A Song About My Wife

Okay, so her name isn't "Janet," and she's more interested in galaxies that aren't ours, but has there ever been a woman better suited to this song on Schoolhouse Rock?

I'm pretty sure there's never been a planet Michele hasn't seen. That anyone's seen, at least.

I might call Michele "IJanet" on this blog from now on. Just cuz it's funny.

Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West

When I first wanted to read Nathanael West, on Diana's recommendation, I figured I'd buy the cheapest publication I could find. That was the New Directions edition with Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust in one volume (above, on the right). Once I read those two, and then the second collection, which contains his other two novels, A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell, I decided West is my hero and I wanted to read everything he wrote. So I bought the Library of America edition (above left) of his complete works. Now I have those four novels, notes about those novels, some screenplays, some short pieces, and some letters. I have yet to really delve into the other material, but I'm excited about "Some Notes on Miss L.," his thoughts on Miss Lonelyhearts (duh) after he wrote it, about his thoughts as he wrote it.

The best part about having read this novel right after reading Wise Blood is in seeing how the two relate. I'm not sure how direct an influence West or Miss Lonelyhearts had on Ms. Flannery, but the stories are so similar, and their respective treatments of crises of belief so fundamental to the protagonists' actions, I'd be shocked if O'Connor didn't have Miss Lonelyhearts in mind when writing her story.

Both Miss L. and Hazel Motes struggle with their religious faiths. Miss L. has believed, and wants to believe, but his belief has been broken by the letters he gets for his column and by the mocking he withstands from Shrike, his editor. Hazel Motes is the son of a preacher who wants to not believe in God and struggles his whole (short) adult life against faith. In the end, each comes to terms with belief in a series of actions that lead to their earthly destructions. Wise Blood doesn't just seem to me a similar story to Miss Lonelyhearts--it may have been written in response to it, so closely do their concerns (and even some of their imagery) relate.

And when I read these stories they pound the ideas I have for my fiction into a certain shape. I see my concerns in a new light, because they are ultimately the same as West's and O'Connor's. My protagonist isn't concerned with what he believes so much as he is what his purpose is, but that purpose ultimately derives from what he believes. My aesthetics and the central conflict of my story put it in a position to be a response to the dialogue between Miss Lonelyhearts and Wise Blood (even if I'm just imagining it). And I've been split for some time on which project needed my attention more, my novel or my belief book, but I think the dilemma is false. The novel treats the same material the belief book does, only by metaphor. My head is on fire now. I want to ingest Nathanael and Flannery and spit out a new hunk of ragged iron, another stark story of freaks finding their way, of grotesques and misfits.

The last paragraph of West's "Some Notes on Miss L.":

. . . Miss Lonelyhearts became the portrait of a priest of our time who has a religious experience. His case is classical and is built on all the cases in James' Varieties of Religious Experience and Starbuck's Psychology of Religion. The psychology is theirs not mine. The imagery is mine. Chapt. I--maladjustment. Chapt. III--the need for taking symbols literally is described through a dream in which a symbol is actually fleshed. Chapt. IV--deadness and disorder; see Lives of Bunyan and Tolstoy. Chapt. VI--self torture by conscious sinning: see life of any saint. And so on.

And just like that, I'm off again. My direction is clear. For at least the next seven minutes.

200th Post

After 199 of these things in the last year and a half, I'd like to be able to say something profound on such a monumentous occasion. I don't know that I can, though. This blog has helped me keep my mind clear of the random stupidity that sometimes gets in the way of my thinking clearly, and that's good. (That's also why I sometimes go weeks at a time posting nothing but junk--I have to clear it out.)

