Wasteland Wrap-up #8

Is it official? Is summer over? I'd like to file a complaint to the manager.

Is it official? Is summer over? I think it is. I start teaching on Tuesday next week. My syllabuses are all done. I am at peace with it. But still… I’d like to file a complaint to the manager. I feel like we could all use another month or so of summer before we rush into the fall? Who’s with me?

Lyndon waiting for me patiently while I wait for a breakfast burrito to be made.

This week, on Doomsday Machines, I posted about John Christopher’s 1956 novel The Death of Grass, which is a book I’ve spent altogether too much time thinking about for the past 8 years or so. It’s one of those strange books that I almost don’t recommend anybody bother reading, yet I also feel the urge to tell people about it. I enjoyed writing that one up.

I’ve decided to modify my post update schedule a bit, and to do Mutually Assured Distractions posts every other week (along with one other “main” post category) rather than every week. So that means that there will be one post (plus this one) per week, then a week of two posts (plus this one), and so on. This is both for my sake (I find myself utterly unable to keep them as “short and quick” as I had intended the category to be, even though I enjoy writing them a lot), but also because had a number of people tell me that the blog was becoming like a pile of unread New Yorker magazines in their inbox.

For extremely uninteresting reasons I very rarely have to pick up a prescription at the sketchiest pharmacy in the Bronx, one where they do not seem to actually serve customers normally and seem to regard my presence as a strange anomaly. This is the only piece of decoration in the place, above the door to the pharmacy back room. I don’t know what it means. I don’t ask questions.

OK, they didn’t say exactly that, but it’s what came to mind when people told me that they were “behind” on reading it, as if it were a guilty obligation. Obviously I don’t think anybody needs to stay “on top” of this, but beyond that, perhaps there is a limit to how much Doomsday Machines content one can (or wants to) ingest in a week?