While I'm not here

This is what I've been doing with my time:

Kate Beaton: I love love love. I just keep coming back.

Asterios Polyp. Just read it, if you like comics.

While I was in Laos and Cambodia, I was digging Never Let Me Go. Also excellent.

The world is just full of stuff that's good. How are you supposed to find the time to do your own things?

Fuck it, I'm going to blog more

Anyone watching Mad Men (obsessively like me)? I'm even feeding the habit peripherally through re-watching movies such as North by Northwest, The Apartment, and reading this book:


It tries to show how much things were changing in the mid-late sixties via an in-depth study of the development and production of the five movies nominated for best picture Academy Awards in 1967. It's a really good read. Super-well researched. Anyhoo, I digress.

There's an episode where Kinsey has this great idea (supposedly; I'm sceptical) but he's drunk and doesn't write it down and thereafter continually regrets the loss of the (supposedly) best idea he's ever had. The 'moral' being, write it down. That's the moral I'm choosing to take in this moment, given that there was something I needed to write down, which triggered the memory of that episode, so I've retrospectively assigned that moral to the story. I can't even remember how it was needed for the narrative. Oh yeah, I think it was to show how good Peggy is relative to her peers at coming up with ideas.

My old friend Rommel said something once about not writing all those ideas down, and getting stuck in yesterday's stale ideas and re-churning them. Put them away (or something), he says. Go fly a kite.

The Crimson Petal and the White

Right now I'm reading this:


It took a while; initially I felt it was too cold or something, but I'm about a third of the way in and it's completely pwning me. It's a page-turner, to be sure.

The best part, now that I'm in there, is that I have some 500 pages to go.

Procrastinatin'

I was cataloguing books on Goodreads, a task I allowed myself as a reward for finishing Dreams From My Father. A chance encounter with Spike Milligan on said site reminded me of how much I loved his war memoirs when I discovered them as a young 'un (teen). I mean to read them again, now. Soon praps. (Or not - I have to read according to the rules first). Anyway. I added a new category to account for his description of shellshock in the fourth of the trilogy (and his bi-polarness in general), which I called mental illness. Then I needed to go through all my 'read' books (I know, I know) and mark up the other books with that tag. This proved a problem; is (for example) The Virgin Suicides about mental illness? They all killed themselves - something must have been going wrong in their brains, right? Or what about American Psycho? Does he have an illness? Is sublimation an illness? Or nihilism? What constitutes a mental illness anyway? How about Louis Riel? Is going a bit nuts not a rational response to oppression? And maybe his vision was true, truly from god - who am I to say?

Anyway, the anti-climax here is that I changed the label to the more inclusive and unreconstructed 'madness_mental illness', which allowed me to tag tales involving things like depression and OCD.

This labelling thing is a lark, innit. In the words of Sandra Bernhard, "don't label me: I'm a people person".

Progress on Rules

Today I had to exercise some self-control. In keeping with the new rules, I did not buy either of the two books I was considering at Gleebooks second-hand.

I will probably long for them for a couple more days, then I'll be over it.

If not, I'll go back for them in blatant disregard of my commitment.

Our apartment is bitterly cold today, despite the sun outside. Studio calling! (There's a heater in there.)

Rules

I'm making some rules.

I'm not allowed to buy any more books until i read at least a third of the ones I've got waiting. Opportunities to buy graphic novels or illustrated art books at highly discounted prices (ie in an op shop) don't count in that rule. No more novels, or Amazon and its ilk until I get through the backlog.

What else?

No more spending without reference to my new Financial Priorities list. Food and drink and the like are exempt from the rule. Also art supplies.

I will turn off the power at the wall in our lounge room whenever I think of it and it's practicable.

Because the rules are public I will have to stick to them.

Don't make fun of my rules. I know they're small, but they're a start.

A start of what, I hear you ask? I do not know.

Last word for the day

I'm finally really stuck into this book.


It's totally doing it for me now. I'm about a third of the way through.

I can hear the Fleet Foxes in the other room, so I'm going to read some more.

Aussi, parce qu'il pleut.

More of the same, really

What kind of review do you call this, Goodreads reader?

"I know I read this, but I really don't remember anything about it, so I don't think it would be fair for me to give it a rating. "

Come to think of it, I feel that way about some books. Read 'em today, gone from your memory tomorrow.

I've used up all my BookMooch points so now I'm wasting time on Goodreads. Some people who claim to like books so much might spend their spare time reading, but noooo, I have to get all meta on books' asses.

Things are looking up

- Feel less rutty (ie no longer in rut)
- Room tidied
- Breaking back of art projects
- Spring arrived!
- More work obtained (poverty fended off again)
- Haircut
- Quazillions of books mooched waiting for me to read!
- internet addiction subsiding (enabling life to be addressed)

In other news, it has been so long since I blogged that blogger has changed its interface in the interim. (Blog, blog; inter, inter).

Live and Learn

I was given this book for my birthday (among other thoughtful presents):


I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I'd like to be like Joan Didion. She seems so collected, so smart. I feel that I will be smarter, happier, more focused and engaged when I am reading this book. Those qualities will transfer themselves to me.

Shelves ahoy!

OK, I take it all (the unposted post) back! Now we have brand new shelving (at least someone has been productive today) and can now spend our saturday night arranging books! Taking them out of boxes! Saying hello to old friends and meeting new ones! Maybe I should make it into a wine-drinking pizza-eating records-playing book arranging hula luau party. I think yes. There's gotta be someone around up for that other than me ... I think it could be very NICE.