Someone made this Flatiron Building mask for the work Halloween bash, but then abandoned it in the Sales Department somewhere along the line-- It has been sitting in between my desk & Kelly's desk since then, & the other day Kelly took some pictures of me wearing it. Of which this is the best. So that is where this picture came from! I'm terrible about taking pictures, I know-- no matter how often I resolve to be better about it, I never actually am. Oh well! So-- currently hanging out in my pajamas, just finished my coffee & a videogame blitz-- I was stuck in Metroid Prime trying to get the Power Bombs. I kept dying! So I had to sit down & stop half-assing it, the momentum of which carried me the heck all over, & netted me the Grapple Hook in the mix, & an Energy Tank, & some more Missile Capacity. Have I mentioned that I really like Samus Aran? Anyhow, now I need to take a shower, hit the gym, shower again, & then hang out with fordmadoxfraud. Then tonight I have DnD-- I haven't gamed in forever & a month of Sun's days!
Since I had drinks with Pierce on Odin's day & have dungeoncrawling tonight, I decided to just hang out at home yesterday-- spend some time with my wife. Except! She never came home! I called her & she was like "uh, duh 2000, I am having dinner with Kira tonight?" & I didn't remember that! She claims I was sober when she told me, but I feel like I must have been drunk. So instead I hung out with Emily, & we played some video games. Jenny eventually did come home, & fell asleep on my lap while watching Glee. That is a funny show-- I am a sucker for song & dance, & I quite like Kurt & Rachel isn't all bad, but the rest of the character's are just so loathsome-- okay, Sue gets a pass for being that way on purpose. I like the show, but the plot is hinged so much on failures of communication, which is normally such a pet peeve of mine? I think Glee isn't the worst offender, though, because they actually have some kind of plot. Things eventually do get addressed. Still-- it isn't a perfect show, but I do like it, despite those misgivings. Anyhow-- I read for a while, finished up my vampire book, & then hit the hay.
In other words, nothing much to report. We have lived with James & Emily for about half a month now? They are churchmice, which is working out. No complaints on that field, & if things continue like this, I think it will be acceptable for the duration. Hooray for non-disasters! We had two Thanksgivings-- the first, the "official" Thanksgiving, was with Kira & Nino & Robert & Judy, featuring Arturo, Donna, Lee & Carrol, & Jessica. That was a big success, & the theme of the night was "that's what she said!" Second Thanksgiving was all us-- I'd been hording points at the grocery store, & got a free turkey! So last Sunday Jenny brined it using Alton Brown's recipe, & we cooked a feast for us, James, Carla & Kenneth, featuring Claudio the dog. Oh, it is worth mentioning! Palo Santo is the name of the Thanksgiving mascot, the turkey dressed as a Pilgrim. He shoots you with his blunderbuss & makes you fall asleep till Black Friday.
Current Mood:stop procrastinating! Current Music:crown me king- the keep on the puppyfell
In Emerald City No one can hear you scream! "Oz" meets "30 Days of Night."
Every time I read one of Wellington's vampire novels, my opinion of him ratchets up a few notches. I started out just thinking these were fun, throw-away pulp reads; then by the time Vampire Zero came out, I realized I was snatching these up & reading them as soon as I could get my hands on them. They are pulp, but in the best possible way. These are well crafted page turner that compel you to stay up finishing them, sneak in a few pages during your coffee break-- these are really great books. This one is no different-- I quite liked it! Wellington is on team "Sharkpire"-- you probably know what I mean. Contrast the monstrous, alien, diabolical sharkpire with the seductive, creature of the night "Sparklevamp." Now-- I'm not hating on sparklevamps-- & that includes Stephanie Meyers. I am willing to say there are all kinds of problems with the Twilight books, but using them as a sexual metaphor ain't one of them. I digress-- the vampires in Wellington's novels aren't even a little bit redeemable. No sir; they are straight up & up evil, they are the undead-- you can tell they are nearby due to the unnatural raising of the hair on your arms, the smell of a sick hamster, the way the whole world goes dead silent. They are sleek predators-- in that they are literally sleek, hairless so that, like a vulture's head, gore doesn't stick to them.
Wellington is high-concept, but restrained-- which is a hard row to hoe, but he pulls it off with panache. The first book, 13 Bullets, hits you with the premise when it introduces the young State Trooper to the grizzled US Marshal: "but, vampires went extinct in the 80s!" The next one stars the two of them again-- 99 Coffins is a story hung on the hook "oh crap, are there almost a hundred vampire coffins buried in this mass grave in Gettysburg that these archeologists just found? Crap!" The third book, Vampire Zero, focuses on Laura Caxton, the State Trooper now grown into her own in a big way, & has one of the best settings to its climax-- Centralia, PA. A coal mine fire, forever burning.
The core premise to this one is right up there with successful pitches: Laura Caxton is a prisoner in a high security prison-- & now the vampire's are in charge. The story pitches Laura against human foes & undead enemies in quick succession, & pulls it off. It alternates between Laura & her girlfriend Clara, & the suspense is tight. & I'm wowed by how much I'm willing to trust Wellington. You might take this with a grain of salt, coming from a straight white male, but: for a straight male, David Wellington can sure write lesbian females with respect & believability. Laura Caxton is a heck of a "bruiser," a dedicated killing machine, but handled without making her Arnold Schwarzenegger "with tits" (as I've heard some styles described). Clara isn't a fighter, but is darn useful. & you know what? What really impresses me is that Wellington can put them in a sucky situation-- a situation where they are threatened to be raped, where they are called slurs, where bad news is always just around the corner-- & still not make me cringe. It doesn't creep into authorial voice. It is a darn fine trait, not being a misogynist bigot. Good for him.
