6.04.2007

On a ratings scale of 0-6

I have no idea where I'd rate on the Kinsey scale. Even after I finished "The Inner Circle" this morning after waiting the whole weekend to read the last 20 pages. Guess that's what happens when you have to leave the book at work.



Another offering from T.C. Boyle, and I'm realizing I think I've already read his best works in "Drop City" and "The Tortilla Curtain." "The Inner Circle" is a fictitious account of the period of time when Dr. Alfred Kinsey was doing his now famous sex research. Told from the point of view of an assistant, it blends facts with a fictional story to give Boyle a background in which to tell a story about sex and ultimately love.

An interesting story, but it dragged on (430 pages) and ultimately the point was something he could've gotten to much quicker. Still like his writing style, just wish he had stronger plots at times.

I'm almost done with "Fast Food Nation," which I'd been reading at home but I picked it up at work after finishing the Boyle, since it is also in stock at the warehouse. I wonder how long it will be until I eat fast food again. It's been more than a week now and I don't even want to buy hamburger at the store and cook it myself. A fantastic story in its own right, a non-fiction documentary style account of how fast food became a national obsession and all of the costs, economical and human that have come with the transformation. It name drops Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" a lot, a 1906 account of what kind of conditions meat packers worked in in Chicago's meatpacking district. might be worth picking up as well.




But I think when I'm done with this one I'm going to try and find something a little fluffier. Or the new Chuck Pahlaniuk. One of the two.








I grabbed The Police's new double disc greatest hits collection and I think I'm having a rediscovery of how good classic rock can be. At work we listen to a lot of classic stuff on the radio and I hear songs from time to time and I realize that I miss them. Being super hip and keeping up on the next big thing has its drawbacks. At times it seems like every band has a very short shelf life and for the most part bands are more likely to break up than make even five albums, making it difficult to find long lasting loyalty to any given band.

Go Pink Floyd!

6.02.2007

The Icky Shuffle

more like the WinAmp shuffle since I'm not a big fan of iTunes. Maybe I should be. I made a playlist of all the random songs I have on my computer that aren't in a folder for a particular album to see what kind of stuff I've picked up over the last three years (length of time I've owned this piece. It's all over the place, songs like Garth Brooks' "Somewhere Other Than the Night" and Toni Braxton's "Just Another Sad Love Song" I don't think you'd expect to find on my computer. But there are some treasures that I would never think to just listen to just because, like School of Fish's "Three Strange Days" and The Toadies "Possum Kingdom." That Toadies song comes on the box sometimes at the Watering Hole and it's always a treasure.

Went to Art Walk First Friday for the first time last night. Got downtown a little late because I was procrastinating but it's great to see a vibrant arts community out and about. Saw a lot of people I knew and more that I didn't but in all I was impressed with the amount of people roaming from gallery to gallery. My friend Alyssa came along and told me about a list she's compiling called 1001 things to do in 101 days. Obviously supposed to be sort of motivating and full of things you don't usually do or have thought about attempting but haven't yet.

I know of a couple things that will probably make my list:

____ number of pushups. Will have to do the math and come up with a reasonable number, like 2,000 or something. That's only twenty a day.

Talk to my brother Jason, it's been more than two years since we last spoke.

Write my brother David a letter. He will never talk again and that's a shame, but he can hear just fine so I'll have to put that on there.

Email my friend Jacob. He emailed probably ten days ago and I haven't replied yet. We met in fourth grade (1987) so we've known each other 20 years. Long time. Good memories, and bad times that are laughable now, like fighting each other when we were on the same soccer team. Then we went to the baseball card shop and bought and opened a box worth of 1988 Score.

Send my mom a poem I wrote her on her birthday when I was a junior in high school, it's pretty basic and not at all good, but the sentiment is there. I'll share it with ya:

She

Special times in our lives, those are times we do hold dear.
Those times are over oh too soon, that's the time that we do fear.
We're here right now so live today as if it were your last,
'Cause when you're done you can't go back to it that was your past.
Tomorrow is forever; today is just for now,
if you've never lived before today I'll show you how,
because eternity is a long time for me not to have shown,
all the emotions and the feelings I wish she would've known.

pretty corny if you ask me. Instead of ever sending it to moms I wrote it on a little piece of paper and stuck it in my crush's locker while I was pretending to go to the bathroom. I saw her read it after class but I never told her it was me.

The day's have been up and down as of late. The end of each school year means more friends leave to explore their futures after college. Most don't return. We keep in touch, but most close friendships are based on proximity which doesn't exist nearly as much when Lincoln and Little Rock, Portland and Montrose are so far away from each other.

But I learned something when I moved to Lincoln. Your future is what you make it. I don't even play Powerball meaning my chances of winning are nil. But if I want to get of any funk I'm ever in I know I just need to get busy. Summertime for me is organizing Lincoln Calling, saving money for the next move and reading books. Sure there's drinking and video games and movies and whatnot, but keeping busy is the key. At least for me.

No particular point to this post, Michelle was giving me hell for being so non-existent in the blog world so I thought I'd just ramble a little bit.
 

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