Ordinary Day

My pal Kaye, originally a pal from my days on PernMUSH and now a Facebook friend, sent me a present that was waiting for me when Dara and I got back from Canada on Sunday night! Namely, a box of Plants Vs. Zombies trading cards–and this little guy along with them!

I feel a poll coming on, because clearly, this zombie needs a name! Some suggestions I have received so far include “Mal” (because he’s wearing a brown coat, doncha see), “Beldar” (because Conehead), and “Gerald” (I could see him looking like a Gerald)!

Drop your suggestions into the comments, Internets! This may well be fuel for a second Vengeance of the Hunter giveaway, so suggest wisely!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Y’know how sometimes, even if you know the book is probably going to be mediocre at best and is even likely to outright suck, you kind of have to read it anyway? Death Troopers, a Star Wars novel by Joe Schreiber, was like that for me.

‘Cause, okay, yeah, Star Wars plus zombies.

I know, I know. But I’m still enough of a Star Wars fan, and definitely enough of a zombie fan, that I could not resist seeing how an author tried to get a zombie story into the Star Wars universe. Plus, given that I saw a spoiler about two of the main Star Wars characters getting grafted into this plot (and it will probably not be much of a stretch for anyone familiar with me to guess which characters would pull me in), well okay yeah fine I’m there.

Survey says: overall, meh. I had two main beefs with this story: one, that the aforementioned grafting of primary Star Wars characters into this plot had no real suspense to it, since you knew they were going to survive. The story’s set before A New Hope, so there wasn’t any doubt at all that these characters would make it. Two, that pretty much every other character is thinly sketched in at best. They’re all archetypes zombie fans have seen in countless stories elsewhere.

Although, that said, the two main characters grafted into the story are the exact right characters you’d want to graft in. And, I do have to give Schrieber props for making the one female in the plot, the prison ship’s doctor, halfway interesting.

Also, props have to be given for a reasonably creepy Star Wars-based zombie scenario. Our protagonists are on board a prison ship that comes across a seemingly abandoned Star Destroyer, which has gone adrift thanks to its crew being devastated by the unleashing of a potent virus that, of course, the Empire had been trying to develop as a weapon. A Star Destroyer IS pretty much perfect for a zombie scenario; it’s huge, and there are thousands of crewmembers at your disposal to turn into undead. Since this is Star Wars, you get the added amusement value of non-human zombies–and I must say, zombie Wookiees? Okay yeah. That’s disturbing. So are the moments with the doomed command staff of the Destroyer being discovered barricaded inside one of the shuttles, where they’ve been slowly starving to death.

And to be fair, I did actually like the ending. The Destroyer zombies start exhibiting creepier behavior (I shan’t specify what, because spoilers), and the surviving protagonists (well, aside from the aforementioned two main characters who we knew were going to survive anyway) go out on a respectably gritty note.

I gave this two stars originally, but I’m bumping up to three ’cause yeah, there was some decent creepiness here.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Most of this weekend I’ve spent catching up: with new movies, with balancing my checkbook, with getting my book review posts written, with getting my tallies of new books purchased tallied, and such.

Friday night, spazzkat, solarbird, jennygriffee, and I all went to see Zombieland, which was highly entertaining. It’s a different flavor of funny than Shaun of the Dead, but definitely a solid competitor in the realm of zombie comedies. Look for the clever integration of main character Columbus’ Rules for Surviving Zombieland into the action, in particular. Everybody in the cast is excellent, especially Woody Harrelson for my money, and there’s a great cameo in the middle of the movie that I will not identify. ;)

Yesterday went pretty much entirely to balancing the checkbook and discovering that we had six hundred more dollars than I thought we did, because I’d accidentally subtracted a previous deposit when I should have added it. This, my children, is why Mama Anna always balances the checkbook. It’s like finding free money! (Only, well, not, because I need to throw it at the VISA, but hey!)

And after I finished balancing the checkbook, I started writing a bunch of book review posts. I’m almost done getting caught up on those and have three more to go; I’ve scheduled a bunch of them to go live through the rest of this week, one per day, so as not to overwhelm y’all with the wave of reviews. I’m caught up through seanan_mcguire’s Rosemary and Rue, and am now pondering exactly what I want to say about the Castle tie-in novel, Heat Wave! (I will be doing the review in-character; if ABC can make this joke, what the hell, I’ll play along.)

