Re: Short attention span theater

On Mar 25, 6:02=A0pm, Dover Beach <moon.blanc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I'm looking at the list of 100 books, and I'm thinking that although
> I've read some of them (I couldn't be arsed to count) I read them a long
> time ago. =A0And you know why?
>
> Because I can't focus on anything anymore. =A0Here is my reading so far
> this afternoon, after I got the taxes to the CPA. =A0I started by
> wondering about the book S**** Pit. =A0Can't remember what triggered it.
> Oh, yes I do -- I heard a recording of Sylvia Plath reading her poem
> Daddy on some XM channel. So I started thinking about crazy chicks and
> political analyses of crazy chicks.
>
> So I used one of my gray-market library cards and found a 1979 article
> about the difference between the movie and the novel (S**** Pit, that
> is), analyzed in political/feminist terms. =A0The woman who wrote S****
> Pit was sort of lefty and it was unclear whether that was partly why she
> had been committed. =A0That article made reference to the Children's
> Bureau publication from 1914 called Infant Care. =A0So I read that.
=A0Wel=
l,
> partway. =A0It got boring about how to fold diapers. I got through at
> least 10 pages, though. I noticed that Julia C. Lathrop was the head of
> the Children's Bureau. =A0In 1914? =A0A woman was head of a gov't agency
i=
n
> 1914? =A0So I looked her up and it turns out I really should have known
> about her because she was in with the Jane Addams/Alice Hamilton
> Hull-House crowd.
>
> So back to my online library account. =A0I looked up Julia Lathrop and
> found some correspondence between her and a working class woman from
> right around 1914-15 and it was just riveting, and heart-breaking,
> because I swear conditions for poor women in Chicago have actually
> gotten worse in the last 100 years. =A0Then I got led off into a puzzler
> about the Progressive Movement and the conflict between the radicals and
> the reformers, and found some material that described the criticisms of
> the Settlement House programs, which were assimilative and promoted hard
> work and sobriety and a bunch of other conservative, unpopular stuff.
=A0
>
> Then I needed some M&Ms and I thought about how I really probably would
> have been better off if I had just sat down and ground my way through
> some more of Plath's poems, and just thought about those, but my head
> just constantly explodes and with teh Intarweb being universally
> available I now cannot stay focused on anything. =A0
>
> I'm sorry, what were you saying?
>
> --
> Dover

My brain is pretty messed up on the focus thing too. I can read
newspaper/magazine articles but have a hard time with books and stuff.
Don't think I could ever deal with poems or anything like that. Also I
am pretty embroiled in a computer project that means I have to stop
and sort of do something every few minutes.

I can't even compose decent posts anymore.

I did kind of make up a post in my head about the kind of weirdos I
always see on the bus but I forgot what I was going to say.