Skinny Legs and All

A philosophical Can o' Beans and pork, shoes, Southern preachers, sexuality, art and Jerusalem are all entwined together in Tom Robbins' novel Skinny Legs and All. I love Robbins word choice and wacky poetry.

"John is a label. Nebuchadnezzar is a poem. A monument. A swarm of killer bees let loose in the halls of the alphabet (105)."

The images that evokes is so cool! "Killer bees in the halls of the alphabet"...I imagine big letters in a maze of halls of a huge house. The same halls that my imagination comes up for the house of Lord Craven in The Secret Garden. Another great line is this one: "He grew up in Alexandria, whose vowels rise like yeast on the tongue (133)." When one thinks about it, yeast on your tongue would probably taste disgusting.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Is a story about an investigative journalist and what the cover calls a "punk prodigy". It's a mystery thriller about a pretty depressing and horrific subject: serial rapist/murderer. The first two hundred pages are background information-- a bit dull actually and then you get hooked into the thriller bit as we uncover slowly the culprit right under our noses. I can understand the phenomenon of the Millennium series, but the subject matter is rather distressing.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid--I love this movie. Witty, exciting, action packed, heart-wrenching and full of fun. How many movies are there where the heroes die at the end? Not many to my knowledge (which is very limited). Released in 1969, directed by George Roy Hill and screenplay by William Goldman it's a film to spend an evening with.

Poems

We are clearing out book and boxes because we are preparing our house to be sold. One thing that was thrown my way were MudPie: Journal of Art and Literature of West Sound Academy. The 2007 publication has these poems from me:

Spring Haiku

A lake reflects impressionist trees:
purple and blue hues,
lush greens.

Cherry blossoms
flutter in the air,
clog gutters.

Autumn Trees

A round palette on the table
Paint tubes half squeezed
Daubs of colors
A bright yellow
An orange, some red
Green hues, the color of weeds
Are left forgotten
To dry and crackle
They chip and soon blow away

Recital

Silent until
played

black and white
keys

type notes of
impassioned melody

learned from a book--
Chopin and Beethoven.

Alcohol

I was reading an article from the New Yorker  by Malcolm Gladwell called Drinking Games: How much people drink may matter less than how they drink it. Essentially we have a culture that supports/sustains loud, rowdy and heavy drinking, especially on weekends. The article was fascinating because it addressed the issue that I've been having with my peers, the fact that people in their twenties/high school/college kids drink alcohol with the sole purpose to get drunk, which I find pointless and a bit disturbing. The article gives examples of Bolivian, Italian-American and Irish-American drinking cultures and why some people have health issues or addictions while others because they drink alcohol a specific way don't.