Sad Thread again - fuck

[Augo]

I go into B&N once or twice a month to buy a coffee and smile at girls.

[RavingLunatic]

My guilty favorites are the ones concerning freemasonry, secret societies, pirates craze cash-ins and the ubiquitous $5 collections of apocryphal American history anecdotes

Haha, yeah, there are a lot of those, along with books on witchcraft and vampires and such. But then you also get stuff like Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy and the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe and novels by John Updike and Umberto Eco and the like. By the way, I've heard good things about Eco before, and we just got in hardcover copies of Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana for $3.99, meaning I can get it for $2.67. Is it a really good book? Keep in mind I'm quite poor, so I really only want to buy fiction books if they're really, really good.

[Thermofusion]

I never got around to reading Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I'd steer clear of Baudolino and pick up Foucault's Pendulum or Island of the Day Before. Name of the Rose bored me to tears but I think I'm in the minority on that one.

[YojimboMonkey]

Foucault's Pendulum FTW, one of my favorite books.  The Island of the Day Before is interesting, the language is so rich that you have to congratulate the translator as much as Eco himself I think.  The Name of the Rose is slow going but I guess it's a little easier to slog through if you're a fan of the movie.  Foucault's Pendulum though, madness, Templars, Rosicrucians, centuries-spanning conspiracies, like if Da Vinci's code had been written by somebody interesting and intelligent.  It's a must read.

[RavingLunatic]

Foucault's Pendulum though...like if Da Vinci's code had been written by somebody interesting and intelligent.  It's a must read.

A dude who used to work at Borders gave me almost this exact same description. So has anyone read Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana? 'Cause that's the only one that I can get for under $3 and is therefore the only one I'm considering buying.

[Good Intentions]

I've read the Mysterious Flame, probably my least favourite Eco, though that's praise by faint damnation. Then again, I kinda liked Baudelino eventually after it got a bit better in the middle stages, whereas Mysterious Flame felt to me like it petered out. But you should read all of his books, because he's a good writer and tremendously good at imagery, like you'd hope a semiotician would be. It's his grasp of history, however, which really gets me going. Foucault's Pendulum is my favourite, followed by The Name of the Rose, then The Island of the Day Before.

[donblood]

My girlfriend just got fired. No details yet. Fuck.

[elpollodiablo]

Damn! Sorry to hear that, mang

Best regards to her, anyway.

[diesel_powered]

Damn. That sucks. Hopefully she'll get an amazing fantabulous job and look back and laugh at the idiots who were too stupid to appreciate her.

[donblood]

Thanks folks.  Turns out she was laid off - they were reducing her job function anyway, and she was too expensive.  Better than fired.  Also four weeks' severance, which helps.  Still a blow, but a cushioned blow.

Cushioned blow jokes can begin now.

[Augo]

My roommate got laid off today, too, but it sounds like he doesn't get any severance pay.   

[kadiekatRN]

Someone that my a couple of my friends were close to passed away yesterday.  I didn't know him very well, but he was one friend's first love.  It's sort of strange; he's younger than me.  He was a hard livin' guy, but I don't think anyone was expecting this.

[Efli]

A dude who used to work at Borders gave me almost this exact same description. So has anyone read Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana? 'Cause that's the only one that I can get for under $3 and is therefore the only one I'm considering buying.

I read and really enjoyed Mysterious Flame, although I don't find it at all typical of Eco's stuff, and like GI says it does peter out at the very end. If you're looking for a good read I'd definitely reccommend it, but as an introduction to Eco, not so much.

[ellaguru]

I had to go to an unemployment session this morning to tell me about all the job search records I am supposed to be keeping. It kinda stressed me out because I spent the last month looking more for further education and training stuff than for jobs (since nobody's hiring anyways), and the report I had to give them only asked about jobs applied for, so I'm hoping I don't look like a slacker when I've actually been doing stuff. They didn't seem like they cared, but I always get stressed about stuff like that, "what if they think I'm just lazy? Can they take away my money?" Stupid economy.

[Thermofusion]

A dude who used to work at Borders gave me almost this exact same description. So has anyone read Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana? 'Cause that's the only one that I can get for under $3 and is therefore the only one I'm considering buying.

