Friday, January 25, 2008

somethings very random, indeed

believe it or not, i try to post on this blog far more often than i actually get it done. for one reason or another, or any combination of reasons, it seems i rarely actually have anything worth reading to put here. but there are a few things i want to say now, and finally i find them worth at least saying, if for no other reason than that i feel i ought to say something on my blog between such long absences.

first, the best television show in the history of mankind is Arrested Development. it is so far beyond any of the competition that to make a comparison is laughably foolish. the more i watch it the more i am confirmed in my initial belief in its startling perfection. one of the first things i would do if i ever became a famous critic would be to vehemently assert this fact, and then condemn everything else as unwatchable drivel.

second, there is a certain writer whose blog i have been reading with a considerable bit of enjoyment lately. it's true that he's my brother, but he's writing something that belies a good measure of potential, and i think everyone should
read and comment on it. i'm not saying it's perfect, but that i like something about it, and i think it's worth reading, even if it results in negative comments: try finding something close to it that it isn't painfully obvious the writer had no idea of natural expression going into it in the first place.

third, everything i write and post here is continually undergoing transformation, perhaps even more than i should like. some of the stuff is now unrecognizable from the form that it originally found on this blog. i just thought that you should all know that.

fourth, i have been working very hard to try to finish some things to put up here, and i should have them ready soon. i just wanted to let everyone know that, and to say it out loud so that i'll have to finish them soon.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

christmas break = reading time!

Christmas time is my traditional happy reading time. not that everything i read over christmas is necessarily happy, but i'm usually extremely happy doing it. so it was pretty depressing this christmas when i didn't actually get any good reading done. i usually shoot for at least one good thousand page novel, or a few shorter ones, new or old, and head (usually, but not this year) back to school, my entire life rocked by a new or revitalized relationship with a great book or two.

but it was a combination of things that kept me from getting that done this year--christmas parties, new years parties, lots a lots of work, a broken down car, and sheer indecision of what to read (something i am almost always plaugued by when i don't have a syllabus telling me exactly what to read, and a condition i have been hoping will be cured by being temporarily out of school).

so anyway, i haven't gotten anything good done yet this christmas, which is a real shame considering the quality of the works i've been trying to decide between (though in my defense i did start A Christmas Carol and a couple hundred pages of Bleak House (nothing says blustery cold winter like Dickens)). but all of this is to say that in the past couple days i finally started something i feel good about. you see, i got extremely sick new years day, apparently poisened by something i ate. and since i had off work, and couldn't go out, i reached for the first thousand page book within reach, and began Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. it was a necessary step, because without my christmas reading i was really beginning to feal like my life was in disarray.