[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] It's Meme Time...

Yes. I nicked this book meme from Paul (who got it from Dawn), and I figured I'd give it a whirl and keep the dream alive. And, to make things easier, I'm also going to follow Paul's instructions.

The common form of these lists seems to be italicise those that X, bold those that Y, and strike through those that Z. Dawn changed that for an italicised comment after each title, and I will follow that format because...well, no reason.

The books listed below are the top 105 books most often tagged as being unread by LibraryThing users (as of October 3rd). I have no idea what LibraryThing is. "Yes," means I've read it. "No," means I have not. Any other comments will, I hope, be self explanatory.

• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell (No)
• Anna Karenina (Yes)
• Crime and Punishment (Yes)
• Catch-22 (Yes)
• One hundred years of solitude (Yes)
• Wuthering Heights (Yes)
• The Silmarillion (I've read parts of it)
• Life of Pi (No)
• The Name of the Rose (Yes)
• Don Quixote (Yes)
  
• Moby Dick (Yes)
• Ulysses (Yes)
• Madame Bovary (Yes)
• The Odyssey (Yes)
• Pride and Prejudice (Yes)
• Jane Eyre (Yes)
• A Tale of Two Cities (Yes)
• The Brothers Karamazov (Yes)
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (No)
• War and Peace (Yes)
• Vanity Fair (No)
• The Time Traveller’s Wife (No)
• The Iliad (Yes)
• The Blind Assassin (No)
• The Kite Runner (No)
• Mrs. Dalloway (No)
• Great Expectations (Yes)
• American Gods (No)
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (No)
• Atlas Shrugged (Yes)
• Reading Lolita in Tehran (No)
• Memoirs of a Geisha (Yes)
• Middlesex (No)
• Quicksilver (Yes)
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (No)
• The Canterbury Tales (Yes)
• The Historian (No)
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Yes)
• Love in the Time of Cholera (Yes)
• Brave New World (Yes)
• The Fountainhead (Yes)
• Foucault’s Pendulum (Yes)
• Middlemarch (No)
• Frankenstein (Yes)
• The Count of Monte Cristo (Yes)
• Dracula (Yes)
• A Clockwork Orange (Yes)
• Anansi Boys (No)
• The Once and Future King (No)
• The Grapes of Wrath (No)
• The Poisonwood Bible (No)
• 1984 (Yes)
• Angels & Demons (Yes)
• The Inferno (Yes)
• The Satanic Verses (Yes)
• Sense and Sensibility (Yes)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (Yes)
• Mansfield Park (No)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Yes)
• To the Lighthouse (Read some of it)
• Tess of the Ubervilles (Yes)
• Oliver Twist (Yess'r)
• Gulliver’s Travels (Yes)
• Les Miserables (No)
• The Corrections (Yes)
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (No)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (No)
• Dune (Yes)
• The Prince (Yes)
• The Sound and the Fury (Yes)
• Angela’s Ashes (Yes)
• The God of Small Things (No)
• Cryptonomicon (No)
• Neverwhere (No)
• A Confederacy of Dunces (Yes)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (No)
• Dubliners (Yes)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Yes)
• Beloved (No)
• Slaughterhouse-five (Yes)
• The Scarlet Letter (Yes)
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Not yet. But, I do own it and plan to read it soon)
• The Mists of Avalon (Yes)
• Oryx and Crake:a novel (No)
• Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed (No)
• Cloud Atlas (No)
• The Confusion (No)
• Lolita (Yes)
• Persuasion (No)
• Northanger Abbey (No)
• The Catcher in the Rye (Yes)
• On the Road (Yes)
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Yes)
• Freakonomics (No)
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (No)
• The Aeneid (Yes)
• Watership Down (Yes)
• Gravity’s Rainbow (To quote Paul: "why does this sound so familiar? Google, google, google...ah, Pynchon - nope, not even remotely interested)
• The Hobbit (Yes)
• In Cold Blood (Yes)
• White Teeth (No)
• Treasure Island (Yes)
• David Copperfield (Yes)
• The Three Musketeers (Yes)
  

That was fun.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/17/2007 10:29:00 AM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Madness in the Face of the Sane...

I have a houseguest.

My twin brother is crashing here for a while, and though it's nice and everything, the one drawback is that my house suddenly feels populated by a couple of twelve-year olds. The practical jokes are something he and I seem to have never outgrown. For example, do you know how much fun can be had with a small motion-activated gizmo that plays phrases from the Star Wars movies?

The other night, I came home after a night out with some friends, and as I fumbled my way into bed, I heard rattling in the darkness, the voice of C3PO excitedly saying "R2D2! It is you! It is you!" Then, from the guestroom, I heard the giggling --the god-awful giggling that punctuates my chaotic and tortured childhood.