Some random thoughts:

• OCCC finally posted an opening I'd been hearing grumbles about. The position's for full-time faculty to teach Comp, Literature, Humanities, and Philosophy. Reading through the job listing is encouraging--it looks almost like the position was built for me. I'll put that delusion away, though, as I tinker with my CV and ready myself for interviewing.
• Writing is going slowly, but at least I'm writing.
• My Fundamentals of English classes at Rose are going to be an odd kind of challenge. On the second day of class I had the students write about where they see themselves in five years. It's a bit depressing to see almost all of them write, in one way or another, that they hate where they are and want drastic change.
• Last night for dinner we had sushi and sake. That was the first time I'd ever had sake, and I'm not sure what to think of it. Michele says it tastes like tequila to her. My reaction was a little different, but sake sure isn't something you fill a goblet with and gulp down. Have to keep in mind, too, that it's a ten-dollar bottle of sake purchased in Central Oklahoma. Might not be the best quality, and who knows how long it's been on the shelf.

Have to get ready for dinner. We have a party to go to tonight, to celebrate one of Michele's colleagues passing his final PhD qualifier exam. The dreaded "E&M" qual. "E&M" stands for "Electricity and Magnetism."

Here's to hoping the next 200 posts will actually contain significant thought.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

I've read this book several times, and I'll probably read it a couple more times this year. I have strong reactions to it every time through, and this time I'm trying not to analyze it too deeply. My favorite Kundera quote (from The Art of the Novel) came to mind as I wrapped up the last few pages this afternoon:

But there is an intellectual, sophisticated misomusy as well: it takes revenge on art by forcing it to a purpose beyond the aesthetic.

I feel like I appreciate my favorite authors best when I don' t carve them up, when I just let them be what they are. I don't want to think too hard about it right now, because the mystery of this kind of genius is a reward in itself.

Videos

I guess I've been on a bit of an Anglophile comedy run as far as the videos go. I can't help it. Every time I see Hugh Laurie in House I think of him as Prince George or Lieutenant George from the Blackadder series.

And we were talking about the "Argument Clinic" at work the other day.

The clip from the Graham Chapman funeral is close to what I want to have at mine. A bunch of irreverence and fun. And only one dead person.

And the MP meets SW is just fun. Starts out hysterical and then gets less funny. But it's fun.

Some Random Ideas

1. Every time I read Wise Blood I'm amazed at how unified the story is. There are other amazing things about it, but the unity is my favorite. I love how, in the beginning, Haze imagines Jesus slinking among trees, and then later he feels his heart beating "like a little ape clutching the bars of its cage," and then toward the end Enoch loses his mind, dresses in a gorilla suit, and runs out into the woods. It makes my brain throw sparks.
2. My novel is at 14,982 words now. I only did 500 words yesterday, but I guess I won't consider it a failure since I wasn't driven to it until later in the day.
3. I don't know if it was school starting or what, but all of a sudden I have too many ideas again, I'm interested in too many things, I want to do too much. It's hard to pick a direction.

On Track Again

My novel's first draft, which has lain untouched for almost two months, sits at 14,584 words. My new plan is to write 1000 words every weekday and 2500 words every weekend-day until this first draft is completed.

The working title has been The Other Dead Guy for a while. I'm also considering Dead and Alive and Deadlife. Or The Deadlife of Alex Cropp. I shouldn't even be thinking of a title yet. The themes are still clanging around in my skull. All I have after a few years of considering the story is characters, settings, a plot, and some crazy description.

Oh. I guess that's a story. Except that it's mostly in note form, or still in my head. I need to remedy that.

Word count: 14,584

Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man by Joseph Heller

This is the second Joseph Heller book I've ever read. The first was Catch-22, of course. I read that once about fifteen years ago, loved it, and then never read it or anything else Heller wrote. I even tried reading Portrait a few years ago after picking it up in the bargain section of Barney Noble, but it didn't hold my interest then.

This time I was compelled from the start. Maybe because now I can identify more with Eugene Pota, the story's protagonist. He's a writer, inspired momentarily in a number of directions, but his inspiration fades quickly, leaving him frustrated and depressed. I'm not seventy-five years old, but I know the feeling of fleeting enthusiasm. Oddly enough, reading this book has energized me.

