Subtitle That Blog!
Love! Love! Love! the great list of suggested blog subtitles/mottos that came in yesterday. There's a runoff poll of some of my favorites over to your right....
The Beard
Don't feel bad if you are not excited about this particular story line. Even ~I~ am bored by my beard.
The Oregon State Flag Makeover
Remember, entries are due Tuesday! Here are the rules, if you are just tuning in.
The Reading List
Michael5000 to Fingerstothebone, 1/28/08:
Fingerstothebone to Michael5000, 1/29/08:To the L&TM5K Vice-Dork,
The time has come for me to call on you in your capacity as blog vice-dork. I have selected the following books off the Reading List as possible "next reads": Andric, Bridge on the Drina; Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita; Greene, The End of the Affair; Kafka, The Process; Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies; Nabakov, Lolita; Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy; Twain, Huckleberry Finn;
My request is for you to apply your patented "Random Movie" selection method to determine which of these will be the follow-up to "The Brothers Karamazov...."
McKenzieBooks.com to Michael5000, 1/30/08And the answer is: 2. Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Glad to be of service.
We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your order on 01/30/2008. Your order has been shipped from Portland, Oregon, via U.S. Postal Service Standard Media Mail (4 - 14 business days). Item: The Master and Margarita [] by Bulgakov, Mikhail....
II: Less Long-Winded Reviews
Epileptic, by David B. [Autobiographical Graphic Novel]. A boy's life is shaped by his relationship with his severely epileptic brother and by his parents' eternal quest to find a cure for the disease by any medical, alternative, or even supernatural means available. An astonishly frank and fair memoir. Recommended.
District B-13. [French Action Film]. I checked out this movie having read that it explored issues of race and class in modern France in an entertaining but insightful way. Nope. Instead, it is just another movie dedicated to the proposition that a sufficiently fit and agile man has nothing to fear from an army of thugs with machine guns. Well filmed in the Hong Kong action style; staged and edited to resemble a shooter video game. Lots of running, jumping, and kicking. Not Very Interesting.
Gridlock, by Matt Gaffney. An accessible and entertaining overview of the conventions, controversies, and personalities of the world of crosswords. There's not much here that will be news to serious crossword people, but it would be a fun read for a casual solver who always wondered where the puzzles come from. Diverting.
I read Epileptic on a recommendation from Dan at Von Trapper Keeper. Gridlock was on Rex Parker's 2007 Holiday Shopping Guide for all things crosswordy.
III. Weekend Greetings
Happy Groundhog Day! It's not as dumb a holiday as it seems. It, and even the whole bit about the groundhog seeing its shadow, date back to medieval times. It's even got some calendrical significance: it marks the halfway point between the winter solstace and the spring equinox. Or, to put it another way, it marks the end of the darkest 1/4 of the year, at least up here in the beautiful Northern Hemisphere where L&TM5K is written and produced.
See you Monday for the Quiz.
I've read epileptic, it's good.
ReplyDeleteBeards are good. Goatees, however, are evil.
Good luck with the beard! I hope that by the end of the year that son of a gun is down to your feet like Shel Silverstein.
ReplyDeleteShel Silverstein lives at M5000's feet??
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, those blog subtitles just don't do it for me. Stick with the original, I say (as do the voters, so far at least).
Lolita is my favorite book of all time. read that next, dammit!
Huckleberry Finn is so deceptively light as to be pleasure reading, if you get weary of heavy allegorical Soviet lit.
i'm with chance - read lolita next. and i really like how your list is mainly made up of dreary russian authors. what do you have against english speaking ones?
ReplyDeletei think you need some lighter fare to break up the monotony a bit.
the beard is looking great. DON'T do the goatee thing. all or nothing, baby.
oh. and i meant to say that it sucks you didn't get the promotion. i'm bummed for you.
a) Nice nostrils.
ReplyDeleteb) Why no appealing to the L&TM5K Head Dork and her very own book list? Sniffle. I fully support both my vice-dork's excellent choice of Master and Margarita, though I wonder if you want to give yourself some breathing room before undertaking the next Russian translation, and the suggestion of Lolita.
Hey, your vote meter let me vote for 2 subtitles, but only counted one. But which one it counted? It's smart enough to not let me vote again though. Not that I'd cheat, I just wanted to double check the numbers, you know.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the job.
If you joined the parade after last August, you might not know about the origins of The Reading List. It was arrived at through a highly democratic process, and thus I can not at this point add or subtract anything to or from it. The Reading List is set in stone, and not even the Lead Dork, excellent as her own list is, has the power to change that.
ReplyDeleteNot everyone may know about the Vice Dork's habit of picking a weekly Random Movie through a computer algorythm. So, I was just asking her to apply that process to pick the next choice of off the list. Master and Margarita it is, and it arrived in the mail today! Woo hoo!
I second (or third) the Epileptic recommendation. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteI do not even know if the groundhog saw its shadow! I have to check on that.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I am going to check into the graphic novel. Those can be yummy.
I look forward to the book review of Master and Margarita.