THE BIG YELLOW ONE IS THE SUN
So hey, I found a Brian Regan routine on YouTube that I’ve never heard before!
Not as good as his old stuff, but still pretty good. That fireworks noise at 6:19 and when he messes up the horse racing joke at 33:13 had me really laughing like crazy.
Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
Have I read this before: Nope! I think I started reading it when I was down in Tucson, but then I moved back up to Moscow and had to return the book to the library, so that was that.
Review: This book was different from what I was expecting it to be. That’s probably because I had a very vague notion of what it was about that had been pieced together by random references to the book and was thus not a super accurate reflection of what the book was actually about. But I enjoyed it. I actually expected things to be expounded upon more (“things” meaning the incidents leading to the change in the thing in the book that changes…hahaha, vague enough? Don’t wanna spoil it) and I think I would have liked it more if there were more details in that respect, but it was still good.
Favorite part: I love the way that youth and beauty were described near the beginning of the book. For example, here’s Lord Henry talking to Dorian about his (Dorian’s) youth:
“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”
“Why?”
“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having…Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so?…And beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”
Rating: 6/10
As someone who’s still obsessed with this game that came out in 1998, I enjoyed this immensely.
The ominous music makes this even more distressing. I love it.
Book Review: A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving)
Hey, duders! So this was a super long book, which is why it took me about a week to get to another review, but let’s do it.
Have I read this before: Nope! I can’t remember if this was a book I had trouble finding in libraries or was one that just kept getting overlooked on my list, but I this was the first time I’ve ever read it.
Review: you guys. READ. THIS. BOOK. This is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read; it’s probably going to replace the The Ox-Bow Incident as my fifth favorite book. Like I mentioned, it’s a long book. It details the relationship between Owen Meany, a boy who feels like he is god’s instrument and believes that he’s foreseen his own death and the circumstances around it, and John, the narrator. The book goes back and forth between John in the present day (late 80s) and when the two were growing up together as boys/teenagers. It’s hard to summarize because there’s so much that happens and so many little scenes and ideas and phrases and actions, but all of it – all of it – comes together so beautifully in one single ending scene that it’s just perfect. So perfect. So good.
Favorite part: I love the way everything that the book had been working towards comes together in that one scene near the end. It’s done so well that I don’t know if I’ll ever be more satisfied with a “tie together” as I was with this book.
But I won’t spoil that for you. Instead, I’ll list a few humorous moments, because despite the seriousness of everything in this book, it actually is quite funny in places.
Hester, Noah, and Simon are the narrator’s cousins. They’re rambunctious little buggers:
“Last one through the house has to kiss Hester the Molester!” Noah said, and he and Simon were off running. In a panic, I looked at Hester and took off after them.
The narrator discussing why he was hesitant to let his cousins meet Owen:
It seemed to me that they would be driven insane by the sight of him, and when he *spoke*–when they first encountered that voice–I could visualize their reaction only in terms of their inventing ways for Owen to be a projectile.
Owen obviously believes in god, but he is critical and somewhat troubled by the organized church and its approach to belief and the interpretation of the Bible.
“JESUS ALREADY TOLD THE DUMB-SHIT DISCIPLES WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. ‘THE SON OF MAN WILL BE DELIVERED INTO THE HANDS OF MEN, AND THEY WILL KILL HIM…” REMEMBER? THAT WAS IN MARK—RIGHT?”
“Yes, but let’s not say ‘dumb-shit disciples’ in class, Owen,” Mr. Merrill said.
Owen and John attend Gravesend Academy. Everyone there loves Owen except for the headmaster, and there’s a whole big scene where Owen gets the basketball team to move a teacher’s car into the school’s auditorium, which the headmaster has a hell of a time trying to remove. The whole scene is pretty hysterical.
He (the headmaster) sat behind the wheel—with apparent jolts of extreme discomfort assailing him from the region of his lower back—and commanded the faculty to push him.
“Where?” Dan Needham asked the headmaster.
“Down the Jesus Fucking Christly stairs!” Headmaster White cried.
Rating: 9/10
North of the Border
This is probably going to sound super stupid, but every once and a while I remember that I am not living in the country I was born in and I’m like…oh.
Yeah, that sounds pretty stupid as I’m typing it out. But it’s not something that I consciously think about very often, so when I do actually think about the fact that I live in a country where I’m not technically a citizen, it’s kind of a weird thing. It’s kind of a shocking thing. I never thought I’d be living anywhere other than the US, but HERE WE ARE in a world where I’ve spent more of my adult life in Canada than in ‘Murica.
Kinda wild.
Sorry, that’s all I’ve got for today.
Cranefall
NOOOOOOOOOOO, the cranes surrounding the new cancer center are being dismantled! Those four cranes have been up since at least 2017 and provide so much extra light at night. I’m going to really miss them.
(“Cranefall” sounds like a good story title.)
Edit: only Crane #2 still stands.
Shostakovich, what the fuck?
