In the meantime

The book hunter has been hunting for something other than literature these days. I've been looking for a good deal on a laptop or netbook - something portable so I can blog on the go. While my BlackBerry 8530 allows me to do so already, I have to admit that it can be quite tedious. Besides, it might come in use when I'm at work. 

However, my trip to Best Buy bore no fruit. Instead, I wandered through the aisles of movies and CDs, coming across nothing that piqued my interested. Afterward, I headed to Wal-Mart to buy a copy of Tess Gerritsen's The Apprentice. I searched the aisles there too, hoping to find something that would call my attention. Nothing, really. Just an issue of Time with the cover story debunking the only child myth.

I'm beginning to think working at the stadium has exhausted me more than I originally believed. While I still love book hunting, hitting up one store has me tired. I refuse to think it's because I'm growing old. I'm too young to feel this old. 

In the meantime, while my bank account heals from a bounced pay check and spending money I shouldn't have, I'm going to compile book list. I'm also going to revive a few dead ideas along with this. I don't know where this blog will head into, but, as I see it, after a year of writing about my finds and reads, it's about time I start making this personal blog a little more public. 

'Til next time, keep on huntin'.

Live out your Twilight fantasies on SecondLife - IT'S FREE!!!

I’ll tell you why I cheat. I need to. Infidelity makes me remember things. The details that expand to fill my life (my upcoming performance reviews, the aches and pains of training, the recovery of my 401(k) ) and the ones that deaden it (my guilt, my smug self-satisfaction, my fake epiphanies about my progress in this life) —all of that drops away when I look down at the naked spine of an unfamiliar woman, twisting slightly in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming onto the sheets of a Hampton Inn in some nameless suburb. This is the most absolute choice I can make. I am there on my own. Against every code, rule, and set of mores I pretend to obey. Against better judgment, against every lesson of hindsight and every shard of wisdom that comes with age, I have no regrets in that moment, because I am naked, or without pants, and I have chosen to be there. I have voted by my presence, declared it, and I feel the blood moving in me again. So it’s the blood. That’s who I am. That’s why men cheat.

From the April 2010 issue of Esquire magazine. If you haven't read this piece already, I seriously recommend that you do. 

Returning Hitler's Art Book

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Via Yahoo News:

DALLAS – After fighting his way across Europe during World War II, John Pistone was among the U.S. soldiers who entered Adolf Hitler's home nestled in the Bavarian Alps as the war came to a close.

Making his way through the Berghof, Hitler's home near Berchtesgaden, Germany, Pistone noticed a table with shelves underneath. Exhilarated by the certainty of victory over the Nazis, Pistone took an album filled with photographs of paintings as a souvenir.

"It was really a great feeling to be there and we knew, by that time, he was on his last leg," Pistone told The Associated Press.

Sixty-four years after Pistone brought the album home to Ohio, the 87-year-old has learned its full significance: It's part of a series compiled for Hitler featuring art he wanted for his "Fuhrermuseum," a planned museum in Linz, Austria, Hitler's hometown. (Read More)

 I think, to be honest, because I'm a book hunter, I wouldn't have been able to return it. That's just me, though.

Required Reading: Why Glenn Beck's an asshole & why America loves him

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I cringe every time I turn the channel to Fox News. More so when Glenn Beck's on. The former drug fiend, alcoholic turned Mormon conservative talkshow host is just what America doesn't need. He talks about being the voice of the common man, but there's nothing common about Glenn Beck. He's not down to our level. He's an asshole. Yet, no matter how much I hate him - how many holes I can find in his arguments and statements - no matter how angry I get watching his program, I can't seem to tear myself away from watching it. I don't do this every day. Hell, I don't even do this every week, or every other week. It's all by chance. The moment I see his shit-eater's smile, my focus just sticks to him and his lies. Is it possible to say his lies are more absurd than Sean Hannity's? His radicalism fundalmentalism does exheed that of his Catholic counterpart. It sickens me that people like Beck would rather watch this once great country fall apart than to support a plan that might save it because it sounds too socialist. The very people who call themselves patriots might just be the downfall of their beloved country, their beloved illusions.

In December's Playboy, Thomas Frank takes a gander at Glenn Beck's holy war and what exactly might be going on in that insane mind of his:

Beck’s books are boring stuff. If you’ve read much conservative literature, you’ve heard it all before. Beck reproduces standard-issue conservative talking points, bemoaning crazy lawsuits or the 1992 House banking scandal in precisely the same way you have seen crazy lawsuits or the House banking scandal bemoaned a dozen times already. He is given to preposterous numerology, reminding us how patriotic we all felt on September 12, 2001 and then insisting that 9/12 actually stands for “Nine Principles” and “12 Values,” the latter of which turn out to be a virtue list in the manner of the Boy Scout law. All of which might lead a fan to conclude it was lucky the 9/11 terrorists attacked when they did instead of, say, February 24, because then they wouldn’t have affirmed our nation’s timeless principles and values. (via)

Required Reading: Erring and Erring, We Walk the Unerring Path

"Erring and Erring, We Walk the Unerring Path" from Shambhala Sun.

Across much of the nation and the world, people have been losing their jobs and homes due to the global economic decline. Everyone is asking: how much worse will it get; how soon before it gets better? The ghost of the Great Depression hangs over us like a bad dream that scares and fascinates at the same time. Meanwhile, the bickering of politicians entertains and annoys us nightly.