all made up with nowhere to go

Holy hell, it's been two weeks since I read DW? I'm really sorry you guys, but I've skim read most stuff. I just. My brain is full of a lot of things right now, and I feel like the worst for not keeping up with you, but. I just haven't had the brain capacity recently. (Also I had three migraines in a row a week or so ago and that was shitty and it always dulls my ability to can).

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I've just altered my target for the book reading challenge on goodreads, and I feel like I'm cheating!

I set it at 25, because I managed to read 23 of 20 books last year, so I thought I'd set it slightly higher this year. However. I did not bank upon my inability to concentrate/not really wanting to read comics (aside from the webcomics I'm sort of keeping up with) happening so badly this year! So I've lowered it to 22, in the hopes I can maybe fit another eight books in in the next three months (I doubt it, but I've got three "in progress" right now).

I'm trying not to care if I don't manage it, but somehow the reading challenge makes me feel even shittier about not being able to read, when really I do it prove I read more stuff than I think I do.

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In games, I haven't touched the xbox for almost three months? My hankering to play Saints Row IV has kind of subsided (I get why Things are Things, but it makes some it less fun for me? *shrugs*). Also it just seems like too much of an effort to put the xbox on, when I can do other things instead.

Like playing Nethack! Mostly while sitting around in traffic! I was knitting, but it turns out that that makes my shoulder burn like my last job used to (computer based, repetitive mouse movements) so no more of that!

Anyway, yeah. Gnomes keep killing me, or I die of food poisoning, or the game generates me a magic marker AND a one level no escape dungeon. I mean, I know this is how Nethack is, but COME ON.

(I don't even know what you're supposed to do with magic markers. I just know they're kind of rare).

I might have to find some other basic no-brainer games to play on my phone (while stuck in traffic!) because I've literally only got Nethack and a match 3 game. Possibly some more roguelikes. We'll see.

I FINALLY HAVE THE HELLBLAZER TRADES I WANTED!

( pix )

I have literally wanted these books for eleven years. But for whatever reasons, DC held off from collecting them as trades till...pretty recently, I think. The most recent one (far right on the bottom pic) wasn't even published till January this year.

(Wikipedia still says on the HB main page that Jenkins' run lasted four years and was the longest one that remained uncollected. Obviously, that's no longer true, since I have most of it on my sofa now).

I don't know if Paul Jenkins fell out with DC, or if DC just thought nobody would buy them (since it's not the start or the finish of John's story, and I'd go as far as to say Jenkins is not a popular writer like Garth Ennis or Grant Morrison*). But whatever the reasoning was, while everything else got collected into trades, his stuff didn't. Me and hmpf were convinced at one point in time that they never would be. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong about something.

Anyway. I am very giddy right now.

I also now own over half of Hellblazer in trades. Now to get the other half! (Though I'm not in a rush for them. As long as they don't go out of print in the meantime).

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I've been playing Nethack for the last couple of days. It's oddly addictive. I don't care about repeatedly dying because I'm rubbish at video games ANYWAY, and I'm used to this from my childhood because oh man no save points, no extra lives, no nothing.

I thought the ASCII graphics would annoy me, but I actually find them kind of charming, especially now I've played a bit more and got used to them.

I don't really have much to say about it. It's just a nice game to waste time on (probably to the horror of everyone who plays it "properly").

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*YMMV, of course. I've gone off Garth Ennis as the years have gone by, and I swing back and forth on Grant Morrison all the time.