Self-Appointed Summer Reading.

Hello Blog!

One of my favorite things about the summer is all the free time I have now that all my most immediate and consequential problems are generally solved. The one thing I really want to do with this newfound free time is knock out some of the books on my To-Read list. Because I am an unapologetic nerd. I wanted to try something called Infinite Summer last year, which is where a bunch of people got together and decided they were going to take on the leviathan novel by David Foster Wallace entitled Infinite Jest. Which I think is referential to my favorite bit of Shakespeare, from my favorite bit of Shakespearean work. You know, the whole "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, etcetera, etcetera." Actually, I'm not sure that that's my favorite Shakespeare. It is the one I remember most, though.

Er, coming back from THAT digression. I didn't think I was ready for Infinite Jest then, and I don't think I'm ready for it now. Instead, this summer I plan on spending my time building a sort of tolerance for DFW's characteristically colloquial writing. So I picked up Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which is astonishingly good so far. Some of the other books I plan on reading, if any of my friends feels like reading along, so we can discuss them and stuff:

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Human Stain by Philip Roth

The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno (...tentative. I didn't like an excerpt I read, but maybe the book as a whole will change my mind)

What is the What by Dave Eggers

A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

And I'm hoping I'll pick up some other good reads along the way. I'll be blogging about them as I read them, mostly just to help me mentally digest the books. Hooray, reading!

Why I usually drive barefoot. (Not because I'm a hippie.) (I'm not a hippie.)

So check it, I'm driving home from work today, right, and it's been such a crap day. Retail, if you don't know already, is the uninhibited debasement of human interaction. Do you remember the last conversation you had with a retail worker? Well, yeah, we don't either. The only difference is that we have repetitive and inane conversations for hours at a time. And we're paid (but not well.) Anyway, I'm driving home and the music is really loud in my car and it's not because I think the rattling bass will percuss in me an easy and natural coolness, but because the sentences that are scrolling Wall-Street-marquee-like through my brain (Hihowareyoufinethanks. Isthatallfortoday? Yourtotalisninefiftythree. Doyouwantyourreceiptinthebag?) will only be drummed out by equally repetitive and inane Top 40 lyrics (gottagetthatboomboompowgottagetthatboomboompowgottagetthat.)

Kind of like, if I want to get rid of one evil, I have to replace it with another. Which could potentially be a very political statement. But it's not.

Anyway.

I'm driving home and there's this fucking cacophony in my head, right, and my work shoes pinch so I switched to the flip-flops I carry in my purse (along with the novel I'm reading at the time. Those two things are the only things I carry a purse for) and just as I'm reaching the light, my flip-flop gets tangled in my toes. (And you SO know how that happens, don't front.) Which is awful because the tangled foot is the one I need to brake, and I can't use it to brake because IT'S TANGLED IN MY SHOE. And there's a good five seconds of my life in which I'm so sure I'm gonna speed through this light and get T-boned by an Optimus-Prime-esque semi and die, but I just mashed my foot down, tangled as it is, thinking a broken foot is better than a dead Anila. But instead my mess of toes and foot and shoe just clamp down on the brake and I just hold it there until the light turns green and I can fix myself.

Sample Post!

JOKE.