- From the Department of Xtra Ultimate Hyperbole +3!!!
Like everybody else, I’ve been getting these for a long time, and I think they’re either starting to lose it or are realizing that the content of the subject has very little to do with whether somebody accidentally clicks through. Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit, and they just believe their own marketing. - From the Land Where Escape Sequences Run Free
The content of this one was mostly an image with a SRC tag that was, again, almost entirely escape sequences; it was followed by a couple .edu URLs, neither of which exist. This reminds me of an old book about spaceships I had when I was a kid, which featured some paintings of “inexplicable salvage” at the end–imaginary empty craft that had been found floating between star systems. This is like one of those: a lonely voyager, adrift, incomprehensible, its purpose forever lost to us. - From the ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha Guerilla Marketing Group
This one’s a little different. The content makes me pretty sure it’s spam, but for some reason–to foil antispam software, I guess–it includes a chunk of well-known (to me) fiction at the end. For the record, it worked; this is the only piece of junk that’s gotten through unscathed to my xorph@xorph account since I installed
From: Feel Younger
Subject: Strengthen your immune systemNow – Powerful Anti-Aging Breakthrough
Claim….Ýours….Nów
As_seen on Oprah, ÇNN, CßS, and_NBC
Free Óne Months’s Supply
Feel Better, Look Yonger, Lose Weight_NówI want to have more energy in the new year
Say good by from us, show me.
“Pages one and two [of Zaphod’s presidential speech] had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely of papier mache and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.”
Candidate dozed off during interview.
Category: Books
Reasons for wanting to hit Harlan Ellison
Old: Writing things with titles like
New: Just being a jerk.
There’s a part in The Perks of Being A Wallflower that describes riding in a truck at night with people you love, watching traffic lights and listening to “Asleep” by the Smiths. The narrator calls it feeling infinite.
Coming back from dinner and the music store tonight, we took the back way around Danville. Jon had just bought the new Flaming Lips album, and it was playing, and he and Amanda were silhouetted by red and white lights and I was in the back and for a few minutes everything was right with the world.
It’s a good feeling.
Apartment update: There’s no stopper for the kitchen sink, so I’ve been using a wad of Saran Wrapto plug up the drain in order to do dishes. If you were to conclude from this, without other information, that I’m living in a guys’ apartment, you’d be right. But, y’know, at least we are doing the dishes (which we only dirtied four days ago).
As is usually the case when there’s actually a lot happening in my life, I haven’t had time to write it down. I have literally not spent one continuous hour in leisure activity since Monday,when it became apparent that I was going to have to personally reset the speed and duplex mode on every single Ethernet card in Cheek / Evans. There are 109 students in Cheek / Evans, and almost all of them have computers. You can imagine the rest.
I’m also way way behind on the Cento web site, which is supposed to go live next Monday (this statement and the preceding paragraph are not unrelated). I’m really unhappy about this, plus of course the fact that the middle room is a disaster zone. A lifetime of Mom’s cleaning habits is starting to drive me out of my mind. I know I don’t have time to clean up all my junk, and I don’t even really want to, but if I don’t do it soon I’m going to start screaming at random. Thanks, Mom!(I’m kidding. Mostly.)
Also I got a girlfriend. You might have guessed that.
I think I’m really going to enjoy this year if I can ever catch up enough to notice that it’s happening.
so what! say what! for your own sake
do you have a headache or heartbreak?
P.S. Anthropology rocks!
Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!
In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”
A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.
So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.
Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!
Right now it’s showering sideways, and the wind is blowing so hard the water is going up the hill. Yesterday it was a lot harder. The picnic table almost flipped off the deck, and the first tree we planted when we moved here split. It’s not exactly down the middle, because the trunk is mostly intact, but about half the branches are sheared off in one big clump.
The tree looks lopsided now, of course. The other half is still lying on the ground on the lawn,and I keep looking at it like it’s an open wound. Which it is, I guess. I want to cut the dying part off and drag it behind the house, to patch up the torn part with tar, but it’s raining now and Mom says it’s going to die anyway.
I just finished The Bean Trees. I don’t go back to school until the 25th.
The Handmaid’s Tale was everything I expected plus three. I mostly remember it as being one of the choices of summer assignments for Mr. Munson’s junior AP English, and even though my choices were good (Ordinary People and Catcher in the Rye), I can’t help but be impressed that he gave it to unproven high schoolers to read.
I’ve been trying to articulate this thought for like fifteen minutes now, and it’s not coming. It’s something like this: But. The fact that he had the balls to give rising juniors books like Handmaid’s Tale isn’t as impressive, really, as the fact that under him we read them and enjoyed them and understood them. Reason number five hundred sixteen I won’t be a teacher–I could never live up to that.
Anyway. The Truth was even fluffier than I expected it to be, actually, but still not bad. I’m most of the way through Enchantment now, and Card’s books are only getting talkier and I don’t like it. He wrote a book called Character and Viewpoint a long time ago, and while I still consider it one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read, he’s stopped listening to his own advice. I wish he’d show me what his characters are doing instead of telling me what they’re thinking. Ender’s Game works so well because it strikes a balance between those two. Enchantment is close, but no cigar. (Children of the Mind missed the whole damn booth.)
And Minority Report was really good, yadda yadda. I just wish, in a fashion oddly reminiscent of Vanilla Sky, that I hadn’t had to pee so bad for so much of it.
- My first remote update! I am at GSP. It is planning week. I am in List-Making-Mode.
- It’s the smells that set off my memory, and the strongest of those memories, weirdly, are of this week last year, rather than GSP proper. Maybe it’s because that’s when I first encountered these smells–the same way the smell (odor? miasma?) of Nevin still reminds me of my five weeks there during my GSP, instead of my whole freshman year.
- Same floor. Same room. Six dumb flights of stairs or the bitchy elevator. And the lights don’t work as well this year.
- But! I get to practice saying “Sixth Todd” as all one syllable again.
- I got Brushfire Fairytales and Dirty Vegas. Both are really good, although I think I like the former better. (Jon, let me know if you want me to burn you a copy of the second. Just to try before you buy, ofcourse.)
- I shouldn’t say this, because Kim and Taylor will probably read it, but I don’t think it really matters now. Last year’s campus director was named Laura. This year’s director of seminar is a different Laura. The first one is about as gone as you can get, but every time someone mentions the second Laura by name, I shudder involuntarily.
- The new campus director is named Joe, and he’s kickass, awesome, right on. I’ve been looking forward to working with him since the retreat in April, and so far it’s every bit as good as I’d hoped.
- I loved our staff last year, and I would have been happy to see any of them return. Not many of us did–some by choice, some not so much. But the few who did come back… well, if you’re reading this and you didn’t make it this year, don’t take this the wrong way: again, I loved you all. But Erin, Mooch, Jimmy and Caudill are the ones I would have picked if I’d had four choices, and they’re all back, and that makes me really happy.
- But.
- B Rich and Harney would have been in my picks too, except I knew they were going to be head RAs last year anyway. And they’re brilliant and exactly right for the job, and it’s going to be a good time, with them around.
- There’s simply no comparison to draw between them and the people who had those jobs last year. Not just apples and oranges, but, like, apples and tungsten.
- So it’s not that I miss last year’s head RAs because I want them doing the job again. It’s that Emma and Drew were my friends, and now that I’m here again, with these smells and that room and those memories, I miss them so much it’s like a knife in my side.
- That said. It’s going to be a good six weeks.