Tiny Mini-Post (Now with Extra River Water)

Here's a quick rundown on what's happened in the past twenty-four hours:

• So at some point yesterday, I hit my thousandth view, and I'm pretty sure only about half of those were attributable to spambots. You guys are cool, you know that? 
• Twenty-one hours ago, I went to the reunion party, and spent it singing show tunes whilst being accompanied by an awesome dude I probably won't see again. Also, we watched a taping of the show, which was awesome. 
• Four hours ago, I went out to go picture-hunting for my new job.
• Two hours ago, I found a fountain. 
• An hour and a half ago, I fell in a fountain. 
• Eighty-nine minutes ago, I realized the fountain was basically river water and thus nasty and filled with paper mill gunk. 
• Eighty-eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds ago (give or take a few) I all but levitated out of the fountain and started squishing back to my car.
• An hour ago, I had to explain to my family why I now smelled like nasty river water.
• Fifty-five minutes ago, I was sprayed down with a hose before I was allowed to enter the house.
• Fifty minutes ago, I finally got to the shower so I could stop smelling like the river, much to my relief.

It's been interesting. I'm going out again in a couple minutes to finish grabbing pics, to make up for those that I didn't take because I was overbalancing into a fountain. At least my camera didn't get wet.

Liebster Blog Award (also a list of my favorite authors)

So I get back from a doctor's appointment in the Big City a hundred miles away, feeling exhausted due to lack of sleep, getting vaccinated for meningitis, and traveling in a car for two hundred miles before two, and what do I find waiting for me? A blog award nomination.

Hi, Liam. I am distracted from my woes now.
 

“The Liebster Award is for bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. Award winners share 11 facts about themselves, answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who tagged them, come up with 11 of their own questions and tag 11 more bloggers with the award.”

I give fair warning that I'm only nominating one other person for the award, because all the blogs I follow that are eligible have already been nominated, and I want to avoid redundancies. And it's still all ones in the number, it's just one less one. One one one. That word no longer means anything. Also, I'm going to use the facts sections to air out all my reading habits and recommend all my current favorite books. Because they need to be known.

IN ANY CASE. Eleven facts about myself.

1. My arm sort of hurts, guys. It's just all sore and achy and not good. It hurt to pick up my cat. To be fair, the cat weighs nearly seventeen pounds, but still. Not cool.
2. I have finished my third Neal Stephenson novel of the month. That's twenty five hundred pages. 2500. That's a lot, and all of it's complex number-stuff, philosophical musings, baroque (or as he'd spell it, Barock) plot twists, meta-history, future-history, meta-sideways-multiverse history, or financial stuff. He created proofs for some of his work in Anathem. That's dedication. I feel accomplished just finishing the novels.
3. My mind is being simultaneously blown and reconstructed by my required summer reading, How To Read Literature Like A Professor. It's exactly what it sounds like, only occasionally funny. It's making me think on my summer break, and that only ever leads to strange and scary connections, like realizing the whole Shakespearean tragedy aspect of Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde. It's like Romeo and Juliet turned inside out, because the people are idiot, but they actually go about trying to fix things instead of just sobbing about it before they kill themselves in angst. It was cool once I got it.
4. On the same topic, more or less, my mind works in stories. So do yours' (Hi, you two faithful readers). But not just yours. Everyone's does. This was pointed out to me for the first time in Science of Discworld II: The Globe, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. As soon as I have time, I'm going to write a whole post on it, I swear.
5. And segueing into the topic of books by Terry Pratchett, I'm halfway through The Fifth Elephant right now, and I'm noticing that his books have a more or less infinite reread value. They're still funny, even the fourth time you read them, and you notice new harmonics every time. I only just noticed that the 'clacks,' which are a cross between semaphore towers and telegraph lines, rhymes with 'fax,' which is how it gets used half the time. He did that on purpose. It's always on purpose, with Pratchett.
6. I only have two three more authors to rave about, so hold on, I'll give you some actual facts soon. Neil Gaiman is possible the best author I have ever read, barring the other authors mentioned in this post. He turns everything into a dream. His stories operate on dream logic, but a special kind that holds together like a spiderweb beaded with dew, intact even once morning comes. I love it I love it I love it. *ahem* Moving on.
7. Two! Douglas Adams had the same kind of dream-logic thing going on, only instead of spiderwebs and myth and horror holding it all together, it's humor. He turned towels and a perfectly innocent number into things that will forever be a kind of shibboleth among myself and all the others who've read and loved his work. Also, I can't talk about cars in Britain in the 1980's without laughing anymore. Which is a topic that comes up more often than you'd think. (Three times. I've had that conversation three times.)
8. Last one! Go read Tamora Pierce's stuff. Start with the Song of the Lioness quartet and work your way chronologically through the rest of her Tortall series, and never ever regret it. Her books have the absolute best characterizations, twistiest plots, wittiest dialogue and amazing battle scenes ever. They get better as they go, up until her Beka Cooper prequels, which kept me up reading until two AM, which isn't something I do except for the writers on this list. I would be a completely different person if I hadn't gotten a hold of her books at the age of nine and reread them roughly once a year since.
9. I feel like I sort of copped out for the previous seven facts, so here's a real fact: I'm more or less addicted to being weird in public. Not weird like disgusting, but weird as in breaking social norms. Wearing ankle-length coats and high heels to go to the book store. Wearing an evening gown out shopping. Organizing impromptu a capella concerts in the park with my choir friends. Talking completely seriously about the next Hunting of the Snipe on public transport with my punk rock friend. It's pretty cool.
10. I'm also in danger of becoming addicted to performances. There's nothing like the rush of taking a bow in front of a standing ovation, be it for a concert or a musical. If I could earn a living doing nothing but perform, I'd gladly give a kidney. I've got two of those, it can't hurt.
11. There's both a model dragon and a model TIE fighter hanging from my ceiling. Science fiction/fantasy, distilled down to two images that pop up when the classification is mentioned, and hanging from the roof over my head. I like it.

