travesty

Everyone on reality TV is always calling every little minor drama a travesty. Tonight there was a real, actual travesty: that stupid, sullen, wiggly soap actress Kelly "My Primary Talent is Having Hips" Monaco won on Dancing With the Stars. I am officially disappointed in the weak, caving judges. John O'Hurley was a much better dancer and had actual chemistry and fun with his partner, Charlotte Jorgensen. A big POO on stupid ABC for having the star of one of its crappy soap operas win and tell the world she's going to go to Disneyland. Synergy my ass.

On the better side of today, K and I put up the new hammock. (The former hammock died an early death due to not being taken indoors last winter. Totally weak, I admit it.) So we tried it right out and it rocks! Pretty much the same as the old hammock. Yay!

Logan hopefully awaiting a belly-rub.


"Mine."


Brodie kept walking all over us and his nails need to be trimmed so after a few we just put him on there and watched him get his sea legs while we teased him with the Mean Kitty.


In knitting news, I am finally blocking the cotton-ease sweater (in blueberry) I finished a few weeks ago. One sleeve ready to go, the other sleeve almost done, then a front and a back and I'll be ready to sew it up. I'm almost finished with a wrap I've been making to test out Micro-Spun. So far I really enjoy working with it. I'm not having much problem at all with splitting (as per several reviews I read). I've been toying with the idea of knitting a wrap for myself for the wedding. Anyone know of any yarns that'd work well for such a thing? I'd want something light, elegant, black, and perhaps with a tiny bit of glitz.

Teach Me

In thrilling HTML news, I remembered how to make the image float to the side of the entire paragraph rather than just the first line. Woo. I finished Teach Me last night. What a great read! I started it the night before and ended up staying up way past my usual bedtime in order to finish it. This was one of the titles I heard booktalked at a preview breakfast in Chicago and I have to say that the booktalk was good enough to make this my first galley read after the conference. The main character, Nine (a nickname short for a childhood mispronunciation of Carolina), is an overachiever who falls in love with her teacher Mr. Mann, who crosses The Line and returns her affections. When he calls it off, she freaks completely out. Her mania and obsession is expertly captured. She's smart enough to realize that she's going slightly nuts but she can't help herself. She's never felt anything so intense and, true to her character, she continues to be as she's always been: focused and committed to following through on what's important to her. Snippets of Emily Dickinson's poetry are included throughout to great effect.

Today I realized that Teach Me has been mentioned in a few of the reactionary articles recently published about the 'alarming state' of young adult literature (most featuring Rainbow Party as the primary focus). People should actually read some of these books before they complain that they're 'instruction manuals' for behaviors they really do not encourage in any way.

We went earlier this weekend to Lansing to see Land of the Dead (finally!), preceded by a lovely dinner at a pseduo-Irish Pub with a couple friends. I thought it was quite enjoyable! Not my favorite zombie movie of all time, but definitely a lot of fun and worth the price of admission. It seems that theatres are the same in all cities around here - there was a six-year old in the theatre! This movie is rated R for crap's sake. There was also a drunk couple sitting down the row from us who not only answered but made cell phone calls during the movie. Goddamn, there is a lot wrong with people. There ought to be some kind of screening process - if you can't act like a grown-up, you're not allowed in grown-up movies. Or not allowed to take your phone in with you, anyway. Aside from that, it was a good time. All the characters are stock; representations of societal groups and stereotypes (the wealthy bastards hoarding all the resources and using the working class, that working class, the hooker with a heart of gold, the disrespected Latino just trying to make good, etc). This social commentary is successful, though the correlation of zombies to the suppressed proletariat (just trying to get back to their old lifestyle, just trying to get to where they can survive) is a bit tenuous in my mind. The whole concept of zombies forming complex thoughts and re-learning how objects work is also a bit much.

Currently watching the extras on the Shaun of the Dead DVD. Love it.

reader rabbit

Last night I felt so tired so early. I headed up to bed around nine, feeling really weird about it still being light out. I ended up finishing A Room on Lorelei Street and then reading another entire book.
I enjoyed Lorelei, I really did. I just didn't like it as much as I expected to given all the hype. I've read a lot of messages on listservs and heard from a number of people that it's the best book they've read this year. I'm just not feeling that. I wanted more. Opal is such a compelling character and so important to Zoe's experience but we hardly got to know her. Another issue I had with the book is that almost every chapter seemed to end on a stress note. Now, in theory, this works - leaving the reader with the same gnawing-worried-stomach feeling Zoe has - but to me it got old quickly. I want to be drawn into the next chapter, but after a few chapters finished feeling like everything is a big hopeless ball of stress, I wanted to put the book away rather than keep going. It's too much of an effective technique.

After that, I picked up a book I'd requested via MeLCat, The Underminer. I don't remember where, but I read something that made me want to read this. I'm guessing it must've been reviewed on someone's blog? It makes me think of This American Life, so maybe it was excerpted there? At any rate, it only took me about an hour to finish it. Which I take to be a good thing. You recognize the characters and situations even if they are exaggerated and despite the fact that everything stays the same throughout - no one truly changes. It's one joke that works, continually built upon as the main character's life gets (at least in the eyes of the speaker, the titular "casual best friend who destroys your life") increasingly worse. There were lots of pop culture references and the characters are only just slightly older than I am so identifying with this book was easy. Overall, a fun read.

And now it is time for yard work!