Saturday, November 29, 2008

Hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving. It's been a blast here in the c-dog household. Even though it was just us this year, we did the whole turkey-potatoes-stuffing-yams-cranberry relish spread ... first time either the missus or I had attempted it instead of just fixing a side dish to bring to a relative's. Came out great, if I do say. The turkey was moist and flavorful and, thanks to my America's Test Kitchen cookbook, I made the best mashed potatoes I've ever eaten.

With some time off I've been able to catch up on watching my Dr. Who commentaries. Fun stuff. Listening to the actors cop to their acting mistakes, tease one another, point out when poor Matthew (Adric) Waterhouse was hungover and puking off-camera, etc. is great fun. (Learned just now via the wikipedia link that Mr. Waterhouse has lived in Connecticut since 1998. Bit of local flavor there. Couldn't verify with whitepages.com though, the one Matthew Waterhouse in CT is 35-39 yrs old, so too young to be our Adric.)

Labels: doctor who, local flavor

15:39 c-dog

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Have you gotten used to alt, indie or punk songs showing up in commercials? Completely used to it?

Okay, then you must - must - check out this commercial.

How could they have missed using "Holiday in the Bun" as a tag line?

And I think playing Mr. Weasley in the Harry Potter movies should have kept Mr. Rotten in the euros.

Labels: movies, music, TV

12:40 bone daddy

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?
Any. Do people really only buy or read hardcover? I mean, if it's a book that I've already read and I want for my shelves forever, I get a hardcover. Otherwise, it's whatever is available or cheap.

Bookmark or dog-ear?
Dog-earing is terrible. It also leaves evidence of where you stopped reading for the next person. I prefer to pass through a book without leaving a trace. My daughter went through a phase of using a stuffed animal as a bookmark. Every time she did this Mrs. BoneDaddy or I would pull the stuffed animal out and lose her page until she stopped doing it and could tell us what "broken spine" meant. Now she just remembers her page number.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
I guess people who only buy hardcover can keep books alphabetized by author, but it seems impossible when shelf space dictates where paperbacks and hardcovers go. I try to keep to keep them roughly grouped - my history area, my comic shelf, my poker spot and the crime/pulp corner. I have a "masterpieces" shelf in the kitchen. After that, it's organized aesthetically.

Keep, throw away or sell?
I sell on eBay, and donate a bunch to the library. I've thrown out very few books that weren't wrecked or moldy or in some way evil. I think I recycled The DaVinci Code because the world already has too many of those. I think I tossed Rand's The Fountainhead because I got sick of looking at it.

Last book you bought?
Not counting books I buy for the kids, since I do that all the time. I grabbed When the Women Come Out to Dance by Elmore Leonard at a library book sale. With 30 Leonard books, I'm about ten inches short of a complete Leonard shelf in my living room. Mrs. BoneDaddy gave me a gift certificate to Labyrinth Books for Christmas and I spent it (so far) on The Manchurian Candidate, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (already read, but I wanted my own copy) and Vegetariana a sort of hippy-ish vegetarian cook book.

Last book someone bought for you?
Mrs. BoneDaddy got me The Dark Side (NPR story), the unbelieveably gut-wrenching chronicle of our rendition and torture program, A Few Seconds of Panic about an old guy who tries to make it in the NFL and a while back she came home from a conference with The Delivery Man by Joe McGinniss Jr., about gambling, Vegas and prostitution. Is Mrs. BoneDaddy the best? Yes, she is.

What are some of the books on your to-buy list?
I'm in more of a pruning mode than a buying mode right now.

Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, or the velvety embrace of Death?
There's really no underestimating how much Potter we've had in the BoneDaddy house, thanks mostly to my oldest. This was the first Halloween in three years she hasn't dressed as Harry Potter. Instead she dressed as a book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. When it came time to explain something like Hitler, the SuperBowl or economics to her, we used Harry Potter (and Voldemort, the Quidditch World Cup and the Weasleys) as our reference point.

The books you need to go with other books on your shelves?
I could use about ten inches of Elmore Leonard. Feel free to take that out of context. My gift to you.

Do you read anywhere and anytime you can or do you have a set reading time and/or place?
Whenever.

Do you have seasonal reading habits?
I try an anti-beach read once a summer. I try to pick out a dense or difficult book to work through instead of a Grisham.

