A Modest Proposal: Make babies out of chocolate

This is what my weeks of endless workouts (and, fine, endless boozing) have produced? This morning, as I, ashen-faced, slumped shoulders, belly sticking out, held on to a subway pole, about to succumb to my hangover and two hours of sleep, the woman in front of me offered me her seat. Unsolicited! The one other time this happened to me, it was because I had just sat down on the floor so I wouldn't pass out from low blood sugar. I figured my evident unwellness had now induced similar sympathetic feelings, so I gratefully accepted. As I was sitting down, she made a comment that chilled me to my bone:

I'm so sorry! I didn't even notice you for a few minutes.

Hold up just a tic. Why would someone be so apologetic for not noticing that someone whose head is clearly not in their normal line of sight didn't look too well? But what was in her line of sight was... my stomach. Did she think I was PREGNANT?

What. The fucking. Fuck.

But hey, maybe she was a nurse trained in dehydration. Maybe she was conducting a reverse of this sociological study. Maybe she just really likes fucking with people's heads. Who knows. I may look like death on a hot plate, but I certainly don't look pregnant*.

Cut to the afternoon. I walked into the nurse's office for a Band-Aid, almost colliding with the nurse standing inside the door. She looked at me and asked something that chilled me not just to my bone, but to my fatty, fatty heart:

Lactation room?

I thought I was hearing things. Why would I need a lactation room? I didn't have the energy or quick-thinking to say no, so my face had to pick up the slack. My poor, confused face. She clarified, asking if I was there for the Lactating Mothers group. Lactating mothers. Lactating, as in, just gave birth and haven't had time to lose the baby weight yet.

I held up my mangled extremity in response. "No, um. My hand? Don't have a kid."

"Oh, I'm sorry! You look just like one of the mothers in our group."

"Ah."

"Just the face! I didn't mean anything."

NOT BLOODY LIKELY. What is the world trying to tell me? That I probably shouldn't have made brownies an hour ago with my roommate. Mmmm, brownies baby...

*No offense to any preggos out there. You have such a lovely glow! I would be honored to glow like that! Or so I've heard! Sorry about the whole "baby" thing, though.

Balls Jr. #1: Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris

True Blood ruined Dead Until Dark for me. That's not to say I hated it; I liked it well enough for yet another "I finished my book at work and need to find something else, anything else to read" selection. But the one episode of the show that I've seen was the first one, so I either knew exactly or had an idea of how everything turned out, which ruined almost all of the suspense and surprises. I might have gotten more invested in the novel if I hadn't known, because objectively they were pretty well-done. Also, my favorite character from the show, the gay black cook, Lafayette, technically appears in the book but has no substantial part and no good lines. Boooo.

Setting all that aside, it really was not bad at all. 1) There was nothing in the plot that made me stop, shake my finger at an inanimate object and scold it for contradicting itself, which is a nice feat for something surrounding vampires and psychic girl-detectives and all sorts of crazy shit. 2) The characters were believable, as far as I can judge having never personally experienced True Life: I'm Poor and Southern. Or True Life: I'm a Supernatural Being, I guess. Or True Life: I'm a Psychotic Murderer... I think you get the point. I even managed to quickly get over my initially negative impression of Sookie, based off of both Anna Paquin and Sookie's opening lines of (paraphrasing) "Yes I'm pretty and blonde with blue eyes but oh I don't date because I can read people's minds and I call that my disability aren't I so cute." 3) The writing was fine. Not terrible, not terrific. Nothing made me roll my eyes and groan (except for that opening), nothing made me mark a certain line as great, but there were some clever enough jokes and solid descriptive writing. Doubtlessly influencing my opinion here is that my first two Balls Jr. books were straight-up romance novels that pissed me the HELL OFF, so anything would've been an improvement over that.

Am I going to continue on the series? Doubtful. It was an enjoyable way to pass the time, but I don't care all that much about the characters or what happens next. If I run into someone who offers to lend me the next book in the series, though, I might take it.

In short, more than passable popcorn reading, but not my thing.

(Technically this is my fourth book read, but it's the first review I've completed.)

Internationalism

Brunette Roommate II, while watching the Ice Skating World Championships: Wow, those Chinese people look extra-Chinese.

