Mixed Media
Ok... first I gotta admit that while I wasn't sleeping well- I ended up switching from Greencine to Netflix. I feel sort of guilty about it- as I prefer the little guy to golith.
I want the little company to win. I'm a little guy.
BUT that said... Because I'm little I want as much bang from my buck as possible.
I'll draw the line at wal-mart, but will admit I've gone to Target- as that's like one of the few places I can get toys without resorting to ebay( which is just too much $ for the toys).
The straw that made me change my mind about Netflix was Dinosaurs... In my sleepless adled mind I *wanted* "I'm the baby, gotta love me" and the "What Al 'Sexual' Harris meant"... I checked Greencine and they did NOT have Dinosaurs and I was like "why the freel am I with Greencine?" This was the THIRD tv series that they didn't have( the others being Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister) which Netflix DID have. So I went for the 'free' two week trial period for Netflix and I timed how fast things went back and forth between Greencine and Netflix. It took about 3 days ONE WAY for a disc to go to Greencine( it's in Ca.)... in that same 3 days- I could send a disk back to Netflix and get the next one.
So I feel a little guilty about the change, but I did let Greencine know why I changed and if they ever got a distrubution center on the east coast- I might go back to them.
50 Book Challange:
Book #4- Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the Feud that defined a decade. I picked this as I wanted to know more about LBJ, and I thought the fact that he stepped down because of 'Nam( and how it was making him unpopular) was a lesson I felt W. should've learnt. Last July when I visited my brother he had Mutual Contempt on his shelf and I realised that while I live in Kennedy Kountry, I knew not a whit about Bobby- save what I knew about his family and that he was shot in '68 while running for president.
I thought it was interesting to compare 'Nam and what it did to politics THEN to what it's done to us NOW. Like the fact that Bobby while against how LBJ handled the war, tried to keep ranks because LBJ was PRESIDENT. I thought this mirrored some of the current politicans who voted FOR the war against Iraq because they felt that this is what the president/public called for.
The passage that really struck me is this quote from Bobby in 1967-
“We’re killing South Vietnamese, we’re killing women, we’re killing innocent people because we don’t want have the war fought on American soil, or because they’re 12,000 miles away and they might get 11,000 miles away”
I left out the 'We're killing South Vietnamese" beginning and sure enough a co-worker thought that I was talking about Iraq.... I just loved the "We're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here" mirrored in Bobby's quote... and he was saying this to CONDEMN how we were fighting the war.
5 1/2 Oblivious He Sails On and 5 2/2 A Heckuva a Job both by Calvin Trillin. Both are short books of political poems about the Bush administration. I count the two books as 1 as both about a 100 pages each and I figured that together they'd be combined to count as one. I figure if one of the books in the Dread Empire's Fall was 700 pages and it would count as much as a 200 page book... then surely two short books could be pooled to equal 1.
I really liked the poetry. I had bought the secound A Heckuva a Job for my older brother... and I ended up after the holiday buying both for me... I love how he refers to Cheney as "Nanny Dick", Condi is Condolezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Ashcroft is Orange John.
Don't think I'd be 'allowed' to publish someone ELSE'S poems without permission but they are funny and if asked( and assured I wouldn't get sued) I'd post one...
Book 6- Soviet Science Fiction. I should mention that this book a) is a collection of short stories, translated as I don't speak a whit of Russian... and b) Published in the UNITED STATES in 1961, so the stories are a bit 'dated'. In his introduction, Asimov suggests that the Russians are behind the U.S.( even though he was born in Russia himself)... as they haven't developed the third stage of science fiction which he denotes as the socialily domintated science fiction. He's not sure if that's because they are 'behind us' or because they have a different view of society.
I thought one of the more interesting moments was in A Vistor from Outer Space as the author has people talking about the possibility of Martians visiting in 1908. The characters postulate that the Martians need water from the Earth. One suggests that the Martians would come here and conquer us for it, and another postulates that the creation of the Martian Canels show that Martians can band together for a higher purpose and so are beyond war... so surely they could just take a bunch of ice from Greenland. I thought this was quite amusing as here in America we've managed to create Interstate Highways... and Tasers.
I really liked the last story as well- Bern's Awakening and felt it would've made an EXCELLENT Twilight Zone episode.
Another story reminded me of RUR- which I just added to my Amazon wish list as it's been AGES since I saw the play. Made me laugh to remember that Robot( the second R in RUR) was from a Czech play... Wonder how many people who saw I, Robot know that.
I want the little company to win. I'm a little guy.
BUT that said... Because I'm little I want as much bang from my buck as possible.
I'll draw the line at wal-mart, but will admit I've gone to Target- as that's like one of the few places I can get toys without resorting to ebay( which is just too much $ for the toys).
