Pack Ratting

I'm in one of those moods again. One of those moods where I just start hording various bits of information. The underlining idea is that one day I'll bother to process it all. Technically, this is the way I always work. I haven't read more then 10-20 pages out of, probably, half the books I own. I've currently got about 5-6 DVDs that I haven't watched. And two or three CDs that I haven't listened to yet.

It's not that I'm buying the things for the sake of buying them. I'm buying them for the moment that the impulse to input them strikes me. Some are an issue of buying things to late. I couple of weeks ago I found that I really had the urge to listen to Slayer, who I haven't listened to since high school. This feeling went on for about a week. Then one day I picked up an album, and before I could listen to it, a coworker mentioned Kula Shaker and I've spent the last several days listening to them. That's over now though, and now that I think about it, may be I'll listen to that Slayer album today. Most of the time though it's the, "this looks interesting"/"I heard really cool things about this" idea and so I buy it, and then process it when the mood strikes me. Ussually with DVD's and CD's it's not that long. Some of the box sets can take awhile to be fully heard/seen. But, that's becuase there's so much to them. And, it'll probably be awhile before I sit down and watch The Three Colors Trilogy, but that's becuase I've already seen all three films (in fact I own them on VHS) and so there's no real drive to watch them right now. But, one wet, cold, Sunday afternoon, I'll see them on the shelf and think, "let's watch French films!" and I'll watch them, and listen to the commentary tracks, and go exploring, and then I'll be so happy I bought them.

Short tangent, when I bought the trilogy, I also picked up Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. I first saw this film in my second year of college. Such a great film. Highly reccomended. And I'm so happy that it's finally on DVD. Now, I just need to pick up his other films.

You kno what though? This wasn't the point of this post. Nope. The point was to talk about the current flurry of purchases. It started with the announcement from Fantagraphics that they were having money trouble, and needed people to buy books this month, so they could cover their debts. So, I dropped a large chunk of change on several books that I've been meaning to pick up, but haven't. They should be arriving tomorrow.
Then a few nights ago, I was watching Chomsky on booktv, and he reccomended a book by Howard Zimm called, A People's History of the United States: 1942 to Present. I ended up picking the book up, and since I was doing some shopping, I went looking for other things and scored some cool used books; Scandal, studies in Islamic Heresy, Pirate Utopia's, and Drunken Universe; all three are Peter Lamborn Wilson books. And then last night, I started talking to a guy who's started a little group that distributes copies of out of print books and writings from various people. I'm sure I'll end up picking some stuff up from him in the not to distant future.

Information is good!

BTW, I'm listening to the Slayer album right now.

Posted by Matt at June 3, 2003 03:04 PM