Update

Blond Roommate II, while reading a magazine: Pork belly.
Me: Pork Belly?
Blond Roommate II: Pork belly.
Me: Is that a food or a fashion?
Blond Roommate II: It's the belly of a pork.
Me: The belly of a pork?
Blond Roommate II: Haha, right, the belly of the animal pork comes from.
...
Blond Roommate II: What animal does pork come from?
Me: You are so Jewish.

... About that

Turns out I was the one who dumped him. My new reaction? Crying. Way to be insane, tear ducts. Way to be.

This is why we can't have nice things

Things like emotions. And relationships that last longer than a week. My response (in March) to dumping*/getting dumped after a month by a guy I didn't really like: going home with a cute, polite, and talented musician. My response (tonight) to getting dumped** after six months by a guy I did like: eating half a bag of Pirate's Booty and four donuts, staring at my cell phone in disgust, and playing endless games of Solitaire.

Joke's on his 40-year-old ass, though, and yes I got dumped by an old man who wrote "u" and "2" for "you" and "to/too," but now he's going to miss out on the most amazing Halloween costume ever inspired by one of my addictions and Girls's Costume Warehouse: Sexy Ramen. By the way, if anyone has any ideas on how one could actually make a Sexy Ramen costume, I'm listening.

Plus, on Friday I met someone who's polite, cuter, better in bed, and doesn't have a replacement hip, so the moral of this story is... I guess it's that I am awful at ginning for sympathy points. Hey, I never said I had strong emotions. Now please excuse me while I go vomit up nine donuts. (I had some drunken, anticipatory donut-eating after a few suspicious texts last night, pre-angry passing out on the couch, but post-leaving my clothes in various rooms of the apartment for my roommates to find. Like a scavenger hunt!)

*As much as that word can apply to a "relationship" that was never official.
**As much as that word can apply to a "relationship" that was never official, and during the span of which I made out with many other people. And sure, when I put it like that, it makes it sound like I shouldn't care. But he was the one who was always too busy, so it's really his fault.

That was a terrific Snowe Job last night, Bob

I don't think the news sources using the term "Snowe Job" to refer to Olympia Snowe voting for an awesomely stripped-down bill that hopefully won't harm the poor, innocent health insurance company that employs me are acquainted with Urban Dictionary.

Or are they...

Book # I Am Never Reading Another Book Ever Again

One Year Gone. 53 books completed. Countless others* started and abandoned. Maybe 10 substantial reviews written. 53 out of a goal of 100. It may not be a passing grade, but it's a winner in my heart. (There's a reason I dropped out of college, folks.)

Round II starts November 1st, and you know what? I'm not reading shit until then. I am crapped out. I've barely been averaging 20 pages a day lately, what with the new job, and the new gym addiction, and the new, transfer-y commute, and the old new sluttiness. Speaking of the job, I had a performance review check-in kind of deal today, and was told by my un-boss that she thinks I'm the star. I am not making this up. She literally said those words. I honestly don't know how I deal with being so awesome. Hey, Jon, how do you do it? Is there a support group I can join?

Anypoo, Cannonball Jr. one has a 52-book goal, but reviews are mandatory. So on the one hand, yay for lowered expectations, but on the other hand, you have the other mitten.

*Seven.

I swear to Godzilla, if this ends up on Facebook...

The bride just sent me the following text, which is Reason Number One why it's not the smartest idea to enter into a Rock Paper Scissors competition in which the punishment for losing each round is doing a shot of moonshine (OR IS IT?!): They have a pic of you guys cuddling. Naked cuddling.

T Minus 2 Hours

That is when I decide to maybe check the weather instead of assuming that since it's a Southern State, it's automatically going to be hot and sunny. This turns out to be a beneficial decision when I see that it's going to be cold and rainy all weekend. This does not bode well for my dressing options for a wedding out in a field.

Oh shit. Shoes.

Planning: An Even Less Strong Suit Than My Birthday One

Married Ex-Roommate is getting married tomorrow! Officially. Well, not officially, because according to the "law" and the higher power of my blog nicknaming, she's already married, but now it will be official in the eyes of The Lord, or whatever it is Indians pray to. This means I'm leaving tomorrow for A Secret Southern State, not to return for DAYS. They're getting married on a Sunday night. How so very convenient for people with jobs in another state.

