Seeing as there is a 50/50 chance right now depending on a couple things and people that I might be in Bali for Christmas I didn’t think I was getting a Christmas present from my parents this year.  We were all out getting Adam luggage for his Christmas gift which he got already because Christmas gifts in my family are given sometime between August and December every year since I left home and my mom mentioned that I did get a present and I hadn’t even thought about it so I said I wanted a tripod but I got a Sony eBook Reader.

They actually bought three, my showing it to my mother off a friend’s photo stream turned out to be great for them because they can’t easily get books in Bali and can now hold up to 160 books each on their own readers.  We also have a family book club we are going to keep going over webcam so it all just fell into place.  I know that they are considered expensive but when you think about how many books it holds, the fact you can still get free books from the library for it and that it comes with 100 free classic novels (if you buy it before September 20) for an avid reader it is dirt cheap.

I have my third fifty dollar Chapters gift card coming in the mail this year which I will be spending on paper books.  I think it will be a long long long long time before any electronic reader could or will take over paper books but for anyone who reads as much as I do and more I highly recommend it.

No more packing four to eight books every time I hop a plane.  No more trying to decide what I am going to feel like reading before I leave.  I have only added four books to the eBook so far, Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy, Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte and The Turn of the Screw Henry James.  With the 100 free classics I can’t see buying any books for it for a while; I have a feeling I’m going to be on a classics kick for some time.  My only complaint, even though I completely understand why is that the free classics list does not contain any book that has been banned for even one minute, yet you can get the book of Mormon which I just don’t consider a classic in ANY sense of a the word.  No Orwell no Salinger, etc. and etc.  I also wish the USB port had a cover but it doesn’t.  I generally have my current book in a bag within my bag which will hopefully protect it from getting a dirty port.  It comes with a really cool magnetic brown cover.

I have kissed my eBook and petted it like a pet and hugged it because I love it. A lot.  The reader is not only pretty much the raddest thing I own now but it opens up the door for me to continue collecting my favourite novels in first printing first edition hard covers!! I’ve mentioned before I spent over a hundred dollars on my covered in plastic copy of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon and I bought the cheapest one I could find and hoped it would show up in the condition promised and thankfully it did.

I really enjoyed the book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris but I thought that Me Talk Pretty One Day was far superior and made me laugh so hard I almost peed in my pants a couple times. His stories about his brother Paul, aka The Rooster are my favourites. From one obnoxious cursor to another he just kills me. I started reading his books because Jenn went to see Mr. Sedaris live and she was crazy excited about going and so I took a look at his stuff and I am so far glad I did.

In June I was looking at a 1001 list of books you are supposed to read before you die. I enjoy these lists, they are all over the place, of course I like seeing how many books I’ve read whether it is a list from published books claiming what you should read, or internet lists, banned lists, I basically like lists. The book Under the Skin by Michel Faber caught my eye. I have read his book The Crimson Petal and the White. Being that the novel is 896 pages long and I did not bend the spine or even crease the cover in any way shape or form it catches my eye on the shelf on a regular basis, I don’t remember much of the detail but I know it is the story of a prostitute in 19^th century London. I was in the book store one day and they had Under the Skin in trade paperback on blow out, this was years ago I’d say 2003 because the inside cover of The Crimson Petal and the White says that I read it in October 2003, I bought it knowing that because it has sort of a boring cover that I would probably never read it but wanted to own it because I had enjoyed the other book.

When I saw it on the 1001 list, the rest of the list ceased to exist for me and I grabbed it off the shelf saved the list to my documents and checked to see where I was in my current book to determine how long it would be before I could start it. If I could read more than one book at a time I would. The book I was reading at that time was The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. [The Catcher in the Rye being a perfectly fine book by all standards in my opinion but finds itself on the banned list]

The cover of Under the Skin displays a quote review from The Wall Street Journal which claims it to be “Original and unsettling… an ANIMAL FARM for the new century.” Having also read Animal Farm, by George Orwell for the first time this year, it was my first read of 2008 actually; I found the rather extreme quote intriguing.

