Your Mind on Books

I’m totally addicted to Kurt Vonnegut. Sure, I “read” Slaughterhouse-Five in high school, like I “read” Shakespeare and Jekyll and Hyde and To Kill a Mockingbird. Am I the only person in the world who didn’t like the latter? I kind of enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye. Never was in a class requiring Beowulf. HATED A Thousand Acres. God damn you, Jane Smiley.

Two years ago I picked up a copy of Timequake at the library book sale (a wonderful annual event which raises tens of thousands of dollars for the county library system) because I knew the author’s name, and a brief glance at the back cover blurb seemed somewhat interesting. I didn’t actually get around to reading it under this past August, on the plane to Missouri and round 2 of military police school. I fell in love, and ended up reading the book twice more during stolen moments in the course of MP school. That’s more of a feat than it sounds like – A787th MP Co is a horrid microcosm of the MP corps and US Army at large.

Upon returning home from MP school, I took my list of things to buy and things to do and with the full intention of acquiring every Vonnegut book possible (plus a lot more), I instead blew most of my AIT earnings on apartment rent and a wedding dress. Nobody saw that last one coming, including myself. In all honesty I’d rather have the books, but I can’t return the dress.

The Short and the Long of It

Today I cleaned my apartment*1, spray-painted white an ancient filing cabinet*2, fed my killer fish*3, went to the post office*4 and bank, ate a Wawa sub*5, and plan on going for a run later*6.

*1 Not finished yet vacuuming – it’s kinda cool, the cord is long enough and the place small enough that I can get just about the whole place from one outlet.

*2 My father is the king of nostalgia. He used that filing cabinet when he went to Princeton in the 70s and got all teary-eyed when I told him that I was glad to use it here at Rowan. After sanding some horrible rust off it – and some tape bits that have probably been there since 1972 – I emptied a can of offwhite Rustoleum on it and everything within six feet of its position.

*3 The other day We bought an African cichlid (a black and orange tiger oscar) to combat our heinous blue gourami. The Male’s mother named the gourami Jaws. We call it Bastard Fish or Hey Fucker. The cichlid has enormous jaws and even though it’s less than four inches in width, is rumored to eat little feeder fish called Rosy Reds. We have yet to test this theory, instead choosing to feed it  Cichlid Crumbles. Blue and the cichlid bite and chase each other constantly, but totally ignore the third fish in the tank, a mild-mannered yet spastic catfish with bulbous eyes and short whiskers.

*4 The spring semester is almost here and it’s an unusually expensive one for textbooks. Three classes alone require 11 books! Half.com is a college student’s best friend in this regard. One time I called the school’s bookstore to double-check a textbook’s edition number via ISBN – and she wouldn’t tell me what it was! What the fuck! So instead I buy my textbooks through the lesser form of Ebay and usually have to pick them up directly from the post office. Media mail is subject to search apparently, and it was obvious that one of the five books I picked up today had its package torn open and inspected. It’s not like it had a million stamps on it, a noxious odor or white powder…

*5 The Male and I were given three $50 Wawa cards for xmas, osnap.

*6 There’s a little park right behind our apartment… that we have to drive all the way around two apartment complexes (one of them the ghetto, eliminating the possibility of walking) and an elementary school to get to. It’s either that or jump two barbed wire fences and ford a swamp.