Beauty School Dropout

A Dropout Reads the News

2011-06-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

1) Hey, gay marriage! Kick ass.

2) Hey, Louise Gassman, wannabe actresses with mountains of debt who also TURN DOWN FULL-TIME POSITIONS should not be living in studios on the UWS, unless they are sharing said studios with a college friend or creepy older man. Find a couple roommates, move to Brooklyn and/or the Bronx, cut your rent in half, and quit whining to the New York Times about money when you clearly would rather burn it all on rent and "happiness."

LOUISE GASSMAN, 28, has a rotating schedule of multiple jobs: as an actress; as an assistant to dance instructors at the Circle in the Square and Juilliard schools; as a baby-sitter; and in a variety of administrative roles and as a spinning instructor at SoulCycle, an indoor cycling studio in New York.
Ms. Gassman’s monthly income, which can vary greatly depending on whether she books an acting job, ranges from $1,800 to $4,000. Some months, almost all of her income goes to the $1,450 rent on her 290-square-foot studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Whatever is left after essentials goes toward paying off her remaining $16,000 in college loans.
“I worry about money all the time,” Ms. Gassman said. “I live on a really tight budget, and I live paycheck to paycheck.”
But full-time jobs don’t suit everyone. Ms. Gassman, for example, has been offered a full-time job at SoulCycle, complete with full benefits, but she doesn’t want it. “I wouldn’t be able to go on auditions in the middle of the day,” she explained. “Of course, it stresses me out not to have health insurance, but what is my choice? Work in an office and be unhappy? Being happy is a superhigh value to me.”

Smart Thinkings

2011-06-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Bright ideas a friend and I have thought of recently:

Pilot idea for NBC: Puppy Notary.

Idea for a TV show with a weekly rotating cast and live commentary: Midnight Puppy Fight. (We really like puppies.)

The name of my memoirs: Everything About Sex is Tacky.

First line of memoirs: Late one night, there was a mosquito.

CBR III 8: The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman

2011-06-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Subtle Knife is the second in the His Dark Materials trilogy. I read the first, The Golden Compass, in the last cannonball round, but I don't think I ever got to a review. I'm going to try something new with this one and NOT have spoilers. Vague descriptions all the way!

The first book was fine. A good YA fantasy-adventure, with a female protagonist, which I appreciated, a cool world that's similar to, but different from, ours, and a solid mystery. Mysteries, really. What is Dust, why is the church so interested in it, what's happening to the children who keep disappearing from Jordan College, what is Lord Asriel up to, what's Lyra's place in all this, and so on. The mysteries are what kept me going. Mystery, really. What the hell WAS Dust? I had to know. I didn't want to read two more books to find out, though, so I went to Wikipedia. I was not overly enamored of the writing-it's serviceable, I think I'm just a little out of the target age group.

My congratulations to Mr. Pullman. He crafted a phenomenon so involved that after ten minutes of trying to understand the explanation, I gave up and resigned myself to either never knowing or eventually reading the rest of the books.

And here I am.

I was in the library, about to check out season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, when I remembered that libraries have BOOKS! I need a book! A girl can't survive on a diet of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man alone. You can't tell from the books I've reviewed, but I've been reading a lot of classics. I needed a palate cleanser. Despite never having a great drive to read this one, it has served perfectly well as just that.

The focus has shifted from Lyra Belacqua in her world to Will Parry in ours, creating new mysteries while effectively merging them with the existing storyline. Will and Lyra are both orphans in a sense. They have absentee/dead explorer fathers and mothers who are dead or gone or unstable and in need of care themselves. Will has had to take care of his mother, who's unstable and deathly afraid of an unseen danger, and his father was lost, assumed dead, on an Artic expedition when Will was a baby.

Both books involve Will and Lyra on quests that involve finding out about their parents, learning about other worlds, and being thrust into incredibly dangerous situations. Both children are "important" in a grander sense, crucial to the immense event that is brewing. They're thrown together for a reason, and need to trust each other despite initial misgivings. Their relationship develops as naturally as can be expected when they're a) from different universes, b) running for their lives, and c) VERY IMPORTANT CHILDREN.

The titular subtle knife is pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie. Since I'm erring on the side of non-spoilers, I won't describe what it does, but it lives up to its name. Pullman has created quite a neat universe, with many cool features and creatures. Plus, eff the church! Who doesn't love a good round of Eff the Church?

I can understand why these books are celebrated, but you will probably get the most enjoyment out of them if you're a young teenager, or really have a taste for YA fiction or fantasy. I was a huge Harry Potter fan, and I wonder what my feelings on that series would be if I was in my twenties when I first encountered it, instead of my early teens. I felt much more invested in even secondary HP characters than I did in some of the main HDM characters. And the Dementors were scarier than the... things in this series that are like Dementors. Now that I've gotten this far, though, I want to hurry up and read the third book. I have more mysteries to solve! Read about being solved. Whatever.

CBR III 0: The Terror - Dan Simmons

2011-06-22T08:18:00.001-07:00

This doesn't count as a review, since I only got to page 50 before quitting this bitch. Can you tell from my notes below that this would be one of the few books I refused to finish?

Wow. People sure were racist and other -ists in the olden days.
11: her tongue was chewed off at the base by herself? What kind of doctor is this guy?
19: "perfumed sodomite" [Offensive, but funny]
No food specified in orders? Jesus, no wonder all these voyages failed, everyone involved is a goddamn idiot.
20: I'm already feeling like I've read this before, ten pages ago. The lichen soup, the denials of cannibalism, George Back going for food. You are not Rashomon.
21: why would there only be a hint of a tattoo if the meat they brought back was uncooked? Had they scraped off the skin or something? ... I'm not going to like this book, am I...
23: "Great Slave Lake"
James Fitzjames is a stupid name. "often called the handsomest man in the Royal Navy, looked as striking and humble as the war hero he was." WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?
26: he filled the silence with an unspoken signal? Couldn't he have filled the PAUSE, or gap, or something that makes sense? Signals that are unspoken don't alleviate silences.
40-41: great cure for consumption, shoveling coal in a ship bound for the Arctic.

CBR III 7: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Frank L. Baum

2011-05-29T12:32:00.001-07:00

This was another short one, so although Le Wiz has nothing to do with Cruel Shoes, aside from their inherent absurdity, I'm adding them up to one full book and review.

We all know the story of Dorothy and her little dog too. You may even know that the famous shoes weren't ruby but silver in the book. What I didn't know was that the book is stupid. I am much too old for its target audience, so take this with a salt lick, but ugh. Lame. The story felt choppy and discontinuous, and the writing was childish. Plus, Dorothy never makes out with the Tin Man! What kind of world do we live in?

I never should've read the book, especially since I don't have kids and I didn't even really like the movie, except when paired up with Dark Side of the Moon, but it was free in some app, and I once portrayed Hunk (black and white farmhand) in a living mural competition, so, you know, memories, nostalgia, blah blah blah.

CBR III 6.5: Cruel Shoes - Steve Martin

2011-05-29T12:04:00.001-07:00

Cruel Shoes is a 1977 compilation of poems and page-long stories that have such surreal topics as dancing buffalo, renegade cows, vengeful curtain rods, and the Diarrhea Gardens of El Camino Real. Everything is written in an overly serious tone, to emphasize the absurdity of the topic. It's slight but entertaining to browse on a warm spring day after kayaking around a lake. (I'm outdoorsy!)

This was my favorite bit:

Some Anti-Gloom Insurance: Comedy Events You Can Do

4) Put an atom bomb in your nose, go to a party and take out your handkerchief. Then pretend to blow your nose, simultaneously triggering the bomb.

"The Bohemians" was also pretty good.

There's not much else to say about this one. Do you like either Steve Martin's stand-up or the paintings of Dali? Then read this book, if you ever happen to run into it.

CBR III 6: This Is Your Brain On Music - Daniel Levitin

2011-05-15T06:51:00.001-07:00

I remember from high school reading about how bats use SONAR to see, I think in a Richard Dawkins book, and it described the really involved biological processes that go on. The signal gets sent out with various wavelengths, bounces back, the brain analyzes the different wavelengths that return, sees how long they take to return and from which direction they're coming, and all of these different inputs are analyzed instantly to create a constantly changing map of the landscape in front of the bat. It was impressive. Then Dawkins (or whoever) reminded me that this doesn't mean that bats are "smart," in the sense that we would use the word. This is all going on in the background, and the bat isn't exactly sitting down and taking a calculus test, but it's still fascinating.

The same thing that Dawkins did for me with bat SONAR, This Is Your Brain On Music did for human hearing. I had never studied in any kind of detail how the ear and brain work together to interpret signals from the outside world and morph them into what we hear as sound. It's crazy if you think about it. The only thing that our bodies have to work with is a bunch of atoms slamming against our eardrums, causing it to vibrate at differing frequencies. From this, we are able to determine the intensity of a sound, the up-down, side-side, and back-front directions, the unique timbre of different voices, pitch, etc. All from the equivalent of being a stretched-out sheet with a bunch of ping-pong balls thrown at it, only able to feel each impact, not see the path of the incoming balls. AMAZING.

Levitin discusses the possible evolutionary advantages of music (as a precursor to true speech, for example, or as a demonstration of overall fitness when combined with highly athletic and rhythmic dancing), as well as more straight-forward explanations of musical terms and how instruments utilize construction materials and string lengths/chambers to produce vastly different timbres and pitches. I'm a musical novice when it comes to technical knowledge (like the names of notes) and being able to create music, so those parts were helpful to me, although he does warn musicians to skip certain instructionary parts.

And speaking of novices, one of the points Levitin makes is that most people dramatically underestimate their own musical prowess simply because they only listen to music and don't produce it. Yet human brains are so well-attuned to musical aspects that we are remarkably talented at complex tasks like melody identification, categorization, and overtone series recognition and completion (where our brains automatically fill in the "base" frequency of notes that have had them surgically removed).

Most of us have a lifetime of listening to music, judging music, picking out genres that we like, and can instantly recognize jarring notes and unpleasant melodies or instruments, and reproduce our favorite songs with remarkable accuracy, even if we "can't sing." That is nothing to sneeze at. We're in a relatively new era of music being something that is only performed by "experts," as opposed to being a group activity in the background of many daily tasks. Everybody can make music, and enjoy it, and while this is not Levitin's main point, it's one of the aspects I really identified with, and I don't have time to get into the many issues he covers.

If you're interested in neuroscience or music, expert or not, if you can find a copy of this book, it will be worth your time.

CBR III 5: I Was Told There'd Be Cake - Sloane Crosley

2011-05-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

Single girl has wacky misadventures in NYC, and instead of having a blog popular among Brooklyners, artsy young Manhattanites, and people who aspire to live in Brooklyn or Manhattan and have cupcake parties after museum-hopping with their gay besties, she gets paid to write books about said misadventures. Goddamn lucky bitch.

The stories are cute and funny, don't get me wrong. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but funny. Am I glad I borrowed the book from a friend instead of buying it? Yes. Am I going to exert any kind of energy to find her other book(s)? No. Would I read another book of hers if I ran across it and had some time to burn and no other book with me? Sure, I guess. Would I read her blog, if she had/has one? Probably. Will I follow her on Twitter? The premise of this question is invalid, since I don't have a Twitter account. Did she create dioramas of some of her essays? Yes, she did. ("Naturally, Sloane decided to turn three essays from her first book into three-dimensional plexiglass dioramas." Well, naturally.) Also, "Obviously... I purchased a vintage paper doll and matching wardrobe off Ebay." Do I really need to elaborate on the types of stories she relays? I hope not, because I won't.

If you're considering buying one of her books, check out some of the links to her website. Your reaction would be a great indicator as to whether or not you'll enjoy it, and her.

CBR III 4: Thud! - Terry Pratchett

2011-05-07T12:52:00.001-07:00

Discworld novels that focus on the Watch (police "force" of Ankh-Morpork) have been solid for me. I love Sam Vimes and the ragged band of characters that make up the force, like Nobby Nobbs, who's technically human, Carrot, the tallest dwarf ever, and Cheery Littlebottom, a dwarf with the best name ever.

Thud! involves a thousands-year old feud between trolls and dwarves. The original battle was at Koom Valley, and there's a famous, wall-sized painting of it that is supposed to contain clues about... something. (It was painted by an insane guy paranoid about the Chicken getting him.) Coming up is the anniversary of Koom Valley, and the painting has been stolen, a dwarf has been found dead next to a troll club, a Black Ribboner (reformed vampire) wants to join the Watch, angry trolls are lumbering around hopped up on drugs, and it's up to Vimes to figure out who really killed the dwarf, what this goddam vampire wants from him, how to prevent a full-blown inter-species war, and how to avoid eating the lettuce in his healthy BLT sandwiches.

Everything gets worked out in typical Pratchett fashion, and a good time is had by all.

A new word! Coprolite: fossilized animal dung.

An out-of-context dirty phrase! "C'mon if you think you're hard enough!" he screamed wildly.

Various other brief excerpts and amusing phrases!

"hell went for a stroll with its sleeves rolled up."
About a VIMP (Very Important Museum Person): "not so much speech as modulated yawning."
"point the finger of scoff"
Thoughts on how the only thing religion does is "put a gloss on slaughter."
"War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said.
"Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
"Absol- Well, okay."
"Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?"
"All right, I’ll grant you that, but-"
"Saving civilisation against a horde of-"
"It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying, Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together," Fred Colon sharply.
"Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?"

CBR III 3: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neil Postman

2011-05-07T11:20:00.001-07:00

You guys! I've been reading, I swear! I'm up to 20-something if you count the head start books. I'm now on vacation in Santa Barbara, which is where I pounded out a ton of overdue reviews last year (see: October), so I was planning on repeating that. Ten days to catch up.

I go home tomorrow.

What, I've been buuuusy! Lying outside being too hot to read, and learning how to play bridge, and getting drunk. Which brings me to now: at a friend's house, part hungover, part hopped up on coffee, with a dash of still drunk, not ready to drive back, and not able to focus on The Great Shark Hunt, which Hunter Thompson would probably appreciate. Perfect time to write some well-reasoned and eloquent reviews.

Looking at my completed list, I see Amusing Ourselves to Death. I then think: I read this? Oh yeah... I look for notes. This is everything I took from the book, apparently:

"118: Billy Graham is more popular than Jesus!

119: hey, maybe it's a good thing if televised preachers are less effective than in-person. Fewer religious people... Yay?"

What I've been leading up to: I'm writing a lot about events that may seem to be unconnected to the book because I don't remember the contents all that well, but that's correct. Here's what I do remember:

Postman rings more than once (zing!) on the idea that the medium of learning is more important than the content of the learning. The culture of teaching children in "fun" ways, like videos of kiddie explorers discovering facts about blue whales, just teaches them that they will never need to put any effort into learning things, like doing boring research or reading boring textbooks. Great, the kids now know a few things about whales, but who gives a shit? They should know a few things about serious study. Also, putting political or any other kind of serious news on TV inherently devalues the news, because a visual format always trends toward short, splashy segments. Serious analysis always needs to be written, and in long-form.

OK, time to go watch Man v Wild and learn about how to survive if I get dropped on a deserted island surrounded by sharks! (Update: the process seems to be to first run across a body of water in which there are sharks, keeping away from the sharks. Then you should run towards the sharks and try to catch them by the tail so you can eat them. I'm gonna stick with my original plan of not going near deserted islands.)

CBR III 2: Papillon - Henri Charriere

2011-02-21T07:43:00.001-08:00

I'm gonna tell you something: Henri Charriere has got some balls (or ovaries for the feminists). It's likely that you've already heard of Papillon, a Frenchman who was falsely convicted of murder at 25 and sentenced to hard labor for life in the Iles de Salut, a trio of islands located off the coast of French Guiana. He famously escaped the brutal treatment that prisoners received in the bagnes, and oh boy did he escape them. He more or less successfully escaped twice, and many more times, his carefully thought-out preparations were foiled at the last minute.