To read this book I had to deviate from my own reading list but I was willing to do it because I buy too many books to stick to only one list. I have reading lists and books I want to buy lists ALL over the place. In fact, something I really enjoy is flipping back through old journals and day planners where I always come across abandoned lists and survey them with nerdy excitement seeing what I ended up getting and reading and what can be moved to the new lists and what stays abandoned.

Under the Skin turned out to be an extremely engrossing book but for only 311 pages it took me ages to finish. It was one of those books that while I had it in hand with my eyes firmly on the page I could not put it down but once I found a way to put it down I had trouble picking it back up again. Each time. I am glad I read it, I talked to Adam about it a lot while reading it and explained the whole story to him, whether it should be on the 1001 list I don’t really care, I don’t put much stock in the lists other than to grab the odd book off them and see if I have read anything notable. In regards to its having been compared to Animal Farm, I can see how it is relatable but think it’s a stretch. The book does still have me thinking though, it was pretty good.

I’d have to say my favourite book so far this year has been Tori Amos Piece by Piece by Tori Amos and Anne Powers. I started listening to her music in 1994 my first introduction to her was her second album Under the Pink; I now own her complete library. I have had tickets to see her live twice but only made it to the concert once. The book was released in January 2005 to coincide with the album The Beekeeper. The Beekeeper is a fantastic album and in reading the book Piece by Piece I can now experience the album in a whole new way and do, I haven’t stopped listening to it again since I read the book. It lets you dive pretty deep into her life. It lets you peek into her thought process when she is writing songs and you find yourself on a whirlwind tour through the album and through conversations she has with music journalist Anne Powers, an intimate and what feels like a pretty complete portrait of her life is presented. I ate it up and love her even more now.

I also read Dry by Augusten Burroughs which I enjoyed, although it is sad and centers on his addictions. It made me want to get off the pot for about five minutes, but that would make my shrink too happy and we can’t have that now can we. I personally liked Running with Scissors a lot more. And I also read The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella, I normally reserve her books for after I finish a heavy non-fiction read because I consider her to be fluff but for a fluff writer she is really good and I own all of her books and have read all but one. I don’t read what I consider to be fluff very often but when I do I am extremely picky about it.

I guess it has turned into a bit of a vacation, but I love blogging I don’t think I will ever stop for good to be honest. I can’t wait till there are Granny bloggers.

I’m still reading blogs I’m just reading them off of Twitter links or through Facebook, I have not been able to face my iGoogle page because I will have to deal with my feed. It is too overwhelming for me. I think I will have Adam sign in and mark everything as READ and start over. That is what I normally do when it becomes overwhelming but I do it myself, this is the most backed up I’ve ever let it get.

You know what totally sucks about not signing into your feed though? I have no idea what is going on. Twitter although fast, does not contain very many of the people that I talk to on a regular basis in real life and Facebook which does hold a lot of people I talk to on a very regular basis is set up in such a way that if you don’t sign in at the exact right moment you don’t find out till the 23^rd that a RAD ASS girlfriend had her baby on the 21^st. Ok, so the baby was a wee bit early but had I have been signed into my iGoogle page I’d have known, damn skippy, right when she popped.

I find that I’m constantly sending friendly HEY HOW IS IT GOING? emails to people only to go to their blogs AFTER and find out everything sucks. Great friend Corinna, seriously.

I added a nifty little ‘Books Read in 2008′ thingy to my sidebar. I like it; it encourages me to make my minimum reading quota for the year which I am three behind on at present.

I took my blog roll down, NOTHING PERSONAL!!! You are all still on my feed and then some [just because you weren’t linked doesn’t mean you aren’t on my feed] and I promise I will catch up on it. I meant it when I said I was taking it back old school, I have not once checked my stats the couple times I have posted, not even once, I have not been on Technorati even once and don’t plan to head back, I’m finding I don’t miss checking either. It was a compulsive urge I had to make a conscious effort to stop doing.

My allergies are so bad this year that they are keeping me even more in doors than they normally do re: we golf, but we have no money this year anyway so the allergies are coming in handy for truthful excuses as to why I can’t be places. But really I know I’ve had a headache since 1994 I can DEAL, sometimes I just don’t want to.

