Enter The Library

We will miss you, RAW.

2007-01-13T10:06:57Z

Just got the news...

GUNS AND DOPE PARTY POSITION PAPER #23

Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after
another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said,
"Son, you know eating all that candy isn't good for you. It will give you
acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat."

"Little Tony replied, "My grandfather lived to be 107 years old."

The man asked, "Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?"

Little Tony answered, "No, he minded his own fucking business."

"...the universe is the inside without any outside, the sound made by one eye opening. In fact, I don't even know that there is a universe. More likely, there are many multiverses, each with its own dimensions, times, spaces, laws and eccentricities. We wander between and among these multiverses, trying to convince others and ourselves that we can all walk together in a single public universe that we can all share. For to deny that axiom leads to what is called schizophrenia.
Yeah, that's it: every man's skin is his own private multiverse, just like every man's home is supposed to be his castle. But the multiverses are trying to merge, to create a tru e universe such as we have only imagined previously. ...but it has to happen: the creation of a universe and the one great eye opening to see itself at last. Aum Shiva!"

"THINK FOR YOURSELF, SHMUCK!"

--Robert Anton Wilson, January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007

shamelessly ripped off from dumbbooks

2006-06-02T07:45:47Z

I like books. Here are the current top 46 books from www.whatshouldireadnext.com. Bold the books you have read. Italicise the books you might read. Leave the rest. Pass it on:

1. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
2. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
4. The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald Keep meaning to...
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
7. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - J.K. Rowling
9. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
10. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
11. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
12. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
13. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
14. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
15. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
16. 1984 - George Orwell
17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) - J.K. Rowling
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
19. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
20. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
21. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
22. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
23. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
24. Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
25. Neuromancer - William Gibson
26. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson Everyone tells me I'll love it.
27. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
28. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
29. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Started it and UGH. Waaaay too over the top.
30. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
31. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
32. Ender's Game (The Ender Saga) - Orson Scott Card
33. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson Once again...what we SHOULD have read in cyberpunk class rather than the horrifically boring Neuromancer.
34. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
35. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
36. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
37. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
38. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien I have tried. Multiple times.
39. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
40. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
41. Atonement - Ian McEwan
42. The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
43. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
44. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
45. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
46. Dune - Frank Herbert

ALSO. I got an iPod shuffle today *dances* and thus have completed my collection of Tiny Things Made By Apple.

It's summer! So I can start updating regularly again

2006-06-02T05:32:09Z

wingzero49: What are those things men wear instead of corsages? A bustier?

I've been saving that one. :D

pockettheroach @ 2006-02-19T03:16:00

2006-02-19T08:17:56Z

Whoa. the LJ text thing really DOES work. Everyone should text me constantly and be a big pain in my ass.

For those in the know, did Raven have a boy or a girl? (I have a totally non-sinister reason for asking. Anti-sinister, even.)

pockettheroach @ 2006-01-23T04:26:00

2006-01-23T09:28:20Z

pockettheroach @ 2006-01-23T03:43:00

2006-01-23T08:45:51Z

Specifically for dragonflychey and mirrorslie, since we're the only people left who still have it:

LEPER HOCKEY GAMES WTF.

I totally do not even remember what that was from. Except maybe something about noses=pucks.

Voice Post:

2006-01-19T10:49:11Z

pockettheroach @ 2006-01-18T00:06:00

2006-01-18T05:15:24Z

Should I start tagging my journal? Or am I just feeling the peer pressure 'cuz everybody's doing it?

viledeacon got scarfed today! Yes, I ate him whole. Just kidding. Here is a silly picture of me with his scarf, which yes I knitted thankyouverymuch:

So now he can be warm, yay.

I've turned into a fulltime crafty mofo, and I got a Blogger account to yak about it. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Every time I go over there, I hear this little voice going "You're being unfaithful to LJ..." Maybe I'll just make myself a little community over here so I can post about crafts without logging in and out OR feeling guilty. Which is silly, yes. But I've been with LJ for a long long time...

