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I'd say mostly fantasy, but not so much the sword-and-sorcery variety, although that's okay on occasion. A lot of what I read might be classed as either comic fantasy or children's or young adult fantasy. Mind you, for me, Oz is pretty much a genre in and of itself.

Speaking of fantasy, I wrote a post on Gandalf today, which addresses some of the pros and cons of Tolkien, at least in my own mind. I'm not as much into Lord of the Rings as many of my fellow fantasy fans are, but I did enjoy both the books and the movies. There are quite a few nerdy things on which I can converse at a certain level, but I'm hardly an expert. One idea I had for a post is a comparison between the Houyhnhnms from Gulliver's Travels and the Vulcans, but I don't know that I'm enough of a Trekkie (or is that Trekker?) to really pull it off. Maybe I'll try it someday anyway; I'm sure there's enough information on Vulcans available online to supplement what I already know.

I've been working on adding the cast of Chris Dulabone's A Viking in Oz to my list of apocryphal Oz characters. I'm pretty sure I included them before years ago, but that version must have gotten lost somehow. It's a short book, so it's not a big deal. Anyway, I'd like to get someone to look over my list, but it's really sloppy in its current format. That's not something I care a whole lot about, but other people might. Maybe I should post a sample and see if anyone has format suggestions. I don't know. Would anyone care to look this over?

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"Gaming system game"? That's a bit awkward, Writer's Block person. Anyway, I have to say The Sims 3, which I've played as recently as yesterday. It's getting a bit tedious at this point, but I'll bet if I started playing again I would do so for several hours. I'm also playing Final Fantasy III on the DS, but I've found the caves I had to explore recently to be more irritating than fun. I now have the key to the Kingdom of Eureka, so I'll have to see how that works out, but I'm not sure when I'll do so. I tend to play console games more when I don't have computer access. Finally, I've started on Golden Sun for the Game Boy Advance, and will probably write about my early impressions this week. My obsessive-compulsive mind has had a bit of difficulty figuring out when to write about games (i.e., how much should I have finished before writing?), but I'm currently favoring an entry on my first impressions and then a later one when I've either completed the game or gotten as far as I can. Since I play mostly role-playing games, they tend to be a bit on the long side.

Today is L. Frank Baum's birthday, and if you look here, you can find a podcast of Baum's short story "The Littlest Giant," in which I do the voice of the Giant King Goola. I have a pretty high voice, not all that appropriate for a giant, but Jared lowered my part and added echo, so it sounds a lot better than I would on the fly. And if you're interested in stuff I've done (and I hope you are), I also contributed to the 2012 issue of Oziana.

I had a dream I was back in second grade, with my original second-grade teacher. There was some quiz on several subjects, including the Smurfs. I was doing pretty well on it, but didn't have enough time. The dream unraveled when I realized the premise made no sense. So why second grade? I don't know. In some ways, that was the last time I felt I fit in with my classmates. I'm not sure I totally did, but I least I was comfortable with them. It was also the last year I really had a birthday party. So I guess there's a bit of nostalgia there. Not that I have any desire to be a child again, but I do want to recapture the best parts of my childhood. Another dream had Amanda Palmer calming me down when I accidentally wore mismatched socks to work, which kind of sounds more like an after-school special than a dream.

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I thought these had been discontinued. Oh, well. One thing that immediately comes to mind, although it's not strictly an answer to the question, is that I once went to Boston Market and they told me the apples were a seasonal item. They never had been in the past, and it's not like they're freshly picked apples, so it's quite possible that employee just had no idea what he was talking about. Can anyone confirm or deny whether Boston Market still has apples year-round? Anyway, to answer the question more directly, I wish Olive Garden would bring back the shrimp and crab ravioli. Also, Denny's should revive the Breakfast Dagwood, which was a big sandwich made up of various breakfast food items. They have something called the Grand Slamwich now, which sounds sort of similar, but I haven't tried it. I have to admit that I'm kind of bothered that it comes with mayonnaise, which I don't care for. Sure, I could ask them to leave it off, but...I don't know. I generally stick with the Moons Over My Hammy on the rare occasions I make it to a Denny's. An item containing a pun that bad just HAS to be good.

