amredthelector: (Spoink hat)
I'm going to plug a comm now.

Go check out [livejournal.com profile] ontd_literature. Lit comm for news on books, talking about what books you're reading, discussing movie adaptations, etc. And it's a Twilight free-zone! It's a small comm, but I like it. Go. Go check it out. Gooooo~
amredthelector: (Default)
Done with my finals! I head back home tomorrow. It's weird, though... it really doesn't feel like it should be winter break already. Maybe it's because the weather here has been 65 degrees F and sunny since October. It just... doesn't feel like winter.

Also, art post time, yay! Some half naked ladies this time, so beware.

Also some fannish stuff and steampunk stuff )
amredthelector: (Default)
More updates on my car.

Power steering pump and/or rack and pinon are having problems. I'm going to take it to a mechanic tomorrow and have them take a look at it (again - got steering fluid checked last week and they warned me about this). Basically, the steering pump is really noisy when I'm turning. When I turn at an intersection, the steering is mostly smooth until the end of the turn, right before I let the wheel slide back into being straight - at this point, it shudders, makes a whirring noise, and is difficult to control. Fixing all of this may cost me upwards of $1400. My parents are willing to pay for it, but I hate that I've had to make them pay for a new battery, new tires and wheels, and now a whole lot of other new shit.

Though they're throwing around the idea of getting me a new car. I'm not too sure how I feel about that.

In other news, Arthurian lore is one big cluster-fuck of continuity. I will never again complain about movies/tv shows/etc not "getting the lore right" because there are so many conflicting versions of the stories, it's ridiculous.

I'm thinking about starting a Tumblr. I've been eying the sight for a while as a sketch blog. I know I keep saying that this is my sketch blog, but I always feel weird posting just one image, so I save things up until I have a lot of art and then I don't really have anything to say about the stuff. I kind of feel Tumblr would be a nice place to just post random doodles as I draw them, and then keep art dump days on LJ. Maybe. I don't know.

OH FUCK EVERYONE IN MY SUITE IS GETTING SICK AT ONCE
amredthelector: (Default)
I'm taking a world lit class this semester. For about every 3 texts or so we read, we are given a few questions, and choose one to write a short essay examining two of the three stories/plays/poems. The professor decided to start adding "creative" prompts. Updating scenes, creating a dialogue between characters. I just received an email from the TAs, explaining that we'll write a paper solely on Dante's Inferno, and one of our options... is to create our own hell.

That's when it struck me. Our homework... is fanfic.
amredthelector: (Default)
Just finished reading Aeschylus's The Eumenides for my world lit class and... hooboy. It has lines like this:

(Clytemnestra's ghost, to the Furies) "Storm at him/ With hot blood-reeking blasts blown from your vaporous wombs

Okay, yes, periods are icky. But really? Really.

And then there's this:

(Apollo) "The mother is not the true parent of the child/ Which is called hers. She is a nurse who tends the growth/ Of young seed planted by its true parent, the male.

Not only are women just incubators, they don't even have a true connection with the kid!

What the fuck, Ancient Greece?
amredthelector: (ozzy bucket)
The Ramayana: One of the oldest records of victim blaming in the world.
amredthelector: (Spoink hat)
Some college kids spend their spring break partying. I spent mine making pie.

Really awesome lemon meringue pie, at that.





*om nom nom nom*

I also tried to make s'mores cupcakes with my friend Penguin, but it was really weird. The batter didn't cook. We gave it extra time in the oven, and the tops of the cupcakes cooked through, but the actual cake was still raw in the center. It was really strange, and we had to throw them out. Which was a shame, because the bits of the tops that we pulled off of the muffin tin and ate were delicious.

Christopher Moore is going to be in town next week, signing books and talking about his latest novel, and I'm going to be back in NM. :< Sad. Though, I guess that's a good thing, because if I had gotten to meet him, I probably would have taken my copy of Fool, slapped him with it, and demanded to know what the hell he was thinking, writing a bad Mary Sue fic for King Leer. Yeah, that book disappointed me.

