Library Additions: December 1, 2009—January 14, 2010

January 20th, 2010

I’ve got a big-ass post on my trip up to Archer City and the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex coming up, so I thought it was high time to engage in some preliminary bookgeeking by listing all the books I’ve picked up since my ginormous post on my library. This may be of very limited interest to people who aren’t book collectors or science fiction fans, but it it will help me document my library on an ongoing basis, making it much more likely that I’ll finally be able to compile a detailed, comprehensive list of what I actually have.

  • Asimov, Isaac. Cal. Doubleday, 1990. TPO short story chapbook given out as a freebie to Isaac Asimov Collection subscribers.
  • Boyett, Steven R. Elegy Beach. Ace, 2009. Sequel to Ariel, which only came out a quarter-century ago…
  • Brookmyre, Christopher. A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away. Little Brown, 2001.
  • Brunner, John. The Great Steamboat Race. Ballantine, 1983. Proof of the TPO first edition. (Unlike Mike Berro, who collects all manner of proofs, I only try to pick them up: A.) When the first edition was a TPO or PBO, B.) I’ve been sent them free as a review copy of a book I want to read, or C.) There has been some sort of change between the proof and the finished book, such as a title change (David Brin’s The Tides of Kithrup became Startide Rising), a publisher change (Random House canceling publication of Sherry Jones’ The Jewel of Medina after the proof had been published), or a significant textual change (such a story dropped or added from a collection).)
  • Cadigan, Pat. Synners. Bantam, 1991. PBO. Replaces an inscribed copy I managed to misplace at an Armadillocon. (I also have the UK hardback.)
  • Dick, Philip K. In Milton Lumky Territory. Dragon Press, 1985.
  • (Dick, Philip K.) Patricia S. Warrick. Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick. Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
  • Harter, Christopher, Anthony Tedeschi, and Jodine Perkins. Places of the Imagination: A Celebration of Worlds, Islands and Realms. The Lilly Library, 2006. Library exhibition catalog, with some color photos of notable first editions. TPO
  • Heinlein, Robert A. Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master. Tor, 1992.
  • King, Stephen. Song of Susanna. Donald M. Grant, 2004.
  • Lethem, Jonathan. You Don’t Love Me Yet. Doubleday, 2007.
  • Martin, George R. R., ed. Wild Cards Volume 9: Jokertown Shuffle. Bantam, 1991. PBO.
  • McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. Knopf, 2005.
  • Reynolds, Alastair. House of Suns. Gollancz, 2008.
  • Scalzi, John. God Engines. Subterranean Press, 2009 (actually not shipped until 2010). First edition trade hardback.
  • Scalzi, John. God Engines. Subterranean Press, 2009 (actually not shipped until 2010). Signed/limited edition. (Yeah, I’ve started picking up both the trade and limited editions of certain books when I can pick them up with my dealer discount. It’s a sickness…)
  • Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels. McKay 1974. Later hardback printing.
  • Sladek, John Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek. Big Engine, 2002. TPO.
  • Watts, Peter. Behemoth B-Max. Tor, 2004.
  • Willis, Connie. Firewatch. Bluejay, 1984. Fine in a Near Fine+, slightly rubbed dj.
  • Zelazny, Roger. The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny Volume 5: Nine Black Doves. NESFA Press, 2009.
  • Zelazny, Roger. The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny Volume 6: The Road to Amber. NESFA Press, 2009.

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DVD Review of Drunken Fist Boxing (Summary: AVOID)

January 19th, 2010

A couple of weeks ago, some friends got in a copy of Drunken Fist Boxing, the sequel to Jackie Chan’s breakthrough film Drunken Master. We thought: It’s a Jackie Chan film, how bad could it be?

The problem is, despite Jackie being featured prominently on the DVD cover, this is not a Jackie Chan film; the only footage of him in the film is flashbacks to Drunken Master, making it the cinematic equivalent of a clip-show. But that’s not the only thing that makes it a ripoff. I would say this is a crappy pan-and-scan video transfer, but there’s actually no scanning: they just chop off parts of the screen. There are times when there are obviously supposed to be two people talking to each other, but one of them is completely off the edge of the screen. Plus the dubbing is atrocious; sometimes you can’t even figure out what they’re trying to say.

See this?

See Jackie Chan’s face
on the cover?

