My hands are covered in ink.

Today as part of my second job at Spectrum Eye (the first bit was finding, pulling and re-filing 2000+ files), I started faxing 929 new doctor announcements. Except first I had to cross off all of the out-of-state doctors. Then all of the in-town doctors. Then all of the doctors with no fax numbers (duh). Then I had to go through and find all of the optometrists and ophthalmologists to make sure I fax to them first (hello yellow hi-liter). I went from 929 to 373 doctors. 97 of those are now hi-lited. My hands are covered in ink from crossing stuff out. I don't just do lines, I do big wavy scrawls. No curlicues, just big waves. That way I know it's really crossed out.
After an hour and 39 minutes I decided I was done for the day.
I haven't sent a single fax yet.

In other news, you guys suck. I got zero votes on what review to post today! My feelings are hurt. On a scale of one to permanent scarring, I'm at about a knee scrape. Screw you guys. :(

So I picked the review of The Great Gatsby. Mostly because I worked really hard on it. It took probably 3 hours total to write, edit, re-write, re-edit, finish, polish, find links, format and publish. So be grateful. And go read it. I'm pretty pleased with it. Of course I could have written more or changed a few things...but I say that about every piece, every time I go back and read it again. I've learned to just let go a little. Once it's out there, it's out there. I'm chill with it. It's a good review, and I like it.

The only rotten part is now I want to watch the movie version except I know it will depress the hell out of me.

Today I'm going to be working on a review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (thanks again Dirk), and possibly going to the library to pick some stuff up. I got Walden Two (which I'm working on) but the two other books I got I haven't even cracked. That's a bad sign for them...usually if I grab a book and let it stew for a couple of days the suspense drives me nuts and I blast through them. These two are just sitting there, bored and useless. That means they need to go back and I need to find something else.

Right now then I have TPoBaW, W2 and Interview with the Vampire to work on; Alex is going to lend me Parallelities when he gets back from NYC (cue jealous grumbling and bitching) and I'm hoping Jonah will let me borrow a sci-fi book he was telling me about, which is called either Up or Down the Line (my memory is horrible).

Other than that, I still need ideas. I'm going to go through my own books and pick out a few I remember well enough to review without rereading (Assassins of Tamurin which I've read upwards of 6 times is definitely one, maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz... we'll see. Memoirs of a Survivor. Stuff like that), but I still need ideas.

I'm also going to be writing a piece on what literature is for my super secret special project, and I want some outside opinions. What do you think literature is? Write as much as I want. If you give me good ideas, I'll use them and credit you in the blog entry about it and be forever grateful to you. I have some outlined ideas which I'll be keeping to myself so as not to bias your comments (which had better be many), but I would love to hear from you all. All...what, 5 of you who read this? If I'm lucky.

Frack

I just realized I'm supposed to post 1 "Info 101" article/week...so my big jump on 5 of them was sort of my worst idea ever. Those 5 would have covered around half of the articles I needed to write for my super secret special project (which clearly is no longer a secret at this point, but you know what? I'll call it what I want. Screw you.).

So for this week we have an article about the excellent Wooster Book Company -these fabulous people were the only ones to write me back when I sent out requests for picture permission for those first 5 articles (towards which I now feel rather bitter). I've been e-mailing back and forth for a couple of weeks with the owner/founder/all-around-cool-person David Wiesenberg in order to get info, more pics and all those shenanigans.

They are Ohio's largest independent bookstore, and I think they're great. I'd love to go visit them, especially for the Buckeye Book Fair (there's a link to info on it in the article, which you need to go read).

Go! Now!

Have a good Saturday.

Tragedy and mayhem

I got Rick Rolled yesterday. At work. That song...that horrid song...was on the radio. I got Rick Rolled by life. I was laughing so hard I accidentally snorted dust from the files I was pulling during the chorus. Never gonna give you up...

For those of you who don't know the horror of a Rick Roll, just go here.

In other news, people who like Twilight still hate me. Far be it from me to criticize a 12 or 13 year old for having an opinion, but seriously kids? Shut up. You have no idea what good literature looks like unless you're precocious, and if you are, you wouldn't like Twilight. You wouldn't insist that my "reality" must be boring because there are no vampires or werewolves in it (first, I watch True Blood religiously, so to hell with your sissy vampires and second, in both True Blood and Twilight, they're shape-shifters. Get your terminology right or GTFO).

