As Big As Big Is

This year for Christmas, I went to Virginia to spend ten days with my parents.  My cats, on the other hand, stayed home and spent the holidays with each other.  I had a couple of people checking on them, so they were fine on food and water, yet they just couldn’t help letting me know that they were angry with me being gone for such a long period.  On the night before I returned, they pissed on my bed.  Let me tell you, if you’ve never had a cat piss on your bed, it sucks.  

This wasn’t any bed, either.  It was a pillow top.  Meaning that in no way am I able to just flip the bed over and pretend nothing happened.  I spent the day I returned home scouring the internet with ways to remove cat piss from a bed.  I tried many different methods, but alas, the smell is not completely gone.  The comforter was destroyed, as were the sheets.  But at least I got the stain out, right?  Small victory in this war.

Yet, as I was trying to clean this mess, I was thinking of ways for me to get back at them.  What could I do to just royally piss them off?  Making a cat angry is pretty easy: rub their belly and they all of a sudden become little hulks.  I had to find something better than merely making them angry.  I had to find a way to make them suffer for making me inhale their putrid fumes all day.

I thought about taking a dump in their litter box, so that they would be confused, and hopefully scared, wondering what kind of animal dropped a humongous turd into their litter box.  Thinking about watching them walk slink around looking for this monster poop taking animal made me chuckle to myself.  I once saw a blog where a guy changed everything around; put water in their litter box, litter in their water bowl, and toy T-Rex in the food bowl.  The cat ended up just taking a piss on the floor next to litter; I guess he showed him for messing with his stuff!  I was worried that if I did something similar, my cats would next take a shit on my pillow, and I’d rather not have that happen.

So what could I do?  I thought about shaving my cat into a lion, like so many of my friends have been attempting to convince me for years into doing.  Maybe I could put them in the cat carrier and drive around for an hour (they hate the cat carrier and think the car is just a pre-game to the vet’s office).  Maybe I could tease them with treats but never give them any.  I could always put funny hats on them and duct tape them so they can’t get them off and have to walk around with a pumpkin hat or a chicken hat on all day.  Or maybe…maybe I can go clean up their throw up, as they just threw up in front of me.  I guess they showed me.  Assholes.

Christ.  Apparently I have nothing of interest to write in this lonesome and desolate blog that I am resorting to writing a book review. Seriously?  Although my ability to read has been called in to question on numerous occasions, I can assure you that I am quite proficient in the art of, well, reading, and that I am more than capable of writing a review of the literary merits of the novel that I have recently finished.  I mean, look at how well I wrote those first couple of sentences!  You can’t write beautiful, flowing words such as those if you’ve never read a book!  I, however, understand your skepticism. Regardless, New York Times, be ready to hire me on, because this may be the best damn book review you have ever laid eyes upon. Probably not, but hey, why not reach for the stars, even though you may be too deep underground to see the sky?  There’s wisdom in those words that I just made up, kids - I’m sure of it.

Imagine an American Harry Potter.  Got that in your mind? Ok, now imagine an American Narnia.  Still with me?  Ok, combine the two into one story.  Now here is where I might lose you: add young adult alcoholism and lots of fucking to that story.  Blew your mind? No? Good, lets move on now that I have your attention.

I’m not going to go into a plot summary; that’s insulting to your ability to use Google.  I will, however, go over some pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses.  Be warned:  There are some spoilers, and if you have not read the story, this “review” may very well ruin the ending for you.

The story is wonderfully told by Lev Grossman (the author).  You see this world of magic through the eyes of 17 year old protagonist, Quentin Coldwater.  You see everything he sees from his introduction to the world of magic, to his schooling in magic, and his life after he leaves school.  Its a great coming of age tale where the protagonist is not in any way a saint.  Its very ‘real world’ with a lot of fairy tale-ness of other stories similar to this removed.  That is one of the things I greatly enjoyed about this book.  I mean, in the 7th Harry Potter book Ron said ‘bloody’ and ‘hell’ quite a few times, but if I was fighting Lord Voldemort (one of my personal heroes), or saw a good friend get murdered (poor Fred), you can bet I’d be dropping F-Bombs left and right; English etiquette be damned! 

