5:10 PM-5:13 PM: I twiddled my thumbs, contemplating how to kill the last twenty minutes at work. I was sick and tired of answering email. So I figured another blog entry would do. I typed three sentences, then four. Pretty soon I was up to five. I leaned back in my Aeron chair at a 35 degree angle, staring out the window, which was still streaked by the telltale sign of sludge. Then I thought about how utterly pointless it was writing a blog entry in the style of Charles Shields. This wasn’t fair, given that I had only examined one page. And yet I found that this killed time quite nicely.

5:14 PM: Was the last three minutes of writing necessary? Probably not. But I shouldn’t be editorializing here. After all, I’m supposed to describe what I’m doing. And yet since I’ve been sitting on my ass, there isn’t much to say about this that’s exciting. Okay, I just scrunched up my left buttcheek for kicks. Nobody was looking. That’s worth something, isn’t it?

5:15 PM: I think about what happened during 5:14 PM. Did I really scrunch up my left buttcheek because I needed to write about something interesting? Well, yes, I did. Does this mean I’m a sex addict or an exhibitionist? Do I have an ass fetish that I haven’t sufficiently explored?

5:16 PM: I offer a Nazi salute to a co-worker and click my heels. He’s one of the few around here who understands my sense of humor. A risky proposition. I then say goodbye to another co-worker.

5:17 PM: I decide to stop writing in the style of Charles Shields and wonder if there’s any easy way out of this without drawing attention to myself. I scrunch my right buttcheek for symmetrical balance. I then Control-C and Control-V this post into Microsoft Word. 300 words. I’ve been doing this seven minutes. I’d feel a sense of shame if I fired up Accessories/Calculator. So I do the math in my head and it works out to about 40 words/minute.

5:19 PM: What happened to 5:18 PM?

5:19 PM, Part Two: That was too quick an entry for 5:19 PM. I don’t think I’ll ever have to take a nitroglycerine tablet. Or at least I hope not!

5:19 PM, Part Three: This is a long minute.

5:19 PM, Part Four: When will it be 5:20 PM?

5:20 PM-5:21 PM: I go to the restroom. I don’t really have to go, but it’s good exercise. I urinated more piss than I expected to. There is a man in one of the stalls using far too much toilet paper. I know who it is. This might explain why he walks funny.

5:22 PM: I think I preferred 5:21 PM over 5:22 PM.

Liz Henry at The Other blog points to this fascinating entry on Robert Shields, a man who has kept up a diary for twenty years, working at it no less than four hours a day and recording everything that happens to him. His diary is 35 million words and a sample page can be found here. Apparently, the diary made its way to the Washington State University library, along with a $100,000 donation. Shields stopped in 1996.

Jennifer Howard reports that Dalkey has found a new home: the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. No word yet on whether a certain prof by the name of Richard Powers will have any behind-the-scenes involvement.

Elizabeth Merrick pooh-poohs Susan Seligson’s Stacked: A 32DDD Reports from the Front. Without citing anything specific from Seligson’s book (Has she even read it? She doesn’t mention that the book received a starred PW review.), Merrick dismisses that anything chronicling one of the most beautiful anatomical parts is mere “tit lit.”

By this logic, I guess we’ll have to dismiss Robert Herrick as a hack. His poem, “Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breast,” dealt with this subject as follows:

Have ye beheld (with much delight)
A red rose peeping through a white?
Or else a cherry, double grac’d
Within a lily centre plac’d?
Or ever mark’d the pretty beam
A strawberry shows half-drown’d in cream?
Or seen rich rubies blushing through
A pure smooth pearl and orient too?
So like to this, nay all the rest,
Is each neat niplet of her breast.

We can also dismiss Sappho’s invocation (“Beat your breasts, young maidens. And tear your garments in grief!”), Philip Roth’s The Breast, Nora Ephron’s famous essay, “A Few Words About Breasts”, and Mo Yan’s Big Breasts and Wide Hips. All to be thrown into the dustheap! For clearly there can be no literary value in breasts. They cannot possibly be written about with beauty, scrutiny, love, hatred, or any other value on the emotional spectrum.

I suspect Merrick might have an ally in John Ashcroft.