I Break for the Holidays or, Herman Melville is Overrated

In honor of just beating solitaire twice in a row, I have decided to update my readers on my Christmas Break happenings thus far.

Two days ago I went to the mall to do some Christmas shopping, as we all do to commemorate when the Magi stopped outside of Bethlehem and bought gold, frankincense and myrrh during the big sales—Balthazar is reported to have received a free box of truffles with his $50 or more purchase, a $10 value, but he held out on Jesus because his dyslexic mother had taught him that chocolate was bad for gods—but I ended up just buying a bunch of stuff for myself, to commemorate when the shepherds stopped on their way to Bethlehem and bought Steve Martin cds and some books for school.

Chief among the books I got is Moby Dick or, The Whale. Not many people know that Moby Dick or, The Whale has a secondary title, namely, The Whale. This is a misleading title, to be sure, because when read out loud it could sound like I am presenting two options of what I bought, and it is the listener's job to decipher which is the correct name of the book, but in actuality the or is functioning as an and, which is also confusing because Moby Dick and the Whale is even more incorrect and has the potential to be a great deal more offensive. I have chosen to address the book as simply, The Whale to prevent myself from snickering when I say the title, thereby prolonging the life of my nasal passages.

After two days of casual reading, I only have 601 pages left, but the last page isn't even a full page, so I basically only have 600 pages to go. This will, however, take me a little longer than you might expect since I prefer to understand what I am reading and I have to read The Whale with a dictionary nearby, and whenever I pick up the dictionary I get to reading it and looking at the pictures.

I doubt that the man at the Barnes and Noble Title Sleuth Desk knows about the secondary title, unless of course I mean Moby Dick, which I might, now that I am calling it The Whale, but I don't. The other book I purchased is called Invisible Man. I asked the man at the Barnes and Noble Title Sleuth Desk who the author of Invisible Man was, and he said H.G. Wells without even looking it up, which was wrong—both H.G. Wells and not looking it up, in that order.

I could have corrected him, but everyone around me was Christmas shopping and I felt "in the way," so I went to the back of the store and did my own title sleuthing, which would have just been author sleuthing if I had known how to spell invisible. I would have known sooner that I didn't know how to spell invisible if "invisable" hadn't brought up four results, but I was eventually tipped off by the fact that none of the results were The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells, so I searched for H.G. Wells and learned how to spell, so the man at Barnes and Noble ended up helping me after all.

TRANSITION

We have three cats and a dog. We keep the cats' food dish on a towel on a chair—the towel to keep the chair clean and the chair to keep the dog "out of the kitty food." This morning, our only legitimate cat, Jacob, ate some of his food, promptly threw it up, and then returned for a second helping. After he was done eating for the second time, or done eating, that is, his kitty instincts kicked in and he tried covering the left-over food with the towel, in order to protect it from the elements, I suppose. Instead he knocked the dish onto the floor, thus scattering Hill's Prescription Diet all over the kitchen.

This is the most exciting thing that has happened during Christmas Break so far. I was asleep when it happened.

And with that, I wish you all happy holidays or, if that offends you, a merry Christmas.