I’ve been reading a lot this past week, trying to find a way to enjoy myself without simply sitting in front of a TV. To that end, I’ve been surrounding myself with good ‘escapism’ books, and figured I’d share.
Good Omens was the first thing I read this past week, It’s a hilarious book about the appocalypse, co-written by Neil Gaiman (of Sandman fame) and Terry Pratchett (of Discworld fame). It really successfully combines Gaiman’s skill at exploring and probing mythic tales with Pratchett’s irreverent humor.
I’m now reading the first book of The Mysterious Benedict Society series. It’s a fun young adult novel about a group of orphans who are recruited by the mysterious Mr. Benedict to help save the world from Ledroptha Curtain. Again, a fun book to read, and one where I know that everything will turn out alright regardless of the characters’ current predicament.
When I’m finish with Benedict, I think I’m going to reread some Heinlein, starting with Time Enough For Love. I fully admit Heinlein swings back and forth between being an advocate of gender equality and a shameless misogynist, but I still really enjoy his books; they take me back to being a teenager, but in a satisfying way somehow.
After that? I’m not sure. I may reread the Clan of the Cave Bear series. Without a doubt, a ridiculous and highly romanticized series, but another set of books I think I’ll enjoy without having to think too much.
How about y’all? What books must I read? What are some of your favorite books, escapist or otherwise?
I saw a 3D showing of Avatar last night, and really enjoyed it. I thought it was beautiful and relatively engaging. I’m not positive if needed to be almost 3 hours long, but it did allow for a lot of room to establish the world and the characters. That said, it was a really racist, colonialist movie that also fit comfortably within the sexist paradigm of Western culture and storytelling.
Continue reading 'Dances with Avatars'»
( Spoilers abound in this post. Consider yourself warned. That said, I haven’t even finished the first season, so please don’t provide any spoilers beyond episode 15 or 16 of the first season in the comments.)
I just got into the first season of Ugly Betty. The show is – very broadly – about Betty as she tries to make it in the magazine publishing industry. I started watching because I’d heard good things, and because I heard it had a trans character.
Honestly, I enjoyed the show so much that I straight up forgot about the trans character, so her introduction a little more than half way through the first season came as a bit of a surprise. It didn’t hurt that the show very openly parodies (or maybe not) ridiculous soap-opera-ey storyline shifts, so revealing a presumed-dead character was really in hiding to come back as a woman is pretty in line with the tone of the rest of the show.
What did surprise me (or, at least, has surprised me so far) is how respectfully the show handles the trans character, Alexis, even within the wholely silly and over-the-top world of the show.
Continue reading 'Ugly Betty mini-review'»
As a followup to my mini-review.
The Droid is awesome at everything except being a phone. I don’t know if I hold it “wrong” (whatever the fuck that would mean), or the sensors suck, or the software sucks, or what. But it consistently hangs up on me, activates the dial pad, locks when I want it unlocked, unlocks when I want it locked, you name it.
If I want to get directions, it’s awesome. If I want to watch YouTube videos, it’s awesome. If I want to look something up online, read blog feeds, play a silly game or an NES game in emulation, text, it’s awesome.
So why does the phone suck so damn much?! I’d have thought someone else would mention this if it was a widespread issue. And I can’t really reproduce the problems…I keep on trying to change how I hold the phone to see if that helps. Does anyone have any insight into how the hell to use this phone as a phone?
Pretty!
I picked up a Motorola Droid yesterday morning, and figured I’d take some time off from transition-related running commentary to share my thoughts from the first 48 hours.
I’m coming from an HTC 5800, which I’d been using for the past two years. It’s a Windows Mobile phone, which I had fun rooting and upgrading to 6.1, along with various other tweaks. However, until recently, Verizon has been locking down their phones – not that they offered amazing phones to begin with – so I couldn’t do all that much with it.
The Droid is Verizon’s flagship in their new push to appear as a company that doesn’t try to keep a stranglehold over their phones, and as a company that doesn’t only have a good network, but good phones as well. (What a concept!) It’s running Google’s Android operating system, and is the first (and thus far, only) phone to run the 2.0 version of the OS.
I’ll get to more specifics after the break, but I’ll cut to the chase: I really like this phone. It’s almost certainly the best phone I’ve ever owned. That said, while I’d definitely recommend it to tech-savvy friends, I wouldn’t recommend it to, say, my mom. I’m not convinced this is a bad thing, though.
Continue reading 'Motorola/Verizon Droid Mini-Review, 48 hours later'»
Edit, 3/28/09 – I’m attempting to organize my thoughts on trans fiction here. That page contains links to all of the blog posts I’ve written on the subject, as well as a (growing) collection of links to sites focusing on trans fiction, and particular trans-themed authors/stories I like.
In How do you transition (a followup) I talked about removing some authors and sites from my bookmark folder of trans-related fiction because I thought it wasn’t making me feel better about life and about myself. I’ve realized since then that I was a bit unfair, and wanted to respond to myself and re-update my list.
In general, I stand by my statement that, for me, forced-feminization stories are feeding a desire to have someone else take control of my transition and do it for me. As such, for me, I don’t think they’re the best thing I can be reading. (This is intentionally not a commentary on why the authors write such stories – not my place to guess – and what other people get out of them – their business, not mine.)
However, I do think some of the authors I removed do have good work, and deserve better than I gave them originally. And so, a revised list. (I’m ignoring non-trans-themed work, as reading trashy Buffy fanfic might not be good for you, but not really for the reasons I want to focus on…)
Continue reading 'Even more trans fiction'»
I recently bought Lego Star Wars for the Wii after a long-fought battle to resist its legoy temptations. As you can see, Luke, Leia, and the gang are pretty adorable as Legos:
Continue reading 'I’m a sucker for unlockables (A Lego Star Wars mini review)'»
Lost Winds
I recently bought Lost Winds for $10 on the Wii Virtual Console (a downloadable games service) and think it was worth it. In the game, you take control of both Toku, a young boy who you control with the control stick, and Enril, the spirit of the wind, who you control with a pointer via the Wii remote. You use the wind to pick Toku up, cary him accross chasms, fight enemies, and solve simple puzzles (pick up rocks to throw at closed doors, for example). The game is a 2D sidescroller, but rendered in a 3D style which is simple but still impressive.
In the game, you’re tasked with finding four chests to restore Enril to full power. The first two are hidden in nice little dungeons, each taking about 45 minutes to an hour to complete. So you’d think by that the whole game would be three to four hours. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. The big disapointment is the last two chests each take about 10 to 15 minutes to find. The game then ends on a (rather predictable) clifhanger, pointing to a sequel.
Even with these flaws, I still think the game is worth $10 – I’ve paid more than that to go to movies that weren’t half as good.
Read on for an ‘Okami’ mini-review. Continue reading 'Lost Winds and Okami mini-reviews'»
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