Moving

I'm making one last blog move to start 2011. This move allows me to maintain my Shooflypie name while also including my name in the URL. I feel like it makes sense. So please follow me over to justinsteiner.blogspot.com. Thanks and welcome to 2011!

Sharing

My Google Reader was advertising a new feature this evening and I enjoyed it enough to add a new part to the blog - you'll see it over there in the upper right-hand corner. It pulls things from the internet that I can look at and share with you, if I find the item interesting enough. Yes, it's another way to waste time on the internet but I got a kick out of the 4 items you'll find over there right now.

I hope to have more things to share with you soon in the way of actual posts. I would like to talk about True Blood (I have one episode left of the 2nd season), Toy Story 3, all sorts of music, and more. I have 4 books out from the library out right now with 2 more waiting for me, so some book posts need to happen too.

I do have one last item to share tonight, a good old-fashioned link. Matt Fraction is relaunching Casanova through Icon soon and GQ did a longish interview about it with him. I've only read the first 7 issues of the original 14 (the 2nd story arc was never collected), so I'm looking forward to more. I think Fraction is one of the better writers in comics today and there's quite a bit of interest to read here.

Ok, enough sharing for one night...

Snow Day Shuffle

The school system I work in started out with a two hour delay this morning but it didn't take long before they called the whole day. We have gotten quite a bit of snow the last few days but I think we could have managed with two hour delays both yesterday (when we had nothing) and today. I'd rather have the day in April than today, especially since this is the first week back and we already have a scheduled day off next week. What can you do?

I've been doing a little of this and a little of that today, including a nap. Right now, I'm waiting for the UPS truck to arrive with a box of comics I ordered from Barnes & Noble the other day, though I do have plenty to read.

Obviously, I haven't figured out how I want to attack the blog this year (the idea of writing about everything I read, watch, or listen to has already fallen by the wayside). I know I said I would get away from the shuffle posts but today kinda lends itself to the idea. So, here are 10 songs...

1. Uncovering The Old/Dr. Dog (1)

2. Sukie In The Graveyard/Belle and Sebastian (1)

3. Snakes of Hawaii/Army Navy (1)

4. What New York Used To Be/The Kills (1)

5. Impossible/Shout Out Louds (1)

6. Decora/Yo La Tengo (1)

7. Passing the Hat/Cold War Kids (1)

8. The Shape of the Sum/I Love Math (1)

9. Rhthm & Soul/Spoon (1)

10. On The Horizon/Sloan (1)

Doctors, Dolls, and the Decade

I have the penultimate David Tennant episode of Doctor Who sitting on my DVR right now. I want to watch it and I don't want to watch it. I'm not a lifelong fan of Doctor Who, though I do remember watching episodes on PBS with my dad when I was a teenager. I wasn't aware that the series had been restarted until I caught "Blink" a few years ago and I was hooked after watching that episode. I went back and caught up on the season with Christopher Eccleston, followed by as many of the Tennant eps as I could find. I am going to miss him tremendously...but I also want to see how he (and head writer Russell T. Davies) will exit the show.

Speaking of exits, let's talk Dollhouse, a show I held at arm's length when it first appeared and even gave up on. I documented my return to the show back in late September and was an avid viewer during the current season. Unfortunately, Fox cancelled the show (as I feared) and pulled it off the air. A few weeks ago they started burning off the episodes two at a time and with a few weeks off I've started to catch up. I was stymied today by a bad DVR recording, so I'll probably try to catch that episode ("Meet Jane Doe") on Hulu in the near future. The show has been quite good and it will join Firefly as a Joss Whedon show that got away (though I loved Firefly more than I do this one).

You know what else got away? My planned posts on my favorite stuff from the last decade. I would still like to put something together, as well as best of the year lists. Not sure if either will happen, though I'd put better odds on the latter rather than the former. Still, we'll see...

Sunday Shuffle Shutdown

It turns out last week was my last Sunday Shuffle. It wasn't planned and I might have done things differently if I had known. So why am I stopping? My wife and I bought a new computer as a joint Christmas present, which means I've had to reload all my music into iTunes. As a consequence, all of my play counts were lost. It seems silly to keep on shuffling when almost everything I have would be the first play and all of my tracks in the high 20s and 30s and even high 40s (Harvey Danger's "Little Round Mirrors" comes to mind) are all reset. I will probably still do a shuffle on Sunday for myself, since I've been doing it for 3 plus years. I'm also mulling possibilities that would replace that feature on the blog, so stay tuned for next Sunday to see if I came up with something.

Retool

My wife and I bought a new computer for Christmas. Our other computer was at least eight years old and was way slower than computers are these days, so it was needed. One consequence of the purchase is that I now have to reload all of my digital music into iTunes, which means that all of my play counts are reset at zero. That fact makes my ongoing Sunday Shuffle series seem a bit pointless. I have felt I need a new approach to blogging, so I'm going to take the opportunity to retool how I do things around here. Since we're so close to a new year, I'll probably wait to implement any changes then.

Projecting

Things will continue to be quiet around here for a little longer. My college semester is coming down to the end and I have three big things still to do - a research paper, an oral presentation in my Spanish class, and my Spanish final. The first two will be over by Wednesday, so things will ease a bit, though I'll still have the final to prepare for. Once that is over on Dec. 15, I will be able to relax for a few weeks. Yay!

