Empty Cage

This entry has nothing to do with reading, I’m almost done number four, but I don’t want my blog to be all book reviews (especially since I haven’t really gotten the hang of how to write a good review).

Does anyone remember MySpace? (Ha ha, internet snob joke). I have one, I’m serious, I don’t really “use it” (because very few honestly claim they still use their myspace) I do find it interesting that I have 41 friends on myspace and 281 on Facebook, which do YOU think is closer to the truth. But as I recall my myspace always had the default layout because I couldn’t be arsed to write a whole entire style sheet for one. (Oh, the horror, I know).

Anyways, my wonderful friend Sean, who is a brilliant guitarist has asked me to redesign his HisSpace… MySpace ish (http://myspace.com/hucksfin). And I’m just now trying to learn how to work this system. I mean it used to be retina scalding blue with a MS Paint banner, so I can’t do worse than that… but there are slight differences that are holding up the creative process. And I feel terrible because I really want this to look great for Sean. I’ve been thinking something in warm colours like brown and taupe, but I’m kind of just making this up. At any rate, I’d advice you to listen to his tunes, they’re great — not so much my style, but Sean and I have agreed to disagree on our music tastes. Like myself and Andrew, we like all the same bands but all opposite tracks.

In other news, I’m almost ready go face redesigning Empty Cage, and stop hiding behind Amber and the nice people at skindownloadland. Amber’s layout was way nicer than this one, but I’ve suddenly fallen in love with lighter layouts, and wanted EC to be bright for a bit. I’ve been reading a lot about webdesign the past little while because I’ve been wanting to evolve how all my websites look. I mean, comparing In Flames to Valour pretty much says it all for my web transformation.

The plan is that Empty Cage will become almost exclusively blog, hub, and personal details (with maybe some writing and stuff — but I have a fiction press account and a deviant art account that I can use for that…).  Let’s face it, what more was EC ever, really? My guides are entirely too smarmy to be much worth anything. And really, the blog is the only part I ever feel like updating. I hope to have http://27.empty-cage.net up soon for a small portfolio to show the people mum throws at me when they want a website designed. I want the root of the domain to be for me, but showing off the whining in my blog might be bad for business. Plus I’d feel like a twit sticking prices on here, given I am asses at webdesign compared to most of my friends — the only advantage I have is a good manager.

I hope to add more character Fansites to Empty Cage, and I think my next major project is Loyalties (the Regulus Black Fanlisting) while I polish off the Inuyasha manga at One Manga so Cursed can be properly done, and finish the Sailor Moon SNES game so I can finish that page for In Flames. Reducing EC to minimums gives me the time to focus on all my other pages that need some loving. I think one day I’d love to create a ‘full domain manager thing’ where the premise would be like wordpress but it can also create and manage all your subdomains. So, one log in panel and I can tweak a page on any site. Something like this probably already exists, but I’ve never seen it.

I’m getting back into my C++ again (which isn’t helpful for websites, but I enjoy it) because I was a master of things that never got out of the console, but, what I want to learn is programming in windows. I’m told PHP is a lot like C++ so maybe I can translate some of my skills into script writing. I’m not confident writing for the web though I’d fail and my script would get hacked and the interwebz would hate me. Seriously.

I’m also reading Calculus for Dummies, I’ve never taken Calculus before but for my Computer Science minor I have this phobia of everyone else being a calculus genius, and the best I can pull out of my arse being 1+1=5. Calculus I is not a required course, but I’m thinking about taking it anyways. Calculus, C++, 75 books, doesn’t my summer look fun? And I haven’t even found a job yet.

I think for once I’m going to finish a blog entry in its own time, I’m not distracted or just bored of writing, so yay me! Dad got a new monitor while I was at school and its one of those massively huge flat panel ones. Love it as I do it makes everything look small, and when I design on it I feel like I should fill it, which is such a bad idea. But it is very pretty, and I can see everything.

Anyways, I’m going to go read, and then maybe play some guitar!

This entry is going to be short, because I’m tired and don’t have much to say about this book really. It’s number three of the S75, and one I’ve been reading intermittantly for the past few days.

