My New Favorite Thing

Last week I was mildly obsessed with The Pioneer Woman, particularly the cooking part. She has just been dethroned though by Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half. But don't fret Pioneer Woman, your considerable use of butter will always draw me back.

Hyperbole and a Half is a blog that is illustrated by Allie's cartoon drawings. It's a perfect storm of well-told, hilarious stories replete with amazing cartoon drawings. I always have a case of the giggles as Heidi could tell you. It's just the funniest site I've read in a very long while.

The first post I read dealt with moving and how that affected her two dogs, neither of which have coping mechanisms of any kind. Dogs, they're so funny!

Once I discovered this website, I didn't do anything else with my weekend. Some of my other favorite posts include The God of Cake in which a young Allie is psychotically consumed with the need to consume an entire cake. I relate entirely too well with This is Why I'll Never be an Adult. And then there's Spiders: "Spiders are little pieces of death wrapped in scary." So true. And this image had me laughing so hard I almost died. No seriously, very strange gurgles started coming from my throat and I almost stopped breathing.

copyright by Allie Brosh

So happy Monday everyone. Good luck getting anything done.

Christmas Time is Here

I mentioned last week that is was snowing here Sunday afternoon, but it wasn't sticking. Well, I woke up Monday morning to a winter wonderland. of two inches. And Seattle freaked out. I was working at the library Monday afternoon, when it was announced that campus would be closing operations at 5 pm. So I got on a bus and it took forever to get home in the snow. Then it was announced that operations would be suspended for Tuesday. Snow day! Sometimes, you gotta love Seattle. Campus was supposed to be open back up on Wednesday, but they decided to keep it closed at the 11th hour. Snow day number two! And then it was the holiday weekend--I haven't been to class in over a week. And I don't want to go back.

Well the temperature has climbed a little and the snow has (mostly) melted. Thanksgiving is over, which means we can talk about other things--like how many movies I want to see in theaters (Black Swan!). Love and Other Drugs was all right. The main selling point is nudity--Jake said he and Anne are naked like 65% of the film. Yup. And they're gorgeous, so who loses out? Their chemistry (and bodies) are the best part of the movie which is otherwise a fairly traditional romantic comedy. She's terminally ill, he's a player, they have hot sex--no strings attached--but then they get attached.

I just updated my Netflix queue for maximum holiday cheeri(less)ness First up is The Ice Storm which I actually think takes place at Thanksgiving. Following is A Charlie Brown Christmas to remind us all of the true meaning of Christmas. and that great Peanuts dance. Next up we have The Family Stone. I kinda want to say it's my secret shame, but I've only seen it once before. Then we have Eulogy which is black family comedy. I kinda wanted to see Everybody's Fine when it came out last year, but I didn't. And then we have The Apartment which is one of my favorite films and is somewhat Christmas-y. To top it off there's The Dead, John Huston's final film adapted from a James Joyce short story which actually takes place at Epiphany (which is in January). And my roommate has Love Actually which is my favorite Christmas movie of them all. What movies do you break out in December?

Last month I tracked down my two favorite Christmas songs which are both Tori Amos rarities: "Little Drummer Boy" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Amazing. I also love "River"--I have the original Joni Mitchell version and an amazing Allison Crowe cover. Crowe also has an excellent cover of "Hallelujah." Brandi Carlile's "The Heartache Can Wait" is one of my new favorites from last year (thanks Megan!). Also on the Hotel Cafe album is "Winter Song" and "Auld Lang Syne." "Song for a Winter's Night" by Sarah McLachlan is also lovely. Weezer does a great upbeat version of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "O Holy Night," a couple of personal favorites. Sufjan Stevens also does a good version of "O Holy Night" and I enjoy his original "Get Behind Me, Santa!" The classic Crosby & Bowie duet "Little Drummer Boy (Peace on Earth)" is one of my favorites. Add to that "A Great Big Sled" by The Killers. "The Holly and the Ivy" is one of my favorite carols, but I don't have a smashing version of it. Frowny face. Throw into that Martha Wainwright's "How Soon" (not actually a Christmas song) and Diana Krall's "Christmastime is Here," and you have a pretty good playlist. Favorite Christmas songs?

