Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. A truly great fantasy series with excellent prose, great world building and one of the most satisfying endings in epic fantasy. Malazan Book of the Fallen. Complete in 10 books, this is without a doubt (in my mind at least) the best work of epic fanrasy ever written. It is darker and deals with more adult themes than Sanderson's work, but nothing can beat it for sheer scope and philosophical depth. It features Sanderson like Avalanches at the end of each book, but the necessity of these epic confrontations is explained in world by the idea of Convergence, power attracts power. And then Kaboom. Cixin Liu's The Rembramce of Earth's Past Trilogy (The 3 body problem, The Dark Forest and Death's End). The most ambitious and original Science Fiction Series I have ever read. The first nbook takes a bit of work to get into, but it's well worth the effort. Liu has some of the most original ideas in Science Fiction, and he writes hard science fiction, so sometimes the fiction part of the fantastical is only a matter of scale of application. If you are looking for a more approachable work, you could check out his short story collection The Wandering Earth, all the short stories are good (with some of them being among the very best of short form science fiction) and all the stories are linked (sometimes profoundly, sometimes only superficially). Since everyone on here has been talking about the Name of the Wind, it got me thinking about one of my all time favorite books, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco. It's a medieval mystery that takes place in a Benedictine monestary. Like Malazan, it deals with adult themes, but the writing is so unbelievably good, the historical accuracy is spot on, the atmosphere it evokes is truly creepy at times, and the themes that it wrestles with are profound.

He's great, you should checkout Hardboiled Wonderland/End of the World, and if you can stomach some pretty grim scenes The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is also very good (but oh, so very dark too).

Two of the prettiest songs that the world has yet known, both by the band The Deerhunter. Agoraphobia from the Album Microcastle: And the song Desire Lines from the album Halcyon Digest: Listen, enjoy, repeat. That's what I'm doing.

Here's a list of some of my all time favorite books that most people would consider classics: Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecia a and Roman's. Salammbo by Flaubert. Erehwon by Samuel Butler. The Possesed by Doestoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov by Doestoevsky. The Trial by Kafka. Demian by Herman Hesse. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. The Plague by Camu. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell. Burmese Days by George Orwell. The Jewel of the Seven Stars by Bram Stoker. The Master and Margarito by Bulgakov. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick. Rambeau's Nephew by Diderot. The Journals of Eugene Delacroix. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (the Dover ones illustrated by Gustave Dore). The 12 Caesars by Suetonius. The Man Who Was Thursday by G K Chesterton. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Nietzche. The Essays by Montaigne. The Robert Fagles translation of The Illiad. Kafka by the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

Oh the Glory-o of another exquisite Storio! A truly villainous villain, with a polar opposite world view too boot, brilliant stuff. Also, Garius' theme is appropriately weighty and ponderous, with just the right touch of sinister. Well done all around! I don't have my Borio story done yet, but I did want to give you a mustache update. I am in full production mode of Magnum PI and Borio Singaldi mustaches, one 8.5 x 11 piece of sticker paper yields 10 mustaches, and I carry 5 of each type in my wallet at all times to give to people because who doesn't want a mustache sticker? To date I have given out well over 50 Borio 'staches, so slowly we are approaching the quantum Singaldi-arity tipping point where we will be living in that most Storio-ed of parallel universes, the one where everyone sports a Borio 'stache.

Sorry to double post, but I did a pretty serious revision to my poem from the last post, and I think it's actually quite good. Infinity in the Space Between Matter Four by four they gathered 'round and danced a merry jig. Three by three they grabbed the spit And turned the suckl'ng pig Two by two they wandered off showing no remorse One by one we buried them in the stinking gorse The no good laughing dirty dogs Were the only ones to dig And when the poison burbled up, They made us take a swig. Now four by four on Lethe's shore We wonder should we drink Three by three some shamble in And we watchers watch them sink 'Til two by two we climb aboard the boatman's leaking skiff. Then one by one we dissipate, Our feckless souls adrift. Nothing in the nothingness- We have no eyes to close- Trapped in abject abnegation This being we never chose.

