January 2010 Archives
Well, for instance, yesterday I was at least personally happy for several things. I went up to the post office, stood in line to get stamps, and when I got them the lady gave me nice, genuine smile. I have no idea why—maybe because I was thinking with some private amusement that this has to be the simplest, easiest thing a person can walk up and ask for, and I might have been smiling to myself about that. But if you get a real smile from a civil servant—or from anyone, actually, especially a stranger—that's kind of nice.
Then I went out and dark clouds and cold winds were blowing about, and it started flurrying. I like that kind of weather: it makes me imagine scenes of adventure, warriors on horseback, trumpets blowing, hooves thudding, banners flying, the scrape of sword swept from scabbard, the harsh clang of steel on steel. Other kinds of weather, a cold, steady rain, for instance, don't make me think of adventurous scenes at all. So at that point I had two things to think about with some pleasure.
Then I was halfway home and heard a noise in a backyard. I stood on the sidewalk and looked through a hedge that only partially screened the yard, and saw a young girl, seven or eight, in a red coat, bouncing with a kind of relaxed, offhand expertise on a pogo stick, her blond hair rising and falling. Just bouncing and bouncing slowly, with a pensive, inward air, as though bouncing on a pogo stick helped her concentrate when she wanted to think about something.
And those are some of the things that made me happy yesterday. I haven't been out yet today but I plan to be.
Then I went out and dark clouds and cold winds were blowing about, and it started flurrying. I like that kind of weather: it makes me imagine scenes of adventure, warriors on horseback, trumpets blowing, hooves thudding, banners flying, the scrape of sword swept from scabbard, the harsh clang of steel on steel. Other kinds of weather, a cold, steady rain, for instance, don't make me think of adventurous scenes at all. So at that point I had two things to think about with some pleasure.
Then I was halfway home and heard a noise in a backyard. I stood on the sidewalk and looked through a hedge that only partially screened the yard, and saw a young girl, seven or eight, in a red coat, bouncing with a kind of relaxed, offhand expertise on a pogo stick, her blond hair rising and falling. Just bouncing and bouncing slowly, with a pensive, inward air, as though bouncing on a pogo stick helped her concentrate when she wanted to think about something.
And those are some of the things that made me happy yesterday. I haven't been out yet today but I plan to be.
Well, I finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy the other day and loved it. The ending moved me as much as any I can think of. It's one of the most poignant, sweetly sorrowful situations I've ever seen a writer put characters in. And thinking about it, I have to say it wasn't so much that I cared about the characters. It was more how much they cared about each other.
It's the kind of book you recommend to all your friends, except in this case I'm not going to push it on people who are religious. Pullman is an atheist, and the book vividly illustrates the abuses of religion, and in its hypothetical world there is no divinity as we know it, no separate, pure realm apart from the world we see around us. But the real energy goes into arguing that we ought to treat each other well in this, the one world we can all agree on the existence of. The books may be explicitly antireligious, but I still feel like I'm a slightly better person for having read them.
It's the kind of book you recommend to all your friends, except in this case I'm not going to push it on people who are religious. Pullman is an atheist, and the book vividly illustrates the abuses of religion, and in its hypothetical world there is no divinity as we know it, no separate, pure realm apart from the world we see around us. But the real energy goes into arguing that we ought to treat each other well in this, the one world we can all agree on the existence of. The books may be explicitly antireligious, but I still feel like I'm a slightly better person for having read them.
I just finished reading one of the most amazing books I've ever encountered, and by "amazing" I don't mean "somewhat remarkable" or "really very good," the way you might say "This is an amazing omelet." I mean that reading it, you enter into a new worlds—worlds, in fact—full of danger and staggering surprises and the profoundest possible mystery. What's that? Which book am I talking about already? Glad you asked. I"m talking about The Subtle Knife, the second in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials.
I discovered the series through a piece that Christopher Hitchens wrote about the Harry Potter books. Hitchens hoped that kids who had enjoyed those would, as he said, "graduate" to the Pullman trilogy. I was intrigued by that: Hitchens is often cranky but rarely flat wrong about anything, and if he put it that way there had to be something going on with the books he mentioned. And to be honest, I'd always felt something missing in Harry Potter, as much as I enjoyed the series. Rowling is a clever writer, diligent, a master of craft, but really not an artist. She imagined a world with witches in it, certainly, but the core of her universe is a sort of joke: The witches are just like us. They're individuals with strengths and weaknesses, and they have institutions that are broadly outlined parodies of real-world ones. And witches can do magic, but there's no real mystery there. They just can, the way some people can wiggle their ears. I'd have to say that the world she imagined is really rather conventional, and she's not the most imaginative or ambitious writer you could think of.