This is why I’m anosmic. Because my nose is off doing this kind of stuff.
But yes, this is from Shostakovich’s first opera, “The Nose,” which is based off of a short story by Nikolai Gogol. Basically, dude’s nose develops sentience, jumps off the dude’s face, and quickly attains a higher social rank than the dude.
Yeah.
I don’t know.
It’s pretty great, though.
Two Things Today!
1. I did my longest run ever today: 15 miles. That’s no marathon or anything (obviously), but that is my standard daily walking distance…a distance I never thought I could run. So that’s kinda cool.
2. The case for Kondle came today! Check it:
Now he’s pretty AND protected!
WOW
This song is an experience. I really like it.
Sorry, that’s all for today.
Wild Wings
I freaking haaaaaaate thiiiiiiiis but I don’t have anything else to blog about today.
The Magic House
So it’s like 5 AM and I can’t remember exactly what brought this topic up several hours ago (was it the St. Louis Arch? Maybe.), but I was telling Nate about this place in Missouri called The Magic House. My grandparents used to live in Missouri when I was young (< 8 or so), my mom and I would fly down there once or twice a year and do stuff with them. The Magic House was (is) basically a big children’s museum full of a bunch of interactive stuff, a lot of them having to do with science in some form or another.
It has obviously upgraded since I was last there, but it’s still there and some features are exactly the same as I remember.
I remember the bubble room, that big Van de Graaff generator (my short hair would REALLY frizz out), a wall where you could use pulleys to hoist yourself to the ceiling, colored circles on the floor in one room that made different tones when you stepped on them, a place where you could test if you were colorblind, a place where you could draw silhouettes, and a big wall that you could dance in front of and your image would be displayed on the wall with all sorts of psychedelic effects applied to it. I really liked going there.
Edit: I’ve also been to the top of the St. Louis Arch (again, when I was very young). I remember those weird elevators and being able to lean out over those little windows. I’d like to go back and see that again!
Book Review: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Wilder)
Kindle-driven reading obsession COMMENCE! Let’s do another review.
Have I read this before: Yes! I read this in 7th grade, I believe. I think it was one of the first books on my “classic books to read” list back when it was in its first iteration.
Review: I only vaguely remember this book, in part because 7th grade was like TWENTY YEARS AGO and in part because I was even more of an idiot back then than I am now and I don’t think I processed this book very well. But it’s good. Basically, a rope bridge collapses with a group of five people on it and a friar who witnessed the incident is interested in trying to determine why those individuals happened to be the ones who were on the bridge when it collapsed. Was there a reason it was, specifically, those five?
Favorite part: I liked the chapter-based focus on each individual (or set of individuals) and how they interrelate. This bit from Esteban really stood out to me as well; I think this stood out to me in 7th grade as well:
“You know,” cried Esteban, leaning across the table, “you’re not allowed to kill yourself; you know you’re not allowed. Everybody knows that. But if you jump into a burning house to save somebody, that wouldn’t be killing yourself. And if you became a matador and the bull caught you that wouldn’t be killing yourself. Only you mustn’t put yourself in the bull’s way on purpose.”
Rating: 6/10
Re-KINDLING my love of reading
This Kindle is one of the best things I’ve bought in years, guys. I love it. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it so much, especially since I’ve always been wary of e-readers and figured that I would prefer a physical book to an e-reader, but now that I have one, I am not ashamed to say that I am an e-reader convert.
There’s something very cool about having immediate access to almost any book you’d want. Obviously you can get that through libraries as well, but with the Kindle:
a) I can find books that I’ve had trouble finding in libraries, or at least at libraries that aren’t the UI library. You’d be surprised how hard it is to find copies of some of the books on my list.
b) COVID, so I don’t think I’d want to go into a library right now regardless.
c) I am notorious for checking out a library book and then keeping it for like a decade. Not ideal for anyone involved.
d) The Kindle is small and light, which would make it easy to carry around once, you know, it’s safe to freaking travel again. Some of the books on my list are like 600+ pages, which make the physical books a bit more difficult to cart around.
e) Going back to the original reason why I bought the Kindle, I don’t have to worry about balancing a book on my treadmill’s little shelf while I walk. The Kindle fits there perfectly and I can increase the font size to whatever size I need to comfortably read while walking.
The Kindle has made me super enthusiastic about reading again. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I have access to any book on my list now (not just the limited subset that I can find in the U of C library) or what, but hot damn I just want to read.
That’s a good feeling. I’ve missed that.
Book Review: Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Have I read this before: Yup! I think this was one of the first books on my list that I read in junior high.
Review: Since I read this in junior high (or really early in high school), it’s obviously been a long time since I’ve read it. And it’s quite a bit different than I remembered it. For some reason, I thought that the crime in question was admitted to fairly early in the book, but I was very wrong, haha. Shows you how much I paid attention in 7th/8th/9th/whatever grade. But it is still a very enjoyable book. Also, as far as “this book has a lot of Russian names” books go, it’s not too bad. Better than War and Peace.
Favorite part: The tension builds nicely throughout the book. I also like how the main character keeps toying with his fate in the sense that he basically outright admits the crime he’s committed but does so in a way that it sounds like he’s just joking.
Rating: 6/10
I wish I had a normal belly button
Is that a weird thing to say? I guess “normal” is subjective, but of the people whose navels I have seen up close and personal,* mine looks quite different than theirs.
Lemme ‘splain. Of the few people whose navels I have gazed upon in relative close inspection, you can see where it “ends.” Basically, you can see that it is a finite hole that has a bottom/end to it. It looks like a little cup or something.
Mine does not look like that. Mine looks like a bottomless pit. Mine looks like what I would expect the tied part of an inflated balloon looks like from the inside. You can’t see the end/bottom of it and it’s weird and I hate it. I mean, when you Google “belly button,” a good number of the pics that come up look kind of like how mine looks, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a belly button like that in person apart from mine.
Part of why mine looks the way it does might have to do with the fact that when I had my appendix taken out, they inserted one of the wands/probes through my belly button during surgery. I can feel a small little scar in there, but it’s nothing too dramatic.
Anyway.
I know this is stupid and that NO ONE CARES, but it just bugs me.
STUPID BLOG POST IS OVER, BYE
*There haven’t been many of them, let’s be honest
Horrible iPad Drawings
HEYOOOOOOO so I have an app on my iPad called ArtRage, which is basically a fancy version of Paint. I suck as an actual artist, so I mainly use it to play Pictionary with Nate (we take turns looking up candidate words on an online Pictionary dictionary and try to guess what each other are drawing).
However, every once and a while I go a little overboard with the drawing nonsense. Examples:
(This is called “The Telltale Art”)
(This came out of a Pictionary round, but I have no idea what the word was)
(This is called “Schwa, Bitches”)
Yeah, I suck.
I’m Glad I Have This Blog
I’m pretty sure I’ve said this on here before, but I am very glad I have a record of the last 14+ years of my life in the form of this blog. The reason I’m particularly glad of that as of late is because this whole COVID nonsense has made me even more nostalgic than I normally am and I like having the ability to go back and read about whatever nonsense I was up to five years ago, ten years ago, back at the end of high school, etc.
It allows me to re-live some of that normalcy that we’re all missing so terribly right now, and that’s been helpful for retaining at least some degree of sanity during the last few months.
So yay?
List-a-Thon: August 2020 Edition
- Hahaha, sorry, what? I feel like there’s a story behind this very specific piece of advice.
- This is such a weird freaking baseball season. Watch the Mets not make the playoffs in a season where like 80% of teams are going to be in the playoffs.
- These are beautiful little objects.
- Need some ambient noise?
- Here’s a calculator to approximate your risk of getting COVID from certain activities.
- I love how all the nonsense in 2020 just hasn’t been quite enough for the US, so the universe was like “lol let’s add some raging forest fires in the west” just to make things more interesting. How much do you want to bet that Trump either a) completely ignores these fires or b) somehow blames them on the Democrats?
- Edit from September 12: so three states are ON FIRE and Trump has said nothing publicly. Called it.
Kindle!
So I got distracted by the redwoods yesterday and forgot to mention that my Kindle came! Check it out:
(Yes, that’s Jazzy in the background of that second pic, haha)
It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but it’s super light and, now that I think about it, it’s about the size of a typical paperback. You can adjust the font size and everything, too, so if I want to read it while I use the treadmill, it should be fine if I make the font big enough.
Supa cool!
Edit: his name is “Kondle” now. He’s my son.
NOT THE REDWOODS
Redwoods do well with fires, but these fires are incredibly intense and hot, which damages the trees. How many other redwoods will be affected by these fires that are so obviously exacerbated by climate change?
Consider helping via donation. I don’t know how many of you have seen the California redwoods in person, but they are incredible beyond words (even the “smaller” ones).
Help them. Help the parks.
Annnnnnd the Mets have COVID
Of course. At least they weren’t the only ones to get it. Or the first.
Hopefully those that have it will only have mild symptoms and will recover fully!
Pantsylvania
Have I mentioned this game on here before? I’m not sure and I’m too lazy to check (pro blogging, yo), so I’mma mention it now.
Among the funky computer games I played as a kid was this one called Pantsylvania. I remember playing this with my friend GE in Troy a lot. It was basically this game where you could explore the town of Pantsylvania through several different buildings and with the guidance of different characters that had you do different things in the buildings. It was super point-and-click fun for young kids and I remember really enjoying it.
The frog gets a lot of hate, apparently. He was my fave.
Edit: here it is if you want to play it yourself!
Somebody’s Got a Tan
Hint: It’s me.
At least on my arms. You can see where I normally wear my Garmin, haha.
Also, ignore how hairy my arms are. I am a yeti.
Creamy Peanut Butter is a Culinary Abomination
That’s it.
That’s the blog.
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