As C. Northcote Parkinson noted last century, expenditures rise to meet income. Today, I’m wondering if the same could be said about advancements that theoretically free us up to do more of what we’d like to, but that wind up encumbering us.

Here’s the context of this question: I just spend six hours clearing out my email.

It was like a digital Bataan Death March. Six hours later, I’m down from 110 “real” emails to 29. That’s progress, but it was hard-fought. I definitely have a small, slight feeling of satisfaction — of being a little less burdened. But am I evaluating what I really accomplished in those six hours, and asking why, at 9:22 on a Saturday night, I’m still at my office? (Other than because I don’t want to take this work home with me?) You bet.

This afternoon while driving over here from my workshop — many hours and many deleted emails ago — I heard someone on the radio proclaiming that our electronic devices own us. That’s true. It’s hard to pull yourself away from your iPhone when you have the nagging suspicion that someone is on there trying to reach you — via text or email or Facebook message or Skype or push message.

It’s not like I haven’t been aware of this situation for some time. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of unsubscribing. I’ve also been responding to some emails in an efficient but rude-sounding way. Here’s one of my responses of that type: “Yes.” Another one is: “No.” I’ve even taken to this stratagem, picked up at a conference: a subject line that says everything. (Example of one I sent: “confirming lunch today at noon at Octopus EOM.”) In response to a three-paragraph email, “no” really says a lot, especially compared against too much time indulging in email niceties versus working on my play. Now that I’m down to 29 emails (and who knows how or when — or if! — I’ll ever get to zero), my plan is to keep that number low. If I have to behave like a Visigoth, maybe that’s just what it takes.

If you email me, and you get one of those terse replies, it is personal. But it’s not personal against you — it’s me taking better personal command of my time.

I just responded to a business email. Dammit. Couldn’t help myself!

It’s Thursday, and I have big plans for today.

First — and I’ve already done this — just sleep until I wake up. Set the mental alarm for “I don’t care.” Which worked terrifically until the upstairs phone rang with someone leaving a message about a doctor’s appointment for “Dye-treesh.” (I’m thinking that would be my son Dietrich, pronounced “Dee-trick.”) I don’t know when I last heard this particular phone ring, but I can say that when it awoke me I was in a confused state and scrambled all around for whichever of my portable electronic devices was making that sound.

Second — have whatever I want for breakfast. Those toxic GMO chemically premade frozen “pancakes” with chocolate bits welded into them? Sure. With three heart-clogging sausages on the side, please. And in my coffee, which I drink black these days, some chemicalized coffee-enhancing “creamer” from the refrigerator. Bye bye for today, Mediterranean-style breakfast.

Third — post on this blog. Done.

Fourth — take my family to the beach. I have big doings planned for that beach. They include: reading, building a sand castle, jumping into and out of the water, horsing around with my kids, allowing my wife’s Goldilocks-type comments about the beach to go unremarked upon (“It’s too hot” or “It’s too cold” or “It’s too bright” or “It’s overcast” or “It’s so crowded” or “Why is there nobody else here?” etc.), and more reading. Not on the list: checking email. Making notes (about ANYTHING, especially tasks that must be accomplished). I had offered to take my family to a water park today, but found out that precisely none of my family wants to go to a water park. Not the 48-year-old wife, not the 22-year-old, not the 15-year-old, and not the still-10-year-old. The latter in particular astonished me. “You don’t want to go to a water park? Ride those big long water slides at high speeds???? Plunge down dark tubes into deep pools of water? Really?” No, they all wanted to go to the beach.

Now, I really have nothing against the beach except this: I don’t like it. I don’t know what the big thrill is. There’s nothing to do there. Around where I grew up, in New Jersey, you can get gobbled alive by greenhead flies, which are the flying armored tank of the human-eating insect world. If we’d had these things under our command during World War II, millions of lives could have been spared, because no one — no one — wants to go up against greenhead flies. So we had those in New Jersey, but they don’t exist around here. If you’re not battling greenheads, then really there’s nothing to do at the beach. Well, except note all the things that you should’ve brought to the beach that you didn’t. And if you really needed those things, you should’ve just stayed where they are — i.e., at home. The reason you feel you need those things while you’re at the beach is simple: because there’s nothing to do at the beach. There’s only one thing you need for a water park: your wallet.

But, the beach is where my family wanted to go, so that’s where I’m taking them. And because there’s nothing to do at the beach, that’s essentially what I’m going to be doing: nothing. Which is a marked change from my usual schedule, so I’m grateful for the big plan of doing pretty much nothing.

Here they come. Time to pack up all the things we “need” for the beach.

Here are 21 reasons Alfred Pennyworth is far cooler than you thought.

Including this.

(It also provides some of us with a small reminder of just why Will Sasso was so perfectly cast as Curly in that recent Three Stooges movie.)

In my adolescence, I was fortunate to meet the right person at the right time. I’m speaking of my mentor, Rich Roesberg.

There’s no one who has made a greater influence on my cultural life.

Growing up in the Pine Barrens and surrounding environs of southern New Jersey made artistic and intellectual engagement hard to come by. People who, last decade, abhorred the encroachment of big-box chain bookstores, to the supposed detriment of small independent bookshops, had no idea what it was like growing up in a place with no bookstore nearby. If there had been a Borders bookstore anywhere near me when I was growing up, it would have been a godsend.

As it was, though, I had my own godsend. One day my mother went into a Hallmark greeting-card store in a strip mall to buy some cards. The store also carried books — in fact, it was called Blatt’s Books — and I found in the back some secondhand comic-books. What I discovered when I took them to the front counter was the assistant manager, an elder in his late 20’s named Rich Roesberg, and a conversation about comic books that over the 35+ years since then has broadened into art, music, politics, and much, much more. “Uncle Rich,” as my gang and I started calling him, became my oasis.

Here’s an abbreviated list of what I found through him during my impressionable adolescent years:

1. A deep admiration for Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and the Beach Boys
2. An appreciation for dada and surrealism
3. R. Crumb
4. John Cage
5. Cut-up (Brion Gysin’s technique)
6. Soupy Sales
7. The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band
8. Jean Shepherd
9. Bob & Ray
10. Steve Ditko (it was Roesberg who made me see how wonderful his work is)
11. Bill Irwin
12. Ernie Kovacs
13. Steve Allen
14. Uncle Floyd
15. Charles Bukowski
16. John Fante
17. Alfred Jarry
18. William S. Burroughs

This runner brings new meaning to having “the trots.”

Here are some fine examples of logo design gone very wrong. Given that we’re biologically programmed to see sex everywhere, and that that’s reinforced by advertising, you’d think someone would have noticed that most of these don’t stand up to, um, penetrating examination.

Sure, somebody else gets accidentally credited $92 quadrillion by PayPal. Why not me? I could certainly use that money, heading off to Comic Con as I am.