That's it...

...I'm learning Japanese, so I can read the captions to this blog without Google's help. I have no idea who these people are, but looking at their pictures is inducing a strong desire to hop on the next train home and hole up with my family for about 10 years. Seriously, little Japanese family? You're amazing. Your dogs have the best faces. And this might be my favorite photo ever:

Serious kudos, whoever you are.

Came across all this snuggliness via this blog, in which I would like to live.

I don't know about you...

...but this is what I'm doing tonight:

Central Cinema is like Disneyland for impverished post-grads. $6 movie tickets, $10 pitchers of beer, $1 bowls of popcorn with a shiz ton of butter and some of the greatest artistic triumphs of our time.

What I'm looking forward to most: chugging an entire pint when a certain character utters a certain unforgettable line...

Currently pondering

When artists do crappy shit, does that change your attitude towards their work? I've never been a huge R. Kelly fan, but the fact that he peed on that one girl doesn't change the fact that I still listen to "I Believe I Can Fly" with tender fondness for "Space Jam" and the '90s in general. However, 2 seconds of any Chris Brown song and I'm hitting next or changing radio stations. Totally ruined for me. So, Kanye? It's been obvious for a long time that the man has an epic ego, could anyone really listen to his music without being aware of that fact? Will his gargantuan douche-move last night finally tip the scales against him?

Thank goodness we have Beyoncé to entertain us.

I forgot how to blog

Oh, uh, hey, internet, um, so about that time I surfed and surfed and surfed you without contributing anything in return for a couple--ok fine, five--months...uh...sorry?

I know I've been le suck this summer, but, to be completely honest, this summer has sort of been le suck, too. Why? Well, for starters everyone cool died! MJ, Ted Kennedy, Bea Arthur. You can't just blog away that kind of pain.

Luckily one of the biggest bummers of the summer, the absence of Maddie, is about to be rectified, and I really shouldn't whine about it because she had herself a grand ol' time in Italia (her much-more-interesting-than-my-blog blog is here). And I got some kickass presents out of the deal, so. I guess I'm ok with it.

Here's a photo of the Return of Maddie, the exact moment at which my mom exhaled for the first time in the month Maddie was abroad and at the mercy of The World:

I call it "Stripes."

Anyway, pals, I'm looking forward to the fall, which is weird and a little traitorous, but I must be honest. In exchange for this blasphemy, I promise to Be a Better Blogger.

Couple things

Effect of the Hunthausen basement MacLab on Seattle University students:

Obligatory plant picture for Mom:

What I've been looking at for the last week or so. Except the rain is new today:

All my verbal skills have been expended on the paper pictured above. This post was a stretch. Have a nice day.

THE FUTURE IS DIGITAL

My new camera, aka Prettypants McFancyface, is here! It arrived about a week ago, and what a week it's been. Join me, won't you?

Two hours after I opened the package, Annie called and told me about this tremendously amazing party going down just a couple blocks away at which there would be piles of free art for the taking. See, her friend Herbert is super savvy and knows artists all over the world and got a bunch of them to send free art things to him so he could disperse them to the masses, such as me. Like. Such as.

Here's my old buddy Wayne amongst some of the free art:

The next day was Saturday, which Maddie and I filled by visiting the new Mexican place on Capitol Hill. Rancho Bravo is a magical place. The interior is the same from when the place was a gross KFC, but now the food is good, so it's just fun. And cheap.

So on Easter I hosted a FEASTER. Which was pretty much just Maddie, Banks, Garrett and me eating quiche, drinking mimosas and watching Mary Poppins. Oh yeah and a Certain Gentleman and I hard boiled six dozen eggs.

Almost forgot. Here, mom.

Well now that I just spent a half hour blogging on a Friday night, I'm going to go be a part of the world and stuff.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Here's what has me all tickled pink today:

Google is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the publication of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

And! Eric Carle has a blog! It's sweet and simple and friendly, and he's got some great pictures. Lke what his shoes look like after he's been painting all day:

Carle and his wife run the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst. Road trip to Massachusetts, anyone??

Maybe I shouldn't have had that third cup of coffee

Trying to conserve writing skills for paper due tonight. Here is the last couple weeks in pictures.

What my paper is on! Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi. Raddest thing I've ever written 10 pages about.