Today, it’s all about the books. I’ve done another round of ebook buying off of Fictionwise as well as via the ongoing Drollerie sale, and I’ve picked up three new paperbacks from Third Place and one from Barnes and Noble too. Here’s the tally:

Physical Books

• Boneshaker, by cmpriest (purchased before seeing the movie on Friday, which seemed apt–buying a book involving zombies before seeing a movie involving them!)
• Academ’s Fury, by jimbutcher
• Valor’s Trial, by andpuff
• Thirteen Orphans, by Jane Lindskold

Ebooks:

• Zerah’s Chosen, by Isabelle Santiago
• Confessions of the Creature, by Gary Inbinder
• Fire and Shadow, by Imogen Howson
• Frayed Tapestry, by Imogen Howson
• The Rose of Shanhasson, by joelysue
• Needles and Bones, a Drollerie anthology
• Stereo Opticon, a Drollerie anthology
• Bump in the Night, a Drollerie anthology
• Tempting Danger, by Eileen Wilks
• Love You to Death, by Shannon K. Butcher
• And five, count ‘em, five super-cheap Harlequin Suspense novels by Jessica Andersen, because I discovered that one of hers I was already reading was #6 in a series, so I was really kinda lost. But I like her writing anyway, so it’s all good!

Which brings me to a grand total of (drum roll)… 19 in this wave of purchasing, and the grand total for the year to 120. I’m currently at 87 books read for the year, with books 88 and 89 in progress. So it’s safe to say that the chances of my finishing the year with having purchased more books than I’ll have read are very, very high! But it’ll be fun to see if I make 120 books read by then.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Meanwhile, in the land of other people's words, I have finally acquired two books I've been ardently awaiting! First and foremost, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I discovered was all over the place at Barnes and Noble this evening. Very, very much looking forward to reading this, especially after chortling over the back cover copy:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

Not to mention this:

Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

And for an entirely different flavor of awesome, y'all remember that anthology I posted about a while back, the one to benefit s00j in her time of medical hardship? I am delighted to have finally gotten mine in the mail. It is gorgeous and chock full of a lot of high-caliber names on the Table of Contents.

Reading both of these is going to be pleasure indeed. Total books bought so far in 2009: 16!

Some nifty things happened at work today:

1. Coworker #1 (hi jgstewart) loaned me his copy of cmpriest's Fathom, which didn't work for him, and which I am 99.99% likely to buy off of him once I'm done reading it. I was going to get it anyway eventually, and now is as good a time as any!
   
   
2. Coworker #2 saw The Forest of Hands and Teeth sitting next to me at my workstation and was attracted by the cover. I said, "It's a zombie novel!" He said, "How do you put those two words together?" I snickered and explained, since I'd just finished reading it at lunch, that it was a post-zombie-apocalypse novel about this young girl who wants to find out what lies beyond her village that's cut off from the rest of the world by a forest full of the undead. (More on this in another post!)
   
   
3. Coworker #3, upon overhearing the previous conversation, immediately came over and said "hey, did you read World War Z?" I affirmed, enthusiastically, that I had. I'm totally going to get me a rep for lovin' me some zombies at this place. I'm good with this.
   
   
4. I was able to take an emergency nap around 2 or so when my brain stopped functioning and demanded I become horizontal. My lead was totally cool with me doing that, so I went and curled up in the chair in the nearest phone room for about half an hour, setting an alarm on my cell phone. I never actually fell asleep since every time I made the slightest movement, I set off the motion sensor on the light in the room. But even sitting there curled up in near-darkness for about half an hour was enough to let me recharge. I stayed half an hour late, of course. And I really, really appreciate that my current workplace is awesome enough that I can do that.

All in all a pretty good day, even if I I was fighting to ramp back up to speed. But I have things to do and I think I'll be a little bit more up to speed tomorrow. Then there's a whole weekend to rest up (modulo Cinematic Titanic on Saturday night yay).

I waited far too long to read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Max Brooks, I was surprised and pleased to discover, is the son of Mel Brooks; you can see that he comes by his Funny honest, with that sort of lineage to draw on. This book is chock full of Funny, to be sure--though it's a dark and deadpan sort of humor. The humor initially pulls you in, but what actually keeps you is a solid and riveting story to back it up and soon make you forget about the initial BWAHAHAHA of the premise.

