jackshoegazer | Entries tagged with book

JANUARY

01) The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (A)ѧ
02) Don't Sleep There Are Snakes: A Life in the Amazon by Daniel Everett (B)ѧ

FEBRUARY

03) To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson & the Quest for a New World Order by T.J. Knock (A-)ѧ
04) On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (A)ѧ

MARCH

05) The Ask and the Answer: Chaos Walking Book II by Patrick Ness (B)
06) IT by Stephen King (A)

APRIL

07) American Nerd: The Story of my People by Benjamin Nugent (C+)ѧ
08) If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell (A)ѧ

MAY

09) My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor (A)ѧ
10) The Given Day by Dennis Lehane (A)

JUNE

11) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (C+)ѧ
12) Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut (B)
13) Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley by Lawrence Sutin (A-)ѧ

JULY

14) The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Vol.1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson (A+)
15) The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale (A)ѧ
16) Drood by Dan Simmons (A)

AUGUST

17) The Terror by Dan Simmons (A+)
18) No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (A)

SEPTEMBER

19) Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut (A)∞
20) Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (A)
21) Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (A)

OCTOBER

22) Pentecost by David Edgar (B)
23) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (C+)
24) The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (A+)

NOVEMBER

25) The Half-Inch Himalayas by Agha Shahid Ali (A)
26) Welcome to Our Hillbrow by Phaswane Mpe (B-)
27) Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon (A)

DECEMBER

28) The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (A)
29) Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness (...in progress)

∞previously read | ѧnonfiction

My dreams have been insane since I moved. Two nights ago I dreamt I got carjacked but the jacker couldn't drive stick so I told him I wouldn't tell anyone if he just got out of my car ran away. It was a bit freaky since he had a gun pointed at me, but hey, I've been shot in dreams before and I just made the wound heal by thinking about it.

I can't remember my dream from last night even though I woke up in the middle of the night and made myself go over the plot of it while I was awake so I'd remember. Damn tricky memory.

Eris, the youngest and most appropriately named kitten, likes to eat raw green beans. She bats them around the house and then eats them. Weird. Though I once had a cat that liked szechuan chicken.

I finished Chuck Palanhiuk's Lullaby yesterday. It was excellent, and I'd have to say, as a book, better than Fight Club. I really don't want to like him, but I am forced to admit, that based on these two books, he is a decent enough writer with clever enouugh ideas that I will read more of his work. He is subversive and fun. He writes with a Vonnegutesque simplicity. Bastard.

Such as it is, here's my list of books I've read this year...

01) A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

02) Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson

03) A Game of Thrones by George R.R.Martin

04) A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

05) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

06) A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

07) Spook by Mary Roach

08) The Legacy of the Beast by Gerald Suster

09) Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins

10) A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

11) The World According to Garp by John Irving

12) A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

13) Lullaby by Chuck Palanhiuk

Okay, I have a banana and I'm going to work!

Behold my triumphant return!

I am living in Madison, officially now, not just staying here four nights a week. The internet is up. My computer is on a styling new desk courtesy of

shevus and Affordable Computer Help. I'm a week behind on everyone's LJ posts, and may never catch up. The bookshelves are painted. The youngest cat, Eris, is in heat, for the first time today. The kitchen is in impeccable order. The bedroom is a seething mass of clothes and luggage.

You could say I'm sort of moved in.

I've also made the switch to first shift. That means after two years of long nights, sleep-deprived days, black curtains and a regular melatonin diet, I have left the Land of Luna. See, here I am outside, on my lunch break, in the daylight! I may look angry, but I'm just squinting into the sun. Seriously! I'm like, totally not upset at being a day person :)

I am now attempting to make the corresponding changes in my behaviour to refelect my new solar schedule. Thus, I should accentuate the more social and alpha aspects of my personality. I should be outgoing and personable. I should shine like a glorious sunrise.

I've noticed that my life works in introspective/extrospective cycles. I feel the last several years have been a very introverted period for me, a time to recollect, to review. Now I must compile it all and express it. As such, I will be writing a lot more. I've gotten many ideas for some fictional pieces. The Jack Shoegazer books are solidifying in my mind, plus I want to complete some short stories and try to get in some magazine publications.

At this point, publication anywhere would be great. Perhaps I can go the Kilgore Trout method and get some bad sci-fi published in beaver mags.

In the meantime, I think you should know that Mexico had a real shit time in the mid 1800s.

They had just won their independence from Spain, and then France, Spain and Britain said, "Hey, now that you're a real county, you can totally pay us back all the money you owe us." Mexico, who was flat broke, not only from the war against Spain, but also because just as they won, the United States declared war on them and stole half their country, said, "Hey guys, chill. I'll pay you later, ok? Let me build you a cake or something."

So when Mexico told those three bastard countries that they couldn't pay, Britain, France and Spain all sent troops to kick the last little bit of snot out of Mexico. Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of the triumph of 4,500 Mexican soldiers over a better-equipped French force of 6,500. Pay no attention to the fact that they lost Mexico City right after that when the French, taking no chances this time, sent 30,000 soldiers against the defenders.

Thus, a Frenchman became Emperor of Mexico. And the real kicker, after the U.S. Civil War, we started sending guns and ammo to Mexico to help them depose the French. We are such bastards. So remember that, when you get wasted on Corona, celebrating Cinco de Mayo!

I'm totally piggybacking one of my neighbor's wireless signals right now. They must be Douglas Adams fans, as the name of the network is deepthought.

The first few days there was no internet signal here, but then day-before-yesterday, poof! there it was. Perfect timing too, since we just got our wireless DSL modem in the mail last night. Oh well, deepthought is slow as Martian molasses anyway.

We're still unpacking, our bedroom is a complete disaster. We pretty much have the kitchen squared away and the living room looks amazing. Pictures would be forthcoming but Jacquelyn's camera decided to go autistic or dyslexic on us, maybe both.

Our new neighborhood is the weirdest ever. It's a very multicultural area of Madison, as we've seen just about every ethnic/racial/genetic variety at one point or another as we've gone out and about. We have several parks and a community garden. The new pool is going up not far from here. There is an old man, who I suspect of being from Guatemala, who wheels a hand-made push cart up and down the streets here, jingling little bells. The kids across the street run out to him and buy ice cream treats.

Yeah, I feel like I live in the Twilight Zone sometimes.

Last night

kiwikat and her husband stayed over. They lost their electricity is a vast tsunami which wiped out parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota. We ordered pizza and watched funny shit on the internet. Have you people seen what Stephen Colbert did the other day? Jesus fuck! Balls of steel! Thank you Stephen!

One last note before I leave you, dear reader, first shift is a breeze if one remembers that one is being paid to work and not being paid to watch movies. Though I did get several pages into Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife by Mick Farren.

Not bad, Mickey, not bad.

Because this veil it has been lifted, my eyes are wet with clarity.

The world is a flurry,
A rambled, ransacked fury,
Disproportionate in length, desperate in breadth,
Base, mundane, with a squeaky, polished shine.
All surface, no depth,
No meaning but what we make,
Like a cake with no birthdays
Anniversaries or holidays to celebrate.

This is my last night as a vampire, my last night as a moonchild. My last night of lunacy. At least this particular brand of 3rd shift lunacy.

Starting tomorrow, which is really today, I am free from the confines of my employer for the next six days. On May 3rd, I return to work as a creature of the sun, a child of Sol. During the interval, I must finish packing, move, buy and move new furniture, and dance with the devil in the pale moon light.

Oh shite, who let Meatloaf in there?

My dear Jacquelyn has gotten sick again, this time contracting the stomach bug that my roommate was suffering from this past weekend. I, again, am the sole survivor, somehow naturally immune to the spreading affliction that plagues my home like zombies after a meteor landing. I played the role of good boyfriend, took care of her between fits of napping, went to the store to get the medicinal staples of stomach issues, saltines and ginger ale.

I have to make up for all the times I’m a crabby, grouchy bastard.

There was so much I wanted to say before I started typing and now it’s gone the way of the Studebaker. Only found as reproductions in the back lots of movie studios for period pictures. Of course that analogy doesn’t quite link up because that would mean that the rest of this post could be found in Los Angeles.

Which I can assure you, it cannot.

I finished The World According to Garp last night. It was quite good, though it was no Owen Meany. Owen really meant something to me, I’ve come to realize. While Garp was in a way, more biographically parallel to myself, Owen fulfilled that profound human need to connect to something bigger than ourselves, the belief, the desperate, dangerous need to believe that our lives have direction and purpose.

When we lost Owen, we lost that purpose, a perfect loop, a perfect chain, the joy and sorrow of something beautifully burning out. The absolute divine ecstasy that can only be found when one has completely exhausted one’s potential, completed one’s orbit.

Which is our purpose, after all.

Sometimes I think,
All we really want -
Our heart’s desire
Our soul’s entire
Plan, plot, scheme, and dream
Is to get home.
But like the factory
Of dear Mr. Wonka,
One must go forward to get back
Endlessly, endlessly
A never-ending track
That winds and whines and dines
To eternity and back
Veil to veil
A bigger picture
A better love
A deeper depth
To be and become
What we were in the beginning,
One.

Charles Baker Hennington was a humorless man who did not writhe in desire at his peripheral notoriety.

There is nothing left but sleep in my veins, a dumb, thumping pulse I write to suppress.

The people talking around me are driving me crazy. I can’t write when they’re talking. I can rarely write with television, movies or music playing. I think I finally understand the writer’s need for solitude. Which, of course, doesn’t explain J.K. Rowling who writes the Harry Potter books mostly in a café.

Each unto their own. Life. Path. Orbit. Spark.

The sleep falls like a curtain. Some light still comes in.

I’ve seen the day of your awakening, boy, and it’s coming soon.

I may not support shopping at Wal*Mart, but I have no qualms about accepting free boxes from them. So tomorrow morning I will go to the China-in-America-Cheap-Plastic-Crap-Outpost and collect a large variety of boxes in a multitude of shapes and sizes.

Until then, I'm going to dig my stored bits out of the garage and start going through it all. Ethan has to extricate his toys from Benjamin's (the roommate's son) sometime soon, which I predict will cause much bickering and shouts of "No, that's mine, retard!"

My roommate's cousin is here for the weekend visiting from Chicago. He's brought his kids with him, a boy of six and a girl of eight. They are friendly and well behaved, so it's not been a total terror to have them around. I made scrambled eggs and French toast this morning before they informed me they don't usually eat breakfast. Weird.

According to various meteorologists, it is going to be rain and thunderstorms all afternoon and evening. I had best go close my sunroof.

This place is beautiful. Why aren't I moving there? Oh, I don't even know where it is.

I'm almost finished with The World According to Garp. I think it hit a little too close to home, as Jacqui's on a career track to university teaching and I'm on the path of the writer and stay-at-home dad. IF this book has said anything, it's that lust causes big problems.

This is probably why Crowley placed it on such a high pedestal, under the conditions that you absolutely control and channel it in healthy directions. Jung even expanded Freud's limited view of libido-as-lust to define libido as the totality of psychic energy. Garp does his worst work when he's paying attention to his lusts and not his path. Once this crashes in the most horribly, dramatic way, he begins his best work yet.

I hope I'm over that hump already. No pun intended.

I talked with

hoodedvoodoo for an hour and a half before his cellphone battery died. It was good to reconnect and share our mutual experiences of high weirdness. Writing, zombies, astrology, fru-fru new agers, orgone accumulators, cults, aliens, existentialism, and our wacky dreams were some of our varied topics.

He's an amalgamist. I suppose I am as well. A cosmologicaly amalgamistic mystagogue.

It's been said before, but seriously, this time, I am on the last edit, which is mostly just a quick proofread, of Complex Psyche. After this, we just have to prep a few sample chapters for submission to our first five publishers.

Jacquelyn's been getting quite a bit of work done at school. I feel bad for distracting her when I'm around. I have to learn to be more invisible. I think it will be better once we live together; then we won't have that I-need-to-spend-every-free-moment-together feeling we get.

