SWEET, SWEET ACID

Want to hear something embarrassing? (Of course you do!) Pineapples were on sale at my local grocery store for super cheap - $1.88 per pineapple. My roommate had recently bought one and I YouTubed how to cut a pineapple because last time I did it I had all these "eyes" left in it and I thought I did it wrong. Turns out I just didn't cut deep enough. In any case, a lot of YouTubbing left me to cut the pineapple the east Asian way instead, since you waste a lot less of the pineapple meat. There's even an pineapple eye-cutter instrument that I desperately want and um, may have threatened my girl A with de-friendship if she didn't travel to the Philippines to get it for me. I feel like that's totally reasonable. I used my new skills to chop up a pineapple and um twenty minutes later my tongue is bleeding. Why, you ask? Because I ate too much pineapple and my tongue is bleeding from all the acid. Yeahhhhh. That's some vengeance. I capitulate! You win, pineapple.

In more appropriate, less character defaming news, I've been all about short stories lately. I randomly picked up the collection "Peaceable Kingdom" by Francine Prose, whose critiques I really enjoy reading, and was really surprised by how much I liked her fiction writing. It's quirky, decidedly intimate - almost reminded me of stories you would tell your friends when you're at the peak of your vulnerability and a little crazy. Strange coincidences and a touch of (sometime) sinister magic gives the stories a bit of grit so they keep an edge to otherwise ordinary events in our lives.

I also grabbed Richard Yates' collected stories - (it's hefty!) and am slowly making my way through it. His collection is similar to his novels in theme, but there's something a bit more unpolished, more obvious about about the subjects and moods he's conveying. Maybe it's the variation on the theme that I'm picking up on and becoming anxious about; I wonder if I'm being de-sensitized to the type of unanware, indulgent characters he's creating (?). I can't read too many of his stories at once because I get so frustrated (or angry! or gah!) with his protagonists. I know. I need to calm down, drink some mint tea, and soothe my poor bleeding tongue.



All right, then,
T