smacky and bucky

Finally nearing the finish line on a big project at work.

My wife is out of town on business yesterday and today. What have I done so far, wild man that I am? I went to Wal-Mart and Home Depot, purchasing painter's tape, primer, paint, brushes, the widescreen version of The Incredibles, and a pack of chewing gum (peppermint). I ate leftover Chinese food and read a book, with two cats and a dog by my side. Woo-hoo! I also picked up the new CD from the Reverend Al Green (as he's labeled on the cover) called Everything's OK. If you don't own any Al Green, your life is missing something. You probably feel it sometimes too...kind of like "I'm not hungry...I'm not tired...what is it?" That void, my friend, is the Reverend Al Green missing from your music collection. The new CD is right at home next to his classic songs. And why shouldn't it be? It was produced by Willie Mitchell, his musical collaborator from the old days of Call Me, Let's Stay Together, and Love and Happiness. Highly recommended.

I'm reading the John Carter of Mars trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs (who also created Tarzan). All three titles in one book for under $9 at Barnes & Noble. Here's his bio, taken from the book:

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 1, 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs grew to maturity during the height of the Industrial Revolution and witnessed the emergence of the United States as a twentieth-century world power. Hailing from a well-to-do family, Burroughs was given an aristocratic education steeped in Latin and Greek, but he was drawn more to an itinerant life of adventure than to a life in the boardroom. The author of Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Burroughs did not confine himself to a single genre; he also wrote medieval romances (The Outlaw of Torn, 1914), westerns (The War Chief of the Apaches, 1927), and mainstream novels (The Girl from Hollywood, 1922).

I'd never read anything by him, and I'm enjoying these. Turn-of-the-century (the last century) science fiction can be quaint, but the prose pops like a good pulp novel, which probably explains why the critics had disdain for it and the public loved it.