blahpook 
Member Profile
Birthdate: May 23rd
About me:
Going to school for my PhD in bookishness. Gets overly enthused about kitchen accessories and cooking. Dreams of being a rock star pirate ninja.
Favorite quotes:
"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)
"Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them."
— Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
In love with:
(1) the hubby, (2) chocolate, (3) hot pink, (4) alternative universes, (5) happy music, (6) chocolate.
About my videos:
I post (and promote) what I enjoy watching, and hope that others like it too. Most of my posts fall into two categories:
(1) Things that make me happy
(2) Thought-provoking acts of rhetoric, (whether I agree with the message or not)
(3) Things that advance my own secret personal agenda to take over the universe
About my comments:
Despite dreams of being a literary genius, most of my comments in general are limited to the standard vocabulary of a 13-year old girl. I am notorious in particular for the following:
(1) "Fabulous" and its cousin "Awesome." As in the 'hot dog' sense of the word and not the 'universe' sense. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please see #3.
(2) "LOL." I will say in my defense that I only use this in instances where I am literally laughing out loud. I laugh easily so this is not a feat, but I will uphold my principles on this. I try to avoid LMAO and its variations, unless I find that my ass has literally been laughed off.
(3) I will sometimes quote things simply for my own amusement. For example, AWESOME like a hot dog (from Eddie Izzard's "Circle): The universe is awesome using the original version, the meaning of the word awesome, yeah? Not the new one which is sort of for socks and hot dogs: "I saw an advert for 'awesome hot dogs, only $2.99'. If they were awesome you'd be going "I can not… breathe for the way the sausage is held by the bun. It is… it is speaking to me. It is saying 'we are lips and thighs… of a donkey. Please eat us… but do not think that we are lips when you eat us, otherwise you'll throw up'." Which is true! It's awesome! America needs the old version of awesome, because you're the only ones going into space. You've got a bit of cash and you go up there, and you need 'awesome' because you're going to be going to the next sun to us. And your President's going to be going "Can you tell me, astronaut, can you tell me what it's like?" "It's awesome, sir." "What, like a hot dog?" "Like a hundred billion hot dogs, sir."'
(4) In instances where I am not limiting myself to a teenaged vocabulary, I am excessively wordy.
(5) I like making lists.
Latest favorites from the personal queue:
--German Robin Hood
--This Girl Can
--Why being stuck on the tarmac with the Philly Orchestra Rocks
Member Since: April 29, 2007
Homepage: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1293927-leah
Last Power Points used: October 6, 2012
Available: now
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15 Comments
SarzyThanks, blahpook -- now I'm craving a poutine!
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
*promote
gwiz665But there's more to life than being really, really good looking!
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Well, I guess the look I'm best known for is Blue Steel. Le Tigre's a lot softer. It's a bit more of a catalog look. I use it for footwear sometimes.
Maze says...Thanks for the heads up. Fixed now.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
looks like embedding just got disabled on your Britain's Got Talent vid.
RhesusMonkNice. This was actually one of my next promotes. One of my favorite sifts.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
*promote
Gratefulmomyour video Candlebox - Far Behind isn't working, just thought you'd like to know.
JAPRNo problem, great sift.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Thank you!!!
In reply to this comment by JAPR:
*promote
NeuralNoiseYeah, they are both amazing. If you liked those I´d suggest Einstein´s Dreams next - I it like if Calvino was writing (invisible cities style) about a loose interpretation of relativity. It is beautiful, poetic, dreamy and a pleasure to read. Invisible cities is also another must from calvino.
Einstein´s Dreams
lately I´ve been reading murakami - it´s one of the best authors I´ve read in a long time...
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Love love LOVE both If on a Winter's Night a Traveler... and A Hundred Years of Solitude.
I haven't read the rest. The geeky "in" club I wasn't allowed to join my first year of college had a thing for Einstein's Dreams but I have yet to read that one too...
