Two books, one I had previously forgotten to mention:
Andre Agassi's autobiography. This is well written in the sense that he manages to make himself come out looking as if he's being honest, while at the same time he comes out looking really good and making others look not so good. And that's pretty much the idea of any autobiography it seems. Or blog, etc. One can't just say it straightforward (I'm wonderful, everyone else sucks!) but that does seem to be the goal. So we come to the conclusion (seemingly on our own) that Brooke Shields is materialistic, selfish, shallow. That Agassi's dad, to whom Andre owes all his success in life, is basically a lunatic. And that despite making a few mistakes, Andre is just this wonderful person who exists to make the lives the others better.

Humorous to hear him try to explain the 'Image is Everything!' quote he's so famous for. Still, other than being almost as vacant ultimately as Brooke and everyone else in his book, he comes across as relatively harmless...

Dragons of the Dwarven Depths by Weis and Hickman: guilty decadent book. All long stories are decadent in the first place. This is 'escapist fiction'. Understand though it's not so much that it's dwarves and dragons and elves that makes it escapist. What really makes it a nice place to escape to is how 2D everyone is. How simple to understand the people are. How relatively straightforward everything is. Good people, bad people. Stark charater flaws. Things are exaggerated and thus so much clearer... With a plot that's badly glued together.

Sturm is honor. Pefect morals. Tanis is the smart guy. Raistlin is a basically a good guy but he's kind of an ass. Clearly a bit morally challenged. Tas is a total airhead. Flint is the stereotypical grumpy dwarf. Caramon is 2D stupid and exists to be taken advantage of by Raistlin. Etc. Each character is clearly not a real person. Just shards of real people. And so they merely survive as 2D evil bears down on them. Is this not really what life is? Or is it maybe exactly what life really isn't? Could it be that this type of thinking is so appealing to people that makes real life such crap? That in real life it's not the existence of evil that's the problem, it's the constant mistaken perception of it. It's that people are constantly seeing it all around them where there's actually none.

Occasionally I think I should set my sights low, hold my nose and try to write such a thing. Was really thinking that the past day or two as some disgusting back stabbing at work has really stressed me out and thus, this is a nice escape. But then later, when I'm less stressed out I'll change my mind. The constant changing of my mind and only having a few moods that desire to write, stops me from writing. Clearly I don't have the continous steady desire in me. And once I've stopped for a while, I don't start again because the stopping part has deeply engraved Failure upon whatever it was I was doing. And so a feeling of certain failure stops me from ever starting up a given project again.

Also the mood for the given story is just gone by the time I feel like coming back to writing again.

My moods change thus I can't stick with any story long enough to get anywhere with it. Is it a flaw in me or the lack of a necessary flaw in me?

A woman at work was going around saying I had a crush on her. I did not. I definitely don't want her to think that. I also don't want that kind of rumor going around, seeing as I'm married, etc. So I've since been erring on the side of being unfriendly, making sure to not smile at her, etc.

And so now she's smearing my work performance. Lying about varioius things. Seeing as I work with 50 some people, you'd think the fact that only one person is smearing me would mean management would be able to figure out the person is full of shit? But no, my management is incredibly stupid. So now what? Get down in the mud and smear back? Just shut up, continue to do more than my part, kiss ass, and say nothing while this person ruins my reputation?

Considering how middle management is, the thing to do is leave somehow. But I have to have worked for a year as a nurse here to be able to transfer. And I have to pay back my college money if I just leave the hospital before then. So I have to stay right here for at least 4 more months. Should I fight back in the meantime? Or will that just make things worse? Maybe it's really just management stirring up the trouble in the first place?

So then from the tick tock back on over to the chop chop for a bit, a while, a life, whatever.

It makes one want to wander around underground with an axe killing goblins.