The straw that made me change my mind about Netflix was Dinosaurs... In my sleepless adled mind I *wanted* "I'm the baby, gotta love me" and the "What Al 'Sexual' Harris meant"... I checked Greencine and they did NOT have Dinosaurs and I was like "why the freel am I with Greencine?" This was the THIRD tv series that they didn't have( the others being Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister) which Netflix DID have. So I went for the 'free' two week trial period for Netflix and I timed how fast things went back and forth between Greencine and Netflix. It took about 3 days ONE WAY for a disc to go to Greencine( it's in Ca.)... in that same 3 days- I could send a disk back to Netflix and get the next one.
So I feel a little guilty about the change, but I did let Greencine know why I changed and if they ever got a distrubution center on the east coast- I might go back to them.
50 Book Challange:
Book #4- Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the Feud that defined a decade. I picked this as I wanted to know more about LBJ, and I thought the fact that he stepped down because of 'Nam( and how it was making him unpopular) was a lesson I felt W. should've learnt. Last July when I visited my brother he had Mutual Contempt on his shelf and I realised that while I live in Kennedy Kountry, I knew not a whit about Bobby- save what I knew about his family and that he was shot in '68 while running for president.
I thought it was interesting to compare 'Nam and what it did to politics THEN to what it's done to us NOW. Like the fact that Bobby while against how LBJ handled the war, tried to keep ranks because LBJ was PRESIDENT. I thought this mirrored some of the current politicans who voted FOR the war against Iraq because they felt that this is what the president/public called for.
The passage that really struck me is this quote from Bobby in 1967-
“We’re killing South Vietnamese, we’re killing women, we’re killing innocent people because we don’t want have the war fought on American soil, or because they’re 12,000 miles away and they might get 11,000 miles away”
I left out the 'We're killing South Vietnamese" beginning and sure enough a co-worker thought that I was talking about Iraq.... I just loved the "We're fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here" mirrored in Bobby's quote... and he was saying this to CONDEMN how we were fighting the war.
5 1/2 Oblivious He Sails On and 5 2/2 A Heckuva a Job both by Calvin Trillin. Both are short books of political poems about the Bush administration. I count the two books as 1 as both about a 100 pages each and I figured that together they'd be combined to count as one. I figure if one of the books in the Dread Empire's Fall was 700 pages and it would count as much as a 200 page book... then surely two short books could be pooled to equal 1.
I really liked the poetry. I had bought the secound A Heckuva a Job for my older brother... and I ended up after the holiday buying both for me... I love how he refers to Cheney as "Nanny Dick", Condi is Condolezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Ashcroft is Orange John.
Don't think I'd be 'allowed' to publish someone ELSE'S poems without permission but they are funny and if asked( and assured I wouldn't get sued) I'd post one...
Book 6- Soviet Science Fiction. I should mention that this book a) is a collection of short stories, translated as I don't speak a whit of Russian... and b) Published in the UNITED STATES in 1961, so the stories are a bit 'dated'. In his introduction, Asimov suggests that the Russians are behind the U.S.( even though he was born in Russia himself)... as they haven't developed the third stage of science fiction which he denotes as the socialily domintated science fiction. He's not sure if that's because they are 'behind us' or because they have a different view of society.
I thought one of the more interesting moments was in A Vistor from Outer Space as the author has people talking about the possibility of Martians visiting in 1908. The characters postulate that the Martians need water from the Earth. One suggests that the Martians would come here and conquer us for it, and another postulates that the creation of the Martian Canels show that Martians can band together for a higher purpose and so are beyond war... so surely they could just take a bunch of ice from Greenland. I thought this was quite amusing as here in America we've managed to create Interstate Highways... and Tasers.
I really liked the last story as well- Bern's Awakening and felt it would've made an EXCELLENT Twilight Zone episode.
Another story reminded me of RUR- which I just added to my Amazon wish list as it's been AGES since I saw the play. Made me laugh to remember that Robot( the second R in RUR) was from a Czech play... Wonder how many people who saw I, Robot know that.
Labels: 50 book challenge, Netflix
1 Comments:
At 2/19/2007 02:05:00 AM,
Unknown said…
I spent the past week doing a crap job of keeping my reading momentum up. I have to get back on it.
Appreciation of poetry takes a good deal of mental processing, so I completely agree with your assessment that two 100 page poetry books should count as at least one (esp. as you point out, a 700 page book has the same weight as a 200 pg yarn).
And welcome to Netflix. I'm totally with you on backing the little guy, but as you point out, the little guy needs to be competetive too; without the large selection and the long ship times, I'd have switched too (which is a bit moot for me as I started with Netflix 'cause of the vaster selection).
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