I’ve been on a reading spree ever since April or May. I’ve always been something of a bookworm, which is itself a family trait, though this year has seen me buying books of all sorts like they’re going out of style (which in some respects they probably are). My goal when I buy a new book is to read it in no more than ten days, something which I’ve failed at numerous times recently, though I’ve been consistent at spending no more than two weeks on any given novel. Unfortunately my book queue seems to grow exponentially month after month (no thanks to Amazon Prime’s free two day shipping) and I doubt I’ll ever be a fully satisfied reader. So, in the spirit of a recent post from the Scud, I present you with what has been draining my bank account these last couple of months. (note: I haven’t read all of these…yet)

The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon

Falling Man and Point Omega, Don DeLillo

Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis

Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, short story collection edited by Jeffrey Eugenides

Looking for Alaska, John Green

Dogeaters, The Gangster of Love, Danger and Beauty, Dream Jungle, Jessica Hagedorn (I went through a crazy Hagedorn phase last month)

Charlie Chan is Dead, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, short story collections edited by Jessica Hagedorn

Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (loved Dubliners and A Portrait, haven’t grown the balls to tackle the latter two yet)

Readers guides to both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake

The Millenium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest), Stieg Larsson

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell (I’m a huge Mitchell fan)

Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami (this is Murakami’s first novel and it’s damn near impossible to find it in the states outside of very specialized stores, so I’m especially proud of this one)

Fixer Chao and The Disinherited, Han Ong

Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

Ilustrado, Miguel Syjuco

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, you know who

Also, I got myself a subscription to Zoetrope: All-Story

On the table to buy next month:

VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Philip K. Dick

This little gem

After Dark, Haruki Murakami

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolaño

and a lot more that I wrote down in a notebook I can’t find at the moment

Anyone have any recommendations for me? Hint: I haven’t read anything by Salman Rushdie or Khaled Husseini yet.

It’s easy for a new novelist to get lost in his craft, making complex story lines that go nowhere, creating multiple characters of varying depth, and writing clever sentences for the sake of it. I was worried that Miguel Syjuco’s debut novel would fall into that trap, especially after chapter one, when I realized I was going to delve into multiple narratives at once if I was to finish the book. I was pleasantly surprised, however, when after reading the novel I was not left feeling empty or that the story was in some way incomplete. The structure of the book may not be to everyone’s liking, though, especially to those who are expecting story lines to culminate somehow into some super-ending.

Syjuco never gets lost in his words at any moment, and writing a social commentary about the Philippines in the guise of a murder mystery made reading the novel exciting. The author has the talent of interjecting humor (as well as plain out crude jokes) to add more flavor, but the entire time–though the protagonist’s name is in fact “Miguel Syjuco” as well–it is the respective character speaking, not the author. Syjuco let’s the novel do the talking as opposed to trying to interject himself into every word in the book. I look forward to seeing more of the author’s work in the future, as this was a really good way for him to start.

This was originally posted on my Goodreads page.

As I’ve already written about one of my true loves–tea–it’s about time I get around to writing about coffee. This may or may not have anything to do with my French press coming in last week, but I have been meaning to write something about it, especially after visiting Four Barrel some weeks back.

Until a few years ago I didn’t think much about coffee. Its sole purpose was to keep me awake at work, and I’d accomplish this with multiple cups of whatever kind of cheap coffee I could find, as well as adding a ton of cream and sugar to it. Somewhere along the line, though, I started enjoying the taste of black coffee, which quickly evolved into enjoying the taste of good black coffee.

Currently my coffee brand of choice is Four Barrel, which I got hooked on after ordering their Bolivia Misque (or Misqui?). Drinking quality coffee, unlike tea, is a relatively inexpensive endeavor. Though I’m sure there are coffees that cost the equivalent of one’s first born, you can easily buy a good, tasty 12 ounce bag of beans for less than $20. I personally have never spent more than $16 dollars on coffee before, whereas with tea I’ve never spent UNDER $20. The only expensive-ish thing about coffee is the equipment, which really isn’t that bad, but it can get pricey. Generally speaking, the most expensive coffee related item you’d buy should be the grinder. Coffee is dependent on two things to come out tasting right: good water and a good grinder. A good grinder should have burrs instead of blades, as it is easier to control the size of the grind with burrs (blades kind of just do whatever they want). This is especially important for presses. Coffee making machines probably do cost more than grinders, but I don’t see much use to them unless you want mediocre coffee in a little under the time it’d take to use a French press. Also, French presses just look cooler than machines making coffee for you. Speaking of presses, expensive ones do exist, but–again–I see no need for spending a lot of money on something when a cheaper yet well-made press can do the job just as well. I spent about $40 dollars on my press, and it work just fine.