Finished!

Wait, now I need to answer actual questions. Huh.

1. What is the best book you ever read containing the concept of time travel, and what made it so good?  Was it the time travel or something else?
1. The best book concerning time travel would probably be the Thursday Next series, just all of it, by Jasper Fforde. If I had to choose one, it would be First Among Sequels, because that is the book in which time travel plays the largest part. And the time travel is amazing, but that's not what's so good. It's the huge meta-fictional basis of the thing, in which no fiction is safe and the book will reference itself without mercy. I have never suffered from a fit of giggles so badly as when I was reading Fforde, except maybe when I read Adams or Pratchett.
2. What is the longest and strangest sounding word you can think of on short notice?  (No Googling.)
1. Sesquipedalian.  Because it means what it is and sounds like what squid feels like. Don't ask me to explain that, because I really can't.
3. What are three expressions you commonly use that originated in Shakespeare?  (You can Google for this if you need to, I suppose.)
1. "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"
2. "To be, or not to be, that is the question!"
3.  "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest."
4. What is your opinion on the theory that people brush their teeth in opposite rotation directions based on the hemisphere they live in?  (Bonus points if you reference the Coriolis Effect– even more if you actually know what it is.)
1. I think it's completely stupid, to be honest. The Coriolis Effect doesn't work like that. It's more a thing dependent on the person's brain. I, for example, don't brush in a rotation. I just go back and forth or up and down. The curve in reference to a rotation frame doesn't have anything at all to do with this.
5. What type of humor do you appreciate most in fiction: humorous dialogue, funny descriptions, funny character histories, satire in the narrative, etc….?  Add your own if you wish.
1. All of it. Just... all of it. Satire and funny descriptions have a special place in my heart, because they are something Pratchett excels at, but I've been sent into fits of giggling by all the things mentioned. It just has to be witty.
6. What’s your favorite key on the keyboard?  (You know you have one.  Don’t even try to bluff it out.)
1. E above middle C or B flat above middle C. It might be alarming that I didn't have to think about that.
2. EDIT: I have been informed that Liam meant the thing I'm typing on, not the instrument. His reaction? "Only a musician." Very true, and I'll own up to that completely. SO THE REAL ANSWER: My favorite would probably be the Tab key. I don't know why. It just is.
7. What’s your least favorite key on the keyboard?  [Insert above parenthetical here.]
1.  I dislike the highest C and the three keys below the last C, because my piano these are the keys that can never again be tuned properly without restringing the whole piano. So I don't like them.
2. EDIT: See above. SO THE REAL ANSWER: I have a thing against the little Microsoft key that my current computer has. It's pointless. It has one function only. It's boring. It doesn't even type a little Microsoft symbol. They could have programmed in a shortcut with as little work and less wasted plastic. /rant.
8. If you could shoot one historical personage, who?  (Excluding anyone who has been assassinated already.  Duh.)
1. Hitler would be the obvious answer, but I'm going to go with the guy who assassinated Duke Ferdinand. Wait, no, check that, take out Lee Harvey Oswald, or at the very least Sirhan Sirhan. All preferably before the assassinations that would make them famous.
9. If you could shoot one fictional character– even to spite someone who will shoot them later in the book, and whether or not there is a weapon that can actually shoot in their time period or setting– who?  (No restrictions, except that you cannot describe the death in all its gory detail.)
1.  I'd shoot Mr. de Mauve, from Shades of Grey, because he ruined a perfectly good bittersweet ending with a petty bribe and made it an awful lot more bitter. Idiot. He is the only character towards which I really harbor a death wish against, in all of fiction. The rest get what they have coming toward them.
10. As we reach the penultimate question, what springs into your head when you hear “penultimate”?  The ultimate pen, translated badly from French (where, as everyone knows, all the words are in the wrong order)?  A penalty mate– a friend who is only stuck with you when you do something really really bad?  Something else?  (The only restriction is that you cannot say the actual definition of the word.)
1. "This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate...)." Because Terry Pratchett is my favorite of all favorite things.
11. If you could capture a single creature out of any myth created by man at least a hundred years before the present year, which would you choose?  (Do not go into detail.  I’m not giving writing prompts; I’m giving questions for you to answer.  If you want to take these as writing prompts, do so by all means– I will claim royalties.  Oh, and do not say you’d catch a unicorn.  Just don’t.)
1.  I would probably capture either one of the little men that people kept sighting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or the creator of the Voynich manuscript. Technically the second one isn't necessarily a creature of myth, but since we don't know who it was, I'm declaring it legal.

