As it is, I had to spend today running errands. But, while running them, I managed to pick up a handful of book and/or movie related items.
For the nephews, I picked up a box set of Big Nate comics
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
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I’m in the middle of an SF novel by M.J. Locke called up against it, which I really like. And otherwise … yeah… it’s the busy season.Report
This post loses its meaning when you post it so late.Report
Believe you me, when I woke up and got to the site and saw that it was down, my first thought was “BUT I HAVE TO POST MY SUNDAY POST”.Report
@jaybird
I was just able to find the site!Report
I’ve been working my way through Season 1 of Vikings. While I can’t exactly say it’s a great show (some of the characterization seems inconsistent and strictly plot-servicing, though since it is depicting an old pagan culture, it’s conveniently possible that character motivations will be a bit inscrutable), it’s pretty entertainingly watchable. You don’t really find yourself looking at the clock.Report
Glory.Report
I’m a big fan of Vikings. The nice thing (for them) is that the info surrounding Ragnar is half-myth, half-historical fact so they can really take some liberties with the story. It’s a fun show.Report
I have a massive viewer-crush on Kathryn Winnick because of her portrayal of Lagertha. As in, I think my wife feels a little threatened by it in a way she doesn’t by the likes of Amy Adams, because when we watch the show she’ll ask me things like “But isn’t Auslag pretty too?” and she seems just a shade too concerned about it because it’s not usually like me to prefer a blonde (my wife has lovely chestnut hair herself). I usually deflect it by pointing out that all the man-Vikings are really hot too, but she pretty much sees right through that.Report
Lagertha is pretty damn sexy. Her face sometimes reminds me a little of the actress that played Tara on Buffy, except her character is THE EXACT OPPOSITE – Tara always had this hangdog hunched-shoulder mopey thing going on.
Whereas Lagertha…does not hunch, nor mope. Oh no.Report
Yes – Lagertha/Kathryn Winnick is lovely. Not to spoil things for Glyph, jura fur ergheaf nf na rdhny, jvgu ure bja fbyqvref, nsgre gur ybat frcnengvba orgjrra ure naq Entane, vg jnf znlor bar bs zl snibevgr zbzragf va gur frevrf.Report
Also, I got through the first twenty or so pages of Horns by Joe Hill, which seems to be about all I can get through anymore. Maybe I will start a series of reviews of the first twenty pages of books.Report
@glyph
Short stories my friend, short stories. Keep reading the stories in the Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.Report
Or Young Men in Spats.Report
Young men do fight a lot…Report
Just keep copies of Chekhov, Hemingway, and Faulkner around. I actually did that for a while in grad school, when pleasure reading had become difficult.Report
Those romantic young boys, all they ever want to do is fight.Report
Watched the Ascension miniseries of Psy-Fie last week. I like that they swung for the fences but missed badly rather than just go to the same sharksquito schlock.Report
I just finished a plotline that the writers didn’t even know about.
Amazing, really.Report
Because @glyph recommended it, I’ve been watching Black Mirror on Netflix. Oy. Difficult and dark and really, really worth watching. But difficult enough that I cannot binge it; I need time to ponder and recover between episodes. I’ve watched the first three episodes; and 3 is mind bending for someone who’s read just about everything Iain Banks published. The first is pure shock value; the second depressing beyond measure.Report
@zic – Heh. I’m….sorry, I guess? 🙂 I know what you mean about needing to chew on them afterwards.
I just re-watched 2 and 3 with a friend and will probably watch them a third time with my wife at some point. They are definitely my favorites of the entire series.
I’m not sure that the first one is solely shock value (though that’s obviously a big part of it). I DO think it was trying to say something about:
A.) The way a modern “pure” democracy, as run via instant Twitter polls and immediate internet feedback, might run into problems with yrggvat penaxf jvgu grzcbenel znq juvzf frg gur ntraqn,
and
B.) this idea that just because we are *all* experiencing something, doesn’t somehow automatically make it OK. One guy wants to jngpu gur CZ shpx n cvt, naq ur’f n creireg; ohg na ragver angvba qbrf, naq gung’f whfg vagrearg ragregnvazrag va gur zbqrea jbeyq; ab qvssrerag guna cenaxvat rnpu bgure jvgu tbngfr.
I keep thinking I’d like to do recaps for the show here; would you be interested in doing some guest posts on them?Report
@glyph I would be interested, indeed. I’ll probably watch 4 today; good thing to do in a storm. But I do not want to do 1; other than the audience reaction during the broadcast (which may be some of the best TV ever made,) it’s just too disgusting.Report
@zic – yeah, those reaction shots are something, cycling through very familiar emotions.