We meet Papi at his 1931 trial, being menaced by the prosecutor, Pradel, ineffectually comforted by his lawyer, Hubert, and ultimately judged and sentenced to life by 12 "cheeseheads." (Hands up, who else would see a movie called 12 Angry Cheeseheads?) He is sent to a temporary prison to await his trip to the islands, where he meets up with Dega, a Marseilles man who gives him the invaluable advice to get a plan. A plan is a small metal tube that you keep far up your anus in order to safeguard your money. I quickly accepted this as standard and not at all gross compared to all the other horrors that the bagnards have to suffer through. I don't want to spoil it for you, but copious amounts of pus and hair shirts are involved.

From the instant he's locked up, Papillon is looking for a way out. For years, Henri's motivation for escaping, besides simply being free, is to return to France and get revenge on the people involved in his wrongful conviction. On his first successful-ish cavale, he and two fellow bagnards, Clousiot and Maturette, make it all the way to Rio Hacho, in Colombia, before they are recaptured and locked up in a local jail to await their return to the bagne. Papillon escapes from there, too, and actually creates a life for himself with the Guajira indians, but he refuses to stay there forever because he still wants to kill some prosecutors/policemen. This ends up being a less than ideal idea because he is eventually turned in by a nun.

Years later, after two sentences in Reclusion (bagne solitary), after a friend is murdered, after a failed prisoner revolt, after gaining the trust of wardens, doctors, and their wives, after a stint in the insane asylum, and after many re-inserting of plans, Papillon is able to get himself transferred to Devil's Island. You know, the island from which nobody had ever successfully escaped. This is where he plans and begins his final, successful cavale, which takes him to Venezuela. He becomes so enamored of the caring way that the Irapa villagers they first meet take care of him and his fellow escaped/liberated cons, that he makes Venezuela his home country.

What most struck me about Papillon's quest is the staggering number of people who want to help him. There are the other bagnards, yes, which in itself is an achievement, because any escape tightens the screws on everyone left behind. There are also people in other countries who know he is an escaped convict and house him, feed him, give him advice on the best routes to take. There are British naval officers who encounter him on the seas and throw him cigarettes, food, even a person to help guide his ship. There are wardens who give him his pick of jobs on the islands, only asking him to escape after they are no longer warden. And none of this has anything to do with believing he is innocent. People help him thinking that he committed the murder for which he was incarcerated.

Can you imagine if a man escaped from French prison today, APB's put out on him, his picture splashed all over the news, and he washed up on the shore of some unknown country? I can't think he would accepted unquestionably, hidden from the cops, anything like that. I know I sure as hell would turn him in, I don't care how loudly he proclaimed his innocence.

Papillon is a great story about overcoming an unjust system, and is a thrilling escape story. Many thrilling escape stories, in fact. I even started tearing up at the end, I was so happy for Papillon. I can't speak to the movie version, but I highly recommend the book. As long as you're not squeamish.

Below is a highly unhelpful picture of a map that was quite helpful to me in terms of seeing where Papillon's escapes took him.

Explanations

2011-02-06T00:51:00.000-08:00

Cannonball Read started with the goal of 100 books in a year. I managed to read 53, but only review 25 or so. The next year, the goal became 52 books in a year, so even though I had sworn off reading and reading challenges, I figured, "hell yeah! If I did it one year, I can totally do it again. And this time it will count as winning, instead of being a 50% F." I almost got there with the reading, but still only reviewed half of them, most in a frantic rush in the last week. I once again swore off reading and reading challenges. And THEN, the stupid challenge was opened up to do-it-yourself goals, AND we got to start early if we wanted, so once again they puuull me back in. And that is why I posted a review a little while ago, only five weeks (and three months) behind schedule.

Calendar year 2011.
Goal: 26 books.
Goal: don't keep avoiding longer books because they will keep my total low (hence the 26 book goal, and the fact that I read Vanity Fair for my first book).
Goal: 26 reviews.
Finished: 12 books.
Finished: 1 review. (I have reasons! My sister got married! Work schedule! My Droid always wants me to play with it!)

But for realsies, I want to focus more on quality than quantity this time around, because I've had books sitting unread on my shelves for years because they would take more than a week to finish. No more! I mean it this time!

CBR III 1: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

2011-02-05T23:44:00.001-08:00

Wow. Hunter S. Thompson did a lot of drugs. I realize I'm not breaking any new ground here in terms of reviewerly insight, considering the only thing most people know of him is "he did a LOT of drugs," but really. I'm surprised he's still alive. (Is he still alive? If not, I amend my statement to being surprised that he didn't die in the opening pages of this book.) I mean, mescaline, adrenochrome*, ether, hash, speed, uppers, downers, anonymous colored pills, bottles of liquor swallowed whole to cap off all of the other insane amounts of drugs consumed.

And all of this from a doctor of journalism! I expected more respectability from a writer. (That is a lie.)

Thank god he's actually a talented writer, because if he wasn't, his drug-addled "reporting" on a motorcycle race in Las Vegas and then an anti-drug national cop conference by the side of his (completely un-)trusty Samoan attorney could have easily turned into an unreadable mess. It kind of is a mess as it is, but a glorious one. Consider that one chapter is prefaced by an editor's note explaining that what follows was transcribed directly from his tape recordings, because his notes were an illegible, stained mess, and Hunter himself was unreachable for weeks at the only phone number they had (for a state trooper's outpost). Aside from that, though...

Thompson and the Samoan race around Vegas from expensed hotel room to expensed hotel room, in various expensed cars, that they thoroughly wreck (hotel room and car alike), crashing into any and all situations with an uncontrollable desire to 1) be really fucked up on drugs, 2) fuck with people, and 3) generally cause a ruckus.

They begin on the road, in a bright-red convertible, stopping first to pop open the Trunk O' Drugs, then to switch driving duties, since Thompson is being attacked by bats in the middle of the day in the middle of the desert, and finally to pick up and terrify a young hitchhiker. He quickly can't handle their violent threats (the Samoan) and creepy, insinuating closeness (HST), and flees.

They proceed to frighten and alienate: the check-in clerk, the hotel bartender, the hotel bar patrons (Hunter has a bad case of the "seeing giant lizard monsters attacking him"), the other reporters covering the motorcycle race, etc. They accomplish very little in the way of journalism, but a lot in the way of testing the limits of the human bodies. By the time the race is over and they're set to go back to L.A., Hunter is holding his breath that he'll make it just long enough to get the hell out of Vegas without being locked up for the multitudinous crimes and degeneracies they committed. Doesn't want to push his luck, you see?

When he gets a call from the Samoan, therefore, that they have another assignment in the city, and that the assignment is covering a national drug-fighting gathering of law enforcement officers, well... He definitely does not want to push his luck that much. The lure of the delicious irony and opportunity for more expensed hotel room- and car-wrecking is too strong, though, and I'm glad, because reading about these two whacked-out, understandably paranoid druggies in wrecked clothing trying to be inconspicuous amid seas of straight-laced cops from the Midwest is delightful.

Somehow they manage to stay out of the slammer (yes, I used the word "slammer"), despite causing many a scene. They stumble out of a lecture, they force a carful of cops into drag-racing/shit-talking, they take the scenic route to the airport through a chainlink fence and straight onto the tarmac, they corrupt an innocent art student with drugs and sex and then abandon her (that was mainly the Samoan, but HST was the one who suggested pimping her out for drug money). They even physically attack and threaten a maid who walks in on the Samoan "polishing his shoes" (vomiting in them in the closet), and manage to turn it around so that she walks away happily sworn to secrecy, believing they're cops who will pay her to narc on the hotel goings-on.

Thompson is a great observer, and his voice is hilarious and full of energy. The situations he describes are hard to take at face value, but when they're coming from the guy who invented gonzo journalism, you never know.

*Fun fact: I first learned about the existence of adrenochrome (taken from the adrenal gland of a living person-REALLY fucks you up) from this book, and in the very next book I picked up, it was mentioned in the first ten pages. Granted, the very next book I picked up was The Doors of Perception, but it's still pretty cool. To me.

(Any typos, please excuse me. I'm writing this on my new phone, and while swyping is amazing and made even my hard-to-impress father use the phrase "way cool," writing anything longer than a text on any phone is still somewhat a chore. As is transferring it from google docs to blogaway.)

(Also, I don't have the book with me right now, so if you notice a small detail that I got wrong, please email me so I can ignore you and possibly fix it without saying anything in a month.)

Balls Jr.: The Unreviewed Masses

2010-10-31T01:37:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Pamela Britton - On the Edge
Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey
Clifford Chase - Winkie
David Cordingly - Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates
Richard P. Feynman - Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender Is the Night
Barbara Garson - Money Makes the World Go Around
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
Malcolm Gladwell - Blink
Malcolm Gladwell - The Tipping Point
Linda Greenhouse - Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey
John Knowles - A Separate Peace
Milan Kundera - The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Edward Luce - In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India
Molière - The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays
Frances Newman - The Hard-Boiled Virgin
Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sisters
Philip Pullman - The Golden Compass
Gretchen Rubin - The Happiness Project
John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck - Cannery Row
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Laura Wright - Front Page Engagement
Robert Wright - The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

Balls Jr. #26: Ubik - Philip Dick

2010-10-31T00:15:00.000-07:00

FYI, I didn't put the "K." in his name on purpose. I like to upend people's expectations. Is your mind blown?

Similar to Asimov's Foundation series, Ubik occurs in a distant future in which regular people can travel to the moon, rich people can be cryogenically preserved after death in a sort of dreamy half-life, and people with psychic powers are so common that there are entire companies devoted to "anti-psyonic"services. Yes, the distant future of... 1992. Heh. Oh, sci-fi writers from the 60s. Adorable.

Ubik is a great, mind-twisty story about one of the above anti-psy organizations run by Glen Runciter and his half-wife Ella. Joe Chip works for Runciter as an anti-talent scout, and he's quickly introduced to Pat Conley, who has the ability to change events that happened in the past. She doesn't actually go back in time herself, she just thinks really hard about something, and then things that happened have now happened a different way. Conley is brought along with 11 other anti-psys to a top-secret factory on the moon to secure the place from psyonic activity for mega-rich dude Stanton Mick.

As soon as the group lands on the moon, Runciter and Joe Chip included since it's such a big job, a floating person-bomb explodes and kills Runciter. Everyone else drags him into their ship and takes him back to Earth, to the same facility that houses his wife Ella, so that he can be placed in half-life with her. That's when things start getting weird. Chip orders coffee and the cream comes out sour. Cigarettes bought in a store crumble and disintegrate. Modern elevators switch back and forth between their usual form and an old-school form, complete with elevator attendants. And Chip wakes up the next morning in a hotel room, with a disintegrated lady in his closet.

Runciter starts showing up everywhere - on coins, on bathroom stalls, on TV. There are also constant instructions to find and apply something called Ubik, which is apparently the only way to keep from dying. Runciter's trying to tell them something, but nobody can figure out what it all means. Did he have a psy predict the future for him, and he knew this was going to happen, so he planned all of the messages ahead of time?

Time keeps rolling backwards, with airplanes reverting to biplanes, and coin-operated doors reverting to knob-operated doors. (Some of these changes can be appreciated by the perpetually broke Chip.) People keep breaking apart from the group and disintegrating. Suspicion turns to Pat Conley, with her ability to change the past. Is she messing with everyone? If so, why?

Their world stops regressing in the 1930s, and Chip finally discovers that he's in half-life himself, as is everyone else. Runciter is the only person who survived the explosion on the moon, and he's been trying to reach the half-lifers as best as he can, which is why he kept showing up on TV, telling them that they are dead. There is a young boy in half-life, Jory Miller, who died in the 30s and steals people's remaining years. He's been trying to keep the group's mental environment consistent enough to keep their minds fresh for eatin', but it's hard for him to keep the last environment in which he lived from coming through.

Ella finds Chip and tells him all about Ubik, and how it will protect him from Jory. Out in the real world, Runciter's trying to have his wife and employees moved to a secure part of the facility so that Jory can't eat their brains. What a considerate employer. The book ends with Joe Chip appearing on some of his coins.

If I had to describe Ubik for its Match.com profile, I would say it has a good sense of humor, enjoys long walks on the beach because there's no technology available for reversion, but perhaps takes too much pleasure in mind games. Fun for a multiple-night stand, sure, but do not put a ring on that finger.

Balls Jr. #25: Silas Marner - George Eliot

2010-10-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

The titular Marner is a lonely old weaver, spurning all of his neighbors in the town of Raveloe because he has never gotten over the betrayal of his best friend and fiancé when he was a young adult living in an ultra-religious community in England. It ended up with him being accused of stealing from the group's funds and kicked out. Now all he cares about is weaving and gathering that comforting yellow gold. His gold is stolen from him by Dunstan Cass, a prominent family's asshole kid who's in debt, for a change, and runs off with the money. The whole town rallies around Marner, who they feel empathetic towards for the first time since he came to town, but he is inconsolable. That money was literally the only thing he lived for, and when it was taken from him, it left a giant pit in his stomach.

Then, one day, he finds a kid in front of his fireplace. The baby has beautiful golden locks, and at first Marner, with his bad eyes, believes it to be his gold, returned to him. Yeah, it's not, it's a baby who wandered away from her drugged-out mom in the snow, but it's close enough for Marner! He keeps the child, since nobody's going to come to claim it. The mother, who died asleep in the snow, had the child by Dunstan's older, upstanding brother, Godfrey. Godfrey is trying to get into Nancy's pants, and he doesn't want to make it known to the Raveloe world that the kid is his, and that he was actually married to the kid's mother, Molly.

The years pass, and the kid, Eppie, brings Marner a long-lost sense of purpose and joy in life. Marner's making small-talk with the neighbors, making daisy chains with Eppie, and happily weaving the hours away. Godfrey is in a childless marriage to Nancy, and when Dunstan's skeleton is discovered with Marner's gold, he wises up and comes clean to her. They both go to Silas and ask to have Eppie back. Yeeahhh... It's been a long time. She's a teenager already. She gets to decide, and she stays with her "real" father, the one who raised her. Even when she gets married, she doesn't leave her father, but has her husband move into Silas's house.

Although Silas Marner was written in the 1860s, it was set in the beginning of that century, in the days when one weaver with a loom in his cottage produced enough goods for everyone in a town. It's a charming, compact little story that I've treated horribly in this review due to my tiredness and cramped hand making me not treat it as seriously as I should. There's also social commentary! Organized religion does not come out smelling like roses, for one thing.

Overall, I say it's deserving of its classic status. (It is a classic, right? I assumed it was, but that might've just been because of the author.)

Balls Jr. #24: Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov

2010-10-30T22:05:00.000-07:00

Ennngh. Between eight reviews and countless games of FreeCell, my right hand is cramping up badly. This is not an unfamiliar feeling for me, but it usually results from more fun activities. I have a goal to write at least half of the reviews, though, which means two more after this. Ennnnnnngggggghhhh.

Anyways, Foundation's Edge is the fourth book in the Foundation Trilogy, and things start getting really crazy in this one. All of a sudden there's this guy, Janov Pelorat, who's obsessed with finding the ancient "Earth," and Golan Trevize, who's obsessed with finding the Second Foundation. That's right, not everybody was fooled by their epic game of "if they know that we know and we can make them think that they know that we don't know..." Galactic affairs have been running too smoothly, and adhering too closely to Seldon's plan, to make sense, unless there was still an outside power, like the Second Foundation, controlling events.

The Mayor of Terminus, Harla Branno, sticks Trevize and Pelorat together in a state-of-the-art ship, and while publicly announcing Trevize's exile for being a shit-stirrer, secretly instructs them to search for the Second Foundation. That's right, Branno's no fool, either. She knows that they know that they knew...

She's also no fool in another respect - she can't trust Trevize to follow her orders, or to report back to her if he does find the Second Foundation, so she sends his ex-friend and betrayer, Compor, to spy on him and Pelorat. Pelorat tells Trevize about his life-long search for Earth, how it was the first planet, the original whence came all of humanity, and Trevize realizes that, hey, maybe that's where the Second Foundation is! So off to locate Earth they go.

