Mythfish put up a challenge: think of 15 books in 15 minutes that stuck with you:

1) "Game of Thrones"/A Song of Ice and Fire series George RR Martin: I love fantasy series and this one is the best, as Mythfish also said

2) "Black Company" Glenn Cook: Recently read this. Excellent military fantasy that gives a first person view of what being a medic in a medieval sword and sorcery company of soldiers might be like

3) "Lord of the Rings" JRR Tolkien: the first epic fantasy series, and a literary classic.

4) "Heart of Darkness" Joseph Conrad: Possibly the best, most dense book about the darker, more primeval side of the human existance.

5) "Handmaid's Tale" Margaret Atwood: Excellent tale of a future where America becomes a theocracy. if only the religious right would read books like these instead of bible thumping...

6) "Left Hand of Darkness" Ursula K. Le Guin: Excellent classic sci-fi and my first look into the theory that maybe an ancient alien race seeded multiple worlds around the galaxy so life will all be similar but different. A good treatise on racial political ideologies.

7) "Something Fun I Did..." Essay collection by David Foster Wallace. I can't remember the full title of this book, but a great look at growing up in the Midwest and some funny essays on pop culture and literature.

8) "Eye of the World" Wheel of Time series Robert Jordan: I know he didn't finish it. I know its about 5 books too long. I know people like disliking it for those reasons. But the first 6 or so books of the series were great, great fantasy epic fun.

9) "The Gunslinger" The Dark Tower series Stephen King: This series was another of the first fantasy series I had ever read. A lot of people did not like the way he ended the series, but I thought it was a brilliant ending.

10) "It" Stephen King: I read a lot of Stephen King when I was younger (junior high/high school). I loved It because I was always kind of an outsider in my class, and the main cast of this book were all outsiders and so I could identify with them all.

11) "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" Ken Kesey: An excellent book about freeing oneself from authority.

12) "Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said" Phillip K. Dick: Dick's novels are all about drugs and alternate realities and how to look at reality differently. This is one of his more powerful mind trips, and I actually liked it better than "Do Androids Dream" and "A Scanner Darkly" which are also goood books.

13) "Snow Crash" Neal Stephenson: The best of the cyperpunk sci fi genre. Neal Stephenson is one of the best modern sci-fi novelists writing today.

14) "Cryptonomicon" Neal Stephenson: Stephenson masterfully crafts a story that spans from World War II to present day developing Phillipine Islands. A great read and an excellent introduction into the world of cryptography.

15) "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" Dragonlance Chronicles series by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman: This is the series that started my fantasy and role-playing addiction. I still love it to this day, even if it does come off a little cliched nowadays. Still, its a great introduction to the genre for anyone, especially young readers.

So, I've seen many clips of the BBC show QI lately.

If this show was on in the states, it would be must see TV for me. Gather some comedians, tell them some interesting and strange facts, and let the hilarity ensue... excellent and funny. Just do a search for QI on youtube and pick any clip, you'll laugh and learn something new all in one.

HBO has taken the next step...

http://www.thrfeed.com/2008/11/hbo-orders-fant.html

With the production costs needed to make the pilot, I believe once the pilot is made HBO goes ahead with the series.. I'm looking forward to it.

So, after the last debate, polls showed Obama widening his lead over McCain. So in McCain's and Palin's stump speeches and rallies, they've been attacking Obama viciously through the William Ayers connection (which is tenuous at best, and Ayers has been connected to many Republicans as well). These rallies have led to reactions like this:

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-McCain-Palin-Mob

Just getting people riled up, feeding them wrong information and lies, and feeding them fear... that if Obama gets elected the terrorist ties will destroy this nation. Its gotten to the point that many intellectual conservatives have turned from the GOP (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=3&em&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) and now have made pleas to the GOP to stop the negative campaigning, as calls of "terrorist!" and "kill him!" have been heard at these rallies.

http://election08.videosift.com/video/CNN-Discussion-About-the-Angry-Mobs-at-McCainPalin-Rallies

Its gotten to this point: http://www.videosift.com/video/McCain-doing-the-right-thing

McCain now has to defend Obama against his own followers. The mob mentality is surfacing, and its getting really bad. I'm starting to get anxiety over this. In a nation known for assassinating its leaders, the kind of rhetoric given to these fundamentalists is like giving a bomb to an Islamic terrorist. I don't think the CNN analysts are far off... if Obama wins, some of these more uneducated people on the right will riot or find some way to release their fear and hatred. Of course if McCain wins, the left will be just as mad, but instead of rioting and violence, I would foresee protesting and a lot of calls for the US election system to change.

Either way, this is a tumultuous time in American politics. People do awful things when they are full of fear and right now the American public is full of a lot of fear... fear of change, fear of the economy, fear of terrorism, fear of Russia growing strong again, fear of our debts, fear of our infrastructure collapsing. I don't see McCain/Palin trying to calm people of these fears, but burning them brighter. Obama on the other hand has been Cool Hand Luke during this economic crisis and throughout the negative campaigning. He's just the better suited candidate at this point. Not to mention if McCain wins, then Palin, a right-wing religious zealot who now has been found guilty on corruption charges (by a bi-partisan board) will be one breath from the proverbially "let's nuke the Middle East and Russia" button.

