It seems incredible to me that in his critique of Lutz choosing the arbitrary date of 1750 as the beginning of slackerdom, that Gary Kamiya failed to mention two of the biggest slackers of all time. By his own definition, these two loafers were too lazy even to write their own words: Jesus and Socrates. (Or maybe he did mention them, and I was too lazy to notice.) Kamiya did mention Buddha. But then, Zen Buddhism requires training and has an anti-slacking discipline to its slacking that disqualifies itself, like a self-reflexive koan. Jesus and Socrates preached a radical slacker ideal, as when Jesus said to trust in God, like the flowers, for our own adornment, or when Socrates taught that idleness was merely wrong thinking.

Kamiya did make me want to read the book. And for a slacker like me, that's something, although I doubt I will go to the trouble of buying it. Perhaps someone will make a present of it for Christmas. And maybe that same person will read it to me. Anyway, I’m too tired now to wish. Back to the couch and my lover, the TV.

Is not giving a shit about other people's opinions. Especially people like Gary Kamiya.

Gary Kamiya's book review was stimulating in a manner that is in no way antithetical to slacking (which should be about enjoying yourself). I've often told my wife, when she complains at my lying down reading on some beautiful afternoon, that what I really would have loved to have been was an aristocrat. The slacker is the needy, pleading stepchild of the English gentry, who used to eat, walk, read, experiment, go down to London, or any other damn thing, WHEN THEY FELT LIKE IT. What full-bore capitalism and the Puritan ethos did was contaminate this lovely lifestyle of pressureless choice so that even the upper class eventually felt that they had to be doing something all the time. Thomas Frank gets at this upper-class mania for activity in his book One Market Under God, where he trashes the dot.com millionaires for thier 14 hour days followed by manic snowboarding or other "extreme" sports, followed instantaneously by more work. Such feverish activity is a weapon in the class war, a way of saying, well, I play on a computer all day, or trade stocks around, or invent weird derivative products, but I deserve 80 times the salary of a working man or woman! The sad fact is, it's almost impossible to escape work either by going up the ladder, or, like the modern slacker, descending it. We have largely lost the ability to socialize ourselves or our children to eating when we are hungry or working when we either have to (people like me) or want to (people with money). We have lost the knack for pleasure.

I started to read this article about slackers but when I saw it was FOUR PAGES LONG I couldn't get up enough energy.

The Richard Linklater film is called "Slacker" (singular). That "Slackers" movie review linked at the bottom is a much shittier film.

I'm pretty sure I just lost some of my slacker cred by looking that up on IMDb.

Work or play, the human dilemma. Though I’d like to be a couch potato, my wife already thinks I am. While turning over soil in the garden last evening, I observed my dog watching me as he rolled languidly then exuberantly in the cool grass. Stupid slacker!

Not a single mention of the Church of the Sub Genius? A great parody-religion based on the concept of Slack.

With these words, Augustus McCrae, an implacable slacker in the novel Lonesome Dove, rationalizes his preference for a life of cards, whores and whiskey. Then, he embarks upon a perilous, arduous cattle drive across the as-yet-untamed West. Hard damn work, any way you look at it. Granted, he got drunk, gambled and got laid between episodes of hellishly hard work, but it was a delicate balancing act, befitting an amazing fictional character. For this he belongs in the Fictional Wing of the Slackers Hall of Fame.

As someone who endured years of grad school, I am all too familiar with the tension between the urge to work and its opposite, the urge to do not a fucking thing. But not-a-fucking-thing is hard to do. Conversation with other grad students is almost always dreadful, something to be avoided, as it leads, sooner or later, to pitiful confessions about "not getting enough work done," to be followed, if lucky, by another beer or another joint. I'm guessing that graduate school attracts "nerve cases" and turns out head cases. In any event, the author might someday turn his attention to the dreary subject of grad school, a perennial hotbed of slackerism.

Having said that, I would never read a book about such a revolting topic. I will, however, read Tom Lutz' book, thanks to Gary Kamiya's excellent review.

Samuel Johnson was the hardest working scribbler in the English language. Chronically short of money, he took any assignment for any amount of money on whatever insane deadline he was given. He wrote a newspaper article in the carriage on the way to his own mother's funeral. Franklin on the other hand had the luxury of lecturing everyone else on the virtues of hard work what with having retired on or before age 40 where he could then indulge his scientific pursuits and the chasing and bedding of women.

What is the nature of work? The purpose? What is fair pay? What is sufficient pay?

What does it mean - if anything - that we no longer do the work of our biological historical ancestors (pre-civilization)? That we don't work to survive, not true survival. Are we thus unnatural, or are we evolved/progressive/transcendent?

Can exercise like biking be a type of work, even if you don't compete as a professional? What about creating personal art that never gets shown? Writing done for yourself and shown to no one else (the anti-blog impulse)?

Is it more immoral not to want to work at all or to work at a meaningless job you hate? Should people be forced/compelled to work if they are able? Punished if they don't? What are the obligations to work of people with mental illness? Chronic physical illness?

Should there be a moral purpose to work (service? contributing to the world?) or should work enrich the worker's life in whatever manner brings him/her personal happiness? Which is a better approach to work: a zen-ish 'live every moment as it is', 'be here now', or ambition and career goals?

Can anyone ever escape the 'siren song of the work ethic' and truly live life on their own terms? If one can drop out, how could time be spent? What goals would one have?

I don't know if my questions are relevant to what Gary Kamiya and Tom Lutz sought to explore.

All I know is that to be able to type this in the middle of the day - me still in my bikini from kayaking in the ocean for 2 hours this morning - insanely wealthy professionals not coming home to this plush neighborhood until after the sun sets over those same waters, I'll scrub those workaholics' top-of-the-line toilets and vacuum up their purebred dog's hair from imported slate floors for an admittedly inflated wage.

To be able every day to walk to the beach in seven minutes, I'll live in a friend's house's guest suite with only a bar-sized fridge and no stove at all - a place large enough for me and my dog only because she's a runt and isn't interested in running around all that much.

On the bathroom's girthless wall hangs my unused master's degree, earned before I lost my status anxiety indoctrinated through growing up on a missile testing army base where there really are rocket scientists whose obscenely bright children were virgins until college and years later show up at class reunions looking fat from accomplishment and success.

I get enough money from these people to live among them but not enough to live like them, yet I'm the one who's rich with all this slack time.

I never knew life could flow so smoothly, as though it were a plastic banana-shaped boat on a lazy current through blue clear calm salt water.