Today I was uploading pictures from my camera onto my computer and it took FOREVER because I have never deleted any pictures of my memory card since I got the camera in May. I was waiting to see how many pictures I could fit on my memory card but after 800 plus photos I decided it was time to delete. And to post some of the pictures that I've taken.
This is Natan and I in front of the CSPAN bus that was at the Miami Book Fair when we went to see Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie was great and really funny and intelligent and good at answering crazy peoples questions (some guy asked, well not really asked but told him about an article in Newsweek that said Rushdie was warned not to fly on 9/11. Rushdie was just like uhh well there have been many times I wasn't able to fly but mostly because they didn't want me on the flight.) but the guy who was interviewing him was kind of a dope and in many cases didn't really ask questions just sort of brought up parts of the book he liked and trailed off. But I did get my copy of Midnight's Children signed, which I just finished reading a couple of days ago. One of the things I like most about Rushdie is his ability to interweave history and fiction into an exciting coherent and original idea. It's right up my alley. Midnight's Children tells the history of modern India through the narrator Saleem, who was born exactly at midnight on the the day of Indian independence and whose life parallels/influences the events of the whole country. (sidenote: Just now as I was writing this I was reading the description of the graduate class I want to take in the spring called Post-Modern world literature and this book is on the requirements. I didn't even realize it, but that means I've already read 3 or 4 of the readings. I have another one of the books, One Hundred Years of Solitude that I could start reading too. Man I will be so prepared.)

This is a delicious breakfast I made for myself one day. After Thanksgiving we had a surplus of potatoes so one day I made latkas and then these hash browns, which did not get as crispy as I wold have liked but they were still good.






And now what I really spend most of my time photographing; my cats!
Red loves going outside.














And he really loves to roll in the dirt.























He is even friends with my dog.











My other cat, Peter, is not as adventurous. He spends his days inside, he was obsessed with the Whole Foods bag for about two weeks.

Adjustments

Last week, I bought this sweater from Goodwill:



But the buttons were mismatched and one was even missing!



So I put these nice maroon buttons on.




Yesterday I decided to put my mom's bike basket onto my bike because she has had it for months and never attached it to her bike. It's a really nice basket too, you can detach it from the handlebars and carry it around. Neat. So after I spent about half an hour searching through my dad's very unorganized tool shed for the two basic tools I need, I took my bike for a ride up to work to pick up my check. Then I went to Target and bought some tights on clearance! Afterwords it was to the Helen B. Hoffman Library book sale. I got a book on Sinclair Lewis and a book of F. Scott Fitzgerald's correspondence. Exciting. It was such a nice bike ride. I rode up Fifth Street and across University and Broward on my way to work. Then, on the way back it was a ride through mall parking lots. First, through the Broward Mall parking lot to Target and then through the empty Fashion Mall parking lot back to Fifth Street.

Tomorrow I am going to see Salman Rushdie speak at the Miami Bookfair. I'm really excited, I have been reading his book Midnight's Children all week and I read this really great interview with him about his new book, but I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in Rushdie. Check it out here:http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=17211218&cds2Pid=22520

Tonight I think I might watch the Wizard of Oz. Last year I had to do a presentation on an essay that Rushdie had written about the Wizard of Oz, but I hadn't seen the movie in so many years.

Obsessions! Delusions! Sickness!

I have been bedridden for three days with an awful stomach bacteria/virus/mysterious sickness. I won't go into all the details except that I was never that sick, not even when I was in South America (where I dangerously drank iced beverages, but thankfully skipped the sea food in Villa El Salvador) for six weeks! I will share one thing; Saturday morning, after spending much of the night awake and sick, I eagerly poured myself a nice glass of ice water (as I do every morning). I was especially looking forward to the drink that particular morning because I was dehydrated after vomiting every hour for most of the night. But there would be no cool satisfaction that morning as no little than five minutes later I was in the bathroom again, throwing up cold vomit. Unbelievable! Betrayed by my good friend water! I was so hurt. I love water and often declare my fondness for ice water in particular, so it was very damaging to have this happen.

