My Words are Flat and Harsh

99 Books Meme

Here’s a list of 100 books that I may or may not have read (or even desire to read). The rules are as follows;

- Bold the ones you’ve read
- Italicize the ones you want to read
- Leave unaltered the ones that you aren’t interested in or haven’t heard of

And away we go…

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (JRR Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (JRR Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (JK Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (JK Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (JK Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (JK Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (JK Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
68. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
69. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
70. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
71. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
72. Shogun (James Clavell)
73. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
74. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
75. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
76. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
77. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
78. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
79. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
80. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
81. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
82. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
83. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
84. Emma (Jane Austen)
85. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
86. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
87. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
88. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
89. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
90. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
91. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
92. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
93. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
94. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
95. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
96. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
97. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
98. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
99. Ulysses (James Joyce)

1) What book are you reading right now?

Success: The Best of Napoleon Hill, by Napoleon Hill.

2) What is the fourth sentence on page 133 of that book?

Energy cannot be organized without the habit of concentration of all the faculties on one thing at a time.

3) What is one book that changed your life?

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Made me a think twice before saying/doing something. :D

4) What is one book that you read again and again?

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

5) What three books would you want on a desert island?

a) To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
b) The complete Harry Potter Series, by J. K Rowling
c) Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

6) What is the funniest book you've ever read?

Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

7) What book made you cry the most?

Hmmmm, A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

8) What book do you wish had been written?

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.

9) What would be the title of your autobiography?

Why do you have to negate everything?

10) What book do you keep meaning to read?

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

11) What five books should everyone be required to read?


1) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
2) Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
3) How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
4) The Street Lawyer, John Grisham
5) Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger

12) What book was the biggest waste of your time?

I can't remember the book title and author. It's about this agent who saved the Prince Charles and Princess D's lives. Arrrghhh.. Can't even remember the entire plot.

(I think the book was authored by either Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum)

13) What was your favorite book as a child?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. I loved it so much, in fact, that I pocketed my cousin's copy, and I still have it.

14) What book have you read the most?

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

15) Is there any book's ending that you would like to rewrite? What would you change about the original ending?

Would change and have changed. Harry Potter should not have married Ginny Weasley. For me, she's just and always be a swooning Harry Potter fan.

I am a movie whore! I'm willing to trade my precious hours of sleep for movies. I have even degraded myself by watching films in pirated DVDs and in those crappy online video streaming sites.

Warning: Gut-wrenching drama is waiting for you after this sentence

But things changed. To avoid being redundant, let's just say that everything in my life took a 360 degree turn.

This is where the drama ends.

Anyway, all I wanted to say is that I don't have the time to watch 14 movies in a week anymore! I have watched Boondock Saints and Reservoir Dogs this October. That's only two movies in one month! How pitiful is that?

Reader: Crap, I just don't get the point of this post. Why did I even bother to read this?

Ode to a Beautiful Nude
pablo neruda

With a chaste heart
With pure eyes
I celebrate your beauty
Holding the leash of blood
So that it might leap out and trace your outline
Where you lie down in my Ode
As in a land of forests or in surf
In aromatic loam, or in sea music

Beautiful nude
Equally beautiful your feet
Arched by primeval tap of wind or sound
Your ears, small shells
Of the splendid American sea
Your breasts of level plentitude
Fulfilled by living light
Your flying eyelids of wheat
Revealing or enclosing
The two deep countries of your eyes

The line your shoulders have divided into pale regions
Loses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple
Continues separating your beauty down into two columns of
Burnished gold
Fine alabaster
To sink into the two grapes of your feet
Where your twin symmetrical tree burns again and rises
Flowering fire
Open chandelier
A swelling fruit
Over the pact of sea and earth

From what materials
Agate?
Quartz?
Wheat?
Did your body come together?
Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills
The cleavage of one petal
Sweet fruits of a deep velvet
Until alone remained
Astonished
The fine and firm feminine form

It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your body
Yet suffocate itself
So much is clarity
Taking its leave of you
As if you were on fire within

The moon lives in the lining of your skin

Lawyers, dry humor, easy sexual bantering, biting sarcasm, eccentric characters, offbeat sensibility, great writing, and gorgeous girls sum up what I like in a show. I'm talking about Boston Legal here. Aside from the reasons I just enumerated, I love the show because of James Spader and William Shatner. Putting the two together in one TV show is one of the most brilliant decisions ever made in the history of TV (this is an according to me statement). Just so you would know what I'm talking about, here's a clip from the caves of Youtube:



And yeah, I have a DVD of the series.

is the title of my first ever abstract painting.


