"Dude, I'm married with patio furniture..." Prez

I have four posts "in the works."

Two of them are over Saul, the evil Israel overlord who tries to murder David. I will get back to that soon, I'm hoping by the end of the month, those posts take so long.

Another posts is about my Aunt. I just don't know what to say, its a horrible situation. I'm actually a few years older than my Aunt so we grew up as something more like cousins. I have never known a person so prone to drift with whatever influence came her way. Now everyone waits to see what will happen. What to say?

The other post was about two different books I have just finished, Up in the Air and City of Thieves. Of the two books Up in the Air was the most that I had something to say about.

I don't want to talk about any of that. Right now I am sitting next to a wife who nervously watches her Dallas Cowboys try to loose yet another game. We have spent most of the weekend setting up bedroom furniture. That's right bedroom furniture. Never thought I would spend so much on bedroom furniture. Never thought I would spend so much time setting up bedroom furniture.

There is something that has stuck with me from a HBO show we really like The Wire. One of the characters is asked if he wants to go out with everyone, he comments "I'm married with patio furniture". The level of married you are somehow has a correlation with furniture. Let me just say this, there is easily 4X - 5X the amount of money spent on this as I've spent on all the furniture I've ever had in my life. Of course when I moved in I spent I total of $75 on furniture, doesn't take much to get more expensive than that.

Married with bedroom furniture, yeah, I saw her eyeing some patio furniture online, wonder how long till we're shopping for that?

Up in the Air

Finished up two books recently, might explain why I'm having a hard time completing another post on David, but anyway the books.

First Up in the Air. Amazing book. The title, like most, has dual reference. Ryan Bingham is a member of the business class of flyers who rack up hundreds of thousands of miles a year always up in the air. At a deeper level Ryan's life, plans, relationships are all metaphorically up in the air, always circling the runway, and the story is about him trying to land only to find he has been circling the wrong runway.

What happens when you stop moving long enough to realize all the people and ideals you have put your faith cannot hold altitude?

I always enjoy getting a chance at peaking inside the lives of people who live so radically different than I do. I fancy that I could have been Ryan Bingham, a man lost in the airways of the United States given just a few different choices.

The book is the story of the crash landing at the end of such a disconnected life.

Some of the concepts I found fascinating in the book had to do with how endlessly worthless corporate ideology is. Ryan searches for value, for meaning, in his work with no success. He criticizes the religious while worshipping a god he knows is false and will ultimately sacrifice him. The book leads us through his faith in each and every one of his idols being destroyed.

Is that what the book was trying to convey? Is there a sense that once you slow down, once you stop flying and put some weight behind the ideals you have in your life they will give way underneath you. The only way to manage is to maintain altitude, never travel in a straight line, always jump from point to point?

It was a good book, very sad, and very modern.