thepeopleseason | Entries tagged with books

I've been listening to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in the car, one of the benefits of having a CD-MP3 player in the car being that you can fit the first five books on a CD and listen to it for days.

In the middle of The Wide Window, "Snicket" gives us this wonderful sentence:

If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if that thing is cats.

ETA: Heh. After reading on Amazon that Daniel Handler came up with the pseudonym "Lemony Snicket" specifically for contacting extremist groups, I googled for his biography and found this page. It's full of info on Handler, but the really amusing item lies towards the bottom of the page:

Daniel Handler evidently is adamantly opposed to censorship. Read the letter he wrote to this blogger.

Heh. Just some random blogger...

Got back last night from a lazy, lazy week in Miami.

After mom's visit for a few days, we drove from Atlanta to Miami, with a stop in West Palm to pick up the elder brother. During the stop, I watched him play Counterstrike for a few hours before I began to feel slightly nauseous. Must be nice, having a computer fast enough to make you vomit.

Watched the entirety of the the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions with Jerry and Dad. Mom bowed out in the middle of Two Towers, and though she watched a bit of Return, I don't think it's something she's thrilled to partake of.

I've somehow managed, however, to get my parents (mostly my dad) addicted to Everwood. I watched most of the first season while I was down in Miami, and at some point, I'll need to send the discs down to them so they can watch the whole thing in rapt attention.

Things my brother has overheard his FSU-alum co-worker say:

"Well, you should understand. It's in your native language."
regarding the Aramaic The Passion of the Christ to someone from Italy.
"It must suck to lose to an in-state rival."
to a Virginia Tech-alum regarding Virginia Tech's loss to West Virginia a couple of years ago.

Got cash, some Tai Chi books, Katamari Damacy for the birthday/Christmas. "Katamari Damacy is not a violent game, but you can roll up balls of little children and nobody knows what happens to them after that," according to Wired.com.

Drove back up yesterday, listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I also had some PKD short stories, the Return of the King audiobook, Prisoner of Azkaban, and some recording to help me learn French. Personally, I think all of the above would have been more worthwhile...

Stolen from

ludditerobot:
(A) First, recommend to me:
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:

(B) I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions, no more, no less. Ask me anything you want. (No Grail references. It's been done. By

ludditerobot.)

(C) Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends to ask you anything & say that you stole it from me.

Just finished, despite a lingering illness and the intention to wait for the end of the manga series, the translated novel of Battle Royale.

Whoa.

Just, whoa.

Went to the book club yesterday, and of all things, played a little bit of poker. Of course, we had read Positively Fifth Street, so it was somewhat understandable.

Happy Birthday to El Guapo, himself. A sweater is forthcoming...

Of the rare individuals reading this journal by actually going to the front page and clicking through the entries, some of you may have noticed three new links at the bottom of the left-side linkbar. Labelled "current..." I've taken to listing the various media that I'm partaking of at the time (of the last update).

Since two of the items will be books ("current read" and "current bookclub"), I figured I'd go ahead and link to Amazon (and no, I'm not getting anything from the link).

Linking to Amazon is a bit of a pain in the ass. The fact remains that Amazon URLs, while from a coding point of view probably a huge weight lifted from their developers, are quite possibly the most user-unfriendly aspect of their site. Apart from their coders, who knows what part of the URL actually contains the portion of the site that pertains to the product you're looking at and what part will grant some anonymous surfer access to your wish list and credit card number? (yes, I'm being sardonic)

Paul Bausch, author of Amazon Hacks knows.

And he provided the following page on O'Reilly's site for creating shorter URLs to Amazon products.

Since I'm a geek, I threw together the following bookmarklet to click on when you're surfing Amazon and want to generate the short URL. It'll generate a small popup window where the short URL is easily copy-and-paste-able.

Link It
Edit: Since LJ apparently doesn't let you embed javascript code in a link anchor, the link goes to a page I have on my own site with the bookmarklet.

The technically-inclined might ask why I didn't just use javascript's alert() function--Mozilla Firefox doesn't appear to allow you to copy and paste from the alertbox.

An assortment of things that have, either peripherally or directly, made my life slightly less boring (in a good way or bad...) in the past few days.

