While I’m on a non-fiction is easier kick, it dawns on me that Uncle Hardass deserves a book dedicated to as many random, drive-by complaints as he can squeeze in as possible.
Thoughts?
Bookshelf Battle
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Author Archives: bookshelfbattle
The Old People Are Getting Younger
I have a new habit, 3.5 readers and it is a terrible one that I need to break immediately.
Whenever I meet, see and/or think about an older person I subtract sixteen in order to figure out how old they were in 2000, realize they were young during then and since 2000 seems like it was just yesterday to me, it feels like that older person should not be old, like they were just young two seconds ago so why are they old now?
Did they catch an oldifying disease?
No, they’re just old. Time, you dirty, dirty bitch, you.
I feel the same way about myself. I literally feel like my life was like:
- 2000 – Oh boy, the world is my oyster!
- Time passes – Huh, I sure am having a hard time making my dreams come true.
- 2016 – Holy shit I blinked and now I have gray pubes. 2000, where did you go?
I blame the pop culture.
For the most part, give or take a few style trends, people in 2000 didn’t look much different than they do now.
The music isn’t that much different. The movies have better effects now but 2000 movies were no slouches.
So that’s my complaint. We’re in the second decade since 2000 but neither decade has had any real defining style.
Think about…
…the 1960s – Tie dye and hippies, bell bottom jeans and people saying “far out” and groovy.”
...the 1970s – Disco, leisure suits and eight tracks.
…the 1980s – Hair bands, Michael Jackson, Madonna. “Greed is good” according to Gordon Gecko.
…the 1990s – Everyone dresses up like a lumber jack and listens to depressing alt rock. Gangsta rap takes over the rap game.
…the 2000s till now – Eh, I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe you’ll see it differently, but it just seems like time time since 2000 has just been all about computers and the Internet getting better, social media taking over, music seems to fall into either pop or rap. There are no new styles coming along and guitar based rock or other types of songs seems like a a lost art form.
My overall point – I used to be able to look at a black and white movie or a photo of a man in a fedora and know it was from the 1950s. But now, its getting harder to tell what post-2000s time period a piece of pop culture is from.
At least my parents got a cue in the 1990s. “What? Everyone is dressing like a lumberjack and listening to songs sung by super depressing marble mouthed mumblers from Seattle? Guess we’re old now!”
It just seems like pop culture is losing its decade dividing lines.
What say you, 3.5?
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Hey 3.5
I have nothing for you today other than I am excited for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Critics are saying it doesn’t quite have that Harry Potter magic but hey, what does?
Are you going to check it out, 3.5?
BQB Update on Design Contest
Hey 3.5.
BQB here.
VGRF waved some smelling salts under my nose and I’m up and about again.
Still a little sad I had to open my wallet. I really do hate doing that. She wasn’t lying about ordering off the dollar menu and the grease traps and so on.
It’s only been a couple hours and someone has already submitted a pretty cool design. I mean, I want to wait until the end of the contest to see what the other designers have to offer but I’m just impressed with the power of the Internet.
Do you millennials have any idea how good you all frigging have it when it comes to becoming creative these days?
Damn it, when I was your age, I had to walk up a hill both ways in blizzard conditions just to get to a computer and when I did I still didn’t have a book cover because no one was selling book cover design services over the damn Internet.
Shit. The Internet back then made your computer make a noise like a screeching cat and you could only be on it for five minutes lest you tie up the phone line.
I look forward to sharing the results of all the designers when they come in and together we will make a good choice, 3.5 readers.
BQB’s Book Cover Design Contest
By: Special Guest Blogger Video Game Rack Fighter
Hey 3.5 readers.
BQB is passed the hell out on the floor for the moment, so I’ll fill you in.
As you are all aware, our favorite resident yeti fighter does not like to part with money.
But he finally did it. He put up some dough to get a 99Designs contest going.
That’s right. He’s going to publish a book of writing prompts.
In fact, before his face hit the floor, he told me that the title will be, “Bookshelf Q. Battler’s Big Book of Badass Writing Prompts: 101 Scintillating Scenarios to Stimulate Your Cranial Excretions.”
Sigh. Don’t tell him I said this but the only thing it will stimulate is a one-way ticket to Amazon’s virtual 99 cent bin.
Did I say that? No. I’m the ever supportive VGRF and what I meant to say was that this will probably be the boot in the ass he needs to get him going.
Once he sets up an author profile and has something to offer as an author, we can only hope that he will continue to work to get an actual novel out there so the Mighty Potentate won’t vaporize us all into the stone age.
No pressure, BQB.
At any rate, 3.5 readers, I figure the guy must love you all, because he actually opened up his wallet.
HE NEVER OPENS HIS WALLET.
No joke, whenever we go out on a date he’ll take me to Mighty Burger and offer to degrease the grease traps just to avoid paying for my choice off the dollar menu.
So in other words, he really loves you guys since he was so willing to part with money, an act which has made him pass out.
I can only hope he will wake up soon so the yeti will stop resting his hairy feet on him as if he were some kind of nerd shaped Ottoman.
