(Sat, Oct 01, 2005)
I don't know about your local theater but the one we've got shows commercials before the trailers now, right up until the advertised show-time, then even the "Turn off your cell phones" message has a sponsor. Apparently it's really important to Cingular that everybody is able to enjoy the movie. How nice of them. And then the multitude of trailers themselves to trudge through. The Doom movie still looks horrible as in very bad. The Narnia movie looks potentially pretty good. And I honestly don't remember any of the other ones. They were that effective.
Oh right, Serenity. If some dude came to you and told you he had an unaired, unseen three-part episode of Firefly on this disk right here, ten bucks, would that be worth it? If you never saw the show, or think Threshold is good SFTV, then probably not. But if you were a fan of the show this movie is like two hours with some old friends you never expected to see again. What could be bad about that? Unless you owed them money or something.
Visually the bigger budget is evident. The ship models are fantastic (Alliance cruisers and dreadnaughts, creepy weird Reaver-craft, etc). And some of the post-production effects add some depth you never noticed was missing from the television show, like grainy translucent exhaust pumping from a land-speeder. The fight scenes involving River are fun to watch. (Get it? She's this cute little thing kicking ass all over the place? Get it?) And the general ambiance if mostly the same as in Firefly, so if you liked that wind-blown, sheet-metal atmosphere, you'll like this one too.
But it's not all good even then. There's something hurried about the movie. It's mostly interested in flying (sic) from one plot point to the next; and with all the rushing around, the characters mostly get overlooked. Some of them go through transformations without adequate or reasonable impetus. Others don't have much to do at all. In several cases a single exchange of dialogue is made to suffice as resolution for fifteen episodes worth of build-up. In many ways Mal and River are the only characters the script cares about, and he mostly just gets mad, while she mostly just gets scary. Meanwhile some action-movie sequences, tough guys fighting with their fists, threaten to detonate yawns all over the place. And there's this character named Mr. Universe which, well, huh? And then there's a New York Times plot resolution that made me grumpy for a good twenty minutes afterward.
And even though I said all that, I reiterate: if you just treat it like a three-part Firefly episode you've never seen before, it's well worth the ten bucks. 8of10.
Oh right, Serenity. If some dude came to you and told you he had an unaired, unseen three-part episode of Firefly on this disk right here, ten bucks, would that be worth it? If you never saw the show, or think Threshold is good SFTV, then probably not. But if you were a fan of the show this movie is like two hours with some old friends you never expected to see again. What could be bad about that? Unless you owed them money or something.
Visually the bigger budget is evident. The ship models are fantastic (Alliance cruisers and dreadnaughts, creepy weird Reaver-craft, etc). And some of the post-production effects add some depth you never noticed was missing from the television show, like grainy translucent exhaust pumping from a land-speeder. The fight scenes involving River are fun to watch. (Get it? She's this cute little thing kicking ass all over the place? Get it?) And the general ambiance if mostly the same as in Firefly, so if you liked that wind-blown, sheet-metal atmosphere, you'll like this one too.
But it's not all good even then. There's something hurried about the movie. It's mostly interested in flying (sic) from one plot point to the next; and with all the rushing around, the characters mostly get overlooked. Some of them go through transformations without adequate or reasonable impetus. Others don't have much to do at all. In several cases a single exchange of dialogue is made to suffice as resolution for fifteen episodes worth of build-up. In many ways Mal and River are the only characters the script cares about, and he mostly just gets mad, while she mostly just gets scary. Meanwhile some action-movie sequences, tough guys fighting with their fists, threaten to detonate yawns all over the place. And there's this character named Mr. Universe which, well, huh? And then there's a New York Times plot resolution that made me grumpy for a good twenty minutes afterward.
And even though I said all that, I reiterate: if you just treat it like a three-part Firefly episode you've never seen before, it's well worth the ten bucks. 8of10.
