OK, why did nobody tell me that a new book by Zizek has been released over a month ago?

Amazon really surprises me, people. Based on the number of Zizek’s books I bought from them, it would make a lot of sense to recommend this new and hugely expensive volume to me. Yet, Amazon never informed me of its existence.

At the same time, it keeps recommending this stupid Fifty Shades of Grey crapola, even though there is absolutely nothing in my buying history that would make Amazon think I might buy it.

In any case, I will be lying on the beach reading my new 1,000+ pages long Zizek book in less than two weeks.

Life is good.

I always keep wondering why my indolence doesn’t prevent me from getting so much done and being so productive. A great article I just read has an answer:

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

I always feel like I need to conceal from people how much time I spend indulging myself and having fun. I even started to play the busyness game, too.

“I’m SO BUSY!” a colleague would complain.

“Me, too!” I say, trying to look appropriately miserable and exhausted. I feel bad about confessing that I spend hours blogging, reading, walking, cooking, taking baths, etc. and still have a lot of time left over to to get all of the work done.

When N. and I started our relationship, I lived in Canada and he lived in Indiana. He couldn’t cross the border because of his visa issues, so I came to stay with him in Indiana. One thing I really loved about his apartment was this amazing bathroom mirror. It looked a little ratty because the entire apartment was a cheap, grad student kind of place.

But that ratty mirror showed me the best reflection of myself I had ever seen. Whenever I looked into it, I saw a stunning movie-star-like person with luminous eyes, amazing body, and perfect hair.

All I wanted was to find a mirror like that for my own apartment in Montreal but I couldn’t find anything of the kind no matter how much I searched in Canadian stores.

Then N. graduated and moved to Baltimore for his new job. I was sorry to leave our apartment in Lafayette, Indiana. It especially pained me to leave the magical mirror behind.

However, the moment we walked into N.’s Baltimore apartment, I realized that the mirror there was as perfect as the one we’d left in Lafayette. Once again, I saw this impossibly beautiful reflection of myself that mirrors elsewhere were incapable of providing.

That was when I realized that I looked so good in those mirrors because N. was around to make me feel more beautiful than I did anywhere else. He was turning the mirrors magical for me.

And it turned out that I was doing the same to his reflection.