Willfully Disengaged

I don't want to say that I'm willfully ignorant. I'm not that. I make an effort to read things that aren't fantasy. I think I probably consume non-fiction at a rate equal to my fiction reading at this point and considering how many books I read in a year I think that's pretty good. As the definition for ignorant is lacking in knowledge or education I think it's safe to say that I am not willfully ignorant. But there are some things I do to insulate myself from the way the world is. I think these things probably make me a happier person if not necessarily a better one.

In the world containing the internet it is possible to immerse yourself in the news all day every day. There are hundreds and thousands of news websites. You could read them or watch them all day every day and never see it all. Alternately, you could get all that fed to you in tiny bites from a news stream. You can see all those headlines, get a little gist, and read only the things that look interesting to you. Or you could be more traditional and watch the news or read a paper each morning. You could get the two-minute news every hour from a radio station if you wanted. You could also do some combination of the above where you have the news on in the background in the morning and then at work you have the news feed going and you look up articles about certain events or blurbs that interest you.

That same world, the one with the paper, the radio, the television, and the internet also makes it fairly difficult to avoid the news if you want to. I stopped watching television in highschool all together because it was otherwise impossible to not see any news on it. Even watching in the afternoon when the blah kind of mindless programming was on meant subjecting myself to news updates and "coming up on the six'o'clock news" style advertisements during the breaks. I could have tried to leave the room or change the channel but that, ultimately, probably wouldn't have been very effective and not only that but it would have drastically reduced any enjoyment I derived from the activity to begin with. So I came to the conclusion that it was probably better to just stop. I do watch television now but by television I mean "television shows". I watch television episode by episode on Netflix in an experience no different than watching a very long movie that has been broken into pieces. I choose what I want to see and I watch it. There is no channel surfing, no news, no just watching whatever happens to be on because it happens to be on. In fact, since they switched to the digital stream I cannot even watch regular tv if I wanted to despite the fact that my roommate has a HDTV... because there's no antenna or anything to go with it.

I could, if I chose, watch the news online or have a little stream of it to my desktop all day long or I could read it in the newspaper at work. Now that I am out of highschool and caring about the news is no longer a requirement to lead a productive life I just don't pay any attention to it ever. I sometimes check the weather after I find out about a storm from somewhere else and I occasionally hear the bizarre, isolated news story on the radio. But other than that the only news I hear about I hear passively from other people. I never ask about it, I just hear about it if they feel the burning desire to talk about it for some reason. This has made for some interesting thoughts about the way that information goes through networks. In this case, the network of people I know and interact with.

As it turns out, most of the news that I hear comes from strangers at work. I also disseminate most of the news that I hear to different strangers at work. I suppose it must be that strangers feel more comfortable talking about some neutral topic like the news or weather than anything else. I also find that the news I hear from strangers is more-or-less accurate or at least obviously false. I usually average out the weather forecasts of various people to get a much more accurate prediction than meteorologists ever give and I can easily tell when strangers are lying about things (usually unintentionally). The lies tend to be glaringly obvious because they have a certain grammatical feel the way a "trick" question has a certain feel. So hearing news orally is not a problem.

The other place I see a lot of news (or get it from there via my roommate) is on Facebook. The problem with news related from Facebook is that Facebook does not relate just the news. News can come along with theories and opinions and get morphed into entirely new "stories" with a modicum of truth in them and the force of people you know behind them to make them seem like real "news." News from Facebook is suspect because it has a reputation of being bad or flawed and yet because it always comes from people you know it's hard to resist the seductive logic that it must be true. And then there are the times when it is true. Your average person can easily distinguish between true and not true because they have a basis on which to lay the facts- a basis of news even if their basis hasn't been refreshed in a few days they can still determine, if they think about it, whether some piece of fresh news is true or false. Without a basis for the news however anything I see on Facebook has the potential for being true or not true at the same time the same way Schrodinger's cat exists.

Recently the weather was turning toward not being winter anymore as it tends to do eventually where I live and my roommate saw on Facebook that there was slated to be a huge storm the next day. A huge storm after a couple weeks of fair weather. Not totally unlikely given that I live in Maine and it's been known to hail in July here. But there was another factor. The storm was due to hit on the first of April. This one factor made me disregard everything I knew about weather and focus only on what I knew about people and about facebook. I concluded that it was probably a wildly-propagated joke. The weather was so bad on April first that aside from one of the stores (a store which is legally obligated to stay open) the mall where I work was closed. If the storm had been forecast for the last day of March instead of the first day of April my conclusion would have been that there must be a storm coming because after all this is Maine that I live in.

