Currently The Triptych By Demon Hunter Undying see related

Amazing. I’ve been tagged twice for this and didn’t even notice. I shall be a good sport though, and fulfill my obligation to the people who tagged me. I will not, however, be paying attention to half of the rules…

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note blog with 25 random facts, habits, goals, or things about you.  At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

1) FACT: I was tagged by Peridot21 first.

2) HABIT: Too much internet…

3) GOAL: To drop off my RX tomorrow.

4) How can I write something about myself that is neither a fact nor a habit? Hmm…

5) FACT: I was also tagged by chaingangsoldier619.

6) HABIT: Showering when I get up.

7) GOAL: To go to a movie with Katelyn tomorrow.

8) I am a penguin. There…it’s not a fact…or a goal.

9) FACT: My eyes look greener if I wear purple. They’re still brown, but they look greener.

10) HABIT: Staying up too late.

11) I wish I had a cookie.

12) I think we must have the same eye colour…that would explain why I can’t remember if it was brown or green. Maybe greener than mine. Yeah. Probably.

13) FACT: I think I make sense.

14) HABIT: Sleeping in my bed.

15) GOAL: To make it to Bible study this next Tuesday.

16) A tortoiseshell cat named Nightmare. Yep.

17) FACT: I like knit shirts. They’re soft.

18) I think I wrote a poem about Nightmare once. Now that I think of it…she was killing people though. Bad kitty.

19) FACT: I cannot do a cartwheel.

20) Books are fun.

21) FACT: I like tacos, but you have to drain the grease off the beef first or it’s just gross.

22) HABIT: I like me some Dr. Pepper, please. Most days.

23) GOAL: To not complain when I get dragged to Dining Out. This is going to be a tough one…

24) FACT: Roger, Dan’s dog and Lemony and Domino’s littermate was a lot friendlier than I thought he would be.

25) There is a song called Unicornucopia, and I’ve had eight years to figure it out and still can’t. Fail.

End.

Reeser

“I don’t want to die now!” he yelled. “I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!”

Arthur Dent

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Currently My Grandfather, the Cubist By Joy Electric Victorian Intuition / Father Winter Replies see related

Heya hey.

I’ve been listening to every single song I own and clearing music out of my iTunes that doesn’t belong there anymore. It’s tough. There’s a hecka lot of music in here that…honestly…I don’t really remember liking very much. I always hoped maybe it would grow on me, because I hate acknowledging that I don’t absolutely love everything that I own, but it never did. I think a lot of the stuff I’m getting rid of is music I listened to in early high school, plus a bunch of metal that just never grew on me and probably never will now.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll get rid of all my old music though, because even if I don’t like some of it as much anymore, there are still way too many songs that I can’t bear to delete just yet because they have the odd fond memory tacked on. I’ll keep the ones that I can remember getting all giddy over when I was fifteen and would call the radio station and request them or that I remember listening to over and over and over again when I was playing the part of Angsty Highschooler…

You guys ever do stuff like that? Go through all of your music or books or clothes and get rid of things that just don’t feel right to keep? (I know you do. Of course you do…I’m just trying to engage you in some sort of conversation.)

I don’t think I’ve ever really gone through all my books. A lot of stuff got lost the first time my family moved, but I never specifically got rid of anything. I think that’s part of why I’m doing those book reviews…so I can see what I’ve got that’s worth hanging on to and what I should maybe get rid of.

Then…there was the time when I was 14 and got rid of a bunch of CDs and books by scratching them up and ripping the books to shreds because I thought it was the right thing to do. Oh well. Maybe it was the right thing to do at the time. Just makes me feel weird to admit that I went and ripped up a bunch of books. I did that? Me? Yep. I sure did.

I think the me from back then would be appalled at my present day media choices. That me would be very worried about me. Very worried indeed.

Of course, that me wouldn’t understand because that me wouldn’t know what I meant if I tried to talk to it about our monster side. She would think she knew what I meant, but she'd be wrong…and I would try to explain it to her and she would probably get angry with me because the present me couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about. I’m amazed at how assured the then me was that she knew everything that it was possible to know about us. Silly of her to think that.

Anyway…back to weeding through music.

