Tuesday, August 31, 2004

 
Just finished the Pig book a little bit ago, went downstairs to get some mint ice cream first ;) ahhh, it's not too bad getting a tooth pulled, I get to eat pretty much whatever I want. I had some yummy winter melon soup and two hot dogs w/o buns for dinner. lol, maybe it wasn't a feast, but it was what I wanted to eat at the time from the options avaliable. And now, a nice bowl of ice cream. Time to start the next book!

Unknown @ 8:15:00 PM

 
My brother also bought some shaved ice, Blue Raspberry and Bubble Gum flavored for $3 at the fair, so add that to the total.

Forget what I said about reading Purdy's book, it's much too serious of a summer book. It's something that I feel like I should take notes on, write down quotes and basically study to see if what he says is true or just a bunch of idealistic crap. So I went to the library to return This Boy's Life and ended up borrowing 13 books. Mostly because my mom wanted me to borrow some books for my brother, so six of those books I've already read, but three of them I intend to re-read, like Interstellar Pig, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, and 1984. Great classics. I intend to read them in that order too. Otherwise, while all the other books that I borrowed are interesting books that I wouldn't mind reading someday, the most important ones are The Bell Jar and Rabbit, Run, the latter one because I happen to own the second book and have felt like I should read it but I can't since I haven't read the first one yet...sigh, the problem with series. So while I would love to play more KnightOnline, since Zach won't get the net till much later since he just moved, I thought I'd hold off on that.
I was thinking about the whole being a voracious reader thing and I came to the conclusion that it's very unlikely to happen unless that person goes through a nice long period of unpopularity. While that doesn't mean he or she is friend-less, the idea is that they don't have much contact with them and thus have an overabundant amount of time on their hands to devote to devouring various library books. So being a loser has its benefits :)

Unknown @ 5:37:00 PM

 
Ahhhh...my neck is sore. I just played a couple hours of KnightOnline, another one of those beta RPGs. This is where the perfectionist in me comes out, sadly. I had the same kind of obsession with Crusin' USA, which was an N64 game. I played that thing for hours and hours doing the courses over and over again so I could get first place in all of the races to unlock yet another car (which were just usually different colored...). I gave it up the moment my memory card erased itself. I mean, all of these RPGs are exactly the same except for the landscape, items and things to kill. The concept is the same, you go out, kill lots of stuff to get items/armor/weapons and you sell items to get money to buy items/weapons/armor. It is, strangely enough, pretty fun playing on a team with someone else. I remember this one time when I was playing Ragnarok (back when that was in beta) and I met this Brazilian guy and we chatted for a good few hours and I tried to help him on his English. Not that I'm saying meeting people is easy. Usually you just run around and kill stuff. Now I'm tired.

The book that I'm trying to read, For Common Things by Jedediah Purdy, is an idea book rather than a novel. This switchover has been kind of hard. However, I've had this book pretty much since the year it came out, 1999. It made quite the splash, 24 yr old Harvard boy, homeschooled in West Virgina on a farm talking about irony in politics and society. Quite the typical 20 something idealistic rant. Of course I want to be idealistic too, but it's impossible once I realize that I'm being idealistic. A step of faith and foolishness. I guess you can't help sounding cliché either. Anyway, the point is, I've had this book for long enough and have put off using my brain to digest it for much too long. I don't really think I'll take anything from the book or remember much of it when I finish, but maybe, just maybe it'll give me enough of a background on irony and politics and all that to make a witty comment someday. Oh yes, prime BS material.

Unknown @ 10:35:00 PM