OK, I will try to set aside some time to do these. I’ll take the first one, let me know which ones you want to handle. I won’t be able to start until sometime after the new year, I’m pretty jammed-up until then.Report
Oh and to anyone else reading – the show is available on Netflix streaming, anyone else who’d like to chip in a recap is welcome. There are only six episodes, so it’s not a huge time commitment…Report
Somehow I missed this recommendation. It’s on my queue now.
Of course, I’m still working through Breaking Bad…
I’ve also got Terriers lined up because of Glyph.Report
@vikram-bath – would you want to do some Black Mirror recaps?Report
R. and I have it up next, after Peaky Blinders.Report
@glyph I think I’d like to do episode 3.Report
Glyph, I’d be willing to do one. But I haven’t actually seen any of them yet to pick one.Report
@chris – lemme know how PB is, I’ve been curious about that one.
@zic – OK, you are down for 3. I have some thoughts on it, but I will save them for comments.
@vikram-bath – Watch #2 (“15 Million Merits”) – if you don’t like it, you probably won’t like the show and can bail, and if you do, it’s a good one for recapping…each ep. is a standalone, so you can start at 2 with no loss or confusion.Report
@glyph
PB is quite good, we are holding back on the second season till the holidays!Report
I just watched Black Mirror episode 1 last night, due to this thread. I thought it was brilliant, and in a lot of ways says much of what I try to say in much of my writing here.
If you can’t find anyone to do a post on that episode, I’m game.Report
@tod-kelly – like I said, I am pretty jammed-up right now, so if you want to take episode 1, I can take 2 (unless @vikram-bath wants it); with @zic taking 3, that would take care of season 1.Report
Walking the District.Report
I keep thinking this is a Wire reference, but I see that Bunny Colvin used to ride his district.Report
The wife and I just finished one of the BBC mysteries, Broadchurch. Holy Shirt was it good. It didn’t pull any punches, didn’t treat you like you were an idiot, and had real emotions and ethics backing it up. Highly recommend.Report
Consider this a bleg of sorts. Long ago there was a short story in which odd things were happening to the main character. For example, he hits a golf ball into the woods and when he goes after it, he doesn’t find his ball but does find a lei made with badly wilted flowers. He eventually figures out that at a specific interval the “story” of his life is experiencing a misplaced “e”. In the example, instead of getting a “bad lie” (a golf term) he got a “bad lei”. He times things so that at the proper moment he’s stepping across the city line for a place named Haveen or something like that and winds up in Heaven, where he explains his problem. It’s traced to a celestial Linotype dropping an occasional “e” early (that it’s a Linotype says something about how long ago this was). I’m stumped about where I read the story, and haven’t found anything like it online. Anyone got a clue?
I’m going to have to sit down and have a stern talk with the guy in the back of my head that runs the filing department — tossing this over the wall for me to think about is just silly.Report
The Angelic Angleworm by Fredric Brown. You can download it at http://en.e-lingvo.net/library_download_1288.html . (I didn’t know it offhand, but “Linotype” make it easy to Google.)Report
And a word to everyone out there, all of Frederic Browns work is worth checking out. I first came across him in “The Fabulous Clip Joint” and have been wowed ever since.Report
If you’ve every seen the Arena episode of Star Trek TOS, it was based on a Fredric Brown story.Report
GORRRNNN!!!Report
“I know! You construct a weapon. Look around, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?”Report
I red the short story as a kid, because of the Star Trek episode. If I remember correctly, the alien was a beachball?
I remember as a kid thinking that a beachball was a lame alien to have to fight, and that a dinosaur monster was a big improvement. I wonder if I would think differently if I read it today.Report
Earlier this year, I spent some time looking into how people built precision positioning components for scientific instruments in the late 1700s. Interestingly, if you’ve got enough metallurgy to make brass and low-grade steel, you can start with a pretty rudimentary lathe and after a couple of years produce accurate 125 threads-per-inch screws. Those give you positioning and measuring accuracy of about 0.001 inch (0.025 millimeter for the metric among us). Useful things, rudimentary lathes :^)Report
Are you sure you aren’t thinking of a different sci-fi movie, @tod-kelly ?Report
If I remember correctly, the alien was a beachball?
No. I think it was vaguely reptilian.Report
Okay, the voice in charge of the filing system in the back of my head is not listening to reason. There was a TV episode — Twilight Zone? — where the world is just sound stages assembled by little guys at the last minute when needed. Sometimes they miss out on the details, which is why you can go through the drawers in a room and not find whatever it is you’ve lost, but can come back several minutes later — the stage has been torn down and rebuilt in your absence — and find the lost thing right there in the top drawer. The construction process goes by something like “building the minutes.”
My entire family, having found something like that, says “Must have been the little guys that build the minutes.”Report
This episode?Report
Oi. I know a guy with the “talent” for losing stuff. Usually it reappears directly above his head, out of thin air. I… don’t know how this happens, and he’s too indignant about the reappeared object for me to actually believe he’s doing some sort of sleight of hand…Report