End.

Reeser

Reeser: *pretends to write a letter* …and by the way, why do you feel a need to change your album covers eighty thousand times? I’ve seen you do this for a few of them now.

Chris: You wouldn’t even have to ask. We already know the answers. One of them had a naked woman on the cover, and on the other one he was all tied up…erotically.

Reeser: Heh.

(whatever would my old self say about this? I probably don’t want to know.)

Hey guys. I promise to stop being boring and doing surveys…as soon as something worth writing about happens. Until then…

LAST PERSON.

You hung out with?

Chris.

You text?

That is grammatically incorrect…but…I texted a photo to my email address.

You were in a car with?

Chris.

Went to the movies with?

I went by myself to that last movie.

Person you went to shop with?

Chris. We were seeking out a CD that he wanted.

You talked on the phone?

Chris. This is getting a little repetitive. Hm.

Made you laugh?

*sigh* Chris…

You hugged?

Same.

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY...

Sun or moon?

Moon.

Winter or Fall?

Fall.

Left or Right?

Right.

Sunny or rainy?

Sunny.

Where do you live?

At home.

Are there 1 or 2 people who you can always trust and rely on?

Depends.

Do you want to get married?

I probably will.

Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it?

Twirl…but I don’t like spaghetti that much.

What time is it?

3:33 AM.

Are you afraid of commitment?

Depends on what I’m committing to.

What is your greatest hope/wish?

Ha. I have no idea.

IN THE LAST 48 HOURS HAVE YOU...

Kissed someone?

Probably.

Sang?

Hmm…no, actually.

Listened to music?

I am doing that right now.

Danced Crazy?

I don’t dance.

Cried?

I don’t cry.

20 FIRSTS .....

Who was your first prom date?

Aaron. And it wasn’t prom. It was a Junior-Senior banquet. I liked it better than prom because there was food.

When did you go to your first funeral and viewing?

Same summer my older sister got married. I was maybe…eleven?

Who was your first grade teacher?

Sister Marie.

Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?

Atlanta, en route to San Francisco.

Who was your first best friend in high school?

Melody.

Where was your first sleepover?

Emily’s house.

Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?

I don’t call people because I’ve had a bad day. I deal with it on my own.

When was the first time you were a bridesmaid or groomsman?

Nevah.

What was the first concert you went to?

Ace Troubleshooter, Relient K, Five Iron Frenzy, and Jars of Clay.

What was the last concert you went to?

Voltaire and the Hellblinki Sextet.

First celebrity crush?

Hm. Don’t know.

Five names you go by:

1. My real name.

2. Reeser

3. Reesey/Reesy

4.  Reeses

5. Er…I don’t think I have a fifth one.

Three things you are wearing right now:

1. A blue shirt.

2. Jeans.

3. Green Converse.

Two things you did last night:

1. Wrote.

2. Read.

Two things you will eat/have eaten today:

1. Spinach without dressing/toppings.

2. String cheese.

Two people you last talked to on the phone: (this is oddly similar to a previous thing by the way…)

1. Chris.

2. Mum.

Cheers.

Reeser

*Pachycephalosaurus plays in the background*

Chris: Ah, you missed a great Showbread show.

Reeser: Not really. I was awake for most of it. I could hear them from the tent.

Chris: Yeah…and their guy…um…he wore a lot of green makeup.

Reeser: See? I told you, Ashton Nyte is no worse than that.

Chris: But the guy in Showbread doesn’t feel the need to write songs about wearing women’s clothes.

Reeser: I have yet to come across a song by Ashton about wearing women’s clothes. And have you ever seen a Showbread music video? The two things I remember about them are Josh Dies’ eye makeup, and the super short shorts in the lizard video.

Chris: Yeah…well…

Josh: …say I’m smart, say my skirt is so short, say I’m different, say I’m one of a kind.

Chris: *to the stereo* You had to ruin it, didn’t you?

Reeser: *snickering*

Currently The Plague Dogs: A Novel By Richard Adams see related

So, here is my book review. And as soon as I post this one, I’ve got two more that I need to write up. I’ve been reading a “teen” series (no, not Twilight, so don’t freak out), and it’s not a bad series, but the books are short enough that I can zip through them faster than I can get myself to sit down and write up reviews.