Pullman is a different story. He drops you down in the middle of things and you have to figure out what's going on, and by the end of the second book it's obvious that he's in the ranks of the most ambitious storytellers in history—Tolkien, Milton, like that. In this series he takes the deepest mysteries of science and the deepest mysteries of religion and fuses them, the way parallel lines meet in infinity. And he makes you feel it—there really are times where you have to stop reading to recompose yourself. And it's scary—I've been careful about reading it late at night, or in certain dark moods.
That said, yeah, it's probably classifiable as "fantasy" and it's also classifiable as "young adult fiction," and if you turn up your nose at that fine, go read some Joyce Carol Oates or something, you stupid hopeless snob. But if you liked HP and you're ready for a much, much wilder ride, or if you're open to the fantasy genre in general or you're just looking for a hell of a well-written yarn by one of the most imaginative people living today then check out this trilogy, starting with The Golden Compass.
I discovered the series through a piece that Christopher Hitchens wrote about the Harry Potter books. Hitchens hoped that kids who had enjoyed those would, as he said, "graduate" to the Pullman trilogy. I was intrigued by that: Hitchens is often cranky but rarely flat wrong about anything, and if he put it that way there had to be something going on with the books he mentioned. And to be honest, I'd always felt something missing in Harry Potter, as much as I enjoyed the series. Rowling is a clever writer, diligent, a master of craft, but really not an artist. She imagined a world with witches in it, certainly, but the core of her universe is a sort of joke: The witches are just like us. They're individuals with strengths and weaknesses, and they have institutions that are broadly outlined parodies of real-world ones. And witches can do magic, but there's no real mystery there. They just can, the way some people can wiggle their ears. I'd have to say that the world she imagined is really rather conventional, and she's not the most imaginative or ambitious writer you could think of.
Pullman is a different story. He drops you down in the middle of things and you have to figure out what's going on, and by the end of the second book it's obvious that he's in the ranks of the most ambitious storytellers in history—Tolkien, Milton, like that. In this series he takes the deepest mysteries of science and the deepest mysteries of religion and fuses them, the way parallel lines meet in infinity. And he makes you feel it—there really are times where you have to stop reading to recompose yourself. And it's scary—I've been careful about reading it late at night, or in certain dark moods.
That said, yeah, it's probably classifiable as "fantasy" and it's also classifiable as "young adult fiction," and if you turn up your nose at that fine, go read some Joyce Carol Oates or something, you stupid hopeless snob. But if you liked HP and you're ready for a much, much wilder ride, or if you're open to the fantasy genre in general or you're just looking for a hell of a well-written yarn by one of the most imaginative people living today then check out this trilogy, starting with The Golden Compass.
I was listening to couple of kids talking at a bar a while back, and they were discussing night of revelry in, I think, Pittsburgh. One guy said, "I don't know how many beers I drank—it was in the teens for sure."
I feel a little sad in a bemused, contemptuous way, having just read that The New York Times may be putting all or some of its content behind a paywall simultaneously with the coming launch of the rumored Apple tablet computer. These guys! They're as smart as they can be, and as good at what they do as anyone, but they just don't see the obvious—they think that if they just latch on to the right platform, the newspaper can come back, the same as it ever was.
A lot of newspaper and magazine people refuse to see that the Internet was a millennial change in communications technology—it changed everything, including the kind of content people want and will pay for from the media. I suppose the Times execs who think the tablet will save them are stuck indefinitely in the denial stage of death. And I guess they imagine that when Apple brings out its tablet, all of the sudden people will be reading the Times again at the breakfast table, or standing up in the subway, holding the grab bar in one hand and the tablet in the other, reading the Times. And people will pay for the Times again because they always wanted it all along, the same as it ever was, but on a computer, with videos and slideshows and so forth. And if the staffers can't do that stuff, shoot, just get some intern to do it. How hard can it be, right?
It reminds me of some poor sap who thinks a lover will come back some day. I actually heard Steve Lopez, a popular columnist, railing on the radio about the newspaper business like he was a jilted boyfriend. "You'll miss us when we're gone!" he said. It was sad. Lovers and customers leave because they don't want you or your product. You think they really want and need what you have to offer, and they simply don't understand that they want and need it. They're temporarily confused and deluded, but in time they'll realize and come back.
