Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Stack (5)

So, first a tactical/life-plan shift. I had been handling this "stack" like it mattered. This is a smart approach because: if you keep something, it better be for a reason. Otherwise don't keep it. And I choose to assume that I have a reason for keeping the few things I do. It is, however, a dumb approach because: you get into a thing where you think it matters if you read these things, or a certain volume of them in a given time, or something completely insane like that. I think I slipped ("slipped", at least; fell headlong) into that, with the stuff about getting through the stack by some date, etc.

So, this is the new stack philosophy:

- stay on top of The Economist, because that's your your main news source
- everything else is a shelf in your house that is there for your leisure and recreational reading time. When you do not need to/are maxed out with work, that's where you go. Otherwise, you have no obligation to it. That's a big shift. It may also mean the stack grows grows grows. We'll see.

Here's what I've read in the last whatever-since-that-other-update:

- 1 National Geographic
- 2 The New Yorkers
- 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly
- 3 The Economists
- 1 Wonder Woman TPB (Volume 2 of the collected George Perez run)
- 2 issues of X-Factor
- 2 issues of Secret
- 1 BPRD: Hell on Earth one-off ("The Transformation of J.H. O'Donnell")
- 1 issue of BPRD: Hell on Earth: The Devil's Engine
- 1 issue of Fables
- 1 issue of Elephantmen
- 1 issue of Fantastic Four
- 2 issues of The Walking Dead
- 2 issues of Savage Dragon
- also, Jesse Kellerman's Potboiler, which was very good

As usual, I really only want to talk here about comic books.

The Secret: good; Hickman is stylish and tight. I may not go on with it, but only because time is limited and there isn't yet a character I super care about. But it's good.
X-Factor: why did I stop reading this? It's silly and soap-opera-ish and ongoing episodic, but Peter David cares a lot about his character and a lot about dialogue. I'm resubscribing.
- The whole BPRD family of books continue to be just top-of-the-form good. The one-off was affecting: strange and sad.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Mint Fail

I like using Mint, but you'd think a pretty simple algorithm could've changed the tone of this update.



But this obviously isn't even my account, btw. I'm not carrying low/no-interest credit card debt. That'd be crazy.