For months I've been discussing the wedding with her. Looking at pictures of the venue, listening to the band she's hiring, asking about what the bridesmaids are wearing (hint hint cough cough), hearing horror stories about her ring designing, looking at potential dresses, playing with her puppy. (That last part may have been my Secret Ulterior Motive for putting up with all the rest of it**.) Tonight, the night before I get on an airship, I realize that, hey, I don't know what I'm supposed to wear. Or how I'm getting to the cabin from the airport. So I text her my questions. My answer: Anything I think is suitable for an outdoor wedding. (The other answer: Hitchhiking, apparently.)

Great. I have a ton of summer dresses, none of which would be appropriate for a real wedding, but a few might be able to pass for this. I think I need to bring all of them, though, because I am very likely going to end up underdressed. Or overdressed. Or too slutty. Or not slutty enough. (Indian guys! Whooo!) Is a bright pink, clingy cotton dress too much? At least it hits my knees, which I can't say for many others. The point is, I have zero reference points. At the last wedding I went to, I was considered too young to wield the oh-so-mighty power of picking out my own outfit. (I told them I wanted to make my flower-girl dress out of actual flowers, which would have been uhmazing, but nooo, they wanted to put me in pigtails and a dress with bows. My stomach heaves at the memory.)

I think we all get the point that I need better life-planning skills (and a spot on Project Runway). Starting with not getting drunk tonight and potentially oversleeping tomorrow instead of, oh, I don't know, getting my shit PACKED tonight. Good luck with that, Me. I did do one thing, right, though. I bought an mp3 player that gets 55 hours of playback! Music for plane > not being nude at friend's wedding.

The more (most?) important point here is that this means I'm still not going to get to any reviews any time soon. On the other hand, with all that forced downtime, I might finally make a dent in Emma.* I'm glad I don't have an iPhone or something like that, and I'm being serious, because otherwise I'd probably waste all my time on pointless apps or movies. (The iPhone can play videos, right? I am very in the loop.)

I made so many points in this that I have no idea what my point actually was. That might bother me if I ever had a point in what I wrote. See you later, alligators!

*Dirty.***
**If you ever check this again, hi! I'm just kidding. Congratulations!
***I just realized I did these asterisks backwards. Eh, who cares.

Books #51-53

Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Stealing Lincoln's Body, by Thomas J. Craughwell

I've had a medical issue that's made me sleep constantly. (I'm fine now.) And my computer's been dead. And I've been working late, way too often. I think those thar are some pretty decent excuses for why I haven't written reviews.

Book #50: The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike

I did it, Ma! I finally did it! Half of it, at least! It's been a while since I've been in grade school, but I have to assume that with all the curves and automatic extra credit and shameful coddling of underachievers (cough cough thanks Mr. AP Calc for not failing me cough oh my impetigo must be acting up again), fifty percent's gotta be, what, a B-? I can live with that. At least now I'll have time to sit back and catch up on my poor, neglected reviews. (If I treat my blog this way, can you even imagine how I would treat my children, god forbid I ever have any? Updike's titular witches, by the by, are a great example of how I would be as a mother. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, they are not so good at the parenting. I'd also probably end up with a minister ranting against me in a Sunday sermon.)

Later, though. Now is mommy's nap time.

Books #48 & 49

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary - Simon Winchester

The Book of Lost Things - John Connelly

How to Succeed in Business in 5 Easy Steps

Step 1: Attend new hire orientation on Monday.
Step 2: Begin new job for realy-reals on Tuesday. Don't do much of anything until Step 3.
Step 3: Learn some practical reportàge tools on Thursday afternoon.
Step 4: Be suspended from your job at 5:00 PM.
Step 5: Thursday night, to relieve your stress, devour a big, black, juicy cupcake and a Subway double-meat turkey sub. That's right. Single meat just can't satisfy me on its own.

Who's surprised by this? Anyone? Anyone? Nobody's surprised? Yeah, neither am I.

To honor this impressively quick turnaround, here are a few not-at-all sexual things that (ex-/future) coworkers have said in the past three days:

"It's coming on Jenny, then coming down on Maria and Fred, so then it's going to come on all of us."

"Talk about Leticia."
"Oh god, Leticia." (Bosses bow their heads and chuckle.) "Now that's a customer you really want to probe."

"My unit is growing, partly because of you two."