More recently than the weather incident there was another bit of news I learned about from facebook. The Government was going to shut down. Not the state government and they weren't just talking about black-out days that they do at the DMV. Facebook was panicking about a total shutdown of the government and any government spending and yelling angrily about how they weren't going to pay the military and how they had to pay the military. Of course they have to pay the military. They stop paying and they stop being the military. It was just as easy for me to see that this bit of news was wrong as it had been for me to assume that the storm was a hoax. This time I was reminded distinctly of Randall Munroe's comment about how Twitter was the best way to watch panic unfold in real time. Facebook's Newsfeed (intentionally) works the same way. I was watching a massive panic unfold where the only goal was the breeding of more panic and not the spreading of real information. This, unlike the storm, really was wrong. The Government had announced they weren't shutting down anything essential. Essential to them included Military, Health, Wellfare. Anything to do with any of those things wasn't to be shut down and of course included in that was all the bureaucracy as well. The only things I could really think of that they would have actually shut down were federal museums and National Parks.

So there are some hazards to disengaging from the news and certainly you might think I was a bad person because it took me whole days to learn anything about the mess in Haiti and I didn't think about it multiple times a day every day. Because I wasn't forced to by the news. I don't hear pundit's spewing nonsense and political lies or things that actually really don't matter to me. Not hearing the news except from other people applies an interesting filter. A filter that in turn must be re-filtered. It's maybe immoral and somewhat dangerous in terms of misinformation but what it also is is interesting. Knowing everything about everything leaves you nothing to talk about much less wonder about.

If It's The Thought That Counts...

If It's The Thought That Counts...
OR
Gifts I Wouldn't Give


If it is the thought that counts then I have to wonder why it is that stores are chock full of thoughtless gifts. Warm and fuzzy television specials tell us over and over that the monetary value of a gift doesn't matter and that we should give thoughtful or homemade gifts as they have more meaning. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, wrote that he consciously logged all the time that he had spent thinking about and searching for the perfect gift for his (now) wife because he's so terrible at gift-giving he wanted her to know that he had put a lot of thought into it even if it might not seem that way. But I suppose that it's a good thing for companies like Ganz and Gund that people don't seem to be taking those TV Special morals to heart when they buy. Yet, when you get a gift you'd rather have something thoughtful and special most likely because it turns out that those TV Specials did do a pretty good job of brainwashing you. Just... not quite good enough.

How about starting off with "greeting cards"? Why is it that people feel the need to pay money to give someone a regurgitation of a stranger's words that any other person could also purchase to express the same sentiment? Who are you "greeting" that you hate so much you can't even stand to spend as long thinking about what to say to them as you do picking out the card to begin with? Some of those cards cost $5.99 or more. If you're into spending money to buy a stranger's words to give to someone you could spend that $5.99 on a book and then write in the front cover. At least with a book you not only get a whole lot more words for your money but also maybe a little entertainment for the recipient and significantly more fuel in the event of an apocalyptic future where your friend must burn books to survive. You don't have to write something witty or clever. Just write the occasion (Christmas, Birthday, Graduation, etc.), the date, that you love them or will be there for them or whatever, and then sign your name. That's all a lot of greeting cards have anyway.

Nothing says congratulations on graduating like a coffee mug. Literally, nothing. As far as I can tell there aren't really any other graduation gifts available. Apparently the makers of gifts feel that the only way to usher someone into a new era of their life is to give them a means to transport caffeine. That is the message that you send to your loved one when you give them a graduation mug. "Welcome to the next stage of your life. It's going to suck. You're going to need a lot of coffee." Encouraging people who are starting out fresh to consume addictive substances seems like a defeatist sentiment. I also know that receiving a mug for graduation feels emotionally as hollow as the mug itself. Get your graduate a stuffed animal, even  if they might scorn the little kiddishness of it they'll still appreciate the gesture when they're living in that post-apocalyptic future we were talking about before.

