The Cask of Amontillado always shows up. in my head.

Category: dribblings

every now and then i’ll reread Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. it’s one of those stories that pop up in my head and i’ll go and find my beat up paperback book of Poe stories and read it again for the first time. i read it again this morning, but not out of my beat up paperback, but out of a new book. it’s a collection Poe’s stories and essays written by popular mystery writers (and i think the gimmick is they’re all Edgar award winners) in honor of Poe’s 200th birthday.

the book has a red cover with a black raven on it and the pages are edged in black. very apro-poe. (ha. you loved that. so don’t even.)

anyway, The C of A is just classic and it’s always in my brain. i think it’s because they have us read that story in 6th grade (or maybe it was 7th grade?) and then every year after that as well. so that by the time we’re in college and we decide to take American Lit. because we knew we were too lazy to take on the Shakespeare that we knew would dominate World Lit., and then immediately regretted that choice because of all the Puritan sermons we had to study in Am. Lit., but that’s what you get for being 18 years old and thinking you’re gonna pull a fast one over on Shakespeare.
oh, it was just me?
right.

tangent, sorry.
so by the time you have to study Poe in college you know all about The C of A. you know the code. the puns. the sick humor. the insane narrator.

but every time i read that story, every time, i pick up on something i’ve never noticed before, or it makes me think of other things that relate to it. and what a great thing! not all stories do that. probably most of them don’t.

this morning while i was reading it and when i got to the last little bit where Fortunado is screaming? and then Montresor stops his trowling and starts screaming too? until Fortunado stops screaming? dude! doesn’t that totally remind you of in Silence of the Lambs (which is another one that pops up in my head quite a bit as well.) when Catherine is in the well screaming and Jame Gumb starts screaming too?

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

i know!

of course, i realize that these are creepy thoughts to be having first thing in the morning over a cup of coffee, but i mean, it’s not like i’m going to read The Cask of Amontillado at night.

6 Comments | Permalink

Tags: , , ,

meet jimmy snooze button

Category: dribblings

the post where you end up feeling very sorry for jimmy.

jimmy’s alarm goes off before my alarm because he has to be at work earlier than i do. he’s always been one to turn off the alarm and pretty much get up right then. my alarm goes off nearly two hours later and usually i don’t hear it right away (it’s a clock radio) and i’ll wake up minutes later with a song playing or the news newsing and i can continue to lay there for several minutes before acknowledging that i must get up and start my day.

i think that’s weird because i always wake up to jimmy’s alarm right when it goes off, but my own? not as quick. in fact, lots of times whatever song is on the radio will work itself into my dream. and then i’ll wake up and be all, “huh. how about that? i show up to high school late and naked and the Monkees are singing about homecoming queens.”

for the past couple of days jimmy’s been hitting the snooze button. i’m guessing it’s because for the past couple of days it’s been rainygloom outside and he can’t go walk Roxy around the block. there are several Snooze Button Senarios that occur when he hits the SB:

1. alarm goes off during a news bit and he will hit the SB right before the important bit.

2. alarm goes off during a Stevie Wonder song and he will hit the SB period. i’d prefer to at least finish out the chorus, but nay, he’ll even cut off a good chorus.

and as i am not a friendly person when i wake up (especially from a nap, but also first thing in the morning) these two SB Senarios are driving me to murder. which, let’s face it, is not the way to start your day. especially for jimmy. i feel bad for him, i do.

especially on the first day it happened. because i woke up to the alarm and then fell back asleep only to wake minutes later to the… alarm?

what the-

“did your alarm go off?”

“yeah.”

“is it- am i having deja vu?”

“what?”

“did it go off twice?”

“yeah, i hit the snooze button.”

“you are fucking dead.”

“what?” becoming more awake.

“hm?”

“what did you say?”

“when?”

“just then.”

“oh, uh… good morning?”

here’s what happens with senario 1. the news.

the alarm goes off and the local radio is doing the local news. “-3 to 4inches of rain. several trees are down and there are 3 detours inside the county limits. several roads are closed this morning so avoid the following road-”

oh sweet christ i know you did not just turn off the only bit of news that would have been useful to know. i am going to beat your face in WITH YOUR OWN FACE!

“what?”

“hm?” did i say that out loud?

“did you say something about my face?”

“i said i love your face off starringnicholascageandjohntravolta.”

now with Senario #2 there are two ways it could go, both have the same outcome (mostly) but both are kinda funny to me so you get to hear about both of them.

