Holy Zombie Invasion Batman!

I am generally hopeless at naming a favourite of anything – I usually say one thing, but add a few hundred on so that they don’t feel left out.

However, there is only one favourite book, and that is Pride and Prejudice. So imagine my excitement at news of this.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
I burn, I pine, I perish. I am going to send a mass email to the world. My birthday is soon and THAT is what I want. Forget world peace, I want brain eating zombies.

Things I can’t afford to do but am doing anyway…

So far this year, despite the BFC (Briony Financial Crisis, localised entirely to my wallet) I have been to see Russell Brand and Dylan Moran.

The Divine Miss Em, who is an enabler, told me about this, and I was physically incapable of saying no. I may be living off tuna, but at least I will be all Beatle-ed up!

The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is Tiggers are wonderful things…

It only took four weeks, but finally the Tigers managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and not the other way around. I put it down to a combination of me threatening physical violence (which is possibly why the parentals kept calling with updates), my friend Tecki turning up in yellow and black stripy socks, and the advent of Robin Nahas, who I’d never heard of, but am the president of the fan club for now.

It was a triumph for humanity. It was good timing actually, as this week fell under the legal definition of C-R-A-P. Fortunately the weekend has been better – I went to see Raymond Crowe with the Divine Miss Em on Friday night which was just wonderful. We went to see The Boat That Rocked afterwards which was also wonderful (and Lordy the soundtrack was amazing!)

Next book on the Fill in The Gaps list is The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble. Looking forward to it, it will make a nice change from Moby Dick before Middlemay. In fact, I might go and start it now, because my lounge room is stupidly cold and there is nothing on TV.

Moby Dick – Herman Melville (Man versus Whale: Whale wins)

I finally my finished the first book in my quest to fill-in-the-gaps, at 1am this morning. Moby Dick – the story of one man’s monomaniacal obsession to take revenge on the whale that took his leg. This blog post – the story of one girl’s monomaniacal obsession to finish Moby Dick despite the fact that it was like reading a brick.

Now that I have finished, I didn’t hate this book as much as I thought I would. Structurally, its all over the place, which was irritating after a while. The story of Captain Ahab’s voyage of revenge on the Pequod is great reading, but it feels like just as you are being drawn into the story the journey stops while Ishamel spends eight chapters talking about how to chase, catch, kill, string up, decapitate, drain and dispatch a whale, or ponders his existance for thirty pages.

It was so hard to read. Sometimes it was very Shakespearian to read (there were even  stage directions in some chapters).  On top of all the jumping around, the story would leap from Ishmael narrating to a long monologue from Ahab, or a conversation on the deck between the first mates Starbuck and Flask, which made it a bit stop-start for me.

I liked the beginning- even the first few pages, where Ishamel lists all the literary whale references the ’sub sub librarian’ could find. Ishamel meeting Queequeg, the noble savage who would share his adventure on the Pequod,  was hilarious.I liked the end (mainly because I was so glad to get there), but the middle was tough. But as much as I whinged about it on Twitter, in the end, I didn’t hate it. There is a lot to like in Moby Dick, especially this:

Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.

It’s paragraphs like that that made up for all the whalekilling. While I did finish the book feeling like I should donate all my money to Sea Shepherds or Greenpeace, I’m glad I read it. It was a literary marathon, but I did it.

Just because I feel some karmic realignment is in order, here is my new absolutely favourite ad (which I point out to my housemate every time I see it, making it not her favourite ad)

Procrastinating my way to the Olympics

Happy Easter gang. I am fairly satisfied that I have made everyone I’ve ever met in my life watch the Sound of Music video. My personal highlight was when three separate people were watching it at work at the same time, but slightly out of sync. It drove one of my bosses mad – so huzzah!

I have successfully procrastinated my way through another week. In my defence, I did wake up one morning and discover that I had uni assignments due (although I procrastinated so well that I haven’t even finished them). I’m also still battling my way through Moby Dick, and I will warn you now, if I put a review up on here it is not likely to be constructive or in English.

Last night I went to see Dylan Moran at the Comedy Festival, and possibly ruptured something as a result. Of all the angry Irish drunks I know, he is my favourite.  Please go watch Black Books and rejoice, as I do.

The comedy festival really is my favourite time of the year. Hopefully if  Kevin07 pays up soon I will partake a bit more (hooray for Prime Ministers buying our love!) but even if he doesn’t I am going to see a taping of Good News Week with the Divine Miss Em on Saturday night, which I’m excited about as Paul McDermott = !!!

And, hopefully, I can rouse up the troops to see Raymond Crowe, who is hilarious, and also a genius. Observe:

It is impossible to be unhappy when watching that video.