i will follow

hayyyy. last night was a raid night, and it went fairly well despite getting a late start (the instance servers were full), though nothing dropped for me. before raiding, i made breakfast for dinner (an egg, cheese, and fake bacon sandwich on thick slices of white sandwich bread from metropolitan bakery !) inspired by some dude on the internet complaining that he hated breakfast food. most notably, i used this totally weird cheese i found at the grocery store that is bacon flavored, with no non-vegetarian ingredients



i even called the company and the natural flavors are not from animal sources? yet it has weird little pink chunks in it that you cannot feel or taste while eating it. i know that might sound gross to a lot of people, but let me assure you that it is the shit. i also got to indulge in my favorite shameful snack, unheated morningstar farms fake bacon. i don't know what it is but i can eat it like candy ! straight from the freezer. i realize that this entry so far makes me sound like a kid whose parents left her in charge of her own meals while they went on vacation, so i'm going to change tracks.

last night i read a book about bigfoot written by an acquaintance- north american primates by shane durgee. i've only met shane one time i think, at a party where we just talked about cats. all i really remember about that interaction is that he likes cats. but anyway, i have a fondness for anyone who likes cryptids and monsters and fantasy junk and animals so i thought i'd support him by getting his book.



i have to say, i was kind of blown away by this book? it's hard to explain. i want to start with the stuff that didn't work for me:

- the book was obviously a first novel and poorly/hastily edited. it's rife with typos and punctuation errors (and a character whose name changes from Sarah to Sara and back within like 2 pages), which isn't a huge deal, but it's distracting to me.
- i didn't like hearing everything the narrator thought and felt but barely hearing what he saw. it was sort of hard to really get into the story because the only thing i could picture was the woods and, oddly, a bigfoot erection. no physical descriptions of characters (small- or bigfoot) beyond some basic stuff like hair color or an item of clothing was especially annoying, and the first harrowing encounters with bigfoot weren't really suspenseful or scary or anything at all.
- the ending was very believable except for one important thing- a lot of the stuff that needed to happen to make it believable didn't actually happen in the book. my brain put it there because i got really into the story, but it wasn't actually in the book, if that makes sense.
- very little time was taken to establish relationships between characters- too much time was spent developing relationships between characters who introduce the main character to other more important characters, etc. the romantic relationship seemed to consist of like, hanging out three times with no real pleasant interactions, but when the character reflects on it at the end, lots more is supposed to have happened, even though the author didn't hint at it in the narrative.
- i don't like being inside a socially awkward dude's brain. it's so necessary for the story but i didn't like being there and it made me feel sick at points ! haha. that's also a positive because i really got 'into' the story enough to have those feelings.
- kind of gross treatment of women, but... socially awkward male protagonist, whatever.



the stuff that DID work for me
- the tenderness and attention to detail that went into the descriptions of rural rednecks and their daily lives, and the fine distinction between rednecks and Rednecks that is a nuance that outsiders could never pick up on. so many little things filled me with nostalgia for my (rural redneck) childhood, even stuff like the protagonist's best friend working for the post office and the mystical bigfoot meetings happening at the library
- the bigfoot meetings in general and the bigfoot guru guy. i can't even really get into this but the introduction of this character and the descriptions of this character were the most vivid and intense in the book.
- the... treatment of bigfoot? i wish i could describe this better without giving away major plot details, but i spent most of the book feeling like there just wasn't enough bigfoot and at the end feeling like i got exactly enough bigfoot, and felt like bigfoot was a character in the story- like he becomes queequeg instead of the white whale.
- all descriptions of the protagonist's family and childhood- while these still lacked physical descriptions, they were bursts of raw emotion and pain and touched on moments and details that are so important- all the memories that are most vivid to us but not appropriate to share or not really what people are looking for when they ask us about our family.
- "that's the mom"
- the main character's social awkwardness. it was so real and described so honestly that only a complete socially awkward freak would even talk about themselves the way the character did ! normally i hate when people talk about punk in books because it sounds so forced and awkward, but this character's interactions were supposed to be forced and awkward, so even that worked.

i guess i could go on and on, but i really liked it. it's a quick read- i read it in about 2.5 hours (with breaks for tanking some heroics) and despite only really spending a short time IN the book, i felt weird and uncomfortable for the rest of the night. anyway, i recommend this book to all the rural redneck bigfoot enthusiasts who read this !



i just dumped most of a bottle of water down the front of my shirt, so i'm going to go dry off, make a bagel with nutella, and get to work. before i go, i want to share some pictures of jeanne's friend's dog with you:







p.s. christina and i may make nutella challah this weekend.

p.p.s. weird al has announced 2010 tour dates ! my brother might come up to go to one with me, and jeanne's bf mike has already agreed to go with me and also to help torture jeanne while we're there !