[X] My Assistant

[Wesley Street]

Tron is sci-fi and an allegory created at the beginning of the personal computing age. Tron gets a pass even if the "science" doesn't hold up because they did the best they could with the available knowledge.

The creators of Eagle Eye, a techno-thriller that attempts a "this could really happen!" justification, really should have known better.

Reading: Vertigo's new take on Unknown Soldier. Uganda in 2002 during the height of the war in the north. A Ugandan-American doctor goes nuts, cuts up his face with a rock and begins a personal battle with the war mongers and child soldiers running the place while the CIA hunts for him. Good, gritty stuff. Blood Diamond meets Bourne Identity.

[pbangarth]

I just read Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Very interesting take on how a man who has lived a thousand years sees the world.

[Synner667]

Just watching Firefly, the series.

Oh sooo good...
...So many ideas - characters, plots, gear, locations.

Mmmm...

[Bitten the Bug]

Firefly absolutely rules!! River is scary but fun... Oh so very very fun...
One thing though.. How come Mal can wear such pants and not even show a slight bulge? Had me and my girlfriends mesmerized.. And wondering.

Heheheh, the man they called Jayne.... *cue music*

[Synner667]

Indeed !!

And they call him captain tightpants...
...Wooo, wooo, wooo

Well, in the film he had some of his nerve clusters moved...
...Maybe his appendage got moved too ??

The show is such a good model of how non-combat people can be done well.

[Freejack]

Reading Sherlock Holmes as published in The Strand with original art. Pretty interesting.

Carl

[Wesley Street]

Finished Yakuza Diary: Doing Time in the Japanese Underworld. Waiting for a copy of Tokyo Vice to come in to my local library.

[Artemis]

Jeff Somers - the eternal prison

[Wesley Street]

Currently reading Tokyo Vice... It's not only an interesting read about the yakuza but about the Japanese newspaper business and reporting practices. It's nice to know that yellow journalism isn't limited to Anglophone tabloids or Fox News.

This weekend I watched the last of the David Tennant Dr. Who episodes (man tears), The Objective (Blair Witch Project meets... any Gulf War 2 movie), and Gentlemen Broncos. GB got some flack from critics and nerds but I thought it was as funny as Napoleon Dynamite, just in a different way, and a lot more touching.

[Backgammon]

Recently saw Shutter Island as well as Green Zone.

Shutter Island is the better of the two. Leo's acting is very good.

Green Zone is pretty average, though in a Shadowrun perspective it has good demonstrations of a corp man (Damon) playing for different Johnsons within the same corp (US Gov) versus other black ops teams. You could get inspired for some NPCs from it. Otherwise, everything else about the movie is average. It's a rental.

[Synner667]

Just finished Vicious Circle [by Mike Carey]...
...One of a set of books about Felix Castor, London based exorcist.

A slightly alternative universe, where exorcists are known and [vaguely] accepted, werewolves, demons, zombies and ghosts are known to exist.

Similar to John Constantine [another UK based chap] or the Dresden books [by Jim Butcher].

Quite gritty, with some good ideas for characters and how different characters can be brought together - policemen, exorcists, zombies, ghosts, demons, gangsters, priests, etc.

[Synner667]

Just picked up a copy of Judgement Night [by Nick Pollotta] whilst on holiday in Oxford...
...One of a set of books about Bureau 13, the FBI's covert branch that deals with supernatural evil.

I remember reading about the RPG, and never knew there were books too !!

I'll be reading that after I finish Juggler of Worlds [by Larry Niven and Edward Lerner]...
...A Known Space novel set 200 years before Ringworld.

[Zhan Shi]

Reading: How Rome Fell. Also a lot of AD&D 1st books too numerous to mention.


Watching: Just got a couple of Monstervision re-edits back. Friends, you simply have not lived until you've watched Hercules in New York interspersed with Joe Bob Brigg's commentary.

[Mesh]

For those of you who liked Tad Williams' Dragonbone Chair trilogy... Otherworld sucked.

[DVSman]

I'm reading The Burning Skies by David Williams. It's book 2 in a trilogy and the neo-cyberpunk is very easy to transfer to a SR game. Book 3 is about to come out also, though if anyone is interested, I would recommend they try to read book 1 first (Mirrored Heavens) since the character development really starts there.

[Kanada Ten]

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga - The amazing bildungsroman of a rural boy, who struggles to rise from poverty and servitude in modern India, weighed down by ignorance, corruption, and class. Quick paced, the story depicts dystopia better than anything I've read in decades, while still laced with humor and personal heartache. The settings and characters are all easy translation for Shadowrun. I highly recommend borrowing it from the library.

[Rand]

I jusr (re)finished the latest book in the Wheel of Time series, The Gathering Storm. That is my all-time favorite series and I re-read them constantly. Just prior to that it read, Changes, a novel of the Dreseden Files, by Jim Bitcher. I tend to really like his Dresden books, and this one was good, but I feel he sort of phoned it in because he is concentrating so much on his fantasy series (which I haven't read, and am not likely to as it doesn't seem to have the same fun, irreverent feel of his Dresden novels).

[Backgammon]

I just saw How to Train Your Dragon in 3D. Absolutely fun movie. If you love cats, you'll love this movie. The 3D was really, really well used, too.

[kanislatrans]

presently reading "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman presently watching,"how to train your dragon" and "Napoleon Dynamite" over and over and over...someday i will get the remote back from my 6 year old daughter.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[TW]

"I'm Ozzy" - Ozzy Osbourne's Biography.

And I thought 'White Line Fever' (Lemmy Kilmister's autobiography) was good, but this, so far, is a lot of fun to read.

[fistandantilus4....]

...someday i will get the remote back from my 6 year old daughter.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Unlikely. Sorry. Until she's sixteen and gets a car anyway.

[Bitten the Bug]

Or a boyfriend.

Last movie in the theater?? Iron Man II. Very. Ho-hum, boring. before that Clash of the Titans. Very.. Ho-hum boring. I like my greek mythology and there wasn't much going on about it. Meh.

Last book I read? Clinical Microbiology something or other, pertaining Enterobactericeae and their damn resistance to beta-lactams and cephalosporins. Mostly Klebsiella sp, E.coli, proteus sp. Also known as ESBL and AmpC resistant. Very interesting. If you are a lab rat like me. I wanted to see where the gene is located and how it.. Well, transfers across the bacterias and stuff. Gets hardwired into the genes of the bacteria and stuff.. Geek? Hell yeah.

[pbangarth]

Just finished Inca Moon by Patrick Carmichael, Trafford Publishing, a historical novel set in the pre-Columbian Andes written by an Andean archaeologist. Lots of wonderful detail about the culture and times, underlying a rip-snorting tale of murder, revenge, sex, and empire-saving spy-stuff. Maybe a little over the top in the foreshadowing and writer tricks, but a page turner anyway.

[Rand]

Just finished Armor by Steakley, a sci-fi war novel - it was ok. Have picked up Dust of Dreams, a Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson. Just 50 pages in....

[Kanada Ten]

The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi) was pretty good. Post-oil genepunk set in Thailand. A disparate collection of characters is caught in a political power play between the Ministry of Trade and the Environmental Ministry...