Category: Life

The contrast between the top books chosen by the educated and those selected by the unwashed masses depresses me:Random House’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. As I mentioned, I finished up Quicksilver, and am now on to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. On deck: Camus’ The Stranger.

My friend Chris, who rumor has it is at work on his second novel, recently wrote a witty short story about his 10-year high school reunion. What makes this story even cooler is that I sort of indirectly am in it, playing the part of “my female coworkers”. Woo! I hope this story wasn’t supposed [...]

So get this. I’m a Mac fan with a starboard tack towards zealotry; this is generally well known. But for the most part it’s self-contained: though I will never condone Microsoft products, I hold computery things in the same light as religion–that is, whatever works from you, and don’t try to convert me. It will [...]

File under “Worrisome Worldwide Fundamentalist Trend:” Religion Enters Russian Schools File under “Unfortunate Inappropriate Reaction to Worrisome Worldwide Fundamentalist Trend”: Arabic T-Shirt Sparks Airport Row And, file under “Extremely Ominous and Under-reported Consequence of Unfortunate Inapproriate Reaction to Worrisome Worldwide Fundamentalist Trend”: Alarm Over Missing South Asians But, on the other hand: Munch’s “The Scream” [...]

Light in the Sky Originally uploaded by PDPB. There’s some guy on Flickr called PDPB who is actually quite a good photographer. Of course he’s not getting a whole lot of attention on the site because most really good stuff gets lost. I like the icy coolness of this photo, and the non-distorted but very [...]

A few posts ago I mentioned that I’m reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, a book that I recalled having tried before but failing at. So I gave it a go once more, starting late last week and reading at a smackdown pace to get through it, so that I could finally say: “Done, dammit.” For the [...]

David Waters the Lawn Originally uploaded by lyzadanger. Normally I pretty much exist for the summer and I would even go so far as to say I like it when it’s really hot, but our house has been nigh unbearable for a goodly portion of the summer this year. It’s hot again today; 84 degrees [...]

Mr. Pencil (husband) and I figured recently that our ridiculous excuse for German engineering is gulping through about $300 a month in repairs–that’s repairs only, no maintenance, gas, car payment itself or insurance. I hope the fact that it barely drives right now and shudders like a Model T means that it needs its computer [...]

Our little household has been glum since the arrival of our awesome Philips plasma 42″ television. You might ask why, as it’s a triumph of image quality and a consumerist coup de grace all in one. It can mostly be summed up in the words: “Comcast sucks so really really hard.” Our trusty old TiVo [...]

Me: Striking Light in the Morning; Hotel Bathroom, Walla Walla Originally uploaded by lyzadanger. During both the evening and the morning, this bathroom fascinated me. It was the quintessential spartan low- to mid-range hotel bathroom, with sanitary seal on the toilet and single-ply toilet paper. In the morning especially, the shaft of light coming through [...]