Maybe if I didn't spend so much time on lists of books, I'd read more

I find myself physically incapable of not filling out any kind of online survey about reading. Case in point, and forgive me for the incredibly long list on my homepage: this list of 1001 books you should read (before you die? I think it's based on a book of that title). Bold means I've read them. I put asterisks next to those I have copies of in my room right now.

1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro*
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan*
3. On Beauty - Zadie Smith
4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
6. The Sea - John Banville*
7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
9. The Master - Colm Toibin
10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
11. The Lambs of London - Peter Ackroyd
12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
18. What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
20. Islands – Dan Sleigh
21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
25. The Double – José Saramago
26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
27. Unless – Carol Shields
28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
31. In the Forest – Edna O'Brien
32. Shroud – John Banville
33. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
35. Dead Air – Iain Banks
36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
37. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster*
38. Gabriel's Gift – Hanif Kureishi
39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
41. Schooling – Heather McGowan
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
44. Don't Move – Margaret Mazzantini
45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
46. Fury – Salman Rushdie
47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O'Neill
48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
52. The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho
53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
61. How the Dead Live – Will Self
62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
69. Pastoralia – George Saunder
70. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
71. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
72. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
73. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
74. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
75. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie*
77. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
78. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
79. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
80. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
81. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
82. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
83. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
84. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O'Hanlon
85. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
86. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
88. Another World – Pat Barker
89. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
90. Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho
91. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
92. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
93. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
94. Great Apes – Will Self
95. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
96. Underworld – Don DeLillo
97. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
98. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
99. American Pastoral - Philip Roth*
100. The Untouchable – John Banville
101. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
102. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
103. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
104. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
105. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
106. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
107. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace*
108. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
109. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
110. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
111. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
112. The Information – Martin Amis
113. The Moor's Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
114. Sabbath's Theater – Philip Roth
115. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
116. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
117. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
118. Love's Work – Gillian Rose
119. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
120. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
121. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
122. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
123. Land – Park Kyong-ni
124. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
125. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
126. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
127. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
128. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
129. Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
130. Felicia's Journey – William Trevor
131. Disappearance – David Dabydeen
132. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
134. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
135. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
136. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
137. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
138. Complicity – Iain Banks
139. On Love – Alain de Botton
140. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
141. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
142. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
144. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
145. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
146. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
147. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
148. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
149. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
150. A Heart So White – Javier Marias
151. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
152. Indigo – Marina Warner
153. The Crow Road – Iain Banks
154. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
155. Jazz – Toni Morrison
156. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje*
157. Smilla's Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
158. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
159. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
160. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
161. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
162. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan* (at my parents' house)
163. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
164. Arcadia – Jim Crace
165. Wild Swans - Jung Chang
166. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
167. Time's Arrow – Martin Amis
168. Mao II – Don DeLillo
169. Typical – Padgett Powell
170. Regeneration – Pat Barker
171. Downriver – Iain Sinclair
172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
173. Wise Children – Angela Carter
174. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
175. Amongst Women – John McGahern
176. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
177. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
178. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
179. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
180. The Things They Carried – Tim O'Brien
181. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
182. Like Life – Lorrie Moore
183. Possession – A.S. Byatt
184. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
185. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
186. A Disaffection – James Kelman
187. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
188. Moon Palace – Paul Auster
189. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
190. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
191. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
192. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
193. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
194. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
195. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
196. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
197. London Fields – Martin Amis
198. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
199. Cat's Eye – Margaret Atwood
200. Foucault's Pendulum – Umberto Eco
201. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
202. Wittgenstein's Mistress – David Markson
203. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
204. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
205. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
206. Libra – Don DeLillo
207. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
208. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
209. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
210. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
211. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
212. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
213. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
214. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
215. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
216. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
217. Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
218. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
219. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
220. World's End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
221. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
222. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
223. Beloved – Toni Morrison
224. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
225. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
226. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
227. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
228. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
229. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
230. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
231. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
232. Foe – J.M. Coetzee
233. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
234. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
235. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
238. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
239. A Maggot – John Fowles
240. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
241. Contact – Carl Sagan
242. The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood
243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
244. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
245. White Noise – Don DeLillo*
246. Queer – William Burroughs
247. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
248. Legend – David Gemmell
249. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi
250. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
251. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
252. The Lover – Marguerite Duras
253. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
254. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
255. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
256. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
257. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
258. Neuromancer – William Gibson
259. Flaubert's Parrot – Julian Barnes
260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
261. Shame – Salman Rushdie
262. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
263. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
264. La Brava – Elmore Leonard
265. Waterland – Graham Swift
266. The Life and Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee
267. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
268. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
269. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
270. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
271. A Boy's Own Story – Edmund White
272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
273. Wittgenstein's Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
275. Schindler's Ark – Thomas Keneally
276. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
277. The Newton Letter – John Banville
278. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
279. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
280. The Names – Don DeLillo
281. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
283. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
284. July's People – Nadine Gordimer
285. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
286. Broken April – Ismail Kadare
287. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
288. Midnight's Children – Salman Rushdie
289. Rites of Passage – William Golding
290. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
291. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
292. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
293. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
294. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
295. Smiley's People – John Le Carré
296. Shikasta – Doris Lessing
297. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
298. Burger's Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
299. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
300. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
301. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
302. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
303. The World According to Garp – John Irving
304. Life: A User's Manual – Georges Perec
305. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
306. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
307. Yes – Thomas Bernhard
308. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
309. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
310. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
311. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
312. The Shining – Stephen King
313. Dispatches – Michael Herr
314. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
315. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
316. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
317. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
318. Ratner's Star – Don DeLillo
319. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
321. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
322. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
323. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
324. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
325. W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
326. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
327. Grimus – Salman Rushdie
328. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
329. Fateless – Imre Kertész
330. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
331. High Rise – J.G. Ballard
332. Humboldt's Gift – Saul Bellow
333. Dead Babies – Martin Amis
334. Correction – Thomas Bernhard
335. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
336. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
337. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
338. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
339. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
340. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
341. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
342. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
343. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
344. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
345. Crash – J.G. Ballard
346. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
347. Gravity's Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon* (at my parents' house)
348. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
349. Sula – Toni Morrison
350. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
351. The Breast – Philip Roth
352. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
353. G – John Berger
354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
355. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
356. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
357. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
359. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
360. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
361. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
362. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
363. The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
364. The Ogre – Michael Tournier
365. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
366. Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
368. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
369. Troubles – J.G. Farrell
370. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
371. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
372. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
373. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
374. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
375. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
376. The French Lieutenant's Woman – John Fowles
377. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
378. Portnoy's Complaint – Philip Roth
379. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
380. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
381. Them – Joyce Carol Oates
382. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
383. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
384. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
385. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
386. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
387. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
388. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
389. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
391. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
392. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
393. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
394. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
395. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
396. Chocky – John Wyndham
397. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
398. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
400. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
401. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
402. The Joke – Milan Kundera
403. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
404. The Third Policeman – Flann O'Brien
405. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
406. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
407. Trawl – B.S. Johnson
408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
409. The Magus – John Fowles
410. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
411. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
412. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
413. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
414. Things – Georges Perec
415. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong'o
416. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O'Brien
417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
418. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O'Connor
419. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
420. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
421. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
422. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
423. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
424. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
425. Herzog – Saul Bellow
426. V. – Thomas Pynchon
427. Cat's Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
428. The Graduate – Charles Webb
429. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
430. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
431. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
432. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
435. The Collector – John Fowles
436. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kesey*
437. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
438. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
439. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
440. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
441. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
442. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O'Brien
443. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
444. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
446. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
447. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
448. Solaris - Stanislow Lem
449. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
452. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O'Connor
453. How It Is – Samuel Beckett
454. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
455. The Country Girls – Edna O'Brien
456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
457. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
458. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
459. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
460. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
461. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
462. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
463. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
464. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
465. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
466. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
467. Breakfast at Tiffany's – Truman Capote
468. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
469. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
470. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
471. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
472. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
473. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
474. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
475. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
476. The End of the Road – John Barth
477. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
478. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
479. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
480. Voss – Patrick White
481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
482. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
483. Homo Faber – Max Frisch
484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
485. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
486. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
487. The Wonderful "O" – James Thurber
488. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
489. Giovanni's Room – James Baldwin
490. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
491. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
492. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
493. The Floating Opera – John Barth
494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
496. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
497. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
498. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
499. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
500. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
501. The Recognitions – William Gaddis
502. The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
503. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
504. I'm Not Stiller – Max Frisch
505. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
506. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
507. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
509. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
510. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
511. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler* (at my parents' house)
512. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
513. Watt – Samuel Beckett
514. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
515. Junkie – William Burroughs
516. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
517. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
518. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
519. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
520. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
521. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
522. Wise Blood – Flannery O'Connor
523. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
524. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
525. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
528. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
530. The Rebel – Albert Camus
531. Molloy – Samuel Beckett
532. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
533. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
534. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
535. The Third Man – Graham Greene
536. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
537. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
538. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
539. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
540. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
541. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
542. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
543. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
544. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
545. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
546. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
548. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
549. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
550. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
551. The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
552. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
553. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
554. The Victim – Saul Bellow
555. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
556. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
557. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
558. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
559. The Plague – Albert Camus
560. Back – Henry Green
561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
562. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
564. Animal Farm – George Orwell
565. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
566. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
567. Loving – Henry Green
568. Arcanum 17 – André Breton
569. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
570. The Razor's Edge – William Somerset Maugham
571. Transit – Anna Seghers
572. Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
573. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
575. Caught – Henry Green
576. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
577. Embers - Sandor Marai
578. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
579. The Outsider – Albert Camus
580. In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
581. The Poor Mouth – Flann O'Brien
582. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
583. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
584. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
585. The Hamlet – William Faulkner
586. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
588. Native Son – Richard Wright
589. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
590. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
591. Party Going – Henry Green
592. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
593. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
594. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O'Brien
595. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
596. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
597. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
598. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
599. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
600. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
601. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
602. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
604. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
605. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
606. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
607. Murphy – Samuel Beckett
608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
609. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
611. The Years – Virginia Woolf
612. In Parenthesis – David Jones
613. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
614. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
615. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
616. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
617. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
618. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
620. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
621. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
622. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner* (at my parents' house)
623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
624. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
625. Independent People - Halldor Laxness
626. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
627. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
628. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? – Horace McCoy
629. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
630. England Made Me – Graham Greene
631. Burmese Days – George Orwell
632. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
633. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
634. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
635. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
636. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller*
637. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
638. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
639. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
640. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
641. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West*
642. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
643. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein*
644. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
645. A Day Off – Storm Jameson
646. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
648. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
650. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
651. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
652. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
653. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
654. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
655. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
656. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
657. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
658. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
659. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
660. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
661. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
662. Passing – Nella Larsen
663. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
664. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
665. Living – Henry Green
666. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
667. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
668. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
669. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
670. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
671. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner* (at my parents' house)
672. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
673. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
674. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
675. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
676. Lady Chatterley's Lover – D.H. Lawrence
677. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
678. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
679. Quartet – Jean Rhys
680. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
681. Quicksand – Nella Larsen
682. Parade's End – Ford Madox Ford
683. Nadja – André Breton
684. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
685. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
687. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
688. Amerika – Franz Kafka
689. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
690. Blindness – Henry Green
691. The Castle – Franz Kafka
692. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
693. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
694. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
696. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
697. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
700. The Counterfeiters – André Gide
701. The Trial – Franz Kafka
702. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
703. The Professor's House – Willa Cather
704. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
705. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
706. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
707. We -Yevgeny Zamyatin
708. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
709. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
710. Zeno's Conscience – Italo Svevo
711. Cane – Jean Toomer
712. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
713. Amok – Stefan Zweig
714. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
715. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
716. Jacob's Room – Virginia Woolf
717. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
718. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
719. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
720. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
721. Aaron's Rod – D.H. Lawrence
722. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
723. Ulysses – James Joyce* (at my parents' house)
724. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
725. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
727. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
728. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence* (at my parents' house)
729. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
730. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
731. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
732. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
733. Summer – Edith Wharton
734. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
735. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
737. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
738. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
739. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
740. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
741. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
742. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
743. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
744. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
745. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
746. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
747. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
748. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
749. Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
750. Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
751. The Charwoman's Daughter – James Stephens
752. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
753. Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
754. Howards End – E.M. Forster
755. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
756. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
757. Martin Eden – Jack London
758. Strait is the Gate – André Gide
759. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
760. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
762. The Iron Heel – Jack London
763. The Old Wives' Tale – Arnold Bennett
764. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
765. Mother – Maxim Gorky
766. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
768. Young Törless – Robert Musil
769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
770. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
771. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
772. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
774. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
775. The Golden Bowl – Henry James
776. The Ambassadors – Henry James
777. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
778. The Immoralist – André Gide
779. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
782. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
783. Kim – Rudyard Kipling
784. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
785. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
786. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
787. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
788. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James*
790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
791. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
792. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
793. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
794. Dracula – Bram Stoker
795. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
796. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
797. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
798. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
800. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
801. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
802. Born in Exile – George Gissing
803. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
805. News from Nowhere – William Morris
806. New Grub Street – George Gissing
807. Gösta Berling's Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
808. Tess of the D-Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
809. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
810. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
811. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
812. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
813. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
814. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
815. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
816. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
817. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
818. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
819. She – H. Rider Haggard
820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
821. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
822. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
823. King Solomon's Mines – H. Rider Haggard
824. Germinal – Émile Zola
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
826. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
827. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
828. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
829. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
830. A Woman's Life – Guy de Maupassant
831. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
832. The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
833. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
834. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
835. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
836. Nana – Émile Zola
837. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
838. The Red Room – August Strindberg
839. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
841. Drunkard – Émile Zola
842. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
843. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
844. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
845. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
846. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
847. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
849. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
850. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
851. Erewhon – Samuel Butler
852. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
853. Middlemarch - George Eliot
854. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
855. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
856. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
857. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
858. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
859. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
860. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
861. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
862. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
864. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
865. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
866. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
867. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
868. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
869. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
870. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
871. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
872. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo*
874. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
875. Silas Marner – George Eliot
876. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens (abridged)
877. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
878. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
879. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
880. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
881. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
882. Max Havelaar – Multatuli
883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
884. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
885. Adam Bede - George Eliot
886. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
887. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
888. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
889. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
890. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
891. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
892. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
893. Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
894. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
895. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
898. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
899. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
900. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
901. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
903. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
905. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
906. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
907. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
908. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
910. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
912. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
914. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
915. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
917. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
919. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
920. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
921. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
922. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
923. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
924. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
926. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
927. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
928. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
929. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
930. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
932. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
933. Persuasion – Jane Austen
934. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
935. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
936. Emma – Jane Austen
937. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
939. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
940. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
941. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
942. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
943. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
944. The Nun – Denis Diderot
945. Camilla – Fanny Burney
946. The Monk – M.G. Lewis
947. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
948. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
949. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
950. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
951. Justine – Marquis de Sade
952. Vathek – William Beckford
953. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
954. Cecilia – Fanny Burney
955. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
956. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
957. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
958. Evelina – Fanny Burney
959. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
960. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
961. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
962. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
963. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
964. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
965. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
966. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
967. Rameau's Nephew – Denis Diderot
968. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
969. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
970. Candide – Voltaire
971. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
972. Amelia – Henry Fielding
973. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
974. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
975. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
976. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
977. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
978. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
979. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
980. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
981. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
982. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
983. Gulliver's Travels – Jonathan Swift
984. Roxana – Daniel Defoe
985. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
986. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
988. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
989. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
990. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
991. The Pilgrim's Progress – John Bunyan
992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
993. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe 994. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
995. Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
996. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
997. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
998. Aithiopika – Heliodorus
999. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
1000. Metamorphoses – Ovid
1001. Aesop's Fables – Aesopus

