HOW TO DISTRACT YOURSELF WITH TRIVIALITY, REPRISE; or, ON GETTING BACK TO YOUR ROOTS, THE SEQUEL

with the end of the film festival (which, the end of it specifically, has already been over milked), it's time to return to the ordinary calendar, which means a resumption of normal activity as per our established dictates of looking good in pants. even the chickens, not actually maimed in that imaginary incident of last may but then reduced by half during a raid in november, resumed a kind of normalcy yesterday with the introduction of two new hens to the coop. the rat that was burrowing under the wall of the run to steal eggs -- apparently the survivors of the raid had been laying through the winter and their trauma -- has been dealt with as well -- but not violently, and of course not by me. it's forty degrees and hasn't stopped raining since late sunday afternoon, the return of the true portland winter, but the signs seem to be pointing in the new directions of spring.

the world outside of portland and the festival having been all but ignored here for the past nearly three weeks, there should be more than enough to find to discuss in the catching up, even if it's a little bothersome not to have a scheduled project and have to come up with topics independent of the easy offerings of an institution like the film center (although march's french crime series has undeniable appeal). but so much happened! and that's part of the problem: not knowing which outdated information warrants commentary. borders finally declared bankruptcy, and the internet split on whether that meant an opportunity for independent booksellers. (a pasadena indie offered $20 gift cards to the first 200 customers to turn in their borders rewards cards.) "the washington independent review of books" (headquartered in america's most literate city) finished its first month. the libyan investment authority's sizable investment share in pearson was frozen and won't be paying dividends. and something about another sarah palin book. and that john galliano mess. (but the james franco boycott meant that no one was watching the oscars to see if natalie portman showed up in dior anyway, so...)

things were going well until i somehow found my way to page99test.com. personally, i'd never test read (or heard of anyone test reading) the ninety-ninth page of a book to gauge my interest in it ("because it's arbitrary. it's rarely as worked on as the elements we usually judge a book by [sic]"). apparently, though, it's an established practice of decades. i started today. page99test.com gives you a login and then throws ninety-ninth pages at you. some of the excerpted books have been published, others not. most of the ones i read were from genre fictions, which made the critiquing (would you turn the page? tell the author why(!), how likely would you be to buy this book?) all the more shamefully compulsive -- and unfortunately not because most of those fictions were very good. using the site is like playing petty editor in tweet breaths. that's as far as i got in my retracing, so it's as far as you'll get caught up before we jump back into ordinary time, which ends again for the caltholic church after next tuesday, but i think that we can give ourselves a bit more leeway.

semi-meaningful distraction! isn't that the very lesson we're supposed to have learned from all the writing about the internet (and on it) lately? consider yourselves served. and then visit that site and smile through those cringes. it's fun! we'll catch each other up later. the rat's been handled, so we don't have to worry about the chickens.

really, though, i'm a good father.