This morning I did the following: 1) read the second part of Mark Lilla's excellent review essay on the reception of philosopher Leo Strauss; while 2) listening to Richard Buckner's new album Dents and Shells; while 3) eating a defrosted and warmed zucchini muffin from Kim's latest batch, adding cream cheese for effect; while 4) drinking my first cup of French press coffee; while 5) thinking about bills I need to pay; while 6) connecting the Lilla article's reference to the reverence that both Strauss himself and "Straussians" accorded Abraham Lincoln to the brilliance of my decision to teach Lincoln's speeches to my English 380 in the week before the election; while 7) wondering why the speakers on my desktop computer stopped working; while 8) deciding that I was still hungry; while 9) contemplating my dentist appointment later this morning; while 10) remembering that I need to plug the external hard drive into the desktop so I can convert our recent video to DVD for my parents; while 11) thinking that my father is going to be very stressed out about the Yankees when I see him this afternoon; while 12) realizing that I'd better eat something else now, since I do have to go to the dentist; while 13) wondering whether I can get both the Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt book Multitude and the Negri reader here in Tucson; while 14) figuring out whether I have time to take Old Red down to the inspection station for what will assuredly be a failing grade; while 15) finally making myself a bagel with strawberry cream cheese; while 16) concluding that I need to put the Buckner on auto-repeat for a while; while 17) admiring my decision to "bookend" the Lincoln speeches with Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People on the front end and his The Wild Duck on the back end; while 18) recognizing the need for a second cup of coffee and making the requisite preparations; while 19) wondering why Kim hadn't called yet; while 20) wanting to get my blog entry for the day done as soon as possible so I can get back to the bit about the Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch in my book that I've been agonizing over for the past week.

Mode: diurnal
Muse: Charmers - Richard Buckner - Dents and Shells