Those are:

1. Leverage
2. Psych
3. Eureka
4. 24
5. Bones
6. House
7. Chuck
8. Life on Mars
9. Battlestar Galactica

I also enjoy:

1. Modern Marvels
2. Wild West Tech
3. Cities of the Underworld
4. Dirty Jobs
5. Mythbusters

As for the things sitting around waiting for me to read, I have:

1. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
2. Deja Dead
3. Death du Jour
4. The Explosionist
5. Freakonomics
6. Soul Catcher
7. Princess Ben

This list is not a list of the order things will be read.

I am currently reading: White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison. This is book seven in the series and I think I wouldn’t be upset to have Harrison take a break and leap into something else. I did find a panel from some convention in New York City where she talks about writing. I thought some of the comments were good. Not sure I agree with a lot of what is considered wisdom from writers, but will probably have to be published to start speaking my mind and having it listened to.

Speaking of books and work, my new job (and I hope it doesn’t last any longer than it has to) is good news for my family and interesting news for me. I will be working a 10 pm to 7 am shift stocking shelves. Fortunately, the store I will be working at isn’t 24/7 and will not (necessarily) have to deal with customer’s throughout 90% of the night. I am hoping it is one of those positions where they give an assignment, let me put on my iPod, and leave me alone until the next assignment comes along.

Anyway, I am trying to get done with the writing sample. Hope it is done this week and that I have applied. I have this little card of things I would like to acquire or earn. One of those items was a college degree. That’s out of the way and sitting in some papers on a shelf next to my desk. I took some pictures of the office/work area to post but it was pointed out to me that I didn’t straighten, didn’t clean, and didn’t close any of the drawers. That needs doing too. Then I will try to remember to post them.

That’s all for today.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2009/03/generically-or-generally-or-just-updating/feed/ 4 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/books-for-me-to-read-in-about-fourteen-days/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/books-for-me-to-read-in-about-fourteen-days/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:45:43 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1587 In no particular order I have a stack of books that I intend to start reading in about fourteen days.

The list is:
The Flaxen Femme Fatale by John Zakour
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Cycler by Lauren Mclaughlin
Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs
Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison

Kind of looking forward to getting to read these.

Along with these I intend to purchase and read (job first, folks):
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present by Jonathan Fenby
1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance by Gavin Menzies

Honestly, very excited about the books and reading and the fun that will be had with reading all sorts of fun things.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/12/books-for-me-to-read-in-about-fourteen-days/feed/ 1 http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/09/cornbread/ http://www.johnhattaway.com/2008/09/cornbread/#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 01:38:29 +0000 smokingpen http://www.johnhattaway.com/?p=1092 Got home from work (missed the school portion of the day) and Lisa had beef stew and cornbread ready for the eating. Very nice food. I don’t think Erin or I have really eaten this well since we’ve been married in part because we both have a tendency to go for the easy foods rather than preparing. Having Lisa here (Erin’s mom) means we eat well especially since Lisa’s main priority was to make sure that Erin was feeling better over the rest of the pregnancy. Truth told, it has been a real blessing to have her here and as a result Erin feels better and soon (crossed fingers) we will have a baby in arms.

This morning started with Erin and I going to see the OB. We actually had to wait a lot longer than normal before Erin got called back. Then we had to wait in the exam room. I don’t normally get bored with being at Erin’s OB appointments and couldn’t be more bored by the time her doctor got into the room and started talking to us.

When I finally got to work, my manager kept asking me about an online software solution for some student groups and then, mid-sentence, would get up and walk away only to come back after I started looking for waht different solutions could do. And then he would leave mid-sentence. At 3:30 he did this and I never saw him again… especially since his questions were directly pertinent to an email he was trying to write. Weird.

On a positive note, I did get Kathy Reichs first two books Deja Dead and Death Du Jour. These are the books that inspired the Fox television series Bones, which I really dig. What looks like it will prove to be interesting (at least to me) are the differences between the books and the television series. The TV series keeps Temperence Brennan (the protagonist) from any real relationship and opposed to children in principle. The books (based off of the descriptions as they have to fit into my school reading) has the protagonist with a daughter and living in Canada. Yay! Go Canada.

For school I have been reading a book titled Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Generations. This is proving to be interesting and now I am convinced that modern cowboy culture is a bunch of posers. Going to a rodeo is interesting if you consider it an athletic competition. That’s about all it is. The uniform for a rodeo is cowboy boots, jeans, some kind of stylized button-up shirt, and brimmed hat (e.g. cowboy hat). For most of those people, they have the look (as do people who like to go to country music concerts), but they lack the reality of what it means to be a cowboy.

Which leads to the day I realized that country music was the music of the low-class conformist. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some country-pop (Garth Brooks has a tendency to be more popular than cowboy) and enjoy the experience; but listening to the music is listening to the extolling of poverty as a virtue. Granted, this is often accompanied by pointing out that people work hard and honestly. With that said, for every individual who works hard I generally meet three who are lazy butts and would rather have someone do something for them than to do it for him- or her-self.

