a couple of things.

i've been thinking about business school.
at the same time, i'm tired of school.

paradoxical and logical at the same time.

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demure is such a beautiful looking and sounding word for something that means, simply, modest.

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books are great. apparently my parents are willing to just let me buy books and whatever, as long as i don't sit in front of the television being a potato. call me spoiled, but this is great.

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i've become obsessed with sunglasses. there is no cure.

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books are great, but i don't appreciate them like other people do. wen lent me Banana Yoshimoto's "np" and i finished it last night. i enjoyed the story, and all, but i'm just not sure where i stand with the book. wenchin has it because she says it's beautifully written. i don't know if i've caught onto this beautifully written stuff.

i gauge how good a book is to me by how many words i tend to skip when i read.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway was GOOD. i didn't skip a single word.

Michael Crichton books are good. i don't skip anything.

John Steinbeck is horrible. i skipped paragraphs and sometimes chapters.

Hiroshima was fantastic. I read sentences repeatedly.

Chuck Palahniuk's books are superb. I've read my copy of Fight Club ragged, and thankfully my copy of Choke is hardcover.

Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake was just bad. I skipped the last half end of the book.

Dan Brown, although predictable when we get to "Digital Fortress", is just gripping for me.

So where I stand with "np" is a little vague. I skipped a word here or there, but it still had my full and utter attention. I liked it, but I can't nitpick it, even if i wanted to. I have no desire to read it again, or fully understand it, but again...I liked it.

It doesn't make me wonder about how I perceive books. I love reading them, and most of my books, I read repeatedly. Heck, my copy of Jurassic Park back in 6th or 7th grade is mostly yellowed, frayed and beat up, but I still read it.

However, my experience with "np" has certainly made me wonder how well I actually gauge books.

latest book buys:

(before taiwan)
choke by chuck palahniuk
invisble monsters by chuck palahniuk
timequake by kurt vonnegut
poker nation by andy bellini

(after taiwan)
smoke and mirrors by neil gaiman
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by mark haddon
the devil wears prada by lauren weisberger
deception point by dan brown

right there, i must've spent at most 60 dollars (thank you half-price books!) but i have no qualms about it.

i just know that these books that i've bought, timequake aside, i will read repeatedly.

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dream for last night:

andrew chang had a lackey in my dream. it was weird. he, his lackey and i were supposed to meet someone at RIMAC North, off the 28th Highway exit (don't ask me, i have no idea.). We were climbing up hills and mountains to try to find his friend, and scaling down absolutely impossible walls in classrooms. (don't ask me, i have no idea.)

We finally end up meeting his friends who I can't remember what they look like. We're about to leave and carpool with them when a guy who bought a pair of fake sunglasses (see? obsession) came up to us and asked us to ID his sunglasses in a catalog. We do, he leaves without saying thanks.

To get to the carpool, we had to walk through school and a giant arcade, really similar to a humongous golfland. somehow in the process, i actually lose all my clothes, so I stop by the locker room (golfland has locker rooms now? don't ask me, i have no idea.) and grab what i think is a clean towel.

in fact, i accidentally stole someone's towel, so in the process of getting a newly folded and laundered towel, i piss off a football team or something.

the football team corners me in front of the sinks and starts splashing things at me, like vodka, rubbing alcohol and chlorine. every now and then some guy would come in with a can of hairspray and a lighter and try to set me on fire.

the first time, they totally missed, so I was dry. the second time, they got chest with vodka, so when the fire came, i put both my arms up to block. it worked pretty well, and the guy was far enough away to where i just felt heat on my arms.

the third time though, they got everything in my hair. alcohol, vodka, chlorine, all three. instead of waiting for the flame to come to me, i charged the guy who held the aerosol, hoping that he'd panic and not be able to get in a shot. it almost worked ,but since hair's not only highly burnable, my hair was pretty much a loaded torch, waiting to be lit.

my head went up in flames, and then something similar to what you see in The Butterfly Effect happened. I got transported out of my body, and I could see a computer graphic animation of myself dying, head on fire. It didn't really look like me, but I could tell it was me, wrapped in a towel, sprawled on the floor, head being burned.

i woke up, checked my head a second, and went back to sleep.