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Give a hoot. Don't steal.

So last week I bought this:

and I'm already reading it for the second time. I have that reaction to McKinley books, even thought I'm starting to think she's a bit undisciplined as a writer. She opens up really intriguing plot threads and then doesn't always follow through on them in later works, and as a reader, that can be really frustrating. She's very cranky when her readers press for sequels too, but you know, no one likes to be left hanging.

So anyway, Sunshine is...uh...well, about vampires, sorta, and also democracy, and making cinnamon rolls. Believe me, it all manages to tie together eventually. You should read it, or one of her many books available at the library or book store. She sometimes gets shelved in Young Adult while Stephen King gets shelved in Adult Fiction, but that crime against logic and good literary taste shouldn't stop you. Read her because she kicks butt. And uh, Neil Gaiman digs her, if you need a reference.

So yeah, the other things I'm supposed to be reading have fallen by the wayside, and I have no excuse other than not wanting to get off my butt on the weekend and go check one of my assigned books out. This weekend, though, I'm back on the track, baby, and I'll have a review for you by the beginning of November. How's that?

Got some new blogs I'm reading that I haven't added to my links page yet:

les cadeux: another NY transplant with a blog, only she works in fashion, which I know nothing about (as you can tell from my wardrobe) and so find interesting.

and

The Life and Opinions of Andrew Rilstone, Gentleman: An English fellow who writes about comics and computer programming, but also knows quite a bit about C.S. Lewis, which is pretty interesting. Plus he uses words like "sweetie" for candy and "3p" and "programme."

October 19

Although I've been angsting over not feeling at home here, today my mood switched, and I began to feel the opposite way. Maybe it's just that I love sunny cold blue-sky days, and I can't possibly feel negative about wherever I am on a day like that. I liked them in Texas too, if I remember correctly.

Also, this week involved more spectacular weirdness than usual. To wit:

On Wednesday, I was waiting at the bus stop on Times Square to go home. Three dwarves walked by (as far as I could tell, none of them were guys I'd seen in movies). Well that was something you don't see every day. Then the bus shows up, but has it's "not in service" sign on, and it stops at the light without pulling up close to the bus stop. Everyone groans and curses, because we've already been waiting 10 minutes. Then the bus driver suddenly opens his door and gestures to us all, "come on, come on!" He does it furtively, because this must be against the rules. We cross traffic and rush up to the bus quickly, before the light can change. He won't take any money. "I can take you across, I can take you across." he says, meaning I guess that he's going west anyway, he might as well drop us off. So I rode home on the Secret Bus, with the lights off inside so no one would know we were illegal passengers.

Then on Thursday, I went to the Chinese restaurant I usually visit for my sesame chicken. Ahead of me is an old guy with white hair and a beard, wearing overalls and a long-sleeved red shirt. But attached to the sleeves of his shirt were dozens of white plastic spoons, glued at the end of the handle, so they would clack more effectively, I guess. He didn't have a sign or appear to be an entertainer, just a crazy guy covered in spoons. Made my day.

Other little things I dug this week were a sidewalk battery seller singing out "Triiiiiiiiiiiiiple AAaaaaaa. Douuuuuuuuuble Aaaaaaa," as I walked past, and a fashion shoot across the street from us. (the poor model was wearing a sleevless shirt in a freezing wind, brr). Apparently part of a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy episode was also shot in front of my workplace. Oh, and a television show (maybe cable access?) was shooting near Times Square as I walked home one day.

Speaking of cable access, I must admit it's a lot more interesting here. There are 2 main channels, and yes, most of what they show is crap. But the other day, I caught a part of a homemade documentary. It was really just vacation footage of the filmmaker's trip to Lake Tahoe, but he used fades, dissolves, and titles, as well as a nice soundtrack, to fill it out. He did a bit on the history of Tahoe, using still shots of pictures from history books he got at the library, and narrating over them like Ken Burns. Plus he included some Indian legends and a bit of mystical/political commentary. It was pretty great. I didn't catch his name, but I wouldn't mind seeing more of his stuff.

This almost makes up for the time I switched on cable access and saw someone's footage of guys peeing in a restroom somewhere...it was a full-frontal view, I'm afraid, and it was just wrong, wrong, wrong. Plus I don't know if the guys knew they were being filmed. Dang.

One last note: Joan of Arcadia is kind of a cool show; it has a really interesting take on how confusing it would be if God actually did show up and start telling you things directly. The acting and writing so far are quite good. Check it out. On the rare occasions CBS does come up with a good show, it needs all the support we can give it. The link I included is for Television Without Pity, a site that provides recaps of episodes you haven't seen with snarky commentary; very useful if you're trying to catch up on a series you like.

October 7

I admit, I'm a bit consumed with the whole Valerie Plame affair (for a good breakdown of the situation, go here). Although I'm very frustrated by the New York Times' lackluster coverage--New York or not, it ain't "librul" by a long shot. But anyway, ever since Joseph Wilson spoke of waiting to see Karl Rove "frog-marched out of the White House," I've had to restrain my glee. After all, the Bushies might slither out of this too, especially if the press continues being meek, harmless little good sheep. Should any of them have the huevos to do their job, we've got a Nixon-scale scandal here. Especially if the CIA decides not to let it go. And while I'm not the CIA's biggest fan, even I know it's stupid to expose agents and screw up their operations for petty revenge. You don't mess with the Agency.

