Dickens? In Cleveland? Hating on the mainstream media? What era are we in? ALSO: I'm a big dork and I'm exhausted, too

Been meaning to link to this for a while (actually, been meaning to link to a lot of stuff for a while, but, well, sometimes you got to take your book-bloggin' street-level, get down and nasty with the gluebound-funk, makin' deals in secluded library corners with your lit-posse, if you know what I mean...which if you do, that would make you weird, since I don't have any idea what I mean). John Ettorre has some fun Dickens facts for you, including that there's actually a Cleveland Dickens Fellowship (which I will admit to an intense, almost overpowering, sudden curiosity about), and that Dickens actually once visited Cleveland. That factoid has that real weirdly anachronistic feel to it. Like when you found out recently--when they stopped letting you send them--that telegrams had actually been around for a really long time, and you really thought about it? No, it didn't make sense. How did cavemen invent telegrams? Didn't they need electricity for that? How did they convince cowboys to put down their lassos and hitch up their utility belts to string all that wire? No. It makes no sense at all. And yet, there it is: true. Same for me and Dickens and Cleveland. I mean, the guy, he like, defined England, right? So what was he doing over here? And what kind of boat back then could cross an entire ocean? I don't get it. Truth be told, I don't even actually believe it. Lies! LIES! John Ettorre, in light of certain recent discussions about the nature of online conversations, I'm going to have to take off my gentleman's gloves and put on my fightin'-words gloves, and tell you how I really feel. You spread lies on the Internet! On the Internet! Yeah! Expletive! Expletive! Yee of low moral standing! You're a coward and a cur! Hiyah!

Yeah, wow. I didn't know that paragraph was going to go there. Live television, folks! Note to self: don't blog when tired.

Anyways, Dickens: if you ask me, I'm cool with Dickens. I'm due to read some Dickens, since I haven't in a while. And by in a while, I mean, I think what Dickens I have read, I can't actually count as having read anymore (link via). But I do remember trying to read Great Expectations in high school and thinking that Dickens was a little bit too British for my tastes at the time, but then I gave it another shot sometime after college and I remember thinking that Dickens was actually a little bit too awesome for my tastes. And then there was whichever one book I did manage to find time to read when I audited that Dickens class in college. I'm sure I'm pretty much cementing my reputation here as a completely hopeless dork, but whatever. It's cool. I'm cool with Dickens. Even though I actually literally can't remember which book I read when I took that class. Sorry. Audited that class. So not only am I a dork, but I'm a lame dork. Go me. (It was either David Copperfield or Dombey and Son. Wait. What the hell? Dickens wrote a book called Dombey and Son? A really long book called Dombey and Son? Seriously, what the hell? Was this guy paid by the word, or something? Er, oh...) Oh! And I do remember reading some of his journalism/essays in that class, too, which were actually really fun pieces. Short! Blog-posty in length, if I recall. I remember liking those. And I guess I read A Tale of Two Cities in high school, on my own time, too. Which doesn't make sense, I know. Also, I've checked the shelves, and it seems I have two copies of Great Expectations. What? Who am I?

But yeah, now that you all know I'm a big lame clueless memoryless dork, anyone want to read Bleak House with me? It's the one Dickens book I own that I know for an absolute fact I never read, except for maybe the first hundred pages, which I think I might have tried to read, before realizing I was about to graduate from college, and that reading was for chumps and suckers and that I didn't need to read anything ever again. So I figure maybe I'll try to tackle it this year. Say, maybe, in June, or July, which'll be about when I finish Europe Central, maybe?