Monday, August 07, 2006

Like Screaming only Louder

Of all of the reasons to write a post this has to be the most infantile. I just realized that I threw out three pages of the review of Althusser's Philosophy of the Encounter that I had been working on. This happened because when I open Word using the little icon on the "Dock"-thing (a registered trademark of Apple computer), rather than say clicking on a file, I create a "Document 1." Usually, I then select an old file to work on, and the "Document 1" sits on my computer, untouched and unused. So I think nothing of throwing it away when I close Word or whatever. However, last night I worked on the review for several hours and never bothered to title it anything other than "Document 1." I think that this is because I was unsure what to title it, or if the particular journal in question even wanted a title for the review (some do not). Thus, when I restarted my computer after downloading the new security update I lost my review (see what my desire for security and safety has gotten me).

I would make some jokes about the "aleatory" nature of this loss, connecting what happened to the book that I am reviewing, but I am not in that kind of mood right now.

Why does this merit a post? Well I thought about telling someone about my misfortune, but it is not exactly an interesting story, or an interesting post for that matter. The truth of the matter is that I had to do something before I went back to work, rewriting the same review.

To paraphrase Sideshow Bob: "I am aware of the irony of using the computer to express my frustration with computers, so do not bother pointing it out."

On the positive side I just started reading Alain Badiou's Théorie du sujet (my French book of the moment) and I am enjoying it immensely. So far it has more politics and less math than Being and Event, which is a good thing. And there is a manatee in the Hudson river. I love manatees (I should tell the story of my encounter with the manatee in Belize, but since that predates the blog by quite a bit I think it will remain in the wetware of my mind).

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