Signs of the Times?...

Cancelled the paper a few days ago. It was a bold move, away from the piles of yet to read sections of the Times, the half solved friday crossword puzzles (is it still a lie if it is as obviously untrue as that last statement?), towards a cleaner, nicer place, a virtual folder in my browser bursting with links to articles and linked entries and overall the electronic, digital, internetational future perhaps? (Let's click harder, my friends.) Oh, and there would be fewer dead trees as well. Less time spent sitting with the giant printed sheet of pressed pulp in front of me on the floor in the morning. Less brutal imagery flowing into my brain, even without electricity. The paper was cancelled. ("To suspend your subscription please press one now.") That was two days ago. And it took just this tiny step to realize that what I thought I was getting from the web and from the news sites on the web was not actually what... please excuse me while I go and try to catch that thought. I seriously thought for a brief moment there that the digest that I serve to myself in this very browser here is the actual real thing I remember. I mean... what was it that I meant? During a short brainstorming session yesterday, some of my memories that triggered ideas were actually from... the paper. I even remembered the location where I read the articles I remembered. It was as if I were speaking of moments in the past and then this smiling face of a friend would pop into the memory again and again and again (oh, I think I need to use the phone...)... how incredibly strange... Right now my perception is that my reading of the online editions of the press is at best a bit of a booster shot, something to remind me that the world is still turning until I get the next paper at my door, around sunrise, and so the world slows down a tiny bit and I can see badly printed images, even if not of them quite joyful, yet without electricity and I can sit on the sofa with a giant sheet of printed paper in front of me and... well, the tree thing can not really be turned into anything positive at this point. How does recycling really work at this point in time? Is my wanting to get the paper back just a manifestation of the same pattern of addiction that is hard wired into a child that does not get a constant stream of confirmation, just a mild tap, now and then, a very addictive little biological mind trick common to some substances... that biologically hard wired circuit about which I read just recently... in the paper?... I hear it is dangerous to misinterpret this "paper knowledge" litter in ones brain for the actual thing... (wars were fought because of... well, but wars were also fought because of women, which does not make women bad, now does it?... oh dear brain, what are you doing to me?) My New Yorker subscription will expire in February 2005, I am seriously worried right now... And clearly nothing beats reality as a source of misinterpretation, not does it?... Please forgive this confused writing style... I spend much too much time clicking on links and other virtual things... (Ever wondered how I earn much of my living?) Wait, was I just reminded of the tragic angle of this silly situation by viewing This brilliant classic Spot for the Guardian, written by Frank Budgen, over at Gorgeous?... I really do not know... or at least not right now... .