| Merry Christmas, y'all. |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|11:52 pm] |
'Twas the night of the rising, when all through the land
Not a creature dared venture apart from a band.
Now stalking was done past dark windows with care,
In fears that the zombie hordes lay in wait there.
The children abandoned in shallow dirt graves
Had risen like demons to feast on our brains.
And Ma with her 12-gauge and I with my bat
Defended our bunker 'gainst any attack.
When past our defense grid there arose such a clamor,
I locked down our base and I started the scanner.
"Away from the windows," I snapped to my wife,
Seeing the readings of packs of unlife.
The infrared scans had detected their entry,
Well out past the range of a mere human sentry.
Yet soon, to my terrified eyes there appeared
The first corpse in range, a fat one with a beard.
Through snowfall he marched on our den of the quick,
This leader of legions so rotten and sick.
Now shambling like puppets behind him they came,
And I readied our weapons to drown them in flame.
"Oh darling! Oh, dear one!" Ma suddenly cried out -
"How did we survive while the rest of them died out?
And they've come back as these! As these sick bags of skin
To bash our brains, bash our brains, bash our brains in!"
As plague winds that carry the foul stench of disease,
When smelled, leave one gasping, reduced to a wheeze,
So as to our bunker the zombies they drew,
With us paralyzed by the horrors we knew.
And then, as we shivered, the leader approached
The far range of our guns, which then he encroached.
As I bolted to act, with the dead gaining ground,
From the bunker our Howitzer spat its first round.
He was dressed in red rags, as I saw in the flare,
And although I'd just missed him, he seemed not to care.
He looked not around and maintained his slow pace
And I saw 'neath the beard what was left of his face.
His eyes, oh how empty! And how they did fester!
His skin was as patchwork as clothes on a jester.
His jaw from his mouth was suspended below,
And it swung back and forth as he marched through the snow.
The blood of unfortunates flecked his few teeth,
Both the ones up above and those swinging beneath.
He had a ghoul's look but a bloated fat belly
That shook with each step – and my god, was he smelly!
He was putrid and plump, a demonical beast,
And I prayed on behalf of such tortured deceased.
The legions behind him of twisted undead
We viewed with a mixture of pity and dread.
They spoke not a word, but came straight to the slaughter
And still our guns fired, blood splashing like water.
We laid out the corpses anew on the snow
And somehow the blob was the last one to go.
And laying my finger alongside the trigger
I made that Yule pile grow one present bigger.
But I heard him exclaim, as he fell out of sight,
"Braaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnnsssss."
--So, to all, a good night. |
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| Fantastic! |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|04:51 pm] |
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Jake and I just finished Doctor Who Season 1. (We decided to forgo watching the show with Mom, since the three of us aren't around at the same time that often and Jake is going back to school a good two or three weeks before I am - so I'll start back up with her once he goes home.) Now, on to David Tennant! |
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| A thrilling adventure story. |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|08:21 pm] |
I've been to the local library three times this week, all with a goal of taking out their copy of Doctor Who Season One. (I've watched up through the beginning of Season 4 with Alex at school, but am starting over this break to get Jake and Mom hooked on the show too.) The first time I went, Season 1 was listed in the catalog as being at the library, though being reshelved... but I couldn't find it, even on the racks of DVDs waiting to be reshelved, next to the regular shelves. Of course, the trip wasn't a complete bust, since I did pick up a copy of Doctor Who Season 2 and the books DC Goes Ape, Gotham by Gaslight, Tales of the Multiverse: Batman - Vampire, Batman: Year One, and Walter Moers's Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures and The City of Dreaming Books. The first four of those are graphic novels/comic collections I've since read, and I'm about a hundred pages or so into the second Moers book.
Since the library didn't have available what I was looking for there, I filled out a reserve request for "Doctor Who. The complete first season." with my name and phone number, so that they would pull it and let me know when the disc set was found. Sure enough, a day or so later I got a phone call that my requested DVD was now available at the circulation desk. Huzzah! Since the library was closing for the day about 20 minutes after they rang me, I dropped everything I was doing and hurried there. At the circulation desk, I found that they had in fact fulfilled the request entered into their system and pulled the relevant discs... which turned out to be the first season of Torchwood, a Doctor Who spinoff. I'm still not really sure how that happened, since the connection between the two doesn't seem to be included in either's library listing. Since I wrote my request in pencil, I suppose it must have somehow got confused in the translation into their electronic database. Again, though - how does that happen?
I checked upstairs in the DVD collections again in the five minutes or so before closing, but after I couldn't find what I was looking for, I admitted defeat and checked out the Torchwood DVDs for the hell of it. The lady behind the desk told me they would keep looking for the right discs for me, but since she didn't ask me to write down the proper title and they seem to have the wrong one in their reserve request database, I decided that was highly unlikely.
Finally today I glanced online and found that the listing for Doctor Who Season One in the library's catalog had the availability status of "In" rather than "Being Reshelved." Off I went to the library where I did in fact find the discs - on the racks of DVDs waiting to be reshelved. The library had not contacted me to tell me it was available, nor am I expecting them to.
(I got a copy of the comic Identity Crisis as well, because I am incredibly blown away by the library's new graphic novel selection, and am fully intent to take advantage of it.)
Final score
Library: 2
Joe: 1
Winner
Joe. |
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| Non-school-related. |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|03:44 pm] |
We're approaching the end of the year, which means soon it'll be time to look back on my resolutions from last year, make new ones for next year, and so on. I'll also continue the tradition I started last year, of going over the list of books I read and movies I watched throughout the year and answering some questions about them. (You can see my answers from last year here and here.) This is one of my favorite things that I've started doing, both in maintaining the logs of films and books here: http://jtkess.people.wm.edu, and in answering those questions at the year's end. In both cases, it's nice to go back and refer to them later on.
Last year I made it to just over 100 books - 102, as I recall - and it was a goal of mine to do the same this time around. Unfortunately two busy semesters got in the way, and I'm entering the last ten days of the year on my 71st book. Oh well! It was still nice to have that as a goal - there was never a time this year when I wasn't in the middle of a book, since I always started a new one as soon as I'd finished the last, and I think that's a pretty desirable state of affairs. I've thankfully had a ton of time to read this break, and in fact books 66 - 70 were finished after my semester exams concluded. Of course, some of those were graphic novels, but still. I'll probably aim for 75 or 80 to close out the year.
(Movies are also behind last year's count, down to 86 from 146. As far as I can remember, though, I didn't have any sort of goal where those were concerned. I certainly won't be going out of my way to watch another 14 movies before New Year's, but with my family and friends you never know...) |
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