And the premise is giggle-worthy enough: what happens when a worldwide outbreak of zombies nearly drives the human race to extinction. The book's schtick is that of an unnamed narrator called upon to compile a report of how humanity survived, only to be ordered to excise all the "human factor" elements that he then decides to turn into a book. The only real glimpse you get of the narrator is in the introduction. Through the bulk of the book, the real characters are the "interviewees" that are the survivors of World War Z. The scope of their stories swerves from the national down to the personal and back again, showing you the big picture of what happens with the countries of the world contrasted with the survival stories of individuals. All of it is amazingly and deeply detailed, from Israel's announcing a quarantine of its entire country clear up through the American charge eastward over the Rockies to take back the country from the hordes of the undead. But the parts that shone the clearest for me were the individual stories, from the account of the young woman whose parents had fled with her into the Canadian north only to face increasingly desperate conditions--including cannibalism--to the old blind survivor of Hiroshima who took on the holy calling of training Japanese survivors to cleanse the ghouls from their land.

In fact, this quote from that old sensei's story really sums up the coolness of this book: "We might be facing fifty million monsters, but those monsters would be facing the gods." BOOYA.

And needless to say, four stars. ^_^

3:25pm

I knew something was up when it took way longer than usual to get into work today. spazzkat was unusually uncommunicative on the whole thing--and what the hell was up with him sniffing my head, anyway? Not to mention the ungodly bus funk, even more ghastly than usual.

Once we got downtown, the weirdness continued. Backups like you would not believe. And at first our whole news department blamed it on the streetcar work downtown, but we soon found out otherwise when we discovered half the news staff responsible for collecting this morning's stories had shambled in off the streets looking suspiciously pasty-faced and moaning incoherently, and Advertising seemed strangely more lucid than usual (with new action items all about growing the BRAAAAAAINS aspect of the company). What reporters we had still able to string coherent sentences together promptly barricaded themselves inside the IT department and, last I checked, were valiantly trying to keep our servers up and running so we can get updates out to the city. This is exactly the scenario our disaster plan is made for, but the servers in Bothell aren't answering. So if our primaries go down, we're fucked.

We were okay in my department for a few hours. The infected aren't too solid on the whole elevator concept, and they couldn't seem to organize themselves well enough to make it up the stairs in single or double file, so we had time to barricade all the entrances with as many conference room tables and chairs as we could find. Problem was, somebody infected must have still gotten in. By lunchtime all the designers were gnawing on the heads of the engineers. QA, knowing a sev 1 pri 0 situation when we see it, seized every sharp object we could find in the kitchen and took off through the emergency stairwell to get out. We jumped into my lead's car, since she was the only one of us who hadn't come in by bus, and that way we made it as far as Ballard. We had to split up then, though. She had to get back to her family; I still had to make it to Kenmore. Last I saw our contractor guy, unfortunately, he was running like hell towards Fremont. I hope he makes it.

I'm posting this from just outside a cafe that still has its wireless up. I didn't go in--the place was pretty jammed full of zombies already, all in a line, like they were still going to get their cappucinos or something. Pretty fucking creepy in general, but at least it let me get this out.

And I just realized I totally left spazzkat behind. Shit. I suck. :( Sorry, man. If you see this, I hope to gods you're okay. But I've got to make it back to solarbird. I hope you understand!

ETA 6:37pm

I barely made it back to Kenmore alive, people.

Traffic through the U-district is fucked, so I had to catch one of the last running busses. They were actually fleeing north for the border, but I got 'em to drop me off in Shoreline and I went overland to try to get home. I've never stolen a damn thing in my life, but today I made an exception and took a ten-speed out of somebody's abandoned bike locker. I don't think the owner wanted it anymore anyway. She was wandering off down the Interurban trail, her helmet all crooked and her face very, very green.

I heard gunfire in Lake Forest Park. I spotted a bunch of people on the roof of the Lake Forest Park Town Centre, taking potshots at all the zombies in biking gear coming up off the Burke Gilman trail. For the love of god, folks, whatever you do, stay off 522. You'll make it faster over the side roads.

Posting this over the Third Place wireless before I try to make that last stretch home. Wish me luck. I have to ditch the bike, there's no way I'm going to ride it up the hill. But under the circumstances, I think I'll be able to run up the whole way if I have to.

ETA 6:50pm

Power's out along half our hill but we still have net and oh thank god, solarbird and risu are okay.

But something's wrong with Zoe. She's looking really... wasted. And molting right and left. Since when were her eyes all runny and black?

ETA 6:54pm

spazzkat just came up the basement stairs. He looks....

SHIT.

Let's start off this posting with some links! First up: word in from greatbigsea is that the Somerville show this Saturday will be colliding with ZOMBIES! Those of you who have followed my journal know that I have remarked before on the odd juxtaposition of my B'ys and the shambling undead. All I have to say is, nobody better be diving for the brain of The Doyle. ;) (Also? I love the entire idea of a Zombie March.)

Second up, arcaedia has some words of wisdom about submissions etiquette when you're querying agents. Recommended reading for the aspiring writers on my Friends list.

