Independence Day

Category: dribblings

have a safe and happy Fourth!

redwhiteblueribbon

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Dragonfly

Category: dribblings

dragonfly 

when we were kids my leetle brahther and i had a baby-sitter who would come watch us during the summer because dad worked 3rd (so he was sleeping all day) and mom was going to college. the sitter’s name was Mrs. Owens and she was approximately 400 years old. give or take a few years. she was a nice, old, southern lady, and i remember she was usually humming a hymn or something. she knew a lot about plants and trees. since we lived near a creek (well, ditch, is probably more like it.) we’ve always had tons of dragonflies in the summer. Mrs. Owens always called them Snake Doctors.

did you know that dragonflies can’t walk?

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i love working with the public

Category: dribblings

it’s true. i love working with the public.

also, i hate it.

also also, i am continually surprised by the public, if not every day, than at least once a week. you’d think there would be a point where i would have seen it all, heard it all, but no, that’s what makes working with the public so great.

case in point: today a lady comes in wanting to get a library card.

i love it when people get library cards. it’s great! when you get a library card you can borrow books! for free! it’s an awesome thing. it’s one of the best things ever invented! i wish everyone used their public library.

so when people come in and want library cards, i too, want them to have library cards.

this lady (a grown, adult woman. older than me.), she comes in and wants a card. AWESOME. let’s get her a card!

do you have a AL driver’s license?

no. i don’t drive.

okay. do you have a state ID?

no. i don’t have anything like that.

you have no photo ID?

nope.

do you have any kind of identification?

not with me.

you’re going to need to bring that in to get a card here.

i haven’t been here that long.

do you have proof of residency?

no.

you don’t have a bank statement or utility bill that comes in your name?

no. it’s not my house.

do you have a rental agreement or lease with your name and address on it?

i live with some people.

okay, to get a card we need proof that you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live.

but i don’t have any of those things.

i’m sorry. you can’t get a card until you have those things.

oh wait! i do have something!

great!

*pulls out a prescription bottle of pills and puts it on the counter* here! this has my name on it!

ma’am, we can’t use this.

but why not?! it’s got my name on it!

ma’am, a bottle of pills is not a valid form of ID.

***

she got mad and left.

she’s no ID, DL, papers of any kind. how did she get there? did she drive there? what kind of pills were they?

i have no answers.

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you don’t have to wear khakis to enjoy this.

Category: dribblings

http://musicmachinery.com/2010/05/21/the-swinger/

turn a regular song into swing!

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18. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

Category: 50 Books

I am so happy to finally have finished this monster. The first half of the book is so tedious I almost didn’t finish it. It picks up halfway, and it gets more exciting, but I didn’t think the tedium was worth it. And I know the author died before the books were published, so don’t misunderstand me here: but the Whole Erica Berger arc? should have been cut out. I’m assuming that if the author had lived he would have had other books to follow this one, and then the Berger thing would have been a good idea. But since the publishers/editors knew the author was dead and no more books would be forthcoming? Kind of a pointless subplot. Because it actually doesn’t go anywhere. It’s magically tied up in a “oh, so… everything’s okay? well, all right then.”

I totally believe the author was going somewhere with that arc, especially to bring in the Linder character. But in this case, what with no sequels, blah.

I would not recommend this book if you did not like the first two books in the trilogy. If, you want to give it a go so’s you can finish out the tril, i understand, but you can pretty much guess how it’s going to end.

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file under: damn, nature, you scary.

Category: dribblings

caterpiller
 Here’s the dickless jubilee that ate my tomatoes! what a fucking liberty.
what with the mandibles… and lookit how it looks like it has eyes all over it’s body. that is some sinister kind of bug bullshit mojo.

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oooooo’s a wittle fweegan?

Category: dribblings

Baylor with a big cheese bite.

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Ruby, don’t take your love to town.

Category: dribblings

i came home from work yesterday and Ruby (neighbors’ cat that loves to play with Lebowski) came running up all excited. now, i had seen her the day before and petted her and cooed at her and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. but yesterday, when she came up to me i knew.

“fucking hell, Rubes. You’re pregnant.”

what a diff’rence a day makes.

i’m so mad at our redneck neighbors. she is SO TINY. i’m afraid she’s going to die and chances are, the kittens won’t make it. not that i want a pack of kittens roaming around either. plus, she’s been hanging around over here the last two days and i hope she doesn’t have her kittens on my porch. or in my jeep.
do not want.

and before you go blaming Bowskers, he was fixed back in January, and he wasn’t allowed to go outside until then. you know why? BECAUSE I’M A RESPONSIBLE PET OWNER AND GOOD NEIGHBOR. whoa, when did that soapbox get here? gimmie that. GET YOUR PETS SPAYED OR NEUTERED. IF YOU DON’T, YOU BETTER BE A BREEDER. if you’re not a breeder? GET YOUR PET FIXED, ASS.

okay. here’s the soapbox back.

