What do you think?

The Best Part of Today #93:

Renwed hope in an old industry.

I saw a television ad for the Kindle the other day that ended with the tagline "the book lives on." It may just be me and my excessive dislike for Kindles (not all eReaders, just Kindles), but I feel that statement is grossly inappropriate for the product it is advertising. Concerns over "the death of the book" have stemmed from the creation from electronic reading devices such as the Kindle. Literature may evolve in the form of an eBook, a platform that devices the like the Kindle are perpetuating, but it will always be around. No one is fearing for the imminent death of literature. What is at stake is the printed book, not literature itself. To say that the thing endangering paper books is also something that keeps books alive is more than an atrocious fallacy.

The book publishing world has faced some severe shakeups recently, notably the chain bookstore giant Borders declaring chapter 11 bankruptcy a week or so ago, and is set to close 200 stores, about a third of its locations nationwide. But recently, while reading the same medium that brought me news of Border's financial woes (the print New York Times), I read a very encouraging article about the state of the printed industry called "Books Fly Off Unusual Shelves." In spite of, or perhaps even because of, bookstore closings, publishers have been seeing a growth of revenue from books sold in specialty stores. Boutiques like Kitson in LA, as well as edgy national clothing chains like Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters have experimented with selling "novelty books" in the past. Now publishers are pouncing on the opportunity to sell more popular mainstream books in such stores.

This heartens me, and makes me believe that, like literature, which will always be around in various evolving capacities, bookselling will evolve too, not disappear entirely. I can only hope that this is the case for the future.

The Love Drug

The Best Part of Today #92:

Cuddling.

Cuddling is not just fun, it is a physical human need. It increases the level of oxytocin in your body, the "cuddle chemical" that increases feeling of contentment, affection, and trust. Everyone needs to do it once in a while. A good opportunity for cuddling is while watching a movie, like I did tonight while watching A Muppet Treasure Island. It was a good time.

Gallivanting

The Best Part of Today # 91:

Unexpectedly seeing an old friend.

One of my very good friends from my freshman year texted me in the middle of my second to last class of the day, telling me she was in my dormitory. I hadn't seen her in a good long time, so I was thoroughly excited. We're both Harry Potter geeks too, so it was perfect that tonight I was going to a HP themed dinner with my roommate and her boyfriend, who was driving her for the weekend. After my last class, after dinner and after my roommate had gone, my friend and I, along with two other friends to see HP 7 in our theatre, and then went gallumphing through the rain and talked and did other pleasant things. The best part about it though, was that I thought I wasn't going to do anything tonight. Gotta love serendipity.

Random Acts of ART

The Best Part of Today #90:

GUERILLA ART.

Something that needs to happen more often in my opinion. Today my roommate and I discussed guerrilla art projects we could do with sticky lights (led bulb + watch battery + magnet + tape) and gels (colored transparencies that cover larger lights.) More to come about this later.

Do you have any good (minimally destructive) guerilla art project ideas? Liberal use of the comment box below is encouraged!

Good old fashioned entertainment

The Best Part of Today #89:

Learning to play poker!

Ok, so I've learned to play poker before. Learning is not the problem. If someone says something is easy to learn, you have my permission to slap them because EVERYTHING is to learn. Retaining what you have learned is the hard part.

Now learning poker is a difficult problem for me because anyone who would ever want to teach me are only people who are really obsessively good at it. Then once they explained the basics to me, they would launch into complicated strategy that I could neither understand nor stand a chance against. I would never learn successful strategy because I would always lose. Or I wouldn't get to play, because the guys (and they were always guys) would always want to play for money, which I didn't want to waste (and I would always waste it because I would always lose).

But tonight, my roommate taught me and her boyfriend both how to play. First of all, I had NEVER met a guy who didn't know how to play poker. So that made me feel better, plus hearing it from a girl's perspective just made it easier for me to learn, for some reason. Hopefully this time I'll remember it. I only won one round in the whole game, but it was still fun.

