So, I’m again listening to David Sedaris’ book, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, and just got to the bit where he’s talking about going on book tours. The passage where he describes his restrictions and arbitrary rules (smokers got priority on one tour, as they are going to die sooner so their minutes of life are more precious, etc.) is funny to me and at first I thought it was an instance of something being funny because it is mean. Now, maybe there’s an element of that, but I think I like it because it’s not just being mean; here’s a guy who’s an entertainer, setting up some rules that are not the conventional rules of entertainment. He’s asserting that, sure, he’s there to interact with people, but he’s asserting some boundaries. I choose to see it as a declaration, “I am not television, I am live and in-person, and you had best pay attention to that.” It makes me want to come up with some equally unusual rules for when my genius wife starts going on book tours.
Also, I just took the Beeb’s news quiz and apparently my head was nowhere in the game this week. Random chance would do better than my score. I hope that means I’m better at piping.