In the Second Foundation on Trantor, which we finally get a clear picture of, Stor Gendibal is a mentalic shit-stirrer. He's examined the equations comprising the Seldon Plan, and he's looked at how off-track they were during the years of the Mule, and he's seen how closely and faithfully the equations have matched the original Plan since after the Mule's death. Suspicious. Things are proceeding too well, even taking into account the Second Foundation's attempts to control events. There must be a-NOTHER agency, even more super-secret, and even more powerful, controlling galactic affairs with better results than the Second Foundation alone could muster. This isn't good for them, because they don't want another group to swoop in at the end of the thousand years and take credit and control of the budding Galactic Empire: Part Deux.

Nobody believes Gendibal until one of the Trantorian farm-ladies is shown to have had her mind tampered with with such delicacy that none of the Second Foundationers could have possibly done it. It had to be the work of a group much more advanced in mentalics. Off Gendibal and Novi, the farm-lady, go, to find this group of "Anti-Mules," and also to find Trevize and throw him off the scent of the real Second Foundation. A Foundationer's work is never done.

Trevize and Pelorat are brushing up on their local legends about a mysterious planet in the Sayshell region. The people there call it Gaia, which is an alternate name for Earth in many myths, but they try not to think about it, because first of all it's probably not real anyways, and second of all, Gaia keeps crushing every military force that comes near it. That won't deter our intrepid travelers, and Trevize and Pelorat head off to Gaia, with Branno and Foundation warships on their trail (because of Compor's spying), as well as Gendibal (also because of Compor's spying. Surprise! He's a Second Foundation scout.).

Gaia turns out to be a funky, inter-connected world full of people, plants, and inanimate objects that share a consciousness. They have the ability to control and read their own and other people's thoughts, and they act like hippies in a commune, with even the walls having feelings. Who knows if this is "Earth," but it's definitely something. Their tour guide, Bliss, tells Trevize that Gaia has been manipulating events for years, all so that he would end up on the planet and be able to decide something once and for all: the future of the universe. Trevize has always had a unique ability to "know" the right choice, and Gaia wants him to use it to choose who should run the galaxy, whether it's the First Foundation, with its military might, the Second Foundation, with its mental control, or Gaia, with its... hippie superconsciousness thing.

Gendibal makes his decision, and everyone leaves happy, except for Trevize, who suspects that his pure quick-thinking might have been influenced in some way. I think he's still going to go search for Earth in the fifth of the trilogy. I want to read it.

Balls Jr. #23: Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov

2010-10-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

Whew. OK. The Mule went back to his empire, which includes the First Foundation on Terminus, but he stops expanding his reach. He's still wary of the Second Foundation, and he wants to find and crush them before making any more risky moves. He sends out expedition after expedition in search of it. All he has to go on are Seldon's words, saying that he was going to establish two foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy, so spaceships from Terminus keep going across the diameter of the circular galaxy. The search we care about has Han Pritcher at the helm, accompanied by Bail Channis, who the Mule thought might be a Second Foundationer, and thus might actually make the search successful. Han Pritcher was helping Bayta Darell and Hubby to fight the Mule in the last book, but after an assassination attempt, the Mule converted him to a loyal follower.

We see some brief snippets of a "First Speaker" of the Second Foundation, talking about how they're going to let the Mule find them, on their terms. It turns out that Bail Channis is indeed a Second Foundation man, and through an ever-escalating series of "but if he knows that we know that he knows that we know that he knows," the Second Foundation finally gets the upper-hand over the Mule, and alters his mind so that he doesn't want to find them anymore. All the Mule wants to do now is go home and play nice. He does that, and when he dies, the empire essentially dies with him, since he's sterile (hence "The Mule"), and the empire was one giant cult of personality that could not survive without the personality.

Years later, Bayta Darell's granddaughter, Arkady, gets herself all mixed up in things, and she plays a crucial role in helping the Foundation find and destroy its red-headed step-sister. She travels all over the galaxy, to Trantor and back, and while on Trantor, realizes that a circle has no end, and if you want to find the opposite end of a circle, you'll end up back where you started. In other words, the Second Foundation is on Terminus!

Foundation leaders root out and disable the group of Second Foundationers that were living on Terminus, and consider the case closed. The First Foundation is once again the only Foundation, and it is well on its way to ruling the galaxy.

Unluckily for them, the Foundation did not realize they were up against the champions and still undefeated masters of "but if they know that we know that they know." It was ALL a trick. Arkady's mind had been tampered with by the Second Foundation at her birth, and planetary events were delicately maneuvered for years to end up with her bringing the untruth to the Foundation and making them think that they had discovered the real hiding place of the Second Foundation.

Where is it REALLY?! On Trantor. Seldon had told the truth. Trantor was both the social opposite of Terminus (center of administration vs. uninhabited, ignored planet), and the physical opposite (in a spiral, the line ends in the middle of the circular rim). The Second Foundationers, with their myopic focus on keeping the Seldon Plan runnig properly, had needed to do something drastic to prevent destruction by the Mule, which brought them into the open. For the Plan to work, though, nobody could know that there were Plan Monitors, keeping everything on track. Nobody likes to think that they don't have free will. So they sacrificed dozens of their men to ensure that the First Foundationers would be convinced that they were free of the Second Foundation, once and for all.

Balls Jr. #22: Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov

2010-10-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

We left our spunky little Foundation steadily gaining in regional power, but in the context of the larger galaxy, that power is confined to a few barbaric, outlying planets that nobody gives a whiff about anyways. The Galactic Empire is still technically in existence, although outer planets all over are declaring independence and slacking off on their taxes, and the empire's power is being eaten away at. Trantor is still technically in control of the galaxy's tax forms.

Now, when writing about a bunch of books in a row, I can't really discuss 2-4 without first talking about what happened in 1-3, so these reviews are not a good thing to read if you don't want to know what happens.

Part One: Yadda, Yadda, Yadda

Bel Riose, one of the emperor's generals, does not like the threat, small though it is now, that the Foundation poses to the empire, and he decides to go rogue and attack it. The emperor finds out and believes Riose to be a bigger threat to the empire than some backwaters planet, and has him executed. The people of Terminus grow steadily complacent, putting blind faith in the Seldon Plan, and thinking that their power will inevitably grow and grow according to plan. They forget that the early Seldon Crises were averted not because of destiny, but because key people noticed the upcoming threats and took decisive action to prevent ruination.

Part Two: The Mule!

100 years later. Trantor's been sacked, the Galactic Empire is like cosmic dust in the wind, the Foundation is largest Galactic power, all because of their economic reach (no invasions of planets for them!), and the Seldon Crisis that was foreseen (a bunch of rich trading planets revolt against the Foundation and try to secede) is ignored because of a much larger, unforeseen threat: THE MULE!

The Mule is highly secretive - nobody knows his real name, almost nobody has ever seen him, but the rumors abound. Rumors of his massive strength, and fire-eyes, and so on. The reality is that his strength comes from his mind: he can reach into people's minds and permanently adjust their emotions and loyalties so that they're more conducive to the Mule's tastes, which could entail loving him, fearing him, feeling helpless in the face of his attack, etc.

He uses this unique, freak ability to quickly climb to power in planets near Terminus, and plans to face off against the Foundation. The men in charge assume that this is yet another Seldon Crisis (yaaawn) and that one of Seldon's patented videotapes/holograms will appear and tell them exactly what to do to beat the Mule. Instead, Seldon pops up and warns them about the secessionary trading planets. Oh shit.

Meanwhile, on those trading planets, Toran and Bayta Darell sneak over to Kalgan, where the Mule has set himself up real nice, and do some spying. With the help of Han Pritcher, an insubordinate Foundation captain, they leave the planet in haste, and harboring a fugitive: the Mule's jester, Magnifico Gigantico. He hasn't done anything wrong, really, he just wanted to escape the Mule's vicious grasp. They pick up another guy on the way, Ebling Mis, who's a psychologist with the Foundation, and they all go off searching for the Second Foundation.

Hari Seldon had talked about two foundations back in the days when he was alive, the second being formed "at star's end," but hundreds of years of searching had proved futile, and everybody assumed Seldon was talking crazy, or trying to mislead certain people, or something else deviously clever. These guys figure that if they have a shot at finding the answer to the Second Foundation riddle, they should go to the giant library on Trantor, which was the only part of the planet that was left untouched in the sack by barbarian hordes (students at the university protected it), and is still the largest storehouse of galactic knowledge. The Second Foundation might be further along in their development of physical weapons, or they might have other weapons that could be used against the Mule's unique mental powers. Last hope for the universe, and all that.

Mis puts his nose to the grindstone when they get to the library, becoming completely focused on trying to figure out what Seldon could have meant, and where the Second Foundation could be located. He loses hair, he loses weight, and finally, finally, he figures it out. He's literally on his deathbed when he calls in the Darells (Magnifico was already with him, having been his helper) and tells them the good news. He opens his mouth to announce the location and BAM! Bayta shoots his fucking head off.

She has her reasons. She realized that Magnifico, the sad clown, was actually the Mule, who was using them both to gain access to broad swaths of people to be influenced and to find out where the Second Foundation was so he could destroy it. When Bayta figured this out, she knew that at all costs, the Mule could not find out what Mis had discovered. So she killed him dead. (He was dying anyways, because the Mule has placed so much mental pressure on him.) The Mule goes back to his empire in which all of his subjects have been made to believe that they love him, and Bayta and whatshisface go... do something.

The upshot is that they, and we, the readers, know that Second Foundation does exist, and instead of building political, scientific, and economic power, it was staffed with psychohistorians and tasked with studying "mentalics," i.e., what the Mule has innate control over.

Balls Jr. #21: Foundation - Isaac Asimov

2010-10-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

I was halfway through Foundation, the first in a seminal sci-fi trilogy/series, when I told my boyfriend, from whom I'd borrowed the book, that I wasn't getting into it. It wasn't bad, I just wasn't invested. He advised me to keep going until the end, because a lot of people have had the same complaint and end up flying through the rest of the books. I trusted him and kept going (not that I had a choice anyways, in this contest), and wouldn't you know it, he was right! I finished this one quickly and went right on to the second, third, and fourth entries in the Foundation Trilogy.

Hari Seldon is A Man with A Plan. Seldon is the pioneer of the field of psychohistory, which applies math to large-scale social events, allowing him to predict the future of human society with gigantic probabilistic equations. He is living far in the future, after humans have colonized millions of planets across the Milky Way Galaxy, space travel is common via hyperspace, Earth is considered a myth if considered at all, and the planet Trantor is the administrative seat of the Galactic Empire. Seldon predicts the downfall of the Empire, and the approximately 30,000 years of chaos, internecine war, intellectual darkness, and suffering that will ensue if drastic steps aren't taken to shorten the time before a new empire will unite the squabbling planets.

To bring about a new empire after only 1,000 years, Seldon sets up what is ostensibly a research center ("The Foundation") with the task of writing the Encyclopedia Galactica on the isolated planet Terminus, but his real reason is to have Terminus become the densest concentration of scientific knowledge in the universe after the deterioration of Trantor. With the heads of The Foundation firmly tasked with the singular goal of completing the Encyclopedia, and their collective scientific heads buried in that quest, Terminus has no way to get out invasion by one or other of the nearby planets who want to take it over.

No way, that is, until the mayor of the capital city, Salvor Hardin, screws science and does some realpolitik, maneuvering a peaceful solution to the crisis. The Seldon Crisis, as it turns out, was predicted by Seldon, and the age of Mayors begins, ending the sham rule of the Encyclopedists. A Seldon Crisis is a point in time, predicted by Hari, in which his plan could go off the rails. If a successful solution isn't found to any of the Crises, the thousand-year plan might fail, and the tens of thousands of years of barbarism might come to pass.

Terminus's superior knowledge of things like nuclear power, and free sharing of that knowledge to neighboring planets, allows them to slowly but surely gain power and influence by making themselves economically invaluable. In time, more Seldon Crises pop up, and each one is averted and results in a new ruling class (Traders, and then Merchant Princes). The first book covers fewer than 200 years after the Foundation is established, though, and Seldon knew that there was a small chance that something would go wrong that early in the game. But the chances increase the further in the future we go. Dun dun DUNNNNN!

Balls Jr. #20: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams

2010-10-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Dirk Gently (of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) becomes embroiled in a big imbroglio after arriving holistically late for a detective appointment with a record industry man who wanted protection from an alleged monster with a scythe that was allegedly stalking him because of a blood contract. Or something. Dirk took his claim lightly and wasn't listening too hard, which backfires when he stumbles upon a crime scene centered around the decapitated record industry man. He was found in a sealed room, head spinning on a turntable, and nobody can figure out how the hell he died without the killer remaining in the room with him. The resulting guilty conscience gives Dirk just the push he needs to take his job seriously, and he sets out to detective his way into a goddamn answer!

Airport counters explode, train stations turn into godly meeting places, calculators give wildly unhelpful answers ("a suffusion of yellow"), Thor, Norse god of thunder and my college-era wooden penis, throws temper tantrums, a professional couple makes contracts on Odin's behalf, an eagle that is not really an eagle throws a temper tantrum in Dirk's apartment, and a filthy, filthy fridge saves the day.

Similar to Gaiman's American Gods, gods have been created because of people's belief in them, but when people stop believing, they don't vanish, they just sort of hang out, and mostly get poor. No resume and no easily described skills* = no job prospects. Gods were not designed for the modern world, alas.

If you loved Adams' Hitchhiker's, you will probably like this book. If you only liked the superior series, you're not missing much by skipping this one. I haven't read any other Dirk Gently novels, but I also don't have much desire to do so. It was funnier in concept than in execution.

*I fly on a hammer!

Balls Jr. #19: On Human Nature - E. O. Wilson

2010-10-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

On Human Nature won a Pulitzer, and the author teaches biology at Harvard, so you know this has gotta be good. It discusses and elaborates aspects of sociobiology, which is the application of Darwinian evolutionary theory to social behavior in humans and other animals, although humans are obviously the focus in this book. Wilson is generally considered the main popularizer of sociobiology (he literally wrote the book), but the field became extremely controversial when it was co-opted by Social Darwinists and tainted by accusations of eugenics-type goals. The main idea behind sociobiology is that social behaviors have been acted upon by evolution, not just physical traits. It doesn't sound so controversial, but this requires the following assumptions: that some behavioral traits are affected by genetics and are inheritable, and that these traits conferred some adaptive advantage to the people who expressed them in the environment in which humans evolved.

GENETIC DETERMINISM, Y'ALL, OMG. Are people slaves to their genes? Does that mean that people with certain genetic combinations are either doomed to a life of crime or blessed with a life of high-achievement? Does that mean we can't punish criminals? Is there no free will? What role does the environment play? What if people start designing their babies and we end up in a real-life version of Gattaca? I'm going to ignore the controversy, partly because I'm on a time crunch, and partly because I don't think determinism (genetic and environmental) is necessarily a "bad" thing, or necessarily untrue. It's a fascinating debate, though, and a book I finished a few days ago, The Moral Animal, goes into these issues near the end. If anyone's interested, have at it.

In On Human Nature, Wilson focuses on certain universal human traits that might have been "selected" by evolution, like altruism, the use of sex for pleasure, aggression, and belief in religion, and discusses how they might have first emerged and then served some kind of advantage. It's easy to imagine how aggression could have helped early humans, but what about altruism? How is doing something good for someone else going to help you, and why would that trait even pop up in the first place? One answer is the theory of kin selection. If you look at evolution from the point of genes, not organisms, then it's clearer to see that genes predisposing organisms to help close family members would easily flourish.

