Those who are dead are not dead

This is how we chill

2013-03-21T00:50:49Z

Another year, another list of books read.

READ:
Liberalism by L.T. Hobhouse (2-15-13)
Light in August (reread) by William Faulkner (3-1-13)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber (3-8-13)

Previous years:
2012.
2011.
2010.
2009.
2009.

New Year's Resolution Progress

2013-01-18T05:45:06Z

Resolution: write 120,000 words. Let's go.

0.74%

894 / 120000 words

_bowles_ @ 2012-07-06T21:17:00

2012-07-07T02:17:41Z

15805 / 100000 (15.80%)

_bowles_ @ 2012-06-29T20:21:00

2012-06-30T01:21:50Z

12251 / 100000 (12.25%)

Keeping count

2012-06-23T02:27:29Z

Let's see if this works.

6540 / 100000 (6.54%)

An actual fic (safety not guaranteed)

2012-06-20T05:00:02Z

Hey, so I've become obsessed with the movie Safety Not Guaranteed... I've kind of seen it twice in the last week. Naturally, I wrote a fic. First of all, GO SEE THIS MOVIE. Aubrey Plaza is awesome in it, an amazing feel-good movie.

If you've seen it and want some fic, here you are (I think I may be the first one?):

Assured of Danger

Aight.

Another year, another list.

2012-05-30T22:17:18Z

Sooooo I've been pretty lazy with putting this up, but here it goes. I've also been pretty lazy in reading this year, but hopefully the summer will rectify that (this list should tell us whether it does). Might include rereads - haven't decided yet.

Previous years' lists:
2008.
2009.
2010.
2011.

Reading list 2012: go!

READ

Golden Arches East edited by James L. Watson (4-1-12)
Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (5-24-12)
Why the West Rules - for Now by Ian Morris (6-2-12)
1776 by David McCullough (6-11-12)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (6-12-12)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (6-14-12)
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (6-16-12)
Voltaire by Ian Davidson (6-27-12)
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré (7-2-12)
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines (7-6-12)
Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (8-6-12)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Hiroki Murakami (9-1-12)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster (9-1-12)
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (12-15-12)
Luminarium by Alex Shakar (12-26-12)
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (12-29-12)

I've made a list of my lists.

2011-08-26T22:29:36Z

Want to keep track of movies/tv shows/books I want to see/read. Thought I'd do that here. (It seems like lists are the only reason I post anymore. I swear I'll finish some writing before the end of the summer...)

MOVIES/TV.

~~Attack the Block~~
~~Drive~~
~~The Artist~~
The Godfather, Part II
~~Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy~~
Breaking Bad
Everything Must Go
Submarine
~~Midnight in Paris~~
The Guard
Raging Bull
50/50
The Tree of Life
The Descendants
Apocalypse Now
Martha Marcy May Marlene

BOOKS.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
~~Catching Fire~~ and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Anything by David Foster Wallace
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

MUSIC.

undun by the Roots
Things Fall Apart by the Roots
Anything by Frightened Rabbit

Recommendations (especially on some good nonfiction) more than welcome!

Here's to reading (more), writing (at all), and listening to just as much music in 2011.

2011-01-04T17:19:22Z

Soooo I haven't updated this thing since last January, but I'd be remiss if I didn't at least make a reading list for the new year. My reading list for last year was somewhat disappointing - didn't get anything done aside from the new Barty book after I went back to school, although part of that was because I attempted to tackle Atlas Shrugged, part of that was because I was mainly reading graphic novels, and part of that was because I just didn't finish my Malcolm Gladwell book before New Year's - and I wrote just about zero, although I did do a fair bit of other stuff and hopefully the somewhat hiatus allowed me to improve in other ways? Yeah, dunno, but that's comforting to say. So I guess my resolution is to read more, write way more, and maybe learn how to play piano. Not sure about the last one, though.

Previous lists:
2008.
2009.
2010

READ

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (1-4-11)
Almost No Memory by Lydia Davis (2-28-11)
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Drubner (3-16-11)
The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball (3-16-11)
Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño (3-20-11)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (3-30-11)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (6-10-11)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré (6-10-11)
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (6-20-11)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (6-22-11)
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (6-28-11)
Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst (7-4-11)
Kraken by China Mieville (7-8-11)
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (7-13-11)
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (7-19-11)
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (8-4-11)
Mr Toppit by Charles Elton (8-12-11)
Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 edited by Dave Eggers (8-23-11)
The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell (8-26-11)
Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel (9-2-11)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (9-19-11)
Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks (12-20-11)
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (12-28-11)
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (12-29-11)

"Guys... I know kung fu."

