An allostatic load

Oh dear me!

• I just now was able to sit down and read blogs.
  
• Christ on a cracker! I am tired!
• Taking classes isn't really fun.
  
• Taking 17 hours is so, so not fun.
• Because of the weight of my backpack and the fact that I walk two miles home from the bus stop I have a swollen bruise larger than a quarter right above my ass crack.
• Those hard plastic chairs are going to be fabu tomorrow!
• I am so tired of blackboard. Not familiar? UT website in which readings for classes are posted, grades, assignments, announcements, etc.
  
• It feels nice to sit on the computer and not do school work.
• I have decided that I hate Spanish. The language bothers me so. Just have two words for God's sake! Why have the same word mean 14 things. Does no one see how that could be confusing.
• Reading Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence and really quite liking it.
  

"Until I Find You"

Two things:

1- I finished "Until I Find You". I think a lot about it. I will tell you all about my thoughts shortly.

2-Thursday I will be leaving in the middle of the night for vacation. Me and Kyle, his parents, and the bride and groom will all be driving in one car to Dallas. Our plane leaves Dallas at 6 in the morning or something. Boo-hiss!

Okay, on to the review of "Until I Find You". Let me preface by saying I love John Irving. He can really do no wrong in my eyes. I'm not saying that it was the best book I have ever read, but with Irving there are always elements worth reading.

It reminded me a lot of "The World According to Garp". It could have just as easily been called "The World According to Jack Burns". It starts with the parents and the absent father then we follow Jack into adulthood. Arguably, not as heart wrenching as Garp. But I think that is because the ending didn't have as much resolution.

Some of the plot line or even certain sentences were a little forced. The characters make up for what the book lacks in anything else. Irving knows how to write a character. Plain and simple. He writes these characters that are damaged and flawed and painful and I love them. The more fucked up the character the more I love them.

Over all it was good and I'm happy I read it.

Tell me what you saw, and I'll tell you what you missed

I have thoughts. Crazy, rambling, beasts of thoughts. I sit quietly as if on a park bench and watch them go by like strangers. Once past I scarcely think of them, these thoughts. But sometimes they frighten me.

-Bukowski, is he a good read? I wonder what is the definitive Bukowski?
-I wonder what I would be like as a mother? Would I freak out about things that I normally wouldn't have out of frustration or some other motherly sort of feeling that I can't help?
-I wonder if Laura will be ok. What is happening to her? What about Iris?
-Wait. Those aren't real people, Lauren.
-I think I'm snapping. Me and the beans.
-If I just started reading again I would find out what is happening to Iris and Laura.
-No, I know where it is going and I don't think I quite like it. I'd rather sit here and make things up.
-Iris isn't going to tell Laura that she has been having an affair and everything will be fine.
-I like Modest Mouse.
-Paul Simon is pretty good too.
-I like musicians who write songs about literature. I don't know that Paul Simon has done this. -I was thinking about Modest Mouse, Led Zeppelin, the like.
-It seems like this is seeping out. Am I talking?
-No.

I'm done

I am done with my first summer semester at UT. I have five weeks until school starts again and a huge stack of books to get through.

1. The Blind Assassin Margart Atwood
2. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell Susanna Clarke
3. Flannery O'Connor The Complete Stories
4. Until I Find You John Irving
5. The Robber Bride Margaret Atwood

(That doesn't look like much, but a lot of them are quite large.)

I am trying to read more women authors. All my favorite authors are men. I feel wrong for that. Any suggestions?

Where was I?

I definitely need to see L.A. Confidential again. I don't remember any of this stuff. I have another 200 pages in the book before I'm done. But it is down to the wire. I can't stop thinking about Bud White. I love him. I didn't love him in the movie. I really dislike Russell Crowe. I'm sure that was the problem before. I will try to look past those things. I love, love, love Kevin Spacey. Love him.

I'm off to read.

I love books

So, we all know I'm reading L.A. Confidential. But, did you know that a friend gave me this book many, many , many years ago? The same friend that I was thinking about in this post. For some reason I never read it. I have no idea why. I always kept it at fingers length and never read the damn thing. If I had it would have been the first in a long list of gritty, filth that I just love. It's is like Iceberg Slim, but not true and really long, and the white side of town. I saw this movie years ago. I don't remember any of the violence and seediness. Quentin Tarantino should have directed it. He can do seediness and violence and still make it watchable.