There is also discussion of larger scientific issues, like the concept of disciplines and anti-disciplines. An example would be the discipline of chemistry and it's anti-discipline, physics. Physics provides its own governing rules for how matter acts, but once you get up to the level of chemistry and start studying chemical reactions and such, you cannot rely on the rules of physics alone. Chemistry needs to create its own rules (and it has). Go one level above chemistry, and you get biology. Biology and its anti-discipline, chemistry, have been merged into a distinct field of study, biochemistry, that looks at the effects of chemical interactions on organisms. Wilson believes that biology should, and will, serve as the anti-discipline for the social sciences, with a merging of the fields to create distinct new fields like biochemistry. This merging would create a more solid foundation for social theories that can use biology as a springboard. He makes clear, though, that this would not "reduce" social science to "mere" biology, the same way that biochemistry does not "reduce" biology to "mere" chemistry.

I am a sucker for popular science books, and I have a discipline crush on evolution, so this book was right up my alley. Well-written, influential, controversial - who could ask for more? (If you do ask for more, though, I won't blame you, since that's just your genes talking.)

Balls Jr. #18: The Code of the Woosters - P.G. Wodehouse

2010-10-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

One of the earlier Jeeves and Wooster novels, The Code of the Woosters involves 1) Bertie's Aunt Dahlia wanting him to sneer at a cow-creamer that's for sale so her husband can haggle the price down, 2) Sit Watkyn, a retired magistrate who once had Bertie hauled in front of him for a mistaken case of purse-snatching, and who gets to the cow-creamer first, 3) Bertie accidentally stealing Sir Watkyn's umbrella, 4) a broken engagement between Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett, the latter to whom Bertie was once accidentally engaged, 5) Stiffy Byng, Sir Watkyn's niece who wants Bertie to help her marry his old friend Stinker Pinker, 6) a Very Dangerous Notebook that mustn't ever leave Gussie's side, 7) Anatole, a gastronomical wonder, and 8) Roderick Spode, a "big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces."

Bertie is tasked with fixing everybody's problems, which in turn means Jeeves is tasked with fixing everybody's problems, which is no easy feat, since every person at Totleigh Towers has multiple conflicting opinions of who should marry whom, and and who should own which cow creamer, and so on and so forth. The Very Dangerous Notebook gets used as a bargaining chip by almost everybody after it inevitably leaves Gussie's side. Everything goes wrong, as everything must, before everything gets sorted out, and Jeeves even gets to go on a cruise around the world by the end. Classic, funny Jeeves and Wooster story.

Balls Jr. #17: Mort - Terry Pratchett

2010-10-30T12:12:00.001-07:00

Yes, another Pratchett. And I still have one more to review after this. The titular (hee) Mort goes to market on Apprentice Day to be picked for an apprenticeship in meat-pie-selling or cobbling or assasinning or another of Ankh-Morpork's varied professions. Instead, the awkward and gangly young man is completely ignored and is about to give up hope and go home when Death Comes For Him. To be his apprentice. Mort is not overjoyed about this, but Death can be quite persuasive, and so Mort is off to Death's home in another dimension. He meets Death's adopted daughter, Ysabell, and right-hand man, Albert, and starts learning about Death's profession.

At first Mort is doing menial and manual labor, like shoveling poop, but Death gradually piles on more responsibilities as he starts enjoying time off for the first time in his non-life. He visits the living world more and more often, becoming more human and less Death-y in the process, while Mort slowly grows into the role and personality of Death, including the ability to walk through walls, which is more creepy than fun. When it comes time for a princess to die, though, Mort ignores the cardinal rule of reaping ("Don't save anyone's life or you will cause reality itself to break apart and need to repair itself. Foolio.") and saves her life.

This causes quite a stir with reality, as it inevitably breaks apart, and all sorts of shenanigans ensue. In the end, though, reality sorts itself out (it wasn't born yesterday, after all, and has done this before), and everyone ends up in their more-or-less rightful places. Very funny, and I always love getting a chance to spend more time with Pratchett's Death. He's just so wonderfully non-human and human at the same time, obviously separate from life and humanity, but fascinated by humans. He reminds me a little bit of the Doctor in that respect.

Mort is still no Small Gods, but it's definitely one of the better Discworld stories I've read.

Balls Jr. #16: Programming the Universe - Seth Lloyd

2010-10-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

Seth Lloyd is a Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering at MIT, as well as the first creator of a technologically feasible design for a working quantum computer. In Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos, he explains how he came to believe the premise of this book - namely, that the universe is one gigantic quantum computer. The universe is made of bits, the smallest possible unit of information, and everything in the universe registers information, whether it's a molecule, an atom, a quark, etc. Every time something in the universe interacts with something else, those bits are altered, and the universe processes that information. The universe computes, in other words. Since the bits are governed by the laws of quantum-mechanics, the universe is a quantum computer. Computing itself.

Lloyd talks about his idea of how the universe could have been created out of "nothing." In the beginning, there was a stable plain of non-information, and then one of the bits got thrown out of whack, and registered the first piece of information in the universe. This "knowledge" spread to other bits, and the universe began computing. He believes that information is the only thing in existence that doesn't conform to the law of "something can not be created out of nothing." As information spreads, new information existed that did not exist before.

At first the universe's computations created simple things, like elementary particles and the basic laws of physics. As he describes it, these are governed by the equivalent of computer code. Small pieces of code, after all, by virtue of imbuing bits with instructions to follow in varying circumstances, can create hugely complex patterns. As the universe expanded with more and more information and computations, it created stars, and planets, and Taco Bell. Seriously. Society would not exist if matter and energy did not have an ability to process bits. The creation of information explains how complex systems like humans can rise from the fundamentally simple laws of physics.

We are all computer programs. Actually, we are computers, and parts of the universal computer, and computer programs, and the results of computer programs, all at the same time. Sort of like being inside of the Matrix, except that we are the Matrix, too. Since it's a quantum-mechanical Matrix, there is no way to predict the future, because to do that, we would need a quantum computer with enough processing power to take into account every bit of information in the universe. Which is what the universe is. The universe is predicting the future of itself. So the only way to know the future is to wait and see what the universe ends up computing it to be.

It's hard to completely explain the contents of this book in a review, but if you have a bent for either the physical or computer sciences, I would highly recommend reading it for yourself. It's thought-provoking, and not dryly written, and could perhaps make the origin of the universe better understood. Not bad.

Balls Jr. #15: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson

2010-10-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

"If there's such a thing as spiritual adultery, my mother was a whore."

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is the coming of age/coming out story of Jeanette, a girl adopted by evangelical Pentecostal parents in 1960s Britain. It reminded me of both Running With Scissors, for the insanity and neglectful parenting that was inflicted on her, and Elmer Gantry, for the religious fervor. In Gantry, though, everybody was a hypocrite, pretending to believe in God. Here, people believe. Oh, do they believe. Jeanette's mother wanted a child, one not born of her loins, specifically to train to serve The Lord, so Jeanette grows up wanting to be a missionary and believing that she has been chosen by God. When she's young, she loses her hearing, and everyone in her congregation stops talking to her because they think she's just having an extra-spiritual experience. When the government forces her mother to send her to school, Jeanette's outspoken beliefs quickly make her an outcast, despite a truly impressive-sounding eggshell Jesus diorama.

Exorcisms are performed on Jeanette after her romance with a female convert, Melanie, is found out. She's also locked in her room for days without food until she agrees to repent. She eventually leaves home/is kicked out and stays for a time with a sympathetic teacher at her school, before leaving for a job at a mental institution.

Years later, Jeanette runs into Melanie, who had immediately acquiesced to the demands for repentance for her lesbian sins. Melanie is pushing a stroller, and vacantly talks about her husband

Allegorical fairy tales are mixed into the story, about Perceval, one of King Arthur's knights, and a girl named Winnet Stonejar who meets a sorcerer in a forest. These additions keep the novel from being an autobiography, even though most of the main plot elements happened to Winterson .

The chapters are each named for a different book of the Bible. If I had any knowledge of the Bible, I might be able to discern some deeper meanings to the events in each section, but, alas, I got nothin'. Except for the first chapter, "Genesis." I get that.

Balls Jr. #14: Bonk - Mary Roach

2010-10-28T12:57:00.001-07:00

If you're in the mood for some good, clean, science-y fun, you can't go wrong with Mary Roach. Unless, that is, you consider sex, decaying corpses, and the afterlife either unclean or un-science-y.

Stiff was my first Roach book, Spook the second, and Bonk, about the history of the scientific study of sex, ranks firmly in between the lesser Spook and the better Stiff. As is typical with Roach, she doesn't take herself seriously, volunteering herself and her husband for some of the sex studies, and she explains all of the different topics in amusing, non-technical language. Also typical, there are a lot of topics. If you become interested in one particular study or area of scrutiny, you'll have to continue your research elsewhere, because there isn't enough space to get too in-depth.

I found a draft of an email where I had taken notes, and since, like all of these reviews, I neither have the books with me, not remember many details, I'm just going to dump them here to finish:

p114: "Copulation," Leonardo [da Vinci] wrote, "is awkward and disgusting." He is said to have never bedded a woman.
p116: SUNY downstate archives w/ pictures of Dickinson vulvas. In Brooklyn.
p135: "nasal boner"
p138: ""Please give all the penises to me."
p141: she mentions The Rise of Viagra, by Meika Loe, which I read for Medical Inventions, etc.
p144: "slim, pernicious work of hyperbolic quackery" - great insult
150: Penis on Trial!
p170: Priapus, god of garden produce and anal rape

Band name: "Womb Fury" (In olden times, what "hysterical" women were diagnosed with. It had something to do with their wombs being angry that they hadn't produced children, or weren't getting enough attention. Treatment of symptoms included manual stimulation of the affected area.)

Balls Jr. #13: Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen

2010-10-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

Oh, Catherine. Childhood-era Catherine was actually one of my favorite Austen characters, in terms of one that I would want to spend time with: an unpretentious tomboy. She grew out of the tomboyishness and into dresses, but she remained unpretentious and obsessed with books, in particular one gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho. This obsession brings about fun satires of the gothic genre, with Catherine thinking that her trip to stay with her friend Eleanor Tilney at "a real abbey" will be full of cobwebs and intrigue and indescribable horrors, just like in the books. She's introduced as "our heroine," with apologies being made throughout the novel that our heroine is not devastatingly beautiful or prone to fainting.

Romance as well as broken engagements abound, the former between Catherine and Eleanor's older brother Henry, and the latter between Catherine's older brother James and her frenemy Isabella Thorpe. Isabella is dumped after her incessant flirting with Henry's older brother Frederick. There is intrigue, as Catherine manufactures a murder-mystery out of the years-ago death of Eleanor and Henry's mother. Their father, General Tilney, seems impossibly rigid and stern, and the mother's old rooms are off-limits, so Catherine naturally assumes that life is like a gothic novel and General Tilney hated and murdered his wife.

Eventually Catherine comes to realize that real life is, well, real life, and not a novel, that some things simply do not hold any greater mystery, and that some friends are toxic and do not mean everything they say. Everybody's love lives get sorted out satisfactorily, since this is Jane Austen, and we all go go home smiling.

This was a lighter Austen than Emma, which I read in the break between Balls. So many good lines. It also contains Austen's famous "defense of the novel," which is great.

Fun fact for male readers afraid of Austen (there was a small comment-discussion on this the other day*): Yesterday one of my coworkers saw me reading Northanger, and said he had been forced to read Pride and Prejudice in college, and had surprisingly liked it, because "it wasn't about romance, it was about social commentary. But I didn't want to read anything else by her, because I figured they would be romance." I set him straight, with an assist from another coworker, and he decided to give her another shot!

*This review was started months and months ago.

Balls Jr. #12: Do Butlers Burgle Banks - P.G. Wodehouse

2010-10-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

Do Butlers Burgle Banks involves a small team of crooks who prowl the English countryside, burgling wealthy estates by getting the leader of the team, Horace, installed as the trustworthy butler. Mike Bond becomes their newest target, not for the jewelry kept in glass cases, but for the mounds of cash kept in Bond's Bank. This might be just the lucky break Mr. Bond needs, because his bank is going bankrupt. Throw in some ladies handy with an umbrella, safe-crackers getting lured in by evangelism, romantic entanglements galore, and as you can imagine, hilarity ensues.

For anybody who's a Wodehouse fan, but is only familiar with Jeeves and Wooster or the Lord Emsworth/Blandings crew, Do Butlers Burgle Banks is a light, fun addition to the collection. For readers new to Wodehouse, though, I would recommend holding off on this one until you know you like Wodehouse.

Balls Jr. #11: Sting Like a Bee - Jose Torres

2010-10-28T07:40:00.001-07:00

Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story recounts the rise and fall of Cassius Clay's boxing career, as seen through the eyes of a former champ who was friendly with Ali. I am most definitely not the target audience for this book, as I have no interest in and almost zero knowledge of boxing. As so often happens, I found myself book-less somewhere, in this case, my boyfriend's apartment, and had to grab something, anything. This ended up making it more engrossing for me in some ways, since the culminating Fight of the Century between Ali and Frazier held tension for me in a way that it wouldn't for people who already knew the outcome. It was interesting to learn about Ali's childhood and family (father once left Ali and jumped off a bus to meet a hot girl), and to see him as a person behind the famous quotes and taunts.

I'm not sure how much I need to write about this one, because most people know this stuff, right? I feel like I'm the only person who didn't know anything about Ali aside from 1) the "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" quote, 2) he was a black boxer, 3) something about Islam... and 4) Will Smith played him in a movie that I never considered seeing. Hey, did you know Muhammad Ali liked to predict in which round his opponent would fall? Or that he protested having to fight in the Vietnam War? I didn't.

A piece of artful writing this is not, but this kind of book is about the story, not the perfectly crafted sentences, and Torres is effective at both narrating fights so that even know-nothings like me can understand the action and be drawn in as well as throwing in apparently previously untold stories and anecdotes about Ali.

Balls Jr. #10: Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett

2010-10-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

I'm baaaack! Just in time for the tail-end of Cannonball Read, Jr. Believe it or not, I've kept Balls Jr. in my heart, although I became thrown off the review-posting course by 1) "training for" and "running" a half-marathon, 2) my first real relationship (to nobody's surprise, he's almost 20 years older than I am), and 3) long work hours. Nothing could ever keep me from reading, though, and I finished my 51st book earlier today. There's no credit in this round without reviews, so I'm going to try to get to at least a few more before time runs out on Halloween. I'm halfway through my first real vacation since I started my job, so I'm considering this a giant sacrifice that everybody should appreciate, even though I picked a Discworld novel because they're easy.

Guards! Guards! begins with a group of dim, disenfranchised Discworld residents with petty grudges against the world at large, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork in medium, and dishonest meat-sellers in particular who have formed a magicky group under the manipulation of an unknown hooded figure. The goal? Bring dragons back. Not the small, unimpressive swamp dragons that are bred by the eccentric Lady Sybil Ramkin, but real, noble dragons that used to live back in the good old days. The dragon will then, in theory, replace the Patrician and get revenge on those meat-sellers and nagging wives and such that so plague the conjurers. Then an heir to the throne will come forward, slay the dragon, replace it as ruler, and be a benevolent dictator.

Gigantic, fire-breathing, magic-eating dragons, you might be shocked to learn, are not easily told what to do. When the group does manage to drag one back in existence, it proceeds to effectively wreak havoc and, after installing itself as the new ruler, requires donations of gold and virgins.

In come the policemen of the Night Watch, led uninspiringly by Captain Vimes, and grudgingly inspired by the new guy - naive, law-worshipping Carrot Ironfoundersson. Carrot turns the Watch around, forcing them to try to stop crime for the first time, and by crime, he means dragons. They muster up the best that their ragtag group can do, bring in the orangutan Librarian and Sybil Ramkin and her most pathetic swamp dragon to help out, and eventually they defeat the draco nobilis, with a game-saving assist from Errol, and unmask the anonymous hooded figure, with an assist from the Librarian.

I never knew Captain Vimes started out the series as an incompetent drunk, since my first experience with him was in Night Watch, and there he was a dogged pursuer of truth, justice, and the decidedly non-Ankh-Morporkian way. In that book, also, Vimes's wife Sybil was only alluded to, not shown, and seeing Sybil as a character and how she and Vimes met was hilarious. Sybil and Carrot are both great characters.

Overall a funny Discworld entry, but I'm going to have to repeat myself and say that nothing has remotely compared to the greatness of Small Gods.

****I read this book months ago and don't have it with me, so there is a vanishingly small chance that I got every detail correct. The overall gist is correct, though.****

Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar

2010-04-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

I am going to run a half-marathon. Which is insane of me, because I do not run. I do not enjoy running. I am not good at running. But I was thinking of ways to volunteer or do something useful with my time, inspired by The Happiness Project (review coming at some point), and my roommate, who has Crohn's disease, works with the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation and convinced me to join up with them and help raise money that way. I started a new blog where I'm going to write about how sore I am, mostly, but since it has my real name and will be seen by my family, I don't want them to find this site. If anyone wants the link, let me know, either in a comment or on the book of faces, and I'll get it to you.

Since I'm also working hideous hours, and much of my weekends are being taken over by a long-distance relationshippy thing, that means I'm probably going to fall even more behind in Cannonball Read Jr. I'll try my best to keep up with it, though.

Balls Jr. #9: The Stupidest Angel - Christopher Moore

2010-02-21T16:23:00.000-08:00

"You can't just say 'retarded' in public like that--people take offense because, you know, many of them are."

Chris, I will always have a place in my empty shell of a heart for you for Lamb, but The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror, despite a smashing name and a smashing Author's Warning*, is not going to enlarge that spot. It was very inconsistent, felt unsatisfying and insubstantial, and overall, despite some great lines and characters, failed to win me over.

Dale Pearson is an "evil developer," evilly buying ice and refusing to throw some money into his ex-wife Lena's Salvation Army kettle. I am extremely not in love with his set-up. He's "evil," cheated on his wife, has no hesitation about using physical violence to get Lena to stop annoying him, and soon comes after her with a gun. [EARLY, NOT REALLY SPOILER] And he just so happens to lose his balance while trying to shoot her, so that he, whoops!, falls neck-first on her shovel. How convenient. He's too one-dimensional. The only reason we might have for sympathy is that somebody is stealing his trees, but even that we can't be mad about, because Lena is a "Robin Hood" of Christmas trees. So then we're supposed to root for her, and a stranger who only wants to fuck her, while they dispose of evidence and bury the body. [/NOT REALLY SPOILER]

I'm not sure why I bothered with spoiler tags there, because it happens in the beginning of the book and provides the foundation for the rest of the plot and Moore spoils it himself. Raziel, who was also in Lamb, comes to Pine Cove to find a boy and grant him his Christmas wish. See, the boy witnessed the death of Dale Pearson while he was in a Santa costume, so he prays that Christmas will be all better and Santa will be fine. Raziel is stupid, as per the title, and he accidentally raises Dale and every other corpse rotting away in the cemetary, and it's zombie time! The zombie time is actually rather limited, and most of the time is spent on Lena and Tucker falling in lurrrve, and that's gross. I did not care about any of the myriad romances or quasi-romances, whether it be Lena and pilot, sheriff and crazypants, scientist and snob, and the ending was a cop-out.

The humor was violently up-and-down. I'd laugh out loud at one line, and roll my eyes at the very next sentence. I loved Skinner, and Roberto the Fruitbat, and Raziel. The zombies were also pretty funny. If you really want zombies, though, I'd go with Zombieland. It's a movie, not a book, yes, but it is also better.

*"If you're buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don't blame me. I told you."

Balls Jr. #8: The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

2010-02-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

It looks like New York got so mad at me for abandoning it for five days that it tried to punish me by heralding my return with a fuck-off blizzard. Well guess what, city? All you managed to do was delay my flight home by thirty minutes, allowing me more time to make out on a hammock in the sunshine, and give me a half day at work. You know, for a city that thinks it's so tough, you are not effective at enacting revenge. Speaking of sunshine...

A year after California real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity dies, his ex-girlfriend Oedipa Maas finds out that she was named executor of his estate. And what a vast, twisty, potentially conspiracy theory-filled estate it is. She discovers the existence of an alternate, underground postal service, and keeps running into signs pointing her towards a conspiracy dating back to the 16th century, revolving around murdered maybe-princes, German war movies, pornographic papal plays, California bookstore arson, and stamp auctions. Oedipa doesn't know if she's going insane, or if she really is finding evidence of a worldwide conspiracy, or if she's hallucinating, or if Inverarity set the whole thing up just to fuck with her.

It's a cool and unique read, with some great descriptive language ("He read the letter and withdrew along a shy string of eyeblinks.") and punny names (Inigo Barfstable. Emory Bortz. Wendell "Mucho" Maas. Mike Fallopian. Genghis Cohen), but I don't know if it was enough to make me want to dive into the gigantic time-suck/mind-fuck that is Gravity's Rainbow. This was enough Pynchon for now.

One of many funny details: Oedipa's lawyer, "wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry Mason and, since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him," had been writing, for years, The Profession v. Perry Mason, A Not-so-hypothetical Indictment.

Balls Jr. #7: Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis

2010-01-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk.

I walked half an hour in the rain on a Saturday morning to pick up some books from the library. I love me some free books. And yet, and yet. I didn't get more than a dozen pages into Elmer Gantry before deciding to make a trip to the Strand so I could buy a copy and mark the bejesus out of it. I came back with four novels by Lewis. That is how fucking fantastic those first few pages were. I mean, come on. Look at the opening lines up there. They introduce a man who becomes an influential, silver-tongued, and deeply hypocritical preacher who rails the fiercest against those sins in which he most gleefully partakes. How can you not want to read this book?

Elmer "Hell-Cat" Gantry starts out as a championship-winning football captain at Terwillinger College, as a great big loud, pushy, arrogant, thoughtless jackass whose good favor everyone wants to obtain since "[h]e was supposed to be the most popular man in college; everyone believed that every one else adored him; and none of them wanted to be with him." The only two people in the world about whom he remotely cared were "his widow mother, whom he vaguely worshipped," and his quarterback, roommate, and sole friend, Jim Lefferts. Although Terwillinger was a religious college, Elmer "detested piety," and Jim was a "freethinker." Elmer's mother wants him to be a preacher, while Jim wants to convert him to the faith of science. The battle for Elmer's soul begins. Elmer's mother recruits Terwillingerian Eddie Fislinger*, who recruits a former footballing YMCA official to work on Elmer, and Jim recruits his atheistic father.

The footballer wins. The footballer wins by flattering Elmer, insulting Elmer's courage, and challenging Elmer to a fight over The Lord. Elmer will end up using all of these strategies himself, to great success. Jim observes his defeat from his bed, laid ill with a bug no doubt divinely-sent.

Elmer's start at religious leadership is rocky. He bribes and schemes his way into graduating, he gets a tiny rural church before getting kicked out for drinking on the job, he falls in with a roving pack of shoe salesmen and decides to try that for a while, he falls in with a New Thought lady and decides to try that for a while, he falls in with, and falls in love with, a flashy, bipolar evangelist and decides to try that for a while**, he decides to try out Methodism for a while, and something finally sticks. The one thing Elmer always had, not religious fervor, not honestly, and certainly not self-control, was ambition. OK, two things. Ambition and a deep, booming voice. He rises through the ranks, charming, bribing, and scheming his way into larger churches, into innocent maiden's panties, out of forced shotgun weddings to those innocent maidens, into larger collection plates and larger salaries, all the while maintaining his glorious, unbelievable hypocrisy.

He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.

Elmer does everything in his power to obtain the biggest possible radio audience for a sermon on the sins of ambition and the virtue of humility. He bullies his way into the police force to conduct raids on dens of iniquity, of which he didn't exactly have disinterested knowledge. To the end he builds sermons around lines stolen from an atheist tract written by Ingersoll. (Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star.) And he doesn't restrict himself to the pleasant vices, either. He can be a goddamn cruel asshole. When he finally gets the chance to fire his widowed church secretary after her brother dies, his reaction is as follows: "that was a pleasant moment; she cried so ludicrously." He is horrible to his wives and conquests: withholding, emotionally abusive, sexually harrassing. It's a good thing all of Lewis's female characters are so freaking meek that they believe every protestation of innocence and kind-heartedness spewing from Elmer's fat mouth. (Except for Hettie. Good on ya, Hettie.)

It's not just Elmer, though. Almost every character is a fantastic hypocrite. The few religious leaders who truly do believe, or live their lives morally, are usually resigned to podunk towns and churches with a low "sacred rating," and one of them even gets death threats*** for speaking out against fundamentalist witch hunts. Every prominent leader Elmer schmoozes with presents one virtuous personality with virtuous reasons for all of his dealings to the public, while hiding another mercenary, egotistical, and quite pervy private personality. Almost every person who convinces Elmer to join the ministry is a doubter himself. Newspaper men crow Elmer's praises while knowing he's full of shit. Salvation-seekers push their way to get into his sermons denouncing the varied and specific businesses of ill repute, complete with exact addresses. Even a charity organization that briefly pops up isn't presented in a positive light.

Elmer Gantry did start to drag a bit in the middle, because there wasn't much forward momentum to the plot, just Elmer fucking around, trying a bunch of different things and not doing well at anything, and I kept thinking, "how much more religious hypocrisy can even ex-IST?" As it turns out, much, much more. A great book, and highly quotable, even if you're simply in the mood for some new insults (beautifically ignorant, tea-drinking mollycoddle, apostolic ice-cream cone, spiritual cold-storage egg) or homoeroticism ("He was reluctant to ask Eddie-Eddie would be only too profuse with tips, and want to kneel down and pray with him, and generally be rather damp and excitable and messy.")

Words of wisdom from Reverend Dr. Gantry, esteemed writer of clandestine love letters and newspaper editorials:

"Dearest ittle honeykins bunnykins, oo is such a darlings, I adore you, I haven't got another doggoned thing to say but I say that six hundred million trillion times."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It is not enough for the ministry to stand back warning the malefactors, but a time now to come out of our dignified seclusion and personally wage open war on the forces of evil.

The devil must have been shaken.

*"A meager and rusty-haired youth with protruding teeth and an uneasy titter, [who] had attained power in the class by always being present at everything, and by the piety and impressive intimacy of his prayers."
**The ending of that chapter in Elmer's life is awesomely and terrifyingly reminiscent of George Costanza at a child's birthday party.
***"If you enjoy life, you'd better be out of this decent Christian city before evening."

Balls Jr. #6: Junky - William S. Burroughs

2010-01-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

"I drink a lot of coffee, but you know what's really addictive? Heroin."

This is frustrating. Junky was definitely holding my interest, in a sort of sociological way, teaching me about The Way of the Junky. Then, halfway through, I idly read the back cover and discovered that it wasn't an autobiography, like I had thought, but a novel. I tried to pretend I never gained that information. After all, I knew it still had elements of reality in it, from Burroughs' life as an actual gay heroin addict. But I couldn't get past that, and I had to force myself to finish. It didn't help that he started repeating himself, either; his descriptions of junk sickness, and the usual timelines for becoming addicted or getting off junk, were taken almost word for word from the beginning and plonked in again. The whole plot, too, was just more of the same "Now I'm doing junk in this different place, and this different junky informed on some other junky to the police, and some other junky died, and I tried more drugs, and I quit junk, and I went back, and junk is sooooo good, so nice and fresh, and junk junk junk." I get it, Billy, the guy likes heroin.

But just now, I found out that it was autobiographical, or at least partly. He had it published under the name William Lee, which I assume I would've known if I had bothered to read the introduction, but I did not bother, and thus I became immensely confused when he was referred to as "Mr. Lee." I don't know if I would've stayed more engaged despite my problems with it if I had known this going in. Perhaps.

And what was up with his wife? First of all, the guy's not ambiguously gay. Why is he marrying chicks? And second, why is she only mentioned once or twice? "So then my wife, who I have never mentioned before, bailed me out of jail, and went home and knitted potholders for fifty pages, apparently, because she sure wasn't doing anything worth writing about." Except I did some 'net investigatin', and Burroughs fucking shot his wife in the head and killed her! That is crazy.

On the bright side, I am now 100% certain that I am never going to do heroin. Ever. Or play drunken William Tell. Peyote doesn't sound too good, either. Shit, he even managed to make drinking tequila sound like a nightmarish journey through an unrelenting hellscape.

Parting words of wisdom, courtesy of Mr. Lee: "Who wants kids for customers? They never have enough money and they always spill under questioning."

Balls Jr. #5: Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard

2010-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

Quick, fun and dirty. Just the way I like it. Allegedly.

Chili Palmer is a Miami loan-shark who always plays it supah cool, and is totally one of the nice loan sharks because he doesn't like breaking legs, and he follows this one guy who scammed him out to L.A., where he meets famous producers and ex-famous actresses, and gets mixed up in their shit, and gets them mixed up in his shit, and a bunch of people want to get Chili out of the way, and by that I mean kill him dead. And he tries to get this famous actor to star in his film, because who wouldn't end up a co-producer after breaking into someone's home in the middle of the night trying to collect money from them, and this famous actor, you'll never believe it (because it's a total contrivance), has a girlfriend who used to be friends with Chili in New York, so that's his in, and then one of the guys who wants him dead dies at the hands of Tony Soprano, and the other guy, Det. Joe Fontana, who wants Chili out cold-permanently - gets taken by the DEA. That's what those pussy bitches get for messing with the Chilster! Oh and then he bones the hot ex-famous actress, in between a lot of sexy pillow talk about who they want for their movie about Chili's life.

I feel like I'm the only person left who hasn't seen Get Shorty, the movie, but I was aware of its existence, and I was also aware of the existence of a sequel, and I knew John Travolta came back for it, so I knew Chili was never in any real danger, because I could be pretty certain if Travolta was playing anyone it would be the guy who puts a little too much effort into his clothing, know what I'm saying, but I doubt that even if I had gone in completely blind I would have honestly thought for a second that Chili, the charming anti-hero hero, would not skate through everything unharmed and come out on top.

If you couldn't tell by my run-on sentences, I'm going a little stir-crazy right now. Me no likey winter no more.

If you're wondering who Shorty is, it's the famous actor guy who everyone wants to star in their movies, and he always leads em on, saying "Ooooh this script looks sooo good, so nice and fresh and unique, set up a meeting with my agent," and then BAM next thing you know he's fondling another pretty young script and you're tossed out with yesterday's rotten milk. He's ungettable.

I almost forgot: the Shorty part is because he's short.

Balls Jr. #4: Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs

2010-01-14T17:27:00.000-08:00

Jesus fucking shit, man. I do not know how Augusten Burroughs managed to survive his childhood. If Running with Scissors is true, that is. There's Controversy, which isn't surprising, because if I was a member of a family written up in this way, I'd be crying Liar! too. 13-year-old Augusten gets dropped off at his mother's insane psychiatrist's house one day, and from then on essentially lives there because his mother goes insane and his father is an uninvolved alocholic and his older brother's on the road with KISS.

This family. I don't even know where to start. All the kids think their dad, Dr. Finch, is "spiritually evolved," even though he 1) keeps some of his patients in their house for years, just locked up in a room upstairs, eating bathroom caulking, 2) thinks God is speaking to him through his shit and directs his daughter to scoop them out and dry them in the backyard,* 3) passes out drug samples like they're candy and he's Pedobear on Halloween, 4) has a MASTURBATORIUM in his goddamn office, 5) masturbates to Golda Meir in there, 6) basically sold his preteen daughter into sexual slavery to a rich old man who became her legal guardian, 7) "treats" patients by taking them to motels for day, 8) allows his adopted, 33-year-old son to have a sexual relationship with 13-year-old Augusten, 9) adopted a guy in his freaking thirties, 10) thinks violently expressing anger is the best route to mental health, the more violent and angry the better, 11) has "spiritual wives" whom he brings over to have Christmas dinner with his kids and pesky "legal wife," and on and on and on.

Even the "sane" family member kills her goddamn cat because she thinks the cat spoke to her in a dream, telling her that she, that cat, was dying. Hope reacts to this by locking the cat up in a laundry basket for days without food or water. Then the cat dies. The feline prophecy was real! That's the only explanation I see.

