Word Vomit

Thanksgiving

mizliterature — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:23:36 +0000

It’s been a couple of weeks since Thanksgiving, and I’ve been thinking about what is most important in my life since then. I am so blessed with the incredible family I have. My mom is one of my best friends, and I am lucky to have her as such. She and my dad have always been supportive, and though we’ve butted heads in the recent past, it is a sign to me that I am finally learning to assert myself and to properly ascertain what my needs are at the moment. But they are there–moment by moment–to give me love and support. Nothing–no monetary value, no material object–can ever take their place. My brother and sister-in-law have also been there for me in so many ways, and opening up and talking with my brother has led me to heal in a way only he could have provided. And, of course, they have produced my niece, for whom my love in infinite. And my extended family–grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins–are some of the best people I know and would choose them as friends were they not family. I am just so lucky to love as much as I do and be loved just as much. It fills me with hope and purpose.

I Win!

mizliterature — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:14:19 +0000

So, this time last year, I said I was going to do all of my Holiday shopping online. Goal accomplished! Go me!

Top Ten Christmas Wish List

mizliterature — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:55:09 +0000

If you’re looking for ideas for my Christmas list, here are my top ten wishes:

A carpet/upholstery cleaner (but I think my parents have that covered)
An iPhone compatible with Verizon (yes, I can wait until January, but you should pre-order)
Cash
Mean Girls and Parenthood on DVD
A gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret (hey, I wear their outerwear, too), Macy’s, or Target (I’m fancy, huh?)
A trip to Disneyland
A trip to London
A trip to New York
Diamond stud earrings in white gold
For everyone to see my uncle’s movie, The Fighter

BBC Book List

mizliterature — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 02:26:52 +0000

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt. Send to other book nerds.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House- Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited- Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Top Ten Tuesday

mizliterature — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:15:38 +0000

For this Top Ten Tuesday, I’ve decided to make the “soundtrack of my life.” So, here it is, in order of birth:

Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan
Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper
Vogue by Madonna
Sweet Child o’ Mine by Guns ‘n’ Roses
Canon in D by Pachelbel
Come Calling (Her Song) by The Cowboy Junkies
She Talks to Angels by The Black Crows
Songbird by Fleetwood Mac
Bleecker Street by Simon & Garfunkle
You’ve Got the Love by Florence and the Machine

15 Authors in 15 Minutes

mizliterature — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 03:00:21 +0000

This is a list of the most influential writers in my life, in no particular order:

Dr. Seuss
Shakespeare
Virginia Wolff
John Steinbeck
William Faulkner
Adrienne Rich
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Toni Morrison
Stevie Smith
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Frederico Garcia Lorca
Geoffrey Chaucer
Emily Bronte
Thomas Hardy
Arthur Miller

Who is on your list?

Makin’ Love with Voldemort

mizliterature — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 03:27:06 +0000

Last night, I had a dream that I was making out with Ralph Fiennes and he turned into Voldemort in the middle of the session. I have never read nor seen anything Harry Potter, but of course I know what all of the movie characters look like, and Voldemort is SCARY. I mean, he full-on turned into the corpse-colored dude with SCARY teeth and a SCARY no-nose. Everything sort of went gray and cold around me, and I jerked awake from the fright, only to find myself sweating from the terror. Yeah, it sounds funny when I describe it, but I was genuinely scared.

In other news, it’s Friday! Yay! Bon weekend, everyone.

Happy Veteran’s Day

mizliterature — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:28:15 +0000

This Veteran’s day, I’d like to honor my grandfather Eugene Johnson, who was a POW during WWII. Typically, “he was never the same” when he came back from the war, but I just always knew him as my Grandpa, whom I loved. I won’t glorify it or anything–he was an alcoholic with his own issues–but as a kid, I didn’t know the difference. He lived in San Diego for most of my childhood, and I always looked forward to his visits. What I remember the most, though, was the last time I saw him alive. He was in the hospital, intubated and on some serious sedatives. But when my mom told him I was there, he opened his eyes widely and smiled a huge, tubey smile. I will never forget that image.

Cheers to you, Grandpa Gene, and your fetes and follies. Happy Veteran’s Day.

Friends Rock!

mizliterature — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:59:38 +0000

I am thankful for my friends. Despite my craziness, they love me for some reason. Though I tend to talk about certain things, like my love life, with some more than others, I know I can call any of them with a broken heart or the future “He proposed!” and they would all be equally happy for me. I am blessed with Shelly’s enduring love; Claudia’s unending support; Theresa’s clairvoyant insight; CKD’s humor and advice; Amy’s inspiration and achievements; Lili’s beauty in friendship and in life; Elizabeth’s common struggles; Katie’s sick sense of humor and selfless support; Katy’s radical acceptance; Phil’s ability to conceive my emotions; Nate’s creativity in solving problems; John’s daily wisdom; and Phil II’s everything. There are many more, but these are the people who have made the biggest imprint on my life in a positive way. I love them with all that I have and am ineffably happy that they are a part of my life.

Florence and the Machine

mizliterature — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:12:30 +0000

I went to see Florence and the Machine on Friday, November 5th at the Fox Theatre in Oakland. I had a blast. She had two opening bands, Hanni El Khatib and Grouplove. Hanni El Khatib I could have taken or left, but I totally dug Grouplove. They kind of reminded me a a new, more modern and relevant B-52s, and definitely just as fun. I was jammin’. Florence herself was unearthly. She wore a typical Florence flowy dress, making her look as ethereal as ever. Her voice was strong, and she hit both the high and low notes with aplomb. My only complaint is that she didn’t play “Hurricane Drunk,” one of my favorite songs, but her set list did include:

Drumming Song
My Boy Builds Coffins
Cosmic Love
Girl with One Eye
Ghosts
Between Two Lungs
Strangeness and Charm
Howl
You’ve Got the Love
Rabbit Heart
Kiss with a Fist
Heavy in Your Arms
Dog Days Are Over

Next time Flo comes around, I strongly suggest you see her!