If nothing else I am reminded that Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) is not only probably insane, but that I agree with him enough that I am also probably insane. I definately laughed out loud and would reccomend this book to anyone looking for a good laugh. At times he tries to get serious, which throw the pacing off a little bit, but I guess it may be a bit soul destroying to be ‘all funny all the time’

Now for the review of my second book for the S75, Geektastic. While I admit that I have been going quite slowly I hope to pick things up from here on out.

The book Geektastic is a compilation of stories about — you guessed it — Geeks. And if nothing else the book captures the pure essence of what a geek really is. Almost all of the stories ring embarassingly true stopping just shy of the insecurity point. I think I might have cringed at the LARP part just a little bit because that was ‘too nerdy’ even for me. If nothing else Geektastic is a great reassurance that you aren’t alone in your fanaticism. And that other people do love the crazy things you do.

I think my biggest problem with the book was most of the stories followed pretty much the same formula the nerd had his/her day, got the guy/girl and all lived happily ever after. It’s like going to what promises to be a great potluck party, and having everyone only bring coleslaw. I mean the party’s still there, you are just forced to wonder why no one called ahead to make sure not everyone was bringing the same thing. I mean, I guess if you’re writing for the Geek niche having a geek fail and then get hit by a bus would probably not help your readership.

Another thing that caught my eye was Libba Bray’s story. (Don’t get me wrong on this I am a huge fangirl of her Gemma Doyle trilogy and am waiting on the edge of my seat for anything else she ever writes). It was spectacular of course, and came as close as any of them came to being really meaty and gritty but… put beside all the other stories well, it stood out as being geared towards a much older audience. It was pretty surreal, the other stories about high school bullying and Libba’s involving underage sex. All of which was fine with me but it doesn’t fit. Either the other stories needed to step it up a notch, or Libba needed to tone it down.

There are also some notable nerdities missing, no gamers except MMORPGs and no anime and manga which I found particularly odd in a book about nerds.

If nothing else you have to read this book if you’re a nerd because they ‘nail it’. The feelings you’ve had, the situations you’ve been in, generally speaking you’ll find at least one story you’ll relate to. Inversely, if nerdy things are not your thing I’d probably say give it a pass.

Up next 69!

Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mouth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye’ve spawned to replace yourself. Choose life.

The first book of the summer seventy five is Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. A book about drug culture in Edinburgh.

Trainspotting was an obvious first choice for me, though I have yet to decide if I liked it or not. Maybe when I’m not marathoning I’ll take the time to read it again. I’ve been told time and time again that I will love the movie that is based off this book because it’s ‘weird’ and, well, if nothing else it is that written exclusively in the Scottish vernacular it became very endearing very quickly. It is conversational and confessional in nature and so reading it is more like being privvy to a conversation than reading a book.

It can, however, be a bit rocky to read. It certainly adds to the effect of the novel. You generally feel as disoriented as the junkie who you happen to be following, written in quick vignettes. You’ll occasionally be at a loss for who you happen to be following in the malestrom of Scots. I half wish I could ask an actual Scot who has read the novel if it is more comprehensible. The novel is endlessly impactful, constantly punching a huge windhole where you thought you might have had guts at one point.

Do I recommend it? Well, I think its a patient read, one that you need to want to read. If you’re willing to hack through the slang, drugs, sex, and cursing there is something undeniably unbreakable about the book. You read it and realise that depravity is in the eye of the beholder. The message is there should you care enough to dig it out.

For me there is of course the added appeal of it being set in Edinburgh, where I lived a few months. You recognize place names and just wish you were back there.

Whether you chose to read it or not you cannot deny the attachment of the novel to the indulging of your wicked side.

This summer, I have decided that I am going to read seventy-five new books. I know that’s not much of a big deal, considering I love reading, but in recent years my interest seems to have waned a bit (oh, god, don’t tell my mother). This is mostly due to the fact that I’ve been trying to learn and do new things, and reading brings be back to that really antisocial pocket of life where I had no friends. But the two can be married!

