Feb2908 Books
I spent the last three weeks reading this ungodly long novel. I originally picked it up in some random airport after I had just finished Into the Wild because there was a short passage about John Franklin in it. This book was apparently about John Franklin as well.
What I really got were 766 pages in grueling detail about John Franklin, Francis Crozier, and a handful of other incidental arctic explores and their fight to survive a poorly executed sea exploration. Which would have been great, because I like that kind of thing. But then they tossed in a giant dude-eating, face-slicing bitch of a monster that turned out to be an ancient supernatural beast created by a pissed off she-god.
Not so much what I was looking for. But after I'd invested 200 pages into this book I forced myself through the remaining half-thousand. If you're in to weird supernatural shit and really really really unnecessarily long books then this one is for you!
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Feb2908 kansas, travel
I found this photograph of Topeka, Kansas, taken last Wednesday, on Flickr. As you can see the city has at least three buildings and five inhabitants. This picture incorporates the major entertainment corridor of the Capitol City; note the beautiful Winter foliage cleverly intertwined with the sprawling urban metropolis. If you look carefully you can see Donald Trump's vacation home in the background. My heart is heavy on this day of my departure.
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Feb1708 illustration, joe stalin
Guys, Chris likes himself. (Joe Stalin)
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Feb1608 california, people, travel
Last week I was in Beverly Hills and Hollywood for work. I had never been so it was definitely an interesting experience. Stayed a couple blocks from Rodeo Drive and went up and down Sunset and Hollywood and Melrose and all kinds of other inexplicably famous streets every day. I can't imagine wanting to live there, but it was pretty neat to see for just a week. Didn't really have the time to take any good pictures, unfortunately, so hopefully I'll make it back again some time this year so I can do up some fun photos.
The whole town is built like a downtown in that everything is built to the street, but all the buildings are one or two stories. So you've got miles of downtown-like suburb areas. It's really weird looking and fairly lame. Traffic sucks and the people are interesting to say the least. I saw Dave Grohl and the rest of the Foo Fighters at Craft on the night of the Grammy's and later saw John Cho from Harold and Kumar on the Paramount lot. Had lots of expensive overrated food and saw lots of nice cars. All in all I wasn't really impressed. I need to hit up Bel Air next time and chill with Will.
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Feb1008 new york, photos, travel
Since I started my job last year I've desperately wanted to get sent to New York City for work. It finally happened last week and I had a blast the few minutes every day when I wasn't working. Unfortunately I had to stay in Times Square and deal with all the tourist bullshit but the rest was great.
I love the city. Tons of restaurants everywhere, people hanging out and just doing their thing, insane architecture, and just generally interesting things going on everywhere because there are just so many people. I don't really get the whole "New Yorkers are rude" stereotype, partly because I lived upstate for five years and partly because people just straight up aren't rude. They're just not wasting an hour having a conversation about clouds with you.
Interesting side note: there were an amazing amount of attractive people there. I can't wait to go back in a couple of weeks and spend some more time taking some more pictures and just generally enjoying myself.
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