“When Truman Capote called In Cold Blood a ‘nonfiction novel,’ he meant something very specific: that the book used the techniques of fiction but was completely factual,” explains Ben Yagoda, but today many people appear willing to talk of fiction or nonfiction “novels” as if that word means a bound work of any form. In high school, this usage is everywhere, and it’s prevalent in college too. Have you ever done it or seen it done? (via Mark Bertrand)

Earlier this morning, I read some a piece on how smart phones and similar tech have banished boredom from our lives and caused the very same problem for us. We don’t know how to be bored, or better said, we don’t know how to go without entertainment. Some say it comes from having small minds, but more than that, it trains us in small instant pleasures that will not build us up.

Have you ever asked yourselves why no one notice something wrong, perhaps something horrible, happening right under our noses? Whatever the reasons may be, we are polishing up our blind spots so that we will miss even more of those problems with our mobile tech and other distractions.

We don’t have to check email while waiting on the cashier. We don’t have to give our kids movies while we do errands around the city. It isn’t that children shouldn’t play when they are essentially waiting on us. It’s how we are training them to play–what we’re telling them is important.

Patrick Kurp wrote about this last year. He said, “T.S. Eliot claimed most of the trouble in the world was caused by people who want to be important. I would add a corollary: Most of the people in the world who want to be important have convinced themselves they are bored and that life is boring.”

These self-important people do not see the value in small things or quietness. They want the exotic orchid, not the difficult research and travel to obtain it. But then, am I any better?

World magazine is praising a new Irish movie called Calvary, which depicts a Catholic priest whose life has been threatened by a parishioner who suffered abuse by another priest in the past. Writer and director John Michael McDonagh wanted to talk about serious issues in this film, not smirk like a hipster at anyone who claims to believe something.

“The film is not made for ironic hipsters who are slouching through life, never coming up with any emotional or intellectual response for anything. As if that’s too—‘Oh, I don’t want to get into all that, let’s just watch some TV show.’ To me, it’s a film made for those people, who I assume is all of us, who are striving for some kind of philosophical decision about why we’re here. Fox Searchlight probably won’t like me saying this, but it’s a film about death. There’s lots of references to death all the way through, and it’s coming to terms with what’s going to face us at the end of our lives.”

He goes on to describe his love for Flannery O’Connor.