Currently reading PK Dick's The Man in the High Castle. My fiancee also purchased a subscription to Asimov's Science Fiction for me for Christmas so I've been leafing through sci-fi short stories.

Re-re-watched Ghost Dog.

Realized I haven't done this in awhile...

Reading: Recently got halfway through Rising Sun, on my gf's suggestion. Very good, but hilarious for the "Japan is taking over the world!" mentality that SR had back in the day. Retroactively funny now that we're twenty years down the line and Japan's businesses are in the toilet yet their culture has completely infiltrated us. Want to see the movie now though.

Besides that, I've been picking up some old school Spelljammer stuff lately and my gf found another couple of Changeling:tD books we were missing for the collection. Also been re-reading Red String (romantic original English manga) and found Tweep (Questionable Content minus the hipster drama + Calvin and Hobbes sentimentality + Charlie Brown bittersweetness + awesome literary interludes). I like webcomics; they're a good way to waste a lunch hour and a lot of them are very well presented and written.

Watching: Like, nothing. Missed out on a lot of Clone Wars because I can't seem to nail down the current airing time for new episodes. Waiting for new episodes of My Life on the D-List, Project Runway, Toddlers and Tiaras (Can't. Look. Away. At. Car. Wreck.), Burn Notice...and I think that's about it, off the top of my head. Mostly we've been sticking to Cake Boss.

Seriously, if you're not watching My Life On the D-List, do so. Kathy Griffin is hilarious. Anyone else watch her and Anderson Cooper on New Year's Eve? "Anderson Cooper, who'd be on your death panel?"

I also want to see Avatar really badly, and Kick-Ass, which looks hilarious. But that will probably end up being a rental when my gf isn't around

Playing: New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Why? The Mega Man 9 Effect. Seriously, it's like if they crammed all of the best parts of Mario 1, 3, World, and Yoshi's Island and Mario World Paizo into a gooey blend and served it up raw. I have seen enemies in this game I haven't seen since 1994.

Oh, and Pokemon Ruby. What? I'm working on my backlog. Ignore the fact I want Diamond. Go away now.

Read: Titanicus by Dan Abnett, it's a WH40k novel about the Legion Invictus, a Mechanicus Titan Legion, defending a Forge World from a Chaos Titan Legion. Reminds me a little bit of mechwarrior, but these mechs are a bit larger.

Watched: Avatar on IMAX 3D, I liked it a lot visually. on tv... Cake Boss, Iron Chef America, Worst Cooks.

Playing: TF2 and Civ4, also started a little bit on Dragon Age

Reading: Swords of Lankhmar (5th in the series).

Watching: Soap. Got the 4th season over Christmas so I'm watching it start to finish.

Running: Shadowrun 4th Google Wave and local game. Trying to get another game going at my FLGS.

Carl

Okay, so I'm reading Gantz and Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit. In the past I've enjoyed Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Gunsmith Cats, Planetes and a few other action and sci-fi manga series. Any recommendations for stuff that has come out in the past two or three years?

Moonlight Mile, it's somewhat similar to Planetes where two characters want to get into space.

Bleach

(Yes, it's shonen, but it's reasonably mature shonen that moves quickly enough. And it's getting pretty close to zero hour now).

I've totally been out of the manga circles lately though. Have you watched Tengen Toppen Gurren Laggan yet? NGE meets FLCL meets crazy awesome, hugely following the Rule of Cool.

Just came back from seeing Sherlock Holmes.

Oh. My. God. FUCKING good movie. Far better than avatar I would say. I do have a penchant for Robert Downey Jr., and he's VERY good in this movie. Guy Ritchie was an unusually excellent choice for this movie. London is so cool to see. Rachel McAdams is a weak spot, but you gloss over it. I highly recommend it.

I've heard about Bleach from a couple of friends but I've never seen the anime. How many volumes are the manga?

I loved FLCL and have liked a few other anime titles that have been released in the last ten years. But my anime collection was described as "Anime for People Who Hate Anime"... which is pretty much true. I feel like (almost) everything that's pumped out to the mainstream falls into Princess Robot Bubblebum territory.

Lesseee...
Avatar.. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. I think I want to be a Na'vi. Then I can have a dragon as a friend/pet and ride 6 legged horses (yeah, I like horses). Oh my god. I am going to see it again. And again. And again, until my husband grows tired of it. Then I want to watch it again. The details, my gods above and below, the details!
Then I saw My life as a Geisha in japanese (can one watch it in any other language?) Which reminded me (again) of why I want to learn japanese.

Urhmm, books... A lick of Frost and Swallowing dark by Laurell K. Hamilton and on to Princeps fury by Jim Butcher.
A lick of Frost and Swallowing dark is about 300 pages pr book. I read them in 3 hrs flat and that is both books. Is that fast for a non native speaker?

