Playing catch up

I'm falling behind on my Jane Eyre-zombie fanfiction series (as well as my novel outlining) as I was busy the last two weeks.  Hopefully, I'll finish the first chapter/episode this week.

About a week and a half ago, Dad and I headed to the annual Wings over Gillespie air show at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, CA.  To know more about this little airport, go to the Wikipedia article here.  Basically, they had some really cool flyovers with WWII and Vietnam era military aircraft.  One of my favorites was the B-17 flying fortress.  I even got to "tour" one.  The guy ahead of us in the tour used to be an actual WWII B-17 pilot who wanted to sit in the cockpit for old times' sake.  According to his wife, he was in college at the time and didn't want to join the army for that reason so after he graduated, he joined the Air Force and flew the B-17.  After they helped him out of the plane, I thanked him for his service to this great nation of ours.  These are a few of the pictures that I took of the B-17.

A couple of days ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar, CA.  I had a blast and I'm going back on the 14th for the "Taste of the Fair."  As long as I don't eat too much, I should be okay.  However, I could not pass up taking a picture of a fast food kiosk (one of many) at this year's fair.  And it's there EVERY YEAR.

I'm trying hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the name of the kiosk.  It also gives everyone the impression that most Americans are fat (and that is true, unfortunately).  You do have to admit that the "Stuffie Pocket" sounds good.  There's also tons of deep fried delicacies such as fried oreos, frogs' legs, ice cream, bacon, Kool-Aid, butter, etc.  It's a heart attack just waiting to happen.  I tried the frogs' legs one year and they tasted really weird.  I also sampled the oreos and the ice cream last year and they were quite good but too sweet.  One year, the fair offered, and I kid you not, FRIED RATTLESNAKE.  Yes, you heard me, FRIED RATTLESNAKE.  More specifically, it was fried Western Diamondback.  Dad and I had some that year and it tasted like shrimp without the seafood flavor.  I liked it but my dad thought it wasn't that big of a deal. 

I went for a 4-5 mile walk this afternoon and on the way home, I spotted this little critter crawling on a wooden fence.

It's amazing how God creates animals.  It pays to stop and see the beauty in God's creation, especially to take a picture of this caterpillar crawling along a wooden fence.  It's as if someone painted this little guy in those patterns.  Sooner or later, it will blossom into a beautiful butterfly.

I am now reading George Eliot's Middlemarch.  I'm up to the point where Fred Vincy is trying to get himself out of debt and Dorothea's conversation with Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon's cousin.  It's a great read and I'm looking forward to reading further into it.

It's time to brush my teeth and head to bed.  Fin.

So much to talk about...and my Top Ten literary bad guys/gals

...and so little time.  I have a good idea for a blog entry.  Prior to that, I've watched a couple of movies (including The Hangover Part II, which I found kinda funny and mostly gross), accidentally bumped my knee on a seat on a city bus (I have the bruise to prove it), and saved my town from a horde of elephants armed with BB guns.  Okay, okay...I made up the last part but I'm also working on Chapter 1 of my Jane and Edward: Zombie Hunters fanfiction series that will debut on Fanfiction.net sometime in the near future.  Thanks to my new Blockbuster online rental account, I now have two "new" movies to watch: The Mechanic with Jason Statham and the original True Grit with John Wayne and Glen Campbell.

As I mentioned earlier, I came up with an idea for a blog entry.  I'm doing a Top Ten list of literary characters in "some" particular order that I loathe and/or perceive to be truly evil; in other words, it's a Top Ten literary bad guys list.  And they all come from books that I have read.  If you'd like to add your own choices in response to this blog, that's cool.  Just so you know that my choices come from books that I've read so if I miss someone, then I probably haven't read the book or didn't factor in their evilness welll enough...lol. 


10. Lady Macbeth from William Shakespeare's Macbeth - A power-hungry woman convinces her husband, Lord Macbeth, to bump off the current king of Scotland.  She's going to need to do a lot more than just wring her hands of blood.

9. King Claudius from William Shakespeare's Hamlet - We all know the story.  Hamlet's dad dies under mysterious circumstances and just like that (snaps fingers), his brother Claudius, marries Hamlet's mom.  Yes, there is something rotten in the state of Denmark and it's wearing a king's crown.

8. Iago from William Shakespeare's Othello - One way to gain a position of power is to frame an innocent woman for adultery.  Iago has it all; he's a lying manipulator.

7. Jack Merridew from William Golding's The Lord of the Flies - He represents the worst in humanity; an appetite, nay, a lust for blood and killing.  He and his "tribe" of fellow choir boys nearly killed Ralph, the elected leader of the island they were stranded on. 

6. Simon Legree from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin - A ruthless, abusive slave owner, he has no sympathy or grief for the death of one of his slaves.

5. Cathy Ames from John Steinbeck's East of Eden - She burns down her parents' home, killing both her mom and dad and sleeps with her brother-in-law.  Oh, and she also leaves her husband after "their" twins are born.  Not necessarily mother material, methinks.

