The Hunger Games

A week ago I finished this three-book series that puts so many other books I have enjoyed to shame. I am not one to pick up YA(young adult) books off the shelves I pass by in cyber space and the covers of the books were so understated that I passed them three times a day for a whole month before downloading the first book. I am not sure if these books were properly labeled by Goodreads because labeling this series as a YA read would be a total understatement and would simply be selling it short. From my short experience with YA books, I see that books that fit the bill describe the protagonist’s journey as a coming of age; shallow or not-very-shallow experiences with responsibility, peer pressure, boys and sex in increasing order. Needless to say I wasn’t very impressed and our relationship was a fleeting thing. Katniss and her friends in this book regardless their age are literally young adults. And by that I don’t mean it to describe coming of age I mean young people who have been forced by life’s circumstances to act like adults. The setting is in a greatly unjust world where thirteen sectors strive and starve and a Capitol –more like a capital to that world- where rich people engorge themselves with delicacies they take from the other sectors. It’s already been seventy four years since the revolution in the poor districts and the children are still paying for their ancestors’ dream of freedom and equality. Every year, the president in the capitol reminds them that he still controls not only their livelihood but their lives as well when from each district a boy and a girl are chosen via lottery to battle against each other in a constructed arena to the death.   There will be only one victor who will receive riches he can only dream of and his district will be rewarded as well with extra rations of food that year.

Katniss is the “man of the family” after her father died in a mining accident when she was twelve. She does illegal poaching in the capitol’s woods and trading in the black market so her depressed mother and young sister do not starve to death. On the year he sister’s name goes in the lottery for the first time her sister is picked and she decides to go in her stead. The boy picked that year is the baker’s son who saved her and her family from starvation the year her father dies. Only one of them will be allowed to come back, this is the boy she will have to kill to get back to her family. Things don’t turn out the way they are expected to in the two remaining books that follow.

If there is something I know about myself, it is that I am not quick on the waterworks, but so many times I found myself tearing up and towards the last chapter and epilogue I found myself flat out bawling. It’s a deep story that grips your heart making it expand at times and squeezes it making your soul contract at other times. This series knows how to end, it might not be what you wished for, but unlike other books that leave an open ending for writers who don’t know when to stop expanding on the characters and plots the series end at three.

This is an excerpt of the epilogue of the last book of the series

My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard.

Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver. But one day I'll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won't ever really go away.

I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.

But there are much worse games to play.

Just One of the Guys

I just finished reading Kristan Higgins’s Just One of the Guys and it won’t take any arm twisting for me to say that it was quite a page turner. Not only is it a story many young women could relate to, but is filled with moments when you stop laughing because you think you bust an organ and hope you get away with something minor like a busted spleen. The humor is witty the repertoire is engaging and the characters are too steamy for you to want to put the book down. It’s about the O’Neil family, specifically the O’Neil girl. She is the only girl of four handsome boys and an honorary O’Neil who just happens to be the love of her life. She’s tall, more like hulking and is simply a jock. The first time she gets in a dress her brothers say she looks like her older brother Lucky in drag. She is quite endearing, with a soft spot for her hideously pound-rescued dog with saggy jowls, yellows eyes and a bad case of drooling syndrome. I can’t even imagine myself loving a dog like that (though I did once have a cat ‘Rusty’ who’s eye got gouged when she was a kitten and for some reason the wound keeps getting infected). Her only girly attribute is a fear of ‘the twins’ blood and gore.She has a wacky love for The Lords of the Rings Trilogy and tends to spend her days in shorts and ratty LOTR t-shirts kicking ass at pool and watching the Yankees. Simply put, she is not the perfect specimen for the feminine female and with a name to put a dictator to tears, Chastity Virginia O’Neil. No one messes with the O’Neil girl unless they want to deal with the rest of the clan, three firefighters, a bomb detonator and a chopper paramedic who has the Medal of Honor. Needless to say things are very promising in the dating department and seem to blow up when her boyfriend dumps her saying she’s not attractive enough to which she replies that she carried his spindly freckled ass half a mile the day they went hiking and he got tired.

