brian_ohio

Book Catch up
The more talented people I meet on LJ, the more books on my TBR pile. Ugh! Plus I have so many books I want to read in this MG/Tween genre as research... I really have a hard time keeping up. 

Here's my current reading

Midnight for Charlie Bone - Reading this to get a good grasp on what makes a Tween book work.
Magyk - Reading it for the same reason above
The Lightening Thief - Same as above

Here's my TBR pile

One Foot in the Grave - Jeaniene Frost (Very excited to read)
Between Golden Jaws - Tiffany Trent (Loved the first two... looking forward to this one as well)
Love (And other uses for Duct Tape) - Carrie Jones (her first book blew me away, can't wait to tear into this one either)
Stray - Rachel Vincent - I've heard nothing but good things about this series
Duma Key - Stephen King - (I read every King book... no question)

I recently finished:

and

Caitlin's book rocked! Werewolves have always been my favorite (since An American Werewolf in London). Caitlin's take on lycanthropy is truly unique. I thought the book had a pulp-ish feel to it, which I loved. (I could see Tarentino directing this baby.) Great voice, great characters and her descriptions of Nocturne City are brilliant. What a town! I was hooked. Go get her book!

Now... Mark Henry. The man needs help. I'm just not sure where to send him. I truly believe, the only person who could counsel Mark with these types of mental issues is Alice Cooper. At least the Alice Cooper of the 70's. For me, the theme song of this book would be Cold Ethyl by Alice Cooper. But... as disgusting as parts of this book may be... it hilarious. And I don't laugh at much. By far the greatest take on Zombies ever. I cannot wait for the sequel. 

Embarassing Moment
I was driving into work this morning, flipping through the radio presets, looking for a song to challenge my awesome pipes... when I found something new. A really cool song. I cranked this baby up... put on my shades, leaned back real cool-like.... and it was a jingle for a car insurance company. Ugh! 

Bowling
The bowling alley up the street has been for sale for years. Finally, this local woman bought it, did some remodeling and it opened up for mother's day. So, being the supreme athlete and generous husband/ father that I am... I loaded up the van and took the family bowling.

Except... when a woman gets involved in bowling... bad things can happen. How were we supposed to bowl on this?

technomom

Originally published at Enemy of Entropy. Please leave any comments there.

This is truly cool. It’s a limited edition, hand-printed “knitting tarot” deck. I learned about it via new LJ friend ciannait.

They aren’t releasing many images, apparently, unless you’re a friend of theirs on Flickr. What I can see looks very clean and simple.</lj>

apod

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080514.html

Looking out a window of the International Space Station brings breathtaking views.

cristalia

cristalia

katallen

stillsostrange

stillsostrange

cristalia

Whose current book is more unsaleable?

Will you join our new subgenre, Unsaleable Monstrosities with Pretty Illustrations!

Most unsaleable book ever?

Trick question: what paranormal romance combo would be unsaleable?

mythusmage

I posted the following in this thread. I’m posting it here because I feel like it. Story below the fold.

Originally published at Mythusmage Opines. Please leave any comments there.

ladyhedgehog

Hey, hon!

If I were to send you some tunes... Say the album that the Miranda Lambert song I wrote you about the other day... Would you want me to send the actual CD or mp3s of the same? I'm assuming you would just rip the CD and listen mostly to the files anyway. And this way I can send stuff I've been listening to that I'm less sure you'd want without taking something I'm using and giving to someone who might not use it...


BTW, the album's pretty good.(Ah! Yes, a song came on because I was listening to the CD in question. Clearly my problem. My digressions always have a reason...) You want it. =) The second song is so sad... Her transmission blows out. And Bob could fix it real quick, but he's off fishinin' in the next county over 'cause this town's dry...

You know, I can think of at least a dozen country songs about how much dry counties/towns suck and how awful it is to find yourself in one. I cannot think of any songs about how lucky a place is to be dry or about how the singer wishes he wasn't legally able to obtain a drink. So how do people in places like Spruce Pine manage to be confused by the concept that staying dry hurts their tourism? They seriously are confused as to why people prefer to go to Bakersville. Or were before all the arson. Now they figure that it's mostly 'cause half the town burned down... But maybe the guy who set all of that wouldn't have if he could have worked his anger/boredom out through whiskey and gotten himself too blitzed to light a match... Or if the town had been opened some overpriced bars to greet the folks when the tourist train comes though, then maybe they would have had fun tourist places rather than a bunch of junk shops take over downtown and the fellow wouldn't have been upset enough to burn it all anyway. In fact, thinking about the junk stores, I'm sort of thinking that it wasn't such a bad idea to set fire to everything after all... (And it was mostly the junk shops he hit. He never got anywhere near damaging the theater or the drug shop, even if they did close their fountain and thus loose all their coolness points years ago.) Such frustrating stupidity. The town wanted the junk stores to become antique shops, but it honestly never occurred to them that the best way to do that is to situate the stores next to the sort of place that serves pastries and sherry. ::sigh::

Hmmm... Yeah. Then you post the email in your blog and keep analyzing the thoughts in it... The thing is, I get the concept that drinking and relaxing don't have to be tied together. Arguably shouldn't be tied together even. (I will grant that one shouldn't need alcohol to relax. But I don't see the harm in wanting manageable amounts of it.) But failure to acknowledge that people are not going to vacation in places where directions to the nearest drink involve finding a rusty trailer at the end of a dirt road, which is off of a gravel road and you'll need to look at your odometer to find either of them because the turnoffs are hidden by trees, but you leave town and then three quarters of a mile past the switchback that's after the old lumber mill (not the new one, the one they closed in the fifties)... Well... The moonshine at the trailer may be pretty darn good, but people aren't going to like that. And if you want to sell a product, such as your town, to people, you have to give them what they want, not what you want to allow them to want. That's a no-brainer, isn't it? Not even Business 101, it's remedial elementary school stuff. I could understand the attitude of, "We don't want outsiders here anyway," but that's not what they have. I guess there is some, "Well, we only want certain kinds of people to come..." to it and an accompanying denial about how few of those people are. But for the most part they just seem confused that it's actually important to people. Despite the fact that there have been many speeches and editorials about it and pretty much everyone has at least one close relative who moved away and cites, "It's dry," on their list of reasons to not come back.


(note: Yes, people in Spruce Pine listen to mainstream country music. I'm not sure if The Frog (their radio station) censors out things like Beer Run (censoring out George Jones! Can they do that??? Well, he does sing about sex and moonshine and piling into trucks to buy beer in the next county over...). But they do watch GAC and CMT and a lot of them have some form of satellite radio now, although this is possibly all people from the demographic that did not vote to retain the dry status...)



And now it's been I don't even know how long... I keep spacing out. Probably due for meds... But don't usually take them after seven. I need to get better at having Inga sing at me. The problem with getting my phone to remind me of stuff is that I have to remember to tell her to... Which I keep forgetting. I am thinking maybe I should set them for everyday, at the times I usually use, and then I can edit them if I take my first pill off of the schedule. And if I forget, then I still get reminders. The second dose might be too early or too late, but the others will be right on...