Sci-Fi

You guys know I love a good scifi post.

go here for the article.

Neuromancer is one of my all time favorite books. Gibson is a GENIUS.

Their description of utopian science fiction. Their description borders on Steampunk and less "utopian" and distopian literature.

But, after having said that Gibson is a genius, I wouldn't list Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine as good steampunk (as I absorb steampunk and have been reading this book for about 4 months now :( )

Other than being interesting, some of these categories are a little suspect toward the end. Weird.

Ps. Noah Wylie should NOT do support lovely cuddly polar commercial, it's just as bad as those animal shelter commercials. Shit.

Texas, our Texas

Here I am folks, back in Texas. I'm sitting with two sleepy dogs who look thankful to be out of the heat. I'm here to spend the week with Cory, during which we are going to float the river (with Jamie and Damon!). I'm excited.

We are going to Rosas today! I miss cheap fast mexican food like nobody's business. Stupid excited cuz then we are going to Ulta. I don't know if I can handle so much in one day. And then this Thursday is Terminator! Whoo!

May movies:
X-men - enjoyed, even though I know it comically is not the same. Hot men with no shirts? Sign me up. The CGI was BAD at points though. Ridiculous. I mean, we have the technology, they certainly had the money, and it still looks like 1970s? Sheesh.

Star Trek - pretty bad ass. The characters were perfect, the acting was good (Zach, just let me know when you are in Mississippi), and the story wasn't too bad either. Could have used less bad boy rogue cowboy action, but whatevs.

To see:
Angels and Demons (thankfully I didn't read this one yet, so I'll be ok) and Terminator.

Then Harry Potter/Public Enemies/Transformers. Whew. That's a lot of summer movie action.

Started reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. So far, (book 1), I am unimpressed. He tends to do that to me. Underwhelm or overwhelm and nothing in between.

Another yay! Scott is selling me his old tablet. Then I am going to learn how to draw or something awesome like that and redo this site. All cool like. Hopefully.

Thoughts and Week in Review

First:
I got my kindle in the mail on Wednesday! It's all that it is supposed to be and I love it. YAY. But I have two papers that must get written before spring break, so yuck - I don't get to play with it much til then :(

Second:
The state of the building I work in is ridiculous. It would be better if they blew it up and started over. Today it was so muggy in the room I was teaching in that you could see the condensation in the air. I'm going to stage a protest.

Third:
Writing papers sucks.

Fourth:
Ok, done with the numbers. Generally this week has rocked. Been very busy between yelling at the DVR for not recording anything and getting this paper written. It's at least half way now. Also it's been package city. Got my kindle wednesday, cory sent me a hoodie thursday and today I'm supposed to get my stuff from sephora in. :) I also have to order books for book club. Damn! :)

Something I find disturbing:
The new it thing to do on Facebook is to take "explored" pictures from Flickr and make them into fake album covers and fake band names. I know this whole thing is just for fun, but it kind of frightens me. Photographers already have issues with copyrights and digital use of their pictures. I know plenty of people who have been stolen from. But if you don't put yourself and your pictures out there, you never get better or noticed. Double edged sword. The thing that bothers me the most is that people don't notice that it's 1) illegal with out a common use license on the picture and 2) stealing with out mentioning the photographer. And we spend all of our time talking about plagiarism? This is just as bad.

Another win for today!

I am currently on book 12 in my 50 book challenge. Not much of a challenge, more like I want to knock out a great deal of the books on my shelves that I own and haven't read yet. It's fun.

Oh, and I finally took a great macro picture today. I need a good photo project.

Whew!

In the span of today:

I've finished a book.
Worked out.
Watched 6 hours of the oscars.
Beaten a ton of the lego batman game (hooray minikit detector!).
Beaten batman to 90 percent.
Written some, but not enough of my paper.
Eaten two lunches and some dinner.
Written a bunch of emails to confused students.
Not slept (boo!).
Looked at sephora.com for wayyy to long.
And finally:

Learned that my Kindle has shipped!!!!

End of story.

Hooray!

Neil Gaiman won the Newberry Award! For the book I'm currently reading The Graveyard Book. How fun.

Go here.

Dad sent me a link to the boy genius website where they said that amazon is getting a new kindle. Of course, this RIGHT AFTER I ordered one. Blah.

Must read book lists

Article here

1000 Best Sci-Fi Novels

My reading list got a lot longer....I have only read 16! Sadness! That includes two books I've only read half of (Blindness and something else). I own about 4 more that are in the to-read category.

I've only read two of the best dystopias, but some of them are weird (how do you not have Brave New World on such a list?!)

Sounds like the next project after the 50 book list (of which I have about 5 done already, and it's still January. Kind of an under achievement goal for the year, but oh well).

Bookness!

I love mail in the form of Amazon boxes. It warms the heart. Including when it's a new Neil Gaiman book from Dad :)!

And then Walden books was going out of business, and Cory bought me 8 terry pratchett books because they were on sale. EIGHT. I'm sad they didn't have more.

I really have to get an electronic reader or something soon. At this rate, there won't be a house big enough for two dogs, three cats, a bunny farm (kidding) and all of our books. Sheesh.

Cats, cats, cats

I forget to blog. I really do. It sucks. I want a new webpage design, so I need to bribe scott into helping. :) I have a bunch of new fabulous pictures from NYC and from the Windmill place in lubbock up on flickr. I'm going to post some of them to the gallery as well. Let's share a few stories.

