boxes and books

It’s been a pretty eventful weekend here in Gracetopia. Well, really  just one major event. I unpacked my final box! I’m finally moved in!

The astute among you might remember that I moved here in December. So this is six months after I moved that I finally unpacked the final box. Hey, I’m not speedy but I get it done. Tortoise and hare, people. Tortoise and hare.

I mean, granted, there are three piles of stuff from this final box sitting on my floor, just piles because I don’t know where to put anything. But the box is gone, and that’s what’s important.

This final burst of unpacking was brought upon by a sudden desire to get my spring-cleaning done (okay, so maybe it’s summer by now, whatever I procrastinate). This process necessitated the purchase of a 2nd bookcase. Part of my cleaning yesterday was trying to get all my books on my bookcase, and I quickly came to realize that I had twice as many books as bookspace. So, 2nd bookcase! Which then led to one of my favorite activites: organizing my books. Seriously, I love organizing my books.

I may be a slight nerd.

I don’t organize by author, in case anyone was wondering. I organize by category. Within categories an author’s books are grouped together but the authors are not in alphabetical order. Mostly they’re grouped by size—my shelves must be pretty.

My categories, in descending order of size, are:

• mysteries/true crime (4x larger than next category—this always surprises me)
• sci-fi/fantasy
• 19th-century lit
• children’s books
• books on writing/writers
• graphic novels/comics (most of these could be incorporated into sci-fi/fantasy, above, but they look better if they get their own shelf)
• 1900-1950 books (mostly Waugh and Wodehouse)
• pre-1900 British lit (mostly Shakespeare)
• Oscar Wilde (this was larger before the post office lost a box of my books)
• “modern” fiction (anything after 1950 that I somehow ended up with… a complete hodgepodge)
• non-fiction (mostly Victorian history)
• my friends’ books (too small! get on it, guys)
• miscellaneous (On Bullshit, something-or-other guide to London, 100 Greatest Hockey Players of All Time)

Any books that could go in more than one category go wherever they look the best or whichever category is more specific.

And there you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about how I organize my life.

Speaking of books, there’s still a free book available. Somebody must want it!

oscar sings

Occasionally I have to double-check to make sure I have not died and gone to heaven. For instance:

a musical

of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The only reason I’m sure I’m still here is that it’s currently touring Europe, where I am not. AARRGHHHH

karaoke

Debut novelist Lara Zielin on the trials and tribulations of editing:

(points to wordvixen, who originally posted this)

free book: Clublife by Rob the Bouncer

Another giveaway! A grown-up book this time.

In this behind-the-velvet-rope memoir, anonymous blogger Rob the Bouncer (Rob Fitzgerald) details his adventures working security at “Axis,” a dizzying composite of real-life New York nightclubs. Spending grungy nights working the “Nightmare Square” of club-choked West Chelsea, antagonized by feuding bosses and berated by the downgrading clientele, Rob has plenty of material for his misanthropic observations. He spends most nights playing God to a line-up of bankers, club kids and mobsters, ogling his bartender girlfriend and babysitting the VIP room for pocket cash. Rob is a likable, identifiable narrator, an average working guy dreaming of something better, genuinely aggrieved to be trading barbs with women drunk enough to chuck tampons at him.

Usual rules apply. If you want it, post a comment. I’ll choose a winner and mail you the book. Tray simple. (I always thought that’s how that was spelled until I started taking French…)

blah

Currently lying sick in bed. Awesome. Only not.

It’s been a busy week. A couple college friends came through town, I went down to D.C. to visit another one. Good times had by all. Well, me at least. Then I got sick, and stayed home from work today. That’ll teach me to have fun.

I’m currently reading Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land for the first time; almost done. Um… Perhaps I will write a review of it. (a review of a book that came out in the 1960s? way to add to the critical landscape, Grace) Or a retrospective type thing. Because it’s a great book and all but… I’m not sure if I grok it. And it’s not quite what I expected.

Also currently reading the Fables series of comics. One of those things I wish I had written. Why can’t I be brilliant? Or at least productive.

So yeah, if you couldn’t tell I don’t really have much to write about today. Like, things have happened since last we met, but my brain isn’t really doing the whole “narrative” thing. So. Uh. Bye?

To end, I think I need to share the picture I took today of my baby:

"no mommy no pictures go away!"

Quote of the Day

Brought to you by a random punky Goth guy I passed on the way home, talking to his friend:

It’s all because of Weird Al Yankovic.

I think he might have something, there.

search me

In other news, variations on “blue penis watchmen” keep bringing a ridiculous number of visitors to my blog.

Don’t you people have anything better to do?

movie review: Star Trek

Usually I can review something without spoilering it to death, but I really don’t think that’s going to work here. So if you want to go into Star Trek unscathed, you should stop reading. You have been warned.

So if you sit back and actually think about the new Star Trek movie, it’s really ridiculously flawed. I mean, there is a lot wrong with it, from small aesthetic decisions, to large plot holes, to pure and simple what-the-fuckery.

