Day 115: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. ISBN: 9780380789023. 

We Can Get Them for you Whole Sale, Page 204-214.

The basics behind this short story, man contacts "pest control" to have a person from his office removed, they offer him a bargain and this quickly spirals out of control to the point where the man asks how much it would cost to kill everyone.  The more people he wants killed the cheaper it is.

The idea is that human life is not worth very much on a whole.  We are not a particular inspiring species.  We've completely taken ourselves out of our niche in nature, so we aren't even contributing to the whole "web of life" deal.  We are a rather miserable group of animals who behave atrociously, and we don't even have "animal instincts" to blame for it, because we're more god damned evolved than that.

There are even days where I wish a plague would just come along and wipe out half of the population.  This is entirely selfish, because I think we've gotten to the same state of overpopulation that Europe faced briefly before the bubonic plague...you know... the Black Death (and it's lesser known sequel).  I sort of wonder if the scientists have it all wrong about cancer.  Maybe it's not because there are carcinogens in the air and we're consuming too many preservatives and eat out of too much plastic.  After all, humans have been doing stupid and harmful shit to themselves for millenia.  I propose that humans themselves are toxic to each other.  There are so damned many of us that we give each other cancer.  Maybe being around all of the pheromones and other chemicals our bodies put out triggers something in our bodies that says, "Holy shit, there are a lot of you wandering around.  Time to thin the herd!"  Hell, maybe it explains general stupidity or the ease at which we seem to make huge mistakes as a species (I'm looking at you BP Oil).

But yeah, I could use a little global population-reducing catastrophe right now.  As terrible as the Black Death was, things improved dramatically for people who survived.  The serf system was no longer supportable, so there went slavelike work conditions.  Wages rose, people had a chance to move up through the ranks and obtain land for the first time.  The times became a more liberal because you had a more diverse landholders (i.e. important people who had sway in politics).

Of course, when you shrink humanity down to the people you know, the individuals, it's not such a great idea.  I wouldn't want to see my fiance die (as much as I tease him about it), or my mother, or much of anyone I know personally.  And I know that everyone has their own unique talents and worth, but it's so hard right now.  It's hard to see that when I'm getting conflicting messages about how wonderful I am (family and friends) and how I'm just not good enough (pretty much any job I apply to).  It's not that my career of choice is obsolete, or that I'm not qualified, it's that I'm a number.  I am one more cover letter in a pool of hundreds, and there is no way I can showcase my individuality that way.  Human Resources has very little to do with the humanity of individual applicants or even employees, because the emphasis is and always has been on the resource.  Right now, there's just a little too much supply and not enough demand.

*Post originally written June 20, 2010.  I'm takin' a day off folks.

Day 71: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. ISBN: 9780380789023.

Troll Bridge, Page 59-70.

"The main trouble with being in love with Louise was that we were best friends..."  page 164.

I've fallen in love with a number of best friends over the years.  The first was probably Andrew*, in third and fourth grade.  He was the "goofy" kid who made weird noises, but was generally well-liked by everyone.  I couldn't understand why people liked him so much when they didn't seem to like me very much and we were friends.  He's one of the only people I actually played with on the playground and I was tremendously upset when he started hanging out with my brother for awhile.  Unfortunately we were such good friends that I was no longer a girl, and he eventually revealed to me that he had a crush on Karen.  This effectively stopped my liking him because I didn't particularly care for Karen.  She was one of those girls who was a little too perfect and therefore I didn't like her.  I guess I figured that Andrew would at least have a little better taste and if he didn't like me or someone like me then I didn't want to date someone like that anyway.

In 9th grade I was slightly enamored with Darrell, who was actually an ex-boyfriend's best friend.  Strangely, since the ex-boyfriend and I parted on good terms, he really wanted Darrell and me to get together.  It never happened, and we didn't really even spend all that much time together outside of school.

Tenth grade was a big problem for me.  I was very much in love with my best friend, Brad.  We actually met on the bus.  I had just switched schools and the first time I saw him I figured he was a senior or junior and would be way too cool to talk to me.  Instead he sat directly in front of me, turned around in his seat and said, "Hi, I'm Brad," and we ended up talking for the entire 30 minute bus ride.  I never did tell him I liked him, but he must have had some inkling.  Everyone else certainly knew.