Before I get to talking about how to make coffee with a French press, let me talk about making coffee with a dripper, which really is just a low-tech version of the bulky coffee makers which are inside just about every house and office in America. I don’t have anything against them really (I use one from time to time), only that a lot of the oils which give coffee its trademark taste are lost in the brewing process (all filters, even the good ones, extract oils out of the beans). Another downfall with drippers is that most people don’t know how to use them. They just pour hot water over the beans and watch as their mug fills up with a second-rate drink. The key to making an okay cup with a dripper is to constantly stir the slurry as the water’s flowing through. If you do it right, using one of these little devices is an okay way of making coffee, but still it’s inferior to a French press.

Making coffee with a French Press:

1. Before you even touch those beans, start heating up the water. You should only grind the beans when your water is ready, because again this has to do with that coffee oil I mentioned before. The ideal temperature water should be is about 190 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Some people will go a little warmer than that, but be careful not to pour boiling water into the press; it just messes everything else up. If you don’t have a thermometer to tell you how hot your water is, don’t worry because all you need to do is heat up the water until it just starts to boil and then stop the heating process. In about two minutes your water should be good to go.

2. Start grinding, but only when the water’s ready. Presses require a more coarse grind than other coffee making methods, and trust me, the coarser the better, at least if you’re like me and don’t like a lot of residue in your coffee (though I do know some people that actually do like some major grit). The coffee should be ground to a uniform size, which is easier to do with a burr grinder than with blades. Now, some of you may be thinking “But WCS, why can’t I just get the people at the coffee store to grind it to the right size if all of this is so important?”. The answer again has to do with coffee oils. Coffee bean oil starts to disappear shortly after it’s ground, so grinding it then waiting days or weeks to use the stuff will result in a flatter taste. Ideally, the time between grinding the coffee and it going into the press should be so minute that you never get to enjoy the aroma of the beans. The amount of the ground coffee that goes into the press should be about 3 tablespoons, but this is all up to you. Experiment to see what you like.

3. Pour in the ground coffee then start pouring in the water. You now have about four minutes until the coffee is ready. A common mistake people have with making pressed coffee is during this step. Don’t put the lid on yet. Instead, pull out a chopstick or long spoon and stir the slurry a bit. When the four minutes are almost up, stir a little more.

4. When it’s time, take out whatever it is you used to stir the slurry with and put on the press’ lid. Start pushing the strainer down, but do this slowly, as going too fast can cause some of the coffee to come out, resulting in scalded hands. Also, be sure to push it straight down. Going even a little bit diagonally will let the grindings float to the top.

5. When you’ve pushed the strainer all the way down, enjoy your well made coffee. Black coffee doesn’t really go bad to the point of making you sick*, but it does expire fairly quickly. You have about 20 minutes until it gets stale, so start drinking it now.

*Black coffee stays good for a long time, but the moment sugar or cream is added to it, bacteria starts growing.

When I was considering what new TV show I should start watching, I asked around for suggestions. Three different people said this:

Person 1: “Lost, dude, it’s definitely worth the time catching up with the episodes.”

Person 2: “Lost is well worth the time and effort it takes to get caught up to speed.”

Person 3: “You haven’t seen Lost yet? It will change your life.”

Lost it was. I spent all of March and the first week of April watching Seasons 1-5, and then a weekend getting caught up with the episodes in this current (and sadly final) season. It really was worth the time and the many hours of my life spent on watching episodes then rushing off to read about what the hell was going on (which I honestly still don’t know).

I can very well say Lost is my favorite TV show that I’ve seen. Ever. And as my two or so faithful readers know, WCS loves his TV. The show–rich with symbolism, twists , AN EFFING SMOKE MONSTER, and consistently good writing and acting (particularly from Terry O’Quinn as John Locke and Michael Emerson as Ben Linus)–has managed to keep me thoroughly entertained even when things get slow or a bit too ridiculous (the writers must’ve been on some drug when they wrote season 5). In my eyes, even my other favorite TV shows lack in overall quality when I compare them to Lost. House, Glee, Fringe (and old shows like The X-Files), they’re all good, but Lost is great.