But they don't, do they? Not very often. If you think and expect they will, the deluded one is you. It's not stupidity—smart people do this denial stuff all the time. But the tablet computer will not magically revive periodical publishing and it won't bring back the buggy whip industry either. Ask Jack Shafer if you don't believe me. I wish it could—I was a newspaper and magazine guy in the happiest years of my life, and I'd love to see it come back the way it was. I wish it would. But it won't. Adapt or die—that's the only thing that's the same as it ever was.
A lot of newspaper and magazine people refuse to see that the Internet was a millennial change in communications technology—it changed everything, including the kind of content people want and will pay for from the media. I suppose the Times execs who think the tablet will save them are stuck indefinitely in the denial stage of death. And I guess they imagine that when Apple brings out its tablet, all of the sudden people will be reading the Times again at the breakfast table, or standing up in the subway, holding the grab bar in one hand and the tablet in the other, reading the Times. And people will pay for the Times again because they always wanted it all along, the same as it ever was, but on a computer, with videos and slideshows and so forth. And if the staffers can't do that stuff, shoot, just get some intern to do it. How hard can it be, right?
It reminds me of some poor sap who thinks a lover will come back some day. I actually heard Steve Lopez, a popular columnist, railing on the radio about the newspaper business like he was a jilted boyfriend. "You'll miss us when we're gone!" he said. It was sad. Lovers and customers leave because they don't want you or your product. You think they really want and need what you have to offer, and they simply don't understand that they want and need it. They're temporarily confused and deluded, but in time they'll realize and come back.
But they don't, do they? Not very often. If you think and expect they will, the deluded one is you. It's not stupidity—smart people do this denial stuff all the time. But the tablet computer will not magically revive periodical publishing and it won't bring back the buggy whip industry either. Ask Jack Shafer if you don't believe me. I wish it could—I was a newspaper and magazine guy in the happiest years of my life, and I'd love to see it come back the way it was. I wish it would. But it won't. Adapt or die—that's the only thing that's the same as it ever was.
Back in the late fall, I planted some winter-friendly plants in my plot
in our community garden here. I already had parsley going, and I'd
picked that in other years when snow was on the ground, so I figured no
problem there. The local garden guru gave us brussels sprouts, bok
choy, and garlic to plant, so I was looking forward to some fine eats
over the winter—fresh, local, and most of all, for free.
And things went well for a while. The parsley flourished, the bok choy and brussels sprouts grew with pluck and fortitude, as if they liked the chill of the season, found it refreshing, good sleeping weather, and so forth. I'm that way myself, and had some fellow feeling for them.
Then we had a phase of serious cold, when we had multiple days where it was below freezing all day, which is rare around here, and we also about fifteen inches of snow one weekend. I wondered how the plants were doing, but I figured shoot, they're winter plants, they know the drill, it freezes and snows in the winter, right? That's why they call it winter, right?
Well, I went over there yesterday, since it finally got warm again. The sight was quite depressing. The parsley was stone dead, pale tan like dried corn leaves. The brussels sprouts seemed to have retracted halfway into the ground. I know, it doesn't seem possible, but that was sure what it looked like. And the bok choy's formerly wide green leaves now laid on the ground in histrionic distress, the way a ballerina will curl into herself and slowly crumple onto the stage to indicate deep suffering.
The weather is back to normal and I suppose it's possible that the plants could come back again. But even if they might, they've lost a lot of ground, and when something like this happens you have to feel for the farmers. You kill yourself all day for the whole season to get a crop growing, and then a thunderstorm boils up, hail falls for twenty minutes, and there's your crop, on the ground, ruined. "Nothing personal," the fates seem to say. And that's how you have to take it. You're dismayed, but it's just life, really. There's no anger or sorrow. And there's no helping it. Things grow in their own good time, no matter how hard you're willing to work. You can rebuild bombed cathedrals and so forth. You can't rebuild a dead bok choy plant.
OK, OK, I'm only imagining what it's like to be a farmer. it wasn't like I lost the fruits of an entire year's work, and it wasn't like my kids will go hungry or any of that. I just went out later and bought some greens and sautéed them with garlic and olive oil. The thing is, as a cook, I thought they were delicious. But as a gardener, I thought it wasn't the same as when you eat food you grew yourself.