A. it’s a local AM station. they play the same songs every day. it’s not quite Ground Hog’s Day where i’m waking up to the same Sonny and Cher song, but y’know, it is a Stevie Wonder song more times than it isn’t. which is fine with me. i’d prefer that. that is a great way to wake up. i mean come on, that’s almost like the Lord has blessed you to go out and pay it forward, when you hear a Stevie song first thing. i mean, i guess. what do i know?

but jimmy, he hears the song, but he doesn’t hear it, you know? so the alarm’s all, “-you belieeeeeve in things that you doooon’t understaaa-”

“buckets of shit! we can’t even make it through the chorus?!”

“huh?”

“that was Stevie, jimmy.”

“…Stevie Nicks?”

“…i am using the Dark Side of the Force to invisible choke you right now.”

“wha-? are you mad at me?”

“no, i’m murdering you.”

“why?”

“you just cut off a Stevie Wonder song and this is where the horn section would be greeting us with it’s magical hook.”

“are you talking to me, or are you dreaming?”

“oh, i’m dreaming all right.”

“i didn’t know it was Stevie.”

“i know! just like how you never know when it’s Smokey.”

“what?”

“i just don’t get it. it is a proven scientific fact that Stevie’s music has become part of human DNA. it’s in our cells. it’s like, mitochondria. do you know what mitochondria does?”

“um, it’s the “power house” of the cell.”

“no, that’s what it did back in the ’80s. back when Pluto was a planet and eggs were good for you. now? now it’s the stevieochondria and it takes all the blessed magic that is stevie’s songs and transforms them into fuel for our cells! he is sonic nutrition! and you are starving me!”

“okay, go back to sleep,” he says as he gently, but firmly, places his pillow over my face, “this is going to hurt you more than it hurts me…”

 

in Senario #2 part B. the alarm goes off and it’s not Stevie greeting us with a new day, but intsead it’s some lump like Neil Sedaka or Chicago or Hall and Oates. and you hear a snippet of a song. no big deal, no big loss. and then the snoozer goes off again right? and you hear a piece of a song by America or The Moody Blues or Blondie (if you’re lucky), and bonk! there’s jimmy to snuff it out.

so then i think it’s okay, that was no big deal. until all day long i’m singing “SWEEEEEET CAROLINE!…. i bet you think this song is about you… don’t you? don’t you? don’t you?!” so all day long i’m harbouring judgement against sweet caroline for her alleged vanity.

 

obviously, if this is the worst thing that happens to me all day, heh, it’s a great day.

Leave a Comment | Permalink

Tags: , , ,

2009 Book Goals part one

Category: dribblings

looking back on the books i read in 2008 one can see that i read mostly mystery/crime fiction. and of the nonfic i read probably 30-50% (totally non-scientific numbers) of that was true crime. so i thought that maybe it would be better (healthier?) to sort of come up with a To Read list that would help diversify my reading for 2009. liz and i have talked about making such a list for two years. we’ve just never sat down and actually made out a list.

so the other night, after a smidge of booze consumption, i was sitting by the computer and decided to make a list. i scrawled a list on an index card with a sharpei, no wait, that’s sharpie. and then i talked with liz to see if she had anything to add to the list. and now i’ll post the list (with ramblings) so that you can see it and perhaps, hopefully, you can add some things to the list be it authors, titels, and/or subjects.

Beowulf – with liz! yay!
Sherlock Holmes
Daphne du Marnier
Rudyard Kipling
Willa Cather
Faulkner – do i have to?
Norman Mailer – if i read Mailer can i skip Hemingway?
Eudora Welty
Northanger Abbey

liz wants to read some Greek Tragedy so i told her i’d join her on that. Oedipus? Iliad?

whose biography? Truman Capote is a possibility.

nonfiction:
something about Salem
Churchill’s WWII writings

 

i have no clues as to anything for sci-fi/fantasy/sf

should i throw in some shakespeare? or any other drama? poetry?

i’m sure i’m going to read some crime novels and true crime. it just… it just happens, okay?

so please, if you have anything to add do so in the comments. i’d appreciate it.

11 Comments | Permalink

Tags:

file under: semi-embarrassing ringtones

Category: dribblings

if i told you that i love the Scorpions’ Wind of Change… would we still be friends?

or would we be BEST FRIENDS?

4 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

books-a-million? not quite.