The problem isn't really falling in love with your best friend though.  The problem is not having your best friend love you back.  It was difficult for me to be around these people that I had such strong feelings for.  Granted, my definition of love changed and strengthened as I got older, but in some ways it was also a little easier because I became more mature.  I was able to deal with my feelings and not let them affect my actual relationship with my friends.  There have been other friends I was attracted to before I met my fiance, who were dating other people or who weren't romantically interested in me, and I kept my feelings to myself.  Whenever my friends guessed at my feelings they were usually polite enough not to point them out or we addressed them and moved on.  Now I don't have to worry about falling in love with my best friend anymore, because he loves me back.

*All names are changed, not that you'd ever be able to actually track these people down... assuming you had some weird desire to do so anyway.
**Post originally written June 2, 2010 to give the author a break.

Day 49: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. ISBN: 9780380789023.

 The Wedding Present, pages 3-16.

This is an amazing Picture of Dorian Gray-esque short story about a couple who receives a short story as a wedding present.  The short story is the opposite of their marriage; the story couple getting progressively unhappier as the real couple continues living in bliss.

There's a lot of appeal in those kind of stories, those striking and enigmatic "what-if" stories.  It's particularly natural to play the what-if game in relationships, regardless of how good they are.  Part of me wonders if that's why so many relationships fall apart; one party always wonders if maybe they could just be happier with someone else.  I'll admit that I wonder which version of The Wedding Present I'm living.  Is this the happy version or the miserable one?

Well, it's not over yet, is it?  It's been difficult having the relationship I do with my fiance; on the other hand if we weren't together right now, I might be having an even tougher time without his emotional support.  Or maybe if we hadn't gotten together in the first place I'd be on my way to a doctorate's degree in library science and not worrying about the economy.  Or I could be living with my mother and yelling at her every day.  I don't know.

That's why I think it's so important to try my hardest to keep this relationship together until I know it's over.  I won't know if it was the good story or the bad one, so I work to make it the good one.  And I beat my fiance over the head to make him work at it too.  So far we're doing okay.  I do sometimes wonder how the other Amy Campbell and her fiance are doing.


This post was originally written on April 24, 2010 to give me a break, allow me to be sick, make time for packing and moving, or some other excuse where I can't sit in front of a computer all day.

Day 43: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. ISBN 9780061551895 (audiobook).

"You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished."

How can Gaiman write stuff like this?  I want to write something this insightful and beautiful.  Of course, if I ever do only about ten of you will ever read it and only after pestering you.  I have lived with something similar to this sentiment for over five years now.  The words that Horace Mann, Antioch College's first president, left us with where these, "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."  While it may not seem so similar on the surface, it's a plea to struggle to live and do until you can't anymore.

I've always interpreted Mann's words a little differently than other people.  I don't think he meant we have to make an incredible discovery or be Nobel Peace Prize material.  We're talking about humanity, and that's a much smaller thing than the world at large.  To me, a victory for humanity can be something as small as teaching a child a lifelong skill they will carry with them, or living in a way that inspires other people.  Most of us can't affect great change in the world; but if a few of us inspire a few more, that will eventually spread.  I think the real message behind Mann's words is to not give up until it's over, you'll never know if that last act will be the one that makes a difference.

We have so much potential as individuals.  I find it so difficult to watch as certain people, particularly people close to me, waste it.  Whether or not you have a job that "means anything," there are things that you can be doing that will infinitely change the quality of life for someone else.  There are so many volunteer opportunities out there, small amounts of money can go a long way in many organizations that do a lot of good, even just writing your opinions and opening up your thought process may get someone else to start thinking about  running for politics or finishing that science experiment they wrote about in college.  You don't know how your life will affect someone else, but I can tell you one thing: you won't do much if the only influence you have on someone is a brief encounter at McDonald's or as a voice on Counter Strike.  Be active, seek out opportunities to change the world, however small a change it might be.

Day 42: The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN 9780061551895 (audiobook).

On the rare occasion there are books that remind me so much of places I've been.  Most books seem to be set in far fetched made up places or are described so generically that almost anyone can relate to them.  While I can understand why they do that, I like the vividness and detail that Gaiman uses in describing Bod's graveyard. 

It reminds me very much of Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York.  This may sound a little morbid, but I've always had a deep affection for cemeteries.  Not because dead people are buried there and I like hanging out in the middle of night performing black mass or anything crazy like that.  I look at cemeteries as a kind of under used park with what is usually very nice statuary, well manicured lawns, and a boatload of reading material/history right at your feet (literally).  Some of the cooler cemeteries even have guided tours.

