untidy thoughts

I've got a new subscription to Vanity Fair, which means I read part of Rob Lowe's autobiography. Yup. I've also got a subscription to The Nation and boy do I love their arts and lit coverage. And I can't find my issue of TNY with the Anna Faris profile. I also read Elizabeth Kolbert in a National Geographic at the doctor's office.

If I don't get up early enough in the morning (and I've been getting up pretty darn early), my cat shreds a New Yorker to wake me. Seriously. What else?

This Sceptical Expat has a great list of what bugs her about TNY. I like especially point number

6) The way so many articles end abruptly. The first couple of times I encountered this I thought it was refreshing. No conclusion, no final aphorism or take home message – OK, not everything lends itself to a neat closing summary. Now I regard it as another smug idiosyncrasy of the house style.

...

It reminds me of my erstwhile supervisor’s critique of a colleague’s formless research papers: ‘He always says that that’s just how the material is. But that’s how all material is until you find something to say about it.’