10books: rounding the corner on the first lap

Current Book: A Long Way Down
Pages to go: 3949
Percent done: 6.5

Man, I hope something happens at the end of this book.

10 Books: Oh *I* get it

Current Book: A Long Way Down
Pages to go: 3992
Percent done: 5.5

First they all literally work their way in to a position where the only choice is to jump or come down as a group and deal with the consequences, then they metaphorically do a similar thing! Clever clever!

AWK-WARD!

Have you seen the cover of Bjork's new album, Volta? I have this image in my mind of Bjork showing up at a party wearing that... maybe she's a little late, maybe this isn't a crowd she'd usually hang with, maybe Timbaland invited her, but there's a few record industry people she knows and she recognizes, say, an artist from Eindhoven, the one that makes babies out of food, so she's feeling good, this is gonna be a good night, but then... over by the food, a woman WEARING THE SAME DRESS!

10Books: I don't trust Nick Hornby

Current Book: A Long Way Down
Pages to go: 4077
Percent done: 3.5

This book asks the reader to make a big emotional investment in its characters, and I don't know if I trust Nick Hornby enough to do that. I mean how do I know that he's not going to give one of them superpowers, or bring someone back from the dead, or have them killed in a random car crash?

Hay guys!

More news from the world of conversation

Today, with a co-worker, I discovered the best sentence ever:

"Hey, give me 50 dollars and a knife"

10 Books: A Long Way To Go

Current Book: A Long Way Down
Pages to go: 4157
Percent done: 1.6

So I wanted to ease in to this project with something light, so I picked a book about about why 4 people chose to commit suicide one New Years Eve. But seriously (folks), Hornby's not what you'd call a dense writer, and this book so far has short chapters... like DaVinci Code short. So far, so good.

10 books: Stand Back, I'm Going To Try Science!

I've come to realize that lately I've been living a lie. I've been living the fast, glamorous, carefree life of a bookworm, proudly displaying my shelves upon shelves of books, reading the reviews and discussing the latest books with friends, even buying a lot of books but not doing much, you know, actual reading.

I think the main reason for this is that, having changed jobs and moved, I no longer have a 1 -hour-each-way TTC commute every day, and thus have lost my habitual daily reading time. Also, I think I've just gotten out of the habit, you can conversationally and intellectually coast on past books for quite a while but that tank starts to run dry eventually and it's time for a fill-up.

So, I'm going to apply myself to doin' some readin' everyday, 10 books off my in-pile, approximately alternating fiction and non-fiction, and blogging about it to keep myself honest.

1. A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
2. Uncle Tungsten - Olivier Sacks
3. London Fields - Martin Amis
4. Animals In translation - Temple Grandin
5. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco
6. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - Paul Hoffman
7. The Confusion - Neal Stephenson
8. Salt - Mark Kurlansky
9. House Of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
10. Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett

The lonely life of the prophet

Did you see this week's PBF? It features a book of those now famous stereograms. You know, from Mallrats? It's a sailboat stupid!

Now, in these modern times the educated populace is well acquainted with these amusements, and furthermore, the methods of their construction and accompanying documentation have improved to the point where almost any person of moderate intellect and normal binocular vision can observe these wonders.

But, cast your mind back, dear reader, to the before-time. Harken to a time when I, a young whelp in my teenage bedroom had all my powers of concentration focused, laser-like on a magazine. Remove from your mind base thoughts reader, for no bombastic Maxim nor forbidden Playboy was this, no! This was an issue of Games magazine. There in the back-pages was an advertisement for The Amazing Patented Stereogram Poster, accompanied by a demonstration of the technology, appearing to all the world as simply a random array of black and white dots, as may be seen when a television is tuned to an empty station. Cryptically, the reader was instructed to 'stare through' the page until the two dots at the top of the page merged in to one whereupon he or she would suffer the visitation of four shapes. Describing these four shapes in a letter sent by post would earn the writer a substantial discount on the poster, and I, ever game for a challenge set my self to the task.

