BLOCKS, BOOKS, and BANANAS! Tales of the Fitful Typist.

Seems I've followed up an entry about not blogging enough by blogging even less. Funny how that works, huh? I kept trying to bang out something about Black Friday, but I just couldn't find the right words to express all the tragedy in a big, strong man being stomped to death so that people could shop at Wal-Mart. Ugly.

Anyways, this tends to be a sparse season where my public outcrying is concerned, so I probably oughta warn you right now to expect more of the same. Over the next couple weeks I may or may not attempt to bang out something for the Chronicle's short story contest, but aside from that, the rest of the month's gonna be input rather than output mode for the most part. I'm once again reaching for my goal of reading a certain, arbitrary number of books annually, although I've been lagging in the back half of the year. Expect thickening glasses and wormier behavior until 2009.

Speaking of books, I just finished Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. It was an extremely interesting read, digging deep into the fruit's colorful, troubled history while laying out why we're dangerously close to losing it altogether, and what needs to be done to prevent that. (While bananas are simply the most popular of the many fruits available to us in the United States, they are the entire foundation of the food supply in many parts of the world, making the search for solutions considerably more urgent.) The 'Ville's own produce manager/bearded weirdo had the opportunity to interview author Dan Koeppel recently. Whether or not you have time to read the book, it's an extraordinarily enlightening discussion, and it's been published in this month's issue of the Breeze in its entirety. Check it out, there's an awful lot you ought to know about this plant we take for granted.