Saturday, October 25, 2008

OMG1!11!!! Teh Sexxxy Vamp1res!!!111!

So. I watched the Twilight trailer. Not only am I not the demographic for this movie, I'm sad there is a demographic for this movie. If that dialogue were any more stilted they'd need circus performers for actors. The Pain! Make it go away. And who cast these people? And then attempted to do hair and makeup? I'd think it was the aforementioned circus troop, except they'd probably do a better job. Just wow...

Finished reading Blindness. Didn't really care for it. There were some interesting ideas that were pretty much invalidated by some bizarre who are these people choices. I don't think real people would react in those ways and it really derailed a lot of the story. Which is too bad as it was a pretty interesting idea. The writing style was mostly ok, although it did make things a little hard to follow. So yeah, move along, nothing to see. Heh.

Flipping through a book on Coin Tricks at the moment. Think I'll try and learn some. I miss magic. It's fun to have a couple tricks to show off on occasion. I still remember a card trick or two from when I was younger. They come in handy once in a while.

Also going to try and tackle Ring by Koji Suzuki. Book they based the movies on. I liked the movies. Both versions actually. They work a little differently, but are both effective. Halloween is far too soon...

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Defending Food

Finished reading In Defense of Food the other day. It's the sequel to Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Another worthwhile read, and in some ways a slightly better one. This time round he focuses on what we should eat and in some cases how. The most useful section is probably the last third, but the entire book is fascinating.

Here are a couple eating rules to live by:

Don't eat anything with more than five ingredients.
Don't eat anything with ingredients you can't pronounce.
Don't eat anything with an ingredient you don't recognize.
Shop around the periphery of the supermarket.
Don't eat anything that doesn't spoil (i.e. Twinkies).

Like I said, it's an interesting book.

The horror movie viewing has been continuing. We took in The Last Winter the other day. Probably the first Eco horror movie I've seen. The planet is angry. This one was fun in that it's another case where they build up the psychological tension as opposed to going for the gore or the cheap thrill. Those really are the best kinds of horror movies. The plot is a little all over the place and the ending is rather abrupt, but it was an interesting movie.

Honestly it's hard to tell what we've seen and done recently. The one drawback to working at the Library is that they have a pretty impressive collection. And I've had a lot of things show up that I'd put on hold lately. So we're a little swamped. A couple Westerns, some Horror, a WWII flick, I can't even remember what else. And that doesn't take into account the TV show, or actual broadcast TV. (Just a note, I really prefer TV on DVD. No commercials and your own viewing schedule FTW.)

Wil Wheaton's blog has been pretty interesting of late.

Hmm, what else. Birthday alley is in full swing. A couple of in-law birthdays over the course of this week and a couple weeks out. G's birthday is soon. Christmas. Ah the expensive time of year.

Well, this has been a decent catch up post. Maybe I'll do this over the weekend... And maybe next time I can find something interesting to talk about... Probably not.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Trying to gather my thoughts

And failing miserably.

First, The Orphanage is great. It's a nice horror film that uses atmosphere and characterization to really great effect. If you're looking for a good scary movie for Halloween, don't let the subtitles scare you. Watch this one.

Second, this makes me hungry.

Third, this is an interesting political diversion. See which candidate matches your priorities. Needs more questions, but it's interesting to play with.

We've managed to catch up some on horror movie viewing. Season 2 of Dexter is fun so far.

I'm still reading Blindness. It's a rather disturbing little civilization falls apart story.

Again with the one sentence paragraphs. Oh well, my brain really isn't capable of stringing together complex thoughts at the moment.

I ended up giving the Girl Scouts the Library tour this morning. There was a mixup in the Children's Department and I guess they had them scheduled earlier. Since I had stopped by to say hi to the girls, I ended up giving them the tour. McK and M seemed to enjoy themselves.

Sounds like we might be getting a piano from lovely wife's Mom. She can't use it any more and she's wanting to make some space in her apartment, so we may snag it. That will be nice. I like pianos. Although I've completely forgotten how to play...

Celebrated lovely wife's birthday this past week. Party went fine. Games were played, brownies were eaten, Republicans were mocked. All in all a success I'd say.

So yeah. That's about all I've got.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Around the net

Stealing a title from G4 and a concept from every other blog on the planet. Have some links:

For my sisters: Shannon Hale's blog. Recently she's been talking about an author's responsibility for the moral a reader gets from their work. I disagree with a couple of her points, possibly on technicalities, but qualifies as interesting.