Anyway, hope you enjoy, even if you will probably not read this particular book.

Selection:

Plague Dogs

by Richard Adams

Synopsis:

We begin our story with Rowf, a fierce mongrel dog and the subject of a conditioning experiment. Rowf is made to swim and swim until, exhausted and unconscious, he’s drawn out of the water tank and taken back to his kennel. In the dog kennel, we meet his friend, Snitter. Although Snitter’s somewhat mad from his recent brain surgery, he’s still a very clever dog and manages to break Rowf and himself out of the research facility.

After the break-out, the two dogs roam the English countryside where they take up with a fox who tries to teach them the finer points about killing sheep and stealing chickens so that they can all be proper wild animals. The dogs aren’t cut out for life in the wild though, and when the local people find out that the dogs might have come in contact with the plague during their escape, the hunt for the “Plague Dogs” begins…

Reeser’s Opinion:

I don’t like this book. I think I liked it when I originally read it (when I was maybe 13), but that would probably have been because I didn’t understand what was really going on in the parts of the story where the scientists and politicians are talking.

The book is split up between lots of different characters. Snitter and Rowf are, of course, the main characters because they are the Plague Dogs, but there are also sections that focus on the scientists at the research facility, sections that focus on the local farmers and townspeople, ones about politicians that end up being responsible for the dogs’ escape, and ones about a news reporter responsible for bringing the story about escaped research dogs to everyone’s attention.

Somehow, I think Adams managed to make everyone look bad. The dogs aren’t as likable as they might have been, because they’re always bickering about doggy morals and how dogs should behave towards humans. The scientists look bad because they do all these horrible things to their animals, and although one scientist turns out to be very kind after all, he’s still talked about as being too sentimental and irresponsible. The politicians look bad because they turn out to not care about the animals or the people who might or might not get exposed to the plague…they only care about what the research facility is costing them. And, of course, the reporter looks bad because he’s one of those unscrupulous reporters that people looooove to include in books and movies.

There are really no likable characters in this story at all, except perhaps Snitter’s master, but I’ll let you decide that for yourself (if you ever choose to subject yourself to this book, that is).

The plot is believable enough, I suppose, but I don’t feel very nicely about the underlying themes in it. I believe that the point of this book was to show the bad sides of animal research and how cruel and pointless it is. I mean, when Adams worked it out so that the initials of the research facility spell out A.R.S.E., we can pretty much assume that he thinks that the research going on there is a load of crap.

Now, I do agree that a lot of the things he describes—and assures us in the foreword have actually happened to animals—do seem unnecessary and of no foreseeable benefit to anyone, animal or human. But the idea of using animals for research is a tricky one, and since I’ve also done some research for my classes, I know that both people and animals have gotten tremendous benefit from this kind of research, too.

I don’t think Adams does a very good job at addressing the ambiguity of the situation though. He waits until almost the very end of the story to introduce us to the sickly daughter of the kind scientist, and to let us know that whatever she’s got is so far incurable and that her whole family is counting on medical research to come up with some kind of treatment.

Overall, I don’t recommend this book unless you are an animal rights fanatic. It will probably make you fly into a righteous sort of rage, and make you feel better because your animal-related morals will be reaffirmed…but if you’re not looking for that kind of thing and actually have no interest either way in animal rights, then you will probably not enjoy this book very much.

Cheers.

Reeser

Currently Severed Death By Morbid Sacrifice Whom I Serve see related

Wow. I’ve been awake for about 29 hours now…

See, I got all messed up by staying up until almost 5am Tuesday, and then I was only asleep for about three hours before the dogs started barking at a deer in the field behind the house…and then the television was turned up to some ungodly volume (the living room is right below my room), and after my mum was kind enough to turn it down, the people working on the house next door started making all sorts of horrible nose with heavy machinery…it was awful. So, at noon I finally fell asleep again, only to be awoken by my poor fiancé when he showed up at my house to go to bible study and was like, “um…you’re sleeping???”