And I finished reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. It was... okay. Not really good, not really bad, just... okay. The plot was pretty much the plot of the movie Doomsday, just in Victorian Seattle instead of Future Scotland. The main characters were pretty bland and uninteresting, while the side characters were awesome and fun. I would have preferred to read a book about Lucy and Swakhammer and how they wound up in the city and in debt to the villain, rather then about the dull as hell main characters. Speaking of the villain, he doesn't show up until the last 80 or so pages of the book. Which yeah, I can understand wanting to keep him in the shadows and seem all cool and mysterious, but it doesn't really work when you reveal who he is and tie up the entire plot after he's only been in about three chapters. Climax is really rushed, and left me feeling underwhelmed. Also, a lot of elements seemed to be thrown in just to make the story more "steampunk-y", like needing goggles to see the poison gas, or describing the city as looking all washed out and yellow (seriously, I think the author wanted the reader to imagine everything with a sepia filter in their head). I wouldn't really recommend this as a staple of the steampunk genre, since it's pretty much the same tropes and cliches of all steampunk. But if you're in between books and need something to read, it's not horrible.
amredthelector: (WTF!Sokka)
Today was... an interesting day. Or at least one part of it was.

I go to school on an open campus. Anyone can come on campus and do stuff there. We get a lot of people registering students to vote; people will try to get students to sign petitions; and every so often, religious people will come on campus and either a) hand out pocket bibles or pamphlets or b) shout at students. Today we had one of the shouty people.

I passed by this guy three times during the day. Once on my way to public speaking, once on my way into the student union building to kill some time between classes, and again on my way back to my lab class. The first time I went past him, he was screaming about how pre-marital sex is a sin. No one was really paying attention to him, as is usually the case with these nutjobs. The second time, he'd drawn a crowd of about 20 people who were all there to heckle him. He was ranting about how smoking marijuana was a sin, and he had a sign that said 'YOU ALL DESERVE TO GO TO HELL'. At this point, people were just playfully egging him on. One stoner was talking about how he 'sees God when [he's] high', so Shouty McPious should shove off and let him practice his faith. Another guy started making fun of him by preaching the "Gospel of Harry Potter", talking about how Dumbledore died for our sins. That guy was made of win. Third time I walked past him, things had gotten tense. He was ranting about how all the students at the school would burn in hell, and that we were Satan's children and whatnot. A group of students were holding a big hand-made sign that read 'FUCK THIS GUY' and had an arrow pointing to him. A lot of people were shouting at him, and a few were verbally ripping him apart, quoting the bible and pointing out how this guy was a bad Christian. There were some campus security members hanging near by, and honestly? It felt like a riot was going to happen soon. I'd estimate by that point (it was 4, he'd gotten started around noon) there were about 50 students watching and jeering.

It was interesting, to say the least. And I saw some people taking photos of the crowd with really nice cameras, so I'm wondering if they were staff from the school newspaper.

Day 14: A non-fictional book

Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait.

This is a great read. This book is a sound debunking of various astronomical conspiracy theories, from the Moon Landing to the face on Mars. Plait keeps things simple, and doesn't bog everything down with scientific jargon. He's also very professional in his writing, never personally attacking the people behind these theories. (Which is really amazing, since you can read transcripts of radio shows he's appeared on with these people on his website, and they are always launching personal attacks against him) It's an interesting read, and I encourage it to everyone, since there really are a lot of misconceptions about astronomy.
amredthelector: (annoyed tiana)
...My mom sent me burnt cookies and socks for my birthday. Thanks mom. Thanks a lot.

Day 13: A fictional book

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

This is a great book. It's a wonderfully dark and surreal look at the fakeness of Hollywood and the destructiveness of people. It deals with sex and drinking and child actors and cock fights and just general crazies. The main characters are sad, pathetic people who have deluded themselves into following the 'American Dream', and you feel sorry for them. But at the same time, they disgust you. The novel slowly builds, at first showing them fairly normal, and then heaping on flaws and weirdness until you get to the finale. And this ending? Is horrifying. It makes you feel sick and scared. And while the film based on the book isn't all that great (and seems a bit narmful at times) the ending is pitch-perfect.

