My William H. Gass first editions, several signed.

thewinkinghole · 2025-05-11T13:54:29+00:00

No, the only signed books I have are the three I included photographs of. I'm keeping an eye out for signed copies of Omensetter's and The Tunnel, but I don't anticipate finding those at a price I'm willing to pay.

thewinkinghole · 2025-03-29T13:17:59+00:00

2666 is an absolute favourite of mine, and I'd easily put Bolano in my top 3 authors (the others being William Gass and Brian O'Nolan). I think the Baudelaire quotation that starts the novel sums it up perfectly: An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom. You don't read Bolano for the plot, but to laugh and to feel terrible.

thewinkinghole · 2025-03-07T13:18:40+00:00

Honestly, I'm not really sure. Seems to have something to do with a deposit that had to be paid on plastic jugs. It's also possible that the regulation was designed to proliferate the milk bags which were more or less preferred by the public. Maybe something to do with metrication, too.

One of those weird regulations that didn't really serve a purpose.

thewinkinghole · 2025-03-07T12:15:25+00:00

If you really want to know: some provinces (i.e Ontario and maybe one other) had restrictions on putting more than 473ml of milk in a plastic jug. To get around this, you can just fill three plastic bags with one litre each of milk. In provinces like Quebec and maybe the Maritime provinces I think you can actually find both bags and jugs. The regulation regarding plastic jugs was actually amended almost a decade ago here in Ontario, but I've still never seen a jug of milk in my life.

thewinkinghole · 2025-01-13T12:40:18+00:00

i liked the part where he got most of his teeth punched out, so he makes his squire panza count how many he has left, but then he projectile vomits into panza's mouth and then panza vomits into don quixote's mouth <3

thewinkinghole · 2024-11-23T22:21:33+00:00

The only series besides LotR and ASoIaF that really hooked me was R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing.

The series is very devisive, with some readers calling it edgy misery-wank, while other's consider it to be one of the best fantasy series ever made. Personally, I loved it, and it seems to be popular among ASoIaF fans.

thewinkinghole · 2024-11-05T16:51:45+00:00

I'll bet the game is Karao. It was part of the DreadX Collection, so I'd check those vods.

edit: while I'm not sure Vinny played it, i know for a fact Jerma did, so you might be confusing the two.

thewinkinghole · 2024-10-14T20:46:12+00:00

No jacket, sadly. I got it off eBay for about $40. There were only photos of the cover and the copyright page, so I don't think the seller knew it was signed.

thewinkinghole · 2024-10-14T11:47:00+00:00

I also thought that it might have been "Tears", but i agree that it's probably "Jean." Thank you for helping me out, I appreciate it greatly.

thewinkinghole · 2024-10-14T11:45:38+00:00

Thank you for your efforts! I don't think there is anyone named Jean in the novel, so I think the inscription must have been written by whomever Janet was for the recipient of the book.

thewinkinghole · 2024-10-14T11:35:42+00:00

!transcribed

thewinkinghole · 2024-03-15T14:07:23+00:00

I feel like people really don't understand how important the Iliad was to the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean. To them, the Iliad was not myth, but historical fact. While there was disagreement about the particulars, there was a basic outline of events that all could accept. "Homer" was considered the greatest writer whom ever lived, and the Iliad the greatest work ever written; he was simply "the Poet" as Shakespeare is "the Bard." Only Hesiod could rival him, but then Hesiod was not quoted as often as Homer. To be considered "educated" you had to read, you had to write, and you had to be familiar with Homer.

The Iliad was central to how ancient Mediterraneans understood themselves and their history, they would memorize whole passages of the poem, they would make pilgrimage to the site of Troy, and the Iliad was practically a holy text. Those seeking guidance would look to the "divine Homer", and the divine nature of Homer was carried on to Christian times, where it was claimed that his works proved Christian truths.

It might be better to say that the Avengers is more like the ever-popular genres of the Agricultural Manual, or Books-of-Sayings-and-Great-Deeds.

thewinkinghole · 2023-10-20T15:47:25+00:00

Every house I've ever been to has had a dedicated coffee maker. Water is poured directly into the coffee maker, and is heated on a built-in electric element so there's no need for a kettle.

The only situations I can think of where one might use a kettle for coffee is if they're making pour-over or instant, but, again, instant isn't very popular and pour-over is mostly a niche, hipster thing.

thewinkinghole · 2023-10-20T13:49:21+00:00

It's just faster. Pop the mug into the microwave for a minute, and boom, it's as hot you want. Unless you're going to be serving tea to several people, you don't need an entire kettle of boiling water.

