He might have done this.

http://ultra0kelvin.deviantart.com/art/Underneath-It-All-84490927

I’m not usually a fan of pixel art, but this is adorable.

Nancy Kress is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Fountain of Age isn’t her best story ever, but it’s still a good read.

Blackbead Brand Rugged Tampons. So very wrong.

More than one has compared Bush to Nero, but none I think has done it so well. Scroll to the middle of the page to read the whole poem, or listen to the realaudio rendition. And, because I do believe in whetting the appitite, here’s the first stanza:

Comparing our imperial leader today to Nero,
whose troops were also engaged in occupation
of Parthian lands along the Euphrates, with about
the same luck as today, we surely must temper
our judgments, forgive a few lies and lives lost,
give thanks that most of the deaths are uncounted,
and not ours. After all, our leader did not murder
his mother. He and she are on excellent terms.

Been meaning to blog this link for the last few days - Marta has been posting some flat out amazing illustrations for OotP to her LJ. I’m wishing these had been in the actual *book*.

I read a lot. Always have. I will, in fact, read just about *anything*. (Upside down memos on my boss’s desk and the backs of cereal boxes included.) It’s almost a compulsion. If I haven’t read something decent in a while I feel funky. Now, I’m not independently wealthy, so this means I spend a lot of time in libraries.

I didn’t realize, growing up, just what I great local library I had. (The Sussex County main branch was seven miles from my house. It rocked.) I thought every town had a decently funded library with a great selection of new and classic sci-fi, a large travel section, a good selection of soundtracks on CD and LP, and a new releases section that was updated on a bi-weekly basis.

I was wrong. With a few notable exeptions (The snooty rich towns, mostly) the Bergen County library system comes up as just adequate. Not that most folks would think it sucks - I think it’s more that I grew up with a really exceptional library, so I’ve got some tough expectations. Hell, my standards are high enough that I will (when I can) drive an hour and a quarter each way just to use my old library. It might be out in the boonies, but they’ve got quality.

But… now and then I *do* find something decent locally. And boy did I ever. Henry’s List of Wrongs. Possibly the best thing I’ve read in two years. The characters are interesting. They’re human. Everyone fucks up at least once. The plot itself pulls you in and then spins you about in a direction you might not see coming. The writing itself, just the pure art of the phrasing and sentence structure…. gorgeous.

I plan on finding everything the author has written and devouring it.

I really was planning on not buying anything nonessential today. Really. No splurging. So after I’d virtuously gone grocery shopping, I thought I’d relax at the bookstore for a while. Browsing only, no buying. And I manage to find two books I’ve been trying to find for ages. I’m pretty good at resisting temptation, but if I hadn’t grabbed them then, I’d have lost my chance at either of them for at least a few more years. (My luck is like that - if I thumb my nose at opportunity, fate finds a way to get back at me.)

And what were they? The Book Of Forms, (A very good poetry textbook, one which I was assigned during my junior year and foolishly sold back at the end of the semester - been looking for it almost ever since.) and Children Of The Night. (One of Mercedes Lackey’s earlier books - the first one of hers that I ever read, and one of her best. And it’s my *third* copy. This one is not getting lent to *anyone* - every time I do that with this title, it grows friggin’ legs.)

But there were temptations that I resisted. Like the used copy of Nancy Kress’s Beggars In Spain - which if I hadn’t found the two books above *would* have come home with me.

I also stopped by at my old local library, which still beats any of the libraries in the Bergen county area hands down. So now I’m working my way through Year Zero, by Jeff Long. Only about ten pages in, but the premise is interesting. Ahhh…. I don’t indulge my booklust nearly enough these days.

Norah Jones - she has a voice like Billie Holiday if Billie was alive today and singing something that fell between Jazz and Country and something else…. and she’s only 22. Did I mention that she’s also luminously beautiful?

She was interviewed on NPR this afternoon as I was driving home, and I actually pulled over so I could write her name down. Finally, a CD I can feel justified in actually *buying*.

Papryus is one of those very nice but tragically overused fonts. Usually when I see it, I’m prejudiced against whatever it’s being used for, regardless of what it is. So when I find an example of it being used and I actually like it, someone is doing something very right. Hilde Schneider-Mott has done this with her portfolio site, and I have to make mention of it.

Being a pretty pictures junkie, I’m always looking around for new photographers whose work I can ogle, drool over, and wish to hell I could reproduce on my own. Stphen Voss is the target du jour - lush, super saturated images that just pop out loud.