This book isn't really the best for light reading, and some people may just find it too weird and dark. I personally love it, though. It's powerful, in the way it makes you feel sort of sick about America and the 'American Dream'. And the best thing about it? It was written in 1939, and a lot of the crazy behavior described in the book is still around today.

Also, it makes a fantastic companion piece to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
amredthelector: (Spoink hat)
Day 4: My favorite book

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

I didn’t really have to think about this. I’ve read this book so many times that my hardcover copy fell apart. I love this book. Actually, I love most of Moore’s books (except for Fool, which I look upon as his self-insert Shakespeare fic), but this one is my favorite. It uses a lot of dark humor and sex jokes, like all of his work, but it sets itself apart from the rest with its characters and their interactions. Charlie Asher, the main character, is a beta male, like most of the Moore’s mains, but he’s also a single father, trying to cope with raising his daughter after his wife’s death, and also collecting the souls of the recently deceased and letting them move on. He approaches this with cynicism and witty jokes, but he doesn’t come off as a hero – in fact, he seems kind of Woody Allen-ish. All the characters are memorable and funny, and the writing makes me laugh ‘till I cry. I just adore this book.

I've told people IRL that this is my favorite book, and they usually seem pretty surprised. A lot of my friends assume that my favorite writer would be Ray Bradbury or Oscar Wilde, because I guess I come off as a bit of a book snob. And while I do like those authors, love their writing styles, and often try to emulate it, they don't really have the same spot in my heart as Moore does. Honestly, the book that got me to like reading was Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants, and I think of Moore as a bit more adult version of Pilkey.

Also, I started wearing suits because of Charlie Asher.
amredthelector: (Default)
So this? Pisses me off.

Pisses me. The fuck. Off.

If I wind up being arrested for assault with a book in November, it will have been because I would be beating anyone who tried to give me this with said book. Even if my school isn't one of the 'top 50', this still makes me want to punch something.

This is actually worse to me then the assholes who break the separation of church and state to hand out little new testaments at schools.

Uuuuuuuuuuugh.
amredthelector: (Default)
It is proving down-right fucking impossible to find an credible essays on framed narrative and Edith Wharton on the college library database.

I'm having more luck with effing Google Scholarly Articles, for Christ's sake.
amredthelector: (Default)
So I've been rereading Watchmen in anticipation of the movie. The first time I read it was about a year and a half ago. I'd started reading it, and got about... 80% through it, then set it aside for a few months, and eventually went back and finished the last part in one sitting. Now, reading it then, it was great.

Rereading it now that I know what will happen in the end? All I have to say is Alan Moore is the fucking master of foreshadowing. Also, this time, I'm paying attention to all the little background details in the panels. akldfjkd GOD I WISH I WAS THIS GOOD.

And I'm noticing the images and lines from the trailers for the movie, and how they correspond to the panels in the book. Man, this movie is going to rock out loud. Even if it doesn't get everything perfect? It'll still be a lot better then the V for Vendetta movie. (Seriously, the book is about the Thatcher administration in Britain. Why did the movie writers have to make it about the Bush administration in the States? Whyyyyy?)

Also, I've been reading Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Normally, I think that Gaiman is a pretentious novelist. His comics, while not as awesome as Moore's, are good. His books... not so much. Overrated, if you ask me. (Secret: I enjoyed the movie version of Stardust and the comic version of Neverwhere - neither of which he had a large part in making - better then the novels) However, something about Pratchet's part in the writing makes the book awesome. It is fucking hilarious. And... I really, really, reeeeaaaally want the two of them to meet up with Christopher Moore (no relation to Alan Moore, mind you) and do a novel about Aziraphale, Crowley, Chase, and Raziel. THAT would be my religious parody novel dream come true.
amredthelector: (Default)
Nyeeerp. I'm back. Here, have a meme.

the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence along with these instructions on your LJ.
Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Flesh and blood, you, brother of mine, that entertain'd ambition, expell'd remorse and nature; who, with Sebastian,-- whose inward pinches therefore are most strong,-- would have kill'd your king; I do forgive thee, unnatural though thou art!