In reply to this comment by NeuralNoise:
1) Dune
2) Complete works of Fernando Pessoa
3) Schismatrix
4) Brief story of nearly everything
5) If on a winter´s night a traveller
6) The Sandman
7) The Wind-up bird Chronicle
9) 100 years of solitude
10) I´ll stop on nine, I can´t, can´t settle on my top 10 so this slot is a huge caroussel.
rougyI love Anais. I feel a spiritual connection to her.
I'm glad you liked her bio. Like I said, I only skimmed it, but what I read really got under my skin. I thought it was very unfair. It...accentuated the banal and down-played the wonder.
She has a little book of short stories, that's really good.
In Favor of the Sensitive Man, and Other Essays.
Worth a read.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Really? It made me like her more, but I already started liking Anais so maybe I was only reading good into it.
rougyI didn't read Gatsby until I was about 37 years old and was very surprised. Good story, but great writing. Poetic.
I flipped through that Bair bio of Anais and I'm really sorry to say that it made my hair stand on end with anger. She took a lot of really cheap shots and the whole thing seemed like some sort of personal vendetta, as if Nin had snubbed Bair at some time and Bair never forgave her.
I'm a writer/poet myself, and...I know there are two sides to every story, but Bair took the most negative slant she could about everything that Anais did and it flat out pissed me off.
Millions of people will be Anais Nin fans for generations to come.
Nobody's going to remember who the hell Bair was.
Ah, that's off my chest.
Thanks for touching base and for starting that thread. It's always fun to see what everybody else is reading.
Caio.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
I'm glad you like Gatsby - the first time I read it was for school, the second time for pleasure, and wow is it well-written and oh so damn clever. If you like Anais, Deidre Bair wrote a huge and scintillating biography on her that I could not put down.
In reply to this comment by rougy:
1. Lolita
2. Tropic of Cancer
3. On the Road
4. Anais Nin's Diary, Vol II
5. Tales of the South Pacific
6. Sophie's Choice
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. The Great Gatsby
9. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s
10. To Kill a Mockingbird
*****
I really liked The Hobbit, too.
EDDAlas, in these troubled times it's whatever pays. I'm a freelancer and since my age doesn't inspire confidence in employers I get most jobs via translation agencies. Usually it's user manuals for home electronics or heavy machinery, EU guidelines and the like, and the occasional agreement or marketing brochure. Although there was also the book on international politics recently. What I'd really love to do though, are scripts/subtitles for foreign movies and novels. I'll try to scoop the upcoming Dan Brown book job as a 'career booster' next, but it's highly unlikely I'll get it, it usually all boils down to who you know in a country of couple million such as mine.
LOL.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Yes, alas, Farm Frenzy and its offshoots are one of my favorite ways to procrastinate from various reading and writing assignments.
By the way, what do you translate?
EDDThe *quality was well-deserved. Although I kind of feel your pain and then again I kind of don't
My wife can't get enough of those kinds of games.
I took a brief stint in English A1 (supposedly for native speakers, mostly World-lit analysis) course as a part of IBO diploma programme. It included Lermontov, 1984, Ancient Mariner, Kafka etc. etc. etc. Decided it wasn't for me, but that's mostly because other group members were even less-qualified to pass as native speakers than I was and also I simply had already read most of what was on the mandatory reading list.
Still, English is my life-long mistress. No wonder I'm 'moonlighting' as a translator/interpreter now.
*edit - I looked below and were you really playing Farm Frenzy?
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Thanks! I still read Pooh and Catcher every once in a while, even though the first time I read both was probably because I was assigned them in class (read: English major). Interestingly enough all but a couple of the books on my list were ones I have read for leisure in-between classes. I guess that says a lot.
In reply to this comment by EDD:
oh and what the hell, anything that helps me exercise some healthy verbal diarrhea is *quality
zombieaterNuthin... I'd ask what you're doing, but I know you're playing Farm Frenzy.
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
What'cha doin?
campionidelmondoYou're welcome
Her voice reminds me of Gianna Nannini...
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Thank you!!! I think her voice is awesome, in part because it's a little odd.
xxovercastxxgrazie
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
*promote
volumptuousI'm used to it. There's so much out there worth clutching them over!
In reply to this comment by blahpook:
Sorry about your dried up pearls...
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