If Only All Returns Were This Awesome!

I was standing outside the White Flint Metro reading Fugitive Days by Bill Ayers when a girl comes up to me.

"Excuse me, do you have four quarters?"

In her hand is a dollar. I start to shake my head. "Let me make sure just in case," as I begin digging through my bag for my coin purse.

I have seventy cents: two quarters, one dime, two nickels.

"It doesn't matter," she said as she swapped them. "I'll be saving more than thirty cents anyway."

And that is the story of how I made a dollar out of seventy cents. If only banks could do this shit. I'm not sure what she was doing with the change (I assume some weird metro thing that wouldn't take her dollar) but man did that turn awesome for me in a hurry.

Confession: I hate audio books

I recently discovered that I am not a fan of audio books.

It had seemed like a good idea. Rather than listening to music on a twelve hour car ride, listen to a book. I love to read. This could knock out at least two novels?

Either The Gunslinger by Stephen King isn't very interesting, or the audio book was awful. We didn't get past the first disk.

We did make it through Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, but I was struck over and over by the fact that I can read faster than they talk. I was impatient. The novel wasn't going fast enough. Everything felt stilted.

Occasionally, I would also want to review the material we had covered -- nearly impossible in an audio book.

The most enjoyable audio book was The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, but the voice the reader had for Salander was so terrible that it was distracting. A good story, but why the voice for a woman would be lower than the male characters infiltrated my thoughts more than once.

I'm definitely going to stick with reading. Not because of any kind of moral superiority but because they get on my nerves.

OMG Blur to play Coachella???

According to this, Blur are in talks to play Coachella, as part of their reunion tour.

OMG WTF? Is it possible that a reunited Blur are going tour America and I will be there? Maybe? Maybe a new album?

In other Blur news, I was excited to see Damon Albarn's name on the cover of Paste Magazine. When reading, I was disappointed. I hadn't really done any Blur research in a while, but everything was something I already knew; blah blah blah about the Chinese Opera and world music. Tell me something I don't know, Paste.

Fox News Viewer Message

Keep your eye on the ticker.

TV FAIL: Leaving Cancelled Shows Hanging

I just finished Veronica Mars. It isn't a season finale in which they leave things open ended; it is like there are missing episodes in the season. Nothing is resolved. It is like filming was halted once the show was put on the cancellation block.

Do shows owe it to their viewers to somewhat tie things up?

This is a concern as Pushing Daisies has also been lined up for cancellation. Part of the problem is that even I've stopped watching it.

Do shows owe it to the faithful to tie things up, or is it punishment for not spreading the word and getting other people to watch?

Another show that comes to mind that left everyone (who watched it) hanging was Dead Like Me:



This had no ending either. It was like they had been halted before they could finish filming the season.

But there's a new box set coming out, with new episodes of what happens to the characters in the future! Did they feel bad for us? Or did they think enough of us had gathered, raised a stink, and they could finally make money off of their viewer? Why not do this sooner?

There are also tentative future plans for Veronica Mars.

Do television shows have a responsibility to keep us happy even though we have not been as loyal viewers as we should have been? Or by keeping us hanging, are they hoping that we'll complain to the studio or the network to keep them on or put them back on air, a la Family Guy?

Whatever reason, it isn't cool.

Goal for 2009: Read Less

Okay. I've read about a thousand posts about people's goals. My goal is to read less. I read a lot. I specifically should be reading less books.

I read a mix of books, but I'm thinking I need to scale back on the less respectable "literature". This means a massive scale back on Teen Fiction. Thank god I got those Vampirey Books out of the way, huh? This came to me while I was thinking about rereading The Princess Diaries and reading the later ones for the first time. Ugh. I need to stop.

I also looked around at the store for The Cider House Rules. I've already read it twice. There are John Irving books in the world that I haven't read.

Instead: I need to read something more challenging. I also should be writing more. Reading, especially teen novels or novels I have already read should not take up so much of my time.

To sum up:

1. Read less
2. Write more
3. When reading, make it challenging

Here's to another year of fighting for equal rights!