Category: 50 Books

so i didn’t read 70 books. i did read 68 books this year. that’s close to 70, but who cares, my goal was 50 books and i broke that goal by quite a few books.

the ones i enjoyed the most were (in no particular order):

Tomato Girl by Jane Pupek
The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith
The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Family Bible by Melissa Delbridge
I, Tania by Brian Joseph Davis
Assassination Vacation and Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

68. Night Work by Laurie R. King

Book four in the Kate Martinelli series. This one was back to mystery solving. I liked it because of that. In the previous book Martinelli was more involved in the crime because the girl was kidnapped on her watch, but in this one it’s just detectives solving a mystery and no one is trying to kill the detectives. Those type of stories seem more realistic and I enjoy them more. Um, it’s not as boring as I make it sound.

Ms. King does a great job of detective writing. The mysteries are always really involved and worked out. You can tell she loves mysteries herself.

Leave a Comment | Permalink

Tags: , ,

12.29.08 a monday

Category: dribblings

from the Bitch and Moan Dept.

today’s cup of Monday has been filled to the brim with things that have annoyed me so hard i just want to start swearing, but i’m afraid if i do i’ll never stop. it all started with the bathroom sink. it’s clogged.
this? this is no big deal. it’s a clogged sink. it’s not the end of the world.
but it’s how my day started out.

and before i could even drink a cup of coffee i was pouring some kind of evil industrial acid down the sink in hopes that it would eat through whatever is blocking the pipe. this, admittedly, was stupid. i should’ve at least had some coffee first. i guess i wasn’t paying close attention (huh) whilst pouring the acid down the sink, and some of it got on my hand. which, i did not notice at first. then, all of a sudden i thought a hornet had stung my finger. nay, ’twas not a rogue bathroom hornet. simultaneously, several spots on my hand started stinging.

i rinsed my hand with cold water. cold water which then was left standing in my clogged bathroom sink. (clever you, Monday.) there are a couple of red spots on my hand and the one on my finger (the one that hurt the most) has a tiny burn-y spot on it. i didn’t know what to do so i put some hand lotion on it. looking back now, after drinking my whole cup of Monday, i guess neosporin would have been a better choice.

the acid did not eat the clog.
i plunged some more. to no avail. i borrowed dad’s auger. i proceeded to get dad’s auger stuck in the drain. after a cup or two of coffee i managed to get the auger out of the drain, and still, sink’s clogged.

defeated, i went to work. the jeep started today, so that was nice. not like last monday when it left me stranded at a gas station and freezing. see? i’m totally an optimist, guys.

have i mentioned my ribs?
well, they hurt. on my right side. i have no explanation for this. at work on Saturday they started hurting. on Sunday i didn’t even go to church cos they were bothering me (thank God i didn’t have to play bass. i don’t know what i would have done… lain down? [wait. lain? laid? would have lain…? i don’t know.]) so any way, my ribs, for no reason, have been hurting and i get to work and i get roped into helping take the Christmas tree down. again, not the end of the world by any means… just annoying.

at lunch, the Sandwich Artist piled all the jalapenos in one mound on my sandwich instead of speading them evenly along the bun. next time, i’ll carefully inspect my sandwich for proper veggie coverage. lesson learned. i think the Sandwich Artist was working her second day of sandwich creation because when she asked me what veggies i wanted on the sandwich i replied, “drag it through the garden.” she did not understand this well-known slang, and stared at me as though i had just recited a Portuguese love sonnet. which i had not.

i’m almost certain if i had said, “i can haz veggies now? lolz!” she would’ve understood. apparently, she piled up the jalepenos in one massive wave of pain which started a fire on the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat? the uvula? yes, the Napoleon box formation of biochemical fire started there and continued to march down my throat, into my stomach, through the duodenum, and then into Russia where it was finally defeated by starvation and winter. take that, you imperialistic peppers.

*sigh* oh the patrons. i swear, everyone who called on the phone today to renew their books first shoved a sleeve of Ritz crackers in their mouth before they started talking. it was Mumble Monday. i had to have this one guy spell his name for me 4 times. do you want to know what he was spelling? it was T-E-E-L.

and three times today people asked if i could “re-up” the the date on their books. where is this non-word coming from? children, the word you’re looking for is renew or recheck. use it. and don’t use re-up… for anything. because i’m afraid if i keep hearing it i’m going to start using it.

then i volunteered to work a 10 hour shift tomorrow so a pal could have the day off. why did i do that? i’m such a schmo. ugh, Tuesday Jaimie is going to HATE Monday Jaimie for this.
this cliched Protestant work ethic is killing me.

i get home and the Lord has not miraculously fixed my sink. i mean, not like i expect Him to do things like that, y’know. He’s got way better things to do, right? but still, a tiny little part (the eternal optimist part) thought, “hey, maybe Jesus fixed my sink while i was at work. i love Miracle Plumber Jesus!”