2010-01-07T06:30:07Z

Chuck Bartowski... YOU ARE THE MAN.

And I'm in love with Yvonne Strahovski.

Yeah, Chuck has become my new favorite TV obsession. I'm all caught up now - caught myself up entirely in the last couple of days - and I am SO PUMPED to watch this on Sunday. Jesus, I think this show was created just for me. The title card should just read, "Jeff... Jeff... Jeff... watch this, sucker."

That is all.

I read. I write. I listen to experimental rock. I'm just generally pretty pretentious.

2010-01-03T18:31:33Z

A list like this one for 2009 and this one for 2008. Because I can, even if I don't read as much as I should.

READ.

Watchmen by Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons (1-1-10)
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King (1-24-10)
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (1-27-10)
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (1-31-10)
Symposium by Plato (2-7-10)
Othello by William Shakespeare (2-9-10) (Iago is such a Slytherin)
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore/David Lloyd (2-11-10)
Phèdre by Jean Racine (2-16-10)
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (2-25-10)
Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost (3-1-10)
Boss by Mike Royko (3-15-10)
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (5-4-10)
Light in August by William Faulkner (5-5-10)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (5-31-10)
The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons (6-8-10)
Renegade by Richard Wolffe (7-5-10)
What is the What by Dave Eggers (7-5-10)
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch (7-13-10)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (7-24-10)
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (8-2-10)
The Magicians by Lev Grossman (8-9-10)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (8-20-10)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (8-27-10)
The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud (11-11-10)

Am I really all the things that are outside of me?

2009-12-22T20:08:40Z

News. Hm. Well Singer's making the new X-movie, so that's good, right? I was super glad for break to finally come, and got out of the northeast right before that blizzard supremely screwed up flights and all that good stuff. My family is crazy, in other news. Some interesting drama with mock, and I think I saw someone I know on the ski slopes yesterday. PLUS I AM OFFICIALLY A BETTER SNOWBOARDER THAN MY SISTER.

Happy Christmas/Merry Hanukkah/Beneficial Atheism Day, everyone.

"If it's true, you really don't stand a chance."

2009-12-04T17:15:18Z

OMG DH sneak peek. Um, don't watch if you don't want spoilers... I guess?

Dh Teaser - HP7 clip, zomg

In other news - I want them to let Singer make another Superman movie. I watched TDK last night and it's still awesome. Same for Star Trek. A new Bart book scheduled for next fall = a vast improvement in my life.

I need to write, but I'm far too busy to bother. Ohhhhh well.

Research papers write themselves... right?

2009-10-08T00:06:23Z

Because I have nothing to better to do, I wrote the beginning of something random. Who knows if I pursue it - probably not, but tell me what you think.

Three days after Harry died Neville began to dream.

Even in dreams he attempted to tell himself that Harry wasn't dead, that Harry couldn't die, that Harry had disappeared – and there was a difference. It didn't matter what people said, what the Aurors found, what the Muggle police found, what all logic told him; until someone found Harry's body, until someone found his heart or his skull or a tiny bit of flesh marked with a lightning-bolt scar, then he wasn't dead. He was disappeared.

And there was a difference.

The dreams tended to not make very much sense. Nothing did in the waking world, for that matter, but the dreams were absurd; visions of rabbits with swords and hula hoops, a hedge maze of licorice stalks, a woman's yellowed teeth and a dark laugh, the same words over and over: “It's a collection, a collection; I swallow your destiny,” she said, and then her mouth would open wide and he'd be sucked in and would have to hold onto her tonsils for dear life.

He had Harry's glasses on his nightstand. That had been all they'd found, save for a few drops of blood (Harry's, accordingly). They'd been given to him, because Ron had left the scene weeping and screaming and Hermione had retreated to one of the Ministry's public restrooms shortly after and hadn't been heard from since. The glasses shone alone in the dark of his small room, dulled only when he lit the lamp and threw his legs over the side of the bed.

