It's time for the great book update! Yes, I've read more books for class and I have this to say about them: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William Gass is officially the worst book I've ever read. For a while it was the Color Purple. This semester it was Excellent Women. But Gass' book surpasses them all by being completely incoherent trash from page one to page whatever. It's five short stories, none of them with any redeeming value except possibly the first 30 pages or so of the first story. Awful. Awful. And then there was Herzog by Saul Bellow which was an enjoyable book, really very slow in places, about a guy who writes a lot of letters to people that he never sends because his wife divorced him. Then he gets over it and stops writing letters. It's more entertaining than that, but at about 400 pages it's really slow until the end, and even then it's pretty slow. Not getting my seal of recommendation either. However, this book I'm reading now, Them, by Joyce Carol Oates, is extremely good so far (89 pages in) and is the first book since the first book we read this semester that I've actually wanted to keep reading. So after I post this I'll go read until midnight.

My cable works. Danny worked some magic on a little splitter in a closet and bam, TV. This has served to remind me how much TV sucks.

I was sure going into the playoffs that it would be the Cardinals and the Yankees in the Series. At this point, I'm still pretty sure it'll be the Yankees, because God hates the Red Sox, but the NL is tough. I'm amazed that wild card Houston is keeping up with St. Louis, but I can only assume it's a fluke and that in the next two games the ridiculous Cardinal lineup will come to life and score hundreds of runs. I have to root for the Cards because I feel they're the only team who can put up a fight against the Yankees, and like any God-fearing red-blooded American male, I hate the Yankees. Laura likes the Yankees. I can't believe that. But sometimes we have to accept these things and move on.

I'm no longer driving the Audi. If I had all the money put in it, I'd have simply taken a metal baseball bat and a chainsaw and whatever other tools of destruction I could find and taken out 3000 bucks worth of agression on the cursed piece of shit. But since Dad had all the money in it, someone's getting a tax write off when it gets given to charity, though if the charity knew what they had coming to them, they wouldn't accept it. It'll probably blow up killing lots of little children or something. It's the devil's car. Now I'm driving a Civic, which isn't nearly as nice as the Audi, but it runs, making it infinitely nicer than the Audi. I salvaged my stereo out of the old Audi though, so one of these days I'll have a CD player in the Civic, and that will be very nice, because the radio blows ass. Except sometimes for the college station, which has played Lagwagon, Strung Out, Atmosphere, The Postal Service, Elliott Smith, and lots of other stuff that you don't expect to hear on the radio. So that's where I keep it. 90.5, KCSU.

Tomorrow the new Me First and Elliott Smith CDs come out. While some people have a problem with Best Buy (and I do too because their customer service is balls) I will be purchasing the CDs there because time has shown that my local independent shop gets CDs late and expensive, whereas Best Buy gets them on time and on sale. One of these days Metroid Prime 2 will come out and I will buy that and play it nonstop until Resident Evil 4 comes out, at which point I will resign from the human race in order to play that game without break until I die of hunger.

Lots of good looking scary movies coming out, most importantly Saw, which looks freaky as shit. Hopefully I'll get to go see that this weekend. I saw Ghost in the Shell 2 down at an independent movie theater in Boulder on... Saturday. I have no clue what the hell happened in that movie, much like after four viewing of the first Ghost in the Shell I have very little idea what happened, but it was fantastic visually and for that alone I think everyone should go see it on the big screen. My 8 bucks was spent on amazing eye candy, and that's fine with me. Maybe when it comes out on DVD I'll watch it a few more times to figure out what the story is.

Cam and I went and saw Against Me! on Friday. It was awesome. Against Me! is awesome. The first band, True North, was boring verging on bad, but they only played like 25 minutes so I didn't get violent. The Blood Brothers were surprisingly good after a few songs when I forgave the singers' ridiculously high voices (especially the blond) and spastic gay dance moves. They put on a good show, and when the brunette sung in a normal voice and the blond screamed, it actually sounded pretty good. And they had a few damn good songs in there where they slowed down and actually played music. And Against Me! killed. Of note, they played The Disco Before the Breakdown for the first time in the four times I've seen them, they had one new song I'd never heard before which was quite good. But there were some notable absences in their set (which was the longest set they've played), including the awesome electric Unsubstantiated Rumors and the other new songs they've played before. But it was a good set. Except for the crowd jumping on stage during the traditional closer We Laugh at Danger and making the band not be able to sing the song. But it was a good time. Then we rode in the HOV lane on the way home, which is this crazy little deal that runs between incoming traffic and outgoing(?) traffic and just goes straight when the highway turns. So we probably saved like a million minutes taking that. Then we passed a bad accident which was cool. That was a good night. We got from south of Denver to Fort Collins in like 45 minutes it seems like because Cam drives like a madman.

The shower door broke today when I got out. Now we can't get in. I told the landlord to get his/her ass over here and fix it, but they were like "nuh uh, we'll take our sweet time." So hopefully they come tomorrow. Otherwise I'll have to go shower with Cam, and I doubt he'll appreciate that (or at least he won't admit it). And that's all.