Look, I know I don't actually read Queen & Country. Spy stories aren't exactly my cup of tea. But I find the guys over at NinthArt generally know what they're talking about.

(*) Strongly Agree
(  ) Agree
(  ) Disagree
(  ) Strongly Disagree

Ex superhero comic artists should behave themselves when given the opportunity to pencil for a cloak and dagger comic of some increased level of drama.

Look! I'm all political and stuff! Speaking out of turn. Sorry about that... ^_^;

I lunch often in the Barnes & Noble on the corner of Washtenaw and Platt. I find the Starbucks inside ideal for reading or writing over my lunch.

Recently they’ve started construction on a huge new building just across the lot, two floors. And I’m watching its progress with mild apprehension. I understand this to be a good sign for my favorite book shop. This move means they’re doing well, even with the recessive economic action going on. This means they’ll inevitably be hiring more help with more store to oversee.

But I am also human. And I hate change when the current status quo meets my standards of excellence. I don’t want my little Barnes & Noble to turn into a clone of the two local Borders. And that’s what this new building is starting to look like.

I'm going to kinda miss needing to go to the laundrymat every week. My 2 hours a week at the laundrymat have become a sort of unofficial time for reading and reflection. A time for quiet. A change of scenery.

Of course, I can read and reflect anytime. But when it came to doing laundry, I had to do it. I couldn't put off until never that 2 hours away from all my toys.

The price of convenience, I guess...

As I mentioned earlier, I finished Microserfs Sunday evening.

The book is written as the journal of a Microsoft employee who moves to Silicon Valley to start a software company with his friends within the company in the early 90s. As a result the book reflects the story in a casual, almost unintentional, manner.

The book often waxes philosophical (which I actually like a great deal), most commonly about the contemporary workplace and how people are being forced to adapt to continue being human and still meet the demands of such an environment.

A great deal of the book feels random. It moves in a sloppy, organic, slice-of-life way from point to point and then, in the last 10-15 pages, the weight of those previous 350 pages all come down at once in a crushing sense of context and realization.

In a sense the ending feels a little manufactured. But I really didn't mind, because it made all the randomness leading up to the end make sense. Suddenly I felt the economy of the examples that the rest of the book so casually played out.

And in those last pages, under all that weight, I cried.

Xian said to me in one of our IM dialogues, “as far as i'm concerned, douglas coupland is the master of first person narrative.” And, as far as I'm concerned, I agree.

I'll definitely be reading more of his stuff.

It weighs in at 36 pages, 7,645 words and 338 paragraphs. That's a lot more than I was planning on, that's for sure. It's only been gestating, what, 8 months now?

It's still got problems, I'm sure. But at this point, I'm sick of reworking things that I'm probably making worse by reworking. I hereby declare this story beta and release it to the beta testers!

What a weekend!

It was Friday night that Andréa and I went to see Lilo and Stitch (sorry Chris, we'll still go see it!). Lilo's name bothers me a bit because, to me it's a little like naming a kid Autoexec. Permissable, I guess, but still odd.

But what a great movie.

It had a few problems, yes. But what doesn't?

The animation was pretty. The story was reasonably coherent. And the little girl was... a little girl, in the way that rarely happens in your average animated film. The people were people and the aliens were archetypes. ^_^

And it all came together. And it was cute. What a great film.

I finished Microserfs tonight and wept. More on that later.

Such a full weekend.

I have the burning desire to have two posts today. So here goes...

An instant messenger discussion from yesterday has re-alerted me to the existence of Battle Beasts. I find myself narrowly escaping placing bids on the eBay lots of them.

I played a Starcraft Mission slowly this evening, savoring the reparability an army of 30 of Goliaths. It was very liberating.

*sigh* Goliaths are so dreamy! ^_^

Q: If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?
A: You already are an animal.

I love Microserfs.

Today, Lorrie Anne brought sliced strawberries and pound cake and whipped cream into work. I discovered if one mixes those ingredients together and consumes them, one has a good morning.

I may leverage that discovery in the future... ^_^

Much much better today, thank you (Andréa, you rock!). ^_^

I noticed that Warcraft III went Gold recently. There is a game that I'm looking forward to. There is a game that needs to be the stuff of long-distance multi-player parties.

I may just install Starcraft in celebration tonight.

I feel icky today.

I had a tooth extracted by an oral surgeon this weekend and it's really hurting this morning. That, coupled with a horrible bout with insomnia last night that left me wandering the dark streets of Ann Arbor until 2:30am yesterday morning, have left me in a state that I can only describe as 'icky'.

I've noticed my posting has begun to take on a more personal slant lately. At first I was trying to avoid that. I think I'm officially going to give up and just post whatever at this point.

Well, not just whatever. But I am being influenced my Microserfs and I'm feeling all journaly!

Started reading Microserfs today. Got me thinking about the good old days when I was working at Microsof-- er. Well I've really never worked at Microsoft, personally. But I begin to get the feeling most tech companies operate in very similar ways.

Took Chris out to dinner this evening and ended up buying shoes. New shoes are a great way of reminding yourself that, although your teeth hate you and are all trying to rot out of your head by the time you're thirty, you still have plenty more to loose.

Stupid stupid teeth!

My crown has come loose and will have to be re-affixed to its tooth peg. I dislike dental visits.
;_;

My happy little short story project is entering the final stages of the Second Revision. I'm currently rewriting scene 9 of 11. Then there will be clean up. Then it will be done.

At which point I will have to make some decisions about what to do with it—a question which I have, up to this point, been able to put off.

In any case, when this is all completed, my writing energies will be free to be devoted to my other outstanding writing project. In many ways, this other writing project will be easier. More complex, to be sure, but easier.

Tomorrow will be Thursday—and it is all yellow!

There are two types of cat in this world-- those that don't mind vacuming and those that do.

Jiji (my cat) falls quite distinctly into the "absolutely hates vacumining" camp.

I feel so guilty every time I need to clean a bit.

UHF is out on DVD since Tuesday. I decided to own it yesterday.

It is the BEST MOVIE EVER.

Better than Sixth Sense. Better than Vanilla Sky. Better than Spider-Man. Better than Nightmare before Christmas. Better than Star Wars: Episode II. Better than Moulin Rouge. Better than ANYTHING.

Okay, I'm lying-- except about the Vanilla Sky part. But it is a damn fine movie. And after years of living a UHF-less existence, I am now vindicated.

I stumbled across a new comic today with the inauspicious name of Bean's Song.

It's a light-hearted little tale of high fantasy with personality. I think the real trick it plays on me is how the sets are as much of the picture as the characters-- sometimes more so. There's a magic and mysterious world that Bean is wandering and adventuring in.

And it makes me dream...

Death Cab for Cutie, which remains, in my mind, one of the oddest names for a folk/rock band, is good.

How's that for grammar?

My weekend at the Caswell residence was a lot of fun (excluding an unfornuate incident involving 100 Proof Hot Damn!).

I was introduced to a version of Risk that's actually quite fun to play. It comes dangerously close to being Axis and Allies. Which is a good thing when it comes to Risk.

Andréa leaves for Japan tomorrow, which puts her in the enviable position of being able to visit the Ghibli Museum. I find that to be an enviable position, at least. ^_^