The past couple nights I've had dreams derived from vicarious living through TV. Most recently I had a wonderful dream in which I met Tina Fey. Nothing sensual or anything like that. I wouldn't exactly call it "realistic" but it was about as close as you're going to find in a dream. I mean, it wasn't bizarro where she's working at a Baskin Robbins ( Read more... )

Thomas Disch's death last week--apparently by suicide--slipped past the literary world with hardly a mention. I wouldn't have known about it were it not for the link to the article in the Nota Bene sidebar of ALDaily. They couldn't have given him a full entry of links as with other public figures, since a Google News search reveals very few ( Read more... )

I've seen the first three of M. Night Shyamalan's six major releases, and liked all three well enough. But by the time The Village came out, and I learned via spoilers what the "catch" was, I wasn't all that interested. I remember that although Unbreakable had some flaws, I still found many scenes gripping and began to wonder (as many others did) ( Read more... )

I'm trying, once again, to adjust my sleep schedule to something approaching that of normalcy. This means fighting off ever-increasing fatigue as this day wears on, or else I'll go to bed only to wake fully rested around 2 AM and start this all over again. I went down to the Farmer's Market at PSU for a while today, and also to the PSU library, but ( Read more... )

Yesterday was hot enough to drive me away from my apartment for the afternoon. Many people claim they are beating the heat by sitting around in the sunlight near a large body of water. This doesn't make sense to me, since you are really cooking yourself in direct sunlight--far worse than just suffering the high ambient air temperature. (It's also ( Read more... )

-----If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked cards. You may want a book about jumping; you may want a book about whist; you may want a book about cheating at whist. But you cannot ( Read more... )

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I mentioned a while ago that I had put a library hold on Duma Key, Stephen King's latest novel. Well, I got it a little over a week ago and read it over the course of several days. I came down with a cold during that time, and it was nice to have some easy reading material while cooped up in the apartment. It's typical Stephen King which is both ( Read more... )

I've seen it yet again: someone on public transit laughing to themselves, and when I take a peek to see what the fuss is, they have a copy of a David Sedaris book (usually Naked). One time on the MAX train a guy was practically in tears, and had to keep setting the book down. In the course of scouting books I've bought/sold Sedaris books many times ( Read more... )

Last week I was at the Milwaukie library (formerly called the Ledding Library, for some reason) and decided I'd like to take home the DVD of Goldfinger again. While browsing further, I came across this relatively obscure Orson Welles film Mr. Arkadin from 1955. When I got home I put in Arkadin first and while studying the opening credits (I always ( Read more... )