Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Predictive software was used to write A New Harry Potter chapter, and it is AMAZING.

The book's title: Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Pile of Ash



My favorite line is: "He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermione's family."



More pages here.

Holy cow, this gave me such a laugh!

Hm, I seem to not be able to embed the clip directly here, so go to https://audioboom.com/posts/5471405-the-trumpster-quote-1 to listen!

Longer post coming soon...ish!

Two little things make a small post.

I was invited to a movie preview, first time that ever happened. Unfortunately it was for a movie that I had less than no interest in seeing. Title: Long Halftime Walk. The summary:

The film is told from the point of view of 19-year-old private Billy Lynn (newcomer Joe Alwyn) who, along with his fellow soldiers in Bravo Squad, becomes a hero after a harrowing Iraq battle and is brought home temporarily for a victory tour. Through flashbacks, culminating at the spectacular halftime show of the Thanksgiving Day football game, the film reveals what really happened to the squad - contrasting the realities of the war with America's perceptions.

Even if I could see it for free online, instead of actually having to go to a theater, I'd have no interest at all in seeing it. Less than none: It seems like a move I'd dislike. RL war. Sports. No thanks.

As the invitation was sent to me the same day as the preview, I wonder if other people canceled and they were trying to fill in spots? Either way, I didn't go, even though it was at my local theater.

The other minor thing amused me: New book I'm reading, the main character is 24 years old. My first reaction was to blink in surprise and wonder why the author made her so old! Then I had to laugh at myself -- clearly I've been reading way too many YA books!

I look though lots and lots of books when searching for ones to read. When I find something odd, cool, wacky, or WTFish, I usually just frown or chuckle at it, then move on. However, after posting about that women who credited her dark side as a co-author, I thought now and then it might be amusing to post a collection of odd things I find while looking for new books to read.

Things that will keep me from reading your book: Having your cat edit it. "Edited by the outspoken and fearless Timothy the Talking Cat..."

Things that will tempt me to read your book: A nice cover. (Though I passed on this one anyway. Summary was generic dreck, and it's from Smashwords.)



But not so much odd covers. Linked for size and NSFW? And this one: Linked for size, utter WTF-ness, and total NSFW.

It's nice when a summary shows a complete lack of professionalism, making it easy for me to pass up on a book:

Set in a distant land, a boy grows into a man as he learns about the gifts of his ancestral blood from a mysterious mentor. And then, on one fateful day, he learns that some knowledge comes with a price.
* Attention: this is not a story about werewolves/lycans/whatever you want to call them *

(Out of curiosity about what kind of story it was then, I googled it. It doesn't seem to even have an Amazon page at all, just Smashwords. Also, no ready answer, and I don't care enough to put more time into searching.)

Summary #2:

Meet Mark . . . a man who has everything, a life that is perfect and a woman who honors his every desire. And if he has it all, why do the visions . . . the uncertainty . . . the demons . . . invade his mind and chase him into what could be his own personal hell?

. . . the ellipses . . .

Added bonus, the title/author of Summary #2 is: T.H.E.i. by T. Duncan Butler.

And then there are books that I just know will be bad, but I cannot resist them:

Pet Noir by Pati Nagle
Overview: Can a lowly gumpaw hope for love with a girl who rides in a jewel-encrusted carrier?

Feline investigator Leon, with opposable thumbs and the ability to talk, is possibly the most dangerous cat in the galaxy. Indentured to the Security department of Gamma Station until the cost of his creation is paid off, Leon alternates between harassing his human partner/roommate Devin and fighting sleazoid criminals, yet still finds time to flirt with the lovely Leila, an exotic Burmese who lives in the swankiest level of the station. Will he win her heart, and more important will he win his freedom?


Bad photoshop? Image choice? All-around bad cover design:

(Took me forever to make out that she must be riding, wearing white pants.)

