Some books recently bought June Edition

I've got some books that I recently read that I have to sit down and write reviews for, they are making a nice little pile for me to think about. This post is not about that. It is about a few books I recently got, most of them from Quality Paperback Book Club. Two of them were kids books of those two one of them I had as a kid the other one is a recently published one.

So the kids books I got (wow this one I got at the end of April.)

When I Grow Up by Al Yankovic
Yep that book was written by "Weird Al" Yankovic the parody musician. This is his first attempt at kids books and it is pretty good. It has that strange wacky humor of Al's so you know he wrote it, or someone was channeling the spirit of Shel Silverstein (and cleaned it up). Somewhere online there is an interactive version of the book that you can purchase or download. I haven't tried that although I thought about it.

Next a book I had, or rather my family had, when I was a kid. I think it was eventually either handed down to my nephew (who is now 24), given away or donated. But the version I got is a special anniversary edition of the book. I figured "Why Not?". Um it was actually May when I got this one. (So much for this being only books I got in June).

 

The Story of Ferdinand: 75th Anniversary Edition by Munro Leaf
As I said my family had this book when I was growing up. Like many of the books in our family library from my childhood this book was probably a 1950s or 1960s edition. I don't know how many times I read it or had it read to me. I think the original copy we had may have been defaced with crayon by either the 5 year old me or one of my older siblings at that age. Aren't most kids books defaced by the kids at a young age? Who then in their Adult life find the childhood memories in a trunk in mom's attic or basement when they are moving out for the final time or many years later when they are packing up the estate.

Growing up in the suburbs of Washington DC, in the small city/town of Wheaton, MD there was an Italian restaurant that was named "Ferdinand's". They had excellent food, and a fantastic salad bar. The restaurant was family owned and seemed like it would last forever, even though many times there would be barely a soul in the place. Sadly they closed down a few years ago.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

This is the third book in the Robert Langdon series by Dan Brown. I haven't had a chance to read this one yet. I'm sure if they are making a movie of it I will read it before seeing the movie as I did with the previous books from this series. I'm not sure what the full synopsis of this story is at the time of this writing (I plan on starting it soon after composing this post). All I know is with the picture of the Capital on the cover and from the first stirrings I recall from hearing about this book some of it takes place in Washington DC.

And Another Thing... (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
by Eoin Colfer
This book is on my list of books to read (although I haven't added it to my goodreads list yet. So I don't know when I got it exactly.) It is sort of officially unofficially the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, except it's written by Eoin Colfer the author of the Artemis Fowl series. I plan on re-reading the first five books of the H2G2 series before starting this one to get back to wherever it is that Arthur Dent has gotten to since then.

Another Google Verification word.

"Hunes"

 

Every once in a while something you read in another blog will stir up your own creative juices, or just plain remind you of something you did a while back. This is one of those times when I read a blog and it reminded me that it was something I do every once in a while myself. 

Adam (aka: Spankee) who writes the trading card blog "My Cardboard Mistress" reminded me of this word verification game on his post "Word Verification Fun". For those of you not familiar with this when you go to post a comment to someone's blog at blogger.com or one of the other Yahoo/Google owned blogging networks you get a nonsense word to verify to make sure you are making a legitimate comment and are not planning on sending that person spam, or trying to steal someone else's identity. I've played that word game a couple of times on this blog and now I am doing it yet again. Some people would say it is something to do when you are board. I say it is fun and if the word is strange enough it stimulates the imagination and you can come up with some very interesting things sometimes.

Here is my comment I made in response to his post. The word I got for it was "hunes".

"Yes that is fun. A couple of times when I couldn't think of anything to say on my regular blog I did that here is a link to those times:
http://klandersen.blogspot.com/search/label/Yahoo 
 
Hmm for this post I have a boring "hunes" guess that is the lesser known sand dunes on the outskirts of Hollywood. Or hey I came up with a more interesting one. Songs that have no real words like the Crash Test Dummies "Mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm" song.

Thanks for this post I'm going to save my comment here and make a post out of it myself since I thought of an interesting definition for my word right now. "

Crash-Test Dummies and "Weird Al" Yankovic

Whenever I think of that Crash Test Dummies song I always picture "Weird Al" Yankovic with his parody of that song "Headline News". So there you have it folks a game you can play with junior and all the kids. While reading and responding to a few other blogs I got the following words:

inglo - Hmmm I guess that is a trendy ice made hut on the Alaskan Tundra.

I also got the cousin of one of  Rowan Atkinson's television characters. The word was "Adder" yes it was in green lettering so it was The Green Adder.

Upgrade to website

After what seems like ages tweaking and trying to figure out new ways of doing things I finally got some of my upgraded pages on to my website klandersen.com.The upgrades/changes are not anywhere near complete but I at least have a majority of the main pages updated to my new CSS style look.

One of the biggest problems I've had recently is trying to remember where some of my images are tucked away if I don't have them on my website or on my thumb drive that I use to keep my current working files for my site. I also noticed that many of my links to anything I used the old Geocities technique of just needing the file or page name, without the rest of the website URL so there are many places where I wanted an image that I don't have one right now. For some reason some of these the latest version of Firefox (4.0) ignores images it can't find so the page doesn't show a space for it. ACK!

DVDs From May

OK so I only got a couple (literally) DVDs in the merry merry month of May.

The Green Hornet

 I got The Green Hornet from Columbia House it was the "Director's Choice" for May I think (or was it for April)?

Bitch Slap (Unrated)

This second DVD (Bitch Slap) I got for some of the actors that are in this. Most of the main cast  members from the Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess - Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, Michael Hurst, Renee O' Connor and Ted Raimi have supporting roles in this film. I think most of them are small cameos or supporting roles that many movie watchers consider "small roles" or "unimportant" roles. 

I just got some Doctor Who DVDs but those I'll mention for my June DVDs Update. Technically I ordered and paid for them in May (Monday 30 May) from Who North America. The post office attempted delivery on Thursday 02 June. Today (Saturday 04 June) I picked up the order. I also ordered some stuff from Columbia House again. A couple of those were pre-orders that are being released at the end of this month so those two might have to wait til my July Update.