In a companion posting I wrote about how the newspaper industry is going through massive changes, making the argument that your small local newspapers will probably outlast the giants from New York and L.A.
And while those papers are going to Web sites more and more, don't expect them to lose the presses and newsprint anytime soon.
Figure it this way. You can't roll up a Web site and smack your recalcitrant puppy on the butt. You can't wrap fish in the .pdf version of your local paper. And, unless you're a) a real techno-geek or b) have a real bad problem with ADHD, you're not going to take the laptop into the bathroom with you.
Don't discount this last part. It doesn't matter what the news outlet is, your local paper is tailor-made for bathroom reading.
We discussed this topic at work a few days ago, and the folks in my department all thought I was crazy for mentioning the subject. Well, it might be because I'm the only male in the morning crew, and taking a newspaper into the bathroom is probably just a guy thing. I did admit that homesteading in the latrine is about the only way a guy can rest his ears for a few minutes, and to say I'm lucky this all-female crew likes me a little bit is probably stating the obvious here.
I'm big on bathroom reading, and if it's indicitave of ADHD, so be it. But I'm not the only one. Some years ago some publisher came up with an ingenious concept -- ultra-condensed versions of many books, bound as the Great American Bathroom Book. Single-sitting classics is what the publishers called the final product, and they did kick out several volumes of that work. Granted, it's a real stretch to condense Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Ethics down to two pages. Even breaking down Stephen King's The Stand (at 1,141 pages, not a small book) down to a two-page capsule leaves a lot of the good stuff out, but it still was a neat trick. Of course, after reading the single-sitting version of The Stand, I had to pick up the whole book.
For bathroom reading, though, you still can't beat the World Almanac. It's the classic. Now, this book is an old friend of mine -- I've had nearly all of them from about 1969 or so -- and it's one of those books where you can start anywhere, finish anywhere, read as much or as little as you like, and educate yourself. Or, if you're like me, you'll at least absorb an awful lot of useless information.
Some samples:
- Loving County, Texas, favored John McCain in 2008, with 67 votes to Barack Obama's 12. King County, Texas, wasn't even that close, with 151 for McCain to 8 for Obama. Kennedy County (of course) favored Obama, 108-93.
- There really is a Deaf Smith County in Texas. I could have told you that anyway; I drove through it. Wasn't much there.
- Mario Andretti was the well-rounded race-car driver, winning the 1969 Indianapolis 500, NASCAR's Daytona 500 in 1967, and the 1978 Formula One World Grand Prix championship.
- Famous South Carolinians include jazz pioneer Charles "Buddy" Bolden, boxer Joe Frazier, Senators Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings, John C. Calhoun, Jesse Jackson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ronald McNair, and "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion.
- In 2007, Americans spent more on medical care ($1,681 billion) than they did on housing ($1,460 billion) or food ($1,329 billion). Scandalous, just plain scandalous. We also spent $340 billion on gas and oil, $102 billion on new cars, $93.4 billion on tobacco products, $85.3 billion on casino gambling, and $49.3 billion on nursery, elementary, or secondary schools.
- In 1969, the average American production worker pulled down $120 per week, at $3.22 per hour. In 2007, the average weekly earnings for production workers was $589, at $17.42 per hour.
- About a third of the world's population (or 500 million people) was infected in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Fatalities worldwide: Between 50 million and 100 million.
- The Rolling Stones concert tour of 2005 played 42 shows in 38 cities, grossing a record $162 million. OK, so Mich Jagger was 62 years old for this tour, and Keith Richards was pretty well perserved himself. Or something.
- Riverside County, CA, checks in with a 2,073,571 population in 2007, up from 1,545,387 in 2000. This is a guesstimate, as the turnstiles broke in Moreno Valley around 2002 or so.
- As the old joke goes, "There were these two Chinese ... now look at how many there are." Like, 1.3 billion as of mid-2008.
- The highest per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world in 2007 is ... Qatar, with $80,900 per head. The U.S. ranks 8th with $45,800 behind Qatar, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Brunei, Singapore, and Cyprus. Zimbabwe is the lowest, at $200 per capita. Somalia sits at sixth-lowest ($600), and Afghanistan at 17th lowest ($1,000).
These reading habits may explain why I have so many factiods bouncing around in my brain, ready for all occasions.
Other bathroom-reading possibilities include the dictionary -- one of my co-workers who doesn't read in the bathroom goes to her paperback Webster's to burn off a few minutes here and there (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, kiddies). Writers and journalists will do well with the Associated press Stylebook. Others worth mentioning are The Psalms (good uplifting meditative reading, and they're just the right length). Reader's Digest (again, a good length for short stays). Any collection of poetry or short stories.
One more:
- American Nobel Prize winners for literature: Sinclair Lewis (1930), Eugene O'Neill (1936), Pearl Buck (1938), William Faulkner (1949), Ernest Hemingway (1954), John Steinbeck (1962), Saul Bellow (1976), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), Joseph Brodsky (1987), and Toni Morrison (1993). Most of the earlier prize winners were pretty heavy hitters at the bar, too.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
[I'll throw this to you, the reader. What reading material do you take into the bathroom? Or would you actually admit to such a practice? Use the comments section to give me your input.]