Portrait isn't a great novel, but it's interesting to me because it shows Heller's frustration and links it to the frustrations of many famous authors, most of whom died at an early age or in poverty or despair. I realize that I'm not crazy--or at least no more crazy than others who feel the need to write.

I feel like I need to pick my reading material carefully for a little while. I think I'll start with Wise Blood and then move to Miss Lonelyhearts and The Dream Life of Balso Snell. Those stories resonate with where I see my fiction taking me, and all of a sudden I'm driven to reopen my novel file and start plugging away. My mind will let me see this as a positive for a few days, until I start dwelling on the temporary abandonment of my humor book, or the essay that I started last week, or that line for a poem that charged through my head a while ago. Or I'll get overwhelmed with school again, or I'll just lose my motivation.

Or I'll keep churning away at this beast until it's finished. My choice, I guess.

Seen But Not Heard

When I was a senior in high school, there was little to interest me in education. I slept through most of my classes, rarely did homework, and couldn't be bothered to pay attention to much of anything. I was better in my English classes, though (and German, come to think about it--maybe I should consider working with language as a career) especially when I was called upon to create something.

In one class I wrote a short story about a little boy who had a nightmare. This dream consisted of his being chained up in a dungeon and tortured by a demon. The only really memorable part of the story was a brazier full of burning coals, a brazier which loomed threateningly but never became significant to the story--just to its telling.

I had seen the word "brazier" any number of times. In fantasy novels and on Dairy Queen signs for the most part, but the word and its meaning were both familiar to me. I was precocious with words--I read the dictionary when I was twelve, as intrigued as I've ever been by a novel. But there was a problem.

I'd never considered how the word was pronounced.

When I read the story in front of the class, I realized at the beginning of the first sentence containing the word "brazier" that I was in trouble. When I got to the word, I read it as though I said it all the time, even though my mind was working it through a dozen pronunciations.

And that's how I uttered the phrase "a brassiere full of burning coals" in front of a class full of my bored peers. People who already had plenty of ammunition if they ever wanted to poke fun at me, which they never did because I was nearly invisible in high school--I didn't matter enough to be made fun of. Twenty-some years later I still remember that, and remember the frustration of being wrong--being publicly wrong--and have a vague awareness of my embarassment at the time for having said something risible.

I had a similar moment yesterday. During office hours I was listening to Tom* talk about how, if one were able to produce a certain kind of chemical and ingest it, one would not age because one's cells would not break down. I can't remember the name of the chemical, but it started with the letter "T." I couldn't remember the name of the chemical a few seconds after Tom said it, but I wanted to make a comment on what he said. So I did what I always do--I made a joke.

"That's my new career," I said. "I'm giving all this up and going into Thermopylae production."

Tom and Tonya both looked at me like I'd spoken (I'm struggling to think of a language here, because Tom's a linguist and his dissertation was a grammar of the Sherpa language, so most of what I can think of wouldn't seem too strange to him) Tralfamadorian.

Then Tom said, "What?"

And I said, in a somewhat less confident voice, "Thermopylae." They still didn't get it. "It's a joke," I said.

"Do you mean 'Ther-MOP-a-lee'?" Tom said.

"Sure," I said. "Tomayto, tomahto. Whatever." I realized then that I had never heard the word "Thermopylae" spoken. It always looked like ther-mo-PIE-lay to me, and I'd never questioned that. So that's what I said.

So I had to check. I knew my pronunciation was likely wrong, but I held out hope that there were alternate pronunciations of the word, and that I had stumbled onto a lesser-known one.

I was wrong. There's only one recognized pronunciation of the word. I checked here. I even listened to it.

So I learned something, anyway. And now I can pronounce both "brazier" and "Thermopylae." But really, Thermopylae is pronounced "ther-MOP-a-lee?" Really? It sounds like an ancient Greek board game. The object of which would be, obviously, to occupy and own as many stoa as possible, so when other people's tokens (chariots, cups of hemlock, and the like) landed on your property they'd have to surrender a certain amount of drachmae. I think I'll design that game now. I don't know what the specifics will be, but you don't want to land on Stoa Poikile once it's owned. Rent is a bitch. The Stoics will whoop your ass.

