I keep forgetting to blog about this, but a couple of weeks ago I read a very short novel about time travel called The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold, who wrote the famous Star Trek episode about Tribbles. It’s 115 pages and is one of the weirdest stories I’ve ever read. Time travel is my favorite sci-fi genre, and this one covers all the bases and touches on all the philosophical implications of traveling through time. All in 115 pages.

Oh, and the main character has sex with himself.

It’s worth reading if you like time travel.

Or extreme sexual narcissism.

Actually, the sex is very tastefully done, and, come on, you know you’ve thought about it.

This week’s New York magazine is all about the aughts — the decade we’ll be leaving at the end of the month. Although the cover story is too over-written for my taste, I really enjoyed Emily Nussbaum’s piece on TV in the aughts; it’s highly perceptive in acknowledging how TV was changed by the auteur, by the DVR, and by the phenomenon of watching TV shows on DVD. (And I’d forgotten how The West Wing transformed itself from late-Clintonian liberal wish-fulfillment into a full-fledged life raft during the Bush years.)

The essays about books and movies are also great. I need to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again. And did Best in Show really only come out in 2000? I’d thought it was a late ’90s film.

There’s also a piece about what life was like in 1999. How innocent we were.