I'm feeling kind of melancholy about moving, and bethje and I have been arguing quite a bit, so I'm not in the best mood just now. I just applied to a few jobs I found on Craigslist, but I have no idea whether I'll get replies, or if they're even legitimate opportunities. I really don't want to go back to retail, but I might not have a choice. We'll see, I guess. I think my best prospect at the present might be to go back into data entry, but there don't seem to be a whole lot of positions of that sort available these days. And when they are there, they're often combined with other stuff I'm less comfortable doing. On the plus side, I beat Gutsco the Rogue in Final Fantasy III, and I made a display of the stuffed animals I've obtained recently.

It probably isn't going to last, but isn't it cool? Please pardon the quality of the cell phone photograph.

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My undergraduate major was history, which I really don't use in my career. My graduate major was library science, which I use a little. For the most part, I didn't really use my education as a means to an end. A guy I know from an Oz e-mail list once described himself as an "intellectual magpie," and I think that fits me as well. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to make any money from that kind of study.

I guess I consider myself reasonably well-informed, but there are some areas in which I'm totally ignorant. I've noticed, however, that being well-informed isn't really of that much use in most situations. I've been in so many situations where someone said something that I knew was bullshit, but I just couldn't think of any way to reply intelligently. And even when you do, sometimes people just think you're being rude. It seems like the trick to being believed and accepted is to show confidence and sound like you know what you're talking about even when you don't, and that's just not something I have down.

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This is kind of an old question at this point, but I figure it would be appropriate for me to answer it. Like some other people who answered this, my first favorites were the Winnie-the-Pooh books. I'm told I could first read at the age of three, and while I can't personally remember this, I guess it's true. And yes, the first stories I read were Pooh stories. I also wrote some of my own, although I don't think I fully grasped the style. One story that I came up with before the age of five (I think I drew the pictures, but one of my parents wrote in the words that I dictated) involves Pooh driving to the North Pole in a Volkswagen Rabbit to go grocery shopping. I had somewhat of an obsession with the Rabbit at that point, not because I ever rode in one (I didn't), but I think I just liked that there was a car with the name of one of the Pooh characters, not to mention the rabbit on the back of the car. I think Volkswagen actually stopped making Rabbits for most of my life, although I believe they're around again now. Hey, since it's a German car, how come it's not called a "Hase"?

Later, I really got into the Alice books, and read them many times. My grandmother owned The Annotated Alice, and that was a help not only at making me a fan of annotated books in general, but because it explained a lot of the Victorian English terms that I initially didn't understand. I still enjoyed the book even before knowing them, though, so take that, L. Ron Hubbard!

I think I got into the Chronicles of Narnia when I was about nine, on a suggestion from my great-aunt. It was also around that time that I started reading The Hobbit, although it was a few years before I'd finish it. Same way with Lord of the Rings, actually. I enjoyed them, but as much as I liked Tolkien's universe, the style wasn't much of a page-turner for me. And I think it was due to a combination of The Annotated Alice and a book on holidays that I knew there were multiple Oz books. I was eleven when I read The Wizard of Oz, and not only did I finish it quickly, but I really got into the series over the next few years.

I still read a fair number of books that are classified as Children's or Young Adult, and not just Harry Potter. A lot of the time, I think the recommended age level is a marketing decision, and not always based on the actual contents or writing style, so why not? It is a little confusing in bookstores, though, because I'll end up looking for the same thing in several different sections. How am I supposed to know whether Borders considers Diana Wynne Jones to be Children's, Young Adult, or just plain Fantasy? Actually, I went there last week, and they had one of the Chrestomanci books in Fantasy and another in Young Adult. Oh, you bookstores and your arbitrary shelving! It reminds me of how the music store near my college dorm put Moxy Früvous' You Will Go to the Moon in Alternative, but their Bargainville in Pop. I guess it's kind of silly to even shop at physical book and music stores anymore, since just about everything is cheaper online, but there's something about the physical stores that I find more enjoyable.

bethje and I finally got around to watching last Sunday's Simpsons, American Dad, and Bob's Burgers (Family Guy was a rerun). I think the Simpsons episode did a good job of parodying eighties sitcoms, and Bart's attempt to sell nuclear secrets to China for a minibike was an interesting twist. I noticed quite a few jokes that I think were really stretched out, though, like the bit with the initials on the vans and the ending in general. Overall, though, I think it worked. I'm kind of surprised by the joke about the World Trade Center address, not because I found it offensive, but because I have to suspect someone still would (or at least pretend to be in order to generate publicity).

