5 things about the New Yorker

Melissa tagged me for either the 5 Things or the 7 Things meme recently. Since I already did the 7 Things, I'm going to just do 5 today (I'm tired).

Because I was reading the New Yorker when I was thinking about this "5-Thing" thing, I have decided to do this one, as "5 Things about Me and the New Yorker."

1. I have subscribed to the New Yorker since I was 18 (42 years).

2. I used to read the New Yorker front to back, story by story, looking at cartoons in the order they appeared. This was in the day before the New Yorker had a table of contents. It just seemed the right way to read it. It the New Yorker didn't want me to know the contents, then I would just let it be a surprise to me. Now, I read the cartoons first, and more often than I care to admit, the cartoons only.

3. I used to be an abstractor/indexer for a quasi-government research agency in Washington D.C. I would read research articles, write a summary of them and select keywords to describe the articles. This was all done on worksheets, because computers were huge things kept in large rooms, not on people's desks way back then. I used to open the New Yorker on my desk and spread my research articles around it so that I could take a break and read the New Yorker when the research articles got dull, and no one would know the difference (today's equivalent would be surfing the web when you should be working). Despite this distraction, or maybe because of it, I was always the most productive worker.

4. I have always wanted to be a cartoonist for the New Yorker. I have never even had an idea for a cartoon, so it seems unlikely this will happen. I appreciate the cartoons though. My mother always admired the little filler drawings in the New Yorker, not the cartoons. Because of her, I admire the filler drawings too.

5. My mother also subscribed to the New Yorker. She read the articles, but did not like the contemporary fiction and I have to agree that much of it seems pointlessly plotless or unnecessarily incomprehensible. Here is an article I like on certain types of contemporary fiction: A Guide to Literary Fiction.


And, because they haven't been tagged for anything lately, I tag GottaGoPractice and Guanaco for this 5 or 7 Random (or organized) things about yourself. Have fun!