Inspired by a co-blogger, I wrote another review for Odessa Books. Man oh man do I have a pile of books to write up! I really let that whole scene go, perhaps because nothing has blown my mind quite as significantly as the last book I reviewed (We Need to Talk About Kevin -- have you read it yet? No? Are you waiting for a free copy or something? Just READ IT).
But after today, I think I'll be back in the swing of things. I've been reading even more voraciously in the last few weeks than I normally do, partially because it helps me escape the madness a bit, and partially because my back starts to ache at night and reading is a good back-relaxing activity. I'm sure if I had a television, things would be different, but for now, books are it.
So a few books I have to write up:
My Sister's Keeper
Double Fault
The Shadow of the Wind
A Year in the Merde
Oryx and Crake
I Feel Bad About My Neck
The Glass Palace
With two exceptions, most of those books are only so-so.
Which leads me to my next question: WHAT CAN I READ? I am going crazy because I have not read a really, really good book in awhile. Please give me some suggestions, but I have some constraints this time around:
1. Nothing to intellectual. My last adventure in book suggestions had people throwing out titles by Hesse and Kafka. I'm not saying I want The Devil Wears Prada, either, I'm just saying let's steer clear of anything that might be taught in a sophmore litt class at college.
2. No sci-fi, unless you SWEAR SWEAR SWEAR that it's your absolute favorite book. I've tried getting into the genre and have a difficult time of it.
3. No trashy romances for the same reason.
4. I would like the book to be un-put-downable.
If I get enough suggestions, I'll compile a second list and read a book every week or so. When a book is really good, I usually finish it in 24-48 hours. When it's good, it might take me 3-4 days. Unless the book is Midnight's Children, which might have taken me a year to actually finish. I am currently on my third year of A Hundred Years of Solitude.
Give me some ideas! I will get myself a Christmas present!
So the other web site I run's forums have been hacked. Hacked to pieces by bastards with nothing better to do. I'm not bitter though.
I'm taking this all in stride. It happens. This is surprising because technological problems tend to eat at me for hours (yes, I'm a dork). And I discovered it quickly enough and contacted my host and everybody is doing the necessary work to fix it.
Sort of. The people in the support forum are a little mystified. I was running the latest version, no security holes they know of. I ran a security check, it came out clear. Checked my users, nobody is getting in "illegally." They think the hackers have gotten to my files - but maybe just one - but the whole system has gone wonky in the process.
So right now, all I can do is wait.
And yeah. France didn't win the World Cup.
It's been a weird week.
Luckily, I spent all day today in the sunshine.
Long-time reader Lottie pointed out to me that she has made several comments, and that none of them have shown up. Know what's funny about that story? I really thought people had just flat-out stopped commenting. You know how some sites just sort of invite people to comment in hordes, while others just don't seem to incite that sort of response? I guess I thought this site wasn't being read all that much, and that those who did read weren't really inspired to participate.
Um. I was wrong. So - let me apologize to all the commenters who have posted anything in the last two months. It turns out I had over 2,000 spam messages, and I think the system just freaked out. Normally, I get little messages in my inbox, letting me know somebody commented so that I can approve the comment. I wasn't getting any messages, and I had to go digging through the spam pile to find yours.
The good news is that I found them. Woo-hoo! And they've been approved and published. And I am finally going to throw in one of those special Turing test things, 'cause this is just freakin' ridiculous.
So thanks to Lottie for making me investigate the matter. And thanks to all of you for just thinking, "Well, I guess she's not reading my comments..." but still trying. I'm reading them all, now. It's a bit of a comment binge, if you will. And I promise that now the comments are going to work better. Pinky swear.
I received 135 spam comments from some poker site that deserves to rot in hell. The whole situation caused a sudden need to update to MT 3.2, and fast.
I was sort of dreading it, but the whole thing went smoothly, therefore proving my technical prowess. There was a small glitch, I checked some documentation and realized it was a javascript issue. Boom, boom, bada bing, bada boom, and here we have a functioning, thus far spam-free zone.
I might introduce those annoying Turing test fill-in-the-letter things to my comment forms, and thus do away with the authorizing. Because, for reals... I only get a few comments, max, per entry. It's not like I need to moniter this shit daily or anything.
Meanwhile, the admin side of MT 3.2 is sooo pretty. I wish you all could see it and ooh and aah over it like The Boy and I just did. Then again, maybe you're just THAT much less geeky than us, and you wouldn't be caught dead finding web publishing so entertaining.
Anyway. I am content. Let me know if you find a bug.
Sometimes web sites - no matter how little they are read - are too public of a forum. I cannot write about what's on my mind because I promised myself that I would not write things that could potentially hurt others' feelings. I am not too sure why I bother concerning myself with a certain other's feelings, when this person has little regard for mine, but so be it.
I have cried a lot the last few days, gotten in an unnecessary argument with The Boy because I was emotional and he was his usual overly-critical self, and had a miniature panic attack at 10.32 pm last night. I am at another rough patch in life, and digesting the problems in front of me has been a little overwhelming. Although difficult, I'm going forward.
Doing so is taking 90% of my energy, and that is why I am not writing here.