But hey, life goes on, right? I'll talk to the gardening guru, discuss the latest developments, and at the very least go into next year's winter gardening with a more realistic understanding of what I'm up against. And I happen to still have four containers of pasta sauce in the freezer, made from scratch with my own tomatoes. The next time it snows hard, I'll make it a point to have a nice pasta supper. And I'll reflect on how sauce is pretty much literally a concentrated form of summer sun. And while I'm eating it, I will encourage the snow to fall just as much as it pleases—raise a glass of wine to it, and toast it sincerely.
And things went well for a while. The parsley flourished, the bok choy and brussels sprouts grew with pluck and fortitude, as if they liked the chill of the season, found it refreshing, good sleeping weather, and so forth. I'm that way myself, and had some fellow feeling for them.
Then we had a phase of serious cold, when we had multiple days where it was below freezing all day, which is rare around here, and we also about fifteen inches of snow one weekend. I wondered how the plants were doing, but I figured shoot, they're winter plants, they know the drill, it freezes and snows in the winter, right? That's why they call it winter, right?
Well, I went over there yesterday, since it finally got warm again. The sight was quite depressing. The parsley was stone dead, pale tan like dried corn leaves. The brussels sprouts seemed to have retracted halfway into the ground. I know, it doesn't seem possible, but that was sure what it looked like. And the bok choy's formerly wide green leaves now laid on the ground in histrionic distress, the way a ballerina will curl into herself and slowly crumple onto the stage to indicate deep suffering.
The weather is back to normal and I suppose it's possible that the plants could come back again. But even if they might, they've lost a lot of ground, and when something like this happens you have to feel for the farmers. You kill yourself all day for the whole season to get a crop growing, and then a thunderstorm boils up, hail falls for twenty minutes, and there's your crop, on the ground, ruined. "Nothing personal," the fates seem to say. And that's how you have to take it. You're dismayed, but it's just life, really. There's no anger or sorrow. And there's no helping it. Things grow in their own good time, no matter how hard you're willing to work. You can rebuild bombed cathedrals and so forth. You can't rebuild a dead bok choy plant.
OK, OK, I'm only imagining what it's like to be a farmer. it wasn't like I lost the fruits of an entire year's work, and it wasn't like my kids will go hungry or any of that. I just went out later and bought some greens and sautéed them with garlic and olive oil. The thing is, as a cook, I thought they were delicious. But as a gardener, I thought it wasn't the same as when you eat food you grew yourself.
But hey, life goes on, right? I'll talk to the gardening guru, discuss the latest developments, and at the very least go into next year's winter gardening with a more realistic understanding of what I'm up against. And I happen to still have four containers of pasta sauce in the freezer, made from scratch with my own tomatoes. The next time it snows hard, I'll make it a point to have a nice pasta supper. And I'll reflect on how sauce is pretty much literally a concentrated form of summer sun. And while I'm eating it, I will encourage the snow to fall just as much as it pleases—raise a glass of wine to it, and toast it sincerely.
People consider themselves superior to other people for all sorts of delusional reasons, and if you tried to think about them all you'd have little time for anything else. But I do have a particular concern about people who think they have a special bond with large predatory animals. Timothy Treadwell famously felt this way about bears, until he discovered extremely late in his life that at least one bear didn't feel that way about him. Now there's word that a Canadian fellow who considered his pet tiger to be a family member was mauled to death the other day. It's not my business and all, I know that, but if being around large predators makes you feel special, maybe you should find another way to feel special. Personally I play a little piano and it makes me feel a little special. I make plenty of mistakes, but not once have I made a mistake where the piano jumped on me in response and tore my trachea out. See the difference?
I went out to buy food because I have to eat to keep alive, and since you have to keep your eyes at least partly open as you walk around in the supermarket I saw that Elvis would have been 75 this year if he'd been sensible enough to stay alive, which he wasn't. I won't be shedding tears for Elvis, I'm afraid. He might well have actually seen 75 if he could have figured out a reason to keep alive. I think if you want to take a moment to feel sorry for a premature death, you might pause and consider Anne Frank, who was 15 when she died of typhus in a concentration camp. Billions of people have died like her through the millennia, people who might have contributed to our common good, people who didn't deserve to suffer, people who just wanted to live and be happy. We don't know about most of the billions, but we can look inside Anne's mind because she kept a diary. She was a precocious young woman, sensitive and thoughtful, and the Nazis murdered her. I saw Elvis at the supermarket tonight. I didn't see Anne. But I thought about her. Doesn't seem right, somehow.