We also played Egyptian Ratscrew, which I won, so there's no way it could have not been fun.

Hvor heldig er det?

The Best Part of Today #88:

Connections you never thought you'd use.

Today my Newswriting class had a guest speaker who was very generous with his advice for students getting into the print journalism market. He also mentioned his mother was in book publishing, so I asked him about getting in contact with her after class.

"Well I don't know," he said, "She lives in Denmark. I don't know if she'd want to talk to you."

Ironically, I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was "I'm part Danish." Which is, in fact, true. My mother was born in Denmark.

"Oh!" he said, "Well in that case, I'll give you my email so you can contact me in two weeks when I go see her in Copenhagen and I'll tell her about you."

We'll see how far this gets me, if anywhere. You never what will give you an edge in this world.

Get ready

The Best Part of [Thursday] and Today #86 + 87:

WARMMMMM.

This is such a wonderful thing, that it takes up two days. For the past week, it has been at least above freezing every day (tuesday was cutting it close, but it was still warmer than it has been). The raised temperature has heightened everyone's mood too, including mine. As I walk around campus, I see fewer scowls on heads bowed to the wind and more genuine smiles, faces turned upwards to bask in the sun, like sunflowers. (Did you know sunflowers always turn towards the sun? And that they are called tourne-soleils in french? You do now!) You simply cannot be in a bad mood on sunny day. Or at least, it's a little harder. For one thing, everyone is very pleased to see the snow slowly recede, thinking this will remove the necessity to tip-toe around sock-soaking slush piles. Unfortunately, the snow is not uncovering the green lawns of summer but rather revealing a new hazard: mud. But remember, even this has it's merits: if the ground is muddy it means it isn't cold enough to be frozen. So set your countdown clocks, if you haven't already, because Spring is on its way!

Get it? It's punny!

The Best Part of Today #85:

Puns.

First of all Better Book Titles. I particularly liked the Dictionary, Joy of Cooking, and the Lorax.

Second: Improv. Every time I do improv, I always wonder why I don't do it more often, because it's so fun. This time we played Speed Dating, and I was a pirate. Why couldn't young Captain Hook see the movie? It was rated Arrr.

Third: Foreplay, or the Art of Fugue. This is one of the many short one-acts in the play collection All in the Timing, and it is one particularly filled with much sexual innuendo and other wordplay and jokes.

Nerdfighteria, and all the kingdoms therein

The Best Part of Today #84:

Long Nerdfighter conversations.

I love talking to other nerds. It reassures me that I'm not the only one. And not with my friends whom I know are nerds, but especially other people that I don't really know.

Today I had conversations Spirited Away, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Shawshank Redemption, and the nature of being a Nerdfigher in general with at least 4 people I don't talk to on a regular basis. It was curious and rather pleasant string of events, not least because of their surprise factor.

Good night, Moon: the Sequel

The Best Part of Today #83:

Getting up early.

Beating the sun out of bed really gets a bad rap. But I only get that feeling when I'm actually trying to peel my eyes open and tear myself out of bed. Once I was up, showered and fueled with a ham and cheese omelet and homemade cocoa I was ready to go. I read my newspaper in Starbucks, and had hours until my first class. And that was only the beginning. There really is so much time in a single day, if only one knows how to use it. I enjoyed it so much, I think I'll do the same thing tomorrow.

As another update, here's how our mini-plants are doing.

Not too bad. I do not have a green thumb all by myself; my plants tend to die despite my utmost care. Fortunately, these little guys are under the joint custody of my roommate and I. It's amazing what a little cooperation can do.

HOTTT (courtesy of sara)

The Best Part of Today #83:

NERF BATTLES.

Also,

SNOWBOARD KIDS.

That is all.

This just in: That Did Not Work

The Best Part of Today [Thursday] #82:

Succeeding in a doubtful adventure.

