'1984'

The temperature is down to 48 degrees here on Bikini Hill as the latest cold front makes its way into San Marcos, America (not that I'm complaining one bit after this brutal summer).  I only mention it because the winds that have been intermittently rattling my window tonight prompted me to look up the temperature.  Isn't the advent of technology, computers specifically (for the purpose of this example), amazing?  I just opened another window on my desktop and started typing 'intermit....' into a search engine so I could make sure that I spelled intermittenly correctly.  Earlier today I typed the name of one of the local cleaners into a search engine so that I could find their phone number and ask them how long they were open.  Does anyone even have a phonebook anymore?  The cleaners who were stitching my blue jeans happened to be open until 6:00 yesterday, so I decided to take a nice little walk through town.  I was going to get some exercise while picking up the jeans, renewing my public library card, and getting what's called a 'Tex Share' card, which allows a non-student holder of a public library card to check out books from the local university.  The book which I have been telling my friends that I needed to make a point of reading for a few months now is George Orwell's '1984'.  By the way, for someone who is pretty close to writing his 20th blog entry in five weeks, you'd probably be surprised by how little I actually do read, in terms of other blogs and books anyway...  '1984' was one of the books that I read in high school.  I can't remember what year it was assigned to me, but I am sure that '1984' was a reading assignment, because in high school the only books that I do remember reading were ones that we were required to.  I do remember reading a bunch of the 'Hardy Boys' mystery series when I was in elementary school, but in high school the only reading that I did on my own usually involved flipping through the pages of Sports Illustrated.  I have been wanting to re-read '1984' for a while now, because I have heard about how eerie it is that many of the things that Orwell wrote about in his book have actually happened.  For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it was actually published in 1949, and has been called prophetic (at the very least by the person who wrote the little preview on the back cover of the copy that I have)...  I have read about the first twenty pages of the book, and so far the biggest parallel that I can see between his book and our society is the power of the media.  In '1984', the media is government-controlled, acting as a propaganda machine for its own purposes.  What I am talking about by the power of our media is the ability to put a story out there, and make it a topic of mainstream conversation, regardless of how trivial it is (or at least how unimportant I believe it is)...  ;)  Yesterday one of my facebook friends passed along this great quote:  "Kim Kardashian is filing for divorce.  During this difficult time, the Kardashian family requests as much attention as possible."  I reposted it for laughs, because divorces are not usually handled in such a manner, with the mother of the grieving bride showing up on 'The View' for example (and I only know that because it came up on my homepage, by the way)...  :)  My point is, do that many people really care this much about Kim Kardashian?  Is this the best use of our media's time?  Okay, back on topic, I am sure that I will get much more from reading '1984' now than I did as a high school student, because there are words and references in it that I cannot imagine I understood when I was younger.  For those of you who have never read it, pick up a copy and keep in mind that it was written in 1949 when reading it.

Tomorrow I will be back with my usual Friday football-driven blog, which promises to be an interesting one since last week was the first time since the blog began that I actually would have lost more of my NFL bets than I would have won.  If you ask me to predict a Nebraska or Kansas State game though, I will be completely, 100% dead-on (or completely, 100% on the wrong side of it, respectively)...  Yes, that is me that you hear whistling as I roll my eyes aimlessly...  Seriously, there are lots of great college and NFL games coming up this weekend, so I hope to see ya tomorrow.  Have a good one!