i've been halfheartedly trying to get through blackwater, ways of seeing, and jem. jem, well, i obviously need to post on miriam's journaling linky thing, but it's of that stilted sci fi style beast. the characters could be toppled with a sturdy tom clancy push, i'm having to wait too long for the plot pizazz to get started, etc. there is a danny interacting with a morrissey though. it could be promising if there's hot gay sex. (i doubt it.) blackwater is nice so far, because it appeases my conspiracy bent(?): there's gobs of sekrit money going to the republican party, the company was set up as a(n unholy) warriors' alliance between the theocons (both evangelical and hot-to-trot catholic) and navy SEALs, and shifty military-industrial complex shenaniganery with the requisite post-NEVEREVARevArEVEREVEREVERSHAKE A BABYFORGIT 9/11 terror paranoia. hooray! as an adjunct, i also have an article about SAIC from march's vanity fair to (re)pore over. such are the joys of a foil-hatted dilettante.
what else? friday i found i take a sick pleasure in trying on $200 jeans and pretending to the saleswoman that i would buy them, except for the painfully obvious fact that my body is nowhere near whatever shape they're cut to. i think perhaps most of them would be a tad long and big in the ass for kristy. i did see a $350 diane von furstenberg dress i would almost have bought. mostly i just wondered why i was smarter and better looking and poorer than everyone else in the upscale strip mall. apparently i miss living in houston more than i realize, if i'm getting my jollies from hanging out in the arboretum.
i finally have a couch! if you're not impressed, take into account that we've been using a twin mattress the boy has had for ten years (and that now has food stains on it) as a "sofa" since we moved in august. so i'm lazy and cheap. whatever. now i can trick you all into hanging out here, plying you with alcohol so that you'll really tell me what you think of me/my books/my tastes in music/my spurious "art"/my pets/my boy/my proofreading abilities/pretty much anything, as long as i get to spend time with you. so i'm needy. whatever.
i got nothing. the joolie told me i had to make a blog post, so i waited until i was drinky enough. i don't have rant material right now, and self-flagellation is TOTALLY boring to type out. go look at hers if you want to see interesting shit people did today.
p.s. roone and ARSEnal and flight simulators are totally boring, and if he talks about the bar, it's only interesting if he reports on what's going on with eric.
p.p.s. maybe i'll come up with a good rant soon.

amelia bedelia is a fucking MORON.

did you know paula danziger died nearly three years ago? i would become a wikipedia editor just to fix the "the cat ate my gymsuit" entry, only i can't bring myself to be that kind of person.
at any rate, this came up because i had an obscenely long conversation about "young adult/juvenile" authors with a friend, and i got to thinking... these writers had a lot more influence on the way i thought about myself at that age than anyone else ever could or did. hence, i give you shout-outs (and also here's to hoping i never become a librarian to kids at that age):
paula danziger, she of I CAN'T EAT PISTACHIOS WITHOUT THINKING OF the pistachio prescription ever. ever ever ever!
godddamnit, paul zindel is also dead. never again will there be books in which the teenage experience is more excruciating to live and relive, even more so than all john hughes movies condensed into one, than in any of his books. my darling, my hamburger? pardon me, you're stepping on my eyeball? i was honestly relieved that my teens weren't as bad as i had anticipated after his books.
well, jerry spinelli's not dead. Who put that hair in my toothbrush? was always a favorite, although the reviews on amazon are creeping me the fuck out. stop being YUCK, amazon-people! you can get all fetish-weird, just stay away from my all-books-are-nostalgic-and-sacred area. geez. I'M TALKING TO YOU, MISS "When I was 14, my boyfriend read parts of it to me first period every tuesday morning while we cuddled." CUDDLED? WERE YOU SLEEPING AROUND IN EIGHTH GRADE? and you, mr. "as a wonderful surprise, my wife got the book-on-tape for our long drive out of state. She never read it before, but she loved it. Even though she is now 29 yrs old." you know what? that was four years ago and ha ha, i'm younger than her. and at this point, i'm just going to say you're probably both ugly, too. because i'm an asshole.
lois lowry. i think i remember liking all of them, but you'll have to wait until i reread the anastasia books.

do you remember when this came out? i do. a little late in the game, but it was super hot-as-fuck when you're twelve and there's a main character who's attractive and unapproachable, like every single guy you see when you're a shy kid.
i dunno. here, let's dial the way-back machine a little farther.
i give you (a shitty copy of a picture)....

patricia coombs' series about 'dorrie the little witch' is awesome. there's something about the watercoloring, the adult ineptitude, the socks, and the cat, which just make it a lot more meaningful to me than the moralistic "mrs. piggle-wiggle" tales, even though i did want to live in an upside-down house very, very badly.
i wanted to tell you about one more book, but i've always had a hard time finding it. i would have to read all the titles in the JF/YA section before it rang a bell. it was set in eastern europe, during the crusades, and followed a guy who had that werewolf-ish disease of scarring and hairyness (sp?durrr) and um, whatnot. see? suggestions, anyone? i'm probably the same only kid who also read these weird ladybug editions of nursery rhymes and stuff, but there was one or a series about these siblings who went on adventures, and they wore those weird dorky eighties sandals in the pictures. fuck. i'll never find anyone who saw those.

whatever you decide to do

i still like work, although it's wearing me out. last night i went to a UT english dept. party at a professor's (okay, a professors' house.) why are all the adorable, financially successful and more-monogamous gay men already TAKEN? *sigh* anyway, it helped me come to the conclusion that i am very possibly not neurotic enough to get a graduate degree in english. that's fine. if i were ever to spend the money, it really should be of more lasting benefit to humanity than that. the conversations way above my head were awesome, but were negated by the neurotic drunk irish-catholic (someone besides roddy doyle ought to inflate this stereotype to woody allen levels), and the base and distracting sidebars about law and order and battlestar galactica. HONESTLY, people. sheesh.
i had an awesome "urban" dream last night that involved me running a bar and a miniature didonato family (as in MLP size) and armored school buses and police helicopters that had blade diameters longer than the buses. it also had LOTS and lots of bad-ass gangs and vestiges of sxsw horridness. can you get ptsd from sxsw?
i need to get coffee before my favorite person in the world picks me up. you should listen to 'jolene' right now.

work is just dandy. i don't have anything else to do (except for procrastinating some horrible ab workout), so let me introduce you to my profile on librarything. that's what i'm doing. it's the tool i've always wanted. yes, the tool for the tool, whatever. just keep in mind that these books are being added in the order from the shelf whence they came, and the soundtrack to the additions are mstrkrft "the looks" and abba "gold", so far.
also, i really ought to pick up the chicago manual of style soon. and two of the three philip pullmans are on loan.

you gotta play tough my love

hello world!

this is a new beginning - no migration or linking, thanks.