...And I Feel Fine...

So according to some sources (probably less reliable than Chuck Klosterman) we've all got a few hours left before the world ends. I'm a little fuzzy on the whole theology surrounding the Rapture vs. Apocalypse dichotomy, but I'm having a few regrets about not filling up the gas tank in the MandaMobile this afternoon.

And how am I spending my last few hours before the roof caves in? I'm watching Zombieland (again) on cable. Of course, this time it's taking on the tenor of an instructional video. Clearly I should have spent the last year or so stockpiling firearms and Twinkies.

First order of business for the AM-- Loot the local Wal-Mart. They'll have Twinkies and firearms. And if I can corner the market on toilet paper, I can become queen.

At least a hellish post-apocalyptic landscape would be more interesting than watching hellish post-apocalyptic landscapes on TV on a Friday night.

The Suz's Summer Reading Challenge: Progress Report 1

I have a bit of a reading problem, and the Kindle has exacerbated that. I see a book review, or, just as likely, I see an interview with an author on The Daily Show, and I race to the Kindle or to Amazon to download it.

Which is how I ended up with Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. Jon Stewart interviews this guy on Monday, and by Thursday night, I've finished his book. This 50 page a day thing is marvelously efficient.

And it puts me 288 pages into the challenge, plus another 50 or so in The Imperfectionists, to which I will return later tonight to make today's page count.

In other good news, I'm pretty sure I'm not a psychopath. Evidence (this blog for a start) would indicate that I have some narcissistic tendencies, but no psychopathy. I've got empathy and anxiety to spare.

Ronson writes near the end: "There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things."

"Sport of the Future"



If Chuck Klosterman is to be believed-- and he's as believable as anyone else I can think of-- most of the women who were a certain age in 1989 were irrevocably warped by John Cusack's portrayal of Lloyd Dobler in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything. The basic premise being that these women, of which I am one, have a jones for the sweet, sensitive, goofy, self- effacing, guy who is looking for a "dare to be great situation", but that we forget that this guy is fictional.

I don't have the complete quote because, as a result of The Great Materials Goods Purge of 2010, my copy of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs ended up somewhere between the moon and Mar del Plata, but in the first track of this opus, "This is Emo", Klosterman says of Dobler/ Cusack something to the effect that every woman of our generation "would sell her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker."

So that pretty much sums it up.

I'm pretty sure that if a dude shows up on my front lawn wearing a trenchcoat and holding a boombox aloft-- even if that dude were John Cusack-- I'd be on the phone to the Weymo 5-0 before Peter Gabriel could finish the first verse, but I won't deny there's truth in Klosterman's premise.

During the birthday greetings frenzy that was my Saturday, I took a moment to catch up with another of my favorite old friends (who, like Diane Court, was a valedictorian) who responded to my recent foray into kickboxing with the line "sport of the future."

Geez. I didn't end up with Lloyd Dobler. But yesterday at the dojo, I took off my gloves, looked at my red wraps and realized I might have turned into him. Except for the part where, you know, I'm not a dude.

Let's consider the facts. I like the Clash. I don't want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything. I'm pretty sure I'm close to being finished with high school (in a sense), and I don't know what I want to do with my life. But I know that I don't know. I'd like a dare to be great situation. Given the right opportunity, I'd definitely follow a boy to England.

But what I've been doing a lot lately, is kickboxing.

And it's about the only thing that's giving me a sense of motivation, focus, and direction in this crazy mixed-up world of ours.

So, maybe Chuck is to be believed, or maybe sometimes we have to be our own hero.

Okay, Suz, You Win

The Suz is over on facebook (Why do I keep posting about my facebook activity? Don't I have a three dimensional life anymore?) challenging her friends and pretty much everyone else she has ever known to join her on her Summer Reading Challenge. Basically, it means if we accept the challenge, we agree to read 50 pages a day from now until Labor Day. Has to be a book, though-- although, really, Suz, can't The New Yorker count? If Young Adult novels can count, why can't The New Yorker?

Because I am learning all the joys of e-book formatting, she's calling me our "expert" in this area, and I have designated that two Kindle pages equal one printed page, but this is a highly imperfect system. What's the conversion between hardcover and paperback? Trade paperback to mass-market paperback?

This is the trouble with us literary types. We're bad at the math involved.

But, the Suz wants this to become A Thing, so I'm passing it along. There are still a few friends we don't have in common.

And so tonight it begins. I'm starting with The Imperfectionists, which is about reporters at an English language newspaper in Rome. Perhaps it will give me a Good Idea or an Achievable Goal. If that's the case, my next read might be an Italian language text.