*I would tell you the reason behind the suspension, but I don't want to ruin the excitement of whatever your mind grapes are cooking up.**
**Can grapes cook? They would probably need opposable thumbs, but if the cooking is metaphorical they would only need inivisible opposable thumbs, and that's doable.

Book #47: The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself, by Marc Abrahams

AKA The Ig Nobel Prizes 2. Who doesn't love the Ig Nobels? Even if you're not a giant nerd like I am, they're amazingly amazing. How many other award ceremonies encourage audience members to throw paper airplanes at the stage, have an eight-year-old girl named Miss Sweetie Poo employ the metaphorical hook to keep winners' speeches under a minute, and hand out awards to papers like "The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas* platyurhynchos" (Biology) and "Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis" (Medicine) and to people like L. Ron Hubbard (Literature)? And perhaps the best combination of prize and invention: The Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Daisuke Inoue for inventing... karaoke ("providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other").

Any kind of longer review is just going to be me repeating more things from the book. You should read it for yourself. Besides, I need to start packing for my move next week, and tomorrow is my first real day at my new job. Somebody is actually entrusting me to be a Senior Analyst. This can only end well.

*Dirty. I can only dream that this was done on purpose.

Overheard In My Underpants

Naked on top of a different old man:

DOM: Sorry, my hips are too bony.
Me: Says who? Plato?
Silence.
Me: Because he had his theory of ideal forms?
DOM: Yeah...
Silence, broken by my inevitable laughter.
Me: My Socrates jokes usually go over much better.

Books #44-46: Attack of the Colons

Fool: A Novel, by Christopher Moore. Funny. Raunchy. How did people ever NOT view King Lear as a comedy? This shit is ridiculous.

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson. Introduced me to the term "gyratory circus" for a traffic circle/roundabout, for which I will forever be grateful. My friends, family, and anyone who has unwisely engaged in any recent conversation with me lasting longer than two minutes are probably not as grateful.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach. Thought-provoking. Maybe I'll share those thoughts with you one of these days.

A Dropout reads the news

From an article about the recent acquisition of and alterations to Stuyvesant Town:

Rob [Speyer]’s ascent through the Tishman Speyer ranks coincided not only with the expanding real-estate bubble but also with a time of generational transition for the city’s leading real-estate families and the arrival of a new player in town: Jared Kushner, the 28-year-old scion of disgraced New Jersey developer and political donor Charles Kushner. Industry observers couldn’t help but note a potential rivalry. “You had a situation where both fathers wanted their sons to come out,” says one senior real-estate executive.

I'll bet that's the first time any senior executive has uttered those words.

Get it? Because they're gay. I made a gay joke. And I laughed at it. This is what you get when you allow the uneducated masses access to journalism. DO YOU SEE HOW YOU HAVE CREATED THIS MADNESS?

Books #42 & 43: A Room with a View and Carpe Jugulum

A Room with a View - E.M. Forster
Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett

The downside to getting accustomed to waking up early and being able to get to work on time every day is, well, getting accustomed to it all the time. By that I mean I've fallen asleep before 10 PM the last two nights, and the night before that, I fell asleep on the couch during a date. (In my defense, we were watching Charlie Rose. I've learned not to expect non-stop excitement from dating a 40-year-old.) It's 10:03 right now and my eyelids feel heavy. What the freak.

This is all to say that I don't have the time or energy to write reviews for these books. In case I never get around to writing something for real, though, here are my one-sentence reviews of each:

Forster: I went in with low expectations, since it's a Classic, but it was surprisingly witty, and in a way that's actually fun to read. I liked that even initially unsympathetic characters get some humanizing, redemptive moments. Favorite character: Freddy.

Pratchett: Medium-level Pratchett. It's no Small Gods, but it's also not as sadly mediocre as The Color of Magic. Since it's about vampires and isn't completely lame, I think I'm contractually obligated to say the following: Screw Twilight, if you want real vampires, read Carpe Jugulum! It really is an interesting concept, though-the main vampires have conditioned themselves not to be affected by sunlight, garlic, lemons, etc. They even have holy symbol flashcards to immunize themselves, which the teacher inside of me loves. And Nanny Ogg! Love love love Nanny Ogg. Dirty old woman. She owns what I'm pretty confident is a pink penis candle, and can turn anything into a "That's what she said."

Those may contain more than one sentence apiece. Nobody ever accused me of being unseemingly good at math, especially not any of my four different Calculus I teachers.

