silver

I'm tired, I spent all day running about with friends (fun but exhausting), I have to get up tomorrow at a reasonable hour, and I can't go to sleep, apparently.

What was going to be an hour of bowling turned into an hour of bowling, then a quick run to the mall (one friend is leaving for two months tomorrow, and needed to return something), then about four hours at karaoke. As a result, I've been earwormed terrifically with this song. I am going to link you to the video with lyrics, because the music video is an incredibly emotionally-manipulative, sad piece of...of...film. WHY are so many Chinese music videos so sad?



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(Totally unrelated.)

You know, when I used to live in a 4-person household, the milk never went bad. This is because other family members are much bigger fans of milk and obviously we'd drink it long before the expiry date. But on my own, I keep milk mostly for tea, and sometimes I'm unpleasantly surprised by curdled stuff. So I've gotten used to sniffing and tasting milk very carefully every time to make sure it's still okay.

Milk is such a ubiquitous thing that I used to drink it without ever thinking about taste. But now that I have to assess its freshness, I can taste so clearly the animalness of it. It's not milk, it's quite unavoidably liquid that came from an animal, and while it doesn't really gross me out, it's so weird. How does this even come through taste? I think I'd like to go back to my ignorance.

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THERE ARE TOO MANY BOOKS IN MY ROOM. They're on my shelves and on the floor and under my desk and under my bed and on my night table and stacked on my table and desk and EVERYWHERE. It's starting to drive me a bit bonkers. Every time I tidy up, they just get sprawled everywhere again. I need to make another trip to the library, but I haven't reviewed them yet! Oh god.

While I was waiting for friends this morning--I love them, but J was a full hour late and generally they're never punctual--I sat in Chapters and read Karen Miller's Empress. I've read Karen Miller before--she wrote some really great stuff set in the Star Wars Prequel EU mostly focused on Kenobi and Skywalker (easy path to my heart). Empress is gritty fantasy instead. Somehow, considering the extensive torture sequence in Wild Space, in which iirc Kenobi touched a lightsaber to his wound in order to use the pain to connect with Coruscant (AUGH), I'm not terribly surprised by the darkness of Empress.

The interesting thing (to me, anyway) is that while I'm interested in continuing with Empress, which starts off with the protagonist (a girl) watching her mother be beaten and then raped and being subjected to regular beatings herself--as indeed all the women are in this tiny, desert-locked village--I couldn't get more than five pages past Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. Like Empress, Wolf Hall starts with a son getting beat by his father, but I think there's a vein of kindness running through Empress that I really didn't think was going to happen in Mantel's novel, and I immediately ditched. Hekat in Empress is definitely subjected to highly distilled misogyny, but she gets away, and starts exploring a new land. Mantel on the other hand--well, it's straight up historical fiction, and there's no getting away.

I was biking today to work when I saw two birds tumble out of the air right past me. At first I thought I'd scared them (there are a pair of quail-like birds that act like pheasants--meaning that they scare me half to death each time) and then I realized that they were fighting. A robin and a pigeon--and the pigeon must have been eight, nine times bigger than the other bird. And yet the robin kept flying up to a tree, then diving down to strafe the pigeon. Repeatedly. And in the end, the pigeon gave up and flew to another tree, some ways away, while the robin taunted it. Strange: I expected it to be the other way around.


Not going to elaborate on my other thing--the casual use of the term "Nazi". I would like to say, right now, that anyone using it is one of the following: a) horrendously ignorant, b) flippant. Horrifically so. Let me tell you, that despite the intervening seventy and eighty years (or more; it depends on the dates you use), the term "Nazi" is still incredibly loaded. It carries heavy, heavy negative connotations, and it calls up inexpressibly twisted actions. Do not use the word "Feminazi".

I finished reading The Metamorphosis today (actually, I started it today while waiting for the bus) and was rather disappointed by the ending and how short it was (more than half of it was the commentary and essays!). It was definitely compelling, though, and strange. Just like The Stranger by Camus, actually, which is more of a dream sort of book. Very odd. I'm getting behind on posting reviews, though...so many books!