Random Chaos

Not only am I not getting my DreamWidth notifications, I’m not getting them at around the same time I stop getting my LiveJournal notifications. This happens around the time that LJ gets hit with DDoS attacks.

And the DDoS attacks have me wondering one thing, because I noticed one thing that was weird—some of the latest ones have coincided with particularly bloody strings in the television adaptation of the ASoIaF novels (AKA Game of Thrones). A fairly important name in that whole deal actually blogs here (if you know that then names aren’t necessary, and if you don’t I’m not contributing to the hug/poke of death that will ensue).

Let’s just say that if the series were Twitter, all 140 characters’d be dead.

Either way, NEITHER service has been immune to the outages and derpiness that has been going around, and given the one or the other, I’m still more impressed with the old veteran at the service than the newcomer. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the young upstart, but I don’t think the mass exodus is gonna stick.

Also, Kuropantsu, if you’re listening, we need to bang our heads into keyboards to work on the second chapter. My strength is back and I’ve hit the arc wall.

This is the second post where I gush about Chuck Wendig’s work—what can I say, I’m a fan. Irregular Creatures is a collection of his short stories, varying in tone from delightfully dark to friendly family fun—as someone first introduced to him via the blog, the latter was more jarring.

Without spoiling any of the contents, the man has an astounding creative mind. While I got used to him as an advice-tossing profanity-spouting guru, it was bumping into his narratives here that sold me on the man’s mad skills. This was one of the first books I got a sample on and was verily cheesed off when I hit the end of the sample. I honestly took a detour off my route to find someplace with wi-fi to buy the whole book.

At some point, I’m gonna have to review it on Goodreads, after I reread it again and it’s fresh in my head.

This time around, I will gush.

I was introduced to Harold Budd by proxy. I found out that he had a hand in a few of the Cocteau Twins’s songs, and I had to find out who this man was, on account of the fact that I am a HUGE fan of the Cocteau Twins. To my surprise I see that not only has he got his own work out there, there is a lot to choose from.

I begin my exploration with an album co-created by him and Zeitgeist, titled She is a Phantom.

In the middle of the gentle, chamber ambient, there are pieces that have…not lyrics, but verse, recited over the music. The man’s poetry lifts over the music, creating images at once lovely and disturbing—and in the case of “We Step Across,” humorously jarring. I start hunting around, discovering that a small imprint has printed a limited edition collection of his work: 50 hardbacks and 200 trade paperbacks.

I was lucky to score a paperback. It’s one of my treasures now, stored on the shelf carefully shielded from damage.

I did read it first, after washing my hands thoroughly, drying them on linen towels, drying my hands a second time on a different towel, and then very carefully before opening the first page and getting a strong hit of that delicious new-book smell. I read slowly, savoring the text, and the feel of the expensive pages under my fingertips. Then, carefully, I took the text down, saving it to a document I could put on my readers and safely carry everywhere.

 What's your WebStory today?

Because the 100 Things project was on hiatus for so long, I’m skipping the segment interlude post. We’re changing our topic now to the written word, be it in blog or book format, and today we tackle one of my favorite authors.

( We start with David Eddings... )