Weird guy in the library

My mom worked in the public library when I was a kid, so I got used to going there a lot. One of my favorite pastimes was to rummage through all sorts of books on the shelves, and take big stacks to a comfy chair and sit and read them. When I got bored I would just take another stack & keep browsing. Sometimes I wouldn't even bother to go back to the chair - I would just sit down in the stacks, pulling books off the shelves and then reading. Of course, I would act all crabby if another patron came into "my" row to get something off a shelf that I was blocking. Bastards.

This was fun for me. But here's the rub: I would really only do this once a week at most. If I were spending hours, seven days a week, aimlessly slogging through library books and encyclopedias, that would be strange. Like the weird pervs my mom would tell me about, the ones who loitered around the library trying to look up ladies' skirts & things. She once got to expel a guy for "masturbating." I didn't know what that was when she told my dad about it, thinking I was out of earshot. Of course, the next day I ran to the library and looked it up in "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and got quite the shock. But I digress.

I started thinking about my behavior on the Internet. Unlike Grant Miller, I am not an afficianado of Ukranian or goat porn, and only rarely even run across smut while surfing. I just engage in the same behavior as I used to in the library as a kid. I just randomly look up shit. And the more shit you look up, the more it leads to other shit. One minute I'm checking out the Star Jones scandal; the next I'm taking some sort of test to see if I have ADD. It goes on & on, and I do it for hours.

Daily.

I have become the weird guy in the libary who never leaves. I have decided this is not normal, and it needs to stop.

So Coaster Punchman has a new policy. No more random surfing for hours daily, ESPECIALLY if I'm supposed to be working. I am now on a strict 3-email-checks-per-day policy. And I will allow myself a quick check-in with my favorite blogger pals once a day. After all, someone needs to keep Echo company. But that's it. The rest of my random surfing will have to wait until I get home from work, and even then I'm putting a cap on it, lest my life become even more pathetic.

Laugh all you want Melinda June - with all the newfound time I will have, I am going to be AMAZING. I might even have time to invent something.

Just you wait.