Chuck-ese

All obligations have been completed. P&P is due in 12 days, more than enough time. No major projects except for those that are self-inflicted.

To Work!

Also, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee spoke in Owosso today. Too bad it wasn’t a candidate I wanted to hear.

Well, the bumfucking is over, sort of. I got the Pride and Prejudice monkey off my back [belated warning: switching into uncomfortably inapropriate anaolgy] in a way, by convincing it to only spoon me (i.e. Mrs. Young pushed back the due date). College app to U of M went out Monday morning.

Oh, I found a cool template for Dress-Stephen.co.nr over at Mashable.com, “Groovy Blue.”

TTFN.

[EDIT at 8:19 - Finished the template, Steve C’s doing something to it.]

You know, because it’s the seventh article I’ve done about things I’ve found on the ‘net. 7 out of 16? [By the time I actually got around to posting this, it was 7 out of 26 posts.] That’s lazy. I think I’ll make this my last. By the way, I’m not really a Harry Potter fan.

Oh, and it’s ungodly long, so I’ll hid this with a “More” tag.

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Robert Jordan, author of the much prolonged Wheel of Time series died on Sunday. His final book in the series is, of course, incomplete. He did leave behind his notes and what he had written of it, and did tell his family and friends of the major plot points. What I hope happens to his unfinished work, if anything happens at all, is for the prose and notes to be lumped together in a softcover volume and sold as-is. And then I hope that’s it. None of this Christopher Tolkein shit, and most definitely none of that Pinkey and the Brain* shit. Give the rest of his papers to a University, a Library, or even a Robert Jordan meuseum run by his family.

* This is an old joke from the original Dreamers of Dune (it’s back, the domain was repurchased and attatched to the ghola forum; I can’t bring myself to participate anymore). I never could figure out which was which, though I suspect that Brain “Oedipus Did Not Do So Much Harm to His Father As I Have to Mine” Herbert being the large-headed mouse, while the identity of the incompetant rodent can be deduced by process of elimination.

Speaking of Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, I believe that Road To Dune could be seen as a guidbook as to how Mr. Jordan’s family can not implement the publishing of his notes. It is billed on the website as:

“Unpublished chapters and scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah, original correspondence between Frank Herbert and famed editor John W. Campbell, Jr., excerpts from Herbert’s correspondence during his years-long struggle to get his innovative work published, and the article “They Stopped the Moving Sands,” Herbert’s original inspiration for Dune, and new material by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.” (Cite)

Notice how the clause about the new work of PatB takes up 16.666…% of the promotion, while the work itself makes up 322 out of 491 pages (66%). To ad insult to injury, 17% of this book was and still is available free on the website. The bulk of the book is a short novel supposedly based on Frank Herbert’s original Dune outline. I would have much rather have had that outline, to have seen the changes to it, to have seen more deleted scenes written by his own hand, that actually adds to my experience of Dune as a novel and a series. Hell, perhaps instead of Little Herbert’s short stories, we could have had the piece that Divus Frank actually wrote called “The Road to Dune!” Given the boxes of Herbertaica, I could have produced a much more fitting tribute to a classic of American literature and its author.

Speaking of things written by Frank Herbert, after finishing Sandworms of Dune, I am convinced that, even if Little Herbert is telling the truth and really did find a hiden stash of notes (which I doubt), he obviously did not follow them. The plot was bad, with a deus ex machina ending. Herbert the Elder would never have written a book that required a lengthy series of prequels to explain (and I assure you I would have been confused [or felt cheated] if I hadn’t lined thier pockets with the profits from all six prequels.) The authors use flashbacks to explain things they have yet to put in novels (the assasination attempt on Paul is surley to set up a book set between Dune and Dune: Messiah), and out or nowhere they mention a race of aliens (the Muadru, Sandworms of Dune, pg. 480.). You can bet your sweet bippy they’ll write a novel about them, slap the Dune title accross the top to generate readers, a laugh all the way to the bank.

To quote a Monty Python skit: “I seem to have strayed somewhat from my original brief, but in a nutshell:” I hate Brian Herbert, Robert Jordan’s legacy has the potential to be sevearly mishandled, and we’ll never know WHO THE FUCK KILLED ASMODEAN? (Thus tying this part of the essay into the title.)

(And, so I don’t sound like a hypocrite, I’ll be going over The Man with the Golden Gun with a fine-toothed comb to see if Ian Flemming had his legacy befouled, too)

Sometime last week, my mother got all over me about the amount of clothes I have in my closet. I have no idea why this is, as it is she who buys all that shit. Regardless, I cleaned the shit out and I’m happier for it.

