This is one of those things that I’ve never heard of and I like to consider myself well-read to an extent. The Imp of the Perverse is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, “In the story, the narrator commits murder to inherit a man’s estate. A coroner attributes the death to an act of God, and the narrator benefits from his crime. Several years later, the narrator starts obsessing about a possible confession for his crime. He acts on a self-destructive impulse, and confesses his crime in public, leading to his swift trial and execution.”
You can read the whole short story right there.
The idea behind the Imp of the Perverse is that we all do things against our own self interest. It’s that voice in your brain that tells you to do something that you know you shouldn’t. I feel like I do these sorts of self-destructive things, but not necessarily intentionally . . . or is it intentionally and I’m just not aware or smart enough to figure it out. Regardless, hopefully you have a new phrase to add to your daily life and when someone does something self-destructive, you can drop that term or you can just send them this gif.
Did you know that if you need to top off your tires from the temperature drop that you can just use a decent bicycle pump? I did this the other morning and my pump has a PSI gauge so you get an idea of where you’re at while you pump. It took maybe 30 or so to get the tires up and took a total of 5 minutes while my truck was warning up.
This is the story of Ernest Shackelton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic (he didn’t accomplish his goal, but he and his crew had to endure a lot to make it out alive). As an aside, the creator of this blog has a handful of map videos explaining Manhattan and it was a blast to watch those to understand my way around Manhattan before I arrived on the island.
I finished 7 books this year, which isn’t a ton, but I read a little bit each day and sometimes I read a ton, but normally it’s just a bit each day. The books I read:
- Time and Again by Jack Finney
- A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
- The Time Has Come by Will Leitch
- Lamb by Christopher Moore
- How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key
- Fool by Christopher Moore
- A Green Lantern graphic novel
My favorites were How to Stay Married and Lamb. They were phenomenal. With Lamb, it’s a fictional version of the years between the ages of 10 and 30 of Jesus. If you at all get offended by religion, then this isn’t the book for you but it is funny and thought provoking. Fool is the comedic re-telling of Shakespeare’s King Lear. How to Stay Married is one of those books that I’d recommend to anyone thinking about being married and who is currently married or was previously married. The Time Has Come was also really good.
They were all good books.
Seek The Substantial 
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