shoesonwrong

Still Alive?

I got two (2) emails that basically said, "Hey, are you dead yet?" It occurs me that after my last post that went something like, "THE PAIN THE UNBEARABLE PAIN MAKE IT END OR I WILL SHUFFLE OFF THIS MORTAL COIL," I went silent and hadn't blogged again. Instead of making good on my threat and offing myself, I just started reading a lot of books. I made it through six this week.

But anyway, yes, I am still numbered among the living. My brain didn't explode out of my ear, and I didn't accidentally do myself in with a makeshift ear-scratcher made from a coat hanger. I do appreciate, though, that two (2) people on the internet cared enough to inquire after my current state of livingness. I also appreciate all the advice left for me in the comments. It did help reduce the pressure; the raging infection had already set in of course, so it didn't do anything for that, but I am now armed with ways to stave off a future infection.

A note about Detroit: The city is doing its best to bring back the downtown area, and it's going pretty well. I go out at night with no qualms, there's a nice park with fountains downtown, etc. But there is zero useful shopping nearby. I'm swimming in wig shops but there's no grocery store for miles. Frankly, I've become rather attached to food and toilet paper, though, so we have to head to the suburbs to shop. Here's the thing: I hate suburbs. Haaaaaaaaaate with a passion that burns like that rash you got from that dirty frat boy one semester in college. There's too many cars all crammed in together, which is ironic given that at least 73% of any given suburb is a giant parking lot. There's too many Wal-Mart stores. EVERYTHING is a drive through (drive-thru). The suburbs are that wasteland I pass through when going from city to country and the place I grudgingly go to buy sustinence and butt paper.

The point of that suburban rant is this: could you remind me to buy the following

• Vacuum bags
• A new, mold-free shower curtain
• Toilet paper
• Scotch tape

Because we need that stuff, like, way bad.

So, uh, that's what I've been doing. You?

I have been bathing regularly, which is shocking given that I spend most of my waking hours hunched over a book lately. I used to be a voracious reader, usually polishing off seven to ten books per week. Then I went to college, and that thing happened where academia takes a book-lover's ravenous desire to read and just kicks it in the nads over and over again until it's almost dead. I had to read so much for school that I ended up being down to a measly seven to ten books per year.

Then, I graduated and became giddy at the prospect of being able to read things other than dusty old mathematics texts or essays from radical thought leaders of the sixties. As a result, I have eschewed all classical literature this year and read absolutely nothing that could in any way make me smarter, more thoughtful, or a better human being. It's been dozens of easy readers type stuff -- memoirs of crackheads, magical romances, fairy tales retold, etc. (See for yourself: a list of all books I have read this year, not including books I have re-read.)

Ryan got me hooked on the Inheritance books by Christopher Paolini, which is weird because I don't generally like fantasy, find epic tales of determination like Lord of the Rings overwrought, and would rather poke my eyes out than read about a dragon of all things. But I have gobbled up those epic fantasies about dragons like candy. The latest book in the series, Brisingr, came out this past weekend and, um, we bought it at midnight. In a clever move, Ryan also grabbed a used copy of Water for Elephants and chucked it at me, thus distracting me and allowing him to get away with Brisingr. (Water for Elephants was a fun and quick read, by the way. Sort of Big Fish meets The Time Traveler's Wife, only a bit more lighthearted.)

Crack dens and a mental midget

I'm in the middle of William Cope Moyer's memoir, Broken. It's pretty good so far, except for one thing. The prologue opens with Cope in an Atlanta crack house, stumbling over junkies, completely strung out. Then the book shifts to his childhood -- which is really interesting, don't get me wrong. I mean, his father was instrumental in establishing the peace corps, Cope got a character reference from Dan Rather, yada, yada, yada. Sure, it's well written and engaging, but I am in this for the crack houses. Let's get to the crack houses. I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE A CRACK HOUSE.

So, we all know Cat is a MIGHTY HUNTER, right? All day, there's been a single ant in the house. I've been disguising my utter laziness and unwillingness to just hunt the stupid ant down already under the guise of letting Momo chase it around for the better part of the day. The payoff came around seven this evening, when the ant crawled directly onto his paw and he went batcrap crazy. Seriously, he was doing that cat thing where they shake their paws in disgust, only he was doing it super hard, fell over in the process, and let out this wail of terror. When it was all over and I managed to regain my composure, he was just staring at me like YEAH? FUNNY? I COULD HAVE DIED -- HOW FUNNY IS THAT?! Earlier, he got so worked up sitting in the window and watching birds, that he started thumping his paws on the window sill (which he was also sitting on) until he thumped himself off onto the ground from the massive excitement of it all. Hello, McFly.

