diversionary reading

After all that depressing stuff in Fiasco and the last few books I had read, I needed some antidote. I needed to cruise through some words that were pretty and artful.
So, I have blown through a couple of books by Tom Robbins.
Sure, a read through of "Another Roadside Attraction" and "Jitterbug Perfume" will turn around your mood better than a prescription for the happy pills.

Robbins is a master at lining up words, lyrical story teller and pretty damned funny.
Here is a quick out-take, describing rain, in Seattle...

"Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the Freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran in the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating."

If you have spent any time in the Puget Sound, you should recognize how nicely it's wetness has been communicated.
That is from "Another Roadside Attraction" - the story of some nutjobs who set up a flea circus and hotdog stand outside of Seattle and eventually come into possession of the mummified body of Jesus. Hilarity ensues and precedes.

Sometimes, reading about wildly absurd things makes it easier to deal ones mundane daily absurdities...