| G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra |
[Aug. 9th, 2009|11:33 pm] |
This might just be the most perfect popcorn summer action movie ever made. It is also very bad. So bad that I want to spank it. Or maybe just the Baroness and Scarlett. Anyway, I would like to list the ways in which it is perfect yet horrible, but I'm just too damn tired, so maybe later. |
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| Sick and tired of being sick and tired |
[Aug. 2nd, 2009|10:28 pm] |
Since I haven't updated my wordcount in almost three months, I thought it was time. I haven't written a lot in that time, but a few words here and there add up. Not to much, mind you.
The last two or three months have sucked ass. I would like to officially declare war on this year, and I will not stop until it is dead. Five more months, motherfucker. Bring it.
New goal: At least 10,000 more words before Dragon*Con. |
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| Done! |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|12:20 pm] |
Finished Lord of the Flies (blah) this morning, bringing my 12 month book total to 52. Yay me. Still feel a bit like a cheat for including graphic novels, but the way this year has gone, I should be elated to have met my goal at all.
( The complete list ) |
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| Double Damnable Netflix |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|08:54 pm] |
Well, Netflix pissed me off a couple of years ago with their Watch Instantly shenanigans, and they've done it again. The new Silverlight player won't even play on my desktop without stuttering, much less on my laptops. Watching Dexter last night was like watching a flip book rather than a TV show. Netflix claims the next version of Silverlight will solve these problems, but I'll believe it when I see it. After all, Silverlight is a Micro$oft product. Guess it's time to put Netflix on hold again after only a month back. I'll give 'em another shot in the fall or winter once Silverlight 3 is out. Not like I don't have enough DVDs to watch without them. And with Redbox, I can get 90% of the new releases I want to see for a buck a night anyway.
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| Down to the wire |
[Jun. 6th, 2009|11:13 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | 52, books | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  optimistic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Campus, Vampire Weekend | ] |
As if there were any doubt. Finish early? Pshaw.
47. (27) 13 Things That Don't Make Sense, Michael Brooks
46. Swamp Thing: Love and Death, Alan Moore
Though I am well into three books, this will be close.
ETA:
48. (28) Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks |
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| "That children of a newer day might remember and avoid our fate" |
[May. 11th, 2009|08:43 pm] |
Still typing away, though I still can't decide which goddamn typewriter to use all the time. I'm switching between three of them. Perhaps I'll do a write-up of each one's various merits and (demerits?) disadvantages. Don't hold your breath on that one, since I think I'm nearly alone in my fascination with this topic.
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| The home stretch |
[May. 10th, 2009|05:18 pm] |
7 more books to read in a month and a half. Or 26 if I want to complete the challenge w/o counting graphic novels. :P
( The 45 to date: )
I started reading Joyce's Ulysses oh a couple months ago. I have probably spent more mental angst on that book than on any other literary concern in the last fifteen years. I felt lost in the shadow of Joyce, somehow unworthy to take up the pen if the ultimate novel had already been written, and certainly ignorant for having never managed to finish reading the whole book. Yet I was filled with a certain ambivalence -- was the book a failure because it was unrepentantly impenetrable (at least to a large percentage of readers) or was it a success because it was a dense intellectual alchemical blending of a day in a mundane life with mythology?
So I've worried this over in my head off and on for many years (more off than on the last several), and I put it on my "Books I Want To Have Read" list sometime last year, and earlier this year I thought whatthehell it's about time to put a bullet in this zombie book's head. And I read oh about 5 or 6 chapters, and it was hard going but not especially incomprehensible, and then I put it down to read something else and never picked it up again. Basically, my response was: meh. The obsession ends not with a bang but a whimper. Ulysses is a puzzle book, and I don't really like puzzles.
Maybe I will return to it in a few years with a different perspective again, but right now I feel about Joyce sort of like I feel about Nietzsche, that he is more of an adolescent experience. "Look at this shit!"
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| Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|09:29 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | wordcount, writing | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  discontent | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Wonderful Night, Fatboy Slim | ] |
It's been a month since I've updated my novel wordcount. One might infer that my output in April has been rather pitiful. Part of this is because of the new job (which required two full weeks of training, one of them with a commute 30 miles each way) and part is because on April 8, issue 14 came out. (Although I did write a story arc for I14's new player-created content. I know, I don't think that really counts either.) So I wrote about 4000 words this month. That sucks, but it's more than I wrote in all but a couple months in 2008, so ya'know, Puritan work ethic guilt: Bite me.
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| Let them drink tea! |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|09:21 pm] |
Tea bagging!
LOL! Someone tell those silly Republicans that no one has raised their taxes in over eight years. (Did Clinton raise taxes? Certainly not much, since he was "the best recent Republican president" as Alan Greenspan said.) Maybe we should set the highest tax bracket to what it was during the most prosperous period in American during the last century: 90%. Oh, sorry, we wouldn't want to become "socialists" like those queer French people, then we couldn't eat our Freedom Fries!
