Friday, January 4, 2008

A Quick Update Before I Sleep

1. Fiction suggestions: good call. I haven't read anything in a while, so I'm open to suggestions.

2. I have a friend! Woo WOO! It's my friend Satya from high school. She's maybe the only person I know besides myself who can pull off wearing the "This is what AWESOME Looks Like!" shirt. Today is her birthday, which gave me a great excuse to call her up and hang out with her tonight.

3. I attempted to set a serious cockblock on a coworker tonight. He's bragged about his mastery of patient abuse to me before, and is generally full of shit at all times, so I don't feel remotely bad about it. In fact, I'm going to be disappointed with myself if I failed in this task.

4. Furthermore, the whole episode revealed something to me. Contrary to everything I've ever been told about myself, I have a hard time getting women because I'm not cocky, condescending, and conceited enough. It turns out my coworkers full of shititude and ridiculously inflated and unchecked ego is part of the appeal. This is sad, because there's simply no way I can detach myself that far from reality. My greatness is more understated, you see. And only intelligent women can see it, I think. Regrettably, intelligent women appear to be in short supply.

5. I've broken two automobiles since my last post.

6. I've also gotten a shiny new Quesadilla Maker. I bought cheese tonight, but unfortunately I left it at Satya's, so it'll be a couple nights before I get it back and try it. I'm hoping this experience goes so well that I can develop a new feature for this space in addition to "Monday YouTube," "Best Movie Reviews," and the excessively verbiose "Thoughts on Songs I Heard on the Radio Today." The new one: "Things you can make with a Quesadilla Maker."

7. I got the Quesadilla in a white elephant gift exchange. There were a variety of interesting gifts, with "unused appliances received as gifts in years past" being the favorite. Counter space in young married couples is apparently at a premium. A sandwich maker, a milkshake maker, a quesadilla maker, and a bread maker all showed up. I brought two gifts: a travel size magnetic "Nine Men's Morris" game, and Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. Simon and Garfunkel were not well-received at first, mainly because I'm quite sure everyone in my family already owns it. However, it's value rose later, when all of my siblings realized they had merely succeeded in trading their unused appliances for equally unused appliances, and the goal of "trading down" in order to get something much smaller appeared. Thus, when my sister Abby threw the Simon and Garfunkel back to grab a holiday mug and bowl set, Paul threw in the Quesadilla Maker to get it off his hands for the smaller CD, and I valiantly grabbed it in exchange for the candy dishes I won. The Nine Men's Morris game went to Joe, who was a pioneer in the "Grab the smallest gift and make a run for it" strategy.

Other gifts of note in the exchange: My little brother Aaron brought a cup. I cheap plastic cup from a pizza place in Muncie. It was easily the lamest White Elephant gift in history, or would be, if it weren't for the fact that Casey and Joe brought an exploding coffee maker that is almost guaranteed to spray scalding water all over the kitchen.

8. I've watched The Godfather Part II. I should do a review of it. Also, I fell asleep three times watching The Godfather Part III.

3 comments:

Nick said...

Fiction suggestions:
Dickens - strange sense of humor, sometimes dark, and larger than life characters looming around every corner.
Chesterton - brilliant thinker, his fiction's good if you like his thought and writing process, often the larger than life characters in his story always end up reminding you of Chesterton himself ... hmmm.
Toole - You've probably read the Confederacy of Dunces. If not, you should. Darker, stranger humor than the other two, it's probably right down your alley.

And good luck with the whole "intelligent girls" strategy.

Peace...Nick

Casey said...

Hey, now. The coffee maker has never exploded. It just has the potential to explode if not used correctly.

BerryBird said...

Not sure what sort of lit you like, but I will second Nick's suggestion for Confederacy, because that book is sheer comic genius, and we know you like funny shit.

Sci-fi can be very effective escapism, so I will throw a couple ideas out there:

(1) Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and of course the sequel, The Fall of Hyperion. Check both out from the library at the same time or you will regret it. Hyperion won the 1990 Hugo award.

(2) Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. These are science-based books about settling Mars, very detailed and very engrossing. Green & Blue both won the Hugo; Red the Nebula.

(3) David Brin's Uplift Series. This one has six volumes, so I won't list them all, but the series has a fascinating premise (uplift). The first book in the series, Sundiver, was the weakest in my opinion, but it is not explicitly required, like The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. If you don't like it, set it aside and move on to Startide Rising. That one won both the Hugo & the Nebula, and is entirely worthy.

OK, I better stop now. What if you hate sci-fi? I'm not an award slut or anything, btw, I just threw those up there to give my recommendations more credibility. Other people liked them, too. Really! Dystopian lit is also good for immersion, but I'll save those suggestions for another day.