Preparing for the Great Podcast Experiment on Monday.

On Friday I proofed a pen, a Bic pen, and found five errors: Our Bold Hero found this fun and interesting. However, most of the time I'm doing unassigned "maintenance" editing, which can be a little more mind-numbing.

My original plan was to download a few good audiobooks to listen to while I was doing some of the more mindless proofing — but did you know that audiobooks were expensive? I'd always figured that they would cost as much as ebooks; I was mistaken.

So it's to be podcasts. Right now I have about 20 podcasts, mostly news and politics feeds from major providers like CNN and the NYT, because I am a serious news junkie but can't read the news at work. Also, the Penny Arcade podcast, because who doesn't love Penny Arcade? Monsters, that's who.

(The amateur call-in show stuff tends to just irritate me. I really like the idea of a "Grammar Girl" podcast, but ultimately I just end of thinking "Why didn't they just look it up?" It would have been so easy. I mean, Bartleby is free.)

Assuming that the Great Podcast Experiment succeeds — if I can concentrate and my maintenance work isn't affected — it will be wonderful to have something new to listen to, continually new. As it stands now, I'm overplaying every song I have.

My right ear is also somewhat swollen. Lousy headphones.

Recent activities: reading sci-fi, watching old Bruce Willis films from the '90s (note: Sarah Jessica Parker is not an attractive love-interest), putting in time on Scarface... a whole lot of nothing, basically.

Currently overdue from the library: Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Space, which I finished earlier today. Good stuff, actually, though I found out too late that it's the second book in a trilogy that begins with Manifold: Time.

I've been disappointed by the limited time I've been able to spend reading lately. The podcasts tie into this: I'd like to be prettymuch constantly thinking, but too often I find myself shutting off my brain. Watching television, or listening to music, not because I'm in the mood to be entertained, but as a way of coasting by with very little thought. Forgetting about time, rather than filling it.

Passive entertainment has its uses (see: Return of the Evil Eye, avoiding), but I don't feel as fully alive watching some re-run as I do when reading a book, or catching up on the news, or editing, or thinking.

Right now, I'm spending maybe six or seven waking hours a day unengaged, and, more so than much of the time I've spent playing videogames or driving or cooking or even washing dishes — that time is being wasted.