Distracted by the Shiny

by C. Patrick Neagle

When I went out on a ship this last time (I teach college English classes on US Navy ships as a hobby), I found myself with a great deal of spare time. To occupy the hours, I decided to start exercising more. Also, I wanted to be irresistible to women when I got back to the States.

Television had taught me that to be the aforementioned irresistible stud muffin, I could start jogging, buy a Bowflex(tm), or be incredibly wealthy. I couldn’t afford a Bowflex(tm) or the shipping charges required to have one delivered to the middle of the Mediterranean; an inability that also precluded, obviously, the option of being incredibly wealthy. Instead, I took up jogging.

I’d tried jogging once before, years back. I made it around the block, thought I was going to have a heart attack; stroke; hallucination of giant, talking pandas; or all of the above, and so decided never to jog again.

As with most of my vows of that type, here I was, breaking it. It would join the vows of “I will never eat broccoli!”, and “I will never become a teacher!”, and “I will never work in food services!” Okay, I’ve managed to avoid that last one. So far.

Jogging on a ship sailing the high seas is an exercise in itself. Said sea is not usually flat; therefore, neither is the ship. One side might be tilted up on one rounding of the deck, then tilted waaaaay down on the next. Builds good ankle strength.

I got used to that, though, as well as being occasionally sprayed with seawater as wind kicked a wave up over the side of the ship. I also got used to dodging weird things scattered around the decking: buckets, rope, power tools, machine guns … that sort of thing.

At first, the jogging was painful. Six times around the ship was roughly a mile. I started at three miles, with two miles of walking scattered in. Okay, okay, possibly three miles of walking scattered in and two miles of actual jogging. Even so, my legs hurt, my back hurt, my arms hurt, my legs hurt, my feet hurt, my legs really, really hurt. Still, not bad for a guy in his fort … er … early thirties. Especially one who had never jogged before.

By the time I left the ship, I was jogging four-and-a-half miles a day, three or four days a week. I looked forward to it, even. But though the pain everywhere else had worked out, it was still hard on my knees.

People always say that: “Jogging is hard on your knees.” What they don’t say is that “hard on your knees” means that said knees will feel like tapioca spooned into a boiling cauldron before being dumped out into a seething brine of piranha, all while each individual tapioca bead is connected to your brain via a network of nerve endings constantly being diced by some chef or another from the Food Network.

Like that.

This awareness-opening pain gave me an excuse to cut back on the jogging when I returned home. Also, I started dating (Hey! It worked!). Also, it was hot. Also, I was whiny. Four times a week became three. Three became two. Then two jumped straight to lying on the couch watching re-runs of “Ghost Hunters.”

Strangely, I could feel the lack. I’d had a lot more energy when I was jogging. I did more, even wrote more. I didn’t feel the need to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. I ate better. I drank more water. Life was gooder on the drug of jogging. Yet I just couldn’t bring myself to go outside, stretch, and just … um … do it (Sorry, Nike, I wear New Balance shoes).

Then one day I said, “Darn it, self, I’m going to go out and jog.” So I did. Right after I helped a friend of mine move something, waited for the rain to quit, hung out on Facebook for a few hours, made lunch, brushed the furballs out of the cat, read a chapter in my book, wrote some e-mails, took out the trash, lay on the couch wondering about the pain tolerance of tapioca, and did the laundry. After all of that, and after fighting off the urge to just take a nap instead, I put on my New Balances, went outside, stretched, and took off down the sidewalk.

I’m not to where I was. I’m only jogging three-and-a-half miles a day, once or twice a week. Toward the end of a day’s jog, I notice that my gait is more like a shambling lumbering rather than a gazelle’s prancing. Also, I notice that I’m being outpaced by anorexic sorority girls hurrying to class while carrying armloads of books. Still, I feel the energy coming back. I almost look forward to going out for a jog.

In any case, it’s better than working in food services.

~*~

The author would like to note that he has nothing against those who work in the food services industry and that if they see him dining at their place of business, they shouldn’t do anything too horrible to his food as a result of this column. He just doesn’t want to work there himself.

