911

My number this week was 911. The Atlas of World History, Rand McNally style. It's pretty big and heavy so I've decided to keep this one for the two weeks and pretend like what I miss at the end of this week picks up again at the end of next week.

I think I might learn something useful this week and the book seems to be pretty well split between maps and writing so it's not too daunting to think about reading. The chapters are:
1) The Ancient World: The Beginnings of Civilization
2)The Ancient World: The Ancient Mediterranean
3)The Ancient World: The Classical Civilizations
4)The Ancient World: The Great Empires of Antiquity
5)The Ancient World: Empires and Barbarians
6)Heirs to the Ancient World: Religions and Civilizations
7)Heirs to the Ancient World: Land and Power
8)Heirs to the Ancient World: Trade and Aggression
9)Heirs to the Ancient World: Tradition and Innovation
10)The Age of European Supremacy: Europe and A Wider World
11)The Age of European Supremacy: The Eurasian Land Empires
12)The Age of European Supremacy: Colonies and Commerce
13)The Age of European Supremacy: Europe Divided
14)The Age of European Supremacy: The Ancien Regime
15)The Age of European Supremacy: The Age of Revolutions
16)The Age of European Supremacy: The Industrial Revolution
17)The Age of European Supremacy: Liberalism and Nationalism
18)The Age of European Supremacy: The Age of Imperialism
19)The Emergence of the Modern World: Rivals to European Supremacy
20)The Emergence of the Modern World: The First World War and its Aftermath
21)The Emergence of the Modern World: The Second World War
22)The Emergence of the Modern World: The Post-War World
23)The Emergence of the Modern World: The Far East Since 1945
24)The Emergence of the Modern World: Contemporary Society
25)United States Historical Maps

Wow, that took a lot longer than expected. They're all only a few pages long so it'll be easy to read through them each. I hope. History books tend to be some of the hardest to read, in my experience, so I guess it could go either way. But I'll give it a go and see where I end up. =)

claque

On page 38, my favorite word was claque (klahk) a group of hired applauders. I don't think I'm ever going to need the term but I'll file it away into my random stupid knowledge pile and maybe one day it will win me a million dollars.

I'm going to the library again today, because as you hopefully know, it's Tuesday, I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do for next week. I might get two books today to cover next week when I'm going to be in Jamaica. It's still under debate in my head. Maybe if the first book is a really long one, I'll just go two weeks with it and take it with me. I'll let you know later what I decide.

And did you know that entree is not only the first dish of a meal, but also a right of admission? Now you do.

422.44

I'm kind of excited about this weeks book but I'm not quite sure how to read a Frenglish book. "Je Ne Sais What?: A Guide to de rigueur Frenglish for Readers, Writers, and Speakers" by Jon Winokur, who also authored "The Portable Curmudgeon" that I want to find because I love the word curmudgeon. It's essentially a French to English dictionary full of idioms as well as other useful words and sayings. Totally helpful.

Only problem, I have no French background whatsoever. I've taken a year of German here at Northern, which has a zero percent helpful rate. Actually I think it has a negative effect because I pronounce everything with a German accent, as my roommate so kindly told me. She's taken three years of French so I'm gonna trust her judgement on that one. I've been to Europe, including Switzerland and France, but the only thing I picked up was 'What is...' in Italian. Granted the book gives pronunciations but my eyes still sort of skip over the French part and go straight to the definition part.

So I think I'm going to leave what I learn up to you guys. Give me a page number from 1 to 155 and I'll pick one saying or word from that page and learn it. Or try to at least.

Side note: I randomly opened up to a page and the first thing I stumbled upon was cache-sexe (kahsh seks) "hide sex"; a breechcloth or G-string. Now you all learned something new.

Google that shit

There are so many characters in this book and the author bounces back and forth in time so it's a little hard to follow, but I think I'm starting to catch on.

There are 22 bad guys, all of whom are Sicilian. For the life of me I can't keep track of who is who because they all seem to be related in some way to the main guy, Gaetano Badalamenti. He was the Boss of Bosses of the Sicilian Mafia for a few years in the 70's until there was an over throw or something and he moved to Madrid. I think. He decided he wanted to start trouble in the U.S. and set up a Heroin importing and money deporting operation called the Sicilian Mafia Commissione. His son Vito was his number one man outside the country and I think Salvatore Catalano was the main guy in New York. They shipped the drugs in, to the New York area as well as Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and cash only was shipped out to be laundered in Europe by the Mafia warlords. Since the men were all pizzeria and restaurant owners, the press spent no time at all coming up with the name The Pizza Connection. Also, the first suitcase of money that was uncovered, the money was wrapped in pizzeria aprons.

The book covers the entire year and a half long trial and the nearly five years of wire taps and FBI investigation that was reported to or by, it was never really made clear what was actual fact and what was speculation in some parts, the author Shana Alexander. There are pictures in the middle of the book and I have to say that Gaetano looks like what a Mafia Godfather should look like. He has big bishy eyebrows and black hair and a near scowl. I googled him to find his picture and got something a little better : http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://nndb.net/people/498/000045363/bada.gif&imgrefurl=http://nndb.net/people/498/000045363/&h=310&w=236&sz=26&tbnid=exanqKO5cKcOoM:&tbnh=117&tbnw=89&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgaetano%2Bbadalamenti&usg=__x1y7Im8HPwp1lGbxbLF6HW-Ulr8=&ei=XAZ6S7vIG8SInQes9fSLAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=5&ct=image&ved=0CB0Q9QEwBA

You can judge for yourself about whether or not he was a good fellow. I like that they listed his occupation as criminal. Made me giggle a little.

