Today's first captcha WTF, complete with my response:

Didn't get much better, actually.

This one became a "close enough" since I couldn't figure out the backtick diacritic mark

And finally, erchilos for the win:

So, John Scalzi has this thing where he tweets his next band name. He's been doing it long enough that a website dedicated to his next band names has been created. It is best read with the random button on the site.

It's amusing, except that it is also a fantastic kick in the seat of creativity.

Seriously, here is a list of weird-ass titles just waiting for a story to be told about them.

While I've pondered most of my two-new-habits-a-month habits for a bit before committing to them, this one I'm not even going to think about it long. It's something I wished I had done with Hugh Genin on a regular basis: give him a phrase / book title, have him give me the one sentence summary of the book from the title, and write the book from his summary. I think that would be delightfully amusing and a lot of fun. Using Scalzi's list, I can skip the "think up a title" and see what plot comes to mind when I read the title.

Given the point of this is to be quick, to be creative without being critical, to write a story frequently without beating myself up about it (much like I do with the themed picture a day habit), the stories I write are going to be subject to the following limitations:

1. I have 20 minutes to write and post the story (which means really, 19 minutes tops to write and 1 minute to post).
2. The story has something to do with the title.
3. Write one every day for a month

I'm not sure if I'll "cheat" and look ahead to another random band title early, to think about the plot ahead of time before writing about it, or even skip over a band name (actually, I see two I'll skip over if I get them), but we'll see.

I figure I'll keep this post private until two things happen:

1. Scalzi notices the stories.
2. Someone wonders who is writing the stories.

Should be fun.

The rule now with Bella is, when she's awake and wants to walk, we walk. We walk as far for as long as she wants. If she tires, I carry her home, but we walk as long as she wants to move. One of the benefits, I guess, of knowing you have fewer than six months to live: people will help make your remaining time as nice as possible.

So, when Bella wanted to walk, we started walking. About 45 minutes into our walk, Bella was still going strong, much to my surprise I will admit. We were heading down the final stretch, the street leading to our block, when I heard a number of sirens. Having just passed the local Old Folks Home, I figured they were coming for someone who was either in trouble, or had just passed, and was somewhat sad for that person.

The trucks came flying up the corner, and, after honking at the idiot who flew through the intersection without stopping for the sirens and barely cleared the oncoming fire truck by less than 20 feet, went straight.

Straight.

Into a 40 meter dead end.

Confused, I walked a little faster to the corner, finally noticing the smell of burning in the air.

Related: seriously, nose, wake the fuck up already, and start noticing these smells.

As I approached the corner, I saw the bonfire a guy had started on the asphalt next to the apartment complex's dumpster. It wasn't a giant fire, less than a meter around and maybe 40cm tall, but, it was open flame, and it was spewing smoke. I pulled out my camera (what, you're shocked by that?), and took a few pictures as Bella tugged on the leash to stop walking, she was busy sniffing over here, dammit.

With the camera out, I watched one guy jump out of the lead firetruck, and hustled over to guy next to the fire. The fireman didn't pull on all of this gear, he recognized what was going on and was heading over to deal with it. The other guys, however, jumped out of the trucks, pulled on their jackets, plopped on their hats, and wandered over to the fire. A few of them turned back to the firetruck and pulled out a few items to help them put out the fire: an ax and a large fire extinguisher.

Bella was willing to walk again, so we crossed the street and started walking past the second fire truck. As I walked by the truck, I realized the engine was on.

The engine was on.

The nearest fire fighter was now 60m away from me, on the opposite side of the truck.

The driver didn't appear to lock the door when he walked away.

Did I mention the engine was still on?

So, apparently, the process to stealing a working fire truck in Mountain View is:

1. start a small fire in the far side of a cul-de-sac parking lot just over a neighboring city's border
2. call said neighboring city's fire department
3. report said fire, but don't describe it in detail
4. wait
5. when the fire trucks arrive and all the fire fighters are talking to you about your fire, possibly jockeying to see who uses the extinguisher to put out said fire, send your accomplice over to the remote fire truck that didn't fit into the cul-de-sac
6. accomplice hops in said remote truck, and drives off

Now, how you KEEP said stolen fire truck is left as an exercise for the reader

Continuing in my goal of reading a book a week, this week's book was Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke. I bought a number of young adult books a few years ago, including Inkheart and its sequels Inkspell and Inkdeath, because I'm a sucker for multi-book stories. Funke wrote the Thief Lord, which Mom gave me and I read a while ago - it's an okay a book, not a great one. I kinda forgot about that when I started reading Inkheart, by the same author. Funke is a German writer, which means when reading her books, the nuances and delights, the cadence and the rhythym of her words and the original writings are often lost in translation.

Inkheart is similar in that the odd writing cadence of the Thief Lord: it isn't quite right. Inkheart is, however, an enjoyable tale, internally consistent with enough twists and revelations to be interesting, but the cadence of the writing is a little off. I'm not sure if it's the translation or Funke's writing style.

Inkheart is the story of a bookbinder's daughter (Wait, bookbinders still exist? Wait more, there are people who love books even more than I do?), whose mother disappeared years before (nine to be exact), when her father accidentally read her into a book while reading a character out of said book. There's a (nominally) one-to-one correspondence / exchange of characters in this reading of characters, so when one being comes out of the book, another being needs to go into the story. This talent of being able to read characters out of a book is a talent that earned the bookbinder both the name Silvertongue and years on the run with his daughter to avoid the characters he brought from fantasy to life by his reading.

Inkheart was made into a movie three years ago. Having half-watched said movie and knowing nominally what the plot is (wow, was Brendan Fraser miscast as Mortimer Folchart, the bookbinder dad and one of two main characters in the story), I have to say I both zoomed through the book (I know that, know that, know that, too) and lingered in the book (oh, they removed that in the movie, that's unfortunate they removed this other, too). As is typical, the book is more enjoyable and makes more sense, while the movie is good for mindless entertainment.

Yeah, so, I enjoyed the book somewhat. I'll read the next two books, mostly because I have them. We'll see. I'm sorta blah on this book as far as writing styles and plot lines go. It's fine for 9 years old and above (it has an accurate recommended reading age, in terms of sensitive issues (death, violence, sex, adult themes, etc.), which is to say, the bad stuff is mostly hinted at and the story has a happy ending).