(Tue, Oct 04, 2005)
Yes it's that time of year again, the Nobel Prize time. Sadly I have been overlooked yet again for my contributions to physics and medicine. But the Literature prize is still a week away, and since last year's winner was some Austrian guy named Elfriede Jelinek, and the pattern usually runs known - unknown - known - nobody, the odds of a name as famous as mine winning are better in an odd numbered year like this one here. Other current favorites include Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates (heh), and Margaret Atwood; but since white Euro types have won 9 out of the last 10, the better money is on Nuruddin Farah of Somalia (whoever that is), Ali Ahmad Said of Syria (whoever that is), or Ko Un of Korea (whoever that is). And because the Nobelians like to generally spit in the direction of the Atlantic, the best odds are on the Somalian or the Syrian (although this stat would also seem to put Philip Roth back in the running due to his latest ass-headed novel The Plot Against America, in which he links Great American Hero Charles Lindbergh to Great American Enemy Adolf Hitler). Personally, if the winner can't be me, I'll be rooting for Margaret Atwood; since while I disagree with her proclivities, getting a Nobel into the hands of a (part-time) Science Fiction writer should do well for the genre.
As for the coveted Peace Prize, both Bono and Bob Geldof are among the favorites -- which proves there *is* life on Mars, and we are it -- along with a bunch of Eastern Europeans with names too difficult to type. Personally, I'll be rooting for the dark horse candidate Übermensche Jones.
As for the coveted Peace Prize, both Bono and Bob Geldof are among the favorites -- which proves there *is* life on Mars, and we are it -- along with a bunch of Eastern Europeans with names too difficult to type. Personally, I'll be rooting for the dark horse candidate Übermensche Jones.
(Wed, Oct 05, 2005)
Check out Orson Scott Card claiming Serenity is the best SF movie ever. This is a bold statement (in case you weren't sure). He seems strangely unaware of anything made before 1999, claiming that before Charlie Kaufman "nobody actually *made* any sci-fi films". (Hear it? That's Ridley Scott rolling over in his virtual grave.) And his criteria here is that a "sci-fi" film has to make the audience *care* about its characters; and that Serenity is great because he *cared* about the characters. Uh... huh. I always suspected they smoked the secret stash out there in Utah.
(Fri, Oct 07, 2005)
Dr. Jones' automobile spews radiation all over me and my surroundings. It's rather Seussian in appearance, with entirely too many smokestacks, moving parts, and honking noises than one would believe necessary. He's collected a train of protestors who follow him around waving signs and ruffling banners, encouraging any onlookers to boycott Jones. It's gotten so bad in fact he's been reduced to digging out secret tunnels beneath the Complex in order to move about unimpeded. Of course I've been manipulating into assisting him; I have dirt beneath my fingernails to prove it to Beefy Lou (who is dubious about everything I tell him).
(Sat, Oct 08, 2005)
We are divided and dispirited out here in Coventry these days. The inevitability of life-as-we-know-it coming to a sudden and dramatic end has made most of us less responsive to life-as-we-know-it. We find ourselves listless with waiting, idle with anticipation, filling out hours with gestures. Very soon the terrorists will strike, so why look for a job? Within the year twelve billion Chinese will invade Taiwan, so why bother having birthday parties? Very soon the world will change and we won't have to worry about things anymore.
As is typical, certain local personages have taken advantage of the general malaise in order to prosecute their personal ambitions upon the rest. ZXC, a jingoist, has drummed up nationalist fervor in opposition to Our Nearest Neighbors, the housing development next door to Coventry Complex. He's constructed munitions and small-arms factories in hardened locations, steel mills in clear violation of Authority's environmental zoning policies, and sweatshops for textiles production. In response to this unprecedented mobilization, Our Nearest Neighbors have launched several artillery strikes, one of which has completely destroyed ZXC's garden apartment. Tensions are now very high.
Beefy Lou, an entrepreneur, has raised a pig farm on the former site of ZXC's home. He's offering body-removal services for a monthly subscription fee, bacon by the pound, and other less mentionable services by the hour. This is of course deeply disturbing for ZXC, who still has fond memories of his garden apartment. Last week he stole into the cupola on the Big Barn with a .308 sniper rifle and made premature pork of several of Beefy Lou's pigs. Without a doubt, our own internal stresses are a greater threat to our prosperity than the guns of Our Nearest Neighbor could ever hope to become.
As is typical, certain local personages have taken advantage of the general malaise in order to prosecute their personal ambitions upon the rest. ZXC, a jingoist, has drummed up nationalist fervor in opposition to Our Nearest Neighbors, the housing development next door to Coventry Complex. He's constructed munitions and small-arms factories in hardened locations, steel mills in clear violation of Authority's environmental zoning policies, and sweatshops for textiles production. In response to this unprecedented mobilization, Our Nearest Neighbors have launched several artillery strikes, one of which has completely destroyed ZXC's garden apartment. Tensions are now very high.
