I never meant to make you cry, but tonight I'm cleanin' out my closet

I was looking at a list of books coming out this fall and saw that Anne Rice, the pop fiction equivalent of a Pez dispenser, is offering us Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. You know this shit is going to suck, right? It'll rile the holy rollers, I'm sure, but that's not really enough of a justification for mo of her drivel. Seriously, has Miss Anne written anything good since Interview With the Vampire? Hell, maybe Interview is crap, too, because I was young and impressionable when I read it and by "impressionable" I mean "ravenous for anything with a homo-erotic subtext".

When you see Now More Pistachios! on the mixed nuts label you may not be immediately impressed, but then you realize, "Hey, less hazelnuts by weight!" and you're happy.

I haven't mentioned books in a while. I'm slogging through something. It's not so bad, it just hasn't made me want to pick it up at every juncture. I went to a cross country meet yesterday and it reminded me of an old favorite, though. Running hasn't contributed many strong entries to the sports book genre, but Running With the Buffaloes by Chris Lear is one of the best. It details a season of cross country at the University of Colorado. This held a special interest for me because a member of my family is a collegiate All-American in cross country. Trust me that most of what happens will be interesting to anyone, though. It's about running and racing but it's about life. Don't get me started on all my racing/running as life analogies, kids! ::crickets chirping::

I just saw a guy on CNN, a tourist in New Orleans, and he said he was just going to stick around because he's never seen a hurricane. Is it OK that I come away from that feeling better about myself and my long-term prospects in life? Sue me, but I'm always heartened by encounters with stupid people. I was in Orlando during Hurricane Jeanne last fall. Granted it was only a Category 1 when it hit there and was soon downgraded to a tropical storm, but it was still WAY nastier than anything I'd seen in all my thirty some years of life before. Back to our tourist, let's do a little figurin'. x feet below sea level in New Orleans times y feet of storm surge plus 150+ mph winds = u fucked. Hmm. Make sure you report back to us on how that was for ya, bro.

I have a little anecdote that doesn't shine such a nice light on me. It deals with television. You know how I love to suckle at the teat of the cathode ray tube, right? Well, a few years ago, I stunned myself with how resistant I am to weaning. I was in Italy on holiday (I like to say it that way to make me seem more continental). It was a few days into the trip before the jonesing began. It's not like I sat indoors and watched the damn thing instead of experiencing la dolce vita. I was in one of the cradles of our modern civilization for chrissake. I did that, too. Anyway, it was just the one evening (OK, maybe two, but definitely not three!). Not only did I watch television, but I watched it in Italian. I don't speak any Italian. Not only did I watch television in a foreign language I do not speak, I watched Big Brother, or Grande Fratello rather, in a foreign language I do not speak. Let me tell you, their version is way sluttier, way nastier and with way more nudity than ours. It was pretty awesome. Does it help me that I was sipping local wine and eating leftover ravioli while I watched?