In non-political news, work continues at a hectic pace as we slide towards the end of the season...OK, that's boring, what do you care about that. Work blah blah blah, it's work. What about the rest of my life? Normal weirdness continues. Poverty, New York strangeness, diet, Matt, weather. Talked about all that.

How about some random thoughts instead.

• My favorite part of the day is walking home or walking to the store, because it's a good time to think. And I like sunset, I like the way the city gets a little quieter as everyone goes in to dinner, I like how the light on the buildings is tinged with orange and slanted sideways. I like autumn evenings especially, how the air is warm with a chill underneath, how it smells colder and kind of burny.
  
  
• I don't usually miss bread, but today I did. Still don't miss pasta anymore.
  
  
• I still don't really feel at home here, sadly. I wish I did, I wish I loved it the way other people do. I like it, and I appreciate it, but it's not the same thing. I don't know if this is just some side effect of being raised like a gypsy and moving every two years, or if I will eventually be somewhere else. Or maybe I just haven't given it enough time. Maybe a crowded city on a medium-sized island just isn't big enough for me. Maybe I haven't had time to make enough friends. I have no reason to leave, but many reasons to stay, so I stay, but I wonder every now and then where I'll end up.It's hard to imagine a whole life here; some days I feel like I'm on a really long vacation. Or like I'm away at school.
  
  
• There was a shouting altercation of some sort upstairs when I got home. Some guy appeared to be unhappy about the noise a neighbor was making, and threatened to tell the landlord. She yelled "Tell him I'm just a normal person who works 8 to 6!" He yelled back, "What kind of work do you do that you make so much noise all day??" There were some expletives mixed in there somewhere. I went back into my apartment, but now I wonder, what on earth could have made that guy so mad? I hardly ever hear noises in the building. Maybe he worked at night and was trying to sleep during the day, but you know, people have to retile their bathrooms sometime.
  
  
• I heard the saddest story today about a friend of a friend; she was struggling to make it as an actress, working as a temp, and found out she had a gigantic cyst on her ovary. She had no insurance but somehow didn't qualify for any assistance. So she was going to have to pay $30,000 for the surgery out of her own pocket...or the bills on it anyway, for the foreseeable future. She had to give up her acting dream and move back with her folks. God only knows if she'll ever pay it off, or if she'll ever be able to do what she wants for a living.
  
  See, that's what's wrong with this country. No national health care isn't an abstraction to someone who's self-employed or wants to work in a difficult field that doesn't give out insurance benefits; it's about life and death, and assuming a crushing load of debt they may never pay off. You end up trading off your dream for your survival. That seems like a bad bargain when we know it's possible to provide care for everyone, just like it's possible to spend far more on a "Star Wars" missile system that's completely useless, or on handouts to billionaires who made the right investments in the Bush campaign.
  
  Not that I'm bitter, ahem.
  
  
• When I was an actual teenager, I really didn't listen to good music. I listened to Christian rock, which was not, sadly, very good. At all. There can be good Christian songs, of course, but they're mostly hymns. Christian "rock" on the other hand, is mostly warmed-over pop and country with some Jesus thrown in and a lot of cheesy keyboards. And I listened to it, because I thought I was supposed to. Though to give myself credit, I recognized both Amy Grant's evil and Weird Al Yankovic's semi-genius.
  
  So anyway, now I'm going through a much delayed music-obsession phase. If you want to know what kind of teenager I'd be if I still were one, I'd be the kind who listens to Aimee Mann, Belle & Sebastian, Rufus Wainwright, Fiona Apple, Ben Folds, and other somewhat depressed people with complicated lyrics. And also Beck, because he is a strange, strange man.
  
  But I do keep in touch with one part of the music I heard growing up, the old country of the 70s and 80s. Early Dolly Parton, some Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, and others. That stuff wasn't trying to convert anyone, so it actually had something interesting to say; it was music that sounded simple, but wasn't afraid to admit that there was darkness out there. Most Christian music fails because it won't admit that we have doubts, and that there aren't easy answers even if you do believe. That means most of it is dry, sterile, and useless. On the other hand, a lot of "secular" music is extremely spiritual. REMs "Losing My Religion" is more honest about spiritual struggles than a hundred "ain't God great" Christian pop songs. Because REM didn't have an agenda, they just wrote down what they were thinking. And they stumbled on something that speaks to a lot of people. You can't go hunting truth if you've already decided what it looks like before you start.
  
  But, there is one side benefit to being kept out of the musical mainstream most of my growing-up years (besides not having to listen to Guns n' Roses all the time); I ended up knowing a lot about some odd corners of music, because they were acceptable to my beliefs at the time. Besides the one Christian station in my hometown, I listened to the oldies stations, which sometimes featured some great old funk and R&B, like Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Ray Charles. In my increasing desperation to find something to listen to that wasn't Michael W. Smith (shudder) I also took a small side trip into some truly odd Christian groups, like 2nd Chapter of Acts. These guys were a true psychedelic hippy freak out Jesus group in their day, and I still have a fondness for their early stuff.

Just to review...
Blech	Wacky Jesus Freak Hippies	Evil