Although for much of the weekend I was only able to lie in bed in the fetal position I did manage to re-read Anne of Green Gables, which I have read countless times. I felt I really needed something nice, loving, comfortable, and even heartwarming because the last two books I read were weird, creepy, uncomfortable, and disturbing.

The first was Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. Oh Vladimir Nabokov, how you love the untrustworthy, obsessive, delusional narrator! In this case it's Charles Kinbote (or is it?!) who presents us with a 999 line poem by his good friend (questionable) and neighbor (most likely true) John Shade, a well-known American poet. The poem is one line short of completion as Shade died before finishing it. Honestly, to even describe this book is like working out a puzzle so I think it's best to just lay out the format of the book and then get into the insanity. First, we get an introduction by Kinbote describing the poem and how he came to be in possession of this work (much to the chagrin of Shade's other friends and Shade's widow), how he met Shade and the nature of their friendship, and which windows of his (Kinbote's) provide the best view of the different rooms of Shade's house. Also mentioned is Kinbote's home country of Zembla (a made up country that plays a large part in the book). Next, is the 999 line poem called Pale Fire. It is an autobiographical poem in four cantos. The last, and largest part of the book is Kinbote's comments and notes on the poem. Obviously this is not the traditional format for a work of fiction and at times it's difficult to read because you are constantly cross-referencing between the poem and the notes but it works itself into your mind until you become as obsessed as Kinbote. This book has so many levels and weird aspects to it that it would require much more than just a simple blog entry to get into everything (and also a second or even third reading on my part) so I'll just leave you with some of the many different interpretations of the novel. Most first time readers(according to critics), like myself, will follow the story as it's presented and accept that Kinbote is the narrator and although he is obviously delusional and obsessed there is some truth to what he says. Perhaps he is really the former King of a distant land (Zembla) that had to flee to America after a revolution. Others see the whole set-up as a work of John Shade as a way to present his poem. He is the literary genius and he simply invented his spying neighbor and the land of Zembla as some sort of device to frame his poem. Another group claims the novel is the insane product of a minor character who works at the university! Honestly, when I read about the third interpretation I had to go back and look for this character because I hadn't even remembered him.

The second book was The Collector by John Fowles. It was a much simpler concept but by no means less disturbing. In it a socially awkward butterfly collector wins a lot of money and abducts a young art student named Miranda. He keeps her as a "guest" in his cellar at his secluded cottage for several months. It was really a rather depressing book, especially the part told through Miranda's hidden diary that she keeps while locked up. Although she tries several times to escape, she is always out-smarted or over-powered. The most upsetting thing about the book is that by the end he has not changed at all, he sees no problem with his behavior and he continues to blame nearly everyone else for his short comings in life.

So you can see how after reading these two books I needed Anne to cheer me up! I found out that one of my favorite English Professors at FAU is teaching a graduate class in the spring about post-modern literature and is assigning Pale Fire, so I am going to try to take the class as a non-degree student (the deadline to apply to the graduate program for the spring has already passed). I hope that works out because I really want to discuss the book with other people and hear their opinions on it. Plus it would motivate me to write a substantial piece about and not just a brief mention in my blog.

Dear George Duke:

Why would you chose this title title for your album, why didn't anyone stop you from naming it this? How am I, as a music retailer, supposed to not laugh when someone asks for this by name? And that picture on the cover really isn't helping.



So thanks for the all the laughs, hopefully you'll gain respect and awards for this album and I can hear numerous people say this name on television and radio.

Sincerely,
A concerned music seller.

Haircut.

So I have been growing my hair out for almost two years which means I haven't changed my hairstyle in just as long. I wanted to keep my hair long but I wanted something different so I decieded on BANGS. Here is my hair before the cut:

 

And here it is after!

