TIME FOR MY ANNUAL NEW YEAR'S POST!
No, not really. I have been seeing Facebook post upon post of "Wow, 2013 is almost here. In 2012 I grew as a Person. I will never be the same. There were so many challenges but also so many fun times. Can't wait to see what 2013 has to offer!!"
Facebook friends sure do have hidden depths.
That made me think I should be writing about the upcoming year, but the whole New Year's thing is a litttttlllllleee dumb considering any day of the year is a New Year's Day. Like August 13, 2012? August 13, 2012 is totally New Year's Day if you started counting August 13, 2011. Wooo. Throw a party.
There are so many different New Year's celebrations in different cultures and frankly the December-January jump (I prefer the late March one. Springtime should totally be the beginning of the year for obvious reasons and Symbolism. Also, my birthday is then) is just an example of glorified colonialism.
But I'm really not one to talk, as I happen to be spending New Year's at a country club.
lol.
If it's true that the way you spend your New Year's is indicative of the year to follow, I'm going to spend 2013 hanging out with friends at a golf course and enjoying an elite lifestyle, complete with truffle oil pizza.
Maybe that means I'll finally get a job? (I mean, not really finally, since my internships haven't ended yet, but it feels like forever that I have been mooching off my family. It has essentially been forever to me; it's what I've been doing my entire life. Except for a couple hundred bucks I've made from odd jobs. Like, really odd.)
Yes, that is my New Year's resolution.
Get a job.
CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY, DAMN YOU.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Book Review: Naked by David Sedaris
As if David Sedaris needs any more praise by an unknown blogger, right?
WRONG.
Naked is the second book I've read by Mr. Sedaris and I loved it. The first one, Me Talk Pretty One Day, was also amazing.
Here's the thing about me. I don't laugh by myself. It's quite rare. I only laugh at funny things when other people are around because I have the Need to Share Laughter to show them I'm not a robot or something? I actually have no idea, but whatever. It doesn't happen.
Well, okay, it does. But only VERY VERY rarely. I still think things are funny, I just don't physically laugh unless something really catches me off guard or is just hilarious in general.
David Sedaris makes me laugh.
Actually, David Sedaris makes me do that laugh where you're alone but in a public place and something is just so funny that you're kind of laughing into your hand and disturbing the peace and whatnot. Similar to when you get a ridiculous text message from one of your friends. It happens. But when you get a text from a friend, it's almost like you're NOT alone because it's like a conversation from afar. Reading a book is different. Completely.
So anyway, I laugh. And laugh. And it's really embarrassing. But still I keep reading. And laughing.
That is my review of David Sedaris.
WRONG.
Naked is the second book I've read by Mr. Sedaris and I loved it. The first one, Me Talk Pretty One Day, was also amazing.
Here's the thing about me. I don't laugh by myself. It's quite rare. I only laugh at funny things when other people are around because I have the Need to Share Laughter to show them I'm not a robot or something? I actually have no idea, but whatever. It doesn't happen.
Well, okay, it does. But only VERY VERY rarely. I still think things are funny, I just don't physically laugh unless something really catches me off guard or is just hilarious in general.
David Sedaris makes me laugh.
Actually, David Sedaris makes me do that laugh where you're alone but in a public place and something is just so funny that you're kind of laughing into your hand and disturbing the peace and whatnot. Similar to when you get a ridiculous text message from one of your friends. It happens. But when you get a text from a friend, it's almost like you're NOT alone because it's like a conversation from afar. Reading a book is different. Completely.
So anyway, I laugh. And laugh. And it's really embarrassing. But still I keep reading. And laughing.
That is my review of David Sedaris.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Facebook drama
is literally the stupidest thing ever. The whole defriending blocking "waa i don't like you" thing.
In other news, I am making baby dark chocolate cupcakes with panuche frosting tonight! For actual friends, not just Facebook Friends (part of that new vernacular due to technology: calling someone your "Facebook Friend" means they're on the lowest existing rung of acquaintance. Like the kind of person you'd see in a store and avoid).
Is blogging about internet passive aggressiveness any less passive aggressive than the original propagators of internet passive aggressiveness?
In other news, I am making baby dark chocolate cupcakes with panuche frosting tonight! For actual friends, not just Facebook Friends (part of that new vernacular due to technology: calling someone your "Facebook Friend" means they're on the lowest existing rung of acquaintance. Like the kind of person you'd see in a store and avoid).