Aleister Crowley was born Edward Alexander Crowley. He once read that the most famous names, the ones that stick in one's memory, are constructed of a dactyl, a three-syllable verse foot in which only the first syllable is stressed, followed by a spondee, a two-syllable verse foot in which both syllables are stressed. Aleister is Gaelic for Alexander, so he changed his name to Al·eis·ter Crow·ley.

My name is Jer·em·y Par·ker.

I am back in Watertown for the first time in a week. I missed my kitties and they missed me. I missed Ethan as well, and I'll be picking him up from school in a couple hours. In the meantime, I thought I'd get caught up on LiveJournal and play some guitar.

Well, I haven't really read my friend's page all week because I rarely have a lot of free time when I'm in Madison. I went back about two days and then Firefox started acting all kerflunky, so I've given up for now. And I'm getting a weird error when I try to reply to comments from the notification e-mail. Weird. Anyhoo, in case I don't dive back into the re-attempt to read all your journals, feel free to comment with links to entries you think I might be particularly interested in, or you want comments on, or you know, any other reason.

The guitar playing is going good. Except when I'm typing.

Today I couldn't find my belt and Jacquelyn said that guys can't find things because they're hunters, as opposed to women, who are gatherers. I said she was right and if it was running across the bedroom, I'd sure be able to spear the damned thing. It was funny. But not quite as funny as when I was playing, chasing the wee kitty, Eris Apropos, and I dove off the bed to get her and as I slid off the bed, my boxers stayed on the bed. Uh yeah, I guess you had to be there.

I think I'm going to splurge some money I really shouldn't and buy Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on DVD.

I updated the titles of my journal and my profile information.

A letter from the University of Wisconsin arrived informing me that they have received my application and all relevant materials, i.e., transcripts and such, and that I should expect a letter in four to six weeks notifying me if I will be returning to an official academic life or forever doomed to, um whatever the other option is.

If I don't get into school, I think I might drop my hours at work as much as I can and dedicate myself to writing a novel, probably one of my Jack Shoegazer books. I also put in my request for a schedule change effective May 1st. If everything works out, I will be going back to a day schedule. No more sleepless days and purple valises under my eyes. I might even get some color this summer.

Waiter: What can I get you, sir?

Me: A tan, hold the cancer.

Waiter: Right away, sir.

Ah, that's the life.

Finished A Prayer for Owen Meany... most heartbreaking book I've ever read. Cried like a baby. Hate John Irving. Fuck you John for making me care.

Watched the 1963 The Lord of the Flies... nature documentary cinematography, bad child actors.. needs to be re-done, but won't because it's two hours of naked boys. Oops, I guess it was redone in 1990. Guess I'll watch it and hope. Maybe I should read the book.

Watched About Schmidt... Jack Nicholson doing the Bill Murray thing... older guy learns about his wasted life... pretty funny, odd, endearing. Beware... mullet alert and a naked Kathy Bates.

Tried to watch Futurama... still convinced that's a crap show. I've never giggled even once.

Played more Baldur's Gate II... completely stuck... there's still missions to do, but I can't figure out how to trigger them... don't want to sail away yet. Bastards.

Don't know what to read now... might dig into the Satanic Verses if I can't get my hands on the second George R.R. Martin book.

"It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth."
~John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

People who say, "Oh, I don't read books. I can't read more than five pages at a time. I only read magazines."

Is it just me or is Stanley Kubrick insanely overrated?

I'll give him A Clockwork Orange, that was a fantastic movie. I even read the book by Anthony Burgess, and Kubrick had excellent source material to work with.

However, Kubrick called Eyes Wide Shut his best movie ever. Double-you Tee Eff? It was terrible. I could barely watch. I had no connection to the characters, no sympathy for their plight, the acting was noxious, the plot contrived and shallow. Who is he kidding?

I didn't care much for Dr. Strangelove, though it had some good ideas which, yes, seem common-place and antiquated now. I didn't find The Shining to be anything special, except in the capacity to spawn an obsessively-repeated cultural quip of "Heeeere's Johnny!"