That which I should not have picked up at Target for seventeen dollars:: Soul Calibur II for the Playstation2, which I played in Weapon Master mode until 12:30 AM last night, despite my intentions to go to the Independent and be social.
They who should suffer grievous bodily harm:: The people who stole Rob's chained-up 2001 Kawasaki Ninja ZX 9R at some point last night. They should have the skin flayed from their faces. Glow-stick sodomy is too good for them.
He who should have massive amounts of funding:: Rob del Bueno, bassist for Man or Astro-man?, who's trying to push biodiesel use in the Atlanta area and the Southeast through his site, Vegenergy.
He who must not be named:: Voldemort
She who should probably write something a little more substantial than "testing. testing..." since she went ahead and registered for an LJ:: genny0926
That which does not work:: Motorola's Mobile Power Tools, which have given me the capability to hook my new phone up to my computer and synchronize calendar and contacts, but which, for some inexplicable reason, will not upload my self-created MIDI file as a polyphonic ringtone. Damn you.

Things I picked up this weekend:

Coupling Series 3 (with a $5 off Best Buy coupon)
Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Koshun Takami's Battle Royale Vol 7
Ken Akamatsu's A.I. Love You Vol 3
Clamp's Cardcaptor Sakura Boxed Set (Vols 4, 5, and 6)
Make It In Minutes (all under a "Buy 4 books get the 5th free" sale and another $5 Waldenbooks coupon)
Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (with a 25% off Borders coupon).

Dear World: Please stop sending me coupons.

Read most of the manga Saturday night; I spent the majority of Sunday watching Coupling, knowing that Series 4 was beginning on BBC America, and found out that Richard Coyle (Jeff) left the cast of the show beginning Series 4. Quite disappointing.

* The title of this post is the catchphrase of dealnews.com, a site which lists all sorts of coupons, rebates, and sales on consumables (mostly consumer electronics and computer equipment).

Yes, I'm secure enough in my masculinity to express my glee at tonight's season finale of Gilmore Girls.

The book line paragraph thing, from

musesfool:
1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:

Nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning at the end of April 1981, and according to the giant illuminated figures at the top of the Mint Hotel the temperature was already ninety-two degrees. When we finally slid the things off--very carefully, I can tell you--Dimitri was characteristically pessimisstic. When Homer would tiptoe down to Nurse Angela's office, late at night, it seemed to him that Dr. Larch was always at the typewriter--and that he would always notice Homer's careful movement in the hall. It was a familiar but always touchy question, and one that I didn't answer just one, two, three. As the first stars came out, Coraline finally allowed herself to drift into sleep, while the gentle upstairs music of the mouse circus spilled out onto the warm evening air, telling the world that the summer was almost done.

Which makes the kind of sense that...doesn't.

( Sources )

I just got back from dinner--a dinner which ripped me away from reading Neil Gaiman's Hugo Nominated "A Study in Emerald." This is the lead story in Shadows over Baker Street, a compilation where various writers try their hand at mixing Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft. The story is, as I've so often said about pretty much everything Gaiman writes, delicious.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've never actually read a single page of either source, however, but "Emerald" is still quite the page-turner (or in this case, mouse-scroller).

Can someone who's more well-read in these areas point me to a good starting point for both?

Dear Everyone:

If you've found yourself a richer, fuller life through giving up on television, then bully for you. Until the day when everything on TV is just cheap advertisements for crap I don't want to buy, I'll continue actually enjoying what I watch. So please spare me from your pretentious, "Reading will give you more rewarding entertainment than anything on television" proselytizing--you probably have read neither a Nicholas Sparks novel nor a John Gray Mars and Venus self-help book.

Sadly, having done both, I know the relative value of each experience, so don't try to tell me that I have better/richer uses for my time.

Thank you,
The Mgmt.

After Capn Ken's glowing endorsement of Party Out of Bounds, Rodger Brown's book on the alternative music scene in Athens, I went searching around for nostalgia on Gaineville's 90s punk scene. Having been in a band in high school with Brian Bowers of Bombshell, I'd always been on the periphery of the scene when it was growing the likes of Less than Jake and Hot Water Music. The best chronicle of these halcyon days is Amped: Notes from a Go-Nowhere Punk Band, by Jon Resh, former guitarist and "singer" for the band Spoke.

So while I'm trolling Google for mentions of Jon and his writing, I suddenly spot a link to the blog of Patrick Hughes, formerly known as Crank in the Independent Florida Alligator's Thursday entertainment rag, and author of such poetic gems as:

Eye on a stick!
Eye on a stick!
I'm gonna stab!
I'm gonna jab!
Stab! Jab!
Eye on a slab!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

and

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Plants are often green
Now give me back my fucking Parliament tapes, dammit.

From what little I've read of his blog, he still has quite a way with words, and he's still a big fan of the imported Kung Fu movie.

Sweet.

