Longklaw.com

The 4th of July was another lazy day this year, but it was still a lot of fun.

I slept late. When I got up I watched some more Jericho and read Fast Food Nation a little.

My roommate John and I finished the story mode of Rayman Raving Rabbids on the Wii. My opinion of it hasn’t changed – it’s fun, especially if you’re playing with others. We also played Super Mario Bros. 2, Justice League Heroes, and Mario Party 8.

I didn’t eat as much as I normally do on the 4th, but that could be a good thing.

Warning: minor spoilers included

I had started reading Dreamcatchers, but I decided to switch to The Long Walk by Stephen King at Rob’s urging. King wrote The Long Walk under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.

The story is about Ray Garraty, who is 1 of 100 teenage boys participating in an annual walking contest. The Walkers receive warnings for offenses such as walking too slowly or leaving the course. If they go an hour without receiving a warning, then one of their warnings gets taken away. If a Walker receives 4 warnings, then he gets his ticket and is taken out of the race. You quickly discover that the way he is taken out is by getting shot by soldiers. I really enjoyed reading the story. It’s a short novel, so it didn’t take a long time to read.

A while back I had heard about a Japanese movie called Battle Royale and it has been in my Netflix queue since then. Reading The Long Walk made me think of it and now I have moved it closer to the top of the queue. I hope I like it as much as I liked The Long Walk.

Lately it seems like every time I mark something off the list, I add more.

• Dreamcatchers, Stephen King
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card




• Summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls




• The Hedge Knight, George R.R. Martin




• The Sworn Sword, George R.R. Martin
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Long Walk, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy, Thom Hartmann
• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Recently I started watching Jericho. In the first episode the people of Jericho see a mushroom cloud in the distance and chaos follows. I’m about 11 or 12 episodes into the season.

Man I wish I had been watching this from the beginning. It reminds me of the way LOST is at its best with all the mystery that unfolds over the course of the season. I think of the failed new shows that I started watching last fall: Vanished, Studio 60, Kidnapped, and The Nine. For some reason I never gave Jericho a chance. I guess when I hear that a show is on CBS I automatically dismiss it. When I started hearing buzz about it, I figured I would try to catch it when the DVDs came out. Then it was cancelled and I wished that I had been supporting it all along. Then it was un-cancelled and I figured I would start watching it now. There will be 7 episodes next season to wrap up unfinished plotlines. If those episodes do well, I think they may do more after that.

I’ve been watching the episodes for free on CBS.com. I found out quickly that CBS’s online video service (Innertube) is crap. I normally use Windows Media Player as my player. Each episode is divided into 5 parts. With the exception of the first episode, there always comes a point where the video starts buffering every few seconds. Usually this happens when you begin a new part. Sometimes if you start the episode over again and skip through the parts and advertisements to get back to the part you were on, everything will be ok. The good news is that if you click on settings and change your media player to RealPlayer, this problem is non-existent (knocks on wood). The problem is that I’m having issues with installing RealPlayer on my preferred multimedia machine. I have to watch the episodes on my laptop if I want everything to go smoothly and I don’t really like watching stuff on my laptop.

Anyway, I highly suggest watching this show. Here’s how you can do that:

• Buy the DVDs when they come out in September or October
• Watch it now using iTunes
• Watch it now on CBS.com (free if you have a computer and internet connection)
• Watch it on Friday nights when they start re-broadcasting the first season on July 6 at 8PM CST. (free if you get CBS)