So, I spend quite a lot of my spare time running, playing, or thinking about running or playing RPGs, and I do have a fair amount to say on the subject, and have been thinking about trying to set some of it down for a while now, and prompted by mindwanders, I thought I might see about getting on with it in the near future.

I am aware, however, that quite a number of my friends don’t have much interest in that kind of thing, so I thought I’d set up a filter for it, so as not to accidentally bore anyone rigid.

So: who wants in?

Don’t take too long to think about it. 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you. They don’t have to be the greatest books you’ve ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

The House at Pooh Corner – A.A. Milne
The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
45 – Bill Drummond
Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night – Christopher Brookmyre
Accelerando – Charles Stross
The Great Shark Hunt – Hunter S. Thompson
Bane – Joe Donnelly
Raw Spirit – Iain Banks
Fucked By Rock – Zodiac Mindwarp
Night Watch – Terry Pratchett
Quantum Psychology – Robert Anton Wilson
King Rat – Chine Mieville
I Was Dora Suarez – Derek Raymond
The Complete HP Lovecraft – HP Lovecraft

Nicking nalsa‘s Variation: that took me six minutes and ten seconds – timing myself made it a bit more interesting. (Also I could have been faster, but I was disqualifying comics.) (I suspect that my inclusion of Kitchen Confidential might be partly due to bleed from his list, but I left it in, because I think it deserves to be there anyway.)

Adding My Own Twist: If you’d like to know more about a book, or what it means to me, leave a comment explaining what you’d like to know about my relationship with that book, and I’ll tell you.

Minimal interest to most of you, but there were a few “I’m interested” comments on yesterday’s post. I’m afraid that when I went to book at around 11pm last night, the ticket site they linked to only had two tickets left, so while I did buy both of them, my spare is going to sparksoflight since she was the one who actually pointed the event out to me, and fair’s fair, after all.

Yesterday’s link yesterday does contain a phone number, if you want to try the box office yourself, and see if it’s just that the site had a tiny allocation. Sorry I wasn’t more helpful/organised/swifter.

Right, leaving to go stand on a plinth for an hour. Those of you who suffer from incurable bordedom and who can’t make it along to Traf Square will be able to see me at http://www.oneandother.co.uk between the hours of 10 and 11pm UK time. You won’t be able to miss me, as I shall be wearing a white suit, to ensure that I don’t accidentally blend in with anything, and to provide passers by with maximum mockery value. Plus, I will have camera and tripod set up.

I am on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square between 10pm and 11pm tomorrow (Monday) night. My plan is to take pictures of the crowd in the square. Which means I need a crowd, and in a perfect world I need the crowd to be interesting looking. So, please, if you’re at a loose end, stop by, and if you feel like dressing up, I’d be delighted.

If any of you feel like re-posting this call for interesting looking volunteers in your own journals, I’d be very grateful indeed.

Can anyone think of anywhere in London I can get an astronaut costume from on very short notice, and for sub 50 quid? I need it this time next week. I don’t mean an average, shitty fancy-dress-party type outfit, I mean something that actually looks within some reasonable mark of the real deal.

I don’t know what the fuck this is other than “RoboGeisha”.

Enjoy.

This is the best image I have seen today:

In the spirit of this image, if you leave a comment, I will respond with your very own set of free instructions.

I have no particular axe to grind here, I’m just curious about something. According to my LJ profile page, there are 284 people who read my journal. Allowing for people who won’t see this because they have filtered me away for doing nothing but posting links, dead journals, people who have lives and don’t compulsively read LJ and people who just can’t be arsed filling in a one question poll, I figure this give me a potential respondent pool of up to three people, which is enough to at least satisfy my curiosity.

See, I know a lot of people who will chin strokingly talk about Jackson’s impact on pop music and how “he may have been a bit of a freak but those first two albums…” (I include myself in this number), and my friends list today is full of tasteless jokes, grief stricken comment, and other responses to his death but I don’t know how many of those commenting actually own any of his albums, and as I say I’m curious:

NB: if you own more than one copy of an album for some reason, please only count that album once.

Which is always a happy occasion. Because I am a smug bastard, on a very old price plan that I have stubbornly refused to change because they don’t offer anything like it at the moment, I get 65 tracks a month for a tenner.

But still: I like to use Emusic for getting exciting new music. Because I’m paying anyway, I figure I might as well use it to get new stuff.

So, if you’re of a mind, recommend me stuff I won’t have heard of. I’m not genre picky, so go for anything. (If you’ve got the time and inclination to check it’s available on there, that would be ace.) But please: take the time to tell me why the artists in question are ace, and pick out some tracks you particularly think I should check out – if I get enough interesting recommendation, I may just grab a few tracks per artists this month, and then grab albums in future months…

Go! Tell me of your modern music!