And yet, when I wasn't covering my face with my hands to get the images out of my head, I was laughing. Burroughs has an incredible ability to find the humor in a horribly traumatic period of his life.

If it's true, that is. I have doubts. I mean, honestly, am I expected to believe that someone seriously jacked off to a photo of Golda Meir?

*I knew a girl in high school who said that she and her brother, whenever one of them had a particularly large or aesthetically pleasing poop, would run to get the other and take a picture. Weirdos and poop, man.

Like selling ice to an iguana. Do I have that right?

2010-01-09T23:05:00.000-08:00

My boss wants everyone on our team to take a few classes being offered by the company. That's fine by me-it means less time working. Theoretically. One of the classes, though? Is called "The Art of Socratic Questioning."

Come on. I could teach this class. I should teach this class!

Decade Lookback

2010-01-03T10:48:00.000-08:00

This has been a decade. Things have happened, people did things, as people are wont to do, and and rollercoasters, man! Up and down. Like life. I thought I'd review some important lessons I've learned in the past 10 years. Sit tight.

1) Charcoal briquettes are not for eating. It doesn't matter if you're staying in a foreigner's house which usually has unfamiliar, festive, foreign packets of food lying around: if you see a shiny packet with round black cookies sitting on top of the fridge, nestled in with bags of tea, take some more time to read the packaging. "Charbon / Charcoal" is not fancy French language for chocolate. IT'S EFFING CHARCOAL. DON'T BITE INTO IT.

This happened Christmas morning. The Jew got coal in her stocking. Punishment for spending Christmas Eve defiling the sanctity of underwear by watching Shop Erotic, the Home Shopping Network for dildos and crotchless panties, with a guy named Christian? Maybe. Nobody can say for sure, but I've got my eye on you, "Saint" Nick.

2) The West Wing is good, and somebody should have told me this sooner.

2a) For further investigation in 2010-2019: Why are they using Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" for the intro song?

3) Torchwood is the letters of Doctor Who rearranged! I am either the last Doctor Who fan to find this out, or it is a massive, secret conspiracy. (Technically, I found this out yesterday, but I'm running out of things that I've learned this year...)

4) It is a commendable idea to take the haircutting advice of a wacked-out dream involving party planning, international spies hunting you, or maybe you hunting them, and Peanuts characters running after a train materializing in the bathroom. At least, I hope it's a commendable idea, because I had a dream last night in which I got straight bangs and had my hair up in a cheerleading ponytail, and I looked AMAZING, and it is long overdue for me to get a haircut.

5) I think I might've been told that about Torchwood months ago and forgot, so it does count!

So that's it! It's been some years, guys. It's been some years.

Balls Jr. #3: American Gods - Neil Gaiman

2010-01-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

American Gods has been reviewed literally countless times in both Cannonball Reads (literally countless because there is zero chance of me going back and counting every time someone reviewed it, not because the number is so large as to be literally uncountable), so instead of a real review rehashing the plot (Old and new gods hang out in the New World, cheating, stealing, fucking, drinking, and living off of whatever belief they can scrounge up until the war between the Old World gods and the New World gods begins.), I'm going to focus on a couple of things that stuck in my craw. Everything's a major spoiler, so don't read any of this post if you are thinking of reading the book some day.

What I don't understand is how Loki got to be head of the New Gods. The whole thing is based around the new gods coming to prominence and vanquishing the old ones, so while it makes sense that Wednesday would lead the old-timers, I am baffled by how an old god could get all the new gods to follow him. Unless none of the new gods actually knew who they were following? If Loki only worked through middlemen who were government guys, not gods, and he kept his identity secret to everyone aside from Mr. Town?

I realize that that is exactly what he did, which raises another question: how the hell did he get himself into that position of power in the first place? And why would the new gods listen to some government/private corporation middleman? I've never understood the whole "evil shadowy mastermind" process. That's something I think I'd be even more interested in reading than American Gods. I want to see how Loki made it happen. How he was able to get all of these upstart gods to follow some dude they'd never seen. How he and Odin worked together and against each other for decades. How and when they decided to put their con into motion.

Also, for such brilliant shadowy masterminds, they certainly did not spend enough time watching Austin Powers movies, because they fell victim to the oldest mistake in the shadowy evil mastermind book: revealing your plan to the one guy who can stop it, or at least letting the guy know that there is still something to stop. What if Loki hadn't told Shadow that he had managed to throw the spear and dedicate the fight to Odin? What if he said after Laura killed them both with the stick-spear of death, she snapped it in half and threw it over the edge? Or simply said nothing at all? Amateurs.

And Hinzelmann! Yeah, it was a good twist, as all of the twists in the story were, but are you telling me Gaiman couldn't have come up with any other way for him to meet his downfall besides reciting his entire history and reasons for the child sacrifices, and then WHOOPS it turns out the police officer was listening to the whole thing! What perfect timing that guy has.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the book. I was impressed with how every small detail tied together. I thought the mini love story between Town and Laura was brilliant. I love how I wasn't able to accurately predict anything. The ending was just a little too coinky-dink for me.

By the way, none of the tags for this post is a joke.

Balls Jr. #2: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

2009-12-30T16:53:00.000-08:00

TIMOW*

Not expecting to like this book, I read it as penance for my first two selections, which were romance novels. (It’s a classic! African-American history! Probably was assigned it in high school and never bothered to read it! Literature! In that spirit, this review is going to be more like a book report written by a fourth grader who just regurgitates the plot and then says something about themes and metaphors, and is also surprisingly jaded.)

I ended up being more than pleasantly surprised. Not that everything about it is pleasant; Janie, our protagonist, goes through a lot of crappy shit, which she relates to her best friend Phoeby. This retelling provides the framework for the bulk of the novel. Janie returns to her town after years away, and we see this homecoming from the viewpoint of gossiping, critical and envious porch-sitting ladies who only grow more bitter when Janie ignores them. The one sympathetic woman, Phoeby, follows Janie and asks for the story of where the hell she’s been for the past couple of years. Janie proceeds to tell her the story of where the hell she’s been her entire life, but Phoeby will probably eventually forgive her for talking her damn ear off.

Janie: Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman. Mother dead, father who knows, living with her grandmother. One beautiful spring day, she quite literally discovers the birds and the bees, kisses a boy, and immediately gets shipped off to be a creepy old man’s wife because gramma isn’t going to be around much longer and Janie needs to be taken care of when she’s gone. Old Man Logan starts off acting respectful of and loving to Janie, then slowly begins making more demands (why doesn’t she bring in the wood after he chops it, why doesn’t she blah blah blah) and insulting her to mask his own insecurity and fear of her leaving him. One day she’s out in the yard when charismatic, flashy, and comparatively young Joe Starks walks by, and let the flirting, secret trysts, and eventual running away together begin!

After a few weeks of blissful intrigue, Joe and Janie get married and travel down to Eatonville, Florida to join in with a group of black people who are building their own town. Joe quickly becomes their leader, since he has money and drive and a big belly, and Janie rises along with him as he opens the town’s only store, oversees the building of roads and a post office, and is unanimously elected mayor. Janie lives in a big house, with all the material possessions and respect she could want. The problem is that she doesn’t care about those things. She wants to be regular, to hang out with the crowd of men joking around in front of the store, and most of all, she wants to be in love. Joe treats her like a pretty object, with one particular sticking point being his jealous refusal to let her show off her long, straight, “white” hair.

Joe falls into the same pattern as Old Man Logan: criticizing Janie, putting down her looks to make himself feel more secure, yelling at her for cutting tobacco imperfectly, etc. Janie slowly becomes disenchanted with him, until one day she gets fed up, insults his nude form in public, gets slapped, and subsequently gets blamed for his upcoming death by kidney failure. After fending off men who want to marry her for her money, she meets a charming young fella, Tea Cake, who plays checkers with her and mimes about her store. Now, mimes are creepy, but Tea Cake does it cutely. They run off and get married, run down to the Everglades and work in the muck. Janie is happy, in love, working alongside Tea Cake, wearing overalls, learning how to shoot, and bitch-slapping hos who get too close to her husband. (SPOILERS) Then the hurricane hits, because they’re in Florida, and of course there’s going to be a freaking hurricane. They start fleeing too late, and Tea Cake needs to save Janie at one point (she’s caught in the water, spies a cow who’s swimming towards high ground with a dog on its back, and grabs onto its tail, which is an image I love). The dog tries to bite her head off, and Tea Cake dives in and throws him under, getting bitten in the process.

Climax. (CLIMAX MEANS GIANT SPOILER, DUH.) Janie’s Got a Gun. Tea Cake goes rabid. He comes after Janie with a gun, and she shoots him in self-defense, in a scene that’s terrifying even though we already know Janie doesn’t die and Tea Cake doesn’t return with her. The white men who are gathered to be the jury of her peers in her swift trial take a few minutes to decide, shockingly, that this beautiful, light-skinned black woman with straight hair is not guilty of murdering a poor, dark-skinned man. Go figure. Janie returns to Eatonville, which I keep thinking of as Eatin' Ville: The Town for Eatin', saddened by the loss of Tea Cake, but happy that, after all these years, she has found herself.

SPOILERS OVER.

The dialogue is written in black Southern dialect and took some getting used to, but it soon became fun to read. The dialect contrasts with the narration, which is more literary and traditionally beautiful, using great metaphorical imagery.

I liked Their Eyes Were Watching God. The End!

*Did anyone else have to write that on all of their papers in grade school? It was an honesty pledge: This Is My Own Work.

Blood, Sex, and Ovarian Violence

2009-11-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

There are valid and well-known reasons why women like to stay on top of their menstrual cycles. For one thing, they need to be like a Boy Scout (i.e., prepared with necessary implements, badges, sticks, what have you). They need to know when to get worried and take a pregnancy test. They need to know when to schedule dates, and which underwear to wear on said dates. Today I discovered a new reason: if you forget and spend the night before it starts doing shots of whiskey, you might very well end up horribly in pain the next day, throwing giant buckets of tears around your office hallway while your boss hugs you and runs away after you tell him you have "lady problems." That's right, I called it lady problems. What? Ladies can be alcoholics, too.

Look at me, being Debbie Downer. Nobody ever promotes the reasons how it might enhance your life to have no way of keeping it straight. So, Point, meet Counterpoint. I have four days of sunshine to get over my embarrassment, I got to leave work early, I had a heating pad secretly keeping my crotch warm as I traveled home in the rain, my boss paid for a cab, and sometimes it's necessary and humbling to revisit the experience of waking up semi-nude on your bathroom mat.

A Modest Proposal: Make babies out of chocolate

2009-11-18T17:33:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-10-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-07-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

(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.

2009-07-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-06-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

(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

2009-06-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-05-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

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.

An Orderly Life

2009-05-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

My checklist from last night:

Flip off a giant green bitch from the Staten Island Ferry: CHECK
Use the phrase "the bee's knees" in my introduction to a stranger: CHECK
Slap a bull's ass: CHECK
Grab a gay man's ass: CHECK
Realize he's probably not as gay as he says when he takes that as his chance to make out with me: CHECK
Take one measly incriminating photo of a friend: CHECK
Have many more incriminating photos taken of me as retribution: CHECK
Wake up on the subway at 6 AM at the end of my line: CHECK
Find a giant pot of gold at the end of the line: POLISH (Get it? Not Czech? Oh ha ha.)

Talk Amongst Yourselves

2009-05-29T11:26:00.001-07:00

I earlier came across a file for Millard Fillmore Hospital and immediately thought of the groundbreaking comic strip, Mallard Fillmore. That set me a'ponderin'. Which came first, the Mallard or the Millard? It’s impossible to know. But that’s what makes it such a great mystery. I eagerly await it being turned into a blockbuster movie.

Confidentiality Note: This electronic message transmission is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. If you have received this transmission, but are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please contact the Service Desk at ***-***-**** and delete and destroy the original message and all copies.

*Editor's Note: You might think the Confidentiality Note was a mistake made by someone posting from her work email and forgetting that it would be automatically added, thereby giving the world the phone number to her job and thus the easy opportunity for stalking (seriously, someone stalk me already so I don't feel unloved), but honestly, I wrote it out myself specifically for this post. The Ma/illard Quandary is too good of an idea to just hand out willy-nilly to anyone. It could be a modern-day Face/Off! You are NOT allowed to steal this idea.*

Obligation

2009-04-27T16:19:00.000-07:00

Friend on internet: Whoa, Bea Arthur died.
Dropout: She was really old. I'm not surprised.
Everyone else: [Silence]

April 5K #5: The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett

2009-04-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

Now these are some gods I can get behind. Mostly because I'd have to or else they'd smash my windows in.

Pratchett is fantastic, and so is his Discworld. The Color of Magic is not my favorite of the 5 or so I’ve read (that would be Night Watch, then Going Postal), but it’s still worthwhile if you like his writing, which you should. This is the first book in the Discworld series, so it has the task of introducing the Discworld and all its ridiculous rules and geography and physical/magical properties. For example, get enough magic together and 4-sided triangles are possible, which silly Sproul spent more than a few paragraphs trying to prove were impossibilities.

I already knew the ultimate outcome of Rincewind and some of the other main characters, which took away from much of the suspense. It was neat to read about the origins of the Luggage, though, and Death’s personal vendetta against Rincewind. I heart Pratchett’s Death. He's so grouchy. It was also cool to see the gods literally gambling with everyone’s lives.

That's all I've got. I've been spending every free moment of the last 10 days reading, and I'm exhausted.

April 5K#4: Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology, by BC Sproul

2009-04-24T16:18:00.000-07:00

Grrr. Arrrg. I saw this is in the mini-lending library at my office, and since I had forgotten to bring my other 5K book with me, I picked it up. It seemed interesting and science-y. Chance is a myth! Who knew?

Then I open it and he starts talking about God, and how chance can't exist, and if it did, then God can't exist, and what the hell does God have to do with science and cosmology and chance? But whatever, I was desperate for reading, and he promised he would keep God out of it, and the idea that chance is just a word used to cover up our ignorance of the real reasons behind events had a neat parallel to the "god of the gaps" theory that appealed to me.

Oh God.

He says that contradictions can't exist in reality, or else reality cannot be understood at all. He says this A LOT. The contradiction he's referring to is the impossibility of a self-caused or self-created event or being. Has to exist to cause something, can't cause self before exists, logical impossibility, blah blah blah we get it. He also says that even God can't understand contradictions. Now, I'm no theologian, but I think it's a little presumptuous of Sproul to say what GOD can and cannot understand. Anyways, I wrote in my notes that he would hate quantum mechanics after he mentions the impossibility of something being two different things at once, and four pages later he started a chapter on quantum mechanics, so that was fun. (Spoiler alert! He hates quantum mechanics.)

One thing that was cool was that he described what an actual quantum leap is (when an electron is hit by a photon and jumps an energy level, seemingly without crossing the space in between), which I’m sure I learned at some point in either AP Chem or college chem, but it was amid the 99% of information that I did not retain from either of those classes, so I was able to relearn it. (One thing I did retain but was never able to put into practice is that learning sign language is awesome, because then you can talk in class without the teacher knowing. I was so jealous of my tablemates.)

He started asking questions about the nature of the so-called leap: does the electron disappear in one spot and get reassembled instantaneously in a higher level? How would we know if it’s the same electron, then? It reminded me of an argument I’ve seen people have over Star Trek and its transporter beam, i.e. if a person gets transported, which involves splitting apart their molecular structure and reassembling them, do they die and the new person is simply an exact copy, or is it really the same person who moved through space? Nerds.

I could spend hours picking apart individual arguments he made, but basically he made a lot of arguments that I disagreed with and thought were incompletely formed, and he made me angry, especially when he said that one of the main drivers of scientists is the desire to "escape accountability to the bar of reason," which is so ridiculous I can't even stand it. And then when he said that atheism is to escape from morality. And then when he said that skepticism and cynicism is the lowest form of thought, that skeptics consider themselves above the pursuit of truth, that Allan Bloom "rightly foresaw that a retreat" to skepticism would be the "death knell" of scientific progress and achievement. What the hell? Skepticism is an essential component of the search for truth. Shut the fuck up, Sproul.