Is blogging about internet passive aggressiveness any less passive aggressive than the original propagators of internet passive aggressiveness?
Monday, August 13, 2012
GHSF #1
I am friends with a self-promoting DJ on Facebook and he invites me to events all the time. You'd think this would come in handy but for some reason they are always at high school dances or at sports bars in Pleasanton.
I think I'd rather go to the high school dances.
I think I'd rather go to the high school dances.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Book review: The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker
My mom had a Barnes and Noble coupon that was going to expire the next day, so she went to buy stuff for us before we went on our annual family vacation. She saw this book in a magazine and got it for me. It was pretty hyped-up, and the blurb was mainly about how it was Walker's first novel and she'd received a $2 million advance and already sold the movie rights, etc.
The cover is awesome and I like it a lot.
The book was an interesting read, to say the least. The book was definitely literary fiction, which is not always a good thing in my opinion. Sometimes literary fiction tends to take itself too seriously. And it usually has a superiority complex when it comes to commercial fiction. That being said, obviously a well-written book is a great thing to see. But I have to wonder: when a work of literary fiction does so well commercially, what really separates it from commercial fiction?
Whatever. Anyway.
SPOILER ALERT!! (Note: spoilery things will be ALMOST INVISIBLE as per my amazing HTML skills.)(Drag your mouse over them to read them if you want.)
The book is told from middle-schooler Julia's point of view. Julia is a rich suburban girl from rich suburban San Diego County (seriously though, there's ONE character with a single mom. It's the same ONE character who lives in, gasp, an apartment. Also the mom is super young. And suffers from bad parent syndrome. And her daughter is obviously a bad seed--drinking and fraternizing a bit too closely with the boys. This was one of the things that irked me right off the bat. A little too perfectly stereotypical. Maybe that was the point, but it didn't exactly endear me to the book). One day, Julia wakes up to hear on TV that the world has begun to slow. Literally. They begin to gain minutes with each passing day--by about the middle of the novel, each daytime period is 24 hours and each night is 24 hours. And it just keeps getting worse. This affects lots of things, of course. Gravity, for one. Birds begin falling from the sky and dying. Humans get sick, too. And then comes the radiation.
Sounds pretty interesting, right?
But... after reading the book, I had the sense that nothing much really happened. Which is ridiculous, right? I mean, essentially the world ended (oh, that's the ending--Julia is in her twenties now and nobody has any hope left; days are 60 hours and nights are 60 hours or some insanely large number). That kind of chaos is pretty big. But somehow it didn't seem big. Julia was more concerned with trying to keep her friends, getting the attention of the boy she liked and figuring out what was going on with her parents. Maybe that makes the book more realistic. But the dreamlike way it was written--the unconcerned voice of Julia, whose world is literally ending--the news-like reporting of each new development and effect of the slowing--made it seem, well, anticlimactic.
I am so typically a product of American films. I need that kind of story structure. It's lame, I know. But I want a book to make me feel (lol). Yes, there was a climax, but it was anticlimactic.
I think that if the book hadn't been so hyped up, I would have liked it better. And, to be honest, I did like it a lot. I read it very quickly and kept doing the whole "oh, the chapter's over? Well... I guess one more won't hurt" thing. But I wonder if this was me just waiting for something to happen. Something BIG. I imagine if the world really slowed, governments would try to do something. Something stupid and irrational, but something that humans do when they are scared and have enough power. Like coming up with some scientific gadget that would turn the earth at a normal rate. Magneticism, anyone? Messing with the gravitational pull? Creating a GIANT FREAKING ARM from the North Pole to the South to spin like a globe?!? Okay, so probably none of these would work (you tell me!)(don't try it or really bad things happen. Read the book for more deets). But at least there would be a Massive Attempt to Fix Things. Instead, everyone just tries to adjust--to the point that they are literally afraid of the sun and can only go out at night. To the point that the world is overrun by annoying bugs, all the birds are gone and kids are dying too.
To go back to my previous point (privileged suburban kids being privileged and suburban), there was hardly any focus on the rest of the world. Two, maybe three times, Julia said something like "things were much better off here than they were in poor countries." I wanted to know more! Famines and droughts were hinted at. Obviously Julia is a middle school student and god knows when I was in middle school I didn't know what was going on in the rest of the world (minus Iraq because we'd just declared war and it was in the news a lot). Still, I wanted more perspective. If the most impoverished character in the book is someone who lives in an apartment in freaking Escondido, CA (or wherever), I'm just not as inclined to feel sorry for these people. Yes, their world might be ending, yes, they are going nuts, but what about people who can't escape radiation death ray (i.e. the sun) or stock up on packaged and canned foods?
