blahFrom
jirel:
I haven't touched a John Steinbech book since high school. For all that I would read voraciously, I never actually went for the classics unless forced. It's probably not a stretch to say that if it weren't for high school English, I wouldn't have encountered his work at all. That said, I liked a lot of what I did end up reading. I still have very pleasant memories of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. I can recall that whole moment of "Listen, you fellas don' know what you're doing" and thinking, holy crap, it's Jesus and that one scene of Okies pulling up to the diner and the waitress telling them it was penny candy so the father could get a piece for the son and then receiving the huge tip from the truckers in return. Just thinking about it almost makes me want to go out and find a copy. Besides, if I read it this time around it's unlikely I'll need to write an essay afterwards.
Up until now, I had never heard of Travels with Charley, though I've been promised it's cynical. Nothing like a good tale of developing misanthropy at christmas time. In the past, the only travel logs I've read have been by Bill Bryson. They've been incredibly entertaining and afterwards, even I feel a twinge for wanting to follow in the author's footsteps. Considering how much I loathe travel in general and my other issues, that's saying something. I can only hope that Travels with Charley ends up being as spiffy.
From
vala_amaris:To preface things, this package ends up qualifying as the most disturbing thing I have received in the mail EVER. I'm almost certain it'll keep that title up until someone sends me a severed bodypart or something similar.
I probably should have suspected something unusual just from the card. Cats are always an ill omen. It was with a minor amount of trepidation that I unwrapped the item and this is what I found.
It's a cat voodoo doll. Spiffy in a creepy WTF sort of way. Just looking at it, I'm tempted to try to sneak it under someone's pillow just to see what the reaction is. I guess I would need to stick a few pins in it first just for authenticity but I'd love to see the response when someone finds this sort of thing in their bed. It could very easily become the stuff of nightmares if you tried it on a child.
For the time being Voodoo kitty is sitting on my desk, though he has his head covered with some paper. I didn't like the way he was looking at me. Admit it, you wouldn't want him staring at you either.
From
sparklefancy:
Spiffy. I haven't had a desk calender in ages. I don't think it's something I've ever bought for myself before since I tend to get very absentminded about ripping off the days in a timely fashion. Not to mention I'm one of those people who always has only a vague awareness of what day it is. I've never been able to get into the habit of making notes and scheduling events, even back when I had something worth scheduling. I'm thinking that this might come in handy as a header to future LJ entries in the new year. A quick camera shot and upload and it might be pretty spiffy.
I should note that I also got the gift from
smallvictories but it ended up arriving after I had taken the pictures of all the others. I'll try to snap a few shots sometime tommorrow or the next day and edit this entry with its addition. 