DEAR ALLERGY MEDICATION SPRAY MAKERS: if you are going to charge me forty + dollars for a bottle that hardly lasts a month can you maybe make it with a sprayer thing that works and doesn’t clog ALL THE TIME and refuse to pick up the last four sprays that’d be awesome I would really appreciate my moneys worth in nose bleeds please and thank you.

While indoors if I’m not reading I am spending a lot of time listening to Bobby Darin, I AM A FULL ON BOBBY DARIN ADDICT now to the point I can even tell the difference between him and Frank Sinatra. At this EXACT moment, Country House, Blur is playing though. That Bobby Darin song If a Man Answers makes me dance a jig that has me busting out the mashed pa-ta-to and everything in between.

I am starting to feel a lot better about my body, I’m eating more, have more energy, feel some motivation to get out and I have been! And I’ve been spoiling myself I got my hair cut and my eyelashes tinted. I used to get them tinted in high school and in my super early twenties but yet never got them tinted when we got married, who knows.

This post includes a very small spoiler if you have NOT done one of three things:

1. read either book, doesn’t really matter which one
2. seen the movie American Psycho
3. care about a part in the movie that is under five minutes in length, in AP is no more than three pages and in LTZ is a short page in length.

But I think you should read this post anyway because I made a discovery.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991) is in my top three favourite books. I read it before I started to date my books but I remember that I read it in 2000, I worked with a girl who was reading it and having the word Psycho in the title was enough for me. In the minor, but WAY more than I usually do but still unsuccessful research I did for this post before deciding this was one for the readers and Googlers who happen across it I found perhaps the most disturbing thing about the book to a Canadian aside from its content is that according to Wikipedia;

A copy of the book was found in the house rented by Canadian serial murderers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, leading to speculation that the book had motivated Bernardo’s crimes. However, the first murder by Bernardo and Homolka happened in December 1990, before the book’s publication.

I also enjoy the film version of American Psycho [we watched it again last night which has prompted this post]. I feel that Christian Bale captured the character of Patrick Bateman with such disciplined and purely superb method acting that if it wasn’t a campy slasher flick he probably would have been nominated for some stuff. This movie also follows the book with very few missteps and the stuff they left out is more than alright with me, the full extent of graphicness both violent and sexual does not need to be written into a screenplay with every facet of his possible serial rage brought to the screen for the viewer to more than get the point.

Less than Zero (1985 Bret Easton Ellis), I read this in January of 2006, if memory serves I gave it five stars, I enjoyed it immensely. It was while reading it that I noticed the repeat. If it weren’t for the scene in the American Psycho movie I’d have probably missed it. Less than Zero is also a graphic and disturbing novel but it is pretty real and no less scary than Gossip Girl, although Gossip Girl is unfortunately marketed at a much younger audience.

I got to page 85 of Less than Zero and must have read the page over at least ten times. It had been years since I had seen the movie American Psycho but even longer since I had read the novel. But I knew I had seen on the screen almost word for word what I was reading on the page.

It is apparently common for authors and Ellis himself to repeat or carry on different characters on a smaller and/or larger scale but I can tell you I have never noticed anything this blatant before. I know that in his book Rules of Attraction the lead character is named Sean Bateman and during the movie I have not seen but read in the trivia [wiki] section on American Psycho where it mentions that in the movie Sean receives a phone call from his brother Patrick Bateman.

But this is a hell of a lot larger than that and my mind is rather boggled that it isn’t in at least one of the three FULL Wikipedia pages I read and none seemed to have any outward links that would be of any help.

I remember that when I finished Less than Zero I had a brief conversation with Adam about how shocked I was because the scene from the American Psycho movie stood out rather largely against the backdrop of a reference from a book published in the 80’s.

Last night while watching the movie it really started to take over my mind in an obsessive fashion the beginning where I say I didn’t research this post is bullshit for once I have now in the writing of this I called two people I have massive respect for in regards to everything not just their book knowledge and neither had heard about this but had both heard of Bateman’s brother in Rules of Attraction. I grabbed both books in the middle of the movie and was lucky enough to find the parts in both books. [American Psycho, Pages 360-362, Less than Zero Page 85].

