Virtually Painless
I’ve been following the progress of Google’s Book Search and book downloads, while I suss out how I might actually use and enjoy such things.
Attached by an invisible umbilical chord to my tech devices (yes they DO give me the oxygen and nutrients I need, dammit) I still love pulp and ink. You know this. A fact that was completely belied by what I found the other day.
I’d come home to grab my bikini for the spa and noticed that my roommate had taken her A/C unit out of the window, which I’d been thinking about anyway, in case she was getting cold. What I’d forgotten were the books I’d been willing to sacrifice to propping up the air conditioner. One was one I’d told her not half a week before that she absolutely must read, if she liked X kind of book. I had climbed up into my bookshelves and not found it, which had been filling me with a worry akin to when animals sense an earthquake. I can’t stand to be in the apartment if I can’t reorganize those bookshelves and take a clean inventory. Perhaps I’ll do the LibraryThing (thanks dave!) or Delicious Monster.
The book: Satan, His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S.
I am a bad mommy. I am a bad, inconstant woman. Perhaps this is why I fear contracting pregnancy, as I have not provided a home safe for my precious things, though I want to, I feel a strong drive and longing to. Perhaps that’s a 2007 resolution. Better bookshelves, for a start.
But clearly I am good news for any manner of publishing entity, because I will constantly lose, destroy, give away, and corrupt media in all its forms, doomed to repurchase it for the rest of my days, even when I have free copies and cheap copies. Because I will lose those too, or be too lazy to do the dance of the software.
But that’s a whole nother story related to income, outcome, and the fun-to-trouble ratio. All I remember was my mother talking back to the television commercials, and shepherding me clear of their promises. “Virtually! See how they always have to say ‘virtually’ that’s really means ‘kind of’ or ‘not really’ ‘close but no cigar.’” Almost, but not exactly. She wanted to teach me to not be a sucker, and believe everything I heard. I still yell at the tv, like my ancestors before me. And the one’s before tv, who came hear on the Mayflower. Yes my people did… we’re a disgruntled, unsettled lot. I understood Lot’s wife.
I still feel that way about all things “virtual” even though we’re not talking about even slightly the same thing, except that these two unrelated concepts use the same word. A virtual book will be kind of like a book to me, not really a book, nor is anything “virtual” close to being “the cigar”. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And maybe it’s a sign that some things should be allowed to deteriorate or get lost, as they aren’t as close to you anymore as you’d thought; while some things kept, and how much effort you give is your way of shaping things and making the world virtually the best you can, as you like it
Next entry: Step To Me Get Burned Like Toast
Previous entry: Branching Out