 

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

I just finished reading Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test:

(my cover unfortunately does not look like this)and although I thought it was a good book it is definitely my least favorite Tom Wolfe book. Tom Wolfe is on of my favorite authors and for years I’ve had to explain to people that this novel, one of Wolfe’s most well known, is one of the few Tom Wolfe books that I haven’t read. First off, the writing in the book is great. I have yet to read something of Wolfe’s that is uninteresting. Wolfe has written about so many subjects; from stock car drivers, surfers, astronauts, wall street, college life to the subject of his new book South Florida (!) that I think it’s fair to say that he is an expert at conveying enthusiasm for subjects that the reader (I’m using myself as the example here, but I’m sure that others feel the same way) had little to no interest in previously. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Wolfe traces the introduction of LSD to fellow author Ken Kesey

and his journey with the Merry Pranksters as Kesey travels across country by bus (this is probably the most well known exploit of Kesey)


befriends the Hell's Angels, begins holding Acid Tests (a giant multi-media event that was designed to create the effects of acid without having to take acid, but that was mostly a joke spread to give the events legality) and eventually had to flee to Mexico as a fugitive from the law. All of that sounds well and good but, personally, I can only read someone describing what someone else feels while on drugs for a limited time. Sentences and whole thoughts end without completion, ideas run together and sometimes entire paragraphs are just mishmash. I understand what Wolfe is doing, that he is recreating the experience, but again how long can you really read some thing like that? I also feel, and this is certainly not Tom Wolfe’s fault, that the book really propagates this idealization of the 1960’s, with the drug movement and the hippies and the whole Haight-Ashbury lifestyle. But the best and most interesting parts of the book are when Wolfe compares Ken Kesey and his followers to various religious movements throughout time. They all have a few general themes that they seem to follow: they begin with one person having a revelation of some sort which leads them to believe that others should also experience this. Then a select few catch on and begin to align themselves with this one person and share in the lifestyle that they propagate. These few people become outcast from society because of their views. At first they all act as equals with the originator having only a slight edge over the others, but eventually becomes a full fledged leader with devoted followers. Anything having to do with this in the book is extremely interesting but unfortunately it only comprises a small portion of the book.

At one point Tom Wolfe is describing the guest of a talk show that Ken Kesey was on:
“his other guest, Frankie Randall, looking sort of Las Vegas Yachtsman, as if any moment he is going to tell a long story about something very frustrating that happened to his El Dorado convertible in a parking lot in L.A.”

(no I don't have an autographed picture of Frankie Randall, I found it online but I think Wolfe describes him perfectly)
This really cracks me up. The section about Kesey on the talk show is a very brief part of the last chapter in the book and this character that Wolfe is describing has no significance to the book but still he has something interesting and funny to say about him. That’s why I love Tom Wolfe.

By the way, my favorite Tom Wolfe book is The Right Stuff.

Thrift shopping in Lake Placid.

Today, I went to one of my favorite thrift stores. I don't get to go to it very often; only when I'm visiting family in Lake Placid. It isn't that the quality of clothing is especially great, but everything is so cheap. They have a whole room of things for only $.25! (As I was typing that I realized that there is no cent sign on the keyboard. When did this get removed from keyboards? I like the cent sign.) So I got a bunch of patterns there for only $.10 a piece:


I hope that I am actually motivated to make these.
I also got this white belt:


which I think looks very nice with this dress that I bought at a thrift store in Hallandale last week:


I also got this shirt to add to my ever growing collection of stripped shirts:


And this scarf/headband, an owl belt buckle and a silver belt, which I just realized still has remnants of the price tag on it:



I'm very excited about my new things and best of all the total for everything was
only $3.40! What a deal.

A new direction!

From here on out this blog will not just be the place where you can find the archived shows from my radio days with one Jon Webber, no, it will be the place where I will post things. Lots and lots of things! Oh so many things! What kinds of things, you ask? Well you will have to check back to find out. For now enjoy this picture of my dog: