is a blog by Brendan
Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.
Reasons for wanting to hit Harlan Ellison
Old: Writing things with titles like
New: Just being a jerk.
There’s a part in The Perks of Being A Wallflower that describes riding in a truck at night with people you love, watching traffic lights and listening to “Asleep” by the Smiths. The narrator calls it feeling infinite.
Coming back from dinner and the music store tonight, we took the back way around Danville. Jon had just bought the new Flaming Lips album, and it was playing, and he and Amanda were silhouetted by red and white lights and I was in the back and for a few minutes everything was right with the world.
It’s a good feeling.
Apartment update: There’s no stopper for the kitchen sink, so I’ve been using a wad of Saran Wrapto plug up the drain in order to do dishes. If you were to conclude from this, without other information, that I’m living in a guys’ apartment, you’d be right. But, y’know, at least we are doing the dishes (which we only dirtied four days ago).
As is usually the case when there’s actually a lot happening in my life, I haven’t had time to write it down. I have literally not spent one continuous hour in leisure activity since Monday,when it became apparent that I was going to have to personally reset the speed and duplex mode on every single Ethernet card in Cheek / Evans. There are 109 students in Cheek / Evans, and almost all of them have computers. You can imagine the rest.
I’m also way way behind on the Cento web site, which is supposed to go live next Monday (this statement and the preceding paragraph are not unrelated). I’m really unhappy about this, plus of course the fact that the middle room is a disaster zone. A lifetime of Mom’s cleaning habits is starting to drive me out of my mind. I know I don’t have time to clean up all my junk, and I don’t even really want to, but if I don’t do it soon I’m going to start screaming at random. Thanks, Mom!(I’m kidding. Mostly.)
Also I got a girlfriend. You might have guessed that.
I think I’m really going to enjoy this year if I can ever catch up enough to notice that it’s happening.
so what! say what! for your own sake
do you have a headache or heartbreak?
P.S. Anthropology rocks!
Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!
In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”
A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.
So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.
Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!
Right now it’s showering sideways, and the wind is blowing so hard the water is going up the hill. Yesterday it was a lot harder. The picnic table almost flipped off the deck, and the first tree we planted when we moved here split. It’s not exactly down the middle, because the trunk is mostly intact, but about half the branches are sheared off in one big clump.
The tree looks lopsided now, of course. The other half is still lying on the ground on the lawn,and I keep looking at it like it’s an open wound. Which it is, I guess. I want to cut the dying part off and drag it behind the house, to patch up the torn part with tar, but it’s raining now and Mom says it’s going to die anyway.
I just finished The Bean Trees. I don’t go back to school until the 25th.
The Handmaid’s Tale was everything I expected plus three. I mostly remember it as being one of the choices of summer assignments for Mr. Munson’s junior AP English, and even though my choices were good (Ordinary People and Catcher in the Rye), I can’t help but be impressed that he gave it to unproven high schoolers to read.
I’ve been trying to articulate this thought for like fifteen minutes now, and it’s not coming. It’s something like this: But. The fact that he had the balls to give rising juniors books like Handmaid’s Tale isn’t as impressive, really, as the fact that under him we read them and enjoyed them and understood them. Reason number five hundred sixteen I won’t be a teacher–I could never live up to that.
Anyway. The Truth was even fluffier than I expected it to be, actually, but still not bad. I’m most of the way through Enchantment now, and Card’s books are only getting talkier and I don’t like it. He wrote a book called Character and Viewpoint a long time ago, and while I still consider it one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read, he’s stopped listening to his own advice. I wish he’d show me what his characters are doing instead of telling me what they’re thinking. Ender’s Game works so well because it strikes a balance between those two. Enchantment is close, but no cigar. (Children of the Mind missed the whole damn booth.)
And Minority Report was really good, yadda yadda. I just wish, in a fashion oddly reminiscent of Vanilla Sky, that I hadn’t had to pee so bad for so much of it.