Overheard In My Pants

"See, this is why I like you. Most girls would look at me and think I'm crazy, or an asshole, but you're like, hey, maybe I should rape my parents."

July 5K #3: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz

I really liked it, despite what everyone mentions in every review of Oscar Wao, i.e., MAKE A FREAKING GLOSSARY, DIAZ! I found a website that annotated the book, which helped greatly when a) I was at home* and 2) my computer wasn't busy crashing.** Otherwise, I skipped over half the Spanish words and figured out the rest from context clues.

Unfortunate confluence of events: I was sitting on the subway, reading about Trujillo's culocracy***, when "Shake That Ass Bitch" started playing on my nonPod, and then the 10-year-old girl standing in front of me started wildly gyrating her hips out of nowhere. She kept going for a while, and I don't know if she could somehow hear my music but it was pretty much to the rhythm of the song, and I was fucking dying trying to avoid looking at her and hold in my laughter.

(Yeah yeah, these last two books probably "deserve" better "reviews," but it's 4 AM and I'm already late getting these up for the 5K. 3K for me. Oh, and the location rules: it's set in Dirty Jerz, where I spent a fun weekend punching a masochist, the DR, where I pretended to be from a few weeks ago at a party, and NY, where I actually live.)

*Considering I've only slept in my bed three times in the past week, this was not often.
**This also was not often. Freaking shit computer.
***Don't know what culocracy means? Now you know what it's like to read Díaz.

July 5K #2: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon

Apparently I prefer my detectives mentally challenged. Not surprising in retrospect.

(5K rule about setting: I've been to England, have read some Bryson travelogues, used to have a cute British boss, and was asked yesterday if I was Irish. I'm practically a UKer myself.)

July 5K #1: The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett

(The rule for this 5K-that I set because I motherfucking WON April's race like the winner I am-is that each book has to be set somewhere you have or want to live(d)/visit(ed). I've lived in California, visited San Fran, and watched Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill Azkaban* intro many more times than is healthy.)

There is no good reason for me not to like The Maltese Falcon, aside from its offensive attitude towards women and homosexuals, that is. It's well-written and twisty and shit, and Sam Spade is pretty badass. Also, of course, it is the BEST DETECTIVE NOVEL EVER WRITTEN. I never got into it, though. After this and Orient Express, I'm starting to think detectivizin' in fiction simply does not do it for me. Even when I was younger, I wanted so hard to love my Nancy Drew books, and it took me years to admit to myself that I didn't. I kept on trying to enjoy it, kept chasing that dragon. Wait...

Since I'm not excited for writing about the book, here's a bunch of quotes that I had fun making dirty in my mind:

• [Spade's] eyes became narrow and sultry. "I don't like this. What are you sucking around for? Tell me, or get out and let me go to bed."
• She murmured, "Poor head," and stroked it in silence awhile.
• The boy said: "You bastard, get up and shoot it out if you've got the guts. I've taken all the riding from you I'm going to take."

There was a great exchange somewhere about two guys going all the way with other, but I lost the page number.

(I am most likely not going to finish this 5K, seeing as how I only finished my first book on the 5th day. I'm OK with that, for the following reasons: I am a champ at not only reading but also resting on my laurels; instead of reading like a nerd I spent my long weekend attending free outdoor concerts, having sex with old men, and not having threesomes. Again.)

*This was supposed to say Alcatraz. Goddamn, I want more Harry Potters...

Overheard in NY. And my pants.

Monday, in bed: Shit. That doesn't work if I miss it.*

*This isn't a true Overheard, since it was me overhearing myself. I was trying to be sexy. I failed. I also made another Socrates joke. I feel like I should make it a goal to incorporate Socrates in some way into every sexual encounter I have. It's a good goal to have, seeing as how it will apparently be achieved with no effort on my part. And you know how girls hate to exert any energy when they're naked. Lazy bitches.


Overheard in Facebook's NY Network:
[Boy with whom I went on two dates and kissed once]: GOD! I'm so FUCKING HAPPY! Relatively anyways.

His roommates, whom I'd met the previous night, "liked" it. Some girl asked what he was on about and he responded with "I don't want to be shouting it from the e-rooftops just yet... maybe over the chat thing? lol"

Man, this is going to be awkward when I lie and tell him things got serious with the (39-year-old) man from Monday...