Bad Reeser. So, since I was supposed to go with my dad to take the puppies to the vet this morning, (puppies are fine…just got a check-up since they were spayed two weeks ago) I decided to stay up instead of risk not getting up on time. Then my dad was nice and dropped me off at Easton (a big mall-type area). I went to see The Fourth Kind, and it was…interesting. Not really good or bad, but still interesting.

They weren’t busy when I got my ticket (who sees “scary” movies by themselves at midday???), so I chatted with the guy at the ticket counter for a while (rather, he chatted with me…he must have been bored because he didn’t seem to want to take my movie card so I could pay and get my ticket) about the movie I was going to. Heh…I told him about this movie, Labyrinth, with David Bowie…and he’d never seen it before, so he thought it was really funny when I told him about the David Bowie character being a barn owl for part of the movie, and that when I first saw the preview for The Fourth Kind, all I could think was, “wow, David Bowie’s an alien.”

Of course, then he made our little chat awkward by telling me I seemed like a pretty awesome person (which I will readily admit to when people say it), and that I should come back sometime.

???

To the movie theatre? Well, I’m sure I will…but I don’t know if that’s quite what he meant. If Chris had been there, he would have gone into glowering mode and told me before we were out of earshot that the guy was hitting on me. I usually can’t tell…like, there are specific things that I’d say, “yeah, that was ‘hitting on’ behaviour,” but usually when Chris says someone was hitting on me (which is rare enough), it’s about people who really just seemed like they were being nice.

Oh well. It was nice to talk to him. And the girl at the concessions…she didn’t seem as chatty, but she was still friendlier than the theatre employees usually are.

I was kind of worried though, when I was the only person in the theatre five minutes before the movie started. My British voice and I did enjoy a pretty animated conversation and sang along with some of the songs we knew in the “Movie Watcher” previews that come before the real previews.

There are some movies coming out that I’m pretty interested in…like Eli, Wolfman, and Daybreakers. Woot for monster movies. Kind of bizarre to me though, that they’re suddenly so popular…like…I don’t know…I reckon a lot of it has to do with the Twilight crazed young audiences, and the entertainment industry wanting to make a buck on monsters while they’re popular…I think the monster craze will crest very soon…but…I don’t know…it’s hard to explain why this upsurge in monster popularity is so particularly strange to me.

It’s like…I figured something out, via monsters, and things got better. And now the world seems to agree with me. Nice, but annoying as hell. I wanted it to be “my” thing…but I suppose it will still be my thing when everyone else gets bored with it.

Anyway…after the movie, I went to Mongolian BBQ for lunch. It was good, but they have this terrible thing about seating lone diners in the very middle of the room, at a table that every single person is going to have to weave around…ugh.

I went and did a bit of shopping, too…and I feel really strange about knowing that I’m starting to recognize a few of the Hot Topic and Barnes & Noble employees. Unfortunately I had to talk to the ones I don’t particularly like…at Hot Topic, there’s this very Goth employee who used to work at the Hot Topic closer to our old house…but I guess she got transferred or something, since this is the first time I’d ever seen her at the Easton one. She’s has this grumpy way of talking to you that makes you feel like she thinks you’re the stupidest creature on the planet, and she wishes you would go away and be stupid someplace else…

Seriously…all the other Goths I’ve ever met have been like perky little cheerleaders compared with her. Myself included.

Bah. At least she didn’t have to ring my stuff up and talk to me…but I did make her go aaaaaall the way to the back and open the dressing room for me.

Then when I was at B&N, and this older man was working at the check-out. He seems pretty grumpy, too…was the same guy that didn’t even bother to look at me when I asked for an application back in September. Sure, he gave me one, but seriously…you should at least look at the person you’re talking to. Grr.

He was kind of nicer this time, but only marginally. Seemed really put-off when I asked him how he was doing.

I swear, I try very hard to be a polite customer.

Anyway, I think I had a good day overall. Though now I am really starting to feel the lack of sleep setting in. My fingers are missing the right keys, so if you see the odd typo…that’ll be why.

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll post a book review.

Cheers.

Reeser

Reeser: *watches a cloud pass over the moon* Chrisface, look. The moon has a rainbow around it.

Chris: Wow. Ashton, you really know how to flaunt it.

Reeser:  x_x

(I know. Sometimes we worry me.)