One more thing to go.

1. What is your favorite television show?
2. How many books do you read in a month, on average?
3. Can you roll your tongue?
4. What's your favorite song?
5. What would you do, if you knew that nothing you did in the next hour would have no negative repercussions?
6. If you were suddenly placed in the movie 'The Birds,' what would you do to survive?
7. Do you think dragons are awesome or merely tired cliches? Why?
8. Where would you go, if you could go anywhere in the world (or out of it)?
9. Pirates or ninjas?
10. If given the choice, would you prefer to live forever with no guarantee of bodily health, or have  eternal youth, but no guarantee of living forever?
11. What is your favorite historical person?

La Stranezza, I nominate you. I'm pretty sure that's a safe bet. Go forth and answer questions!



Now to go write legitimate things.

Content!

This is a bunch of random recommendations for stuff that I like, because content is hard and my brain burnt itself out yesterday. Wheeeee!



First! I'm reblogging something from the amazing Mentalfloss Watercooler Ammo emails: The Disciples, a series of photographs by James Mollison, documenting the types of people to attend different concerts. The video projection in amazing, especially the first picture, of the Goths.

Especially these four. Yes, I'm slightly creepy. Deal.

Second! This makes my day, every time I see it.

Third! I have finally joined an MMORPG. It's Fantasy Online, and this might be my addictive nature and lack of experience speaking, but I like it. Level 40 in the past week! Woo!

Fourth and Finally! MIT has designed a mechanical Willy Wonka. No lie. It is a literal chocolate candy printer, with refillable cartridges. And less specifically, there's also just a straight food printer. Gene Wilder, purple suit, top hat and all, is in my head and grinning at me.

Gene Wilder, I'm sorry we ever doubted you.

List list list

So far today, I've:

• Pulled a Hanukkah-style miracle, only with gas and without religious significance
• Nearly been electrocuted twice while setting up game buzzers
• Moved a grand piano
• Sung an unexpected solo
• Faced the wild, nasty unknowns of the basement armed with only a garbage bag, washcloth, and bottle of cleaning spray, and not only lived to tell about it, but also cleaned it up relatively well.
• Won three games of Twister

So far today, I have not yet:

• Practiced my accompaniment piece for tonight 
• Oops
• Figured out a way to lock my room so that the invasion of eighth graders soon to take over the house will stay out of it
• Figured out why the TV is in the back of my car and how they fit it in there
• Eaten anything other than a waffle and some tabasco-flavored Cheezits
• I may need to correct this at some point.
• Figured out why the piano had been moved into the calc. room in the first place
• Discovered the origin of this sudden strange sense of foreboding
• Check that, it's because of my sister's party. May the FSM save my soul.
• Used this quote in conversation: