Andrea got 2 tickets to see Les Miserables at the Fisher Theater Dec, 27 for xmas this year and she was gracious enough to allow me to be her guest for the experience.

I've never seen the show live, but I have listened to the London Cast recording extensively and knew most of the story by heart. Despite my familiarity with the musical, I wept at many of the more moving plot points.

I was left wondering about the sway musicals hold for me. Conventional logic, to me, would say the idea of a tale where everyone sings their lines should be a little on the silly side.

But somehow it ends up being far more potent than spoken word...

I am now broadcasting to you from Kansas, the land of wheat. At least, I am for the week.

There are a few things I'd like to point out:

1- You may think Kansas is far enough away, that I'd get out of going to work. This is not true.

2- Return of the King is an amazing film. My paltry words would not do it justice by describing why it is wonderful. It simply is. Go and see it.

3- I audiobooked 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' on the 16 hour drive out here. I must, once again, affirm my devotion to that text. Great story.

Umm... I think that's about it.

When I moved at the end of this summer, I quickly determined my new apartment was just down the street from this library. I finally got around to going in and getting a library card a few weeks ago.

Let me just say, I love having access to a library! It's been six years since I've had the convenience of a library card.

One of the things that I've noted during my browsings is that this particular library has a modest comic collection in Young Adult, empowering me to read WATCHMEN without actually having to pay money for Alan Moore's writing.

I also noticed the Library brochure solicting volunteers and I begin to wonder if they'd be able to use a volunteer comic consultant to help them make sense of their collection...

I really hate it when people doing the reading in audiobooks have it in their head to do a very special voice for characters of the other gender. It sounds more like the reader is making fun of the character than trying to perform the character's lines.

This is especially annoying when Tim Curry tries to do the voice of young girls (although, I wager he's not the only reader who misguidedly attempts this). This is also annoying when the female reader of Miss Wyoming does Men Voices, causing me to wonder if all the men in Miss Wyoming are named Hank.

Just get the tone of voice right, people. I'll fill in the rest.

Update: I've now reached the point in the narrative of Miss Wyoming that is read by a male and he has his own annoying special Woman Voice. People who do Woman Voices and Man Voices like these two make me wonder about their relationships to people of the other gender.

It is my opinion, that most books are too long. We, as a literate society, seem to have it in our head that there's something better about a 400 page novel. That if a book is shorter, then something must be missing or that it must be written for children with their shorter and vastly inferior attention spans.

And while we labor on with this unspoken consensus, fewer and fewer adults take the time to read. Why? Who has the time to read a 400 page novel?

So rather than revise the way we write and publish, we turn reading into the hobby of the intellectual and the obsessed.

Here is my opinion of how things should be different:

The publishing industry should make an effort to produce books that are shorter. By shorter, I mean that there should be more novels that weigh in at 150 to 200 pages.

I personally think that brevity in [creative] writing should be cultivated and admired.

In a well-written 150 pages there's a lot more room for wordcraft and the reader has the time to reread the text to pick up things they missed on the initial read.

I am officially declaring myself Literary Minimalist.

I was inspired by some discussion on Console RPGs in general, the announcement of Final Fantasy XII and the recent release of Final Fantasy X-2 to pick Final Fantasy X up again over my terribly therepeutic Thanksgiving Break.

So I loaded up my 33 hour save game from my previous two attempts at completing the game and proceeded to add about 8 hours onto my tally. And what occurred to me as I wandered around levelling up and fighting boss battles (a skill that seems to have atrophied in me) is that I like FFX a lot more now than I did when I started playing.

Perhaps part of it is the video-game deprivation I've currently set upon myself. Some of it, very likely is acceptance of the linear structure, that I previously chaffed against.

But I think the biggest part of it is that I've clocked so many hours on C-RPGs that to sit down to one on a cold afternoon with a mug of hot coffee feels like home.

It's nice to know I have a form of home to visit whenever I want. Sad as that sounds.