To clarify, what didn't work was taking the reminder off my phone. As my second consecutive incident of forgetting to post proves, I am incapable of remembering to post the BPoT with a physical reminder, so back on it goes.

What did work was an improbably adventure in only an hour's time. Between 4:45 and 6 p.m. yesterday, I had to go back to my room, retrieve a book that had to be returned to the library, eat dinner and return to where I started for my next class. I didn't think it was possible, especially since I intended on taking a bus back to my room because of my previously injured knee and took that took a very long time to get even close to my destination. Also, the book return was a far cry from the ease of dropping it in a designated slot. For some reason, the library had no electronic record of me checking it out, and thus charged my friend (who had it before) a $15 fine. I didn't know how long that was going to take, making it hard for me to efficiently plan out my time. But somehow, I achieved everything I needed to and got to me class perfectly on time.

What can I say? I'm not sporty but I do like fun

The Best [and Worst] Part of Today [Wednesday] #81:

Playing Racquetball.

This is a complicated one. First of all, I didn't post yesterday because 1) I took the daily reminder to do this off my phone so that the only days on my calendar that would appear in red would be days I have play rehearsal or something (instead of all appearing red, reminding me to write in my blog every day). 2) I was out playing racquetball until 12:30 a.m. 3)Even if I had remember to write in my blog last night, I probably wouldn't have because I was nursing my racquetball wound.

You see, being invited to play racquetball was my first time in the gym on campus (gyms kind of weird me out cuz they're sweaty and germy and smell exactly how they sound). Not that this really matters, but I just want to point out that I'm not a very sporty person. That's why it surprised me how much fun playing Racquetball is. It's very simple really, you're in this relatively small but high-ceilinged room and all you have to do is hit the ball against the far wall and get the heck out of the way so someone else can hit it.

But, not being used to this sort of thing, it kind of doesn't surprise me that my knee to this unique opportunity to resurrect an old injury and pop out of its socket while I chased wildly after the little blue ball. It popped back as I fell down, but it still hurt like the dickens.

So on the one hand, I was proud of myself for playing this sport for the first time, which was really fun for a while, but on the other hand, popping my knee out (and then walking back to my dorm) was definitely not a very pleasant activity. Oh well, there's a good side and a bad side to everything.

Is gumption the word I'm looking for?

The Best Part of Today #80:

Facing my fears.

A small social fear anyway. When I walked into my Creative Writing class today, there was one seat in between both the guys I secretly like. At first I passed by it, not having the guts to just sit there. But as I did so, I saw that the only other seat that would afford me a good view was right next to some weird guy I didn't know. Might as well take the seat next to the guys I like. Normally I wouldn't do something like that with such gumption, but I was proud of it, even if it was a small victory against shyness.

Always remember your roots.

The Best Part of Today #79:

Reading my paper New York Times in Starbucks.

It's times like these that feel like such an artsy-farty, scarf-wearing, mocha-sipping liberal. But that's perfectly okay. Especially after hearing my own mother say "I don't really see anyone reading the real newspaper anymore," I proudly brandished my paper pages, gladly rubbing my thumbs into the inky newsprint and inhaled the delicious aroma of newspaper-and-coffeeshop. Yup, it's good to read a real newspaper.

I deserves mention that I spent the majority of the later afternoon in the same place, reading my library copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Pages yellowed with age, softened with use, creased by dog ears, I reveled in the non-electronic-ness of it all. I buried my nose in the antique and inhaled deeply no less than three separate times over the course of the afternoon. Even as I type this blog post on the battery-operated slab of metal and plastic we call a laptop computer, I say it's good to remember where it all came from. Good ol' fashioned paper, 100% tree.

Well, gosh

A while back (remember back when we had these things called classes?) I wrote an "image poem" for a creative writing class assignment. I was reluctant to have a poem be the first piece of my creative writing that I showed to my class, but it actually turned out pretty well. All of my classmates gave similar comments that were simultaneously helpful and pleasantly surprising. I decided to post it here for anyone to take a look at, if you felt so inclined. Keep in mind, I do not consider myself a poet, so it's totally fine if you think it's a pile of rubbish.