Here's where my big stink is, where I find the feces festering, where the chafe has set in and I'm ornery. 2001: a space odyssey. This is billed as a masterpiece, one of the best movies ever. I swear, it was the worst piece of pretentious, over-hyped, boring shit. I could barely stay awake. It's as if the whole movie takes place in slow motion. Had it come out today, it would be billed as an art film for aging hippies.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of psychedelics and transcendentalism, deep time, the origins of consciousness, and the projection of that into the future as any aging hippy, but I couldn't imagine finding that movie interesting in any way unless I was spending the evening with my head full of lysergic acid diethylamide. Then, I'm sure it's a hoot and I'll find the answers to life, the universe and everything will be much more than forty-two. But to say this is a masterpiece of filmmaking, I must protest.

That movie fucking sucked. Pardon my French. Which is funny because fuck is from the Middle English, attested in pseudo-Latin fuccant.

So perhaps someone out there can explain why I'm wrong, but until then, I cam going to read Arthur Clarke's book and then adapt my own screenplay for 2001, something that people who aren't acid burnouts can enjoy.

Complex Psyche
-or-
The OmegAphelion of Mustafa Shibui

by Parker J. Hood

A damaged psyche is like a horse gone mad - a slobbering beast forcing us to commit deeds beyond our very comprehension, driving us where we'd never imagine. What drives a mind over the edge? What truth lurks within the billowing bowels of the subconscious?

Mustafa Shibui would love to know the answers to these questions and more. Unfortunately, he's too busy with his new book. You see, his Editor is rather… demanding. More demanding than most, one might say.

Humoring the urgings of his Editor, under whose command he seems powerless, Mustafa slowly finds himself embedded in an epic conspiracy of apocalyptic proportions. The more he learns, the stranger things seem, as monsters, aliens, sorcerers, and one especially relentless fan-girl make repeated attempts upon his life.

With the help of a mysterious Serpent Queen, Mustafa races to determine his ultimate role in these shady intrigues. Have his employers, now revealed to be part of a powerful and enigmatic secret society, been pulling his strings all along? What of the strange Artefacts which everyone seems so determined to obtain? And for what sinister purpose might the device called the OmegAphelion be used?

Prepare to lose your mind in this complex maze of mystery wrapped around an enigma nestled in a Universe a-quarter-of-a-dimension over from our own. Schizophrenic in perspective and irreverent in style, this surreal parody of science fiction and fantasy masks the infinitely profound beneath a veneer of the uproariously shallow. The result is a wild journey with psychotic twists and jolting turns that somehow manages to land you safe and sound back in stark reality - whatever that is.

You’ve never had so much fun in the fault lines of the soul!

For all intents and purposes:

This is not
a poem,
I swear.
But,
it sure looks
like one.

The Book is done, except for two or three footnotes which John has to write. Then we will begin the submission process. I'm not even going to admit that it might take a while to get it published. This Book will get picked up by one of the first five publishers we send it to, and they will love it and lavish us with praise and a hefty marketing budget.

Also in the writing realm, I just sent the editors of Clavicle my little contributor blurb, which reads:

"A writer and artist meandering around the Midwest, my work is often surreal and complex, hiding the deep and mythic behind a fat layer of absurdity. Though primarily a fiction writer, I've been known to bust out the occasional scholarly paper and a heaping, haphazard ton of poetry, but hey, you can call me a monolatrous mystagogue."

I just realized I'm going to have a weird, busy week in November. I get back the 9th or 10th from Vermont, I work that whole weekend right afterward, the first issue of Clavicle - my first real publication - comes out on the 15th, the new Harry Potter movie comes out on the 18th, our initial letters of interest for the Book will be sent to publishers that week, and I know I'm forgetting a brazillion things that also seem to fall on that week.

Whew.

Anyhoo, it's time to get the wee lad up for school, so I bid you adieu.