Sadly, I don't think anything sums up Who I Am as well as the search phrases that got people here (Obviously I'm kidding, please God, tell me you knew I was kidding). It's lame to post search phrases, but they give a nice, well-rounded representation of me. A small selection:
lack of concentration shivers
barack obama address democratic full video
difference between skank ho and slut
bedbug bites recovery time
nympho librarian
my-boobs breast-reduction 2005
eriq la salle soul glo
i hate argentinians
country music star bra sizes
I decided to make the "Bookworm" page its own mini-site. Don't mind me. I just felt like the books were spilling over the pages. So if you want to go look, you can, but don't be surprised that the pages look EXACTLY the same as the rest of the site for right now. I'm too busy to make it look different just yet, but I will, eventually.
I've gone through and recategorized the site. In the process, I ended up reading almost all of my old posts over again (and was embarrassed enough to delete 26 of them). I thought it might be a good idea to collect a few that I consider my favorites. So, in no particular order:
This Blogexplosion thing is funny. It really has exploded. I like the idea though - there's a strange sort of sheepish recognition on everybody's behalf that a) they read a lot of sites and b) they want a lot of people to read theirs. "Blogging" (still hate the word) is something that my friends just don't get, and I only half-get myself, but Blogexplosion is a whole world of people who seem to understand.
The one issue I have with Blogexplosion is the rating idea. Every blog group thingamajig has one, but they annoy me. I sorta feel like the whole point behind blogging is that nothing has to be polished, you can say what you like, and people who find it interesting will hopefully come back. We're not exactly looking to be published novelists. Most bloggers are just geeks with something random to say. I like it that way, and wish there wasn't an imposed sense of how-it-should-be, you dig? The really good writers - who also happen to be bloggers (Dooce, for example)- will get discovered, ratings or none.
Anyway. Hello Blogexplosion types. You're welcome here.
My negativity from the previous post inspired me to listen to some music. And then I remembered I had been neglecting the music section of this site, so it's back. Sorta. Plus, if you navigate around a bit, you'll realize that it's still clinging on to the old site format (which I technically prefer to this current one, but you gotta vary things sometimes or you end up a boring old hag).
I just wanted to tell those who had given up hope. Maybe I'll do a weekly special or something. Anyway. I feel good about that. Music can always turn things around for me. It's pretty amazing, really.
Only another hour until the debate starts, too. See? I'm not so negative after all.
Oh, and I sat next to a famous old woman at the pizza place today. I'm almost sure it was the middle lady in this photo, but you never know. Great film, too.
Thanks to my brother-in-law, I just set up and enjoyed the best RSS feed decipher doohickey ever. And yes, that officially makes me a huge geek, but ANDREW STARTED IT!
I'm telling you all, it's like Outlook for newsfeeds. It's wondrous, fabulous, glorious. It's ScriptReader. And if you head over to www.newsisfree.com, you can find, like, seven million different newsfeeds. I'm such a world news wacko that I set up my "inbox" to have different sections from around the world. So I'll be getting the newsfeeds from Le Monde, Arab News, Jane's Information Group, and Periodismo.com, along with several others. I've got NPR coming in, too, of course. This is like a gift from heaven.
Of course, I had to break up some of the seriousness with a little bit of fun. And really, can I ask you something?
Sometimes I want to just live in their comic. I would rub Hobbes' belly and pretend I'm in a spaceship with Calvin. Although Calving really is in a spaceship, and I guess that's where we differ.
Oh, by the way. Why the hell is my site so fucking long all the sudden? What's up with that?
So can I just say that I think the idea of voting someone off of a blog index is a cruel thing? Over at Blizg, you can do that. You can give a blog a positive vote, a negative vote, or you can vote it off Blizg's index. I put my site in their index because it's always a good idea to have your site in one of those massive index thingies. But I didn't realize they were going to rank us. WTF? These are personal journals - it's not like we're in competition with one another. Or is that naive of me to think that?
I thought it would be more like wander-lust or globe of blogs, where you're just sort of indexed and categorized.
But it's really pathetic - I totally took it to heart when I saw that someone had cast a vote to vote me off on Blizg. I currently have nine votes: four good, four bad, and one get-rid-of-that-bitch. And I try to tell myself that it doesn't mean anything, but eh...that's 5-4. And Your Site Sucks Donkey Balls is winning.
And anyway what kind of asshole votes people's sites off? Was my site that bad? I know I can't please everybody, and that there are bound to be a few negative votes, but still...vote me off? But I want to stay (I'm whining, there...I might have even stamped my foot).
I might just pull a Sherry and pull myself off of the index altogether. Unfortunately, I get two or three visits a day from over there, so apparently it is doing what I had originally intended for it to do. Plus, I am currently the only blog in France, and that makes me feel special. But being there is also doing more than I had thought it would - namely hurting my feelings. I don't think my delicate ego can take it anymore.
PS - You can make my day and vote positively for my whiny ass here. (opens in new window). Of course, you could also be one of the dickwads who likes to hurt other people's feelings, too. Apparently there are a lot of them out there.
My sister has done it again.
Click on Snoop. Enter my site's URL. Enter any site, really. But if you enter mine, read the entry before this one. It will kill you. Especially when I start talking about the quail. But be patient...it's a little slow. Certainly worth the wait though.
Where does she find this stuff?
