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Current Entertainment:
Books Lying
Open
Soul-Devouring
Worry
Life's
Too Short For:
Curse of the Day:
Phrase
of the Moment: The
best usage yet? When I said, after we saw the results of this
boxing match: "Who kicked Oscar de la Hoya's ass tonight? |
Friday September 26, 2003 | |||||
| Quote
of the Day -- QotD Archives
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. --Aldous Huxley |
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Daily Blog Malaya and I went to a used book giveaway earlier this week, one sponsored by the Concord Public Library System. Basically it was a way for them to unload a ton of their old books, ones with some damage or that no one was checking out anymore. They opened up to the public at 10am, and from what I heard an employee saying, there were literally hundreds of people waiting when they opened, with cars lined up and down the street trying to get in. Malaya and I went by around noon, and even then there were an amazing amount of books. They had it spread out in a big parking lot, over enough space to park something like 100 cars, and the layout was just box after box of books, on the ground, in long rows. It looked like a book farm, basically, with dozens of people walking along the rows and bending over to pluck a ripe one from the selection. And it was all free. Free, free, free! Not a cheap $1 a book type sale, free. Take all you wanted; bring your own bag. We brought four big plastic bags, thinking that would be far more than we'd find worth filling, and we left with all four full, and a bunch more hardcover books stacked up loosely. I had to drive the car down and back it in near the exit while Malaya stook guard over our stacks. I would list every book we got and why we got it, but that would be an entire update in of itself, plus we're not exactly proud of every book we grabbed, plus we don't have anything close to a reasonable reason for every book we picked out. I got several past best sellers from authors I've never read (S is for Sequel by Martha Grimes, Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow) just because I've always heard of them and was curious. Why I never bothered to simply check out one of their books, books that every library on earth is simply overrun with, is a good question. Malaya and I both grabbed several thick paperbacks from authors we've sort of heard of, or from the middle of famous series we've never read. I grabbed half a dozen hardcovers in the horror and/or suspense genres, ones that had good covers and front jacket blurbs. And there are a bunch of other books in our stack (which is waist-high and double wide) that neither of us has any memory whatsoever of picking out, and that we've spent the last few days blaming each other for bringing into our home. I doubt we'll ever read more than half of them, but hey, they were free, and we can just donate them to the local library once we read them or get sick of them. I personally plan on giving a number of them about 20 pages of my time, and if they grab me, I'll continue, and if they don't, away with them. Oddly enough, none of the books on the "Books Lying Open" listing is one we got for free at the book sale. Most of them are ones I read over the last few weeks, ones that Malaya owned and loaned me, or ones that we got at the local library. I list them for the hell of it, and throw a line through them once I've read them. In theory I mean to blog about them, at least in brief, but that doesn't always happen, as long-time readers have no doubt noticed. And I've been meaning to write about Steven King's Dark Tower series for a while, since book five is coming out in a couple of months, and to catch up on the whole series (which I really enjoy, despite not really liking book one, much of book two, and the entire flashback/sappy love story in book four) I've been skimming over them, looking at some of the very extensive Dark Tower websites out there, and reading another dozen pages of the exhaustive Dark Tower Concordance every time I'm in a Borders with Malaya. Plus, thanks to Malaya's library, I finally read the novella in Hearts in Atlantis that's related to the Dark Tower world, and I read the short story in Everything's Eventual that's set in the Dark Tower world before the first Dark Tower novel. Neither of them were very good, or necessary, which is putting me off of diving into King's 700 page Insomnia, which has a strong Dark Tower tie in (sort of) but by almost all accounts is quite boring. Since I've got like two dozen other novels lying around that I keep meaning to read, plus several I really need to spend more time writing, I really have no excuse for sitting through long, boring books. More on books as it occurs to me to write about them.
And appropriately-enough, here's some Steven King news. ¤ Steven King has been selected to receive the prestigious National Book Award, for lifetime achievement. Goodie for him. I haven't really liked anything he's written for about the past decade, but I loved his early stuff, and I can recognize that he's improved as a writer over the years. It's just his plots that have gone downhill, IMHO. In any event, King has certainly produced an impressive body of work, both in and out of the horror genre, and while he's not that great a "writer" he's certainly ten times the story-teller or "novelist" that most published authors are. The article includes a quote from some Yale professor who seems to be auditioning for the title of "Most Unintentionally-Amusing Pretentious Literary Snob on Earth," and while your reaction will probably be something along the lines of, "What kind of stupid fuck is that guy?" which was pretty much what I thought when I read it, I still found it pretty funny.