THAT WOULD BE MORE INTERESTING, I TELL YOU.
Because it's not like the rich San Diego Countyites suffered more from the slowing. That would also have been more interesting! To me. They suffered much less. Like, come on. Throw the developing world a bone once in awhile! Screw the privileged elite for once. It's fiction. We know it's not really going to happen. It's okay to do impossible things in books. Fun, even!
Sigh. And that is the end of my rant. I don't know why or when it turned into such a rant. I really did like the book. But I have been trained by Academia to be more critical of things than not. Because if everything in a book is really really really good, what point is there in talking about it?
I want to end on a good note, so I will talk about something that I thought was really well-done in the book. And that is the time debates. See, the world is slowing down. Days are 40 hours long or whatever. Each day, a couple minutes are added. What do you do? Keep up with the sun/obey your circadian rhythms? Or stay on a 24 hour clock schedule? It stands to reason that our society could not function without a strict time-keeping system. The last time we did that, trains ran into each other and all kinds of bad things. That's why we changed it. Anyway, the vast majority of people in the novel decided to be on "clock-time." How else could governments, schools, businesses really run? Those who chose to stay on "real-time" woke with the sun and slept at night. These guys were mostly hippies. Wanting natural stuff and everything. They created colonies out in the desert, such as Circadia (LOL). But being on real-time turned out to be nearly impossible after awhile. I mean, sixty hour days? You can't sleep 30 hours and stay awake for 30 hours. Maybe it's possible, but that's not any more natural than being on clock-time. The fact that society was so far divided was very interesting as well. People lost friends and family over this issue. The community turned on those who chose real-time. They were run out of town. People who found out that their loved ones had chosen real-time FREAKED OUT. Anyway, this whole time dichotomy and its driving force throughout the book was one of the things that made it seem very real.
Overall, I truly did enjoy the book. And I am hungry. This is abrupt. I apologize. Hej hej!
The cover is awesome and I like it a lot.
The book was an interesting read, to say the least. The book was definitely literary fiction, which is not always a good thing in my opinion. Sometimes literary fiction tends to take itself too seriously. And it usually has a superiority complex when it comes to commercial fiction. That being said, obviously a well-written book is a great thing to see. But I have to wonder: when a work of literary fiction does so well commercially, what really separates it from commercial fiction?
Whatever. Anyway.
SPOILER ALERT!! (Note: spoilery things will be ALMOST INVISIBLE as per my amazing HTML skills.)(Drag your mouse over them to read them if you want.)
The book is told from middle-schooler Julia's point of view. Julia is a rich suburban girl from rich suburban San Diego County (seriously though, there's ONE character with a single mom. It's the same ONE character who lives in, gasp, an apartment. Also the mom is super young. And suffers from bad parent syndrome. And her daughter is obviously a bad seed--drinking and fraternizing a bit too closely with the boys. This was one of the things that irked me right off the bat. A little too perfectly stereotypical. Maybe that was the point, but it didn't exactly endear me to the book). One day, Julia wakes up to hear on TV that the world has begun to slow. Literally. They begin to gain minutes with each passing day--by about the middle of the novel, each daytime period is 24 hours and each night is 24 hours. And it just keeps getting worse. This affects lots of things, of course. Gravity, for one. Birds begin falling from the sky and dying. Humans get sick, too. And then comes the radiation.
Sounds pretty interesting, right?
But... after reading the book, I had the sense that nothing much really happened. Which is ridiculous, right? I mean, essentially the world ended (oh, that's the ending--Julia is in her twenties now and nobody has any hope left; days are 60 hours and nights are 60 hours or some insanely large number). That kind of chaos is pretty big. But somehow it didn't seem big. Julia was more concerned with trying to keep her friends, getting the attention of the boy she liked and figuring out what was going on with her parents. Maybe that makes the book more realistic. But the dreamlike way it was written--the unconcerned voice of Julia, whose world is literally ending--the news-like reporting of each new development and effect of the slowing--made it seem, well, anticlimactic.
