Momentary lapse (again)
Apr. 1st, 2006 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bending_sickleWritten March 28
This time I know it’s not the hormones. And though I am listening to Sarah McL.’s “Afterglow”*, I think it’s a bit unfair to blame her.
In the immortal words of Blue Rodeo as they played “Montreal” live: “It’s not going well”.
Plus, I just changed my phone’s language to English and feel like a traitorous bitch.
You can’t tell I’m upset by the swearing.
Back to making the fucking bed and doing the whole winter-spring clothes interchange.
"I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. "CATS", he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE."
- Terry Pratchett
Still haven’t searched for more Firefly/PitchBlack-Riddick fics, but the more I think about it, the more I like this crossover. Loads better than Firelfy/Star Wars. (Granted, I’m going solely on the hotness factor. Plus, no messy Force to deal with.) Still, I’ve been thinking about whether Jayne would be able to take Riddick on. I mean, Jayne’s a great shot, but nowhere near as quick as Riddick. Plus, Riddick can be scary, whereas the only time I found Jayne scary was when he was showing off his gun Vera (“Do I have your attention?”).
So now I’m thinking about these two trading blows***, banter or bodily fluids.
Books I’ve seen in the stores:
The seven types of ambiguity
Small crimes in a world of abundance
Necromonicon (by D Tyson, with no mention whatsoever of Lovecraftˇ, despite these being stories featuring Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu and Shub Niggurath)
Saving fish from dying - A Tan (which has an absolutely gorgeous description of doing just that)
The seven capitol sins of chocolate (a recipe book)
Books I’d totally buy:
100 Selected Poems – E. E. Cummings
I. Asimov (and/or his other autobio’s), Asimov’s Galaxy: Reflections on SFˇˇˇ
Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
The possibility of an island - M Houellebecq
How we are hungry - D Eggers
And, of course, those Buffy and Firefly analysis books that are floating around.
And, last but not least: The Situation is Hopeless but not Serious: The Pursuit of Happiness – P. Watzlawick
This has a bunch of adorable little essays of how to worry about silly things. God I love this book. In fact, here’re the two sole (introductory) paragraphs I jotted down:
“It’s in habitants – the Austro-Hungarians, as the reader may already have suspected – thus were proverbial not only for their inability to cope reasonably with the simplest problems, but also for their ability to achieve the impossible somehow almost by defeat. Britain, as one bon mot claimed, loses every battle except the decisive ones; Austria loses every battle except the hopeless ones. (Small wonder, since the highest military decoration was reserved for officers who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by taking some action that was in flat contradiction to the general battle plan.)
The great empire is now a tiny country, but absurdity has remained its inhabitants’ outlook on life, and the author of these pages is no exception. For all of them, life is hopeless, but not serious.”
“What are we to expect from man...? You may heap upon him every earthly blessing, you may submerge him in well-being until the bubbles shoot tot he surface of his prosperity as though it were a pond, you may give him such economic success that noting will be let got him to do but to sleep and to eat dainties and to prate about the continuity of the world’s history; yes, you may do all this, but none the less, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer devilment, he will end by playing you some dirty trick. He will imperil his comfort, and purposely desiderate for himself deleterious rubbish, some improvident trash, for the sole purpose that he may alloy all the solemn good sense that has been lavished upon him with a portion of the futile, fantastical element which forms part of his very composition. Yet, it is these same fantastical dreams, this same debased stupidity, that he most wishes to retain....
These words were written by the man whom Friedrich Nietzsche considered the greatest of all psychologists: Fyodor Mihailovich Dostoyevsky. And yet what they imply has been known since time immemorial – namely, that man is ill prepared to put up with sheer bliss.”
Random books I’d like to take out on loan:
Odd Thomas and Forever Odd by D Koontz (if you don’t know why, understand that this is Koontz, the man who writes excellent thrillers – until the denouement, at least, where boy gets girl and they take care of child – and that the character is eccentric and has some sort of contact with dead people).