If you want to show appreciation of (or suck up to) a teacher then the thing you shouldn't give them is a notepad with some kind of teacher-related sentiment on it. They are a teacher. They work in a building that, if funded properly, should never have a shortage of paper (and if it does have a shortage of paper you'd be more well-appreciated to buy them a ream of plain paper for a tiny bit more money instead of the fifty sheets of one-inch squares) so why do they need a tiny notepad that barely has room to write a single sentence on it. If you actually want to be appreciated get them a package of nice pens/pencils in standard colors and a large package of crappy pens/pencils because one thing that students are always stealing are pens and pencils from teachers. Even if the teacher is retiring pens will still be useful in their post-teacher life while tiny notepads with teacher-related sentiments will just be kind of ridiculous.

Do you know what it says to someone when they buy them, instead of a chocolate bunny, a tiny not very plush looking stuffed rabbit that comes in a box with a cellophane window just like a chocolate rabbit? Well, unless that person is allergic to chocolate, it says: "I know better than you do about limiting the effects of chemicals like phenylethylamine, theobromine, endorphins, anandamide, and tryptophan on your brain." But do you really? Can you actually pronounce the ones other than endorphins? And why should it be your job to say that that someone shouldn't have a substance that changes your blood pressure or causes mental and physical relaxation, or acts as an anti-depressant, or acts like THC, or triggers a release or serotonin which literally makes makes you happy all in one convenient as well as delicious package? Give them the chocolate and if you're (or they are) worried about their weight then just don't give them a lot of chocolate. But why give someone a non-cuddly plushie-shaped tease when you can make them happy (literally)?

What about a little piece of metal or glass or most likely plastic that you give to someone so they can carry it around in their pocket? Would you give that to someone? A useless bit of material for them to carry around in their pocket? An object that has no meaning whatsoever except that which we imbue it with? I sell those all the time. We call them "pocket tokens" and people rarely buy the tokens because they look like something, they buy them because they like the pre-packaged "meaning" they come with in the form of a little printed card displayed with each one. Why not collect a pebble for your friend from your, or their, or your shared favorite outdoor place and give that to them? It would have a lot more meaning. Or, if they're not an outdoor-appreciating sort spend a quarter on a bouncy-ball from a machine at the grocery store and give them that to keep in their pocket. If you feel the need to attach a pre-packaged meaning to the bouncy-ball gift then tell them it's to remind them of innocent happiness. At least a bouncy ball they can play with unlike a pocket token.

And the greatest gift of ADD you can give is in the form of an object so distracting that not even your typical sane and ordinary person will be able to perform normal, simply functions around it. Yes, I am talking about the incredible quality of the new 3D bookmarks. I know they are effectively distracting because they're displayed on a spinner on the counter and any customer that comes within range of them will inevitable be unable to do anything but comment on them and, if they have even a marginally disposable income, buy one (or several) even though they come at five bucks a pop. You could buy your gift recipient a second book at that price. And unless your recipient is both illiterate and easily amused they'll probably appreciate a second book a whole lot more even barring the possibility of a terrible post-apocalyptic future when they may come in handy.

Two of the (literally and figuratively) most empty statements you can make with a gift would be a picture frame (but no picture in it) or a set of decorative measuring spoons. The purpose of a picture frame is to contain a picture so unless you have a picture of someone or something that holds some meaning or beauty for the recipient that you wish to frame you shouldn't be purchasing them a picture frame. Similarly, the purpose of a measuring spoon is to accurately measure ingredients. So far as I can tell decorative measuring spoons do not accurately measure ingredients and should therefore not be purchased unless your express intent is to ruin the food preparations made by the person who got the decorative measuring spoons.

I can think of no more eloquent way to say "I secretly loathe you." than by gifting someone a keyring or bottle opener. No matter what kind of thing the key ring is featuring or what the bottle opener is attached to they still give the sentiment that your relationship with this person is the same to you as a drug company's relationship with potential new customers. If they can't seduce them with intentionally confusing advertisements they want to get them with the guerrilla warfare style campaign of permeating tiny areas of your every day life with small clutter objects bearing their logo that work on the customer's subconscious causing them to want to get the drug if they ever feel the need for it or have it suggested to them. Drug companies as a whole are for profit and  people who must be convinced to buy a product are merely a necessary evil to be dealt with. Is that the message you want to give to someone? I got you this yellow lab bottle opener not because I thought it was a genuine expression of your love for yellow labs but because I think that by getting you a yellow lab bottle opener I have fulfilled my obligation to get you a present. Well, if it is then go right ahead but otherwise you will want to consider a different gift.

Stuffed animals are normally a gift that I would encourage you to give to persons of any age because it turns out that human beings who aren't sociopaths don't really run out of reasons to feel like they need a hug when there's no one around to give one. However, I would explicitly exclude in this encouragement the subset of stuffed animals that are not soft and cuddly, are scary-looking, contain things that make noise, or come with a key for a addictive digital game that may result in the recipient's eventual bankruptcy. Anything like that is not a thoughtful or pleasant gift to give.

Some of the worst thoughtless gift offenders are door-knockers, fake rocks, fake plants and "key hiders". Door-knockers and "key hiders" of any kind or attractiveness imply something about what you think of the recipient. It means you think that not only are they so lacking in intelligence or wits that they will frequently lose their house key and also that their guests, if faced with a door lacking a bell, will not know how to knock unless there is a door-knocker present on their door. Fake rocks or fake plants also state resoundingly: "I think you're stupid." Either I think you're stupid enough that you can't tell the difference between real and fake objects from nature or I think you're so stupid that I don't think you could even keep a real rock alive so I got you a fake rock/plant to care for.

And my absolute most loathed thoughtless gift item is any kind of magnet, rock-like object, paperweight, plate, or placard with any kind of motivational, religious, witty, statement of advice, or heartfelt sentiment on it. You don't need a piece of useless cutter-causing junk that the recipient feels would be rude to just throw away but is too embarrassed to display anywhere in their home to say something to someone. If you want to give someone a loving, encouraging statement you don't give them a ceramic plaque painted purple with white lettering and a rainbow and fluffly clouds painted on it bearing the legend: "May you always have rainbows." You give them a prism on a strong long enough to hand around their neck or hang in a window and you vocalize to them: "So you can always have rainbows."

And though there are many more thoughtless gifts you may fall prey to that I didn't list here maybe I managed to steer you toward some marginally less thoughtless gifts to give people.

A = B, B = C, A =/= C ?

When does variable A equal variable B and variable B equal variable C but variable A does not equal variable C? In cooking. And other conversions that make use of the same units to measure weights as well as volumes. The problem comes in because cooking equipment is set up for liquid volumes but ingredients are packaged by weights. So if you get an eight-ounce package of bread crumbs not all those bread crumbs are going to fit in one cup even though a cup is eight ounces. Not unless you could somehow make those crumbs into a liquid of the same density as water- because that is the real problem. Eight ounces of water and eight ounces of crumbs weigh the same but the density is different so you end up with a whole lot of difficult questions for your math teacher that he will not be happy answering.

This conversion problem has come up many times without my thinking about it. I've made a lot of fudge in my life and over the course of dozens of batches I've found out that making fudge on a day with low enough barometric pressure results in taffy instead and that forgetting the teaspoon of salt ruins the whole thing and that substituting mint for vanilla requires caution because the mint has a higher alcohol content and thus causes a much more intense but still brief amount of boiling when you pour it in. But the recipe I originally used called for a cup and a half of chocolate chips. I asked my mother whether it was important if I actually measured or if I should just put in the whole twelve-ounce package. I couldn't say exactly how that conversation went except the result was that I used the whole package, more because it seemed silly to have half a handful of chips left over than any other reason, I suspect. The fudge came out wonderfully and has come out wonderfully every time I've made it without screwing it up in some other way. However, that same recipe calls for two cups of mini marshmallows and I didn't ask if I should put in sixteen ounces of that instead of packing the marshmallows into the cup twice and ending up with considerably less than sixteen ounces of weight- if I had I wouldn't have ended up with fudge at all.

I was making vegetarian meatballs yesterday (and I say "meatballs" because it's easier and causes less explaining than breadcrumseggsnutschesseballs) and the recipe called for two cups of bread crumbs. When buying the crumbs the night before I had to know how much to get, the net weight on the box said eight ounces so I concluded that I should get two boxes. I babbled this to my roommate as I was cooking. Saying that I had gotten two because I needed two cups and each cup is eight ounces so if I had sixteen ounces of bread crumbs I should be all set. Then I rattled off the obvious algebraic equation. A = B, B = C, so A = C. Or at least it should. In this case I fortuitously decided to measure the crumbs out rather than dumping in both boxes because sixteen ounces of weight would have been far too much volume for meatballs. And it turned out that A didn't really equal C. I decided I had a lot of questions about that.