Oakwood Cemetery was one of those.  I was on co-op at the time for the Syracuse Peace Council.  Part of my payment included a room with a member of the Peace Council.  I was staying with an old British couple, one of whom was particularly hard to deal with sometimes.  Their 33-year-old son was also at the house frequently enough and tended to be creepy and incredibly inappropriate towards me.  I did end up leaving that situation about a month before my co-op ended, but in the meantime I coped by spending as much time out of the house as possible.  Since the graveyard was nearby, that's where I spent most of my time (especially when it was nice out).

Gaiman's cemetery is much like mine was; full of hills, and headless statues, and crypts.  It was also full of stories, ones that I never really explored as much as I would have liked.  I did go on a Salt Baron tour hosted by the local historical society/friends of the graveyard.  I would have gone on more, but it got too cold and most of the other tours while I was there were cancelled.  Still, it was nice to find a place where I could be at peace, funny that the living should find rest in the graveyard.



*The picture is one of mine, taken in Fall 2004 at the Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York.  You can find additional pictures at my deviant art account.

Day 16: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. ISBN: 9780380789023.

Looking for the Girl, pages 163-175.

Despite the fact that I started listening to Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted on audiobook yesterday, I don't think I'll be reflecting on that publicly, especially since the first "story" grossed me out so much I had to fast forward through it.  Let's just say there are some forums I would prefer not to talk about auto-erotic asphyxiation (and worse), and this is one of those forums.  But to keep it a little smutty, because god knows I'm not shy about sex, I'll go ahead and tell you what I've been thinking about this particular bit of porn-centric writing.

Our narrator is a man obsessed with his first "perfect woman" image, which he comes across in an issue of Penthouse.  Time passes and the girl keeps showing up periodically during usually important transition periods; she's always the same girl, the same age, but with a slightly different look, new hair color, grooming, etc.  By the end of the story the narrator is left with a sense of disappointment because this "perfect woman" is no longer obtainable, and in truth never has been, because even when he's in the same room with her she isn't actually real.

It's not the woman that gets him excited, it's the idea that he's found a perfect mate: someone he thinks he can relate to and be satisfied with.  But the truth is you can never be satisfied with anyone based on what you initially expect from them based on their appearance or even from phone or IM conversations.  I was definitely a victim of this mentality; there's no room for the person or the relationship to change.

When I was eighteen and still in the process of changing constantly, I fell in love with a man who was eleven years my senior.  I was young and did not understand the impact that his image of me would have on our relationship, and until the relationship was coming to an end, I didn't even realize he had this idealized version of me in his head.  Since we met when I was still in high school, I didn't have the brains to call an end to the romantic relationship when I left for college, and he sadly wasn't mature enough to just let me go.

It probably won't take you a lot to realize that I made some drastic changes in my ways of thinking (although this was somewhat stilted by my hanging onto this guy), but I was a different enough person that it became one of the things we fought about.  Rather than standing up for myself and telling him, "God dammit of course I'm miserable because I love you and I want to talk to you and you're making no effort to communicate with me," I let him blame me completely for the mistakes I made.  But you know what, I owned up to those mistakes and admitted them to him, and if he had called me a day earlier it wouldn't even have been an issue.

To this day I am sometimes furious to think about all the opportunities I might have missed out on during that first year at college because I was wrapped up in him and all his bullshit.  There were parties I didn't go to, and boys I didn't kiss, and people I was rude and acerbic to because I was too involved in a toxic relationship to know what I was doing.  Oddly, those were the three hardest semester I ever had at Antioch, not that the others were necessarily easy, but at least the only person's emotional mess I had to deal with was my own, and I liked it that way.

How do I feel now?  My fiance has his problems, and we certainly fight about them, and we fight about mine too.  But there's an understanding that our identities as people are fluid and constantly changing.  We aren't pictures in a book, where there might be new things revealed by looking at it, but it's still the same static image and there's just not much depth no matter what.  We know that there are times where we will feel closer to each other than others, where one of us might be a little too clingy for the other, that we might not even be sexually or even emotionally attracted to each other for our entire relationship; but we think our relationship is important enough to stay together and work to rebuild those attractions.  We know that we can wait for the other person to be just as clingy and give the necessary space in the meantime.

And maybe one day, we'll look at each other and realize that we don't love each other anymore, or not enough to stay together, and as calm rational adults we'll go our separate ways.  That's a risk of being in an adult relationship, but because I know he sees me as a person, I know he will communicate any problems with me and we will figure out what to do about it.  I won't find out one day that all of a sudden I don't meet his image of what I'm supposed to be and now he just can't love me anymore because of that.

