Payday! Woop. My first act was to go to Chapters and buy 20 books,
of which more in the next paragraph. Then went to the
Vancouver 2600 meet. It was good to see a lot of new
faces
there among the old; most of the new ones seemed to be in
high school. It was almost like 2 meets in one; the newbies
sat by themselves while the oldsters who knew each other sat
by themselves too. Adjourned to the Jolly Taxpayer for beer
as usual afterward. Got home and talked with Gina some more about wedding
plans; looks like it will be in November. She said we're
going to need a nino and nanang, which translates to
something like "sponsors" but isn't exactly. I'm sure I'll
figure it out sometime long after the wedding is done.
One of the books I bought was the Diary
of Samuel
Pepys. Perhaps one of the most famous early diaries to
still be in print, Pepys was a civil servant living in the
1600's. A quick perusal showed that he used his political
position to amass wealth, and was a sexual predator to
boot. The preface had a big warning label: feminists will
not like this guy. That doesn't affect its literary
quality; I think its one of the few real diaries that can be
read like a novel; Samuel had a style that any modern day
diarist could learn from. Since he didn't plan for anyone
else to ever read his diary, he held nothing back, which
makes for very interesting reading. Maybe I had Advogato in
mind when
I bought it; the book had certainly never attracted my
attention or interest before in any way. It covered the
Great Fire of
London and many other events of the time between
1660-1669 when the authors eyesight finally gave out. Its a
great stroke of luck the diary was preserved; he wrote in
shorthand, and noone translated it for the general public
until 1825. If you want the sordid details, go buy your own
copy, I'm nowhere near done with mine yet :p
A few days ago a friend sent me a book called how
to succeed with women for review. Being a shy and
somewhat inexperienced guy, he wanted my opinion on the
material in it. Flipping through it, the chapter When
Babes Attack: Handling Problems Women Cause caught my
eye. Expecting it to be amusing, I started reading. Right
away I was caught up in the little scenarios it related. I
read a bit more... then a bit more... I found myself taking
the authors seriously. Then I started to skip around in the
book to see if the rest of it had similar quality of
content. In the chapter on Where the Girls Are, it
suggested the following gimmick: "carry around a cute
stuffed animal" then explained what would result.
WOW! They stole a leaf out of my book. Thats
exactly the technique I used very successfully for a while,
as you can see here
and then here
in these pictures taken at the first LinuxWorld
Expo. The motto of the book could be summed up as "good
intentions and being a good guy are not enough" in regard to
the dating game. It bills itself as "the manual for
geeks". rtfm on women? sure, here it is.... it lives up
to the billing too. Now, I know, most of you are in
horrified shock. "Oh my god, a fucking MANUAL on how to be a
sexual predator? how CRASS!". But its not. I'll let the
book explain for itself:
It's as if dating is a
dance. In the past, everybody knew their steps, and could
dance together. A man knew that, if he was interested in a
woman, he could do certain things to show that interest, and
a woman knew the proper responses to show interest or lack
of it. In the modern world, those dance-steps have been
largely lost, and we have been left on our own to figure
them out. Oftentimes, rather than dancing together it feels
more like we are crashing into each other, and stepping
constantly onto each other's toes.This book is about
changing all of that.
I daresay even
Skud would
benefit from reading it. Any guys here feel their love life
isn't up to par, this book IS the f***ing manual, all 440
pages of it. What, you thought women weren't more complex
than us? The womens equivalent of this book,
The
Rules (New York Times bestseller), only runs 190 pages.
In my next entry, I'll be reviewing the 1623 edition of
Shakespeares First Folio, of which I have a direct
photographic copy. Peace out