Ericka’s Neighborhood

This month has been positively shameful. I blame a lot of it on how Await Your Reply totally wrecked me, and made everything else seem boring and unimportant. I only finished two books in November and I didn't like one of them. How sad am I? But, well, this is my last week of class and now the time I've devoted to reading some 425+ student pages a month can be spent on other things.

BOOK ACQUIRED
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth

BOOKS READ
The Complete Essex County by Jeff Lemire: Sweeping and brilliant graphic novel about hockey, forgiveness, loneliness, and family in Canada.

Totally Killer by Greg Olear: Despite being a sort of homage to American Psycho, a bad choice in point of view ruins what could have been a pretty funny novel about murder, babyboomers, and 1991.

CURRENTLY READING
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

I was tagged by arulba. She was tagged by tagged by Kay. Thanks!

Summarize the Bible in five statements (fifteen words).  The first statement – one word long, the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last five words long. Or possibly you could do this in descending order. Tag five people.

Comprehensive (The book is comprehensive in content and form. There are so many nooks and crannies full of meaning. Most of the literary forms are represented in the Bible.)

Human made. (This cannot be emphasized enough. Despite what many have said about Divine inspiration, the Bible was written and assembled by humans, specifically men. Imperfect human beings make imperfect writings and books, and the Bible is no exception.)

Remember the metaphor. (The Bible is an imperfect book written in many literary forms for many different audiences. To read it as literal truth is to ignore these realities, which is dishonest to both the book and to the person reading it. Metaphor can help us make the book relevant for our particular time, though this requires work and thought. And whenever one interprets a dream [think Revelation], metaphor is the best tool one can use to pull meaning.)

Read the Gospels first. (This helps set one’s mind in a Christian sense, providing one is reading the book in that framework. Then, read the entire Old Testament straight through before reading the rest of the New Testament, starting with the book of Acts.)

Paul writes letters to others. (What many Bible readers and believers should to realize is that Paul’s letters are written to a particular group of people in a particular time and place. It is important to not take these letters out of context. Many Christians believe Paul provides a practical application of the Gospel. However, Paul is actually providing his own interpretation and application of the Gospel for groups like the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, etc. One is actually reading a one-sided conversation. For a universal message, turn back to the Gospels. Jesus’ message is simple and universal enough for one to apply without clinging to Paul’s [or anyone else's] ancient interpretation.)

There are certain pieces of art -- music, books, movies, tv shows -- that click with you in ways that are hard to define. Oftentimes mere words cannot explain the feelings you have for certain things. The heart wants what it wants, right? Though I have tried, I still can't explain what it was about the Wakefield Twins of Sweet Valley that had me entranced for years on end. I can't adequately explain how the music of The Replacements exhilarates me and makes me feel understood and not alone all at the same time.

Nor can I explain why I love Dawson's Creek so much. It's a silly teen drama that I fell in love with when I was much too old to be in the show's target audience. I remember having a great time making fun of my parents who were early-fans of the Dawson's Creek/Felicity night on the WB. Little did I know, three short years later I would be the biggest fan of Dawson's Creek.

It caught me when I was at my weakest. I was working a crap job in Customer Service, living alone for the first time, and fighting a battle with pneumonia where the doctor made me choose between staying in my apartment for 10 days or going to the hospital to rest.

I opted for the home quarantine and it was then I caught my first episode. It was the one where Pacey kissed Joey. That's all it took and I was hooked. I watched the show religiously for the next two years. Then I proceeded to Netflix the hell out of the entire series so I could get the full Dawson's Creek experience.

It didn't end there. Once I moved into Supergenius HQ and had cable, I began to TiVO the show on any time it was shown. I'd watch it every night and it ruled. But then I got laid off in the winter of 08 and by that summer decided that I needed to slash my cable budget. I dropped down a level, saving myself a measly $13 a month (seriously Comcast, are you fucking kidding me?) and thus ended my Dawson's supply. There was much sadness throughout the land.

Over the years I've spent a lot of time debating the merits of purchasing each of the six seasons of Dawson's on DVD. But somehow I always held back, mostly because I am cheap. But then they released the Complete Series as a box set for only $81. I could not resist, and snapped it up immediately.

There was much rejoicing throughout the land when it landed on my doorstep. However, after making my way through 2.5 seasons I've discovered that one of the discs is flawed. It won't play the finale of season 3, which is a very important episode. It is here where Joey makes the decision to ditch whiny, crybaby Dawson and spend the summer sailing to Key West with Pacey.

So, what's a girl to do? I, of course, e-mail customer service at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment whereby I was told to pack up my entire Boxed Set send it to their giant conglomerate and then spend the next three to five weeks with my fingers crossed praying that they return a working set to me.

Perfect solution, huh?

I don't think so. While I am all for sending them a proof of purchase, and even sending back the defective disc for a new one, the idea of just sending something I paid hard-earned money for into the void doesn't sit well with me. And why does it take so long? Three to five weeks? It took Amazon 2-days to get the set to me, apparently it takes the makers of the boxed set a couple of fortnights to get a working product to me.

I call bullshit. 

Do you have any idea how much my Thanksgiving was ruined? RUINED! It was ruined by the fact that I am hopelessly, utterly in love with a song that talks about pie in a positive light. I spent the entire holiday breaking singing about pie.

