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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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75 Responses

  1. ScarletNumber says:

    I hate Daylight Saving Time.

    I think it starts a bit too early, but I like the concept.

    Besides, that ship has sailed.Report

  2. aaron david says:

    I am now into the 4th book of Gene Wolfe’s Book Of The New Sun. All I can say is Holy Christmas! In his subverting of the genre and all its tropes, it makes Martins books look childish and hamfisted. At first glance the books come across as typical late ’70’s early ’80’s fantasy, but by the time you are 2/3 through the first book, you know that something deeper is going on and that many things don’t add up the way the narrator presents them. By the second book, you realise the narrator is a liar…

    (I wont say any more, as I don’t want to spoil the fun.)Report

  3. Mike Schilling says:

    Well, had I read this story prior to hearing that theory, I would have said that this is Gaiman writing a short story using a Tyrion of his own… but now I wonder if this isn’t his take on Miles instead.

    It is a short book.Report

  4. Saul Degraw says:

    I purchased the Buried Giant this week and am currently reading The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. I also get to pick up Jenny Unglow’s book about Britain during the Napoleonic Wars this week.

    There are times when I really want to read fiction but find it much easier to concentrate on non-fiction.Report

  5. Will Truman says:

    I’m watching Red vs Blue. I thought I would like it, but graded on a curve. Turns out that it’s actually pretty good with or without a curve. I can’t tell if it would be better or worse with real animation.

    I finished Man in the High Castle, which I was underwhelmed by. I think I just didn’t quite “get” it.

    Still haven’t started Gotham.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Will Truman says:

      The Man In The High Castle turned out to be a much different story than the one I thought I was reading. I wasn’t sure what to think of it either. I might re-read it at some point.Report

      • zic in reply to Glyph says:

        It’s a very disturbing book; and one that probably doesn’t age as well as far as we are from the implementation of the Marshall Plan.

        If you can find it (out of print) read Deux Irea, Dick & Zelazney wrote it together. I’d put it at one of my top-10 weird, twisted books ever, and I’m a weird, twisted-book kinda gal.Report

      • zic in reply to Glyph says:

        Sorry, that’s Deus Irae.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Will Truman says:

      The PKD book I’d recommend unreservedly is The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Archer is a slightly fictionalized version of Archbishop James Pike. You don’t need to know that to enjoy the book, but after I did some looking, I was surprised how many of the odd things about the character were factual.Report

      • James Pearce in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        Adding that Eye In the Sky and The Gameplayers of Titan were pretty good too.

        (His later VALIS-era stuff I find nearly unreadable.)

        Also…..I watched a documentary about Dan Harmon on Netflix the other day. It occurred to me that if someone were to make a biopic about Philip K Dick….Harmon should play him.Report

      • aaron david in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        @mike-schilling @will-truman @glyph

        If I was to recommend some PKD, I would go with Ubik, A Scanner Darkly and then Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Of course, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is fantastic.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        Flow My Tears I read not too long ago. I am starting to suspect I like his short stories (I have a couple collections of his) better than his novels, but this wouldn’t be unusual for me.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        @james-pearce – yes, from what I have read of Harmon, it would probably be very easy for him to play a Dick.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        I don’t like Flow My Tears. I think it’s because the main character is (unusually for PKD) pretty much a jerk, and so I didn’t care what happened to him.Report

      • aaron david in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        The reason I like Flow My Tears so much is that it was the first PKD I read that I really started to understand his idea of Are You Who You Think You Are.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to Will Truman says:

      I can’t imagine RvB in any other format. (It’s hard to tell if they lost something as time went on just because the joke got worn, or because they went to newer versions of Halo *and* the joke got worn)Report

  6. Mike Dwyer says:

    I plowed through the first season and a half of Black Sails last week. The constant forming of alliances, betrayals and then re-forming is a bit tedious at times but overall I found it entertaining. Very similar to Game of Thrones that way. It covers a time period, the ‘golden age’ of piracy, that I was not overly familiar with so of course I went down the Wikipedia rabbit hole when I was done and there are all sorts of new historical details to store in my memory bank. Because it is on Starz there is plenty of nudity and they touch on both gay and lesbian relationships. One of the big reveals was the existence of a gay affair when the viewers were led to believe that the character was involved in a heterosexual affair. I don’t have an opinion on it, but it does turn the dynamics between some of the characters on its head.

    Walking Dead finally got interesting again last week. Hoping they can keep it together for a bit. Lots of potential interesting stories to tell if the writers can stay on track for a change.Report

  7. Kolohe says:

    Jaybird, a question for you.

    John Stewart on RAW: weird attempt at cross promotional synergy, or weirdest attempt at cross promotional synergy?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:

      I thought that ZZ Top on Raw was probably the weirdest crossover they did until Jericho yelled “HOW IS THIS FAIR?” and they responded “How?” and Jericho yelled “HOW? HOW? HOW? HOW?” and they started playing La Grange.