Repeat after me: "Money isn't real." You'll feel better.
Or it might make you mad--imagine all the suffering that is caused by the manipulation of a fiction--Bernie Madoff, Enron, the entire banking system--Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can.
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| March book update |
[Apr. 2nd, 2009|10:25 pm] |
I started several non-graphic novel books in March, but only managed to complete one:
( The books )
Watched the end of ER tonight. Reminded me a bit of the end of West Wing. It was not a very good episode, especially in comparison with the early seasons. I haven't watched a full episode in at least three or four years. But I was hoping for a little dazzle for the end of such a long-running and (deservedly) critically-acclaimed show, but it was mostly just a normal episode, not a particularly well-written one at that, with a few cameos. Ho-hum. I suppose fifteen years is much too long for a show to remain fresh anyway.
I planted three trees today. Two apple trees (red and golden delicious) and a crabapple with pretty blossoms. We'll see if I ever get any fruit--the golden delicious claims it will bear fruit this season. I find that unlikely. Hopefully the rains did not wash them all away. |
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| In you I taste God |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|11:10 pm] |
I want to get all of this out. Maybe I'm on the downhill slope of the novel. I don't even care if it's good anymore, it just has to get out.
Over four pages today, and over three Friday, even though I'm apparently suffering some sort of upper respiratory infection. I want it to go away without taking antibiotics. I hate antibiotics.
38250 / 70000 words. 55% done!
Random Things:
- I'm still pissed about Battlestar Galactica. I'm starting to wonder if I will be able to successfully declare the last two seasons non-canonical in my own mind the way the last two Matrix films are. To me, they are just big budget fan-fic. If I think about the BSG finale that way, my blood pressure lowers. Sometimes a creator is not worthy of their own creation.
- I now know what's wrong with the Olympia SG-1 typewriter. That doesn't mean I will be able to fix it, but I'm going to try. And I'm optimistic.
- In the meantime, because I wanted to use a desktop typewriter, I've set up the Royal KMM, the second typewriter that I bought. It seems somehow appropriate to be drafting such a blasphemous novel on a typewriter with a metal tag that reads, "Methodist Pub House".
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| I see angels and they're laughing at me |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|09:34 pm] |
The more I've thought about the BSG finale (I haven't been able to get it out of my head all day), the more pissed off I've gotten. In some respects, I think that it's spoiled the rest of the series for me. Though I want to go back and watch at least the first couple of seasons again, I'm afraid it will be tainted with the knowledge that Ron Moore is waiting at the finish line to piss all over the dramatic tension and subtext and subtlety.
I am feeling very burned today. As if Ron Moore saw the genuine emotions that people poured into this series and laughed. Either that, or he completely misunderstood the strengths of his own series. Another reason I fear to go back and re-watch--I'll see him lurking behind every reference by Head-Six that "God has a plan." Yep, God sure do, but it's fucking idiotic.
At least I can go to my screwed up little world with angels and try to make it more compelling:
35680 / 70000 words. 51% done! |
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| Thoughts on the BSG finale |
[Mar. 23rd, 2009|11:11 pm] |
The trend holds--I am once again disappointed by the end of a series that I love. There was a lot to like in the finale, and I'm hanging onto that, but several things made me want to scream (or laugh inappropriately anyway).
( LJ cut for spoilers )
ETA: The series that have disappointed me with their endings (usually not just their final episode, but entire seasons): Babylon 5, Buffy, The West Wing, Farscape, Gilmore Girls, Felicity, Alias, X-files, Deadwood, and Veronica Mars (though the last two were canceled rather than concluded, so they get a bit of a pass). Series that have had generally satisfactory or better endings: Angel, Dawson's Creek, (Does Firefly/Serenity count?), Twin Peaks (though I hated it originally).
Not sure what that proves, but just random data points for my eventual upload into cyberspace.
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| Half Time |
[Mar. 22nd, 2009|11:40 pm] |
Yes, I used a sports metaphor. But in my defense, I didn't use it very well.
35130 / 70000 words. 50% done!
Almost 5 pages today! (I'm back to using the SM-9 until new ribbons come in the mail for the Royal KMM.) Halfway to the goal. A little late, but who's counting? The story was not ready before now. I guess I'm just proudest of the fact that even when I missed a day (or ten!) I've come back and pushed, even when it felt like I was shoveling shit (though it remains to be seen whether I'm not).
I hereby promise that if I get this part time job I will not use it as an excuse not to write. Writing must come before video games and TV (even TV on DVD). |
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| The Butler did it. |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|10:14 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | wordcount, writing | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | content | ] |
| [ | music |
| | You Were the Last High, The Dandy Warhols | ] |
32530 / 70000 words. 46% done!
I think whodunnit just changed on me again! I have a feeling I'm going to be editing a lot if I can ever finish this thing. |
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chaos_sleeps's journal
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