If I bothered to respond to the comments on that particular article, I'd probably a) get fired for being a dick and b) make some little kids cry.

I'm all for freedom of speech, and I love getting comments - and making fun of stupid people. So in the end I have no problem with idiots leaving poorly written comments that are, in a word, buncombe. (If you don't know what buncombe is, go here. You'll also learn about lots of other fun words, like bescumber and Frenchify). Seriously, fans of Twilight: come insult my review as much as you like. But know that no matter how many times you tell me the "Twilight Saga" (which I will reiterate for the umpteenth time is a series and not a saga. Idiots. I don't care what it says on the cover of the book, the cover of the book is lying to you) is the BEST BOOK EVAR and you luuuuuv Edward and he's so hot and protective...you're never going to change my mind. The books are sexist, poorly written, boring, predictable, riddled with errors and they promote abuse, stalking and pedophilia. There's no way around that.

/rant

In other news, I'm going to work again today! I'm going to try to go in at least 4 days this week, although I'm taking tomorrow off for the sake of my special project. Are you getting excited??? If not, I'm disappointed. Make me a cake and I will forgive you.

Additionally....I got into an argument with a 65-year-old man from Australia yesterday. He wrote an article on Helium.com and I was sort of put off by it, since it proposed to explain why scientists reject the idea of God by trying to tear down the theory of evolution. Needless to say, that was not convincing to me, so I wrote him some feedback. Twice (because Firefox chose to crash right then, not because I'm that much of a dick). I wasn't very nice. I wasn't attacking him personally, since in the rating system you don't know whose article you're working with, but I was definitely ripping the article more than one new orifice. My questions were justified and I still stand by my position that the article was written from an ignorant and incorrect standpoint, but I was being a bit of a snide jackass.

So it didn't surprise me when I got a long, impassioned e-mail from him asking me who the hell I think I am, insulting my intelligence, my writing abilities, my personality and my validity as a human being. About what I expected from what was clearly a radical, if not fundamental, Christian. I wrote him back, apologizing for the offense and basically being more of a jackass while trying to come off as taking the moral high ground (which is what I tend to do in those situations).

A flurry of e-mails passed between us, each successively less pissy, and it was a really weird experience that I thought I'd share with you, my very few readers. He turns out to be quite nice. I caught him at a bad moment, he said, early in his day and he responded without thinking about whether my comments might be valid. I, of course, apologized for my lack of tact. Then we talked about schooling (since in his first e-mail he had compared me to one of his daughters...not in a good way) and that seems to have been the end of it.

Except for this -this is the second time I've sent him feedback on Helium via the rating system. And pissed him off without really trying to. The first time I responded quite angrily, I remember, saying something about getting into a pissing match with a skunk (I've told you I'm a jackass. Eventually you will believe that); this time I appear to have made a friend, maybe. Or at least there's one less 65-year-old who hates me.

Crazy times.
Still reading. :)



The review of Rebecca goes up tomorrow, along with my special project, so keep your optical organs peeled!

Review Monday

As promised, here is today's review. Richard Feynman!

You're all getting spoiled this week; I posted an extra review last night just for kicks, and later this week I have a special project that's going to result in 4 separate articles! So get excited about that, and get your reading glasses ready! ;) It's going to be a busy week for me. I'm actually going to work in addition to writing, so I actually have to leave the house for something other than the library or coffee...

As far as my experiment yesterday with going outside went....that failed miserably. I stayed inside and got active though. My arms still hurt from Wii Boxing, and I'm okay with that. I'm still white as a lily, but at least I didn't spend all day sitting in front of my screen staring at various pieces of writing. I consider that a step in the right direction. Maybe I'll actually venture outside today, who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Still reading The Things That Matter...it's taking longer than it probably should, mostly because I'm just reading at night right now. Not sure why, I've just been putzing around doing other things during the day. Like playing Wii.

Well, keep an eye out for further reviews 'n' stuff later this week :)