Current Mood:Last Supper. Current Music:crown me king- yucca mountain press
Little wee devils! (Meat Man, from Mythbusters, aka my next Promethean character-- not pictured, diving helmet!)
A diary? Writing to record my happenstances? What ho! Last night I got a martini or three courtesy of friend the gentleman Pierce, who I met through a mutal affection for Paizo & Nicola Griffith, oddly enough. What a juxtapose! We met up at the Algonquin, which I'd never managed to get my act together & get to before. Nice enough. My mixology pedigree is all in Brooklyn-- where I'd've taken him to the Cotton Club (you know I dig the sidecar!)-- I only know about dives & happy hours in Manhattan. Still we had a lovely enough time, full of swag & gossip.
This week at work has been moronic. Swamped with backlog on Tyr's day: fine-- my own fault for having Moon's day off (to slam out my NaNoWriMo)-- but then Odin's day was Sale Conference, which meant I was in meetings for a straight seven hours. Today was going to be catching up on that mess, but instead-- a virus! My work computer got infected & getting it fixed was sort of the work of the whole day. I mean-- ugh. & then tomorrow I have off...which means my weekly digests are going out on Moon's day instead of Thor's day. Whatever, suck it!
Current Mood:feather & flourine. Current Music:crown me king feat- nuclear launch detected.
Souls for Stygia! Souls for Heaven, souls for Hell! Limbo's confusing.
I'll cop to it, I'll own up. I've been slack about reading. Heck, even when I have been reading, I've been paging through old roleplaying books. Three plot devices are to blame-- one my NaNoWriMo, which gobbled up chunks of my time. Speaking of gobbling, two-- Thanksgiving. We had two of them, one in which Jenny cooked a turkey! Three, Metroid Prime. James brought some GameCube games with him, & so my slacking off time has been devoted to shooting missiles at Space Pirates. All that aside though! I did read this. Which is a short collection of short stories. Yikes! Short short stories, too, mostly.
The two strongest contenders in it are "Under Hell, Over Heaven" & "Hero Vale." First off-- this is Margo Lanagan of Tender Morsels fame. I expected things to be fairly terrible, by which I mean bad things happening in good faerietale form, & there were definitely moments of that. The only rape was monkey rape-- & frankly, hanuman langurs are the sort of thing that make you think Dworkin might be right about heterosexual sex. There are a lot of dreamy tales in here-- queens coming out of cupboards, clay changelings in the upper east side, dead babies hidden in the forest. "Under Hell, Over Heaven" is a procedural set in Limbo; the souls who try to earn "brownie points" in Heaven's ledger by rounding up souls that have been waylaid due to clerical error. Two things going for this: one, it absolutely reminded me of Wraith: the Oblivion & that is always a good thing; two, it is full on Catholic. A lot of writers would have twisted the concept, but no, Lanagan stands by the Catholic mythology, with all the silly candles as get out of jail free cards & unbaptized babies in hell. "Hero Vale" is-- well, I called Tender Morsels a "woman's tale," & "Hero Vale" shows Lanagan can write a "boy's tale" too. Just the sight of a "hero" is enough to drive you mad...possibly mad with bravery.
Current Mood:Now, vampires. Current Music:crown me king- the black sails broke the horizon
Buy my most recent National Novel Writing Month project, Watchtower Gothic. A novel about the childhood of Gillick Bootblack, a boy growing up in The City-- population, one billion-- as a member of The Unity, a sect of militant Utopians. Gillick's fate is to one day become the world's most infamous war criminal-- but only if he can get out of this creepy carnivale! His friends Alizarin Red, Blondie Glass, & Beatle Chimneysweep are there to help him along the way-- as is the grotesque Doktor Tophet. It is only $7.02 for a hardcopy-- & the download is free. & while you are at it, you could buy any of my other NaNoWriMo projects. Now that I'm finished, I can finally get back to having a life! I actually chickened out of a Creative Commons license-- none of them are what I want, which is derivatives-only-with attribution.
Current Mood:Check it out! Current Music:crown me king- copyright 2009
Special S-class fight! Special maid costume cafe! Sword-duel a go-go!
The most recent Hayate X Blade, & just as confusing & sort of addicting as the rest. The plethora of characters-- including a Sid & Nancy, now?!-- are a big hard to navigate, especially considering that family names, given names, & nicknames are all bandied about interchangably. Doesn't wreck anything though-- this is plenty of fun.
Current Mood:off to meet Marie for lunch. Current Music:crown me king- antique pornography
The Land Before Time! Starring...Littlefoot! Not really, but that would be sweet.
I guess my opinion of him hasn't changed from The Taint? Or Necroscope for that matter. He's fine but...not great. I actually thought I was going to put this down...but then I'd read a story I did like, & would carry on. Here is sort of the deal: he tries to pastiche Robert E. Howard & Clark Ashton Smith here (with of course heapings of Lovecraft's Mythos) but just...doesn't get it. His "barbarians" come off like parody depictions of pop cultural Conan, not the clever, noble Conan of the books. They are what you make joke about, if you never actually sat down to read the Howard. Besides that, his depictions of women & people of colour are...problematic. Listen, if you set your book at a nebulous "time before the dinosaurs" you might want to think about not making the "savages" black & the heroes white. I'm just saying. Still-- when he does wizards, it is kind of cute. Kind of Vancian, actually. Vance-ian. Kind of like Jack Vance. His wizards are interesting, & sell their stories...but the rest are like drinking flat soda.
