More Wordle

I assume I will get tired of this at some point...This one is from the whole blog so far. Thanks to Will for actually getting me the text document this morning, glad to see someone has even less to do at their job than me. It seemed that the words changed each time I went to mess with color or font so I stopped when I saw that it had pulled "fucking" and "gaiman" because that made me happy.

And again, here is the tiny linked version to the gallery pic.

Wanted

I've had a little pent up aggression lately so this morning I decided that while finding the studs in my ceiling and installing my own punching bag in the computer room was tempting, I'd better find another way to let go of some anger (apparently a full hand of PBR didn't do it). So, since I was up early anyway, I decided to take care of it the old fashioned way. I got my ass on a bus and went to see a nice, violent movie.

I love violent movies, sometimes too much, but when I'm cranky they are just what I need. So I figured Wanted was right up my alley. It was relatively crowded for an 11:50 am showing, but hey it did only open yesterday. I settled in with my breakfast of popcorn and Coke and got ready for two hours of mindless violence topped off with Angelina in full tattooed glory. It was exactly what I needed. Hell, it's a movie about assassins for christs sake. One of my favorite parts? Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to hear about the details. When James McAvoy demolishes a computer keyboard against the face of his supposed best friend resulting in a slow motion shot of the keys flying apart and forming "Fuck You" in the air with the second "u" being the guys tooth. I love this stuff.

Throughout the movie I kept hearing this odd sound that I couldn't place. But just as I would get close to figuring it out the machine guns would start up or the mysteriously fast El train (it was shot in Chicago) would rumble by and I would get sucked back in. By the end of the movie though I was truly confounded on what was making that extra, not out of the fancy speaker system noise. It just didn't fit. Then the credits began to roll and the lights were brought up and it all became clear. The veil was lifted and I figured it out. There it was in the middle of the aisle between the stadium seats and those crappy flat floor front rows. In all its horrific glory. A stroller. There for the past two hours. There for all the fuck you's and the bullets to the head. There amongst the splattered blood and the flying teeth was a child. Someone thought it was a good idea to bring a child somewhere between birth and I'm guessing 4 years old to an R rated film about assassins. All the pent up aggression that had slowly seeped out of me for the past two hours came flying back and settled in with an icy chill.

I carried the rage with me out in to the sunshine of a pleasant Chicago afternoon. I brought it with me across the street to the bus stop. I sighed as I heaved it upon my shoulders and started heading north on foot. I figured it would be best to try and walk it off a bit before I jumped on the bus. So I walked. I walked and I walked and while the rage did slowly begin to subside it took me walking all the way home. From 2600 N. Western up to 4900 N. Western and then over 4 blocks to my apartment. 30 blocks. Anyone got a punching bag for sale?

2008 books - 6 month summary

It's June 27 and I just started Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad today. Being as it's the weekend I doubt I will get it done before June is over and done with so I'm going out on a limb here and finally posting my first 6 months of books. I typed these as I went and my "reviews" are not really all that insightful but at least I have a record of where I'm at to date.

To catch everyone up I made a new years resolution to read 52 books this year. So far I've knocked out 36 which means I'm just over 69 percent of the way there. It also means I need to average just under 3 books a month for the rest of the year to hit the goal. I still think I can do it and I've got a stack of unread graphic novels I can crank through in case I start to cut it close.


January (10):

The Book Thief. By Markus Zusak - Phenomenal! Read it.

52 Volume 3

If ever I returen Pretty Peggy-O. By Sharyn McCrumb

Sharp Objects. By Gillian Flynn -

52 Volume 4 - Series was good, but since not a big DC reader hard to follow. Not sure what is real and what is made up by these writers.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. By Ken Kesey - took a bit to get into but enjoyed when done. Intrigued to see movie now.

Soon I Will Be Invincible. By Austin Grossman - Awesome.

Street Angel. By Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. - It's a teenage homeless girl heroine who skateboards. What more do I need to say?! I truly hope there is more than just this first volume.

Identity Crisis. By Brad Meltzer - Finally read this after owning it a year. Took me picking it up in DC at a friends house and then finishing it here in the city. It's good - the end scene with Robin's father brought me to tears. A first for a comic book.

Doctor Zhivago. By Boris Pasternak. The first 100 pages almost made me quit. Again and again and again. If you can get through those it's great. I really want to see the movie now, I know there was a bunch I missed due to my uneducated ass not knowing much about Russian history.

February (3):

Scar Night. By Alan Campbell. Pretty damn good, was recommended to me as a combo sci-fi(which I do not read)/fantasy, so I thought I would try it. Loved it and am now anxiously awaiting my next trip to the book store to see if the sequel is out yet....I don't think it is (boo).

Zombies Calling. By Faith Erin Hicks. Recommended by the guy that had the recommendation at the book store for Street Angel (there was no sequel and I was looking for something in the same genre). Very, very funny. The art leaves a little to be desired, a little too chaotic at times for me, but if you ever watched a zombie movie, and enjoyed it, you will connect with this comic.

Kafka on the Shore. By Haruki Murakami. Weird. Have to read others of his I think.

March (7):

Snow Crash. By Neal Stephenson. Recommended by Schmidlap and it was great! Took a bit to get into the language of a sci-fi, geek tech book but once in (28 pages) I was hooked. In the middle it started to get a bit murky with all the religion=virus=drug talk, especially since my fundamental knowledge of any type of historical religious information is bankrupt (thanks mom!) and I got lost more than a few times in the Sumerian history and gods. But once you pull through the murkiness and accept that you're probably missing something it gets really really good again. And I know have to get a dog to name Hiro Protagonist...maybe a german shepard...

The Picture of Dorian Gray. By Oscar Wilde. This was my first Wilde and it was a bit difficult to be honest. The language was thick, sentances long and drawn out, and quite a bit of philosophical musings that ate up entire chapters. After Snow Crash it was a bit hard to get into it, but it was good none the less and I'm glad I read it.

Zodiac. By Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash sucked me into the Stephenson craze and Zodiac was the only one on the shelf that looked small enough to fit in my bag! It was good, an eco-thriller that makes me want to tackle his bigger works.

Odd and the Frost Giants. By Neil Gaiman. This book was written for World Book Day in the UK - it's where authors get together and write books for free distribution to kids, it's an awesome idea. I found out through Gaiman's website that I could order them for 1 pound each through Amazon.UK so I got four copies! I think I paid more in shipping that I have for my last three books but it was totally worth it. It's a kids book and it's adorable, when it comes out in the US you should read it.

Stardust. By Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. This was the graphic novel version of the story (so now it's my third version of the story). The art is amazing and it's really more like an illustrated novel than a comic book. If you can, read or watch this story, it's great!

Sin City Volume 1 - The Hard Goodbye. By Frank Miller. I've seen the movie and if I remember correctly I enjoyed it. Casey said now that I was in to graphic novels I had to check out the original. As usual, he was correct. It's great. Dark, violent, black and white. Now I've got the next two volumes on my to read list and I have to go back and watch the movie.

The Good Fairies of New York. By Martin Millar. I got this from the damn Amazon "customers who bought X also bought Y" advertisment scheme. It works on me every time. And usually it's worth it. Especially in this case. I started with Millar's "Lonely Werewolf Girl" (probably to be reviewed in the next month) and they said I should also buy Good Fairies. It's much smaller than Werewolf so I started with it and I love it. Scottish fairies throwing up from too much whiskey and magic mushrooms? You can't get better than that.

Summary for Quarter 1: 20 books finished, 32 left to read. Percent complete = 38%. With 32 left to read in 9 months the average is three and a half per month. This update done on April 14th - I've already read four books in April. I am secure in meeting my goal of 52 books this year.

April (5)

The Historian. By Elizabeth Kostova. - Good, my first vampire book. Took forever it felt to read though I enjoyed the whole story.

100 Bullets. Volume 1. By Brian Azzarello. Fucking amazing.

100 Bullets. Volume 2. By Brian Azzarello. Still fucking amazing. However, sections that contain French slightly confusing. Good enough art though got me through (and having a visitor who speaks French hepled translate).

100 Bullets. Volume 3. By Brian Azzarello. Review getting old, but still fucking amazing.

Oil!. By Upton Sinclair. This is the book that "There will be blood" the movie is based upon. I had no interest in the movie (and if fact at this point still haven't seen it) but when I heard that Sinclair wrote the book I was intrigued. I really enjoyed The Jungle so thought I would equally enjoy Oil!. Not quite. I did enjoy it, but there's just something about it that didn't quite make it. Maybe it's the ridiculous usage of the exclamation point throughout the whole book - we are talking about at least 3 per page! Then there is the fact that up until the last 50 pages it doesn't seem like it's going to end well. Not "well" as in good/happy but well as in satisfactory...does that make sense. There was a feel of bull dozing at the end to wrap up the story quickly as though we were running out of time. And the end while done okay was less than satisfactory.

