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11.23.4

liber

After five years of blogging it's hard to write at length. The daily drama (I keep on renegotiating my relationship with coffee; still allergic to New York; Tylenol PM is good stuff) gets repetitive, but if you try too hard only to write things you haven't covered before, you end up ("one ends up") a touch hamstrung.

Once again through the door.

I blame a recent entry on Waggish for getting me sucked into the world of Ad Verbum. This Oulipo-derived, word-puzzle-slash-piece-of-interactive-fiction may be the first text adventure I can actually finish on my own, but as with all games the downside is that it's hard to pull myself away - I went to a party last night carrying a folded postcard in the back pocket of my jeans, with puzzles from the game scribbled into the inside fold. Try out the Ad Verbum web version. YOU WILL LIKE IT.

Picked up at the library today: Edward Eager, The Time Garden (on a tip from Redfox). A slender little kid's book paperback with a cover by Quentin Blake, which reminds me of how, a few months ago, I went with A. and his dad to the Museum of TV in midtown and watched a couple episodes of Tales of the Unexpected, a skin-crawlingly nasty series written and introduced by Roald Dahl. I love the original Twilight Zone for precisely the reason so many hate it: its sweet-tempered, repetitive, predictable morality, where evil is (almost always) punished and the ambiguous character (usually) redeemed by choosing the good. Well, Twilight Zone naysayers will love Tales of the Unexpected. And I can't wait to crack open the Time Garden - I just have to finish re-reading Catcher in the Rye, which I grabbed on my way out the door this morning because it's one of the few books that will fit in the pocket of my new down jacket.

Also got two more books at the library that I'll hopefully cover in a separate entry.

Confidential to Jim: There is no heat in my room & will never be until I get off my ass and buy a space heater. But I'm tired of buying stuff right now, so a double layer of heavyweight comforters (as pictured on Flickr(TM)) will have to suffice. P.S. I know I've been really bad with email. Maybe catch up over the coming vacation.

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