Current Mood:42k, on schedule. Current Music:crown me king- revenge is the best revenge
I know, I know! It is November, though, & I've been working on my NaNoWriMo instead of doing journalese. I'm at 39k, which puts me near about where I want to be. I've gone back & forth-- I hated it for a while, what I've been outputting, but I have kind of gotten back to a good place. Here is what I've learned-- I like epistolary documents, & I like putting together scraps. Nothing quite so good as the Wil O' Wisp gimmick, but still. Learning. Maybe the next novel is when I use an outline! This one-- is shaping up to be 1/3 of what I thought it would be. Anyhow-- like David was saying, it is about doing the count, getting the job done.
Yeah-- also my life is different lately. James & Emily live with us now. I'm not wigging out about it, but it is weird. Right now I'm by myself-- Jenny at Kira's, James back at his old place, Emily working late. We are renting out our spare room to them for a few months, which is like, a match of moments-- they needing a temporary place, us needing temporary renters. Weird to be a landlord-- I guess I can cross that off of things to do.
Today I saw New Moon today. I liked the first one better. This one had the real problems showing-- Bella is a terrible protagonist, & the FatherHusband fight that Jacob & Edward have is...gross. Still-- the fights were really dynamic-- I liked the werewolves, despite the slightly patronizing "magic injuns" thing. Afterward we went to the Clover Club to have a couple of civilized cocktails.
Current Mood:Kill forever! Current Music:crown me king- jenny lewis is not a p-zombie
Star Power, Star Power! (104) Starcraft: Frontline by Knark, Washid, Furman, Elliott, Benjamin, Sharmek, Sevilla, Eldar & Kamarga.
The Swarm, Forever! The Protoss & Humans will make worthy new strains.
Quick hit: the story of the first narrative in here was the best, with constant callbacks to the in-game lines ("Jacked up & good to go!" & "Honor guide me!" & the like) without it being overwhelming. The art on the Zerg sucked though. The plot on the rest was all-- pretty forgettable, erring on the side of silly. The art was sometimes good, sometimes poor. Still, I like Starcraft.
Current Mood:Get to work! Current Music:crown me king- nanoo nanoo
The Just raised the Gun. The Gun is named Suddenly. Then, Suddenly speaks.
I liked this better than Engine Summer I think? Well, it is tough to say. They each have strong points over the other. The biggest problem with this is also a perk-- what exactly is going on, here? I mean-- just what is going on? That said, I really like the pieces of this. I enjoyed it all around. I am too busy & hungover to go into it, though.
Current Mood:Yawn-O-Tron Current Music:crown me king- onionskin
The Good Doctor said: "Ah, so you are serious." The drone killed them all.
Cheating! I shouldn't be writing this here but want to at least get something down before I lose my train of thought. This isn't officially a Culture book, but it might as well be. Well, it might as well be a fantasy novel, set in a made up land-- with two suspiciously advanced people, a doctor & a bodyguard. Like many Iain Banks works, shit gets bad at the end-- but because our protagonists, or at least, the focal characters, are from the Culture, it ends up okay. Either through technological murdertech, or through social advancement-- why revenge yourself? I quite liked it. That is all I'm going to say about it for the moment, though. Not out of disrespect for the book, which I rather liked, but rather because it is time for me to write some in my novel (I hope).
Only spit out my 1.6k words today in my NaNoWriMo. Gillick Bootblack, Blondie, & Alizarn Red are at the karnak carnivale going to see Doktor Tophet. The poor dear things. Ugh though I have been damaged! Last night was Sam's game of World of Darkness monster mash, & I played a werewolf (who in human form looked a lot like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) who wouldn't stop talking about Antarctica. I had the soles of the shoes Saint Lawrence "Titus" Oates wore when he walked off into the blizzard in an honorable attempt to save his friend's life! I have a piece of the tent from Saint Birdie Bowens, Saint Uncle Bill & Saint Cherry's Emperor Penguin Egg Expedition! I didn't have any of Shackleton's whiskey, though. There was...a lot of frenzy! It turns out boy do Vampires & Werewolves freak out a lot in each other's company. So today was just trying to mope as much as possible. Get it out of my system. I managed to leave the apartment to get groceries-- I had a salad for breakfast, & grilled cheese for lunch. Also lots of Kix. M tested, M approved. We also watched V. Which is...kind of terrible. Not through the remote at the screen bad, but just that bland kind of boring. Like Flash Forward, which we've stopped watching. Anyhow, the V stuff looks pretty, & Morena Baccarin is very pretty & otherworldly. Plus you know, Alan Tudyk, & that girl from Lost who reminds me of Danielle. I'll give it another chance, but I'm not excited about it. Seems aimed at a lower brow than I'd like, a middle brow. Canned ethics conflict, ahoy! I do like aliens though. & fascists. My other Quest today was venturing out to find bitters. My usual source has been out, & I require frequent infusions of angostura bark. I ended up at "Grab," which is a Bierkraft-like specialty shop, with kegs to fill growlers with arthaus beers, & stinky cheeses, & such. Also netted some Fee's Bitters with my usual Angostura Aromatic Bitters. Oh & hey! Bernie is in town-- he was at game last night, too!
Current Mood:sleepy maybe? Current Music:crown me king- the guns of junon
“Cosco Port I'm seeing a lot of David PeChasky(?) the City Cancel Sames(?) but whether it say anything like 500 votes on no more is mine. I'm greatly deeply emboiled(?) and an adventure. I'm looking praying ___ I require Amy store ___. I put them in the ___ and they have been out in the groceries. There is not a problem to me.”
Severian saw a knight in white armor with a gold visor.
