Oddity #2

Fairfax county has this thing about “encouraging reading” by putting giant book sculptures in front of public buildings.  Sometimes, these locations make sense–the one I’m about to show you comes from a local library–but often, the reasoning behind the placement is kind of perplexing.  I once found one in front of the Fairfax County Conference Center.  Why?  Who knows.

Anyway, here you go:

Okay, leaving aside the fact that that’s hideous, check out the back:

You want to encourage people to read…and  you’re going to encourage them to pick up…Robinson Crusoe?

Clearly, the people who make these sculptures have never actually read an actual book.

Edited to Add:  Please see my apology here.

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Food Fight

The Boyfriend and I have been packing on some pounds, which is not surprising. I mean, A.) it is winter in this hemisphere; and also B.) the Boyfriend is a self-described “simple Chinese man,” and there I went and introduced him to Italian food. And maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad in and of itself, but I am not, actually, Italian: I am Italian-American, which means that I add mountains of cheese to otherwise blameless dishes.

You’re starting to see how my formerly-scrawny boyfriend might have come by his nascent love-handles.

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Kryptonite. Delicious, Delicious Kryptonite.

My friend Brandy became lactose intolerant in her early twenties, which is just plain cruel.  I mean, it’s one thing to be born deaf, blind, or unable to digest milk products, but to grow up eating cheesecake and to know what you’re missing?  I imagine it’s something like how Beethoven must have felt after he went deaf.  Except that instead of upsetting your landlords by destroying their pianos so that you can play on the floor and feel the vibration, you’re upsetting your roommates by having violent diarrhea every time you open a box of mac and cheese.

 

In truth, I’m a little sensitive about the subject, because there was a time when I thought I might be lactose intolerant–when a little swig of milk could make my stomach turn and the mere thought of ice cream made me want to hurl.  Fortunately, though, I am a quarter Scandinavian, and when I crap, I crap whole sticks of butter.  My aversion must have been the result of stress or a stomach bug or something, because my Viking ancestry quickly reasserted itself and I soon found myself chewing on blocks of cheddar and pillaging monasteries for the fun of it.

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Oddity #1

I don’t have much time to write or review lately, because moving is hard and so is studying for the M.A.T.  I don’t do much actual reviewing, though–mostly I just take practice test after practice test, because I want to feel like I’m doing something, but the dogged acquisition of random trivia just seems…like a complete waste of time, honestly.  I mean, half the time when I miss a question on one of the practice tests, I’m glad. “If I had known the answer to that one,” I’ll think, “I would have had to kick my own ass for being such a nerd.”

Still, I don’t have much time to write, and that makes me sad.  So I thought I’d start posting pictures of my “oddities”:  weird books that I’ve come across.  Here’s oddity number one:

I love the fingers pointing in the corners.  Check it:

So adorably judgmental!

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