To get even, I set the gizmo up outside his door, and went to sleep. And, where I'm certain he slept a tortured and imperfect slumber fractured by the fear of my impending retribution, I slept peacefully until I was nudged awake by Obi Wan Kenobi outside by brother's door explaining that the Force will be with my brother --always. I giggled. I'm certain there are worse things to wake up to than Alec Guinness' voice first thing in the morning. I can't think of one off-hand, but I'm sure something exists.

Oh, wait. The worse thing would have to be DogCat.

Normally, I let him in in the morning, and though I'm not quite awake when I do so, I am, at least, out of bed. Since the Twin is here, DogCat's been getting access to the house while I'm still asleep as a result of The Twin letting him in on the way out of the house. Plus, it's been raining the last several days, and instead of a nice cup of coffee greeting me first thing in the morning, I've been dragged into the world of the conscious by a soaking wet, attention-whore of a cat who acts as though he's not seen me in several years.

So, that's been the last several days on this end. Eventually, sometime today, I will construct a means by which to exact my vengance. Yes. It's a little insane, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before one, or both, of us gets hurt.

Until that happens, I'm thinking of putting his deodorant in the freezer.

-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/16/2007 09:40:00 AM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Neat.

Thanks to the folks at Maps of War.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/15/2007 12:48:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Heh-heh...

Now, if people are going to say they see Jesus or Mary in pieces of toast and eggplants, well...

I think this speaks for itself.


Thanks to Optical Illusions


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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/12/2007 08:58:00 AM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Get Your Cowboy On!

Just make sure you have a ukulele...

Gotta admit... That's pretty slick.

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/11/2007 10:18:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] My Requisite Saffron Recipe...

There are only a few things I buy in large quantities. Basmati rice is one of those things. I love making it. It just blows boring old write rice out of the water. It's got an amazing, nutty flavor, it's very aromatic, and once you get it down, making the stuff is a breeze.

Anyway, this is my recipe entry for Jaden's Steamy Saffron Giveaway. It's nothing more than Basmati rice with saffron and toasted almonds, and since I'm ridiculously busy lately, it's nice to have this recipe in one's memory to whip out in a pinch. Here's what you will need:

1/2 cup slivered almonds (toasted)
2 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth if you prefer to eat with your molars)
1 cup basmati rice
1 pinch of Kosher salt
1 pinch of saffron threads (I'd say around five or six)
ground black pepper

First, toast the almonds in a medium sized saucepan until that yummy toasted almond scent drives you almost to the point of doing something insane like licking a hot pan. However, right before that urge strikes, dump in the broth, rice, salt and pepper and bring to a boil.

Once it's boiling, stir in the saffron, turn the heat to low, cover and let it sit for 20-25 minutes until what you have is a nice pan of rice with no liquid left. Fluff it up with a fork and eat until your head explodes.

Oh! And the crusty stuff that sticks to the bottom of the pan? Eat that too. That's pretty much the best part in my book.

I suppose you can serve this with just about anything, but I tend to just eat it by itself with a cold beer.

-DP


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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/10/2007 12:37:00 PM

[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] As a Proud Member of the Foil Hat Brigade...

I feel it is in everyone's best interest to put this little story out into the world:

A retired lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve who served with the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage questioned in a little-noticed editorial Sunday why six active nuclear armed cruise missiles were being transferred to an active bomber base that "just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."

"The United States also does not transport nuclear weapons meant for elimination attached to their launch vehicles under the wings of a combat aircraft," Navy veteran Robert Stormer wrote in the Texas-based Star-Telegram. "The procedure is to separate the warhead from the missile, encase the warhead and transport it by military cargo aircraft to a repository -- not an operational bomber base that just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."

Six nuclear W80 nuclear-armed cruise missiles were flown to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana where they sat for ten hours undetected. (link to full story)

I happen to think someone somewhere is up to something pretty shady. After all, the protocol for handling and transporting nuclear weapons is pretty detailed for a reason: so mistakes such as this won't happen. And, as I read this article, I could help but consider that we are supposedly trying very hard to keep such weapons out of the hands of those who wish to attack our nation and her interests, yet it's clear that we can't keep track of our own weapons.

There's also the considerable PR ploy to take into account. The military can not directly come out and say that we are moving nuclear weapons into our base of Middle East operations, but the appearance that it is being done under these somewhat suspicious circumstances is more than enough to ignite a person's paranoia. However, the thing to keep in mind is that there is the strong likelihood that U.S. nuclear weapons are already in the Middle East, and I'm willing to bet they've been there for quite some time. After all, our boats carry a great many of those things.

The thing that bothers me most is that, if this isn't a genuine mistake, then someone felt that this sort of stupid stunt was necessary to achieve a greater end. However, the real end result is that, rather than send the message to spook our enemies, our military --including our Commander in Chief-- simply comes across looking as though they are nothing but a collection of incompetent fools akin to a bungling Barney Fife.

Oh well... Time to take the shiny helmet off my noggin and get back to my mad little life.

-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 10/09/2007 03:00:00 PM