Except really it's not so much a problem of math as of recipes. There are no standards in recipes and the writers also make a lot of assumptions about the readers. And that's why people who have never really cooked find it so difficult to do. Because recipes are written in an illogical language. A recipe calls for eggs but doesn't say from what kind of animal or what size. A recipe can tell you to beat the eggs. But if you aren't aware that whisking eggs is referred to as "beating" you aren't going to know what instrument, if any, you needed for beating. Not to mention all the inconsistencies in measurements and the set ups for A does not equal C failures.

I'd like to create a logical, standardized recipe system that does not require conversion. After I make this up I suppose I'll have to translate recipes into this new "language", and then convince people to actually use it in the future and then... I wonder if it wouldn't just be easier to make fun of the whole thing instead?

The Horror Begins

I have a very special book review for you. Sadly, none of you have ever heard of this particular book. Which is quite the tragedy as it is one of the most hilarious books I have ever laid hands on. Fortunately it is available from Amazon for your consumption. This book is entitled Cabin by Black Lake: The Horror Begins. Believe me, the horror begins on page one and does not stop. Unfortunately for the author of this book the horror comes not in the plot or execution of this book (both of which are in fact tired and terrible) but in the frankly impressive lack of words that are spelled correctly and sentences that are grammatically correct by anyone's standards. At the same time any attempt to read this book out loud can result in contractions of the musculus zygomaticus major, painful abdominal cramps, shortness of breath, giddiness, euphoria, and other symptoms usually associated with uncontrollable laughter. With that I will lead into the main content of this post which will largely consist of quotes from the book. Any spelling, grammatical or factual errors are intentional (on my part) to keep the fidelity of the quotations and any modicum of coherence is likely a mistake due to my one-handed typing.

Chapter one, page one, paragraph one, sentence four reads: "He was in his room on the scent floor of the dome and he had been up at five thirty studying, for his test on monday." Supposedly the main character lives at the University of Maine in Orono. I've been there, and while it does have a dome it is recreational and not residential and does not have, to my knowledge (though admittedly I can only imagine that a scent floor is some kind of indoor garden focused on smell), a scent floor of any kind. The sentences that follow that are not much more coherent: "The room had two bed one of Jimmy and one of his room mate Berry Bydean. The sum shown thought a little, seen there was only one window over looking the parking lot." I'm not sure who makes bed sculptures of people or why a college student would want one but apparently they decided to put them in their room on the scent floor. Also, from what I can tell, Jimmy is doing math homework without a lot of thought even though there is not much of a view to distract him. Then, in the same paragraph, we segue extremely awkwardly into: "Because of college, he didn't have the time to date much and don't really have a close have a girl friend. Jimmy was a good looking young man and was well liked by the girl on college. Jimmy set in the chair and looked out the window on the second floor in room 214." I don't know exactly why the author would lead you to believe that UMaine Orono has a single female student when the reality is that there are (according to Wikipedia at the time I checked this fact) 6,254 female students to 5,613 male students. Or maybe the author was referring to a particular theoretical girl who likes to spend her time on the tops of the college buildings?

And now we'll go to paragraph two of the first page as I begin to wonder if I am going to need to make this particular post in installments. "Jimmy was asked by the coach to play football, as he was a very good haft-back for Old Town a couple years ago. But Jimmy said "No!" he couldn't take the time off his studies, as he was attended college, to become a lawyer It had been a quit Saturday morning, as a lot of student had go home for weeks end. Jimmy was in his dome room, and it was almost eleven o'clock in the morning. And most of the student were gone home for the week end, except for a few student that home for the week end." I'm not sure exactly what to make of this except that it seems to imply Jimmy is studying law and was once the shaft of a tool (and a very good one at that) and also, on an unrelated note, most of the students had gone home except for the few that were already there.

Moving right along, finally on page two we have a line that had me in tears: "Jimmy had a dream and was studding hard at school to make it happen." ...It sounds sort of painful and also illegal. Because studs are, you know, male animals kept for breeding. So one can only imagine what it is that Jimmy is doing to keep himself in college. He is supposedly attractive and popular with at least one girl, after all. And later in this (is this really the same paragraph, oh god, I guess it is) same paragraph: "Jill was a pretty blond twenty year old with a cute twenty four that stood five foot nine inches he weight a good hundred ninety pounds with a round belly." Yes, allow us to abruptly introduce a couple of new characters and describe them to a greater extent than the main character is ever described and also Jill apparently has what I guess must be some kind of giant dog. I will be interested to learn how the giant dog plays into this story.

