Blind Prophecy

Here’s what I did this weekend…

• Video Games & movies.

Maybe I can put a positive spin on that by listing what I didn’t do this weekend:

• Spend money on clothes and books
• Spend money on clubs and alcohol
• Spend money on eating at restaurants
• Get wet in the drizzly rain
• Work from home all weekend
• Stress about Grandpa’s health
• My taxes (oops, another weekend down)

I finished reading Glass Soup by Jonathan Carroll. Very interesting and funny, if not completely captivating. I want to like a book where a man the size of a candy bar climbs out of an envelope on page 5… and maybe I would have if Carroll hadn’t insisted on pointing out on page 3 that the character he was introducing in the opening chapter was definately not a good man. In fact, Carroll goes to great lengths to convince you that Simon is a selfish bastard. Call me crazy, but I do like a few minutes to decide whether I like a character or not without the author telling me to stop it, he’s detestable. Anyway, the plot was surreal and not nearly as clever in the resolution as it was in the set up… but then how can it be when the characters discover the secret of the universe (which they talk about in a strange language Carroll doesn’t translate), but the big reveal later into the book turns out to be pretty uninspired.

I also (finally) got to watch my Netflix DVDs. They’ve been sitting in my room for a long time now. Anyway, this selection was the first two discs for Tales of the City. I really love this story. Sure, it’s soap opera and all that, but it’s fun. Plus, anyone who loves this city will delight in the typically San Francisco-ness of it all.

Have I mentioned that my condo complex reminds me in some strange ways to 28 Barbary Lane? My ethnically diverse neighbors and I don’t talk much (there are language barriers), but they make up an interesting group. The 50ish guy who lives across from us is often seen doing some kind of martial arts movement practice in the parking lot. Yesterday, he had added actual medieval weapons to his routine. I came home from the grocery store to find him practicing with a pike, a sword and staff propped against the concrete wall behind him. We also have a condo cat (half-feral and unnamed since pets aren’t allowed). I’ve nick-named him “Boris” after the cat from the Tales of the City books, and because he looks a lot like the cat in the tv/film versions of the books.

Filed under: books, livejournal by Jere Keys