I see your un-read novels list, and I raise you!

Supposedly, the BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this. Look at the list and put an 'X' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - (saw the flick)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - No
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - No
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6. The Bible - X (NAS)
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - No
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - No
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - X (read in 2002 and remember almost nothing)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - X
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - No
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - No
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - No
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - X (the high school standards: Julius Cesar, Hamlet, Romeo-n-Juliet (the censored version)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - No
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X (junior high)
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - No
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X (multiple times, was on Elko County H.S.'s banned list)
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - No
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot - No
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - No
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X (but I don't remember much)
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens - No, but read parts of Oliver Twist and Christmas Carol
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - No
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - No, started to, lost interest
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - X (again, don't remember much)
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - No
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - X (loved this when I was 12)
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - No
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - parts of it
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X (over and over again from age 11 to 16)
34. Emma - Jane Austen - No
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen - No
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X (yes, yes!)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - No
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - No
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - No (dominant paradigm sexual fantasies put me to sleep)
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell - X (another one I barely remember)
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - No
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - No, but I read "The World According to Garp" and started "A Widow for One Year"
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - No
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - No, but I remember my mom reading me this
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - No
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - X, yes, YES!
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X, Golding was one of my favorite, also read two other books of his
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - No
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - No
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - X, two or three times
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - No
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - No
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - No
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - No
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - No
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X, another I barely remember
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - No
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - No, but I saw the more recent movie and really liked it
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt - No
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - No
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - No
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - X, YES!
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - No
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - X, and I read "Edge of Reason" and laughed till I peed
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - X, yes, love Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - No
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - X
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker - No, but I've read like every other single vamp story out there
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - No
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - X, YES! And his other books
75. Ulysses - James Joyce - No
76. The Inferno - Dante - No, but parts of it
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - No
78. Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - No
80. Possession - AS Byatt - No, but I own the DVD and have read one of her other books
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - No
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker - No, but I read FIVE of her other books
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - No
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - No
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - No
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X, but don't remember it
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - No
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - No
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - No, but have read parts/excerpts
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint - Exupery - X, but I don't remember it
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No but I've read one of this others
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams - X, in fact just re-read it for the sixth time this Xmas
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No, but I really should
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - No
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - No
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - No
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No

Actually read: 29 ... I'm gonna say 28 1/2 just because

On my list and in the house: Hardly any of them. I'm a creative minimalist ... plus I took a painful trip to the used book store in May and unloaded almost two full boxes of paperback and hard bounds I'd been hauling around since before college.

Muscadine

I started reading this old historical fiction novel the other night that I've been hauling around for years. I became a fan of the author in my twenties and have read most of his stuff, though my memories of specific plot details are real hazy.

Anyhoo, I was just gonna flip through this 1988 paperback and then toss it on the Get Rid Of pile but, damnit, the author keeps surprising me. He does things with adjectives I don't know how to do. I'm envious.

I came across one phrase the other night that blew me away:
... they fled into the muscadine shadows.

And another: ... the darkness emerald with waking dreams.

There's more: ... the yard swirled with children and ... he took it for its earthing power.

I'm having trouble deciding whether you can commandeer nouns like 'emerald' and force them into adjective work. Is it grammatically correct?

I don't care. I think I'll keep (re-)reading.

Spontaneous vomiting?

I love this website but this photo might just do it for me.

Best memoir about adolescence and racism EVER!

I grabbed a copy of "Jesus Land: A Memoir" on Friday out of a one dollar bin at a bookstore. I just finished it tonight.

I seem to always be just behind the curve of cultural phenomenons, and vaguely remember reading a review of this book in 2005 when it hit the literature circuit and Julia Scheeres' searing novel started picking up awards right and left.



"Jesus Land" is Julia's recollection of her childhood and adolescents growing up in a family run by fanatically strict fundamentalist Christian parents. But really it's about her adopted brother, David, who was African American and brought home by the author's parents when he was three where he became, in her words, 'my twin.'

Gentle, nerdy David's encounters with violent bigots become Julia's and the racism starts early. Part way through the book, Julia recounts the first time white kids try and beat them up ... they are just 8 years old.