L.A. Confidential

Done

I finished The Handmaid's Tail. As if it was some sort of race.




What now?

The Handmaid's Tail

I am reading Margaret Atwood. I am 60 something pages in and I am totally hooked. I absolutely love it. LOVE IT! She is a beautiful writer. Just beautiful.

I read a great article in the Playboy

Playboy is a great magazine. Underneath all the boobs is a magazine committed to anti-censorship and literacy. This is really the fundamentals I think all magazines should have, but alas they don't. So I choose to read the ones with the values I think they should have.

The first article was good. The basic gist of the piece was that Democrats and Republicans are the same. Neither one care about the fact that the illiteracy rate in Detroit is 50%. Neither one are doing anything about the HUGE imbalance of wealth in this country, or the out and out assault on the middle class. But rather a politician is a politician. It is summed up by the last sentence of the article, "To prefer a Democrat to a Republican is at best to prefer death by a thousand cuts to a good, clean bullet to the base of the skull." Wow! Sort of takes the breath right out of you. Score for Curtis White. It makes me want to read his book, The Spirit of Disobedience: Resisting the Charms of Fake Politics, Mindless Consumption and the Culture of Total Work. Of Course the title doesn't hurt anything either. I can hear it softly calling my name.

Second article, literally right next to the previous one I didn't even have to turn the page to get to more substance that I really care about. This one is about "Going Postal" this bizarre American phenomenon. And rather that talking about how outrageous and scary it is which I am in no way interested it speaks of the fact that it is perfectly normal. Of course it is, why shouldn't Americans be pissed that steadily our work environment is getting smaller and smaller, i.e. cubicles rather than offices? Why shouldn't we be pissed off that in the last twenty years we have received a six cents increase in pay adjusted for inflation for working the same jobs. Why shouldn't we be pissed off at the out and out assault on the middle class. We work harder and longer than anyone in the first world. But luckily everyone else in the first world gets health care and vast sums of vacation hours. Americans, as the article so poignantly put it, should be revolting in the streets. Revolution is eminent, right? Nope. We don't say a thing. Instead it festers until one day you come in to your shitty job and blow your boss to bits. Well, I'm pissed. I have successfully hated every job I have ever had to the point of combustion. This article told me it was perfectly normal. Right on, Mark Ames.

I find it hard to part with books, even if they are text books. I had a huge stack of text books. We loaded them in a box to sell them. I couldn't pick the box up. In fact, I couldn't slide it on the carpet. I had my trusty brute heave them around for me. Between Bevo's and Half Priced I got almost $65. It was such a score!

I had this foolish idea that I would make some Valentines and post one on here. I had some really great ideas. They weren't working out the way I wanted them to. I lost patience. I started to late. Now you get nothing for Valentine's Day! So there.

Finished Fried Green Tomatoes. I am convinced that Ruth and Idgie are gay. In the movie I didn't think so, but the book is very different. They are compared to married couples, the son that Ruth has is called "Ruth and Idgie's baby". It is like she wrote a love story about a gay couple and forgot to mention it. Maybe not, maybe I am wrong. It sure did seem like it though.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Suprisingly violent. Not that that is a bad thing. Just suprising. The story runs so deep into everyone's life including all of the black people. I wasn't expecting that either. The movie sort of gives them lip service, but nothing like what the book goes into. I am pleasantly suprised. Quite a story.

I have been playing with Library Thing. I like it. Take a look. It is over on the side. Yeah, right under flickr.

I think about this at night. I finally remembered it when I was supposed to. "You Suck" is wonderful. And if you liked "A Dirty Job" you will like "You Suck" because they run parallel. But get this, they intersect occasionally. How? It sounds geometrically impossible, I know. But literature isn't geometry so anything is legal.

Next on my literature plate? "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe"

That was a bad pun on accident. I swear!

Good News Everyone!!!

YOU SUCK!!! The sequel to "Bloodsucking Fiends" is out! I got wind of it last night from Casey. You may know him from Corley's blog. I am on my way to buy it!

Plus you have to see this!

