I'm Back!

Yes, that's right! I'm back. Back from hours of variously napping and reading on the way home. Back from some thrilling heroics hospitality. Back from... well, stuff.

And what am I going to talk about now? Books, obviouslyⁱ. And there might be a poll, and some current events.

Firstly, though, a quick bit about the Event. It was fun. The food was good, everyone was happy, someone figured the corkscrew out, they embarrassingly surprised me with chocolate cake since I get older next month, and Jim ran away from meeeeeeee I ran out of bourbon. It was a fun turnout - family, friends of family, various other friendfolk, a good supply of likable relatives, my horrid grandparents, my affable and personable Jossparents, and the aforementioned slightly-less-than-half-a bottleⁱⁱ.

So! My miniature supply of reading material for this journey consisted of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, jimbutcher's Blood Rites and Lynne Truss's Talk to the Hand - The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (or six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door)ⁱⁱⁱ.

Stardust was lovelyfun™. It's amusing, fun, entertaining, and makes use of the word 'fuck' in ridiculously small type. I'm not going to say much more about it, since half of you^vii have read it and all the others should, unless you take grand offense to the word 'fuck' in ridiculously small type^viii.

If you call that a spoiler, then I'm stealing your nose and never ever ever giving it back.

Blood Rites is the sixth book in the Dresden Files series, and follows yet another adventure of professional wizard Harry Dresden. Again, it's entertaining and fun, and has all the best things about all of the rest of the series. All I need to do now is find myself a copy of the seventh book, and then write polite emails and comments to Mr Butcher to ask him to please write more books, right this very second if that's not too inconvenient and he doesn't have other plans and he's not too terribly busy. Except I'll keep it all very short, so that he can have more time to write books while I'm sending similar emails to Messrs Gaiman and Nix^x.

Talk to the Hand - The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life (or six good reasons to stay home and bolt the door) is a book with a very long title amusing in the vein of Eats, Shoots and Leaves - The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation^xi. It had me laughing, when I wasn't busy bemoaning the lack of manners in those damned youngsters   old people   those horrible things on TV   that filth on the electric wireless   society the modern world. And, um, yes. Very entertaining. I may have to take up her suggestion about mobile phones, too, just because it sounds very, very fun^xii. There's no swearing, but 'Eff' is used a lot^xiv.

And, um, yes. Current events! I have to wake up early in the morning to go and learn stuff. Early, here, is being defined as 6:30am^xv. The stuff is being defined as things like making coffee, pouring beer and recognising when someone is too drunk so that they can be given a funnel for the vodka politely asked to go home. And that's about it for current events, actually, which means I can get around to something which I've been meaning to get around to ever since I've meant to get around to it^xvi.

So now, we have a poll. Wheee!

[Poll #606310]

And that's about it for now^xx. Keep reading for more of this - different <lj-time>, same <lj-station>.

1. It doesn't make sense to me, either, and I'm writing it.
2. I'm all for precise measurements, when it's other people doing the precise measuring and figuring out what to do with it.
3. At this point, normal folk would consider abbreviating this title. Well. Hoo-ray for them^iv.
4. Does that count as utter bloody rudeness?^v
5. For that matter, does the phrase 'utter bloody rudeness' reek of utter bloody rudeness to anyone else?^vi
6. My Joss, now I'm doing it and I'm not even British.
7. Yeah, yeah. Precision.
8. In which case I've already offended you. Just maybe, if I talk about the book enough, you may just be forever hardened to miniaturised swearing^ix.
9. And then I might just have to have a lie down. All this public service is hard work.
10. See? I'm being good. I didn't footnote this whole paragra- *headdesk*
11. Which also has a long title, but is about punctuation, not manners. And the other book with the long title which I'm not typing here despite having already given it a longer name than it properly has is about manners, not punctuation. While proper punctuation is mandatory a specific case of good manners, it's hard to punctuate with manners_{could you all please stop reading the sentence at this point, thankyou.}
12. No, I'm not saying more. OMJnonfictionspoilers!11!1!1!!1eleventyonemillioneleventyonethousandandeleventyone^xiii!
13. Please remind me to never ever ever do that again.
14. Should I suggest people Effing get used to it?
15. ... it's early for me!
16. Um... sorry?^xvii
17. I am really, truly, honestly and completely sober.^xviii
18. Just not entirely sane, perchance^xix.
19. And who says 'perchance', anyway?
20. Too. Many. Footnotes. My post could collapse. The poll is in danger.