In their teens, their parents relocate to rural Indiana, the upper domain of the Bible Belt where the locals treat David, and Julia by association, with anything but Christian kindness.

When Julia's other adopted brother, Jerome (the opposite of David in every way except his skin color), gets sent to prison, their parents ship David and then Julia to a fundamentalist Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic to "turn them around".

Julia Scheeres' description of life in Escuela Caribe doesn't read like a typical teen's recollection of boarding school or even a stint in juvenile detention. It's more like a Vietnamese POW camp. There's sleep deprivation, beatings, endless psychological torture and even typhoid.

If you only read one non-fiction book all this year, read this one.

Unsafe at any speed

My uterus tried to kill me on Tuesday. This attempt on my life by an internal organ came just before my 44th birthday.

I have no idea WHY my uterus tried to do this, she's always been a fairly quiet, taciturn gal unlike my ovaries who spent a good chunk of my twenties psychically screaming at me and offering up grapefruit-sized cysts like some weird threat. Get pregnant now bitch, or your lower intestinal tract gets it!

Visiting the ER just prior to your birthday means that every pasty, gray-green LPN/RN/NP/PA you meet, stops mid-monotone medical questioning and suddenly says "Oh, happy birthday!" Like they're really thrilled you dropped in to see them (a complete stranger) while they were working in the ER (a tense, dirty, despairing place that makes Greyhound bus stations seem hopeful and clean).

There's this weird assumption some men make about having a woman's body. It's assumed we know what we're doing, like we orchestrate and schedule things like morning sickness, endometriosis and breast cancer. Like maybe I just penciled in the word "hemorrhage" under Tuesday, June 30th on my wall calendar. As if I have some sort of communication and/or bargaining power with the complicated plumbing that makes up my sex organs. Note to my ovaries: Okay girls, no cramps before the end of the month or I take away all the chocolate.

The reality is when it comes to having a woman's body? Fellas, we have no fucking clue how to drive this thing. Communicating with our bodies is like giving directions to a 13-yr-old Brazilian cab driver in English. No comprende.

We women, hopefully, have a sort of body awareness. We get a feel for when things are going to happen, like puffing up like a water balloon means Aunt Flo's on her way or whatever. But it's not like my vag talks to me or something. It doesn't tell me what it's going to do.



My sex organ is like a brainless, flighty 2-yr-old Thoroughbred filly who flits around a pasture bolting away from every butterfly or bee that drifts past the end of her nose. She's unsafe at any speed and with any rider. My ovaries and uterus are like the Chevy Covair of the vital organ world. Seriously, Ralph Nader should publish a study on my vag and all the near collisions it's almost caused.

So right now, I'm doing what every woman on earth who lives any where near modern medical facilities does: I'm waiting. I had an ultrasound on Wednesday, right after the Tuesday High Drama in the ER but I have to wait.

I hate to wait.

Paranoid, Neurotic, Psycho Feline

... seeks similar in human owner.



Enjoys sleeping 22 hours a day, hiding, cringing, randomly freaking out, kicking cat litter across the room and climbing on kitchen counters when no one is home.



Hates sunlight, cuddling, petting, loud noises, other life forms, expensive cat toys, catnip (what IS that stuff?), normal cat food, chicken, being observed and refrigerator motors.

Email foster cat mom for more info.

(sigh) When can I take her back to the SPCA?

No ... Fuck You, Schultz!

Stop Starbucks

And BTW, their coffee is total crap. Tully's is better.

Another Awesome Documentary

Sprawling from Grace.

The "Easy Button" Circle Jerk

After months of stir craziness, I'm about to take the first minimum wage job that comes along. Yesterday I went to Staples' job site. What a pain in my ass some of these HR sites are. An HOUR minimum to complete their form pages?

So the first mine in the turd field was this credit check disclosure statement (this is for a minimum-wage job stocking printer paper and holding up a wall):

This application contains a number of disclosures and consent forms which usually are provided in written form. I understand that I have the right to receive such disclosures and give my consent or authorization on paper instead of electronically. If I do consent (blah, blah, blah) applies only to the electronic transactions related to this job application, and that I can access the electronic records by contacting Unicru. I further understand that I may request a paper copy of any consent or authorization I give electronically. I may receive such paper copies at no cost within the next 60 days by contacting Unicru at 1-800-338-6321 or visiting www.unicru.com for contact information.

Translation: We're going to ask for a lot of unnecessarily personal information and then we're going to get this fly-by-night outfit, Unicru, to snoop around in your credit rating. Don't sue us.


(Actually, I've read the FCRA and I don't remember the plot line going quite this way)

Fair Credit Reporting Act
I understand that a background check (Consumer Report) may be obtained for employment purposes only at Staples.
Staples may make inquiries to Sterling Testing Systems, Inc., a Consumer Reporting Agency, concerning your employment suitability and qualification. You may contact Sterling Testing Systems, Inc.: 800.899.2272 or Find contact information on Sterling Testing Systems, Inc. using any computer connected with the World Wide Web at: http://www.sterlingtesting.com. [Please do not contact Sterling Testing Systems, Inc. for the status of your employment application. Sterling Testing Systems, Inc. does not have access to this information and will not be able to respond to your request.] [Please do not contact Unicru for results of the background check. Unicru does not have access to the report and will not be able to respond to your request. Sterling will provide you with a copy of your consumer report upon written request.] Staples may verify all or part of the information I give Staples. (Translation: we probably won't even read your application). I hereby authorize Staples to procure a consumer report and, to the extent permitted by law, make any inquiry into my credit history, motor vehicle driving record, criminal and civil records, prior employment (including contacting prior employers), education as well as other public record information.

If any of you, like me are tired of this corporate home invasion crap, feel free to call the number above and tell these people that they're violating both federal labor and credit law.

But wait, it gets better. In the Employment History of this form page which is longer than a tape worm's rectum, they give only these options for why you are no longer with your last employer:

* Why did you leave this employer? (check all that apply)

• Accepted a job somewhere else
• Returned to school
• Moved to a new location
• Did not like the work
• Dissatisfaction with my supervisor
• Unhappy with my pay and/or benefits
• Terminated due to attendance
• Terminated due to poor performance
• Terminated for not following policies
• Terminated due to economic downsizing or store closure
• Lack of steady work/not enough hours
• Had conflicts with the work schedule
• Lack of advancement opportunities
• Wanted a job that better suited my abilities
• Did not get along with coworkers
• Unhappy with company policies or rules
• Seasonal job
• I am still working for this employer

Translation: Hey Fuck Up, how'd you lose your last job?

When you file for state unemployment insurance, they offer only three possible reasons:
1) Laid off due to lack of work,
2) Fired/terminated for reason and
3) Voluntarily quit.

Apparently three simple answers is just not good enough for ol' Staples!

Then the real fun begins. A 36-page psych test to determine whether or not you're going to be 5 bucks short on your till. And then companies like this one or FedExKinkos and Mall-Wart scratch their bloated corporate heads and wonder why they have such high turn over and why it's costing them so much annually to go through the laborious process of hiring people?

Maybe, Mr. Corporation, if you didn't start by treating prospective employees like they were felons ...

Forgive Student Loan Debt

Robert Applebaum and Kevin Bartoy are better than super heroes. They're ordinary people who are questioning WHY in the fuck former college students should be straddled with unbearable debt FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES?!

How does crippling debt and non-existent credit = healthy free-market capitalism???

How are we supposed to be good little mindless consumers and help drive the ponderous engine of the Western World forward when we can't even afford the cheap plastic crap at Mall-Wart?

What I've been wondering for the last half dozen years is, what's next?



Will debtor's prisons make a come back ala Charles Dickens?

Or will we just have privatized corporate prisons where everybody gets let out for the day to go work and then comes home to lock down?

Forgive Student Loan Debt.

Trekkin'

I went and saw "Star Trek" yesterday. I got to the downtown megaplex waaay too early, so bought my ticket and then had to wander and look at all the stuff I couldn't afford and didn't really need.