I Should Just Accept My Fate And Start Attending Conventions Dressed Like My Favorite Character

I have been playing around on goodreads.com for a few days, trying to tally up all the books I have ever read. Or at least all the books I can remember reading. This has led me to a conclusion in three parts:

1. It's stunning how many books I have read and yet cannot remember. There's books I remember reading but can't remember the name of, books I don't even remember reading until I see them again, books I can only remember the covers of, and books that I can remember only one small detail about that in no way helps me remember what book it is ("She had an itchy wool sweater. I think it was purple.").
2. I have read an embarrassingly large number of Baby Sitter's Club books. To be fair, this was all over a decade ago, but still.
3. I don't know how or when it happened, but sci-fi is my genre of choice. Don't get me wrong, it's all classy, amazing sci-fi -- I don't read crap with laser guns and big boobed women in futuristic leather suits -- but I don't know how I got on that path. I have read my share of the classics -- from Austen to Faulkner to Shakespeare to Kerouac -- but the majority of my shelves are populated by the likes of Pat Frank, Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Robert Heinlein, Cory Doctorow, Max Barry, Scott Westerfeld, Neal Stephenson, Chris Genoa, George Stewart... well, you see what I mean. Even as a child, I gravitated towards Michael Crichton and Bruce Coville (My Teacher Flunked The Planet!). Neither of my parents read sci-fi. They never bought me sci-fi or pushed me towards the sci-fi section of the library. And yet, I have been drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

Flowers for Annie

I sort of forgot about this blog for a few weeks. Which is ironic, because I carried around a notebook in which I wrote amusing anecdotes that I thought would be good to blog about. After about a week, I forgot WHY I was writing all these anecdotes down. (That did not keep me from taking these notes down, however, because I was worried I would stop writing them down, remember what they were for, and then panic about discontinuing them.) Then a few days ago, I lost the notebook and (as I predicted with my amazing Kreskin-like powers) I remembered I was taking these notes for my blog. My blog! How could I forget about my blog?

I will tell you how: It's very similar to the second half of the book Flowers for Algernon, where he reverts from being a super genius back to a mentally challenged bakery sweeper. It may just be my loss of a cocky attitude that I possessed as a college freshman, or it could very well be I am getting progressively dumber. I fear it's the latter

Ping My Whuffie

I LOVE Cory Doctorow's books. His writing never ceases to draw me in, and I find myself trying to sneak in a few sentences during dull class moments on a regular basis. Plus, most of his work is under a creative commons license and available for free on his website -- how cool is that? He is fast becoming one of my favorite authors, not just because of his writing but because he's just putting his stuff out there so freely. If I ever publish a book, I promise I will do the exact same thing.

And in conclusion, Björk is frightening.

George Orwells's Emajination

So, in my attempt to avoid doing any real work, I have resorted to reading peoples reviews of books on amazon.com. I'd be willing to say that MAYBE 40% of the people who seem to be reading books nowadays have any reading comprehension. And of those that do, about half of them are pretentious boobs who seem to have decided one three things:

They've used the massive "intellect" to find some new insight in the book ("It's obvious. I don't know how anyone missed it before; 1984 is actually about pre-revolutionary France, child abuse, and the importance of finding a credit card with a low interest rate!") that everyone else on the entire planet has overlooked.

...Or to enlighten all of us that the book they just read is crap and everyone else in the world who found some enjoyment/entertainment/enlightenment/whatever from the book is a moron. ("Watership Down: talking rabbits. That's all you need to know. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will realize that rabbits cannot talk, and this book was published by 'the man' who's just trying to keep us all busying reading stupid books so that we won't have time to fight back.")

As for the 60% who lack reading comprehension... well... the quotes from Amazon speak for themselves.

George Orwell has a great emajination

I didn't really get it, but, then again, I didn't really read it to much because there's this girl in my class who's really really hot, and I kept staring at her.

I can't even remember witch rabbit told everyone that he thought he secned dander. (I... have no idea what is going on)