Where the Buffalo Roam

Working a full day on a Saturday: not cool, but bound to happen eventually. At least everything went well, and there were donuts.

Didn't manage to find a Super Bowl party. Still enjoyed the commercials, though. This is my favorite; I personally call it "Oh Brave New World". You'll see why.

Picked up some Annie Proulx at the library, specifically Close Range: Wyoming Stories. You might have heard of her most famous book, The Shipping News. I got this particular book because one of the stories in it, "Brokeback Mountain", is currently being adapted into a film. Her writing style is just amazing. Dense, complex, visual, a lot like how I would write myself if I ever got up the courage to attempt fiction. As for the story itself... I haven't been able to get it out of my mind for days. It pops back into my head at idle moments, and every time I feel a strong need to cry. If the movie is even halfway decent, I'll be bawling. It's not that it's tragic or depressing exactly, just extraordinarily sad. As one reviewer put it, you need a hug afterwards. I suppose it's probably fair use to quote a brief excerpt:

"Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there too, in a cartoon shape with lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and relief; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it."