The Holy Chao

I doubt I will post much here anymore. You can find me here, if you like. I may or may not port the archives over there.

# posted by Matt @ 5:28 AM 2 comments

Lowe says that someone called E-Dog submitted this meme, whatever that means. You can read Lowe's version here, if you want. The idea is you're stuck snowbound for eternity. What would you want with you?

Novel You've Read: You Bright and Risen Angels

Novel You've Never Read: I don't know; I haven't read it yet. Something surprising, funny, sad, long, and complex. Ten Thousand Years of Solitude has a certain thematic appeal, being snowed in forever...

Book Series You've Read: The New Sun/Long Sun/Short Sun cycle

Book Series You've Never Read: I don't know; I haven't read it yet. Something surprising, funny, sad, long, and complex. Would something like the complete works of Shakespeare count?

Autobiography You've Read: Golly, I can't remember that I've ever read an autobiography

Autobiography You've Never Read: How to Make Love Like a Pornstar - sure, I'll go with Lowe's choice. Or Grant's Civil War memoir, the edition with the other guy's memoir, too.

Nonfiction You've Read: Psychotic Reactions and Carbouretor Dung maybe. Maybe How the Mind Works or The Language Instinct. Those might end up being too head-trippy for eternal immobility, though.

Nonfiction You've Never Read: I don't know; I haven't read it yet. Can I get snowed in at a Barnes and Noble?

Book on Tape You've Heard: The Killer Angels

Book on Tape You've Never Heard: The BBC production of Ulysses

Snow-Themed Movie: Fargo maybe?

Non-Snow-Themed Movie: Blade Runner or The Princess Bride

Movie Sequel: Toy Story 2 maybe? Or Aliens

Movie Remake: I don't know. The remake of Psycho just for academic reasons

Movie Trilogy: LOTR - again, I'll stick with Lowe on this one. The extended releases, naturally. I mean, hell, I'm snowed in forever! I'll probably watch them back-to-back!

TV Channel: Wow, can I pass on this and take another book? How about some music? Music is notably lacking from this meme...

Season Pass on DVR: I don't even know what this means. How about more music?

Cartoon: Bugs Bunny - I'm with Lowe again

Home Movie: The bit with Luke where he's on the playground and starts lecturing me about his school's playground and wagging his finger at me. It never gets old.

TV Collection on DVD: Meh. Pass. How about the new Battlestar Galactica, once they end the series? I hear it's supposed to be pretty good.

TV Season on DVD: Wow, you people and your television. Am I really missing something? How about... No, I just don't care. How about another book, please?

Magazine Subscription: Either Scientific American or something so dirty that posting its name would get me banned from blogger for eternity.

Photograph: Gosh. Um. I guess the pic of Nancy in the kitchen.

Appetizer: Does a rotating tapas order count?

Entree: Something Thai. How about chicken green curry?

Dessert: I don't really go for desserts. How about another book? OOOH! Or the Internet! That would be useful while eternally snowed in.

Fast Food Item: Buffalo wings from Goodfella's Pizza down the road.

Beer (Patrician): Hm. How patrician do we want to get, here? I'll go with the most patrician: Thomas Hardy's ale.

Beer (Plebian): PBR, man. PBR.

Wine: Not really a wine person. How about more beer? Newcastle Brown, to cover the gap between patrician and plebian.

Booze: I'd say Booker's, but that's just by reputation. Maybe the other B bourbon, the name of which I can never remember? I'll look it up later.

Drink (Chaste): Diet cola of some stripe.

Video Game System With Complete Game Collection: Eh, how about the XBox 360? I don't actually care, but it would either be that or the PS3. The XBox has been out longer, so it probably has more games.

Single Video Game (regardless of platform): Morrowind GOTY Edition for PC and unlimited access to all the mods anyone has ever done ever. Also the construction kit. That's entertainment for a snow-bound eternity!

Card Game: Shanghai. If it counts, I'll take Mah Jongg

Board Game: Go

Pet: Pavel, I guess

Non-Spouse Family Member to Keep You Company: Luke

Writerly Figure to Keep Your Conversational Company: Wow. Depends on my mood. Gene Wolfe, William Vollmann, Steven Pinker, maybe Jeff VanderMeer from the current generation of young turks. Michael Moorcock, maybe.

Sports Figure to Keep Your Atheletic Company: Does Strip Weathers count? Okay, okay. Um, what's his name. Barkley. Charles Barkley or however he spelled it. Oh, or Jackie Chan.