I suppose I could stop that furry freak but unlike BQB, I am not a champion yeti fighter.
Results are expected in a week and if BQB doesn’t like any of the designs he can say no thanks.
But be ready to help him choose one.
Take care, 3.5
P.S. in the meantime, take a look at his writing prompts and tell him what you think.
Movie Trailer – John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
Hey 3.5 readers.
2014’s John Wick was such a special, under the radar surprise. It didn’t get half the play it deserved and really grew just by word of mouth.
I was blown away when I saw it.
How to even explain it?
Very quickly, you, the viewer, are presented with a world where there’s a lot going on, but there isn’t much to bog you down in the way of detailed nuance.
Wick is a legendary hitman who goes into retirement to make his wife happy, only to come out of retirement when a puppy gifted to him by his deceased wife is killed by an epic douche.
Yeah, I know, it sounds like an unlikely plot but it works.
And there are rules. Hitmen use special coins as currency and they can stay at a special hotel where they’re supposed to be safe for the duration of their stay. And for a certain amount of coins, hitmen can make their victims’ bodies disappear no questions asked.
In other words, there’s a lot of rules but you learn them quickly and easily.
Plus, it was great to see Keanu Reeves in a big lead role again.
Shit, that man is well-preserved.
Anyway, John Wick has been given a second chapter. My only hope is that this franchise doesn’t get too big for its britches. Sometimes when a movie is an understated success there is a desire to go bigger in the sequel and that doesn’t always necessarily work out.
It was the quick, snappy, clear and concise writing that made the first Wick movie a success, so I hope there’s more of it this go around.
Movie Trailer – Logan (2017)
Hey 3.5 readers.
My look into the 2017 world of movies continues with Logan.
It’s set in a future where mutants are all but gone. All the X-Men are gone but Logan/Wolverine remains because of his healing powers and shit.
Somehow Professor X still remains.
And somehow Professor X enlists Logan to rescue a girl because, I don’t know, who knows, I assume she’s important or something.
The Wolverine movies have been hit or miss. The one in 2009 sucked. The one that came out a few years later where Wolverine went to Japan and fought samurai and shit was the bomb.
This one looks like it will be good and we can only hope so as it is apparently the last Wolverine movie, or at the very least, the last one where Hugh Jackman will play everyone’s favorite super angry clawed mutant.
What say you, 3.5 readers?
Movie Trailer – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
They’re back and still listening to Star Lord’s mix tape:
Mighty Potentate Transmission #1
STAND BY FOR A TRANSMISSION FROM THE MIGHTY POTENTATE, SUPREME INTERSTELLAR OVERLORD AND ALSO NOT A SHABBY DANCER
3…2…1…ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY POTENTATE!
Greetings pitiful humans.
The Mighty Potentate here, once again confirming the existence of alien life, though I’m not worried any of you will catch on as only 3.5 of you read this blog.
Frankly, that’s what I’m hear to talk about.
Still not a big fan of all the reality television that your incompetent ass rock of a planet has been beaming out into the cosmos, 3.5 readers.
Why, just the other day I turned on my space television in the hopes of finding a decent scripted show only to find the following reality based drivel instead:
- Who Wants to Win a Colonoscopy? – The gist is exactly as it sounds. Competitors fight for the right to have the inner workings of their hiney canals broadcast on television. Is there no level you dim bulbs will stoop to for fame?
- Cat Hoarders – Like the regular Hoarders show but the guests hoard cats. Cats under the beds, cats in the closets, cats in the walls, cats everywhere. So many cats.
- Intervention Intervention – Literally, a show about interventions for people who are addicted to holding interventions. How has your species survived this long?
3.5 readers, I grow concerned that I might actually have to invade your dumb planet just to stop the spread of your insipid reality television.
First, another year is about to end and Bookshelf Q. Battler has yet to publish a novel. I still maintain that he is the chosen one and that he will one day write a novel so well written that you will all abandon reality television and favor scripted media instead.
Second, has anyone heard from Alien Jones? I heard a rumor that your greatest earth country has elected a reality TV star as its potentate but I haven’t been able to confirm it and Jones has not been returning my calls since last Tuesday.
It’s like that little green weirdo is trying to avoid me for some reason. Strange.
Anyway, 3.5 readers, continue to slap BQB around and urge him to keep writing his novels so that reality television can be abandoned and your pitiful planet can be saved.
Potentate out.
END OF TRANSMISSION.
Movie Trailer – Ghost in the Shell (2017)
A Scarlett Johansson robot?
Yes please.
When can I order one on Amazon?
BQB here, 3.5 readers and I’m just taking a peak at the Ghost in the Shell trailer, the film based off of the Japanese manga series of the same name.
Looks cool, I suppose for those of you into Japanese cartoons (that’s one nerd trend that never appealed to me but to each their own) this won’t be new to you but it’s new to me and that’s why I dig it, it looks like something fresh, that the general moviegoing public hasn’t seen before (though apparently there was a toon version of the movie in 1995.)
It looks like it has just a hint of Blade Runner influence if you ask me.
What say you, 3.5 readers?
Bookshelf Battle 