Do you read one book at a time or do you have two or more books going at once?
One at a time. Except once in a while I get sucked into a book that I know will only take a day or two.

What are your pet peeves about the way people treat books?
I generally don't care until I wind up with the books and find the marks, folds and crumbs. As a side note, when c-dog and I were room mates, I used to wait until he was out and lick the spines of all his books. What can I say, we didn't have cable.

Name one book you surprised yourself by liking.
World War Z, by Max Brooks.

How often do you read a book and not review it on your blog? What are your reasons for not blogging about a book?
I put up an end of the year list and that's pretty much it. Books aren't like movies with everyone saturated with the same few selections. I need a compelling reason to review a book up on TC. It's everything I can do to keep my LibraryThing updated.

Labels: Books

11:27 bone daddy

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Book/Reading Meme
via It Doesn't Have To Be Right...

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?
For Kim Stanley Robinson, it's Hardback & first available paperback. For all others, it's whatever the library has or I can get on bookmooch.

Bookmark or dog-ear?
Bookmark! Dog-earing is vandalism.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
Well, I used to alpha by author, then chronological within author. Now, I'm lucky to keep authors together.

Keep, throw away or sell?
Depends, mostly keep. Doing lots of bookmooching though.

Keep dust jacket or toss it?
Keep. But I took the dj off "Quicksilver" while reading it, lost it for a while, found it, then lost it again during the move, and found it in the car after the move - trashed. I'm starting to wish I didn't care about djs. I like the plain, no dj, look. And they're a pain when you're reading.

Last book you bought?
Wow. I can't remember. It may be a couple years since I bought a book? I'm a library guy. Oh wait, "Sixty Days and Counting" was a 2007 book, that was the last one I bought.

Last book someone bought for you?
Would've been last Christmas ... so Quicksilver from my mother-in-law.

What are some of the books on your to-buy list?


Collection (short stories, same author) or anthology (short stories, different authors)?
Collection, I suppose.

Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, or the velvety embrace of Death?
Potter.

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading?
Nighttime.

The books you need to go with other books on your shelves?
I'm still missing a few Lucius Shepards.

Do you read anywhere and anytime you can or do you have a set reading time and/or place?
Whenever and wherever I can. Which is not often. I've got an office/library in the new house though, so that's nice.

Do you have seasonal reading habits?
No.

Do you read one book at a time or do you have two or more books going at once?
I'd prefer one at a time but I'm all over the place lately. Audiobooks in the car. Picking up graphic novels before I've finished other books I've started. Keeping one book in the living room and another in the office. A mess.

What are your pet peeves about the way people treat books?
Seriously, don't me started. Books are not coasters. Bookmarks are a must. Don't lick your finger before turning the page of my book, you sick f*ck, that's just gross.

Name one book you surprised yourself by liking.
"Atonement."

How often do you read a book and not review it on your blog? What are your reasons for not blogging about a book?
I don't think I ever put book reviews on TC. I review books on LibraryThing when I have the energy. So, not that often.

Labels: Books

22:46 c-dog

More Quizzes of teh Interwebs!

cdog voted for Obama. cdog's full name yielded "Socialism" in an interweb quiz. Therefore: Obama is a Socialist. Wingnuts to arms!

Labels: interweb

22:21 c-dog

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Shea Ralph update.

Labels: uconn

07:48 c-dog

Saturday, November 08, 2008

How come nobody says this? - Colin McEnroe | To Wit

Almost nobody mentions the fact that Obama -- after living down a cascade of accusations (including from Joe the Plumber) that he would be a soft ally to Israel, that he himself was a Muslim, that he was in the thrall of an anti-Semitic preacher, that he was a confederate of Farrakhan -- picked as his right hand man an Orthodox Jew.

Somewhere on the interwebs, forgot to blog it and can't find it at the moment, is a post that lists a whole bunch of things that, if any one of them happens, the blogger will eat a hat. The list includes things like "President Obama makes it illegal to criticize President Obama," and "President Obama launches an invasion of Israel," &c. All the fear-mongering, wingnut doomsday predictions that have a probability approaching 0 of happening.

Labels: Obama

18:29 c-dog

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Good Morning

Labels: 2008, Obama, pictures, sports

08:44 bone daddy