Yesterday was my first day of (paid) work since 2001... I am now an employee of Books-A-Million. First day wasn't too bad, but it's still retail. Oh, and it's a bookstore, so I saw quite a few things that really irritated me, not the least of which was seeing Oprah's name stamped all over Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, since apparently it's the latest title in her book club. You might think that's a good thing, since tons of people are reading the book just because Oprah recommended it, but also take into account that most of these people will get nothing out of the book (assuming there's something to be gotten out of the book, given its classic status; I haven't read it myself) because they're already mindless Oprah zombie-slaves. I remember when Oprah was pitching Steinbeck's East of Eden and she dedicated an episode of the show to "discussing" the book. For a while, Steinbeck's son talked about how his dad would disappear into his study for hours on end to write the book, etc. -- great, but how does that further our understanding of the book? -- and then the "discussion" degenerated into Oprah and her girlfriends talking about asshole women they knew (because apparently one of the characters in the book is a real bitch). They never even touched on the significance and/or meaning of the book, and really all Oprah's doing is using these classic authors' status to further her own popularity. I hate you, Oprah.

By the way, I just checked Greg's blog -- apparently his latest entry deals with modern fiction, and some of the content of the article is relevant to what I wrote above. I'm not going to go too in-depth into the subject at present, but suffice it to say that I don't think reading is intrinsically valuable. Rather, I think its value is instrumental... and if you're not getting anything genuinely worthwhile out of it, it can actually be damaging. For instance, say you read and love Steven King. On some level, I think that could actually render you incapable of truly appreciating the genius of, say, Kafka or Hawthorne, because if all you're able to read solely for entertainment -- as opposed to always seeking deeper meaning -- I think that you'll be less inclined (or less able) to seek deeper meaning even where you know lies. Conversely, if you've become accustomed to seeking that deeper meaning in all things (because you never know where you'll find it), reading Steven King (for the most part) is going to disappoint you immensely... or you'll end up reading things into it that isn't there. You may yet learn something in the latter instance, but this doesn't make you a better reader or someone who is better able to analyze content. Quite the contrary. And if entertainment is your goal, given the amount of effort it takes -- or should take -- to read through a book (even a bad one) you'd be better off watching television or movies, I think. (And even there, certain kinds of shows are to be avoided.) But enough on that for now.

Oh, by the way -- it's not Steven King that I don't like. I'm just not the biggest fan of his writing, chiefly because his writing style (which I think reflects and/or is representative of content -- in all instances -- but we'll not get into that now) strikes me as rather shallow, largely because of something he's admitted himself: that as a writer, he tends to grab words off the top of his head, as opposed to thinking about what would be the best word to convey the sentiment, etc. (Whereas in my writing, I am obsessive about diction and style, as I don't think it's so easy to divorce from content and I'm generally writing pretty heavy stuff. Stephen King reads like an 8th grader's first draft to me.) But I do think King himself is a pretty cool and interesting character. Here's a photo of us together.

I never said it was a good photo. In fact, it's a really bad one. 😛

SO. Over at Retroactive Continuity, De's finally gotten around to answering the FIVE QUESTIONS!!! w00t! So that's all done, then, at least on my end. 🙂 To recap, the other participants were Brent, Greg, Mickey, and Sam. (With the exception of Greg, the links go directly to the relevant posts; for Greg's see the May 28, 2004 entry.) Oh, and no, Sam, Spider-Man isn't a movie monster either... though I'm sure there are some movie monsters who have similar powers. Creepy things that crawl on the ceiling are not unheard of, though I'm not aware of any who spin webs of any size to catch crooks just like flies.

So anyway, now that those are up, I'll post the five unique questions and let you have a go at 'em... probably on Thursday night or the wee hours of Friday morning (or maybe Wed, to give you time to think about 'em), so you can use them as the FRIDAY FIVE. If you want. Make plans for that, people!

Couple of quick plugs and then I'm done for this post. Greg's getting tons of mentions today; over at Pop Arena, he's got an article that's near and dear to my heart -- one on vampire ducks. At X-Entertainment, Matt's got a triple book review... and then on I-Mockery there's a (really long) essay about anime "concentions". (Typos in the topics of articles are really bad, btw... unless they're intentional...?) I haven't gotten all the way through that last piece yet (I think it's even longer than most Scary-Crayon pieces), but if you've ever been to an anime convention there's a lot in there to which you can probably relate.

So, I should have another SC article ready later today -- the fourth (technically fifth) offering in the Random Lunch series. Yay! By the way, SC needs more readers. 🙁

Oh, and I mentioned that Terra was going to be my next drawing project -- here's the sketch thus far. Aaaand I'm out. Ja.