I made this while listening to Rihanna's Umbrella. wehehehehe.

You can make your own too.

1. Hero (Chinese)
2. Cinema Paradiso (Italian)
3. City of God (Cicade de Deus)
4. The Tin Drum (German)
5. Magnifico (Tagalog)
6. O Crime do Padre Amaro (Portuguese)
7. Malena (Italian)
8. Amelie (French)
9. Voces Inocentes (Mexican)
10. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Chinese)
11. Once (Irish)
12. Rashomon (Japanese)
13. Oldboy (Korean)
14. My Sassy Girl (Korean)
15. The King and the Clown (Korean)

In my search for films that tell a great story with an excellent presentation, I was carried away to "Cinema Paradiso" in Italy by director Giuseppe Tornatore.

After hours of combing the internet for the full version of the movie Pulp Fiction, I finally found the almost perfect site where I can watch it. But I won’t tell you where. nyahaha. Anyway, I can’t resist the urge to post this dance scene of Uma Thurman and John Travolta. Makes me want to put on my dancing shoes and do the twist.

These strips from Dilbert remind me where I'm working. :D

Some may hate this big-mouthed, red-haired, weasel-faced giant but not me. I adore Conan O'brien and his lightning fast wit.
Read this transcript of his speech to the graduating class of Stuyvesant High School and you'll see why I'm a fan.

Alright, yeeaaaah! I said yeeaaaah! Thank you. Thank you graduating seniors, faculty, parents….(several girls shout “we love you Conan!”) I love you too sir. Thank you graduating seniors, faculty, parents, SAT tutors, college placement coaches, jealous siblings, grandparents who have no idea who I am… (applause) “Who is this horrible man?” and people who wandered in accidentally because they have season tickets to Lincoln center.Before I begin, I’d like to thank you for inviting me today. Over the years, I have been asked to give commencement speeches at many prestigious institutions. Just last year, I was offered fifty thousand dollars to speak at a graduation. But I said, “you go to hell, Bronx Science!” (applause) Then they said “sixty thousand!” And I took it but I never showed up! Man, those guys are idiots.

Hang on, grandma. “What’s happening?” I am truly honored to be here today. Of course when I first got the call no one mentioned I’d have to show up at 8:45 in the morning and wear a dress. By the way, true story, I am wearing a ceremonial robe decorated in the colors of my Alma Mater, Harvard University. (applause) But I choose to wear it because it’s the fastest way to let everyone know I’m a pompous, self-important jackass. (applause) I’ll go to Starbucks later, “I’ll have a mocha latte, BUT DON’T STAIN MY ROBE!” By the way, if you’re curious, yes, under this thing I am going commando. (students “woo”-ing) I call it “Conando.” That was dumb.

I’m especially honored because I was told it was the students who wanted me to be here today. It’s very flattering to know I was up there with your other first choices, skateboarder Tony Hawk and Bow Wow. This is a sentimental occasion for me, because I remember my own high school graduation so very well. Just like you, I sat in a large auditorium, daydreaming about experiences yet to come — college, my first job, puberty… thirty eight.

Yes, I’m even reminded of something my dad said to me at my graduation. He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me right in the eye and said, “I’m not your father.” Then he wrapped me in his strong, Samoan arms and said “don’t ever call me.” Yes, graduation is a day you’ll never forget. Many of you have been signing notes in each other’s yearbooks that you will read years from now. Things like “best friends forever” or “keep in touch,” and that’s fine. But you might want to do what I did. I wrote incredibly specific, untrue memories, just to confuse my friends when they look in their yearbooks twenty years from now. Greatest thing I ever did. I wrote things like “I’ll never forget the time you stole those mothballs, you shoe-sniffin’ wild man!” or “keep head butting alligators, señor Cinnamon Shorts!” They call me twenty years later, “what does it mean?!”