Okay, that might be my favorite haiku of all time. In The Book of the New Sun, one of the greatest books ever written, the protagonist is in the corridors of a museum, full of every ancient wonder-- & the caretaker shows him the "oldest painting" they have, & Severian our narrator describes it as a knight in white armor, with a gold visor, standing on a blasted battlefield, holding an eerie flag aloft. It is of course the moon landing, but being set however many tens, hundred of thousands years later-- millions-- Severian has no reference.
This book is gorgeous. Still photographs of the clothes you might need to go to outerspace. The writing is historically interesting-- who competed, who won the contract-- but except when it gets technical, the pictures dwarf it. The layout is fairly crazy, if only because reading along with the text forces you to jump all over, but there aren't a lot of options when you have loads of full page art. My favorite might by the AX-1-- a hardbody suit with rotary joints that managed to look like the most ungainly & most elegant option at the same time. I read this at work while doing a bit of drudgery that I had to wait around to finish, & I was surprised by the reactions I got-- everyone wanted to talk about it. People stopped me in the elevator-- "you know, Platex had a contract with NASA to build spacesuits!" or had an opinion. Just goes to show you, the space race isn't dead! Come on, Ares! Seriously though, why did we call our rocket Ares? Ares is the god of war. We're not even trying to scare the Russians anymore with our ballistic prowess. Why! I think the USA was just jealous of India having the guts to call their "I"CBMs Agni. Which to be fair is a pretty intimidating thing to call your nukes.
Current Mood:I should make coffee. Current Music:crown me king- except europa. attempt no landings there.
The bamboo rattled when the guns came to Japan. Blood fed the snow queen.
This is a collection of comics about rural Japan on the edge of industrialization. The end of a world-- but it isn't overly nostalgic. Maybe the opposite. Domestic violence & rape are the plot of a majority of the stories. Still, there are definite moments of beauty & magic. "Echo," "Wild Geese Memorial Service," & the eponymous "Red Snow" in particular I enjoyed. Honestly though it just made me wish I was reading Yusagi Yojimbo comics.
Current Mood:time for television! Current Music:crown me king- the final killer
The People of Flame came before the Talking Men, & after the Blood.
In Adam's Tongue the argument was how language & proto-language drove the evolution from ape to man. Well, from animal ape to human ape, I should say. Or at least Homo ape. The premise of this book is that cooking was the impetus of that same change-- or I should say, that is how the premise is stated. Luckily, the book is more scholarly than that pithy statement, & the turn of a phrase that suggests cooking made humans out of apes veils the real thesis of the book: that fire is what made Homo habilis into Homo erectus. In fact, Bickerton's argument in Adam's Tongue regarding abstract displacement & "power scavenging" fits right into Wrangham's scheme-- or at least, the power scavenging does; Wrangham puts increased meat consumption as the kick in the pants that jumped Australopithecus into habilis. Though I should be clear on something-- Wrangham prefers the term "Habaline", much the same way one might say "Australopithicine." He reserves judgment on species or genus, which I think is overly conservative, but it really doesn't impact his argument but to make the stepping stone from Habaline to Homo erectus all the more discrete.
The first thing Wrangham does is sit down & spell out what cooked food means in terms of biological ecology. He also ends the book with a bit of a screed about caloric information-- which is a revisting of his arguments. Simple as pie: cooked food lets you scrape our more calories, more quickly. Which frees up your time & your biology. Humans use the same amount of energy as you would expect for a primate our size-- but with a vastly larger brain sucking up a hugely increased proportion of that energy. How does Homo sapiens afford it? By externalizing digestion-- well, & then some. It isn't like cooking replaces digestion; it supersedes it, really. He talks about raw foodists-- not as a rant, but an example-- & sheesh, I never realized how recklessly awful raw foodists are to their bodies. Semen stops flowing, sex drive drops off, infertility & amenorrhea set in, metabolism drops & thus energy decreases, bones start melting & muscles coming unhinged. Just a disaster! & really if you stop & think about it, you can see that humans are pretty unarguably adapted to eat cooked food. The smaller teeth, the tiny mouth, & the radical change in intestinal length & processing. "Natural" is a cooked meal, for a human-- & Wrangham posits that it has been for a long time.
Wrangham folds in all the benefits of fire in with cooking-- & that is fine, but really the arguments terms are reversed I think. This is a study that dwells on cooking, but that is only a facet of fire. It is fire that we are really talking about. Catching Fire has no problem appealing to the other benefits of fire, but casts them almost as fringe benefits; protection from predators & light at night allowing sleeping on the ground, making bipedalism viable, for instance. The articulation of fire's role in bipedalism happens in two parts; elsewhere Wrangham speaks to fire's ability to warm allowing humans to shed their hair. The picture he paints is much more evocative than just heat dispersal on the savanna; it is long distance running or walking-- it is letting sweat bead on your skin, instead of under a layer of insulation. With fire, you don't need a heavy coat to protect you from the elements-- you can go naked of fur, ready to take full advantage of your bipedalism. He argues that clustering around the fire, whether for warmth, protection, or for shared food, results in self-domestication. Protohumans who are calm & share get a spot in the circle, prosper. It is fire that this book really speaks to-- not just cooking.
There is a chapter of the book that deals with cooking & the sexual division of labor. Now we're getting into some interesting territory! & choppy waters. Wrangham dismounts the chapter well, leaving you with a fairly decent couple of quips, but the body of the chapter is a little...heteronormative. Which I want to preface saying. I don't in any way think that discussing gender roles in societies & their place in evolutionary psychology or biological anthropology is something to shy away from. That said, there are dangerous corridors that must be carefully navigated, for here steps in many of the cultural assumptions of the viewer. Gender binary is a real social construct, but it is easy-- to easy-- to ignore queer outliers. Or to believe that the data you are looking at confirms your own biases. & I'm not saying Wrangham is bad, or heaven forbid misogynist, but just that this is a chapter to stay on your toes for. There are a lot of givens, a lot of sweeping pronouncements. Which are always difficult. Anyhow, I confess to a certain amount of essentialism in my feminism-- & I happily embrace the Industrial Age & Information Age for its ability to enfranchise women.