Most of the names of the important people I didn't recognize because the trial happened before I was born but Rudy Guiliani was the U.S. Attorney for the southern part of New York during the trial so he played a big role.

In an effort to try to get a quick recap of a slightly confusing book, I googled (My parents say 'Google that shit' all the time at my house) and found that Wikipedia had the best summary of events.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Connection_Trial

It's all starting to make sense now. Yay!

345.67

The good news is, I read more of my last book before I returned it to the library. I was early for an appointment at Planned Parenthood to refill my birth control and stumbled upon the chapter about sex. I couldn't help but read aloud to my roommate. What we learned is that we are all living our lives by poor moral standards, both men and women, and that we need to shape up and quit coveting thy neighbor's wife. Personally, my neighbor doesn't have a wife so I don't think I'll be able to find that to be very difficult.

The new number for this week was 345.67. I apologize for not posting sooner but I've been having some medical issues then had to leave town so it's been a bit of a hectic week. The book closest to my number was The Pizza Connection by Shana Alexander. Written by 'America's finest court reporter' it chronicles the largest and longest running criminal court case to ever be held in federal court (in 1988). 22 Mafia defendents were accused of a $1.65 billion heroin smuggling and money laundering conspiracy that streched from Europe to New York to Brazil and beyond. I sound like a book blurb writer.

Anyway, there is a picture in the front cover if the book laying out the court room. It took three rows to seat all of the defendents because there were so many of them along with an equal amount of defense attorneys. I'm a little short on time this morning so I'll say that it starts by describing each of the bad guys then the court room then all of the bad things they did and the official things the judge did. I'll give you more when I'm back in Marquette.

Epic Failure

It's been about five hours since my last post. Our grocery shopping is done. We are officially checked out of our old apartment. We fixed a few little things in the old apartment. We talked to the woman we are going to start babysitting for on Thursday. There are four more loads of laundry done and the last one is in the dryer.

I've read a paragraph more in my book.

I think tonight is going to wind up an epic failure on my part. The two chapters I have read include 'The Ten Commandments for the Twentieth Century' and 'The Supernatural Authority of Moral Law.' I've been informed in great detail what the ten commandments are, each of the versions, as well as why they are important to pay attention to. The book is written by a Rabbi, which wasn't what I was expecting when I picked up the book but I think it's cooler than if it had been someone of Christian background since that's what most people generally stereotype when thinking about the commandments. Hopefully by the time class starts tomorrow, I'll have made some sort of headway.

And the stupid boy next door dumped a load of my laundry onto the counter while we were gone checking out of our old apartment. We were gone for maybe an hour. The clothes were still warm sitting there when we got back. So I left him a note on the dryer he stole that said 'Thanks bud. You're a peach.'

I consulted my book, I have not broken any of the commandments by doing so.

Excuses

All of my dishes are done. My laundry is folded. My roommates laundry is folded. There are four more loads currently being done. The blankets in the living room are folded and the pillows organized. The grocery list is formally written out on a piece of paper. I'd sweep but we don't have a broom anymore and we never had a vacuum so I can't do that. Plus, we just moved into this place on Friday so I know it's clean. I'm finally out of legitimate, or not, reasons to keep putting of my book.

For some reason, I can't seem to bring myself to read a book about why I should live my life according to the Ten Commandments. My parents were both raised Catholic so I was baptized as a baby for their personal beliefs. Until I was about 10 we went to a Christian church so I was raised knowing all of the stories and ideas that came along with the Bible. We stopped going because my parents decided it would be better for us to make our own choices about what we wanted to believe or not believe. I myself have settled on agnostic and I'm not sure where my sisters fall along the line but I think they're both somewhere around me.

I don't have a problem with people believing what they want, as long as they don't try to impress their ideals upon me. In some ways, I find different beliefs to be very interesting. But at the same time, I've neevr really understood why someone would want to live their life based around a book that may or may not have been written with divine ideas from an all powerful, omniscient god. It just seems illogical to me, in the same way I'm sure it seems illogical to them for me to not believe. I've taken religious based classes on campus to learn more so that I can make informed decisions about what I want to believe in or not believe in and yet a 133 page book seems to be a more than daunting task. And I've already read the first two chapters.

So it's time to just suck it up and do it. There is something to be learned from everything and I am going to learn something from the book "The Ten Commandments for Today." I'm reading the rest tonight so by tomorrow hopefully, I'll know at least one new thing. Wish me luck.

...well kind of

I'm disappointed with the use of the Dewey Decimal System at the Peter White Library. There, I said it. I was going to try to be nice but it's out now.

My roommate and I decided that on Tuesday's we're going to come to the library to work on homework after class otherwise we end up watching Bones all day and don't get anything done. Which worked out really well with my blog idea. Or so I thought. My idea, or the idea I had help with, was to have someone pick a random number for me, get that book that matches that number within the system no matter what it is, and read as much of it as I could in a week. So with my number -- 222.22 -- I set out in the library to find it.

My understanding of the Dewey Decimal System was that it included all books, even works of fiction. Which is not the case in Peter White. So I did what all unsure people so, and Googled. And found the Wikipedia site that explained it. The literature books should be within the 800 range, which they arenn't. Instead, fiction is labled fiction on all the books and is in alphabetical order, mystery is another section, and so on. Reference and nonfiction are the two places I've found to be numbered. I haven't checked books on tape yet.

So, my random number guesses, supplied always by my roommate, will be limited to the ninfiction section. And based on the book for this week, within the nonfiction section the base idea for which books are which seems to be right. 200 is the religion section and the .20 section is the Old Testament.

This week's book is "The Ten Commandments for Today" by Robert I. Kahn. More on this later because my computer is about to die.