The first blog project for that time period will be to read and review Interfictions 2, which I was generously sent thanks to David Schwartz. After that, I'll get to whatever decade and/or year-end stuff I'm going to do. I also plan on reading all of the stuff I have piled up around here.

I will, of course, be back tomorrow with a Sunday Shuffle (and one the week after), but it will be another 10 days or so until I put up a post with some content to it.

Break Blues

Posting has been obviously sparse this week, though that's not necessarily unusual. Life has been busy as always and my college classes took a step in terms of the quantity of work this week, so I've been stressed and feeling behind. However, I have reached a bit of a respite - it is fall break in the school system where I work during the day, which means two days off wrapped around a weekend. It feels heavenly.

It comes at a time where I have 140 or so items on my Google Reader and a DVR that's about 40% full. It comes at a time when I have two books to be read and a third that's in at the library, not to mention the JLA/Avengers trade I bought last week or the issues of SF magazines that are stacked up (I've been halfway through one for a couple weeks now). Let's not even mention all the DVDs I haven't even cracked open.

I also want to keep things moving on the blog. I still have one more album I bought in January to discuss in "My Music Year" and the year as a whole is getting shorter. I do still want to write about my favorite works of art from the 2000s, which I hope to kick off on Nov. 1. I think at this point, The Jayhawks project will have to remain on hold for a while longer.

I can't let all of these things get in the way of school either - that work isn't going away. When I think about how quickly the break will go and how much I won't be able to accomplish, it makes me a little depressed. I won't let the negatives rule the days, however, and I'll enjoy what I get done and know it will be more than it would have been without the days off. I'm taking today off completely from my school work, which definitely helps. You should see a few more posts from me over the next few days as well.

Project Collection

The history of this blog and even my life is littered with ideas and projects that I don't follow through on, yet I keep coming up with new ones. This year the big ones have included recording an EP (not one note), reading Infinite Summer (I lasted less than 50 pages), writing a biography of The Jayhawks (not one word written), blogging about every song by The Jayhawks (I've covered 4 in 2 months), reading the entire works of Charles Dickens (not one word read), and writing about every issue of Astro City (nope). Still, I don't want to give up on these ideas or at least on the idea of ideas in general. I'd like to follow through on a project or two. I realize I'm setting myself up for failure with all the school work I have in college this semester and the general craziness of life, but here are the blog projects I plan on doing over the next few months...

* A series of posts on the best of the decade in books, music, movies, TV, comics, and whatever else I come up with

* A resumption of writing about The Jayhawks songs

* Reviews of all the new music I've bought this year, in chronological order

It's ambitious, especially for someone with my track record, but I feel like I have to do it. What have I got to lose?

Labor of Love

I don't want to give up on this blog. In fact, I think it will be necessary in the coming weeks just to switch my brain into a mode that isn't about school. I may not post often and I may not follow through with all the projects I want to start but I still want to be here. They say you're supposed to dress for the job you want, right? I would like to earn money as a writer before it's all said and done, so with this blog I'll be dressing for that job. I love music and books and TV and movies and comics and more and I want to be able to share that love. And so I will.

Suspension

It's rather obvious that I haven't followed through with my intentions when I (re)started my blog under this new title. The chances of that fact changing anytime in the forseeable future are slim to none, unfortunately. As I mentioned earlier today, my new college semester has begun and it looks like I have a lot of work ahead of my over the next 3 1/2 months. I do not intend to only live and breathe the day job and my school work but I know that writing blog entries will not be at the top of my list of things to do in my spare time. So, I am suspending all blogging until...well, I'm not sure. I suspect my use of Twitter will diminish as well; if I'm going to keep up with anything, it will probably be Facebook, where I do get feedback and a sense of community amongst my friends, new and old. Take care.

Restless

I could be working on some blog posts right now. I could be writing about the three Jack of Fables trades I read this week. I could be writing about all the books I read this summer. I could be working on my (slowly-progressing) Jayhawks project. I could be taking notes for all the blog projects I have in mind (looking at Astro City issue by issue; a myriad of posts about my favorite pop culture from the 2000s; a long-delayed review of the new Wilco album).

I could be reading some more of the June/July issue of F&SF.

I could be looking at my Spanish book from last year in preparation for my third semester class.

But I'm not doing any of those things.

Instead, I am very restless because college starts again tomorrow and I'll be in my first English class since spring semester of 1994. I'm not nervous at all, I just want to get it started and see what the class will be like. I guess it's a good thing I go to work tomorrow before class or else it would be another wasted day (at least I got the laundry done today).

I know I will get to all the things I mentioned above...just not until after I've been to my English 201 class (The Nature of Literary Study) tomorrow evening.

American Geek

I am an American Geek. I love music, books, comics, TV, movies, and all aspects of pop culture. I love highbrow and lowbrow and everything in between, as long as it is good. This blog will document my search for that good stuff and discuss the good stuff I have already discovered.

Why Season 3? My first blog was Shooflypie and when I stopped doing it, I deleted it. My second blog was Another Piece of Shooflypie and it was full of good intentions that never went anywhere. My hope is that this relaunch, the new season, will be much more entertaining. So please stick around and see where it goes.

Why relaunch on the 4th of July? I'm an American geek.