Quote of the Week: Apocalyporn

I don’t know if we’re so much inured to apocalypse as almost sexually obsessed by it. We could only love apocalypse more if it had 4 liters of silicone in each tit.

–Grant Morrison, on “Final Crisis”

Ok, ok, not the most general or enlightening statement you’ve heard all week. But surely, one of the most INTERESTING ones, wouldn’t you say?

Tentative Plans for December

The key word being tentative.

“Constructive” Stuff:

Where constructive is defined fairly loosely.

1. Do my own version of NaNoWriMo, in December*. Wish I could have done it in November with everyone else, but endsems are a pain.
2. “Prepare” for next semester. Yeah, really. All my courses depend to a very large extent on prior knowledge which I’m supposed to have gained sometime during the last 2 and a half years, but almost certainly haven’t.
3. Find something to do for the summer. This deserves a bullet point, for reasons that shall be explained later.
4. This may not really fit, but: get both computers working the way they’re supposed to. Which includes mailing the Dell service center guys and asking them if they can come to Kottayam instead of Chennai to fix the display for the laptop, fixing whatever the reason is for me not being able to play practically any games at all on the laptop, and getting a whole new keyboard,mouse and possibly speaker system for the desktop. All dependent on what my father’s willing to pay for, of course.

*I DO plan to do this, but it’s more of an exercise to see if I CAN still write any longish(and this will be longer by far than anything else I’ve tried) story, rather than actually trying to write The Novel. I have no intention of putting it up for review by anyone else, at least not under my own name, which means not on this blog. I haven’t really decided the plot -which is bad, because as of an hour back this is officially December- but this will almost certainly be SF/F (by which I mean, it’ll be far-future SF, but whether I make it sound scientifically plausible is a whole other question), very likely some sort of a cliche, and almost certainly bad.

Reading List:

Fiction:

Any recommendations? I have a whole bunch of pulpy stuff that I plan to read if there aren’t, but I was hoping for something solid which is still fun. And preferably easily available. Classic SF/Fantasy would be good, because there’s a chance that any reasonably famous book is somewhere within my 4 GB collection, or can be found on the net. Although, looking to expand, so try me anyway.  Meanwhile, will try and finish Snow and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Non-fiction:

1. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes. By all indications, something I should be reading at this time. Should be particularly helpful if Tyler does in fact go ahead with the Book Club. Also have Capitalism and Freedom to browse through, however.
2. The Road to Reality, by Roger Penrose. I’ve had this for a VERY long time now, and still haven’t got past the first few chapters, partly because it felt a little too much like a textbook. More specifically, because I peeked ahead and read from in between and those chapters feel exactly like a textbook. But since I’m quite determinedly and shamefully jobless, I guess I’ll try harder.
3. Guns,Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. Ditto. Although I didn’t really try very hard on this one.

Graphic Novels/Comics:

1. The Preacher (only because it was there. I have no idea how good it’ll be.)
2. Marvel 1602
3. JLA Elseworlds
4. Batman (specifically, re-read Arkham Asylum, Year One,The Dark Knight Returns, TDK Strikes Again, and the Killing Joke)
5. The Dreaming*
6. Fables*
7. Lucifer*

*Found a great website through a hacked google search that has the entire collectionof all these, plus a lot more. Actual reading will depend on how much I can download. Thankfully, net at home is between 5 and 20 times faster than the connection here, depending on the time of day, so this SHOULD work.

Movies I Downloaded:

Not picked or ranked in any way, just a random assortment of movies that I’d like to see, or see again.

1. Tortilla Heaven
2. The Jesus of Montreal
3. The Breakfast Club
4. Burn After Reading
5. Broken English
6. A Cinderella Story(Yeah, I know. But I NEED something like it sometimes.)
7. Trainspotting
8. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
9. Love Actually (Hey, it’s SWEET! I need something I can watch when I badly need to get the warm fuzzies. Summer of 2007 I went with “You’ve Got Mail.” Hopefully, this’ll work,too. )
10. Return of The Jedi
11. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Games I’m taking in the faint hope that they’ll work on the desktop back home:

1. SPORE!!! (Oh, please,please,please work!)
2. Caesar 4 (Only because I remember Caesar 3, besides being the very first game I ever bought for myself, as the only computer game my father ever liked playing, a long,long time ago… back when I was actually into playing games while others offered helpful comments from the sidelines.)
3. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
4. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri: This, and the next 2, mostly because they actually work on my laptop.
5. Monopoly -just the board game, nothing special, but good when you just want to waste time.
6. N! Best flash game ever! Tough, and addictive. Mostly good when your fingers start to itch. Also has the advantage of being something to do when you want to listen to music, but not “just”.

Also have a bunch of TV shows/anime that I don’t really want to bother listing. And I’d like to go somewhere for the hols, even if that doesn’t seem very likely right now, especially alone. Also hope they’ll finally let me take the car out on my own. Wish me luck!

I saw Ironman

And while I still can’t believe that Robert Downey Jr. can look so GOOD as a superhero, it was pretty awesome.Honestly, don’t start attacking my “manhood” again, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

He’s never been one of my favourite heroes,though. A little too conservative/militaristic. I know that might be what they call “small-minded”, but at least in the comics he’s pretty much always come off like that. But then, I have problems with a lot of superheroes. Batman’s moral absolutism. (Ironically enough,) everybody else’s wimpiness. Not that I don’t like them, I merely have issues with them as valid or desirable templates for a moral code. Oh, that reminds me: I finished reading Watchmen, and it was one of the best, most twisted, morally ambiguous graphic novels I’ve ever read. Actually, it was the only deliberately morally ambiguous graphic novel I’d read that didn’t seem obvious. Read it. If you’re from the insti, ask me when I get back in August for the ebooks.

Although I might not have it if I have to format my computer or something. My brother screwed up somehow, I can’t even log into windows, and as far as linux is concerned, since I installed hardy(after formatting gutsy, update didn’t work and my other install was bugged anyway) I can’t do anything on it except basic surfing. I’m downloading codecs and stuff so that I can at least watch movies and listen to music. Did you know that even mp3s aren’t supported by default? Crap!

The Good Life

Is when you spend a day spent doing nothing but watching sitcoms, downloading comics from the LAN- SUCCESSFULLY: I got all of WATCHMEN!!! And Maus! And V for Vendetta! And the complete Transmetropolitan! Thank you, dam!-,reading “Lord of Light”,  watching the Animatrix, going out and having “studmax” food for FREE in a “studmax” restaurant-the (some weird name) chicken kebab with buttered rice and a whole bunch of other stuff because we ordered too much and nobody else could finish in Copper Chimney (just below Zara and right opposite Stella Maris in Gopalpuram,Chennai… check it out,people!)- for our EML treat, followed by coming back and playing poker with my friends (and not sucking ) while listening to the Pixies rock “Where is My Mind” on repeat while nobody -for once- criticizes your musical tastes and drinking cheap whisky that is miraculously good and getting surprisingly happy-but-not-pissed-high and generally laughing your ass off for ridiculously inept jokes.

Followed by watching “Enchanted”, unless I fall asleep. Not that its a big deal, either way, seeing how completely free of any responsibilities I am

PS: The Pixies are GOOD!!! Listen!

Indiet**s

Yet another interesting webcomic, although not as good as sinfest (or,obviously,xkcd), and a hell of a lot more offensive as well. Like Dinosaur Comics, the art is basically the same for each post, although this has a couple of different sets of panels.

Oh, and I totally screwed up D slot,too.

indietits- these birds are hipper than you

Selections below:

And that’s most people’s response.

Hey, that goes for ALL of you.