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Well, to an extent, I guess. I don't demand that people I talk to have the same exact tastes, and I've been friends with some people who liked music I thought was terrible. I'm sure it's worked the other way 'round as well. As unfair as it might be, I think I might well judge someone who genuinely liked John Mayer, for instance. In general, though, it doesn't matter so much if someone shares my taste in music as long as they share SOME interests with me. Otherwise, what are we going to talk about?

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While I'm never opposed to it, I tend to think some fandoms really support it more than others do. I've written Oz fanfiction myself, although most of that was prior to ever having heard the term "fanfiction." I think the common term back in the pre-Internet days was "pastiche," although I feel that this is really only appropriate when you're purposely trying to ape the original writer's style. I think the fact that the publishers found other writers to continue the series after L. Frank Baum's death means it always kind of came across as a collaborative effort to me. Even Baum wrote in his introductions about using ideas from readers. Since many of the books are now in the public domain, that means there have been some professionally published fan-written Oz books. On the other hand, I know there's Discworld fanfic, and I can't bring myself to read any of that. It just seems to me that Terry Pratchett's own style is integral to those stories, and stuff written about the same universe by someone else just wouldn't be the same. Then again, maybe that's how I would have felt about Oz books by anyone other than Baum if I'd lived in the early part of the twentieth century. I guess a lot of it is precedent.

As far as TV-based fanfic goes, I really don't read it, but since TV shows are usually collaborative efforts anyway, I don't think I'd have the "not the original writer" objection to it. I'm just not really interested, even if it's based on shows I like. Overall, though, if you like the characters and want them to have other adventures, I don't see any problem with writing them yourself. I'm not entirely sure why it's so popular among fanfic writers to make unlikely characters have sex, but even then I think the important thing is making sure they remain in character. If you're going to make the established characters act like they wouldn't really act in anything other than a parody, why even use those characters?

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From a personal standpoint, I think smoking is disgusting, and I'm not sure why anyone still does it. You can't really even use the "it looks cool" excuse anymore, because, well, I don't think that association is common these days. There was a time when cigarettes were considered glamorous, but now I think they're seen as lowbrow. That said, you can smoke if you so choose; it's not like I don't have plenty of bad habits of my own (although I'd argue that none of them are as self-destructive). As for the rights of smokers, well, they're not a persecuted minority, are they? They're doing something they CHOOSE to do, and that can harm those around them. Even if secondhand smoke doesn't lead to cancer, it still smells bad and can aggravate other health conditions. I know one argument against smoking bans is that businesses should be able to operate the way they want, and perhaps there's something in that, as there were some smoke-free restaurants and such even before the bans. I've heard the argument that you're going to EXPECT smoking if you go into a bar, and I generally don't go into bars anyway, unless I'm with someone else who wants to (and fortunately, they were all in places that didn't allow smoking). Nonetheless, sometimes people who don't normally go into bars will do so to see a concert or other such event. Sure, we don't HAVE to go, but wouldn't it suck to miss out on seeing your favorite band because the only nearby place they're playing allows smoking? I guess I would be okay with some businesses allowing smoking, as long as they're clearly designated and there isn't any real reason for non-smokers to patronize them.

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Buddha. I'd ask him for meditation tips so that I could spend the two hours achieving enlightenment.

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Wouldn't it pretty much have to? If science is "[t]he investigation of natural phenomena through observation, theoretical explanation, and experimentation, or the knowledge produced by such investigation," then any rational explanation is a scientific explanation, right? When people believe there are things that science can't explain, that suggests to me that they don't think there IS an explanation for them. As much as people talk about faith, it seems like belief in God or another supernatural being generally occurs because the believer thinks there IS evidence of such an entity, not because there isn't. Now, that's not to say that science has explained everything YET, or even that it ever will, but is there any way we can know ANYTHING except through observation and experimentation? Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean there isn't an explanation for it. But why listen to me? I know nothing.