Bound and Gagged in Hot Pink

I heart Fannie Flagg

I can't help it. I just read "Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!". Loved it. There is just something about her books/ movies that make you feel warm inside. Even if it is a little cheesy it is still good. I think I may have to read "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe". I have see Fried Green Tomatoes one thousand and one times. I usually don't like to read a book after I watch the movie. Well, it isn't that I don't "like" to, it is more that I can't. I just can't stay focused and entertained. I am like a four year old for some reason. When I know what happens it just doesn't do it for me. But it is a double edge sword after you read the book then watch the movie the movie is always lame in comparison. An otherwise perfectly good movie is ruined.

While I am on the topic, "Fluke Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings" is excellent. I finished this weeks ago. It is great. It was still sitting by my bed and every time I passed by I would think about it. I finally just put it away on it's shelf. I love Christopher Moore. I love his books too. But that isn't the real reason I love him. The real reason is this.

I asked him to draw me a doodle. He did. He giggled. It was funny. A little back story on the doodle: I went to a David Sedaris book signing at Book People. It was incredibly crowded and the whole thing took about 5 hours of waiting. When I finally got up there he drew this little jack-o-lantern in my book with his signature. When I went to Christopher Moore's book signing I thought, "Wouldn't it be way neat-o if every book I got signed by an author had a doodle too!"

If you go to the Book People website you have to check out the Leslie's What to Wear Refrigerator Magnet Set. Leslie is an Austin famous transvestite. It gives some back story. You should check it out.

They say everything is connected.

But how? Or more accurately why?

Reading Corley's blog about god and love I thought about the book I am reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. I have always loved quotes by Oscar Wilde so I bought a huge book of his collected works. It is a great book, though I have only read about 40 pages. It is about art, and beauty, and all sorts of social issues including homosexuality. When I read this book I think someone has taken my thoughts and put them down on paper. How could that be? Someone from the past has stole my ideas from the future? How could it be that I think some of the same things about life as someone did in 1890? That is just a mind fuck. Plus he was half way around the globe, a man, famous, and gay. What is it about my life that could possibly be the same as his?

My history teacher last semester said repeatedly that everything is connected. The first time he said it I had just turned off "The World According to Garp" on cd. It was at the very end and Garp was saying that everything is connected. It blew my mind. I felt an overwhelming need to get up and leave. I wanted to go back to my car rewind "Garp" and listen again, and cry again. Sometimes I wish that I could just do anything I feel like, even if it is the most socially unacceptable thing under the sun. Are socially inept people happier in the end?

Here is a great passage.
"'I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream- I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and you soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.'"


I strongly believe in a collected consciousness. So does Kyle. We were discussing this thought one day and it came to me. What if artists can tap into the collected consciousness at greater depths? Maybe that is why we see our ideas on the tv or in music more frequently. More specifically Jacob had come up with this song about shitting the sheets. It was really funny and He sang it to a song. They recorded it. Then within a year Tool had a song with the lyrics, "God damn. Shit the bed." Have you ever heard a song about shitting the bed? I hadn't either until Jacob came up with it. Too many of Kyle's jokes have ended up on Aqua Teen Hunger Force to even count. And for some reason it always amazes us.

So maybe artists thoughts linger longer as well? Is that why I have thought the very same thoughts that were written by Oscar Wilde? Well over 100 years and his thoughts are still in the consciousness? Or is it that society is still basically the same and it forces free thinkers to think alike?

I work with a guy who told me this week that he has never read a book from start to finish in his whole life. It made me really sad to think of that. A boy in his twenties had never read a complete book. If I could possibly imagine my life without books it would be a sad, shallow existence. One of my favorite teachers in college, (just happened to be a sociology teacher) Dr. Linda Tobin, tries to remedy that. At the beginning of her class she gives out a book list. They are all novels ex: Life of Pi, Lovely Bones, Secret Life of Bees easy reads. Then you are to write a seven page paper on the sociological theories represented in the novel. Incredibly easy. I have talked to a number of people who dropped out of her class because of the reading thing. I was talking to her in the hall one day about my reading choice, "The Lovely Bones". I was telling her how hard it was to read and after every ten pages I had to put it down because it was traumatising me. We started talking about reading and how we couldn't live without reading and she said the reason why she does this is because she knows students don't read. I can't image in my life having never read Island, or Tom Robbins. To have an experience all your own. To have a connection with someone you have never met, who has never even existed in the same time. That is amazing to me. Thoughts and ideas shared over hundreds of years. I cherish anything that is timeless.

I hope I am immortalized in thought.