Which reminds me: between second and fourth grade (methinks), I read a book of collected stories by Stephen King (the only other work by him I’d read by then was Dragon Eyes, recommended by my brother as “not scary”). I won’t say I’ve been scarred by the stories, but I remember them exceptionally well. There was one of a werewolf family that’d just moved into a new neighborhood (“Back in our country, we didn’t go to the supermarket to get our meat! What nonsense is this?”), a possessed washing machine and likewise possessed factory cutting machine – a story that made damn sure I’d remember what the “hand of glory” is, a finger poking out of the toilet seat to attack our character, possessed cars forcing people to fill their tanks with gas, and loads more. I would really, really like to reread them.
Neil Gaiman’s book on Douglas Adams (Don’t Panic)
All those Anne Rice books dealing with Lestat (post Veronica’s Veil hiatus) and the
Mayfair Witches (post Lasher) because 1) sexy Lestat, 2) sexy Julien Mayfair (never mind that he’s dead and incestuous) 3) witches + vampires, people, and 4) sexy Lasher can’t really be gone – dead, yes, but not gone. (Plus, Lasher was sexier as an incorporeal spirit anyway.)
Plus, I can’t wait to see Michael’s face when he figures out his ancestry. *evil glee*
…and by “see” I mean “read”.
(And while I realize Rice has really gone down, I still recommend her early vampire novels - The Vampire Lestat, if you can only bear to read one and The Body Thiefˇˇˇˇ if you can read two – as well as The Witching Hour (which covers centuries in the lives of a witch family, full of incest and murder and a sexy familiar) and The Servant of the Bones if you want something that has nothing to do with her vamp or witch series and has some Jewish history.
By all means stay away from her Christ-novel. No, I haven’t read it. And I mean to stay that way.)
I’m just one book away (The Longest Journey) from reading the major works of E. M. Foster. Which is cool.
And I’ve read H. G. Well’s four main SF books (The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds). While Dr Moreau kicked ass, TTM was pretty good, WotW was alright but IM wasn’t at all.
Must reread Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, having only read it once (and in Spanish, for some reason). Which means that I must’ve missed out on such glories as “take the hide (and seek) of x animal” or “three feet of y animal (if you don’t have three feet, one yard will do)” or “the hip (and pot) of a hippopotamus”. Oh, Dahl, how I love you.
One last thing: there’s this type of crystal blocks you can buy with carvings inside the block, all 3-d and pretty. I saw one today featuring a swimmer in the ocean. There was a huge shark underneath. Coolest thing ever.
PS: LJ societies related (somehow) to writing:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
the_story, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_muse, t_h_i_n_k, writingprmpts, sfwriters, slash, writeranonymous, promptlywriting, fandoms_bitches, fictionwriters, depressionsucks, books, justwrite,writers_block, writers_bloc, workingtitle, necronomiphiles, i_can_spell, moviequotes, writers_guild, bdwriters, fontaddicts
...and http://www.dafont.com/
* Which always, at least to me, sounded of post-coital bliss.
*** Um…trading physical blows…as in strikes. Not… Oh gods, explicit mental image…
ˇ Or, as named in one of Neil’s stories, H. bloody P. bloody Love bloody Craft. ˇˇ
ˇˇ Coincidently, this story, “Shogoth’s Old Peculiar” also taught me the meaning of “gibbous” (as in, “the gibbous moon hung low”), which I later, to my delight, found in Cry of the Kalahari by the Owens couple.
ˇˇˇ Where he discusses why faster-than-light travel is impossible and how we should name our planets, satellites and suns if we want to make sense of it later, how not to write and what irony really is. And he’s completely lovable. In fact, I prefer reading Asimov being Asimov, his essays, introductions and autobio, than his novels, which are too full of intrigue, politics and idea-drive (rather than character-drive) to be my cup of tea. It’s my cup of coffee. (Meaning I’ll read it if I can get some sugar with it, but it’s not something I crave or thank deities for.)
ˇˇˇˇ All I remember is that there’s a German Shepard called Cujo, Lestat, David Talbot and a nun˚. And that, apparently, after centuries of drinking blood, food kind of looses its appeal.
