Hash and Rehash Were Sitting on a Fence...

Greetings! Dave the Goof here, preparing to unhinge the top of my head and unload more nonsense out onto you, in the form of vacuous blogginess...

More Pianist News: Asked wifey to sit down and watch the first part of The Pianist with me tonight, and she obliged. Felt a bit guilty about it afterwards... it's hard for me to remember that not everyone has the stomach or desire for watching holocaust-related movies/docs like I do. It's shocking to see what people are capable of doing to other people -- that's not everyone's idea of entertainment. Although I don't really consider it entertainment. In a way, I'd like to think it helps me discover myself (pardon how hokey that sounds). I mean, if I was in the same situation, how do I think I would respond? What would I do to survive? What would I do to protect my family? Would I steal? Hurt someone? Kill? If things got bad enough, would my faith go out the window? Or would a have the bones to stand strong to the end? Could I keep my eyes set on eternity? Or would I become obsessed with living hand-to-mouth? What stuff am I made of?

So many questions.

More Book News: Finished reading Anthony Ryan's book Raven's Shadow. By all accounts, a great book. I'm having good luck with indy writers this year so far. Greg Hamerton, James Daniel Ross, Jolea Harrison and now Anthony Ryan. The gems are out there, if you dig deep enough. While Raven's Shadow is a "Book One," it also works well as a stand-alone. According to his website, the sequel has passed the 200,000 word mark, and the first draft will be finished by mid-September. And then re-writes will begin. So I probably won't see Tower Lord until mid-2013 at the soonest, I think. I don't mind. That just means I'll give the Book One a re-read right before Book Two comes out. Anyway, I recommend it, if you like strong, traditional fantasy.

I've moved on to reading Waylander, by the great David Gemmell.

More Batman News: I finally went with Wifey to see the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises or some such. I was a little underwhelmed; I thought they handled the main villain (Bane) weakly. And believe it or not, as long as the film was, it really needed to be longer. I think they just tried to do too much with the film - tried to cover too much territory. It should have been tighter. And oddly enough, they left it open for another sequel - not sure why, since this was supposed to be the end of the trilogy, at least as far as Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan are concerned. Anyway, I thought the film was riddled with illogical choices, but there were enough positives to keep the film afloat. I gave it a 6.5 out of 10.

More Bored Shorts News: I've officially watched all of the Bored Short clips they have uploaded. The Kid History series is awesome. Episode 5 is my favorite, but they're all good. Here, watch!



I think it would be awesome to do something like that for a Christmas movie. Have a bunch of kids tell the Christmas story, and film adults acting it out like that. I wonder if we'd have to get permission to do that? Probably not.

More Workout News: Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be shocked. Are you prepared? *ahem* I can do pull-ups now. I know, right? And I mean, full-on dangling completely straight-armed on the bar, and pulling up nice and slow, all the way up, again, and again. I couldn't do any three weeks ago. I guess the new strength-gain program I've embarked on with my trainer Markshane is working, eh!? Not bad for less than a month, eh? Now if I could just lose this extra 10 pounds... I figure once I get a six-pack going, I will finally be a real man! Right? Right?

OK, well, I suppose I'm off for now. If anything interesting happens this weekend, I'll write about it here! Aren't you lucky!? Man, what would you ever do without a way of finding out all the cool and fascinating things I do on a day-to-day basis! Thank heaven you live in such a time as this!

I was just testing your ability to roll your eyes. Success?

Good.

Dave the Going, Going, Gone