Definitely this election will be considered a unique one for the history books.

I recently responded to one of mythfish's post with this, and thought it a good post to throw up here myself:

Let's see if I can get a proper timeline:

- McCain "suspends" his campaign (though he still runs commercials and has his supporters in full on campaign mode) in order to face the financial crisis. FYI, he did this "suspend the campaign" thing in 2000, and in his last 2 senatorial races.

- McCain tells Dave Letterman he can't do his show b/c he's got to fly immediately to Washington to "fix" the economic crisis. He then stays in New York for another 16 hours to do an interview with CBS news and to address the Clinton Global Initiative. Way to drop everything and head to Washington!

- Bush invites McCain and Obama for the economic plan meeting. Obama, senators, Bush administration members, congressmen, and others participate in the meeting. Its reported that McCain pretty much doesn't say a word the whole time, up until the deal is basically made up and proposed, and then McCain speaks up to say "No, we have a different way." This pretty much starts the Republican party divide.

- McCain/Obama debate friday night. McCain actually has a strong showing, and the news networks talking heads agree he won the debate. However, he comes off as unpresidential, he won't look Obama in the face, his reputed fiery temper flares up a few times in the debate, and he continually condescends Obama while again refusing to look at him.

- While all this is going on with McCain, Palin has her second interview with Couric, which she botches completely... to the point that Saturday Night Live parodies it by not parodying it.. but by just simply repeating verbatim what she said.

- The Republicans end up turning down the bailout plan, due to Pelosi (rightly) blaming the Bush administration and deregulation. Right before this, McCain puts out an add and a statement that his leadership was the reason the bailout plan succeeded. OOOOPS!!

- Senate and house currently working on a different bailout plan.

Folks, if this is how McCain handles a crisis, I don't want him or Gov McMoose anywhere near the White House. It doesn't help that republican house reps and senators were calling McCain out for trying to "come to the rescue". They wanted no presidential politics to complicate the bailout, and that's exactly what McCain brought when he did all this. His campaign went in all out panic mode, and ended up accomplishing what Washington politics is great at accomplishing... nothing.

Obama on the other hand went into this with a cool head, asked to work bipartisanly to get it done, and let the lawmakers do what they do with a few recommendations but tried to leave presidential politics out of it. Bravo, Obama campaign.

Now, granted, the bailout was a "bad bill". But the feeling was something needed to be done to save an awful day on Wall Street. Because the bailout didn't happen, the stock market lost $1 trillion dollars. Now that the worst has happened, the renewed bill will hopefully be better for the economy now and in the long run. We'll have to wait and see once it gets voted on tonight.

I did have a little bit of a laugh when I saw a picture of someone on Wall Street holding a sign saying "Jump you fuckers!" though. Reap what you sow.

I just want this week to get over with. ugh... let's see:

- water softener leaked all over the carpet in my downstairs, so I had to unhook it and redo some of the plumbing downstairs (was done cheaply at least thanks to Anna's brother).

- refridgerator gave out, had to spend over $100 to get it fixed

- David Foster Wallace, a splendid author who I enjoyed reading committed suicide

- Richard Wright, founding member of Pink Floyd, died of cancer.

Just get this week over with already. Here's one of my favorite songs Richard Wright wrote, and a fitting title to give him a tribute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBWY3bli92Y

This is why I love the Daily Show:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card

And why I can't stand the GOP... hypocritical, lying jerks the lot of them (no, not all of them, but Rove needs to die).

Write a novel.

So my dreams last night involved:

1) Barnes and Noble being invaded by vampires
2) my brother, my dad's dog, my grandparents' old house, and a bunch of strangers playing soccer in the yard
3) the Iowa Hawkeye football team sucking so badly that it was much more like an old Krazy Kops or Benny Hill skit.. you know where the camera is sped up so everybody is running around bumping into each other and falling down. Oh yeah, and the football was replaced with a bag of peanuts. I told you they were weird dreams.

I watched Obama's acceptance speech last night. it was impressive and inspirational... made even more impressive by the fact that he wrote most of it himself. This is the man who could change America's drive, change our position and view in the world, and change our government for the better... to help the 95% percent on the bottom instead of the 5% on top. Of course, I don't know how much he'll actually be able to do once he's in office, but he definitely showed me he's the man to get things done and done right. Anyone who votes against this man either wants the status quo (and so is part of that 5% on top) or doesn't want America to succeed in the future. It will be interesting to see if McCain can come anywhere close to the inspirational words Obama said. I'm guessing he won't.

Closed on a house today! I'm excited to move in! It will take a few weeks to get painting and some maintenance around the place done so once we move in we'll be in!