Anyhoo, the flick was pretty good. Abrams has a knack for gathering casts that have a fair amount of synergy. Zachary Quinto was delish as the new Spock and Chris Pine was surprisingly good stepping into the Spandex of Bill-the-Pregnant-Pause-Shatner. At one point, the actors were doing such a good job feeling out the whole Spock/Kirk bromance I thought they were gonna kiss, like with tongue and everything. Ah well, hopefully in the next installment.

My only complaint: Abrams used the now industry-standard, rapid fire editing. You barely have time to process one scene and the camera is lurching off to show us the next explosion or flying debris, whatever. I know it's the norm now, but I still don't like it.

Ursula Le Guin is right: we're now substituting violence for drama.

B+

Fuckidol

Yesterday, after an un-enthused two hours at the gym (lung infection kicking my ass) I hiked over to Whole Paycheck Market for some bagels and soy milk. In the process of hiking the 1.2 miles to the store I lost my prescription eyeglasses out of my pocket (had the prescip sunglasses on at the time). I spent yesterday late afternoon stomping through rush hour up and down Denny Way in search of my specks to no avail.



What's weird is, while I was walking to the store, some gimpy homeless crazy started following me. In Seattle we are ass-deep in homeless crazies so I'm used to it. But at one point the guy sorta dogged me for two blocks muttering loudly to (I thought) himself. Every time I hit a stop light, I'd pause, pull my iPod headphones off and glance back at him and he'd be about a half block back giving me the Woolly Crazy Eyeball.

I'm now wondering if Mr. Offhismeds found my eyeglasses and was, in his own Thorazine way, trying to give them back.

Shit, shit, shit! I really liked those glasses. After checking today, I found out it would run me about 400 bucks to replace them.

In other news, I had this flu cold that I think I possibly caught from the cat I fostered for two weeks. Said flu has left my sinuses/throat but remains dug into my lungs like a tick in a dog's ass. I don't even remember how many times I woke up last night and coughed and coughed while hanging my head over the side of the bed. Echinacea, etc. has been only partially helpful.

Fuckidol, I'm going to Linuxfest in B-ham tomorrow.

The DEpression and pets

MSNBC had a great article on how the 'recession' is affecting pet owners and how the number of dogs and cats being surrendered to the SPCA (and municipal dog pounds) is skyrocketing.

I took Mer kitty back to the SPCA today out in Eastgate. She's a love but I just can't be anything other than a 'foster' cat mom right now since I'm not even sure how much longer I'll be living in this area.



Anyhoo, the stories about people forfeiting their pets because they're losing their home are tragic.

(Foster) Cat Mom

I'm a foster cat mom now. I signed up as a volunteer with the SPCA a week ago. Mercedes (hate the name, call her 'Mer') has been ensconced here for a week. Her horrible lung infection is gone and I'm FINALLY done force-feeding her antibiotics.

When I signed up, I had this picture of a cute, sweet 5-month old kitten to take care of. Instead, the head volunteer honcho handed me a carrier with a 16.5 pound 7-year-old female cat. I nearly dislocated my shoulder lugging her home from the Sound Transit stop.



To her credit, Mer Kitty is demure, quiet, perfectly litter-box trained, doesn't destroy house plants and was the quietest cat I've ever transported in a carrier. (I helped a friend haul a couple of her cats to the vet a few years ago and it was YOWLING, inhuman SHRIEKING and non-stop insanity for two miles through terrible Seattle traffic.)

Anyhoo, she goes back to SPCA next Thursday and then I'm going to take a volunteer 'break' and wait a couple weeks before I have to start dealing with litter boxes and cat fleas again.

Right now, seriously folks, I don't know if I'm going to have a place to live come May 5th. No lie, the shit in my life is that deep.

UPDATE: Mer Kitty's catnip addiction is out of hand. She's now demanding 'cat crack' at all hours of the night. I've had to cut her off the herb. She's out of control! ;p

Creep Me Out!

I have a checking account (and almost penniless savings) with a huge, well-known west coast bank. The last few months, the bank has been creeping me out to no end. I have "online banking" but I still insist on the old monthly bank statements.

Anyhoo, watching mysterious "overdraft" fees magically appear on my online account one day and then mysteriously vanish the next day is getting old.