I'm literally surrounded by books right now. I've got floor-to-ceiling shelves on two of the three walls around me. So I just turned around and grabbed the first book I saw. Props to you if you know what it is... though the author should be obvious.
amredthelector: (dragon :3)


I started this with the intention it would be Isaac cheesecake. But all cheesecake of her turns out depressing as hell. So it became fluff. Which I inked. I'm getting better at brush pen inking.

So, I'm having a hard time starting Pendragon 9. I want to read it, but it's the second to last book, so in a way, I don't want to read it because I don't want the series to end. But I've found out that the first book is now in comic form. And the preview pages I've seen of it are... perfect. I must go get it. Nerdluuuv.

Trans 9 is... oh man, it's fantastic. I love you, T9. I love you so much. Though, in trying to play Terry accurately, he's becoming very different from everyone else. When he woke up, he didn't try to find out where he was and what was going on, he wanted to find his pants. Instead of telling everyone he's Batman, he's lying through his teeth because he's suspicious that this is a ploy to get all the heroes together and kill them at once.

And you know what? It. Is. So. Much. Fun. I love this game. I love it so much. If I ever pick up another character, it will be No1 from Artemis Fowl 5/6.
amredthelector: (Default)


The latest Artemis Fowl book was about time travel. Doctor Who season finally aired last night. I felt obligated to draw a time traveler. This is Rei, my Brazilian time traveler. He was originally inspired by my middle school friend Jesus, who was the same guy that designed CowGirl for me. Rei travels around time with using a three-handed pocket watch, and wears a mix of '40s and '90s clothing. He's currently being used in a really funny free-for-all rp.

I drove for the first time today. I think I have to move to the UK, because I keep wanting to drive on the left side of the road. (In an empty parking lot, thankfully) Driving is hard and kind of scary. But I'll be getting my mom's car when I go to college (she'll get a new one for herself) so I really have a whole year to learn before I actually have to take myself places.

There's this big tree in front of my house. We think it's older then the house itself, meaning it was planted around 1890. Today a US Forest Service official knocked on our door and told us that that tree is a Balsam Poplar, and is the largest in the state. We'll be getting a certificate in the mail soon. Cool, huh?

Artemis Fowl 6 was pretty awesome. (I may be biased because I like time travel...) I don't really ship for any of the fandoms I like, but, man, Artemis+Holly = OTP. The book relied on dues ex machina a bit much, but that's what you have to expect in time travel stories. If you go back in a personal timeline, the outcome will always be the same, according to Doctor Who. And he is the leader in time travel, so I'll believe him.
amredthelector: (oscar ninja)


Batman and Dr. Horrible have put me in the mood for villains, so here's yet another comparison sketch, featuring my villain character. On the left is CowGirl. She was designed for me by a friend about four years ago. About two years ago, I rehashed her looks (from a woman in old west garb with a cow head to a woman in old west garb with cow ears and hooves) but didn't really have a purpose for her. I liked her, though, so I once again redesigned her, this time in The Sheriff. She's now completely human, and a lot of her personality, origin, and reasons for being evil have changed. I kind hope I can figure out what to do with her now.

Following that train of thought, I've fallen a bit behind in Trans 9. I think I'm just going to move him straight into the current communal thread, as the whole 'get out of the pod room' thing is a bit boring, and rather hard, as I'm just talking to a robot's one liners. Other people have skipped the whole 'clothes' room, too, just implying that they got them in their next post, so I may do the same.

Yesterday, I was in a mall renewing my cell phone contract, and just happened to walk past a bookstore. I saw that a new Artemis Fowl book was out, so I decided to get it. As I was going to pay for it, I saw that the 9th Pendragon book was out, so I had to get that, too. A lot of my friends have made digs at me because I still read these series that I read in middle school. But if my dad can read a series he's been with since the 60s (Dune) and my 22 year old sister can read a series meant for high schoolers (Twilight) then I can read these, damn it!

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