Fortunately, JJ Abrams doesn’t let you catch your breath long enough to notice.

I’ve seen the movie twice now, and I left the second time going, “wow that was even better than the first time!” But with the space of a few days, and time to think, all the things that are wrong with it are becoming clearer—all the things that should make this movie horrible and unwatchable. And yet, I still love it. I still want to see it again.

So here are some of the many reasons we should dislike this movie:

• Time travel wtf. The movie begins with a time travel/alternate reality trigger so that JJ Abrams could ignore canon and basically do whatever the heck he wanted. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but what’s the point in having canon if you’re just going to throw it so far to the winds? It doesn’t really seem like a real Trek movie. JJ basically just ran rampant through Trek lore.
• One of the most blatant examples of this was the Spock/Uhura romance. Granted, I generally tend to be against romantic entanglements in my action movies. (“hey! something could be exploding right now! stop it!”) But alternate reality or not, I really don’t think Spock would have turned out that differently…
• Some of the comedy was atrociously out of place. The swollen-hand-and-tongue gag was interminable and seemed to have stumbled in from a different movie. The Scotty-in-the-tubes gag was funny for approximately 2 seconds—actually more like negative 2 seconds, when Scotty was still just in the big canister. But yeah that got old quickly. (even though I would pay good money to watch Simon Pegg do, well, anything. paint fences. drool. sneeze.)
• There were some ridiculous Star Wars moments. Let us take, for instance, the Hoth scene. (Delta Vega in Trek) Our Fearless Hero is marooned on a snowy, icy planet, and then OH NO there’s a big toothy furry creature coming after him! We then switch monsters, as one eats the other, and then our Fearless Hero is saved by an Old Guy waving shit and making lots of noise to startle off the creature. (*cough* Obi-Wan and the Sand People *cough*) So basically… yeah. That’s the only time I was really jolted out of the movie, when I was like, “uhhhh is JJ confused about which saga he’s working on?”
• Also, of all the gin joints in all the world… Young Kirk and Old Spock just happen to end up in the same random icy cave together?
• The Ewok. Excuse me. The weird alien thing that’s hanging out with Simon Pegg on Delta Vega. Apparently it’s played by Deep Roy (the guy who played ALL the Oompa-Loompas in Tim Burton’s Charlie in the Chocolate Factory). Which is really all you need to know. Seriously? Didn’t people learn anything about annoying alien sidekicks from Jar Jar Binks?
• So at the end of the movie (in case you ignored my previous spoiler warning, I repeat it now) when Old Spock is talking to Young Spock, he says something along the lines of “You ask why I did not just come aboard the Enterprise and explain everything? I could not do that! You and Kirk had to find each other and realize you are meant to be lifelong friends.” Ummmm sorry? Total bullshit. Yeah it’d be nice if Kirk and Spock stop hating each other but there’s a universe to save damn it. If I’m Spock, having mini-me be friends with Kirk is not worth an entire universe.
• “Red Matter?” Really?

I could go on. The fact that the movie has all this^ but still makes me want to see it surely is a credit to JJ Abrams’s filmmaking abilities. Right? Or maybe I’m just a sucker for shiny exploding things and men in Starfleet uniforms. I don’t know. Anyway. Here’s some of what makes it good:

• The acting. I’m going to go ahead and place Simon Pegg at the top of the list, because he is so absolutely, absurdly amazing that I pretty much died of joy every moment he was on the screen (too rarely), but really everyone was fabulous. Zachary Quinto played young Spock to perfection. His voice was perfect, his eyebrows were perfect, even his shoulders were positioned right. Chris Pine (cue swoon) played young Kirk to cocky asshole perfection, a reluctant young hero who grows up to be a kick-ass hero. And Karl Urban, bless him, made Bones a character I was actually interested in. Eric Bana as the bad guy did not have as much to work with, but still managed to growl his way into a memorable performance. And did I mention Simon Pegg as Scotty?
• Rip-roaring action. Even though there’s a totally superfluous car chase scene, it’s crazy fun. The whole movie is crazy fun. It just goes by in a flash, so quickly you don’t even notice the plot holes.
• It makes enough sense. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But it makes enough.

Really what it all comes down to is that the movie’s a great ride. One that I want to go on again and again and again. You shouldn’t think about it too much (she says to Star Trek fans… yeah right) and just go with it. You won’t be sorry.

N.B. This may actually be the worst movie review ever written. I do apologize. List format? What Grace?

couldn’t say it better myself

Really, the only review of the new Star Trek that you really need.

I’m a Doctor, not a Physicist

Wow, loooooong week.

I just slept for 18 hours, if that gives you some idea of how my week’s been.

Our work conference ate my life and my time and my sleep but I still managed to see the new Star Trek at midnight on Thursday. (Full review coming later, but seriously Simon Pegg is worth the price of admission.) So I’m resting this weekend by watching the X-Men trilogy (“I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”) and eating massive amounts of ice cream.

A More fascinating blog post will be coming soon. At some point.