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Here, have a regular blog post. No no, it's on the house.

The family went and saw Bee Movie. It was cute, but it felt like it was trying too hard. There were a lot of funny bits, I will give it that. My favorite part, hands down, was when the main character was flying through the cab of a truck and you hear the radio say, "From NPR News in Washington, I'm Carl Castle." I'm a giant nerd for laughing at that, but it was the best bit. I think Carl must have lost a bet.

I just finished reading Larry Niven's Ringworld. I'm on this classics kick and will probably try to find more sci-fi or fiction done in the middle of the 20th century. You know the books, the ones everyone is trying to get you to read. I blew through Forever War and it was sort of entertaining but not what people had made it out to be. Ringworld left me equally as lukewarm. I don't know if it was level of intellect or the time in my life, but I just couldn't seem to wrap my brain around the plot, or if there was one. It was like reading a bad dream, the narrative was all over the place and when people slowed down to talk it was in this technobabble exposition, as though the reader needed a degree in quantum mathematics just to grasp the basics of the story.

There was a bit in the book where the main characters travel by transporters, basically. I forget their name. Think of a phone booth that zaps you to another location. Later on an alien homeworld, they find similar modes of transportation, but no booths, just open platforms. This allowed them to basically run several hundred miles in a short time, but they missed seeing this wonderful alien world. The whole book was like this scene, it moved really fast, across ridiculous, almost unbelievable distances, but you never felt like you were seeing anything. Scene after scene I was left thinking there would be more, but it just moved on. They were in a storm, then suddenly in a floating castle, then suddenly someone was dead, then not dead, then they were being attacked.

I hate to say this about a classic, Hugo Award winning book, but it was just shit-ass writing. If I'd have writing like this in college I'd have failed. If I wrote a story like this now, it wouldn't sell. The concept was tenuous, the alien/human interactions were forced, and the scope of their travels was just stupid in its immenseness. I can't honestly recommend this book to anyone. The idea itself was interesting, but the execution was horribly amateur.

If anyone has suggestions on other classic science fiction, I'll take a shot at it.

So now I'm doing a shirt design for my mom, flushmount for Cheryl, holiday cards to mail out and I have to hire someone to stand behind me and kick my ass to get some lettering done for a couple people. Oh and the annual Penciljack holiday art swap is going on, plus I have to get my drawing done for th 100 Artists Project.

Good thing I'm super motivated to do fuck-all.

So I'm doing flushmounts and watching football and I see a commercial where a guy tricks his wife into thinking he missed picking up their son from practice. She comes outside and they're standing there with a new car, you know, with a fucking bow on top.

I hate those commercials. Has anyone got a car for Christmas? Does anyone know where to find giant bows? My guess is you get them at car lots. "Merry Christmas, honey. I got you a $400 a month payment for the next five years. Ho ho ho!" I'm sure if you tried that in real life, the honest reaction would be, "Oh jeez that's nice baby, but I hate those cars."

I'm all kinds of black coffee bitter today.

Carry on.