Beefy Lou, an entrepreneur, has raised a pig farm on the former site of ZXC's home. He's offering body-removal services for a monthly subscription fee, bacon by the pound, and other less mentionable services by the hour. This is of course deeply disturbing for ZXC, who still has fond memories of his garden apartment. Last week he stole into the cupola on the Big Barn with a .308 sniper rifle and made premature pork of several of Beefy Lou's pigs. Without a doubt, our own internal stresses are a greater threat to our prosperity than the guns of Our Nearest Neighbor could ever hope to become.
(Sun, Oct 09, 2005)
Google services seem to arrive by a kind of electronic osmosis; merging themselves into public awareness before any actual markup gets rendered in any actual browser. (Or at least into *my* actual browser, which is the solipsistic point of Google entry.) For instance there's Google Video, which is a collection of -- yes -- video that users have submitted to -- yes -- Google (all in a rush one night, or so it would seem), and borders on the absolutely weird at times. (People do ODD things with video, and not just naked people.) Then also there's Google Earth, which is different from Google Maps; it's a local Keyhole-powered app that is sort of mind-blowing. And now I can add Google Reader, which is the inevitable RSS reader done up in Ajax-wow style. The thing that seems so different about Google compared to other companies is that they actually seem to have a staff of people actually *doing* things. It's weird.
(Wed, Oct 12, 2005)
North of me: open ground reclaimed by small farming plots, sad stringy brown stalks, rows of hastily emptied furrows made rough by Dog Days and never recovered.
East of me: checkpoints, German shepherds, and razor wire slowly metastasizing into a ragged quilt of earthworks, bunkers, minefields, and searchlights; then beyond, vast building projects, the looming bulk of monuments gesturing rudely eastward, chariot-racing and athletics festivals in towering coliseums.
West of me: The border between the Complex and the Offset Housing Development: a 4 meter, 25 degree bulldozer slope downward beneath a fading summer's wealth of vegetation, strewn with border-zone debris: chunks of concrete and construction site sputum, a rusted fence still standing for brief runs despite daily assaults by improvising pole-vaulters (broom sticks, pool cues, tube light bulbs), a bare earth trail winding around the fence and down by two leaps and a quick jog to the manicured lawn of Our Nearest Neighbor.
To the south of me: downhill from the patchwork of farms a garbage dump grown from overflown trash bins into compost drifts, noncombustible wrecked furniture and appliances, neatly ordered recyclable sections, and an entire city of makeshift apartments warring over Tupperware clients.
Beneath me: an entire world. Dizzy.
I perch gargoyle-like from the lean of the balcony fronting the abandoned apartment above mine. On the sidewalk below, the restless swagger, mornings in business drag, children chasing smaller children with matchsticks and ghost stories. It's all somehow like a cement truck broken down on a highway.
East of me: checkpoints, German shepherds, and razor wire slowly metastasizing into a ragged quilt of earthworks, bunkers, minefields, and searchlights; then beyond, vast building projects, the looming bulk of monuments gesturing rudely eastward, chariot-racing and athletics festivals in towering coliseums.
West of me: The border between the Complex and the Offset Housing Development: a 4 meter, 25 degree bulldozer slope downward beneath a fading summer's wealth of vegetation, strewn with border-zone debris: chunks of concrete and construction site sputum, a rusted fence still standing for brief runs despite daily assaults by improvising pole-vaulters (broom sticks, pool cues, tube light bulbs), a bare earth trail winding around the fence and down by two leaps and a quick jog to the manicured lawn of Our Nearest Neighbor.
To the south of me: downhill from the patchwork of farms a garbage dump grown from overflown trash bins into compost drifts, noncombustible wrecked furniture and appliances, neatly ordered recyclable sections, and an entire city of makeshift apartments warring over Tupperware clients.
Beneath me: an entire world. Dizzy.
I perch gargoyle-like from the lean of the balcony fronting the abandoned apartment above mine. On the sidewalk below, the restless swagger, mornings in business drag, children chasing smaller children with matchsticks and ghost stories. It's all somehow like a cement truck broken down on a highway.