May (6)

Burning Chrome. By William Gibson. Recommended to me by my father after he heard how much I loved Snow Crash (stephenson). Didn't realize till I started reading it that it's short stories. I'm not very good with short stories, mostly because most of the ones I've read sucked. The short story is a hard format to master, hell writing in general is hard, but I've been especially frustrated with the short story - it's the cop out zone for so many writers. Chrome was not this bad. In fact, it was pretty decent. Some of the sci-fi took me a bit to get into but once I figured out what the hell they were talking about it was okay.

Invisible Man - H.G. Wells. Good. Short read, odd narration, wonder if it's been made into a movie? Surely it must have.

Letter to a Christian Nation. Sam Harris. Delightful. Loved it. Already lent it out to a friend. Stealing "I'm not an alchemist" for my own repitoir.

Narcisuss and Goldmung. By Herman Hesse. This one took awhile, it was good but I was disspointed to have the namesake character Narcisuss dissapear for the majority of the book.

The Time Traveler's Wife. By Audrey Niffenegger. Amazing, fantastic, totally surprising. Alyssa lent this to me and I have to admit, the back cover did not pull me in at all. Some love story that honestly sounded boring. But I gave it a chance because she said how good it was. She was right. It's written beautifully. The setup, which could have been confoundingly confusing, was done in a such a way as to easily keep track of where and when you were in the story. It's just over 500 pages and I have to admit, about 100 pages from the end I broke into gut wrenching sobs at a particular scene. Read it. It's worth it.

Lonely Wearwolf Girl. By Martin Millar. This was recommended to me by my brother and I finished it in about two days (being off work helped with that). It is the second book of Millar's that I've read and I absolutely loved it. Over 500 pages, it is huge book to hold, but it's totally worth it. I can see why Gaiman recommends him.


June - 5

Guenivere. By Sharan Newman. Fantastic! Made me want to pick up Mists of Avalon again and see how the character is portrayed as she gets older. This version really centers on her youth - before she meets Arthur.

Treasure Island. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Picked this up at the Printers Row book Fair (which was awesome!) and figured I'd knock out another one of the classics before the half way point of the year was here. I quickly discovered that Johnny Depp and the Dread Pirate Roberts were in no way a satisfactory prep in pirate speak. I fear some of the story got lost in translation between the pirate gab and the boat specifics, but overall I enjoyed it.

Indigo Sound. By Regina Harris Baiocchi. Picked it up from a local author at Printers Row. Really good story, that flows the main character from chapter to chapter by following up on someone mentioned in the previous chapter...does that make sense? I wished at some points that I could have more of specific characters, but overall I think it's an interesting story about life and the connections between people.

Running with Scissors. Augusten Burroughs. Again, picked it up at PR. This one was made into a movie a few years back and got a lot of attention. It was good, but I'm not sure what all the commotion was for. It's a pretty fucked up story, with some fucked up childhood stories. Even disturbing on some levels. And at times it got a little random for me.

I love everybody (and other atrocious lies). By Laurie Notaro. Picked it up at a garage sale mostly because of the title. Not so much a story as a handful of random stories by the author, but still enjoyed it. She has a witty, sarcastic style that I can deeply appreciate. I think if I were to ever get off my lazy ass and write a book it would sound something like this.

Can't say no to $1.50

We were supposed to go out for one beer. That's it. One. And then I was going to go home and clean my apartment for my next day, early afternoon punch party. We started with one. We did not stop.

My new local hangout has a special on Thursday's that include $1.50 bottles of PBR. I like this for three reasons. One, PBR reminds me of home, though all my previous experiences with it were in the can variety. Two, when you drink PBR out of a bottle you learn that under the caps are playing cards and if you are nice to your bartender he will let you keep those caps, and someday, if you try real hard, you can own a complete deck of PBR cards that you can then play bar poker with. Three, I can not do anything in this city for $1.50. I can't even ride the train for less than $2.00.

So for these reasons I headed down last night to meet a friend for the already mentioned one beer plan. Well, that plan quickly unraveled into a much longer plan when I figured out how to bet on the NBA draft. I'm a bit of a gambl-aholic and have had a pretty dry existence lately so when the opportunity sprung to my slightly addled mind I couldn't pass it up. It started with us noticing how damn young these kids looked as they were ushered out of college and into NBA history. Then we started betting a dollar each time one of the kids were in the audience (the ones not there had their stats flashed right away which cut off the betting process) and shouting "Freshman!" or "Junior!" with the winner taking the pool. If we were both wrong the money stayed in until one of us got it right. I think I ended up walking away $5 up. I was a big fan of this game.