That disclaimer said, I do think there is a strong clustering at the poles, there are gendered divisions of labor all up & down human & the near-prehuman history. Heck, I even like the Neanderthal extinction theory that says human gender specialization is what drove them to extinction. Wrangham makes some compelling arguments about cooking, & its cross-cultural role. He doesn't split men & women into hunters & gatherers, but rather hunters & cookers. It is a fairly intriguing way to frame the data, & he backs it up with figures & statistics. The hook my interest is most piqued by is his argument that economics come before paternity. That cooking, as a means to split up time & to manage caloric economy, precedes sex & parentage in terms of marriage. The two pieces may very well fit together, but that survival beats out parentage-- I have to say I see strength in the idea. & it wouldn't be fair not to mention that my household operates by the schema he lays out. I bring home the meat (from the grocery store...) & then Jenny cooks it up. Of course, a lot of the societal surveys that Wrangham brings up enforce female subservience to the cooking pot with domestic violence, he ends the section with a brief discussion of this-- so it works out.
There are a few tidbits in here I will end this by discussing. Wrangham puts fire's discovery with protohumans pounding meat to make it more digestible, which is as good as any argument, but ultimately beside the point. Imagining the circumstances a thing like that caught on is fruitless. He also talks about how cooking might have happened-- food dropped into fires, or seeds left after you've moved it. Again, immaterial. People (& presumably proto-people) are weird. Who thought up eating rotting milk, or fermented grapes? Who knows? He also name checks Antalya's forever burning fire, mentioned by Homer, which is great, awesome, sweet. & WTF Kanzi the bonobo will make FIRE? Apparently, yes. Give Kanzi sticks & matches & he'll cook up marshmallows. What the heck. Lastly, this book has a lovely notes section, bibliography, & index. Oh it warms the cockles of my heart.
Current Mood:Should be NaNoWriMoing! Current Music:crown me king- the blood, the fire, the word.
Ha! Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum! Grind your bones to make my bread! Heist on the Iron Horse!
When I read Rapunzel's Revenge, I wasn't prepared to be wowed, & thus was bowled over. This time, I knew what I was getting into, but I can happily say it lived up to expectations. Where ...Revenge is a Weird West tale, this goes east, goes urban & becomes a good old fashioned Grimm Bros. Heist story. Jack takes front seat, which is fine-- he's not as great as Rapunzel, but she doesn't get sidelined, so that is fine. There is a pixie sidekick, which you know I'm into. A giant crimelord with a floating penthouse A steampunk gadgeteer. Giant ants! Cultural diversity-- seriously, the witchdoctor or kachina fellow, or whatever that guy was, what?! Where did that guy come from. Great. The madcap & frantic pace of the book really works; I was compelled to blitz through it. Jabberwocks & Bandersnatches, too, in the bargain. Gender positive, respectful of race, rollicking fun-- why isn't everyone writing books like this? The advance reading copy I read was black & white, & I can't wait to get a look at the finished colour art, because Nathan Hale's art participates in the Jeff Smith school of cartooning with a heavy dose of details & expression in the colour. I had no idea this was coming out but I'm pretty excited about it.
Current Mood:back from the gym! Current Music:crown me king feat. drinky crow- how much for that magic bean?
Geek Chic. (97) Geektastic edited by Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci.
Clark Kent wears glasses. Kal is a newspaper geek. Jor-El? Science geek.
This is a collection of stories, ruminations on nerdery, in particular, on High School geekdom. Contributed to by a whole host of the "cool kids" of YA literature-- & to sit at the popular table in YA fandom you kind of have to be a big nerd. The first story, by Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci, is a romance between a con-going pair of cosplayers-- a Jedi & a Klingon. Mostly when the 501st show up as the undisputed authority, that part is the best. They also wrote the interstitial comics, with illustration by the always awesome Bryan Lee O'Malley & Hope Larson. That story, & the comics, are very strong. A lot of the other stories are fine, or cute-- or in the case of Kelly Link's "Secret Identity", really weird. The only one I didn't like I pretty viscerally disliked-- Barry Lyga's "The Truth About Dino Girl." The culmination of that story? Has the protagonist, a paleontologically inclined girl with a crush on the baseball jock with the lame tattoo of a flaming baseball, bumping into the aforementioned guy's girlfriend, & spilling her borderline stalker doodles of said aweful ink all over. The girlfriend says predictable things-- "he's my boyfriend, you are a weirdo who is stalking him, leave him along" & then doesn't tell everyone in the school. She tells the boyfriend with the terrible tat, but leaves it at that. So our "protagonist"? Her "revenge" is to sneak into the girl's locker room, take pictures of the girlfriend while she's showering, & post them all over with a note saying "I R A SLUTZ" & posting the girls home phone. Okay, newsflash Barry Lyga. Your protagonist is the bully. Your protagonist is the villain in the other stories. On a lighter note, probably the sweetest story is "The Stars at the Finish Line," by Wendy Mass.
None of these were my geek childhood, though.
Current Mood:to the gym! Current Music:crown me king- also, all the witches in the castles.