And the word "universe" is not formed from the words "unity" and "diversity," so stop freaking saying that!

And EVOLUTION IS NOT RANDOM AND BLIND. Seriously, when someone can blithely misunderstand such a fundamental concept about a theory they dismiss offhand, or spout off grand theories of the universe based on invented etymologies, it's hard to take them seriously about the topic they're supposed to be teaching you.

And stop being so smug and certain that you've made your argument, because you have not. God is not a logical necessity, you just skimmed over any reasonable logical or empirical argument that would've ended your case, and what the hell, you said it wasn't going to be about God, BUT IT TOTALLY BECAME ABOUT GOD AND I AM MAD AT YOU FOR TRICKING ME INTO READING IT.

The worst part is that I agree with him. Kind of. I think it's logically possible for God to have created the universe. I don't think it's likely, but logically I don't see how it could be disproven. Sproul is not the person to try and convince me of its truth, though, especially when I was interested in reading a book about chance in science.

Shut up, Sproul. And stop repeating yourself. We get it. You reaaaally like God.

April 5K #3: Take the Cannoli, by Sarah Vowell

2009-04-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well. That was disappointing.

I've been meaning to read Vowell for years, and that's why, when my other options were a Vonnegut bio that was way too thick for a race and another Chelsea Handler book, I went with the new (to me), overlooked (to me) author. Branch out! Learn things! She's smart and stuff! Intellectualism! Political! Shut the hell up, brain.

Take the Cannoli was, sadly, extremely blah. It's partly the fault of the format, I think, since although it was in the biography section of Barnes and Noble, it was really just a collection of essays that happened to have all been written by a person who likes to talk about herself. There was no connection between any of the essays, essays I probably wouldn't have minded reading individually if I ran across one in a magazine. Put 'em all together, and it was too disjointed, too purposeless. I partly blame myself, since I had a feeling I would've been better off with Assasination Vacation or The Wordy Shipmates, but I needed a biography.

The only story that gripped me was her journey across the Trail of Tears with her twin, Amy, but that was due to the subject matter, not her writing, which I mostly found lacking. There were some witty lines, but then there were also lines like "I'm so afraid of drowning that I tend to drink beer in half-pints." Hardy har-har. Otherwise, it was cute, fine, whatever, but if I could go back in time, pick a different book, and never touch this one, I would.

Then again, maybe I'm just bitter that I was enjoying a hearty bowl of Top Ramen when I came across Vowell's description of ramen as "suicide food."

Book #18: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

2009-04-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

Damn. Just... damn. Ender's Game completely deserves all the acclaim it's piled up. It's not even one of my 5K books, but I had to finish it tonight, because I had to finish it. It is a devastating story: children, mostly boys, are plucked from their homes all over the world and sent into space, to Battle School, to learn how to be leaders in the inevitable war against Space Invaders. Ender Wiggin is singled out from the beginning as the shining star, but with military genius and an unstoppable desire to win at everything come both isolation and hatahs. Like, try to murder you in the shower hatahs. Ender can't have support from teachers, because he needs to learn how to support himself, he can't keep friends, since he becomes more and more hardened to the world as he climbs the commander ladder, he can't hear from his sister back on Earth, because the military guys want him to have no "landside" influence, and he can't even rest after getting beat up, because he needs to toughen up, nancy-boy. This is all happening when he's only six years old. Six. SIX.

Ender is the military's one last hope against the Space Invaders (a.k.a. buggers), so while you read, you understand, you suppose, why he's being pushed to these extremes, but you also want to cry for how thoroughly his childhood is being crushed. He can't show emotions, he has to order around older boys in military formations, he has nightmares, and everyone hates him at some point since he's undefeated at their battle games even though he's so young (in contrast to the old folks, the 11- and 12-year old military commanders, who I'm surprised don't wear out the Battle School's supply of dentures and adult diapers). He's turned into a killing machine, and he's such an empathetic little boy that he's constantly conflicted about this. Also, he's a LITTLE BOY. I read this on the subway, and there were multiple times when that thought would hit me and I'd have to hold back tears, because if you drop your guard on the train and, especially, let tears cloud your vision, yo ass is getting robbed. That 8 AM commuter train is full of vicious thugs, I'm telling you.

Eventually Ender graduates to Command School like 3 years early and starts training for realsies, as the ultimate commander of the space fleet against the buggers. The twist at the end is one that I had vaguely been considering, as a "what if that happened" scenario, but it still managed to shock me. Although I was slightly disappointed that there wasn't (Anti-Spoiler?) a face-off between Ender and his older brother Peter. I thought that's what the stuff with Peter's face in the mirror in Ender's computer games was leading up to.

There are a bunch of other books in the series, and I'd be interested in reading more about what happened back on Earth with his siblings, and about the lives of Ender's friends/commandees at Battle School, but I also heard that the series slowly progresses down the shitter and gets all covered in Card's insane religious beliefs, so I'm debating this.

Progress?

2009-04-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be with a grandfather. We all did. I am large, though, and contain multitudes, so I ended up going in the completely opposite direction and pulling a Mrs. Robinson.

And remember when I corrected someone's grammar in bed? This following scene took a great amount of effort on my part:

[Scene opens on old lady on young boy.]

Harold: I want you so bad.
Maude: [nothing, even though she really, really wants to say "badly."]

[Sex and stuff, End Scene]

I also made no mention of overrated American literature or classical Greek philosophers. I learned my lesson! This time I smartly stuck to the contemporary movement of hermeneutics. That Hans-Georg Gadamer, such a kidder.

This has nothing to do with progress, but for the second night in a row, after I jokingly (ok, half-jokingly) said I was going to punch him for stealing pillows, he responded with "now we're talking!" Is it possible I found two guys who like being beat up? Eeeenteresting.

(You know what's an amazing idea? Having this open when your new roommate, whom you were clearly not going to show this blog, borrows your computer. Guess now I can't write about when I have sex in her bed and pee in her fish tank...)

April 5K #2: The Very Virile Viking, by Sandra Hill

2009-04-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

HahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHAHAHA. Whew. OK. So, Magnus Ericsson has a buttload of kids back in the tenth century Norselands, and he complains about them and gets teased about it, but really he loves them all. He takes a vow of celibacy since his seed is too strong, though, and he can't handle any more rugrats, especially without a wife. [But how long had it been since he'd lain with a woman? Far too long! I am afraid to look at a woman these days, for fear my seed will fly into her womb.] He also decides to go a-viking to find out what happened to his missing brothers, and he and nine of his spawn get transported to 2003, when Angela Abruzzi's mom prays for a fertile man to come impregnate her daughter and deliver her some grandbabies. Hilarity, miscommunications, cultural clashes-and ROMANCE-ensue.

Oh, and there's something about Angela's vinyard being in danger, and then being saved. By Magnus. Of course.

I actually legitimately laughed at the very first line: "In days of old, when men were... whatever..." Sandra Hill is at least aware of how ridiculous this book is. She also takes advantage of the opportunity for some clumsy social commentary cloaked in an extreme foreigner's reactions to things about which Americans don't think twice. There are clumsy indictments of absentee fathers, general wastefulness, idleness, etc. A trip to "Wall-Market" made me crack the hell up, because the entire time Angela has been stuck with Magnus (long story short, Angela wants something from a man who wants Magnus to be an "act-whore" for him, and Magnus believes Angela is his destiny), she has refused to believe that he isn't putting on an act by pretending to be unfamiliar with common, everyday things. Yet when he proclaims to be stunned at Wal-Mart, how all of these wonders of the world could be in one place and yet cater to the non-rich, she finally turns to him and stares. "You're serious, aren't you?" Because never having seen a car or boxers is totally normal in L.A., but marveling at Wal-Mart? Not even an actor would have that big of an imagination.

This is the first romance novel I've ever read, so I can't compare it to any others in the genre, but I would guess that it's not too bad, relatively. The characterization is one-note and sometimes contradictory: the militant feminist melts a little when Magnus acts the tough guy to a man who posed no physical threat. I actually wrote in my notes (yes, I took notes on a romance novel) "bad feminist! You don't need a MAN protecting you!" Angela acts like a bipolar freakazoid after she finally makes it with Magnus, which is annoying as hell. Magnus can speak perfect, modern English except for a few words that he NEVER EVER LEARNS HOW TO PRONOUNCE CORRECTLY. Free-can for freakin', act-whore for actor, pop-sigh-call for popsicle, Britain Spear for Britney Spears, you get the idea. When we meet his brothers near the end of the novel (uh, spoiler alert), they've been there for years and one still pronounes his wife's name as Profess-whore Merry-death. Ugh. I will give her the baby Lida, though, who is A-Dorable. Probably because she doesn't have to say any of the stilted dialogue, only "goo."

The plot is dumb as rocks, as is the dialogue, and the sex, but it was easy to laugh at without being too offensive. The sexy-times were impossible to get into, what with all the "sweetlings" and "dearlings" and "I love yous" and "suckle mes" and "constantly mutual orgasms, even just from dry-humpings." Sorry, dry "tupping." I don't understand how this kind of stuff can appeal to women looking for porn, but I suppose despite all this, the book achieved one of its objectives, since about halfway through I myself had a romp in the bed-furs for the first time in... four years?

Plus, it was great fun reading this on the subway and at work, awkwardly hidden behind my Lord Emsworth book cover.

Pages: 345

April 5K #1: Full Moon, by P.G. Wodehouse

2009-04-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

Although Lord Emsworth, a collection of short stories, was fun, the stories tended to be repetitive enough to need to space out the reading. There are only so many complications an author can throw into a story that lasts 30 pages. Not incidentally, my favorite, "Crime Wave at Blandings," was also the longest by far. Twists and complications are where Wodehouse thrives, and in Full Moon he employs a dizzying array of them, every detail building upon or working against another to make everyone's current predicaments (and all Wodehouse is predicated on predicaments) intertwined to the upmost degree. At the end, he manages to deftly unravel all the separate strands of the story, like a magician pulling a tablecloth out without disturbing the plates and glasses on top of it.

One thing I did not expect to see in a book set 60 years ago in England was a reference to my old stomping grounds, Long Island City. LIC plays a small, though vital role in the plot thread starring Freddie Threepwood, who I freaking love. Just look at how he decides to comfort his friend whose engagement was called off by his fiancée, who wants him to give up art and focus on running a pub he inherited: "I must say I agree with her that you ought to have a pop at it. There's gold in them thar hills, Blister. You might clean up big as a jolly innkeeper. And as for giving up your art-well, why not? It's obviously lousy."

Or his insight into bitches, during that same speech: "She's like all these small girls-bossy. Give her a thingummy, and she'll take a what's-its-name. The reason I've always found her civil and respectful is that I've never relaxed the iron hand. Small girls are like female Pekinese. Have you ever seen a man in thrall of a female Pekinese? Can't call his soul his own."

And now, for Lines That Are Better Out Of Context:

"He stands behind you. He peers over your shoulder. He starts back with a hoarse cry. What then? Was what he proceeded to dish out undisguisedly the raspberry?
"Yes."
"No avenue was left open that might have led to a peaceful settlement?"
"No."
"It would be no use your offering to rub it out and try again?" (79)

He had not actually expected the girl he loved to grunt, but he was not unduly surprised that she had done so. He assumed that she must have something in her mouth. Girls, he knew, often did put things in their mouths... Doris Jimpson [his ex-fiancée] had frequently done this.* (136)

(This book was part of a mini-challenge to read five books in two weeks, starting on this past Wednesday. One each of fiction, non-fiction, sci-fi, biography, and romance.)

Pages: 215

*This was certainly intentional on Wodehouse's part, and I love him even more for it.

Mulva?

2009-04-13T21:50:00.000-07:00

There's probably a problem with your perspective when your new hook-up buddy gives you a ride home with no strings attached, and you worry that he doesn't like you anymore, right? It's not that he's being a good person and respecting the fact that you have to get up early for work the next day. Nope, he's an asshole.

I almost liked things better in the past, when I had zero experience and also had zero understanding of how girls could be so fucking insane about guys. BEING INSANE IS NOT FUN.

That didn't take long

2009-04-09T18:13:00.000-07:00

At first I was kind of psyched up about not having a TV or an internet connection in my room. (I'm using my absent roommate's computer, since she's at home recuperating from surgery.) "I'm going to get so much done! Reading! Exercising in the park! Exploring the neighborhood! Um... Organizing my clothes!" Now that I've spent the past week reading, eating, checking my email, and falling asleep on the couch at 8 PM, I can now firmly say that yes, I do need a TV, and I definitely need internet in my room. I'm constantly worried that New Roommate is going to come home and find me lounging on her bed, so I try to minimize my use to turning on Pandora music and sitting in the living room with a book.

Today I even had to resort to reading her academic book about mole people while finishing off a package of Oreos in a desperate sugar-grab because I had read and eaten everything else in the apartment. By the way, reading about a man killing and eating a rat in the subway tunnels can really make you lose your appetite, and by that I mean it will make you put down the book and wait 30 seconds before finishing your Oreos, and by your Oreos I mean your roommate's Oreos. And her chocolate cheesecake. I think my months of trying to go sugar-free have gotten to me...

I'll almost be glad to start my brain-dead temp job next week, just to have a reason to get out of this place, even though it means I'll have to cut down on my drinking and whoring and start waking up at 7:00, which is one of those mystical times I thought only existed for church-goers, professional athletes and unicorns. But hey, at least my parents can't yell at me anymore for my weekend trip to Atlantic City, now that I'll be making the cash monies.

Tip for people going to Atlantic City: Do not go to Hooters at 2 in the morning. It is depressing as hell (even the guys agreed on this), and the waitresses are annoyed with you for not letting them get ready to leave, so you get shitty service.

Another tip: You should play live-action Monopoly with the street names. We didn't, but I thought about it, and it seems like it'd be fun, right? Right? RIGHT? Ah, forget about it.

Final tip: If you discover that you happen to be rooming with a boy who enjoys being punched by girls, take advantage of that, because lord knows it's hard enough to find a willing punching bag these days, even with the recession.

Book #15: Lord Emsworth and Others, by P.G. Wodehouse

2009-04-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Anyone who can make golf interesting is a genius. Bravo, P.G. Bravo.

Book #11: Good Omens, by Gaiman and Pratchett

2009-04-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

This book is fucking amazing. The fact that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett never collaborated on anything else only makes it that much more special. My problem is that the more I like a book, the less I have to say about it, as evidenced by my review of P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch is also the shit, and you should also read it, but I'll give you a little more information than that.

It's about the apocalypse. And the Antichrist, who happens to be a cheerful, charming 11-year-old boy named Adam as well as the subject of a little comic switcheroo at birth.* (Blame the novice Satanic nun for that mix-up.) A lot of fuckers are trying to find Adam and prevent the end of the world, including an angel and demon, Aziraphale and Crowley, who were originally in the Garden of Eden as, respectively, the angel and the snake. The snake named Crawley. Heehee. Aziraphale and Crowley are buddies on Earth, where they like their lives and feel there's no need to rush into anything hasty, like the ultimate showdown between Heaven and Hell. There's also Anathema Device, the witchy descendant of the titular Agnes Nutter, who joins up with Newton Pulsifer, part-time Witchfinder. Anathema knows The End is coming soon, since she has Nutter's book. "Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold."

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (and eventually Satan) want to find Adam as well, but that's because they want to get their war on. Especially, well, War, who in this case is a beautiful, redheaded war correspondent who always somehow manages to be places right before wars break out.

So it's all a race to the finish line, with Adam as the unknowing ribbon cutter. That didn't make sense, but whatever. Good Omens is funny, scary, thrilling, and environmentally-conscious, and I'm leaving out a lot, but the important thing to take away is that it is the shit.