Yesterday, my unemployment insurance went through in deposits but before that, the bank was trying to auto draft my monthly ISP bill plus some weird "overdraft" fees (the ISP is a whopping 45 bucks a month) and I only had like $30 in checking at the time. The catch is, I checked and the auto draft for my ISP bill wasn't supposed to go through for another 48 hours. WTF?!

It's like watching a fucking game of Three-Card Monty.

To paraphrase Bill Maher: "Stop trying to sell me online banking shit to make my money safe. I put it in a bank because BANKS are supposed to be safe!"

One dollar's worth of hope?

A few weeks ago my checking acount balance plummeted to like minus 10 cents or something. Anyhoo, I fixed the problem and then, weirdly, this showed up in my mail.

I've been denied an ETB (foodstamp card) because I "make too much money" on Unemployment Insurance.



Then, bizarrely, Washington Social Services sends me this check for a whopping one dollar. Don't know if my balance had anything to do with this or if it's part of the first stimulus that Bush signed right before he left?

Also it might be a new annual WA state thing for low-income renters. Once again living in CHHIP housing has helped me just enough to annoy me ... but not really help.

I can now buy half a cup of coffee.



Oh wait, I can't. The Tully's closed.

Best Alternet Essay EVER!

Boys can't handle this.

I'm jealous of 'anonymous', wish I'd written it. I especially like the beginning.

And here's yet another Alternet essay I'm jealous of:

Stella ... where is your groove?

Amanda Marcotte hits point after point when discussing hetero women's sex drives (or the lack of) but this one really stood out:

To add to it, sexual desire in our culture is almost solely contextualized as something straight males have and not anyone else. Images of nubile (presumably straight) women with no clothes on still signify "sex" in our culture. Half-dressed women greet straight men everywhere they turn with beckoning smiles and lidded eyes, titillating men and inspiring men to think about sex constantly. Straight women don't get near the provocation on a daily basis -- is it any wonder that 60% of the men who answered the Consumer Reports survey thought about sex once a day, but only 19% of women?


One for the hetero girls

American Idiot

On slow nights (we unemployed have a few) I've watched Wife Swap. It's this over-the-top reality show that doesn't just press the offensive button, it leans on it for 54 minutes once a week.

One episode had a white supremacist family swapping moms with an African American family. There's been a lot of so-rural-we-say-shucks families mixing it up with city slickers. And Wife Swap has done the Pagan-Punk-Rocker Mom vs. the Bible-thumping-hillbilly family to DEATH.



Now, weirdly, America is offended by the latest installment. (This after several seasons of offensive?!!!) Yes, the lethargic ire of white trash America has been roused by a Brit Twit in San Francisco, a city that's actively cultivated snobbery since about 1979.

Apparently what's got everybody's Wall-Mart undies in a twist is the fact that the twit was A) un-apologetically rude, B) brazenly proud of his (apparently upper) class and C) he's a foreigner, dagnabit!

So after multiple seasons of paranoid, controlling, psychotic husbands forbidding their families to watch 'sinful TV', dine in restaurants that serve 'murdered animals' or fail to clean their rooms ala boot camp style with a toothbrush -- they're upset because some Brit Twit talked trash about ATVs?!

I wonder how much of this ire is about the Twit verbally lashing out at the redneck wife and hurting her feelings vs. his attack on 'Merkica and the slothful, stupid pastimes so heavily promoted in some parts of the country (Missouri, anyone?).

ATVs are stupid and they do promote laziness, just like the American car or SUV. And paintball is great if you live in a trailer in Tennessee and you've run out of cows to tip, but promoting it as a way to get your gap-toothed spawn into college? PA-LEASSSE!

The Twit is right if it only takes some Toff asshat like him to get under America's skin. We are inbred, stupid and lazy if that's all it takes.

Traveling with Tyler

This has been floating around the web for a few years but I decided to grab it off a travel site and link it here.



It's just ... lovely!

And to think ol' Richard was tellin' me about creative minimalism way back in 1991.

Dr. Phil = Not really a doctor, not really wise

I knew there was a reason I've linked to Feministing.com!!!

What an awesome rant on an utterly retarded show.

Yeah, fuck you Phil, you creepy shit kicker.