I shouldn't really be updating here, I should be working on my NaNoWriMo novel, Watchtower Gothique. I'm at 6668 words, but I didn't write at all last night, since decided to maek grilled cheese, eat it with the leftover squash soup, go to the gym, & hang out with Jenny. Then today I haven't written at all, either-- I was too busy voting! I was going to take a picture of the knobs inside of the voter booth, but then suddenly-- I wasn't listed in my district! Probably because the DMV changed my address to "7th ave" arbitrarily. I had to fill out an affidavit vote, which is much less exciting. Still, my duty to the republic is discharged. Here is how I voted: Bloomberg for mayor on the Independent/Jobs & Education line. Maura Deluca for public advocate on the Socialist Worker line. John Liu for city comptroller on the Working Families line. Reginald Boddie for judge of the civil court on the Democratic line. Marty Markowitz for borough president on the Working Families line. David Pechefsky for City Council on the Green line. I voted yes on both ballot proposals.
This weekend past was a pretty big blowout. Argh, I really shouldn't talk about it, I should be writing on my stupid novel! I will though, I need to get this down for posterity, or whatever. Friday during the day I helped Nick & Rachel move. Nick was one of the soldiers who showed up to boogie down when I moved, so I was obligated, but I would've done it anyhow! For a while it was just the three of us, & Nick & I dominated the task of bringing stuff from the upside-world of his carriage house apartment down the spiral stairs. Don't worry, the stairs fold up! Then Rachel's parents showed up, & then Leslie & Matt. THEN! We drank some beer & ate some pizza. Nick & Rachel's apartment has a killed view, but even more envy making is the washer/drier. Boy wouldn't that be nice! Then I went home & Jenny was sad. But I left her anyhow!
I was trying to make my way to Kat's for her Halloween bash. It was...a disaster. I had the stuff for some kind of costume-- or as my joke was, "I'm not wearing a costume." You know, black cape! Weird Halloween gloves! Lightsaber! Just another day of Darth Malleus. I even brought the tube that screws into the lightsaber to make it have a neat glow-beam part. You know what I mean. Anyhow-- the F train was diverted to West 4th, which is fine-- Kat is only a few blocks from there. I was going to walk from 2nd ave, but no sweat. "Oh," I then realized. "That will take me near the parade. Well, I will just remember to switch sides underground & none will be the wiser." Ah, if only it were that easy. The cops had blocked the whole thing off! You couldn't switch sides. I don't cotton to complaining about the cops like they are evil, unless they are being such, but this was poorly planned. If your trains are being diverted from their regular station, & the solution is to take an opposite-bound train to reach the by-passed stations, you have to let that happen. & the cops also decided to not allow anyone exiting the trains to use the turnstyles-- everyone was funneled into the emergency exit, which meant it took me about thirty minutes to get out of the station, with the insane crush of people. Then outside, it was raining, & the waves of parade goers were acting particularly like a crowd of morons. So I wandered around, holding my bookbag so it didn't get soaked, getting jostled, unable to cross the street to go to Kat's because of the parade. Ended up lost in the West Village, which is redundant-- I could just say "in the West Village" & you could assume I was lost. Eventually I escaped. I seriously Mister Miracled out of it. Then finally, only an hour & a half later, I was able to walk five blocks to Kat's.
Nick's poem sums up Kat's party better than I ever could. I brought a bottle of the Brooklyn Special 2, & it took me a little of that & about an hour to stop griping about my train ride. I am a baby about things sometimes, & I was being a baby then! Still, eventually I settled in. The joint was banging, & the shindig escalated all evening. Kat's has a concrete "backyard", & adjoins the courtyard out front, & there is an alleyway in between-- & of course three rooms in her apartment. Well, all of them were pretty well filled. I spent most of the evening in the hallway/alley, with the occasional trip to hang out in Kat's room. My partners in crime were mostly Toy, Jocelyn, & Nick; honorable mention to Nicole & Matt S., though. I like when people know they can flirt with me, because I'm just a huge flirt, not like, trying to pick them up. Eventually Matt & Katie showed up, but by that point, I was getting ready to leave. Well, forty-five minutes later, at least. Probably the highlight of the evening was tracking the couples hooking up. There was some earnest making out & finger banging going down! Good for them. Then when I got home (midnightish?) Jenny was still up; we hung out for like, two more hours just the two of us. It was awesome.
Current Mood:okay, done. Current Music:crown me king feat. mork- nano nano
“Justin finish loading I brought my camera and I was going to take a picture of the machines power lovers(?) but they are they don't have my phone correct address on top I think when we put in our address change or Jenny think that when we put in our address changes the B M V switch to 7th Avenue and 7th Street. So my, my it's all messed up is the moral of bad story I voted I voted for the Winberg on the Independence slash government education line and I voted for a bunch of working families people and a groom(?) candidate and any social candidate I voted for the social work for, for ___ because I don't know ___ that's that the good public ad with good ___.”
Halloween! Yes, this picture is from the weird camera built in to the computer. I'm trying to be better at taking pictures, but the frank reality is that I'm a terrible photographer. Still, practice will lead to improvement, probably. Also, while I'm talking about taking pictures, everyone is complaining about flickr lately. Okay, tagging is added functionality. You have to click an extra time to "all sizes" to get the html for image hosting. A slight, minor paint, for functionality I don't use. People freaking out about it are-- well, people freaking out about their sense of entitlement to a free service. Or some people are Pro-- I'm Pro-- but still, not a big deal. I will say it is funny, the dichotomy between how Flickr views itself-- as a website to socially distribute personal photographs-- & how it is used. I like that Flickr isn't Tumblr. That said, I certainly use it as a combination sharing/hosting service. You know? A pipeline leading back to here. Alright, enough meta.