* I'm going to start calling Tom the "Idea Cannon" after this post. Because that's his conversational style.

If You Want To See Cool Pictures . . .

Check out Michele's latest post. Pictures of Mercury from the Messenger thingy they flew past it.

Freakin' cool.

Another Video of the Moment

From defunct hip-hop rock band Citizen King. Pretty entertaining video. I'll find The Refreshments, because "Banditos" needs to be there, too.
"Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people . . ."

Plus Urge Overkill's "Sister Havana." That song is great for any era. See? The nineties weren't a total loss.

Another Change

I've changed the "Video of the Week" to "Video of the Moment," because I realize I can't keep myself from updating it more often than every seven days.

The new clip is a song from Coheed and Cambria's newest album. Some metal-snobs call these guys "emo" but I don't care. They write catchy songs and they demonstrate talent at every instrument.

I'm also going to add a song inspired by the Land of the Lost TV show. It's funny.

Clearing the Cobwebs

I've posted on the other blog. It wasn't a comment on Kant, like I'd intended, but a report of an incident from my workday.

Sorry if it's not interesting.

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs

So he's gay, he was born in New York but spent time south of the Mason-Dixon line, and he writes about his chaotic professional life, his past drug use, his idiosyncrasies, vacations with his partner, and traveling to Europe.

And he's not David Sedaris.

Augusten Burroughs has collected some amusing essays in this collection, and some filler to go along with it. The voice is a little too contrived and self-conscious for my taste, but there are some genuinely funny moments. And some humorously genuine ones.

And though they deal with similar ideas, Burroughs isn't just a poor-man's Sedaris. They have different perspectives and different stories. They're both funny, though I think Burroughs relies too heavily on the easy joke or the shocking image, where Sedaris's humor is cleverer. If they relate at all, Burroughs might be the working-man's Sedaris. His background is a bit more squalid, his struggles earthier and more primal.

I don't feel like I wasted my time reading this book, but if someone said they intended to read both authors I'd advise them to start with Sedaris.

A New Semester

I have all my ducks in a row, for the most part. My schedule was simplified last Wednesday when the Assistant Humanities Dean called to tell me I was losing my Comp II section. Now I'm teaching the two Comp I sections and two Fundamentals of English sections. I don't have much planning to worry about for Comp, now that I've taught this textbook for a semester, and Fundamentals shouldn't be too tough--less intense grading than for Comp, anyway. So I'm not worried about that.

I don't like the loss of income resulting from the change, though, so I'm going to find another part-time job for weekends. Now that we have no holidays ahead of us, no travelling to think about for a while, I can just concentrate on wage-slaving. This has been a hard year, with disruptions from the move, periods of unemployment (and underemployment), and the chaos of transferring our entire lives to a largely uncertain new setting. Now we're pulling out of it, though.

So when classes start tomorrow (and Michele sits at home because her class was canceled--boo) I'm presenting a new face. The no-nonsense, deadly-serious taskmaster.

Right.

We'll see.

Er . . . Lame

I finally did this thing that I found on my brother's blog. It rates your blog like the MPAA does movies.

The justification was the use of the words "death," "dead," and "abortion."

I wonder what my rating would be if I let my mouth off its leash. It would be rated DEFCON something, I guess.

Reissues of Crimson Glory Albums

Just a quick note for those few who might be interested. Apparently the first two Crimson Glory albums are being reissued by Metal Mind Productions. I've never heard the first album, but Transcendence, the second, is a classic. The only song that made it to MTV was "Lonely," the requisite ballad. But even that one shows off some serious musicianship--especially Midnight's voice (yes, the singer was called "Midnight," and the band wore silver "Phantom of the Opera" masks, but they could play).

I've linked the video for "Lonely" on the sidebar.

