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 Was looking back over some old Nick Fury comics and the first thing I thought was "Oh, I'm used to you being black now" and I sighed. Like I was disappointed that I have access to the original source material. 

The Ultimate Marvel universe has ruined this for me.

... and by ruined, I mean turning Nick Fury into every Samual L Jackson movie ever was the a really good decision.

Now I am off to feel ashamed of myself.



Found this today.  It's not a sound I typically listen to, but I like it.

 2 days ahead in Nanowrimo!

I'm going to get done early enough to do serious editing (please?).  I'm glad I write every day in general outside of November, helps with the necessary discipline (of which I typically have none).

Also, going to start sharing music when I remember about it.  Today is The One You Say Goodnight To, by Kina Grannis.  Found her by accident and I'm glad I did.  Let's see if this works.

 Summer camp and real life work eat my soul.  Done with the actual camping now (black widow count = 13), now to Camp Nanowrimo.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

 

It surprised me how many of these I didn't recognize the title of.

 

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen   (not a big fan of her, but I page back occasionally to see if my tastes change)

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (bits and pieces? still working on it)

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (the heroine’s an idiot, as are most of the other characters, but I still love it in spite of myself)

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (read bits and pieces when people make me, but have never finished any of them because I can't stand her writing style and yet I still know more about the series than my best friends who have read it 8 times.  I feel like it counts...)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible  (it was the only way I could get away with not being completely attentive in church.  I then proceeded to critique the old school Moses movie at the age of 10.)

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott   (not impressed)

12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare   (alright, so I don't love all of it, but the tragedies are brill)

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD

19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell  (can not force myself to read it, I want to punch the main character in the face she annoys me so much)

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy   (started, never finished)

25.  The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll  (loved parts but not all of)

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy  (in progress)

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis    (loved when I read them as a child)

34. Emma - Jane Austen   (not a big fan of her, but it's a classic and I have an english degree so I feel obligated)

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen   (see above)

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 

38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 

48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

52. Dune - Frank Herbert   (if only because of my brother)

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons  

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen   (literally wanted to die)

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov   (bits and pieces of, but nothing substantial)

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac 

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding   (never ever ever)

69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie  

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens  

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker   (it hurts to say I haven't read this)

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte's Web - EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle   (love.  so much of it)

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton  

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery   (in french)

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo   (started, never finished)

Have once again dedicated myself to National Novel Writing Month.
Why in gods name do I do this to myself.


Let the thirty days and nights of literary abandon begin!  (in three days)

I wish I had a studio to paint in.  It becomes much harder to justify doing oil painting when any minor accident involving the carpet means I loose my deposit.  Of course it would also help if I didn't give up on using brushes and end up using my fingers for my abstracts, but that's no fun. 

I'd get my guache out, but it doesn't have the same movement and functions better for cell painting.  Why do I even own that much guache...

Theoretically I could use a diluted paint and it would be so bad, but then I'd have to deal with room mates complaining about the smell of paint thinner (just like they've done about fixative and plaster and clay being baked and varnish and my sketching materials taking over the living room which  is probably a legitimate complaint) and that's almost as bad as loosing my deposit.

I need to buy a tarp.

There is almost nothing I enjoy more at my job than sitting by the front desk and listening to our students write music in the hallways. 

The telephones are surprisingly quiet today, which is just as well because I've caught the bug that's going around the school and am fairly certain I sound like a man.  If our admin assistant wasn't sick then I wouldn't have to worry about the phones, but she is (and has been the past two days) and I'm a nice person with a history of minding the phones for the last hour of the school day when it's needed.

Our School Director is rustling around, trying to leave for almost an hour like she does everyday.  She walks out the front doors the same time as our buisness manager before walking back in because she parked on the other side of the building.  The students sitting in the hall with their acoustic guitars send their farewell wishes a filth time as she passes.  One of them starts a particularly complicated and fast series of chords that I can't identify, but remember from yesterday; It sounds beautiful and I feel incredibly ridiculous when my first thought is that it sounds like the wind in the middle of an open field.

The bell rings and the students rush the halls, some wave at me or call out greetings as they walk by. 

Even though I can't hear it from where I'm sitting, I know classical music  is playing through our PA system and it makes me smile.

I am notoriously bad at online journals, but am going to give it a shot anyway (again).

...Although now that I'm thinking about it, I should probably not be doing so while at work. Especially since I really do love my job.