Sometimes a book seems to come together. Attention-grabbing title "The Girl With Glass Feet", interesting cover:

When that happens, I hit up Amazon to check reviews and such. Unfortunately this one didn't have very good ones, so I'm skipping it. Still, kudos for the title and cover!

Another interesting title, though the book wasn't for me: A Fierce and Subtle Poison

I had really bad luck with my book hunt today. I looked at more than 1,700 titles and authors, clicking links to read summaries and look at cover when the title/author caught my attention, more than three hours combing through them, and only came up with a total of three new books to read. One will likely be bad (the Pet Noir one), one sounds interesting but comes from Smashwords (Shadows of a Superhero so it will likely be bad, and one I have hopes for (The Gaslight Dogs). Usually after this much time I have 12-20 new ones to read.

Yesterday I posted about Google challenging me (on my work computer) because they didn't think I was a person.

This morning I came into the office and opened Firefox. google.com is my home page.

Instead of Google I got:

"You're seeing this page because the website you tried to access may be hosting viruses or other malicious software. This site is blocked to protect your computer and the [company] network."

Apparently my company and Google are having a spat!

I don't know if I'm actually losing my hearing or not, but I seem to miss-hear certain words and my brain fills them in for me. I guess most of the time I don't notice, but sometimes my brain makes odd choices. This morning I was listening to news on the radio. There was a story headline:

Lion kills 30 inmates in prison.

WTF? How did a lion get into a prison? The newscaster kept talking about how many people died and then I realized: She must have said riot kills 30 in prison, not lion.

I kind of like my version of the story better.

In unrelated news, if you own a Kindle, you can get one free book per month (pick one of four offered). Sadly most months there's not one that interests me enough to even click to get it free, and this month was no exception. However, this one tempted me. I LOVE the cover and title:



Unfortunately it's about a murderer who terrorizes a town. Not my cup of tea at all.

I'm rolling at this trailer. I laughed out loud a number of times!



In Lost news: Wow, season 6 is really, really good. I'm about halfway through it, and I'm so very tempted to go spoil myself because I want all the answers NOW NOW NOW. I suspect I'm going to really like how the series wraps up, this season is hitting all the best religion-in-fiction buttons for me.

It was worth sticking with the slow seasons to get to this point.

Two amusing penis-related things in one post!

1) Put your loved one's ashes into a sex toy.

2) This banister could be a selling point in some neighborhoods...

Recall how yesterday I posted about the Internet Wayback Machine not having archived a site I was looking for? Well it turns out Google is better than the Wayback Machine. I've never seen this feature mentioned before, I found it by chance.

Google archives stuff!



At the end of the URL, there's often a little arrow. Click it and you get a 'cached' option. I found lots of stuff I had thought was lost!

And in more amusing, less helpful screenshots: I decided to make a DW journal just to back up my old IC LJ one I had rediscovered, so I trotted over to their site and went through the process of making a DW account...



Um...

And, as you can see from my images in this post, I have a new FTP tool. I love WinSCP, it's exactly what I was looking for!

And lastly: So very very tired. I've not gotten more than a couple hours sleep for three nights now. Darned upstairs neighbors. I swear to god, who moves furniture at 11 PM? Especially when they also get up at 4 AM? Are there two of them? One noisy late and the other early? Blah.

My eyes are killing me, too. I've spent so many hours reading these IC journals and RP logs, my poor old eyes just can't take that anymore.

As happens with many popular movies nowadays, there's a porn version of Guardians of the Galaxy ... and it's online for free!

It's surprisingly well done. Quite funny and worth watching! At least the first 15 minutes. Then things get... strange. Very strange. It looks like all the storyline is done by 30 minutes in, but I only skimmed after that.

Can't embed it (and it's NWS anyway, of course), so click here to see it.

You can hear the song again in the last minute or so, over the credits. It's quite well done!

In less interesting movie news, there's going to be a Play-Doh movie...

Edit: LJ tried to block my post as spam again, it didn't like the Play-Doh movie link. If that happens to you, using tinyurl to change it works to get around the issue.