only 15?

Don’t take too long to think about it.
Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you (in no particular order).
First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
Copy the instructions into your own post.

1. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
3. Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4. L'Assommoir - Emile Zola
5. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
6. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
8. The Inferno - Dante
9. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe
10. Erasure - Percival Everett
11. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
12. Salt - Mark Kurlansky
13. The Faerie Queene - Edmund Spenser
14. The Heart and Stomach of a King - Carole Levin
15. Devil in the White City - Erik Larson

hmmm. a healthy mixture of narrative nonfiction, classical texts, and good, solid contemporary fiction. gotta love a well-rounded collection.

the new funniest thing i've ever seen.

thanks to my best bud for turning me on to this one...

life lesson #1,069

disney pixar movies are always depressing. the humor is just not enough to get past the sadness. take for instance this:


it's a beautiful movie, really, it is. but it is also the most depressing movie ever. congrats, pixar. you did something few other films have made me do: cry like a girl.

life lesson #1,068

wax museums are creepy regardless of your age.

they are creepy when you're five, twelve, and twenty-six.

no matter how innocuous and innocent the wax figures may be, it will always seem as if their eyes are following you, or they are lying in wait to chase you down the hall and into the mirror maze to attack you with one of their "for display purposes only" weapons.

creepy.

el cumpleaños de mí padre.

my dad's birthday was earlier this month, so in typical duessa form i made him a cake:

here's daddy posing with his cake:


for his present, my sister and i got him a camping trip. we went to cooper lake in sulphur springs.


the area was really pretty.


the first day there we did a little fishing. it was stank hot and the fish weren't biting, but it was fun.


back at the campsite, we had a fire-pit.

so we decided to toast marshmallows. here are our marshmallows awaiting their destiny...

and the finished product:
i have never before seen my father eat a marshmallow. until that day:

our fire went out just as dusk fell upon us.


the next morning, we schlepped back over to the fishing pier to drop some more lines.

again, the fishing SUCKED. but, we did manage to catch a couple little guys (and by little i mean TINY).


we finished up fishing just as a swarm of children descended upon the pier and a storm started brewing.

all in all, camping wasn't that bad.

aporkalypse now. apparently.

so pig fever is upon us. it was very serious, then not. the media drove us all into a panic with non-stop coverage and "hey guys, it's the end of the world" broadcasts. the media sucks.

being the "i can find humor in everything" person that i am, i couldn't help but appreciate the gallows humor that came out of the not-so-pandemic pandemic.

here are a few little treats i've encountered:

and last but not least, my favorite (courtesy of my best friend):
lest you not be able to read the small print, it says: "As the two friends wandered through the snow on their way home, Piglet grinned to himself, thinking how lucky he was to have a best friend like Pooh. Pooh thought to himself: "If the pig sneezes, he's fuckin' dead.""

that's it. i quit. i'm moving on.

but not really. the infamous bradbury project is frustrating me.

there's just so much information to be collected, organized, and accounted for--it all seems like a little too much right now. but i've been here before; i'll continue trudging along through the muck.

on another note, a colleague of mine who thinks my obsession with bradbury is quite amusing thinks it's funny each time i purchase another book by or about bradbury. i mentioned that i recently purchased the 1967 book club edition just for the new introduction it contained and he decided that instead of the crazy cat lady, i'll be the crazy book lady. one day i'll die and the police will find me surrounded by hundreds of copies of fahrenheit 451. they will immediately decide that there's foul play involved and think the books are a clue. little will they know that i was merely afflicted with biblioholism.

he thinks it's funny. i think it's probable.

so, in honor of him, i've decided to commit to this bradbury obsession once and for all. i will purchase every book the man has published and every edition of fahrenheit 451 ever produced (accept the asbestos edition because i don't have $30,000 to spend on it--although if someone were to give it to me i wouldn't turn it down).

i'm sick.