In my mind, the easiest way to connect the three is to start with Less than Zero.

We have a conversation between the main character and his on again off again girlfriend;

(I am only including relevant parts of the page)

I roll over onto my back, I feel something hard and covered with fur and I reach under myself and it’s this stuffed black cat. I drop it on the floor and then get up and take a shower.

“Will you call me before Christmas?” she asks.

“Maybe.” I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.

“Clay?”

“Yeah, Blair.”

“If I don’t see you before Christmas”, she stops. “Have a good one.”

I look at her a moment. “Hey, you too.”

She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head.

I step out the door and start to close it.

“Clay?” she whispers loudly.

I stop but don’t turn around. “Yeah?”

“Nothing.”

Even if you have not read Less than Zero if you have seen American Psycho that part although Christmas is Thanksgiving and the names are Courtney and Patrick, the lines I have used from Less than Zero are the EXACT words used in American Psycho in both the book and the movie and there are more from the scene that I haven’t included.

IF this was supposed to be some kind of allusion to the character of Patrick Bateman being a fan of Ellis and had read his novels then why the black stuffed cat? In order for there to be advancement in the use of a character from a book written around the time the character of Bateman is coming out of University I do not see the development or the relevance and if there is none this is extremely disappointing and screams lazy author to me, even if I do love two of his books.

By taking the stuffed black cat out of American Psycho I may have been able to accept some kind of continuing theme but being that it’s pretty much exactly the same dialogue used in both book and movie I can’t find a connection or a reason.

This minor reference to Patrick Bateman in Rules of Attraction that could be found by a four year old makes it extremely hard for me to wrap my head around why information on this other parallel is nowhere to be found especially when all of the articles state that Ellis reuses his characters. I am pretty confused and would LOVE to know if anyone has noticed this or knows why it isn’t mentioned anywhere [that I can find], I feel it is one thing to reuse a character but to literally plagiarize yourself, I don’t get it.

On an added note both Less than Zero and American Psycho are on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, this flabbergasts me even further that I can’t find anything on this three way connection. Granted those lists are a dime a dozen and it also has Glamorama on it also by Ellis, which I hated, it quite frankly went straight over my head; I’m still surprised I finished it.

I read a lot, I watch a lot of movies, and I have a lot of opinions.

I have decided to single out four movies and two books. Four movies I have seen and the two books that I’ve read that the movies were based on and do I want to read the other two?

The Kite Runner: I was stubborn, very stubborn and for whatever illogical reason refused to read this book. Too many people were going on about it. One of them as coincidence or fate - whatever you want to call it would have it - was one of my BFF’s who lives in Beijing. Every single time we’d get onto MSN he’d ask me if I had read it yet. I can not for the life of me remember other than wanting to shut Jimmy up why I finally gave in and read it. What a read, I read it in, [oh this book even has the exact finish date written in it how you like that?!] or should say finished it on November 24, 2006. It was originally released in 2003, I held out a while. I flew through the book lost completely in the story, it flows beautifully and grabs you from the very first sentence, not unlike how Hosseini’s second book does with its opening chapter.

Due to the fact that I read a lot of non fiction when books like this come along they never feel fully fiction to me and I think that if the writing is good enough this then does nothing but draw me further into the story.

By the time I had read the book and got back online with Jimmy the film that I had no idea about was a month away from wrapping and James sprung the news that he was still in Kashjar, China as Caterer on the movie. HELL YAY! There are one or two photos in my TV and Movies set on my Flickr but due to normally bad connections only half of what he sends me makes it.

I’m always nervous when I watch a movie that has a book attached to it that I didn’t just enjoy, I loved. The fact that my friend was a part of the crew made me ridiculously nervous yet overly excited to watch the movie. I held to my ban of big movie theatres and brought it home shortly after it was released on DVD.

