A Long Day For Everyone

Now Playing -
Trash by Bob Schneider

Life - 

I hope this isn't the case for all of mankind, but man did it seem like most people I talked to had bad days yesterday. Mine wasn't anything remarkably bad, just a lot of stuff on top of each other. I had to get lobsters again, nothing new there, but my manager, who I suspect can't decide whether he likes me or feels like I was brought in because he's a bad manager and therefore hates me, decided he needed to ride along, to learn how to do it. I mostly think it was an excuse to get out of the store for a few hours... So that was three hours of awkward conversation in my boss's car, with him smoking and utterly disregarding the directions of his increasingly distraught GPS. Upon returning to the store, we found the health inspector, who was thrown for a loop by the lobsters and as a result, even more anal and picky than usual.

After she left, our assistant, who I knew was unhappy in the job, and frankly, not very good at it, announced that he was quitting.

Then our intrepid district manager walked in, intent on making sure our store was ready for the holiday weekend. I didn't get home until almost seven, twelve hours after I'd left the house that morning. Blah.

Lindsay didn't have a much better day, so we decided to kennel the pups and go out to dinner. We chose Pedro O'Hara's because they're awesome and the tables there are secluded and dark and comfortable. Then the night got better. I ordered a Celtic Cheesesteak. Which was the best thing I've ever eaten.

Ever.

We're talking a toasted roll, sauteed onions, peppers, mushrooms. Corned beef. Provolone and blue cheese crumbles. All grilled up until it's crispy and amazing. And served with some nicely seasoned steak fries. If I owned a restaurant, this would be the only thing I served.

So the night ended better than the day before it, with a pleasant walk along downtown Brunswick in the mild summer breeze and a full stomach.

Oh yeah, and as we were walking past a restaurant with outdoor dining, a car screeched to a halt in front of it, the door flew wide, a girl puked spectacularly, croaked a heartfelt "I'm sorry!" and roared off. So it wasn't just us that had a rough day.

I also shaved my head the other day, as part of a contest I had with my employees at work. Shockingly, I did not end up with a horribly creepy lumpy head.

 It's still very odd though.

Writing - 

Did a bit of work on my zombie novel and my post apocalyptic sixties crime novel.

Book Review - SPIDER LEGS by Piers Anthony and Clifford A Pickover

Spider Legs by Piers Anthony and Clifford A. Pickover
1998, 301 pages

Growing up, Piers Anthony was my favorite author. I was introduced to him by a librarian, and started with A Spell For Chameleon, which had just won an award at the library, I guess it would have been around ... 1989 or so... It was technically the first "Grown Up" book I checked out, previously reading all young adult stuff. I really enjoyed it and never looked back, reading all sorts of things, but quickly amassing a huge collection of Piers Anthony books. Eventually, at some point, I realized that I didn't really care for his, or at least liked other authors more, and the collection moved to the back row on the bookshelf. As we were unpacking and rearranging the Library this week, I decided to try and read some Piers Anthony books again, and decide if they were worth keeping, or if I should shift them to the "Sell" pile. I chose Spider Legs to start with, because it's a departure for him, being Horror/thriller-esque, and not part of a series. I remember enjoying it.

I was a fool. Spider Legs is one of the worst books I've read in a very long time. It was an absolute chore to finish, slogging my way through the rather short 301 pages was a kind of bizarre torture.Spider Legs is the story of a Norway village, under siege by a giant Sea Spider, which is essentially a long legged crab with a feeding snout and no claws. Typically small, around the size of a hand, this puppy was the size of a Elephant, mutated and grown in the back room of a fish shop by it's over the top crazy, but apparently skilled at genetic manipulation owner, Martha. She also installs a trap door in it's stomach and rides around in it when she's not acting like The Penguin from Batman Returns. I have hard time even writing a description of this book; essentially it's one attack, a LOT of horrible dialogue between a few characters, and pages of scientific description that is so poorly written it feels fake. The Sea Spider kills one girl, lets a guy survive, naked on an iceberg in the ocean.. somehow. Suddenly, the entire town accepts its existence, forms a posse to hunt it down, and all of the major characters decide that of slightly greater importance is getting some awkward action from the other major characters.

I couldn't believe how bad the writing was in this book. It's laughably bad. Like circus sideshow advertising bad. Witness, if you dare, these random passages:

After discussing options for finding and catching the elephant sized killer invertebrate: "Good idea. I'll make sure the police department sets up some huge spring loaded cages with chunks of meat." This is said with no irony or sarcasm. It is a legitimate plan for them.

Or this passage, where our awkward leads get to the end of a sightseeing trip on a motorcycle: They dismounted. Natalie found that her legs were stiff; the ride had stretched her thighs in unaccustomed ways. As if, she thought naughtily, she had just had endless sex with a monster. The shaking of the motorcycle had also put her kidneys into gear; she had to find a bathroom. Naturally, she had not considered that before guiding him here to the uninhabited countryside. They could so readily have stopped in Sunnyside. But he understood well enough. "Lets take a brief break." He said. "Apart. Choose your region." She chose a gully with good bushes for concealment. He went somewhere else. It was a great relief.

Also a great relief? Finishing this book! Though I have to admit that right around the time they tried to kill an armored beast aboard a ferry loaded with civilians with small handguns and the lead female got an old man's dentures stuck in here hair, I began to get a perversely insane giggly pleasure from reading it...

Obviously, I'll have to try one of his other books before selling all of them, maybe it was his cowriter on this book, but the scenes here are not the worst by any means, I could have quoted the "sex" scene and how they flail around like blind people, running into chairs, regardless of the TV running in the same room as them, or any paragraph at all with Martha, but this was one of the most embarrassingly bad books I have ever read, and it's worse to know that I've read it 3 or 4 times now....

Ugh.

1/10

Now Reading - Nothing yet, still recovering from this book!