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Jan. 18th, 2005 07:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
Paradoxically enough, the reason I haven't been updating terribly often is that I have too much to say, not too little.
What trips me out about Further Confusion 2005 is that this year the GOH was Alan Dean Foster, the author responsible for pulling me into furry (through the "Spellsinger" series, which features giant kangaroo djinns, gay unicorns and communist (hey![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
millerwolf!) dragons). I would have given my right arm and one of my spleens (I have three) to be able to just walk up and shake his hand, and to sign my paperback collection of Spellsinger novels, or to just be a completely unhinged geek or *something*. And all the people who're coming back from FC have NOTHING to say about him! What is the world coming to?!? I swear to beans, people are *so* uncultured. ;)
I tried planting the seeds of appreciation in several people before they left conward, and even tried to persuade one or two to pick up autographs *for* me, but alas I think the subtle hard work proved fruitless in the end. Maybe I should just stop being so damned coy about it and just *e-mail* the bastard. But then, *everyone* knows my track record with e-mail.
The weekend was spent entertaining (sort of) lots of company; Horses' Ghost, Warnndog and a few other came down from OK,rozberk made a surprise visit from KC and our resident mini-fridge skyfox showed up from...wherever it is that mini-fridges go when they're not being particularly useful. :) It was a pretty fun weekend, all in all, though all those people have left me more on edge come Monday morning for some reason.
Went to see "White Noise" yesterday with Odis, and *man* is that movie scary as hell. It started out completely lame, setting up the generic horror people-coming-back-from-beyond premise. Enormously successful man and his enormously successful wife are happy and alive with love; creepy and knowing child is introduced before TRAGEDY strikes! (Gasp!) Wife's car is discovered by the river without her body, throwing the now heart-broken man into a series of montages about how sad he is, but courageously copes. Rah rah rah. The movie doesn't pick up until a mysteriously Orson Welles-like fellow introduces him to the concept of EVP, and after brushing it aside at first he decides to check it out in the end. Sure as anything, he hears his wife in a bunch of static and after that he grows obsessive. During one particular 'breakthrough' in hearing his wife's voice, something pretty enormously scary happens, and from then on I was hooked. The ending kind of drew out and set up the very generic "maybe there'll be a sequel" idea, but woo...I still get all goosebumpy thinking about it.
I finished "Witches Abroad" by Terry Pratchett, which turned out to be an enormously good read. I see whattoob gets out of Granny Weatherwax so much, and I think that Eliahn would identify with her a lot, seeing as how she's a good witch who really wanted to be an evil one. I teared up during the scene with the Big Bad Wolf, quite unexpectedly, and I think that was the most impressive thing; in about a page and a half, Pratchett can dump the full weight of tragedy on you without even blinking. He's a masterful storyteller, I'll give him that. My favorite character, despite the very interesting Granny, had to be Nanny Ogg. What a dear. :D
Right now, I'm reading "What Is Zen?" by Alan Watts. I'm really enjoying it so far; a lot of Watts' earliest work ("The Way of Zen" et al.) seemed really clinical to me (though admittedly it's been a while sicne I've read them) and that suggested that he understood Zen well enough logically, but he hadn't really gotten it. This book is a collection of some of the last talks he ever gave, and it's a lot warmer; the sharp mind is still there, but he gives a pleasantly straightforward (and wandering) cadence to his speeches that suggests to me a much deeper understanding of it. Towards the end of his life he started to rework the idea of Zen in his head, and sharing this process in a series of talks is a great thign indeed. :)
"Boomer Express" restarts tomorrow, and we'll be finishing out the end of our third storyline here soon. To be honest, it's going on longer than the length of it would suggest. With my many pockets of non-productivity through November and December, I think we kind of hit a point where we were two weeks behind or so. Even still, I'm pretty excited again about the way we're going with it.
