Because I can, pictures of the plague of snow covering my small mountain town in Upstate NY. Sadly, we're still acres better off than Buffalo or Syracuse.
My most recent batch of library books were picked up from the library:
The Atheist Universe
God: The Failed Hypothesis
John Adams
Walt Whitman's America
Algebra Demystified
The Demon-Haunted World
The Little Book
The Pale Blue Dot
From The Dust Returned
Benjamin Franklin
Mistborn: The Final Empire (I know, shaddup)
Alfred Kinsey
Serenity: Those Left Behind
Firefly: The Official Companion, Vol 1
Fray . . . just to round out the trinity of Whedon--all hail!--who is the closest thing to a creator-god I will accept.
(Also picked up Deliver Us From Evil, The Who's Tommy, and Pink Floyd's The Wall, which I plan to watch entirely sober and entirely alone. No similarly drunk/stonedswhatever friends to hide behind during the scary parts, or sing along with during the sing-y parts. I'll be flying solomente on this mission.)
Only John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were initially on my hit-list. But in the process of getting the former, I ran into a semi-acquaintance that I tried to dodge, and was thence lost in the land of biography . . . which is a much pleasanter land than I once thought it was.
I got jumped by Whitman and Kinsey, and wound up cornered by the acquaintance, anyway. Thankfully, his Seinfeldian stench didn't linger in my coat for too long after.
There's a moratorium on new books for the next month. Till the list is at least halved.
In related news: how long has there been a fat, hot, wet mess o' Ann Coulter books at my library? How have I just noticed this, as often as I'm in that section? I'm not one to advocate the burning of books, but it's a good thing I'm not a smoker, or I'd have started a small pyre with her books alone. Seriously, there were, like, eight of them. It was horrifying, and nauseating seeing all that right-wing, bullshit propaganda and hate-speech in one place, in my beloved library. In the guise of a horse-faced, giraffe-necked, so-called "woman".
And on the heels of it, came the Seinfeldian stench. . . .
Harrowing stuff, these trips to the library.
But on a brighter note, my broken ass isn't quite as broken. Still a bit achy, but nothing I can't ignore.
And on the Rachel Maddow front . . . I need to a) make her mine, b) run away with her to a place where both gay marriage and polygamy are legal, and c) convince her Ana Marie Cox would make a necessary addition to our marriage. Which would all be contingent on getting both their current S.O.s "out of the picture", and preferably in some way that involves neither a woodchipper or jail-time.
Ah, if only I were as diabolical as I am covetous. . . .
"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak."--Jayne Cobb
Wow - look at all that snow. We haven't had a single flake in Virginia. I'm actually sort of jealous of you; if we got that amount of snow here, things would be shut down for a week - Winter Holiday!
ReplyDeleteThe mention of "wood chipper" instantly made me think of Fargo.
ReplyDeleteThat is indeed a copious amount of snow. I don't think I've seen that amount up front and personal for about ten years. I can honestly say I don't miss it. Except for the snowball fights. There's no good substitute for them. Balled up dead leaves do not have the same aerodynamic coefficient at all.
PS - I notice you've read Salem's Lot. What did you think?
The call center--let's just call it the Ninth Circle of Hell--is open 363 days per year, ridiculously busy most of those days. So when we do close, due to weather or what have you, the days immediately following that are nightmarish. If we ever had to shut down for a week . . . I'd probably quit. Or wind up decking someone I work with/under and being escorted off the premises.
ReplyDeleteHah, you can have all of NY State's snow. I hate the stuff, myself, and most of the people I know feel the same. Plus, we'll gladly take some of those beaches off your hands--no charge, no problem-o :D
I've never seen Fargo--astonishing, I know, but I haven't. Oddly enough, I've threatened to toss a lot of people into woodchippers. Not that I've ever, you know . . . followed through. . . .
::whistles::
::clears throat::
You only miss snowball fights because you haven't got hit with an earball, recently. Neither have I, but I have a long memory for that kind of pain. And for all the trouble I got into for beating the snot out of the last little bastard that earballed me.
Balled up dead leaves might work if there were some sort of viscous mud keeping them together. And it adds the element of "ew!" to the element of surprise. Plus, you can do it all year long :)
Imagine getting hit in the ear with that, though.
'Salem's Lot was one of SK's best, in my opinion. Not necessarily for the prose itself, which was about his usual, but for the tone, the very stark contrast between good and evil, saved and damned.
Believable characterization in the face implacable destruction. 'Salem's Lot was very . . . heh, realistic. In comparison to the dreamlike quality of Needful Things, which nonetheless had the same tone, that pervasive feeling of doom. That something much more important than a bunch of townspeople was gonna die. Or be saved.
Blarg, I'm an incoherent book reviewer. No one kills off an entire New England town like SK, I'll say that. Salem's Lot, Needful Things, and to a lesser extent It, are really about the deaths of small towns (Jerusalem's Lot, Castle Rock, Derry), ideals (notably poor Father Callahan's, whose story is picked up a little in the Dark Tower Series), and innocence (Susan's, Mark's, Mears's)--real or imagined. There's sad wrapped up in the scary, the sense that something good could be taken away forever, even if you're not quite sure what it is.
Would've liked to see some inhuman good balance out all the inhuman evil. In-the-flesh good, not just some hokey little cross that's powered by belief.
Overall, I'd give it 7 out of 10.
You?