Consumables #51

I have never really understood it when people have told me that they lose touch with someone close to them, and then they just keep putting off and putting off calling them or sending them an email because it's been so long that they feel all this pressure to explain where they have been and to catch them up on every last thing that has happened in the interim, which will take a long time, and so then they put it off some more, and on and on. So much pressure we put on ourselves, people! There is enough pressure out there. Don't pile more on. Just get in touch with that person and say hey, what's up? I miss you. Also, lots of stuff has happened, but we'll get to that eventually. How are you?

 

If you promise to work on that one, I promise to work on one of my neuroses. Like how I sometimes think I talk too much. (Let's not all point to this bloggy as evidence that my powers of motor-mouthing might not be an unwarranted fear).

 

All of that is to say that I feel like I haven't done a Consumable in a while (like a whole month, egads) and rather than try to do a laundry list of all of the totality of the sum of everything for the past month, I'll just give you some greatest hits.

 

Bookth!

 

Nanjing Requiem, by Ha Jin

Hey, want to know what a horrifying time and place is? Nanjing, China in 1937, that's when. Ha Jin tells the fictionalized story of the for-real person named Minnie Vautrin, an American woman who worked as the dean of a college in Nanjing who ends up running a refugee shelter for more than 10,000 women and children during the town's invasion and afterwards. Jin's writing is his usual spare, straightforward language- no stylizing it up. To some this might seem like he's treating the subject too clinically- showing us what happened, period. To others, this style may hit the right chord of documentary-like candor. I felt both ways about it, which is so typical and tiresome of me, I know.

 

Hark! A Vagrant!, by Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton rocks it with her comics, for sure. She does funny commentary on everything from Jane Austen to Disraeli to Wonder Woman. She does make me feel terribly guilty that I don't understand the comics that have to do with Canadian politics. How is it that I know so little about Canadian politics? I feel like I know about politics. I even feel like I know about world politics. But yet, I realize with the Canucks, I have been remiss. I know NOTHING, it seems. I am that horrible neighbor who doesn't know what is going on right next door. So my reading her book went like this: ha ha! Funny! What does that one mean GUILT GUILT. Ha ha! Good one! Is that a Canadian politician? I have no idea who that is GUILT GUILT. So you should totally read it, just don't be like me, meaning (a) don't be a dumbass about Canada, and (b) if you are, don't sit there and feel bad about it the whole time.

 

In the TeeVee!

 

The Walking Dead

I really want the storyline to move faster. Too slow, zombies! I think I would enjoy this more if I waited for them on Netflix or whatever and just watched them all in a row.

 

Movies!

The Sorceror's Apprentice was on tv the other day, and I didn't even watch it but it brought me joy as any reference to this movie always does, because it reminds me of the time that Alli's husband Chris called it "The Wizard's Intern." Hee!

Fuel

Documentary about energy production, and hey, it ain't depressing. I know this deviates from my usual diet of depressing documentaries, but everyone's got to break out of the mold sometimes.

 

The Thin Man

I watched this one again and it's still awesome. Nick was such a boozehound, wasn't he? And Nora with her ridiculously fancy dressing gowns. And the repartee, so loverly.

 

Could that really be it for anything that I want to say about my month? I guess so.

 

Laters, my pretties!