Just mean.

Christmas Songs That Bear Repeated Listening

Fairy Tale of New York - The Pogues


You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch - Thurl Ravenscroft

Book: Fargo Rock City

Comparing Nevermind and Appetite For Destruction

There's no doubt about which of these records is more socially important, but there's also no question about which one gets played in my apartment when I want to hear something badass.

Book: Fargo Rock City

Fargo Rock City
By: Chuck Klosterman
Started: Sunday Nov 16, 2008

Anyone that's stood within earshot of me for more than 15 minutes knows my opinion of Klosterman's collection of essays, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa puffs, namely that it is pretty good and an entertaining read, but much like Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, it offers honest insights in to the inner workings of the mind of a certain class of man, the introspective, hyper-verbal insecure genre nerd, and for this reason, neither book should ever, ever be allowed to fall in to the hands of a woman. It would be a disaster.

Anyway, Fargo Rock City, so far, seems to be a history of heavy metal, specifically a history of the nomenclature and sub-genre classification of different kinds of metal, and more specifically, Chuck Klosterman's relationship to the nomenclature and sub-genre classification of different kinds of metal over the course of his life. I'm not really sure why I'm reading this book. I was never in to metal, I'm not from the rural U.S., I'm not Chuck Klosterman. I'm hoping it gets funny, fast.

Book: Lives of the Monster Dogs, finished

Finished Lives of the Monster Dogs over the weekend. It was poignant and sad. Much like a communicating with a dog, I'm not sure if I got everything it was trying to tell me, but important parts came through.

Book: Lives of the Monster Dogs

Lives of the Monster Dogs
Kristen Bakis
Started: Sunday Nov 9th, 2008

Ian made me pick this up years ago in a used bookstore in a plaza of used bookstores in a university town in New York state. I'm about 60 pages in and so far it delivers what the title promises, it's the story of a group of sentient bipedal, talking dogs, who rebelled against the isolated mad-scientist founded commune that created them, and decide to go to New York. But it's not told for comedy or crazy science fiction, it's for pathos and romance.

So far, all the action takes place in Novembers, historical, future and startlingly, November, 2008. It's a very November book. Told in greys and windswept empty streets, bundled coats, fireplaces, dusks and clear night skies. It is exactly what I want from a book right now.

Back To My Roots

L: what did you do?
Me: Brown shoes, brown coat, grey sweater
L: er, it's camo for the bookish

So a while ago I tried to reboot my reading habit. Mistakes were made at multiple levels of management and I'm not here to point fingers, but the project was canceled half way through, and 4th quarter performance was impacted.

Anyway, let's try again, without the rigid itinerary or inflexible schedules.

A Box Factory!

This totally sounds like something from the B plotline of an episode of 30 Rock.

I am trying to save lives

Ok, this is a crazy idea, but stay with me. Everyone knows that day-light savings time is

1. A crock
2. Killing people

But everyone (and by "everyone", I mean "me") loves the fall-back weekend. You get an extra hour on the weekend, it doesn't come with the pressures and obligations of a whole day off, it's just an extra hour. You're early for everything, better slept, it's fantastic.

Now, what if we kept the fall-back weekend, but lost the spring-forward weekend? The "day" would rotate around the day-night cycle over a 24 year period, but in this 24 hour go-go world wide global economic market, that's good. Think about it people.