I bought a Honda Hawk GT NT650 sportbike this week!
It's the bike I've wanted for more than a decade, gassing it up will be cheap as hell, and now every commute will be far more exciting!
Because of the ever-present specter of imminent death and/or traumatic head injury!
Note that this is a far different list from "Games I've played," which would be far, far longer. This was just sort of an excercise to see if I could spot any trends in games that manage to actually play to completion.
Ultima VI
Wolfenstein 3D
Portal
Fallout
Fallout 2
Bioshock
Soul Reaver
Soul Reaver 2
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Psychonauts
F.E.A.R
Morrowind
Morrowind: Bloodmoon
Legend of Dragoon
Shadow of the Colossus
Knights of the Old Republic 2
God of War
Devil May Cry
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil 4
Space Rangers 2
Homeworld
Space Quest 4
The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2
Escape from Monkey Island
Full Throttle
Herps of Minnesota: Cope's/Eastern Gray Treefrog
There's no reliable way to tell the difference between the Cope's Gray and the Eastern Gray Treefrog without counting chromosomes, and both are ubiquitous in Minnesota.
This frog is probably the most urban herp in the state, as well, and can be found stuck to office building windows at night, looking in over your shoulder, wishing it could come in and use your computer to look for rims on craigslist.
The Gray Treefrog is an almost exclusive insectivore, and is able to cling to almost any surface, including glass, using its mucous-covered toe discs.
I found this little fella outside the back door to my office, where he had just finished polishing off a moth. Spending 12 hours in front of a computer screen, at night, completely alone in a dark office building can get to you after a bit, so it's nice that I can step outside almost any time, and find an amphibious friend to hang around with on my break.
This list of the most important works of sci-fi/fantasy has been making the rounds lately (I got it from PZ Myers), and it fits in neatly with the agony of the Science Fiction/Fantasy Literature class I've been in. I'm not saying I know more than the professor, necessarily, I'm just saying I can't make that judgement based on the rather unsophisticated analysis and discussion in the class.
Ones I've read are bold, added some comments, as well.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien [Read (the first time) in 3rd grade]
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert [Read (the first time) in 4th grade, buuut.... I don't think I had any idea what was going on]
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson [Since I was already fairly well steeped in cyberpunk as an established genre (see Snow Crash), I wasn't that impressed]
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe [A revelation for me in the way Tolkien never was, Wolfe is probably my foremost literary idol]
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey. [Ugh, ugh ugh ugh. A friend of mine once remarked, after watching the movie Underworld "how do you make a movie about a secret war between vampires and werewolves so boring?" I have the same feeling about what McCaffrey did with sentient, telepathic dragons and their elite riders]
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card [Read it first in Jr. High, and, in boot camp in San Diego, I was allowed to have the book in my gear because it was on the Commandant of the Marine Corps' Reading list. Probably owe Card a great deal for the mental trauma I did not suffer because I had this excellent novel]
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson [I can recognize the importance of this as one of the first wave of post-Tolkien published fantasy, and some of the anti-heroic elements, but, just like Brooks' Shannara work from the same 2nd wave, it does not hold up for the modern reader]
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling [I read the first 3 books to try to understand the fad. Mostly, it just made me sad that Roald Dahl is still dead]
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice [Not a fan]
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin [I read this in 7th or 8th grade. I have a vague memory of what happened... and I'm pretty sure I didn't understand it]
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson [Sorry Gibson, this is Neuromancer for my generation]
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks [See above comments on Thomas Covenant.
Additional note a friend and I found when discussing it: Brooks uses the phrase "Elven longbows hummed about every other page. It's like punctuation to him]
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
Check this craziness. My father, the venerable E.P. Fox, goes to pour some drinking water for his crazy one-eyed dog, and stops to brush some plant debris, a dead leaf or something, off the dish. Little did he know that as soon as he touched it, it would spring to life and show itself to be a pint-sized Lovecraftian horror!
Oh no, it's ok, I'm not offended, "what the f**k is that?!" is a pretty typical reaction, and I don't think that kind of language is at all inappropriate here. I am sorry I made you spill your drink, though. Here, let me get you a napkin. Oh dear, we seem to be out of napkins, could you make do with this DEMON-FURRED, SLUG-BODIED, BETENTACLED DOOM BEAST?!
Whew! Ok, let's catch our breath here. In actuality, the thing is damn cool, and while I am planning on writing a Lovecraft Mythos short-story inspired by it (DOOM!), the world's coolest biologist, the infamous Dr. PZ Myers, graciously identified the critter in this post.
So, it's a Hag Moth caterpillar, not a slug as I had originally guessed. I don't feel too bad, though, since some research indicates that the hag moth caterpillar has developed shortened legs that resemble suction cups, and my locomotion-by-"foot" observation wasn't in great error.
Myers riffed on my old man's place of residence in his post, suggesting that the abomination might be the spawn of local crazy person Michelle Bachmann, and Eric Zaetsch expanded on that theory here. All in all, quite a good run for these pictures, as I am fully in favor of both PZ being awesome and Bachmann being dumped. I feel like I've done my part to encourage both.
Actually, I'm kicking myself for not posting it here first. A link from PZ might have meant my first reader! Nevermind the fact that it would have been the only post...
Links Edited: Blogger doesn't do Trackbacks? Que the Fark? I may have to take this dog and monkey rodeo elsewhere...
