Matt's Favourite Books, Part 1

I was talking to Debbie yesterday about what her all-time favourite books were. I managed to guess 3 of her top 5, but then I got into a pretty grey area where I was guessing books that were probably in her top 20, but definitely didn't make the top 5. I then started thinking about my own 5 favourite books, and found that there were a large number of possibilities. Debbie guessed 5 or 6 books that I thought all warranted being in the top 10, but I struggled to rank them. So, over the next couple of weeks, I intend to make a short list of books that I really, really like, and from this list will reduce it down to a current top 5. Please feel free to make suggestions - especially if you know that I said I loved a book, but it doesn't show up on the list. If there's a book that's in your top 5 that I haven't mentioned, please let me know, and I may add it to my towering pile of books to read. In no particular order, some books Matt loves are: Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions, Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Galapagos Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club Philip K Dick - Radio Free Albemuth William S Burroughs - Naked Lunch, The Ticket that Exploded, Cities of the Red Night Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman - The Dragonlance Chronicles Joseph Heller - Catch 22 Douglas Adams - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - Good Omens Hunter S Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Robert Anton Wilson - The Historical Illuminatus Trilogy (haven't read part 3 yet - will do this holidays) Stephen King - The Eyes of the Dragon, The Stand, Dolores Claiborne John Brunner - um, so many to choose from, uh, The Sheep Look Up? Right, that's enough for Day One. I will actually look at my bookshelves when I'm next at home and at leisure (possibly being next year). From this group, Vonnegut, Wilson and Heller are the current forerunners.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone. That is all.

Ephemeral?

Uh, does this work? 

Steve's Face

It's trying to hide, but if you look really closely you'll see that it's there. This is the full size section of the dread photo below. Hmmm, I've been posting a lot of photos lately..? 

Civilisation Picinic of Awesome

Steve's Favourite Dread Photo

Dread Photos

I recently played in an excellent SF game of Dread - a horror RPG that uses a Jenga tower as its mechanic. To succeed in a difficult task, or to avoid being the GM's plaything, you have to pull from the tower. If the tower falls, your character dies. Horribly. To up the tension, the game had cool spooky music (Event Horizon soundtrack, Set Fire to Flames, Silent Hill), and some creepy lighting achieved with torches that had fluorescent bulbs in them. We had one on the floor, and players had to hold another torch in one hand while they made their pull. It was awesome: 

Coolest collage ever...

For Debbie's "Bogan Fairy" outfit for her staff christmas party, we made this collage and printed it onto a tight red t-shirt:



Now I want to make myself a matching t-shirt, but with a super-masculine font, and the font being made up of steel and engine parts instead of pink and purple zebra print.

Worderific Content

I thought I should write something here, rather than simply post another picture. This may be slightly influenced by the lack of a suitable picture to post, but I won't comment on that. It's now Tuesday, which means that the Kapcon SDC is officially closed for K16. If anyone was to beg for an extension, the judge may be flexible. It also means that there are only, uh, 7 and a half days left of school for me. That time does contain a LOT of marking, as well as 2 prizegivings, which means a bunch of work for me. I'm not doing marking next year. Well, I'm probably not going to do marking next year. Never say never - if I need the money, it's not all that bad a way to earn some extra dosh. In unrelated and possibly uninteresting news, I spent a good part of yesterday's lesson (yes, there was only one) telling my class Japanese folk tales. I'm actually half way through the Tanuki Band of Shojoji Temple, which is one of my favourite tales. It's going over pretty well, much as it did in previous years. I'm really looking forward to hearing my class tell some stories - their choices are always very interesting. Sadly, the bell rings and I must depart. Fortunately, I remembered the meeting I have after school, and should still be here (rather than sneaking off home to mark). Is that fortunate? Probably. Laters y'all. Oh, and Children of Men is a good film. I was much enjoying him.