Big Things Come in Small Packages

In the seldom spare moments I have outside of work and school, I find myself wasting inordinate amounts of time surfing the Internet focused on one thing that adds no value to my work or my school. For example, last week, I found myself searching for a dress I'd seen in a hipster boutique in Austin called (shameless plug for friend's store) Spartan/Bows & Arrows. It was a cream colored wool shift dress with a light blue French toile design throughout that was far beyond my budget. I probably spent 2 hours on my computer searching for it on some discount site to no avail. I've attributed that time to my inability to grasp Acid/Base reactions.

But, recently, my web surfing produced some gems that I would love to share.

The first is a document that may have already reached your Inbox called the Subprime Primer. Through stick figures and easy to read and understand content, I now get what the hell has been going on with our economy.

The second gem is discovering George Saunders. I feel ignorant and totally unfit to say I received my masters in Journalism from UNC Chapel Hill as I admit that I have just discovered Saunders. I bet all the "real" writers, sipping coffee on their chaise trying to meet their editor's deadline have known Saunders for years. I bet they also wear berets.

Nonetheless, Saunders is a genius. At least by my standards, which might mean diddly-squat to the average hob-nob. Here is a funny piece he recently published in The New Yorker.

Saunders also writes for the UK's Guardian. His column is called American Psyche.

What my two discoveries have in common is that they take highly complex topics and dummy them down to a couple of pages that any one with a few synapses could understand, or at least laugh at.

So even though my aimless surfing on the Internet keeps me that much farther away from memorizing Kinematics formulas, it keeps things real all the same.