Considering this is the last season for the show, the latest episodes have had this incredibly powerful impact on me. Take the newest  episode for example: from the opening scene til the end, every shot, every sentence seemed to be meaningful and important (making the normal hour running time feel like 15 minutes), and it gave the impression that if you looked away from the screen for just one second you’d be missing a ton of answers to questions you’ve been wondering about for years.

There are only four more episodes left, with the finale being a two hour mind fuck which I’m greatly anticipating. I know not every question I have about the show will be answered, but by jove, that’s part of the its magic.

I turned 22 on Wednesday. Unlike last year when I was inexplicably depressed for growing a year older, this birthday was a lot more normal (?) and decidedly less drama filled. I was fairly busy that day, trying to take care of errands I’d been procrastinating on for some time now. My mom took me out to lunch at a Japanese restaurant where she works, which was nice. Afterward I spent the rest of the afternoon with Jordan at a tea place before it was time to go to dinner with the folks. It was an overall nice birthday, albeit a little on the low key side, but that’s how I like things.

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I used to get really sad on my birthdays. I’m not sure why, but I never looked forward to that day. It wasn’t for what one would expect would be the normal reasons (more responsibility, getting older, etc.), it’s just that with my birthday came a 24 hour bout of depression that would more or less ruin the day. After turning 21 I remember not liking myself for a couple days after wards, but then I read a blog post by Esco (which I’ve consistently been reading in one shape or another since about 2002) . In this particular post he was talking about birthdays and how he can’t stand people–particularly in the 20-something age group–complaining about them. He was right: there is absolutely nothing for me to complain about. I’m healthy, I have all my fingers and toes, I don’t have any hideous face scars, I’m in a good relationship with my girlfriend, I have a roof over my head, etc…. all these are reasons for me not to complain. So last year I cheered up and told myself to not worry about birthdays anymore and just be happy that I’ve made it through another year without any terrible disasters occurring in my life.

From now on I’m never going to have a bad birthday again if I can help it. There are always reasons to complain, yes, but more reasons to be happy.

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Normal posts next week, promise.

So see ya’ll in a few days.

P.S.: I’m also thinking about redoing this site (and maybe tinkering around with some things on my film blog). So expect some changes within a few days.

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I also got a shit load of books and movies last week. I probably shouldn’t buy as much as I do, partially considering my pay check isn’t so large but also because my book and movie (and Netflix) queue is getting bigger and bigger each day. I’m planning to catch up with everything as much as possible during spring break next week, but knowing me I’ll do nothing but watch The West Wing.

Movies I bought:

– The Departed (Martin Scorsese); Always loved it, felt it was time to own it.

– Munyurangabo (Lee Isaac Chung); Watched it last year and thought it the best thing I’d seen at all for some time. Despite many other films of its kind (which aren’t many really), this one has retained its replay value (which I can’t even say for The Dark Knight).

– Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul); I love Joe’s films. I figured if I didn’t own any of his films (I bought Mysterious Object at Noon some months ago) I’d eventually get tired of always renting them from Netflix when I could be getting something I haven’t seen instead.

– Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Same as above.

Books I bought:

– Shutter Island, Denis Lehane; The movie was pretty good, but this book had been on my “to read” list for a while. I didn’t really buy it, as it was an early birthday gift from my sister.

– Less than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis; I saw some girl reading it at Teazer’s a couple weeks ago and realized I’d never read any of Ellis’ books.

– Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami; I gave away my last (and heavily annotated) copy to a friend while I was still in the Philippines. I figured since it’s probably the book I’ve read the most (I’m figuring upwards of 40 times) and wouldn’t miss it so much, but I was wrong. It was time I own it again.

– Film as Art, Rudolf Arnheim

– The Films of My Life, Francois Truffaut

– I Lost it at the Movies, Pauline Kael

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Two of my friends have started a new blog project called Blogivation. It’s purpose–I believe– is to profile bloggers of all sorts and types. I may be biased, but I do find it all interesting. My sister has already participated in it, as I have too. If you have a blog and think this would be interested in this, contact my friends on the website and get involved.

