Friday, October 28, 2005
(12:13 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Classic Friday Afternoon Confessional
I confess that I have come up with a pretty good post topic for the book group over The Open: Man and Animal by Giorgio Agamben, starting Monday and extending throughout the week. Aside from my post on Monday, here is the expected line-up:
Monday: Ben WolfsonAs mentioned before, the book is only 90 pages long, so if you were hoping to join in the discussions, there is probably still enough time to read it, assuming you can get a copy within the next couple days. Even if a couple days of the reading group week have passed by, I doubt that will be a big deal, because I'm sure the discussion of each post will be spread throughout the week to some extent.
Tuesday: Matt Christie
Wednesday: Jodi Dean
Thursday: Good Ol' Doug Johnson
Friday: Scott Eric Kaufman
I confess that yesterday, I was waiting for a Blue Line train at the Jackson station, and there were some CTA employees down on the tracks picking up papers. I thought that I heard a train coming, but the guys weren't getting out of the way (turns out they can just stand up against the wall; I thought they'd have to climb up onto the platform). I began to consider what it would be like if they were hit and, most likely, killed. First of all, the O'Hare side of the Blue Line would not be going anywhere for a while -- depending on how fast the train was going, some kind of clean-up process would be involved. I thought, "Man, that would suck. I guess I could just go take the Brown Line." Then I thought, "Well, no, because I need a transfer when I get off the train" (I had already taken the bus up from Hyde Park) -- "oh, but wait -- this is a Red Line transfer, so I could just walk across." I was kind of pissed because I would then have to take the Fullerton bus and walk eight blocks south, or else pay for a whole other trip just to take the Kimball bus those eight blocks.... Luckily for me the guys were not hit by the train, allowing my trip to proceed as planned, without requiring any excessive walking.
I confess that I've been watching too many old Seinfeld reruns, and it's likely making me into a bad person, or actually just moreso.
I confess that when I got home, I completely rearranged my books, going back to a strict-alphabetical system. This was not at random: on Tuesday, Hayley had purchased a new bookshelf, which we assembled together as a fun family project and which seriously alleviated their book-storage problems. I was particularly jealous that they were able to avoid having books vertically stacked, either in front of the normally stacked books or on top of them -- both of those were problems I was currently facing. I calculated that by reclaiming some space on top of my nice bookshelf (the shitty one already had a makeshift new top shelf on it), I could fit everything in -- and when I was done, I found much to my surprise that I had ample room at the end of the row to put any library books, etc. Vertical stacking: eliminated. I also went back to a more or less strict alphabetical by author scheme, having been unsatisfied with my previous attempt to sort them by topic.
I confess that my emotional breakdown on Monday was really helpful in terms of getting some things out of my system.
I confess that I am envious that Scott McLemee was able to shop at a store with the following display table:
I confess that the jazz on Chicago Public Radio at night makes me feel really lazy.
I confess that I wish Blogger had a feature where if you assigned a post a date and time in the future, it would wait and then automatically publish it at that particular time.
UPDATE: I confess that I've reactivated myself with three temp agencies, but I don't actually believe they're putting me on their lists at all.
