Saturday, November 15, 2003
(1:12 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Future of an Allusion
Since no one is going to guess it, "the sophistry of despair" is from Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death (available in a couple different editions from Amazon.com -- at a substantial discount from the publisher's list price!).
Let me tell you what I've done the last couple evenings. Thursday was spent almost entirely on the book of Psalms, except for a brief break for Survivor and South Park. Back in the day, monks used to go through all the psalms in one day, and I found that even with my busy American lifestyle, I was able to get through 106 in an evening. That left me with 44 more, plus Song of Songs, plus Lamentations, plus selections from The Women's Bible Commentary and Old Testament Parallels (both books are available at Amazon.com).
Thus I ended up staying up until 2:30 AM on a Friday night reading the Bible -- but that's not the low point! My real tour de force of loserdom was spending the bulk of Friday evening, from approximately 6:30 to 10:30, cleaning my house, while having an intermittent theological debate with my sister (via the AOL Instant Messenger service, for which I use Trillian -- a highly recommended product). I moved the furniture in my bedroom, consolidating a considerable segment of free space that was previously spread haphazardly throughout. I vacuumed under my bed, in the hope of cleansing it of cat hair and thus assisting my allergies. I dusted. I vacuumed the furniture more thoroughly than it's ever been vacuumed. In the end, I even cleaned the vacuum cleaner itself. I am truly Danny Tanner incarnate.
At one point, I thought I had accidently let the cat outside, and I got to have a fun conversation with Tara Smith about how one handles such a situation. It turns out the cat was just hiding from my disinfecting fury, as I discovered shortly after hanging up the phone.
So far this morning, I have slept, taken the dog for a walk (and now I just learned that he will exhibit puppy behavior for three years -- good luck, Richard and Kari), eaten Golden Grahams and sour cream glazed donuts, and planned to go to a party at the home of the lovely and talented Anthony Smith, the most frequently mentioned non-combatant on this weblog.
Oh, I also wasted a ton of time on Google trying to come up with a clever link for every second word I said.
