I’m sorry, John, but Barry has a helluva trump card.

So, I thought I’d be reading Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded this weekend but, and I’m sorry, John, but it’s your own fault, Barry Hughart’s The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox arrived shortly after Hate and, well. Damn.

Just look at this sucker:

I try not to judge books by their covers but Jon Foster’s art has filled me with such a lust that the rest of the reading queue has been reorganized. And now I’m about half way through the first book of the omnibus and am a better man for it. It’s provided some needed respite from when my brain is totally borked from studying and a few other things (well, OK, the car thing, but I’ll discuss that later…) that have been grinding down on me. So, thank you, Mr. Hughart, wherever you are, and thank you Subterranean Press for such a beautiful omnibus (what a great word…what bus you ridin’ man? The OMNIBUS, ‘COURSE. FOOL.) and thanks to Whatever’s Proprietor for that lil’ bit of snowball effect that got this volume through my front door.

That all is just the tip of the iceberg for what I’m thankful for, of course, or rather, the view in a telescope held by a guy looking at the iceberg-field-of-thankfulness that is on his horizon.

Happy Thanksgivin’.

No. Really. Seriously. Lame.

I mean, c’mon.

This is just a reminder.

This is only a reminder.

But seriously.

Seriously?!?

Seriously.

Duck duck goose?

Duck duck lame.

Squee: Antipathy Antidote

So, copy #198 of Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded arrived today, along with Waiting for Athena. both by John Scalzi. Who I’ve mentioned before. Go buy his stuff. Just, just do it already.

I’ll be pouring over this during the Thanksgiving break, hopefully, as a reward for getting through um. Life. Hahahah. I find it interesting to note that I have an almost-batch file in my brain that will type in Whatever’s addy into the address bar (much like I have antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov or www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/ …sigh.), just because it’s quicker than looking it up in the bookmarks with a mouse. There must be some secret ingredient there that keeps me coming back for more. If you need a platform for jumping into some of the more interesting elements of web couture, you could go more wrong than starting with The Whatever.

As a single parent, I’m looking forward also to the Waiting for Athena chapbook, because it’s making my parenting gene go all giggly.

We shall see what we shall see.

Of course, I’m a fan, so, you know. I’m biased.

My Car = Stolen

Jeebus Mary Marsupial, why teh fuck would anyone want to steal my Kia? It’s such a harmless thing… Oh wait. That’s the reason. Inconspicuousness. Farking great. It’s gone forever. Good thing it was the only car we had. Good thing it’s getting cold here in Kansas. Good thing it was paid for, ahhhhhhhh, there’s that silver lining.

You know. It’s one thing for the officer taking your information to ask if you had locked the car (yes, yes I did). It’s another thing entirely for the same officer to inform you that stealing cars is hard.
The blank look that I had on my face for an hour after hearing that I’m sure was the result of shock. As if looking at the spot where my car once was, it’s nice covered spot devoid of any Kia-ness, wasn’t enough. I had to shake myself out of stupor in order to get back inside and start making phone calls.

And the worse part about it is that getting something so important to the daily functioning of your life taken from you *does* things to your soul. I’m angry and unable to trust others outside of my immediate friends and family. I’m pissed off in general that whatever it takes for auto theft to become obsolete is so far down the road that my kid’s grandkids probably won’t live to see the day.

And that line of thinking goes absolutely nowhere, or, rather, straight into a pit of self-wrought hell that can suck you down forever if you let it. There’s only one thing that you can do, and that’s to keep moving. But gotdammit, I’m going to bitch about it for awhile before doing so.

Things to look at, things to hope for

With the coming of the Obama Administration, what things do folk want to see happen?

Charlie Stross has a list here. There’s some decent discussion to go along with the ten points he lists. Points one through three, along with nine and ten resonate strongest with me in terms of urgency. Mix these in with revitalizing the economy, getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Big O has his work cut out for him. As do we all.

If things are going to change for the better in this country, then same proportion of the populace that voted for change is going to have to work even harder for those changes to take effect. We’re going to need eight years of consensus to remove the deleterious effects of the previous eight. And that’s just to get us back to zero. We can do it, if we want to, as always. Follow through, follow through, follow through. Hardest thing in the world for the inexperienced to do.

One of the easiest things to do for the next eight years?

Don’t watch Fox News.

Squee moment

Heheheh.

Pulled the feed for the Wordle above off of the Whatever. The Proprietor liked it enough to use it as the daily header. I’m having a moment of squee for myself now. Hurry! It’s likely to be gone soon.

Special (and many) thanks to said Proprietor for his good graces in using content derived from his site.

Ultra-short Movie Review

Idiocracy. Not so much funny as completely terrifying.

November.

Goodness gracious. November is almost upon us. What a busy month it’s going to be. Let’s see. This is all my slightly less dubious alter-ego’s fault, that bastard. Starting at midnight local time I’ve got NaNoWriMo to get started on. There’s four certification tests that need studying for, along with my part in our class’s final project, which is the implementation of a mock network forest and the presentation of that implementation in front of the faculty. That’s next week.

Also next week, the nation shall decide which direction it wants to go, and we shall see if we’re up to the challenge of pulling ourselves out of the mess we’ve made. There’s catching up on some emails to friends and family, then there’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I’m swamped!

Somewhere in there i’m going to read some books, some comics, work out, play with my son, take the car in for an oil change, hope i won’t need a new set of tires, and good gotterdamerung do i need a vacation.

Fortunately: Bagels.

Self-inflicted life of the worst kind.

The NaNoWriMo site seems to be getting slammed. That’s a good sign. OTOH, it’ll take forever to log in. Ah well. That’s what caffeinated ‘alloween candy is for!

Frivolous Underpinnings.

For when you just can’t seem to squash your foes:

Yo, Joe

Well, any doubts I may have held about Biden have been quashed. I’m sure that Palin will get the obligatory “Oh, didn’t she do swell considering” nod, but I think it’s pretty clear which candidate is better suited for the VP.

“Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere!”

“Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.”

“The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us.”

Blammo. Biden’s been the best debater so far.