A couple of notes on Mr. Grossman’s writing style.  A dear friend of mine pointed out that he uses way too many adjectives.  This is absolutely true.  But, at the same time, you would think with that many adjectives he would reach Tolkien level of detail.  Sometimes it seemed to me that he skimmed on details because he seemed so intent on getting to the next part of the story; maybe one that interested him more than the part he was currently writing?  I feel as if I never got a good mental picture of Quentin and his sweetheart, Alice.  I can’t define what their faces look like, except that Alice had black straight hair and that here eyes were sallow when Quentin first met her.  I wished that there was more details in certain areas, and less in others.  Maybe I read over those parts too quickly?  That is a possibility, but even as they got older he never seemed to make clear definitions on what their features were doing.  I know that facial features don’t change that much in 5 or 6 years, but they do change, especially when you go from age 17 to 23 or 24.  But like I said, I may have skimmed over those parts.  If I did, feel free to disregard all that you have so far read.

Lets snap back to reality (take that, Eminem), or the reality factor his book incorporates.  

Grossman’s attention to real world reactions is something I greatly admired in this book.  Yet, the real world-ness was also something that also distanced me from the book.  ”But Steven,” you say “you can’t have it both ways! Its either a good or bad thing.  Make up your mind!”  Trust me, I feel the same way, yet, I wish there was something more fairy tale-y to the story.  I believe my struggle with this culminates at the end of the story. 

I love real world endings in movies: a group of kids wander into the house of a crazed serial killer and they all die, the monster destroys the city and no one can stop him, the protagonist is killed, etc.  These things make me enjoy movies because they sometimes become so over the top that its nice to have a director bring it back down to earth.  With this story, I was pulling for a happy ending the whole time.  When the protagonist fucked it up, then became overly angry at his girlfriend (I said there would be spoilers, but I’m trying to not give details away either), and when they sort of made up, I was stoked.  I thought to myself, “Fuck yeah, Q! You fucked up, and she fucked up too, but you need to forgive her cause you love her, and because it’s your fault that she ended up fucking up! C’mon, don’t be an asshole, be a MAN and deal with the consequences of your actions!  You’re almost there!”  I was rooting for him.  I truly was.  But that “real world” (I put quotations around it because they were in a fantasy land when it happened) stepped in and changed everything.  I felt deceived, hoodwinked, or whatever else you want to call it.  It wasn’t what I expected, which in retrospect, is a great thing.  It feels like lazy writing when the author goes with the standard ending.  Yet, I felt that out of countless stories I have read in my life, none more than this book, and the characters within the pages, deserved the standard happy ending.  

While the ending wasn’t what I had hoped for it to be, I feel as if that is what Mr. Grossman intended: Life isn’t always what you hoped for, sometimes its worse, other times its more than you can imagine, but regardless of what happens, there’s always something new and exciting just waiting be discovered.  You just need to keep your heart open.  Or maybe he just wrote a kick ass book and I’m tying way too much shit into it that really isn’t there.  

You, random person who fell on to this “blog”, read this book.  You won’t be disappointed. 

Oh, and New York Times, I am waiting on my check.

Yes.  I am referring to Hell.  Not because of my office’s wondrous abilities to enact policies that are not ready to be adopted.  Or their ability to make everything so much harder than it should be. No, no, not at all.  Rather, the actually temperature of my office.