Famous Figure to Keep Your Fabulous Company: Is Siddhartha fabulous?

Historical/Sports/Famous Figure to Keep You Conjugal Company: Janis Joplin. The easiest question in the meme.

Band to Play Every Night: Live? Gosh. The Traveling Wilburys. As long as I get to jam with them. If not, Tool.

Album: Now, see, that's not even fair. A) I'd get bored eventually with any of them, and B) No album I can think of adequately covers all my moods. Maybe the White Album.

Song: See, this isn't even a question. How can you only have one song? "Wings for Marie/10,000 Days"

Piece of Gym Equipment: Kick bag

Exercise You'd Do Every Day: Beat the shit out of the aforementioned bag

Medicine: Imitrex or however you spell it.

Sports Team You'd Follow: More books please

Game on Tape You'd Watch: More books please

Pair of Shoes: Doc Martens

Water Brand: Tap. Or, hell, we're snowed in, right? Open the window, Scoop up some snow, and wait.

Crime You'd Wish You'd Committed PreSnow: I think I'm done with crimes. Don't really need to commit any more, thanks.

More music and books, please. Less TV.

# posted by Matt @ 7:35 AM 0 comments

As I may have mentioned before, Nancy and I are active in the SCA. I'm formerly the seneschal of Azurmont, which is a canton in the Roanoke area. I passed that off as quickly as I could, but I'm now the chronicler and webminister for Azurmont.

In pursuance of which duties, I put together Azurmont's new website. I'm pretty happy with it, although there are things that need to be tweaked (the title on at least one of the pages is still "template," and the times on some of the calendar events are AM instead of PM... what do you want, it's an unpaid gig.)

There's probably more SCA stuff to mention, but I won't right now.

Except to say that "seneschal" = president, "chronicler" = secretary, and "webminister" = webmaster. But you could probably figure that out if you tried.

# posted by Matt @ 4:52 AM 0 comments

Since writing my loot list, I've updated some of it, commented on some of it, and ignored most of it.

Here's the update you've all been waiting for.

I know!

You're welcome.

I have now listened to Rockin' Bones, and I find it listenable. Even enjoyable. It's not terribly consistent, and it's better as a historical document, I think, than as a collection. But once I have a place to put music that randomizes and so forth, I'll probably rip it and be happy enough when any given song gets played.

The Gene Wolfe book is a fine thing. I loves me some Gene Wolfe, and Soldier of Sidon is certainly that. I expect that it's not the end of the Soldier series, which makes me happy. I like Latro.

Love the leather jacket. Still not very Rock, but it's a great jacket.

I like the Nick Drake just fine, but it requires a certain mood. And it is overproduced. I like him best when it's just him and his guitar, or at most a fairly minimal arrangement.

Thom Yorke remains Thom Yorke, which is a good thing. But he's done more appealing stuff with Radiohead (to my tastes) than the solo album.

The Stray Cats and the Johnny Cash are pretty much as you would expect: professionally done anthologies of musical acts that had a lot of Stuff. Nancy likes listening to them, so my work here is done.

Finally, I forgot to mention that Nancy and I got a mutual gift card from relatives, of which my half has now been spent, on Thomas Pynchon's new opus, Against the Day. It's effin' brilliant. I can't enthuse enough about Pynchon, so I'll just not do that, but I love it.

A propos of nothing, I just got two job offers in 24 hours. It's a nice feeling :)

peace
Matt

# posted by Matt @ 12:25 PM 0 comments

Well, the good news is that my amazon.com wishlist is down to a mere 100 items, exactly. The bad news is that I'm blogging it. I mean, what the fuck, Matt? Don't you have anything more interesting on your mind than shopping?

Yes. Yes, I do.

But I'm not going to tell YOU fuckers about it.

So, the List of Loot, Year One (Annotated):

I think that's it for Things Other People gave me. My folks gave me some money, which I promptly went out and spent, on:

Maybe some other stuff.

Later

# posted by Matt @ 4:37 AM 1 comments

May as well document Eris, too, while I'm at it ;)

# posted by Matt @ 12:21 PM 0 comments

More than 2 years ago, I got this tattoo. At the time I said, "when I get a digital camera, I'll post it."

Got a digital camera yesterday :)

# posted by Matt @ 12:20 PM 1 comments