Booked

I was lounging in my hammock, downloading a book to my e-reader (The Collected Works of Shakespeare, if you’re interested), when I realized that it had been a long time since I’d been in a bookstore. I got to thinking and realized that it had also been a long time since I’d been in a music store. A bit more thinking (sometimes I think that much, it’s true) and I realized that it had been a really, really, really, really, really long time since I’d been in a movie rental place.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve gotten used to getting most of my entertainment from the internet (motto: Going without a capital “I” in Wired Magazine since 2004). I ordered my books from Amazon. I ordered my DVDs from Amazon. I ordered my music from Amazon. Well, okay, I also ordered my music from iTunes. Well, okay, I mostly ordered my music from garage sales happening on nearby streets. Well, fine then, the garage sales didn’t really take my order, but you get the idea.

Anyway.

I used to love going to bookstores. When I was a kid and we’d go, I’d spend what felt like hours working my way through the shelves, pulling out books with their shiny spines, drooling slack-jawed over the glossy cover art, devouring the back cover blurbs. Sometimes, I’d even buy one (rather, my mom would buy one for me). Later on in life, I haunted both the big chain new book bookstores and the small, corner-shop used bookstores. In the one, I loved the bright lights, the unbroken spines of all those new books. In the other, I loved the smell of paper, the dimness of the shadowy corridors that seemed to promise secrets to be found — and the cheap prices (hey, I was on a budget).

I never loved going into music stores as much as bookstores, but especially during my graduate school years, I’d go into one once or twice a week looking for a cd. I’d flip through the collections, take a couple up to the listening counter, slap some headphones on, and find out if I was going to have a new favorite group (it’s still the band Garbage, if you were wondering).

My DVD collection numbers 400 or so boxes (many are TV series). It was my great pleasure to wander into the local used DVD store and browse through until I found some horrifyingly bad horror movie and then buy it for a couple of bucks.

So what happened? The 21st Century, mostly. When Amazon, founded in 1994, started selling, well, darned near everything in the early 2000s, it was just ridiculously easy to go online, make a couple of mouse clicks, and wait for the mailman to deliver my goodies. In that one place I could get movies, music, books. Heck, I could get posters, blankets, and, if I really wanted it, a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. Amazon was like the Home Shopping Network, but not as noisy, and with better decor. Even more convenient was iTunes, Apple’s online music store. With even fewer clicks I could have individual songs or whole albums electronically sent right to my computer.

But Amazon and iTunes weren’t the end of it. Even having those services, I’d still occasionally go to anactual brick-and-mortar store to pick up a book or a DVD (and blankets, for that matter). Until this year.

This year, two new things-of-note entered my life: 1). Netflix. 2). Nook.

Netflix (all bow before the great Netflix!) is a service that, for a low monthly fee, sends you DVDs that you get to keep as long as you want, then send back when you’re done in return for getting some more DVDs. Netflix also “streams” movies — sends them directly to your computer or even your TV — if you have the right equipment. Now I don’t have to pop down to the store to buy or rent movies. I just turn on the computer or the TV. There they are. The rest come to my door via my good friend, the mailman (all hail the great Mailman, deliverer of the stuff!)

A Nook posing with some of its non-technological ancestors.

Nook is my e-book reader (it’s distributed by Barnes and Noble; Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader, is Nook’s more famous cousin). I’ve named my Nook “Fluffy,”even though it’s, well, not. I turn Fluffy on, log on to the Barnes and Noble online store, and download books — many for free, most for a reasonably low price. With a little more effort I can go to my computer and download books from pretty much anywhere online, then transfer them over to Fluffy to be read at my convenience.

I never have to leave my hammock.

When I was driving around the other day just for fun — since I don’t actually have to leave the house to do any shopping or anything — I drove past a used bookstore I had frequented a great deal in the past. On a whim, I wheeled into the parking lot and walked in. There it was, that smell of old books on weathered shelves. It was heavenly. I walked over to a section and pulled out a couple at random.

“Wow,” I thought, “these take up a lot of room. This whole shelf’s-worth of writing would fit on Fluffy with room to spare.”

So I didn’t buy anything.

Not that I won’t ever buy a paper book now and then. After all, if I drop Fluffy while reading in the bathtub, I’ll likely be electrocuted.

* * *

The author has yet to be electrocutedby any of his electronic gadgetry. If you’d like to wish him continued unelectrocutedness, feel free. He would also like to welcome his soon-to-be new WordPress readers. Howdy.