(Wed, Oct 12, 2005)
Lately there has been some unrest between the apartment dwellers in Coventry Complex and Our Nearest Neighbors in their housing development ("Shady Meadows"). The apartmenters accuse the housers of flaunting inappropriate riches with their offset houses, deck patios, swimming pools, and giant trampolines. For their part, the housers accuse the apartmenters of permitting trash and debris to drift over and settle onto their deck patios and into their swimming pools, of sending their grubby little children over the border to harass and commingle with the clean house-children, or wandering over themselves to squat in backyards and cul-de-sacs, beg for loose change, pick fruit, plant bushes, drive around in dirty pickup trucks.
There's talk of building a giant wall along the entire border, all curly-topped with razor-wire, Palestine-chic oppressive, looming grey and black walls of Mordor kind of thing. Most of the Shady Meadows people support the plan, and are even willing to donate some of their collective dues money to it; but with several existing walls on other borders with other neighbors, the Coventry populace is disturbed and angered by the prospect.
It's like a useless anecdote scrawled upon a napkin tossed into the trash with the remains of an unsatisfying meal. Or rather a powder keg, is what I meant.
There's talk of building a giant wall along the entire border, all curly-topped with razor-wire, Palestine-chic oppressive, looming grey and black walls of Mordor kind of thing. Most of the Shady Meadows people support the plan, and are even willing to donate some of their collective dues money to it; but with several existing walls on other borders with other neighbors, the Coventry populace is disturbed and angered by the prospect.
It's like a useless anecdote scrawled upon a napkin tossed into the trash with the remains of an unsatisfying meal. Or rather a powder keg, is what I meant.
(Thu, Oct 13, 2005)
On behalf of the human race I can honestly convey that none of us saw this coming. It makes one almost... cynical.
(Fri, Oct 14, 2005)
There's an early review of the Doom movie on Aint It Cool News. Apparently -- much to the shock of the multitudes -- it sucks. Personally I'm not surprised but neither am I full of chuckles; I had held some remote and tiny hope that they could do something with the setting, at least cozy into the Offworld Facility or Craft Inhabited by Something Creepy sub-sub-genre (e.g. Alien, Event Horizon), but I guess not.
(Fri, Oct 14, 2005)
Believe it or not -- what with the great array of choices available -- I'm still struggling to find the perfect text editor. I'm the kind of retard who opens text files frequently in order to record all the important junk in my head; I have files for journals, lists, todos, quotes, snippits, code, etc -- all carefully evolved and organized over many years now, and accessed through a quick-launch link on my taskbar. It's the place I click on most often, the center of my working universe, so the choice of a text editor is a fairly important one for me. Most of these files are ascii plaintext (iso-8859 or UTF-8 to be exact), so what I mainly require is a simple "notepad-replacement" class of text editor with a few additional features that I find useful.
In most ways EmEditor from the Japanese Emurasoft, is perfect (or perfectly adequate anyway) for my needs. It supports syntax templates (e.g. java, xml, etc), macros, regular expression searches, and is smart about things like character encoding and non-displayed characters (like carriage-returns). It even has a feature I haven't seen elsewhere: a configuration option for the system tray icon that allows you to open a new text file with the current contents of the clipboard pasted into it. I use it all the time for short-term text storage, especially when I'm writing code and about do major refactoring (especially considering Eclipse's undo implementation still leaves me sad). Other functions can be added through plug-ins, including a pipeline to external programs (which actually makes it plausible as a code editor), and a spell-checker. But the spell-checker isn't great (for one thing it always starts at the top of the page) and it's not real-time highlighted, which is possibly the only MS Word innovation I actually like (not to be confused with the grammar-checker, which I despise). This single problem has consistently led me to explore other options.
For instance, EditExt (formerly EditPro); I'm typing this with EditExt 5.5 from Alcoda Software, a program that attracted my attention because it does have real-time spell-checking. It also has other competitive features, but the only standout is full integration with WordWeb (or something that looks and behaves exactly like it). Unfortunately the application is rather clunky -- it takes longer to load than it seems like it should (possibly loading the dictionary in the same thread as the interface), and even the dialog windows have a noticeable delay -- especially with large files (for instance the xml file I keep this weblog stored in). It's surprisingly difficult to work with in comparison to EmEditor; the space between text lines (vertical kerning I guess it's called) is rather narrow and causes me to squint a bit; and worst of all the text doesn't scroll along with the scrollbar, so if you're browsing a document you'll scroll for a bit, let the text reorient, scroll a bit more, etc. Most annoying indeed! Also there's a sort of flushed quality to its whole appearance, like it's not handling the font-smoothing quite right -- which makes me wonder what it was written in.