Pages: 412

*The boy everyone thinks is the Antichrist has a demonic Nanny who treats him to nursery rhymes like "Oh, the grand old Duke of York/He had ten thousand men/He marched them up to the top of the hill/And crushed all the nations of the world and brought them under the rule of Satan our master."

Book #14: Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, by Chelsea Handler

2009-04-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

I gotta say, having shitty internet* and no TV is doing wonders for my reading habits. Although it is irritating that I now live two blocks from a library, yet can't check anything out since for some reason the Queens Library lives in an alternate universe that doesn't fall under the NYPL banner. And since I had apparently just finished having one-on-one time with Chelsea's personal lord and savior and was not in control of my critical faculties, I actually told the person in charge of getting me a new card that the address on my driver's license isn't current. This is taking my fear of authority figures to an ugly extreme, people. What did I think would happen if she found out the address was two days out-of-date? Ban me from checking out books ever? Make me walk around with a Scarlet F on my chest? This also cuts me off from using their free Wi-fi. The one time I decide to tell the truth, it effs me in the A. This is why you need to lie constantly, kids.

Right, so, the book. Chelsea Handler is hilarious, her stories are hilarious, and if I had a TV, I might start watching her show. As it is, I'm going to hope I run into a copy of her other book at some other guy's place, since I am currently in the process of turning into Ms. Handler, by which I mean an alcoholic hussy who borrows/takes books from every guy who has books available for borrowing/taking. I already have the compulsive lying part down. [Disclaimer: I don't know if the part about books is actually true for her. She's not broke and can buy books if she wants to read, instead of depending on happenstance and crotchety lady librarians with moustaches who won't give her a freaking library card, even though her last address was still IN QUEENS, for fuck's sake.]

The chapters progress chronologically through Chelsea's life, starting with her third-grade lie about being in movie talks with Goldie Hawn and ending with a vacation with her father to bond after her mom dies (her dad gets them upgraded to first-class by saying they're honeymooners). Although there is an order and a light thread of continuity, each chapter could probably be read individually and out of order without missing much, since each concerns itself with one self-contained story (getting conned by an adorable, drunken midget, using her new boxing skills in a street fight with teenagers, dog-sitting with a side of accidental bestiality, obtaining a lesbian inmate girlfriend, etc.). It's all light and fun and I want to get drunk with her and hear about all of her one-night stands while we make fun of people with kids and lie obscenely to strangers.

Pages: 264

*Puzzling fact: Blogger's spellcheck does not recognize the word "internet." I'm not sure on what it thinks it operates.

Book #13: The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

2009-04-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

(I'm not going to spend much time on the review part of this review, since I assume everyone already knows about Holden Caulfield.)

Salinger has done it again. A quick read that has me stumped as to my ultimate reaction. After I read Franny and Zooey, I knew I would have to get around to The Catcher in the Rye and evaluate Salinger on his most famous work. I feel accomplished for having read it-another classic I can say I've completed-and I mostly enjoyed reading it, but I felt like I was missing the point. I don't understand what about the novel has made it so widely celebrated. Was it the cynical, apathetic narration? It's definitely not for the beautiful language. While Franny and Zooey had numerous phrases that I could appreciate on their own merits, Salinger's narration as Holden Caulfield is much more utilitarian, and the plot isn't exactly a gripping, thrills-a-minute ride. He just meanders around New York, wasting money on hotel rooms, cab rides, and non-hookers.

I do appreciate that Holden doesn't magically grow up by the end of the book. That's a manifestation of the cynical nature of the book-people don't change-but at least it kept it from becoming a sappy eye-groaner. Salinger also has a knack for quickly and effectively sketching characters who feel real, even characters that only show up for a few pages, like Luce, Holden's old Student Advisor who deigns to meet him for a drink, or Lillian Simmons, his brother's "phony" ex who runs into him at a piano bar.

One thing I don't quite understand is the "cult of Caulfield" that apparently exists. I think he's an intriguing character, but how anybody could read this book and think, "That is the person I want to be" is beyond me, and that's coming from someone who spent years being cynical and apathetic. Being that way SUCKS, and it was mostly because I was fucking depressed. Holden doesn't enjoy anything. He's perceptive, but doesn't care about anything (aside from his younger siblings). He's not even actively rebelling against anything. He doesn't give enough of a shit to rebel. He's all about avoidance-avoidance of schoolwork, of his family, of responsibilities in general. Maybe I should've read this during my depressed years and given myself a better shot at connecting with the character, but I kept wanting to yell at him, "So work with kids if you care so much about protecting them!" I recognize the hypocrisy of that coming from an unemployed college dropout who also tries to avoid schoolwork and family, but there you are. It's frustrating to read about someone else who doesn't care that he doesn't care while knowing that real people think that's cool.

I'm sure those ever-present English majors can provide endless reasons as to why the book is so appreciated and why I'm a dunderhead, and that really is good, because I've spent too many years away from English classes. I honestly believe I would've gotten much more out of Catcher if I had read it in a class and spent more time analyzing it as a piece of literature. Instead, I'm left underwhelmed and with some too-late insight into the boy who lent it to me.

And yes, I've still been reading, although I've given up on completing even 50 books in a year, let alone 100. I'm up to about 20 so far.

Pages: 214

You don't have to go home, but you kant stay here

2009-03-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

My life philosophy, to the extent that one exists, can be summed up thusly: "Follow the path of least exertion."* So, when I was deciding between California and NY, I was leaning towards the place with perfect weather and a better economy and a rent-free house all to myself, not because of any of those things, but because I wouldn't have to find a new place here. Screw the weather, going to look at apartments and moving all my stuff is so much work! (Yes, I knew I would have to ship all my stuff across the country and back, but for some reason I didn't count that as work.) Then I realized that when August came, I'd have to find an apartment in NY from California, and that would create an impossible list of duties for myself, and I would never get around to coming back, and I would never go back to college or see my friends again or stop blacking out drunk on the beach and I would end up dead from the world's most painful sunburn while waves gently lapped at my lobster-like ankles, and I would really rather die with a nice golden tan.

Rambling aside short, I'm moving about 10 minutes north and cutting my rent almost in half. Three cheers for last-minute moves in which I'll probably still be packing right up until I get thrown out of my apartment!

Scary thought: I'm moving into an apartment without DVR. There isn't even cable. I might actually have to go outside to entertain myself. This should be interesting...

*Also, "become a dirty ho in your early 20s," but let's pretend that's not true for a moment.

Just call me Dear Abby

2009-03-25T23:36:00.000-07:00

For your benefit, I've assembled a short list of things that you should probably never say during an almost-threesome, unless of course you want it to be the most badass almost-threesome to ever happen ever.

1) [Guy puts on Led Zep a couple hours in]
Girl: Oh, I don't think so. I always put on Led Zeppelin when I'm masturbating. It might confuse me.
Guy: So if we ever hear you playing Led Zeppelin, we'll know you're playing with the little man in the boat?
You: What?! She hangs out with Ernest Hemingway?
[Silence]
You: Aw, come on, nobody? Old Man and the Sea?
[Girl and Guy sadly shake their heads]
Girl: No, we get it.
You: OK, maybe I'll stay away from the literature references for now...

2) Girl: Do you want to [do something sexual to me]?
You: The question really is, do you want me to [do something sexual to you*]?
Girl: Oooh, interesting. You just made me think.
You: Oh yeah, just call me Socrates, baby.

3) You: [laughing]
Girl: What are you thinking right now?
You: PRETZEL LEGS!

4) Guy: You did good.
You: Well.**

Now replace all of those You's with Me's, because naturally I said all those things.

Oh, right. By the way. That happened. Hey God, remember when I asked you to make my life go back to being boring? Uh, thanks for ignoring that?

*I'm not being coy here. I honestly don't remember what specifically she was asking.
**Here is where you can pinpoint the exact moment I realized that I take being an SAT tutor much too seriously.

The perils of having big fat pants on fire

2009-03-13T18:15:00.001-07:00

Married (!) Roommate had her bachelorette party last night. I was talking to a cute guy at the bar when he mentioned something about his jacket getting stolen recently. My heavy winter coat was jacked a few weeks ago, so I commiserated with "Oh man, my coat was stolen at a bar last week!" It actually happened over a month ago, but my brain is so used to lying about small things like that that it just came out.

Cute Boy: Oh no, what did you do?
Dropout: Well I had to get home just in a shirt like this, which sucked, especially since it was in the middle of January. [Last week would've been the beginning of March. Not even close. I realized this and started to backtrack.] Wait... no, not January, or last week, but it was really fucking cold, and...

At that point I got dragged to the Latin jazz bar next door, since the group was following someone who they thought was will.i.am*, and I was too embarrassed about leaving on such a weird, pointless lie to give him my number. Some might say that's what I get for lying so indiscriminately to people, but to those some I say, "My mother was the last remaining princess of Moldovia, who the hell do you think you are?"

*It wasn't.

Bemused

2009-03-11T11:51:00.001-07:00

My vote for the word that is most pointlessly confusing to me. Since nobody else gets a vote, congratulations 'BEMUSED' on your win! I never learned the real definition for years, so the only things I had to go on were context clues from books and what the word sounds like. What does it sound like? A mixture of befuddled and amused. This must mean that the definition is something like "amusedly befuddled" or "befuddled, but still amused enough to lift half of your lip in acknowledgment that something amusing is going on."

This was a decent working assumption, since it's half correct (it means befuddled, with no amusement necessary). Once I found out the real definition, though, it shattered my brain, because I thought everyone else shared the same misconception I did. So now whenever I run into the word, I can never tell if the person using it is trying to convey the correct, or "bland," definition, or has mentally imbued the word with more spicy definitional goodness. Because honestly, how can a word sound SO MUCH like "amused" yet not have a meaning at all close to it?

It isn't fun having to go through this debate with myself every time I see the word 'bemused,' but these are the things I think about.

So cheers, Bemused. I raise my glass bemusedly to you. Here's to hoping I never have to see your rat-bastard face again as long as I live.

Annie are you OK?

2009-03-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

I'm friendly with a girl who has a super-cheap room to rent, so I got her number last night (score!) and decided to see the apartment tonight. I called her phone, and an obviously male voice picked up. I'm quick on the uptake, though, so I oh-so-smoothly asked, "Hi, is this Girl?" [Long, awkward pause.]

Guy, clearly not Girl, and clearly scornful: No, but she's here.
Me, quietly: "...'s phone?"

Yeah. Just call me a smooth criminal, baby.

Stuck between a crack rock and hard liquor

2009-03-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

My lease runs out at the end of the month. Since Engaged Roommate is foolishly getting married (who would have ever expected that, with a name like Engaged Roommate?) and Blonde Roommate foolishly wants to live with someone who "occasionally cleans the kitchen," neither of them is resigning. I'm left with a few different options, but not many attractive ones, considering I have no job and can't afford to live anywhere nice like, for example, a place with all of its walls still standing. Main Option #1 is find somewhere really cheap and deal with the missing wall, perhaps by covering it with a large quilt. Option #2 is find someplace expensive and finance it by sleeping with the renter. Option #3 is move out to my parents' place in California until I go back to school, which is totally happening, I'm sure, because all the other times I've said I was going back to school turned out soooo well.

#3 looks the best right now, since the weather would be so beautiful I'd want to dry-hump the air every time I walked outside, I wouldn't have to pay rent, the economy is less shittastic than in NY, and my parents wouldn't be there for a few months. (KEGGER!) I've been thisclose to buying a ticket for a few days-sure, I'd have to leave my friends and various guys, but... money. And kegger! Today I started looking at everything I'd have to put in storage, though, and realized something that shook up my plans. If I left, I'd have to give away my most precious possessions: a buttload of alcohol and toilet paper. I just bought a 12-pack!

Screw California. Drunken old-man whoring, here I come!

[What's that? Where have I been? Fuck you, that's where I've been.]

She's such a charmer oh no

2009-01-26T17:05:00.000-08:00

I called my grandparents today to thank them for their birthday card, and then... this happened.

Grandma: You're getting older! I'm getting older too. We all are.
Dropout: Haha, yeah. If only I could find the fountain of youth, then we wouldn't have to get old and die.
Grandma, who is, by definition, already old and close to death: [Silence]
Dropout: [Cough]

The Town Halo

2009-01-25T18:13:00.000-08:00

You know you did your birthday right when you wake up nakedish on your bathroom floor, head on a pillow, $75 in your coat pocket, and Scrabble books strewn about your living room.* And that is all I'm saying about that, mostly because I can't remember anything else about that. QUOTES!

I am a horrible person, but you knew that already:

Engaged Roommate: Is [Nick] short for anything, or can someone just be named Nick?
Dropout: [Nicholas]?
ER: Oh, OK.
Dropout: That was my grandfather's name.
ER: Nick or Nicholas?
Dropout: Both.
ER: So, they call him Nick?
Dropout: Well, now they call him Dead Grandfather.
ER: Holy shit.

Match made in pig heaven?

TAB's Coworker: I want popcorn
TAB's Coworker: ugh
TAB's Coworker: I am such a slob
Dropout: I spent all of today lying in bed with chips and salsa that I forgot to put out last night
TAB's Coworker: you are my dreamgirl
TAB's Coworker: let's go eat pork products

*This sentence reads more accurately if you remove the word "right."

I am very very immature

2009-01-14T23:59:00.000-08:00

Look, it's a circus. Men are pitching literal tents all over the place. I understand that. A mature, a.k.a. humorless person wouldn’t giggle at that. But if you're me and read Water for Elephants in a certain way, then man, that book was positively bursting with gay sex.

Teams of men are also raising enormous poles. (34)

I try to keep from looking desperate. The scent is overwhelming. I open my mouth, inhaling deeply—it’s like manna from heaven. It is manna from heaven. (35)

He cocks his head at the tent between us... “You been craning your neck since you got here. Wanna take a peek?”
“What about him?” I say, jerking my eyes toward Cecil. (38)

Camel drops to his knees.
“Ah Jesus,” says Earl. (54)

I look up. August peers down at me, grinning, his hair blowing in the wind.
I climb to the roof. He moves over, and when I sit down next to him he claps a hand on my shoulder. “Turn around, I want you to see something.”
He points down the length of the train. It stretches behind us like a giant snake, the linked cars jiggling and bending as it rounds a curve.
It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it, Jacob?” says August. I look back at him. He’s staring right at me, his eyes glowing. He clicks his tongue and winks. (60)

I scuttle over on hands and knees.
“August?” (61)

“Jacob!”
I turn. August strides toward me, his shirt crisp, his chin scraped smooth. His slick hair bears the recent impression of a comb.
“How are we this morning, my boy?” he asks.
“All right,” I say. “A little tired.” (72)

“Hurry up—I’m guessing we’ll be out of here in another half an hour.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t mention it,” August says. “I’ll leave a shirt for you in the stock car.” (81)

“August told me about what happened this morning... He feels terrible. He likes you. He really does. It’s just… Well, it’s complicated.”
“Hey, it’s nothing,” I say. “It’s fine.” (92)

“He wants us to bring the meat.” (98)

I sit for close to an hour, staring at the grass between my feet. I pluck a few blades and roll them in my fingers, wondering why the hell it’s taking them so long to pull out. (102)

“What are you so sore about? Last night?”
The mere mention causes bile to rise in my throat.
“You embarrassed or something?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, would you just leave me alone?” I snap.
He is quiet. After a few seconds I roll over again. He’s still looking at me...
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Well, yeah—I think that was pretty obvious.” (144)

“I saw your act last night,” I say.
“Did you?”
“Yes,” I say, shaking my napkin and spreading it across my lap. “It’s… I don’t quite know what to say. It was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Oh?” says August, cocking one eyebrow. “Never?”
“No. Never.”
“Really.”
He stares at me without blinking. (203)

I can sense something out there, just beyond my grasp, hovering, waiting—and God help me if I’m not skidding toward it again, mouth open wide. (219)

We roll around, grunting, so close I can feel his breath on my face. Now I’m on top of him… Now he’s on top of me…Now we’re standing up again, grasping at each other’s collars and lapels… (246)