CSotD: Time to make the donuts
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"Personal time" is kind of a strange concept for writers and I would assume cartoonists as well, and perhaps for anybody who gets paid to do what they want to do anyway. I have a service dog, in that he exists simply to get me up and away from the computer twice a day for an hour or so, because otherwise …
"Personal projects" are a little different, however, and Connie Sun's cartoon (hat tip to Johanna Draper Carlson) is well-timed. I scheduled this past week off from my main job to concentrate on a one-off gig, which is sort of like a personal project except that it was sold before I started work on it.
I have a certain structure to how I do my week-after-week job and each day has its own set of specific tasks. The open-endedness last week led to a lot of drift and, though I got everything done that I had wanted to, it kind of all happened towards the end when I got some sense of looming deadline hanging over my head, if only the end of my free week.
Deadlines are wonderful things, but they have to be real. I've heard of people who purposely set their watch 15 or 20 minutes ahead so they'll be on time, but I don't even reset all my clocks for Daylight Saving Time and back. I know the difference between what a clock says and what it means, if I've set the clock myself (or not).
There's actually a thing called "hyperfocus" that is kind of where autism and ADD crossover on the Venn Diagram. Some — certainly not all — ADD types go into hyperfocus at deadline time, and I guess I'm one of them, because I wrote all my papers in college the night before they were due, which is the only reason I graduated at all. Sometimes I even bought the book the day before, because I'd put that task off, too.
I do not recommend this, by the way. Like Shannon Sharpe, I graduated not "Magna Cum Laude," but "Thank You, Lawdy."
Top 85% of my class. Would have been a proud moment indeed, if I'd gone to graduation.
Amusing ourselves to death
The New Yorker has a site where, each month, a different cartoonist posts something topical more-or-less every day. It's worth a bookmark, and this month's cartoonist, Barbara Smaller, nailed one this time.
There have been several cartoons criticizing TV news for overcoverage of the missing Malaysian jetliner, including some pretty good ones. But let's not pretend this is the first instance of pandering to the booboisie instead of presenting actual news.
NBC Nightly News is possibly the worst, not only leading with viral non-stories and burying the more important stuff, but also wasting three or four of their precious 24 minutes reporting on viral videos and other pop-culture ephemera. If it becomes any fluffier, they might as well just expand the already-overinflated Today Show further and engulf us completely with Pickle Queen interviews, recipes, inspiring supercrips and, yeah, cat videos.
I did have to say "possibly the worst," because the competition in that category is absolutely fierce.
The fact that NBC made such a big deal out of the "Waiting for Superman" rollout, however, gives them extra credit for accusing our schools of failing while working their hardest themselves to make Americans even more ignorant.
Meanwhile, as responsible journalism falls to the gods of mammon, the Associated Press and its affiliated Professional Grammar Nazis are working tirelessly to strain at gnats.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Bizarro)
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