Cry me to the moon.

If you have read Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and at the end you feel disjointed, disoriented, if you feel like you have been catapulted to Jupiter, you’re still sane. Thank Pynchon even for not sending you out of the Milky Way galaxy. I feel like reading through a David Lynch film with lesser tendency for migraine. I got the hang that was Vineland after one chapter, but with this one I still feel like struggling after four, but the novel is short with six chapters. Probably because, Pynchon meshes imagined worlds of the rock and roll mania, drug culture, and the conspiracy over the courier system all of which is suppose to mirror the confusion that is America itself. It’s like a reinvented detective story with a more perplexing, labyrinthine and interesting chase, full of sadness and loss and search for meaning. If Pynchon wants us to place ourselves in Oedipa Maas’ shoes, then all the confusion, loss and seemingly perpetual search for meaning definitely hits home.

On one hand, everybody seems to be jumping on the Twilight bandwagon, so I digressed by picking up another vampire of sorts novel by Elizabeth Kostova called The Historian. It’s too early to tell some of the probable highlights of the voluminous book (so no spoilers please) but speaking of digression I think it offers to shed light on the true Dracula, the inspiration of the Bram Stoker novel, who wasn’t a vampire in the first place, Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler, because, yes, he impales people like lechon. Like skewering them with long pointed wooden sticks and displays them in such a manner as the barbeque vendor displays her freshly grilled, with sauce, barbeque, intestines and lamang-loob. And yes, according to the book, which is partly autobiographical, back in those Ottoman empire days, this happened people.

I just came from the pantry to drink water and walking from the dark hallways of our office (yes, the sun has set and I have to keep reminding myself I’m suppose to be a bureaucrat) and scarily chanting The Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson (with all the larynx-tearing growl), when the guard freaked the hell out of me. So much for stress.