Rav Casley Gera

Magazines. There are hundreds of the bleeding things, and I sometimes think I’ve subscribed to most of them. They attack me like some multi-headed monster; as soon as you’ve slogged through one, another two have plopped onto the doormat. From initially reading them cover to cover, then just the most interesting articles, I’m now reduced to skimming - and still there’s so much of it that the thought of reading anything, ahem, more substantial goes out the window.

Well, enough is enough. It’s Sunday, and I’ve put the entire day aside to clear out my magazine drawer before it gets any more overfull. And you, dear reader, can share the journey with me, in stream-of-consciousness style.

The titles list: Prospect, February, March, April 2006 editions; Colloquy, Winter and Spring 2006 editions; Jungle Drums, June 2006 edition; Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus Newsletter, Winter 2006 edition; The Pink Paper, 29 June 2006 edition; CreativeWeek, June 2006 (?) edition; Harvard Magazine, March-April 2006 edition; Harper’s, June & July 2006 editions; The Atlantic Monthly, June and July-August 2006 editions; Harvard Public Health Review, Spring 2006 edition; Gay Times, June 2006 edition.

10.30am. 20 min in. Already i have a headache. I now know that young members of Fatah and Hamas have a lot in common, and have been told (but not convinced) that, contrary to the widely-accepted theory, Britain was well-armed in the 1930’s. And now I’m off to buy some Diet Coke.

11.25am. Sentences are already starting to blur into one another. Apparently, Indian philosophy has more in common with the Western tradition than with the Chinese! Starting with Prospect may have been a mistake.

11.44am. More detail about the seemingly ever-growing list of mistakes and stupidities made by the US in Iraq. There’s a compelling drama of State/Pentagon relations in there somewhere; not just Powell as talisman, as has been done in Stuff Happens, but on an institutional level.

12.48pm. This is slow going. Electoral reform and the need for government direction of digital development, check.

12.59pm. Apparently the average “cut rate” of Hollywood films increased in the 1980’s from one every ten seconds to one every six seconds, and has stayed there since.

13.21pm. Oh my God! Ringo Starr slept with George Harrison’s wife!

16.01pm. Laptop has been monopolised by friend, prompting distraction into long Wikipedia-fest. Learnt: French people may not really exist; the song “Guantanamera,” which I always thought was Brazilian, is in fact Cuban; the British seat of Government used to be Winchesster; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Harvard students were required to learn how to make a sundial. Oh, and Greater London covers 609 sq miles. Have long way to go. Have added vodka to Diet Coke.

16.28pm. Long article about the long battle to alert Americans to the dangers of Trans Fats. I recall at Harvard there were signs everywhere noting that the food served in the H-Bomb’s many canteens was trans-fat free. The article waxes about the dangers of the fats, one of the four main types, the others being the better-known saturated, unsaturated and monounsaturated. The American authorities are now warning against trans fat consumption, which appears to have no positive effects whatsoever and substantially increase heart disease risks (apparently, while both saturated and trans fats increase “bad” cholesterol, trans fats also reduce “good” cholesterol). And yet for some reason, I’ve never heard anything about it over here. Is Europe oblivious to this threat? Or does our food contain fewer trans fats anyway? Given Harvard’s neverending boasting about its Global University status, it’s a bit of a damning
indictment of the article that it doesn’t mention the situation elsewhere.

16.35pm. Bloody hell: more people die each year in the US of suicide than of murder.

17.36pm. John Maynard Keynes was gay!

18.14pm. Finished Gay Times. Learnt nothing of interest, besides the above.

19.09pm. Apparently containment can work with Iran, and the interior western US might turn Democrat.

20.16pm. I really need to stop and call my mother; 2 Harper’s and 2 Prospects to go! In other news, apparently information management is going to be transformed by a new open-source program called Chandler. But not yet, and besides, it kind of looks like Outlook to me.

20.44pm I give up. I’ve just found another Atlantic I hadn’t noticed; so I now have more to read than I did an hour ago. It’s no good. There’s at least another day’s worth of reading to go.

How do people do this? Somebody reads these bloody things, and it’s not normally the unemployed. And I’ve gained nothing. Granted, I’ve learnt a lot of factoids and been exposed to some interesting ideas, but not one has been exhaustively explored in the way that could allow me to form an actual opinion of my own. I know, it’s supposed to be a “jumping-off point for further research.” But if there’s barely time to read the articles themselves, how the hell are you supposed to make time for advanced googling?

I guess the problem stems from my hedging my bets. Pick a mag and stick to it, I guess that’s the lesson. There are Economist people and LRB people, and then there are those people for whom the Saturday Guardian provides a week’s stimulation. I need to face facts and become one of these. But which one? Suggestions welcome….