but of course, Miracle Plumber Jesus had not been by the house. He was probably out feeding the hungry and healing the sick so it’s not that i’m complaining. just stating a fact.

so i go across the street and borrow a few wrenches from dad. i disconnect the j pipe and try to auger the pipe that runs behind the wall. i got about 3 and half feet in and decide that’s probably far enough. so i drag out the wire bit and clean it and yes, there’s a bit of nastiness on the end. so i put the j pipe back together and turn on the sink and the sink is filled with standing water immediately and the j pipe is leaking like the roof of Frank Lloyd Wright’s house.

this seemed like a good time to start drinking.

you know, i really thought i could fix a simple sink clog. i really did. i actually believed in myself, in my slightly handy abilities, in my moxie, in my Hey, I’m a Girl and Also? I Can Unclog a Drain.

but no. i failed in every conceivable way. even my acid was ineffectual. acid.

for i am Plumber Benign.

13 Comments | Permalink

Tags: , ,

12.29.08 how many?

Category: dribblings

i’ve two books i’m reading at the moment… can i make it to 70 before the new year?

4 Comments | Permalink

Tags: ,

more books to add

Category: 50 Books

66. Pentimento by Lillian Hellman
I forgot to add this one last month. It’s a memoir, I guess. More like it’s written portraits of some of her favorite people. Very well-written. I’m not sure everything in the book is true, she has a way of making herself look good. But still, a very enjoyable read.

67. With Child by Laurie R. King
This is book three in her Kate Martinelli series. I enjoyed this one more than the second one because it was a bit more emotional. Plots with kidnapping tend to be that way. Ms. King was able to write it in such a way that you felt everyone’s grief and dispair. It had a happy-ish ending. Which seemed more real than to have a totally happy ending.

I guess it starts in medias res but not like you think. It’s not in the middle of “action” exactly, so I was confused because I thought maybe I had skipped a book. I went and made sure I was reading book 3 and not book 4. So maybe it could’ve moved along better if it had started at the beginning… instead of in the middle…. and then in the middle of the book? that’s where it goes back to the beginning. So by the middle of the book you can see what has happened and you’re up to date. It was clever, but I was not wearing my Clever Hat so I didn’t pick up on it.

Also in this one Kate and Lee sort of split up for a bit, and that was sad.

While To Play the Fool was straight up mystery solving, this one was more involved with the characters, you see them change a grow. I’m not sure books three would stand alone very well, but since it’s part of a series I guess it doesn’t have to.

Leave a Comment | Permalink

Tags: , , , , ,

65. To Play the Fool by Laurie R. King

Category: 50 Books

65. To Play the Fool by Laurie R. King

More crime novels? Yes, please!

I’ve been looking for a new (to me) author/series to get into because I enjoy a good series and it’s always nice to be able to recommend stuff to patrons at the library. Loads of people come in and say the same thing, “I’ve finished all the books in the Series Title by Author Name, what do you suggest?” and usually I’ve never read whatever series they’re talking about. I know, right? How is that possible?

So I read the first book in Iris Johansen’s Eve Duncan series. And I didn’t like it very much. But I thought I’d give book two a shot. I liked that one even less and didn’t even finish it. So anyway, I was straightening up some shelves in the fiction section, which is not my section (we’re all “in charge” of different sections, so when it gets slow we can go to our sections and read the shelves to make sure the books are in proper order. my god i’m on a ramble.), but the shelf was a wreck so I was putting it back together and I noticed it was a whole shelf of Laurie R. King books.

I look at the covers of the books and notice that some of them have on them, “a Kate Martinelli Mystery”. This is book nerd code for “series”. Sweet! And it also looks like she’s another series about some chick who works with Sherlock Holmes. I haven’t thought about Sherlock Holmes in a while, but I do remember having a book of Doyle’s Holmes mysteries when I was a kid. I loved that book. It was a blue paperback and I think it had been a birthday gift. I remember Sherlock Holmes being kind of a dick. (ha! pun not intended, but i’m totally intending it now. and also, why am i rambling? i’ve only had one cup of coffee.)

ANYWAY, forget all that because I checked out one of the Kate Martinelli mystery books. Of course, we didn’t have book one. So I read book two. Apparently a lot of stuff went down in book one and I really wish one of the libraries had it because it sounds like I missed out on a lot of goings on. In this one, book two, detective inspector Martinelli and her partner Hawkins (San Francisco PD) are to solve a mystery about the death of a homeless man. Their main suspect happens to be a much beloved, and learned, other homeless man who happens to be a Fool. And who also happens to only speak in quotations (from the Bible and Shakespeare).