I read and really enjoyed Mysterious Flame, although I don't find it at all typical of Eco's stuff, and like GI says it does peter out at the very end. If you're looking for a good read I'd definitely reccommend it, but as an introduction to Eco, not so much.

If Mysterious Flame is anything like Baudolino (another 'usual suspect' on the extreme discount/closeout tables), there's a reason it's on sale. I love Eco's stuff but Baudolino was nigh unreadable and, worst of all, the first thing I've read by the dude where I felt he lost grasp of the careful whimsy vs. pretension dichotomy that he so artfully balanced in books like Island of the Day Before and Foucault's Pendulum.

[clare]

"Nation's worst peace-time disaster", or "among the world's deadliest bushfires in 150 years", take your pick, it's all fucking unbelievable. Fortunately for me, this time it's nowhere near, but 6 years ago it was a different story.

Edit: Oh yeah, and there's a possibility that some of the fires were deliberately lit. Great.

[G.C.R]

While the headlines and pictures of Australia burning and folks crying made me sad, to be honest my day had been sucking pretty badly already. Campbell and I took Hoshi to the vet. She's been living with him so since I haven't been seeing her every day, it was a shock to see how awful she looked, tiny and so skinny there's just no weight left to lose, and manky fur and all. Anyway so they look at her and think its renal failure, which is what I expected, would mean that she kept going a while but it would eventually kill her. They decide to keep her in over night for re hydration on a drip.
So we go into town and Campbell buys me lunch, and we've just started eating when the vet calls with her urine test results. Its not renal failure, its diabetes. Now it is treatable, but the vet says many people opt to have them put down at this stage cos of the work involved. I'm just freaking at this stage that its going to be prohibitively expensive, but we trek back to the vets. She explains what is involved. Insulin shots twice daily at the same time every day, new diet, strict weight monitoring. Vet overnight stays every two months. I'm totally glazed but Campbell's asking questions and seems positive its possible. The vet stresses we need to start treatment straight away, which freaks me because I'm scared if we say no then they'll bring her in and euthanaise her on the spot. So we decide to treat her.
Then we go in and see her and its fucking heartbreaking, she's sitting in a tiny cage with her tail in the litter box and not moving even when they open it up so we can stroke her and looking so frail.
Later after I go home and cry some more and sleep and stuff and Colin comes by (with unexpected presents of special soaps and chocolates) I'm thinking about the practicalities of this treatment, and to be honest I have no idea what to do. I don't think that I can do it. In order to do everything required I will have to reorganise my work, relationship, sleeping patterns, and pay money that I can little spare. She was going to be coming to live with me anyway because Campbell's leaving town for two months soon, so asking him to bear the bulk of dealing with it is not really an option.
Hoshi is an old cat, about 15 years old. I'm trying to rationalise this because I feel like a terrible owner and this is such a hard decision, and I'm at work and keep spontaneously bursting into tears and this is just awful but I think its not workable. We're going to have to put her down.
Now I have to phone Campbell and tell him that I don't think we can do it. I'm sorry to write so much, I'm bitching more than people have on here about dealing with dying humans, but this is feeling really fucking bleak.

[clare]

No Grace, you're right. It is bleak. It's a decision that you have to make about someone you love. I hope it goes OK. I was in a similar position a few years ago and it totally destroyed me for a bit. D'Arcy wasn't happy about it either and we both cried a lot. Some time later we were in Target and the checkout chick asked him what was wrong "my cat died" he said, the woman made sympathetic noises "the vet killed her" he said. That was 3 years ago and he still talks about the cat. Sad is legitimate here.

[edison]

Oh man, Grace, I feel for you. I don't really know what to say, except that I would probably do the same thing in your situation, but this sucks.  to you and Campbell

[jebreject]

[DCDave]

Oh man.  Good luck, Grace

[elpollodiablo]

Poor kitty...

Sorry, Grace.

[girl]

I'm sorry, Grace. 

[G.C.R]

Thanks guys, you're really lovely people here you know?
Its kind of turned from sad to weird today- Campbell is determined to treat her by himself, to the point of turning down work and reorganising his life around it completely. I think this is an absolutley insane idea, and cannot possibly see how he can make it work.

[Good Intentions]

Best of luck with your Hoshibelle, whichever way it goes.