Blood Red Shoes

Blood Red Shoes – I Wish I Was Someone Better

God bless those darlings over at PopScene for having a little iMeem widget in their website. From there I’ve found two new bands to stalk and see if they’re any good.

Blood Red Shoes formed in the UK in 2005, and their album is slated for release in April this year. Don’t let the fact that it’s a two-piece group, one on drums and one on guitar, make you think of White Stripes. First of all, the talent between the two isn’t staggeringly different. Second of all, the drums are far more interesting. And third, when they both sing, you don’t cringe. In fact, you smile, because you really appreciate harmonizing. Or maybe that’s just me with my choirslut background.

Anyway, I’m going to see if I can’t swing that torrent soon. Hopefully the album lives up to the singles.

Garfield, Minus Garfield

I had a completely different post for today, but this trumped it.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

I wonder if this is what Jim Davis meant all along.

Writers Write

I don’t imagine other writers writing.

Some people get lovely images of their favorite writer slaving away over their typewriter, keyboard, fountain pen, quill and inkpot, what have you, sweat glistening on their brow as they waffle back and forth over whether the dog should be a retriever or a Labrador, or if that comma truly needs to be there. They see in their mind’s eye the author slaving away over his or her beloved work, and this image gives them hope, because they too slave away, and perhaps they can one day be at the caliber of their dream writer.

And this is the way it is. I’m aware of it. Writers struggle. Wolfe had fingers perpetually stained with ink. Faulkner fought with his printer that even though black was cheaper, something was going to be lost if they couldn’t print his work in four different colors. And, as he’s recently going on about in his blog in the process of making The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman does in fact sit down and spend time putting pen to paper and making pages to be fastened together and read in a series.

It’s just so awkward. So pedestrian. Despite my conscious knowledge of the process, I still imagine the books on shelves springing from the earth fully-formed, their coming heralded with trumpeting angels and very large cheques. I feel in my heart of hearts that I’m the only one who is human and struggles.

It’s not that I think I am unique in my trials. I just can’t see how such wondrous things can come from a process so mundane and human.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Book Review: Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

EATS, SHOOTS, AND LEAVES, by Lynne Truss

I know Lynne Truss would hate me if she met me as a person. My manners are largely foul, my language matches, and I happen to be able to truly appreciate use of an emoticon. Nontheless, her book had me in stitches at points, and I would like to shake her hand for giving this lowly engineer common grounds upon which I could chat with my CFO. Although showing passages to my coworkers crowned me the office Grammar Nazi, with mutterings like, “Be careful when you write emails to MD. There’s no telling what will be done to your words.”

I’m not a pendant. Although I did diagram the sentence “I would like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand” on someone’s whiteboard in an effort to show the importance of the Oxford comma. In fact, I snuck into their office while they were at a meeting, wearing a hooded cape and a domino mask, leaving only my words as evidence that their office had been disturbed.

Sentence diagramming is a fun party trick.

Corollary: I don’t find myself frequently invited to parties.

Book Review: Twilight

TWILIGHT, by Stephanie Meyer

I didn’t like this book. I’m going to say this flat-out.

Perhaps this is just a failed communication between myself and romance as a genre. I would like to think, however, that there are indeed Smart Bitches who read these books and have at minimum the discerning taste to identify and repel straight-out bad writing. I’m going to submit the reasons I think that this is not a good book, and those reasons will be based not at all on the fact that I don’t care for romance.

As I’ve said before, my heart is a cold, black place.

The fact that I managed to read about four hundred fifty pages without striking any discernible plot (outside of Bella and Edward making eyes at one another) is a problem.

I straight disliked the main character. The first chapter did it for me. I cannot get behind her type of persona. I held contempt for people like that even back when I myself was a person like that (aka: dour teenager). Call it a personal failing if you will. I’m largely intolerant of people like this. Moreover, the fact that she was asked by four guys to the girl’s choice dance is a red flag. Making her an absolute klutz is neither humanizing nor redeeming. It’s a transparent attempt at giving a character a flaw, and completely misses the point of what a character flaw should be.

I will say, if Edward were a touch less melancholy and angst-ridden, I might have enjoyed him. There’s a difference between having angst and being angst-ridden, and I forgive Meyer on this point sheerly because riding that razor-thin line is no easy task. She went a little far into the red as far as I’m concerned, but it’s an early effort.

The character struggles were freshman at best, but that’s a fair assessment, since from what I can tell this is Meyer’s first book. One can only hope that the conflict of “I’m a monster in love” will receive some added layers in future books.

This book was originally recommended to me when I mentioned I liked Dresden Files. I don’t exactly see the connection outside of “light escapist reading” and even that is tenuous at best.

So, no, I wouldn’t recommend this book. Because I couldn’t really find much that was redeeming about it. But, well, perhaps that’s just my romance prejudice talking.

Mindless Self Indulgence

Mindless Self Indulgence – Shut Me Up

I’m in a mood this morning. It was going to either be this or Peaches. Primarily because they match my new haircut.

The Watchmen

I need to be better at reading the internet.

Watchmen just wrapped yesterday. In celebration, they’ve given us a picture of Rorschach and someone on fire.

Awesome.

Waste of a Weekend

Well, not technically.

I was intending on going with a friend to see Wicked. This would have required a road trip. Well, things didn’t work out, so I ended up staying home. My only human interaction between Friday night and Tuesday morning was the internet and the pizza delivery guy.

And it was fantastic.

I feel so deliciously recharged. I feel like I want to write and sing. I’m tired due to lack of sleep (too much gaming – I went from level 53 to 59 on my paladin, please don’t laugh at my gear) but mentally and emotionally ready to take on everything.

Now I really have to write tonight. And critique things. Yes. Critique things.

The Dissociatives

The Dissociatives – Somewhere Down the Barrel

Daniel Johns, lead singer and songwriter of Silverchair, and Paul Mac, Australian dance music producer, made this group sometime back in 2003. The story I heard was that they got to know each other after Mac did a mix of Freak (album, Freak Show). Johns sent Mac some poetry, and Mac made music of it. And lo, this happened.

I’ll say, Thinking in Reverse is my favorite song of theirs, but this one is a very strong and easily palatable single. Horror with Eyeballs is great, but can be potentially off-putting. Which is why I went with this.

Computer Problems, Part the Final

You thought I forgot. Nay. I just had to wait for a day with nothing interesting to share.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story doesn’t play out to be nearly as exciting as the first bit. Even the second bit was a letdown. From here I came to discover two sad facts: one, Microsoft matches the product key to the system disk, so the disk I got was useless; and two, it was, in fact, my video card that died.

So I bought the GeForce 8600.

“Why didn’t you just get the 8800?”

Because the 8800 is the 8600, you’re just paying $125 to get it overclocked.