You are viewing [info]giggglius's journal

Jul. 9th, 2009 @ 10:08 am On a bus.
I'm on a bus. I did the Jersey Shore last week with the AOs, It was beautiful and fun.

I went to work on Monday but had to leave early so that I could sell my car in western NJ. (I really miss my car already. It was a wonderful little car. But it went to a really good home. The guy likes high MPG cars and likes fixing up cars, so he had no issue with the dent or anything else. Yay! Also, I just wire transferred the money to buy my new car in Germany. It's interesting what cash will do for you. If I hadn't been saving up for this move, I wouldn't have had the cash to buy the car, and the people selling it to me for half its worth NEEDED the money to pay off their loan. It's not like I could have easily financed the private sale.)

Now I'm on a Megabus from Milwaukee to Chicago. $10 for the ride, free Wifi. No plugs though, so I'll run out of battery before I get to Chicago. I love Milwaukee. I really do. The Safe House is the most awesome restaurant in the world. When you order a martini, they send it through the pneumatic tube to shake it up and it travels through the entire restaurant. Awesome. And the tea house that began my obsession with afternoon tea is in Milwaukee. Mmmmm. And you can't beat the friends here. (Well, you could, if you had a big enough stick, but why would you want to?) I also spent yesterday with [info]rebeccavich who I hadn't seen in 2 years (since the last time on the Jersey shore). I hadn't even known she'd moved to Milwaukee! It was great!

When i get off the bus in Chicago, I'll be meeting my godparents for the first time. They moved away from Seattle when I was 4 and never came back. I have no memories of them at all. My only knowledge of them growing up was that they had given me my little baptismal bible, and when I was in middle school my mom went to Chicago and saw them and brought back a Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt for me. Supposedly they're really nice, but I don't know them.

And then a weekend of business at the ALA Annual conference. Crazy! I might end the weekend with more craziness and go see HP and the HBP Tuesday at Midnight. Who cares that I have an 11am flight. It's HP!
About this Entry
2 comments
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Jul. 8th, 2009 @ 11:03 pm Whirlwind Tour
So I have left NYC.

I am moving to Frankfurt, Germany.

And since I luckily still have a lot of friends on Livejournal, I figured maybe I should start posting regularly again.

I had to move out of my house at the end of July, so I spent a week on the Jersey Shore with [info]metallian and [info]mrsmetallian as well as a bunch of awesome other Alpha Thetians. I then worked one last day at NYPL, and am now in Milwaukee with the Metallians before heading to Chicago tomorrow for ALA (yay librarian conferences!).

I'll then spend 2 weeks in Seattle, 2 days in Iceland, and settle in Frankfurt (after 2 weeks of whirlwind travelling Germany with [info]haeddre).

Oh what a crazy life I lead.

But it's nice to be back to checking LJ!
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Feb. 23rd, 2009 @ 06:55 pm Jobs in Germany
Anybody want to find me a job I can do in Frankfurt (or the immediate environs)?

Or a job I can do from abroad for an in the US company?
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Feb. 22nd, 2009 @ 02:15 pm In Honor of the Oscars
My first post in FOREVER!!!

And thanks to Comrade Christine for sending me her version.

Rules:
1. Pick 20 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
5. NO GOOGLING, using an IMDb search or other search function.


1.
I'm Fergus the Ostler.
Whogus the Whatsler?

2.
"You don't have to do this. I mean, this ain't exactly the Mississipi.
I'm on one side, I'm on the other side. I'm on the east bank, I'm on
the west bank. It's not that critical.

3.
Praise the Lord, and pass the tax rebate!

4.
I've come here with a view of asking you to marriage me. I know I
seems an insane person - because I hardly knows you - but sometimes
things are so transparency, they don't need evidential proof.

5.
What's this? You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see?
Don't be that guy.

6.
"I'm promoting you Major. "
"I don't think that's a very good idea."

7.
DON'T MOVE, DIRTBAG!

8.
It comes in pints?
I'm getting one.

9.
We are men of action, lies do not become us.

10.
The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me.

11.
"I heard that! It turned inside out?"
"And it exploded."

12.
"Tell me, what's Einstein really like?"
"Dead."

13.
Supplies!

14.
"I hate trees."
"They don't bother me. "
"Yeah, well, you weren't in the last one."

15.
He does dress better than I do, what would I bring to the relationship?

16.
Well, I hope it's a long ceremony, 'cause it's gonna be a short honeymoon.

17.
One thousand gold pieces on each of their heads, dead or alive! . . .
I prefer dead!

18.
One day, lad, all this will be yours.
What, the curtains?
No, not the curtains,

19.
"Just how obscene an amount of cash are we talking about here? Profane
or really offensive?"
"Really offensive."
"I like him so much."

20.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

And a couple that Christine picked and I would have chosen but didn't
want to copy.

1a)Hey, Ryan, be careful what you shoot at. Most things in here don't
react too well to bullets.

