I can no longer read the New York Times.

It's not what you think. Our neighbors down the hall are letting us catsit for a few days and their big, fat New York Sunday Times was leaning against the wall this morning. "Good." I thought, "I get to read the actual paper today." See, I read the Times every day, but online, not in uh, as a paper, just as an image on my monitor. Clicking through the stories, zooming through the most emailed editorials and punching up the stories I've had fed to my email -Archeology-Stocks-Red Sox-Rove- etc and I've got it wrapped up in about twenty minutes, maybe thirty, which is good because I leave the apartment very early. I plow through Today's Papers on Slate http://slate.msn.com/ if it has arrived which is rare. Then I usually meet the paper carrier on my way out the front door and I get to the subway before the paperguy down there has his papers stacked up. (He doesn't have a stand. He sells them from stacks. I'll do his story sometime. It's a good one.) On the train I listen to books on my Muvo or actually carry one with me. I just finished 1776 and 1491, two historical books, both excellent.

But today I had the real paper, the whole paper right in my hands. I headed for our apartment, made a bagel and coffee and prepared to settle in for a good read. First, the Sunday New York Times is enormous, today's was just a normal issue but it must have weighed eight pounds, the New York Times Magazine alone was about three of that and there are sections and sections of which I haven't the slightest interest. I'm sure someone in New York looks carefully through the Automobile Section and the big pullout ad for CompUsa. My coffee was cold by the time I got my sections sorted out. Reading the Times used to be a Sunday ritual around here. I would walk up the hill to Greumbaum's and get a paper and some pastries, then my wife and I would peer through the news as the CBS Sunday Morning burbled in the background. Now I go run, she sleeps in, I watch CBS Sunday Morning off the DVcR while I wait for the football game to end and 60 minutes to begin.

I lasted about thirty minutes. I read the editorial page. I looked through the International Section and read through the continuing disassemblage of this miserable administration's conduct before the war. I picked up the Magazine. It felt huge. I tried to find the front page article, couldn't find the first page, it was pressed between two ads for leather coats. I gave up, drank some juice, found my sneakers and went for a run. When I came back I punched up the paper on my monitor.http://www.nytimes.com/ and read through the good parts.