(Week 9) Reading resists boredom… with other thoughts and inquiries

“[Reading] resists boredom. Voluntarily picking up a book, we expect – indeed demand – to have our interest engaged […] reading liberates us from routine and tedium as well as the pain life more actively inflicts. Even the kind of verbal production read only for information or ideas involves us in alternative worlds of conceptualization and imagination.” – Boredom p.1

“To us, who are regaled every morning and evening with intelligence, and are supplied from day to day with materials for conversation, it is difficult to conceive how a man can subsist without a newspaper, or to what entertainment companies can assemble, in those regions of the earth that have neither Chronicles nor Magazines, neither Gazettes nor Advertisers, neither Journals nor Evening Posts.” – The idler no.7

The first excerpt explains to us how reading is an act that directly opposes boredom – interest. The latter is a thought about how it is hard to imagine not having anything of interest to read – which I agree is pretty hard to imagine – since apparently the English can’t seem to sit still and do nothing just for one second. Either way, the idler no. 7 goes on to explain why he thinks the morning and evening papers should communicate and create suspense and interest from news stories, which hints at the notion that people read papers and magazines back then more because they have nothing else to do and less because they actually found news interesting. But this doesn’t make sense because the former excerpt said that to read something means that it must inherently be interesting for the person to read it in the first place…

Speaking of reading uninteresting things, lets talk about the ramblers of this week: Euphelia and Bellaria. I hate these b!%&#es, but it’s not their fault. Let’s not talk about how Bellaria changes clothes four times a day and says that she has no times to read because she has to go walk in the park twice every day and accept or decline massive amounts of party invites. Let us do talk about how she’s super pretty, and knows she’s super pretty, and talks about how guys will apparently do anything for her. Second thought, let’s not. Euphelia, how can you get bored of nature and flowers and autumn? You live in God Damn England!! Isn’t it always gloomy there? And your mother is an “economist of pleasure?” (1) WTF is that? You can’t schedule your own planner or something? (2) You have no spare time because you planned a card-game and the opera on the same night? Sounds like too much effin’ spare time to me… Sorry I don’t have anything smart to say about this week’s Ramblers, but neither did Bellaria and Euphelia.

I did love the Addison reading on the Royal Exchange. If only he was alive today to see what it has evolved into. He loves this diverse, daily gathering of people so much that he starts to cry about it at times. Wierd, but I admire his passion for something practical and honest; at least your not throwing pebbles in the water because you decided you hate flowers one day and can’t make friends with country folk. Aa-Euphelia-hem! Pardon me, sore throat, seasonal flu is coming around.

Yeah, that’s really all I gotta say about that… I really didn’t mean to write this much, but hey! I was bored…