*takes a bow, exits stage left*

Current Music: Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen

Going to bed in the wee hours again, but this time, I don't have poems to regale you with. I've been editing, and I am basically complete. This is the crap-editing I hate, which is purely grammatical, and not even that fun, but merely checking for consistency with punctuation and footnotes. The fun part is that we're adding a bunch of footnotes covering some of the more (fictional and non-fictional) esoteric aspects of the book. For instance, here is the footnote for Sothis:

Sothis – The star Sirius, known as the Dog Star; a star in the constellation Canis Major, the brightest star in the sky, approximately 8.6 light-years distant from Earth. Sothis rose with the Nile flood and was also associated with epidemics. Sothis was thus a destructive and greatly feared goddess, an Egyptian equivalent of Kali. Iachen was said to be an Egyptian magician who 'tamed' the power of Sirius and transformed it into a life giving power (just as the flood fertilized the land of Egypt with fresh Nile mud.) When he died he became the centre of a cult which kept a flame burning on his altar. When Sirius rose the priests of Iachen entered the streets with torches lit from the altar, in order to channel the power of Sirius and heal any diseases unleashed by it.

And here is the footnote about the Trans-O-Matic:

The Trans-O-Matic is a home teleportation device invented by the late Dr. Dennishimus Fringleman of Reading, England. It operates by voicing a KeyWord, much like a telephone number, for one’s destination. The teleportee is then phased into quantum particles and instantly re-manifested in the destination Trans-O-Matic. Precise enunciation is paramount, as it is quite embarrassing to suddenly appear where you aren’t welcome. Trans-O-Matic Caller ID became mandatory by order of Congress after Cincinnati resident Bill Torgas drunkenly slurred the KeyWord for his sister’s house and found himself in the Trans-O-Matic aboard AirForceOne. The Trans-O-Matic made a revolution in transportation, practically bankrupting the airline industry and made the late Dr. Fringleman an overnight celebrity. He is survived by his three children Casius, Ashanti, and Wayne, who are all, ironically, pilots.

There are tons more and I will be quite happy when they are done. Otherwise my day was spent making armor plating for Ethan's HALO-inspired space-marine costume and cooking omelets for dinner.

Oh, and my friend Gina, whose pagan wedding I missed because of my lightning strike, is designing and painting a tarot deck which she plans to get published and she wants me to collaborate on the accompanying book for the cards. I'm super-excited to have another writing project to look forward too and it's quite the 'coincidence' that this comes up just as I've pretty much decided to move to Madison. (She lives in Madison. She and her hubby Craig are two of my best friends from high school who I rarely get to see due to the fact they've been living in Milwaukee and now Madison for years and years.)

Rockin'.

Ah, glorious day! Tis the birth of a log weekend, my once-a-fortnight stretch of worklessness from Friday through Tuesday that revitalizes and rejuvenates whilst numbing employment displeasure!

In other words, TGIF.

This weekend should entail more editing of Le Book. Well, hardly editing. We've just decided to add some detailed footnotes filing the reader in on some less-than-obvious aspect of the strange universe in which the story takes place. It's about a quarter of a dimension over from ours. Almost everything is the same, but for instance, the Atlantic is now called the Atlantean Ocean because Atlantis rose in the middle of it and is now home to a lot of people and a fabulous vacation getaway called Bohemian Gardens. Yeah. And it just gets weirder.

I will also be creating Ethan's Halloween costume. With his new HALO obsession, he's going as a kind of space-marine of some sort, so I am going to make him armor with these easy-to-follow instructions. This should be quite easy compared to some of the more complicated costumes I've made for him in the past. The year before last, he wanted to be an Aragorn-style fighter and I had to sew and entire costume from faux-leather, which, let me tell you, is no easy task. Here is the final results of that effort. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Too bad that's the only picture of it. Arg! I even made boots!

Jacquelyn found an amazing and affordable place to live and it's getting more and more tempting to just up and move, even before the fall. It's even got a big yard practically right on the lake. I checked out the schools and they're really good. The teacher-student ratio is decently low and the test scores are quite high. I would actually be saving money moving back to Madison, so all signs are pointing to yes. Add in the possibility of going back to school, it's quite tempting. (I've lately gotten the funky idea of aiming for an MFA, so that would be a step in the right direction.)