I am so typically a product of American films. I need that kind of story structure. It's lame, I know. But I want a book to make me feel (lol). Yes, there was a climax, but it was anticlimactic.
I think that if the book hadn't been so hyped up, I would have liked it better. And, to be honest, I did like it a lot. I read it very quickly and kept doing the whole "oh, the chapter's over? Well... I guess one more won't hurt" thing. But I wonder if this was me just waiting for something to happen. Something BIG. I imagine if the world really slowed, governments would try to do something. Something stupid and irrational, but something that humans do when they are scared and have enough power. Like coming up with some scientific gadget that would turn the earth at a normal rate. Magneticism, anyone? Messing with the gravitational pull? Creating a GIANT FREAKING ARM from the North Pole to the South to spin like a globe?!? Okay, so probably none of these would work (you tell me!)(don't try it or really bad things happen. Read the book for more deets). But at least there would be a Massive Attempt to Fix Things. Instead, everyone just tries to adjust--to the point that they are literally afraid of the sun and can only go out at night. To the point that the world is overrun by annoying bugs, all the birds are gone and kids are dying too.
To go back to my previous point (privileged suburban kids being privileged and suburban), there was hardly any focus on the rest of the world. Two, maybe three times, Julia said something like "things were much better off here than they were in poor countries." I wanted to know more! Famines and droughts were hinted at. Obviously Julia is a middle school student and god knows when I was in middle school I didn't know what was going on in the rest of the world (minus Iraq because we'd just declared war and it was in the news a lot). Still, I wanted more perspective. If the most impoverished character in the book is someone who lives in an apartment in freaking Escondido, CA (or wherever), I'm just not as inclined to feel sorry for these people. Yes, their world might be ending, yes, they are going nuts, but what about people who can't escape radiation death ray (i.e. the sun) or stock up on packaged and canned foods?
THAT WOULD BE MORE INTERESTING, I TELL YOU.
Because it's not like the rich San Diego Countyites suffered more from the slowing. That would also have been more interesting! To me. They suffered much less. Like, come on. Throw the developing world a bone once in awhile! Screw the privileged elite for once. It's fiction. We know it's not really going to happen. It's okay to do impossible things in books. Fun, even!
Sigh. And that is the end of my rant. I don't know why or when it turned into such a rant. I really did like the book. But I have been trained by Academia to be more critical of things than not. Because if everything in a book is really really really good, what point is there in talking about it?
I want to end on a good note, so I will talk about something that I thought was really well-done in the book. And that is the time debates. See, the world is slowing down. Days are 40 hours long or whatever. Each day, a couple minutes are added. What do you do? Keep up with the sun/obey your circadian rhythms? Or stay on a 24 hour clock schedule? It stands to reason that our society could not function without a strict time-keeping system. The last time we did that, trains ran into each other and all kinds of bad things. That's why we changed it. Anyway, the vast majority of people in the novel decided to be on "clock-time." How else could governments, schools, businesses really run? Those who chose to stay on "real-time" woke with the sun and slept at night. These guys were mostly hippies. Wanting natural stuff and everything. They created colonies out in the desert, such as Circadia (LOL). But being on real-time turned out to be nearly impossible after awhile. I mean, sixty hour days? You can't sleep 30 hours and stay awake for 30 hours. Maybe it's possible, but that's not any more natural than being on clock-time. The fact that society was so far divided was very interesting as well. People lost friends and family over this issue. The community turned on those who chose real-time. They were run out of town. People who found out that their loved ones had chosen real-time FREAKED OUT. Anyway, this whole time dichotomy and its driving force throughout the book was one of the things that made it seem very real.
Overall, I truly did enjoy the book. And I am hungry. This is abrupt. I apologize. Hej hej!
Blog reclaimed.
It's been awhile! I failed at blogging while studying in Copenhagen, but decided to start again now that I graduated college and am a Grown Up and whatnot. I have a tumblr, but reblogging is kinda dumb/tumblr is 2 hip 4 me/lyf, so I'm back on here!
And no, I'm not in København anymore. But how could I get rid of this name? Haha. Insert something about how my experiences in Copenhagen will always stay with me, and I will go back at some point. Also, I finished one of my novels there, so that's good enough right?
This is just the first entry, so nothing too fancy. I'm thinking it'll be pictures, random stuff, reviews... etc. Since I want to be a writer or whatever, I should probably get on this whole blogging thing as it's The Future and whatnot.
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