... drives a hard bargain.
If you like this, you'll like all sorts of other things from the always awesome pianolessdevil. Seriously, go there.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Mah Dawg
If you like this, you'll like all sorts of other things from the always awesome pianolessdevil. Seriously, go there.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Slap Yo Momma
Regarding the cliche that something is "So good it'll make you slap your momma," don't.
Seriously, no matter how good those baby back ribs seem right now, it's going to sound really stupid when the cops show up.
This was of course established in State of Virginia v. Sweet Baby Ray, in which the court not only held the defendant in contempt of his momma, but also upheld the suspension of habeas porkus.
Update: The court did acknowledge that the ribs in question were corpus delicious.
Seriously, no matter how good those baby back ribs seem right now, it's going to sound really stupid when the cops show up.
This was of course established in State of Virginia v. Sweet Baby Ray, in which the court not only held the defendant in contempt of his momma, but also upheld the suspension of habeas porkus.
Update: The court did acknowledge that the ribs in question were corpus delicious.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
My Reading List Lately
The Integral Trees, Larry Niven
Slow start, but it really picks up. It's essentially a vehicle for exploring how life might evolve in zero-gravity, with a bonus of how orbital mechanics can be turned into a catchy tribal poem. Plus some tribal warfare in a mixed-gee environment.
Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson
There aren't a lot of sci-fi authors who can pack in as many ideas per page as Robinson. He also tends toward realism - there are no one-dimensional Heinlein-cutouts in his books. This one tackles the meaning of science to humanity, the applicability of game theory to altruistic behavior (that there's some hard science, ya'll), the tensions between traditional scientific journal culture and the culture of high-tech businesses, and a lot of other stuff in between.
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
This book grabbed me by the hair and held my eyeballs to the page for two straight days. I loved it. It's a Harry Potter/Narnia story done in a realistic manner. While there's a protagonist the story follows, he's no more the protagonist than anyone is in their own real-life story. Characters and situations are played for some genuine shades of gray, and the standard-trope density is very low. Fun times.
The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman
I picked these up at a used bookstore, and enjoyed them. If you're not familiar - Phillip Pullman wrote these as Narnia stories for atheists, as an alternative to C.S. Lewis's Christian apologia. They're nowhere near the sophistication of The Magicians, but if there's a young adult in your life struggling with their natural tendency towards heathenism, I'd certainly recommend this series.
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
I hate to seem like one of the unwashed masses, but this seemed like a rambling story about a bunch of rich kids boffing and jaunting around Europe. I know it's supposed to juxtapose these folks against the realities of war and violence and such, but I couldn't help imagining Holden Caufield narrating it: "And then all these phonies went to a phony restaurant and ordered some crummy wine and got in a fight and it just makes me sick."
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
I didn't really research this book beforehand, but about halfway through I glommed onto the idea that he was equating wealth inequality, entitlement, and excess with murder, and I really started to dig it. Just in case you missed it, this fantastically wealthy mass-murderer screams "I need more tax breaks!" about 40 pages before the end.
Under the Dome, Stephen King
Stephen King's thousand page metaphorical indictment of the second Bush administration. If that's the sort of thing you'd like, then you'd really like that sort of thing. For the record, I enjoyed it. Dick Cheney, I mean Big Jim Rennie, isn't exactly a nuanced character, but even King's flat characters don't suffer from lack of interesting detail.
Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
This is the cotton candy of the list: fast, sweet, and not too filling. It's the second in a series of historical fantasy books that imagines a Napoleonic War, but with dragons. Given the main character is a gentleman in a profession that doesn't pay much attention to rules of etiquette, there's are usually shades of a novel of manners. If you need a book to read on the plane, you could do far worse - Tom Clancy never had dragons.
Slow start, but it really picks up. It's essentially a vehicle for exploring how life might evolve in zero-gravity, with a bonus of how orbital mechanics can be turned into a catchy tribal poem. Plus some tribal warfare in a mixed-gee environment.
Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson
There aren't a lot of sci-fi authors who can pack in as many ideas per page as Robinson. He also tends toward realism - there are no one-dimensional Heinlein-cutouts in his books. This one tackles the meaning of science to humanity, the applicability of game theory to altruistic behavior (that there's some hard science, ya'll), the tensions between traditional scientific journal culture and the culture of high-tech businesses, and a lot of other stuff in between.
The Magicians, Lev Grossman
This book grabbed me by the hair and held my eyeballs to the page for two straight days. I loved it. It's a Harry Potter/Narnia story done in a realistic manner. While there's a protagonist the story follows, he's no more the protagonist than anyone is in their own real-life story. Characters and situations are played for some genuine shades of gray, and the standard-trope density is very low. Fun times.
The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass, Phillip Pullman
I picked these up at a used bookstore, and enjoyed them. If you're not familiar - Phillip Pullman wrote these as Narnia stories for atheists, as an alternative to C.S. Lewis's Christian apologia. They're nowhere near the sophistication of The Magicians, but if there's a young adult in your life struggling with their natural tendency towards heathenism, I'd certainly recommend this series.
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
I hate to seem like one of the unwashed masses, but this seemed like a rambling story about a bunch of rich kids boffing and jaunting around Europe. I know it's supposed to juxtapose these folks against the realities of war and violence and such, but I couldn't help imagining Holden Caufield narrating it: "And then all these phonies went to a phony restaurant and ordered some crummy wine and got in a fight and it just makes me sick."
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
I didn't really research this book beforehand, but about halfway through I glommed onto the idea that he was equating wealth inequality, entitlement, and excess with murder, and I really started to dig it. Just in case you missed it, this fantastically wealthy mass-murderer screams "I need more tax breaks!" about 40 pages before the end.
Under the Dome, Stephen King
Stephen King's thousand page metaphorical indictment of the second Bush administration. If that's the sort of thing you'd like, then you'd really like that sort of thing. For the record, I enjoyed it. Dick Cheney, I mean Big Jim Rennie, isn't exactly a nuanced character, but even King's flat characters don't suffer from lack of interesting detail.
Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
This is the cotton candy of the list: fast, sweet, and not too filling. It's the second in a series of historical fantasy books that imagines a Napoleonic War, but with dragons. Given the main character is a gentleman in a profession that doesn't pay much attention to rules of etiquette, there's are usually shades of a novel of manners. If you need a book to read on the plane, you could do far worse - Tom Clancy never had dragons.
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