To say the movie was good is a complete understatement, it was bloody amazing. It gives me chills just thinking about it now. It you didn’t know that it was filmed in China you’d swear they had somehow gotten into Afghanistan for more than just reconnaissance and stills. I thought I was proud of James for the locations he had worked in while head chef for the cast and crew of The Painted Veil but it had nothing on the locations for The Kite Runner.

The book, the movie, they both left something with me; they opened up my eyes to a lot of situations that I generally read about from the perspective of a memoir be it a solider, a journalist, a victim and/or survivor. The story is deep and extremely multifaceted yet simple and eye opening in ways that I never saw coming I guess because sometimes the simplest of things are the hardest to grasp.

Into the Wild: I have read three Jon Krakauer books; Into the Wild was the third one I read in April of 2005. The book was a gift and the giver’s favourite book. I enjoyed this book and I got it, I related to it on a couple levels from the character’s relationship with his parents, to trying to find your own way in a capitalist society, his stubbornness and inability to see very far ahead of himself, the feel of needing to do something, anything but to just do it none the less. Without sounding too cliché here I think I can safely say there is a little bit of Christopher McCandless in all of us, I’d say that has a lot to do with why his story is still gripping new people some fifteen years after his journey into his own seemingly private solace began.

For me this movie should have never been made, I wish I had never seen it, I do not recommend it and I think if you want the real story read the book, the visual you are given on the page is so much better than even one minute of what comes across the screen it was almost un-watch-able. From the horrendous use of his personal letters through most of the movie and especially the beginning to casting Vince Vaughn (EWWW), back to the worst decision ever to have used a soundtrack by Eddie Vedder I just hated it. Adam made it exactly six minutes, started to laugh his ass off and went to bed. He has not read the book. The only thing that saved this movie for me to any degree was the use of a narrative by the actress who plays his sister that was touching and well placed throughout the painstakingly long and large cinematic piece of shit and I enjoy Catherine Keener no matter what she does.

I figure the only reason the McCandless family went along with this screenplay crap was because it was so poorly done it worked for them because they didn’t have to see what their son really went through. Have you seen The Machinist? Christian Bale loses so much weight it is awe inspiringly scary and impressive. Emile Hirsch was just not strong enough for me; Justin Timblerlake is the better actor in Alpha Dog, Hirsch did not do the McCandless role justice. If it weren’t for some superb makeup that I’m only calling superb because Hirsch was so ill-equip to handle a role of this magnitude the heavy makeup when he is dying is necessary because he loses so little weight I can’t even believe he was allowed to act in certain scenes. I counted the ribs I have showing with my hands over my head spinning around like on a bus roof and I have the same amount showing as he did since my drastic weight loss from my head crack and I’m not portraying someone who is going to die I just got sick.

The cover of this novel states “He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself,” YET we see the character of McCandless in a different t-shirt in almost every scene. This really bugged me what a ridiculous oversight by the costume department, I just can’t see a guy who abandons his CAR and burns his CASH caring that much about what t-shirt he is wearing and I found it really distracting. I want a movie like this to be REAL not a bunch of wardrobe changes and fancy makeup. Nuff said.

Atonement: In my humble opinion this is the movie that should have won the 2007 Oscar. It is amazing, beautiful, poignant, outright sad, flabbergasting, real - even through the illusion of fiction.

Two words, James McAvoy.

Droooooool central, but it is worth mentioning that all of the performances in this movie are brilliant.

I saw lots of people walking around with this book with the movie cover on it a long time before I saw the movie and now I’m annoyed because it will take me forever to find this book without the movie cover on it. BOOK NERD CONFESSION ALERT: I despise owning books with movie covers, it infuriates me. One time, I lent my copy of The Beach to a friend and she accidentally spilt pea soup all over it but the movie was out then and when she ordered it for me even though she asked for original cover they sent STUPID Leo cover and I was MAD not at her at the book, I had it sent back and it took I kid you not NINE months to get it delivered with original cover I had about given up and forgotten about it when one day I came home to an unexpected delivery of it and had a good chuckle.

I want to read this book pretty bad, considering how incredible the movie is, I think I can safely assume that it will be an out of this world read but I will wait until I can obtain it sans movie poster cover to own.