As I was going about the rest of my day, I decided it would be a good idea to start filling out college applications. It was determined that I would apply to colleges in order of likelihood of rejection, so I opened up the app that the folks at Harvard College were so kind to send me. As I was scanning the completed first page, I noticed an instruction at the top: “Type or write in black ink only.” Guess what colour pen I was using? Unless you thought something stupid like “A yellow gel pen,” you have a 50/50 chance of getting this right. Further hint: it wasn’t red. Being so fucked (”so” not being used as a discription of degree, but rather in it’s meaning as “truthfully”), I printed off copies of all 4 apps I needed to fill out. When this was completed, I was too weary to fill any of them out, so I determined to put them away. The desk being home to much in the the way of junk, I had to add it to the smaller, less mature dross-heap on my bedside table, where it can be overshadowed by the Mountain of Yet-to-be-read Books.
I realized that I have too much clutter in my life, and it would help me immensely if I tidied everything up for this last year in High School. Come, embark with me on my journey into clarity, efficiancy, and order (by clicking “More”).

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So I’m reading a message board, right? Someone posts a link, and formats it improperly,
e.g. http://”www.straightdope.com/classics/a971212.html” in stead of “http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a971212.html”.

This cannot, logically, be found. However, instead of giving me a popup error, it redirects to the Wikipedia article on HTTP. I wonder if this redirect was triggered by the message board (the SDMB), my browser (Firefox 1.0.7), or my ISP (MichOnline).

As a side note, when I type Chucksphere URLs, and forget to include the “.html” or applicable filename, it redirects to the Chuckese main page. Interesting.

The newest Dune novel came out August 7th, and I completely missed it. I’ve been to major bookstores several times during interveneing period, and it never even crossed my mind to seek out the next installment of the greatest corruption of a classic work of literature ever.

[Sweet Bloody Mary, that title was terrible. I appologize.]

So, I was reading TIME maganize yesterday, and I came across the following tidbit:

“25%: Percentege of U.S. adults who did not read any books in the past year.
4: The number of books the average person said they read.
5: number of books the average American claimed to have started reading in 2005.
10: “         “    “        “      “           “              “       “   “          “         “      “  1999.”

Lets see how I stack up. As I recounted to Lauren a few weeks ago, I’ve read nearly 300 books in my nearly 18 years of life. That averages out to be 16 2/3 books a year. However, this total does not include books that I read as a small child (mostly books I read before I entered Middle School. Ergo, the average would be more along the lines of 37.5 books a year (300/8, for every year since I left elementary school.). This number looks much too high. Taking into account reference books and the like, I probably read 20 to 25 books a year. It’s taken me the past 2 months to read almost 6 books (nearly done with The Confusion by Neal Stephenson, ’tis a beast). Anyway, that’s how I compare to the national average.

Oh, the United States is the most heavily armed country in the world, with 90 guns per 100 people (Numbers include civillian weapons only). The second most heavily armed is India, with 4 guns per 100 people. That’s quite a discrepency between #1 and #2, eh? No wonder the World thinks we’re a bunch of hillbilly gun-nuts.

Source: “Numbers.” Time Magazine. September 10, 2007.

Actually, first up is a non-internet related reading tidbit. I learned two new words today be browsing the dictionary. Tumescence means a swelling, or a swollen body part. A Triskelion is a symbolic design featuring three curves or bent legs/arms eminating from the center (i.e. The flag of the Isle of Man).

Microsoft to Create Digital Monopoly: Paranoid? Yes. Is paranoia never justified? No.
The Best Candidate: Too bad he won’t be nominated. That’s what happens when you refuse to sell your soul to lobbyists.

John Edwards’s Anti-Brownie Law: “In response to pressure from the cookie lobby, Presidential hopefull-” Aw, screw it. I’m no John Stewart. But this is exactly what we need: government being run by people who know what they are doing. That’ll be the day, though.

Wikipedia: The Book: I’ve read longer…

The Opportunity Cost of the Iraq War: Good points, all causes I support. However, we’re also really fucking far into debt. Fixing social/economic/education problems is a must, but we also need to start paying this thing down. Almost 10% of our budget is paying the interest on our debt!

Full governmental transparancy: Great idea.

[Edited: On preview, I see that this post (the 14th) has forced the first post off the first page. Each page is set up to handle ten days worth of posts.]