Update Becoming Rant
Work is nightmarishly hectic as we attempt to fulfill a week end deadline. Both Monday and Tuesday left me in the office until midnight. Only able to sneak in blog entries when computer is rebooting (even then must be tactful). I'm still reading Snowcrash but it's a long book with a complicated plot, hence no blog entries.
I bought the most recent Vanity Fair (can't find their website). Even though I know Christopher Hitchens writes for VF, I still have a hard time purchasing it because it gives the impression of People magazine: forget your crusty, proletariet existence and live vicariously through your favorite celebrity. This month's edition featured George Clooney on the cover. I would have placed it back on the stand except it featured a long story written by Sebastian Junger on Liberia. So I skipped the stories about Clooney, the gossip of the royal family in Monaco... okay, I didn't skip that one (did you know princess Stephanie of Monaco is involved with a circus acrobat? EGAD, how could she involve herself with someone so common!) and read it.
Why are the celebrities we obsess over always in entertainment1? I think Clooney is a talented actor but there are many people who interest me many times over with much more captivating stories of life. Why can't People magazine focus on brilliant doctors, cutting edge authors, avant garde architects or engineers? Is Jennifer Lopez' life really more interesting than, say, Pattie Maes? I suppose it has more of a soap opera quality to it. That's why it irks me that Sebastian Junger and Christopher Hitchens choose to publish their work in VF. That a person who is writing about the reconstruction of Iraq would let their work be dominated by tawdry stories of celebrity.
I'm getting too extemperaneous now, I'll step off the soap box.
1If you're European and you're snickering then please don't; your obsession with royal families is also annoying. Those people are even less deserving of attention than actors who at least have some formal occupation.
6:54:15 AM 
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