Random conversations

Hi

So I had the pleasant experience of being chatted up by a tall woman this afternoon. I had just gotten off the train and noticed a fairly tall, older woman coming out from the car ahead. I went upstairs and as we were crossing the street she said hi to me.

We walked along for a block discussing the annoyance of basketball and how everyone thinks you much be good at it. There’s too much of me to hoist into the air so I have no jump shot. If you want, I can foul some leg injuries on the other team, but that’s not really a long-term strategy.

So we talked for block and then went our separate ways. It was a really nice (and rare) little interaction.

later
Tom

Random conversations

Hi

So I had the pleasant experience of being chatted up by a tall woman this afternoon. I had just gotten off the train and noticed a fairly tall, older woman coming out from the car ahead. I went upstairs and as we were crossing the street she said hi to me.

We walked along for a block discussing the annoyance of basketball and how everyone thinks you much be good at it. There’s too much of me to hoist into the air so I have no jump shot. If you want, I can foul some leg injuries on the other team, but that’s not really a long-term strategy.

So we talked for block and then went our separate ways. It was a really nice (and rare) little interaction.

later
Tom

Orange Eats Books

Hey,

So I just finished up reading The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich. It was a very hard read in that literary sense. My flippant summary would be: “William S. Burroughs writes Twilight”.

That’s wildly inaccurate of course, but it has that same stream of conscious writing, that grotesque imagery, and it starts out with teen-age hobo vampire junkies running riot through the all-night spaces of the Pacific Northwest. Amongst the gang of boys trashing Safeways and draining 7-11 clerks we have our narrator. A teen-aged girl whose words spill out in a drug- and blood- and sex-fueled haze. She’s run away from her foster home and unremembered past to find her foster sister and lover Kim who ran away a few months before she did. But our narrator has ESP and she knows that Kim is dead, or that she will be and the narrator is simply following Kim’s psychic residue until she reaches the place where she’s dead and then maybe she’ll get back something she desperately wants, but can’t recognize.

Like Dhalgren, this is a book that’s not really about anything. Certainly if you looking for a coherent plot, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Phrases and passages repeat word-for-word or in off-kilter variants. Time and place shift and slide from one to another. Our narrator moves in a dream-like state where she’ll be in one place and then suddenly wake up someplace else. It’s frustrating if you just want a simple story.

But as its own thing? It’s kinda interesting. I’m rarely in the mood for avant garde or experimental writing like this, but when the moon is right, I’ll give it a go and there’s a lot of interesting imagery and a some neat ideas running through it that made it a fun read for me.

So I liked this but I can’t casually recommend it. You can check out the first few pages at the Amazon link above and that should be enough to let you know if you want to pick it up or not.

later
Tom

Orange Eats Books

Hey,

So I just finished up reading The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich. It was a very hard read in that literary sense. My flippant summary would be: “William S. Burroughs writes Twilight”.

That’s wildly inaccurate of course, but it has that same stream of conscious writing, that grotesque imagery, and it starts out with teen-age hobo vampire junkies running riot through the all-night spaces of the Pacific Northwest. Amongst the gang of boys trashing Safeways and draining 7-11 clerks we have our narrator. A teen-aged girl whose words spill out in a drug- and blood- and sex-fueled haze. She’s run away from her foster home and unremembered past to find her foster sister and lover Kim who ran away a few months before she did. But our narrator has ESP and she knows that Kim is dead, or that she will be and the narrator is simply following Kim’s psychic residue until she reaches the place where she’s dead and then maybe she’ll get back something she desperately wants, but can’t recognize.

Like Dhalgren, this is a book that’s not really about anything. Certainly if you looking for a coherent plot, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Phrases and passages repeat word-for-word or in off-kilter variants. Time and place shift and slide from one to another. Our narrator moves in a dream-like state where she’ll be in one place and then suddenly wake up someplace else. It’s frustrating if you just want a simple story.

But as its own thing? It’s kinda interesting. I’m rarely in the mood for avant garde or experimental writing like this, but when the moon is right, I’ll give it a go and there’s a lot of interesting imagery and a some neat ideas running through it that made it a fun read for me.

So I liked this but I can’t casually recommend it. You can check out the first few pages at the Amazon link above and that should be enough to let you know if you want to pick it up or not.

later
Tom