A carnival of technology

What in the fuck did I just read?

I made it to page 30 in Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ve seen at least three different covers for paperback editions of this novel, and I don’t know if each is a sign of repagination. The one I have has a V-2 rocket outlined in white against something that looks like a black-and-white Pollock painting. I think I could make it a little farther, but I need to get some sleep tonight. This is certainly an odd book. I had to put it down for a little while after the sequence about a giant adenoid swallowing London (boring aside: my own adenoids were removed when I was like five. I don’t think they were the size of a city block.), but I picked it back up and continued on through a few more rows of boxes which I guess are chapter breaks.

I got a bit of a late start today since I decided to cook dinner instead of paying someone else to cook dinner for me, and that involved heating my kitchen up to approximately three billion degrees Fahrengrade and spending over an hour screwing around with some chicken, spinach and linguine. I also had a couple of drinks, fed my sourdough starter (it should be ready on Thursday), attempted to patch a bicycle tube (The patch didn’t take. I found the flat this morning (my favorite kind of flat, since fixing flats on the couch is a hell of a lot nicer than fixing them on a sidewalk), and investigation led to a tiny little hole that I thought was caused by grit caught inside the tire finally making its way into the tube. I cleaned out the tire, slapped on a new tube and forgot about it until tonight, but further investigation showed that the hole was actually on the corner of that weird rectangular seam that tubes from Performance seem to have. I think this is the last of my Performance tubes, and I swear I am never shopping at that shithole again. Seriously, why does a tube need an extra seam? I feel kind of bad now for telling that lady on MARTA that I got my bike at Performance, though I don’t think she’ll actually try to buy one. I’ve seen her before when I’ve gotten off at Dunwoody, and she’s very friendly and talkative, but there seems to be something a little off that I can quite put my finger on. I’ve always seen her wearing hospital scrubs and traveling with her nearly silent daughter. Maybe it’s just that quiet desperation shared by so many rider of public transit. Real nice lady, and I threw out that stupid tube after another spot on that goofy seam started blowing bubbles.) and watched an episode of House. I started my reading around 10 o’clock, and this book is kind of weird. It’s also very heavy. It’s hard to find a comfortable way to hold it.