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Just looking back over the past year - below are just some of the books I read (listed in no particular order).

1. Stolen - Kelley Armstrong
2. Haunted - Kelley Armstrong
3. White Night - Jim Butcher
4. My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding - Charlaine Harris, Rachel Caine, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lori Handeland, L.A. Banks, Jim Butcher, Esther M. Friesner, Susan Krinard
5. No Humans Involved - Kelley Armstrong
6. Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong
7. Dates From Hell - Kim Harrison, Lynsey Sands, Lori Handeland, Kelley Armstrong
8. My Favourite Witch - Annette Blair
9. The Kitchen Witch - Annette Blair
10. Industrial Magic - Kelley Armstrong
11. Bitten - Kelley Armstrong
12. Blood Bound - Patricia Briggs
13. Moon Called - Patricia Briggs
14. Dead Beat - Jim Butcher
15. Summer Knight - Jim Butcher
16. Cursor’s Fury - Jim Butcher (read twice this year)
17. Death Masks - Jim Butcher
18. Fool Moon - Jim Butcher
19. Grave Peril  - Jim Butcher
20. Storm Front - Jim Butcher
21. Industrial Magic - Kelley Armstrong
22. Last of the Wilds - Trudi Canavan
23. Priestess of the White - Trudi Canavan
24. Furies of Calderon - Jim Butcher (read twice this year)
25. Scar Tissue - Anthony Kiedis
26. Blood Rites - Jim Butcher
27. Lover Beware - Christine Feehan, Eileen Wilks, Katherine Sutcliffe, Fiona Brand
28. Academ’s Fury - Jim Butcher (read twice this year)
29. The High Lord - Trudi Canavan
30. The Magician’s Guild - Trudi Canavan
31. The Novice - Trudi Canavan
32. Claimed By Shadow - Karen Chance
33. Touched The Dark - Karen Chance
34. The Taste of Night - Vicki Pettersson
35. Scent of Shadows - Vicki Pettersson
36. Proven Guilty - Jim Butcher
37. Magick in the West End - Kala Trobe
38. Windfall - Rachel Caine
39. Chill Factor - Rachel Caine
40. Heat Stroke - Rachel Caine
41. Ill Wind - Rachel Caine
42. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling
43. Blood Ties (Book One) - Jennifer Armintrout
44. Blood Ties (Book Two) - Jennifer Armintrout
45. The Scot, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Annette Blair
46. Confessor - Terry Goodkind
47. Captain’s Fury - Jim Butcher
48. Dragonswan - Sherrilyn Kenynon
49. On the Prowl - Patricia Briggs, Karen Chance, Sunny, Eileen Wilks
50. A March Into Darkness - Robert Newcomb
51. Savage Messiah - Robert Newcomb
52. Magic Bites - Ilona Andrews
53. Firestorm - Rachel Caine
54. Memoirs of an Exorcist - David Devereux
55. Hunter’s Moon - David Devereux
56. Adobe Creative Suite 2 - Classroom in a Book
57. Adobe Photoshop CS2 - Classroom in a Book
58. Ancestral Trails - Mark D Herber
59. The Genealogists Internet - Peter Christian
60. Photoshop Finishing Touches - David Cross
61. The Photoshop Channels Book - Scott Kelby

This is by no means the complete list as I didn’t start to record what I was reading til midway through the year.  This year though I intend to keep a track of what I’m reading and when I read it.  You will find 2008’s reading list HERE

Popularity: 21% [?]

In my last post I mentioned Evil Ducks while talking to some God-Squadders who knocked at my door (see previous entry) and said that any Eddie Izzard fan would understand what I was talkimg about. Well, for those of you who have never seen Edde do stand-up, below is the transcript of the specific part of his Glorious show where he brings up the whole flood theory.

Enjoy!

So God said, “I will send a Flood, 40 days and 40 nights, and lots of umbrellas, but I will save two of everything, because it looks good on the seesaw floater. Two hippos” (mimics motion) “Noah, stop what you’re doing and build me an Ark.” And Noah, who’s Sean Connery playing the role of Noah

“I’m working on a speedboat at the moment. It’s much more exciting, a bigger engine in a speedboat, and you can shoot across the water like that…..”