I hope to write a short review for each of the summer seventy-five here, just to keep my writing brain going as well as my reading one. I want to get out a few chapters for a few of the stories I’m writing. Do less random forum writing, and more practical stuff.

Obviously I want to keep up my website design here too.

Anyways, I thought once I wrote that in my blog I’d actually do it. So, Summer Seventy-Five kicking off with Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. Any reccomendations for books as offered by you, the internet, will be taken into consideration.

I always write my reviews for things long after I’ve read, listened to or watched them. Which is always a shame, because I think something is lost, all those gritty details that let me shell shocked at the time slipping through my fingers. But I want to start writing reviews for the books I’ve read and American Psycho was the last book that scarred me enough to write a review on it.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

An opening line fit both for American Psycho, and incidentally the gates of hell. American Psycho is not a book written for the faint of heart, but on the other hand I would be genuinely frightened to meet a person who wasn’t at least slightly repulsed by it. Even myself, an openly desensitized jackass, had to admit it was unnerving to the point where you just have to put it down for a moment and let your brain cool off.

The book is about a serial killer. Though, not your average foaming at the mouth sort of serial killer. Patrick Bateman is always cool, calm, and collected in public, though for probably no other reason than the fact that he is completely mad. A well off yuppie who the world has made so cold that violent executions do not seem to touch him at all.

I think the most effective part of the book is how meticulous it is. Ellis paces the story in a way that you really get into Patrick’s head as he itemizes people based on how expensive their attire is. It demonstrates amazingly well how inhuman he sees them. Perhaps, however, it is not that he sees them as inhuman, but himself as above human. At one point Patrick soliloquizes:

“I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning”

This insight of Bateman’s perhaps tells more of the story than his gruesome attacks ever could. He simply cannot feel. This is what adds much more interest to the end of the book. (If you have not read American Psycho, and plan on eventually reading it, skip the next paragraph).

It is when Patrick starts to question his own honesty, and if he has really committed the crimes that he starts to get concerned. It is not that he is worried about whether or not his victims have died, but rather if finally his sanity is giving out. And how breathtakingly honest this is. We don’t care about other people, only ourselves.

All in all, I would be hesitant to lend American Psycho to some people due to the graphic content. But in all honesty if you can get past that this is one hell of a book.

I am always posting when I should be doing something else. In this case that something else is sleeping as it it 2:45AM and that is when the normal people generally get some shut eye. But good old Kae, she’s a bloody insomniac and therefore blunders through her entire life half asleep. Go Team.

I feel like I should blog more, but whenever I have an idea for a blog post it is when I am smack dab in the middle of doing something else. I mean, my life isn’t the hyper exciting rocketship ride it was in the UK, but, so what, I’m still living right. In many ways that trip was bad for me, I expect everything to be exhilerating in my life now and get all pissy when I have to do the same old. Or find a fucking job.

Speaking of finding a job, holy bloody fuck is it getting hard. People don’t seem to get that I could care less about the recession but everywhere has a hiring freeze. You just want to yell at them ‘Well, fuck, you may not be hiring but they are still going to charge me several thousand dollars next year to go to school.” I know it isn’t the fault of individual companies, but do people have to be so agressive when refusing my resume. Shit. I may need to go back to Ottawa where I have more options.

Speaking of which, I finished my first year of University April 30th, I had an exam 7-10 which was the last possible time slot, and it was my hideous math exam from hell. But so far I’ve passed all my courses with just my Criminology mark to come in. Woohoo. I finally got my minor together too, so I am now a Philosophy Major with a Computer Science Minor.

Because this entry is doomed to be schitzophrenic due to the early hour that I am unloading my brain I guess I can babble about music for a bit, I’ve been getting into even more grunge tunes, not sure why, but lately Hole, Melvins, Meat Puppets and Butthole Surfers are getting a lot of play time here. I am in love with Plateau by the Meat Puppets and Pepper by the Butthole Surfers (I know, the commercial underground forgive me gods of indie for I have sinned)

Anyways, I thought I could write more of an entry but I’m drawing a big old blank. So, more entries soon, but sleep now.

EDIT:

I confess — I have Twitter.