12.22pm
Thursday
18 May 2006
It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you're a grown man when you read this—it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then—I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.
—Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, which I also got in the mail yesterday, adding to the pressing pile of books I have to read before I start school and have no free time
MST or Pretty Girls Make Graves? Dinner party or Six Flags?! I am beset by dilemmas of a miniscule scale that gnaw at my insecurities and vie for my neurotic attention.
I think because so many things are going so well right now (I love my boyfriend more than I used to think myself possible of loving a person, much less a person who is good for me; two of my tightest girlfriends ever are so much nearer geographically than either has been since before college; I adore my house and my coworkers and my friends and I'm going to SIX FLAGS tomorrow night!) that I am perplexed and sometimes crippled and debilitated by the things that are not going perfectly according to my deepest desires (wavering the line of terribly stressing about work and playing hooky for two hours this afternoon; missing my little brother, though I get to see him in a week, though a weekend is never enough; constant, unending worry [terror] that things will Go Wrong with my dramatic life change that is upcoming, that I am behaving irrationally, that I will regret the massive student loan debt, that maybe even I don't know if I want to do computer science--)
Playing Bejeweled in Bo's car the other day, kicking ass and taking names, but remaining indifferently out of it, provoked me to comment that it was a shame skills at monotonous logic games (raise your hand if you were a Tetris child prodigy) did not parlay into a successful role in modern society.
Computer science is as close as it gets.
I don't know if it's close enough; certainly the technical details involved in embedded software detract from the comparison and detract from my ability to remain captivated.
I am pretty sure I have a strong chance at failing at life if I cannot find a way to make a profit at something that captivates me.
But I do have a pretty strong determination to that: to being interesting/interested.
That's probably why I spend so much time on Wikipedia.
• × • × • × •
The 25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written, or so says Playboy:
- Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill), John Cleland
- Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence
- Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
The Story of O, Pauline Réage- Crash, J. G. Ballard
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice- Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth
- The Magus, John Fowles
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
- Endless Love, Scott Spencer
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov- Carrie's Story, Molly Weatherfield
- Fear of Flying, Erica Jong
- Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
- The Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille
- The End of Alice, A. M. Homes
Vox, Nicholson Baker- Rapture, Susan Minot
- Singular Pleasures, Harry Mathews
- In the Cut, Susanna Moore
- Brass, Helen Walsh
- Candy, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg
- Forever, Judy Blume
- An American Dream, Norman Mailer
- The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins