The great thing about reading something other than blogs is you run into ideas that you have not thought of before. More than echo chambers, most blogs are conformity chambers - you go there not to hear the same voice but to learn the voice you ought to speak yourself. Not so with writing. You know... as opposed to blighting.¹ I was reminded of this when I read this interview with someone of little real connection to me in the New York Times this morning:

I put on some crisp, clean pajamas, make my bed and get back in it. I have these Turnbull & Asser pajamas, they’re really very WASPy, tweedy kind of plaid men’s pajamas. I make a big pot of tea, in one of those big Chinese teapots I got in Chinatown, the white ones with the goldfish on it. I’ll make what’s called a bed picnic. It’s usually two or three types of sandwiches. It can range from anything as low-rent as a vertically sliced hot dog inside toast with Mexican hot sauce and mustard, to something as gourmet as grilled cheeses I got at Artisanal.

I am not a sultry TV personality, do not go for long urban walks, have never broken a coconut in front of the goddess Lakshmi and the god Ganesh and do not have bed picnics. Yet I get it. It is just about degrees of abstraction in relation to one's inner self-indulgent slob. It invites new ways of thinking about one's inner self-indulgent slob. It justifies one wallowing in and with one's inner self-indulgent slob. Not to confirm to anyone else's manner of experiencing one's inner self-indulgent slob. But to be better at, to be more in tune with one's own self-indulgent slob.

¹ Remember how fun it was to add "bl-" to everything back in 2004? I just did it again. Blog + writing = blighting. I hope that is more successful than my coining of "blinglish" back in '03.