Now you can debate "literary value" endlessly, and "aesthetic accomplishment" as well, but you'd have to be a complete idiot, or else have an axe the size of a dinner table to grind, to even hint that King's work doesn't show endless "inventive human intelligence." Back to your ivory tower to continue your chess match with George will, culture, Professor Clueless. We'll give you guys a call when next the NYT needs a sniffy quote condemning some wildly-popular aspect of modern culture. Before you start thinking the award is that prestigious, consider that they gave Oprah one in 1999, apparently because she hosted a TV show with an audience large enough to guarantee that any book she featured would become a best seller. What sort of criteria is that? Does the FOX News legal department get one for all their hard work promoting Al Franken's latest opus?
¤ In other news, northern Japan was hit by an enormous earthquake, up to 8.0 in magnitude, but since it was well offshore and relatively deep underground, there doesn't appear to have been all that much damage, and there are no deaths yet reported. Unfortunately, there aren't really any good pictures either, though I picked a couple from the slideshow for reproduction here. This one I liked since it has potential. Potential for disaster, anyway. I certainly wouldn't be anywhere within about 10 miles of this when it was on fire. If that one goes up and takes some others with it, they'd hear it in China.
This is the coolest picture in the Earthquake story slide show, even though it has nothing to do with this earthquake in particular. I just like it for the handy reference and graphics, though I have some suggestions. I would like to see tiny human figures staggering around and being swallowed up by the fractured earth, or perhaps plummeting from the crumbling buildings.
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was going to put off quoting and commenting on some of the kitty emails,
and talking more about the kitties, but since I already did that
yesterday, I have the energy and a bunch more pictures already sorted and
saved and ready to go, I might as well get it over with and write about
something different tomorrow.
Picking up where I left off on Tuesday (sort of), Dusty has pretty well gotten over any worries about Jinx. He still growls or swats at her when she gets too close to him, but that only happens once in a while, and he usually gets annoyed after she's been walking over him for five minutes, or grabbing at his tail, or other such indignities. They're not sleeping together yet, but I won't be surprised if they're doing that within a week. He no longer bristles or slinks around her and doesn't mind her chasing around the house and frequently bumping into him or leaping over him, and she's got no fear of him at all. They have played a few times, mostly in the form of swatting at each other, or her stalking his tail and eventually making him get up or else swat at her. They're cute when they interact, but the events happen very quickly, and with little warning, so it's been hard to get any good photos of them. Yesterday we had a new cardboard box sitting on Dusty's purple chair, and Jinx decided it would be a fun thing to leap into. Dusty saw her and thought that a kitten in a box was great fun, so he perched on the sofa and kept batting at her head when she poked it out, or batted at his paw as it batted at her.
So they do play, but not in a way that makes for easy collection of photographic evidence. Jinx is very quick and eager to be around people, and that will be a nice trait for her to possess, assuming she's not trampled before she gets big enough to tone it down some. For now she's forever running up from behind, and shooting right between my legs, or literally under my feet. I've kicked her by accident a couple of times, and nearly stepped on her at least twice, as has Malaya. Now I just expect her to come running past me whenever I walk away from her, and when I hear her coming I pause for a second until she flashes past me. Her bell is really all that keeps her from being stepped on at least once a day.
She cat naps and dozes, and goes into a deeper sleep every now and then, usually when you take the time to hold her. Plus the minute you start holding her or rubbing her, the purr engine ignites and she goes like a sewing machine for as long as your attention continues, and often several minutes after that. She's super playful and adventurous and agile and fearless and all of the other typical kitten traits. She'll chase the string mousie as long as you're willing to pull it, and she is very capable of climbing up onto every item of furniture in the condo, as well as leaping from one to another, and especially from furniture onto people. I've had her run up my back while I was bending over to tie my shoes a number of times, and she likes to climb up onto the backs of office chairs, or onto the kitchen chairs and then leap from there to my lap when I'm in my office chair. This is cute, to a point. A couple of days ago she was on Malaya's chair while Malaya was tying the string waistband on a pair of sweat pants, and then a minute later Malaya was walking around the living room with a gray kitten clinging to her thighs with three paws while she batted at the string waistband with her other paw and bit it with her mouth. This was cute to me, less so to Malaya.
Speaking of poop, she's being bad there. We tried initially to get her to use the box Dusty is using, and she wouldn't do it. I'm not sure it's so much the box as it is the entrance to the box, since his litter pan is housed in a wooden shed sort of thing that's actually on our back patio, and accessed through a kitty door in the living room wall.
The trapdoor is easily-pushed open, though it took Dusty a while to learn to do so. We obviously want to keep the door down, since it keeps the odors out, plus any stray litter inside the poop-area, if Dusters gives it an extra-vigorous kick. Jinx will have nothing to do with this area though, and won't even go in if you try to push her. She wouldn't go in the first day here, but immediately went in a cardboard box full of litter that we put in the bathroom. We've since upgraded to a plastic litter box with a kick guard all around it that I made of cardboard, but she refuses to use it anywhere other than in the bathroom. We've been trying to put it by Dusty's trap door, where the speaker is in the photo above, but she won't use it when it's there. And once we put it back in the bathroom, she uses it instantly. The problem came in when we left it out there most of the day on Tuesday, and dropped Jinx in the box every now and then so she'd be sure to know where it was. We hoped she'd eventually use it, and then after a day or so there we'd move it through the trap door. Our theory was sound, but the application was flawed, since just as I was tucking Malaya in that night, Jinxers ran in and leaped up on the bed, and laid down behind me as I was spooning Malaya. She soon got up and ran away, and it wasn't until I got out from under the covers that I realized she'd just pissed on the bed. And it was a lot of piss; after all, she'd been saving it up all afternoon and evening while her box was in an invalid location.
It's no real hardship; she's got water and kitten chow and a cat bed in there, and of course her litter box, but I would certainly prefer her to sleep in the bed with the rest of the family. Malaya won't hear of it for now though, since she's still mad about the pee incident. Jinx also peed a bit in Dusty's purple chair, but we think that was the first day she was here, when she was frequently scared and didn't really have the routine down, so we can forgive that. Other than those two incidents, she's been 100% at her litter box; it's just the location of it that we want to change. So in theory she's perfectly fine to let into the bedroom now, since she'd just get up and go to her box when she had to go. However I've had no luck convincing Malaya of this, and haven't even really tried; not while she's still mad at Jinx for the bed wetting. We're going to do the laundry tomorrow and have about six loads worth, two of them made up of sheets, blankets, comforters, and bathroom rugs that Jinx is responsible for, so perhaps after those are all clean and if there are no more accidents, Malaya's feelings towards the cute gray kitten will thaw a bit. Or perhaps not.
Dusty has grown to like her, or at least tolerate her with flashes of interest. His main interests are sleeping and following Malaya around the apartment, but his real passion are insects. Every night a moth or two find their way into the condo, and such creatures are basically Dusty porn. He'll sit, motionless and transfixed, for hours while staring up at a cicada or other bug on the wall by the ceiling, and if one comes down lower, he'll swipe at them furiously. He has had some success knocking them out of the sky, and yes, he eats them once he's winged them, if he's quick enough.
The rodents are probably feeling a bit lonely the past few days, since I've pretty well ignored them in preference for Jinxie, just taking enough time to give them some food in the morning, and making sure their dry food dish stays full. Jinx isn't that much bigger than a rat, but she's far more active and fun and lap-kitty and hard to ignore, so it's not a real tortured decision which creature I'm going to play with. As for the snake; he's been ignored for years, so there's no real change there. Malaya helped me pick the shedding skin off of him a few days ago; her longer fingernails proving very helpful in peeling the bits off of his throat and sides that he was having trouble shedding on his own. I suspect we'll try to sell the snake in some local classifieds in the semi-immediate future, since I'm pretty well sick of him, and the novelty has worn off for Malaya as well. Or perhaps we'll just continue thawing him a rat every 7-10 days and ignoring him. He's so low-maintenance that it's really no trouble to keep him as long as the frozen rat supply lasts (and I've got at least 6 months worth still), aside from occasional cage cleaning. I'm assuming he won't die of cold over the winter here, with his heating element below the tank, but there's really no guarantee of that, and I don't think he's going to be be allowed inside, if Malaya has any say in things.
Tomorrow I'll quote and reply to some reader emails on the kitties, EA Games, and random other things. |
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