He dressed in a suit he'd bought eight months prior, back during the war. There had been a need to make a run to a Muggle town for news updates of an attack, and it had been an excellent opportunity to stock up on Muggle supplies that could aid in the effort. The suit, he'd thought, would help him fit in. It hadn't, and everything he'd bought had been a waste, and there wasn't much news in the Muggle press, but it was quite a sharp suit and he hadn't worn it since, which was a shame.

He pocketed his wand, glanced at the nightstand, and exited the room.

Tom said hello on his way out – poor old Tom, near dead from the strain of the war – and Neville said hello back, because that was the polite thing to do. Muggle London seemed not to have realized that the world's greatest hero had disappeared (but not died, mind you), and something about that was comforting and depressing at the same time.

He rode the Tube to Kensington and back, for no other reason than to waste time. He liked the sensation of the train cars, whirring along mechanically and unknowingly, and he liked being pressed against other people who didn't care for bacteria and the grime of the metal cars or the thought of not being invincible.

More than anything, though, he was waiting. He waited until 9:00, then 9:15, and soon it was half past the hour. But he waited.

Fifteen minutes to ten, at Tower Hill, the man in the wide-brimmed hat stepped on the train and didn't look at Neville, and Neville waited.

The man stood still near the door, head pointed downward and face covered by the wide-brimmed hat. Neville got off at West Kensington and waited.

The man with the wide-brimmed hat also exited the train, which Neville noticed through a reflection on the display case. Neville walked out of the station, took a right into an alley, and slowly walked.

He heard no footsteps.

He walked past a cat, which stared at him and then behind him and hissed loudly before scattering off.

Neville spun on his heel, wand out.

The man with the wide-brimmed hat grinned.

“Who are you?” Neville demanded in his most menacing tone, something that the last three years of puberty had significantly aided.

The man replied in a crackling voice: “Is that an introduction?”

“Who are you?” Neville demanded again. He shoved the wand forward.

“I am an old friend,” said the man, and he bowed, flourishing his hat and revealing sandy, thistly hair beneath, curled at the ears. “A man of great talent and little ambition. Much like yourself, I would say – am I right?”

“Why are you following me? You've been following me for three days.”

The man's hat was back on and he stared at the wand. “I wanted to talk. To introduce myself. I know things are going very badly, very badly indeed, but I just wanted to talk to you. I think we are going to be excellent friends.”

He grinned again, and his face stretched like the Cheshire Cat. Neville threw a Stunner at him but the man was gone.

Neville swore and the cat howled.

ZOMG BIG BANG

2009-09-19T17:31:07Z

Oh my God the hermionebigbang archive is finally open and that's so cool and there's so many stories including mine, but more importantly the artwork - I WANT TO SEE ALL THE ARTWORK. MY GOD.

I've only seen the artwork for mine so far but please please please check it out because it is so sparkly and nice and prettyful and all those things and I want to shoot off internet fireworks because it's so cool!!!

The table of contents for my story, but skip that crap and go to 9/10 at the bottom, which are the art pieces by ghot and paperflowered .

SRSLY.

_bowles_ @ 2009-09-16T22:09:00

2009-09-17T02:14:28Z

So I finally trolled on over to Jonathan Stroud's blog for the first time in a long long while to see this madness that he's posted saying he's aiming to release another Barty-related book next autumn along with the Amulet graphic novel. !!!!!!!! is all I can say. I'm hoping that maybe with the graphic novel and this new thing maybe the ball will finally get rolling for a movie. Decent movie, mind you.

Also thought it was interesting that Heroes of the Valley was one of the six books included in that care package Obama and others were seen on TV putting together a while back.

/nerd

Spidey vs Mickey

2009-08-31T18:00:33Z

I'm trying to decide whether to be excited that Disney bought Marvel. I mean, they haven't screwed around with Pixar's production, so at least the movies won't be affected - hopefully, since Marvel seems to have figured out what they're doing for the most part - and this probably means the Marvel cartoons will get more airtime. And let's be honest, some intervention in the comic area wouldn't be that bad of an idea (*cough* ASM).

Eh.

Neda, I still believe.

2009-06-21T09:32:10Z

TEHRAN — The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.

Roger Cohen.

I know I'm a guy and all that bullshit that comes with it and maybe I'm not supposed to say this but that makes me want to cry. Hard. Maybe I'm just sentimental because of the last month and what's happened (really, what hasn't happened?!), but oh my God wow.

Don't watch the Neda video. Read the story, but I really would advise against watching the video. I don't know how I'm going to get to sleep after that.

This was a depressing entry. But I'm depressed. Which is weird, because it's been a wild time recently with some ups and downs and deaths and summer break time and etc, but what can I say.

As far as actual updates on my life - I'm working on my hermionebigbang story, which I should finish by the time I'm out of town, and I'm really excited about it. It centers around Remus and Hermione and the nature of magic and has been loads of fun so far, even if I should be working on that right now rather than making myself weep over foreign revolutions.

And I'm seeing Oasis in Coventry! My God. I was going to put that in caps, but it seems kind of silly now compared to the rest of my post.

I'm done.

Wolverine and Nancy Pelosi

2009-05-04T04:57:34Z

I saw Wolverine on Friday night. I wasn't expecting much from the reviews, but it was an enjoyable, decent popcorn flick. The fanboys/girls will throw a shitfit over it but I would see another movie like it. Hugh Jackman is great as Wolverine, and I liked Reynolds as Wade Wilson and whoever the hell played Gambit (a character I usually don't like). Schreiber was decent as Sabretooth.

The script was absolutely shit, although there were some genuinely funny moments, but the film did too much of the looking up into the sky and screaming "Nooooo!" kind of thing. My favorite line: "They finally figured out how to shut you up!"

(SPOILERS)

For another spinoff, I want to see not a Deadpool film and a Gambit film, but a Deadpool & Gambit film. I want a film that's half metafiction and half buddy road movie, and another half badass action flick. I want Gambit as he's walking away from Three Mile to find Deadpool in the rubble, I want Deadpool's costume, and I want the two to randomly go around on adventures, spoofing comic book movies with Deadpool's irreverent humor and spending half their time blowing up shit and half their time making fun of pop culture. I want the format to be halfway between Burn Notice and Ferris Bueller's Day Off in that Deadpool often stops to address the audience, and I really want a fight scene in which Deadpool is talking into the camera and another angle shows Gambit looking over in between punches to see Wilson speaking into thin air. And I want an interrogation scene, one where in the middle Deadpool uses a gruff voice and barks, "WHERE'S RACHEL?!" to the confusion of the suspect.

But that's just me.

Last night was awfully crazy, I wish I taped it... but enough about that.

I slept til 3:45 today and had the opportunity to meet Nancy Pelosi at a huge mansion thanks to a friend. She impressed me much more in person than she does through the media. I've been studying for the past two hours and should probably get to bed, although I would also like to mention that I have some badass new t-shirts featuring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Luigi, and Batman. So yeah.

I know what it's like to be dead

2009-04-11T06:01:37Z

I would just like to note that my icon makes me sad now.

Oh Kutner.

You thought you might be a ghost

2009-03-14T21:16:21Z

So I'm leaving for Tampa Bay tomorrow on a bus for 20-odd hours. OH JOY. Packing has been a blast. If you enjoy folding clothes over and over and then packing them and trying to find room to squeeze them into your suitcase. If you don't enjoy such activities, then you probably wouldn't have found it entertaining.

School and all has been insane recently. It's been great, mostly, some major surprises and minor disappointments but for the most part life is good and very, very busy. I've been feeling very nostalgic. Found out some stuff about my family that I didn't know before, so that's probably just added to it. Spring is finally coming and it has been a very Harmonious weekend spent on Portkey's archives (so far).

Six word poem of the day:

Outward, weary traveler: the universe waits.

"I've always been with you, Jack."

2009-02-12T06:30:48Z

I am in the process of catching up on the Lost I missed last week (I've gotten into this show all of a sudden and OMG). Daniel and Locke and Juliet are a recipe for success and I will never get tired of Ben or Jack and Kate's sexual tension (or Sawyer and Juliet's, for that matter).

Stole this meme from coin

1. Take four books off your bookshelf.
2. Write the first sentence
3. Write the last sentence on page fifty
4. Write the second sentence on page one hundred
5. Write the next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Write the final sentence of the book
7. Tag four people [eh.]

