I cheated a little bit and read some of my current “public transit” book while I was taking a bath tonight and I had a very “me” sort of epiphany: Not all books are best read when riding a train. The Third Policeman is narrowly regarded* as an absolute masterpiece and one of the funniest books ever published. As I’m still reading it, I can’t tell you if I agree with these assessments or not, but what I can tell you is this: It is considerably funnier when reading without any distractions.
I wonder if this effect contributes to my being less impressed with The Master and Margarita that I expected to be. Many people whose opinions I respect regard it as one of the greatest novels ever written, but it left me a little underwhelmed. I’m willing to admit that the problem is probably with me and not the book. Perhaps the issue was not with what I read, but how and where I read it.
TIL why producers really prefer their drum machines to have separate outs for each drum. Again, probably obvious to most people who’ve encountered the situation, but I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes.
My experiment with Vero is not going particularly well. I like the interface well enough, but the fact that you cannot post just text. You have 8 options as to what you’d like to post:
You can add text to any of the above, but if you just want to saw something, you have to type it over the cover of a book or an image or something. That’s not a deal breaker, but it’s a curious design decision.
The bigger problem is that none of the people who I am currently following have posted anything in the last 6 months (or longer). The site still has frequent issues with their servers being unable to handle the load of new users, but based on my experience, I’m pretty much just posting for my own benefit.
I guess that’s about it for now, seeing as it is getting unreasonably late. I’ll try to think of something good as I’m dropping off to sleep. It’s a little thing, but I’ve found it helps me sleep a little better. Anything to take the sting out of these strange, worrisome times.
-RK
* Things are often described as “widely regarded” so I assume that they can be “narrowly regarded” as well. I’m improvising here, but I take “narrowly regarded” to mean “adjudged as so by a small but extremely enthusiastic audience.” A minority opinion, but in this case, a minority comprised of people I respect.