Total: 94. I am therefore inspired to pick up all the copies of books on this list that I already have and finish off a list of 100. I could also theoretically sign up for this.

The best part is that a good number of the books on this list I own but have not read yet were purchased in one fell swoop of a buying binge, at Logos bookstore in Santa Cruz, just a few weekends ago. Am I psychic somehow, or just a huge bibliophile?

(via)

Jazz Old Hands

What I need is for this list to be boiled down to like, the top 10, or 5, and then maybe I could finally get into jazz like I've always said I wanted to.

Obama's religion

The thing that has bugged my dad the most about Obama's campaign (although he is a supporter) is Obama's constant reiteration that he is Christian. (We're a non-religious family so that tends to rub us the wrong way; although intellectually obviously we don't care, sometimes you have that gut reaction to someone where you want them to believe the exact same things that you do.)

I've been telling him all along that he has to repeat that fact because generally you don't get elected in this country if you are anything but Christian, but lately I've changed my tactic to "if he doesn't keep saying that, people will keep talking about how he's Muslim." It's seriously fucked up. So hear hear, Alex Balk, for this comment.

Because I'm sort of re-hooked on Gossip Girl

Oh, kill my beating, 15-year-old girl heart now, why don't you, television:

"It really does feel like we’re living the show sometimes," says Penn, who for the record is pretty much exactly like Dan, all cheekbones and philosophical musings.

It's unbelievably cruel for New York Magazine to confirm that secret wish of all females that TV actors and their characters are the same person. Especially in this case, since I have had a soft spot for Penn Badgley ever since that terrible, but awesome, show "The Mountain" which was canceled halfway through a season since literally only Cristina and I watched it. ("Jack and Bobby," which was also awesome, suffered the same fate, and we never found out which son was going to grow up and be president.)

These are the things I worry about, besides John McCain

I maintain that if I were to go back to school, one of my top five choices would be as some kind of media studies person analyzing "The Hills." I don't even watch it anymore -- my tolerance level is way, way too low for that kind of bullshit -- but I maintain a mild academic interest in it as a cultural phenomenon. Read this article about Heidi and Spencer to understand -- it's unfathomable and creepy.

Together, they have leveraged many bits of their lives -- Heidi's plastic surgery (nose job, breast implants), her real and continuous falling out with Lauren, the possibly faked ups and downs of their relationship and the cruel public mockery of Heidi's popstar aspirations -- to fit the 24-hour news cycle. They have retained a publicist, Cindy Guagenti of BWR Public Relations, but she seems to have a hands-off approach to their full-on courting of the press. Often, staged-looking paparazzi shots accompany their doings: It's Easter, and Heidi and Spencer have bunny ears on! Spencer comforts a crying Heidi after people are mean about her music video for "Higher" on the Internet!

Harvey Levin, the TMZ guru, said this fakeness factor actually adds to the fun: "They are so lame, and so staged and canned, that it makes it almost entertaining and fun to poke fun at. The secret for them is that they get the joke."

And Hilton, whose lawless blog has caused frequent earthquakes that shake the publicist-driven and fawning Celebrity Industrial Complex, mused over the setups and fictions in a telephone interview. "Genius and pathetic at the same time," he said. "But more genius than pathetic."

I really hope not. Stuff like this actually makes me feel like America is doomed; the apocalypse is, actually, closer than we think.

(via)

Personality-mapping the United States

This has already been multiple places online, including my friend Rachel's blog, but please explain why there is a strong neurotic population in Oklahoma? I don't get it.

If they had interviewed me for this study they would have got one solid purple dot over in the San Francisco Bay Area. Damn hippies.

What the campaign is really about?

Roger Ebert has a blog, which is pretty cool. I never read his column, and only watched him on TV, so it's weird to actually read his writing for once. Especially when it's about my favorite subject, Hillary Clinton's campaign (ok, perhaps that's my second favorite subject, but it's all tangled up now, obviously):

The campaign was not about political positions, but about sheer desire.

Way to say it, Roger. And you even say it in a way that makes me feel kind of sad for it all. It's a pretty shitty way for her to go out, without ever expecting it, and clinging for dear life. What a world, what a dynasty. We'll have to see how it goes.

(via)

The Empire Strikes Barack

These "12 Internet Memes that Took Obama to the Nomination," while (slightly) premature, are nevertheless hilarious. Most of them I'd at least heard of, although I didn't watch all of them due to my ongoing "I can read lots of junk at work but can't manage to squeeze in video time" (unlike my extraordinarily lucky roommate with two monitors and his own office, who manages to watch full movies at work while actually working, a level of multi-tasking I can only reach while "working" from home) problem. However, they don't exactly lose anything in belated watching. My favorite (of the ones I'd never seen before) is the "Star Wars" parody, so I'm posting it here:



Obviously there's zero nuance in these things, but whatever. You just have to love the Internet.

Plouffe

My friends have developed a weird kind of e-mail-hero worship of David Plouffe. Not actually kidding; it's like the way you think you know the people whose blogs you read, when really you don't, and all we do is read his mass-marketed e-mails. Anyway, apparently he's afraid of the spotlight, which only makes him more intriguing. Dude deserves a killer job in Obama's administration (assuming it eventually exists).

So would that make Eric, Larry, or Sergey Hugh?

My friend Kim hosted Jon Carroll and Leah Garchik at Google a week or so ago. You can watch her very smooth intro and the event itself on YouTube here (the story about the orgy is quite hilarious and sometime in the first half, since that's the half of the talk I attended), but my favorite thing to come from this event (not that I had anything to do with it) was this quote in Carroll's column soon after:

I think maybe Google is the Hefner mansion of the 21st century. It too rises from a fantasy - what if you had all the information in the universe at your fingertips? - and it too has sensual amenities to ease the workload. Since the whole idea of Google, it would seem, is that no one should ever have to leave work, one does wonder how it handles courtship rituals and related activities. I imagine they are handled in some officially unofficial way, though, because the Google environment is very carefully thought through.

As for the first half, yes. As for the second half, good question, man, good question. I decline to state. I don't even know myself.

A really dumb complaint

There should be a website like "White Whine" for "Google Whine." Like this, thought to myself for the second time in a week upon opening my (free) container of veggie sushi I got from the kitchen just yards from my desk, "Why don't they give me more wasabi and soy sauce, and less fucking ginger." Which sounds absolutely absurd considering there are cyclones in Myanmar and all that, but really, to indulge me for a moment in being entirely shallow, why is it that prepackaged sushi packs only give you one measly packet of soy sauce, and seem to think that to mitigate the spice of that pea-sized ball of wasabi, you need like a quarter cup of ginger? WHY!?!!

Election Night

My friends and I are big dorks. It was my friend Jordan's birthday yesterday, and so a bunch of us went out to Toronado for some beer and sausages from Rosamunde's next door. Always delicious, yes, but the real show of the night as far as I was concerned was a couple of time zones away and brought to me by my Blackberry. I will not lie, I refreshed the New York Times Indiana primary results about every three minutes, even though it only actually updated maybe every seven minutes. I'd last looked at the county results map around 7pm, and so from then until 9pm all I knew, or guessed, or hoped, was that Lake County hadn't reported yet. I also will not lie, I definitely sang part of "Gary, Indiana" in the middle of a dive bar. My friend Sarah and I had each pledged to ourselves and our comrades to not go on from Toronado to the second destination of the night, the Page, primarily because I wanted to sleep and she wanted to avoid repeating any drunken decisions similar to those she made at our Cinco de Mayo celebration Monday, but with 89% of the votes in, I couldn't in good conscience go home and miss the chance to toast a victory for Barack Obama after a night of inching margins and percentages. So we went on, with a second pledge to only have one beer at the second bar, and were rewarded with CNN broadcast on the TV. (More bars should really show political results. Toronado was showing NBA playoffs, whatever that is all about.) We all had our smartphones in hand -- I had two phones, one refreshing the Times in case they got the results before CNN, and one texting my dad -- and we clinked glasses about six times.

And, ok, we were obviously going for a long shot, but I had also expected, or worried, that Clinton was going to hit like 8% minimum victory in Indiana, the polls not being promising, and also history not exactly being encouraging what with "close" races in PA and OH turning out only in her favor. So a loss for Obama by barely 20,000 votes is fucking A-OK for me, and I feel like all this is finally happening. I can't really say anything because I feel like I'd jinx it, but I am feeling good today.

Finally, overall I realized that I may need to be sedated on Election Night this November, which happens to also occur on my birthday. I was wired from the moment returns started filing in from Indiana until 11pm last night, and that's despite the two and a half beers I had in that time. I seriously have no idea how I'll manage to keep my heart rate at any reasonable level when what's at stake is not just one state, but the chance to finally get a Democrat back in the White House. Seriously, even now I'm freaking out about it.

At last!

I consume a lot of online media every day. I'm subscribed to 120 feeds in my Google Reader, and I share a tiny percentage of that with you on this blog. It's obscene, really, the number of things I could take time to read every day. (I don't; they build up, and when I have a home sick day I spend a lot of time weeding through them again. It's sort of like the way I deal with physical excess -- I pile up clothes all over my room until some day I have time to put them away. Judge away.) Anyway, all this is to say that there's some stuff I love but don't blog about since it takes time to open up another window, arrange the links, etc. Thankfully, Google has finally introduced a new sharing feature in Reader where, when you share an item that you've read, you can write a comment. Can you believe it took them this long? (I should insert here that my opinion is not the opinion of my company, obviously.) I can't. But I'm absolutely thrilled. And I should take this moment to point out that if you want to read my shared items, and you aren't one of my "friends" in Google Reader or don't use Reader at all, you can go here. Go forth and consume the Internet.

A (tacit) celebrity endorsement I can get excited about.

