Thus revealed, the creature buried its nose in the tire-tilled soil...
June 10, 2005
I could just die.
Category: Miscellany

Yes, I think that I could do it right now. I can scarcely maintain an upright position for exhaustion; a painful amalgamation of queasiness and hunger festers in my gut; my senses are on edge, such that my head swings 'round at the slightest rustle in the distance -- and the office resounds with sound! The hum of the fan, the tick of the clock, footsteps in the hall, voices in the office, the irregular drip of water from the ceiling onto the plastic bag that lines the interior of the trash can behind my desk, a distant beeping from somewhere -- I know not where! -- all of these devils assault my peace of mind and conspire to bring about my fate. And these on top of those unhappy concerns that already plagued my troubled thoughts! Had I a pistol in my desk drawer, I would gladly splatter my brains across its glossy, varnished surface.

I finished reading Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther this morning. Poor Werther! Good book.

-posted by Wes | 9:47 am | Comments (9)
Scary-Crayon reads!
Category: Books

The Scary-Crayon review of The White Bone is finally online! Granted, I sacrificed sleep to get it done -- not that I could've slept anyway, as fucking hot as it is in here -- but I came through. Go me. It's a fairly lengthy review, but I think it's pretty good. Anyway, enjoy! And do comment.

I've been having ideas for books to write like crazy this week. Will I get any writing done this weekend? We shall see!

-posted by Wes | 5:17 am | Comments (1)
June 9, 2005
The sweltering heat.
Category: Miscellany

Hey all. Sorry I haven't gotten that Scary-Crayon review of The White Bone finished yet -- as you can tell from the previous posts (if you haven't read them, go do that), my mind's been pretty occupied this week with all manner of depressing and complex thoughts. You can rest easy, though, at least for the moment -- my "Street Fighter II: V" DVD box set showed up yesterday, and I can't go to my grave without first watching all 29 episodes. Rah. Anyway, hopefully I'll have that review up tonight, along with a long-awaited addition to SC this weekend. No promises regarding that one's completion, but we can hope... and if nothing else, hopefully I'll finish up a new food article for next week or something.

In looking over these graduate programs that fail to captivate me, I'm kind of disappointed that I haven't seen any Philosophy and English/Creative Writing dual degree programs. That would excite me. And teaching philosophical fiction? That would be fun. But I don't see anything like that available. Sigh.

Maybe this weekend I will make substantial progress on my illustrated book as well! Here's hoping. Anyway, gotta get ready for work. Ja.

Did I mention how fucking hot it is in here?!?

-posted by Wes | 5:45 am | Comments (6)
June 8, 2005
The mistrust-affection connection.
Category: Serious

Looking inward and examining certain correlations regarding both my feelings and opinions of people I've known, I've discovered something rather curious: it seems that the amout of mistrust I harbor for a person increases in proportion to the intensity of my affection for that person. This rarely holds for my long-distance/online relationships with people -- as much as I like some of my online acquaintances, the kind of passion of which I speak here is, I think, usually reserved for relationships in which a certain physical proximity (or at least the potential for it) exists (or existed) -- but this relationship between affection and mistrust has held true on several occasions in my past. (more...)

-posted by Wes | 12:05 am | Comments (5)
June 7, 2005
The GRE and books I've read.
Category: Books

I think I'll take the GRE this summer. Still probably won't apply to grad school in December, though -- with the exception of creative writing, there's not really a subject I'm interested in studying in-depth right now (in an academic setting, anyway; I do enjoy philosophy, frex, but I've grown weary of academic pretension, even though I'm fairly good at affecting it). Maybe that'll change in the coming years (assuming I'm around for them, which seems highly unlikely), but in the meantime at least a good score on the GRE would bolster my self-esteem in the company of these hot-shot academic achievers. At least then I'll have something with which to nurse my intellectual pride when those people shun me for the company of "smarter" and more well-to-do individuals!

And now, a list of books/literature I've read in the past month and a half:

No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner
In the Palm of Darkness by Mayra Montero
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Marco's Millions by William Sleator
The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy
What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson

I started reading The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe this morning. It's not bad so far! And hopefully I'll have a review of The White Bone up on Scary-Crayon either tonight or tomorrow night. Anyway, ja!

-posted by Wes | 10:49 am | Comments (5)