The Original of Laura

My friend passed along this link to me a couple days ago to a New York Magazine article about Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura, his last uncompleted work.  I've read Pale Fire and Lolita by Nabokov and enjoyed both of them (well, as much as you can enjoy a storyline like Lolita's) & after reading that article, I have this sense in me at this moment that every second I spend not driving to a bookstore to buy it is another copy lost, and by the time I muster up the strength to get there, they'll all be gone.  So I just wanted to let all of you people who read my blog out there know that this book sounds like a must-read, or a must-own, anyway.  A lost gem that was stored away in a safety box at a bank for 30 years while Nabokov's family tried to make a decision about what they should do with the manuscript: burn it (which would be adhering to his wishes) or have it published.  I think Sam Anderson put it well in the article when he said, "I’m still undecided about the ethics of its publication. (In his gratingly arrogant introduction—about which probably the less said the better—Dmitri Nabokov offers no real justification for his decision.) But from a purely selfish standpoint, as a reader holding the book in my hands, I’m glad Nabokov was overruled."  I cannot completely agree yet, because I haven't held the book in my own hands, let alone read it, but I'm happy to have the opportunity.  And with that, I'm off to buy it before everyone else in the world reads my blog and goes out to buy it for themselves! 

Manifesto Information, cont'd.

Upon further inspection of the red piece of paper, I found a phone number, email address, p.o. box number, and website for "Manifesto."  I still don't know if it's a novel or a collection of stories or poems or whatever else, because I haven't moved past the red piece of paper yet, but if you are intrigued by my short description in the long post 2 posts ago, then here are a list of places where you can find Manifesto for yourself: http://www.dedrabbit.com/

Support Manifesto, I guess?

Oh, yeah, and also...

I started the 29-day Giving Challenge, for obvious reasons.  You should give, too!

A Million Apologies, But Anyway!

So I suck at this blogging stuff but whatever.  I have a new project (or 2).  I went to visit a few fine folks in Western Mass Halloween weekend.  On Sunday, I was walking around Amherst before I left and my host took me to this record store he loves (I think it may have been called Mystery Train and I think there MAY be one of those in gloucester, mass as well, but anyway) and while I was there, waiting for people to finish buying things, I notice this white paperback.  Nothing is written on the cover or the spine; there is no title page; there are no clear partitions between sections, chapters, stories.  So obviously I was intrigued and felt compelled to buy it because it was $5.00 and why not?  I recently finished Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk and wanted to start a new book, so I decided to go with the mystery white book.

I opened it and inside there is a red piece of paper folded up.  In big type, sideways on the page, it says "MANIFESTO" (presumably the title of this work), and in much much smaller type on the top of the page it says "Manifesto is."  This is followed by titles upon titles upon titles, starting with The Catcher in the Rye and ending with the movie Koyaanisqatsi (which I really need to watch again).  I am making it my goal/project to be able to check off each listed work in this paragraph.  I will recreate the list here and if I have read it in the past 2 years, I will consider it done.  Movies I will rewatch regardless of the last time I viewed them, and I'm not sure if there is music involved, but I'll listen regardless of time, as well.  Here it goes.