After my not-quite-a-new year’s resolution to give up soda and other carbonated drinks at the beginning of the year, I’ve found myself getting increasingly interested in tea. I’m not talking about that shitty bagged tea either; I mean real, loose leaf, “I’m going to have to forego buying new movies this month because I’m going to buy the expensive ass tea” tea. I have been moderately interested in tea for a couple of years now, but since I decided to limit consumption of my drink of choice, tea has taken on a totally new meaning for me. I mentioned to Jordan the other day that tea is an expensive hobby if you want to take it seriously, and I’m discovering more and more how much money it takes just to make a good cup of tea. But since the process of making tea is far more enjoyable and relaxing than just pouring a glass of soda, I’d like to think all the dollars I have invested into buying tea are be worth it.

I’ve developed a sort of process for making tea. It’s by no means my own personal method, as I just about lifted all of it from this guy, but it’s nice to think of it all as “my own way”, even if it techinically isn’t.

1. Gather all the materials. Kettle, tea pot, whatever you’re going to drink out of (I despise tea cups, mostly because they’re too small, and coffee mugs just don’t feel right when you drink tea out of them; my mom bought me a couple of mugs from Starbucks which aren’t too big nor too small, and I thank her everyday for them), and your tea tea.

2. Fill the kettle with slightly more than the amount of water you’ll consume when drinking the tea (so if you’re going to drink one cup, fill the kettle with a cup and a half of water). This is my own personal rule, as other, more scientific, ways of making tea just haven’t felt right for me. Though the quality of tea is only as good as the quality of water you use to make it, unless you live in the damn jungle (or rural California), your normal tap water is actually better to make tea with than bottled water. This is because tap water is filled with more oxygen than bottled water is, and water with a lot of oxygen makes for a better tasting tea.

3. Start heating the water in the kettle. In fact, start heating everything you’re going to use to make the tea with. Place warm/to hot water in the tea pot and whichever cup you’re going to use. Introducing hot tea to a cold tea pot/cup makes for tea which cools down faster, and as any tea drinker can tell you, hot tea is good tea and lukewarm tea is just depressing.

4. For every cup of tea you’ll be making (assuming you’re drinking out of a man’s cup, not some small ass tea cup), use 2 decent sized spoon fulls of tea (or one teaspoon for every 8 ounces if you want to get technical). Contrary to what most tea snobs will tell you, you’re not breaking some strange commandment by adding more or less tea if that’s the way you like it. Drinking tea is a very personal experience, more so than drinking wine or even coffee, so make it to fit what you like, not what someone else does. Experiment around with making tea to find out what you like and dislike.

5. Toss the hot water out of the tea pot and add the tea. Many tea pots have infusers in them, but I don’t like using them for the purpose of infusing. In my experience, tea tastes best when it has space to move around while steeping, and infusers–even good ones–don’t really allow this to happen. So, if you can, take that infuser out and set it aside because you’re still going to use it later on.

6. As a general rule, I do not let my water boil long. I either catch it right before it’s boiling (when there’s a lot of steam/noise coming from the kettle but no bubbles) or let it boil only for a short while (less than a minute). This really depends on what tea I’m drinking. I’ve discovered that black and herbal teas taste best when the water has boiled, and green teas taste best when the water is stopped from heating right before it’s about to boil. Again, experiment to see what you like. But whatever you do, don’t let the water boil for a long time. As I said before, water quality for tea is all about how much oxygen’s in it, and water that’s boiled long just doesn’t have that much of it left. I shouldn’t need to explain this further.

7. Pour the water into the tea pot (which should already have the tea in it) and wait. The steeping time for tea depends on the particular tea you’re drinking. Green tea tastes best when steeped for around 3 minutes, black teas taste best when steeped for 4-5 minutes. Do your homework to find out ideal steeping times for whichever tea it is you have. Generally, though, any more than five minutes is too long, though some herbal teas do taste better if steeped for five to six minutes, I’ve learned.

8. Get rid of the water placed in the cup earlier on and get that infuser ready. A little note about infusers: the good ones have either a wire or metal mesh which allow all water to escape just fine, but keep most of the tea and its debris from going into your drink (Samovar sells a nice selection of infusers for all under 20 dollars before shipping). Ceramic infusers’ holes are just too big and let almost everything go into your tea, and no one I know likes drinking tea leaves. An average infuser should fit into just about any cup, so go ahead and place it there and start pouring your tea into it.