The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker.
1) On September 11, 2001, at 8:46 A.M., a hijacked airliner crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York.
2) In some of the experimental variations, mooping referred to something in a conspicuous manner, like zigzagging a wet sponge over to a wet purple cloth.
3) Recall that Fodor also claims that words for complex concepts are no harder to use and learn than words for simple ones.
4) Word meanings can vary across languages because children assemble and fine-tune from more elementary concepts.
5) We can do this even as our minds flicker with the agonists and antagonists, the points and lines and slabs, the activities and accomplishments, the gods and sex and effuvia, and the sympathy and deference and fairness that make up the stuff of thought.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
1) On May 18, 1860, the day when the Republican Party would nominate its candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln was up early.
2) The only schools in rural Kentucky and Indiana were subscription schools, requiring families to pay a tuition.
3) Like the ancient Greeks, Lincoln seemed to believe that "ideas of a person's worth are tied to the way others, both contemporaries and future generations, perceive him."
4) Though Lincoln did not drink, smoke tobacco, use profane language, or engage in games of chance, he never condescended to those who did.
5) She was sixty-three in 1882 when her oft-stated longing for death was fulfilled at last.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.
1) Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.
2) Despite Mr Norrell's tuttings and suckings-in of air at every new revelation, there's no doubt that this conversation did him good.
3) He was a great reader of the more exciting sort of history - and his head was full of ancient battles in which the English were outnumbered by the French and doomed to die, when all at once would be heard the sound of strange, unearthly music, and upon a hilltop would appear the Raven King in his tall, black helmet with its mantling of raven-feathers streaming in the wind; and he would gallop down the hillside on his tall, black horse with a hundred human knights and a hundred fairy knights at his back, and he would defeat the French by magic.
4) "When they discover that they are consorting with a servant I am sure they will feel the insult very keenly."
5) Then he turned upon his heel and disappeared into the Darkness.

Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud (signed! bwahahahaha).
1) Listen then, and I'll tell you again of the Battle of the Rock.
2) Hesitantly, precariously, Leif got to his feet, his boots slipping and sloughing in the mire.
3) "...We shall proclaim your vile hospitality from the rooftops, and also sing songs of your dwarfish nephew, so ugly that the mountains turn their backs on him and rivers burst their banks when he kneels to drink."
4) "Yes, take it between your fingers." (...okay don't misinterpret that.)
5) Sleep tight.

That was actually pretty fun.

They are turning my head out.

2009-02-10T04:29:41Z

I'm listening to 'Lovers in Japan' and randomly some muscle near my stomach started spasming along to the beat. It was odd.

(Did I mention I love this album? Yes?)

I've got a lot to do. When I say that I mean noshitI'vegotalottodookay. But in three months this should all be done, good riddance.

Don't know what to think about the newest A-Rod controversy. I watched Obama's press conference for a while and remembered why I've been such a political geek over the last year. I'm about to start a new book. I want to write but I'm too tired to make myself.

That is all.

Stroud and the Cardinals

2009-02-02T04:05:38Z

So I read Stroud's new book, Heroes of the Valley, last Friday. A little slow at the beginning, but the writing is lovely, and the end of the book is alternatingly chilling, amusing, and thrilling. I recommend it to anyone who loved Bartimaeus, or just anyone who loves fantasy or myth or whatever.

And then TODAY I went and saw Stroud speak! He was great, really funny and really engaging, and some of the audience's tidbits were amusing. And I got a chance to speak with him afterward when he was signing, so that was very cool.

Super Bowl was great, although I was rooting for the Cardinals. My friend was irritating me, but nothing is new.

The Office = love.

Top 12 House episodes, IMHO

2009-01-28T04:05:53Z

Randomly, because I can.

1) No Reason
2) Three Stories
3) Wilson's Heart
4) Merry Little Christmas
5) All In
6) Meaning
7) Son of Coma Guy
8) Need to Know
9) The Mistake
10) Half-Wit
11) Detox
12) Ugly

Yes, I'm bored. And yes, I realize that there are none from this season, although I haven't seen more than like 4 episodes so that's one of the reasons. That and the fact that the new team is still being developed as far as character goes, although Thirteen's actually become semi-interesting.