Recreational Reading

i played the part of the good grad student yesterday morning and spent some quality time at the library. so now i have a stack of journal articles (all 10 are from aquatic botany, imagine that) sitting on my desk just waiting to be read. it just so happened that all of the old articles i needed (i.e., the ones that i couldn't get online) were from the same journal. and i haven't bothered to download the others.

but anyway, that's not the point. i'm back to my usual bad self (and i don't mean that like, "go on wit yo bad self." i just mean that i'm doing things i shouldn't, not that i'm totally rad or some other long dead phrase popular in the early 90's). yes, i will eventually get to the point. which is this - rather than reading science-related articles that i must read before next week, i have been doing some recreational reading. yesterday, i pretty much read all of charlaine harris's club dead, which i found pretty funny, though i'm not sure it was supposed to be humorous...definitely the best book in the dead series so far. i even stole some quotes from it - "real men always have duct tape in their trucks." "true adults don't have sex just because the other person is skilled and pretty." even out of context, i find these funny and thought-provoking.

this morning i started reading the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy while i walked on the treadmill (i do not have the coordination required to read on an elliptical, though it is a better workout than a treadmill). of course, my renewed interest in this book was sparked by all the recent promotion of the new movie. i never watched the tv series or the older movie (pretty sure there was an older movie) or read the book until now. but i did have the game when i was a kid. i played it on an old commodore 64...those were the days, man. anyway, the intro at the beginning of the book (actually, the one i have is a collection of every hitchhiker book douglas adams has ever written, which makes mine a 5-in-1) says the old game isn't anything like the books, the radio show, or the tv show. but so far, i'm finding the game and the book fairly similar. the book seemed quite familiar right from the beginning. i remembered arthur dent's headache in the beginning (the game was one of those where you type in what you want your character to do and it prints out the results. for instance, i was told my character's head hurt, so i typed in "look in medicine cabinet." the computer then printed out the contents, which included "buffered analgesic." i remember this because my childhood self had no idea what "buffered analgesic" meant. i asked my mom and was informed that this was pain medication - basically tylenol.) i also remembered the bulldozer thing, only when i was playing the game it never occurred to me to lay down in front of the stupid thing. i just let the stupid guy demolish my house and didn't know what do about it. anyway, reading the first few chapters of the book brought back memories. also, the book is pretty funny itself.

i have a tendency to enjoy things that are sort of off the wall, so i like the funny sci-fi thing. i guess maybe i have a weird sense of humor. my favorite part of the movie final destination (apart from the evil dripping toilet water, which kind of creeped me out and made me wary of water on the bathroom floor) was when the blonde chick yells, "drop dead!" and steps off the curb, to be immediately creamed by a fast-moving bus. the first time i saw this, i sat shocked for a second, and then started laughing. i think my mom thinks i'm crazy, but i thought that was really funny. then, when i watched mean girls, and regina george got hit by the bus, i laughed my ass off. maybe i am crazy. i have no idea why i find unexpected bus accidents so freakin' hilarious. maybe i just like to see pedestrians get squished. chad has this war game, and i'm always telling him to run over some pedestrians with a tank instead of shooting them. i intended to minor in psychology in college (but i discovered that i only had to take one extra class to minor in chemistry and took the easier route), so i took 4 psych classes (including abnormal psych), but i have no idea what my weird sense of humor says about me. i would be interested to find out what a psychologist would have to say about my fascination with people getting smashed by buses.

ok, enough. i'm going to read at least a couple of those papers today. now.