My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Well, I finally did it, I finally completely finished Dune. I successfully hated it from beginning to end. Honestly, my problem isn’t with the story per se, but the prose just killed me, the use of “Presently, he said,” or “He swallowed with a dry throat,” over and over again. It’s just such a flatly written book.

Maybe at 15, a virgin to sci-fi and life in-general I’d have found it brilliant, but at 28 (as of 12/31/08), it just didn’t do anything for me.

From a writer’s perspective, midnight mass was pretty spectacular. Personally, it was rather awful, I’ve never felt so lonely, but the writing material… Wow.

My mom was married to a fellow, Randy, for about ten years. This marriage didn’t go particularly well, by which I mean, it went astonishingly badly. Still, my mom and Randy get along much better not having to live together. 

So, Randy isn’t usually in town for Christmas, but this year’s different. Since he’s here, mom decides to invite him to midnight mass, and much to my surprise he actually says yes. He hadn’t seen the inside of a church for at least ten years, until tonight. He shows up at the house in a festive mood, but on the drive over it becomes apparent that Randy’s quite drunk. So, while we’re in church the sleepy part of being drunk starts to kick in, my brother has to keep kicking him to prevent his nodding off. During the communion he declares that he can no longer remain awake and has to go, now. Mom tells him to go nap in the van, my brother hands him the keys and he promptly does so.

After communion the mass is ended and it’s time to go in peace. Randy’s sleeping so peacefully in the van that he won’t wake up to unlock the van, which I find amusing, but not as amusing as when he does wake up and simply can’t figure out how to operate the locks, thus triggering the car alarm.

Obviously, we did get back into the van and we did get home.

Happy birthday Kitty Jesus! Next we get to celebrate Your Kitty Crucifixion and Resurrection.

I gather they’re re-airing the TAL episode, as I’m getting lots of new readers.

Wow, you people must be pretty fucking let-down. I’m sorry about that, on many levels.

Every single year, my family goes to midnight mass to ring in Christmas. This year, I think I’d rather eat glass, or read Dune than sit in church. I just don’t feel it. I also have absolutely no idea how to escape it.

Perhaps Kitty Jesus will show me the way, but I seriously doubt it, being that I’m not a kitty. I know Regular Jesus definitely won’t help me. Santa’s pretty useless too. I suppose death, taxes and midnight mass are just inevitable.

Sometimes I stumble upon random little movies on iTunes, I buy them on a whim and hope for the best. I usually have really good luck, Lonesome Jim, Wristcutters: A Love Story, both excellent. Idiocracy, however, was almost as painful as reading Dune. Honestly, I like my Russian-roulette approach to movie buying, it has yet to kill me. انواع البوكر

The Life Before Her Eyes is my most recent spin, and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. It’s the story of two high school girls who are confronted by a fellow student gunning his way through the building. He says that he’s only going to kill one of the two best-friends, but they have to decide which. The film then flashes forward to show the life of the surviving girl, a life that slowly unravels. لعبة كريكت

The film is gorgeously shot and well-acted, Uma Thurman playing the guilt-plagued survivor. The story has a twist, and while the twist didn’t particularly surprise me, I don’t at all regret watching. It was definitely worth the random purchase.

I have this tattoo, “Give me patience,” it’s an allusion to Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters. The book meant a lot to me and I figured having those words etched into my arm would be good, as sometimes I feel really short on patience. I feel really short on it right now. The tattoo’s not giving me anything. I want things, simple things, but they all seem so far away just now. It’s astonishingly frustrating.

I’m wondering if patience would help me, maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe patience is just a way to pacify a person when they ought to fight harder. I really don’t know.

Baron VanderMeer hissed, “What did you think about Dune? It wasn’t clear from your post.”

Swallowing with a dry throat, Michael said presently, “I have nothing but abject hatred for it.”

Things that are better than Dune:

• Root canals

• Trache changes

• Getting punched in the face while wearing glasses

• Kitty Jesus

• Pink eye

• Communism (dedicated to Celeste)

• The Anti-Christ

• Stale pretzels

• Being raped by woodland critters

• Spontaneous blindness

In about five hours I go for another trache change, I’m a little uneasy about it just now. I’ve been pretty down on myself for a half a year’s worth of mistakes, and I’ve been really afraid that I can’t fix things, but that’s ridiculous. I can, of course I can, provided that I think clearly and don’t quit. I’m not going to lay down and die, I’ve thought about it, but I’m not. I’m going to Jefferson Smith my way out of this fucking mess, I’m going to fight for this lost cause.

I just have to not die in the O.R. After that, it’s so on.