Books and television

I've been remiss in posting here, but not without good reason.  Besides getting the homestead livable, I overindulged my passion for reading and read six books this month.  Three would find little audience beyond geeks, but the other three have found an audience beyond that with which I usually keep company:  The Stieg Larsson trilogy.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest were some of the most enjoyable reading I've done in a long time.  Far from being the much-derided chick-lit, these books had great suspense and twists that kept my interest.  Much like the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, the second installment suffers in comparison to the bookend pair, but that in no way detracted from the experience.  What's more, if sordid sexual tales are expected, that only involves a fraction of the stories.  Larsson deftly weaved the three books into one continual story.  How Hollywood is going to follow up The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo should prove interesting.

Sunday my girl and I built a much-needed tool shed in the backyard.  We did it over four hours and partly in the rain.  Regardless, when we were done we were tuckered out, so we crashed on the couch and got caught up in a series entitled Amish:  Out of Order.  It's another one of these reality shows that focuses on a little-known segment of society involving what are called Ex-Amish.  I thought it might be a focus on rumspringa, but it wasn't.  The stories are moving and sad, but captivating all the same.

We were fascinated by the story of one girl who wanted to become Amish.  For the life of us, we didn't understand it, but we wanted to see whether she followed through with it, so we kept watching episode after episode.  Along the way, a kid Cephas Yoder appeared.  As nice a guy as you'd ever want to meet, Cephas had a bet with the main person in the show that was whimsical yet sweet.

As we came to what we thought would be the episode where the girl made her decision to join the Amish, it was disclosed the Cephas had died when he tried to avoid hitting a deer early in the morning on his way back from his job in the oil fields and flew off the embankment, being killed instantly.  He was only eighteen-years-old when he died.

I don't typically pay much attention to current cultural trends.  I watch only two reality shows with any loyalty -- Top Chef and The Amazing Race -- and read next to no contemporary literature.  Yet within the same month, I finished three books of recent vintage and blew an entire Sunday afternoon transfixed by a social trend of which I knew next to nothing.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Shaking my head

There are some things I just don't understand.  I don't mean intrinsically -- I mean the action themselves I understand.  But why anyone in his or her right mind would want to engage in them boggles my mind.

To wit:  Who thought it would be a great idea to ingest smoke into one's lungs for pleasure?  People die from smoke inhalation, for crying out loud.  What could possibly be healthy about this???  Then, when it was discovered the tobacco companies had lied about the addictive effects of nicotine...people continued to smoke.  Now, I understand that those already addicted would continue to smoke, but what about younger people who had never smoked a day in their lives who ostensibly were against Big Business, etc., and who had been availed of the information their parents and grandparents lacked?

Gambling.  Why would you possibly take a risk of losing money on the off chance a pair of dice or a ball hurtling around a spinning roulette wheel will land favorably for you?  What control do you have of the outcome?  Where does skill enter into this?

Tattoes.  With the possible exception of pirates, is there anyone who really needs to put ink under his skin?  I can almost make an exception for someone who discreetly has a tattoo placed where no one but his or her lover can see it, although even that escapes my comprehension.  But when you deck yourself out as some sort of walking billboard, I fail to understand the reasoning.  Basketball players, actors and actresses and rappers all seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid.  I can't wait for thirty years to pass so we can see how ridiculous these fools look.

Piercings.  I fully understand earrings and have no truck with them.  But nose rings, lip rings, belly rings...and other body parts?  Why?  In what way do those make a person look more attractive?

There are more things, I'm sure, but these things really mystify me.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles