Buying Books

    Truer words were never spoken.

Hotel California

    Actually, Hotel California was a song about members of The Eagles visiting a Satanic service, and being rather unimpressed.  The titular hotel had been purchased by the Satanist church.

Punctuation Sunday

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “Everyone in my village liked U2,” I said.  “Everyone in my country, maybe.  Wouldn’t that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their trucks.  I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music.  Do you know what?  The first week I was in the detention center, U2 were number one here too.  That is a good trick about this world, Sarah.  No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.”

    (from Little Bee by Chris Cleave)

     8½*/10.  The full review is here.

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Book Review Friday

    With our guest book reviewer tonight, Her Majesty Queen Victoria!!

History Thursday

    Strange.  Very bizarre.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    I looked out the window at the same view I’d seen for the last ten years and counting.  I was bored with Modesto, bored with being Noah Bains’s loser daughter, two loser marriages, loser modeling career, and anything else I might try my hand at – but what else could a loser like me do?  I was about to turn forty, right foot in a walking cast, cane on the left, a nonexistent love life, living with a monosyllabic father who had enough of his own hangups to put mine to shame.

    (from A Dead Red Cadillac by R.P. Dahlke)

    8*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Happy Fourth of July (again)

    Well, whaddaya know.  I did find time today to post on the blog.

Happy Fourth of July

    Yeah this is a day early, but I usually forget to post anything on holidays, and this one caught my eye today.

Tuba or Not Tuba

    That is the question.

Surreal Saturday

    Artist: Mother Nature.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    In this universe there is no such thing as “faster-than-light” travel.  The speed of light is not only a good idea, it’s the law.  You can’t get to it; the closer you accelerate toward it, the more energy you need to keep going toward, and it’s a horrible idea to go that fast anyway, since space is only mostly empty, and anything you collide with at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light is going to turn your fragile spaceship into explody chunks of metal.

    (from The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi)

  8*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Food For Thought

    Helder Camara was a Roman Catholic archbishop in Brazil, and an activist for the poor.  Wiki him for more details.

How do I convert to...

    I'm a Pastafarian. Which can almost be scrunched into the acronym "PDF".

Why Calculus is Dangerous

Book Excerpt for the Day

    Rachel had recognized the edge of wildness about him in the last few hours.  It both thrilled her and scared her.  She had spent enough time with him.  Gray did not think like other people.  He operated at the fringes of common sense, trusting his quick thinking and reflexes to pull him out of tight scrapes.  But the sharpest mind and fastest reflexes would not help you if a wall of rock dropped on top of your head.

    (from Map Of Bones by James Rollins)

  8½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Life Choices

    Hmm.  I'm gonna have to think about this.  So many ways to choose.

Stress Relief

    True dis.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    There were such things as dwarf gods.  Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode, they’d seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat.  Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer, it’s nice to be able to blaspheme.  It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, “Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!” or “Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept-on-a-crutch!”

    (from Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett)

  9½*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Melons

    Public Service Announcement Thursday!

Snuggling

    Baloney.  Bella and Blackjack snuggle up against me in a tag-team attempt to push me off the bed.

But It's a Dry Heat

    I admit, it was a bit balmy today here in Phoenix.  But it never hit the projected 121°F.  My phone says it topped out at a mere 118°F.  And it's a dry heat.

Sing Along Monday

   C'mon now.  I know you sang that whole verse in your head with those modified words.  And we might even forgive the misspelling of "lightening" EVEN THOUGH it was right there in plain sight on the can in the picture.  Sheesh.

Punny Sunday

   And BTW, Kurt Vonnegut just happens to be my favorite contemporary American author.

Book Excerpt for the Day

    People can survive, even if one brain hemisphere is destroyed.  True, they will usually be paralysed down one side – and if the left hemisphere is destroyed they typically lack speech – but so long as one hemisphere is undamaged, they continue as themselves, albeit with extreme paralysis and related losses.  Assuming that is indeed true, let us deploy a further thought experiment.  You are placed under anaesthetic and your brain is divided, the left hemisphere being popped inside and appropriately connected to a new previously brainless body, Lefty, and the right hemisphere similarly into a different new body, Righty.  Lefty and Righty awake, with partial but different paralyses.  Where are you?

    (from Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide by Peter Cave)

  7*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Or else

    Another comic that took me just a tad too long to "get".

Editing

    As a part-time editor, this is tearing me up inside.  And no, I didn't catch the extra "the" in the first balloon.

The Inquisitive Kid

    Hey now.  That's me!  I just finished reading a book on Philosophy.  Review to follow, probably this weekend.

Oh look! A Unicown!

Sunday Surrealism

Book Excerpt for the Day

    “A fine kettle of soup you’ve dropped into, schlemiel.  I should leave you simmering till you’re fit to eat, except that wouldn’t be fair to this poor little shiksa you’ve conned into holding the hand you haven’t got.”

    “Huh!” snorted Guthrie.  You keep quiet about seduction of the young.  Beware this old witch, you two.  She’s evil and depraved.  I’ve seen her put ice cream in her beer.”

    (from Harvest Of Stars by Poul Anderson)

  7*/10.  The complete review is here.

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Dress Code

    They issued a dress code where I work earlier this week.  Eerily, it is remarkably similar to what the Pointy-Haired Boss is reading to Dilbert.

The Coso Artifact

    Look, I was tuning up my Time Machine whilst visiting the Eocene Epoch and I mislaid a spark plug.  I SCREWED UP, OKAY?!  Sheesh, I accidentally drop one lousy artifact, and I'm grounded for life!

Happy Birthday, Willie Nile!

    70 years old today, and still rocking!  IMNSHO, one of the best, straight-up Rock & Roll musicians around today.  Sadly, he never seems to make it here to Arizona on the concert tours.

Thought for the Day

    I have thought such thoughts.  I have been that high.

Punctuation Matters

    I remember this stuff from my childhood.  Apparently I wasn't a grammar nazi back in those days.

Punny Sunday

    Sunday, Pun Day, Mythology Edition. 

Book Excerpt for the Day

    They crossed a cleared court they had not noticed before.  At one end was a pole supporting a metal rim.  Below it was a big ball.  Ease picked up the ball and bounced it on the ground.

    Suddenly a huge dog ran out on the court, growling.  He was the size of a small horse.  Surprised, Ease hurled the ball at him.  The dog caught the ball on his nose, flipped his head, and sent it sailing up in high arc.  It passed through the hoop with a swish.  Satisfied, the dog departed.

    “Big puppy,” Glenna said, pleased.

    Mitch grimaced.  “The Hound of the Basketballs,” he said.

    (from Board Stiff by Piers Anthony)

 

  6*/10.  The complete review is here.

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What scares you the most?

    I kinda like Dylan's answer.

Cages

    This doesn't apply to me cuz I have my own little office.  Hmm.  Now wait a minute...