I hope it's a lesson that people learn a lot sooner than I did, regardless of whether they stay with the person who taught it to them.

Day 13: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman. ISBN: 9780380789023.

Virus, pages 160-162.

Yesterday my fiancé and I found ourselves in lovely Elizabethtown, Kentucky. We left Alabama on Wednesday, after I had a job interview with a state university in Tennessee. I felt pretty good just getting into Kentucky, but was dreading the drive around Louisville this morning. If you ask me, Louisville is one of the worst cities to drive anywhere within a 20 mile radius of. We've several times been forced to go into the city because some joker thought it would be hilarious to feed the 265-beltway entrance ramp onto I-71 less than a mile away from the exit ramp. Ugh.

Anyway, during the drive back to Kent, Ohio to drop off the future Mr. Campbell and spend a little time with the in-laws, I was thinking about this short story. As an avid Tetris player both on the original Game Boy and on any platform I can get today, I found this particularly appealing. The gist of the story is that there's an addictive video game that acts as a virus that infects the human population: people pass it on to their friends, who end up playing it and passing it on to their friends. The more they play, the more they want to play, to the point where they are playing it even in their sleep or in their minds as they go about their daily tasks.

I've had jobs like that. I've had social interactions like that. And I've certainly played video games like that. Unfortunately with video games you don't have anything to show for it at the end of the day. As much as you advance your little digital avatar through the maze, as many little digital demons as you've killed, as many sexy princesses as you've chatted with (even if it is a real person on the other end of the thousand miles of cables), what proof do you have that you've bettered yourself in anyway? There's only so much hand-eye coordination that you can gain and use practically from video games. Okay yeah, Wii Bowling might give you a general idea about what stances work best for you, but it's not going to take into account the wax on the floors or the weight of the ball. When it comes down to it, you still only know how to throw around virtual balls, and they aren't real buddy. (That so needs to be a t-shirt, who wants one?)

I think Gaiman captures this point very clearly not only in the demise of the human race as everyone becomes addicted to the game, stops going to work, and dies in their own filth from hunger because they're so addicted to the game that's all they have the willpower to do; but also because the game itself is representative of what you have left from energy spent on this task. Nothing. The goal of the game is to have nothing left on the screen, and therefore nothing left in your life. Think about that. All that coinage you amassed on W.O.W., all those crops you harvest on Farmville. It's nothing.

What are you neglecting in favor of that? How many novels could you have finished in the time you were using? How many hours of exercise? How many rewarding and engaging conversations? Hell, you could even improve your typing so u doan al tipe liek ths. You could be reading more of my blog posts, and that would be awesome.

I'm not saying video games don't have their benefits. God knows I love me some Katamari Damacy on stressful days, but please, don't let it eat your life. You have so much more to live for. And let's face it, when the zombie apocalypse comes, you'll be glad you learned knitting needle kung fu.  Oh god, I hope that's real.

Day 8: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN: 9780380789023.

The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories.  Pages 74-110.

I wasn't so pleased with the plot of this story, but it followed Gaiman as writer dealing with Hollywood, which I'm sure is completely different than dealing with book publishers.  The one thing I did get from this short story was a fantastic quote about being a writer and how obnoxious it must be.

"The irritating question they ask us - us being writers - is, 'Where do you get your ideas?'

"And to answer is: Confluence.  Things come together.  The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!"

This makes so much sense to me, not just creatively but in every day life, trying to get by and get things completed.  There are times when I am moved to clean the kitchen or reorganize the closets.  More recently all that energy has been going to writing cover letters, being unemployed and all.  Writing cover letters is possibly the most tortuous part of unemployment.  Forget the shame, forget not having money to eat out or pay my car insurance: sitting in front of the computer every morning and forcing myself to write a page and a half about myself and my experiences to match a job description, only to wake up and do it again the next day, is a worse punishment than ever bestowed by those bastards on Mount Olympus.  Hm, I bet that would be an interesting rewrite of the Greek myths actually.  Feel free to steal the idea, I'm not going to write it.

I've actually left cover letters dead in the water because I couldn't even force myself to write them.  Having 8+ months of rejection under my belt has not helped matters at all in this respect.  Maybe if there was some promise of receiving even an interview, it would make it worth while to slog through those cover letters.  Instead I sit in my pajamas and stare at the cat, hating my miserable life.