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

I've noticed Zelazny's books on the store shelves since I started prowling the Science Fiction/Fantasy sections twenty-five years ago. At first they didn't interest me, because they seemed to be an uncomfortable (for me) blend of fantasy and science fiction. I recently read one person's description of the Amber novels as "science fantasy." I don't like it as a category, but it suggests some of the right things. Over the years people have suggested I read these books, but I've mostly moved on to literary fiction and philosophy now, and when I read something frivolous I get frustrated with myself. But I took the recommendations seriously--especially that of fantasy author Steven Brust, who loved these books so much he named his son "Corwin" after the protagonist.

So I found four of the Amber novels at a flea market for fifty cents apiece and grabbed them. When taking a chance on new genre stuff, it's my practice to go as cheap as possible.

Okay, about the book. Zelazny does a good job of incorporating a kind of pulp-crime tone into this story. He does a really good job with point of view, his pacing is pretty good, and there is no way to predict the direction of the story (except for the assumption that Corwin will survive--fantasy stories are reliable that way). The conventions of fantasy literature are met in unique ways, and that has been difficult for everyone in the genre.

That said, I have a quibble: The arc of the story is incomplete. This is clearly intended as the first in a series, so that's probably nothing Zelazny would worry about, but I dislike when authors pull this kind of open-ended crap. Even Robert Jordan had a plot-arc for each of his sprawling monstrosities.

I'll get around to reading The Guns of Avalon at some point, but the guy at the flea market didn't have that one. Until then I'll have to stew on the non-ending of Nine Princes.

A Poorly-Written Fantasy

Don't get your undies in a bunch, Buckaroo and Jam. I'm not making a statement about Zelazny's Amber novels. I'm not even done with Nine Princes in Amber yet. But the book did provoke some ideas, and those led to the phrase "poorly-written fantasy."

I'm a little more than halfway through Nine Princes, and I've been pleased. The story is characteristic of 1960s fantasy in that Zelazny isn't following a series of expected developments, but is telling a story that surprises--and when it doesn't surprise, it at least wasn't predicted. Too much of what happened in the 1980s led to formulaic stories. The quest starts with an unlikely hero who meets with some companions he has trouble getting along with, and they slowly bond as they struggle along a Quest. The good guys are easily identified, as are the bad guys. The quest inevitably involves finding some ancient artifact or recovering a long-forgotten tradition with which the hero ultimately defeats the villain. The hero is able to succeed because goodness is his essence. There's more of a postmodern, realistic grit to Zelazny (so far).

The formula novels are boring. I like Zelazny's style (even if the story is eerily reminiscent of Heinlein's Glory Road at first) because life isn't predictable and easy like that. We have to think to figure out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. We can't just look to what's been done in the past, because as times change new solutions are needed to solve emerging problems. Tolkien set the stage, and if you can trust Terry Pratchett (and I do), all of fantasy literature is merely rearranging the furniture in Tolkein's attic. It's the guys like Zelazny, Glen Cook, Steven Brust, Fritz Lieber, and Michael Moorcock who surprise, who deviate and invent. Even Robert Jordan, who was very good at what he did, only modified Tolkien's formula. I need something new--I've seen the old. So Zelazny is a good break.

But as I'm reading Nine Princes, I'm also following the political process, the run-up to the November Presidential election. I know already that I'll vote for either the Democratic candidate or an independent who I agree with almost completely. I won't vote for a Republican because the American conservative political position is morally and intellectually bankrupt. The Republicans drive me crazy with their us-vs.-them oversimplicity, their blind reliance on tradition, and their insufferable self-righteousness.

And then it occurs to me: American political conservatism is a poorly-written fantasy. Conservatives are the "good guys," everyone else is the "bad guys," and these lines are easily identified. They cling to tradition, regardless of changing circumstances, and they have nothing new to offer.

But what they didn't imagine is that in 2008, Sauron would be represented by George W. Bush.