It's been damn cold across the Northern Hemisphere, and last night it was pretty damn chilly right in my living room. The cat was snuggled against me for dear life, and I figured the thermostat was simply exhausted from overuse and wasn't working right, so I got up and turned the heat up five degrees.
Within a few minutes it was warm and cozy again, and I got to thinking about the first person who managed to control and start fires. There had to to be first person: I can imagine that some things evolved—language, art, music, say—but you're either lighting a fire or you're not. I figure someone was working with some flint, and a spark hit some wood shavings or grass or something, and it blazed up a bit and smoked, and this person said "Hmmm." And then kept experimenting, and one thing led to another.
I was further imagining how awesome it would be to be that person. It was probably a nerdy, engineering-type person, not that great at the hunting and gathering actually, and maybe not so smooth socially. But man, once you discover fire, you're pretty much set. See, I placed this discovery among the Cro-Magnon, with the glaciers and tundra and all that. And I figured this person gets a nice fire going, and everyone is sitting around, totally comfortable for the first time in human history. This comfort is a delight they had never dreamed of, and they're all just cheering for our fire-starting person and everything is wonderful.
But then, against my better judgment, I checked this on Wikipedia. Every time I check something that I enjoy believing on Wikipedia, it seems things didn't really happen that fun way I think they did. And it was just that way—it seems people started controlling and starting fires (well, as far as we know) about 125,000 years ago, in the Homo erectus days. And it was in Africa, fer Chrissakes. It probably never even got cold enough there that you'd want to put a sweatshirt on at night. They were firing clay pots and cooking and so forth, and yes, it was a turning point in human history and blah blah blah. But by the time the cave people were hunkering down in the caves in Europe, fire had been around for a hundred thousand years. Old stuff, in other words. They certainly took it for granted, because even if they live in caves, people are still people.
So I guess I'll have to imagine the first time other things happened—the first person to eat an avocado, say, or turn a cartwheel. And if it's fun to imagine I think I'll enjoy the vision for a while before I check it out on Wikipedia. Wikipedia can be kind of a buzzkill that way, actually.
Within a few minutes it was warm and cozy again, and I got to thinking about the first person who managed to control and start fires. There had to to be first person: I can imagine that some things evolved—language, art, music, say—but you're either lighting a fire or you're not. I figure someone was working with some flint, and a spark hit some wood shavings or grass or something, and it blazed up a bit and smoked, and this person said "Hmmm." And then kept experimenting, and one thing led to another.
I was further imagining how awesome it would be to be that person. It was probably a nerdy, engineering-type person, not that great at the hunting and gathering actually, and maybe not so smooth socially. But man, once you discover fire, you're pretty much set. See, I placed this discovery among the Cro-Magnon, with the glaciers and tundra and all that. And I figured this person gets a nice fire going, and everyone is sitting around, totally comfortable for the first time in human history. This comfort is a delight they had never dreamed of, and they're all just cheering for our fire-starting person and everything is wonderful.
But then, against my better judgment, I checked this on Wikipedia. Every time I check something that I enjoy believing on Wikipedia, it seems things didn't really happen that fun way I think they did. And it was just that way—it seems people started controlling and starting fires (well, as far as we know) about 125,000 years ago, in the Homo erectus days. And it was in Africa, fer Chrissakes. It probably never even got cold enough there that you'd want to put a sweatshirt on at night. They were firing clay pots and cooking and so forth, and yes, it was a turning point in human history and blah blah blah. But by the time the cave people were hunkering down in the caves in Europe, fire had been around for a hundred thousand years. Old stuff, in other words. They certainly took it for granted, because even if they live in caves, people are still people.
So I guess I'll have to imagine the first time other things happened—the first person to eat an avocado, say, or turn a cartwheel. And if it's fun to imagine I think I'll enjoy the vision for a while before I check it out on Wikipedia. Wikipedia can be kind of a buzzkill that way, actually.
Last night I was at a township meeting, listening to some Wal-Mart dudes and some township supervisors wrangle over what hours might be acceptable for the Wal-Mart to get deliveries in. This was important for all concerned and to others as well for a variety of perfectly good reasons, and that's why I was there, but then the meeting was over and I went out, and saw Orion in the cold night sky, and my eye went up his foot, to his belt, to his upraised fist, and then my eye traveled up farther, and through the thin overcast I could just see a faint patch of light that I knew was the Pleiades.
