eh, things.

[jazzfish]

A week of work and sick-recovery, and a bit of gaming over the weekend. Today my big goal is to get caught up on all the email I owe to various people. Eh, might happen.

I currently have no intention of getting on Google+, partly because I don't need yet another place to keep track of all the same people and partly because, to quote Marco Arment, "a huge advertising company would like you to give them as much of your personal information as possible and encourages you to use their services more frequently, for more reasons, and for longer durations each time so they can show you more ads and make more money from the advertisers." (Yes, I use Facebook: sporadically, in a quarantined browser, and with very little of my personal information.)

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A modern sexual-assault tale: "You knowingly walked down Dundritch Street in your suit when everyone knows you like to give away money, and then you didn't fight back. It sounds like you gave money to someone, but now you're having after-donation regret."

On the difference between Good Dogs and Dogs That Need a Newspaper Smack, which is actually a cogent explanation of privilege and has nothing to do with smacking anybody, canine or otherwise. [via salzara_tirwen]

Holy cow, Barcelona has a Mammoth Museum. And also a shop from which you can purchase your very own mammoth skeleton.

A very cool climbing wall.

Narbonic: The Perfect Collection (print version of online comic!), and a digital Planetary [Warren Ellis] omnibus (online version of print comic!).

And Tim Powers has a new book out next March: ""Next up is a novel based around the Rossetti family, a loose sequel to The Stress of Her Regard." I should reread Stress; I've only read it once but I remember it as being middling Powers (so, lesser than Anubis Gates or Last Call, better than the Last Call sequels, and, mm, on par with Three Days to Never).

Comments

[thanate]

The University of Nebraska State Museum has got a hall of Mammoths, ancient to modern as you walk in the front door. If I'd had any reason to be in Lincoln, I would totally have tried to book it for my wedding reception...

(They also have a bunch of stuff on the ashfall fossil beds, which are responsible for the state fossil being the mammoth. Reputedly if one wanders along roadsides in the Nebraska badlands for any length of time, mammoth teeth will appear. (I didn't try this the last time I drove through, but I was tempted...)

[jazzfish]

Huh! That ... would have been a pretty awesome place to have a wedding reception, yeah.

(Not quite worth driving through Nebraska for, but neat regardless. :)

[desfido]

I've only read it once as well, but I'd rank it best of the 2nd tier from what I recall.

First tier is Declare, Anubis Gates, Last Call, and Drawing of the Dark.

Third tier is the LC sequels.

2nd tier is everything else of his I've read (Stress, Tides, Three Days).

The unclassified works are The Skies Discrowned, Epitaph in Rust, Dinner at Deviant's Palace, and all his short works.

It's the only one of his works from that second tier that I've had a strong impulse to reread, even though I haven't followed through on it yet. I find it quite possible that after a reread or three, I may bump it up to the top tier.

So, I'm sort of excited, on the one hand, because I liked Stress. On the other, I'm not particularly impressed with what he came up with for sequels before (relatively to the admittedly high standard of how good he is when he's at his best). So, who knows.

[desfido]

Also, the Planetary link is broken.

[jazzfish]

Sounds about right. (Though I should reread Drawing as well.) From all I've heard, Skies Discrowned and Epitaph also belong in the third tier, and my recollection is that Dinner is the bottom of the second.

Also, you weren't a fan of Stranger Tides?

(Also also, link fixt: not sure how that happened, but it should have pointed to http://blog.newsarama.com/2011/07/08/dccomixology-releases-digital-planetary-omnibus/ .)

[desfido]

I wouldn't say so much that I wasn't a fan of Stranger Tides. More that I'm not nearly as much of a fan of it as I am his other works. I mean, I *have* had an impulse to reread it, which means it's at least okay. I just haven't had a strong one, like I very frequently get very strongly with the works in the top tier. I don't always follow through on that urge, because I often have more strong impulses to read or reread books than I have time to do so, but with the top tier, it's often and strong enough, that combined with the relative availability of them (I either own them or can reliable obtain them from the library or both), I expect to end up rereading at least a couple of them at least once a year.

The third tier, I will probably only reread if there ends up being another sequel, despite there actually being some good bits, just because I was comparatively disappointed.

Stranger Tides, Stress of Her Regard, and Three Days to Never I expect to eventually own all of, and to eventually reread all of. But, unlike the characters, plots, and imagery of the top tier, they just haven't made as much of an impression on me. Declare, for example, I consider to be a notable work in both fantasy and spy fiction, and enjoyable by the standards of both. While they haven't made quite so strong an impression on me yet, I am open to the possibility of them making more of an impression on rereads; I just think Stress is the most likely to do so at present.

Once I have I reread both Tides & 3 Days a few times, even if I still put them both in the second tier, I still wouldn't say I didn't like them. I mean, I even kind of half-assed liked the third tier works. It's kind of like Scorcese's lesser works: they're still good, you're still glad you've seen them -- it's just not necessary to rewatch them unless the mood strikes you (which it's less likely to do so), because there's not as much to get out of 'em as his really good ones.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

1) I don't see ads. Thank you AdBlock Plus!

2) I thank advertisers for making it possible to have an active social life without actually having to spend facetime with people.

3) I will follow my friends wherever they go.

[jazzfish]

Absolutely agree on #1 and 3, and, if necessary in a year or two I'll end up with a G+ acc't. Migration and drift are one thing (okay, two things); just adding an extra locus for social interaction, meh.

Advertising irritates me (hence, adblock), and I'm deeply distrustful of enterprises whose business model is "sell my info to companies so they can waste my time trying to sell me things." Meh. Not like there's really much I can do to stem the tide, not online anyway.