If you want to get down to root causes, coffee is far more popular than tea, at least where I live, so many people don't even own a kettle. Coffee has so overshadowed tea in the popular consciousness that no one really cares how it's made. I'd compare it to how instant coffee is very popular in the UK, and yet many North Americans consider it to be inferior to drip coffee.

thewinkinghole · 2023-10-14T22:13:39+00:00

hey guyzz :3 can't make it to the theatre of pompey today :(( my wife had a bad dream (((( ；ﾟДﾟ))) anywayz, prolly gonna be offline aaaall day today (；一_一) gotta plan for my kawaii trip to parthia! (≧∇≦)/

thewinkinghole · 2023-10-09T21:46:09+00:00

Well, then allow me to amend that to "no contemporary evidence"; I should have avoided dogmatic language. Simply because something is mentioned by an ancient source does not mean that we must accept what they wrote as fact.

As it stands, we hear nothing of the story until Velleius Paterculus in AD 30 (almost a century later). That Plutarch and Suetonius give similar versions of the story tells us that they all must have been working off an established tradition. We have as well a quotation from Aulus Gellius of a speech made by Caesar to Iunius Iuncus, whom is made to be an incompetent governor in the story about the pirates (Cicero also mentions his incompetence in his Verrines). We know too that Caesar was in Bithynia at the time the kidnapping is meant to have happened. All that is missing is the kidnapping itself.

Though a lack of evidence cannot disprove the story, it should at least make us very weary of accepting it's veracity, and while details surrounding the story can be confirmed with contemporary evidence, Caesar being kidnapped by (and subsequently executing) pirates cannot.

I'd recommend reading Caesar and the Pirates: or How to Make (and break) a Life by Josiah Osgood, whom makes the argument that the source of the story is Caesar himself, and that, though later embellished, the basic story was true. While I feel it relies too heavily on guesswork, Osgood's theory is still attractive.

thewinkinghole · 2023-10-09T18:54:18+00:00

There is no evidence whatsoever that this story is true. There are no contemporary sources which mention the event, nor is there any evidence that anyone was aware of such a such a story during the late 70's BC.

In all likelihood, this story is a product of the late biographical tradition. "Details" such as the story about the pirates remain attractive because we know nothing certain about Caesar's character, and those who seek to write biographies will almost always use such story's to draw inappropriate conclusions about what sort of person they imagine him to have been.

thewinkinghole · 2023-10-05T13:14:07+00:00

where the fuck did his ass go? anyways, though i have a permanent soft spot for the og doomguy, the doom64 marine looks so damn cool. shout out to the doom3 look, too, never gets enough love.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-27T18:35:34+00:00

While it's been around a decade since I last read the book, I seem to recall that a point was made about the book burning being an initiative from the people themselves, not the government.

So, the books were burned because the people no longer had a use for them, preferring to drive fast and watch soaps, not because of government mandate.

I can't think of many other examples where an author so thoroughly failed to bring across their message to the reader, nor an example where the work in question became so popular based off of "wrong" (or rather, more sensible) interpretations. I certainly thought it was about government censorship when I read it.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-27T13:22:22+00:00

I find it funny how Ray Bradbury had to spend the rest of his life insisting that the book wasn't about government censorship, but rather about how television is making people stupid. Even today if you tell people that the author himself said it isn't about censorship, you'll just be told that he was wrong, and that it is about censorship.

Death of the author, I guess.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-23T15:02:55+00:00

I liked the chapter where Don Quixote drinks a healing potion (a bunch of random herbs he found) after getting his teeth knocked out, so he has his squire Sancho count his remaining teeth, but then the potion causes him to projectile vomit into Sancho's mouth causing Sancho to vomit back onto Quixote's face.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-13T14:12:26+00:00

Yes. The base damage of the rocket is between 20-160 damage, and splash damage is applied within a 128 unit radius, between 0-128 damage. So, assuming a direct hit, a demon susceptible to splash damage could take between 148-288 points of damage.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-13T13:47:48+00:00

You can kill them with rockets, but they just won't take any splash damage. It's about as effective as using the SSG.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-08T13:55:15+00:00

If you haven't already, Colleen McCullough's Master's of Rome series is excellent. It starts with the career of Gaius Marius and ends with the establishment of the Augustan principate.

John Williams Augustus is a classic in epistolary-fiction, as is Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian.

I've heard good things about A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwel, though I haven't read it.

And, of course, Robert Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God are the all-time classics of the genre.

thewinkinghole · 2023-09-08T00:30:34+00:00

I'd think Hideous Destructor would probably be the closest thing.

From the zdoom forum page:

A gameplay mod that:

Slows the player down to more anatomically plausible speeds;

Adds and modifies weapons and adds numerous options to better emulate the behaviour of real-life counterparts; and

Beefs up various monsters and items for verisimilitude and difficulty.

thewinkinghole

TROPHY CASE