The cats are ninjas. They have hidden 25 amazon dollars somewhere and it's frustrating to no end. Especially when greyson decides that 5am is a great time to play. ON MY STOMACH. He's also gotten really bad at chasing his tail. While standing the edge of the bathtub with a wet tail. Imagine him whipping in circle and water flying everywhere. Then you have my face intercepting the water. Ugh.

Bruce is currently thumbing through the papers on my desk that I was working on. It's a great cat house in here. Great. He's actually licking the envelopes clean. Yeah.

In something other than cat news - movies! Tv! Pictures! and Books!

Movies: I have volunteered for the Oxford Film Festival. It's got an oscar nominated short coming to it! :) I get to meet all kinds of cool people and I'm working enough that I get into the whole speal for free. Yes. I have the cool title of being INFO coordinator. What does that mean? I have no idea. Should be a blast though. Oxford has the coolest art stuff. Of course, it's mainly full of academics who need distractions...

TV: I'm trying to catch up on lost (read: watch the whole 4 seasons) because I started watching it with friends yesterday. That was a blast, and makes me glad to get out of the house. Also BSG is on, Fringe, CSI, Heroes, Terminator, NCIS...the list goes on and on. I would never leave the house if I didn't have DVR.

Pictures: Also joined the University Photography Club. More to come the meeting is on Monday...excited!

Books: I'm trying to read 50 this year. I know I read fast, but work gets in the way and I forget to read and etc...excuses excuses excuses. So, I joined the group on goodreads to make sure I actually do it. I have about 100 unread books in my house. And I want a kindle...so I need to get them read. Reading about 3 right now. Eek!

Well crap, back to work since I came home sick today and took a 3 hour nap. At least tomorrow is Friday!

Doh!

So, I raked in the books for Christmas, which makes me very happy. I love books, it's like a bad smack addiction. I have literally about 80 unread books at my house. I'm working on it (which can be seen here). I'm kind of grumpy in the last couple days though because of two funny stories:

One, I put some LJ Smith books on my amazon list to remember to read. My parents bought them for me for christmas. Hooray! And then I found I had the original copies of them buried in my closet. DOH.

Then I was looking for the other series that I had to take back with me so Cynthia could read them (and I could reread them). Double DOH. It appears I have misplaced NINE different books (some of which are not findable on Amazon any more, but thankfully on half). Blah.

Stupidness.

Noses

"Nasal congestion is an erection inside your nose."

I'm reading Bonk - The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach.

She is hilarious. I thought this book might get slightly vulgar (given the topic) but it's straight up funny times. Because when talking about how erections work, she throws in how the same tissue is located in your nose to diffuse the whole uncomfortable science of talking about penises. I can't read too much at a time, it's not like a page turner sci-fi book. But a little bit a day makes me laugh :)

And apparently, I am procrastinating all the real work I have to do.

BUT! The physical plant brought me a heater!! :) :) :)

DEATHCAB!

So yo yo yo. Guess what I did Tuesday?

That's right - we went and saw death cab for cutie. And they rocked. Like awesomeness. I really enjoyed it, even if it meant driving 5 hours Tuesday night to get there and 5 hours back on Wednesday to get home. I'm all confused what day it is now though, since that kind of road trip is usually during the weekend. Doh. But here's the low down on our "weekend trip".

The concert - was rocking. Talk about stereotype dysfunction though. Two stories.

1. Big (BIG) dude comes and sits in front of us with his little girlfriend. I'm thinking aww poor guy got dragged to the emo kid show. (We're talking this guy was like football player meets american gladiators.) Boy was I wrong. Dude knew every word to every song. Even the really old ones that they played. Whoa crazy. Girl looked like she could care less. Ha.

2. Two guys sitting behind us. Mid-twenties. Talking about weddings like they were girls. "Dude you going to have a wedding planner? What about the day of?" Flowers this, colors that. I was dying. Seriously? Then they started talking about rings.
Guy1: "Well we have to get her something simple because she doesn't want to wear her engagement band to work".
Me thinking: "aww poor guy, why doesn't his girl want to wear her ring? That's not cool."
Guy2: "Well doesn't she work with monkeys?! I'll be they are like ohh-shiny!"

You can't make that up. Seriously, that's what was said. I'm not that good.

The show was yay! They played some old ones - We Laugh Indoors, Transatlanticism, Photo booth, the new year, movie script ending, etc. They played lots of the album and the last album, plans. Crooked teeth was awesome, into the dark, blah blah blah.

Know what I was happy about? Title and registration. That's right. erin's favorite song.

What else?

1. I got a new iphone because mine was broken. The guy was also nice enough to replace my busted up head phones. Sweet.
2. Bath and body works was having a sale. Nuff said.
3. Half price books was around the corner. I bought a BOX of books. Literally.

House of leaves for cory. (i can't spell mark danielenwski's name right sorry).
middlesex - jeffrey eugenides
kafka on the shore - murakami
seeing - jose saragamo
all families are psychotic - coupland
jpod - also coupland
speaking with the angel - hornby
being good - hornby

Ive almost got all the hornby/coupland books. Geez. There weren't any palanuik's though. DOH. Blah.

Also got another 25 gift card to amazon from using my chase card so much. Time for some Pratchett lovin'.

4. Got to eat taco cabana. :):) Too bad the tomato problem right now meant no pico de gallo. BLAH. That means my cheese quesadilla was just CHEESE and tortilla. Double doh. Oh wells.


Then today of all things, the exact dog cory wants is sitting in our yard. Talk about fate. Pictures soon. I have to bath my purple head.