Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Don’t Pee In The Amazon!

Last night, Leigh-Ann and I watched a show on Animal Planet called “Eaten Alive”.  It was pretty much terrifying.  It was a whole show about parasites invading people’s bodies, eating their brains, entering their penis (The candirú is attracted to urine, so will swim up the source, if you know what I mean...and it won’t come out), swim under their skin, swim through their colons, some of which are a couple of feet long.  People are pooping these long worms out.  Imagine the horror.  It made me not want to leave my couch.  Well, not that that’s usually a huge problem anyway, but still…

We’ve also been watching Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days show on FX.  The first episode had Morgan and his fiancee trying to make it by working minimum wage jobs.  It sure makes me appreciate not having to live like that, and wanting to help others who do.  I can’t even imagine the hours, the worrying (okay, I can imagine the worrying - as an independent contractor, I worry about being cheated by companies who go out of business.  We’ve lost many thousands of dollars in the past few years that way), the toll it takes on a relationship.  The first episode was really eye-opening, so we watched tonight’s episode about a guy in his thirties who wanted to get his in-shape body back.  He was put on a program of human growth hormone, testosterone and dozens of herbal supplements.  In addition, he was to change his eating habits and work out with a (hot!) trainer.  I enjoyed the possibility of how this episode could’ve worked, but the shrewish behavior of the guy’s wife ruined it for me.  Even before he started having liver problems, she was getting on his case for spending too much time with the (hot!) trainer.  Too much time?  It was a maximum thirty day project, lady!  Hmmm, wonder if trainer Heather’s perfect body had anything to do with Shrew-y’s behavior.  So, this episode didn’t do much for me.  I would’ve preferred they vetted the subject and his family better.  Next week though, a Christian man is spending 30 days as a Muslim.  Should be interesting.  Of course, not as interesting to me as a future episode with a Christian ex-Marine living with a gay family in San Francisco.  I miss San Francisco, so I always look forward to seeing it on tv.  Plus, I heard the guy loosens up and starts to have a good time.

Okay, moving on to books - You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers.  I have to admit, I wasn’t overly impressed by this one.  I felt like it needed lots of editing to tighten up the story, which ambled aimlessly, often and with great feeling.  I don’t doubt that Dave Eggers is a terrific writer, but I don’t feel this was a terrific book.  Looking at the Amazon reviews, it looks like more people disagree than agree with me, but there are enough who saw the book exactly as how I saw it.  Pretentiously boring.  I thought it was a great story idea, but I was disappointed with the follow-through.

A book I finished last night.  Or to be more accurate, somewhere after three this morning, and then Eli woke us up with her thunderstorm fears.  There was a little lightning and some rumbling, but it wasn’t terrible.  Just terrible enough to require Leigh-Ann leave and sleep on the couch so Eli could be next to her.  We drugged Eli with our first vet-approved dosages of Xanax, but it still doesn’t work that well.  We’ve tried just about everything.  Next, doggie pheromones.  Anyway, I digress.  I read Dry by Augusten Burroughs.  I completely enjoyed the quick read of advertising career, horrible alcoholism, subsequent recovery, subsequent falling off the wagon, then back to recovery.  I appreciate that throughout, he remained an excellent storyteller, yet I was horrified by the hundreds of Dewar’s bottles in his apartment, booze smell oozing through his pores when he went to his advertising job.  Blech.  I guess everyone has to be pretty thankful that Augusten’s childhood didn’t turn him into a deranged serial killer or something.  That was one screwed up family.  So, yeah, I liked Dry a lot and I’m going to order the rest of Augusten Burrough’s books that I haven’t read yet - Sellevision & Magical Thinking.

You know, I think this entry was a bit ambitious for a day of practically no sleep.  Let me know the millions of mistakes I’ve made by morning.  I eagerly await your critiques.  Naw, probably not eagerly.  But I hate leaving out or misspelling words.

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1. when is morgan spurlock going to marry that girl?  sheesh. we don’t get
   FX up here, so i will have to wait to rent 30 days or get it on some other channel.
   i’m jealous!  we also have to rent The Shield, which we love.

   and you shall know our velocity sucked in my opinion.  i LOVED AHWOSG tho. 
   i also love augusten burroughs, we have Dry, but i haven’t read it yet. 

   as for pooping and worms.  eww.

   jenB  on  06/23  at  05:14 PM

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