MOVING DAY!

I've moved over to wordpress. Maybe a new blog at a new site will bring some new ideas, cheers.

'ahems and ahahs'

So I'm not sure that this particular blog will be kept up to date, I grow weary of my own rants and raves of the more personal nature. The new site will be primarily focused on literary reviews, so check it out. Cheers.

Blog Blues

I'm not sure if I want to continue blogging. Without having a clear and focused theme to my blog, and I realize this is my own decision, writing this blog seems rather scattered and unimportant. I know that I should not really be concerned with how vast my readership is, I'm also concerned by the fact that people only read things that they're interested in and my lack of focus makes this blog at times quite mundane. I'm sure that occasionally I have some rather interesting posts, but lately it seems that the majority of my postings are simply movie reviews and/or book recommendations. Every once in a while you might find a random post bitching about my work life or the stress that I may or may not be experiencing on any given day.

If a blogger stops blogging, does anyone really care? I'm guessing not because the world is full of ridiculous blogs, so we'll see. I might shift on over to wordpress and try to write a more focused blog.

Quote of the Day: Expanded #003

"My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane."
- Graham Greene -

--- Courtesy of Wikipedia ---
Henry Graham Greene OM, CH (October 2, 1904 – April 3, 1991) was an English novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter, travel writer and critic whose works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene combined serious literary acclaim with wide popularity.

Oh, where do I begin to relate the story of my love affair with Graham Greene, hehe, you're going to understand that pun in a few seconds. My 'affair' with Graham did in fact start with a book title of the same name, "The End of the Affair". Three years ago I was in the middle of a brutal fall semester. You know that point, that time of the year where you have essays in front of you, and readings and Christmas with all of its glorious pressure is baring down on you. I decided that I needed a book unrelated to school. So I took a random walk down an aisle up on the 8th floor and stumbled into the G section of fiction literature. I was just randomly pulling books and looking at titles and then I saw "The End of the Affair". It was a short read, which is what I wanted and it also had a library binding, so there was a lack of a flap jacket and/or information on what the subject or story line of the book was to be. So I sat and read for a few minutes, which turned soon into an hour. Well, I finished that book in two days and I've been hooked on Graham ever since.

There is a lot of mystery around Graham Greene and his true occupation. He worked for the British Intelligence Service and supplied them with information, so there is some question of whether he was a spy who happened to write or a writer who happened to spy. Either way, the writing was a great opportunity for him to travel to various locales around the world and dig into the culture, politics, and people of these places.

One simply has to look at the various locations that his novels are set in:

Liberia, "Journey Without Maps"
Mexico, "Power and the Glory"
Haiti, "The Comedians"
Vietnam, "The Quiet American"
Sierra Leone, "The Heart of the Matter"
Great Britain, "The End of the Affairs"
Vienna, "The Third Man"

He's traveled quite a bit and what really sells me on Graham's novels is the style with which he writes. I'd offer my own explanation of this but I lack the intelligence to properly put my thoughts into words, so I'll let someone far more qualified do so for me.

---
The literary style of Graham Greene was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction, of ancestry, and of independent life". This lean, realistic prose and readability was thought by Virginia Quarterly Review to be "the main business of holding the reader's attention."
---

I urge all of you my few die hard devoted readers to go out and pick up a Graham Greene novel. They're small and compact, most of his novels being no larger than 250 or 300 pages, yet they have quite a punch to them. They're always full of action and suspense. Enjoy.

ugh

So, my plan to see Batman utterly failed yesterday. I don't know if it is the stress of summertime routine, the constant working at the hotel, or if I picked up a bug, might be a combination of all of these elements, but about an hour before the film was set to start, I was just having the most trouble keeping my eyes open, concentrating. You see him up there...that's how I was, all broken and defeated.

Well, I have next Friday, & Saturday off, so I shall be watching the film then. I might even try tomorrow, we'll see. Hopefully this bug will disappear soon, I'm still feeling like someone is pressing down on my chest, very hard, ugh.

Batman shall just have to wait, it sucks but I'd rather not watch batman with a raging headache and/or half interest.

Oh throw in the fact that we were going to be watching an 11 pm show, and that I had to work this morning at 7, well you do the math, sickness + lack of sleep + work = partial death.

Misc.

So it's been an odd week. Working quite a bit, mostly in the evenings which is 3:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. which wears on me quite a bit as it simply kills the day. I wake up and before I know it, it's time to go in for a shift. But I have Saturday evening off for a change and might be seeing the Batman, so huzzah.

I was talking about silly e-mail names that people pick for their various accounts and I started to think about all of the various e-mails that I've used, so here goes.

illb6ifullb9@
bear_g@
lestrygonian@
the.gaurav.sethi@
gs04nw@

I've not had too many e-mails in my internet life and I was in my teens when a 56k modem was the shiznet, oh man, I remember those days, back when Netscape was a legitimate browser alternative. It's interesting to look at the progression of my account names, from childish and immature to the just plain weird, and now to the professional and respectable.

Take a look back at your e-mail history, what types of account names have you made use of?

I have nothing important to say. It's summertime. I'm bored. Life is routine, and I'm sick of most everything, because most everything costs money, and I lack that. I guess I have Batman to look forward to this weekend, though not in the way I had wanted. Sorry boyos.

Everyday Normal Guy!

Happy Birthday Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall, Paris Through the Window, 1913

Change of Style

I decided to change the style of my blog a bit. It's still pretty boring, just a different kind of boring. Hope you enjoy it, cheers.