LOTR, Day 2

I'm already to Rivendell. I'm on Chapter 1 of Book II.

I just got into the second book of the Fellowship of the Ring, so that
puts me about halfway through the first book in the trilogy. At this
rate, I'm going to take at least a week to finish the whole thing.

LOTR, Day 1

I found a download of the entire Lord of the Rings on Google. Yeah,
the whole thing in one text file.

So, this marks the first day of my voyage to the Mountain of Doom. So
far, I'm already through the Forward, the Preface, and made it to
Chapter 4 (A Shortcut to Mushrooms) of the Fellowship of the Ring.

By the way, I absolutely love Google. It's a library, an arcade, a
movie theater. Plagiarising the words of Smash Mouth, "It's a holiday
in my head."

Pulp Fiction Script

Today I read the script to Pulp Fiction, by Quentin Tarantino. Google
it, it's easy to read for free.

Wow, that guy is (or at least was) a genius. That was some good script
writing, and that's not even taking into consideration the acting and
special effects that would go into the movie. I really think he is the
king of dialog. Well, I have a short term memory, but right now he's
the best I can think of.

However, I did notice that some real gemstone bits of the finished
product were not in the script. I think this means that the actors
themselves were responsible for really classing it up. The scripted
speech by Wallace (Ving Rhames) missed the vinegar reference. "Some
think you'll age like wine. If you mean you turn to vinegar, you do.
If you mean it gets better, you don't." I really missed that one in
the script, and I'm glad Ving Rhames nailed the final performance.

Timeline, by Michael Crichton

Well, I read another book, yes sir bob, and this time it was Timeline.
I suppose it's far overdue, since it's not only a Crichton story, but
there's already a movie out. I know, I feel shamed. I should have read
it before any dust accumulated. This is from the guy that wrote
Jurassic Park, one of my all-time favorite worn out paperbacks.

I was told that the end to Timeline was lame, and this stopped me from
reading it for years. However, I took the plunge yesterday afternoon,
and just got finished. Well, it wasn't that long of a book. It could
have been at least half again as long as it was, and I would have been
thrilled.

(spoilers ahead) Timeline is about a crew of historians that get
blasted back to medieval France through a time machine in New Mexico.
They're on a rescue mission because a professor got lost in time. Back
then, France was not a nice place. People get smacked around and get
hurt. Some of the crew last an entire ten minutes before getting
killed. Some of the action scenes are just pure blurs of literary
goodness.

And it's true, the end was kind of lame. It's like Crichton just woke
up one morning and said, "Aw, let's get this book over with so I can
go do my next project."

(major spoiler) At the very end, the bad guy gets sent back to a nasty
time period. He doesn't know when or where he is, although he's in
some sort of forest. At this point, I just wanted a T-Rex to bite him,
or a gang of velocirapters to run out and get him. C'mon,
velociraptors! Just one raptor! PLEEEEASE! That would have been
freakin' awesome! But, no, it was not that far back in time, just the
time of the Black Death. Oh. Well, that is kinda lame.