For Lent I'm trying to give up movies on DVD/VHS. (Movies in the theater are fair game, although I doubt anything interesting will be playing.) But the Christian practice of Lent, at least as I see it, isn't a purely negative, ascetic exercise, but one intended to free time for higher pursuits. I'm hoping to spend at least a portion of the 2 hours a night I ordinarily devote to a movie on reading. A couple of recent ILL requests--Thank You, Jeeves and The Pythons Autobiography--arrived this week; combined with the fantasy classics I bought at Half Price, these make a big stack of reading material that should get me through the 40 days. (Whether or not reading such books is really a "higher pursuit" than watching, say, Rohmer movies, I leave for you to decide.) Dipping into the Python volume, I find a British radio program called The Goons being cited repeatedly as a major influence, so I might want to give that a listen (CDs available at amazon).

Drinking: Carmen Merlot 2002; Listening: Stereolab, Sound Dust.