No Country for Old Men: I walked out of my shrink’s office one day and saw a dude reading and I spied with my little eye the author Cormac McCarthy and the book title was No Country for Old Men. I thought cool beans MAN because I had just recently become a McCarthy fan after falling in love with his latest novel, a post-apocalyptic father and son’s journey called The Road and I had no idea he had written No Country for Old Men until right then.

Although Javier Bardem does deliver a fantastic performance, to be able to still pull off sex appeal with a hair cut like that alone was impressive, the movie was an utter disappointment it felt as if they had taken a story that may or may not be a good one and stripped it down to their favourite parts of its dialogue and severed it up as a movie with guns and blood and Javier delivering some of said dialogue with a sexy psychopathic drawl. When it comes to Oscar worthy I think it would have been a lot harder to pull off the sort of performance delivered by Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl than a gun toting funky walker dirty talker.

When I get sick I am a pretty big baby combine that with seasonal allergies and night time barfing and things have been fantastic!

Boooo last Friday I had to cancel therapy re: being sick, no girl time re: being sick and I had only been looking forward to that for WEEKS! Adam is sick as well so we’ve been passing this shit back and forth and at first I wasn’t snotty I just felt EXTRA balloon migraine head with MILD head cold, NOW I’m getting full head cold and snotty. YAY! I’ve been having really awesome night sweats as well and I haven’t been forgetting to take my crazy people tits and so therefore I can not pin point a reason other than being SICK.

In other news, The Greeper has a new place that she likes to sleep. Pretty exciting shit eh? I know, I thought so too until it turned out she’s serious and has taken over half the spot I sleep in. She has of course had other phases, other places she goes back to. The fashion box, the tent, I’m sure she will get bored of sleeping right below BUT almost ON my pillow soon.

Our camera is not back from being fixed yet so we had to buy a back up one. We couldn’t delay the monkeys any more due to lack of photos, but at the same time we HAVE to be able to take photos of our product. This issue of course led us into a discussion of other things that could happen to slow us down, when we are just about done with a lot of the start up necessities and can now work on picking up our production pace. I mentioned that there would come a time that we’d make a monkey, look at it, hate it or it would not meet our quality standards and we’d have to start over. Really, did I say that out loud? Because it happened the monkey after I said it! YAY! We have informed the buyer, I figure honesty is best, there is only two of us and both of us had a hand in it sucking so we’ve had to start over. Now we have a physically challenged monkey in our apartment, at least Dr. Vegas finally has a monkey that isn’t going anywhere to play with mostly because it is blind and can’t speak. Once that red thread goes on for the mouth the suckers don’t shut up. Banana this, poo in your face that.

My Dad is supposed to be dropping two boxes of stuff off to Adam and I on Saturday, some of my stuff, some stuff they are giving us, some stuff that has been in the family forever that I am taking because I’m the last member of our family and I don’t want it leaving the family till I die I guess. Small problem though, my Dad and I got into one of our infamous fights today. Oh how I love them. Always in regards to the exact same issue(s) hidden by topics seemingly cloaked in difference that spread years, weeks, months some just days - we some how manage to piss each other off regularly even when not in big fights. My mom is going to be all upset now and that’ll be my entire fault too, I’m sure. Super awesome, we both resort to behavior befitting that of two year olds and just generally spin in circles for a while. Fun times. We have worked hard on things as a family but my Dad and I, man we’ll just always scrap, sadly that is just how we are, we can’t seem to communicate in any sort of healthy way. Wonder how many more phases this move to Bali holds in store for us.

Just finished my fifth book of the year leaving me three behind my minimum quota for 2008, I will get off my ass and post on them soon. This year has been good so far aside from The Time Travelers Wife. EWWWW.

So I will go BULLETS on you.

• Every single time one of us sits at the computer Gus jumps straight onto a lap she has her head buried in my arm right now. She is the most adorably cute annoying cat in the world.