And before I go, I'd like to say that drizzling diamonds drum down the drain like daemons in my brain and all I can think is what a waste of precious jewels.

As I reluctantly arrived at work last night, and began my nightly ritual of retrieving my headset and getting my break schedule, I was surprised to find out that I was not on the schedule.

How could this be?

Apparently, I had asked off for this week for a trip to Vermont with Jacquelyn, but had later changed the dates to early November instead. The scheduler at work apparently forgot to put me back on the schedule for October. Sooo...

I get an extra week of vacation! I told them I would come in if I was needed though. Aren't I nice?

With the Halloween flyers out and Jacque in Minnesota this weekend, I will have the time and opportunity to get back to editing The Book, which has been floundering due to you know, lightning strikes and multiple graphics projects, plus work and travel. Finally. I can feel it screaming with angsty rebellion, "Let me out! I'm going to take over the world!"

I have to be the good parent and hurry up and push my baby out of the nest so it can fly on its own.

(Wish it luck.)

Ah, consciousness! Welcome oh glorious light of being!

Or something like that.

I've just eaten a left-over sandwich which I had forgotten had jalapeños in it. Ah, hothothothothot! So, then comes the Leine's BerryWeiss. Oooh, that's much better. And now, I'm calm.

Now that school has started (for everyone except me, seemingly) and I am off vacation finally, times are tight. More so, time is tight.

I may not see Jacquelyn for a week or more. That is le suck. Things couldn't really be going much better with her. It's so odd; we seem to have fallen into the middle years of a long-term relationship. We somehow bypassed all that getting-to-know-you, walking-on-eggshell beginnings and moved right into that comfortable, almost domestically cohabitative stage. Yet, we've managed to keep a good hold on that hot, intense energy of a new relationship. Hmmm, odd indeed.

Work is busy and overtime is abundant. However, I was so tired last night that I left early. I was falling asleep and I'll be in less trouble for leaving before the end of my shift than I would be for sleeping during a call.

If gas prices keep up like this, I can't afford to keep commuting to Madison. Which would then require me to either A) move to Madison (which I can't afford) or B) get a job here (which I couldn't afford the pay-cut.) Damned if you do...

I've finished the hard edit of the Book, and now I need to free time to enter the changes into the digital copy. After that, it's publisher time. I'm about a third of the way done, so the submission date is rapidly approaching. Egad!

And to close, I'd like to officially apologize to those of you in the Anti-Snobby-Clothes-Brigade. I beg for your forgiveness. My name is Jeremy. [Audience in unison: Hi, Jeremy.] I bought a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. *sobs* And they fit great. God, I swear, I didn't know they were when I bought them! How can you ever forgive me??! This is almost as bad as when I bought that scarf from the GAP last year.

That was tongue-in-cheek, if you will. I'm long over my clothing prejudices. Cool, comfortable, cheap, and not in that particular order, are my sole requirements for fashion these days.

Ta-dah! Everything is back to normal. Mercury quickly retracted all of his evilness and put everything right. How much longer until I can go back to normal thinking?

The only lasting effect is that I was forced to spend six hours sitting in a coffee shop editing the Book. I got 130-something pages done, which puts me at over half done. (Remember, these are double-spaced pages, so it's not as thick as it sounds. We're looking at a 250-275 page book when when published.)

I was playing around on Photoshop last night and designed this Book cover. I've probably done close to twenty different covers. This one is probably close to my favorite. We had the idea of releasing the Book with multiple covers, each gaged for slightly different target audiences, plus the collectors who would buy every version. (Because it's that good, you know.)

As much as I hate to admit it, I'm kind of bored and lonely today. My roommate is at band practice for I-don't-know-how-long. Ethan and Ben (my roommate's son) have a couple friends over today for a sleep-over, so they're all occupied. The house is full of rambunctious boy noises, which seems to amplify my boredom. I can't seem to settle into anything, let alone folding my laundry, reading or even editing.