“No, Noah, I want an Ark; an Ark with a big room for poo.”

“Look, a speedboat would really kick ass, it will give great photos to the people in The Bible. We can get all the animals with long ears to sit along the side….. it’d be fucking excellent! Excellent photographs!”

“No, you build me an Ark. You can put a big engine in the Ark, if you want.”

“Okay… I should compromise.”

So he started to saw up pieces of wood to make the Ark. (makes sawing noises) That’s not how you start sawing, is it? You start sawing by going (fast sawing noises). It’s impossible to start, isn’t it? Then you get into that middle bit (more sawing noises), which feels good - when you feel like your Dad… when your Dad used to say, “I’m just going out to the garage to saw a plank of wood in half.” (sawing noises and thud) …..”There we go! Oh, Dr. Benoski on Sunday television! ‘˜The Ascent of Man’”…. (snores) Sundays with my Dad, that was!

No, you want a speed-saw, don’t you?, much more….. (speed-sawing sound) Those power saws, much better! But sawing has a difficult start-off, then it goes into a bit of that, and in the end it goes back to (fast sawing noises). And after a while, Noah realized he was actually punching a baboon! (more noises)

“Stop hitting me! (noises continue) Leave me alone, I’m trying to sleep!”

“I’m not punching you, this is my mime! I’m sawing an Ark, I’m making an Ark. Get out of my mime! I don’t want you in my mime.”

“What have you got against baboons in mime?”

“Nothing, you can do your own mime, but not in my mime… not on my mime. It’s my motto, ‘No Baboons in Mime.’”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”

“I… did before, but I don’t now…”

So he built an Ark, and that was great; and he went around collecting two of every animal from all around the world, including two baboons, one of them punch-drunk. (staggers) “He was hitting me earlier, I don’t know what’s going on.”

He was going, “Okay, who have we got here? Two dogs – okay, two dogs, long ears, along the side, please. I’ll explain it to you later. Two sheep – on you get, sit along the side, there we go. Two cats – small ears, inside the boat. Two ducks…” The ducks are going,

“We’re not coming.”

“Well, there’s gonna be an enormous fuckoff flood.”

“So? What’s the big problem?!”

There’s a huge hole in the whole Flood drama, because anything that could float or swim got away scot-free, and it was the idea to wipe out everything, He didn’t say, “I will kill everything, except the floating ones and the swimming ones, who will get out due to a loophole.” All that in a James Mason voice, (as Mason) “I will kill everything, except the floating ones and the swimming ones… (mumbling) …a loophole. Sorry, I wasn’t here, I was off-stage, in my trailer. Someone else did my lines.”

So – yes. It is, anything that can float – you’ve got bad ducks, bad geese, bad swans… (miming evil demeanor) Bad ducks going, “quack, quack, quack…” (mimes gargling and spitting) They’re the spitting ducks. You bad fish! (mimes fish) Bad pilot fish, with those little lights on the top – evil pilot fish, really, really bad! Those that go down in twos, and swim up to other fish, you know, with the little lights on the top, and the other fish are going, “No, there’s a car coming towards me! Aaah! Hey! Bloody pilot fish! You evil pilot fish! I know your Dad.” (walking very erect) That’s how a fish walks if he’s English. “You don’t know what just happened there.” Yes…

So it’s a big hole in the whole thing. I mean, with the humans, we understand the idea of good and bad; evil and very, very good – saintly, I suppose, but with animals? What, in fact, is an “evil giraffe”? How do they…? “I will eat all the leaves on this tree. (mimes eating leaves) I will eat more leaves than I should… and then other giraffes may die. (evil chuckle) I am an evil herbivore!” (mimes the giraffe walk) It’s very difficult to be evil. “I will hide berries where no one can see them.” (evil chuckle)

So yes, there you have it.. Evil Ducks, pilot fish and herbivores!…. go watch Eddie Izzard.. it’s much funnier than reading what he’s saying ;)

Popularity: 14% [?]

Before I start, let me make clear that I have no real problem with Christians or Christianity – each to their own, I say. I do have issues with The Bible and various aspects of the religion but I believe that every person has the right to believe what they wish and if Christianity is what floats your boat, then so be it.

About 11am this morning, there was a knock at my door (yes the door with the big purple pentagram in the centre of it!). When I opened it, there were two women standing there – one I would say was in her mid-50s, the other younger in her 20s or early 30s. The older woman opened with “May I ask you a question?” I shrugged and said sure, whatever.

“Do you feel that Jesus has been taken out of Christmas?” says she.

After gazing at her for a long second or two waiting for the punchline, I shrugged again and informed her, most politely, that she was really asking the wrong question – me not being Christian and all that. She asked what faith I was and I told her I was pagan. I was quite impressed (and serioiusly amused) with how quickly she managed to hide the look of horror. As she seems quite insistent on wanting to talk, I figured I had a few spare minutes and I’m always willing to discuss religion with people. I told her I didn’t believe in the Christian version of God – being solely male and obviously schizophrenic! I don’t think she appreciated the schizo comment, so I cleared up what I meant, pointing out the two obvious personalities of God in the Old and New Testaments, and throwing in the whole problem with the Flood theory… she didn’t seem to understand the evil ducks and evil pilot fish and I think I may have lost her totally with the evil herbivores! (If you’re an Eddie Izzard fan, you’ll understand that).

I mentioned a number of problems with the various transcripts of the Bible, not to mention the fact that it’s written by man not God – to which she argued that it’s the word of God set down by man… which I responded to with you’ve only got the authors’ word for that. I briefly touched upon the fact that a number of “Gospels” were left out of the Bible due to their contradictory nature and not fitting in with what the Pope wanted it to say back whatever century it was (I don’t remember offhand) and brought up the King James version with his infamous line “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” which is a misinterpretation and means something else entirely.

I also asked her if she truly believed that Jesus was crucified and rose from the grave on random days in March and April to which she looked blank so I reminded her that Eostre (Easter) doesn’t fall on the same date each year, unlike Christmas, and asked her why it was’t a static date like Christmas.. she couldn’t give me an answer to that (no surprises there!)

She then changed her method somewhat and asked what I thought of the world now. I told her it was bloody awful and getting worse every day. You could almost taste the glee in her expression. Then you’ll agree, says she, that we must eradicate all wickedness from the world!! Oh the fervour in her voice!!! Wickedness is a matter of perception, I told her. What seems wicked to one could be the right thing to do to another.

But you must agree, she spluttered, that killing someone is wicked.

Nope, says I. Again, its a matter of perception and of circumstance. If someone came into my house and threatened my kids, I’d kill them without any hesitation. Would I be evil for doing that?

Oddly enough, it was then she decided she had to continue to another house in her quest. She asked if I’d like some literature to read. I told her that the only Watchtower I wanted in my house was the Jimi Hendrix song…….

Popularity: 9% [?]

I love surfing the shops online at this time of year – not just to see what goodies are being released just before Christmas or in the hunt for the christmas present for the kids, but because the “his and her” christmas lists a lot of shops make up to help people choose the right gift.

Let’s take a look at some of them and you’ll see what I mean.

Take Asda for example. For him, they recommend:-
Sporting Days Out
Spheering (this deserves a post of its own!) and Parachuting
Powerboating
Ferrari Racing
Flying Lessons
Wine Tasting
Name a Star/Moon After him
Adopt an animal

For Her, they recommend:-
A Makeover
A Spa
A meal Out for two
A Day out in London
Afternoon Tea
Beauty Treatment

Now Tesco:-
For Him:-
Apple iPod
Ultra Mobile PC
Xbox 360 Pro
Apple iPhone
Digital Camera

For Her:-
A Chocolate fountain
A Digital Photo Frame
Cashmere Sweater
Christmas Bouquet
Drinks fountain
Think Pink Full Car Set
Bath Robe
Pink & Red Pyjamas

Seeing a pattern here? These places seem to think that only men are interested in the good stuff. I’m not saying I want to go skydiving or any other thing that means I have to exert energy :-p but I can guarantee if anyone turned up with the so called “for her” presents from either store, I’d be more inclined to strangle the person bearing the gift than to thank them!

Be honest, how many of you women out there reading wouldn’t prefer more of the gifts in the men’s lists than for the women!!!!

Popularity: 8% [?]