Unrelated to Beauty

We live in an image-obsessed culture--there's no way around it. I get disgusted by the constant media coverage of the shiny people, the vapid smiles, the team-built hair, the high-finance wardrobes. I like to think I'm above all of it, that appearance doesn't even register in my assessment of the world around me.

I'm wrong, of course.

Every once in a while I see a person so completely outside of the culture of beauty it shames me, forces me to realize that I too am a participant in this superficial society.

Back when I worked at Book Store I saw a woman who stopped me cold. She looked so bizarre, so unbeautiful, she occupied a space entirely outside any aesthetic continuum. Some of her appearance had to do with choices she had made, but most of it was natural, unchangeable. For instance, the closest comparison I can make to her face is this:

That's right. The woman looked like Iggy Pop. She couldn't be blamed for an Iggy-face. The woman was unbelievable. But that wasn't even her most striking feature.

Her head was shaped like a tire, and her face was on the forward tread. She was taller than me, probably six-four, six-five. She wore a jean jacket and had bear paws tattooed on the backs of her hands. Her hands were something else. Like loose bunches of long brown bananas. Her fingers were thick, and each had at least one ring on it.

She walked like Alice the Goon. When I saw her across the store I thought, "That dude has terrible posture." She came closer, so she and her baby-faced husband could ask me where the martial arts books were. I said something and she laughed, her mouth opening wide, revealing an absence of teeth behind her upper canines. It made the laugh "horsey."

She was a very nice woman, and her husband was the strange one. He was short--five-six maybe. His facial hair was pure starter-kit: scraggly mustache and a fluffy, sparse goatee. He was pudgy and soft-looking, the polar opposite of his leather-strap wife. He said they needed the books because their sons kept getting beaten up at school and they needed to protect themselves. When I showed them the proper shelf, with rows of books on karate, taekwondo, aidiko, kickboxing, and wrestling, he said, "I had most of these books, but they took them away when I went to jail." He looked like he'd last about ten minutes in prison--like the guy the guard beats to death at the beginning of Shawshank Redemption. She, on the other hand, looked as though she'd rule her cell block. Make him her bitch. Maybe she had, but she seemed too good-natured for that.

I suggested some books on aikido--solid self-defense that worked well to avoid hurting the attacker. They both nodded, thanked me for my help. I walked away, but I couldn't help watching them. What kind of kids could those two have? They'd have to look like Grendel, and who would mess with them? I decided the woman's posture was so bad because she had to bend down to talk quietly with her husband. They commisserated in front of the books for a while and then left without even taking anything off the shelf.

Strange. And for no reason, whenever I'm in a Book Store I think of those two. I think of how appearances really mean nothing, and even when I realize that I'm just at a different, slightly less shallow level of speculation. I'm still making unjust assumptions.

Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman's been on my radar for a while. Back in the MFA days, a copy of his Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs sat on the shelf in our office, courtesy of Drevlow. I never even picked it up, because I couldn't get past the stupid title. Klosterman's good at many things, but titles isn't one of them. But Drevlow loved reading him, and I could usually trust his tastes. So I was torn.

Then I was in Barnes and Noble, gift card in hand, faced with a hardcover copy of this book for six dollars. I decided to give it a shot.

Killing Yourself to Live (guh--what a stupid title) is worth the six dollars. There were times while reading this when I wanted to yell like Meg Ryan in the diner scene of When Harry Met Sally--not from physical ecstasy (or the mimicry thereof), but from recognition, in acknowledgement. "Yes! Yes! Yes! That's exactly right!" One example is his description of the revisionist history following the suicide of Kurt Cobain:

Then, of course, Kurt killed himself. Soon after, the reverse engineering began in earnest. Slowly, the memory of Cobain evolved; weeks after his death, people who hadn't seemed especially jarred by his passing started to claim they were finally feeling okay. The memory of the recent Nirvana backlash disappeared; suddenly, Nirvana had always been everyone's favorite band.Nevermind was no longer the soundtrack to living in the early '90s--now it was that experience in totality. Kurt Cobain had not merely made culturally important music--suddenly, he had made culture. His death became a catchall event for anyone who wanted their adolescence to have depth: It was now possible to achieve credibility simply by mourning retrospectively.

