Grand Central Station Fun

If anything like that ever happened to me, I'd think I had finally stepped into the pages of some super-sweet novel.

Originally found at http://www.kiwipulse.com/ after hanging around at Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird.

Hilarity

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress is hilarious so far. Susan Gilman reminds me of David Sedaris, in that when I finish rolling around laughing, look back at the page, and reread the section, it sets me off laughing again. (And yes, both Gilman and Sedaris literally have made me roll around laughing.)

Muffin Surprise

Today I went to Madelein's Bakery to get something for lunch. I couldn't find the rumored turkey sandwiches, they didn't have their famous pizza squares, so I settled for a muffin with choco chips on top and went to get some chicken on a stick from the vendor.

The muffin top was delicious. The bottom had something that looked suspiciously like chitlins. Yes, stewed entrails. In a muffin.

There are some things you just can't prepare for.

Even the Subtitles have Subtitles: A list of my to-be-read pile

I've been out of the USA for 7 months now. If the situation were a lot different and instead of a plane, I had taken a pregnancy test all those days ago, right now I would be a lot heavier, a lot scareder, and probably a lot more excited for the 9-month mark.

As it is, the only one that counts is the 12 month mark, when I'll be returning to the US. But in what state will the States be?

In related news, still trying to figure out who I'll vote for come November. Damn, now it looks like I'm going to have to focus on more than one issue. I haven't finished Fiasco: The American military adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks (reference the fact that the book's dimensions are something like 1ft X 6in X 450pg), but that's not the problem. It's this economy issue. I mean, I don't really believe in the economy, but if I did, I hear I'd have to be worried. So I guess I'll go along with it, same as I went along with kneeling and eating the wafer back when my family was "Catholic."

Fiasco has intrigued me enough that I recently bought another nonfiction about war, America's Splendid Little Wars: A short histoy of U.S. engagements from the fall of Saigon to Baghdad, by Peter Huchthausen. Looks interesting--and more importantly, short.

I also bought Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress: Tales of growing up groovy and clueless, by Susan Jane Gilman. This one came highly recommended by Laurie Notaro, author of The Idiot Girl's Action Adventure Club (which I've never read). Obviously, a few interim reading projects are going to be put on hold while I digest these.

Above all, I finally got my shipment of used, cheap books from www.powells.com. I suggest you check them out--free shipping! (Not to Asia, but oh well.) Among the riches: You Are The Message by Roger Ailes, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, by Albert Einstein, and The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, by Douglas Adams. Sadly, no explanation book for the Einstein, so I'm going to have to try to struggle through it alone first.

So I'm pretty much drowning in unread books, and I therefore can't be spending any more time listing them.

Gym Class Heroes Really Are My Heroes

Taking the cue from my friend Hops over at Be A Good Human, I present my number one favorite song of 2006.

"There's a lot of you don't realize, there's a whole subculture of boys driving around in vans looking for your daughters and your lottery tickets."

I lost my Gym Class Heroes CD this past summer when I secretly sublet an apartment with some shady peeps. I wouldn't give back the summer in exchange for the CD, but I'd trade July's trip to Disney World for it.

Dear Bias

Right now I'm reading a biography of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il. It's horribly biased, but interesting nonetheless. For instance, did you know that North Korea ("the People's Democratic Republic of Korea," despite being communist) once kidnapped a South Korean actress and her director husband in the hopes of improving the NoKo film industry? And that Kim Jong Il is a nice, smart guy, according to Vladimir Putin?

I'm also back to doing some calculus work. Pretty pumped about that.

In related news, I've decided to attend UB when (/if) I go back to school, for mathematics. I'm currently researching the idea of going for a master's, rather than a second bachelor's.

In unrelated news, I customized my Google News Aggregator, and I'm in love with it. Do it yourself!

Wishing to be the Friction in your Jeans

It's a new semester. All week it's been, "No running in the halls!"

New books to figure out. New names to learn. One of my classes, there's a girl named Cherry and a girl named Strawberry. Blueberry dropped out. (I'm not even lying.)

That's not to say there haven't been a few good things to read this week as well. The article telling us about how one out of every 100 Americans is behind bars, found through Objectify This. The presidential hopefuls on msnbc.com, of course.

And the Best Buddhist Writing 2007. Two excerpts from the essay entitled There's No "I" in Happy by Matthieu Ricard:

"...A person whom we consider today to be an enemy is most certainly somebody else's object of affection, and we may one day forge bonds of friendship with that selfsame enemy. We react as if characteristics were inseparable from the object we assign them to. Thus we distance ourselves from reality and are dragged into the machinery of attraction and repulsion that is kept relentlessly in motion by our mental projections. Our concepts freeze things into artificial entities and we lose our inner freedom, just as water loses its fluidity when it turns to ice."

...

"You are napping peacefully in a boat in the middle of a lake. Another craft bumps into yours and wakes you with a start. Thinking that a clumsy or prankish boater has crashed into you, you leap up furious, ready to curse him out, only to find that the boad in question is empty. You laugh at your own mistake and return peacefully to your nap. The only difference between the two reactions is that in the first case, you'd thought yourself the target of someone's malice, while in the second you realized that your 'I' was not a target."


Take that, negativity! You're only a mirage created by my mind's egotistical habits.

On Tuesday as I walked to work, I found myself trying to convince myself of the following:

I am everything. I am the world. I am the rocks beneath my feet. I am the sidewalk. I am the snowflake as it tries to follow the car. I am the wind current. I am the air passing through that woman's lungs. I am that woman. I am the force of gravity, I am the electromagnetic force combating gravity. I am not the center of the world...these things are me. I am a small part. I am insignificant--I am everything. I create the world around me. The man walking in front of me creates the world around him. He is me. I am him.


...Actually, at that point it got kind of personal, but it was interesting while it lasted.