Holy fuck, "The Conquest of Ether and Air" is amazing.

These would make excellent song or album titles, wouldn't they?

I already stole the title of the whole series for a song, so why not continue to be a thieving bastard? I feel like the grandeur of these kinds of titles makes my silly ones even more silly, in a good way. White Knight Platypus, Raleigh Pigg, A Hundred Times A Billion, Assume The Form of a Bear, etc.


Fuck, I love words. I really need to get back into reading. To the point that I am just going to ask you fuckers to recommend me something.

Dunno, i mean, i like reading out-of-date encyclopedias.

Have you ever read Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything?

Cannot say that I have, however that does sound quite interesting going off the title. I will have to check that shiz out.

The book looks big, but doesn't read big. Bryson is funny and has a knack for putting big thoughts in elegantly non-prickish ways.

Read some bits of it here if you like, but really, just get the book and check it out, because it is awesomer than any short quote can convey:

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/23 ... everything

Ooooh fuck yeah, gotta get this.

I am going to have to czech that out as well, Mr. Chris.

I've been back on a humorous fiction kick as of late to deal with the mass of that is my brain, and have been re-reading my Terry Pratchett collection. Specifically the stuff involving The City Watch, because those are the best ones. Brilliant stuff and full of clever turns of phrase, social satire and genre parodies. Some of those get a little on the serious side though; Night Watch isn't funny at all and rather dark (but, excellent). I will forever hear Death in the voice of Alan Rickman. I'm doing them out of order; currently on Jingo.

This currently:


My old roomie is featured prominently in this book and the accompanying DVD.

I am actually kind of very surprised that you havena read it already. Have you read the Jared Diamond books(mainly Guns, Germs And Steel, and Collapse)? They aren't as funny and amusingly put as Bryson's style, but they are equally awesome in a similar scope of coverage and method of distillation of large amounts of stuff.

For that matter, have you ever read any Jane Jacobs books, like The Death And Life Of Great American Cities, or Dark Age Ahead? It isn't funny, but she has a really interesting angle on things and the books strangely read much more optimistic than their titles would imply. Her aim isn't to report the collapse of things, but to avoid it. Very interesting analysis of how we do things in and around our urban areas, what works, what seems like it should work but doesn't, that sort of thing. Dark Age Ahead was a pretty quick read too. I think i ended up reading it twice that summer.



My sister loved the shit out of Hogfather(as did i) and asked me what else she should get from Pratchett. I obviously dunno, so if she loved Death in that, what else should she read next? I assume that once one starts reading more than a random one book, one will eventually read all or most of them, but in your opinion what are a couple/few funny ones that should follow this one? I would say that it is the funny element that she liked the most of Hogfather.

Oh, but i should mention, that if it is humorous things you want to read, Pretty much any Bill Bryson book is swell way to get there with non-fiction. His language books and his travel books are equally righteous.

ALSO, a book that i was reading when i was at my parents' house in december, you might really enjoy. Have you ever read Three Men In A Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome? If not, you should go get it. The language is fantastic and i found it properly amusing to read.

[It is a very English telling, of how some bored, generally non-outdoorsman types go on a boating trip on the Thames, and almost nothing goes correctly. Told however in a suuuuuper dry Classic Englishman(first published in 1889, but it doesn't read dated that way really at ALL, other than the language being occasionally very well arranged) tone of utter saying-the-opposite-of-what-is-meant-ness.]

Now onto "IX - The Reason Why In Science".

Which is back to being awesome, as evidenced by its table of contents:



Each section so far is just a short blast of Awesome 1912 Language, and Amazing 1912 Science.

So which won, meat or vegetables?

Dunno yet. Basically just started this one. I am just about to find out if radium can cure cancer.

I need to find these. This stuff sounds epic.

Currently, this, part of my birthday present to myself (all old history books from a used book store):

Having the opportunity to acquire some audiothings, I'm about an hour and a half into this:



and I got this as well, which I have not started yet:


Bitches stole my font on the latter; Bank Gothic Medium.

That's awesome.

Surely this book inspired Fifty Shades?

My drummer found this and gave it to me. It's fantastic.



I've dog-eared so many pages of this for the quotes. There's some quality ones on politics, religion, college football, etc. I would like to track down this guy's other books, likely long out of print.

Apparently there is a documentary series of this as well. The book is excellent.