Hey, we got Stevie Wonder on our side. Go us.

I'm actually serious.

And because I can: "Top five musical crimes perpetuated by Stevie Wonder in the '80s and '90s. Go. Sub-question: is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?"

If it's rampion you want, rampion you shall have.

Ok. All my cooking blogs have been talking about ramps this past week. I have not read too deeply into any of the posts to find out what ramps are, but apparently ramps have like the shortest season of any edible, although I maintain that my inability to get a good apricot tops this whole ramp season business. (I also exaggerate, I have no idea how long ramp season is compared to other seasons, but people are freaking out about ramps, so I assume it's short.) Anyway, I also have no idea how ramps taste. Are they like leeks? Onions? They look like leeks and onions... I think. A wikipedia search could easily solve this problem but I prefer to keep it all mysterious because a) I've never ever seen ramps in a store near me and therefore they are pretty irrelevant to my life and b) whenever I hear the word "ramp," all I can possibly think about is this episode of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" with a "Fractured Fairy Tale" bit where Rapunzel's mother wants to eat rampion.

Anyway, so the upshot of all this is that I'd rather tie my concept of "ramps" to an obscure cartoon than find out what it actually is. At least for the sake of blogging about it, and now I'm going to look that shit up because now I'm wondering if ramps and rampion are the same thing. Or if the latter even exists. Plus! I have the immense pleasure of presenting you with this, the product of my YouTube search efforts, and truly awesome:



(Just so you know, ramps are wild leeks that taste kind of like onions and garlic, and rampion is some rando flower in Europe.)

Thinking about Islam...

My dad sent me this bit by Sam Harris, author of "End of Faith" and "Letters to a Christian Nation." I have only read the former of the two titles, and I confess I don't remember it well. It had some compelling points, but I was not entirely swayed by his argument that religion in moderation is basically as bad as religious extremism because it sanctions it somehow. Despite not having any kind of religious upbringing, I have a soft spot for religion. I don't like to condemn my friends who do have a religious faith. Maybe it's just me being a sentimentalist. I also have some respect for the traditions and forms of faith -- and being ridden with anxiety like I am, I have a longing for a kind of solace and inner peace that I imagine religion offers some people.

Still, it's very interesting to read Sam Harris' points of view. He is willing to say things that people don't like to say, and this article proves that at the same time that it asserts the necessity of such speech. He certainly does put his money where his mouth is.

I recently finished reading "Three Cups of Tea," which I could talk about at length but which is essentially just a story of this guy, Greg Mortenson, who after a failed trek up K2, stumbled across a remote rural village in Pakistan and became crazy committed to building a school there. After a lot of false starts and adventures, he ended up building more than 50 schools, "women's activity centers," and various random other things (for example, in order to build the first school, he realized he had to build a bridge, and he helps them get clean water which completely halved the infant mortality rate). Mortenson believes that education is at least a major key to bring about the end of terrorism, because schools like his, which teach math and writing instead of Islamic extremism like the madrassas (which in the chronology of the book start cropping up everywhere, like mushrooms, and scare the shit out of him), and give villagers options beyond sticking around where they were born tending to yaks and joining up with terrorist organizations. His other big sticking point is how important it is to education women, an assertion that is not totally backed up with facts/evidence from his own schools; however, there was some statistic in the book that shows that communities with more educated women have better health and life expectancy or something like that.

The reason why all this is relevant is because the entire book is filled with assertions both from the author and the Americans and from the local Pakistani people who work with Mortenson to bring about these changes that they are not like the Muslim extremists or the terrorists of whom we are all afraid. It's a major, major theme in the book. So I am torn when I read these "academic" perspectives on the intrinsically violent nature of Islam and then these anecdotal, experience-based stories which indicate the opposite. Or which focus less on the textual shit, the stuff buried in the Qur'an, and instead focus on the lifestyles of the people whose faith rests with and in that book. I mean, in one example in this book, the leader of a village has a Qur'an that he cannot even read, and he is a paragon of virtue, open-minded, dedicated to providing a school for his village, especially for the girls. His granddaughter ends up being the first educated woman in the region. I like to think that there are more men and women like that out there, and indeed, there are more mentioned in the book. But he also can't read his holy book, which academics inform me is filled with all this bad stuff. So what does all that mean? What's the takeaway?

All I can think is that it's very important for us to try to get to know Islam on both an intellectual level and on an experiential level. I think in Harris' case, although I don't know for sure what kind of Muslim-country-tourism he's gotten up to, he relies at least somewhat on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has had first-hand experience with some of the worst that Islam has to offer. (I have her book "Infidel" on my to-read stack and I keep thinking I really need to push it higher up in the queue.) But what am I supposed to do? Just reading "Three Cups of Tea" I learned tons about Pakistan. I vaguely knew that there were different tribes there, but had no real grasp on that fact. And I'm not planning on making a trip out there anytime soon, so I have to reach for information where I can find it. I think if nothing else, that is something I'd like to take away from this Harris piece -- more information, not less, is good.

Something worth thinking about.

And I call myself a beer lover...

This is just depressing. My friend JJ, who writes a fantastic beer blog (I don't really know how it compares to other beer blogs, but that's because I don't read any others), posted this list of 125 Places To Have a Beer Before you Die. I really, really would like to hit up all these locations some day. In the meantime, I have been to...

