You know, I wonder if somehow having a comment spam filter attracts spam comments. I mean, WordPress and Akismet appear to do a really good job of catching them, but I never got this many spam messages back on the old Blog of Wes. (There's no sense in reading the old page since I ported all of the old entries over to here, but if you're interested you can take a gander at the old layout :)) Perhaps the programs are lying, in order to exaggerate their performance and effectiveness!

Aaaand on a note somewhat related to that last comment, VOTE TOMORROW! Assuming that you have not already. I'm planning to vote Democratic across the board... and it really sucks that I feel like I have to do that, but I think that's the extent to which the political scene has been polarized as of late. And have you seen some of the Republican National Committee advertisements for this campaign? They're like weird fake campaign ads on a sketch comedy show! Insanity.

Also, given yesterday's international news, I totally want to read this book. Could be interesting!

The Prestige is pretty good stuff, by the way. A lot of the reviews that I've read have called it a challenging and confusing film, but I honestly didn't get any of that -- it seemed fairly easy to understand to me, especially since it goes out of its way to explain the twist ending at the end, replete with flashbacks. Anyway, I wouldn't call it a masterpiece (I probably couldn't rank it among even my top 20 or 30 favorite films, though I'd certainly add it to my DVD collection for $7.50 or less), but it's definitely a great film and makes for a good theater experience. It's certainly the best movie I've seen at the cinema this year! But then, the only other movies I've seen thus far are V for Vendetta and Silent Hill, so that's not saying too much.

Finally, the latest Neurotically Yours cartoon from Ill Will Press -- entitled "Useless Software" -- is quite funny. "It all just says pissed off and a date next to it!" Go watch. 🙂

Again, not to go into too many details, but apparently some of the things that were supposed to happen to force me out on the street can't happen -- at least not so soon; there would be lots of legal issues, etc., and that would take time -- so I'm not likely to be stranded in the very near future. I'm not at all happy with the situation, but (at least regarding my housing prospects) it doesn't look quite as bad as I'd been led to believe. It still sucks though.

I was still terribly worried yesterday, though so I spent a few hours bagging a whole bunch of my action figures. It was oretty depressing, but not quite as bad as I'd imagined it to be. I won't feel too bad about selling or donating many of them for various reasons -- for example, whereas I couldn't bring myself to get rid of Tokka (even though I bagged him; I'm bagging them all for inventory purposes), I might not feel too bad about selling Sewer Samurai Leonardo or Undercover Donatello because my memories regarding Leo and Don are more attached to them as a characters as opposed to any specific representations of them. This isn't to say that I'd be willing to part with all of my various versions of the four Turtles, mind you -- you'd be hard pressed to separate me from Storage Shell Michaelangelo or Headdroppin' Raphael, to say nothing of the versions I went out of my way to acquire in later years (can you say Super Turtles?) -- but it is kind of interesting and will make for good discussion when I get around to writing about the figures. I also have virtually no emotional attachment to my carded figures -- after all, I never got to open them or play with them -- so insofar as I never planned to open them anyway (and with very few exceptions, I didn't), selling them won't be terribly disheartening either. Assuming that I sell my comics, the same rules apply, since (with the exception of comics I bought during the last three years, which I mostly haven't touched) I probably wasn't going to read the print versions again anyway. I'm way too worried about them being damaged by oils on my hands to ever remove them from their plastic sleeves.

You know, this is why I prefer to buy comics and books used -- if I get them new, I'm generally so worried about damaging them that it's fairly hard to enjoy the books! When you get one with a worn spine right off the shelf, it's pretty easy to crack it open and relax. And speaking of books, I started posting that 50K-word novel of mine from November 2004 (see the sidebar) on Scary-Crayon. It's incredibly insane. I'll be posting more of my old fiction on the site in the near future, so stay tuned.

And that's all for tonight. Thanks for your concern, everyone -- I hope things turn out relatively well when all of this is over.

I stole this from De. I didn't get officially tagged (:cry:), but I'm gonna do it anyway since I think it is NEAT. I will also forego the tagging part and extend the meme to anyone who wants to play. 🙂

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your Blog/Live Journal along with these instructions. (So does that mean we're supposed to be posting sentences 6-9 or 5-8??? I will cover all bases and post 5-9.)
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people.

There was a knob, with a dial on it, sort of like a clock with one hand. Only there were no numbers for the dial to point at. Right now the dial was pointing at a strange symbol that looked something like a Chinese character, but different -- some alien letter. To the right and left were straight lines. To the left, the lines got wider and wider apart.

The book is Marco's Millions by William Sleator. Other nearby books that would have been the meme selection but for a few inches are The Pocket Treasury of American Folklore and Who's Next: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who. There are also several Barney and Madballs books patiently awaiting Scary-Crayon reviews (if you're interested, see the existing reviews here and here), but none of them have 123 pages. There's also The Pogo Stepmother Goose by Walt Kelly, but in addition to being a collection of comic strips and illustrated stories its pages are not numbered. Which makes the table of contents significantly less helpful, but at least one knows which stories are in the book. 😛

Ja ne!

Yesterday I finished reading Pilgrim by Timothy Findley. Interesting book -- I'm not sure what else to say about it. I could summarize it, but I believe I've done that previously, and in any case the linked review does that well enough. It is odd and rare, though, that the main character's ultimate triumph -- especially in a book in which psychiatry plays so significant a role -- is not that he is "cured" of his affliction (if we call it an affliction -- there is, naturally, given his institutionalization, the suggestion that perhaps Pilgrim was not truly an immortal), but that his final suicide attempt is, well, final and successful. Make of that what you will.

This evening I finished writing yet another short story that -- save the acquaintances who ask to see it and the editors who reject it -- no one will ever read. It is approximately 2,280 words and is titled "The Lion That Wore Glasses". It is rather strange.

All for now. Ja ne, minna-san.

Hey all -- just a quick update before I hit the sack. Been well? Hope so.

On Saturday night I ventured back to that DC goth club to check out a performance by Martiya Possession, a gothic bellydancing troupe. Not bad -- they were great dancers! -- but I think maybe I was expecting something else. Like given that bellydancing supposedly has all of these connections to fertility rites and whatnot, I think I was expecting to be aroused! I wasn't. But then, maybe I was too drunk for that, seeing as how I actually slumped over and fell asleep right there at the bar just after finishing my turkey burger. (I was kinda hungry, but I think I ordered it more for the novelty of eating a turkey burger in a goth bar on the night of a bellydancing performance.) Really -- I was fucking gone. But that's what I get for drinking with my dad before going! (more...)