And...a NEW WIP! Yes, get excited! Read it here: Hello, Hogwarts! And don't yell at me after you get there. It's HP fic, I SWEAR. It really is.

pockettheroach @ 2006-01-15T17:38:00

2006-01-15T22:39:11Z

StumbleUpon personal winner of the day: Cthulhu's Wager

pockettheroach @ 2006-01-05T11:41:00

2006-01-05T16:43:08Z

Also, if anyone so cares, I've set up an RSS feed of my LibraryThing reviews at pocket_books. I review a LOT. Plus a lot of older books, not just new stuff. (I think my last review was for Moll Flanders.) So there's that, if you're interested.

Actual word-for word conversation that took place in my house today

2006-01-05T16:13:12Z

My mother: "I have to go do laundry tomorrow. Do you want to come with me?"

Me, who would normally reject this outright: "Maybe. I'll think about it."

My mother: "Oh good. Did you guys hear that? Megan's coming with me."

pockettheroach @ 2005-12-26T12:30:00

2005-12-26T17:32:45Z

lionessvalenti totally got me season one of the X-Files on DVD. And a crochet starter kit (five hooks, an afghan hook, yarn needles, markers, and an instruction booklet). I'm set.

pockettheroach @ 2005-12-25T04:32:00

2005-12-25T09:32:41Z

pockettheroach @ 2005-12-23T08:53:00

2005-12-23T14:05:14Z

I was tired of the same old quotes on my random quote thingy, so I added some new ones. Actually, I added a lot of new ones...actually, they're doubled. So check them out if you like. (Pretty much by refreshing my journal.) Most are about books and writing. I'm going to have to reread Robert Twigger's The Extinction Club because I know there are some damn good book quotes in there. By the way, that book is the best book you've never read and should. Bizarre, fractured travelogue talking about endangered deer and looking for a used bookstore in Cairo and numerous other seemingly unrelated storylines that all magically come together perfectly in the last few pages.

Also I have decided that Thoreau should be posthumously given the title of Western Zen master.

I was just feeding the fish (by the way, I have cute baby platies, little orange spots darting around) and the morning news was on. They were shooting from some local mall showing kids sitting on Santa's lap. There was this little girl, maybe five or six, and Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas. She wasn't sure, so Santa threw out some suggestions: "A game? A doll?"

And I got pissed.

Seriously. People want gender equality, and yet we indoctrinate children with toy advertising. Sure, there are plenty of gender-neutral toys out there, but the kids watching Nickelodeon in the morning are repeatedly being given the message (while in the semi-hypnotic, reality-detatched, highly suggestible state brought on by having their nervous system stimulated with thirty flashes of light per second) that DOLLS ARE FOR GIRLS and TRUCKS ARE FOR BOYS. I'll grant that in this day and age, it might be possible to see a girl in a commercial playing with a remote-controlled car, but are you going to see a boy manning (no pun intended) Ken in that Barbie commercial? Hell no. Advertisers are ingraining kids with very gender-specific messages from the start.

All I want is to see Santa make the identical suggestion to that girl's brother, really.

Woot woot got a color one!

2005-12-20T13:26:31Z

MindMap

Funny how these fall. Most of the pink folks in the center are people I know from the old AOL XF chat. Most of the lower-left blue are FA people.

Score one for the home team!

2005-12-16T21:33:19Z

Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans' privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.

In a crucial vote early Friday, the bill's Senate supporters were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and their allies. The final vote was 52-47.

President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent.

They also supported new safeguards and expiration dates to the act's two most controversial parts: authorization for roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to monitor multiple devices to keep a target from evading detection by switching phones or computers; and secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries.

Full story

pockettheroach @ 2005-12-15T09:22:00

2005-12-15T14:28:38Z

So The Producers was on AMC last night, and I was going to post about how the remake looks really good and brilliantly cast and whether the name Leo Bloom was a reference to Ulysses, when I realized none of you folks had heard my story of going to see GoF (except lionessblack, araviaelf, and wingzero49, who were with me). Ha ha! We had midnight premiere tickets. I had worked the night before from midnight to eight AM, had not slept all day, and promptly fell asleep as soon as the previews started. Laugh at me!