Did you ever see the episode of South Park where the lesson learned was that marijuana is okay, but it makes it ok to be bored when you could be doing something else or learning a new skill? Yeah, I'm bored and I can't even make it okay to be bored.

My, my, how productive I've been! Laundry and dishes and oil change and hair cut for wee lad and cooking and car washing. Now I should just add sleep to my list of productions and maybe I'd get some of that too :P

I got the Book back from the Editor yesterday. There are no major changes to be made, and merely a few grammatical errors, and a propensity to use "seemingly" quite a bit. Some quotes from the review:

"...a fun and entertaining read, yet thought-provoking and surprisingly profound at the same time... very complex and well-developed characters. The book is very smartly written, full of nuances and witticisms. There is a wide spectrum of personalities, providing a something-for-everyone potential..."

Does anyone here know how to do margins with HTML? I would have liked to indent that last quote. Hmmm...

So now, the next step is to do the final edit and get it ready for publication. We should be sending it off toward the end of August, once Mercury goes direct again. Excitement, excitement!

I'll be working all weekend. Yip.

"I would say that there is no truth. There is only you and what you make the truth." ~ Bright Eyes

"People believe. It's what people do. They believe and the will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine and people believe; and it's that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen." ~ Neil Gaiman

Douglas Adams said that Man wanted to know purpose, so God left Man to figure that out. We make belief. The Universe doesn't mean anything until we create that meaning.

You feel like life has no meaning? Get out there and make some. Brew it, stew it, construct it, paint it, spell it, dance it, write it, cook it, eat it, shit it, fuck it.

It's your world. Populate it as you like.

Everything is under control.

Your control.

Do you think that an orbit exists as anything but an expression of the planet which follows it? Do you think your life exists as anything but an expression of you?

It's your life.

Wake up.

**EDIT**
Thanks

wwonka666, for the indentation advice!

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jackshoegazer

The ICONOMICON!

February 2012

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2010 READING LIST
If you're the biggest fish in the ocean, then some bastard is shooting at you with harpoons.
Bendy desk lamp springs invented by British man are poised to celebrate their 70th anniversary.
When preparing meals, it is very important to note the distinction between chips and chimps.
When the ending chapters begin, it's the end of the beginning.
Genetic discrimination by insurers and employers is still looming on the horizon.
The moon landings weren't fake, they really took place in my backyard sandbox.
The barber can give you a haircut, the carpenter can take you out to lunch.
...in which I review various media forms I have devoured.
No more either/or.
You know what drives me in to a seething frenzy of rage?
2001: a spacey oddity
Wanna read a booK? (A Synopsis)
And don't forget to give me back my black t-shirt.
Dennishimus and Sothis with side of Tarot Omeletes.
(no subject)
So I'm up at dawn, putting on my shoes...
The word of the day is odd, not "odd" but odd.
A Dark Labyrinth of Silly Putty
Your only hope is that forgetting might make a door appear.

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THE MISADVENTURES OF AN ESOTERIC INVESTIGATOR

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Entries tagged with book

2010 READING LIST

If you're the biggest fish in the ocean, then some bastard is shooting at you with harpoons.

Bendy desk lamp springs invented by British man are poised to celebrate their 70th anniversary.

When preparing meals, it is very important to note the distinction between chips and chimps.

When the ending chapters begin, it's the end of the beginning.

Genetic discrimination by insurers and employers is still looming on the horizon.

The moon landings weren't fake, they really took place in my backyard sandbox.

The barber can give you a haircut, the carpenter can take you out to lunch.

...in which I review various media forms I have devoured.

No more either/or.

You know what drives me in to a seething frenzy of rage?

2001: a spacey oddity

Wanna read a booK? (A Synopsis)

And don't forget to give me back my black t-shirt.

Dennishimus and Sothis with side of Tarot Omeletes.

(no subject)

So I'm up at dawn, putting on my shoes...

The word of the day is odd, not "odd" but odd.

A Dark Labyrinth of Silly Putty

Your only hope is that forgetting might make a door appear.