Engineer humor. This one's for you Dad. Heh. I need me one of them.

Sci-fi. Death scenes. Countdown list. You know you want to click.

Fake Twitter feeds anyone? I'ma gonna check out Bad Horse for sure.

100 skills you should know. If you're a guy. Or something. I dunno, I stopped reading.

Need to put the kids to bed. Clean up when you're done with the internet. It's a mess. Links everywhere. Kids these days...

Monday, October 06, 2008

Some thoughts on writing and other fish in the sea

I've started reading Blindness by José Saramago (it's currently a film starring Julianne Moore and some other people). This has caused me to think a little bit about writing styles, partially as the book has been translated from Portuguese (I believe) and partially as there are some interesting stylistic choices. The book is, in a lot of ways, mostly dialogue but it uses its own method to convey the conversations. There are no quotation marks, no paragraphs breaks, no he said/she saids. Changes in speaker/thought are separated by commas within the same sentence.

This produces, for me, a strange - almost noisy - quick-paced rhythm in my reading. It's very different. Coupled with either an artifact of the translation process or a strange word style, reading Blindness is a cross between an interesting experience and a somewhat painful one. It's like there's a hum in the background due to the way the words flow and the effort required to keep track of what's going on.

Writers have been playing with style forever. Joyce and stream of consciousness narrative, ee cummings and the birth of texting, Danielewski and games with narrators and footnotes. Things that either make English teachers jump for joy or cry bitter, bitter tears. Personally I find it interesting if occasionally eye-rolling worthy. Not every experiment is a grand success. It will be interesting to see if I stick with Blindness. I certainly find the story interesting, it's just a question of whether the style gets in the way of that or really does help. And ultimately, again for me, that's what makes any of these experiments successes or failures. Does the style choice help the story or get in the way of it. Terribly conclusive I know.

Have caught a couple horror movies to usher in October. Part of something truly awful (and thus great) called Madman. A nice 80's slasher called The Burning (featuring a young Jason Alexander of all things). I think we may have to throw April Fool's Day into the mix for nostalgia's sake. And I might just have to venture forth into The Shining territory again. Here be dragons.

Paprika proves that Satoshi Kon is an Artist. (And yes, please to note the capital A) I liked the film for a few reasons, but boy is it out there. Apparently it's based on a novel. See previous commentary on writing styles. It was like a cross between Dreamscape and an artsy foreign flick. Oh wait. It was a cross between Dreamscape and an artsy foreign flick. Convenient.

Saw a bit of Drunken Master as well. It was funny. I miss good Jackie Chan movies.

Oh and here's the Geek Alphabet. Just sayin'.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

October

I'm strangely drawn to this site. Mostly as I can build a playlist of just about anything. The Pillows! Jonathan Coulton! Weird Al! Go nuts internet. And seriously, listen to The Pillows. Don't let the Japanese scare you. Serious rock.

Speaking of serious rock, AC/DC track pack coming up for Rock Band 2. Thunderstruck. The only real problem is that nobody sounds like the lead singer of AC/DC. But the drums and guitar...

Fringe is slowly growing on me. It does scratch that X Files itch.

Run Fatboy Run was Simon Pegg goodness. And sweet. And funny. I should really say something else so my paragraphs are longer than a sentence. Simon Pegg is my Hollywood best friend. We would hang out if we knew each other. Totally. And much hilarity would ensue.

I may have to go watch The Graveyard Book as my copy is probably sitting in a box at the Library. I wants it.

Oh right, October. While not my favorite month this does mark the beginning of my favorite time of year. September just pretends. October typically delivers. Plus I can force my horror movie tastes on poor wife as, hey, October. And scary games and scary books and scary candy. Really. Have you seen how much HFCS is in that stuff? And you want to know what they say about it you stupid corn industry commercials? How about you can't eat it in moderation because it's in EVERYTHING?! How about it's so evil it convinces your body that you're not full. It's totally ok to eat more. How about there's no way it's a "natural" substance considering the amount of technical wizardry needed to produce it (which I'm pretty sure you don't allow anyone to see...) Sorry. Soapbox put away.

But yes, October is nice. Cooler temperatures start to be the norm and there's a nice shift to fall sensibility.