2012 Book Count #2-4

2. The Fault in Our Stars, John Green. Magnificent. Easily his best book.
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey. Very good.
4. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes. Again. Still favorite novel ever.

2012 Book Count #1

1. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. Different ending. Better than the movie.

Eating Out of a Dumpster

So, at least for right now, I am not broke. To signify this transition, I have stopped getting food out of my local food pantry. I can now no longer justify getting free food from there that other people are paying for when I am perfectly capable of paying for it myself. However, in a completely coincidental turn of events, I saw a documentary the other day about dumpster diving (about which I had become intrigued because I pulled a duffel bag out of my rich White neighborhood dumpster a few days before), and this has converted me to a semi-freegan. That is, at least part of my regular diet for the foreseeable future will be pulled out of a dumpster. So far I have eaten raspberry Greek yogurt and a bag full of shrimp. I live right next to a grocery store. I work right next to a different grocery store. Neither store locks their dumpsters. So far the thing that I have found most interesting about my two excursions to date is how much I would have paid for the food I’ve eaten if I had bought it. I never eat shrimp normally because holy eff, that stuff’s not cheap. And I buy cheap store brand yogurt. So it’s very possible I will start eating better out of a dumpster than I did out of my wallet.

Actually, this reminds me of something I heard on NPR a long time ago when they were interviewing Michael Pollan about his new book, In Defense of Food. He said that “food” (which he defines somewhat more strictly than people do normally) generally has one interesting characteristic that edible non-food does not: it rots. So, by this rule of thumb, a Twinkie is not food, but a tomato or a roast beef is. It occurs to me that food I am likely to pull out of a dumpster is much more likely to be FOOD than the stuff I normally buy, because I buy box pasta and that’s not going to expire until 2017 or something ridiculous, whereas the expiration date on the yogurt I had last night was January 10, 2012 (note that it was already in the trash January 5). So I wonder if I will also be eating higher quality, in addition to higher cost, thanks to this new-found foodventure. I also wonder how much I will save on my grocery budget.

Being an Addict

Hello. My name is Kru, and I am an addict.

The other day I was watching a television show in which one of the characters is an alcoholic who has been sober for several years. However, when another character learns this, she asks “You were an alcoholic?” to which the first character replies, “No. I am an alcoholic. And I always will be.” I have heard this view expressed before, but I sort of assumed that it was an exaggeration, used to make sure that people steered clear in bounds due to fear of a single misstep. Now admittedly, I figure there have to be some things that once you quit, you aren’t nagged by them anymore. But I used to think that most things fell into that category, and now I am realizing probably a great deal more than I previously thought falls into the same category as alcoholism.

For example, I am more than seven months sober, the longest I have ever been sober since I was a teenager, but I’m not an alcoholic. I am a pornography addict. And it is still difficult for me. Just today I was struck by the fact that I know exactly where to get the drug I want the most. The exact location, and what will be found there. Also by the abundance of it. I figure, let’s say you’re addicted to heroin and you move to a new town out in the boonies of Montana or whatever. Maybe (granted, I know nothing about rural Montana) you could make acquiring heroin difficult for yourself by moving to a place where the supply is low and/or difficult to ferret out. But for alcohol, for cigarettes, for pornography, there is no place to run. There are industries out there hunting you down. You could buy stock in them.

It’s hard. But I’ve made it seven months, and I can tell you that one of the biggest helps recently has been not wanting to lose the streak. I just wanted to tell someone. Thanks for listening.

Book Count #35 and #36.

35 and 36. Catching Fire and Mockingjay, both by Suzanne Collins. Here is what I think happened after Suzanne Collins finished writing The Hunger Games. I think she sat down at a table and said, “Okay, now I think I will write about 400 more pages of stuff pretty similar to what I just wrote, and then spend the next 400 after that defacating over everything.”

On the plus side, “The Hanging Tree” is an excellent poem. On the downside, it and all symbols used in this book (like President Snow’s use of poison to kill his enemies) are explained IN THE BOOK. Oh, and major spoiler here, but almost everybody and their sister, including Primrose Everdeen, dies. And Katniss turns fairly evil, voting in favor of one final hunger games in which the Capitol’s children will be forced to die. So yeah. Eff this book.