King believes that the impulse to collect comes "partly from a wound we feel deep inside this richest, most materialistic of all societies." But he also considers other possibilities -- "It finds order in things, virtue in preservation, knowledge in obscurity, and above all it discovers and even creates value." His own fondness is for "the mute, meager, practically valueless object. ... What I like is the potency of the impotent thing, the renewed and adorable life I find in the dead and despised object." For him, there's "something in nothing." A lot of nothing.

"There are a lot of really great stories out there," said museum director/curator Karen Bachmann, "and time to share with the community."

Many definitions of distraction exist. An April report by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, for example, describes three basic, unofficial categories: purposeful, incidental and uncontrolled.

My observation of people in general, not just my clients, is that we desperately want to take a break from our hectic, overscheduled lives--but not right now. Try it: Put down this magazine and do nothing at all for ten minutes. No planning, no worrying, no activity of any kind. Just ten minutes of empty time.

Did you do it?

I thought not.

After the salted yak butter tea had been served, the chief continued: "If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Mr. Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea."

Perhaps owning a personal vehicle is a false entitlement that will become economically impossible for many of us in the near future. But something will need to fill the void.

Over a stove burning dung in the centre of the main room, Lhamotso boils a kettle of water to make yak-butter tea, a salty brew popular here. The television is the only appliance.

"I kind of like the atmosphere," the 17-year-old Stillwater teen said. "It's always crazy busy. I can't think of doing anything else."

You could (and will) say they had it coming, but really, we all had this coming. One thing we'll always remember about this decade was the constant home do-over fetish, in real life and in the reality of reality TV -- the constant warping of the consumer's sense of entitlement, the fairy-dust economics, the MasterCard reminder that the experience is priceless. We'll look back and think of all the time we spent watching shows where people flipped houses for easy profit, or traded spaces, or designed it to sell, or were led into rooms blindfolded to experience the paroxysms that came with new paint, new furniture, new life.

DIY poses as a relentlessly practical how-to resource, a compendium of useful projects and expert advice. It posts prices at every stage of each project. Its Web site offers backup: lists of the necessary tools, step-by-step instructions, more pointers on how to get the job done. Yet in the end DIY thrives on sheer fantasy.

Make time to share your dreams with your spouse. She says that you might be pleasantly surprised to learn that the spouse may want to join you on that Mt. Kilimanjaro climb.

Make time to play games that help him master separation issues, such as hide-and-seek or role-playing with dolls and animals.

I confess, I love to look. Admit it. People watching at the beach is sanctioned voyeurism. It's an enthralling show. You have every type of body, in varying degrees of undressed exposure, parading around you, up close and personal. Like beach rocks or seashells, no two bodies or swimsuits are exactly alike. The whole scene is so democratic; while you're tactfully studying them, you suspect that they are eyeing you with much the same interest.

We spend some more time staring at rhino thighs that make Silk Smitha look like Twiggy before we reluctantly move to the sight of that blockbuster YouTube video. Several cars are parked here, enjoying the a.m. view and hoping to make their own bestseller video, I'm sure. Alas, there is no violence/mayhem today.

Some girls like beads, others don't.

While I do enjoy a shirt that fits my curves, I'm completely perplexed as to what section of humanity thinks, "You know, I really like the X-Men ... but I also want to show my midriff!"

So with bathing suit season in full swing and celebrity moms parading around in skinny jeans, I thought now might be a good time to share some tips on weight maintenance for moms.

I must be one of these greedy people as I'd like them on my property. I also would like to see the extra money come into the town, school and county. Maybe then we could have a community beach that doesn't have to be shut down because of goose dung.

The Government had been not only wrong but had unbecomingly continued to resort to casuistry in feeding the people with misleading hogwash ...

Sam Boon, breeding manager for the English Beef and Lamb Executive, is wandering round the Warwickshire ground of the Royal Show with a pair of rubber ram's testicles, eager to instruct farmers on the finer points of fertility. "There is the squidgy, flaccid side," he says, palpating an object the size of a champion aubergine. "And there is the firm side. Too much sponginess, too many lumps and bumps will affect his ability to get ewes in lamb and produce pedigree stock. In a fit and healthy ram, they will feel firm and toned. And big really is best. I would always check for a ram's scrotal circumference." And from the inside pocket of his sports jacket, he produces a rubber scrotum, cheesy-looking and veined, to make his point.

Thus the threat of death, whether real or imagined, makes you more alive and responsive to the immediate present. This can also change you, for the better. That's also the premise of the new Korean craze for well-dying. In a country infatuated with 'well-being' -- living and eating healthily, even to the point where tobacco-makers offer vitamin-enriched 'well-being cigarettes' -- training companies are now offering courses on dying a good death, reports The Financial Times.

This attempt to Google our way to wisdom is clearly flawed. An executive at a top company of accountants recently confided in me his deep concerns that young workers are less and less able to concentrate, think deeply, or mine a vein of inquiry.

Will the Sunset Limited survive? I'd like to think so. But the next day we had lunch with a young Californian woman who listened to our enthusiastic train stories with a decided lack of interest. "You know," she said airily, nudging the subject to a close (I was already beginning to dislike her), "I don't think I've been on an American train in my life."

"You sacrifice your own personal time. You don't get to be with loved ones, you don't have time for yourself. But it's worth it. When the train's coming, you gotta jump on it - because it's not always going to be around."

The Happening is one of the most interesting movies of the year, despite being one of the worst. It offers a study in what happens to the mind of a talented moviemaker when he is caught between commercial hysteria and his own engulfing ego. When books go nutty it's all just prose - or the history of prose - but when it happens to films people start losing their jobs and their houses. That is why so many film directors behave unnaturally and why good films are very hard to make nowadays.