New tags.  And new tags.  Cuz I'm bored at work and decided I needed to do some sorting of my LJ.

So, if you will take your gaze to your right, you shall see:

awesome - vague tag that will be attached to things that I find to be awesome (or, as Michael Bay would say, AWESOME)

books - because seriously?  I had a tag for movies and games but didn't have a book tag before?

dollhouse - pretty self-explanatory.  Here's hoping I'll be able to use it a month from now, though.

politics - gonna be tiny, cuz I try my best to avoid it here, but it might get some play every now and then.

world of booze - cuz if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it RIGHT.

So a few months ago I wasted healthy chunks of calendar time playing Knights of the Old Republic.

Today?

I started the sequel.

Good Lord...  9am-3pm, 6:30pm-9:30pm, 10:30pm-11:30pm...

Now that?  That there's a weekend killer.

I did break it up a bit, though, with stuff.  I finished reading Bourne Identity last night, so I sat down and rewatched the movie, as I hadn't in a very long time.

Wow...  Amazing just how little the two have to do with each other.

Government operative who loses his memory?  Check.

Bank statement in his hip?  Check.

Um...  Ummmmm...  that's about it, really.

They brought a connections, most of them in name only (Marie, Treadstone, Kane/Cain), but otherwise I might as well have been following two different stories.

Can't wait to get to Bourne Supremacy, see how they tackle that after shifting so much.

I know I shouldn't complain, since my teeth end up pretty damn good compared to my friends and/or fam, but LORD amighty that appointment took too long this morning.  Easily THE chattiest hygenist I've ever been with.  And not in a good way.  Talk at me for two minutes, scrape for thirty seconds, pull back and talk for another minute, scrape another thirty seconds.  Swear to God, I would have gotten out of there ten minutes earlier if she would have at least WORKED while she was talking at me.

I guess some dentists just enjoy having a captive audience.

Not a low-key weekend last weekend.  Not a high-key one, either.  It was just a key weekend.  BBQ and laundry with the fam on Saturday, a subpar gathering with some theatre folk Saturday night.  I left after an hour, I was the youngest there by a good fifteen years on average, and none of the people who decided to show were close buddies.

Sunday I did the Easter Buffet thing with my friend hear_my_song_07 .  Granite City does Sunday buffet goooood and souped it up a bit more for the big E.  I also discovered that the assistant who gets a coffee pot smashed over his head on the fifth season of Angel went to high school with me.

Rented Bolt last night.  Good stuff, it's going on my buy list.  Watched Dollhouse on Saturday morning cuz, again, I forgot that it was on Friday night.  This is me not paying attention to TV, apparently, when I completely forget about the one show that I DO want to watch.

It's getting good still, by the way.  I dunno how far back the episodes go on Fox and Hulu, but if you're into Whedon at all I say give it a shot.  Dushku's the weak link in the cast by far, but the others are picking up the pace.  Sierra, Victor, and Boyd are great, and I came out of this last episode actually appreciating Dominic, which is a surprising thing to say considering how much I loathed him up until the end of this ep.

Finally, I finished a chapter and am ready to start up on the next.  Unfortunately, I'm having major conflicting issues writing a chapter ( SPOILER ).  I'm trying very VERY hard not to let one affect the creation of the other.

You know, it's been a while since I've talked about what I've been reading. So here we go:

- Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heart: A biography on the first governor of Minnesota. Really interesting stuff, if not a little flowery at times for a straight biography. Then I saw the picture of the author, who looked like Your Grandma, and it made a little more sense.

I like to do that sometimes, though: Just head to the library's biography section and grab a book at random. I had also pulled a book about Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the original designer of Washington, DC, but never got around to it.

Anyway, Sibley started as a fur trader, and was a general, governor, congressman, treaty-writer... big life, there. The book itself was a little skippy. Jumped around the timeline a bit, and that was a little distracting.

- Needful Things: A re-read, but the initial read was so long ago that I barely remembered any of it. Still a good read, though. I know some people don't like Stephen King because his stories get too bloated: Too many characters, too many subplots. But that's what I dig about him. He'll write three pages of backstory for a character who you will never see again. I LOVE that!

- Ivan the Terrible: Creepy book, creepy history, creepy time period, but very well-written.

- Good Omens: I borrowed it from my friend over a year ago, losing it, and rebuying it, I FINALLY finished yet yesterday!

Fun book. The climax kinda left me a bit muddled, but I think a second read might let me get it a little better. Fun stuff otherwise, though.

I just wish I could get into Pratchett more. I read the first few chapters of The Colour of Magic, and I just couldn't hook me.

- Just started Bourne Identity this morning. I'm gonna see how long I stay with it, though. Ten pages in and I'm already annoyed by Ludlum's descriptive style. Really poetic stuff, which just doesn't feel right within the genre.

Wow, my server at work REALLY doesn't like LiveJournal, for some reason.

Ah, well, I can still post. Kinda.

I finished a book on Ivan the Terrible this morning.

What have I learned?

People in the 1500's were BATSHIT INSANE.

What's scary is that there are still tons of societies today that think the same way as they did in 1500's Russia.

Yeah, I'm talking to YOU!

Action Philosophers!

Philosophers!  In Action!

PLATO SMASH!

I am WAY too absorbed into Black Dossier, which I was finally able to find at a local library over the weekend.  It's pretty much the most glorious, brilliant work of mainstream crossover fanfiction you could find, written by the greatest graphic novelist we'll probably ever have.

samtabsav, if you haven't read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the graphic novels; avoid the movie like the plague), DO.  As an English scholar you'll get a kick out of all of the references to classical literature.  I pretty much have to keep Wikipedia running at all times, since every name Alan Moore uses turns out to be an already-existing literary character, from Prospero and Orlando to James Bond and Bulldog Drummond.  It's glorious.