Testing, testing... the mic? the mic?

Hear ye.

You've come here, so you know what this is. Here, I'll concern myself chiefly with personal information, with various breeds of self-promotion, with talking about dead animals I find while taking walks on the farm, and with media I like and/or dislike or would like to discuss (said medias including books, films, TV shows, plays, music both live and on record, comedians, video games, and jokes I hear people tell), as well as a few things I'll do my best to post at least weekly. I'll try out these weekly ideas, see if they work. If not, I may move on to other things.

The first of my weekly post ideas: Finnegan's Wake excerpt of the week.

James Joyce spent seventeen years in the early twentieth century writing a novel (the word here used quite loosely) that almost nobody reads and of which many readers interested in highbrow literature develop a snarling contempt. Mostly nobody can even decide what the thing is about, although there are many schools of thought. Among the folks who manage to agree, the Wake is a dream, chronicled more or less in English: of all the world's history and languages; of a giant which is the city of Doublin, asleep by the river Liffey, its wife; of the nighttime concerns of the family which are the core characters, HCE the Father, ALP his wife, Issy their daughter, and Shem and Shaun, their twin sons. The prose is saturated with poetic device, multilingual puns and double meanings, and aggressive ambiguity of every imaginable sort.

If anyone asks, I'm not a fan of Finnegan's Wake. But between the two of us I've almost never been so fascinated by anything in my life.

Much has been written about the Wake elsewhere, and I'm a bit of a noob, I'm afraid, so I won't attempt to treat on it at length. Not yet. But I thought it might be fun to open the book and choose a phrase every seven days or so to sink our collective teeth into.

For example:

"Hohohoho, Mister Finn, you're going to be Mister Finnagain! Comeday morm and, O, you're vine! Sendday's eve and, ah, you're vinegar! Hahahaha, Mister Funn, you're going to be fined again!"

-pg. 5 of Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition, 1999.

You can't read it the way you read anything else. Any ideas on this? I have a few. Ball's in your court.

Also, a fantastic resource and a place to read Finnegan's Wake for free online, annotated Wikipedia, clicky internet style: http://www.finnegansweb.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

The second of my weekly post ideas: horror story/novel/movie/album/etc. of the week.

I always divide my "Favorites" lists on Facebook and mySpace and everything into columns: one for horror, and one for everything else. Horror has ever been my favorite flavor of story; it seems to me the most honest, the most true to nature. I'll write about the first weekly pick as soon as I decide what I want it to be. Which brings me to...

...The third of my weekly post ideas: story/novel/movie/album/etc. of the week.

For things like American Beauty or the music of Counting Crows or the show "Squidbillies." And everything. You know.

Which are all the weekly post ideas I have, for now. I'm sure I'll think of more, or some or all of these won't work and they'll have to change, or whatever. I'd be thrilled to hear suggestions. :)