When news resembles the Internet

[active_apathy]

To quote from their lead-in thing this evening:

...and Heath Ledger gets sprayed with water by photographers on the red carpet at the Sydney premiere of [the] gay cowboy movie.

This? Very much not made up. Yay for Seven news. It's not journalism, but sometimes it is entertainment.

Today has been a slow news day in the life of me, with a prominent feature being that I've finished Anansi Boys and very much liked it. This brings to light an important observation on the way I read books.

Yesterday, I was reading it while I was out; I came home, about a sixth of the way through the book, for about an hours' reading.
Today, I woke up, swept and washed the floors, vacuumed, washed myself, and read for a further hour - at which point, I decided it should be lunchtime. The book was half-finished - ie, one hour now means one-third of the book.
Post-lunch, I finished the other half over - yes, an hour. And the deleted scene, and the little interview with Neil, and a bit of a glance at the notebook thing.

Does this happen to anyone else?

Lastly, there's been a large blue torch (USian: flashlight) sitting on my bookshelf since the night where I had to put a spider out on the very most distant part of a broom imaginable. It occured to me today that this particular torch has a base which can be used to make it point upwards at angles up to 70° from the horizontal.

Be honest. In this situation, would anyone else suddenly feel like painting the batsignal on it?

Comments

[raptor-au.livejournal.com]

Why? Can't find any mob bosses to strap to it?

[nekoama.livejournal.com]

Flashlight? Batman? YES

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

Oooh, you should totally do the batsignal thing. That'd be great.

[salzara-tirwen.livejournal.com]

I know you weirdos in the rest of the world call a flashlight a torch - but what do you call a stick with fire on the end?

[leila82.livejournal.com]

I bought Anansi Boys last night! I'm going to have to ration the reading, however. I meant to buy the first Garth Nix book instead, but couldn't find it, because apparently the it was not kept in the Fiction section of the store.

And re: the reading thing, I'm assuming you're asking about the odd reading times? It's happened to me; sometimes the start of a book isn't as gripping as the middle or end. More often it's the middle of the book that starts to drag; I find myself speeding through the first 100 or 200 pages, and then stalling out for the next hundred. That's partly why Jonathan Strange took me about a month to finish.

I vote for the batsignal.

[theshadowlurker.livejournal.com]

I would! And then of course I would be compelled to shout "HOLY MARCHING MADNESS, BATMAN!"

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

I would make up my own superhero signal, like... a turtle. I dunno, I have had no sleep.

[crackedwraith.livejournal.com]

Curses, Robin, I have no bat-icon!

It makes me think of a Batman shadow puppet episode. But that's just me, the geek, for you.