˚ No, they never walk into a bar together, but can you see it? A dog, vampire, scholar and nun walk into a bar and…
This time I know it’s not the hormones. And though I am listening to Sarah McL.’s “Afterglow”*, I think it’s a bit unfair to blame her.
In the immortal words of Blue Rodeo as they played “Montreal” live: “It’s not going well”.
Plus, I just changed my phone’s language to English and feel like a traitorous bitch.
You can’t tell I’m upset by the swearing.
Back to making the fucking bed and doing the whole winter-spring clothes interchange.
"I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. "CATS", he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE."
- Terry Pratchett
Still haven’t searched for more Firefly/PitchBlack-Riddick fics, but the more I think about it, the more I like this crossover. Loads better than Firelfy/Star Wars. (Granted, I’m going solely on the hotness factor. Plus, no messy Force to deal with.) Still, I’ve been thinking about whether Jayne would be able to take Riddick on. I mean, Jayne’s a great shot, but nowhere near as quick as Riddick. Plus, Riddick can be scary, whereas the only time I found Jayne scary was when he was showing off his gun Vera (“Do I have your attention?”).
So now I’m thinking about these two trading blows***, banter or bodily fluids.
Books I’ve seen in the stores:
The seven types of ambiguity
Small crimes in a world of abundance
Necromonicon (by D Tyson, with no mention whatsoever of Lovecraftˇ, despite these being stories featuring Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu and Shub Niggurath)
Saving fish from dying - A Tan (which has an absolutely gorgeous description of doing just that)
The seven capitol sins of chocolate (a recipe book)
Books I’d totally buy:
100 Selected Poems – E. E. Cummings
I. Asimov (and/or his other autobio’s), Asimov’s Galaxy: Reflections on SFˇˇˇ
Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
The possibility of an island - M Houellebecq
How we are hungry - D Eggers
And, of course, those Buffy and Firefly analysis books that are floating around.
And, last but not least: The Situation is Hopeless but not Serious: The Pursuit of Happiness – P. Watzlawick
This has a bunch of adorable little essays of how to worry about silly things. God I love this book. In fact, here’re the two sole (introductory) paragraphs I jotted down:
“It’s in habitants – the Austro-Hungarians, as the reader may already have suspected – thus were proverbial not only for their inability to cope reasonably with the simplest problems, but also for their ability to achieve the impossible somehow almost by defeat. Britain, as one bon mot claimed, loses every battle except the decisive ones; Austria loses every battle except the hopeless ones. (Small wonder, since the highest military decoration was reserved for officers who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat by taking some action that was in flat contradiction to the general battle plan.)
The great empire is now a tiny country, but absurdity has remained its inhabitants’ outlook on life, and the author of these pages is no exception. For all of them, life is hopeless, but not serious.”
“What are we to expect from man...? You may heap upon him every earthly blessing, you may submerge him in well-being until the bubbles shoot tot he surface of his prosperity as though it were a pond, you may give him such economic success that noting will be let got him to do but to sleep and to eat dainties and to prate about the continuity of the world’s history; yes, you may do all this, but none the less, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer devilment, he will end by playing you some dirty trick. He will imperil his comfort, and purposely desiderate for himself deleterious rubbish, some improvident trash, for the sole purpose that he may alloy all the solemn good sense that has been lavished upon him with a portion of the futile, fantastical element which forms part of his very composition. Yet, it is these same fantastical dreams, this same debased stupidity, that he most wishes to retain....
These words were written by the man whom Friedrich Nietzsche considered the greatest of all psychologists: Fyodor Mihailovich Dostoyevsky. And yet what they imply has been known since time immemorial – namely, that man is ill prepared to put up with sheer bliss.”
Random books I’d like to take out on loan:
Odd Thomas and Forever Odd by D Koontz (if you don’t know why, understand that this is Koontz, the man who writes excellent thrillers – until the denouement, at least, where boy gets girl and they take care of child – and that the character is eccentric and has some sort of contact with dead people).