Third, several of you out there have probably heard already, but for those of you who haven't, it seems that the Skiffy Channel is planning a Battlestar Galactica spinoff, to take place on Caprica, and to show the events leading into the original Human/Cylon war. Here's hoping it'll be fun!

And in other news--reading through Julie Czerneda's Migration now, and am quite enjoying it, as I completely expected to do. This book so far isn't as astonishing in terms of plot revelations as the first, since it's the second part of an ongoing story and the reader has a better idea of what's going on now. But Czerneda's still throwing me a couple of amusing side curveballs in terms of interactions between certain characters, and she's not stinting on the amusing alien species, either.

I have learned to my chagrin that according to the list of mile counts on the Eowyn Challenge page, I was tracking miles to Lothlórien wrong all this time. I'd been thinking it was 464 miles when it was actually 462! So I got there earlier than I thought I did, it turns out, and I get to modify the numbers a bit now. Clearly I was distracted by Aragorn. Or Legolas. Or both. (Mmm. Aragorn.) But the mile count to Rauros Falls is a scant 389, so I should hopefully be able to tear through that pretty well over the summer and get well on the way to Isengard after. I'll be following the route taken by Aragorn, of course. (Because again I say, mmm, Aragorn.)

One possible way I might be able to knock off some miles: apparently in these parts, May is Bike to Work month. Very tempting, if I can figure out a decent route from Kenmore down to Real.

I got asked yesterday afternoon what my feelings were about working this weekend, again. I offered Saturday but said that I can't work on Sunday, because of a prior commitment--which is, of course, MurkJam! If you are coming to Jam, please drop a comment here or email me, and let me know! I need to know how much pie I should get.

And last up, birthday wishes go out to kirkcudbright and framlingem for today, and gerimaple for tomorrow! Especially Geri, since her post today that she really wants me hurry up and finish Lament of the Dove so I can write the sequel to Faerie Blood brought a big smile to my face. *^_^* Happily, I plunked out over 700 words on Lament last night, so I'm getting closer and closer to the end of it!

Thursday evening miles: 2.4
Friday morning miles: 2.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 925.8
Miles out of Rivendell: 467.8
Miles out of Lothlórien: 5.8
Miles to Rauros Falls: 383.2

I could tell that today was going to start off odd when, just prior to waking up, I realized I was dreaming about myself, seimaisin, and Alan Doyle trying to escape from my old college campus--because it was full of zombies. I distinctly remember even dreaming about the sequence where the zombies are created--a medical type of some sort in front of a line of badly wounded men, telling them about how it's a good thing he's made "this solution" to keep them alive, and how he'd better not put more than three drops of this other stuff into it, which of course he then does because he's sloppy in creating whatever mixture he's trying to create. (Also, one of the initial zombies was played by John Cleese.)

And I remember the campus overrunning with infected zombie people and Alan, seimaisin, and I jumping into a car and trying to flee southwards out of Lexington, only to find Broadway full of abandoned cars, so we try to turn around and head back north, but we can't go THAT way because the wave of infection is apparently coming down out of the north.

I am not sure why my subconscious lined me up a zombie movie for this morning's dreaming, nor what zombies have to do with Alan Doyle, as this is the second time my brain has made me link zombies and Great Big Sea. Perhaps it is a warning, and I should be telling you all to look out for people trying to eat brains at the next GBS concert you attend!

Or perhaps it is a warning to all of you on my Friends list who live in Kentucky. Because when I told her about the dream this morning, solarbird rightly remarked, "Transy IS full of zombies."

But anyway. In non-zombie news, functional again today, thank goodness, thanks to my visiting both my chiropractor and my LMP yesterday. Several muscles around my neck and shoulder are still somewhat cranky, but at least now I am no longer in active pain. This is a good thing.

I did not write yesterday, but I figured I could manage a day off thanks to the aforementioned cranky, painful muscles. What I did do was finish up Charlaine Harris' Shakespeare's Champion, watch Lost, walk down to Lake Forest Park to get stamps and mail bills and then walk back with solarbird along the Burke-Gilman trail, take a nice hot soak, and play a lot of solitaire in RealArcade on my laptop. Tonight, hopefully, there will be writing.

In the meantime, everybody say hi to auntmonkey, latest member of the hopefully-about-to-be-resurrected jamming group to get her own LJ!

Tuesday evening miles: 1.85
Wednesday miles: 2.75
Thursday morning miles: 2.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 747.85
Miles out of Rivendell: 289.85
Miles to Lothlórien: 174.15