Manifesto/my literature/movie consumption for an undetermined period of time is: The Catcher in the Rye, Fight Club (book or movie do you think?), Trainspotting, Junky, On the Road, The Sun Also Rises, Go Ask Alice, The Bell Jar, A Clockwork Orange, Fear of Flying, Tropic of Cancer, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Stranger, The Outsiders, No More Prisons, The Trial, Bomb the Suburbs, The Journey is the Destination, Leaves of Grass, A Separate Peace, Savage Inequalities, Passages, The Road Less Traveled, The Bluest Eye, Cherry, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, The Great Gatsby, Journey to the End of the Night, Giovanni's Room, Flaming Iguanas, Hunger, Crime and Punishment, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, War and Peace, Demian, Siddhartha, Rule of the Bone, Beneath the Wheel, Fast Food Nation, My Side of the Mountain, Man's Search for Meaning, Things Fall Apart, The World According to Garp, The Red Balloon, The Phantom Tollbooth, Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, My Antonia, Thy Friend Obadiah, The Little Prince (I'll read Le Petit Prince), Jonathan Livinston Seagull, Hamlet, King Lear, The Odyssey, Catch-22, Peace Pilgrim, The Basketball Diaries, Winesburg Ohio, Bread Givers, Into the Wild, Becoming Anna, You Can't Win, The Lord of the Flies, The Chocolate War, Night, Wuthering Heights, The Secret Garden, Don Quixote, The Last Bongo Sunset, White Noise, The Fountainhead, Moll Flanders, Harlot's Progress, Pilgrim's Progress, Les Misérables, MAUS, Paul's Case, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Ferdinand and the Bull, The Giver, Steal This Book, all works by Bukowski, Vonnegut, Kafka, Noam Chomsky, Steinbeck, Dickens, John Fante, Camus
films: Kids, Drugstore Cowboy, If..., Kes, Natural Born Killers, Wings of Desire, A Thousand Clowns, Baraka, The Last Picture Show, The Razor's Edge, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (I didn't know there was a movie for this, I will trade Fight Club the book for Fight Club the movie and The Unbearable Lightness of Being the movie for the book), It's a Wonderful Life, Life is Beautiful, A Man and a Woman, Crumb, Vagabond, In the White City, La Dolce Vita, Five Easy Pieces, The 400 Blows, Clerks, Spun, Spirited Away, The Color Purple, Il Postino, Donnie Darko, Julien Donkey-Boy, The Breakfast Club, Jules et Jim, The Journey of Natty Gann, Swept Away, Heathers, You Can Count on Me, You Can't Take It with You, Office Space, Old School, Rushmore, Permanent Vacation, Stranger than Paradise, Time Bandits, My Own Private Idaho, Empire of the Sun, Bonnie & Clyde, Edward Scissorhands, Midnight Conduct, American Graffiti, thirteen, Girl Interrupted, Explorers, Swingers, The Flight of the Navigator, Harry and Tonto, Deconstructing Harry, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, Harold and Maude, The Goonies, Good Will Hunting, The Truman Show, Scent of a Woman, American History X, Benny & Joon, Sonny, A Beautiful Mind, Reality Bites, Mad Max, Apocalypse Now, Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, American Movie, Love Story, Igby Goes Down, Being There, The Legend of 1900, Out of Africa, Sophie's Choice, Bleu, Blanc, Rouge, Swing Kids, The Land Before Time, The Graduate, Shane, Stand By Me, Arcadia of My Youth, Man with the Movie Camera, Dogtown and Z Boys, Giant, The Never Ending Story, Citizen Kane, Platoon, The Killing Fields, Dark Days, Streetwise, Goodfellas, Hotel Rwanda, Born into Brothels, Hud, High Fidelity, Life of Brian, Brazil, Broadcast News, Newsies, Thelma and Louise, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Garden State, 24 Hour Party People, Koyaanisqatsi

So there you have it.  There's the list.  Every time I complete one, I'll write a review or commentary of some sort, and repost the list, taking away the completed film or book.  I'm going to TRY to have it all completed by year's end 2010, however, with all of the "all works by" authors, I might have to take some extra time.  We shall see.  I see a new library card in my future though for sure.

Before I start these though, I'm going to read the little white book that inspired this, Manifesto.  If anyone feels like joining me or if you're just looking for some  "new" books to read, movies to see, comment and let me know.

On another note, I started this blog last night.  So that's my second project.  A 50,000+ word novel in 30 days.  If anyone's interested, hit me up on Twitter (the link listed in the side bar OR http://twitter.com/makeshiftkatie), comment here, email me, message me in some way before Monday, November 23 (the start date), and I'll add you to the OFFICIAL ROSTERRRRRRR.  Go to that blog for more really exciting information about the novel-writing project.

Have a great Wednesday everyone!

In the meantime...

I've been trying to be fairly active on my tumblr account lately (it's just easier) so visit that link on the side if you're interested.

A Note on My Slacking

Okay, so I'm overly aware of the fact that it's been exactly a month since my last post. 

I'm even more overly aware of the fact that it's been 8 days since I was supposed to write a 29-type list.  I have had a TextEdit doc of ideas going for those 8 days. 