Bleach is up to ...23(?) volumes by this point in the States, close to 200 episodes in Japan, and they're at Chapter 371 if I remember correctly in the Japanese manga. I warned you, it's a Shonen manga. However, it's well written, smart, with crazy character designs and a good moving plot that you will guess at. I've been following it since the very start and it's ended up the only thing I'm really reading seriously now. I think it should be ending soon though (the main character and the main Big Bad [the person whose manipulated everything since chapter 1] just crossed swords).

Gurren Lagann is like if you took Eva, drop-kicked the angst, and made it follow the Rule of Cool. It's about giant robots beating up giant robots and being completely hot-blooded and making your way through the world because of it. It's silly in the FLCL vein, not nerd guys stumbling into the girl's shower for panties silly.

There's also Genshiken if you're looking for something very down to earth. It follows an otaku club in Japan for the four years the two main characters are in college; one is a shy comic book nerd and the other a hot fashionista type that joins to get closer to the hot guy that used to be a complete nerd (and her next door neighbor). Loads of geek references in this and you will learn things - it's how I learned a lot about GunPla, for instance - and if you're watching the anime, the animators got to use real references to things and even got to use footage from actual Guilty Gear XX matches in it. Great series, rarely "anime" funny (there's one scene I can think of, but the character is imagining himself in a dating simulator), and one of the few anime me and my gf agree on.

To quote Col. Quaritch:
"Hey Sully, how's it feel to betray your own race?"



An additional aside:
Are you feeling a bit blue after watching Avatar?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/...lues/index.html

An enjoyable movie, the visuals were awesome.

Meh. Pocahontas with blue cat-elves. I'll wait and see the special effects in a movie that has a story I feel like watching.

This I read the first volume of in manga-form. I will need to find more as it was quite good. I especially enjoyed the club president's rant about how if you aren't masturbating to drawn images, there's something wrong with you... and provides compelling anthropological evidence.

Call Me Joe.

This is why I stick with NPR and the BBC. I love how journalistic standards in America have slid so far that reporting on message board postings makes national news. I'm now waiting for a Fox News op-ed piece on how furries are evil godless communists.

Also, if you're feeling sad because a place in a sci-fi movie is so beautiful, try getting out of the house and going to a large national park.

Just read Princeps fury by Jim Butcher.. Me like! A bit railroadish here and there, but that could be due to my impatient nature and penchant for devouring books rather speedily. I am looking forward to read it again after my husband is finished with it. In a week or two.
I am currently reading Exile's honor by Mercedes Lackey. I am rather fond of Alberich Weaponsmaster.

Last movie seen? 300.

Reading Barry Hughart's "The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox." Hilarious.

The fiancee and I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall last night. My lady and I now have a deal. We can watch romantic comedies so long as there is nudity (male or female) and it's actually, y'know, good.

Love Actually would be an example of "not good." And I should know, I sat through it three times with three different girlfriends.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of the funniest movies I'd seen in a long time. I loved it too. The british guy is awesome.

Russell Brand's stand-up comedy is kind of annoying but he was the perfect prick-Brit rocker. I loved Aldous' music video where he held up a sign, Bob Dylan style, that said "sodomize intolerance."

Judd Apatow gets branded by uppity critics for creating nerd wish-fulfillment flicks... but I think our time has come to take the rom-com genre.

Just watched the film, Moon.
I enjoyed it, highly recommended. Shows a good scifi film that doesn't need wizbang graphics, animation, or action.

I rented Pandorum the other day. Not bad, really. They used their limited bugdet very well. It's not *great*, but it's entertaining enough. It has Denis Quaid in it, which is cool only because it prompted my brother-in-law to point out that Denis Quaid is a poor man's Harrison Ford, which I find to be hilariously true.

Just watched Eagle Eye. Pretty good movie and inspiring for hackers and diggers

Recently watched The Hurt Box I think it's called. It's ok.

Also watched The Orphan. That was pretty good too.

Carl

Movie: Sherlock Holmes Got absolutely nothing to do with the Detective at all.

Books: Masquerade, very old book about Alias of Westgate.

Rpg: Non existent.

Hurt Locker. That was an excellent film. Eagle Eye... made me want to poke out my eyes. Hollywood + ZOMGComputers = shit.

Watched Cold Souls last night. Mildly depressing dark comedy but interesting.

Just started re-reading Dune. It's awesome. Again.

dude, you had better not be dissing Tron there . .

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.

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

Just watching Firefly, the series.

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

Mmmm...

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*

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.

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

Carl

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

Jeff Somers - the eternal prison

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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..

"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.

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

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.

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.

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....

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...