Favoritest shot from my photography final!

Super-on-sale dress I ordered from J.Crew yesterday while I was at work!

Picture I took in Paris of Hemingway's first apartment when he was poor that I totally forgot about having seen which is now taped to my bedroom wall above the stack of Hemingway books I'm using for my thesis!

Ok. Writing now.

Getting Kids to Read More: Ur Doin' It Wrong

Oh noes! The interwebz is rottin' our brainz! College students today have the literary taste of wittle girls, apparently.

Since I've blogged about both Stephenie Meyer and Maya Angelou, I feel the need to comment on this latest iteration of the "Kids today" sentiment. Especially since my last post was all about my bookshelf. See, Washington Post?? At least one of us has read Plath and Ginsberg! I have pictures! See? See??!

Jeebus.

While just about every paragraph in this article annoys me to the point of wanting to go out and read more Meyer and Rowling just to piss off the condescening professors "in full tweed glory" of the world, it's that tone that annoys me the most. That "everybody she knew was reading 'Soul On Ice'" tone. The only real live college student they talk to in the article is a senior-English-major-history-buff-pants at Kent State--in Ohio--and says of his peers, "The one book that I know everyone has read is 'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.' "

Since when is reading about "everybody"? What does "everybody" even mean these days? Last time I checked, we lived in a nation that was becoming more heterogeneous by the second. Isn't the fact that Nobody Agrees on Anything Anymore our big problem? The article cites the fact that "two-thirds of freshmen identify themselves as 'middle of the road' or 'conservative'" as evidence that all college students care about is beer. Two-thirds of freshmen. Two-thirds. Of freshmen. Really? Didn't think to ask some graduating seniors whether their political views and reading lists had changed a bit over the course of four years and a college education? No? I can't think of a single book that I know everyone at my school has read. Not even Harry Potter. Know why? BECAUSE GENERALIZATIONS R DUMB. If they're looking for "the Germaine Greers, the Jerry Rubins, the Hunter Thompsons, the Richard Brautigans -- those challenging, annoying, offensive, sometimes silly, always polemic authors whom young people used to adore to their parents' dismay," why are they looking at best-seller lists and only talking to a college student who decided to go to school in a moderate state and then bitches about how his classmates are politically moderate? I don't have numbers here, but I'm guessing the erotic journal of Anais Nin was not a staple of every bedside table, even in 1969. It's called a counterculture for a reason. Besides not, you know, talking to students, does the article look at The Orphan or bookninja or any blogs? No. And that's what makes it more irrelevant than anything else.

Whatever though, what I really hate is that reading gets characterized here as this thing you do for other people, so you can tick off a few totemic names over cocktail weenies or something. Why read just to piss of your parents? How about reading whatever makes you really, really ridiculously happy, or whatever finds its way in front of your face?

Does blogging about my bookshelf ensure impending Crazy Cat Ladyhood?

Fear not, loyal No Pantsers. I've been making up for my laziness on the interwebz by being super productive in real life.

Par example, last week I reorganized my bookshelf. It used to be laid out according to author and genre so there was a chunk of Neruda books on the poetry shelf and all the Salingers huddled together on one end of the fiction shelf. But that was stupid and neurotic and, as it turns out, problematic, because what do you do with something like The Journals of Sylvia Plath, which wants to be with the rest of her Plathiness on the fiction shelf, but is technically non-fiction? Also, I have begun amassing a fair amount of plays in the last couple years, which, to my mind, lie in some nebulous not-quite poetry, not-quite fiction zone, and there's only so much space in the Ikea Flarke bookshelf.

So! Here was my solution:

That's right. It is now organized by color. Books with covers that are primarily covered in warm reds, oranges and browns are at the top, cool hued blues and greens are second, and then I divided the rest into spines that were mostly black or mostly white.

This pleases me on several levels. First of all, it's just prettier. Second, it's deceptively neurotic. It might seem less organized, but this shit took me an hour and a half. And it requires a certain level of observational skill to notice the grand chromatic scheme--the Boy I Like Better Than The Other Boys came over after it was done and I giddily asked, "See what I did to the bookself?!" His best guess before I finally told was, "Uhhhh, you moved the picture of your dog?" My bookshelf is like a brain teaser.