See, I’m one of the lucky ones; I don’t work in a cubicle.  I have an office and it’s a pretty sweet office that smells of Green Tea Citrus Febreeze sticks protruding out of a jar of scented oil thing.  It has the little Geico money guy staring at you as you walk into the door, and there is a bobble head Darth Vader judging you as you sit down.  Then you see the bright blue ball with eyes.  ”What is that?” you think in your head, but you don’t know and are scared to ask.  ”Who is this man with half a beard and kinda long hair, yet dressed ever so professionally doing in this office?  Surely he will not speak to me about money?”  Well, I am going to speak to you about money and that blue ball thing with eyes is a Pigmy Puff, which you would know of if you read/watched (read, preferably) Harry Potter.  You would do best not to anger me.  I am known as the Money God in these here parts.

Wait…I got lost.  What was I talking about?  I started talking about Geico money dude and Harry Potter, and lord knows when I get started about Harry Potter, everything else is as important as…well…Nothing.  It’s not important at all.  Harry Potter takes precedence to life.  Hot office!  That’s what I was talking about.  Alright, let’s move on.

My office is pretty awesome, as I mentioned previously, but the temperature is never right.  It’s freezing outside; my office is 102 degrees.  It’s 102 degrees outside; my office is 102 degrees.  I can’t win!  I requested to have it fixed and they said they did, but I couldn’t tell you if they did.  They even showed me where the thermostat that controls my office is located.  The reason why they showed me that is because one day it was 102 degrees outside, and surprise!, so was my office.  It was also set on “heat” rather than “cool.”  Yeah.  Lame.  But I’m pretty sure they’re just messing with me, because though I am able to adjust it from “heat” to “cool”, I can’t adjust the actual temperature.  It sits there, laughing at me, no matter how many buttons I press or the combination of buttons I mash.

I ended up requesting a small desk fan, since i’ve seen it before in other peoples offices.  That was shot down too, as apparently we don’t provide those to our employees who our busy slow roasting in their offices; this is something you bring in from the outside.  First of all: Fuck That.  Second of all: no.  If I dipped my head into molten magma, you can say, “Well the reason why you’re hot is because you are an idiot.  You can buy your own desk fan.”  But I didn’t do that.  If I did, I wouldn’t complain.  Actually, I probably would a little bit. I like attention.  But all I do is come in to the office and “work” from time to time.  Do I not deserve a desk fan?  Some of my coworkers have freezing cold offices.  They sit twenty feet away in a different office.  I refuse to believe the department has an AC unit while my lone office, who seemingly angered God, boils slowly and continuously.

Sometimes the air conditioning kicks on for a couple of minutes every three to four hours.  I can hear the laughter coming out of the ducts.  Maybe if I’m quiet, the air conditioning Gods won’t think I’m here and will continue pumping beautiful cool air into my…crap.  They heard me.

Jack never really thought about the world around him. Don’t think that he was ignorant, not at all; he read the news every morning and was actually quite smart.  He graduated from an Ivy League school with honors and had a great job, stunning wife, and a couple of kids who go private school and will no doubt go to an Ivy League school as well.  Yet, he never noticed the squirrel nest in the tree in his front yard, even though he passed it at least three times a day and trimmed the very tree they lived in every three weeks.

The squirrels on the other hand, noticed him every morning, every afternoon, and every night.  They also noticed him when he came at their home with the loud, whirring, munching machine (as they call it) that took some of the best swinging tree limbs away from them.  They even tried to reason with him by leaving little acorns for him at the front door of his house, but he swept them away as he’d leave for work in the morning.  They thought about learning to write English to communicate with him, but this would take much too long.

Jack was always confused as he’d find acorns at the front door.  He’d look around to see which plant or tree could have dropped them, but they always were in the same place and there were no plants near the front door, so he’d brush them aside.

As Jack accelerated on to the highway to start his commute, he looked over to the passenger seat and saw a note.  It was scribbled poorly and he had trouble reading it, but once he deciphered it, he crashed his car.

At the scene, the police saw the note and picked it up.  They were confused.  It read, “Sorry about your brakes, we figured your car needed to be trimmed.  Love, the Squirrels.”

Don’t fuck with squirrels.