I need to catch up on a lot of things, *especially* e-mail. I'm slogging through it as best I can, but it's a little difficult to sit down and get things done at this point.
What trips me out about Further Confusion 2005 is that this year the GOH was Alan Dean Foster, the author responsible for pulling me into furry (through the "Spellsinger" series, which features giant kangaroo djinns, gay unicorns and communist (hey
millerwolf!) dragons). I would have given my right arm and one of my spleens (I have three) to be able to just walk up and shake his hand, and to sign my paperback collection of Spellsinger novels, or to just be a completely unhinged geek or *something*. And all the people who're coming back from FC have NOTHING to say about him! What is the world coming to?!? I swear to beans, people are *so* uncultured. ;)I tried planting the seeds of appreciation in several people before they left conward, and even tried to persuade one or two to pick up autographs *for* me, but alas I think the subtle hard work proved fruitless in the end. Maybe I should just stop being so damned coy about it and just *e-mail* the bastard. But then, *everyone* knows my track record with e-mail.
The weekend was spent entertaining (sort of) lots of company; Horses' Ghost, Warnndog and a few other came down from OK,
rozberk made a surprise visit from KC and our resident mini-fridge skyfox showed up from...wherever it is that mini-fridges go when they're not being particularly useful. :) It was a pretty fun weekend, all in all, though all those people have left me more on edge come Monday morning for some reason.Went to see "White Noise" yesterday with Odis, and *man* is that movie scary as hell. It started out completely lame, setting up the generic horror people-coming-back-from-beyond premise. Enormously successful man and his enormously successful wife are happy and alive with love; creepy and knowing child is introduced before TRAGEDY strikes! (Gasp!) Wife's car is discovered by the river without her body, throwing the now heart-broken man into a series of montages about how sad he is, but courageously copes. Rah rah rah. The movie doesn't pick up until a mysteriously Orson Welles-like fellow introduces him to the concept of EVP, and after brushing it aside at first he decides to check it out in the end. Sure as anything, he hears his wife in a bunch of static and after that he grows obsessive. During one particular 'breakthrough' in hearing his wife's voice, something pretty enormously scary happens, and from then on I was hooked. The ending kind of drew out and set up the very generic "maybe there'll be a sequel" idea, but woo...I still get all goosebumpy thinking about it.
I finished "Witches Abroad" by Terry Pratchett, which turned out to be an enormously good read. I see what
toob gets out of Granny Weatherwax so much, and I think that Eliahn would identify with her a lot, seeing as how she's a good witch who really wanted to be an evil one. I teared up during the scene with the Big Bad Wolf, quite unexpectedly, and I think that was the most impressive thing; in about a page and a half, Pratchett can dump the full weight of tragedy on you without even blinking. He's a masterful storyteller, I'll give him that. My favorite character, despite the very interesting Granny, had to be Nanny Ogg. What a dear. :DRight now, I'm reading "What Is Zen?" by Alan Watts. I'm really enjoying it so far; a lot of Watts' earliest work ("The Way of Zen" et al.) seemed really clinical to me (though admittedly it's been a while sicne I've read them) and that suggested that he understood Zen well enough logically, but he hadn't really gotten it. This book is a collection of some of the last talks he ever gave, and it's a lot warmer; the sharp mind is still there, but he gives a pleasantly straightforward (and wandering) cadence to his speeches that suggests to me a much deeper understanding of it. Towards the end of his life he started to rework the idea of Zen in his head, and sharing this process in a series of talks is a great thign indeed. :)
"Boomer Express" restarts tomorrow, and we'll be finishing out the end of our third storyline here soon. To be honest, it's going on longer than the length of it would suggest. With my many pockets of non-productivity through November and December, I think we kind of hit a point where we were two weeks behind or so. Even still, I'm pretty excited again about the way we're going with it.
I need to catch up on a lot of things, *especially* e-mail. I'm slogging through it as best I can, but it's a little difficult to sit down and get things done at this point.