Happy Holidays Everybody!

The Day After Yesterday

I am thankful for my roommate Heidi who did almost all the dishes from yesterday's feast.

Only Cameron and Chloe came over, but that did not deter me from making a feast. We were small in numbers but had enough food to feed an army. My thinking was that you can never have too much food at Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving leftovers are the best leftovers of all.

I started taking some pictures of the food but then I forgot, so this post will not be illustrated. If you would like to see what the food (mostly) looked like, you can go to The Pioneer Woman Cooks. It is my new favorite blog and is where I got most of my recipes this year. Besides, she's a better cook and photographer than I.

On Tuesday I first made cranberry sauce which I do every year. Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce is a sad state of affairs. On Wednesday night I made an apple de leche pie (oh my!) and then proceeded to eat the rest of the dulce de leche from the can.

I bought a 6+ lb turkey breast and brined the bird for over 24 hours. The meat was very moist, but I don't know that the flavor was exceptional. This was my first year roasting a turkey--I had to buy a meat thermometer!--but I think it went pretty well. The nice thing about a small bird is that it only took around 3 hours to cook. The sad thing about buying a turkey breast is that there's no dark meat.

On Thursday morning I started the Parker House rolls. I thought about halving the recipe, but opted against that. It made about a bajillion rolls. Well the recipe says 36, but I think we got more than that. But rolls are the best!

Then I made homemade stuffing which was basically a cubed baguette topped with onion and celery sauteed in butter and boiled with herbs and vegetable broth. It was actually quite good.

While the turkey was resting, I made gravy from the drippings. This was my first time making meat gravy, but it turned out all right, I think. While this was all happening, Heidi made a pumpkin spice cake (Heidi once had a bad experience with pumpkin pie, so this was not allowed), mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole.

Cameron and Chloe brought us some cranberry bread and sparkling Pinot Noir. It was delicious--after it was gone, we had some Washington State Merlot and New Zealand Suavignon Blanc. Tasty! And since Heidi doesn't drink, this equated to a bottle per person. After dinner was done, but before dessert, we played a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit. Chloe won of course. She recently auditioned for Jeopardy, and may get a call any day to be on the show. I almost got a third wedge, but I answered Julie Kristeva instead of Julie Christie. Similar names; very different people. I blame the wine.

After they had left, and I was quite drunk, I had to finish an assignment that was due that night. On Thanksgiving! Evil. And the assignment was evil. It was a lot of work about web crawlers--something I understand at a very minimal level. The hardest part was going to open source crawlers and trying to find certain architecture features. I just made stuff up.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday this year. How did it go? What are you thankful for?

Once I finish the dishes, I'm going to catch a matinee of Love and Other Drugs. I'll report back. I'll also give a rundown of my holiday playlist.

Olio

"Olio" and "oleo" are frequent solutions to the USA Today Crossword puzzle. I like that online crossword puzzle cause it's free and easy--if you enter the wrong letters it will let you know, so it's easy to cheat.

Three weeks ago or so, I had several blog post ideas, and I was going to write them just as soon as I had time. Foolish me. Now the ideas have evanesced from my mind.

So this is just to say "Hey! How's it going? What's up?"

School is kicking my butt. I hate information retrieval systems--the class mostly, sometimes the actual systems. There's lots of maths involved. I've never hated math before, I was even kind of good at math especially when I had a good teacher, but that's all over now.

In my management class, I have to write a memo letting employees know that shift might hit the fan (I don't know anything about anything and might not have a job myself), but I have to reassure everyone and keep them working. I want to write "Run for you lives! We're all going to die!" But that might set the wrong tone.

Collection development is the class that causes the entire cohort to go out drinking afterward and bond that way and over Facebook status(es). But our final assignment--in which groups have to write a selection policy--is almost done. Did I say almost done? because I meant almost due.

Yesterday in Nancy Pearl's class we talked about Westerns and whether that's even a viable term anymore. Maybe regional literature is a better definition instead. I already mentioned that I read Shane and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. In two weeks we'll discuss fantasy and science fiction. I currently have Neverwhere, Dune, Sunshine, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and The Passage sitting on my table. We'll see which ones I read/finish.

It was snowing earlier today. It just stopped. For about ten minutes it was snowing pretty hard and even momentarily sticking. It might continue to snow throughout today and tomorrow.

Right now I'm thinking up my Thanksgiving Feast. It might only end up being me and my roommate. All our friends that we invited are going home. My roommate's vegetarian, but I'm still going to look for a really small turkey. I might end up getting a chicken instead, like Chandler (and we be watching all the Thanksgiving Friends episodes). I found this brining recipe via Megan, and really want to try it. I will be making cranberry sauce (it's tradition!), and I need to find some bottles of wine.

I also bought my plane tickets home yesterday, which means I can go to Megan's wedding and apartment Christmas and Elise's party. I can't wait!

So that's what I've been up to. Next week I hope to post my holiday playlist--ho ho ho!

Book Lust: A Really Long Book Post

A while ago, I promised a post on the books I was reading in Nancy Pearl's (librarian extraordinaire) readers' advisory class where we are taking on genre fiction. We discussed whether or not genre was a useful term--there was much debate--and we read a short essay by Ursula LeGuin called "On Despising Genres." Most of us thought that calling a book genre fiction or even saying that it "transcends genre" places a value call on it--which as librarians we want to avoid (but as a critic...). However, we were not sure if interfiling so-called genre books with "regular" fiction would be helpful for our users (and us) or not.

We started with mysteries and thrillers. I read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie for my traditional mystery. It was my first Christie (and possibly my last). It was a fine book, but not really my cup of tea. Nancy likes to say there are four doorways to a book: story(/plot?), setting, character, and language. One classmate believes there is a fifth doorway--idea (like a philosophical novel, perhaps). Now most books will have components of all four doorways, but will primarily utilize one or two. And most readers have one or two doorways that they prefer to read. I like books that focus on characters and are beautifully written. Hello Shakespeare! Story and setting are generally secondary to me. So Orient Express is entirely a story book where Hercule Poirot sits back and solves a mystery like a puzzle. Mysteries after all are essentially intellectual books. I will say the solution to the murder was unusual, and I didn't see it coming at all.

For each book we read, we are supposed to provide a brief annotation, basically what you would see under staff recommendations. A one to two sentence review that teases the potential reader while staying true to the tone of the book. Here was my annotation for Murder on the Orient Express: "Get stranded on the fabled Orient Express with a cast of international passengers and follow Hercule Poirot at his finest while he tries to solve a seemingly impossible murder mystery with an unexpected ending." It's not a very exciting annotation.

For my contemporary crime novel, I read the international sensation The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the original Swedish title translates to Men Who Hate Women). I am boggled by why this is such a popular book. I think the pacing is really uneven which is critical for a thriller; it's probably why I didn't find it very thrilling. I don't think it's well plotted which is perhaps less of a story problem and more of a narratological issue. The setting, in Sweden, is perhaps the best element of the book. Sweden, as presented in the novel, is a very different place than I am used to, and it flavors the whole work. There are two central characters: the journalist Blomqvist, who is really boring (though he somehow has lots of sex), and the (possibly autistic) sociopath and hacker Lisbeth Salander. Salander is a much more interesting person, but I don't quite buy her as a fully developed character. Maybe this is due to her autism and sociopathy (things I don't fully understand), or perhaps that she is a male fantasy, as one of my friends thinks. The language is technically proficient, but it's very literal--lacking any literary devices or figurative langauge. That may just be the translator's issue. Many of my classmates objected to the strong violence portrayed in the work, but I generally don't have an issue with fictional violence portrayed through the written word. Last night I just watched the Swedish film, and it possibly did less for me than the book.