It’s a dirty, rotten LIE!

Occasionally you get some decent kung fu (when you can see it), and a generic plot about the teacher from Drunken Master training two students, one of which is the very hot Pan Pan Yeung, when an old enemy of the master shows up in town and…look, it’s a sub-Shaw Brothers kung fu flick from 1979. The plot only exists to string together the fight scenes. And the fight scenes aren’t good enough to make up for the general suckitude.

The cheesy rip-off nature of the DVD makes this one impossible to recommend even to serious kung fu aficionados. Avoid.

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Shaver Blogging: The Norelco Arcitec 1050

January 12th, 2010

I got the Norelco Arcitec 1050 electric razor for myself a few days before Christmas.

My old Norelco still worked, but the blades had gotten pretty dull. So, buy new blades, right? A good theory, except:

  1. Damned if I can figure out the model of the old razor, It’s nowhere visible on the razor itself.
  2. In my experience, Norelco charges a pretty hefty price for their razor blades. Like, $35 each.

I was toying with the idea of checking to see if Fry’s still had the $29.99 shaver bin and picking up one of those, but instead I tried my father’s Arcitec 1050x over Thanksgiving, and was pretty impressed with the way worked, especially on my neck (always a tricky area). Plus my parents found a newspaper* ad from Norelco with a $20 off coupon, along with a flyer from Target offering a $20 gift card for buying it (turns out, in the itty bitty tiny print at the bottom of the ad, you had to buy the Norelco Nose Hair Trimmer ($14.95) to get the $20 gift card, but I have been thinking about getting one of those off and on for a while, so I went ahead and got that too.) The heads seem well designed (though I couldn’t figure out how you open the head just by looking at it). And it has a sturdy hardcase for travel.

This is definitely a much better shaver than my last one, and even better than my last one was when it was brand spanking new. In addition to producing a lot closer shave overall, it does a lot better job shaving my neck without producing red chaffing the way my old one did (which was why I had to use disposable razors there). It’s much easier to submerge the head in hot water for wet shaving (and in fact they recommend it for cleaning the heads).

Drawbacks: The trimmer included on it is a little more awkward to use than the one on the old razor. (Then again, since I bought the separate nose hair trimmer (which works OK), I probably won’t be using it as much.) Also, once when I turned it on with the head underwater to clean it, it locked up for a minute. It worked after that, but it was a bit frustrating not knowing why. Though the induction charger works quite well, it’s much larger than just the old cord arrangement, which means it will be a bit more cumbersome to take on trips. Finally, while it does a better job on my neck, it isn’t quite close enough for me to dispense with the disposable razor for those spots.

Let’s call it 4 Stars out of 5
★ ★ ★ ★

*A “newspaper” was a series of large sheets of paper folded together upon which the “news stories” compiled by “journalists” (a sort of primitive blogger) of (usually) the preceding day had been printed as a carrier medium for print advertizing, and which were either delivered to the driveways of subscribers or sold in kiosks around town. Go ask your grandparents what they looked like.


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An Example of Why Longhorn Fans Love Mack Brown

January 11th, 2010

With Longhorn safety Earl Thomas declaring for the NFL, and Pete Carroll decamping for the Seahawks, I thought I would post one short bit about why Longhorns fans love Mack Brown. (In addition to the whole “won a national Championship and constantly wins 10 games a year” thing.) Here’s what he said about Thomas’ decision:

“We appreciate everything Earl has done for Texas and want to wish him all of the best. He has been a great player for us and more importantly a tremendous person, student and representative of our program. We thank him, support him and look forward to following his career in the NFL.”

It may seem a touch biolerplate, but it’s a very thankful, very gracious statement. I’m sure more than one recruit’s mother or father will read that and go: “Gee, Mack Brown is such a nice guy. I feel safe entrusting my son to him.” And Brown does seem to manage his program in pretty a classy manner.

You would think this would be pretty standard for a college coach, or at least successful ones. But you’d be wrong. Contrast, for example, with then-USC coach Pete Carroll said when Mark Sanchez announced he was coming out early for the 2009 NFL Draft:

“We don’t see this decision the same. … Mark is going against the grain on this decision. He knows that. He knows that coming out early is a tremendous challenge for a quarterback. And the statistics don’t back up that it’s easy to be successful the way he’s going about it. We know that, he knows that. … I don’t agree with the assessment of the decision.”

