"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact."
Showing posts with label In an Ideal World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In an Ideal World. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Multitasking at its Best; or, Something I'd Like to See Invented

I may be a huge weirdo, but I read books in the shower.  Yes, they get wet.  But they do dry back out afterwards, albeit with some ripply looking pages.  Small sacrifice.  I also often read in the hot tub, as well as whenever I get around to taking a bath, both of which tend to get books a bit damp as well, though not as much as the shower.  I have found this task a bit easier while showering in Europe - Italy, and France, in places where you use a handheld showerhead and turn it off whenever you’re between rinsings to save H2O (Europeans as a whole are much more environmentally conscious than we wasteful Americans).  

Why do I want to read while showering, you may ask.  Well, my own modern American upbringing has so bombarded me with media from all directions at all times that I can’t seem to bear not to multitask most of the time, and I find myself rather bored doing just one activity at once.  My sophomore year roommate once took a picture of me brushing my teeth with one leg up on the sink to stretch it and a large textbook sitting on my leg, with a highlighter in my other hand.  Somehow I’ve been trained to see any single task as strangely unproductive, and, well, boring.  As Harriet the Spy’s Ole Golly told me recently in an audiobook I was listening to while driving, you might as well play checkers while you watch TV, because both are boring to do alone but provide enough entertainment when done together.  

So after wondering just how to keep my books relatively dry during a particularly wet-booked shower just now, I decided to search the internet to see if anyone had actually come up with any sort of invention yet that allows you to read in the shower.  Here’s what I found: 
  • Durabooks, a company that makes waterproof books with pages made out of a nontoxic, synthetic glue-paper material.  I highly approve of this, but they seem to have only six titles available: a few short story collections, as well as two erotic story compilations (they know where our minds are in the shower).  A good idea (and I might purchase one at some point), but not exactly what I’m looking for.  I want to be able to take whatever book I’m currently in the middle of reading right into the shower with me.  
  • Another interesting find: waterproof notebooks.  These could definitely be useful at some point, I should think.  
If any of you are budding inventors out there, invent me some sort of casing or covering I can place on top of my book that can be easily put on or removed that keeps the water from getting to it and somehow allows you to still turn the pages.  Or just put one of those waterproof TV screens in my shower for me.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

List of Superpowers I'd Choose, in order:

1) The ability to teleport anywhere in the world instantly at will (and I could of course bring people with me if they were touching me or holding my hand or something at the time)
2) The ability to fly -- I dream about it so often and so vividly that some part of my brain does not understand why on earth I cannot fly and truly believes I can... it’s almost as if it remembers doing it, somehow..
3) The ability to relive parts of my life at will -- mainly I would use this to relive show performances - I am just dying to play Rosa Bud again, and Rosie, and the Witch, and Big Mama.. and with my exact VSMT cast, well that would just be incredible ---  though it wouldn’t be terrible to choose some other wonderful times from over the years to experience a second time.... and, heck, while we're at it I could be Alice in Wonderland again, and Cinderella, and Jaydeen, and the Narrator, and Tallulah, and countless dancing chorus girls having the time of their lives out there......

What powers would be your ideal?