The Cobain-worship that sprung up after his death always irked me. People forget, I guess, that right before he died Nirvana was fading, and, as Klosterman writes, "[B]y the spring of 2004, Pearl Jam was way more popular. It wasn't even close. . . . Pearl Jam was seen as the people's band; Nirvana was the band that hated its own people."

Other times, though, Klosterman misses the mark. He never writes poorly, and his voice is enjoyable throughout, and he's never objectively wrong (it would be impossible, considering he's writing of his own experiences and impressions) but sometimes he just drops the ball. An opportunity for deep reflection is staring him in the face and he passes it by. Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn't there for him, it's only staring me in the face because of my perceptions, my experiences. Hell, it's his book. I'll just leave it at "I really wish he would have grabbed that bit by the throat and shaken everything out of it."

In addition to a casual, witty delivery, Klosterman's just a couple years younger than I am, and he grew up in North Dakota, so our perspectives are similar, our cultural touchstones coincide fairly often. Especially when it comes to KISS. Everything he says about the solo albums is absolutely true. His comparison of his romantic relationships to the members of the band is brilliant. He reminded me of something I've been meaning to write about, and I'll probably post that here soon.

Sometimes Klosterman's hyperawareness of pop culture feels a little forced, and that kind of thing always makes me wince a little, but this book feels sincere. And since it's funny in spots and poignant in places, I think it's worth reading. And he provokes me. He makes me want to add my thoughts to what he's said. He compels me toward dialogue with him. It gives me the impression that if he and I were to meet, we'd probably get along too well.

As 2008 Begins

Since the year started with me away from my computer and my home (important, probably, in that order) I haven't said much here. Because of that the thoughts in my head are backed up like this:

I have a lot of things to say in a lot of different directions. I'll forget a bunch right now and then remember later, so the next few days may be a string of bulleted posts with no coherent order, theme, or purpose. I'll just have to find a way to live with that.

• I've removed the "Dubya's Victims" ticker from the sidebar. Not that I'm less enraged about it than I was, but because its constant presence made me stop actively thinking about it. Dubya's idiotic war of choice deserves my attention and my anger, and the ticker allowed me the illusion of keeping it in mind while, in fact, I gave it less thought than before.
• In place of DV I've put up a picture of the book I'm currently reading and a link to the "Video of the Week." The first is because I just like to share what I'm reading in case it jogs some interest in someone else. The second is for fun. I'm just saying, "Hey, look at this," or "Remember this?" or "What the hell is this?"
• I'm starting Phase Two of Building a Better Jason. I've managed five months of successful pescetarianism, and now I need to change something else. I'm going to start excercising. I've never been good at regular exercise--even for the five years I was in the navy. Unless someone has compelled me with threats of bodily harm, I've never bothered, but considering my family's history of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and clinical insanity, I should try to be as healthy as possible.
• I need to write more. I should just have that tattooed onto my forehead.
• The two weeks we just spent in Minnesota seemed to yeild less free time than the five days we were there in November. Didn't see enough of some friends, and didn't see any of others. That sucks. We'll have to come up during the summer at a time not dominated by holidays or celebrations.
• My other blog will see more action in the near future. In the spirit of Dodge's annual book project and Matt's new Agatha Christie blog, I'm going to focus my reading this year. I need to narrow my scope, though, so I'm going to spend the year reading and reading about Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I'll explain in greater detail on the other blog soon.
• I also need to re-read Elaine N. Aron's The Highly Sensitive Person. I don't buy everything she proposes, but it's become more clear to me over the last year how important it is to my mental health to moderate my sensory stimulation. It helped a decade ago when I first read it, and I hope it will again. I can't keep freaking out. It makes me unendurable.

That's all for now. More to come soon.