Which reminds me: between second and fourth grade (methinks), I read a book of collected stories by Stephen King (the only other work by him I’d read by then was Dragon Eyes, recommended by my brother as “not scary”). I won’t say I’ve been scarred by the stories, but I remember them exceptionally well. There was one of a werewolf family that’d just moved into a new neighborhood (“Back in our country, we didn’t go to the supermarket to get our meat! What nonsense is this?”), a possessed washing machine and likewise possessed factory cutting machine – a story that made damn sure I’d remember what the “hand of glory” is, a finger poking out of the toilet seat to attack our character, possessed cars forcing people to fill their tanks with gas, and loads more. I would really, really like to reread them.
Neil Gaiman’s book on Douglas Adams (Don’t Panic)
All those Anne Rice books dealing with Lestat (post Veronica’s Veil hiatus) and the
Mayfair Witches (post Lasher) because 1) sexy Lestat, 2) sexy Julien Mayfair (never mind that he’s dead and incestuous) 3) witches + vampires, people, and 4) sexy Lasher can’t really be gone – dead, yes, but not gone. (Plus, Lasher was sexier as an incorporeal spirit anyway.)
Plus, I can’t wait to see Michael’s face when he figures out his ancestry. *evil glee*
…and by “see” I mean “read”.
(And while I realize Rice has really gone down, I still recommend her early vampire novels - The Vampire Lestat, if you can only bear to read one and The Body Thiefˇˇˇˇ if you can read two – as well as The Witching Hour (which covers centuries in the lives of a witch family, full of incest and murder and a sexy familiar) and The Servant of the Bones if you want something that has nothing to do with her vamp or witch series and has some Jewish history.
By all means stay away from her Christ-novel. No, I haven’t read it. And I mean to stay that way.)
I’m just one book away (The Longest Journey) from reading the major works of E. M. Foster. Which is cool.
And I’ve read H. G. Well’s four main SF books (The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds). While Dr Moreau kicked ass, TTM was pretty good, WotW was alright but IM wasn’t at all.
Must reread Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, having only read it once (and in Spanish, for some reason). Which means that I must’ve missed out on such glories as “take the hide (and seek) of x animal” or “three feet of y animal (if you don’t have three feet, one yard will do)” or “the hip (and pot) of a hippopotamus”. Oh, Dahl, how I love you.
One last thing: there’s this type of crystal blocks you can buy with carvings inside the block, all 3-d and pretty. I saw one today featuring a swimmer in the ocean. There was a huge shark underneath. Coolest thing ever.
PS: LJ societies related (somehow) to writing:
the_story, the_muse, t_h_i_n_k, writingprmpts, sfwriters, slash, writeranonymous, promptlywriting, fandoms_bitches, fictionwriters, depressionsucks, books, justwrite,writers_block, writers_bloc, workingtitle, necronomiphiles, i_can_spell, moviequotes, writers_guild, bdwriters, fontaddicts ...and http://www.dafont.com/
* Which always, at least to me, sounded of post-coital bliss.
*** Um…trading physical blows…as in strikes. Not… Oh gods, explicit mental image…
ˇ Or, as named in one of Neil’s stories, H. bloody P. bloody Love bloody Craft. ˇˇ
ˇˇ Coincidently, this story, “Shogoth’s Old Peculiar” also taught me the meaning of “gibbous” (as in, “the gibbous moon hung low”), which I later, to my delight, found in Cry of the Kalahari by the Owens couple.
ˇˇˇ Where he discusses why faster-than-light travel is impossible and how we should name our planets, satellites and suns if we want to make sense of it later, how not to write and what irony really is. And he’s completely lovable. In fact, I prefer reading Asimov being Asimov, his essays, introductions and autobio, than his novels, which are too full of intrigue, politics and idea-drive (rather than character-drive) to be my cup of tea. It’s my cup of coffee. (Meaning I’ll read it if I can get some sugar with it, but it’s not something I crave or thank deities for.)
ˇˇˇˇ All I remember is that there’s a German Shepard called Cujo, Lestat, David Talbot and a nun˚. And that, apparently, after centuries of drinking blood, food kind of looses its appeal.
˚ No, they never walk into a bar together, but can you see it? A dog, vampire, scholar and nun walk into a bar and…