I stand at the window, watching the glass

Icicles, snowflakes swirl and glitter in the sun

The luminuous shaft shimmers on the snow,

and warms my nose, the crest of my cheeks,

my closed eyelids.

There is nothing but the slight warmth

on my face, until the spray hits it.

The salt smells tangy,

a drop spreads sharp spikes across my tongue.

Hair bun runaways wrap in abstract patterns around my slick neck

The sun on my bare arms, but my legs are goose-bumped,

The spray slips past my shorts and down my ankle

I squish my toes in my soggy boat shoes.

The rigging strains and snaps,

a rough line chafes my hands, spilling wind from the sails.

We’re slowing down-another boat comes up fast

They have the windward tack, the right of way

And we have to get out of theirs

A shouted order, my fingers fumble

to pull the line, push the tiller

They’re close; will we make it?

But no,

I’m wrapped in a robe of white,

and glass,

the sun on the snowflakes,

and my face.

Wild for Oscar

The Best Part of Today #78:

Plethora of Oscars.

It's funny that certain names have recurring in my recent activities. For example, reading the short story contest submissions for the Long River Review; a significant number of them had characters named William. Today however, I was dominated by Oscars. I started reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde the other night and it has me absolutely enthralled as I progressed through more than half of it today. Afterwards, I watched Wilde, a movie about the flamboyant writer's life. Immediately following that, Alicia and I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with the Dorian Gray as one such League member (turned villain). Curiously, so much attention is lavished on Gray boyish face, golden-hair and fair complexion, i had almost forgotten that the League's Gray was rather more Gray, older and with long dark hair. A curious casting choice, but then, how often have films (especially mediocre, albeit enjoyable ones) ever shown a consideration for close details to their respective books?

In consideration of another Oscar, I read in the new york times today that there is a new Children's Museum opening in Maryland, featuring Elmo, Big Bird, the Cookie Monster, and of course, Oscar the Grouch. Additionally, there's been a big hullabaloo over which movies one should see at present because of how many academy awards nominations it has garnered. With the Oscars less than a month away, I'm eager to see all the lauded films I have thus far missed.

Typewriters bring people together

The Best Part of Today #77

Making an unexpected connection.

I was really excited take this Publishing class, but I didn't know how I felt about my professor. At first he seemed egotistical and unfriendly, but today we actually discussed mutual interest in book conventions. Then I saw he had an old Underwood typewriter and a sword, which we chatted amiably about and he invited me to come back before class sometime to see his other typewriter. It was very pleasantly surprising.

Snow fall

The Best Part of Today #76:

Other than having two snow days in a row, finding out my roommate like The Fall!

The Fall is an very artistic movie that one can only appreciate with an open mind. Otherwise it will just be a really weird movie, like it was to my mom and and sister when I went with them to see it at a little run down theatre in Norwalk that plays experimental films. But I thought it was beautiful. It is a truly amazing artistic achievement. The only problem is, the only other person I knew liked it was the person that told me about it. But today, while watching the very strange Terry Gilliam movie The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, my roommate and I discussed other strange movies. I had told her about The Fall before and she hadn't recognized, but talking more about it today jogged her memory and she realized she actually had seen it. Not only that but she really likes it! It was an uplifting moment to know that I'm not alone in my strange artsy film choices.

Thank you, weather gods

The Best Part of Today #75:

Snow day number four.

It's the fourth time in 3 weeks. I haven't had a full week of classes since school started, and that's saying something as I always have fridays off. (Let's not forget the first day of classes was cancelled). Today was a nice laid back day during which I got to catch up to all my classes' crazy syllabus adjustments. The best part, though, was still holding All in the Timing auditions even though classes were not held. That would have been the best part of my day even if the classes weren't cancelled, but I would have shown up late because my last class ended a half hour before auditions started. No such trouble today.