(no subject)

A couple of weeks ago, out of absolutely nowhere, R asked me if I'd ever read Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer". I said I'd never heard of Eric Hoffer, and he handed me a copy of the book in question, which he'd read in college.

Sometimes, in this journal, R comes across as kind of a dumbass, but the truth is he's a very intelligent man. He went to an ivy league university on a football scholarship but he did a degree in some very complex social-political-historical thing that I wouldn't even attempt to study, and he has a much firmer grasp both of currents events and of what they mean for society than I do. We tend not to discuss it too much because neither of us find this stuff as interesting as blues music and What Terrible Things R Once Ate, but he's not an idiot by any stretch, and the books I occasionally borrow from him tend to be...complicated.

The True Believer was written by an autodidact longshoreman, an avid reader who simply had thoughts to say and wrote them down. The book is about "mass movements" -- social, nationalistic, and religious, successful and otherwise. He could have titled it "How To Throw A Revolution" and it wouldn't have been off the mark.

( The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer )

Final Verdict: Obviously, I liked the book and I find Hoffer's theories and writing interesting. It was a hard read, but it both challenged and entertained me and it's hard to find books like that -- I don't mind pure entertainment (I avoid pure challenge) but a book that balances the two can be rare. I don't think this is a book that everyone would enjoy; it's not pleasure reading, though it was pleasurable to read. I do think it is educational and provides a new way of looking at things, and I value that. If you're interested in social structures and especially in the social structure of fandom, I'd recommend at least having a skim of it in the library sometime.

(no subject)

HEY AMERICANS

IT'S CLOCK SETTIN' TIME!

Remember to set back any analog clocks and sync up any digital ones tonight, unless you really feel like getting up and performing that mystical task at two in the morning when we officially set the clocks back an hour. I have three clocks that actually need setting: the oven clock (very important, as it's the one I consult in the mornings to determine whether I have time for an egg), the bedroom clock, which was a wedding gift to my parents and is the clock I learned to tell time on, and the cheap one in the living room that I never look at because I keep forgetting its existence. This is a lot of time for a guy who basically stops looking at clocks after 4:30pm on weekdays and never consults them on weekends.

As a child I found this whole process baffling, that the human race could just decide to change time twice a year. I also believed that days really lasted longer in the summer, not the daylight itself as we all mean but that hours took a longer time to pass in summer. Clearly I was made for time travel.

Unrelatedly, I had a theory as a very young child that a long silence was an acceptable substitute for "no", which led to interesting misunderstandings with my parents. Come to think of it, most of the misunderstandings I had with my parents came back to an incorrect interpretation of reality on my part.

Frankly, my interpretation of reality is much more interesting. In my reality there are dragons. Beat that.