That’s not quite rude, but it is pretty tone-deaf to talk that way about one of your best players. As for who was right, well, Sanchez has had his ups and downs, but given he’s $28 million richer and is starting for an NFL playoff team, you have to give him the edge.

I also found this bit from Sanchez on Carroll’s jump to the pros pretty amusing: “I just wanted everybody to know I completely disagree with his decision. Statistics show that it’s not a good choice.”

(And no, I didn’t blog about UT’s loss to Alabama in the National Championship Game. When Colt McCoy got knocked out, it was obvious that UT’s chances of winning were going to be pretty slim, and I couldn’t bear to watch any more after that ill-fated shovel pass snafu that ended the first half. If McCoy had been healthy, the outcome might well have been different, but give the Crimson Tide credit: Their job was to beat the team that was actually on the field, and they did that in convincing fashion, so congrats to them for a well-earned National Championship.)

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Howard Waldrop and I’s review of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is up

January 11th, 2010

Over at Locus Online

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Books Read: China Mieville’s The City & The City

January 5th, 2010

I finished China Mieville’s The City & The City just before the Christmas holidays hit. It’s a very solid, and very interesting, novel, and speculative fiction if you consider Ruritanias fantasy. A police procedural set in a sort of Trans-Balkens City-State duopoly of Beszel and Ul Qoma, which are not just side by side, but deeply intermingled with each other, different addresses on the same block geographically, for example, could be in entirely different cities, with different languages, laws and customs. Residents must “unsee” the residents of other cities as they pass through their daily life, their virtual apartheid guarded by the fearsome, unseen offices of Breach. It starts with Beszel Inspector Tyador Borlu investigating the death of a woman who believed there was an ancient third city, Orciny, dwelling in the shadows of the other two. The more Borlu investigates, the more he realizes that something is wrong, and that his victim’s murderers may dwell much higher among the city (or the city)’s citizens than he ever imagined. The novel works both as police procedural and extended metaphor for the parts of their own cities readers “unsee” every day. It displays the imagination of China’s other novels, but unlike several of his most recent, engages the reader in the plot much earlier.

I’m pretty sure this will have a place on both my Hugo and Nebula ballots this year.

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And speaking of cold…

January 4th, 2010

Friday it will probably be colder in Houston than McMurdo Station in Antarctica. And even colder here in Austin. My weather widget says it’s going to get down to 18. Usually in Austin, there will be a few times in January where you need to kick on the air conditioner. Where’s all that global warming they promised us?

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Cthulhu Ski Mask

January 4th, 2010

Tempting, but at $45 is much too expensive for a climate as typically balmy as Texas. (At least most years. This year it’s been freaking cold…)

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Texans Clinch Winning Season, Miss Playoffs, Gary Kubiak to Return

January 3rd, 2010

The Texans finally have a winning season after beating new England 34-27. Moreover, in Arian Foster, they appear to have (finally!) found their running back of the future. (Of course we said that about Dominick Davis/Williams and Steve Slaton as well, so who knows?)

Alas, their slim playoff hopes were crushed like an aluminum can when the Jets similarly crushed the Bengals 37-0. to lock up the last spot. Ouch.

A, owner Bob McNair announced that coach Gary Kubiak will be coaching the team next season. Given the strong finish, I’m about 60% sure that’s the right decision. The 2007 Texans probably overachieved at 8-8, and Kubiak has a lot more talent at his disposal than the 2007 and 2008 squads had. Next year, though, the playoffs should be the minimum a team with the top-rated passer in the NFL should expect for success. And before calling for yet another coach firing, everyone should remember: Winning in the NFL is hard.

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Happy New Year!

January 1st, 2010

Last night I attended two New Year’s Eve parties, then went home to shoot off loads of fireworks (I live in unincorporated Williamson County) with Dwight, A.T, and Carol, a task made more difficult by the the high winds. (It’s been a very wet December, so there was no chance of starting wildfires.)

Quote of the evening: “How far away should we be from the thermite?”

(Yes, Dwight brought thermite. We were very careful to use a proper containment system.)

The great thing about having New Year’s Eve on Thursday is that you can stay up until 2 AM going to parties and firing off fireworks, sleep until noon, wake up, ask yourself “How much of the weekend do I have left?” and the answer is “All of it, and then some!”

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