Notes on Three Books and an Administration

I have recently read the following:

• Flight vol. 5,
• Watchmen, &
• The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner

Flight was good, as usual, and not nearly as depressing as usual, as an added bonus, possibly to offset the soul-sucking effect of Watchmen, which is, I will strongly advocate, one of the most depressing books I have ever read ever. I bought this latest Flight at Intellectual Property, on the Drag, which is going out business and having an excellent 50% off sale, along with Dykes to Watch Out For and, er, something else... hm. What was that. Can't remember. Whatever. Uh, anyway. To be perfectly honest I can't remember too much of Flight right now. All I can really remember is the story about the guy whose girlfriend gives him little people who go inside his brain. I liked that one.

Watchmen, oh my gosh, did three million people really have to die. Ozymandais is like the scariest person in the entire world. See, Watchmen is the type of book that makes you feel saddest when Bubasta (a, well, a mutant lynx) dies, instead of when a human meets the same fate. It is psychologically powerful in a difficult way—the emotions the novel evokes are not your ordinary ones, not even the ones you get from traditional dark classics like The Trial or As I Lay Dying. They're something a little more decrepit and debauched, like you're reading something you're not supposed to (especially in the chapter about Rorschach) and yet you are learning something deeply profound. So, go read it during the day.

The Thief, on the other hand, is just a refreshingly creative Newbery Honor book. The ending is excellent. I mean really good. Because it's just a book you're reading, and you've got the ending all planned out, and you're reading, and then you get to the end and you're like la la la holy fuck what do you mean wow.

The administration bit. I was watching an Obama press conference the other day and he gets asked a three part question, right? And he takes like five minutes to answer each part. So ten minutes into the question, after he's answered the first two parts, he repeats the third part of the reporter's question verbatim. And also he's so eloquent. And takes all of their questions so seriously. Like he... cares. So in love.