I am so ashamed.

I follow the Christian Post on Twitter because I like to keep up with the ideas and thinking of many Christians. Today they tweeted the following:

CP Tweet

Ben's CP Retweet

As most of you know, I've been keeping a blog on iwilldare.com for over nine years. It's a lot of content -- 7,193 posts (and that's not included the hundreds of posts I deleted, mostly about sandwiches and what a fuckwit my boss Shakey McDougal was) and 18,198 comments.

In the last year I've noticed a new trend, e-mails from people begging me to delete some asinine comment they made back in 2002. It seems all those annoying teenagers who had a lot to say about Donnie Darko and being bored in study hall have discovered the Internet has a long memory. Now, when they Google themselves (or their e-mail addresses) they're embarrassed to discover that something they said on a website five years ago is the #1 result.

Ha!

I'm of two minds when it comes to deleting the comments. Part of me thinks I should just delete them and be done with it. It doesn't take a lot of time, and most of the time the comment is not a great loss to the Internet. Of course, the other part of me is all, "Suck it up, loser. I refuse to edit my website because you were an obnoxious 15-year-old, let this be a lesson to you!"

What would you do?

On Friday, M-----l posted his whimsical Christmas gift wishlist in red in and book form. I admire a man with a good marketing campaign. For as long as I can remember I have executed extravagant birthday marketing campaigns which were often quite successful. In fact, on my 30th birthday I managed to weasel 30 bouquets of flowers from friends and family. It was a bounty of epic proportions.

This picture shows just a fraction of the flowers I received. In fact, I got so many vases that the following year when we threw my parents a 30th Anniversary party I outfitted every table with a vase (and flowers I bought at the farmer's market).

Flowers6602

So yeah, gift marketing for greedy pigs. I'm all for it! In honor of that spirit I present you with my wishlist for Christmas 09.

Joan Jett Barbie.
I loved Barbies as a kid. I loved Joan Jett as an adult. It's two great tastes that taste great together.

2010_joanjett

1 comment

Falling Water Legos
I'm a big fan of the Lego, and still get down on the floor to make houses and trucks with The Tibbles. Hell, I've even played with the Legos when none of the kids are around. Also I know about nothing about architecture, but I watched a PBS documentary (or three, it was architecture day) on Frank Lloyd Wright and he was a fascinating sort of scoundrel. So yeah, this is just plain awesome.

Falling water legos

1 comment

Pencil Sharpener
The heart wants what it wants. This is one of those things that I never think of buying when I'm at the store, but if anyone asks me what I want, I say a pencil sharpener. For a long time I was pretty set on the electric pencil sharpener, but now I think I might not mind an old-fashioned mounted one either. My mom offered me the old pencil sharpener from the bowling alley, which is cute. But man, that pencil sharpener sucked ass when the bowling alley was still going. I hated that thing.

Pencilsharpener

The amount of work in graduate school is shocking. I fancied myself as a seasoned academician and the shear volume of reading and writing has taken me by surprise. My blogging and extracurricular reading life ground to a halt. My classes end in early December and I do not have to return until February, so I’ll have plenty of time to catch up.

I also learned about the Upaya Institute, a place in New Mexico that teaches caregivers and healers how to deal with death and dying. I have a belief that many people suffer from a fear of death, which then causes great suffering in their lives. I feel that some of my life’s work will be helping people work through their fear of death.

I have an assignment for a foundations course that is asking me to come up with ten ways that I am going to integrate the course themes into my practice.

• I had a client put me on hold until after the holidays. It bummed me out. I think being "put on hold" might be a nice way of saying, don't call us, we'll call you.
• I watched some Dawson's Creek (I bought the complete series on DVD and it was the best $81 I ever spent) and felt better.
• The next day I had two new short term projects fall into my lap. That made the holding feel a little less scary.
• On Tuesday, I wen to an actual meeting in an actual office. It was quiet, like a morgue and it reminded me how much I don't want to ever work in a cube farm again. Cubicles feast on human souls. It's true.
• In class this week, we workshopped my crappy story The Boss. The story has the potential to be uncrappy, but it's not there yet. Matters were not helped when I got sick in the middle of rewriting it a couple weeks ago, so it's really not even a second draft yet. It's bad. Thirteen pages of situation and no story. I tweeted that last sentence, and one of my classmates brought up the fact that she read the tweet not once, not twice, not thrice, but FOUR times during the workshop. Nobody but me and my friend Steve knew what she was talking about, and I wanted to punch her for bringing it up. I was embarrassed and the class was puzzled. On Friday one of my classmates e-mailed me and said it was really weird and kind of stalkerish of that woman. I think she's right.
• I did some other stuff, but most of it has been obliterated by this book I'm reading. A book that is so bad it's making me angry.
• Oh, I also got mad at music bloggers and wrote a rant about music blogs, and how they kind of suck because they have no editorial eye and are too busy trying to find the next big thing rather than telling their audience what is worthy of their time and what is not.
• I've been kind of ranty this week.
  
• You're welcome for sparing you most of that.
  

I've watched this video about 11 times today. I don't know what exactly it is about it, but every single time I watch it I smile head off. So fun.