And while those papers are going to Web sites more and more, don't expect them to lose the presses and newsprint anytime soon.
Figure it this way. You can't roll up a Web site and smack your recalcitrant puppy on the butt. You can't wrap fish in the .pdf version of your local paper. And, unless you're a) a real techno-geek or b) have a real bad problem with ADHD, you're not going to take the laptop into the bathroom with you.
Don't discount this last part. It doesn't matter what the news outlet is, your local paper is tailor-made for bathroom reading.
We discussed this topic at work a few days ago, and the folks in my department all thought I was crazy for mentioning the subject. Well, it might be because I'm the only male in the morning crew, and taking a newspaper into the bathroom is probably just a guy thing. I did admit that homesteading in the latrine is about the only way a guy can rest his ears for a few minutes, and to say I'm lucky this all-female crew likes me a little bit is probably stating the obvious here.
I'm big on bathroom reading, and if it's indicitave of ADHD, so be it. But I'm not the only one. Some years ago some publisher came up with an ingenious concept -- ultra-condensed versions of many books, bound as the Great American Bathroom Book. Single-sitting classics is what the publishers called the final product, and they did kick out several volumes of that work. Granted, it's a real stretch to condense Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Ethics down to two pages. Even breaking down Stephen King's The Stand (at 1,141 pages, not a small book) down to a two-page capsule leaves a lot of the good stuff out, but it still was a neat trick. Of course, after reading the single-sitting version of The Stand, I had to pick up the whole book.
For bathroom reading, though, you still can't beat the World Almanac. It's the classic. Now, this book is an old friend of mine -- I've had nearly all of them from about 1969 or so -- and it's one of those books where you can start anywhere, finish anywhere, read as much or as little as you like, and educate yourself. Or, if you're like me, you'll at least absorb an awful lot of useless information.
Some samples:
- Loving County, Texas, favored John McCain in 2008, with 67 votes to Barack Obama's 12. King County, Texas, wasn't even that close, with 151 for McCain to 8 for Obama. Kennedy County (of course) favored Obama, 108-93.
- There really is a Deaf Smith County in Texas. I could have told you that anyway; I drove through it. Wasn't much there.
- Mario Andretti was the well-rounded race-car driver, winning the 1969 Indianapolis 500, NASCAR's Daytona 500 in 1967, and the 1978 Formula One World Grand Prix championship.
- Famous South Carolinians include jazz pioneer Charles "Buddy" Bolden, boxer Joe Frazier, Senators Strom Thurmond and Fritz Hollings, John C. Calhoun, Jesse Jackson, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Ronald McNair, and "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion.
- In 2007, Americans spent more on medical care ($1,681 billion) than they did on housing ($1,460 billion) or food ($1,329 billion). Scandalous, just plain scandalous. We also spent $340 billion on gas and oil, $102 billion on new cars, $93.4 billion on tobacco products, $85.3 billion on casino gambling, and $49.3 billion on nursery, elementary, or secondary schools.
- In 1969, the average American production worker pulled down $120 per week, at $3.22 per hour. In 2007, the average weekly earnings for production workers was $589, at $17.42 per hour.
- About a third of the world's population (or 500 million people) was infected in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Fatalities worldwide: Between 50 million and 100 million.
- The Rolling Stones concert tour of 2005 played 42 shows in 38 cities, grossing a record $162 million. OK, so Mich Jagger was 62 years old for this tour, and Keith Richards was pretty well perserved himself. Or something.
- Riverside County, CA, checks in with a 2,073,571 population in 2007, up from 1,545,387 in 2000. This is a guesstimate, as the turnstiles broke in Moreno Valley around 2002 or so.
- As the old joke goes, "There were these two Chinese ... now look at how many there are." Like, 1.3 billion as of mid-2008.
- The highest per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world in 2007 is ... Qatar, with $80,900 per head. The U.S. ranks 8th with $45,800 behind Qatar, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Brunei, Singapore, and Cyprus. Zimbabwe is the lowest, at $200 per capita. Somalia sits at sixth-lowest ($600), and Afghanistan at 17th lowest ($1,000).
These reading habits may explain why I have so many factiods bouncing around in my brain, ready for all occasions.
Other bathroom-reading possibilities include the dictionary -- one of my co-workers who doesn't read in the bathroom goes to her paperback Webster's to burn off a few minutes here and there (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls, kiddies). Writers and journalists will do well with the Associated press Stylebook. Others worth mentioning are The Psalms (good uplifting meditative reading, and they're just the right length). Reader's Digest (again, a good length for short stays). Any collection of poetry or short stories.
One more:
- American Nobel Prize winners for literature: Sinclair Lewis (1930), Eugene O'Neill (1936), Pearl Buck (1938), William Faulkner (1949), Ernest Hemingway (1954), John Steinbeck (1962), Saul Bellow (1976), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), Joseph Brodsky (1987), and Toni Morrison (1993). Most of the earlier prize winners were pretty heavy hitters at the bar, too.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
[I'll throw this to you, the reader. What reading material do you take into the bathroom? Or would you actually admit to such a practice? Use the comments section to give me your input.]
2 comments:
But you forgot Uncle John's Bathroom Reader!
H'mm. I've heard of that one; I'm going to have to check it out. Thanks, cmwheeler!
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