Well, it looks like May hasn't been a particularly productive month in terms of journal-entries-per-31- day ratio. So...I’ll try to force one in just before June gets her sweaty palms all over us.

Actually, ever since I finished up Mike Jasper's book cover, I haven't really done much of anything in the creative vein. And at work, where there has been a rather noticeable lull since Summer session began and faculty have left on vacation, I haven't felt like doing much, often finding it hard to pry myself away from websites like atlantabraves.com, espn.com, or anything else not related to academic technology. (The way the Braves have been performing, though, I've had good reason to quickly close those Internet browser windows.) At home, I've been downright lazy and uninspired: No reading for pleasure, no design work, no progress on the website, no need to extract all the black feline fuzz from the carpet so that we have two cats instead of one, etc., etc...

...which leads me to speculate that I'm probably more inspired and prolific when I'm under pressure -- close to (but not) overwhelmed with work, personal projects, and a barrage of other stimuli. Throughout April, for instance, I was teaching, working through a stressful end of the semester, just beginning the designs of two book covers, reading all the books on my bedside table, writing a journal entry almost every two days, and generally thinking a lot more critically than I am now.

As for the last two weeks of May, there’ve been no impending deadlines, and hence no inclination to act as if there were any! To avoid taking the guilt trip of the not-so-hardworking yet puritanically-indoctrinated American, I’m going to need some new motivation in June.

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Speaking of anxiety and Puritanism, here’s an interesting little article.

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One nex-to-last note of no particular interest: I bought 4 hardcover books today at the Carrboro PTA for - get this - one dollar: Steven King's Cujo and The Stand, Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, and finally (my favorite of the four) Sixteen Short Novels: An Anthology Selected and with an Introduction by Wilfried Sheed. (A few authors included in this anthology are Edith Wharton, John Steinbeck, Thomas Mann, Anton Chekhov, Willa Cather, and Albert Camus.)

I already have and have read the Tom Wolfe novel: My whole point for buying it, however, lies in the hope of getting Nice Price Books to give me a couple of dollars in trade for it. I bought my copy from this particular used bookstore for a whopping $14, so I'm hoping I might come away with a $3-$5 in-store credit. I'm thinking of doing the same with Cujo, seeing as how NPB carries a lot of King and I'm not so sure I want to even read this one...

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Last note of no particular interest: I've seen too many Jack Nicholson movies recently:

1. The Shining
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
3. Five Easy Pieces
4. About Schmidt

And tonight Easy Rider is in the queue.

(Steffi just pointed out to me that of the first four I mentioned, only About Schmidt gave the actor the opportunity to stray from his typical, crazed characters. As Good as it Gets, one of his more "recent" films, is no exception, either.)

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Currently Reading:

A Reverie for Mr. Ray by Michael Bishop