Yesterday was a busy day! Hurried up at work to get my stuff done before 1:00, which is when I had my yearly review/lunch. Good stuff, & the obligatory negative was mostly "now that you've been here a year, here are new responsibilities going forward." My boss wrote a simile comparing me to the Death Star & my workload to Alderaan, but his boss nixed it. We went to Old Town & we ended up ordering the exact same thing-- chili, then a bison burger. Mine with munster cheese & onion rings. The rings were of the old school batter type, fat. Acceptable fare, though I confess I probably didn't pay as much attention to my food as I would have were I not being occupationally reviewed. Then I left work early to go to the dentist's office-- another chance to be graded on my performance! Got cleaned up & not too badly yelled at for not flossing. Next time-- "deep cleaning," whatever that might entail. Came home only in time to pack up the dirty clothes & take it to the laundromat. By the time I came home with clean & dry clothes, I was done for. Just sat on the couch miserable, until it was time for bed. At which point I just tossed back & forth. Now today I am going to go help Nick & Rachel move, then to a Halloween party at Kat's. Then Sunday, I am going to see Pamela run in the New York City Marathon, & go to the gym, & start my NaNoWriMo!
Current Mood:Fish have gills, teeth. Current Music:crown me king- sowing the hydra's teeth
"I am just going Outside and may be some time." -"No Surrender" Oates
I'm of course familiar with these gentlemen, not least because two months ago I read a similar book focusing on the Scott expedition. & we get a recap of Scott & Shackleton here-- your Cherry, Birdie & Oates, Captain Falcon, all that. Antarctica blows my mind. It is like an outerspace you can go to. Just right there, south, awaits a physical manifestation of nihilism. I'm sorry, Ice-shirt but you are well & truly put to shame by the Great White. Hempleton-Adams made a modern, one-man trip to the south pole, where he was picked up by an airplane-- he has no illusions about who are the real heroes. The appendix of chronologies records the dates as "'heroic age' of Antarctic exploration" & really, it is, isn't it? You get to see human being stretched to their most admirable-- science! Bravery! Exploration! Without the clouding tint of imperialism or commercialism-- pure stuff, here. & heart break. Oates, knowing his frostbitten feet are holding back the team from possible survival walks into a blizzard to die, his last words "I am just going outside and may be some time." Damn, man. That said, you don't come here for the story. You come for the pictures! The book is chock full of 'em, gems like Ponting's "Castle Berg" below. A great deal of them haven't been exhibited before, coming from private Royal collections. The book also has a number of chapters on photography, both technique & history, which frankly went over my head. Also deliciously brimming with appendices, including "non-photographic material" like the various journals compiled by the expeditions. Oh, I liked this book. I wouldn't stop talking about it!
Current Mood:The Great Black. Current Music:crown me king- by this sword I rule
Yesterday I got lunch with Marie at Le Pain Quotidien. We split a Tuscan platter & a seaweed salad & she picked up the tab-- how nice of her! We talked about things, & I circumlocuted a few times, but it is always lovely to see her. Plus, galleys for the second book of her Kronos Chronicles are in, so it was a good reminder for me to lay hands on one so I can read it. Leaving we made a loose concept of a plan to see The Plan the Battlestar Galactica movie, & to see the DVR version, since, well, it has boobs in it. Then it was back to the beehive!
That evening was the Halloween party at work, which started a little inauspiciously-- Nichole & I went to buy wine for the party & then got carded! Since I wasn't wearing my coat, I didn't have my identification, & since she was all purse swapping for her costume-readying, neither did she! So there was a bit of Keystone Kops going on. We took care of it eventually, & I sussed out her & Andy's martial arts styles-- he is the "Ruthless otter" while she is the "Shifting Manticore" & her finishing move is "Poetic Justice." You figure it out by asking people what their totem animal is, & then who their favorite villain is & what trait of theirs they most admire. Voila! Eventually we came back to a party in full swing. Our parties often turn into company parties instead of just department parties, because we throw a hella fun bash. Jenny came up & we wore shirts that light up the closer we get & dim the farther away from each other we go. Too sweet! Too gross! All the company executives showed up, & the CEO & Jenny & me had a little hello, too. I became very drunk! But not obnoxiously, or overly. Just party drunk. We stuck around to help clean up & then Jenny & I went home, ate burittos, & watched Community & Mythbusters. At home, I think I was drunker than I was at the party!
Current Mood:spider tribes Current Music:crown me king- glass spider & malice spider
Last night was a lot of fun! Jenny was a little bit fussy when I got home, but that faded when company showed up. Dinner (& then this morning's breakfast!) was pretty intense. Jenny took two acorn squashes, cut them in half, scooped out the seeds, then filled them with a mixture of quinoa, ground pork, apples, & onions, peppered it pretty heavily, & then baked it. Pretty darn successful. No Lilly this week again, so just down to the Gruesome Foursome, me & Jenny, David & Maggie. There wasn't a lot of television to watch, which I blamed on baseball...which may or may not be true. We kept the tv off for a while, just shooting the breeze-- David & Maggie brought flowers for Jenny & DnD miniatures for me! The yochlol is my favorite; that plus the couple of ochre jelly minis I have should make for a pretty horrifying encounter. Finally all our giggles were out, & it was time to tune into America's Next Top Model. I have very little I can even say about this episode besides-- blackface. Tyra dressed the girls up in blackface. The girls went to Hawai'i, which...I have a soft spot for. I went on that cruise on the Nimitz from Hawai'i to Seattle when I was 13, & really liked Hawai'i. Not to mention the mythology & culture of pre-contact Hawai'i are interesting, & still semi-extant! I like it, is all I'm saying. Tyra's logic for the blackface was that Hawai'i is a melting pot of ethnicities, which is true-- & for a minute I thought her mash-up idea was going to be fashion, just fashion. Then she started saying it was fashion "inspired" by these cultures...as they dragged out an "Indian Headress." Okay, I can...still stay with you. "Cowboys & Indians" are an interesting film & literature motif despite being largely fictional. Oh, oh, wait, you are putting the girls in blackface. Okay! Then Jay started shouting ridiculous things like "Botswanans hear music everywhere!" & one girl was supposed to be Malagasies! Who the hell knows anything about Madacascar's population? One of the two anonymous girls was kicked off-- whatever, they both bore me. Then, amidst beer & ice cream, we moved on to Modern Family, which Jenny likes & I don't hate. Though this episode had a nice "women should let men win, like good martyrs" moral, which, ugh.
