Hallelujah

Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah!”

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Monday, I found myself in a depressingly cliched situation.  After deciding to be anti-social and not join my work group at lunch, I went to Subway and got a sandwich.  I didn’t want to be TOTALLY sad and eat at my desk, so I found an empty table at a nearby Starbucks and got a small cinnamon dolce latte, took out my book, plugged in headphones and ate my lunch in solitude.  As I sat there, reading and eating and listening, Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah began playing.  Now listen.  I think we can all agree that song is the very definition of touching.  If you don’t know the song, go ahead… listen…I have posted a convenient little link for you.

Ok.  I assume everyone now agrees with me.  Well, I sat in my little corner of Starbucks, with my little sandwich, and my book – and I swear, I had a true moment.  Since then, I have forced Blake to play the song for me at least 20 times.  And now I am forcing everyone who reads this blog to listen to it as well.

Month of January – Five Books Down

Back in the beginning of January, I listed all FOUR of my New Year’s resolutions (I am obviously very ambitious).  So far, I am proud to say that I am Resolution-Breaking-Free for the month of January.  I was mostly worried about the book reading one, as, while reading one book per week is not unheard of, it does demand a certain amount of discipline.  Like, when I’m aimlessly watching television or doing laundry, I have to remind myself, “Kristi!  Why waste your time with worthless tasks like laundry or dishes, when you could be reading books!”  This serves the dual purpose of giving me an excuse not to do laundry or clean ever, but also like, totally expands my mind, man.

Now, a little bit about my book reading habits:  I am primarily and almost exclusively a fiction reader.  I don’t know many other Fiction Only Readers (or F.O.R.s), in fact, if the people I know do claim a type of novel, it is overwhelmingly, non-fiction books chosen over their fiction brethren.  But I LOVE fiction.  Always have.  I just can’t get lose myself in a non-fiction novel the way I do the fiction variety, and they never weasel their way into my brain, causing me to wonder about various themes and images and overall plots for weeks after the novel is completed.  At best, non-fiction books give me facts, which I can then use to prove my superior intelligence in social situations.

I began this month excited to start my new challenge.  My parents gave me a Kindle for Christmas, which allowed for simultaneous knitting AND reading, something which excited me to dorky new levels, and it was kind of like a blank slate to buy ALL NEW BOOKS (exciting due to my propensity to purchase more books than I could ever read in any reasonable amount of time – resulting in a bookshelf FULL of forgotten, unread novels.)  I began by consulting my beloved Goodreads.com.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with the website, Goodreads is kind of like a highbrow Facebook, where you can announce to all your friends any novels you have completed, are in process of reading, or are planning to read.  If you are really brave, you can post a review of a book previously finished for others to read, respond to, or just plain ridicule.  I mainly use the site as an organizing tool, enjoying tracking my reading process and utilizing the “list” function and “forums” full of people way smarter than me and full of advice on just what little old Kristi should be reading next.

This month, I somehow decided on the following books:

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Author:  Stieg Larsson

Those two books look like some sort of weird sci-fi novels when written on top of one another like that, but most assuredly they are not.  Now listen, I don’t plan on offering some sort of literary criticism or worse – book report on my novels every month, but maybe just a thought or two.  Besides sharing an author, these two novels also share main characters and similar story lines.  Imagine that.  I recognized these titles from various “Best of…(whatever year the first of this book came out)” and honestly, I have to say, I was expecting more.  While VERY entertaining and something of a “page turner” (ugh.  I don’t like that expression), it was more of a thriller than what you normally see on a “Best of…” list.  BUT!  If you like that sort of thing  (and who doesn’t?), I have to admit that even though these books are very long (exactly how long, I have no idea thanks to the lack of page numbers on Kindles…Geez!), I flew through them in a couple of days a piece (which allowed me the leg up for the rest of the months).  Thanks Stieg!

The Unit
Author:  Ninni Holmqvist

Randomly, this novel shared a location with the previously mentioned novels.  Sweden.  How random, right?  Side note:  Since beginning this little marathon reading quest of mine, I have noticed odd similarities in all my choices.  Not obvious ones, like reading the same genre over and over again, but weird ones – like – novels being written by Swedish authors (unknown to me when choosing what to read next) or entire plot twists (not to be revealed here!).  The Unit falls under the “dystopian future” novel sub-genre, which is a favorite of mine.  I love those dark and depressing novels!  While I found this book enjoyable, its really the next one that got under my skin for DAYS.  I even repeated the plot to Blake INCLUDING the story-telling method in which it was told…which I’m sure he enjoyed thoroughly.

Never Let Me Go
Author:  Kazuo Ishiguro

Without giving to much away, let me just say that this novel and The Unit share some startling plot similarities.  This was unknown to me, but allowed me to feel a little smarter than the average when I was able to guess the plot twist in this book way sooner than I’m sure the author intended.  As mentioned, this was probably my favorite book of the month.  I contemplated it for days.  It was both thematically stimulating and an interesting read.  The best combination!  If you, like I, are hiding a dark heart full of love for dark/dismal futures – try this one!