      Anyway, to answer your question, when they had each of the presidential candidates give a short “Get Out The Vote!” speech on Raw (“do you smell what Barack is cookin’?”) and then had an Obama impersonator fight a Hillary impersonator (with a Bill impersonator at ringside hitting on the female fans), that was the weirdest attempt at… I don’t even know what that was an attempt at. It’s like Papa Vince said “Screw them. They don’t regulate in our favor anyway.”

      Jon Stewart on RAW is no weirder than the three year period where Kane beat the crap out of Pete Rose at every WrestleMania.Report

      • Kolohe in reply to Jaybird says:

        I can see a significant enough overlap between ZZ top fans, Pete Rose fans, and WWE fans. The video for Legs, breaking Ty Cobbs record, and peak Hulkamania all occurred with a few years of each other, so anyone that was 12 years old at the time would have a special place in their hearts for each for the rest of their lives.

        But the venn overlap between even occasional Daily show viewers and even occasional WWE viewers? That might well only exist right here at MD.

        (and no politics, but the funny thing is that the only things John McCain likes more than war and restricting free speech are attempts to regulate sports. also, Mama Linda ran for Senate under the elephant banner a couple years after the donkey match you describe)Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

        Holy cow, I never even looked at it like that.

        Hell, Bob Barker and Ozzy and Sharon hosting RAW (another bunch of weird matchups) probably fit the same mold… I remember the kids who stayed home sick in 9th Grade all came back the next day talking about how Bob Barker went grey and “OZZY” was what all of the boys wrote on their knuckles (even at the Christian school!).

        Tapping into forgotten nostalgias… whoa. Papa is even smarter than I had hoped he would be.

        With that said, I imagine that he’s trying to do the same thing for a decade ago, rather than three of them.

        Because I betcha that he didn’t want the Jon Stewart of 2014… he wanted the Jon Stewart who replaced Craig Kilbourne.Report

  8. Chris says:

    This weekend I have watched Earth to Echo, Thunder and the Magic House, and Mr. Peabody and Sherman (the movie released last year), each at least twice. We also read fairy tales and fables, each a few times.Report

  9. Tod Kelly says:

    I’ve had limited time this past week. I did manage to watch the first few episodes of Better Call Saul, though.

    And I started Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book The Buried Giant, but I’m only about 50 pages in — partially because of time, and partially because Ishiguro is a writer to be savored.Report

  10. ScarletNumber says:

    BTW, bravo to whomever put the post counts back on the main page.Report

  11. Glyph says:

    I just watched ep 7 of Fortitude and… ewwwwwwwwwwwwReport

  12. Maribou says:

    Jay and I are still watching Sleepy Hollow, and I’ve been alternating between HIMYM rewatch (up to season 4 now), and season 5 of Glee (I mostly watch TV if I am exercising or putting away laundry, so the music is kind of nice even though I feel like the show jumped the shark a while back and I spend some time muttering “STOP BEING STUPID ABOUT (whichever character they are being stupid about)” every single show).

    Dman’s wife and I have started rewatching all of ST:TNG (I’ve maybe seen 50 out of the 177 episodes, MAYBE, feels more like 20 – and she’s seen every single one). I think it will take us a few years, but it should fill the gaps between on-the-air-now shows nicely (we are currently in a lull between Librarians being over for now and Outlander not restarting until April). Tonight we watched the pilot, which I had actually never seen! But I had read the novelization of the pilot (I read basically 90 percent of the SF paperback section at my local library as a kid/teenager) so I knew what was going to happen. Still, it made me happy to finally watch it.

    Readingwise, I have *mostly* been reading about complex trauma disorders and fibromyalgia, as part of trying to sort out my life, and that is about as fun as you might imagine it to be. But I also read an intriguing YA paranormal/Arthurian/Templar thinger with a half-Pakistani female protagonist (Devil’s Kiss, by Sarwat Chadda). Right now I’m in the middle of the far-more-intellectual-than-I-expected Floating on a Malayan Breeze, by Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh. It purports at first glance to be a travelogue about going around Singapore and Malaysia on a bicycle as a post-grad-school best-friends lark, but is actually the story of 10-11 years of first-person investigation into life in both countries (sparked off by said lark), with tons of historical context and political rants and some light (ie human readable) economic analysis, by a Singaporean economist whose father moved there from Malaysia. It’s super interesting, but I can only pay the amount of attention to it that it deserves for about 30 pages at a time, so it’s taking a while.Report

  13. Anne says:

    @tod-kelly ooooh I’ll have to try that! @kim yup got the Defiant and taking it out every chance they getReport

    • Kim in reply to Anne says:

      And this is why you don’t write stupid clauses into the contract of TV series. Berman and Braga gave them a pretty long time to figure out some way to get a starship. Don’t mess with the writers, it rarely ends well (well, except for that bit with the Berber, and I think that won’t spoil it).Report

  14. Miss Mary says:

    It is a possibility Oregon won’t be participating in DST much longer. I’m okay with that! 🙂Report