Random dumb thoughts

This page is to put those little weirdnesses of life that don't really fit anywhere else, or aren't worth a page of their own

Friday, June 13, 2003

Okay, she's back by popular (well, one person) demand!

A couple of things I've noticed from standing on the metro, just observing what's around me. First, the other day I was seemingly surrounded by loads of people earnestly using their styluses (styli? styles? what declension is stylus?) to frantically work on their palm pilots (or equivalents). Initially I was impressed by the diligence of all these people doing work after work, until I turned my head and started looking at their screens. The fellow on my right was playing Monopoly (color screen PP). The fellow on my left, playing chess (black and white PP). I couldn't quite see the screen of the lady in front of me, but I was sensing that there was some version of video game involved -- tetris or something like that. I was reminded by a quote by Douglas Adams having to do with people and their digital watches.

Speaking of Douglas Adams, that leads me to the second thing I learned this week on the metro. I was kind of jammed into the metro, and was standing next to a woman who was sitting and reading a book quite intently. I realized that I could read over her shoulder, so I did. I was sucked into this book -- as best I could tell, it took place in an alternative 1984-type reality. The woman involved was doing something involved with rewriting literature, while still attempting to preserve the original (hey, I came in in the middle). The woman's name was either Tuesday or Thursday -- it was a day of the week. It seemed really interesting, but I only got through a couple of pages before I had to get off. Later I realized that I rather wanted to find that book, but I hadn't seen the cover -- only the back. So last night, I put on my thinking cap and started to peruse Amazon.com to see what I could find. I kept plugging in "Tuesday" and fiction, and getting nothing that seemed right. Then for some reason, the phrase "Thursday Next" popped in my head. So I plugged that in, and bingo -- there's a series of books called the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. The book I seemed to be reading was "The Eyre Affair". So this weekend I will be off to scare up my own copy of this book to see if it's any good.

Where's the Douglas Adams, you may be saying at this point. Be patient, we're almost there. So I google the author, and find several reviews of this book, as well as the author's website. All over these reviews, the author is praised as another Douglas Adams. While I had been browsing through Amazon.com, I had found several books that also claimed to be "just like Douglas Adams". This is one of my minor peeves. I know that using a popular author's name can be an effective way to quickly convey a book's genre, especially if the work is a little unusual. But somehow I suspect that the marketers, reviewers, and even the author himself are just being lazy. Instead of explaining what the book is about in a literate and coherent way, they go for the easy description. Either that, or they're trying to ride on the man's coattails. Them's some big shoes to fill, so you better be pretty damn sure that your work is worthy, okay?

We'll see.

.: posted by Lily Friday, June 13, 2003

Sunday, June 08, 2003

Several small thoughts --

Hell must be freezing over, as of all of the blogs I regularly read, this one is the most recently updated. That is a very unusual occurrence, to say the least.

I'm thinking good thoughts for Eddie Izzard, who is up for a Tony for Joe Egg this evening. Go, Eddie, go! You're my favorite jelly donut.

The body is a pain in the ass, I've decided. I seem to have developed another food allergy. This evening I went with a friend to one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants, and ordered a large bowl of soup and a squid salad. As I started eating the soup, I remembered that I often have a funny reaction after eating the soup there, but didn't think much about it. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later, my cheeks get all tight and I get a burning and itchy feeling that starts on my head and scalp, and eventually radiates down my arms and back. I then feel a little disoriented for a bit. I no longer freak out when this happens, because I realize that in about 45 minutes it will go away. My friend asks me if I'm allergic to MSG, and I say I don't think so, as I never really look to see if it's in a product, so I know I must have eaten it a million times. I figure that they must be using some odd spice or herb in the stock that I'm not used to -- I've been to the Asian market next door, and they have all kinds of weird spices, herbs, plants, and dried fungi that are common in Asian cooking but that I probably wouldn't have come across. However, this time I call over the waitress and ask her what's in the soup broth, as I have noticed this reaction after eating the soup there. She tells me that they do use MSG in the restaurant in the chicken broth that is the base for all their soups -- they use it in several things, but the highest concentration in the broths, and that they don't use anything else unusual in the broth. When I got home, I looked up MSG reactions on the internet, and sure enough, what I had seemed to be a textbook case. I had no idea that MSG is allegedly some kind of neurotoxin, although that bit of information seems to come from one of those websites that did not seem the most balanced in its presentation of medical information, so I take that with a grain of MSG...I mean salt.

Now what I really have to wonder is just how much MSG do they put in that soup? I looked at the list of things that MSG is in and all the names it goes by, and I know I've eaten most of those before with no noticeable reaction (except the wicked munchies at times), so just how much are they putting in there? It's kind of scary to contemplate.

Bummer. I'll have to remember not to get the soup there anymore. One of these days I want to sign up for those cast-iron digestive systems that some people seem to have.

.: posted by Lily Sunday, June 08, 2003

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