Current Mood: nostalgic

Rules:
Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
You'll include this explanation.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

( And finally... the answers to the interview... )

Everyone should go read

musesfool's latest Potter piece, "Happiness is a Warm Gun," which she graciously dedicated to me. For a while now, she (and her amazing prolificness) has been an inspiration to me since I started my desultory career writing fic, so it's cool to find out that it's something of a two-way street :)

Here are a handful of pics I took in Paris when I finally got fresh batteries. There would be more, but my batteries died before I even got into the Louvre. Jerry took most of the pictures anyways...

I'm unconvinced that Michael Rosenbaum is as good an actor as everyone says he is.
The whole Tom Bombadil section of FOTR was utterly boring and was rightly excised from the movie.
The only time Sarah Michelle Gellar might have deserved an Emmy nod for her Buffy work was in the first season.
Season 3 is the most overrated Buffy season for two reasons: horrible Faith characterization and an agonizingly bad metaphor driving the season finale.
Joss Whedon might have deserved an Emmy award for his Buffy work, but only for the work he did well before the voters/critics actually noticed.
"The Body" is the most overrated and overwrought episode of Buffy.
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone was a pretty lousy movie.
After Season 2, Buffy's character turned to a self-involved, slightly-power-mad child with less maturity than Season 5 Dawn. In fact, most of the Scoobies, with the exceptions of Giles, Tara, and Xander, are now petulant twits.
As well-plotted as it might have been, Babylon 5 had some of the worst dialogue I'd ever seen in any show.
Between Seasons 4 to 7 (after the departure of Dan Vebber), no one on the Buffy writing staff had any inkling of how to write Xander, even Joss, who made him the scapegoat of "Once More, With Feeling" when he wrote himself into a corner.

And here's my slightly different take on Shanshu for the

open_on_sunday Prophecy/AU challenge.

Wow (Casting spoilers for PoA)

I'm sure she'll do a bang up job with the role, but I totally don't see her as anything approaching Trelawney...

From Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers:

Pigs were popular subjects [in automotive impact testing] because of their similarities to humans "in terms of their organ setup," as one industry insider put it, and because they can be coaxed into a useful approximation of a human sitting in a car. As far as I can tell, they are also similar to a human sitting in a car in terms of their intelligence setup, their manners setup, and pretty much everything else, excluding possibly their use of cupholders and ability to work the radio buttons, but that is neither here nor there.

I'm only on page 95, but Roach's witty writing on a not-unghastly subject is a delight to read.

Current Mood: amused

Things I learned/observed/figured out at DragonCon:

Bring lots of money
I probably spent over $300 buying crap. As previously mentioned, I got the all of Invader Zim on a bootleg DVD, as well as: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Maison Ikkoku: Box Set #1, Escaflowne DVD #7, Deliria--an RPG edited by chinook_wind, a RedOctane Ignition Pad, a USB-to-Playstation2 controller converter, a five-dollar copy of NHL Hitz 2002, Ghost of the Robot's CD, two signed photos of James Marsters, and an autographed poster for Chance, Amber Benson's independent movie--the poster including a forthcoming DVD of the film. Luckily, I had the willpower to resist getting another $100+ leather (or metal) mask from Mansour Designs.
Confidence is Hot
Being that this is a science fiction/fantasy/comic book con, you'll expect that a large number of attendees are, well, let's just say, not the ideal Hollywood body-type. I do have to respect the number of attendees who squeezed themselves into tight-fitting costumes, and paraded around the Con largely half-naked. Aside from a bevy of "booth babe" types, there was one older woman, dressed as the Scarlet Witch, slightly overweight, but still looking quite good in her handmade costume.
Overconfidence is not
Really, as much as I admire the people in the costumes, the grossly overweight woman in the skin-tight lycra bodysuit with the plunging lacy neckline was really quite a turn-off. I don't really begrudge her her body-pride--hell, I donn't really have the balls to go near-naked/skin-tight in public--but I have a feeling that most of the Con-goers looked at her more as freak than fearless. It wasn't even a costume per se--it was just the outfit she probably reserves for evenings when she's feeling randy/kinky with her lover. I do not doubt she has a lover. Which brings me to...
Costumers are more impressive than goths
In the hierarchy of dressed-up con-goers, the people who make their own wings/armor/cloaks/latex forehead ridges (I saw a Reed Richards who created his own stretched-out arms) are generally more impressive than the people who buy their own medeival costumes/swords/corsets/underoos (Like the Supergirl who just had on a Super-S babydoll tee and Superman briefs) who are generally more impressive than the people who just buy latex ears or porcelain fangs. All of the above are more impressive than the goths who just show up dressed how they're dressed every Saturday for their visit to the local BDSM show.
James Marsters has a lot of fangirls
Quite possibly the biggest celebrity draw of the Con, James Marsters has a lot of screaming fangirls. Every panel that he attended was pretty much full (on Friday, the Con staff rudely expanded the room in the midst of his speaking), and his appearance pretty much caused every other Buffy track panel to get extra attendance. In the Saturday panel that I missed, one girl in particular asked him to take his shirt off, and to make a point, he asked her to take hers off. She did, apparently not getting the point...
There will never be a Harry Potter track at DragonCon
Because of behavior like above...
It's good to know people
Tricia, the Buffy track director, got me past the lines to see the Buffy Musical performance on Friday night because I'd been attending the Buffy track since year one. She also had me help out with crowd control on the Monday celebrity panel, so I got a prime seat.
Wear comfortable shoes
I did so much walking at DragonCon, I think I might have lost about five pounds. And, like Lt. Dan said, keep your socks clean and dry, or you'll get blisters.
If you go to try to see some people that you've read online, it helps to be a little extroverted
I met harmonyfb, and a few others, but being somewhat reserved and introverted, I spent most of my time in the periphery of the Con, wandering about to buy crap.
( More details about the well-known Angel casting spoiler )
Danny Strong is quite short; so is Iyari Limon
But he's really funny. I met up with a couple of fellow fans and we wandered about the Walk of Fame. We spoke with Danny about his upcoming projects, and he mentioned Four Guys Eating or something to that effect. He said he plays the "asshole" and indicated that that role is more in line with his personality. He then signed something for one of my compatriots, and when learning that the autograph was for the guy's (perceived freeloading) ex-girlfriend, asked him for his phone number so that he could hound him to kick her to the curb.
Tom Hodges, the guy who played the bully in Lucas, directed James Leary (a.k.a "Clem, the foreskin demon") in Stunt Cocks. He plays poker with Lou Diamond Phillips, too.
According to Marsters, James Leary in costume gets all the chicks, "because of the ears."
ETA: If you're going to buy something, try for later in the Con
I could have purchased a couple of the DVDs on Monday afternoon for a greater discount, and perhaps saved $20.00 on the Ghost of the Robot CD according to harmonyfb and her friends' reactions to the show...

