How to save $99

A smarter you is only 15 minutes away!

Aha!  I have been wondering where she’d got to, my smarter self.  She slipped away back in ’92, round about the time Apple stock was selling at $6.00 a share and Nike at 52 cents. 

Of course Blinkist doesn’t really mean it that way.  Smart Carolyn isn’t across the bridge and down I-80 in Berkeley.  The teaser in their online ad implies if I give them $99, and read the non-fiction book summaries they send me, my noodle power will expand in 15 minute increments.  Wouldn’t that be nice? 

It’s a clever new service that reads non-fiction books so you don’t have to.  They’re like Cliff’s Notes for the 21^st Century person who is too preoccupied Tweeting about Instagram to pursue learning on her own. 

Yes, it’s just like back in high school, except now, instead of escaping a death march through The Scarlett Letter, you can become superficially familiar with the cutting edge concepts in science, business and technology others have devoted their lives to exploring.  You’ll know just enough to bluff your way through a casual conversation over latte and a scone.

It’s perfect for busy know-it-alls.

As a dummy and someone drawn to the quick fix like a teenage bride to Hamburger Helper, I’m tempted.  But $99!?  Maybe it’s smarter to hold onto my C-note.

Here’s why:  Blinkist says they read more than 1000 of the best in nonfiction and business books each year, then reduce them into “powerful, memorable distillations” for schmucks like me, so we can Evelyn Woods our way through them and claim we know stuff.

But let’s be real.  With 50 new titles and 40 new audio versions – their “fresh weekly releases added for you each month” – I’m pretty sure I don’t have time for this shortcut.  Just scanning the lists would constitute a detour off my highway of retired bliss into a quagmire of book selection.  It’s hard enough picking which T-shirt to wear each day!  And really, don’t you have to read the rundown to choose the book?  Rather defeats the purpose.

And honestly, if past behavior predicts future success, I concede.  There will come a reason I do not read the abstracts of the books I wish I’d read but really don’t wanna.  Case in point:  My Netflix queue is backed up with a cache of erudite yet unwatched documentaries downloaded from 1998 to present, that I cannot bring myself to delete. 

If only good intentions could boost your IQ! 

And here’s a red flag:  Blinkist doesn’t say how much smarter I’ll be.  That’s an important detail.  Is the formula $99 a year x 15 minutes/number of synopses of arid material deemed too desiccated to digest the old fashioned way = 25 points of intellect?  Or what?

My cost-benefit analysis leaves me dubious.  See, I’ve been through this before.  Just the other day I was promised that I could “get these abs in two weeks!”  The headline on the magazine cover was accompanied by an arrow pointing at the bony midsection of Gwyneth Paltrow. 

BTW – She has one of those non-committal belly buttons – is it an innie or an outie?  I don’t like the looks of it.  She is distressingly long-waisted.  Maybe it’s because her bikini bottoms are drifting lazily south, below the skeletal remains of her baby bump. 

And how does she get those abs?  “Having sex and laughing,” according to a completely out of context quote from her interview in Women’sHealth magazine. 

Well, let me just tell you that Mr. Plath – who is retired now as you may recall, and home all the time with not quite enough to occupy himself – and I are laughing and laughing and…well, here we are, 10 days later, and I don’t think I’m getting those abs. 

Just sayin’.  You can’t believe everything you read.

So when Blinkist promises I can “Learn more, do more, be more—and still spend less time reading;”  I say, I’m doing that already.  Except maybe for the “being more” part.  I mean really.  How can you be more? 

I say you can’t.  You can only be what you can be.  In the philosophical sense of course.  So.  There’s my smarter self. 


And I still have my $99!

Stumble Upon This

So I’m now a member of StumbleUpon.  It’s an internet sort of search mechanism that suggests sites I might never find no matter how much time I spend hunched over the keyboard squinting at the screen.  I can’t think what interest I professed that led me to stumbling upon Men’s Health Magazine.  But after a quick perusal of its cover, I felt compelled to compare it with those of Women’s Health Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Ms., and AARP.  Get ready. 

Guess who put a teaser called, “When Flirting Goes Too Far” on the cover of their magazine?  If you had to choose among those publications just mentioned, wouldn’t you peg that topic to be in the women’s magazines?  I would have, meaning I suppose that I’m still narrow-minded and sexist in spite of my overt claims of feminism.   

When did a man (my husband excepted, of course) ever care if flirting went too far?  But even in our new world where men do worry about the consequences of an indiscretion, I would have been less surprised to see it on Men’s Health than I was to find it on AARP.  Yup.  There it is in boldface type.  The senior set is concerned with flirting games. 

Natural curiosity leads a person into the depths of AARP’s webpages in search of what, in fact, can go wrong when flirting does go too far, since it’s been such a long time since a person allowed herself to flirt.  One has to navigate past image after image of older folks who could be the target of an ill-placed flirt.  Folks like Jim Carrey, Meg Ryan, and Heather Locklear.  All now 50 and beyond.   

What could possibly go wrong in a flirtation with one of those senior citizens?  OK, Sharon Stone.  She does seem dangerous somehow.  Best not flirt with her, Dad.  It could go too far.  You could find yourself… entangled.  

Even now, you might expect a headline like “Sex Survey Exclusive!” to adorn the cover of Cosmopolitan, right?  Helen Gurley Brown never did have any compunction.  Yet there it is on Men’s Health!  It looks like the men actually surveyed 1900 women, and have learned how to “find her ‘on’ button.”  Yikes.   

AARP boasts some hard-hitting sort of must-know stories.  In its section on Relationships, for example, one can get advice for when “Sleep Apnea Ruins Your Sex Life” or “ When Mom has a New Boyfriend.”  Ewww.  

Men’s Health touts articles formerly the sole purview of the “ladies’” periodicals – subjects like  “Power Diet,” and “Lean Belly Prescription,” even “No Sweat Cardio.”  And “Back Pain Primer?”  Nope.  Not AARP.  Nowadays even men in the 18 to 35 demographic admit to being vulnerable and frail.  

Conversely, back in the day when you saw a headline like “Sculpt Flat Abs!” or “Love v. Lust,” you’d ascribe them to a men’s magazine, wouldn’t you?  Wouldn’t you??  Not anymore!  Look to Women’s Health for those must-reads. 

Notably, in my tiny sampling and unscientific review, no mention of money on the covers of Women’s Health, Cosmopolitan, or even Ms. (though Ms. has every other serious issue up front).  AARP and Men’s Health, both mention it.  The most banal foray into finances might be “Your Money Plan:  How to make it.  Where to spend it.”  At work and on the mortgage come to mind.  But I confess, I didn’t read the breaking news. 

OK.  I know.  I’m reverting.  I’m revealing.  TMI.  It just seems the blurring of the lines between young and old, male and female territories produces oddities.  I know that’s good.  It’s what we wanted, right?  We didn’t want the stereotypes in any camp.  Still it seems kind of funny.  To me anyway.  Just showing how deeply the gender roles are ingrained, I suppose. 

Part of it could be the idea that no matter how evolved the men are, the “Secrets of Strength and Calm” offered in the men’s magazine really do remain with the women.  It’s our cosmic destiny.  We provide the ohm in our relationships and to the world.  It’s the natural order.  Men are strangers in that celestial land of serenity.  If we women offer it up without a mystery attached, what’s left to surrender? 

Up next, StumbleUpon’s latest suggestion for my exploration: “Miley Cyrus Inadvertently Slights Jesus on Twitter.”  Now that goes too far!