So as we were absorbed in this process, which took awhile since there was a 5-7 minute break between each pick and we couldn't bet on the kids not there, our one beer night stretched out till we both had a full hand of PBR cards. Lucky for me we never set a bet on that because my buddy ended up with two pair. And that's with me trying to rig it by looking at both and picking my favorite. Looks like I should have paid more attention to what I was handing over.

3 and half hours after I came in I found myself with a full hand of caps/cards, an extra $5 and ready to go home. I settled my $10 bar tab with a $20 and hit the road. My goal now is to figure out each Thursday how I can turn whatever is on the sports network into a betting adventure. Wish me (and my liver) luck.

Wordle

I am such a thief. I get my best ideas from my other blogging friends. I even might try and steal this one and incorporate it into my work somehow. I got this one from here. You can make your own here. This one I made from the really, really long draft post I have going of all the books I've read in 2008 (which I may have to post at the sixth month mark so it doesn't become it's own novel.)

Enjoy as I head back to work.

Tiny version that links to one in gallery...

Milk and why I now will buy only soy products

I don't usually keep milk in my house, but because I recently had a weekend guest and my ability to produce food at any given interval is decidedly lacking, I choose to cover up this fact with the option of cereal (which we also had to buy when she got here because apparently my personal choice of cheerios which I keep on hand to munch dry right out of the box on Saturday mornings was too much like "sawdust" for her - yeah I sent her home with her own half eaten box of lucky charms).

There are multiple reasons my fridge is usually sans milk. The top three are I never drink it fast enough so it always ends up spoiling, I'm not completely lactose intolerant but I get a little queasy when too many dairy products start entering my eating cycles and I choose to save that small section of my food choices for ice cream and sharp cheddar cheese, and finally that weird ass crust that forms around the edge of the milk jug. I have always bought my milk in plastic containers. Gallon, half gallon, or that weird two serving size at the gas station, it is always a plastic bottle. I have seen milk in bags back home but maybe that was just a Wisconsin thing because my local store here doesn't have them. Maybe if I didn't drink directly from the container this weird crust process wouldn't happen. But lets face it when you live alone, with no dishwasher save your own two hands, breaking the habit of swigging any product straight from the fridge is mighty hard to break.

The reason this crusty, hardened milk substance is so disturbing to me is two fold. One, it's creepy to drink any liquid and have unsuspecting solids touch any part of your mouth. I have an overall issue with food substance (which is why I never eat Jello regardless of the amount of liquor it may or may not hold) which may be why this one is so icky to my. The second one I figured out today. I came home and slugged down the remainder of this weekend's milk before it got out of date and as I proceeded to lean over the garbage and brush the milk flakes off my lips I watched them fall to the top of my garbage (which was admittedly close to me since it's about time to empty it). As I looked at them I thought "Wow, that substance looks familiar". And this is when it dawned on me. What they looked like was my sheets right before I washed them after a weekend in with a boyfriend. Do I really need to spell this one out? I am trying to keep this relatively family friendly here folks. What I will say is that I'm pretty sure every person who might read this is familiar with that wonderful white spot hidden under the duvet cover.

The really disturbing part was the realization that two years of basically single in the city, with a few random exceptions, meant the closest I was coming (mind out of the gutter people!) to the "wonderful white spot" was crusty milk flakes in my fridge. From now on it's soy products all the way.

Garage sale challenges

I have a friend in town so while I take a quick smoke break in the other room I thought I'd throw up a quick post. Today after coffee in the rain we saw a garage sale sign pointing us a few blocks south of our current location so of course we had to check it out. She ended up with a picture frame and a shirt for her boyfriend (which I think she will actually keep) and I walked away with 3 books and 8 CD's for $10. Not that I really need CD's but I felt it was good karmic payback to help someone unload their leftovers...and I got Public Enemy which just makes me smile.

As for the books, there were mostly baby books and computer programming which while tempting I felt I could leave behind. I did however find The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. I snatched it up when I saw the author after my love of Snow Crash. But then I saw it was book two of The Baroque Cycle. Yup, the same Baroque Cycle as this post. Did I dare try and add it to my arsenal of 2008? Plus it was book two - that did me no good. But, always up for a challenge, and never one to pass down books for a dollar, I added it to my stack and now I am a third of the way to taking on Stephenson's epic. Once my current binge is done (supplied by the fine folks at Printers Row) I think I might have to throw a summer gathering where I invite Mr. and Mrs. Schmidlap to come and plan on promising to trade my fantastic punch for the opportunity to borrow book one.