Discoflamingo13's Journal: The Complex Plane and George Saunders

Time enough has gone by- time for an update. I've recently finished reading "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," by George Saunders, a collection of short stories and a novella. If you have not already done so, I suggest reading it at your earliest convenience. I was recommended to read it after a friend of mine likened his style to mine in a short story I'd recently drafted. The title of my story is the definition of a complex number, in purely mathematical notation. Mostly, it's about the Vietnam war, and a high school math teacher who's coming to grips with the fact that one of his students is the daughter of one of his unit members. She's in an abusive relationship with another student of his, and he's getting ready to solve that. At least, that's what it was in my head. On paper, it's a hell of a lot more confusing.

But I digress. The story will sort itself out as time goes on. Comments by my friends were many and varied, and so I have to do what's best for me with that. I re-compiled Mozilla with cryptographic support. Note to self: always ./configure --enable-crypto , then gmake. Saves another 2 hours of compiling random packages again.

It's freezing rain here. Still, Slivken managed to convince me to go see "The Time Machine" over at the Death Mall (which is the Mall of America, for those of you out of the Midwest[Hell]). A solid movie - about what you'd expect from Hollywood, with the sci-fi aspects not glossed over too much. It's only great fault was how it was only 1.5 hours long. Jeremy Irons (the leader of the Moorlocks) has completely redeemed himself from Dungeons and Dragons, in my eyes anyway. Can't tell you how much it resembles the book- never read it. But Alexandru has, and he's awaiting my review with bated breath, or perhaps baited breath. Never can tell with those cagey Rumanians.

My Dutch naval trenchcoat is falling apart, and this rain isn't helping any. If anyone knows a keen place to get Dutch naval trenchcoats, let me know. I'd greatly appreciate it. It's pretty frigging cold here.