I became mildly obsessed with this confounding image, engaging in visual combat whenever I had a free moment with the magazine, and practiced the mandated 'looking through' objects when I did not. My two eyes were subjected to the kind of gymnastics usually only imposed upon 12 year old Russian girls. My schooling suffered.

I will not claim that my faith did not falter. Perhaps I was not worthy, my eyes simply too weak, or congenitally deformed to the point where even my royal-observatory-grade glasses could not compensate for my deficiency. Perhaps there was a misprint in the magazine and as a result the task was impossible. And perhaps, dear reader, sinister mischief was afoot. Was I the victim of an international hoax? A rube and an easy mark? Staring at a nonsense image to no purpose other than to feed an unseen tormentor's dark glee?

Yet, in my labours there were glimmers of success. How could I continue otherwise? Very occasionally the confounding blur of dots would begin to converge and almost convey a meaning just at the very images of my perception.

And of course, as you dear reader were no doubt sure all along, but which was to me by no means a certainty or even a likely probability, mirabile dictu the scales fell from mine eyes, and before where they was only flatness and noise, suddenly there was depth and order. The two dimensional page suddenly became an impossible shadow box holding 4 shapes suspended, exactly as promised! I was euphoric and held the vision for as long as possible fearing that this was my one and only glimpse at this impossible dimension. My fears were unfounded, however, and I realized that I could now perform the feat at will!

Elated and bouyed by my triumph, I wanted to share this discovery. Picture me now, waving a magazine and exhorting parents, relatives, friends and strangers alike to "look through" the page. Picture them, confounded and annoyed with this brash youth. Put yourself in my shoes and imagine my frustration, wanting to share my amazing discovery but finding no audience patient and willing enough to hear my message.

I imagine this is how the crazed desert prophet must feel. Knowing, not just believing, but truly knowing in the core of one's being that the world contains more depth and wonder than ever previously suspected. Knowing that if you could just make people listen, if they would just believe you a little, enough to put in the modicum of effort required that they too could see what only you have seen, but meeting only stubborn indifference and a baffling unwillingness to invest the smallest amount of attention to gain new sight.

You can't bottle funny

The Skza and I (which, by the way, will be the title of my fourth book) posted a couple more videos last night. One we worked on for about 2 weeks, took 8 long takes and hours and hours of editing, whilst the other was completely ad-libbed, is one take beginning to end, captured while we were messing with the lighting.

Guess which one I like better?

I need to get a camera

Things I saw on my walk to work this morning

• In someone's recycling, an empty giant (we're talking gallons here) Cheez-its container
• A municipal worker doing leg stretches against the side of his garbage truck, while waiting for the compactor to do it's thing
• Written in chalk on the sidewalk, arrows pointing at the entrances to houses, and what pets live there: "cat", "cat", "dog", "lots of cats"
  

Important Lexiographical Discovery

Pronoun + Adjective + food item = instant euphemism.

• His stinky potato chips
• Her generous omelette
• Your peculiar bacon
  

Funny comic

Stealing my thoughts, using their rays

So, if you're reading this here blog, you probably know me In Real Life, or as the kids say: "In-Re-Li". So maybe I admitted to you recently that it wasn't until my 31st year of life that I found out that horses and ponies are separate animals, for I had thought that ponies were just baby horses.

Now, witness today's Achewood:

Upcoming

We are working on a new Homem Arahana show. It is going to be AWESOME or TERRIBLE or BOTH.

Probably not very fuel efficient

Things I would like to do for bad reasons

• Take up fabric colouring, so I could publish a book "Get Rich or Try Dyeing"

Things I am bad with: Money

Tonight's impulse purchases:

Americano coffee...................$1.50
San Pelligrino Orange soda.........$1.00
Comic Book: Ex Machina #1.........$10.55
Used Copy of The Compact OED.....$150.00