And to top it off, the country and western lifestyle is dead-set on the conservative side of the political spectrum. I am sure that the performers are more liberal in bent, but the fans are the ones you have to worry about. If the fans are highly conservative then the musicians tend to lean in that direction. The Dixie Chicks showed that a nation who was solidly behind President George W. Bush would not support a group that was opposed to him. This is the fans. This is how the fans react. And as a result, when your base supports an individual who you don’t like, not supporting that individual means your fans won’t support you.

By extension, my lack of support for the conservative base denotes a lack of support for a musical style that is conservative in nature. This started way back in 1997 or 1998 when I sat in a country music concert and looked around at the people sitting around me and realized, as I sat there, that these people had a lot in common and that I lacked a common purpose with them. I also noticed that the tickets I had were insanely expensive and the people around me were, most likely, not actually in a position to purchase the tickets.

The transition away from country music was not immediate. I did start looking at other music types and truth told I am more interested in listening to stuff that hits mid-90’s or artists that existed before or during my adolescent stages of life. Currently, radio isn’t something I listen to outside of what Erin wants to listen to (if we’re in the same car) or NPR.

Anyway, most modern day cowboys are not and I have little to no appreciation for them.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

300-level American Lit:

• American Short Story Masterpieces
• Three Screenplays by Horton Foote
• After This
• The Wild Iris
• The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry

Senior English Course:

• All the Pretty Horses
• The Virginian a Horseman of the Plains
• Fencing the Sky
• Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album
• Lazy B: Growing Up On A Cattle Ranch In The American Southwest
• Cowgirls: Women of the American West
• Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries

200-level Civilization:

• The Dhammapada
• The Prince
• The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries
• Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages
• No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
• The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilization

200-level Introduction to the English Language:

• Linguistics at Work
• An Introduction to Language

That’s it (so far). Pray for me. Oh, and Erin seems to think that I am secretly proud of the extensive list of reading material. I don’t know whether or not that is true, I do know that this is the most number of books in any single semester that I’ve ever had.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

After BritLit people kept coming up to me and making odd statement about what they thought the test would be like. My opinion is that the teacher is probably going to be a little tough, but not difficult and that we should worry more about the take-home portion than about the in-class portion of the test. This must not be what people wanted to hear since they would all, invariably, walk off and join a group down the hall where they were discussing the intricacies of the exam and possible scenario’s of testing. Maybe I am stupid for not being afraid of something like this, but being aware of the material, having studied for each class, and having read all of the material, plus being one of the only people that offer comments or criticisms in class, I believe that worrying isn’t necessary. I will do fine.

However, I also realize that people want to get together to assuage their own fears and as such, I guess I wasn’t the most forthcoming person for that. So, the group down the hall is getting together sometime Monday night at Barnes and Noble to meet and chances are, I won’t be there.

In Shakespeare I went from being able to tolerate the bard to hating him again. Richard III is an interesting play, but when you push through ¾ of the play in one night, without breaks, you get to hate the man who wrote it (not that I personally believe he wrote any of his plays).

Regardless of class I was in a different mood. I’d finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance earlier in the day and had been thinking about something. In truth, I am still thinking about something and can’t seem to put my finger on it. This put me in a rather weird mood last night and I spent most of the evening actually staring out windows and trying to avoid the interaction with other people. The experience was such that I came home, ate a little something, and went straight to bed. I don’t normally go straight to anything and last night I was home and in bed pretty dang fast.

I’m still wondering what is going on inside of me. My mind is working a million miles a minute to figure something out and in truth I can’t seem to grasp the first thing that is going on. It’s like I turned on a light and then lost the switch. Somehow I turned on the thought process and now I can’t seem to figure out where the source of the process is or how to turn it off. The long and short of it is that I am worried.

At first I thought the thoughts were around the term Quality as used in Zen but I have since eliminated that. The whole experience suggests that when I figure it out the whole experience will just stop. But that is the rub, I don’t know what I need to do to figure the whole thing out. There isn’t any clues that I can find, there isn’t any real cause for any of this. I am working. I am going to school. I have a place to live. A little money in the bank. I have books to read and…. Interesting. That is very interesting. I don’t have the one last thing that has been causing me problems of late. I add nothing more here.

I will go on to say that about two weeks ago I had a series of thoughts strike me, which were coupled with experiences that I’d written down in the past but had never really talked about, that felt like they needed to be written out in a journal entry. For over a week I would wake up in the morning, I would wake up in the middle of the night and this would be all I could think about, and the thoughts would be right there. All of my waking hours were spent, in some form or another, thinking about these events, these experiences, and these new thoughts in conjunction with each other. The entire experience had been such that I doubted many of the things that had happened for me.

On top of that, I felt it time to crack open a series of journals I wrote a couple of years ago that I carry places with me because… uhm, I’m not always smart… and read in them. So, I read in them and then I sat down and penned the journal entry. The outcome was that the moment I was done with a part of the journal entry the thoughts associated with that subject disappeared (became an afterthought really) and I could move forward. Last night I added the last crumb to the pile. And no, I am not going to tell you what the journal entry was or what it dealt with.

However, as I begin mentally working through what is, and isn’t, working in my life I come to the realization that I am missing pieces to the proverbial puzzle. I am missing elements, or an element, that would further make life more whole. The thought is very interesting. I didn’t know I was deep in that kind of a way.

Real Heroes Fly ]]> http://www.johnhattaway.com/2004/09/what-came-first/feed/ 1