I’ve been feeing irritated again with my inability to interact naturally with people, and of course I wanted metrics quantifying the phenomenon. So I headed over to Wrong Planet and stocked up on tests.

The Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire gives me 123 aloof, 92 rigid and 97 pragmatic.

And she who danced upon the darkness,
breaks and thrashes on the floor.
Throwing fits of rage and fury,
torn and sundered to the core.

Blistered through and through with wonder,
blasted from the roles of fate.
Ripped and wretched for a moment,
crushed with woe upon the gate.

After three years of having our summers trumped by Jen pursuing her Masters degree, we decided to take a crazily overboard vacation to make up for it. As it happened, Hawaii won the coin toss, and Maui seemed a good start. We ended up tweaking our travel times just right and got a deal, so from June 14th to the 20th, the continental United States could no longer taint us with its relative banality.

And so, I’ve fallen off the planet once again.

It’s not exactly like nothing has been going on, It’s just that my unparalleled boringness was eclipsed by my aggressive laziness. My vacation in Hawaii—which I returned from a month ago—still remains woefully unchronicled. Instead, my precious hours have been consumed by gambling and collecting bellybutton lint. Except for a few minor items . . .

I’ve finally gotten The Windup Girl off my to-read list, and having finished it, I’ll have to watch Paolo Bacigalupi for future novels.

The Windup Girl is something different than I’ve ever encountered. It’s part wild cataclysm, part dystopia, part social commentary, and all action. I’m not kidding on the last, either. Whether it’s Hock Seng shrewdly planning the rebirth of his financial empire, Anderson Lake pursuing an elusive new fruit on the behalf of shady agricultural megacorporations, Jaidee’s crusade against the corrupt Trade cartel that aims to hijack Thailand’s sovereignty for financial gain, or Emiko’s constant struggle against her lot as a Windup, something is always moving.