things which are currently awesome

First and foremost, top of the list - I have a four-day weekend! That is so very awesome.

on to more materialistic things.

Rihanna, Talk that Talk

I love this CD!! 

Top Gear is a show on the History Channel. It's basically a bunch of car geeks doing crazy stuff with cars, like contests to test durability and handling. Even if you aren't into cars, this show is hilarious. Boys are quite  silly.

Won't someone purchase these Adidas Midiru Court shoes for me?

Samsung Galaxy mp3 player. I will have one of these within the next couple of months. It does everything I want it to do and it's not a freaking ipod touch. I do not want an ipod touch. I also don't want to be forced into itunes. itunes is an a-hole. 

movie: Moneyball

We watched Moneyball this weekend. Here’s a quick description from IMDB: “Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire new players.”

I had mixed feelings about this movie. The acting is really good from Brad Pitt to Jonah Hill (who actually plays a different character this time) to Philip Seymour Hoffman. On the other hand, the story moves pretty slowly.

For example, there are meetings where a bunch of old men talk about which baseball players they want to trade. Not very exciting. Also, there is a lot of tobacco spitting, which is disgusting, even when it comes from Brad Pitt.

Overall, the movie was okay. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, so , you know, I guess I’m probably biased from the beginning. Moneyball gets a B-. 

and now for something completely random

Some girls like fancy dresses and high heels. Me? I prefer t-shirts. At last count, I had about 50 including the ones with no designs on them.

So, the husband and I were talking about hypercolor shirts. I want to find one, an authentic one that says hypercolor on the front.

I found similar shirts, but not the exact thing. It turns out, the original company doesn't make them anymore. I don't think they even exist.

But I did find an original commercial from the 90s. retrolicious!

Hatfields and McCoys and other fun times

Today I visited the dentist for part one of the crown appointment. It was very not fun at all. I’ve never had a crown before. Luckily, they said the 2^nd part is the easier of the two. This time, I managed to keep from biting the inside of my face off while I was numb. Yay me!!

I have no movie post today because we didn’t watch a movie! What is up with this inconsistency? It’s like chaos up in here.

So what have we been watching? True Blood and Weeds. We watched the first part of Hatfields and McCoys last night. I know, we’re a little late on the bandwagon with that one. We’re late on the bandwagon a lot.

One thing that really struck me about that show was the suddenness of the violence. I swear the first like 5 scenes were people getting shot and such. They would start getting into a little bit of a story and BAM! game over, buckaroo.

Another interesting detail is that the Hatfields have money. Whenever I’ve seen the Hatfields and McCoys parodied, both families are portrayed as poor, white trash.

The McCoys actually are kind of poor. They’re also freaky religious.

I like the miniseries so far. I plan to keep watching it.

Bradbury vs Nietzche

I am alive! My attention span has been a mess this week, for real. I didn’t do the movie post because I didn’t pay enough attention to the movie to do a proper (by my standards) review. We watched Contraband with Mark Wahlberg and Kate Bekinsale. It was good, even though I didn’t keep up like I should have.

I read a couple of interesting quotes today. The first one I read was attributed to Ray Bradbury, from his book Zen in the Art of Writing.

“We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.” - Bradbury

That book is now on my reading list, btw.

And then later today, I stumbled on this Nietzche quote - “We have art so that we may not perish by the truth.”

Hmmmm…those say pretty much the same thing. Was Bradbury paraphrasing Nietzche? Was he a fan? Did they just happen to come up with the same idea? Can I spell Nietzche without looking it up every time? The answer to the last question is no.

zombies and book working

I’ve had 2 zombie dreams this week. During both of these dreams, I was mostly unable to arm myself properly. Where there were guns, they were either not loaded or falling apart. The best weapon I got my hands on last night was a pair of kitchen knives, which weren’t all that effective on the undead. I mean, I did manage not to get bitten, so I guess I did a decent job of surviving.

Certain people say that if you have dreams that you’re being chased, you’re probably feeling guilty about something. I did a little mental evaluation and came up with no events that might have caused such feelings to surface. I’m going to go with – too much watching the Walking Dead.

Ok, book update. I’m still working on the first Pestilence read-through. It seems to be taking a really long time, especially considering that the book is actually in decent condition as far as editing goes. The story seems to be lining up ok. The characters are consistent. The dialog is good. I’m just doing some tortoise speed reading, I guess.

I should be making more of an effort to read other books when I’m not editing or drawing. I haven’t read any fiction of significant length lately, which is bad. I’ve picked up a couple of books and then promptly tossed them aside. I’ll get back to at least some of them, I’m sure.

I think that’s all I have for now.

goodwill oddities

The husband and I went to Goodwill last Friday night. I kept finding weird things, so I took some pictures to share with you all.

First, let me say that I love Goodwill. I purchased a sweater during this trip. So although I make a little bit of fun, it's not because I have disdain for them. They're a wonderful organization. Moving on.

Our first guest is the most beautiful sweater in all the land. Nuff said. also, this was not the sweater I bought.

This next picture is of a large sculpture or statue or whatever of an angel with Jesus. The strangest

part of this was the coloring. The angel was mostly pink. She even had pink circles on her cheeks, like a girly clown. And Jesus, sweet, odd Jesus. He is a blond haired, blue-eyed surfer looking guy, you know, because everyone in his region of the world looked like they just rode in off a wave. 

Another thing that struck me as strange about this was the awkward positioning of the angel's wings. Is it just me, or do they look like they might be upside down?

I actually had a wonderful idea for this statue that made me consider buying it. My mother has a library in her house. I thought it would be funny to sneak this giant, colorful thing in and just leave it in the library without saying anything to her about it. Then, she would walk in and find it and be all like what the heck is that?

So after I got a good dose of angel weirdness, I started noticing the other angels on the shelves. There was a freakish number of them. They were everywhere! looking at me. Below is a picture of a couple square feet of shelf space. I have labeled the angels for your convenience.

Seven. And the bottom right one has NO FACE! What is it about angels that makes them so easy to discard? hmmm....

Last but certainly not least, we have ART! Shove my disconnected ideas in your face and mush them all around because this is ART, baby. I have also labeled the image for your convenience. I hope that you can read at least most of them. There's a lot going on here. We have two instances of Jesus, an angry dog, a happy couple, the same happy couple pasted in a different spot, some school children, a girl with an odd haircut and no shirt who appears to be singing? oh, and that middle eastern man down there. He might be somehow related to the Jesus image. Maybe he's running a message from Left Jesus to Right Jesus. And there's a girl who appears to have fallen asleep in class and the giant child eye. What ISN'T in this picture? holy crap

movie: Nowhere Boy

We watched Nowhere Boy this weekend, which is about John Lennon’s teenage years. The story begins with him living with his aunt and uncle instead of his parents and follows him as he finds his way, musically. He reconnects with his mother, and she teaches him about rock and roll and how to play the guitar. He meets a couple of the other Beatles during the course of the story, too.

I don’t really have a lot to say about this movie, other than it was really good. I did some research and the family dynamic in the film seems pretty close to what is known about John Lennon’s mother and his aunt. I will say that the movie ended kind of strangely. It just kind of stopped. I wish there was more to it. Nowhere Boy gets an A-.

the print copy giveaway

It's up on Goodreads! Have you entered yet?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Devil in the Branch

by Lea Ryan

Giveaway ends October 01, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

How about a freebie?

Destined for Darkness is currently free on Smashwords with this code:

KZ92T

It expires 9/1/12

so check it out. and maybe leave a glowing review because I could use some of those.

Link to the book

and then check out the second book, Devil in the Branch, which came out yesterday.

That is all.