The Growler List: 125 Places to Have a Beer Before You Die

1. Great American Beer Festival, Denver, CO
2. Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium
3. U Fleku, Prague, Czech Republic
4. Great British Beer Festival, Earls Court, London, England
5. Oktoberfest, Munich, Germany
6. Augustiner Keller, Munich, Germany
7. Abbaye de Notre-Dame d’Orval, Orval, Belgium
8. The Gravity Bar, Guinness St. James Gate Brewery, Dublin, Ireland
9. Monk’s Café, Philadelphia, PA
10. The Great Canadian Beer Festival, Vancouver, BC
11. Hofbrauhaus, Munich, Germany
12. The Brickskeller, Washington, DC
13. Rick’s Café, Negril, Jamaica
14. The Market Porter, Stoney Street, London, England
15. Cat’s Eye Pub, Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD
16. Seats on top of the Green Monster in Fenway Park, Boston, MA
17. Mondial de la Bière, Montreal, Quebec
18. Horizon’s Café, CN Tower, Toronto, Ontario
19. Clubhouse box seats at the Saratoga Race Course, Saratoga Springs, NY
20. Beer Club Popeye, Tokyo, Japan
21. The Publick House, Brookline, MA
22. Infield at Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, FL
23. Henry’s 12th Street Tavern, Portland, OR
24. The Hopleaf, Chicago, IL
25. World Beer Festival, Durham/Raleigh, NC
26. French Quarter during Mardi Gras, New Orleans, LA
27. Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy
28. Zum Uerige, Dusseldorf, Germany
29. Toronado, San Francisco, CA
30. The Olde Mitre Tavern, Ely Court, Hatton Garden, London, England
31. Turn 4 Suites at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis, IN
32. Rogue Brewery, Newport, OR
33. The Wynkoop Brewery, Denver, CO
34. Spuyten Duyvil, Brooklyn, NY
35. Great Lakes Brewing, Cleveland, OH
36. McMenamins Kennedy School Hotel, Portland, OR
37. Atelier am Dom, Cologne, Germany
38. Anchor Brewing Tasting Room, San Francisco, CA
39.The Flying Saucer, NC, SC, TN, AR and TX
40. Arend’s Nest, Amsterdam, Holland
41. Blues Bar, Stone Town, Zanzibar
42. SandLot Brewery, Coors Field, Denver, CO
43. Clark Street Ale House, Chicago, IL
44. Tailgating at a Southeastern Conference Football Game
45. Selin’s Grove Brewing, Selinsgrove, PA
46. The Great Lost Bear, Portland, ME
47. The Map Room, Chicago, IL
48. The Blue Tusk, Syracuse, NY
49. Woolwich Arms, Guelph, ON
50. Beach Bar at the Atlantis Hotel, Paradise Island, Bahamas
51. The White Horse Pub, Parsons Green, London, England
52. Redbones Restaurant, Somerville, MA
53. Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, Sydney, Australia
54. Falling Rock Tap House, Denver, CO
55. Sleeping Lady Brewery/Snow Goose Restaurant, Anchorage, AK
56. In de Wildeman, Amsterdam, Holland
57. Andechs Monastery, Andechs, Germany
58. Charlie’s Bar, Copenhagen, Denmark
59. PINT Bokbierfestival, Amsterdam, Holland
60. Sierra Nevada Brewing, Chico, CA
61. Kr?ma, Ceske Krumlov, Czech Republic
62. Sapporo Beer Garden, Higashi-ku, Japan
63. Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, MI
64. Sail and Anchor Brewpub, Fremantle, Australia
65. F.X. Matt Brewery Tasting Room, Utica, NY
66. Delerium Café, Brussels, Belgium
67. Birreria l’Orso Eletricco, Rome, Italy
68. Gösser Bierklinik, Vienna, Austria
69. Bariloche Ski Resort, Rio Negro, Argentina
70. d.b.a., New York, NY
71. Brewer’s Art, Baltimore, MD
72. Au General Lafayette, Paris, France
73. Schlenkerla Brewery Tavern, Bamberg, Germany
74. De Hopduvel, Antwerp, Belgium
75. Mr. Sancho’s Beach, Cozumel, Mexico
76. City Tavern, Philadelphia, PA
77. Die Weisse, Salzburg, Austria
78. Halve Maan Brewery, Bruges, Belgium
79. Tinkoff, Moscow, Russia
80. Le Bier Circus, Brussels, Belgium
81. TY Harbor Brewery, Tokyo, Japan
82. Irseer Klosterbrauerei, Irsee, Germany
83. Stockholm Beer & Whiskey Festival, Stockholm, Sweden
84. Goose Island Brewing, Chicago, IL
85. Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
86. Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, NY
87. Deschutes Brewery & Publick House, Bend, OR
88. Baumgartner’s Cheese Store & Tavern, Monroe, WI
89. Icebergs Bar, Sydney, Australia
90. Cantillon Brewery and Gueuze Museum, Belgium
91. Dogfish Head Ale House, Rehoboth Beach, DE
92. Belgo Central, London, England
93. Bruxellensis Festival of Characterful Beers, Brussels, Belgium
94. Felix in The Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong
95. Brasserie Federal, Bahnhof Zurich, Switzerland
96. Heineken Brewery, Amsterdam, Holland
97. Clark’s Ale House, Syracuse, NY
98. The Shakespeare, Aukland, New Zealand
99. Mahar’s, Albany, NY
100. Steamworks Brewing, Vancouver, BC
101. Cooter Brown’s, New Orleans, LA
102. McSorley’s Ale House, New York, NY
103. Kelly’s Caribbean Bar, Grill & Brewery, Key West, FL
104. Rose & Crown Pub, Epcot Center, Orlando, FL
105. The Church Brew Works, Pittsburgh, PA
106. Brick Store Pub, Decatur, GA
107. Sunset Grille & Tap, Boston, MA
108. The Ghost Bar at the Palms Hotel, Las Vegas, NV
109. Norwich Inn/Jasper Murdock’s Brewery, Norwich, VT
110. The Gingerman, Austin, TX
111. Library Ale House, Santa Monica, CA
112. t’Bruges Biertja, Bruges, Belgium
113. beerbistro, Toronto, Canada
114. The Dubliner, Washington, DC
115. John Barleycorn, Chicago, IL
116. Anchor Bar, Buffalo, NY
117. Gritty McDuff’s, Portland, ME
118. Top of the Hill Brewery & Restaurant, Chapel Hill, NC
119. The Bell, Aldworth, Berkshire, England
120. The Golf Tavern, Edinburgh, Scotland
121. Old Ebbitt Grill, Washington, DC
122. 5 Seasons Brewing, Atlanta, GA
123. Tim Schafer’s at Lake Norman, Sherrills Ford, NC
124. Stumbling Monk, Seattle. WA
125. The Happy Gnome, St. Paul, MN

Yeah, that's right. Four. My only consolation is that two of them are in England, and so that gives me some kind of cred (grudging credit to Sean and the CAMRA Good Beer guide). Though why they say to have a beer in Piazza San Marco, I have no idea. Venice is not exactly a beer town.

Jezebelles

It continues to be weird to see pictures of people you read about on the Internet all the time. (Like seeing Ira Glass on video.)

But this is just my own elite opinion, so you can feel free to disregard it.

Sorry to post old news, but this is the last straw. We have had enough of presidents who ignore facts in favor of their own self-interest.

(On a side note, welcome to my Clinton campaigning friend and new blog reader! Er... ha.)

Rhubarb, who knew?

Dan and I decided to sign up for a CSA box. We chose Farm Fresh to You because they deliver directly to your home, rather than requiring you to go to a local pick-up center to pick up your box. That alone was a good decision, since our first box was delivered last Tuesday and I didn't rescue it from in front of our house until Thursday morning. You would think that we rushed crazy folk would be the worst candidate for a CSA box, delivering organic, local, slow food to your doorstep. However, it turns out to be a great idea! It's actually forced me to use fresh veggies and to cook in general, since I don't want to waste all this fresh produce arriving on my doorstep. Our first delivery included a small head of lettuce, a pack of strawberries, a bunch of carrots, two stalks of rhubarb, and a bunch of asparagus. My first reaction was -- rhubarb? I've never cooked rhubarb, and in fact, until this weekend, I'd never eaten it at all. So my first mission was to find something to cook with rhubarb.

I ended up choosing this recipe for big crumb coffee cake with rhubarb, and if I may say so myself, it was a really excellent choice. Tangy, really cakey with a hint of vanilla, with a lot of crumble on top. I actually think that I didn't put in enough butter in the top crumble, so it wasn't as "big crumb" as it should have been, but really, more butter would probably have given all of us heart attacks on the spot, so it may be for the best. We ate this as dessert for our brunch club on Saturday, just little bite-sized pieces really, and then had some more yesterday morning as a snack on our way to see the Annie Leibovitz show at the Legion of Honor. The recipe was delicious with rhubarb, and really quite easy to make (even when I had the totally wrong sized pan), and the blogger says you can definitely make it with other fruits as well. I imagine it would be pretty good with some cinnamon and apple, too. Sadly I took no pictures, but I promise that they don't look as good as the ones on Smitten Kitchen's website anyway.

Totally off my pseudo-diet, but whatever.

Candy

I realized that when I filled out that survey thing with the top 5 favorite snacks, I forgot about the ultimate, ultimate ridiculous snack habit I have (although I am deliberately avoiding it because, whew, the floodgates, believe me): Lifesavers. Specifically, wint-o-green lifesavers that come individually packaged in the bag. They are so, so good. Yum. And if you must know, my second strange candy habit is Smarties. I used to eat them like ten rolls at a time and squirrel the wrappers away inside the couch cushions. Whenever Mom or Dad found them I felt so guilty. And that happened multiple times since I apparently did not learn from my mistakes.

Hovel2Home2Hangover

Oy.

I was walking across campus this morning and thinking to myself that I love the collective hangover experience. There is nothing quite like it. I can't believe I'm romanticizing the hangover, but it's true! Some of the most hilarious times come from when you and your friends are all sort of just trying to process the previous evening... at brunch, on gchat, on vacation... there's a certain tingle to it, which may not make sense to you but it does to me. And there's this sort of tiny glory that comes from knowing exactly how another person feels, physically, in that moment, and knowing that all that stems from a collection of activities you all participated in the night before. It's a very alive moment.

Anyway, this is all sort of just a rambling thought inspired by, obviously the collective hangover. Last night was Hovel2Home, a purportedly small celebration of the fact that Zoe has a home (if not yet any furniture or dishes). The expectation was for it to be a few girls sitting around sipping wine and, I don't know, celebrating. But there were only two bottles of wine, and on a trip out for more we stumbled (not literally, at least not yet) into the Lone Palm, a spot which I realized is almost exactly between my house and Zoe's, and that is either a very good thing or a very bad thing. Last night, it was ground zero.

Not to say that anything so very bad happened. Nothing really out of the ordinary -- which is really just an indication of the fact that the people I know have boundless energy and a lot of enthusiasm for each other, which leads frequently to enthusiasm for booze. Who knew!? Anyway, it was a good night. Much bonding ensued. And then my friend Sarah, who unfortunately lives in Russian Hill, crashed at my house. The best moment of the morning, therefore, was when, readying myself for a late shuttle, and while I was sipping the water I had so thoughtfully put next to my bed the night before, I heard Sarah in the hallway drop a HandiSnack cracker that she'd found in Dan's room on the ground and say "10 second rule." These moments can't be made up or repeated. I'm telling you, the collective hangover is a glorious, glorious thing.

Thus, a day in the life. I promise my parents and parental/stable readers that I really do attempt to take care of my health more often than this blog or my gchat statuses would indicate.

UPDATE: Realized that Zoe had coined the perfect, the only acceptable, title for this post and changed it.

Designer Coffee Cup Sleeve Cuffs

I am still super pissed that no one has ever made Louis Vuitton slap bracelets. This just reminds me of that fact.

Off to get a haircut. Be ready.

Tagged!

I loved being tagged! I always want it to happen and it never does, so I just find random surveys around and fill them out anyway, because I love surveys. Memes are the slam book of the modern Internet age.

What was I doing 5 years ago?

Well, May 2003 I was midway through spring quarter of sophomore year, which means that Laurel and I were biking to and from golf class ("Golf for Business and Life") twice a week, purportedly on the way to Human Sexuality class (this was really what my schedule was like that quarter), but since we were going to be late anyway because the classes were on polar ends of campus, we would swing by Jamba Juice, usually not actually on our bikes because biking was hotter than walking, and sometimes we would put vodka in the Jamba. I think I'd filed to be an English major and was probably already admitted to the fall quarter in Oxford. Man, I miss those times.

Five things on my to-do list today (or things I did today - in no particular order):
1. Buy pinatas
2. return Peattie's car
3. get my hair cut
4. watch the Office
5. get an X-ray of my teeth for my braces deal

Five snacks I love, regardless of cost or nutritional value :
1. frozen grapes
2. cheese in any form, especially if paired with Pepperidge Farms Hearty Wheat crackers
3. iced tea with lots of ice and lots of sugar in it, cup after cup of it
4. these weird gluten-free oatmeal cookies they have at work
5. had to think seriously about this but ... wheat thins with cream cheese

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire, assuming I had to spend it on me:
1. buy vacation homes, one on a temperate lake/coast somewhere, one somewhere hot and beachy, and maybe one in the mountains too. and maybe one in Italy. and maybe one in Brooklyn.
2. stop working for a long while. perhaps invest, and then just quit working altogether and just attempt my whole blogging/writing/knowing about the Internet for a living thing
3. travel a LOT
4. always use the wash-and-fold. hell, actually I'd hire someone to clean my house and clothes
5. go on another American road trip, this time lasting much longer

Five bad money habits I have:
1. Taking money out from non-BofA ATMs and paying fees for it.
2. Buying extra stuff on Amazon.com in order to get up to the super saver shipping
3. Target. I can't buy less than like $150 there at a time.
4. buying cheap plentiful clothes instead of quality stuff
5. I think my entire life is a bad money habit. But let's just say, buying groceries I don't end up eating.

Five (four) places I have lived:
1. Whittier
2. Stanford
3. Columbia University
4. Oxford, England
5. San Francisco. Nice how I just eliminated Palo Alto there, right?

Five jobs I’ve had:
1. picture framer girl
2. bartender in England
3. assistant teacher person (at my old high school)
4. RA
5. admin

Five bloggers I'm tagging (in a total dork move):
1. That's what she said
2. Silvia
3. Sara
4. Bethany
5. Cri (unlinked on purpose)

John Mayer feathers his hair!

I love him. I even like his tattoos. (Though allegedly now he has a bunch more on the left arm and that weirds me out, but I am going to pretend they don't exist.)

How privileged are you?

I find this is pretty poor taste, and yet I feel compelled to answer it... it's a "how privileged are you?" test, and I have bolded the true statements. The original authors of this exercise are Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, and Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
Does it matter if it was when I was in middle school?
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician or professor
Am I forgetting anyone?
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
What does this even mean?
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
I assume this is definitely true.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
Piano was the longest-lasting one but there were some brief attempts at other stuff.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Well, unless you count the mocking in "Stuff White People Like" or the Obama "elitism" bullshit...
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
No! God bless scholarships.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
Assuming "GATE" camp didn't count.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
I mean, not like the Four Seasons.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
Nah, but this year I bought a hand-me-down, but for really cheap, so it almost counts?
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
It was my grandma's old one and it was pretty retro and kick-ass. But I suspect there is a generational difference in answering these questions. Lots more TVs sitting around when I was a kid.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
Hell, I don't own one now!
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
Man, apparently privilege is synonymous with "artsy."
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family
Who isn't? I just knew Dad wanted us to turn off the lights when we weren't using them. Something I still am not always sure my roommate knows.

I got 20 out of 34. I will say that I think that I was very privileged growing up because my family cared a lot about arts and education and about me and my sister getting the most out of every opportunity. So even if we couldn't really afford stuff, we made it work. At least, that's my perspective on the whole thing. What's interesting to me is thinking that in comparison to so many kids I knew in college, I never really thought of myself as super privileged. I mean, these kids went to Disneyworld every year, their parents were neurosurgeons or what have you, they had gone on trips to Europe with their families instead of with their high schools, and my parents just finally got to Europe while I was there studying abroad. I feel really lucky, I guess I should say, that I got all the things I got. Anyway, this is a much bigger subject than this blog can really get into, and I feel somewhat touchier about it, even though it's actually a major issue for me. I can't count the number of times people in school assumed I was a trust-funder or that my parents were lawyers or something, maybe because I was white or maybe just because I went to Stanford. And it always bugged me a lot, because I felt like people didn't get that you could be smart and not have some legacy going back generations at some Ivy League school. That you could be a good person and not make a lot of money. I don't think anyone ever meant it that way, except for a rare one or two, but it always got under my skin, so these issues of "privilege" are important to me. Hence my posting this survey despite my cringiness about it.

(via)

Babies!

I'm really rocking the random posts today. Be glad I didn't post, in addition to the pandas, the sleepy bear and the baby lions (but feel free to follow those links!). But, on the subject of baby things, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are expecting their first child this fall, and if that baby is not hilarious from like age 2 minutes then I will be shocked and disappointed. However, I will get over that, provided the baby is hilarious at like, age 19, after having a somewhat quiet non-celebrity childhood, when he/she realizes that he/she is actually so funny he/she just can't keep it down and then emerges out of his parents' shadows, in such an inconspicuous way that people don't even realize, until they do and it is awesome.

I don't even plan my own kids' lives like this.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Suddenly it occurs to me that the Judd Apatow backlash might all be bullshit. Let me see if I can explain.

I saw "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" last night and I was pleasantly surprised by it. I really liked it, in fact. It was funny and sweet and not overly filled with the standard Apatow crew (although several of them, obviously, appeared, thank you Paul Rudd I love you). Halfway through I thought to myself, fuck, this is a romantic comedy. And here's the New York Times sitting around talking about how the romantic comedy industry is freaking out because they aren't managing to capture crowds the way "You've Got Mail" used to, and they all want another "Wedding Crashers," which was not that funny, nor was it really that romantic. The Judd Apatow backlash constantly refers to his talent for portraying the loser guy, who always inexplicably gets the girl, even though she is like ten billion times hotter than he is. But "Wedding Crashers" was way more of a guy movie than any Judd Apatow fare, and I really don't get how people keep missing that point... maybe it's whatever freakish portion of the female population finds Vince Vaughn attractive.

Anyway, the new(ish) standard Apatow critique is that his female characters are two-dimensional. I will grant you that, to a point. I get that there was not much female character development in "Knocked Up," and the movie was primarily about the guys, although in my opinion not so much the guys who all lived with Seth Rogen in the house but more about Seth and Paul Rudd, who produced the funniest and saddest and best scene in the movie (when they are high on shrooms in the Vegas hotel room). However, I still think that Leslie Mann, despite coming off as somewhat shrill at times, was nevertheless incredibly sympathetic in addition to being legitimately funny. And Katherine Heigl, despite being the hottie who somehow was desperate (?) enough to sleep with the nottie, still showed a considerable level of strength throughout the movie, and there were hints of complication around her (such as when she runs into her old friends after buying baby stuff, and wants to hide it -- she's got issues with this, even if they are somewhat snobbish ones).

The girls in "Superbad" somewhat inexplicably go for the boys in the story, despite the boys being total idiots (or at least Jonah Hill was. Michael Cera is always adorable). But that was a teen movie, and it was more of a teen party movie, less a teen romcom (a la "She's All That," which is not so much a com except when it's by accident).

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" was not much different, although I would argue that sheerly because Kristin Bell is awesome she manages to give some depth, even if it was bitch-depth, to a role that could easily have been just a figurehead (forgive me since that's totally not the right word for a film role). Critics have claimed that she doesn't come off well even when she is trying to be sympathetic, but I disagree. I thought she is clearly a smart woman, who is clearly stuck in a career that she wants and does not want at the same time, and is negotiating a level of fame that she isn't really emotionally equipped for. Perhaps I'm interpreting, but I think that stuff is there, and it in part excuses her bitchiness. The other thing about this movie is that Jason Segel is much more likable than Seth Rogen in "Knocked Up," partly because he is more attractive and partly because he is written to be less of a total loser (although definitely not a success, he at least has managed to keep a job and date a girl for an extended period of time, and he has a treadmill, whatever that means), so it's much more understandable when Mila Kunis goes for him. Less of the total "shlub," in other words.