Ok, so I had some time to work on these, I just have the Magnum PI and Borio Singaldi mustaches so far, but they're pretty sweet, yep pretty sweet indeed. So as to not derail the thread, the results are spoilered below, forgive me a self indulgent slightly sinister chuckle, mwahahaha.

Brilliant @Firerust! Another fine addition to the Chronicles of everyone's favorite irasicible rotund gourmand. I'm currently working on a sticker sheet that is going to be a collection of famous mustaches that I'll post the print and cut silhouette studios file of here, and I would love it if you could do a quick sketch of Borio's famous mustache, or post a picture that most closely approximates it. If you do, Borio's mustache will join Magnum PI's, Higgin's, Hercule Poirot's, Sam Elliot, Lord Yupa's, Rhett Butler's, and Nigel Bruce's Dr. Watson mustaches on the famous mustaches sticker sheet.

This song is beautiful, so beautiful.

Granted! As soon as your wish leaves your lips, you find yourself transported 10,000 feet up into the air. To your horror you find yourself plummeting to the ground, unable to stop or even slow your fall. Given that the acceleration due to gravity is approximately 32 ft/s^2, it takes you about 5 seconds to reach terminal Velocity (approximately 174 ft/s). Hurtling through the air at ~118 mph, you have nearly a minute to think about how you should have been more specific with your wish. But the Nightwatcher isn't without some mercy, just before you hit the ground you find yourself once again transported 10,000 feet above the ground. This time as you plummet you experiment with different body alignments and find that you can control your descent to a pretty great extent, and once again just before you hit the ground you are again transported 10,000 feet up into the air. As you get used to your new life, you get quite adoept at managing your perpetual falling, and even devise systems with your loved ones whereby they throw you sandwiches, pickles, and other consumables to you just before you teleport back up to fall again. Could be worse. I wish I had a pocketwatch that could control time, specifically with the following 3 functions: 1) A button that stops time for everyone/everything not touching the pocketwatch.. 2) A dial that advances/rewinds the hours in a day. 3) Another dial and button that allows you to set a specific time/date that you can jump too. Oh, and, I would also like it engraved with the following, "Time is an arrow, if you don't give it a shot then all you'll ever do is quiver"

Listen to this one on repeat for the rest of your life (that's my plan):

Here's a cryptic little number and a drawing too boot. 4 by 4 they gathered 'round and danced a merry jig. 3 by 3 they grabbed the spit to turn the roasting pig 2 by 2 they wandered on showing no remorse 1 by 1 we buried them in the spiny gorse Another drawing of the Gorse.

Such a good song! So after listening to a bunch of the songs from his album, I finally did it, I bought the digital download of Will Wood's The Normal Album, and let me tell you, it does not disappoint. Every song, every single one, is a freaking gem! I'm going to call it, right now, this is the best song of the 2020's, I know what you're saying, "Wow, not even two years into the decade, and you're already calling the best song of the decade?" and you know what I say to that, "You better believe it!". Without further adieu, here is "Okultra (The Black Box Warrior)" By Will Wood, from the soon to be platinum album, The Normal Album (which you can buy for only $7 for digital download):

While walking my dogs along the river trailI I found King Stropharius mushrooms (also known as winecaps) for the first time today! They are absolutely beautiful mushrooms! They're saprotrophs, so they are found along trails in bark chips and mulch. Here's what they look like in the wild.

The Disney film Watcher in the Woods is atmospherically terrifying, and Betty Davis is super creepy in it. I think it's a terrifying G-rated movie, which isn't easy to do. Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds is terrifying but also very tame in the gore department. I third @Orlion Blight and @Elegy recommendation of John Carpetener's The Thing, super scary but not graphic hortor fim. And if you watch that and like it, his movie The Fog is really good, though it does shade into kinda cheesy (but in a loveable kinda way). I don't think there's anything explicit in it, but maybe do an internet search if you're woried about that to be sure, but the original Creepshow movie is superb. It's a series of shorts kinda like the old EC comic horror stories in the Vault of Horror or Tales from the Crypt. The final short with EG Marshall is super horrifying without any gore what so ever. In a similar vein, Stephen King's Cats Eye is good too. Its likewise a collection of horror shorts and the one where James Woods is quiting smoking is a classic!