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still reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Category: dribblings

i’m on page 239 (about halfway through) and i feel like i’ve been reading four books at the same time. but no, it’s the same book. just with a ton of names (and several of the names are kind of similar, think: <i>Beowulf</i>.) there is so much going on in this book, and it’s JUST NOW starting to get exciting. yes, over 200 pages in and it’s finally starting to DO SOMETHING. i thought i liked exposition.

BUT MAYBE I DON’T.

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The Girl With the Very Large Stack of Books That Need to be Read

Category: dribblings

i’m in the middle of reading the third and final of the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. (while i’m thinking about it, shouldn’t it hornets’? i mean, don’t they live in colonies together? so the nest wouldn’t belong to just one hornet. Joe the Hornet. John Q. Hornet. i dunno, something seems off.)

i’m not even close to finishing it yet, but so far i can tell you that it is JUST AS tedious as the first two. There are half a million characters to keep straight and the amount of details is never-ending. i’m not saying it’s a bad thing, okay? i’m just warning you that if you think this is a “summer read” or a “beach book” just something you can sit and chill and mindlessly read, it’s not. you better have your thinking cap on.

this one starts up right where the second one, The Girl Who Played With Fire, left off. which is nice that it didn’t skip ahead or gloss over events. however **** TGWPWF SPOILER ALERT**** that ending was so bullshit stupid that i felt it ruined the whole book. i’m sorry, but when you’re shot three times, one of the shots being IN YOUR HEAD, and then you are BURIED, i don’t think you get to dig yourself out of your grave and EXACT AXE-WIELDING JUSTICE on your “killer”.
call me old fashioned.

did i want Salander to die? of course not. she’s the only reason Americans are reading these books. (please tell me you knew that. tell me you didn’t think we were picking up on the “injustice to women” subtext? you know us better than that. however, if you want to write a feminst book to make a point, i don’t think you should have the other main character be a middle-aged man that the “The Girl Who” falls in love with.) i’m rooting for Salander just like you are, BUT that doesn’t mean i’ll tolerate bullshit for the sake of bullshit. getting shot in the head, buried in the ground, and then digging yourself out of the grave and axing-to-the-head your tormentor is a complete crap plot point. in any country.

and the reason i hate that so much is because the books are good. it’s that one part that makes it so stupid. so i have decided to believe that since Mr. Larsson died before his books were published that maybe he would have gone back over them with an editor and been all, “hey, you know the part where Lisabeth gets shot in the head?”

“yeah, then buried?”

“right, then buried. then she doesn’t die, remember? she digs her way out of the grave.”

“yeah, despite the multiple gunshot wounds, one of which was a headshot.”

“yeah, and one to the shoulder.”

“probably making it difficult to dig her way out of the grave.”

“probably.”

“tough girl.”

“yeah. then the axe part, right?”

“the axe! i forgot about the axe.”

“that’s all plausible, right?”

“what do you mean?”

“i mean, people will buy that, yeah?”

“oh yeah. well, i mean, Americans will.”

“should i… change any of that?”

“mmmm, yeah. in fact, change that whole bit. it’s crap.”

“it IS crap, isn’t it?”

or something like that.

anyway. we’ll see how Hornet’s Nest goes. maybe aliens will show up?

one other thing i’ll say about this series is that i do like the book covers. i have no idea what the Scandi/Euro covers look like. i’m just glad that the covers don’t have trees on them. it seems like most of the Scandi crime books have trees on the cover. (not to say that we don’t ever put trees on our book covers, but it was just something i’ve noticed.)

 i’ve enjoyed the odd palette.


see? weird colors. simple type (which is great), and the tattoo kind of covers some of the letters? love it.


this one was far more garish with the colors. it almost hurts to look at this one. again with the simple letter style and the hair overlaps the letters. see? with the unity? i didn’t like how the words were placed on this one as much as i liked the first one, but that’s just me. also, the hair? really has nothing to do with The Girl. i guess it could be her wig? doesn’t matter, there’s no fire playing in the book either.


i liked this one as well, but what you can’t tell from the picture is that the background is a chrome silver. it’s shiny. unfortunately i think that gives it a bit of a sci-fi look to it. i wish they had chosen a real color instead. but the design is still good. i really like the title layout (compared to the others i think this one is the best). the dotty hexagons overlap the letters (unity! important!) but the hornets, lack an imagination, i think. most of them are the same picture (just smaller?) and most are facing the same direction. to me they look like WWII bomber planes in the air. i’ve not finished reading the book, but i’m doubting that WWII bomber planes make an appearance. if, by some chance they do? kudos to the graphic artist.

it reminds me kind of like something my pal Laura would do. not the colors or the bland hornets, mind. but with the layout. it’s a more sparse design than the other two covers. i dunno. maybe not. Laura, how would you have designed that?

****

anyway, i need to get back to reading this so i can read all the other books i so want to read right now!

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