9. Take the infuser out of the cup and start drinking your tea. I don’t know of any serious tea drinkers who put sugar or any other additives into their tea. A good tea shouldn’t need anything but itself to make the consumer happy. The same goes for coffee, but that’s for another day.

10. Washing your tea supplies is nothing hard. The infuser you can wash without any soap and it’ll be just fine. For the kettle and tea pot, hand wash with just a little soap, rinse thoroughly (no one likes soapy tea), and dry with any clean towel. Some teas are made to be reused, but most aren’t. Again, do your homework to find out if you should throw your tea out or keep it. Disposing of your tea is no problem. Toss it down the sink (it won’t clog your drain, don’t worry) or put it in the trash, whatever you’d like.

That’s really it. I’ve said this numerous times throughout this post, but making tea is all about experimentation. It’s sad when you try something new with your tea and utterly fail, but when you experiment with something and discover the tea is better this new way, there’s not much better than that.

No one will probably read this entire post.

I’ve been meaning to write about an experience I had with an old high school classmate last Friday. It’s taken me a while to get my thoughts straight, let alone find the time to sit down and right something on a more personal level. But here I am now, on the final part of a caffeine high, listening to Nujabes’ Ristorante Mixtape Side A, and trying to act my age and not fall asleep at an early time.

I don’t want to get too into this though, just enough for me to put into words the emotions I had and have had since that terrible night, so I can bid adieu to it once and for all.

One of the few friends I’ve kept since I graduated high school in ’06 and I enjoy unwinding on Fridays at one of the only real cafes left in town. Whereas I’ve severed ties with almost every person I was friends with in high school (for various reasons), him and I have stayed fairly close since then. Last week he texted me to inform of the arrival of a certain girl class mate, whom I just so happened to had been mad in like with during high school, and who reciprocated my feelings as well back then, to varying degrees of intensity. We had a rocky–and occasionally verbally violent–relationship as friends, though during our senior year we were quite vocal of the feelings we had for each other, knowing all too well nothing would ever come of them, mostly due to some shady ass things I did to her our sophomore and junior years. After high school, however, we both moved on, I got involved with other girls of course, particularly the one I’m with now (and have been with for almost three years). She moved out of town and got with a guy who was five years older, and who had an established enough career. Between graduation and last Friday we hadn’t as much even glimpsed a shadow of each other,  and maybe messaged each other–at most–five times through Facebook.

My friend tells me last Wednesday that she wants to see him and I that coming Friday. I have no qualms against this, of course, as I saw her as a good friend, albeit one I probably don’t know well anymore. How terribly right I was (about the not knowing her part, not the good friend one).

She became the most bitchy, irritating girl I have met, probably since middle school (which had a female population consisting ONLY of bitchy and irritating girls). The entire night was a waste of my time and precious energy, constantly trying to rebut her comments towards me without sounding defensive. From the moment she entered my friend’s car to the hasty get away I achieved much later on, I was resisting the urge to open up a box of crazy on her ass.

She wasn’t the most attractive girl in high school, at least not until the latter part of our last year, but it was well known that after she moved away she got much better looking; curves filled out, face straightened up, hair looked less crack whore-ish. Unfortunately, she kept reminding my friend and I of how “hot she’s gotten”. Understandable, considering the deep insecurities the constant teasing in high school probably gave her, but nonetheless annoying to no end. She kept referencing the high school crush I had for her back in the day, giving me the “you could have had this” attitude the entire night. Though good looking now, she was by no means the hottest girl I have seen lately, and even if she was, the constant self-made calls to her physical attributes deserved more scorn than positive attention.

(On a slight side note, at one point in the night she grabbed one of my hands and inexplicably pressed it to her boobs. What she thought either of us gained from that is still beyond me, as right before she was trying to convey to us how mature she now is, and also I’m not a 15 year old boy anymore.)