Anyway, all this is a long way of saying that it's true that the women in Judd Apatow romantic comedies (and romantic comedies they are, so don't deny it, boys) are arguably more two-dimensional than the guys in the movies. However, as a woman, I can say that usually, I like romantic comedies because I like the men in them at least as much as I relate to the women. At least in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," I related to Sarah Marshall (on a more shallow level than, say, I relate to Sally in "When Harry Met Sally," but that is Nora Ephron's genius so I cannot explain further). The best romantic comedies out there have both relatable women and attractive (I mean physically and personality-wise) men. The worst have bland women and boring men. There are some, like "My Best Friend's Wedding," where the woman is supremely relatable but the guy is not really super appealing except in the way that you so completely identify with Julia Roberts that you competitively want her to win him and he therefore becomes desirable. And there's "Two Weeks Notice," where Sandra Bullock is sort of meh (I can't relate to her, I don't get it) but Hugh Grant is bumbling and sort of incapable of taking care of himself and I love that movie. So the one thing Apatow has going for him is that his movies have somewhat realistic men, who also happen to be attractive, despite being legitimately flawed both physically and emotionally. I think that's why I've gotten more of a kick out of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" than the romantic comedies I've watched recently -- and why, when I want to see a cute movie as of late, I dive into the archives instead of bothering to see a new one. Apatow movies aren't really guy movies. They still end well. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" had its fair share of sort of fuzzy sunset moments. It also featured "pearl necklace" jokes and a pretty long (no pun intended) male frontal nudity moment/scene. So at risk of sounding like a moron and betraying my feminist roots, I think these movies are sort of unisex. And I consider that a strength, in a world where "romantic" movies have been relegated to the same world as chick lit and pink covers and all that. They are genuine crossovers, and I think the reason people are worried about them being sexist is less because they actually are and more because men actually go see the movies, and like them, and no one seems to be inclined to call them a click flick. So it's a case of a hyper-reaction, or something.

Anyway, this has been a very long ramble and I'm sure I'm leaving something out and probably will disagree with myself at a later point. But I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" again, so I guess that's sort of the ultimate point, right?

(Side note: It reminded me of "50 First Dates." Just fun fact!)

All this inspired by this.

Kiss the rain

If they really put Dawson's Creek on the new WB.com (so absurd), it will be so awesome. I can only wish that they keep the original music. The fact that they changed the music on the DVDs -- including the theme song -- is still one of the things that rankles me most, outside of real life issues like global warming and all that. Seriously! I mean, can you imagine this scene with any different song??



I'm dying a little bit right now. Ah! Seriously! I must find the tapes I had of all the episodes and get them digitalized...

Book from Yo Momma

Yeah, this is actually happening. I continue to be pissed at myself for not coming up with this idea first. And will obviously buy the book.

Pandas make you smile

I sat down to watch this video sort of daring myself not to smile and instead just giggled the whole time. Pandas are such strange creatures -- they sort of roll into things, they look like dolls, or beanbags, or clay, or something. Anyway, but they are also pretty damn cute, and those little eeping sounds they make certain don't hurt.



(NPR via CuteOverload)

I have to add here that when I saw BJ Novak do standup a couple months ago, one of his funniest bits was about how pandas are endangered, but it's hard for scientists to get pandas to mate. "Pandas! Don't think other pandas are cute!" was the punchline, and I still think it's hilarious.

I can't believe I'm still talking about this

A pretty awesome Daily Show clip about the whole Wright controversy. I have to agree with Jon Stewart here (when do I not?). You sure can't say he's not charismatic.

Obama made another speech separating himself further from Wright and the general opinion on it is positive. I guess I never felt like Wright was that crazy, nor did I think it was necessary (since it seems fucking obvious to me) for Obama to point out that just because he went to church with this guy does not mean that he agrees with everything he says. I also think it's sort of absurd to assume that Obama in church is the same as Obama in government or campaign. I feel like I have different parts of my life where I may indulge myself in certain opinions or habits or whatever, but they do not bleed over into other parts of my life and indeed, they just give me more to think about and different perspectives. Has no one considered that maybe Wright's church was that for Obama? Having read "Dreams from my Father," I recognize that Obama has some anger, and he relates to the anger of minorities, perhaps specifically black people, against the inequalities that exist in this country. That obviously is a theme in Wright's church/sermons. And I think it is okay for Obama to have some anger and even to indulge it a little. Maybe he gets some of that anger worked out in church, maybe it gives him a way of thinking about things, or a way to connect with people who feel the same way. I'm speculating, but I could see this being true. Anyway, the bottom line is that this is all absurd, because we're still forgetting that there are shit tons of asshole white preachers out there, one of whom was sought out for endorsement by the McCain campaign! Jon Stewart, take it away again...



Whatever. I should stop writing about this shit and start talking about the issues. You know, like how Hillary Clinton and good ol' John McCain (who I am terrified is going to show up in my dreams some day, like some evil tottering gnomey grandfather demon) wants to repeal the gas tax, which is REALLY STUPID (and I link to just this one article out of the many, many possible links talking about how that plan will not work, nor will it do anything about, oh, I dunno, global warming, or the economy).

(via, via)

This is really what me and my friends do for fun.

We are ahead of a trend. Or something.

A couple of months ago, at some random person's 11th (read: 44th; it was February 29th) birthday party somewhere in the depths of SOMA at like 4am, I commanded the friends I was with to "dance to the music in their head!" The DJ at this place was incredibly lame, and did not have the stuff we wanted them to play, and so I felt that this was the only solution. It was pretty sweet. Perhaps you had to be there. It was the weirdest crowd ever, in a dance studio that had been converted into a party locale. There were only about 40 people there, alcohol was for despite it being a private party, and there was a line for the bathroom (I suspect now because the bathroom was probably the hot spot, and perhaps there were lines in the bathroom as well as outside it). But we had a grand ol' time dancing to the music in our heads.

Then, in Belize, on the craziest night of the trip (the one that started with me and Justin "bonding" -- for the sake of research -- with this drunk 40-something Kentuckian at the pool bar at two in the afternoon), I was taking a little cat nap (ok, I was sleeping it off) when suddenly Dan woke me up and handed me an iPod. I was confused. What was going on? Why did I need this iPod? What was the point? I quickly realized that all of us had iPods! We were dancing to the music in our heads! This proceeded for quite some time, and I ended up ditching my iPod with its legit music and just shared headphones with Laurel (who, to be fair, was using my second iPod, what a yuppie I am, seriously). The thing you need to understand is, Laurel has ridiculous taste in music. Ridiculous in the sense that it is amazing and totally singular and specific to her. There are those of us who can tolerate it, and who even love it, but none of us could have originated it. I will at some point post a list of the songs that are on the "Laurel Party Mix," but until then just trust me: it's ridiculous.

The iPod party continued for some time. We ended up boarding the water taxi to town while still listening to the Laurel Party Mix. (The boys, I must admit, straightened up and did not listen to their music on the boat.) We fist-pumped the entire way there. At one point someone on the boat apparently made a judgy comment about "Where'd we learn those dance moves, Muhammad Ali?" (Or some other boxer, I am not sure.) I was in quite the aggressive mood that day (blame the rum punch), and so I responded with something like "Whatever, you don't even know, you couldn't understand," or perhaps something a little more colorful. Then someone remarked on what we were listening to (did I mention that we were singing out loud the entire time too? On a crowded boat flying alongside a Belizean coastline in the dark?). Either Laurel or I told them it was "the fucking Pet Shop Boys." (It really was.) This led to one of the top quotes from the trip: one passenger explaining to the other that the Pet Shop Boys were "a homosexual band from the 80s." Classic.

I will stop reminiscing now, except to say that after returning from San Pedro back to our resort, and after the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had in my life, we continued the iPod dance party. On the beach. In the wee hours of the morning. It was the strangest communion with nature and fellow man that I can really imagine. And Laurel fist-pumped so hard once that she jammed her elbow into my head. We are really, really cool.

And! This is the entire point of this post -- we are also apparently really trendy, without even realizing it, and possibly with less trendy music (although probably whatever Dan and Justin were listening to was way legit. I think James just listened to "La Isla Bonita" a lot, which I cannot blame him for since it's about the island we were staying on!). Seriously. There was a "silent rave" in New York recently.

Then, Dan's younger brother was in Sao Paulo and participated in a "Silent Disco."