I like zombies.  They’re fun to kill in video games. It’s fun to watch them kill people in movies.  It’s also fun to watch them get killed by people in movies, and yet, I can’t help but feel that the poor zombies are being exploited by the powers that be.  I understand that it is near Halloween as well, so it’s zombies, devil-spawns, and vampires galore.  They’re everywhere. And I don’t mean the “Oh my God the Dead are once again alive! Run for your lives and grab a shotgun on the way out!” kind of way.  More in the “Let’s dress up like zombies and pretend to be dead as we bar hop” kind of way.  It’s sad to see the zombie brought to such a terrible low.

It’s been a pretty quick ascent for the zombie popularity as well.  It’s been about a decade since all the remakes of the Dawn of the Dead, Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, and now Zombie-land.  Apparently it’s the new cool thing to love zombies.  Kind of like how the Honda Fit was cool for hipsters for about two minutes and now they make fun of anyone who was dumb enough to buy it and not lease it.  Is this the path of the zombie?  I hope not. The transformation of the zombie was pretty crazy as well.  They used to slowly walk and say “Braaaaaaaiiinnnnsssss.”  When people were killed by them in movies, you’d shout “If you skipped across the park you would have lived!  I could survive a zombie apocalypse! Seriously, i hope there’s a zombie apocalypse so i could survive it!”  And then you saw 28 Days Later with their running zombies and you weren’t so confident anymore.

All i’m trying to say is that i like zombies and i’m sad to see them become so lame.  Everyone’s favorite monsters these days are zombies.  Why? Cause Woody Harrelson was in a movie with them?  Or cause you think you’ll look hot as a slutty zombie for Halloween?  I once asked a slutty zombie to marry me while i was at Halloween Horror Nights, but that’s neither here nor there.  I just wish they hadn’t become so watered down.

Now please excuse me, I’m going to go play some Left 4 Dead and listen to the Misfits.

About time. The Moon has had it way too easy these past billions of years (thousands, if you’re dumb). NASA has already launched a rocket to drop a bomb into a crater that may contain water. This crater, which is on the South pole of the moon, will soon have a brand new crater inside of it. By bombing a crater, they’ll be able to tell whether or not there is any water because of the water vapor this bomb will kick up (along with a 30 mile high plume of ash). This is a CONSPIRACY! One that i am about to make up, right now.

We all know that the moon has had close ties with Hezbollah for the past decade, and that it has been a haven for terrorists on the run. We’ve witnessed truck and train movements on the Moon increase by 35%. What does this tell us? The Moon is getting ready for a space war. The Moon circles the Earth so quickly, it’ll have the ability to bomb every major city in the world in 24 hours, if it plays it’s cards right. We need a preemptive strike to stop them in their tracks.
The Mooninites have been overly secretive about their nuclear stations. They say it’s for energy purposes, but you and I know, that this is complete bullshit. They have repeatedly refused the UN to inspect the stations, stating that under Article IV of The Inter-Spatial Neutrality and Peace Among the Stars Act (commonly known as the Space Act), that they are not under control of the UN or any Earthly organization. What they fail to realize, however, is that we are all united. Even North Korea thinks that these guys are messed up. And if Kim Jong Il thinks you’re crazy, then you must be fucking nuts.
An Earth as united as we now see it has never before been seen. All the countries of the world are united (except Switzerland, who wants no part of anything, ever) and ready to take on the threat that is the Moon. Even though most countries sent aid to the Moon when they fell into a deep recession, they all have expressed intention to bomb the Moon’s most tactical positions i.e. roads, nuclear stations, train tracks, civilian homes, post offices, schools, grocery stores, government buildings, etc.
An ultimatum has been sent to the Mooninites, though a response has yet to be received by the Global Task Force of Space (commonly known as the Space Spelunkers). If no response is received by the Space Spelunkers, the bomb will be dropped and the ship carrying the bomb will also crash land on to the Moon. The bombing will take place at 7:31am Eastern Standard Time.

Get your 10+inch telescopes ready for a bombing of the Moon that will undoubtedly go down in history as the best bombing the Moon has ever seen.