TextPad and UltraEdit are both decent, but they do more than I require, and nothing better than EmEditor. AbiWord is a nice app with real-time spell-checking, and if I were in Linux I'd probably use it more, but it doesn't offer me much over MS Word and has some weird bugs in its Windows version. OpenOffice just takes too damned long to load. PSPad is also bad for some reason I can't remember; maybe I'll take another look at it.
Anyway, I'm still on EmEditor / MS Word.
In most ways EmEditor from the Japanese Emurasoft, is perfect (or perfectly adequate anyway) for my needs. It supports syntax templates (e.g. java, xml, etc), macros, regular expression searches, and is smart about things like character encoding and non-displayed characters (like carriage-returns). It even has a feature I haven't seen elsewhere: a configuration option for the system tray icon that allows you to open a new text file with the current contents of the clipboard pasted into it. I use it all the time for short-term text storage, especially when I'm writing code and about do major refactoring (especially considering Eclipse's undo implementation still leaves me sad). Other functions can be added through plug-ins, including a pipeline to external programs (which actually makes it plausible as a code editor), and a spell-checker. But the spell-checker isn't great (for one thing it always starts at the top of the page) and it's not real-time highlighted, which is possibly the only MS Word innovation I actually like (not to be confused with the grammar-checker, which I despise). This single problem has consistently led me to explore other options.
For instance, EditExt (formerly EditPro); I'm typing this with EditExt 5.5 from Alcoda Software, a program that attracted my attention because it does have real-time spell-checking. It also has other competitive features, but the only standout is full integration with WordWeb (or something that looks and behaves exactly like it). Unfortunately the application is rather clunky -- it takes longer to load than it seems like it should (possibly loading the dictionary in the same thread as the interface), and even the dialog windows have a noticeable delay -- especially with large files (for instance the xml file I keep this weblog stored in). It's surprisingly difficult to work with in comparison to EmEditor; the space between text lines (vertical kerning I guess it's called) is rather narrow and causes me to squint a bit; and worst of all the text doesn't scroll along with the scrollbar, so if you're browsing a document you'll scroll for a bit, let the text reorient, scroll a bit more, etc. Most annoying indeed! Also there's a sort of flushed quality to its whole appearance, like it's not handling the font-smoothing quite right -- which makes me wonder what it was written in.
TextPad and UltraEdit are both decent, but they do more than I require, and nothing better than EmEditor. AbiWord is a nice app with real-time spell-checking, and if I were in Linux I'd probably use it more, but it doesn't offer me much over MS Word and has some weird bugs in its Windows version. OpenOffice just takes too damned long to load. PSPad is also bad for some reason I can't remember; maybe I'll take another look at it.
Anyway, I'm still on EmEditor / MS Word.
(Fri, Oct 14, 2005)
This is the software that causes Mogwai to come out of my computer speakers so it has a pretty important job in MyLand. Audio players abound, just look, but finding the perfect one has been challenging; and the perfect one never seems to remain perfect. For a long time Justin Frankel (who has my life) had the best one (Winamp for all you illiterates), but then along came AOL and messy versioning between multiple code forks, and it all sort of fell apart until Justin himself didn't want anything more to do with it.
In the following years I've used a number of different substitutes. I tend to prefer simple interfaces and light memory requirements, so I didn't even bother with gizmos like Musicmatch Jukebox or Windows Media Player. And I don't want spyware or crappy sound quality so I haven't installed a RealPlayer in years. The best ones are these ones, trust me:
dBPowerAmp made me happy for a time (nice features, nice sound, support for lossless codecs, etc), but the interface is rather clunky and it's been stuck on the same version for years now.
Foobar 2000 may eventually be the most promising audio player -- it's the geek's choice I suppose -- but it's still stuck in beta with a complicated and clunky plug-in system, and a lackluster interface. I keep checking up on it though, waiting for the 1.0 release.
Zoom Player does audio in addition to video, but it's just not as good at audio. (Although it does video really really well.)
Quintessential Player is the one I'm using now, and I like it a great deal so far. The default interface skin is kind of not great but some user skins are quite great, so don't let that turn you off (I recommend the SynPLEX skin by Nucleo), and I mostly interact with it through SysMetrix anyway. It supports Winamp plugins, CD ripping, Gracenote lookups, and great interface features.