Here is one of the quotes I loved:

Maybe we can get together for drinks later on at the old watering hole where us journalists like tohang out.

That should be “where we journalists like to hang out,” Al, old buddy. ―I‘m…I don‘t… I can‘t hear properly. The Tooth has taken control of me.

Drinks it is, then, Alan says. “Awesome.”

Jesus. How did that thing get so gray? Doesn‘t Alan know his own tooth is rotting away in his mouth? Shouldn‘t it be pulled? It certainly should be capped. As Alan talks, the gray tooth blinks darkly, Alan‘s narrow lips moving around the words that I‘m ignoring, fascinated by the evil power of The Tooth. Like Tolkien‘s Ring, it has a hypnotic, undeniable power. One tooth to rule them, one tooth to find them, one tooth to bring them all, and in the darkness bite them.

In short, awesome read and I’m glad I picked it up

Racist Food

Its been a week since the John Mayer frenzy and one day since the condemning post regarding said record artist, i'm listening to a track that says "here, they come to snuff the rooster" yup Alice N Chains. I'm not sure if that's a step up or down the hallway of no return, but i think i'm liking the mood. After all, six hours ago i was listening to Johnny boy sing about dancing in a burning room.

Now, getting on to the the topic at hand which certainly isn't my taste for morbid lyrics. I'd say is funny how companies tend to have certain racist tendencies regarding naming merchandising if only it really were funny. Introducing the negro biscuit. The prime rib to this mess-up feast; Eti's choco/vanilla biscuits are called -yup you guessed right- 'Negro'. 

Well, it is a chocolate cookie after all, and a black one at that. I can't help but roll my eyes at that. Hasn't anyone noticed these racist cookies of doom? And i don't mean those extra fleshy pounds on my ass kinda doom at that, i mean a totally different kind of doom. I've known about them since i was about ten. Other sold foodstuff that had been in the market for a long timer have been pulled out and renamed and i'm talking about a country that just happens to be in the sinking hellhole located exactly in the middle of war and nowhere. Particularly, a really good chocolate bar; im not sure if it qualifies as a bar if not a ball -haha get it? chocolate ball?get it? -that had a name that literally translates as "Head of the slave" or 'Ras i 3abed' in Arabic. I think one or two years ago the Lebanese company 'Ghandour' changed the name to 'Tarboush Ghandour' or 'Ghandour's Hat' where tarboush is a kind of Lebanese traditional head-wear that people normal in the head no longer wear, and by that i don't mean in the physical sense but more of the mental health sense.

Sadly, other companies did not follow suit or restrict themselves to teaching kids how to eat Negro cookies and Slave heads, they decided to teach household wives the proper way to deal with a slave's head. That is to clean pans with Negro Steel Wool; its name helpfully being translated to 'Seef il 3abed' in arabic on the packet or translated to 'Slave's Steel Wool' the darn thing simply states 'Negro' on the darn package. 

I'm sure the list of racist offences do not stop here and we sure are bringing up our children around a lot of social baggage and hate.I'm not sure the rest of the world would be able to bring their ideals up to date.Name editing should be a simple enough task if we want to make sure our kids don't grow up like a special version of hicks. Funny that, Lebanese hick version 1.0

    

Diluted Passions

It’s been a while since i did this and i am not sure it’s a good or bad thing. The things that i am passionate about could be counted on one hand, two of which are music and reading and they often come hand in hand. I have developed this passion for John Mayer music. 

I'm trying my best not to look up what he did/is doing in his life i hear it's not quite pleasant. I'm taking a break from reading a fiction novel by Caitlin Kittredge called Street Magic. It's part of the Black London series and not a bad one at that. Though i think I’m only giving it the time a day because i just finished the Nocturne City five volume series and it was completely worth the three days i spent on it. The protagonist in this series seems a bit more diluted even with the brit humor and cussing. I guess for a non-brit, it’s hard to keep a smile from creeping onto your face when the words "wanker" and "tit" are used as casual cuss or exclamation remarks. Hmm i guess I’m getting sort of used to watered-down brit humor. 