Yes, you should cherish this day because this morning is one of the most important experiences of your life. Then, afterwards, it’s off to brunch with your parents. Starts off well, but halfway through they mention dinner plans with your grandparents and aunt Rose who hasn’t seen you in ages. “But I made plans,” you say. “I’m going out with Kirsten and Dylan, there’s a party at Galapagos and JR has rented the VIP room.” “But aunt Rose came all the way from Garden City,” they say. “And who’s this JR?” Suddenly you jump up from the table, “OH MY GOD, IT’S JASON RUBENSTEIN, I TOLD YOU THIS LIKE TWENTY TIMES, I TOLD YOU TWENTY TIMES, YOU DON’T LISTEN!” So enjoy that.

Because this ceremony is so important I have thoroughly compared and researched yours school. According to wikipedia which I visited… (applause) … not five minutes ago on my blackberry, your school is named after Peter Stuyvesant, head of the Dutch West India Trading Company. This explains, by the way, why your teachers are still paid in grain and bags of salt. Stuyvesant, as you know, true story, is not your typical high school. In 1950, this really happened, in 1950, students in Stuyvesant tried to build a particle accelerator. By way of comparison, that’s the same year my public high school discovered fire. (Conan makes a caveman noise) In 1969, girls were admitted to Stuyvesant for the first time (applause). This started a new trend among the boys called showering. You didn’t want to be here pre-1969.

Today Stuyvesant has a remarkably diverse and varied student body, ranging from math geeks to science nerds. Yes, you’re a glorious beautiful rainbow of brainiacs. And that can be very intimidating, let’s face it, most of you are smarter than me. it’s a proven fact that as you get older, your brain shrinks and you get dumber. This is why you have to explain to your parents how a TIVO works and they have to explain to your grandparents how a cat works. Even I’ve gotten a lot dumber, I graduated from Harvard 20 years ago, and I am currently reading at the 6th grade level. If anyone here spoils the ending of Charlotte’s Web, I am so going to freak.

So what can I tell you this morning? What advice can I give you? Well, I’ll tell you what I won’t do — I won’t sprout a lot of meaningless clichés, you know the ones, the trite phrases that pollute most commencement speeches — “reach for the stars,” “follow your dreams,” “keep your eyes on the prize.” No, you guys are too smart for clichés, so I’m going to give you real concrete advice that will get you through the next four years of college.

Number one: most of you are going to competitive schools, so psych-out the competition right away. It’s simple, here’s how you do it — show up at freshman orientation with a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and a black magic marker. Sit in the dining hall and start crossing out whole paragraphs of the book while yelling “WRONG, IDIOT!” “TRY AGAIN HAWKING!” “This guy’s an ass!”

Number two: rip out a picture in a magazine of a hot guy or girl and frame it. Tell people its your boy or girlfriend who goes to Ohio-Wesleyan and that your relationship is purely physical. When people ask you why she looks suspiciously like Jessica Alba throw a hot tray in their face and run away.

Three: be warned, everyone has a weird roommate. If you don’t have a weird roommate, then you’re the weird room mate. (applause)

Four: if you want to get out of a test, don’t say you have a family emergency. Everyone says they have a family emergency in college and it never works. Say you have diarrhea. No one ever says they have diarrhea unless they do.

Five — write these down, these work. Five: some of you guys will be tempted to grow a goatee. Do not grow a goatee. A goatee is just a beard with low self esteem. On the same note, some of you girls will be tempted to get a lower back tattoo. I just want to say — that’s totally awesome. (applause, principal shakes his head) My message is a little different than your message. You won’t invite me back.

Number six: people will tell you that your future depends on what major you choose. This is not true. Einstein majored in hotel management. Dick Cheney majored in modern dance, and Britney Spears wrote a thesis on socialist labor relationships in post-glasnost Poland.

Alright, those are silly and a complete waste of time. But believe it or not, I actually do have some real advice for you. I don’t want to freak you guys out, but twenty five years ago, I could have been any one of you. I went to a public high school, and I was a bright, ambitious, hard working kid who wanted more than anything to go to a good college. The only problem is, I was much more interested in succeeding than in really learning. When you’re a smart kid in a competitive school, it’s an easy trap to fall into. So I did a lot of things in high school not because I enjoyed them but because I thought they look good on an application. I think you know what I’m talking about. I was on a debate team — hated it. I ran track — I was terrible, I got so bored running the two mile that I tried to talk with my opponents during the race. “what are you gonna do later, I mean you gonna be doing something later?” I joined school government — hated it. Of course, like many of you I worried obsessively about my GPA and my SAT scores. And of course, it worked. I got into the college of my choice and to this day I’m proud of the work I did in high school.