Chronic City
Author:  Jonathan Lethem

Yeah, you guessed right.  There is a lot of pot smoking in this novel.  Chronic City, while still maintaining the threads of a plot, is more of a character study than any of the other novels I read this month.  As I described to Blake this morning, “I feel like the author put all this obvious symbolism and themes in the novel wrapped up in big blinking lights, exclaiming ‘I’m a symbol!  I’m a symbol!’”  This novel caused some serious shower-thinking (where I do my best thinking), and Lethem’s writing style is uniquely intriguing.  However, I would not recommend this one to a casual reader (or an anti-weed advocate.)  If you like your stories straight-forward, this is 100% NOT the story for you.

There you go!  One month of books down!  With one book to spare!  I AM SO GREAT!  (that was a joke).

Chop in Boots

This is what happens you when you put boots on your doggies.  They high step.  (sorry about the sideways-ness of the camera.  I don’t know how to fix it!)

3rd Candy Review – Some Monstrosity Named “Zit Poppers”

Well, its been a while since the last candy review.  Blake and I have not only been collecting “interesting” looking candies on our own, but have been given different varieties by well-meaning family members and friends.  We have quite the stash of disgusting candies to look forward to trying, but this week we decided to brave the most disgusting of them all.

Everyone, I would like to introduce you to the most counter intuitive candy ever made.  Zit Poppers.

Nothing about this candy makes you want to try it.  The name.  The packaging.  It is all over disgusting.  But Blake and I did.  And here are the results:

Kristi:  First of all.  Let’s talk about how these bad boys look.  Just looking at them made me want to gag.  My brain knows they are made of sugar and therefore it follows that I should love them.  My heart cannot let go of the fact that some genius at Candy Inc. wanted to appeal to 13 year old boys and named them Zit Poppers.  And then designed the candy to look like a giant zit.  White bodied and red at the tip.  That folks, is hard to forget.

Blake: Kristi mentioned the packaging earlier. Apparently the creative geniuses behind this Halloween delight couldn’t decide on the best slogan, so they went with all of them. On the box it has “Plump & Ripe!” “These Are No Simple Pimples!” “AWFULeeeee Zitlicious!” and “Oozy, Sticky, Goo Filled Zit Gummies You Can Burst In Your Mouth!” and claims that it is made by Chef Ghoulicious’ Pantry of Candy. This supposed chef, while probably not up for a James Beard award any time soon, looks more like he was trained by the Garbage Pail Kids as opposed to Le Cordon Bleu. (Yes, that was yet another Garbage Pail Kids reference.) Either way, the candy looks like a sort of half-melted, gummier version of Dots. And I can’t wait.

Kristi: Of course Blake would be excited to try these.  He’s disgusting like that.  My only hope for this candy experiment was that the candies would somehow resemble Gushers, one of the all time best “fruit snacks” on the market.  My brother and I (mainly my brother) would eat cases of these growing up, and so, I am not completely new to the “candy bursting into sugary liquid inside of your mouth” genre.  So, I closed my eyes to ignore the appearance of a gigantic oozy zit and took a bite.

Blake: Man, I could go for some Gushers right now. Fruit AND Candy? Yes please. Anyways. My very first instinct with this candy was to squeeze it in hope that “oozy, sticky, goo” would come shooting out. Well, it got the oozy and sticky part right. It pretty much just squished in my fingers and got my them all sticky. Which is now making it difficult to type. The J key holds on to me after I hit it. Zit-likeness: thumb down. But maybe the taste can redeem it. After all, as the package reminded me, there are no simple pimples.

Kristi:  And, you know what?  It didn’t taste that disgusting.  Granted, it didn’t taste nearly as delicious as a Gusher, but as far as random sugar candies made by stupidly named candy companies?  Well, it was better than most.  The delicious “puss” filling was similar to the “ketchup” from our last candy experiment.  Sugary and sour.  The overall flavor, randomly enough, was that of watermelon.  Someone at Chef Ghoulicious’ Pantry of Candy apparently links zits with watermelon.  And now, so do I.

Blake: Watermelon zits?! What?! I want to try one! And that my friends, is how it spreads. These were pretty great. In fact, I tossed up a white flag to sticky-finger-ness and dove right back in. And they really are exactly like softer, gummier Dots, which I wish was the case for normal Dots. I can’t eat two of those things without having to make an appointment with the dentist to replace a filling. So I was pleasantly surprised by these Zip Poppers, and for what they lack in poppyness they make up for in gummy goodness.

Kristi: While less effusive than Blake, I also must say that these were rather tasty.  I mean, I definitely wouldn’t seek them out, but if I was eating a giant dinner and there was no dessert presented except these and maybe some sub-par dessert options like tiramisu or cannolis, I would go with the zit poppers.  That’s a solid endorsement right there.

Blake: I know, I know, tiramisu is delicious. Kristi is weird. And as for the zit poppers I give them 4 snow cones out of 5. They don’t beat the Pop Rocks candy bar, but crushed the marshmallow hamburger, hands down.

Blake: Apparently that is all. I am supposed to wrap this up and end it. Ummm…… [insert my new catch phrase]…. YOU’VE BEEN WRAPPED!