I wasn’t planning on reading Anthropology by Dan Rhodes at this point, but the finished copies of the new edition came in and I picked one up (because they’re so cute). Then when I was waiting for my Psychology class to start I opened it up (it’s more fun than reading what I should be reading, the Psychology text). I got through about half of it in 20 minutes, and I finished it off when I got home.
The whole premise of the book is 101 ‘love’ stories that are each exactly 101 words long. Now, I’m not anal retentive enough to go count them all, but I know Dan Rhodes a little and I think he’s pretty thorough.
It’s a quirky book with funny characters, bizarre situations, essentially little chunks of weird, but not Paul Auster weird, more like TC Boyle weird. They’re very digestible and wryly amusing. Check out Victor Solomon‘s site — he made some shorts based on the stories. My favourite story out of the 101 is, by a mile, Pieces. I think it’s pretty obvious why.
Thanksgiving weekend in America. I don’t tend to care (not being in America nor an American). But my sister and Davidson came to visit. Yay!
We went to see Mary King’s Close and Edinburgh Castle. We ate at Cafe Marlayne and Turkish Kitchen.
We got food poisoning from Turkish Kitchen. When I say ‘we’ I mean everyone but my sister, who wisely did not eat the baklava. I was greedy, Neil was greedy, we talked Davidson into it.
Saturday involved us staying in all day, taking turns to spew orange liquid into the toilet (from both ends — of the body, not the toilet). We were supposed to meet my cousin and his family for dinner at Lazy Lohan’s, but Neil couldn’t even get out of bed. So my cousin and his family came over. His wife proceeded to commandeer our kitchen to make fresh chicken soup and macaroni.
Chicken macaroni soup one of the most wonderful things in the world when you’re poorly. She made so much that we’ve only just finished the soup and chicken meat, and will be finishing what’s left of the macaroni tomorrow.
She also shooed me out of the kitchen and did the washing up.
My guts continue to be rumbly and weird but at least implosions are no longer occurring on a semi-regular basis.
(This was also the weekend of The Living End concert. It was magnificent and I loved Chris Cheney’s shoes. It was fucking amazing to finally see them live after too many years bereft of The Living End. Too bad I couldn’t really get carried away In Case Of Implosion Leading To Explosion. I may have to try to get Neil to move to Australia just so I can see them more often.)
The moral of the story? The family that shits together makes the bathroom very smelly.
