Like Joan, I accidentally slept in today and missed class. Twice. Except I didn't really miss class. I screwed up my courage and went to one late. I'll go to the other one on Thursday. Why this happened puzzles me. We turned the heat on for the first time Sunday night, and since then we've all been sleeping a whole lot more than usual. (This morning at ten o'clock, one of my roommates woke up and decided to skip his nine o'clock class.) Of course, it's 3:30 in the morning right now, and I'm awake reading Microserfs, so maybe the problem is something else.

Microserfs is involved somehow, I'm pretty sure. A "copy" "fell into my lap" this evening thanks to a wonderful fellow who is known simply as "Mister Klaw," and I haven't been able to get away from the comp... book since. At the very least, Mr. Coupland's work is a nice relief from the other book I've been reading.

Now, Ms. Chua's opus is fantastic--get some other, better-read people tell you about it--but it is as grim as it is accurate and thorough. The author has goods on pretty much every nation except Canada, Ireland and Mongolia, and that's only if you don't count the introduction:

.... For over two decades now, the American government, along with American consultants, business interests, and foundations, has been vigorously promoting free market democracy throughout the developing and post-socialist worlds. At times our efforts have bordered on the absurd. There is, for example, the sad tale of a delegation of American free market advisers in Mongolia. Just before they leave the country, the Americans are thrilled when a Mongolian official asks them to send more copies of the voluminous U.S. securities laws, photocopied on one side of the page. Alas, it turned out that the Mongolian was interested in the documents not for their content, but for the blank side of each page, which would help alleviate the government's chronic paper shortage.

That part was kind of fun. Other parts, like the descriptions of the Serbian and Rwandan genocides, were not so fun. Very informative, but not exactly after-dinner reading, you know? I read those most gruesome sections on the way home from school Monday, then spent the evening curled in the fetal position, rocking back and forth in the corner of my room.

Still, I need to know this stuff if I'm ever going to make any sense out of the world. So I keep reading. I guess it's like Dr. McReynolds said once; we are just damned lucky. Most people around the world are not.