Throughout the night she was trying to convince my friend and I of how much “better” and “mature” she’d become, but all I could see was an insecure teenage girl in a decent looking 21 year old’s body. Everything she did was “so great” because it was different than what my friend and I did, though with a little questioning you could tell she was bullshitting almost everything. She proclaimed to drink all the time, but after one and a half cranberry vodkas she was already buzzing far away from us. She talked about the “sophisticated” and “amazing” films she watches now, though the most non-mainstream films she could think of were Garden State and Lost in Translation, which in fact aren’t very non-mainstream at all. She treated sex as some secret only she and her friends were in on, and disbelieved I had ever had any sexual encounter in my life (words can’t express the amount of shock/anger I had towards that, which resulted in me resisting the urge to say something back and risk sounding utterly defensive). And she never missed a moment the entire to criticize me AND my girlfriend, for no other reason than to just be a bitch.

Despite all of this, I barely said anything back to her. Even now, a week later, I still don’t know why I didn’t defend myself more adequately. I only piped up when unnecessary words were said about my girlfriend, who doesn’t know this girl from my past and doesn’t deserve anything said about her (luckily most insults were aimed at me and only splashed onto Majal a couple times). The only logical reason I can think of for this silence is I had a case of “revertigo”; I reverted back into the me I was in high school. I was an ass to her back then, yes, but deep down I [the high schooler] was always trying to get on her good side. Last week it seemed sub-consciously that may have been the case, except I had no rational reason to do so. I have no more feelings for her, at least none which would’ve resulted in anything more than a closer friendship. But now that ship’s sailed, and all I have left is this feeling that, no matter what, I will never talk to her again, hopefully never see her again, and if all else fails, I will not let her trample on me (or my friends) the way she so freely did last week. I don’t care what becomes of her and I pray that she never enters my life again.

I’m happy without her, and even more so, I’m happy with the people I call friends now. Fuck her.

This was way longer than I expected.

I’m tired of being sick. I’ve been sick on/off since July, when I had a more extreme version of what I currently have right now I think. I’ve had a headache almost everyday for a while, probably caused half by a sinus infection and the other half by a pillow that prays to be replaced. Needless to say, physically I’ve been feeling mighty crappy recently.

BUT

I’ve been having a nice life recently. Stable/okay paying job, school’s started,  and my weekends have been thoroughly fun, which is a good step up from my anti-social attitude I had for the latter part of ’09. As long as my plate is full I’ll do well in mostly everything I do. My classes aren’t particularly hard, but one of my sociology teachers is damn boring, however her redundant sentences do add some unintended entertainment to an otherwise boring teaching style (ex. “I expect you to come to class having read the reading material for the reading we will read for that day’s reading.” I am not kidding about this). I predict I will have a good semester finally, after a long string of terrible ones, and I think I deserve a break every now and then.

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Part 2 of the 09-10 television season has begun. It may not be my most noble hobby, but I do enjoy watching TV. Not just any TV show, and not even on TV per se, but I do derive some excitement out of well crafted, well acted television. Though last year’s output of good films was low, I think television had an excellent showing. I’ve already voiced my pleasure of Glee, but Modern Family (ABC) and Community (NBC) are both picking lots of steam. The former started off strong and has had consistently good writing since then, but I almost gave the slip to Community when it began, as its jokes seemed forced and unnatural, but after the five episode mark it started hitting more than missing. Jersey Shore (MTV) has also caught my attention, later than for other people, and for probably different reasons than most of its audience (it’s like watching a train you know is about to crash). House and Fringe, both on Fox, have been okay, the latest episodes of both having probably been the best of their run this season so far. How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, both on CBS, finally started rising from their long and occasionally dull plateau (this goes double for HIMYM, which just went back to the Mother arc). That’s all the TV that’s interested me so far, aside from Sunday night Fox, which is a given. Since I’ve been so busy recently I haven’t had the time to watch these shows the night they come out, so I save them all for the weekend, along with back episodes of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

I’ve also wanted to watch some older shows that I’ve been interested in before. I’ve only seen the first two seasons of The Sopranos, and that was when they were still new too, so buying the show season-by-season seems like it’d be a worthwhile venture. Other shows’ seasons I’d like to buy are The West Wing, The X-Files, Lost, The Wire, and maybe–just maybe–Heroes. All seem enjoyable enough to buy, watch, and keep.

I also want to read lots of books. :]

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I’ve started using my Tumblr a lot more, so if you have one too you can/should follow me. The stuff I post is usually just daily fluff I’ve found, but I do enjoy the artistic porn that’s come by my dashboard, amongst other things.