Lastly, I am also overly aware that I went to Maine a couple weeks ago, and while there I broke my music challenge.  Now at the time I didn't consider it a break.  I never made this stipulation, but I think it should only count when I'm alone because forcing other people to listen to that shit is just cruel, cruel, cruel.  I left on Beyoncé before going to Maine and I haven't picked up since I've been back.  Even worse... I've listened to other music.  But in my own defense, I've barely even done that.  Also, part of this whole challenge was for me to hopefully make some elimination decisions in the end.  Instead, though I simply continued to download new music, that I wasn't even allowed to listen to because it didn't come in the first 2 letters of the alphabet or something and so I was just growing my collection and making no headway on fitting any of that onto an iPod.  So, the night before going to Maine I just went ahead and unchecked a LOT of music.  Blink-182 (except select songs) is gone.  Stand-up comedians, gone.  Things I've listened to in the past and know I'm never going to listen to, gone.  However, there are a lot of things on there still that I probably COULD uncheck (the whole Pussycat Dolls CD(s)), but since I haven't listened to them really yet, I don't want to make that executive decision. 

So, anyway, this is all just to say, to all of my fans.  I AM SORRY.  I have failed.  These things happen with me, more often than not.  I will pick up where I left off though, someday, I will.  And when I do, I will continue, starting with Beyoncé's "Listen" and moving on (or moving backwards as needed depending on new artists) as originally planned.  Today is just not that day.  I spend too much time at home to not at least listen to music I feel like listening to. 

Expect a list soon though, I'm trying to complete a couple and figure out which to use.  Amanda Dolan said it best: twenty-nine is a daunting number (for lists).  The first one came easily, but it's already proving to be more difficult than I expected.

Peace.

Music updates

So it's been almost exactly 5 days since I started my challenge (still not sure if "challenge" is the right word for it) to listen to my whole music library in order from A-numbered starts, etc.  I have only listened to 16 hours, 36 minutes, 51 seconds, and counting of music.  And I just added a lot to my library tonight (thanks to my good friend Ms. Caitlin Cullen).  So that means I have to backtrack and listen to Amy Winehouse, but I figure I'll wait until a CD break (post-Avril?) to do that so I know exactly where to pick up.  Anyway, this has been a slow moving project to say the least, and I still have no real ideas of anything interesting to do with it.  But I have taken some preliminary notes (when I remember to) and I figure at the very least I'll share them.
Things I've learned:
- Amos Lee is a male singer, and a pretty good one at that (John Legend-y?)
- Andre 3000 of Outkast actually sings, and not badly either (unless the Love Below singer is not him)
- Apples in Stereo are annoying.  Can you feel it? I don't know and I don't care. 
    - Energy sounds like Jenny Lewis

So.. rereading those here makes me realize they're not really all that interesting, but that is why I need YOU to give me ideas.  Because I am all dried out of them, it seems.  So please, to all my adoring fans, give me a project that I HAVE to stick to so that I can expand on this rather pointless assignment I've given myself. 

That's all for now.  I have been in the process of reading James Joyce's Ulysses for over two months now and have not made any real progress since coming home, so I'm going to try to fulfill one of my goals from my September 9th post and READ ULYSSES!!!!

Goodnight to all.

Music.. Challenge? Help Me Decide!

So I was thinking the other day when I was browsing my music library that there are a lot of bands on there that I haven't listened to even once and that that is fairly disgraceful and completely unacceptable.  In order to right this wrong, I am going to listen to every item in my whole music library consecutively from A-No Artist, which extends beyond Z and artists that start with numbers!  My conditions are not that I have to have music playing at all times, but that every time I do want to listen to music, it has to be in this order, no skipping, no replaying, no cheating.  This also only applies to the music library on my computer as it differs from the music library on my iPod (due to space restrictions) and trying to continue on my iPod will be too complicated.  However, if I am near my computer and want to listen to music, it has to be from the computer.  I can't put off listening to a certain dreaded artist by plugging my headphones into my iPod instead.(click to enlarge image below; library size specs can be seen at the verrry bottom, so you know what all of this entails.)

Now this may heed a few different results.  If things go well, I will feel that my music library has been suddenly renewed without needing to download something new, even though some particular artists have been at my fingertips for years.  Or I may rediscover some old gem that I've forgotten about.  I will feel like less of a poser for having certain artists on there and have nothing to say about them because I can't even recall their genre, let along music.  On the other hand, I am positive I am going to have to endure several horrible albums, including some stand up comedians (Dane Cook?), untalented pop artists, and others I am embarrassed to say I used to listen to (I would lend an example, but it's too difficult to choose just one).  The positive side of this effect is that I may finally realize it's okay to delete the whole Blink-182 discography I've held onto "just in case!" because there will never be a situation in which I'll allow those songs to come from my iPod (no offense to Blink-182 or their fans, they were just the first to come to mind). 

