You know what? I just realized that I haven’t read anything strictly for pleasure and not work-related for months. And this is just wrong. So here is what I will do. I will force myself to get a really silly, just-for-entertainment book (like this one, for instance) and read it. And I will not feel guilty over the 20+ work-related books I urgently need to read and annotate.

So here is the challenge: read or watch something completely and utterly fun and unproductive.

This will be the hardest challenge for me because April is just insanely busy for any academic and for me especially because I now have a second job. And I need to prepare my tenure dossier. And buy a house. And move. OK, I need to stop freaking myself out now and just breathe. And then:

HAVE UNPRODUCTIVE CAREFREE FUN

So the seller continues to be very unreasonable and obnoxious. I didn’t have any opinion about Bosnian people before crossing paths with this seller but now I’m starting to develop one. And it’s not extremely amazing.

Everybody has conspired to annoy me today, it seems.

Does anybody need a Steam account that contains:

People who buy digital content.

I made a huge mistake of buying several episodes of my favorite show from Amazon Instant Video, counting on being able to watch it whenever I wanted.

But no, it turns out that the way the system works is that I can only access my content when the vendor wants. I haven’t been able to watch my shows for days. I just spent an hour doing my hair without any show to watch.

Serves me right for doing something as stupid as buying digital content.

This is, of course, a pretty minor inconvenience. But imagine a whole university completely cut off from all of its textbooks because something is malfunctioning on a server somewhere. That would not be as minor. >

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a warning for Russian citizens who are planning to travel overseas. It is best to abstain from leaving the country for now, the Ministry advises citizens, because evil Americans are on the lookout for Russians they can kidnap.

Here is a link in Russian.

One thing that I hate about living in a small town is how everybody knows every detail of everybody else’s life going back forever and feels the need to share these details with you.

“So this guy you were talking to? His wife left him for his cousin 7 years ago, and then there was a nasty divorce, he got really depressed for a while, let his house go to seed. His son dropped out of high school. And now he just started dating my former neighbor’s second cousin, and she is a very weird, annoying person. So I don’t know, are you sure you want to use his moving service? I mean, I’m sure he’s professional and all, but he’s had all these issues. . .”

This is getting very annoying.

I think I need to take up gardening now. I have never grown a thing or even kept a potted plant but I’ve got to have some genetic memory of all the generations of Ukrainian peasants who toiled on the land, right?

So what should a person who has no idea about gardening do as her first step? Is there some book or a website? Are there gardening outfits?

Also, if we move in on May 31, is it too late to plant some flowers? And does anybody know if it makes sense to plant decorative red thyme in Southern Illinois?

When I ask people I know these questions, they begin to make fun because the idea of me gardening seems too extreme. But I learned to drive and I go to two different gyms, so change is possible. Especially, given the genetic memory.

Totalitarianism is invincible because people embrace it so joyfully. Freedom terrifies them so much that they will agree to anything as long as somebody dictates their behavior. A coffee shop whose owner believes she is entitled to tell people how to use their property doesn’t encounter any opposition:

I was here working on my laptop when I looked over and saw that there’s a sign that says ‘laptop-free,’ ” says Luna Colt, a senior at the University of Vermont.

During a recent visit, Colt is shocked that using her computer is against the rules.

“My friend and I started talking about it because we’re both on screens,” Colt says. “Then I said, ‘Should I go up there and apologize?’ “

It is unbelievable to me that anybody would be so terrified, insecure and childish that they would apologize for being dictated to and mistreated.

This seems like a little thing but it surely tells us a lot about how easily people renounce their rights in order to present themselves as obedient little children. I would never continue patronizing a business whose owners would try to tell me that I can’t use my property while on the premises.

And the business owner’s reasoning for banning laptops is very totalitarian, too:

Whalen says it’s not just about money. “To walk into a place and see people looking at their screens with a blank stare, it takes away just kind of the community aspect of it — of you being in a place with other people,” Whalen says.

She thinks she can decide for her customers that they need “the community aspect” and enforce it. The only way such people manage to stay in business is because so many customers welcome totalitarian environments.

A study of work habits of 30 academics at Boise State University showed that:

Faculty participants spent 17 percent of their work week in meetings – including those with students – and 13 percent of the day on email (both for research and with students). So combined, he says, 30 percent of faculty time “was spent on activities that are not traditionally thought of as part of the life of an academic.”

About one-third of work-week days – 35 percent – was spent on teaching, including 12 percent for instruction and 11 percent on course administration, such as grading and updating course webpages.

Just 3 percent of the work-week day was spent on primary research and 2 percent was spent on manuscript writing.

As I always say, people will do anything, and I mean anything at all, including attend useless meetings and dawdle with email and “update websites” all day long just to avoid doing research. I used to be one of them but then I took care of this problem.

I will now record everything I do in a week to compare my own productivity numbers to these. Uncharacteristically, I even have a meeting this week, so something will appear under “Service.”