Contemplating the N.Y. Times again.

I don't know why I feel guilty when I spend the better part of the afternoon reading the New York Times.

It's surplus info, really.

Maybe it's sitting on the couch, on a nice day; I can hear my Mom's voice -- "Get outside and do something!"

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Speaking of guilty, they published some spring poems, each of which had a line I underlined:

"pride greed wrath sloth lust a list compiled by a parent always needing something to forgive you for..." Privet Hedge, Ellen Bryant Voigt.

Or this, about allergies:

"Riven & sweltering & swelling, they come into the body's sad lake, its blue bag of steam."
Allergenesis, Kiki Petrosino

And this, about a songbird:

"And he wouldn't work harder at his song,
if all the world prized it,
nor temper what sounds like ardor
if a public though him wrong."
The Word From His Song, Li-Young Lee


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I've noticed, I read the first section of the N.Y. Times last, because it seem the least useful to me these days.

The first section is mostly topical news.

Heh.

I get most of that news online, these days.

The newspaper really serves as more of magazine; more in-depth article and stories.

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The Times also has more than it's share of puff pieces. The fashion news mostly leaves me cold, except to look quizzically at the bizarre clothing that no human would wear outside of 5th Avenue.

The Business section always has a couple of interview-the-C.E.O. columns which are totally useless. (I don't think any C.E.O. knows how to talk anything but useless generalities, jargon, and New-age businessspeak. Candor? Revealing? Forget about it.)

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Strangely, it's the only newspaper sports page I'm currently reading. Probably because it is more like the above mentioned magazine, than a simple recording of games and results.

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Even applying myself, I can't read the whole paper in one day, so I hold back my favorites; the Book Review and the Magazine, to savor later.

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Hey, if I'm going to spend hours reading the damn thing, it has to be blog fodder!