(click to enlarge to readable size, or find the same scans at Flickr)

(1)Alec Longstreth website

(2)I’m Quitting the Internet: Will I Be Liberated or Left Behind? by James Sturm

Also, I bought Lynda Barry’s new book, Picture This, at the Alternative Press Expo, and it’s seriously amazing. If you care about drawing or writing or living, you really should read it. Here’s a link to the book at the Drawn and Quarterly site. Since I’m cheating. But there’s a downloadable PDF! The book kind of makes me want to turn off the Internet permanently, to be honest, and to just put my head really close to the paper and watch how the ink flows out of my pen. Which is rather the point, I suppose. Back to minutiae!

The David Foster Wallace quote on the lower right, there, was sent to me by TC. I think that, for me at least, one of the reasons I need to limit my use of the Internet is because the “constant monologue” he mentions is the sussuration of a ZILLION voices coming from blogs, review sites, and the like.

“…being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.” <—something I can’t do if I’m distracted all the time.

And the last line? Substitute “the Internet” for “the mind” and that pretty much sums it up. I feel like I was allowing the Internet to be my master. Allowing it to give me opinions, ideas of beauty, ideas of worth, ideas of success. It gives me constant stimulation if I’ll let it. And for me, that’s just not a good thing. I know your experience is probably different. I hope it is, anyway. But really, I’m doing this to find out about me.