That's all for now. Ask me if you are curious about anything...

Current Mood: tired

Strike that--reverse it.

Well, with the upcoming three and a half days off, I've had to get things ready, apart from my usual obligations--last night's pool league, book club tonight. Today I got a package in from my parents which required my signature and initials in over a dozen places (there's a rainbow of tape flags marked "Sign Here" and "Initial Here" sticking to the edge of my desk at the moment), and I need to find a UPS drop box to throw this thing in so they get it soon.

And then apart from getting things for this trip, I'm also have to figure out the schedule for the next few weekends. Blue Man Group is playing at the Civic Center on the 23rd. So looking forward to this show. I've been listening to Audio in the car for the past few days. When I first heard about the show, I was planning to work up to doing Rock Concert Movement #4, but first I got lazy and then I hurt my back. Oh well.

And then the weekend after that is Dragon*Con. Anyone reading this attending? I figure

bratsey will probably want me to get her an autographed something or another from James Marsters, if she hasn't already asked someone else to do so.

Add to all of that the compelling desire to complete Xenosaga on the PS2. When I read the back of the package, it said something like "up to 80 hours of gameplay!" "Yeah, right" I thought. Few games made these days ever amount to anything over two days' worth of enjoyment, but I'm pleasantly surprised...and unwittingly addicted.

On top of that, I'm waiting 'til after the trip (and Xenosaga) to start Splinter Cell, and Soul Calibur II comes out on August 29.

Right now, however, it's all about Vegas, baby.

We're gonna be up five hundy by midnight.

Current Mood: excited

What should I do first?

Watch the Homicide DVDs that I got from Netflix.
Watch the BMW Films DVD that I got in the mail.
Look at The Art of Hellboy.
Read Matt Wagner's Trinity (Supes, Bats and Wonder Woman).
Install a new video card in the computer and add the sound card from the other computer into there.
Read Amarillo Slim's biography.
Watch the Shawshank Redemption on TNT.
Watch the fourth installment of the World Series of Poker on TiVo.

Current Mood: torn

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A Winter's Tale

The pursuit of Happiness

Entries tagged with books

Brilliant Line from Lemony Snicket

Christmas highlights

Q&A

Just finished...

Nothing new to report

Because I'm a geek

Odds and ends

How to go broke saving money*

A little bit sweet, a little bit bitter

A Study in Emerald

It bears repeating...

Crank lives

In which I am exceedingly lax in answering chinook_wind's inter

(no subject)

Ten Unpopular Opinions...

Margaret Strauss, Sybill Trelawney?

Book Rec

DragonCon Notes

So much time, so little to do...

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