New Hampshire is...

...the Granite State.  Its capital is Concord.  The state bird is the purple finch.  When I was in college in Boston the liquor stores there were open on Sundays and that's the only reason anybody I knew ever went up there.

That's all I really know about it and that's all I have to say.  I had an urge to blog about the primary tonight, but I've overcome it.  I'm going to read a book instead.

Charlie Wilson's War.

What are you reading instead?

And instead of what?

Comments

[Maria]

Jane Austen's Letters...

... instead of Kaplan & Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry. Feh.

[Tom W.]

Charlie Wilson's War - me too!

[Jennifer]

A World Lit Only by Fire...

... instead of completing a class plan.

[Claire]

Blind Assassin by Atwood.

[Ken Muldrew]

Gravity's Rainbow...

...instead of...well, now that I think about it, I'm going to walk the dog first and then go back to the very strange collection of digressions and jumbled anecdotes. I wouldn't say a pattern is emerging yet, but certainly a feeling...at least as far as the understandable paranoia...the perversions and psychic nonsense isn't making any sense so far. Better to walk the dog with more tangible thoughts to mull over.

So you guys really think you're going to have an election?

[Apostate]

Pierre and Jean.

But I'm glad she won.

[OutOfContext]

I had to work tonight. As I stood in front of the big screen tv next to the mens room watching the election results, one of my customers stopped next to me and asked, "Do you think America's ready for a black President." "America's ready for anybody after eight year's of Bush," was my answer. "I heard the church he goes to doesn't allow whites," he said. "..and Bush probably belongs to clubs where blacks aren't allowed," was my weak response. "He's a Muslim, isn't he?" "No he is not, and would it matter if he were?" I said getting a little aggressive. He went to the bar and ordered another shot of Jagermeister.
Now I'm going to relax with a story from Lydia Davis' "Samuel Johnson is Indignant" and a few pages from Michael Palin's "Diaries 1969-1979, The Python Years."

[KC45s]

Reading Bears: A Brief History instead of writing the book I'm contracted for (or to). Though not instead of, uh, reading certain blogs...

[Linkmeister]

I've been reading blogs (and commenting on some of them!). We got the NH results at 6:00pm our time, so I didn't have to stay up late. It was gloriously amusing to watch David Brooks on the News Hour intimate that perhaps the vote counts were wrong; he couldn't believe that HRC was ahead with 50% of precincts counted.

Makes me want a serving of Schadenfreude Pie for all the press people who got it so wrong.

[Zach]

Bestest favoritest Schadenfreude moment of the night: feckless hairdo reporting at its very, very best..

MSNBC "desk" AP, et al *all* flatly refuse to "call" it for Clinton, for hours, and hours, and hours. You see, Clinton lead cannot possibly be confirmed as legitimate, because "Hanover and Durham are not reporting yet"..

CNN also maintains large banner to this effect.

Not until hours, and hours, of bloviating later, as *80%* of precincts are reporting in.. does anyone, ANYONE at CNN MSNBC AP et al.. manage to figure out that

a) student body of Dartmouth (Hanover): all of 5k

b) UNH (Durham), student body 15k..

..out of session until 22 Jan 2008.

Nobody was ON the UNH campus tonight.

Woops.

BAAAAA HA HA HAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA Ho ho ho whee...

[Uncle Merlin]

Harry Potter book 4 instead of "Atoms and Light" by John Dodd.

Its Time for fun.

BUT>>> I really should be reading "Year of Wonder" by Geraldine Brooks for book club on Sunday.

OutofContex: I take it you work in a restaurant/bar setting.
The character you describe we used to call a type and that type we called a "Fire Starter". They always throw out the controversial and uncertain but they NEVER come to or OFFER a solution. Even if you pin them down on their point they move quickly to throw out the next controversial uncertainty. With them they never come to anything concrete.
I always found the most pleasing way to deal with them was to throw back some new big scary uncertainty and then walk away and polish the bar or glasses or tend to another more attractive customer. That always left them hanging.

UM

[Mike Schilling]

Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road (AKA Jews with Swords), instead of pulling together the umpire list for this year's Little League season. Which I'll get to soon. Honestly.

[joanr16]

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. A Christmas gift. But I confess to turning on PBS's recap at 10 pm Central Time.

[OutOfContext]

Uncle Merlin,
Bowling Center, SW Ohio. Not only a type, but typical. And your characterization is not quite on spot. His words would not be considered controversial around here at all. This is very fertile ground for Swift Boat seeds.

[Nat Turner]

_Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace_ -- amazingly good.

[Nat Turner]

_Partners in Command: George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace_ -- amazingly good.

[Michael Bartley]

Wallace Stegner's Big Rock Candy Mountain. Did you ever finish No Country For Old Men? Thoughts?

[Samuel]

Finished the code of the Woosters. Bought it from the local library for 25 cents and it looks like the book won't survive another reading.

Instead of reading, Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross. A bit of Jeeves is always welcome when I am down in the dumps.

[Chris the Cop]

Charlie Wilson's War also - I'm seeing the movie this weekend. (By the way, after watching the way Barack won Iowa and the way Hilary won NH, I think Barack will will win the nomination--not much of a limb to go out on I admit since I have a 50-50 chance of being right or wrong, but there it is.)

[tdraicer]

I'm going for some light reading: the second volume of Saul Friedlander's brilliant Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945.