Book #36: The Odd Sea, by Frederick Reiken

The Odd Sea won the Hackney Literary Award for a first novel. I mention this for two reasons: one, to let you know that other people more important than me thought highly of it; and two, because it makes me think of hack writers, which amuses me. Congratulations, you’re King of the Hacks!*

The book is about the years following the disappearance of the narrator’s older brother and the efforts to find out what happened to him and rescue him from his Schrodinger's Cat status. It explores the effects of the disappearance on, well, mainly the narrator since he’s the one telling the story and all, but also the family members as individuals and a unit, the brother’s girlfriend, and the brother’s teacher. Reiken uses clear, spare language, and does not turn the story into a melodrama, into which it easily could’ve spiraled in another author’s hands. It actually had somewhat of the opposite problem. Since emotions were always presented in such a straightforward manner, I always felt a level of detachment from the story and the characters. I also had some issues with the narrator's voice. He often seemed to be too adult, or flat-out weird. (Describing his sister as bosomy? At thirteen? Awwwwkward.).

For a book with the constant threat of death, torture, and child molestation hanging over it, it was surprisingly pleasant. Like walking through a forest on a sunny day and happening upon a dead moose - you’re just so relaxed that you can acknowledge death’s existence without having your mood be affected by it. (I don’t think moose actually live in forests, but you get the point.) The comparison became even more fitting when I saw that Reiken is a nature writer. There are a lot of descriptions of leaves, and forests, and the sky, and I usually wouldn’t care much for that, but everything was just too darn pleasant for me to get bored or upset. He’s also a reporter, which could help explain the detachment.

There was one part, though, where I got seriously stirred up. A speech the father makes at his timber frame raising got me choked up a little. I was over it by the time he made a similar speech again at the end of the book.

I can see how someone who is drawn to serious explorations like this would enjoy it, and I can see why it would get some first-time-novel praise. It doesn’t just show promise, it delivers on some of it already. This isn’t the type of thing to which I’m drawn, though, so I won’t be holding my breath for his next novel.

Time for another round of Quote That's Better Isolated And Dirty: On one full-moon night we sat out watching beavers until dawn... The beavers seemed not to mind our presence, yet for some reason this made me feel invisible, and afraid.

*That’s not really what the award means. I think.

Book #30: Captain Freedom, by G. Xavier Robillard

(Three book reviews in two days? What did you ever do to be so blessed?)

Captain Freedom is by no means a perfect book, as someone else’s review on Pajiba plentifully pointed out. There are some confusing timeline issues, it’s shallow, uses a lot of cheap, pop-culture-y jokes, and the writing itself isn’t too polished. Despite all that, I enjoyed it and laughed out loud often. Timing no doubt played a big part, since this was the first book I read after completing the 5K. Rushing through 5.5 books in something like 10 days made me appreciate something mildly stupid that I could easily fly through. I also started it on the first gorgeous, hot day of spring, and reading outside in the sunshine always makes me happy, no matter what I’m reading.

So, yeah. If you like stupid-funny, I guess I'd recommend this. Otherwise, back the hell up.

Book #35: Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett

(I have a gigantic backlog of reviews, so I’m going to try to bang out as many as possible over the next few days. Quality is not expected. Not that it ever is around here.)

There isn’t much left for me to say about Pratchett. Hogfather is another one of his Discworld books, and while it certainly wasn’t the worst of them that I’ve read, it didn’t come close to being my favorite. It’s routinely mentioned as one of his best, but I doubt it helped that I read it immediately after Small Gods, which was uh-mazing and will hopefully get a real review. The Hogfather is an alternate-universe Santa Claus who uses pigs instead of reindeer and who gets kidnapped, or exiled from reality, or something I can’t explain well but will make sense while you’re reading it. The book concerns the efforts of Death and Co. to rescue him, as well as the bad guys’ attempts to keep him whatever/wherever the hell he is.

There are a lot of funny moments, the plot made me want to keep reading to find out what the heck was going on, and the ending was great. I didn’t really care for the main character, Susan, though. I’m sure she’s a nice girl and a wonderful au pair, but she was saddled with an “I am obligated to do this even though I desperately do not want to” storyline, which made her kind of a killjoy. She also was surprisingly slow in some areas--despite her own relatively extensive experience with the odd and supernatural, no matter how many times she was reminded that the God of Hangovers had zero experience in the human world (long story), she kept being shocked when he asked questions about it. Keep up, Suze, he’s new here! Sheesh.