You can find mushrooms in the city too, just down the street from our house there's a spot where every year I get 3 to 4 big, delicious Agaricus Augustus ("the Prince") mushrooms. So I went back today to look for more Ls, that's my little joke, and I kid you not, I found the prettiest morels I've ever seen. And they were gigantic too! Definitely a nice time of year. @Spren of Kindness I was going to upvote your post when I noticed you had the very rare, highly coveted and very short lived reputation of So 1337 Hoid Can't Compete, I took a screenshot of it on my phone in case you wanted a copy of it (it's spoilered below). Well, I do run on mushrooms and am capable of making extraordinary leaps...of logic that is...

Since you like fantasy and ya romance, if you haven't already read the Damar books by Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword, you should check them out. The Ostenard series by Tad Williams is really good, his prose is beautiful and the ending of the first trilogy To Green Angel Tower is satisfyingly epic, like a Sanderlanche or an Erickson Convergance. The first book in the first trilogy is The Dragonbone chair, good stuff.

They just smurf 'em like that, that's how they smurfin' do it.

@Eluvianii I love Welcome to Valhalla, I really like how she draws out each syllable "Welcome to vall-e-hall-a". Good stuff! @Orlion Blight I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR, and Teri Gross was interviewing the musician Richard Thompson who was in the seminal British Folk band Fairport Convention (and coincidentally whose bassist went on to form Steeleye Span). And they played an excerpt of the song Crazy Man Michael from their most acclaimed album Liege and Lief, and it is phenomenal, and I thought of you and your recommendation of Long Lankin, so here is another one, back at ya, enjoy: And in the interest of full disclosure, the SD card on my phone that had all my mp3s gave up the ghost, it went kaput. So the only albums I put on my phone after this tragic event were the complete discography of Okkervil River. And I have been listening to their concept album Black Sheep Boy pretty much non stop for a week and a half. I tell you all this because you should really listen to this album. It's quite possibly the best album of all times, I kid you not. Check out this track, So Come Back, I'm Waiting, which has my favorite line in any song: He lifts his head handsome, horned, magisterial. He's the smell of the moonlight wisteria. These lines are about the eponymous black sheep boy, the whole album is also about the black sheep boy, and is so very good. The rhyme scheme carried throughout the song is subtle but brilliant, give it a listen, it might just change your life.

It's that time of year again, yep, morel season! Got a little less than half a pound, they are such pretty mushrooms! This bunch of yellow morels was especially beautiful, but I did feel a bit like a giant harvesting all of Smurf village when I picked them.

The prettiest song ever made, if you disagree post a riposte, the proof's in the pudding as they say (at least those people who fancy pudding are always saying it, myself included). Here it is, The Origin of Love, from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. @Spren of Kindness that Jova Musique Waiting For Love was great!

This is the first I've heard of steamed and stuffed tofu, it sounds amazing though, I'll have to try it next week, I'll have a dim sum night. I love mapo tofu! Unfortunately that's the one type of tofu I can't get my wife and daughters to eat. I have to have it when they're out of town, but I always have a box of House brand mapo tofu in the cupboard. Sounds like a sweet setup! Can't at the moment, also I've never been much of a healer type. That's totally sweet that you're a professional DM, hope everything comes up 20 (when you want it to, mwahaha).

Sweet! That's freaking awesome!! How exactly does that work?

Sorry to double post, but I just saw this, what's this about you becoming a full time D&D Dungeon Master? As in you are going to, as a profession, create and run D&D campaigns?

Do tell! We love tofu in my family! I recently figured out that the best way to Marinate tofu is to pan fry it first. Broiled teriyaki marinated tofu skewers are ridiculously delicious (that's one of my secret to fun techniques revealed). (Spell checker changed tofu to "to fun", so I'm just gonna go with it). What's one of your secret tofu techniques?