I finished the Rushdie yesterday, and got glasses, somewhat frustrated driving, and I (re)-read the entirety of The Crying of Lot 49. What a terrific little (in size) book. It has some very obvious similarities to those other big books of his I read, mostly in terms of his themes and interests (Maxwell's demon, conspiracies in general), but the experience of reading it is completely different, and most of the time it was hard to remember they were written by the same person. In GR "paranoids" is a verb, in this it's just a rock band. And I listened to Nuggets 2 and 3 while I read it, which seemed very appropriate, especially with the cover on my (1967) edition. For a while my parents were in the room too, working on their new laptop or looking through glossy car promo materials, and remembering or not remembering the songs from Nuggets. It was fun.

Then I stayed up until about four, finishing the book, playing a little Super Mario Bros. on Martha's brand-new original version Nintendo (Danny bought it for her for Christmas for about fifteen bucks), reading pitchfork reviews (much more entertaining than they have a right to be), and e's journal (for the first time in months), and reading my entries here from November 4th-10th (what a glorious, heady week. hooray for mini-crushes), and then tackling chapter two of Cloudsplitter; all fifty pages of it. I put on "and then nothing turned itself inside-out," brewed up some licorice tea, and cuddled up to it. Thankfully he got to the narrative right away. It reminded me a lot of East of Eden; besides being big and epic, it has a similar wholesome, American, family-oriented, male-driven storytelling tone and focus. I think I like that. Let's see if he can sustain its interest for the next 700 or so pages.

Lots of e-mail: Rebecca and Nori about hangers, blinds, jelly-roll pans (they're like shiny cookie sheets with sides, i use one for making my bûche); Nori and Brigid about Yo La Tengo; Brigid and Alyssa about Salinger and Wes Anderson (and their similarities), etc. Today I baked springerle while listening to "Dig Your Own Hole" (great cooking album), we barely had any sugar, and at first I mistook instant hummus mix for brown sugar, and then just ended up substituting powdered. They look like they'll come out well. The mail came late, bringing two more big books; "Giles Goat-Boy" (funny non-parallel blurb on the back says Barth is like Mephistopheles, or Batman) and "The Language Instinct" (read the first chapter, fun and intriguing if a bit preachy, should be a nice counterpoint to all my epic fiction.) I'm making good use of my remaining time, largely by not doing anything of much importance with it. They keep predicting snow and almost none of it arrives (nothing on the ground anyway.) I've been playing scales and arpeggios, which are better than I might have hoped, although I can't remember all the fingerings for the latter. Trying not to think too much. Just feeling.

who is this doing this emphatic type of alphabetapsychedelicfuckin'[?]
(well, what do you think he's saying?)