A quote to end the year

I’m currently reading Last Argument of Kings, the final book of the First Law trilogy by Joe Ambercrombie, and I came across this little gem. Probably the funniest thing I’ve read all year. It’s location 903 in the book, whatever page that corresponds to.

With each thrust her head tapped against the plaster… With each thrust the table made an outraged creaking, louder and louder every time, as though they were fucking over the back of some disapproving old man.

Happy new year, all!

December 31st, 2010 - Posted in books |

Airline seat fail

So the other day I was on a flight, and ended up sitting next to a Yale student. Honestly I’m not sure how she got into Yale, because she was thwarted by the credit card swipe on her screen. For reference, this is the type of device I’m talking about.

She was trying to buy a film, but just could not figure out how to pay for it. First she tried to swipe the card outside of the screen itself (in the holder, basically) but that did nothing. Then she turned on the light and saw the little graphic that indicates you need to swipe. Imagine that! What a revelation!

So her next action was to put the credit card in vertically, so it would have been impossible to read the strip. Excellent. Finally she figured out how to put the card in properly, but couldn’t swipe across. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to her to angle the screen out, either. I suppose I could have aided her, but my girlfriend and I instead just decided to watch her struggle. Eventually she just gave up. So if you’re that girl, well.. sorry, I guess. (And how did you find this post?)

December 20th, 2010 - Posted in essays |

Strange bedfellows

Politics have seriously gone off the deep end in the last week or so. Obama has capitulated to the Republicans by extending the Bush-era tax cuts, but also stacking on his own for the middle class. I don’t really have an opinion on this, though I’m mildly concerned how the government is going to take in any money. But whatever!

Anyway. The backlash against the president has been, well, crazy. There were a whole lot of posts on DailyKos about how the president sold them out, how he’s a traitor and a turncoat, and that he’s all noise. One particularly hilarious post was written by someone who unsubscribed from the Organizing for America mailing list, and then proceeded to weep about it. It’s true that some senators and representatives have been rather upset about the president as well, but they’re keeping it in line a little bit better.

The thing I find funniest of all is that opposition to the tax cuts bill comes from two very different groups: the progressives, and the teabaggers. Yes, apparently the teabaggers also oppose the bill, though for different reasons. I can only imagine what’s going through the mind of the crying unsubscribe guy when he reads that article – and he will, because it’s at the top of dKos right now. Must be a strange feeling to be united in a front with your mortal enemy. But really, what does that say about the viewpoints of the two respective groups?

I’ve looked at dKos at least once a day for roughly five years or so, and it’s very interesting to me how it’s melted down since then. The actual rhetoric there is gone; anyone who dissents from the perceived majority opinion is downvoted pretty hard. Actually, there’s been an uptick in the number of flounce posts (referred to there as GBCW, goodbye cruel world) written by more moderate people who basically think that the site has really lost the plot. An article titled Is Barack Obama Stupid? made it to the Recommended list rather quickly the other day, though the author received a huge number of downvotes for the title – not the content. That doesn’t change the fact that it made it to the recommended list in the first place.

Personally, these days I find ThinkProgress and Little Green Footballs to be among the more sane sites out there. Strange times indeed.

December 9th, 2010 - Posted in politics |

More confusion in the Castle book

I finished Naked Heat, the second tie-in book they’ve released for Castle.  I previously wrote about how meta the book is. So here are some excerpts from the acknowledgments, signed by one “RC”, which is almost certainly the fictional Richard Castle:

…Special thanks are due to Detectives Kate Beckett, Javier Esposito, Kevin Ryan and Captain Roy Montgomery for not simply putting up with me, but including me in their professional family.

…and to Nathan, Stana, Seamus, Jon, Ruben, Molly, Susan and Tamala – your tireless professionalism makes every day a joy.

…A huge tip of my hat to… Melissa Harling-Walendy at ABC for her guidance aong the way.

So here we’ve got the fictional Richard Castle saying thank you to the other characters in his fictional world, but then also to the actors who play him and the other fictional characters. And then you’ve also got him thanking someone at the company who airs the show about his fictional character. … Wait, what?

We have to go deeper.  BBBBRRRAAAAHHHHMMM

December 3rd, 2010 - Posted in books |

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The last show I saw was Mythos at 92nd St Y - New York, NY on Oct 6, 2014.
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Hey there. I'm a web developer who works and lives in New York City.