Finally, finally, a third paragraph and a new page (yes, your math should work out to the fact that a third of page one and ninety percent of page two is all the same rambling paragraph). "He picked the letter up and looked at it ones more. It was from the Court in Washington County and a lawyer, Jimmy didn't know. The letter read like these.
Dear; Jimmy Bentley.
I'm sorry to inform you of the death of Orland Forster Gray. Mr. Gray died on problems of his heart on August twenty third. You, Jimmy Bentley, have been named in Orland Gray Will. You, Jimmy Bentley are ask to attend the reading of Orland Gray Will on the date of the reading of the Will. Mr. Jimmy Bentley must attend the reading of Orland F. Gray Will or you, Jimmy will lose you're part of the inheritance.
Jimmy had not been told of his uncle Orland death back in August of late year."
Wait. Wait... So, it turns out that this mysterious lawyer is really the third-person omniscient narrator of this story. Otherwise how else would the lawyer know to be sorry to inform him of the death of his uncle (and the manner in which he died) if the reader doesn't even know about Jimmy's lack of awareness until the next paragraph. I also suspect that this lawyer may have killed Mr. Gray because his explanation of problems on his heart as a cause of death sounds both fishy and defensive.

Jimmy then proceeds to take a mind-numbingly-boring walk which is described in far too much detail the only real highlight of which is when he stops to talk to some pretty girls. "Another girl walk up by side Linda, it was Rachel, a beautiful black girl with a grant finger and a pretty face with slim lips for a black girl. She was so good looking she could be a model almost any were in the country. Jimmy was greatly attacked to her, but he had no told her that he thought she so beautiful. Maybe so day he would tell her he had feeling of her, "Hi, Rachel, you're looking grant." Jimmy said as he looked her all over she smiled back, seen Jimmy was looking her over, she moved closer to him, she liked the idea that he was looking her over, she like at." I feel sort of racist and extremely sexist just re-typing that and I didn't write it. By the way, Jimmy is so attractive he can get girls that look like models even though he's poor and I'm also getting the feeling that all the female characters in this book are not only going to be mysteriously and inexplicably attracted to Jimmy but also act like (fill in your own colorful description for that behavior) the whole time.

Eventually, after a whole six and a half pages, chapter one does end though not without cramming in the introduction of even more characters, some more racism, another letter from the lawyer/narrator, replacing every word that begins with "q" with the word "quit", and a whole lot of champs (which, from the context, seems to be the grounds of the college though I feel like the illegality of making the grounds out of champs is too high for this to be factual). And now, lest my brain try to escape through my ears, (and to save something for you to enjoy if you decide to buy this) we'll skip to the big finish.

Chapter twenty-five (honest to god there are twenty-five chapters in this one hundred seventy-nine page book), page one hundred seventy-five, paragraph one, sentence one: "The next day the evening papers banner story report read , Five college STUDENTS KILLED by wild animals in the Black Lake areas and two are missing presumed die." And the only thing I can manage to think is: Christ, did he really take six other people to visit this cabin with him? Also, I am fairly certain that as there are two of them still missing they ought to be presumed dice. "His son was die!!! God no! It had been a long day at the store, Howard went through the mooching of his job at the store. But he felt as though something was missing. His son Jimmy was lost at Black Lake and God five of his friends had been murder by some animal. Howard didn't wont to think about it, but he couldn't help it, he did!" I wonder if the mooching of your job is easy? I kind of want to try it but I think I'm probably too nice for that. And yes, if your son is lost something is in fact missing- him. Fairly certain that unless these animal are sentient (and you, Howard Bentley, don't know that they are or could be unless you were tipped off by the lawyer/narrator in which case I hope you socked him) it's just killing, not murder.

And we end with this confusing and hyper-dramatic sequence: "Howard looked down at the colored phone on top of the table, as it rang one more time his hand when his fingers when around the phone and lifted the receiver picking it up and put it to his right ear and said, "Hello! "He heard hissing of the phone, then he hear the voice say at the other end of the telephone
"Dad, I'm alive!""
I can only wonder if this sentence contains the maximum saturation of "ways that you can describe picking up a phone" in one sentence provided that grammar is not a factor (sorry Geoffrey Chaucer). I also find myself strangely disappointed that Jimmy wasn't killed by the Jelly Creatures (which are, in fact, the actual monsters in this story) after all. And now, aside from urging you to buy this book for a hilarious if sometimes painful read that you will want to share with your friends, I think I'll conclude this post the same way that the book that it revolves around comes to a close.

THE END