4. Jack Torrance from Stephen King's The Shining - Someone who slowly goes insane and then turns on his family to help quell the "voices" from the Overlook Hotel.

3. The White Witch from C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - Dictatorial tyrant of Narnia who has covered said land in enormous amounts of snow. 

2. Saruman from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series - Y'know, that One Ring is lookin' pretty sweet right now...

1. Lord Voldemort from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series - With Harry Potter's geneology (and everyone else's family tree) aside, he is one bad dude.  Several people have been left dead in his "wake," if you will, including some much loved HP characters.

Honorable mentions (mostly characters I just didn't like very much):

*Scarlett O'Hara from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.
*Becky Sharp from William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
*Mrs. Medlock from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden.
*Lady Catherine de Bough from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
*Mrs. Reed from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
*Tybalt from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
*Cynthia from Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.
*Etc.

That's it for now.  Fin.

My apologies for not updating my blog in a week; I've been busy and tired for the past seven days.  Every now and then, us bloggers do need a break or so.

This evening after work, I went to a birthday dinner for my aunt with my cousin, grandmother, and mom.  All was well and fun was to be had until just before we left, I could hear the constant faint screaming of a child from across the area in the Mexican restaurant where we were eating.  We all agreed that something should've been done but, unfortunately, the restaurant hostesses couldn't do anything about it (we were just leaving the restaurant after our dinner anyway).  This reminds me of a similar incident at the Spaghetti Factory years ago.  Dad and I went out to dinner and we were just browsing our menus when we heard a constant screaming from a table near us; apparently, a woman was trying to do her best to calm down a child who was clearly upset.  My dad couldn't tolerate the noise level any longer and requested to our waitress that we be moved elsewhere so that we could eat in peace and quiet (we were granted that request and enjoyed dinner without any further interruptions). 

Now, young children get upset from time to time; whether it's fatigue, hunger, or just wanting to be held by someone, there's a reason for their discontent.  However, when in a public place such as a restaurant, a retail store, library (especially a library), et. al., the best thing to do would be to take the kid outside to let him/her blow off some steam.  At my church, there are seats outside in the lobby where mothers can sit and calm down their upset kids and the minute a youngster starts crying, the parent would IMMEDIATELY head to the lobby to calm down the child.  Thankfully, parents are really good at managing their kids during services.  I wish that some parents would do the same in a restaurant.

Now that I've finished ranting, I have finished reading not one but two books.  I have finished Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray.  It's a sad novel but it's a great piece of work about superficiality at its finest.  It broke my heart to read certain parts of the book.  The second book I read was Villette by Charlotte Bronte.  It's not as good as Jane Eyre but it has that Victorian-Gothic touch to it, especially near the end of the novel.  Again, it does have a sad part or two but it's a good read and one can easily read all 657 pages of it in a day.  After work, I went to the library to pick up The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas so I can read it before the film version comes out in the summer, but it wasn't there so I will have to go to another library branch to see if it's available there (ditto for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls).  Still, I didn't leave the library empty-handed; I checked out George Eliot's Middlemarch.  So far, I'm sustaining myself on a steady diet of Regency/Victorian literature so I can get a good idea of how to write my novel.  I've pictured almost every scene that I want in my book so much that I think I'll just draft a condensed short story version so that I can have something to work with when I create an outline.  I considered doing it this evening but it's getting late so I think I will do it either tomorrow or Wednesday evening.  However, I'd like to break from Brit Lit by reading Hemingway, something I haven't done since I was a teenager (did a report on him for my AP junior English class).

That is all for now.  Fin.

It just keeps getting weirder and weirder...and other misc.

I'm still at the beginning of William M. Thackeray's Vanity Fair and it is not your average Regency novel; it just keeps getting weirder and weirder....and funny, too, especially the part where Becky Sharp is forced to share a bed with one of Sir Pitt Crawley's female servants; the same bed where Crawley's wife had passed away.  Lt. George Osborne is another story altogether.  I also seem to notice a trend in Regency and Victorian literature; most men are named John, James, Thomas, Henry, George, Charles, Edward, Edmund, Robert, Roger, or William.  For women, it's Jane, Emma, Emily, Anne, Elizabeth, Mary, Molly, Louisa, Julia, Susan, Charlotte, Catherine, Isabella, etc.

On an unrelated note, I was reminded this evening about a particular song in Sunday School that I had to sing.  It was this song in particular:

If I listened to this song/video as a kid right now, it would've driven me insane (as an adult, I could only tolerate about 30 seconds of it).  As we did the Father Abraham "dance," I had but one thought in my little elementary school age mind: since when was Abraham Lincoln in the Bible?  For those reading this blog entry and grew up in Sunday School singing the "Father Abraham" song, what were your first impressions of it?  Did you get the Biblical Abraham confused with our 16th president like I did?  In a way, Father Abraham is the Christian version of the Hokey Pokey dance: right arm, left arm, chin up, spin around, shake it all about, turn yourself about, etc.  Also, there was one song titled Fishers of Men and as a kid, I had no idea what being a "fisher of men" was.

I would love to continue the blog but I've got to be up early tomorrow for work.  Fin.