I was thrilled to read a story in which Death played a major role, though. He’s one of my favorite Pratchett characters, and up until now he’s only had pop-in roles. This story allowed his many dimensions to be shown-he’s funny, tragic, and charmingly awkward in his attempts to emulate humanness. Honestly, by the end of Hogfather you kind of want to give him a hug and lie to him it's all going to be OK.

Book #38: Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger

J.D., you goddamn son of a bitch. I give you one last chance. One chance to really impress me, and what happens? You actually do. The short story format forced you to cut down on all the endless philosophical blather that got tiring in Franny and Zooey and focus on the aspect of your writing that I enjoyed the most in Catcher, i.e., the character sketches.

The story everyone raves about, "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish," starts off the collection, and it's charming, disturbing, playful, and shocking. The last couple of paragraphs in particular are tense and full of anticipation-at least, I imagine they would be, if my stupid eyes hadn't automatically jumped to the end of the last page, ruining any chance of being surprised. What's worse is that I had forgotten I'd picked up Nine Stories in high school and immediately put it down after the first story because I'd done the exact same thing and wanted to forget the ending so I could be surprised the next time I read it.

After that, my favorite stories were "The Laughing Man" and "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period," the latter of which is written by a man reflecting on his teenaged pretension and is pretty fucking hilarious. "The Laughing Man" has a cool, intertwined double storyline, one a Scheherazade-style action-adventure tale that a character is narrating within the story, and the other centering around both that character's love life and the main narrator's childlike understanding of and reaction to that love life.

Most of the other stories were intriguing and kept me interested and thinking. Then I got to "Teddy." You were so close, Salinger, and you had to go and throw in a wunderkind who's just soooo spiritual and monologues about life and meaning and reincarnation all over the place. Overall, though, good show, old chap.

(Review #37, for Murder on the Orient Express, is almost done.)

Use the pink, fuzzy handcuffs, Officer Krasinski

I'm glad drunk and disorderly laws have higher requirements than what I did Friday night. It was five AM, and four of us were looking for the subway after some late-night pizza. We passed a group of cops walking the other way, and one girl asked them where the nearest train was. A short, cute cop stopped and asked where we were trying to go.

Girl: Greenpoint.
Me: Astoria.
Cop: Oh, you're going to Astoria? I'm going there in about 20 minutes, do you want a ride?
Me, overjoyed: Really?!
Cop, sneering: No.
Me: What the fuck. You know, this is why cops have reputations as assholes.
Girl, in a loud aside to me: He's so cute!
Me, also loudly: Are you kidding? He is NOT cute. [I faced him] You are not cute.
Girl, turning back to the cop: Do you know what street the F is on?
Cop: Yeah, yeah, it's on the corner of Fuck Off and Find It Yourself.
Me, taking an angry step toward him: FUCK YOU. You are such a FUCKING DOUCHEBAG.
He laughed and walked away. The girl was grinning widely and squealed, "He was Irish! I could tell!"
Me: No wonder he was such a fucking asshole.

I also think I hugged John Krasinski. Note that this does not mean I actually did, just that I really want to think I did. I was sitting by the register at the pizza place when two men walked in. I commented loudly on how one looked incredibly like John Krasinski. The girl who would later fall in love in Asshole Cop agreed with me. That was all the encouragement I needed to start my own love connection. I raised my arm and tried to snap my fingers, failed, then called out, "Hey, blond dude!" He turned. "Have you ever gotten that you look like John Krasinski?" He started laughing, then confirmed he had. That's when I busted out my curveball: Ever gotten Aaron Eckhart? BAM! Hit him with a new one.

They sat down at the table next to ours, Aaron Krasinski facing me. And face me he did. Every time I looked up, he was grinning at me, occasionally giving me these cute eyebrow-raised smirks, with an expression on his face like he was waiting for me to do something. In my egotistical drunken state, I assumed he was simply taken with my excessive adorability. Or my excessive cleavage. (Don't judge, it was party night.) I asked if I could call him Aaron. I could. My friends laughed at me, and Aaron and I bonded over their jealousy over our true love.* I gave his friend, Aaron Jr., my leftover pizza, they got up to leave, and I jumped up to hug him goodbye.

