今天天气很好！

Ah, summer. There is nothing in this world quite as unstoppable as my ability to do nothing in the summer. Perhaps you know the feeling: waking up at noon, donning the same clothes you've worn for three days running, and wandering out onto the yard in bare feet (alternatively, if you don't enjoy the feeling of wet grass prodding about your bare soles, the cool tile of the kitchen will suffice).

Summer laziness, I have concluded, is the ultimate procrastinator's ecstasy. Options for the wayward procrastinateur are limitless. Perhaps a carefully positioned deck chair and the latest copy of a glossy magazine will do for today; perhaps an iPod and a cool glass of lemonade are preferred instead. Details don't matter. This sort of summer frolicking has but one prescription: all activities must reflect the spirit of the keyword 'sloth'.

(If you're still in the kitchen, you can also pick a mollusk as a keyword. Mollusks are always fungible.)

* * *

Unfortunately, I have been rather busy for the last few weeks. My "cozy" research jobs have been put aside for no less honourable a shtick(s) than: A. my best friend's wedding, coming up this weekend; and B. the Dalhousie Student Union handbook.

(Which, by the way, is set to be just as good as last year's handbook. And by that I mean that it is largely the same.)

I still find some time to do nogoodery between turns of fixing DSU rhetoric and spending money on a sport that hates me, however. (Clue: the sport's palindrome is 'flog', which, coincidentally, is a mightily apt description of how I play it.) Regular readers of this blog will know that this nogoodery entails a number of spectacular feats, some of which I tell people about, some of which I keep secret for reasons that will soon become obvious, and all of which are imprecise and unspecific and not abnormal for a 23-year old male, not in the least. And what I mean by that is that if I say "I watch a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, lurk around Buffyverse newsgroups, and would order all seven seasons of BtVS and all five of Angel if not for the fact I am broke," it is to be taken in a most general, non-disturbing, and not-in-the-least, non-abnormal sense.

(Coincidentally, that entire statement is true, so we'll work from there.)

Other general, non-disturbing hobbies of mine include:

-Drooling at the expensive guitars listed on eBay;
-Playing loud, impressive music at the kids across the street so as to inspire phear in them;
-Squirting Spray & Wash at the ants that choose the untimely death of crawling out of a hole in my wall at precisely the same moment I am watching it;
-Flipping between Charlie Rose, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, then re-watching all three on YouTube and Google Video to get the bits I missed;
-Sending nasty emails to CTV and PBS admonishing their decision to air The Daily Show and the The Colbert Report at the same time as Charlie Rose, and vice-versa, thus causing me to experience unpleasant apoplectic fits of rage that are surely taking years off my life;
-Waiting for civilized, problem-solving responses to those letters;
-Leafing through an odd assortment of magazines that includes The New Yorker, The Walrus, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Maclean's, Time, FHM, Maxim, Stuff, Playboy (for the articles!), Rolling Stone, Spin (though not since May 2006's makeover), Downbeat and Guitar Weekly; and, when my subscriptions have run dry,
-Looking for the perfect Wikipedia page.

* * *
Wikipedia is one of those things I both love and hate. It is notoriously inaccurate — thousands of Wikipedia's pages are complete garbage. Many of them, however, are simply excellent, containing a wealth of information archived in such a way that regular encyclopedias simply cannot compete (take the example that most Wikipedia entries are interlinked with web citations, websites, relevant links and other wikipedia pages; also take the example that Wikipedia pages can be updated as soon as something happens; and also take the example that many of Wikipedia's pages are subject to vociferous and objective debate).

Despite the "you're potentially reading misinformation" con, I spend hours upon hours browsing Wikipedia, sifting from one linked page to another until my brain begins to twilight and my eyes see red. I do this not in search of any particularly accurate information, or any specific information at all, but instead because it doubly satisfies my summer credo: I am doing no work; I am relaxing. At the same time, I'm engorging my addiction to information and my desire to learn without breaking any sweating rules. It is an unconscious, mouse-click-driven education. It allows those of us who wish to immerse ourselves in the world to do so without actually being in it. It is a fix. It is a problem that fills your head with loose ends and words instead of serotonin and poison. And it is the perfect escape.

* * *
Lately, I've found myself reading Wiki pages on a widening number of topics: the Church of Satan, The Who, Napoleon's Italian campaigns, the Tang Dynasty, Erik Satie, Syriana, existentialism, anagrams, Hitler's wives, Bauhaus architecture, and so on. I have even gone so far as to occasionally contribute to a few pages (Dalhousie University; The Dalhousie Gazette; The Who). Other times, I simply leave comments (a few Buffyverse-related pages).

Last night I topped all of my previous searching, editing, wondering, and lusting by stumbling on this page, dedicated to explaining the Inverse Ninja Law. It is not a particularly useful page, nor is it all that eloquently written or designed. But it does just what Wikipedia does best: it satisfies an urge to digest, to know, and to read about things that are just outside the scope of regular encyclopedia radars, but sit square in the sights of the modern lexicon, the evolving language of concept, and that post-modern beast known to most as 'The Internet'.

(I'm fixed for another day. Thank you, temple o' useless knowledge. Next up: the Uncanny Valley.)

* * *
Ah, summer. There is nothing in this world quite as unflappable as my ability to do nothing in the summer. Summer laziness is indeed the ultimate procrastinator's ecstasy. Options for the wayward procrastinateur are indeed limitless. And Wikipedia, along with The New Yorker, expensive eBay guitars and the phear I am inspiring in the children across the street, are just a few ways that life chooses to say I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for all that work you have to do. I'm sorry for all that time you must spend wondering and worrying about your future, your career, your life and your health. I'm sorry for making you skinny, for giving you those ears, and for making you so anal you refuse to let anyone else cut your hair. I'm sorry for inventing pain. I'm sorry for making musical instruments difficult to play, and math frustrating to learn.

And, most of all, I am sorry for winter.

* * *

Most apologies are meaningless. As I sit out on my deck, a warm wind blowing about my feet, it occurs to me that this is one that is not. In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a favourite book of mine, there is a character named Captain Dunbar who is entirely devoted to making time pass as slowly possible. "Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" he asks at one point, rhetorically. "This long," he says, snapping his fingers.

"A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."

If there is one good thing a little laziness does in this world, it is that it forces us to live in the present for a moment, free of worries, free of the future or the past, forced to take our time and develop an unmoving, unshifting realization — of existence, of consciousness, and of the nature of inaction. It is, as Dunbar aptly identified, a fix; a state of being in which we cease moving through life, as we have often the tendency to do, and finally let life move through us.

For once. The perfect escape. A bee gathering pollen. The feeling of wet grass beneath the sole of a foot. The rustle of trees. The sound of a car engine running. It is the paradox of progress, and like an encyclopedia, it is static; reality seen in an imprecise, piecemeal, and unspecific way. It is the conscious immersion in the world — without actually being in it.

* * *
Cheers to summer. We barely get three months of it. So here's to Dunbar, and to making summer laziness last in all of its imprecise, unspecific glory.

再见。