2a) -Why a spoon, cousin? Why not an axe?
-Because it's DULL, you twit. It'll hurt more.
About this Entry
3 comments
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
May. 21st, 2007 @ 12:37 pm Firecrackers up the wazoo
Oh! Great Del Rey
Air Gear, vol. 1 2006
Itsuki is the star wrestler of the Eastside gang, but his recent victory against the Westside won’t go unpunished. After a beating and a firecracker stuck where the sun don’t shine, Itsuki is ready for revenge. With a new pair of Air Trek (a powered rollerblade that helps users “fly”) and his foster sisters (who happen to conveniently form an Air Trek gang out to stop the bad guys), the adventure begins. Perhaps the author goes by the moniker of Oh! Great to convince the reader that his work is better than it, in actuality, is. While his drawings are eye catching and highly detailed, his writing is choppy and confusing and lacks character depth. The naked shower scenes, rape or molestation of large numbers of girls in multiple scenes (implied), and the aforementioned firecracker are gratuitous and detract from the storyline. There has been a lot of shojo being reviewed for the system recently, so it would have been really nice if this had been a good shonen title to balance out collections, unfortunately it’s not. The artwork does not save the story.
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
May. 21st, 2007 @ 12:30 pm Vampire Academy
Mead, Richelle Razorbill
Vampire Academy 2007
With an appropriately slutty cover and a title to make students think this will be Private meets Dracula (which, really, isn’t a bad sell), the reality of the book was a pleasant surprise. Inside, we find a world where half-human Dhampirs train to protect the living vampires (Moroi) from the dead vampires (Strigoi). The book focuses on the friendship and mystical bond between Dhampir Rose and Moroi princess Lissa. Mead creates supernatural characters that are far more real than many of the shallow characters found in series fiction today. The main characters face ostracism, classism, self-mutilation (cutting), slander, first love, and depression (which they fight the old-fashioned way . . . with therapy and pills). A strong addition to the many vampire books that come out each year, with another book in the series due out in 2008.
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
May. 21st, 2007 @ 12:25 pm A Princess of Roumania, revisited
So, back in December, I mentioned how I didn't like the book. I just didn't.

I had to review the sequel, Tourmaline, and I didn't like it either.

Now I have to review the 3rd (and hopefully last) book in the series, White Tyger. I expect I won't like it.

But to be fair, I think there are lots of people who will. I suggested book 2 for an awardy/listy thing, I'll probably do the same for book 3. I recognize that it's just one of those things where it's a good book, just not for me. I can admit when my own preferences shouldn't overshadow the merit of a book. This doesn't happen very often though. Normally, when I'm faced with a book I don't like, it really is a bad book. I like so many DIFFERENT varieties of books, that it's surprising for me to dislike a good book. But I'm not a fan of the LOTR books either. I love the story, don't like the writing style. And that, as far as I can tell, is what happens with the Roumania books and me.
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Dec. 21st, 2006 @ 05:14 pm I don't like this book
I'm reading A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park. I don't like it.

The below review from a user at Amazon.com really sums up what I'm feeling right now.

My favorite line in the review: "It ends with something that I would call a cliffhanger if it were even remotely interesting or thrilling."

A review by Abigail Nussbaum (Israel)
http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Roumania-Paul-Park/dp/0765310961

"The exuberant praise for Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania - from luminaries such as Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Kim Stanley Robinson, and John Crowley, not to mention many respected genre reviewers - has left me scratching my head. Did all these people read the same book I did?

Park's underperforming novel might be acceptable for the YA set (although there's so much good stuff for kids these days that it's hard to imagine why they'd bother with this book), but adult readers have nothing to look for here. At no point is A Princess of Roumania truly bad, but neither does it ever manage to pull itself together into a competent piece of writing. Reading it is an experience similar to eating dough instead of bread.

Park's prose is dull and overworked in its descriptive passages, choppy and inscrutable during the (never particularly thrilling) action scenes. His plot meanders, and when it does advance it does so at a snail's pace. Worst of all, Princess' characters are at best dull, at worst, merely cyphers on the page, bereft of personality and originality.

Part of the problem is that Princess is only the first half of a story that, quite plainly, isn't broad enough to support 600 pages. The book's plot is mainly setup - getting all the pieces on the board where the author wants them - and the result is at least 200 pages of almost nothing happening, followed by 150 pages of very little happening. It's probably overstating the case to say that Princess would have made a good novel at half its page count - there's still Park's anemic prose and indifferent characterization to contend with - but it would have been a good first step. Regardless, it's important to note that Princess doesn't really stand on its own. It ends with something that I would call a cliffhanger if it were even remotely interesting or thrilling, and resolves none of the questions and mysteries raised over the course of its 370 pages.

This is hardly the first time I've found myself at odds with authors whose own fiction I've greatly admired. It probably won't be the last. The fact that Park plays a little with the conventions of the 'Princess in hiding' sub-genre doesn't make him an original writer, nor does in make A Princess of Roumania an interesting or worthwhile book. There are plenty of books out there that overturn genre tropes in interesting and thought-provoking ways, and you would be well advised to leave Park's book alone and seek them out instead."
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Dec. 11th, 2006 @ 07:40 pm 10 sure signs a movie character is doomed and other surprising movie lists
by Richard Roeper.

from the list "the 40 worst movies I've ever seen" comes:

5. Battlefield Earth: The Real danger of Scientology is that John Travolta may someday make another movie based on the wrotings of L. Ron Hubbard.
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link
Dec. 8th, 2006 @ 06:30 pm Christmas Letters
Elph had the right idea. Can people please send me their addresses so I can send them Christmas letters? I've never done it before, so it's really about time I did . . .

All comments will be screened, so you should be safe, otherwise send it to my GMAIL account (i'll never see it at my alum account).
About this Entry
Leave a comment
Permanent Link