My annotation: "In this shocking and violent crime thriller, a journalist and computer hacker join forces to solve one prominent family's mystery only to uncover a larger conspiracy of corporate corruption." If you've read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, what did you think? Like or dislike? I have to say that most of my classmates enjoyed this book (as well as millions of people worldwide). Opposed to intellectual mysteries, thrillers focus on adrenaline and the emotional impact built on a series of escalating and life-threatening events. So do you guys read mysteries or thrillers? If so, do you have any titles you would suggest?

Our next session was about romance novels. The list of traditional romances included such classics as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. The Regency romance novels of Georgette Heyer were also included and Rebecca which I chose to read. It was a good novel, but I didn't think it was very romantic. Basically a young, unsophisticated woman marries an older and wealthy widower, Max de Winters, and goes to live with him at the estate of Manderley. The titular Rebecca was the first Mrs. de Winters, recently deceased, who by all accounts was beautiful, sophisticated, and charming. The unnamed protagonist is haunted by the memory of Rebecca, but things really get cooking 2/3 of the way through the novel. It was an interesting book, and I'm excited to see the Hitchcock film. Supposedly it's among the least of his works, but it's his only film to win Best Picture. My annotation reads: "At the grand estate of Manderley, the young Mrs. de Winter must contend with a menacing housekeeper, a distant husband, and the ghostly presence of his first wife, Rebecca."

Then we discussed modern romance novels. Oh boy. I read My Lord and Spymaster by Joanna Bourne. I was so opposed to reading one, that I ended up pleasantly surprised. Sadly(?) I didn't finish the book, but the writing was much better than I was expecting, and the lead female character, Jess, was feisty and headstrong. (Apparently the writing goes downhill and Jess becomes a much weaker character in the second half). There was plenty of sexual tension from the very beginning, but I never got to the part where they ended up in bed together. There are two features of every romance novel: a central love story between two characters and a satisfactorily happy outcome. (Also, there is lots of sex.) There is also a surfeit of sub-genres. For example, my novel took place in London during the Napoleonic Wars. Here's my annotation: "Follow the headstrong Jess Whitby as she navigates London's seedy underbelly to clear her father of treason. Standing in the way is the rakish Captain Kennett who has his own plans for Jess and may lead to her undoing." I wanted to finish the book, but there was other homework and it was overdue at the library, but I think a got a good snapshot. It also made me think there might be something to romance novels.

Then we got to graphic novels, and I read a bunch from the class list which was divided into superhero comics and more "literary" ones. My roommate and I both read Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, and my roommate developed a huge crush on Superman. I've always been more of a Batman guy myself, so I read Year One and The Dark Knight Returns both my Frank Miller. Year One is pretty good, but I really disliked The Dark Knight Returns (where Miller is also the artist) even though it's widely considered to be one of the best Batman comics ever. I think Miller is an acquired taste. And I also read The Long Halloween by Loeb and Sale. I really like this one because it uses most of the rogues gallery including an origin tale of Two-Face. It also does a good job with meshing Bruce Wayne and Batman. My annotation: "Follow Batman as he tries to deduce the surprising identity of Gotham's latest serial killer, Holiday, who is targeting members of the Falcone crime family. Along the way the Dark Knight must contend with the formidable villains of his rogues gallery and the loss of an honest friend."

Much of our discussion centered on whether or not graphic novels was an appropriate term. I've always thought of graphic novels as a book-length comic or a book of collected comic issues. But I also like the idea of just calling them comics too. Both terms have their problems. We decided it's best to use whatever term the patron is using. We also discussed whether or not comics/graphic novels are a genre or a format. I'm inclined to think format since there's a wide and diverse range of genres in the comics format. People keep talking about the "death of the novel" and I think that comics might really be the next major literary format.

Among the "literary" graphic novels I read Persepolis and Blankets. Both of them are very good. And both are memoirs not novels at all. Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi, a young girl growing up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Blankets is a coming-of-age love story by Craig Thompson who grew up in the Midwest in a Evangelical Christian home. Then I read Fun Home by Alison Bechdale which was really good. I won't describe it more than by my annotation: "In this graphic memoir, Alison Bechdale comes out as a lesbian; four months later her father dies--likely suicide. By turns funny and tragic, this is the story of their complicated relationship woven together with books and fraught with secrets."

Next time we're discussing Westerns. For my first Western I read Shane by Jack Schaefer. It's the archetypal story of a man who rides into a Western valley, cleans up town, and rides off into the sunset. Shane is a dangerous man who stays with the Starretts; the novel is narrated by the young boy Bob Starrett. The Starretts are homesteaders who are being driven off the land by a rancher and that's where Shane comes into play. My annotation: "A man's dark past and a boy's future cross paths when a lone stranger rides into a burgeoning Wyoming town where he is soon caught in the middle of a power struggle between homesteaders and ranchers." Right now I'm reading The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen. It's ostensibly a work of (historical) fiction, but it feels like narrative history. The book's okay, its just long and dense.

After that we're reading fantasy and science fiction. It will be very exciting, I'm sure. So do you guys read genre fiction? If so, what are your favorite genres and books?

And the Winner Is...

Elise!

Thanks to everyone who played--you're all winners in my book (and you'd all get a book if I could afford that). I may make this a semi-periodical thing, so keep your following ways.

More posts to come soon.

And Happy Guy Fawkes Day. Can you believe it's November already?

Rant

So I got these awesome new old-fashioned WeSC headphones last year--like the ones Joseph Gordon-Levitt wears in (500) Days of Summer--and they were/are awesome. Only the cord is like a foot-and-a-half long. This didn't really matter because it came with a longer extension cord. Sad story: the extension cord shorted out (or something) and no longer works. So I stopped using these awesome headphones and started using bud headphones which are lame. Now I'm trying to look for a gold-plated male/female extension cord and they're all like a bajillion (or fifty) feet long, or they have sucky user reviews, or the postage is super expensive, especially for a freaking cord. Just slap a Forever stamp on it. Sheesh! All I want is a high-quality 3'-6' gold-plated male/female audio cord. Is that so much to ask for? I think not. It's not like I'm even asking to find one that's the same orange color to match the existing cord.

So my Washington school log-in page called, appropriately enough, MyUWNetID, is inexplicably showing up on every web page that I visit. It's f**king annoying. My roommate said I should export my bookmarks and then reinstall my browser. I don't think any of those words are English.

I voted today. In Washington we vote by mail-in ballot which is lame since I don't get an "I Voted" sticker at my local precinct. But voting itself is not lame, and you should all vote! Here's what the liberal Seattle weekly The Stanger says:

"Glen Beck says you're not going to vote this year. Bill O'Reilly says you don't have the guts. Sarah Palin says you're going to toss that ballot straight into your socialist recycling bin. And Christine O'Donnell says masturbation is a sin and she's not a witch and she's you and you're not going to vote.

"Here's why they say you're not going to vote: because the Republicans are unstoppable. They're going to take the House and the Senate and the pennant and the Oscar and the Emmy and the cake. And they know this because they heard it--and said it--in the echo chamber that is Fox News.

[Other stuff about local issues and one fanboy "Squeeeeeeeeee!"]

"Vote. Prove Beck, Palin, O'Donnel, and the rest of the health-care-killing, Wall-Street-loving, anti-gay, pro-kitten-rape dickwads wrong."

And if you want to win a book, enter by leaving a comment in the previous post. Why wouldn't you want a free book?