seryan

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#LJ20

One year to the day since I was laid off, and I'm still unemployed.

Playing D&D tonight in the game store, I finish killing the leader of the group of whatevers that was attacking us and feel a tap on my shoulder. Bear in mind I'm not naturally diplomatic.

"Excuse me," says a random man politely, "but could you tell my wife that gaming really is fun for girls, too?"

"Well, obviously," I said, once again making it clear a career in diplomacy is not for me, "I'm here!"

The woman just kind of rolled her eyes and walked off. But the man thanked me and told me to enjoy the game.

Which I did. (Nat. 20 and two insta-kills, plus compliments from another player on the dice bag I knit myself.)

I'm kind of wondering how many other women he asked, because I wasn't the only one gaming that night, just the only one playing D&D. Hopefully if any were asked they all gave similar answers.

My holiday traditions are pretty much 'terrible movies' (this year's was Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 and due to financial constraints I didn't even get drunk) and this meme.

I came across a listing for "a shitload of free ereader fairy tale books" earlier today and once I'd finished downloading them all decided to share. This list is for the Amazon.ca links, since Amazon.com keeps directing me back there. (Presumably weird copyright issues since even though these are free and public domain the rule seems to be a blanket one for the entire Kindle store.) If you need the US links, go here. Like the original poster, I've just collected these links and haven't read any of the books yet (except Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Dracula, and Frankenstein, but not in this format) so I can't promise quality.

If you don't have a Kindle you'll need to download the app. If you don't want to do that, these are public domain so you could probably find them on Project Gutenberg. (I haven't checked.)

Here are the links for Canada:

Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights
Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for My Children
Russian Fairy Tales A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore
Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends - Not available free on Amazon.ca.
English Fairy Tales
More English Fairy Tales - Not available free on Amazon.ca.
Canadian Fairy Tales
Gawayne and the Green Knight A Fairy Tale
Irish Fairy Tales
Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks
East of the Sun and West of the Moon Old Tales from the North
The Magic Bed A Book of East Indian Fairy-Tales didn't appear on Amazon.ca in eBook format.
Indian Fairy Tales is currently unavailable on Amazon.ca.
Japanese Fairy Tales isn't available free on Amazon.ca.
Tales of Folk and Fairies
Aesop's Fables; a new translation isn't available for free on Amazon.ca.
Czechoslovak Fairy Tales
The Laughing Prince Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales
The Cat and the Mouse A Book of Persian Fairy Tales isn't available free on Amazon.ca, and Amazon.com shows me a listing for paperback copies only.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [illustrated]
Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson isn't showing up on Amazon.ca.
The Master Key, An Electrical Fairy Tale Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity
The Blue Fairy Book
Dracula
Frankenstein

Two that weren't included on the original list:
Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
The Shoemaker's Apron A Second Book of Czechoslovak Fairy Tales and Folk Tales

Enjoy!

We're talking about something kitchen-related, I can't remember what. I enjoy cooking, Steve's not really interested in doing it, so most of it falls to me for those reasons and because I hate having to share my cooking space and tools. (Worst part of having roommates, over and above trying to get people to clean per the schedule, I swear.) Anyway:

Me: *asking a question about whatever it was we were talking about*
Steve: Yes. Because you're the food wizard.
Me: What?
Steve: You're the Executive Food Wizard.
Me: If I'm a wizard, I should have a wizard hat.
Steve: It's backordered.Should be here in a few weeks.

Still waiting on that hat...

I went outside earlier to dig over the vegetable garden and the compost before winter hits. I have an eight by six garden with roughly half given over to compost and the other to plants, and I rotate sections year by year. Just at the edge, the border between soil and compost I found a few dozen beans plants sprouting.

This time last year we had just over a foot of snow on the ground, this tyear I've got bean plants sprouting - on their own, no less, they're the result of some beans pods that got buried in the compost - and the parsley, thyme, and kale are still going strong. I've got a few carrots left in too. Apparently carrots will self-seed, so I'm leaving a few in the garden and seeing what happens. Someone told me that if you let carrots grow wild they'll push out the weeds and I would rather have the carrots.

I think some of the hostas are trying to make a comeback too, but you can't kill those so they don't count.

We Are Still Here

In the cold, wintery fields of New England a lonely old house wakes up every thirty years - and demands a sacrifice. (IMDB Summary)

Oh man, a friend recommended, and loaned, this to me and it was worth every minute. We Are Still Here covers both the haunted house and town with a dark secret tropes and it does so very, very well. From the same group who brought you The House of the Devil, We Are Still Here is set in the late 70s and could also easily be mistaken for a period piece. The cast is mainly composed of older adults who never really make poor decisions, making it a refreshing change in a genre filled with improbably well-off college students dying rapidly in foolish ways, or families refusing to leave their haunted homes.

The movie revolves around Anne and Paul Sachetti who have moved to a new house in a small town for a fresh start after the death of their adult son Bobby in a car accident. Anne is certain that Bobby has followed them and claims she can feel him in the house. When a friend of the family performs a seance they don’t make contact with Bobby, but one of the angry former inhabitants of the house who leads them to an even deeper menace.

We Are Still Here moves the story along steadily, without rushing the audience, and the final confrontation is genuinely tense and gripping. Definitely recommended if you’re looking for a genuinely frightening film, or a change from standard fare.

The Purge

On the one night a year the government allows violence, a family finds themselves terrorised in the home they thought they’d made safe.

The Purge tries to be both social commentary and a horror movie about home invasion and fails at both. It could have been much better, it just doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. You can certainly combine genres very successfully: Evil Dead II and Little Shop of Horrors are both successful horror/comedies, for example. Those films use balance, intermixing one with the other. The Purge, although at first glance seems like it might, does not and it suffers for it, not helped by a dubious premise that is never fully developed. What they’re trying to achieve by using the extremes shown and discussed in the story needs a lot more background given to us before it can be believable. TVTropes has a more in-depth explanation of the problems on the film’s page under the Artistic License - Economics and Hollywood Psych sections.

Unfortunately, The Purge doesn’t follow up on its promise of social commentary mixed with horror, turning into a pretty standard home invasion horror flick with the obligatory twist ending. None of the characters are developed enough to give them any depth, and as a result The Purge fails to become what it clearly wants to be.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Every kid wants a Silver Shamrock mask for Halloween, but the toy company hides a horrifying secret behind its consumer-friendly image.

Yep, watched it again this year. Well. 'Watched' might be a strong word: the friend with the yearly rewatch had a housewarming party and I may have been distracted by booze, a drinking game, and kittens. One of them was so small he fit in my hand!

Anyway, because I watched this last year and everything from that recap still applies, I'm going to be lazy and just paste last year's text here:

It took pretty much the entire evening to get the Silver Shamrock jingle out of my head. Then I started on this and it came back. Dammit.

I'd always heard about how bad a movie this was, but I was curious because the original idea behind the Halloween series - that each film would be a unique story centered around the holiday in question - sounds interesting. A friend of mine has a yearly watch, so I went over last night because horror movies, good or bad, are more fun in a group. It wasn't nearly as awful as I expected and I think it would have gotten a better reception released on its own rather than as part of the Hallowe'en series.