Playing with Myself

Yesterday was a bit busy. So it's Ten on Tuesday... on Wednesday.

10 Things You Will Never Do Again

1. Trust my dear mother.
2. Tequila shots. Anything else, but not tequila.
3. Travel without my own blanket, if I don't have to. I'm weird that way.
4. Eat beef.
5. Look underneath the bed at a hotel. Ick.
6. Fly across the Atlantic in a military troop carrier with jury-rigged seats and my feet directly on one of the hinges of the loading ramp.
7. Live in a town without a decent bookstore (this is a COLLEGE town, for crying out loud!).
8. Work on my dissertation (take THAT, do-gooders).
9. Buy anything less than an XL in a t-shirt.
10. Go hungry again (thank you Scarlett O'Hara).

It's 10 on Tuesday, after a hiatus last week (13 year wedding anniversary yay! Suckerific week boo!). Alas, I don't care much for this week's topic so here's one from the archives:

Ten Favorite Movies to Quote:

1) Galaxy Quest:
-- "It's a rock monster. It doesn't HAVE motivation."
and
-- "Whoever wrote this episode should die!"

2) Ghostbusters: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!"

3) The Big Sleep:
-- "You go too far, Marlowe."
-- "Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he's walking out of your bedroom."

4) How to Steal a Million:
-- "Well, it was pitch dark and there he was. Tall, blue eyes, slim, quite good-looking... in a brutal, mean way, Papa. A terrible man!"
-- "This tall, good-looking ruffian with blue eyes, he didn't molest you in any way, did he? ... Well, did he?"
-- "Not much."

5) Support Your Local Sheriff:
-- "This [dented badge] must have saved the life of whoever was wearing it."
-- "Well, it sure would have if it hadn't been for all them other bullets flying in from everywhere."

6) Airplane!:
-- "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue."

7) The Mummy:
-- "Look, I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am... a librarian!"

8) Practical Magic:
-- "Louis L'Amour, by the way, was not a foreigner! He was from North Dakota, you asshole!"

9) The Hunt for Red October:
-- "Listen I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollipops."

10) The Shawshank Redemption:
-- "The Count of Monte Crisco... by Alexandree Dumbass. Dumbass!"
-- "Dumbass? 'Dumas.' You know what that's about? You'll like it, it's about a prison break."
-- "We ought to file that under 'Educational' too, oughten we?"

Happy Tuesday, all.

The regular Ten on Tuesday is still blathering about work, so here's another golden oldie: ten good books that you've read (recently or not)

1. A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore -- A tale of a man who becomes Death... but not quite in the way he thinks. Technically I'm not finished with this one, but with only 20 pages to go Moore would really have to screw up to pop my happiness balloon. I haven't laughed quite so much in ages. So barring mass destruction of puppies and kitties on the horizon, this is a treat.

2. The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves by Annie Murphy Paul -- Not nearly alarmist as it sounds, it's really a quite interesting history of the various types of personality tests used professionally and personally today. I love personality tests, so this was fascinating.

3. Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout -- Probably my favorite of the Nero Wolfe mysteries, not only because it introduces the woman I always wanted to be when I grew up, Lily Rowan. I reread it, and the rest of the series, quite a bit.

4. Braniac by Ken Jennings -- Upon reflection, I can't tell you a damned thing about this book other than that it is by the guy who won so much money on Jeopardy and there are lots of neat tidbits of trivia in it. And yet I remember I was surprised at how well Jennings can write, and I loved it.

5. 1602 by Neil Gaiman -- What if Marvel superheroes lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? I probably would have enjoyed this even more if it had been about DC characters, as I'm rather shaky on the Marvelverse, but nonetheless this was fascinating. Not nearly as dark as I was expecting from Gaiman, but still really good. I hope he continues the series.

6. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin -- I tend not to read historical mysteries, particularly medieval ones, because I am constantly distracted by what I know of the period. However, this story sucked me right in and I'm glad I gave it a shot. I believe it is Franklin's first book, so I will have to keep an eye out for her next. Addendum: It turns out, as Amazon notes, Franklin is "the pseudonym of a veteran historical fiction writer."

7. Livin' La Vida Dorka by John Kovalic -- We have a couple of the Dork Tower comic strip collections at home, but don't collect them the way we would if they weren't so role-playing gamer heavy. Nonetheless, the ISU library has a fine collection of graphic novels and I picked up this one last week to pass the time while I was working the circulation desk. I forgot how much I love Dork Tower.

8. Pop Culture Crossword Puzzles by Trip Payne -- Not really a book, I guess. But I still enjoyed the heck out of it. If you saw the fascinating (to dorks like me) movie about crossword puzzle tournaments "Wordplay" then you will probably remember author Trip Payne.

9. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach -- Much better than her second book, "Stiff" is enough to make you reconsider donating your body to science (unless you want to be a practice dummy for budding plastic surgeons). Fascinating stuff.

10. The perfect "haunted house" book -- I'm still looking for it, though The Haunting of Hill House comes close.