I can see why this made it onto the list of Q Magazine’s 50 Worst Albums Ever. Sheesh. What a pretentious piece of crap.

Why oh why do I do this to myself? I used to enjoy Patricia Cornwell and read her avidly, but she has been on a down-hill slide for so long now, with her characters becoming both more unrealistic and self-disintegrating at the same time. Even buying her books on the clearance rack isn’t much of a bargain. “Oh sure,” I tell myself, “it’s only a dollar, so if I don’t like it, it’s not like I wasted a lot of money on it.”

But it’s really not the dollar, it’s the time trying to wade through this barely comprehensible book. Reading this book was like trying to watch a movie that was shot entirely using strobe lights. You get glimpses of some things and glimpses of a whole lot of nothing else. Get this—after opening with a look at a cold-blooded murder, she switches to Kay Scarpetta getting maudlin and depressed over a bird breaking its neck flying into her window. Give it a rest: the woman has been cutting up dead bodies for 30 years. Is she really going to get emotionally distraught and cry buckets over a dead bird? Or maybe she’s emotionally distraught. Hard to say because the language is beyond spare; if it were a human, it would be on life-support for malnutrition.

When did Cornwell adopt this kind of nihilistically spare narrative style? Is she just jaded and blase about the whole process and no longer feels the need to give enough details to be comprehensible? Is she under the delusion that this stream-of-consciousness skeleton of a story is literature? She can’t even be bothered to make up new character names any more. Now, she simply reverses a couple of letters in the name and calls it a day. There is a doctor in this book named “Maniro.” One of her main characters for years has been a cop named “Marino.” Has she become disdainful of her audience and careless about doing a decent job anymore?

Who knows? Who cares? Would someone please bop me on the head the next time I reach for a Patricia Cornwell book on clearance? One thing’s for sure—one more is going to make me about as self-disintegrating as her characters for forcing myself through another one.

David Gray is my latest great discovery; I just bought this as my third CD by him. OK, OK – I know the rest of you brilliant children have been listening to him for years and I am just slow to catch up and you are all jaded and blasé about him by now and yada yiddity yada. Shut up and let me revel for a moment, will ya?

First, there’s his voice. I can’t determine if it is a particularly gravelly tenor or a raspy but sweet-pitched baritone, but it is as sweet on my ears as honey on buttered scones. Not really a pretty voice, but not unpleasant nevertheless – a little rough as though weathered by life’s pains and trials. Kind of an English Bob Dylan.

And then there’s his music, the words and the sounds that come together in soul-piercing combinations—ballads of angst and hope and sufferance for the 21st century. A poet set to music, a musical pied piper calling out the doubts and the fears and the secret feelings inside.

It took me awhile to try this, because I thought of it as something for 20-somethings, but I have a lot of friends of various ages with facebook pages and it is a good place to check in with them through the day. (Although I am almost sure I am just about the oldest person I connect with on the site…)

This is one of my favorite Chinese dishes - spicy and crunchy and mmmmmmmmm. I’m sure it’s not good for me at all - that’s how much I like it.

It’s gooey. And it barely looks like pie. Except that it comes in a crust and is the best-seller at House of Pies.

Plus, it’s gooey. Which is why they call it Bayou Goo. The disclaimer: no bayous were harmed in the making of this pie. And it’s gooey. (Did I mention that already?) Watch your fingers.

Parts of this book are really thrilling. However, the characters are all two-dimensional and rather uninteresting, which made other parts of the book stilted and unbelievable. So thumbs up for the thrilling parts and blah-boo-hiss for the rest.

I’m trying to figure out what all the fuss is about with this movie. It’s kind of a Cinderella-meets-American-Girl jam packed with every kind of ugly-duckling-becomes-swan, romance-chick-flick cliche Hollywood ever exploited.

I can see Anne Hathaway having the bad judgment to do this film; she’s young and lacks judgment. But Julie Andrews?! Julie, Julie, Julie! What were you thinking?

You might wonder what I was thinking watching this thing to the bitter end. I only have two excuses:

1) My faith in Julie misled me into believing it would get better, and

2) I was at the end of a Valentine’s-Day-Saturday working jag and was too tired to switch channels.

I strongly recommend this book if you have any type of cardiac-related condition such as high blood pressure or angina or if your family has a history of heart-related diseases. It was written by Louis Ignarro, who won a Nobel Prize for his research into nitric oxide (the NO of the title) and its use in treating heart disease and improving the cardio-vascular system.

I can’t only recommend it as an informative read; I haven’t yet put any of his recommended plan into action. OK, that’s not totally true—I already exercise and follow his dietary suggestions, but I haven’t yet tried the supplements he recommends for building and protecting nitric oxide in the body, but I plan to start.

OK, I know this is weird, but I bought this CD because I heard two of the songs on CSI NY and really liked them. Not that I am such a huge fan of CSI NY that I will automatically buy all the music from it (although I do think Gary Sinise is hot), but the songs were very compelling.

Now that I have the CD, I don’t remember which songs they were. It is a good thing I like the whole CD.

Don’t take this for a recommendation, although I do recommend it if you are into bluesy, husky-voiced chanteuses. But you have to keep in mind that I am not a musician or anything. I just like music. And having grown up with music and movies, I can’t help but think of music as my own personal soundtrack that I keep editing to fit my life. One day, I am going to write a book inspired by the soundtrack in my headphones.