Doyce Testerman

The First Evil has a blog. On LiveJournal, natch.
Still, pretty funny.

(via Stan/Boulder Dude)

I finished up The Onion Girl, by Charles de Lint today, one of several books he’s set in the fictional locale of Newford. Interesting stuff, and the first thing I’ve ever read by de Lint (I think — certainly the first novel-length thing). Lots of good characters. Onion Girl is one of the later books in the Newford series, so there is a sense of having walked into an ongoing conversation between people who have all known each other for about twenty years, but it was still enjoyable.
De Lint is obviously comfortable writing his characters and has known them all for a good long time — so much so that a book like Onion Girl, which is much less about the story and much more about exploring his characters in painstaking depth, doesn’t bother him or his readers much. In some ways it reminded me of an excerpt from a (or any) long-running Amber campaign that you read one character diary from — obviously fascinating to the involved participants, but less so to those who don’t know what exactly’s going on.
Still, brimming with lots of neat ideas, good prose, and lots of small feisty women with unkempt hair and commitment issues. I’ll be happy to find and read more of his stuff.

In related news, we’re going to test drive a Mini at two this afternoon. :)
Update:
Getting a Mini has become much more likely. Very comfortable (more room for the driver in fact than my truck), very zippy, corners like it’s on rails, excellent handling in general, and optimized for an intelligent driver — I really enjoyed the half hour they let us just take off and drive it (without even a sales guy). The clutch is very forgiving and I really liked the action on the manual… I can’t even see where getting the Cooper S would be necessary — the plain old Cooper I drove had plenty of juice, and that’s something I’m really picky about.
Then you look at numbers and realize that the highway MPG is double my pickup’s and even the city mpg is still 11 better than my truck’s highway mpg. There’s a lot to like.
Jackie even liked it, and she really didn’t want to.

I got a form in the mail to apply to be a Neilsen family.

Started and finished Coraline today, which I really cannot recommend enough and which I’ll more than happily lend to people (or gift them for upcoming birthdays). I enjoy Neil Gaiman more and more with each new thing of his that I read (although Neverwhere is still my favorite, I think).
Justin listened to me moan at the creepifying wiggins and laugh out loud all through the reading of it today (I would have read it out loud but my voice is absolutely GONE right now), and immediately grabbed it and ran off with it when I finished.
My duty here is done.

Nathan Fillion (aka Cpt. Mal Reynolds) posted a little farewell note on the Firefly board (well, everyone did, but his was the best one). Included below:

So, here we all are. It seems that we are a living embodiment for the show. We are Browncoats, fighting a war we were never meant to win, but fighting nonetheless. The Fox Alliance has spoken, leaving us to make due with the cards we’ve been dealt. If you are anything like me, you’ve been pulling the record tabs off your precious Firefly VHS tapes, pushing along through your life still bitterly fighting the war from within.

I love Firefly. Walking around the cargo bay, the bridge, it’s all been terribly painful. It does still live inside me, though. With every “gorram” or “them as can” I throw unknowingly into my daily conversation, or everytime I sit in the captain’s chair that lives in my heart, I smile with the knowledge of what we’ve accomplished here. We may have been on the losing side, still not convinced it was the wrong one. I can’t remember who said that.
Keep sending those postcards into to UPN. Every little bit helps, and if ever you see me on the street, just nod and say, “Captain.” You’ll make my day.

Okay, quick and dirty.
Excellent. Just excellent. More Gimli, good Legolas stuff, Eowyn was great, Grima was great, and the animation on Smealgol was absolutely stunning.
There were scenes where I wanted to see more — not because they felt incomplete, but just because I wanted to enjoy the scene even more and for longer.
Oddly, Helm’s Deep was not one of those scenes. It was the part I thought could have been shortened a bit in favor of more Treebeard, but probably only by a minute, total… I say it could be shorter, but there isn’t really any bit I’d want to lose. Ah well.
I wanted more Treebeard. His section was far too ‘hasty’. Smealgol was excellent.
There’s a rumor going around that a major scene from the second book was moved to the third movie. That is not true: there are two major scenes that were moved, both near the end. Should make the start of RotK ver ver interesting and of course I can hardly wait.
With the first movie, I enjoyed the added scenes on the DVD mostly for the fun of it. In Two Towers, I think they’ll add considerably to my enjoyment (which was already substantial) just because there is SO MUCH going on that it would be nice if there were no arbitrary three hour time limit.
As with the first movie, the timing of some of the dialogue seemed odd and off-center the first time I saw it, but flowed seamlessly the second time — don’t know why that is.
Wanted to see more of Faramir, but I liked the stuff they added to that section of the story. Did I mention Smealgol was brilliant?
Quite a large section was added to this movie that is not in any way in the books, but it was so interesting visually and story-wise that I really didn’t care. It needed to be added to counterweight the stuff that was moved to RotK.
All in all, great stuff, although I think I might have liked FotR just a squige more (this being so very very VERY ‘middle of the story’), but having said that I want to also mention that Two Towers made me want to reread the whole series again more more so than FotR did.
Seeing it twice in the same day might have been, in retrospect, unnecessary, although I’m glad I did it since now I won’t be constantly thinking about it until I see it again.
Again, Smealgol was great.
There are many great little one-liners that I’d love to mention, but I hate reading those myself before I’ve seen the movie because I end up waiting all movie to hear the lines, so I’m not going to mention them. I will simply mention Legolas, Gimli, Samwise the Brave, and Gollum.

I spent the lunch hour turning my electronic tickets for The Lord of the Rings into paper.
The first show we’re going to is at midnight tonight. Twelve hours later, we’ll there again.
Geek? Maybe. When I went to the theatre where they’re doing the midnight show there were already people in line outside (for seats, not tickets). Lawn chairs, reading material, and warm clothing — not particularly warm outside today.
Matter of fact, it just started snowing a little bit.