Current Mood:The Amazing Lunko! Current Music:crown me king- carnival explosion
Urfaust. (95) Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri & Dina Nayeri.
"I am friend of Faust" A fair enough translation. I like "not light lover."
To get out of high school, you had to write a research paper. Some 12 page bit on an assigned book, with all the pointless requirements that attend it, like notecards. Seriously, I never used notecards after I was required to use them for a grade. Okay, confession, I didn't do them when I was required to, either; I didn't do so well on that score. I just stayed home the day before the last day of school & wrote it. Hey, you do what you have to do. My book was Goethe's Faust & reading it I realized-- I hate Goethe's Faust. My solution was to make my thesis a cheap excuse to talk about Marlowe's Doctor Faustus as much as possible. Kit Marlowe is my jam. So, given that background, when I saw Jenny reading Another Faust, I figured "hey, might as well read it. Maybe I'll like it. Or maybe I'll hate it." Well, I don't know if I hate it, but it certainly was a failure, in the end sum.
First point first: this is the least diverse cast of a book? Ever? The beginning tries to make it seem as if it is the most diverse, but I don't know how to tell you this-- all white European people are the same. I mean, one upper class kid from Greece & two upper class kids from Italy & one lower class kid from England & one lower class kid from France...come on, what? They all relocated to New York immediately, & have their family histories erased, making their backgrounds moot, regardless. It isn't till about half way through the book, when some characters have had a chance to "fall" a little bit & others have had the chance to rebel a little that they start differentiating-- that, & when their mutant powers activate! Because in this case, selling your soul to the devil nets you superpowers like mind reading or time manipulation. Why not! I will say this-- certain bits of the book have some vivid imagery behind them-- the blue house/red house concept has some David Lynch influence lurking in the shadows, but wasn't played enough. Victoria's bug-room was well done. Vileroy's scarred iris was a nice piece of conceptualization. The "reveal" with Bice at the end was clever, but badly executed. Other than that though, I think the book fell flat. Relationships were wooden, for one thing. You don't notice that certain people are acting a certain way until the character's spell it out in expository dialogue. The plot was fairly tightly wound, with each character's actions falling into the next, in a sort of "master plan" scenario, but then that never came together. A let-down. Probably a hundred pages too long, too.
Current Mood:Why is that guy growling? Current Music:crown me king- with his army knife
Wait a minute those were the droids we were looking for! CAPTAIN'S LOG: Nothing to report. Monday I came home, tired as the dickens. Charles Dickens, a man suffering from a horrible version of narcolepsy. First I stopped at the grocers to get supplies for Jenny to make macaroni & cheese-- with sausage & mushrooms embedded in it. We watched something-- some kind of program. Eventually the carbohydrates woke me up somewhat, but I still ended up going to bed fairly early-ish. See how exciting Monday was! Tuesday was sort of the same. I bought gear for cooking, & living-- eggs & toilet paper. Told the cashier I was preparing for my Halloween pranks. Jenny made a frittata & I went to the gym. I've been back in the slump of not going often enough, & I'm trying to get out of it. Twice a week will not cut it, for I am the Lord of Slaughter, & the Blood God demands blood! They were playing The Golden Compass at the gym, so I did the elliptical more than I might otherwise. I think that film gets a bad rap-- say what you will but the casting in amazing. Lyra is one of my favorite all-time protagonists. Like, she'd be way up on the list. She's so great, & so clever-- I want Cunning to be the virtue of more characters. It appeals to me. Metis! Plus, there are polar bears wearing armor, fighting each other. I so seriously envy Pullman the invention of the panzerbjorn. They really are an astonishing medley of awesome ideas. Anyhow, I came back from the gym & dug into the sausage & broccoli frittata that Jenny made, & we watched Castle. Seeing Nathan Fillion in his Captain Malcolm Reynold's garb, from Firefly made both of us grin stupidly. Seriously, fan service is not always a bad thing! I sure do miss Firefly-- it might just have been Joss Whedon's best work. Buffy broke boundries & it & Angel are always going to be favorites of mine, but Firefly had at least the potential to be one of the greatest, bestests. & I'm not even a Browncoat fanboy type. This is just facts! Anyhow, then off to bed. Woke up at the same time as Jenny, played some video games, now here I am at work on my lunch break. Sherene & I split a 2-for-1 coupon for burritos.
Current Mood:malice spider Current Music:crown me king- the cataracts of my hidden heart
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mordicai's journal
23 Hours by David Wellington.
Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan.
Hayate X Blade volume V.
House of Cthulhu by Brian Lumley.
Starcraft: Frontline by Knark, Washid, Furman, Elliott, Benjamin, Sharmek, Sevilla, Eldar & Kamarga.
The Deep by John Crowley.
Inversions by Iain Banks.
Spacesuits by Amanda Young, photos by Mark Avino.
Red Snow by Susumu Katsumata.
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham.
Calamity Jack by Shannon & Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale.
Geektastic edited by Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci.
The Heart of the Great Alone by David Hempleman-Adams, Sophie Gordon & Emma Stuart.
Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri & Dina Nayeri.