The Funniest Thing of the Week

A couple weekends ago at Panera I chatted for a time with an elderly woman while both of us waited in line; we disagreed about something, I think it was the general state of the public's will to inform itself and its appetite for information. She insisted that people don't read and suffer for it, whereas I'm of the opinion that in general people do read, but it's most often not in the form of newspapers. It's TV and web stuff and magazines and perhaps novels, and I'm not convinced that people suffer for it; they just aren't looking for the same thing that she is out of her reading.

And I think that a valid argument can be made for the narrative element of television shows, that if folks are willing to couch themselves in plots and narratives in the shows the like, such as CSI or whatever other dramas have plots, that this kind of immersion could be as beneficial to the imagination as traditional reading, the kind that is so popular to lament, now having supposedly died its long death.

And this woman was well-known and respected in the Panera. The employees and other patrons knew her, and being familiar here was very important to her.

I'm thinking that if she can get such satisfaction and pleasure out of regular visits to Panera, the horrible big box bakery that takes up in strip malls and advertises nationally, then it could very well be possible that the more common forms of media, like magazines and websites and television, can be as satisfying as the traditional ones, like novels and serious newspapers and The Economist and presidential addresses, or whatever else might fit into this category.