Fall Housecleaning Edition

No song review/inspiration for rambling personal essay today, I've got some things to talk about that don't really fall into that category so I'm just rambling today.

First things first: I was heartbroken last week when Lou Reed died. I thought about posting my thoughts here, but then I remembered that I owed the website Overthinking It an article after my last idea (comparing Miley Cyrus to J.D. Salinger) didn't pan out in second-draft form. So I sent them this: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2013/10/31/sweet-lou-lou-reed-1942-2013/

Lou Reed was a hero of mine since I heard Joy Division cover "Sister Ray" and sought out the original Velvet Underground version. He lived a full, active and adventurous life, and he will be missed. Kudos to the Georgia PBS station for re-broadcasting the "American Masters" profile of Reed from back in the late Nineties twice this weekend.

Now then; grad school applications do have a deadline, and it is February 1st. I'm now wondering if I can afford the fee for the entrance exam (it was pretty high a few years ago, and that was before the recession). I just sent off my first student-loan payment yesterday, which is kind of a big deal as I delayed it forever because of all the fun times I had financially over the past few years. It felt good to start trying to pay that off, though it too could take a long time to do so.

Finally, I read a very good biography of a very odd writer whose work I've always meant to delve more into but whose reputation for being odd has kept me at arm's length. David Foster Wallace left behind three novels, a couple of collections of short stories and essays, and one very interesting collaboration about rap music (the only work of his I've actually managed to read all the way through). Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story is the first biography about him, and it's really good (even if I can't help but feel sad at how the author seems to portray him. I wonder how people who knew DFW feel about the portrait). I might just have to pick up some of DFW's work and give it another try. I think I got through the first paragraph of Infinite Jest before tossing my hands up in despair that I would never understand it. Sometimes it helps to have context.

Anyway, that's it for now, except that I just remembered how awesome it is to see Boston win another World Series. Do you realize that they have yet to lose a World Series this century? Wicked hard, that is. Wicked hard.