me and the girl

JLB rationalizes God

Picked up a collection of Jorge Luis Borges's fiction, and opened it to a random page. This is what I read:

"I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine , eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer—not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.—is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists."

JLB, that doesn't make any sense, man.

hell day 3

Third hell day of the three-day hellathon. Morning. Took pooch for a walk. Didn't bother to put a shirt on, or underwear, because that's not the kind of day today is. It's overcast and windy. Chilly. Kahlua's turd was bigger than mine usually are. She is a beast.

Went to dinner with the family last night. It was fun. We joked around, there was no serious family talk. Grandma and I shared a Mudslide.

At work we play this song by the Jackson 5, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." It bothers me because the kid in the song has two options: 1) His mother is actually kissing his father, and there is no Santa Claus, or 2) His mother is a whore. It's interesting that a child's revelation that there is no Santa Claus would coincide with his understanding that his mother, his totem of purity, actually has sex (!) on a regular basis.

BOLANO

The word of the day is BOLANO. There's an en-yay on that N but fuck it, I'm tired and lazy because Black Friday kicked my ass.

I will keep this short: please go out and read Roberto Bolano. I'm working through his whole oeuvre before I get to "2666", which he never finished before he died. Words I've seen used to describe it: apocalyptic, noir, pulp, sci-fi, raunchy, violent, inventive, brave. It's essentially five novels in one, all circling around the murders of the women in Ciudad Juarez, right over the border from El Paso.

This is a big deal. I'm in the middle of "The Savage Detectives" right now. All I can compare it to is when I tore through "Infinite Jest". Never been that engaged in words since.

saturday and sunday

I decided to say "Fuck it" and go with the flow. I wasn't going to kill myself at work, trying to do three things at once. Occasionally I did, it can't be avoided, but I didn't freak out about it. At the end of the day I felt much better and I think overall people were much nicer, as they could sense that my vibe was much more laid-back.

BLOOD'S A ROVER

From Sobel Webber Associates:

BLOOD’S A ROVER
by James Ellroy
(Knopf, Fall 2009)

Foreign Publishers
France: Rivages
Germany: Ullstein
Italy: Mondadori
U.K.: Random House Century

At long last—James Ellroy’s greatest work of fiction.

BLOOD’S A ROVER is the third volume of Ellroy’s Underworld USA Trilogy. Volume 1, AMERICAN TABLOID, covered 1958-’63 and ended with the JFK snuff in Dallas. Volume 2, THE COLD SIX-THOUSAND, covered Dallas to the MLK RFK hits and their hellish aftermath. BLOOD’S A ROVER takes us on the wildest historical ride of them all.

There’s a horrific armored-car heist, replete with a stash of missing cash and mysterious emeralds. There’s J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes moving into their psychopathic dotage. The FBI’s out to infiltrate two evil black-militant groups in L.A. The mob wants to plant lush hotel casinos in the Dominican Republic. There’s a voodoo vibe in Haiti, and, brother, it be bad gre-gre. Two rogue cops and a kid private eye are locked in a consuming fury to claim the Red Goddess Joan.

Sex and history—on an unprecedented scale.

Raging love stories, the clash of race and ideology, the moral fire of a great American time.

Playboy will publish a 10,000-word excerpt in this year’s Christmas issue on sale Nov. 10.

Alfred A. Knopf will publish BLOOD’S A ROVER in fall of 2009.

Feel the all-encompassing heat!

Fear this book.

I must have this. Now. Going out to buy Playboy. Need...excerpt.

flight of the conchords

Rios loves Flight of the Conchords. I pretend that I don't like them. But they're funny. Sometimes. She rented the DVD, which is now overdue. She's watched the season...twice. She listens to it in the car all the time. It's not so bad, but the songs aren't really good song-wise (like Tenacious D, for example), so it's basically like listening to a comedy sketch over, and over...

Bought some stuff at Atomik Pop, today: