Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, Book 8) by Jim Butcher
Are you the type of person who after finding your way to the bottom of a bag of salted pretzels starts to eat the salt that has accumulated in the corner?
No? Well, uh, me neither…err.
God, I am so weird. Add this to the list of searching every kernel of popcorn at the bottom of the bowl for slight deviations in the shell; therefore assuming the kernel can be eaten because the shell has lost its structural integrity and is chewed easier than perfectly complete corn kernels.
…type of gal I really am, watch this video below. I don’t know if because I actually had one of these things at some point in my life and had to watch Elmo shake his thang a million times a day, but I laughed so hard I was crying when I saw it.
I originally saw this on SplodeTV. Go there!
Yeah, I got sucked into doing another group story. (Actually I volunteered.)
I posted my chapter yesterday. (Tom actually posted the story for me, because apparently I’m too incompetent on formats other than Wordpress to accomplish anything.)
I worked very long and hard on the piece. (I pumped it out in 8 hours, after I got the writing bug.)
I hate doing research. It’s such a pain in the ass to find things that aren’t wiki-related. Couple that with research on women in the 1940’s during WW2, and I was starving for information. (Actually, I found some very intriguing articles about the war movement. There are some very neat, authentic videos on Youtube by the US War Department in relation to women doing their part. )
I am too lazy for real punctuation in this post. (Yeah, what she said.)
Enjoy the story. (Or I will cry buckets of salty tears that will overflow and drown small helpless kittens.)
Think of the kittens. (I meant it about the crying.)
Let me know what you think! (Unless it’s bad.)
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been the last day or so, it’s been building my new work desk, filing cabinet and hutch for my home office. Remind me never to buy furniture that hasn’t already been assembled. It took me from 9 a.m - 10 p.m yesterday to get everything built. I only screwed up twice while following the instructions and I’m pretty confident it was a printed error.
For example, the first step of the file cabinet instructions were to place the rollers for the drawers on the inside of the cabinet. Step 12, had me trying to build a drawer on those same rollers which was virtually impossible.
As it says in my Twitter, I hate the name “Bush” even more than I did then! Once I get everything put back in place, I’ll take a picture for you, but this is what I ultimately bought on company dime.
Two years ago, I was trying to come up with a witty name for this blog. I settled on “Amnesia with a side of sarcasm.”
It just hit me as to how stupid that sounds. I mean, it totally makes no sense what so ever.
So, until I find a tagline I actually like, I’ll be playing around with it.
Today you get: “Happily Exceeding your DRA* of Mental Clorox”, as it has a nice ring and imagery associated with it. I’m sure there are things on this site, that you wish you could you unread, unwatch, and unlive. A bit of bleach will usually do the trick getting out unwanted stains, so hence my brilliant idea about the new tag.
Enjoy and if you have any ideas as to what you’d like to see under the “Amnesia” title, feel free to leave a comment.
(*Daily Recommended Allowance)
Imagine a peppy Depeche Mode and you have Cut Copy. It’s what Coldplay would sound like if they invested in therapy.
Enjoy. Dance. Live.
In light of my previous post regarding the recent science fiction movie, Children of Men, it seems to have peeked a more encompassing question regarding our outlook of the future.
Since Pete is a voracious reader, I simply asked him; Have you read anything in science fiction that is not depressing regarding the future of humanity?
Taken from the comment he left on the above mentioned post:
I had to answer: “Not so much.”
Gone are the days of a Utopian future (Star Trek, anyone?). Genre writers in the 50’s (most notably Heinlein) had an interesting streak of optimism in their fiction that is strangely missing in a great deal of fiction now. Of the true sci fi that I’ve read lately (excluding fantasy) only Red Thunder by John Varley has a relatively happy ending.
That’s just it. Most of the popular speculative fiction out there right now, leaves me depressed for our future. Wars, disease, infertility, corporate rule, dark ages, apocalypse. What happened to our happy endings full of hope? I do understand that for a good story, there are crucial elements that make it worth telling. There is usually conflict to make things interesting.
Yet, if you look at the Star Trek Series, while there was the occasional conflict between races, humanity was thriving and exploring new worlds, new life, and new civilizations! Aside from nasty bits with Klingons and Romulans and the occasional asshat who thought he was a God, there wasn’t a moment where even if something happened to the USS Enterprise (version x.?), humanity wouldn’t break down and be conquered forever.
So what is the motivation here? Do we thrive on our misery? Do we enjoy being in this state of fear? Is it the simple fact that our future is already planned to be so miserable that every piece of media in this genre arriving in stores and theaters must prepare us for the inevitable?How do we reverse the trend? Can we and have it be as popular in light of recent world events? Do things just have to get so bad, that we see the proverbial swing of the pendulum in writing? As a society, we finally can’t take anymore woe and start digging for the nugget of hope until it once again becomes the norm? Or are we always going to be doomed to fail as a civilization.
Science fiction was once a hope for technology and harmony amongst the people of this Earth once they set aside their differences and worked together as one. That is the singular ideal of Utopia. It’s a sad statement that those ideals and advancements are dismissed in today’s culture. What once was a driving force, has now become the purveyor of doom and we’re eating it up like good little scared and mistreated citizens.
So I pose the question to you guys; Why is the human race doomed to fail in the vast majority of science fiction available for consumption?
If you listened to “The O’Leary Letters”, you’ll notice I say “webcast” instead of “podcast” in the introduction. In my efforts to fix that last night, I had a few characters who wanted to take a shot at doing the intro.
We go from a proper English gentleman named Arthur, to surfer dude, Shilo, to Barry White’s younger sister, Fiona, and finally, Daisy May from the Tennessee Mountains. After that, I finally come out and get the intro done and it’s the one we’ll be sticking to from now on.
Enjoy. Cause I was laughing my ass off at the stereotypes living in my head.
Perhaps I’m a rare breed. I’ve never gone to someone elses desk and just taken something without permission. Yet, it seems to constantly happen in my work environment. I guess because I’m the office manager/administrative assistant, my title suggests that I like to be shit on.
This week I’ve come back to missing scissors, and today I came back to find my desk heater missing as well. Today happens to be a colder day in New England, and our building management doesn’t think it’s necessary to provide adequate heating for its tenants. It’s annoying to say the least, because I went out and purchased the heater in my spare time.
It doesn’t hurt to ask for things, and I’m a pretty easy going and generous person. This type of entitlement is one of my biggest pet peeves. Once you figure out that you’re not the king of the cube jungle, or the line everyone else has been waiting in, or the road on which everyone drives, you’ll be a lot better off and I think you’ll finally stop wondering why people hate you.
Because, really, they do.
I also happen to have a red swingline stapler, and if that goes missing, well there will be hell to pay.