I’m quite hooked on the song "Edge of Desire" it’s simply heartfelt and perfect for the times you feel you just want someone to shut up and hold you no strings attached. I was listening to that same playlist two and a half hours ago while i was making my coffee-flavored custard. It's a pretty nifty idea to layer your pan with layers of chocolate cake and top it with coffee custard. Yup i made the custard and then ate a damn apple instead. 

Whats Your Poison?

I finally realized how utterly ridiculous it is to have a blog entry titled by a date that is just automatically displayed above the post. Yes! i have seen the errors of my ways and thus the lame title of this entry. I'm not sure why i'm blogging its 2:30am and my teeth are killing me. NO its not due to an overly chocolated evening or anything of the sort i just got my teeth pulled out. NO i am not 80 and i don't plan on replacing my teeth with dentures i'm just removing the little bastards aka my wisdom teeth.
Darn, my hands are looking too wrinkly  guess when you peel a hundred onions and peppers and then dice them the effect couldn't be too good. Mom is making her famous liver saute. Dad just spent a fortune on tissues and toilet paper i wonder what has gotten into him. Most peeps would go on a shopping spree and end up buying shoes or a fancy suit. Well....not dad. He buys a jumbo 20kg jar of mustard a 22kg jar of tomato paste and a shitload of toilet paper. The next day he gets mango puree. Fancy that!

Thursday March 9th 2011

          Wounds that heal with time...they are so many. But time makes us forget, momentarily at least, while writing about these wounds opens them up again. No biggie, were all grown-ups here...well not too grown up to have a dear diary-ish blog. Hmm i wonder where this came from. I feel like typing in a smiley but i know it won't look good on my doom and gloom page especially on a bad day and i'm looking at it.
          I'm glad i have friends, even if i know they are temporary. I just finished thanking God for them a moment ago. On days like today they warm me inside out. Not many people are willing to pack up a Tupperware to let you have a taste of a dish their mom made the previous day. I should know, its a friggn hassle carrying it around when you are commuting with a big-ass laptop, bag, books in the middle of a storm. Yet, it feels perfectly cozy when you share a home-cooked lunch with friends. There is something very special when its comes to sharing a home-cooked meal with friends. Maybe that is whats behind the Japanese obsession with a "bento" or lunch box. Almost every anime i watched had to have a bento-deprived character tucked up somewhere. Usually this character is the son of a well-off successful working family. Poor bento-less people.
          Finally, the chapped nail-polish is gone i guess i had enough sleep to wake up in a good un-soured mood, or maybe, just maybe, things are on the way to getting better? 

Monday March 7th 2011

          I started this day looking like a mortician with my black on black n chipped black nail polish. I didn't mean to dress myself in that, that morning but i seem to have dressed my body with the color that fit my mood's spectrum. Last night I fell asleep crying on my brother's shoulder. I couldn't get myself to my own bed. I found myself hugging a pillow and marching towards his bed. One moment he was holding me, the next i was sobbing ever so lightly. I swear i barely made any noise i didn't even shake, yet he knew. That's the way it has always been between us. Or i guessing tears can be heard hitting a pillowcase.  I only had three hours of sleep that night but it was one of the most relaxing sleep experiences i ever had. And though i woke up in a black mood, it was not related to my precious hours of sleep that night, of that i am assured.
          I'm glad i write anonymously here, i wouldn't admit to crying myself to sleep to almost anyone. I do have this image of the tough independent person i need to keep. I have to stay solid to those who use me to anchor their lives. I just told my friend to try be happy and then told her that i don't practice what i preach. At least i don't have to pretend much for her sake like everyone else.