...yeah, maybe I'll actually get to see it one of these days.

pockettheroach @ 2005-12-13T22:21:00

2005-12-14T03:23:44Z

I'm tired of only being connected to the internet when I'm at my computer. Sure, I can email from my cell phone, but I can't check my Gmail account. I think I want a chip implanted in my skull with Firefox, and maybe Pagespinner and Cyberduck so I can code in my spare time at work, and hell, why not Xcode too. Technology can't really be that far away from there, can it?

pockettheroach @ 2005-12-12T19:55:00

2005-12-13T00:56:30Z

Forgive my not updating in FIVE MILLION YEARS.

Here is my meager apology.

pockettheroach @ 2005-10-13T15:30:00

2005-10-13T19:36:16Z

Happy X-Files day! (Because I am the ONLY DORK LEFT ON LIVEJOURNAL WHO STILL SAYS THAT EVERY YEAR.)

And yes, I splattered it all over poor abused MASHEO again.

I am such a huge nerd.

pockettheroach @ 2005-10-11T23:13:00

2005-10-12T03:14:42Z

Ah, fuck. I did it again.

pockettheroach @ 2005-09-12T23:33:00

2005-09-13T03:39:11Z

Stuff on eBay. Go, look, bid if you like, support my educational habit. Mostly clothes right now. Hopefully more and different stuff later. We shall see.

My order to everyone for the day: Go read a poem. And when you are done, go read this. I'll let my brain spill in a few days, but right now there's all these half-formed ideas floating around...but read, and see some of the things that are shaping these ideas.

In the "I'm a big dork" department...

2005-08-30T15:13:06Z

I have baby guppies! Three of them, I believe. I tried to get some pictures, but baby guppies are not photogenic. Imagine commas with eyes and you've just about got it.

pockettheroach @ 2005-08-25T10:11:00

2005-08-25T14:17:44Z

My favorite episode of the X-Files was on the other night. I can't recall the title, but it was second season, the one with the circus freaks. A Darin Morgan ep.

That episode utterly sums up everything I loved about that show. It's riddled with dark humor, right up to the morbidly hilarious ending. The episode is themed with circus sideshow acts, but you never really get a good look at anything--it's all hidden, or in many cases, reflected in mirrors for a brief instant, leaving you to wonder did I really just see that?

Sorry for my brief relapse into ten years ago, but damn, that used to be a good show.

pockettheroach @ 2005-08-22T09:19:00

2005-08-22T13:31:41Z

So I just started Wizard and Glass this morning, and I understand now, completely, why people have yelled (literally) at me for not reading this series before. This is SERIOUSLY FANTASTIC STUFF, people. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Read if you haven't, read it if you hate King, read it if you hate fantasy. It's fantasy, yes, but not at all your standard variety. It's like nothing else I've ever read--the closest thing I can compare it to is Trigun, as the worlds are somewhat similar, but the comparison stops there. Things fit together and make sense, but there's never a deus ex machina feel to any of it. It's simply right.

And in other news...er, really, none. We saw The Skeleton Key on Saturday, which was good. The commercials for it were pissing me off, I remember, because they keep going "It has a twist ending...and nobody's giving it away!" I was all, hell, SOMEONE is giving it away somewhere, no doubt. But they actually cemented it pretty firmly--in order to give away the ending, you'd have to explain the entire damn plot, unlike The Sixth Sense where it could easily be spoiled in one sentence (I am still glad I did not elect to tune into Conan the night he gave it away, because I hadn't yet seen it, and I watched Conan pretty regularly at the time). But yeah, good solid movie.

Oh yeah. And last weekend, whilst in Newport, we got treated to a free Vanilla Ice show. I wondered how much money he would have taken to just shut up.