It's like that all the time—you have the mundane and money-making, and the magical and mysterious, and how to balance them, well, I'm still working that out. Ignore one, starve the body, ignore the other, starve the soul. But all I know is, I care about the big picture—I noticed with approval recently that the Kepler spacecraft has found five definite planets outside the solar system in just a few months. I don't see how that will put a dime in my pocket or yours, but I like it.
But still, we live here on earth, that's what we've got the best access to, and frankly, I like checking out the street-level stuff. You often see shoes on the street and other places, if you're looking. And to me, that's kind of trippy. Who is losing all these shoes? Don't they notice when they've lost one? Most perplexing. I've also noticed that people are dropping little plastic dental floss holders all over the place. Are people flossing in public? A lot? I'm scratching my head over that. And then there was the witch's hat I found along the side of the road one day. Another puzzler.
But today I was walking home after dropping my car off to be serviced, and I was just looking around, and something caught my eye, so I stopped. It was a billiard ball, of all things. Why was it in the street, lodged by the curb? I suppose it's like asking why the planets and stars and galaxies are up there in the sky—they just are, and the reasons are beyond our ken. And that's all right with me. Curbstone or cosmos, pool balls or pulsars, I'm content just to scratch my head and wonder, and figure I'll never know the answer.
It's like that all the time—you have the mundane and money-making, and the magical and mysterious, and how to balance them, well, I'm still working that out. Ignore one, starve the body, ignore the other, starve the soul. But all I know is, I care about the big picture—I noticed with approval recently that the Kepler spacecraft has found five definite planets outside the solar system in just a few months. I don't see how that will put a dime in my pocket or yours, but I like it.
But still, we live here on earth, that's what we've got the best access to, and frankly, I like checking out the street-level stuff. You often see shoes on the street and other places, if you're looking. And to me, that's kind of trippy. Who is losing all these shoes? Don't they notice when they've lost one? Most perplexing. I've also noticed that people are dropping little plastic dental floss holders all over the place. Are people flossing in public? A lot? I'm scratching my head over that. And then there was the witch's hat I found along the side of the road one day. Another puzzler.
But today I was walking home after dropping my car off to be serviced, and I was just looking around, and something caught my eye, so I stopped. It was a billiard ball, of all things. Why was it in the street, lodged by the curb? I suppose it's like asking why the planets and stars and galaxies are up there in the sky—they just are, and the reasons are beyond our ken. And that's all right with me. Curbstone or cosmos, pool balls or pulsars, I'm content just to scratch my head and wonder, and figure I'll never know the answer.
Here's some advice for free: Say, just hypothetically, that you're walking down the street, trying to turn your iPod off and it won't so one of your steps in fixing it is to reset all the settings. And let's further say hypothetically that you're checking street numbers to find the right house and you're walking and everything so when the iPod asks you what language you want, well, here's my advice: Stop walking and concentrate on that particular step.
See, if you don't, you might hypothetically hit "Chinese" instead, and instantly all the many control options on your iPod would be in Chinese. And hypothetically, you might happen not to read Chinese, and you'd walk into a house full of dear old friends having a party and catching up with each other, and you might find your iPod predicament so crazy-making that you spend ten minutes silently on the couch, pressing each control, hoping that when the list of languages to choose comes up, the names of the languages won't all be in Chinese. Hypothetically speaking, one of your friends might look at you as you frowningly punch your iPod's Chinese controls one after the other and she might suddenly cry, "His toy is broken!" and laugh.
You would probably discover the language choosey screen eventually. But it's best to be careful during the reset process and avoid that whole situation. That's my advice for today.
See, if you don't, you might hypothetically hit "Chinese" instead, and instantly all the many control options on your iPod would be in Chinese. And hypothetically, you might happen not to read Chinese, and you'd walk into a house full of dear old friends having a party and catching up with each other, and you might find your iPod predicament so crazy-making that you spend ten minutes silently on the couch, pressing each control, hoping that when the list of languages to choose comes up, the names of the languages won't all be in Chinese. Hypothetically speaking, one of your friends might look at you as you frowningly punch your iPod's Chinese controls one after the other and she might suddenly cry, "His toy is broken!" and laugh.
You would probably discover the language choosey screen eventually. But it's best to be careful during the reset process and avoid that whole situation. That's my advice for today.