However, on the rare occasion I get this sudden burst of energy and I am all about writing those cover letters.  When I get like that I can churn out a good cover letter in about an hour and nothing feels better.  I go out, and I take a nice long walk to the library.  At the very least I feel like I've done something and don't feel guilty watching Netflix movies.  Getting out from underneath that weight of guilt, even momentarily, is blissful.  It's unfortunate that it doesn't come more often.  But yes, I agree with Gaiman, that feeling of "confluence" can make all the difference in your life whether you're creating art, writing a paper, or a daily task that you don't particularly care for.  Sometimes it pays off to go ahead and slog through the pain, but other times you just have to wait for that inspiration.

Day 7: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN: 9780380789023.

The Price from pages 51to 58 is a charming story about a feline who makes sacrifices for a family he chooses to fight for. It also has a very remarkable last paragraph in its simplicity and its depth.

"I wonder what we did to deserve the Black Cat.  I wonder who sent him.  And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give."

I myself adopted a black cat some ten plus years ago from a pet store that hosted rescue cats in Montgomery, Alabama as a teenager.  Now I find myself back in Alabama, although in a different house and in a completely different situation.  My fiance is asleep in the next room, and I'm diligently typing away on my mother's computer.  Outside there are some neighborhood cats, some who probably belong to other neighbors, but others you can tell are a little ragged, and would probably be more so if my mother wasn't feeding them.  It's interesting to watch how they interact with each other.  Right now a grey tabby seems to be standing guard while a black cat with a white bib and boots eats, and just now they've switched positions.  I know they are not as social as dogs, but they do seem to have their own social order and society.

Meanwhile, my heffalump of a cat Simon is being both hefty and lumpy on the couch in the other room.  Simon was a Christmas cat.  A few months before, my mother kicked my brother out of the house for some very serious problems that were negatively affecting both of our lives and it was the first Christmas without him.  My mom was still recovering from the divorce only a few years prior, and she gave me a choice: Christmas tree or cat.  I never did like Christmas trees and what could be more fitting and in the spirit of the season than taking in a new family member who would otherwise be out in the cold.

We went to the pet store near our apartment building and looked at the few kittens they had from the Humane Society or ASPCA.  They all had fleas and some of them looked downright ill.  My mother wanted a little orange tabby, but he seemed irritable when held and had patches of fur missing.  Today I may have taken the orange kitten knowing that the ones who don't look healthy are harder to adopt.  But I was 14 going on 15 and I wanted a cat that would match my demeanor.  I picked up a little black kitten who was mostly ears and looked vaguely bat-like.  He was playing with the others, but calmly.  When I held him he snuggled in close to me and began purring rather than struggling or trying to climb over me.  My mother picked up a very cute puppy and we introduced the two to see how he would get along with other animals.  He was more curious than anything else and did not seem distraught by the interaction.  He came home with us.

For the first day or two I tried to come up with a better name for him than Simon.  I dislike giving animals human names and I wanted something that would better fit his personality but my mom vetoed anything I suggested, and they weren't very good suggestions anyway.  So Simon it was and Simon it has been ever since.  And he has been for me there through it all, taking care of me and my mother. He was there when I left for college and kept my mother company; he traveled with her to Germany and was there for me when I spent ten months with her on co-op; he was there when my grandmother died and dutifully crawled into my luggage to make me laugh.  He's here now to sleep at the foot of the bed, with my someday-to-be husband sleeping the coolest part of the Alabama morning away.  But I know he won't be there forever, and even though there will be other cats to come and bring joy to our lives, there will be no cat like Simon. He has given everything to us that we could ever ask for, and I only hope we've been able to do the same.

My big Heffalump cat, Simon.  April 2010.

Day 4: Smoke and Mirrors

Currently Reading:
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN: 9780380789023.

The introductions of Gaiman's works are always worth reading.  He's such a fantastic and interesting individual that I can't get enough of his writing.  He's the kind of person whose head I would love to live inside.  Those of you who know me well know I have a somewhat interesting head to live inside of as well, particularly when it's late at night or early in the morning and my control over my mouth is reduced to nil.  Yes, my filter turns off at midnight.  

Anyway, as I was reading the introduction to Smoke and Mirrors I came across this quote, "When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make thigns up, warning me of what would happen if I did.  As far as I can tell so far it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning." - Page 2.

It got me to thinking about my own ambitions as a child of 13 when I first started writing, mostly angsty poetry which seems to be the forte of every 13-16 year old child.  