But old habits die hard. Once I got into college, I had every intention of joylessly grinding away again. I was gonna turn college into just another step on the road to being successful, whatever that meant. I told people my plan was to go to graduate school in law or government, just because I thought that’s what smart people were supposed to do. And then something really weird happened. My roommate — by the way, he was the weird roommate — my roommate was going to an orientation meeting at the Harvard Lampoon, the school humor magazine, and I decided for some reason to tag along. I wrote one piece, then I wrote another piece, then another. Before long, I was running the place. The only difference was, I was joyously happy. I was succeeding at something because I loved the process, not because I was trying to get anywhere. I had found the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and I honestly didn’t care where it took me or what it paid.

So when I graduated form college in 1985 I told my parents “thanks for the amazing Ivy League education, now I want to be a comedian.” Later, in the emergency room after they woke up, they said they were fine with my decision, and I was on my way. I’ve had a lot of highs, I’ve had my share of lows, but if I hadn’t allowed myself to experiment and risk doing something without a clear career payoff, I might have missed out on so much. I never would have written for Saturday night live. I wouldn’t have preformed in stage in Chicago in a diaper in 1988. I never would have spent hours crafting the Homer Simpson line, “the bee bit my bottom and now my bottom is big.” I never would have jumped out of a window in the South Park movie. I never would have danced with the masturbating bear or been pooped on by Triumph the insult Comic Dog. I never would have swam naked in Arctic water with the Finnish Ministry of Defense. Yes, it’s been a wasted life. But I honestly believe that I found the best use for Conan O’ Brien. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked extremely hard at being an ass, and yes I’ve made some sweet, sweet coin. I do very well. (applause)

What I’m asking you to consider is that the next four years don’t have to be just a stepping stone. You are very bright, impressive young people. But for the last four years, your GPA has been calculated to two decimal points and you’ve pushed yourselves very hard. Many of you have succeeded because you have stuck to a very rigid and linear path and that is fine, that’s fine, all I’m asking you to do in college is to take a moment every now and then, breathe, look around you. If something intrigues you, take a small chance. You might just find your entire life you’ve been planning on. It could be bio-physics, it could be medicine, could be puppetry, could be ultimate fighting, beekeeping, government, or whatever the hell it is Ryan Seacrest does. Don’t really know what that is.

The point is, at this moment, many of you have ideas of what you want to do with your life, but for many of you those ideas will change. And that’s because you think you know who you are right now, but you really don’t. Trust me, when I look back at 18 year old Conan it’s a ridiculous sight — six feet four inches of pale skin and bone, scared of girls, squeaky voice — I’m sorry, that’s 43 year old Conan. But life and the choices I made have changed me in a thousand ways. None of it would have happened if I had rigidly kept my eyes on the prize and decided with great determination to follow my dream, because I didn’t have the slightest idea what my dream was when I was 18. It had to find me. So enjoy the next phase of your life, make sure you enjoy today as well. You’ve all achieved something pretty remarkable today and you should be infinitely proud.

Before I go, let me leave you with one last message. Tonight, many of you will party — it could get pretty rockin’. All I ask is that you remember to stop for a moment, take out your cell phone, and invite me along. My home number is 212-664-3737, seriously, I have no plans. Thank you and congratulations.

"Tonight I Can Write" tugged my heart the first time I read it. (emo..nyahaha) It speaks about memories of a lost love and the pain they can cause.

Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is shattered,
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her,
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
That night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that is certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes,

I no longer love her, that is certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer,
and these the last verses that I write for her.

I'm not really into self-help books. As a matter of fact, I despise self-help books. So when a friend lent me he copy of Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese, I was prepared to ignore it. What made me read the book were the picture of a cheese in the cover and the word cheese itself.

The book came as a pleasant surprise. I actually liked it. Realizations about my job hit me right in the face while I was reading it. In two months time, I'm doing something that I should have done a year ago. Time for me to look for Cheese Station N.

Part 2

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