I got home and decided to see if John Krasinski was in New York right now. I knew it wasn't actually him, but a girl can dream, right? I ended up on Gawker Stalker, and it turns out he lives in that area, and all of the recent sightings of him have been within a 3-block radius of that pizza place. COINCIDENCE? Or me missing the chance to make Jim Halpert my boyfriend, or at least be able to brag to everyone I ever met that this happened to me?

Now, logically, I know if it really was him, he wouldn't be joking about falling in love with some drunk chick at a pizza place at 5 in the morning. But on the other hand, it was him and there is no other explanation. He kept doing the smirky Jim face, and what if he was trying to get me to realize it actually was him? You know how those Hollywood types get when they go too long without public recognition and worship.

So that's how I've been spending the remainder of my weekend. Slowly convincing myself that I had a glorious encounter with a celebrity and didn't even realize it until it was too late. At least if this dream is shattered, I'll always have my gyno run-in with Amy Ryan with which to comfort my soul.

*Sample dialogue: "How could we not? Such a perfect setting."
"Romantic lighting..."
"Exquisite cuisine."

Books #35 and 36: Hogfather and The Odd Sea

I finished Hogfather, another Pratchett book, on Thursday. I can't even get my placemarks up in a timely fashion. In my defense, I was busy packing for and then attending The Roots Picnic with a bunch of virtual strangers, and doing the typical Philly activites: cheesesteak eatin', Liberty Bell watchin', ass grabbin', famous internet personality punchin', strip club attendin'. You know. The ushe.

The Odd Sea, by Frederick Reiken, is being completed as we un-speak.

I think I'm killing my roommate's goldfish. They are trying to eat their own poop.

Lisztomania

I found out we're allowed to post placemarks for our Cannonball Read books as soon as we're finished with them, even if we don't get the review up until later. Since I'm about a dozen reviews behind, I'm going to post my list up until now instead of doing a barrage of review-less posts. At some point I'll think about putting a continuously updating list on the right-hand side of the page, but then I'll decide to do something else instead and it'll never happen.

1. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
2. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul - Edward Humes
3. Myra Breckinridge - Gore Vidal
4. Stardust - Neil Gaiman
5. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead - James Kirkwood
6. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
7. Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs
8. Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
9. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
10. Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
11. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
12. Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need - Dave Barry
13. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
14. Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea - Chelsea Handler
15. Lord Emsworth and Others - P.G. Wodehouse
16. Full Moon - P.G. Wodehouse
17. The Very Virile Viking - Sandra Hill
18. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
19. Take the Cannoli - Sarah Vowell
20. Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology - RC Sproul
21. The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett
22. Sick Puppy - Carl Hiassen
23. The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman
24. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World - A.J. Jacobs
25. The Friend of Women and Other Stories - Louis Auchincloss
26. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins
27. Her Infinite Variety - Louis Auchincloss
28. Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut
29. She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb
30. Captain Freedom: A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves - G. Xavier Robillard
31. Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street - Michael Lewis
32. King Dork - Frank Portman
33. Snoop - What Your Stuff Says About You-Sam Gosling
34. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett

Books I'm reading now:
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Stealing Lincoln's Body - Thomas J. Craughwell
Mole People - Jennifer Toth

Sexy Saltine, what have you done?

You know how some folksy people like to appraise someone's attractiveness by saying "I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers," and whoa, if the person speaking is a white chick from Tennessee, that takes on a whole new dimension. You know? Oh, of course you know. Well, I ate crackers in bed this morning (Saltines, the sexiest of all the dry crackers [as opposed to the dripping wet crackers, and ew sorry]). Since I can't kick myself out of my own bed, would it have been unfair to preemptively kick out my "special friend" so that he wouldn't wake me up at 8 AM and I therefore wouldn't have been awake to eat those crackers in the first place? Also, it's possible I was subconsciously drawn to them so they'd soak up the massive amounts of water I drank to get rid of a certain "special taste," and if you think about it that way, it's all his fault and I should kick everyone out of bed for making me eat crackers.* Uh, not that I do this with everyone. Only, like, a third of the people I know. Tops.

This question has practical applications for the future, because sadly there is a large chance of this happening again. The cracker-eating, I mean.* Maybe I should rename my bed "the kitchen table."* I think that would solve most of my problems.

*Dirty.