My mother and I had a tentative relationship at that time, I thought I knew what was best for me, and in some cases I even turned out to be right.  I think this is probably the hardest thing for a parent to learn from their child, that they no longer know what will make their child happiest, safest, or healthiest.  I initially had ambitions to become a writer.  I wrote prolifically, mostly during school which I did not find particularly challenging or interesting academically.  I kept that interest all the way into my senior year of high school, but my mother was worried that I wouldn't be able to make a living as a writer, and although she was probably correct I still wish she had kept her mouth shut.

I am not saying that she shouldn't have encouraged me to add other skills besides writing to my repetoir, but I wish she had also encouraged me to continue writing and had allowed me to at least consider a degree in creative writing.  I likely would have still ended up in the same position I'm in now, unemployed with a Master's degree and writing a blog into empty air, but maybe I would also have something to keep me company and a drive to create.  

I did take writing classes in college, and they both helped me immensely in my academic career.  In poetry class I learned to let go of words.  I would write poems and rewrite them, and other than certain phrases or thoughts I would create completely new poems from the old.  The memoir class helped me reflect on how my past made me who I am and how to perfectly capture a moment in time, something I hadn't learned up until that point.  Sadly looking back at my writing style in those days make me cringe, I was so young and had no idea what I was talking about.  It's like 18 is the new 16 only worse because you can look back at how stupid you were at 16 and think you've gotten over it.  At 25 I realize I'm always going to be stupid.  

I do think if my mother had encouraged me a little more to keep up with my writing.  I think I may have made more progress and really grown into my talent.  I don't know if I would have been the next Neil Gaiman, I somehow doubt it, but I may have had a chance to make an impact on my generation or future generations by what I left behind.  And maybe that's more important to me than she realized since I'm not planning to have children.  

What I want to tell you, you future parents or mentors: if a young person tells you they want to be a writer, don't scrunch up your face and hmph and harrumph.  Don't tell the child that writing is impractical and they should focus their pursuits on something more "worthwhile."  Writing isn't about practicality, but is worthwhile.  Think of some of the novels you've read over your many years and what they've meant to you.  I can think of at least four or five that have become a deep part of who I am and I can't help but think that the author's efforts were more than worthwhile if their work touched me that deeply.  So please, do not, do not, do not discourage your child from writing.  They could very well change my life.

PS: for those of you who saw this post early, I was cheating.  I'm currently on the road and wrote this on March 30, 2010.  I apologize for any doubling in your RSS feed.  Consider it a sneak preview, you lucky dogs.

Day 3: Smoke and Mirrors

Currently Reading:
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman.  ISBN: 9780380789023.

In some ways I feel a little guilty giving Mr. Gaiman even more press than he already receives (not that I have a huge following as of yet), but the spirit of the project it not to review what I'm reading, but rather to share reflections and thoughts that my current reading invokes.  And, well, I read Neil Gaiman.  For me his work is the stuff of modern fairytales.  I think he very appropriately captures the childish wonder and fantasy in his novels, whether the audience is adult or child, that allows us to believe in something beyond our own world. 

Since this is a collection of short stories and I will at times be too busy to update every day, or regularly, I will be using this particular volume for short entries...or I'll be using it to cheat and publish pre-written entries.  Don't worry!  I will let you know when the original entry was written, but this way I can still contribute to my blog without feeling compelled to work on it every single day, or take vacations only where I have internet access.  Speaking of which, my fiance and I have decided to take a somewhat impromptu trip to visit my mother in Montomgery, Alabama, so guess who's going to start cheating right off the bat.  Trust me dear reader, you don't want to see the poorly typed ramblings of someone who drove for ten hours, found a hotel to crash in, and has to force herself to come up with some kind of drivel more profound than, "Um, it was a book on CD, and um, roads are long."  On the topic of books on CD, here are a few that might pop up in the not too distant future, since we both picked out a few.

-Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
-On the Road by Jack Kerouac (I thought it was appropriate, so sue me.)
-Pride and Prejuidice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen

In addition to these, since the Wood County Public Library will be on furlough when I get back from my trip, I made sure to stock up on "real" books and I'm looking forward to plowing through those.  I'm especially excited about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer, because I love the idea of taking a historical figure who has already been mythologized and adding doing something completely bizarre with the figure as a character. 

Gee, I seem to be focusing rather a lot on paranormal books here.  I promise you, it's all a coincidence and like everyone else I go through phases and moods where I lean more towards one kind of a book than another.  If you're interested in books I've read in the past or that I'm planning to read I encourage you to sign up for and add me as a friend on Goodreads.com.  I do have an up-next shelf that I tend to pick books from, but I make no guarantees that they'll be the next to show up in the blog.  Life is full of surprises and I have no idea what I'll decide to read next.