The question is, how can I make this more interesting?  How can I give you something to read about this experience?  Or is it a dead subject after this post and I should just ask you to wish me good luck?  If you have an idea to make this challenge extend beyond the challenge to my ears, heart, and brain (btw Oxford Comma is winning, so far) and turn it into a project, etc. then leave a comment about it here.  I have already started.  I'm only in the beginning of the "A"s.  So there's still time to give me all of your brilliant ideas and I'll try to think as well.


In other news, it's September 11th, so you know what that means!  Call my grandparents and wish them a happy anniversary!

Goodnight!

Mac Widget Review #1 "Organized"

"Organized," brought to us by the same people who brought us "iStat Pro" has been installed in my dashboard for approximately 14 minutes (although it came out last October, I'm slow I guess).  I love it already.  In that 14 minutes I've been able to delete 3 other widgets from my dashboard (sorry iCal, Stickies, and World Clock) and well I guess that's all really.  But how great?

Most of the reason I stay away from installing too many widgets is because I have limited screen space and I don't like having to shuffle things around (take my iTunes library for instance - I could never own an iPod smaller than 30g and even that has reached its limit & it was very painful for me when I had to start manually selecting songs).  But with this widget, so much space is freed up on my dashboard!  It has the functionality of iCal, World Clock, Post-its, and To-Do Lists, but takes up the space of a calculator (pictured below: four different screen shots from the widget).  Now I have room for at least four sizable widgets and maybe even a couple smaller ones.  I mean, obviously you could fit a million widgets on your dashboard, but if you're like me and don't like overlapping, this widget really helps you out.

(click for larger image)

Also, it's free (like most widgets), but iSlayer encourages donations, so donate!  Not that I've gotten there yet, but I'm unemployed and currently missing my debit card, so there's really not much I can do for them.  My donation is this free plug I'm giving to the small circle of people who read this (and I know most of you are Mac users).  So if you're poor, too, but want to help iSlayer, you can send your rich friends a link to this and we can all feel better about ourselves, and I can start to feel like an internet celebrity (even though that's not my goal). 

So, go to http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/ anytime relatively following this post date and you should be able to find "Organized" right there on the front page (that's how good it is), but if you're reading this to catch up on all my posts now that I'm a famous blogger and you need to know how humble I was when I started, then just do a simple search on that same link or from the iSlayer website directly and you, too, will have a cleaner and more efficient dashboard!

p.s.

i just have to make note that the last post was my 9th on this blog (including imported Paris ones), on the 9th day of the 9th month in the year 2009.  coincidence?  you decide.

twenty-nine goals, big & small

1. finish redoing my résumé
2. clean/reorganize my room
3. e-mail professors to keep good standing for references
4. write more in blog
5. write more in tumblr
6. write more on twitter
7. write more in journal
8. write more in cw journal
9. read Ulysses
10. learn to cook
11. 200-sit up challenge 
12. rejoin gym
13. find a job (preferably one with health care)
    
14. study for GREs
15. spend less time online (conflict with goals 3-6, 22 and 13?)
16. keep in touch with and/or visit friends that aren't in NY
17. eat more healthily
18. start saving money
19. go to sleep earlier
20. floss more often
    
21. keep speaking/reading/listening to French
22. email French family
23. figure out my stance on the Oxford Comma to facilitate consistency
24. utilize futon or chairs more and bed less
25. go to museums I haven't been to and also to ones I have
    
26. start taking books out at the library, THEN buy them if they're worthy (will help with goal 18 and will help me not have to repeat goal 27 at a later date)
27. get a bigger bookshelf
28. drink more water, less soda
29. dance when no one is watching.live.laugh.love. (cheating? 3-in-1?? Oh well.)

not in any particular order, except maybe some of them.

Lessons from the Disney Channel

Since being home, I have had the opportunity to babysit my 4 year old sister ("4 and a half!") for the past week before she begins kindergarten. In the mornings, before she starts dragging me to the pool in the afternoon and before my mom and step-dad become insistent that it's a beautiful day and she needs to be outside, we've passed the time watching ample Disney Channel shows. So, I thought I'd write a post to let everyone in the world out there above the age of 14 (or maybe I should be more generous since it's likely there are people older than that watching Disney still) know what kind of Lessons the kids (et al.) are learning these days.

