Well, as you'll see if you scroll waaaaay down, I've added a handful of new links -- Candy Blue Kite, Undead Alice and the Vampires, BRODOTYPE, cheesedip.com, !!me am tOkKa.., and Immature, Narcissistic Self-Obsession. I'm thinking of maybe relegating the links to a drop-down menu of sorts, since I've got so many of 'em now, or at least moving the blog archives above the links so they don't get all lost at the bottom of the page. I'll probably end up doing both at some point...but for now, this is fine. And I've also rearranged the order of a few of the already present links. Nothing fancy. So welcome, new linked people! Glad to have you in the sidebar. 😉

Started reading Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame the other day. I'm about 50 pages in so far and I've gotta say that I'm really enjoying it... I'll have more to say about it when I'm finished, but yeah, thus far I'd highly recommend it. Also, while I'm recommending things, here are three Nathaniel Hawthorne shorts that I really like: "The Birthmark", "The Artist of the Beautiful", and "Young Goodman Brown". If you got into the recent discussion about Christianity, which dealt in part with the (more/less) Biblical teaching that people are depraved and evil creatures, you may find the latter story especially interesting, since I think that that's the kind of person you'd really end up with if that idea was truly taken to heart. And in any case, it's a great story.

So since I've stumbled across The Literature Network, expect a lot more recommendations from me in the future. It's also worth noting that Voltaire's Candide -- which is my favorite novel thus far -- is on there too. It's not terribly long, so get to readin'. 🙂

A new Scary-Crayon review should be going up either tomorrow or Monday. Fans of the Spectare section should be pleased in the coming weeks, since a lot of the planned articles will be dvd reviews. I've already mentioned Johnny Suede (I'm going to go ahead and try to give it a full review; if that fails I'll just review certain highlights), but there are a few other things waiting in the wings that you'll really enjoy. At least, I hope you will. We'll see!

And now, a note on "Mad Mad House", SciFi's latest reality show. Whoever writes for Every Topic in the Universe(s?) has been faithfully blogging about the show since it began (see the latest related post here), but since the 2-hour season finale is apparently NEXT THURSDAY I thought I'd say a few words about it before it ended. So here we go.

First off, I'm not sure that I need to say it, but I'm not very big on reality TV. With the exception of the first season of "Big Brother" on CBS (and possibly the first season of "American Idol"...), I've hated them all. See, what I liked about the first BB was that, while it did have the characters participate in goofy "challenges" from time to time, it didn't seem like the houseguests were selected because they were loud-mouthed stereotypes who would undoubtedly clash and provide much "drama" for the delight of the home television audience. The contestants were, for the most part, pretty boring by those standards -- while of course they had their differences and problems, these were hardly the focus of the show. Mostly they sat around and talked. And y'know what? I kinda liked that. I'd much rather see a handful of people just trying to get to know each other than shouting at each other and throwing crap. But of course, shows like that don't do as well in the ratings, and the next season BB had a bunch of "opinionated" caricatures who were getting into it with each other even during the first episode, which I didn't even finish watching. I think I flipped over to Cartoon Network after the first half hour.

So lately I've been following "Mad Mad House". The other week I was discussing the show with RPD of Ice Anvil Online and Medicant Downline, who remarked that he didn't like the show because much of the drama on it seemed like the result of post-production editing. And I'll admit that much -- they're cramming a week's worth of time and activities into an hour of television, so of course they're going to try and display the segments with the most "drama." And admittedly, I wish they didn't do this quite so much, since I'd rather overhear a genuine conversation than watch Eric go around plotting and backstabbing everyone. (Again, one of the things that made the first BB so neat was that it was on several days a week, so they didn't have to do this, and the people were low-strung enough that oftentimes nothing of "interest" happened on an episode -- just people trying to get to know each other. Nice.) But even with this, there's a lot less "drama" on "Mad Mad House" than you'd see on one of MTV's reality shows (which I know RPD prefers :P), and a lot more time spent just following the housemates in their calmer moments as they just try to get through the day. And I dunno, it kinda feels like I'm getting to know them too, even if it's only one-sided.

But what I like about the show is not only trying to understand the contestants and alts (the resident advisor types who decide who goes and stays), but also taking note of the weird karmic "vibe" of events and the way that things tend to backfire on the contestants. For example, one episode Noel overslept because he'd taken cough medicine to sleep the night before -- something he didn't normally do, but did that night because his roomate, Art (the modern primitive; one of the five alts), snored. So when Noel finally woke up, Ta'Shia (the voodoo priestess; another alt) confronted him about it, whence he pretended to be addicted to cold medicine as a sleeping aid. In one of the private interviews, he noted that if he pretended to have this problem and then "overcame" it, he'd look really good and would win the alts' favor. However, one of the other contestants -- Loana, the "goody two-shoes" girl (at least, outwardly so) -- lied to Ta'Shia and told her that he'd still been taking the medication even after he claimed to have stopped. The result? Noel was kicked out. And then the next week, Loana was eliminated for being such a goody-goody snitch. (In fact, the one alt with whom she'd really been having it out -- Fiona, the hot witch -- didn't vote for her to be eliminated.) It's all very interesting.

And as the author of Every Topic in the Universe(s?) notes, Don the vampire is pretty hot. 😉

So hey! If you're reading and are casting for a reality show, PICK ME! Pretty please? Seriously. I probably wouldn't be good for lots of "drama" or anything, and depending on who does the voting I'd probably get ousted after the first episode, but still, I'd be fun for a while, and I'd really enjoy it.

That's a wrap for this post, slick.