I thought it was interesting because

1. The book made you think along with the detective. Especially the quotations. What is he quoting? What is he trying to say by using that quotation? Is the quotation itself the answer, or is it’s origin important too? that kind of thing.

2. I liked the fact that the mystery didn’t take place in one week. It was mentioned that she had other cases pending, and she worked on those. Made it seem more realistic, I guess.

3. I LOVED that no one was trying to kill her. Although that looks like that’s what happened in book one, from what I can glean from context clues. But it seems like in most mystery series the main character, detective, medical examiner, forensic investigator, whathaveyou, is always a target of murder. So I really enjoy it when an author sticks with the detective/hero solving a mystery  and managing to keep it interesting without making the protagonist(s) a constant target of attack. Do it in every other book if you must, just don’t… i mean… FORMULA is all I’m saying, Iris Johansen.

I’m going to read a couple more and also give her Sherlock Holmes series a shot too.

Leave a Comment | Permalink

Tags: , , ,

64. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith

Category: 50 Books

This contains spoilers. but also this book is old. So maybe you should’ve read it by now?

64. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith

Really good fiction. This is book one, and of course neither library had book two, but both had book three.

This is a noir piece, and it’s very well done. But I can’t say that the main character was a “typical” noir-y, hardboiled detective because Aud Torvingen is a very tall, blonde, Norwegian lesbian who lives in Atlanta, Georgia and works as a… I’m not entirely sure what her job is. She’s a retired police woman, but she’s independently wealthy (hate). She works as a body guard now? But she also teaches self defense? And apparently she also solves mysteries because that’s what the main story ends up being: a mystery that she’s hired to solve.

I didn’t really like Aud at first. Her Nordic/Scandinavian pragmatism was to the extreme in everything she did. And you’d think that her it-is-what-it-is attitude would make it really hard for the author to write huge descriptions of things, but nay, the author does all right. In fact, for noir, the book is filled to bursting with descriptions of EVERYTHING. Mostly it’s descriptions of wood, wooden things, buildings with wood in them, and other things like trees. Normally I don’t like huge paragraphs dedicated to the desription of say, a tree, but in this book the author does a great job and I didn’t skip any paragraphs. In fact, it was almost a game to me to see if the author could keep describing wood and wooden things (including Aud?) in different and non-redundant ways. You win this round, Griffith. The sex scenes were not graphic at all, which was suprising seeing as how she describes everything else to the nth degree. I was expecting the sex to be Ayn Rand-ish since the story is from Aud’s point of view. But I was pleasantly suprised to find the sexing treated with a quiet dignity and grace.

Right, so, noir. Let’s do a checklist shall we?
1. hardboiled detective character: check
2. dame someone is trying to kill: check
3. everyone is a criminal, including the good guys: check
4. love story between the hardboiled protagonist and the dame to show the tough-as-nails detective with a heart of gold: check
5. the fucking fatal wounding that you knew would happen but thought, nah, maybe this time the tough guy (girl) will get the dame and they’ll live happily ever after because obviously this isn’t a typical hardboiled crime novel what with a giant Norse woman and all. So you finally start to like the hero because she finally starts to act human, which is exactly why the fatal wounding occurs in the first place. Because OBVIOUSLY she wasn’t thinking with her cold, calculating, Thinking Brain but was instead trying out her new Human Brain because YOU AND I KNOW that when the dame is all, “No, you stay here and do that fun activity you had planned. I’ll go off to the meeting by myself because I’m a Big Girl and nothing bad ever happens to me.” Even though the whole fucking book has been about bad things happening to her. And so the hero stays behind and CLIMBS A MOUNTAIN instead of trailing the dame to the meeting (because nothing bad ever happens in Norway?) only to be ambushed, but not before the hero comes to her senses and gets to the scene just in time to NOT prevent the fatal wounding of the woman she loves. So she then murders the rest of the people who are involved in the crime ring: check

The whole time I was reading this I kept reminding myself, “noir fiction doesn’t end well; you know this. don’t get attached. it’s dark and gloomy. this is why it’s called noir.”

So, I didn’t like Aud at first but I did toward the end which is where you can see the tragedy coming from a mile away. And yes, I sobbed like a baby at the end. And now I’m not sure if Aud changes. Does she go back to being a cold, unemotional hero? or does she, since having found love, warm up a bit and become a kinder, gentler Aud? I don’t know because the library doesn’t have book two. Yet.

This book gets 2 Cansecos.
I’d recommend it to anyone who likes crime novels.

4 Comments | Permalink

Tags: , ,

← Previous Page — Next Page →