Update

Whenever I take a little time away from blogging, my brain fills up with all sorts of weird useless screeds that I feel the need to download. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of time to do so right now, so here are three things that are currently floating around, in no particular order:

1. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had started reading Raymond Chandler. Well, last week I finished. Having now read all of his books, I would strongly recommend him to anyone who likes tight, philosophical, inspiring, and generally outstanding writing. I really got a kick out of his last two novels. The Long Goodbye is a depressing but honest contemplation on disillusionment and betrayal. Although it's a downer, it is also an honest end to Chandler's oeuvre, and would have been a good place to stop. However, a few years later, he wrote Playback. Much more energetic and lighthearted, it seems shallow after The Long Goodbye, but is a lot more fun to read. Best of all, Chandler writes his main character, Philip Marlowe, an awesomely hopeful ending in it. I liked it so much that I had to read the last ten pages twice.

That having been said, you need to eat dinner before you can get to dessert, and without The Long Goodbye, the ending to Playback doesn't make any sense. Together, though, they are a perfect meal.


2. I am working in a temp job that I really don't like very much. As I was financially strapped after the Jerome incident, I needed a job quickly and took the first temp assignment that came down the pike. It doesn't pay very much, and is in Human Resources. My job is refiling the entire employee records of a large company. In the process, I have to go through every record, which makes me feel a little bit like God. More precisely, I feel like a sad god, as I have to read these little biographies that detail the constant struggle for security and job satisfaction, which is so often undermined by drinking, divorce, cruddy superiors, and other problems. Added to this, I want to shoot most of the executives in the company, as they keep giving themselves gargantuan bonuses while dickering over $.50/hour raises for their employees. It's really pretty despicable.


3. Ella is having another operation on Friday. I am going out to see her on Thursday night, and will hopefully be back on Saturday or Sunday. They're going to put a drain in on the right hand side of her liver. She's strobing between anger, humor, irritation, and sadness, which seems about appropriate for the circumstances. Afterwards, she is coming up to the city to spend Christmas with us. One of my best friends, the infamous John, will also be coming up and is bringing his sons. Although it's going to be a cheap Christmas (we're all broke), it also looks like it'll have a lot of joy.

So that's it for now. I'll hopefully get the time and distance to write something more coherent in the next few days!