• Adam hurt himself at work and has been off here and there and so I’ve had to carry some heavy shit and;

1. it made me wonder how the hell I was ever as independent as I was
2. someone held the back door to the apartment building open for me, I made it all the way up the stairs to my floor and swung the door open so I could let it hit me in the back to go through but I didn’t move far enough over and the door knob NAILED me so hard that it happened on Monday and I still have pain shooting in a couple of directions and a massive LUMP.

• COMING SOON!!! HUGE and I mean HUGE MOOOOO-VIE post. While we make monkeys we watch movies, mostly movies we’ve seen or I watch them twice or vise versa, some will be old and some will be new movies. I feel that my one liner-ish reviews are generally better than if I go all out anyway.

• Speaking of movies, and forgive me as I’ll probably repeat some of this somewhere down the road but I FINALLY got my hands on a copy of Into the Wild BUT now I’m afraid to watch it, WHY? Because see, I read the book in April 2005 [NERD ALERT/reminder: I date all of my books when I finish them] I have also read most of Jon Krakauer’s other books. The book Into the Wild is a 199 pages, with epilogue 203. I had this funny feeling having just watched two movies of perfect length so I looked at Into the Wild and saw that it is 143 minutes. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’m now convinced that Krakauer and Penn are conspiring against all of man kind, how the HECK does a 199 page book become a 143 minute movie? Krakauer wrote Into the Wild before he became known for being an arrogant thinks he knows it all, extremely repetitive journalist [NOT SAYING HE HASN’T BEEN THROUGH A LOT re: Everest] but seriously is half this fucking movie going to be Penn and Krakauer masturbating their egos and Krakauer getting us back for writing such a short book in comparison? I guess I’ll see once I watch it.

• Also coming soon a very personal review of Dry, Augusten Burroughs, [who has a new book out on April 29 YAY!] and I wasn’t planning on reviewing it at all but I have a few things to say about The Last Days of Socrates, Plato. Once I start talking about the damn Socrates I can’t shut up now, I feel similar to how I felt after I read 1984.

• OUR CAMERA IS BROKEN!!!!!! On one hand I feel really lame getting so upset over a materialistic possession but our camera is not just a play toy for us anymore we NEED it for our business so we are pretty stressed about it or rather I am, Adam doesn’t really stress much about anything in life. I have a couple tricks up my sleeve to hopefully get some photos of two monkeys that will be done this weekend and HOPEFULLY by the time the Jedi one is done THAT IS RIGHT A JEDI ONE, the camera will be fixed. I don’t pray but if you do please say a prayer for our new business. All start ups have glitches. We’ve officially hit a glitch.

• I finally had the pleasure of meeting Raul over the last weekend at Tanya’s housewarming party. I am like the last blogger in Vancouver to meet him I think. He was everything he has been talked up to be and more! I was the one at the party with the sippy cup. I had every intention of joining y’all at Every Third Tuesday this month because the Hamburgler [Monica Hamburg] was the speaker, I call her a friend, she doesn’t read my blog, that is cool man, but she is rad, I heard she did a great job, sorry I missed it, been taking care of my dear husband yo.

• We now have our FOURTH coffee pot in less than two years. The first one I broke in a tantrum of mass destruction, although I was not TRYING to break the coffee pot I just forcefully put it under the tap and knocked it into something. THEN Sarah and Jack bought us a rad coffee pot for a wedding gift [can’t find the post re: FUCKED archives] but even though we know at least four other couples/people who have that coffee pot and they ALL still have it ours broke!! WOOOOOOOOOOO! RIGHT after the warranty was done, probably the day after. I then bought a $24.99 twelve cup coffee pot, cheapest one I could find. Last week the heating plate went on it. Adam likes burnt coffee I blame him. SO I bought YET another coffee pot, and this one makes loud noises and I want to throw it out the window and I don’t have the box to take it back because I am a recycling freak and actually get excited about the amount of things I have to recycle and FUCK now I have to wait out this shit coffee pot, watch it last ten years, seriously.

Ps. Dr. Vegas is always a mentor to the Sock Monkeys, he always gives em’ some advice before they leave our infantry but this particular monkey the Dr. really took to. They had a pretty awesome jam session before he departed, Vegas has already shown off his guitar though so he took it off for the photo.