if you don’t already read eric’s site, i direct your attention to the recent flurry of comments over girls/guys gone wild/mild. this and eric’s declaration of superhero amore has resulted in a lot (read: more than 2 comments) of interesting feedback…and geek facts.
yesterday i received my copy of wil wheaton’s second book, ‘just a geek’. so far, it is incredible. i almost missed my el stop this morning because i was so engrossed in the first chapter. his first book, ‘dancing barefoot’, was surprisingly evocative for so few pages, and so far ‘just a geek’ is delivering too.
in chapter one wil mentions how his grammar has improved over the past few years. i can’t help but think that my grammar is awful. i don’t really know what a ‘passive voice’ is, but i’m pretty sure i use it all the time…maybe even in this sentence? all i can say is that grammar was never really stressed during my formative years. i could write better than most of the students in my school so i think my teachers left me alone (to my own detriment). any writing skill or ‘style’ i might of had was a result of reading in every spare moment, even while walking from the bus to the school.
by the time we started creative writing in grade school or whatever i’d already been reading adult novels for years. i knew words the other kids didn’t and ways to construct a sentence that they wouldn’t be ‘taught’ for another couple of years. unfortunately, when i reread one of my favorite TNG books, ‘war drums’ (my grade school reading was almost entirely TNG and DS9 books), i found that the writng was…not the best. no wonder i turned out to be such a crappy writer in college.
so what is the answer? – drown my sorrows in comic books and graphic novels. here i can concentrate on the artwork without having to think about writing (ha, just kidding. some of these guys write way better than ‘real’ authors). two days ago i hit comix revolution for the new issue of ‘eightball.’ sadly, no ‘eightball,’ but i did pick up 3 great books. one of them, ‘mother, come home’ is listed on the a/v club page. i read ‘mother, come home’ in one day (2 el trips). it was very touching. at the end i actually had to look around the train car to see if anyone noticed i was crying. it was that good. but i always have been a sucker for father-son relationship angst (to be honest here, i also cried when i read ‘war drums.’ wtf is happening to me?). the other two books i bought were seth’s new memoir of his father’s life (i think) and adrian tomine’s newest compilation.
here’s something completely unrelated to books and reading and grammar and all of that: last night i set up my wireless router. comcast is coming on saturday and i mean to be ready. no internet = virtual (ha) isolation at my new apartment. internet access will make the new place feel like home. also, a decent-sized tv will make things feel better too. it’s on my list of things to buy, but i’m trying to watch my feathering-the-nest spending, especially since i haven’t found a home for my boxes of books.
ok, time to ‘work’ which means slogging through some coldFusion, struggling to stay awake and compulsively checking my email. oh, the daily grind.
Speaking of Star Trek… It’s not Transparent aluminum, but:
Translucent Concrete!
a cooler pic here. did you realize i had already written about this or…?