Sat 28 Jul 2007
Life, lately, has devolved into getting up in the middle of the day, going to work, coming home, and then not moving for several hours until I fall asleep. Writing it out, that seems far from healthy, but I find it satisfies my innate laziness.
Since my last post (in MAY? Good grief! Loki is right to complain!) I don’t feel like I have really done much worth talking about. School’s obviously been out for the summer (and is actually soon to start up again, but let’s gloss over that little tidbit), and I’m back at my parent’s house, not being very useful. Despite swearing that I would never touch a lawn mower again, I am once more mowing graveyards. The equipment and lack of communication with management is just as bad as last year, and just to make it all perfect, I seem to have developed allergies to grass. Definitely not applying for this job next year.
I am also making a bit of money by cleaning the doctor’s and dentist’s offices on weekdays. Basically I have the job of the Janitor from Scrubs. (Well, except for all the fixing and handyman duties, I just clean, so it’s not really like that job at all, but any analogy that compares me with Neil Flynn is worth including.)
I spent a week in Fredrikstad, on the Oase festival, but a writeup of that wouldn’t be very interesting. There are only so many ways to say “sang and prayed a lot” before it gets boring.
I have bought a new computer, one running this fancy-pants Vista stuff. Help Desk speaks truth, and they’ve sucked all the fun out of Solitaire and Minesweeper (I liked them because they were simple, now they’re a chore!), but other than that, all is well. Mainly because it can run URU!
I’ve been aching to play Uru again for some time now, and now I finally can! I never want to leave my room ever again! And yet I keep having to anyway! Curses! Exclamation points!
This is the main reason for my slack updating, to be honest. Uru Live is very definitely pretty much at the top of my list of Most Awesome Games Ever, narrowly beaten by Riven, possibly sharing second place with The Longest Journey. Explanations can’t do it justice, go get one of the free visitor’s accounts and have a look around it for yourself. It helps to have played the rest of the Myst games, but it isn’t necessary. Or even better, get a paid account, so you can actually see the game, not just the visitor approved areas. August is right around the corner, sign up on the first. It’s 99 cents for the first month, so that gives you plenty of time to get hooked decide if you like it or not.
Another thing I’ve been doing a little bit of is reading, so I’ll do a quick little mini-review-list:
Swamp Thing - I bought all the volumes containing Alan Moore’s run (and when he left it ended! LALALALA THERE IS NO MORE AFTER THAT!). This was very good, I can definitely see why it became so popular. I’ve read them twice since buying them, and will probably end up reading them again before going back to school.
Hellblazer - I bought Original Sins and Dangerous Habits, which the lie-list at the store said were the two containing the earliest stories. Wikipedia tells me there are two volumes in between, though, so I guess I know where next month’s comic budget is going. Original Sins was ok, but nothing spectacular, but I really loved Dangerous Habits, which seems to be where the movie pilfered all it’s best bits. I really didn’t need to get hooked on an expense like this now, but I’m much to weak to resist, so I guess I’ll be buying new shelves soon.
The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas under Red Skies - Oh man! I bought Lies some time ago, on sale, and it’s just been sitting in my shelf ever since waiting for me to find the time to read it. Luckily for me, that time arrived at the same time as the sequel, so I didn’t have to grind my teeth and wring my hands waiting for more. At least not until I finished Seas. These books were good. These books were very good. Who doesn’t love con men and capers? And pirates? And it’s in a good fantasy setting to boot. Locke Lamora is hereby officially one of my favorite fictional characters.
Renegade’s Magic - the end of Robin Hobb’s Soldier Son trilogy, and what an end! Seriously, the end took be completely by surprise, especially considering her other work. Like all her books, this was a fantastic story, well worth the read.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - I’m not even going to bother. Either you’ve read it, or you intend to read it, or you hate it without having read it, or you just don’t care. I thought it was good, and I’ll leave it at that.
I think that’s it. I make no guarantees for continued activity, not with Uru installed, but I somehow suspect that I’ll be more tempted to blog once school starts again and I have other things to do.
July 29th, 2007 at 5:21
“Loki is right to complain”
Holy CrapSanta, I should get that framed! O.o
“Despite swearing that I would never touch a lawn mower again, I am once more mowing graveyards”
Interesting. You somehow able to do this without touching the lawn mower (in which case, please, share how!) or are you now an oathbreaker?
“prayed a lot”
For/About/In regards to what, if I might inquire?
“Hellblazer and Swamp Thing”
Let me borrow? Prettyprettyprettyplease?
So you liked Lynch? Should I then put him before Hobb or after Hobb on my to-read-list (yours being the only word on which I’m allowing anything to be put before Hobb for obvious reasons)
“Either you’ve read it, or you intend to read it, or you hate it without having read it. ”
(8) WROONG. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. Wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wroooooooong. (8)
(Yeah, I haven’t read it. I don’t really intend to read it, at least not this decade. And I don’t hate it without having read it either. So there must be a fourth option for people who just barely gives a flying turdsock.)
July 29th, 2007 at 12:37
You’re right that I forgot to put in “not caring”, but you’ve openly stated that you intend to finish the series at some point, even if it’s decades away, so you don’t fall into that category.
July 29th, 2007 at 18:31
That intent scarecly counts considering how I’m fully expecting to be dead by lack of excercise long before I will have time for reading HP…
July 29th, 2007 at 18:32
Oh, and I wish to have it known that the phrase “Flying turdsock” was indeed coined by me, right there. If anyone wants to use it, feel free, but send me a message or something so I can know my astonishingly clever combination of words is spreading the goodness.
August 20th, 2007 at 16:18
Hellblazer is so excellent. Also: Swamp Thing. I’m reading both of them at the library, because I’m dirt-poor.