In the following years I've used a number of different substitutes. I tend to prefer simple interfaces and light memory requirements, so I didn't even bother with gizmos like Musicmatch Jukebox or Windows Media Player. And I don't want spyware or crappy sound quality so I haven't installed a RealPlayer in years. The best ones are these ones, trust me:
dBPowerAmp made me happy for a time (nice features, nice sound, support for lossless codecs, etc), but the interface is rather clunky and it's been stuck on the same version for years now.
Foobar 2000 may eventually be the most promising audio player -- it's the geek's choice I suppose -- but it's still stuck in beta with a complicated and clunky plug-in system, and a lackluster interface. I keep checking up on it though, waiting for the 1.0 release.
Zoom Player does audio in addition to video, but it's just not as good at audio. (Although it does video really really well.)
Quintessential Player is the one I'm using now, and I like it a great deal so far. The default interface skin is kind of not great but some user skins are quite great, so don't let that turn you off (I recommend the SynPLEX skin by Nucleo), and I mostly interact with it through SysMetrix anyway. It supports Winamp plugins, CD ripping, Gracenote lookups, and great interface features.
(Fri, Oct 14, 2005)
And just to make it perfectly clear that I prefer music made by geeks to music made by rock stars, this is Mogwai. And if you haven't heard any of their live recordings yet, go find them. "My Father My King" is simply amazing.
(Sun, Oct 16, 2005)
I suppose it's part viral marketing, part fan enthusiasm, and part glomming on; the Lost producers have been buying up domains lately, and the Lost-o-philes have been spending entirely too much time searching them out. It's almost turned into an online game like the ill-fated Majestic was supposed to be. There are links within links and clues within clues, but there's also a taste of red herring always around. Here's a scratch on the proverbial surface:
the hanso foundation (see also .info)
the hanso foundation SSL (leads to bigspaceship1)
bigspaceship1.org/ (the quote is from Othello -- wow, English Major skills in action!)
bigspaceship1.com (this site changes: the morse sometimes reads "a long time ago, on an island far far away" and "sometimes a polar pear is just a polar bear" and "narvik for life"; the red dot hides "2FENO6"; and apparently there's a mouse sometimes)
wwww.bigspaceship1.com (sic) leads to Smart Dust
click barcode, enter theislandiswaiting
theislandiswaiting
Mr. Clucks
www.oceanic-airlines.com
Is this fun? I don't know. Kind of. If you're at work maybe. But it's interesting.
the hanso foundation (see also .info)
the hanso foundation SSL (leads to bigspaceship1)
bigspaceship1.org/ (the quote is from Othello -- wow, English Major skills in action!)
bigspaceship1.com (this site changes: the morse sometimes reads "a long time ago, on an island far far away" and "sometimes a polar pear is just a polar bear" and "narvik for life"; the red dot hides "2FENO6"; and apparently there's a mouse sometimes)
wwww.bigspaceship1.com (sic) leads to Smart Dust
click barcode, enter theislandiswaiting
theislandiswaiting
Mr. Clucks
www.oceanic-airlines.com
Is this fun? I don't know. Kind of. If you're at work maybe. But it's interesting.
(Thu, Oct 20, 2005)
This guy is collecting data in order to draw a map of the U.S. with better defined boundaries. People submit locations to which they feel they belong, ranging from local community to largest city with local influence. The result is probably a description of media broadcast ranges and cable agreements as much as social contexts, but it's an interesting experiment anyway.
(Fri, Oct 21, 2005)
Surely Wikipedia has gone too far now. Here's a list of made-up words and phrases on the Simpsons. Here's a list of television comedies without laugh tracks. How about the most sexually active popes? A history of the heavy metal umlaut? Screw it, here's a list of unusual articles in the Wikipedia. (Which *will* consume you.)
(Fri, Oct 21, 2005)
Time Magazine has tossed out this list of the best novels in English since 1923, and it's truly batty. It's got Snow Crash on it, Gone with the Wind, The Corrections for flipping out loud. It's got Watchmen, Ubik, and Neuromancer, which are all great reads but not great novels, not on the same list as Pale Fire, Gravity's Rainbow, and The Recognitions. What's wrong with these people? Why is everybody insane?
(Tue, Oct 25, 2005)
Must stock up on bachelor chow, luckies, and coffee beans. Must set autoresponders and voicemail apologies. Must don frilly Napoleon hat. Civ 4 is here.