So one week into the semester, a couple weeks with the new work schedule and everything is okay. I've been being anal, unnecessarily stressed, but quiet about having to complete every bit of work. Only so far I have had introductions and readings, which reminds me how texts are tiring and monotone, but I actually like the information (about information)!

I finally finished A Brave New World, that I borrowed along with Choke (which I am reading right now)..not so much cause I wanted to, but semi did/do. I read Huxley's book back in college for my a philosophy class, and liked the subject matter, but it still wasn't as memorable. :( I think Huxley's short autobiography at the end was what I liked the most. Maybe I'll give it another 5 years and give it a read through for the third time.

Nothing has really changed even though school started, but I don't mind staying in and reading textbooks and becoming anti-social/ dormant. I think I was already heading down that route for the past couple years anyway.

edit: Choke was an entertaining book. really better then i expected. Now I hear a Brave New World movie is in the works and Leonardo di Caprio is in it...ouch. Bandwagon jumper (I).

chang a lang lang

At a second attempt..I read it, laughed, awed, was briefly was disgusted by America (humans = machines), thought about a God, grew slightly offended, admired his illustrations and POV, considered my own free will...

I also have moderately large amounts of flem in my pharynx, took off 2 hours early from work, and am mildly lethargic plus craving cake, but thankful I could finish... scared that I found mid - partini board game - someone else possibly reads this booger blog :(





Uber short, but now feeling super creepy. First book I ever read by him about a 32 person murder in the rich mansions of London. A detailed POV by a hired psych who scopes out the case from beginning to end. Motives by their murderers can be easily understood, but he lays out the details, weapons, second by second plan fiercely. (NOTE: I'm the biggest wuss out here...so.)

On the quest to find other books and/or knock more off my pile, I spent the last of my xmas money on this.

The novel before his famous "Ask the Dust", but written in the 1930's and was left unpublished until 1985 because it was too riske for the time. Once again Arturo Bandini is a wretched writer living with his Catholic mother and destined to be a nun sister, who rely on him to be the breadwinner, but can't keep a job until his Uncle Frank sets him up with a dead weight position at the cannery making 25 cents an hour among the Mexicans and Filipinos. His big ego of a self professed writer, proud to be American, complicated vocabulary comes off at times as arrogant and as a bigot, but it's more like a insecure, revengeful individual who says things to spite others and make himself feel giant. (Hilarious!) Without knowing his perspective, you can imagine that any person from the outside would think that he is insane... well even knowing his POV, he still comes off as crazy - killing crabs to win the war, sneaking nudie cutouts and having a name and personality for each, swooning over women he notices randomly and retraces their footsteps obsessively. Pretty spectacular.

'School' started a couple days ago.. well more like one class.. modules have been easy so far. ho hum. I wonder if I'm taking things too lightly at the moment. For one task, we were supposed to post in our personal blogs for other students to see. While some talked about their experiences in libraries, others about their opinions of social networking or the Oakland riots, I wrote the rhyme 'Ode to my first class: a 203 post' mostly jokingly and horribly cheesy. Oh well.

New years resolutions - more like a grocery list of self improvements

(9 days to late) that I failed to mention:
Improve my recently learned 10 key typing skills
throw the veg categorizing out the window
make school my No. 1 priority
read more, paint more
work on my socializing which is on a steady decline (and probably will keep)
listen and just improve my memory..sigh


Didn't have anything I was enthused to pick up and read from my pile on the edge of my couch, so ehhh I guess I'll knock one off the pile. Pav says I haven't entirely read the book, since I skipped the chapter about the army and the effects of bullets on human cadavers, but it did provide some interesting insight to how our bodies decompose (i.e. gases need to escape so our tongues and mouths, as well as genitalia become 'edowed'), cannibalism is China (up to the Ming dynasty, it was a practices that kids, more so daughter take a part of themselves and make a dish for their ailing mother in laws - boiled breast, seared thigh, etc), organ transplants, beheadings, environmental alternatives for the dead - human compost...

A customer that had bought a hard cover of this book said it was really good, but borderline awful... which is exactly a way to describe the author who goes on tangents and while interviewing mentions the obvious, tacky joke of the cadavers - insert penis joke here - . She is thorough enough to keep it interesting, even the book is somewhat dated. Main message: DONATE YOUR ORGANS TO MEDICINE/ Bodies to Science

EDIT:

From a resident of San Francisco, The Abortion by Brautigan is a quick read about a librarian (not your typical library), who meets and is with a stunning young girl (who hates the attention she receives from males constantly for her hot bod) and takes a trip to Tijuana to abort a baby that they're not ready for. The library, which is a place for anyone to bring in books that they wrote, unpublished, and place them in their shelves - no dewy decimal system here - is his home and a place he can't imagine being without.

Despite the writing being too simple at times, such as its dialogue stating the obvious, it's lighthearted, a bit poetic, and taking place in SF in the 60's, it's references to the city's streets and building is charming for any local - he even mentions his dislike of San Diego. Reading up, it sounds like a Vermont library put into practice the Brautigan library (http://www.jessamyn.com/journal/june00b.html), but isn't open to the public and may relocate to the Presidio - Yea the Presidio library mentions nothing of it.

I had to make it one of my last reads before school started.. yea bestseller smchmeller, but it was a good read. More of a genealogy essay in some ways, than an all out story of Oscar Wao. You begin to appreciate his family (sister, mother, bestfriend, grandfather, tia) and their struggles with life, which seems to be more from a passed down stubbornness, then the curse. I wonder how accurate his descriptions are of Dominicans, their superstitions, and the corruption of SD, but if I wrote a story of my family, it would probably have had the same energy (...it reminded me of my background) if I tried to describe Filipinos in the Philippines... except my family is uhh godly & square.

Despite the references to things nerdy (The Watchmen, Tolkien, etc) and 'cool' (Joy Division)... which it could have done without, the last couple pages is the best of the book. What about love?? I guess if I wasn't in it..I'd just be in disgust for its sappyness. wink wink, nudge nudge

At home (top) At play (bottom)