• Spanish is a legitimate language to learn and therefore it will be featured. French may be featured as well, but only "bonjour" and some combination of "hon hon hon," "ze" instead of "the," and "ah oui, c'est bon." Read: for mocking purposes, not learning ones. Read: Disney knows nothing.
• On a related note, characters who speak some Spanish are always Mexican. And mostly know how to count.
  
• Related note numéro deux: "Let's count with Mickey Mouse, because when it comes to count, we can trust Mickey Mouse." Rough quotation, but the part in bold is what's important. Here we learn two things, we can trust Mickey Mouse with all of our counting needs (even though he probably has one less finger) and Disney doesn't know how to conjugate verbs.
• Animation can only be in extreme 2-d (for a trendy sketch/water color effect), computer animated, or one of these paired with the occasional real-world shot of grass or the sky, as these animated characters pass through.
• A lesson we've all learned a million times: duct tape fixes everything. What Disney tells us, however, is that that rule is not limited to our own personal objects. When leaves start to fall, you can tape them right back up, too.
• Hannah Montana is as annoying as you'd suspect.
• In general, making fun of foreign countries is appropriate when your audience is between the ages of 2 and 6.
• Four creepy older men are the entertainment of choice for aforementioned audience. (Remember The Wiggles? Now there's the "Imagination Movers.")

There may be more to add by the end of this week, or day, but there's a starting list. As you can see, the youth of today is learning a lot of great things. I can't claim that the Disney of my day was much better, but I didn't catch onto that bandwagon until I was a bit older than my sister, so I had quality television like Sesame Street as a precursor. They know what's up.

Well, until my next inspiration...

Internet chains

I have a severe problem I think (well, anyone with tabbed browsing probably has something similar) with starting at one website and ending up somewhere completely different. A 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon type of thing. So this is my most recent:
Tumblr: here I view Amanda Dolan's reblogged post with a video promoting 500 Days of Summer
Google: 500 Days of Summer
IMDb: 500 Days of Summer, again.
Photos of Joseph Gordon-Levitt --> leads to a picture with him and this bittie Isabel Lucas
IMDb her --> Trivia (because there's no bio and I don't know who she is) --> car crash with.....
Shia LeBeouf --> films....
New York, I Love You

And with that I decided to stop and write this post, but anyway I guess it's not that crazyyy so much as a great way to inform myself of really important information! Because now I'm just excited that I know about New York, I Love You that's coming out some time in the near future (after Paris, Je T'aime). This clarifies that they are the two coolest cities in ze vorld! I hope they use LCD Soundsystems song, "New York I love you, but you're bringing me down" somewhere in the film.

Okay must go ride bikes to river in 95/100º heat. woo! Au revoir bitches.

Seriously, number twenty-nine

..as in, the twenty-ninth blog or other means for writing I've given myself. Let's just see if I can keep up with them all:
1) Twitter - easy enough, little pressure to do so, anyway. (@katieklein)
2) Tumblr - could be easy enough, if I remember to share things I come across in the internet world/my head (fancy-claps.tumblr.com)
3) This - (just wanted to keep w/ the "T"s) Well, I have to come up with its purpose first, I guess. And, okay, I know that that's not exactly 29, but I just have a thing with that number (a self-centered thing, but whatever, a thing's a thing, amiright?) and I wanted to be able to remember the link for this because "whatupparis.blogspot.com" didn't stick for me. And really, it is kind of almost the 29th thing, because all means of writing don't exist on the internet. And I have about four or five (if we're including notes, travel journals, etc.) outside of this dangerous world.

So, I need some kind of system. Or rule (role, really) for using this blog, to make it worthwhile. Plz make suggestions. I already have in existence the things mentioned above, in addition to a journal of collected letters, a creative writing (ha! ze most pathetic) notebook, a journal of the dear diary variety, and a notebook that contains different lists, a wine log, and random quotes to remember (there are actually several of these in existence, but only one with me right now). So what is left? What's suitable for the internet and potential public viewing? Things to avoid suggesting: pop culture news (don't follow it) - poetry (not good enough) - can't think of more now, but fr real leave me some comments or something and I'll get on top of making sure I actually use this.

Okay that's it for now. Give me motivation to come back later. Au revoir