January 31, 2010

Rant way past due:

So I was in Toronto last year and we went to visit Rogers Centre. The parking lot has no slot markings on the ground or anywhere, but there was one row of cars on one edge already, an aisle and another row of cars (see image), so we parked in what would have been the third row. We were gone for about an hour and in that time, our row of cars got filled, but in what should have obviously been an aisle, not just one, but about 10 idiots parked, thus blocking us and a bunch of other cars in.

Fine, people are morons and don’t give a shit if the car they parked next to can still get out, but it was also very hard to get any help. We, of course, called the parking lot. No, they couldn’t send a tow truck to help move the idiots’ cars so we can get out. Their solution was to wait. We hailed a cop car to try and get them to send a city tow truck instead. Did you know that cops are unable to do anything on private property? Well, I’ll commit murder on private property and by that logic they can’t do anything. We had to wait there for over an hour till someone came back to his car and we were finally able to move.

One year of book club books...

• January: White Tiger by Aravind Adiga ****
• February: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz *****
• March: Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons *****
• April: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis *****
• May: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson ***
• June: B as in Beauty by Alberto Ferreras ****
• July: The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist ****
• August: Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling *
• September: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik *****
• October: Come Closer by Sara Gran ****
• November: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy *****
• December: The Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Pearlman ****

Does anybody care about my star ratings? I wouldn’t if I were someone else. One might find it strange that I am in a book club and I don’t care about what others say about a book. Well, it’s not entirely true, I do get disappointed when a book I like, others hate. That was the case with The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and The God of Small Things; the girls hated these books yet, they were at the top of my list. A book is such a personal experience that for me it almost feels wrong to share. I find that I hold back a lot of my opinions because if I tell, I might tell too much. I’m not in the book club to talk about the book, that’s just the excuse. I’m in the book club for the times we don’t talk about the book and for the food.