Fragmented Friday - Entertaining the Pirate

My apologies yet again for the lack of posts, my blog monkeys; this past week just hasn't been the most conducive to the flowing of creative juices. But, since Book Monkey and recent birthday girl The Pirate -- who has recently joined the elite ranks of Book Monkey Bloggers with In Xandu did Kubla Khan -- is going crazy trying to find things to occupy her mind with while waiting to find out if she will be selected as a contestant on the new season of The Mole, I figured I should throw up a couple of random thoughts.

It looks like there's a possibility that Cap'n Shack-Fu might not be joining the Army after all; instead, he may be joining the FBI. Either way, it will mean him moving off somewhere so he can fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but at least if he's with the FBI the odds of him staying stateside and not being shipped off to a war-torn country are quite a bit better. Plus, since being a federal law enforcement officer is one of Shack's lifelong dreams, we're all hoping that the FBI opportunity pans out. Plus, "Special Agent Shack-Fu" just sounds too good.

The other day I got an email from Cedric the Destroyer which included a link to an online game and the comment from Cedric that the game had nearly driven him to drink. I, of course, immediately clicked the link, and was soon replying back to Cedric cursing his black, black soul for exposing me to the addiction that is the "Escape Room" game Vision. And, once I beat the thing, I did what all right thinking individuals would do: I forwarded the evil thing on to the friends I thought most likely to be intrigued/entrapped. A few hours after sending the email out, I got a phone call from The Lovable PigPen which began thusly: "Remind me to kill you when I get home." Of course, since approximately 80% of my conversations with my best bud PigPen include at least one death threat between us, it's hard to say just how much of that was a reflection on the game and how much was just par for the course for our mutually antagonistic brotherhood. I've tried out several other "Escape Room" games, and so far the best ones I've found have been from the same author as the first one, so if you're sucked into Vision and want to torture yourself even more, then try out Sphere and RGB as well.

I'm soooooooo happy the writers' strike is finally over; would be happier if the whole mess didn't mean that we have to wait until next Fall for new episodes of Chuck, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes, not to mention shortened seasons of, oh, just about everything else. But, at least we have Lost back, that's something to put a smile on my face.

I must admit, I've been pleasently surprised by two of the mid-season replacement series: Eli Stone, which skates by on its remarkable cast if nothing else, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which threatens to typecast Summer Glau as the go-to weirdo, kick-ass super-chick actress, but really, there are worse things to be typecast as, right? Terminator in particular has won a fond place in my heart for its interesting take on the whole Terminator mythos.

If all goes as planned, I'll finally get to see There Will Be Blood this weekend; very excited about that, it's been way too long since I've gotten to experience a new P.T. Anderson flick -- kind of makes me want to go back and watch Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love again just because.

I got a call Sunday night from my mom telling me that my grandmother had to be hospitalized for congestive heart failure. Right now, she seems to be doing better, but any and all prayers for her would be greatly appreciated.

There are few things in life as entertaining as watching Cap'n Shack-Fu cringe and curl up into the fetal position every time Hellga comes on screen on American Gladiators.

While I might not have been in a blogging mood recently, I have been in a reading mood, having just finished up volume three in Greg Keyes' Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series, and subsequently started book one of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, although I might have to take a break from that in order to do a quick read of the latest Discworld novel.

After a month or so of continuous listening, I finally burned myself out on the Once soundtrack, although that may have been more a need for more upbeat, frenetic rock music to pull me out of my doldrums than anything else.

And now, a moment of silence for the late Steve Gerber, an extremely talented comic book writer whose biggest contribution to the general world of pop culture was the creation of Howard the Duck -- a comic book which had more politically charged satire and social commentary in one panel than that fiasco of a movie ever dreamed of hinting -- but whose biggest contribution to the life of young Cap'n Neurotic was his run on The Defenders, a book which was so wonderfully bizarre and warped that it could not help but pull me in.