2010: Week 45 Blots

BLOT: (11 Nov 2010 - 10:24:44 PM)

Semi-fortnightly reading update: November 11, 2010

Meant to post this last night, but wasn't able to get around to it. This is my short discussion and listing of my past week's reading, and my intended readings for next week.

Alas, I have only been able to do two books in the past week (and one was started two weeks ago). The biggest culprit has been my schedule. Since I posted last week's entry, I have written over 8000 words for class, have went out of town for a weekend class, worked all day Sunday, and then had regular shifts Monday and Tuesday and class last night and tonight. Books, though I love them so, have often taken a backseat to mindless gibbering. Which I also love.

Arthur Machen's The Three Impostors and Other Tales (volume 1 of the Chaosium Collection), edited by S.T. Joshi: There are few other ways to describe this book of semi-horror, semi-awe tales than as an outright genre classic, but it is not necessarily an easy book to get through. Machen loves several things and he is one of those writers who pastes and smears all of those things into every little crack of his prose. What's more, only the first—"The Great God Pan"—and the last—The Three Impostors—tales are really keepers. The other two, middle tales, can be mostly skipped. [Review is forthcoming]

Jim Trombetta's The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read: Lots of covers and interior artwork only marred, as a collection, by the occasional need of a touch-up for clarity and by the lack of E.C. Comics. Though Trombetta explains that he is looking at the lesser known ones, and that there were many, MANY, other horror comics not-E.C., it would still have been good to get more in context. The other half of the book, if half, is commentary by Trombetta. Most of which is interesting, and some of the anecdotes are perfect, but there is a good bit of literary critique sliced into the text, some of which feels like stapled on pop-psych review that might be awesome at the undergraduate bar near a local liberal arts college. [Review probably not forthcoming, but I'm thinking about it]

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 45
BY MONTH: November 2010

BLOT: (11 Nov 2010 - 04:23:33 PM)

Photos taken while walking around Research Park on Veteran's Day

This afternoon, Sarah and I grabbed lunch at Shaggy's and then walked around Research Park for a couple of hours. These are some photos from that. Fall foliage is out, but this year's strangely cold-then-hot-again weather has obviously confused the trees. The following slide show is from various places while walking around. Huntsville natives will probably recognize some of them. If not, it is a nice place to walk. The stretch from about Adtran over towards Bridgestreet is all sun, though.

If you would rather, here is the direct link to the album: Huntsville's Research Park on Veteran's Day.

LABEL(s): Huntsville, AL, Photos

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 45
BY MONTH: November 2010

BLOT: (09 Nov 2010 - 08:27:42 PM)

Quick Note: Something of an Outcome about the Cooks Source thingie...

Nick Mamatas posted "We win.", which he clarified as meaning the initial demands of the person whose stuff was stolen was met, and some degree of apology was made. NPR has also update some information on it. I'll not link to the magazine itself, since apparently the apology is a static page that could go away before you get to it. The NPR article implies that they did not so much apologize as implied that factors were involved, and though they say they will change some of their policies, apparently they paint themselves as a victim in all of this. I don't do Facebook, so I don't know what sort of Facebook attacks or explosions there were, but I do know they said their page was hacked. I'm not sure if that means "hacked" as in "someone pretended to be us and responded as us" [which did happen on Twitter, through a couple of a fake accounts] or "lots of people continuously made it impossible for us to use our page" [something like a comment-based DDOS attack]. Anyhow, there you go. I had talked with some friends about it, and had kind of posted about it (in the context of the wide world of intellectual property), so just wanted to update.

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 45
BY MONTH: November 2010

BLOT: (09 Nov 2010 - 07:52:10 PM)

This "Not Always Right" feels faker than most...

I'm a fan of [The Customer Is] Not Always Right, the bloggish thing that allows anonymous submissions of encounters with bad customers (many of said customers having greatly aggravated senses of entitlement). Of course, I would guess more than half are altered in some degree to better state the case. In some, you get some implausible faulty logic bits going on for way longer than anyone not suffering from a mental disability would persist in keeping up. And, kind of often, the dialogue bounces in a way that it makes me think they are cutting out exchanges that might be better explain the weird behavior. Then you have ones like this, "In Real Hot Sauce Now," which claims to be from a restaurant in London.

Here are the actions: dude/tte is in line and jackass shoves up to the front of the line and starts berating the "young teenager" smiling behind the register. She does not recognize the order, but is able to "look it up" (presumably, this is some sort of magic fast food restaurant where only one type of each sandwich is ordered every day). Everyone else bolts, excepts the person telling the story, who, in front of the line so right by the register, somehow manages to pull out a cellphone and call the cops. Then, s/he is able to alert the girl behind the counter that the police have been called, without the jackass finding out. The cashier stalls the customer for long enough that the cops come and drag the bad customer away. The manager comes out [of hiding], is chided for being 30 and a male and not defending the poor, young girl's honor, offers said girl a promotion "on the spot", and she turns him down for being a coward and quits, then and there. Takes some money and some food, and the storyteller gets to share in this glorious repast. And, I suppose, they all drink lemonade...

That's either a direct rip from a movie or TV show I haven't seen, or that is some dude/tte's sexual fantasy about the spunky, young cashier that needs to be saved but the mean old manager is too cowardly to do it. I know, I know, complaining about the stuff on that website is pointless, but I couldn't start chuckling at how horrendously fake this one in particular sounds.

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 45
BY MONTH: November 2010