This is apparently a large global trend and we totally did it before it was cool.

Thus concludes my delirium-induced self-indulgent blog post of the day. Also, I should clarify that the picture at the top of this post is one of the only ones from the iPod party in Belize. It doesn't show that all of us were participating. But it does indicate the awesomeness, if I do say so myself. You know, the haze, the warm glow, the blur, the headiness of it all. (UPDATE: I changed this photo from the original after consultation with Justin.)

P.S. Because this blog post would not be complete without another non sequitor (although at least it's not a parenthetical (damn)): "Today, we saw a junkyard dog attacking the bones of a rotisserie chicken." "Nature."

Weekend Lessons

This is probably one of those things you shouldn't write about on the internet, but whatever, I am sort of delirious and it was one of my big weekend discoveries, so I am going to write about it anyway. I was in Santa Cruz this weekend, with a bunch of friends, on a quest to understand "what it's like to grow up in Santa Cruz" (we had three natives to show us around). Unfortunately, upon waking up Saturday morning, I realized that I felt like total shit and realized I seemed to have developed a cruel full-blown virus of some kind. So while my buddies were ordering mimosas at brunch, I was resisting evil egg dishes and guzzling water... and taking the Xanax that my friend offered me to help relax. I had fierce body aches and was struggling to find any kind of over-the-counter drug to help with that (ibuprofen being acceptable for headaches, but otherwise utterly unhelpful, plus it's kind of like I take it so much it doesn't do anything anymore, the way caffeine used to be for me before I gave it up). So while I whined about needing some kind of full-body relaxer, my friend busted out the Xanax, and boy did that shit do the trick. I only wish I'd had more than one, because it was really the only thing that made Saturday tolerable. (That, and I slept for like two hours at the beach, then went back to our home base and slept more, then woke up, ate dinner, and then went back to sleep. I really have no idea how all that sleep didn't cure me.) I really went to my happy place.

Lesson learned: prescription drug abuse might be a good idea.

Kidding. Mostly.

Who knew?

I admit that the only reason I jumped onto this link was because Bookslut pointed out that this guy writes Jeopardy questions. It makes so much sense that a Jeopardy writer is also a poet. It makes me want to be a Jeopardy writer. And a poet. Anyway, I liked this one:

Valentine’s Day
by Billy Wisse

Before we start to cover for each other
There are some questions you will have to answer
— More than formality, less than ordeal —,
Young lady: Where’d you get that smile of silk?
What master painted you those heavenly eyes?
And as you take those issues up: Are you smart,
Slyly so? Does your speech sputter along
Then make radical swerves into the clear?
If so, no wonder this purple night is ours
Down to the raindrops in the gutter where they belong.
You understand I wouldn’t know love if it hit me
In the eye, where its image could make a home.
You have to keep on reaching me with words,
Using ones like “contingency” correctly
And “fatuous” in unexpected ways,
Summoning up a lifetime when you say
"…to northern Arizona," shooting phrases
Straight to the heart, out of the reach of thought.

(via)

More on Wright

Somehow I feel like this is not going to help anything:

Mr. Wright said: “On November the 5th and on January 21st, I’ll still be a pastor. As I’ve said, this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. This is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African- American religious tradition.”

This may be true, but it's the kind of thing that will stir up the pot even more than it already has been. All these media types are just primed and ready to jump on anything that sounds remotely racial or accusatory (or both).

I wrote a lot more about this and then went back to reread it and deleted it. I decided that plain speech, and expression of opinion or belief, is more important than toeing the political line, even if it's the kind of speech that gets you (or that senator who used to be in your congregation) into trouble.

Still, I can't help it, whenever I read things that Wright says, I think it must be pretty interesting to know him. Whether you agree with him or not, and even, maybe especially, if you disagree with him, he must give you a lot to think about. And that is something to feel good about, I think.

CNN Exercise

I have started watching "The Situation Room" 0n mute with closed captions while at the gym in the afternoons. I get really angsty while watching the show because one commentator will say something I totally agree with and then the next says some more total bullshit and I can't squeal with indignation because I am in the middle of the gym with a bunch of people, and so I instead have to bury my rage deeply and try to exorcise it via, well, exercise (who knew!?). Today for the first time since I've watched it they had Tony Snow on. He and Jack Cafferty got in quite the tiff. Jack was absolutely spot on, because he was talking about how Hillary is definitively behind in the race, and has to win all the next states with like 60% of the vote, and all the other folks started talking shit about whether or not Obama could get the white working class vote or whatever. Anyway, the best part was when Cafferty just said straight up to Tony Snow, "People are really tired of your former boss and they are ready for change in the White House," and then the two of them went back and forth with Cafferty spitting (I imagine) the phrase "your boss" out as often as possible. Like, way to stick it to him. Snow looked smug, like you would expect, and I got more angry and went faster on the elliptical.

Random note on Jonathan Franzen

I love Jonathan Franzen. I read "The Corrections" and I actually found it somewhat meh, too much suburban angst for me and the whole plot with Cam or whatever the oldest pervy professor son's name was in Eastern Europe eerily reminiscent of "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," but there is no denying that Franzen is a great writer. I just think I prefer his non-fiction. I actually loved "The Discomfort Zone," self-indulgence be damned, and this morning I read (most of, it was a long piece and the shuttle ride was shorter than usual) his latest piece for the New Yorker, "The Way of the Puffin" (abstract only), about China and environmentalism and development and shit. He is just really good at saying things just perfectly. Observe:

About his Chinese guide: "He had the fashionably angular eyeglasses and ingratiating eagerness of an untenured literature professor."

The best part about him, besides the occasional little funny things that always catch me off guard, is that he's just as good at summing up real issues as he is about pinpointing these exactitudes. And he's honest about his flaws, even while embracing them in that self-indulgent way of his, in a way that somehow seems to make you question yourself and your motivations, as if he's sort of rubbing off the patina of self-satisfaction. Like here: "I could make a pretty good ethical argument for our responsibility to other species, and yet I wondered whether, at root, my concern for biodiversity and animal welfare might be a kind of regression to my childhood bedroom and its community of plush toys: a fantasy of cuddliness and interspecies harmony." As a stuffed animal girl myself, this struck me, especially since earlier in this same New Yorker there was a ridiculous article about these tigers in India who actually eat people, like, on a regular basis, just grab them by the throat and drag them off into the jungle. (They obviously only do it when humans are in their territory, they don't like wander purposefully into villages, usually, but they do it without provocation and there's basically no way to avoid it, not like standing tall to make a bear scared of you.)

Anyway this is a largely pointless post, just yet another stream of consciousness, and I really needed to share those little nuggets of Franzen. God, I'm glad it's Friday.

An American Wife

I am really not sure how I feel about this.

I love, love, love Curtis Sittenfeld, primarily because of Prep. And Man of My Dreams, while I didn't like it as much, was still pretty damn good. (I think that the Prep vs. Man of My Dreams argument is very similar to the Everything is Illuminated vs. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close argument, in the whole first-novel-is-it-better-or-worse-than-second-novel sense, and I'm on the first novel side in both cases.) She is good at pinning down these very particular feelings, that most of the time you don't bother to describe because it's too ephemeral or too sort of shameful or embarrassing, but that you encounter all the time. But I just don't know how I feel about the premise of this next book. I think it's mostly because I don't really have any interest in Laura Bush; I think she seems boring, and not that smart, and her face always looks the same, and so the idea of reading a book based on her, written in first person, no less, doesn't appeal to me much. But it's Curtis!

I will still, obviously, pre-order it.

Joanie!

I had a dream I met Joan Didion. I wanted to tell her I loved her, but I thought she'd resist that kind of girlish display. It was like in Can't Hardly Wait when Jenna Elfman, in angel stripper ("I'm a dancer") outfit, tells Preston how sad she was that she didn't say anything to Scott Baio when he came to her mall.

My dreams are very weird lately.

("This is just like that Scott Baio thing. When I was 16, I had the biggest thing for Scott Baio. I mean, this went back to the "Happy Days" years... not to mention "Joanie Loves Chachi." God, I hated her. Joanie. See, I always knew that somehow... I'd meet him. Like if I wanted it bad enough, I could make it happen. And it did... right after his first season of "Charles in Charge," he was doing this mall tour, and he came here to our mall. It was like everything was finally falling into place. You know, like it was --" "Fate." "Yeah! So I went, you know. And I had this red bandana... 'cause, you know, Chachi always wore that red bandana. And I waited there outside. And I was the first person when he pulled up. He got out of that car-- He was so beautiful. And he looked right at me. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move. I never even talked to him, and he was right there. I still have that red bandana.")