#even bought my own copy of Dante’s Inferno

[disasterpost]

Me listening to Hoziers album: this is his best track on the album

*next song plays*

This is his best track on the album

*next song plays*

This is his best track on the album

*next song plays*

This is his bes-

[baeddel]

hi! what did you enjoy reading as a teen/what were your favorite books?

hi :3 i read a lot of the same books i read now, funnily...

so an important thing is that where i live, there are all these 18-19thc stately homes that were mostly abandoned when the English gentry fled during unrest (if not the Famine, then certainly the Land War). these have been appropriated by organizations like the National Trust who make them selectively available to the public. well one such home had a little bookshop for guests, and there they had an enormous collection of antique books, printed and bound in the 19thc. you'd think these were expensive, but they were actually worthless - a few pennies each. they also sold old books from later eras, and recent paperbacks, and anything someone brought in for them to sell.

[long and indulgent. getting progressively stoned as i write]

so when i was in primary school (not yet a teenager or even a preteen) i'd read Tolkein, and i'd read Pratchett, and the rest of the time i'd read these old books. the ones i remember: a copy of Vergil's Aenid which was falling apart at the seams, a collection of poems by Tennyson (who i loved for some reason), a collection of Wordsworth (hated him), Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (loved that one), a collection of the Metaphysical Poets (hated them), a farce about a cow named Venus and its adventure (i don't remember this, except that i own it), a bunch of Dickens (hated him), Joyce's Ulyssees, which i loved so much my mother bought me a bootleg collection of Joyce's entire catalogue (i particularly loved Finnegan's Wake then; now i can't understand it) , a collection of Gerald of Wales (i don't remember reading it), a bunch of Horatio Hornblower books (naval adventures), each of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales printed and bound individually in Modern English, a collected version in Modern English, and a collected version in Middle English which i sat down and sounded out and believed i could read that way.

you must understand that i did not read all of these cover to cover. i was a child and i read the way children play. i have dyslexia and at that time my dyslexia was very severe—i used to ask my mother why the words lift off the page and why they jumble up—so a single sentence would take a lot of wrestling. i didn't finish a novel-length book until two years ago, but i finished a few novellas. the first one was during this bookish late childhood era and the little book was Figures in a Landscape by Barry England, which was an influence on me; there are only two characters who are two soldiers stranded in the mountains behind enemy lines, their hands are tied up, they hate each other guts, clinging to bare life.

anyway, i think i was 12 when we went into a book shop and they had a display for a new translation of Dante's Inferno, which my mother bought me and which i fell in love with. and Vergil is in that story, so i went and dug out the Vergil again. and then i got a little Beginner's Latin book and made very little progress on it. at some point before or after this i let somebody on the Runescape forums convince me that i needed to read Aristotle's Politics and Plato's Republic if i wanted to talk about politics, so i got them and read some of them. i enjoyed them, especially the Republic, and i even believed i understood them. there is apparently a brief discussion of anarchy in those books, or at least i believed so back then, because after that i started calling myself an anarchist and defending the idea in General. i remember this because i had an argument with someone who considered themselves a capitalist, and he quoted some of the Politics at me, and he was alarmed when i quoted some back. i guess something was in the air back then (later on i'd call myself a communist because of Citizen Smith reruns). anyway, then, as i lately talked about, when i was 13 i got the Eddas because they quote them in Age of Mythology. the Poetic Edda was hard for me to read (it was probably not the best translation; Larrington's is very readable), but i loved the Prose Edda, even though it bewildered me too. i took it everywhere with me, but my first boyfriend stole it.

all this time im still reading fantasy. they put out this big collection of Lovecraft right around when i turned 13, so i got that and read most of his short stories (this collection completely bowlderizes him; i was very surprised to find out about his racism much later), and then they made a similar one for Howard. unfortunately i didn't find the best pulp writers back then (C. A. Smith and C. L. Moore). i tried to read more contemporary fantasy but i never could get much into it; i remember thinking Terry Goodkind was a hack and history vindicated me.

anyway, later on in my teens i was really into Bowie and Iggy Pop and stuff and they referenced William Burroughs a lot, so i started reading Burroughs. my first Burroughs was the Soft Machine, then Junky and Queer, and then Naked Lunch. i read the last three all the way through. i read around some of hismhis friends—Kerouac, Ginsberg—and i looked for more books about drugs and delinquency. so i read (again, some measure of) Thomas Quincy's Confessions of an Opiate Eater, and most of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (now i am 16-17), and i find out about Anaïs Nin (through an amazing girl on gag, of all places) and i read as much of her as i can. now i was going to used bookstores, and i found this little book called the Sexual Life of Catherine M, about a woman's adventures in dogging, which i liked a lot. i found out about Charity at 16 with Howling Dogs and i decided she was must be the 'big thing' in literature today, which i was right about. i read everything she ever did up to that point, but unfortunately i didn't think to keep up with her subsequent work. i also read Hemmingway and Orwell, because everyone on writers forums used to say that you had to. Hemmingway is still influence on me even if that isnt fashionable anymore; Farewell to Arms and 1984 were both books i read all the way through.

shortly after this i get into thelema so i start reading Eliphas Levi, A. E. Waite, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie. and shortly after that i got serious about leftist theory and started reading Marx, Engels, Bakunin, etc. but i couldn't get my head around much of any of that stuff; it would take a while for me to really get it. i gave up on occultism because i decided it was a hall of mirrors, and i got dispirited with leftist theory for a long time, and i could not summon much energy to battle my dyslexia to read books, and i felt that i no longer understood poetry, and i had no one in my life regularly after the fallout that happened, so i mostly sat around playing jrpgs and jerking off and thinking it was all over for me. meeting @canmom was a big event because she encouraged me to write again, and i went back to a lot of old things i loved, and i would write little things to show her. and i made other friends who i wrote letters to, and i met other writers and artists i look up to, and i got into some amazing life-changingn relationships, which gives me the encouragement and the support i needed after a long time, and now i feel invincinble and i think i can do anything.

what did you ask? oh yeah, well, my teenage favourites were Dante, Snorri, Burroughs, Anais Nin, Marx in chronological order.

[oldnintendonerd]

Prime Hunting Season Starting Soon

Official hunting season for 2018 is long over. With another season in 2019 just around the corner. I visited what was to be the final yard sale of the 2018 season on October 25th 2018. A brave older couple was downsizing and held a yard sale when it was 36 degrees out. Unfortunately, they were not gamers. Nor did they have any games from any kids or grandchildren. They did have some stereo equipment, and a surround sound speaker system. No music, or blu rays either though. The stereo was a shelf system, not a component type unit like I would be looking for to match the Sony TC-WE805S tape deck that I got at the start of the season. An all around bust of a sale for me. I wished them luck and headed on my way.

I closed out the last post with the PS3 find from 09.01.18. Giving me access to HD console gaming. A new era for this Old Nintendo Nerd. I do primarily game at 240p being that NES, SNES and N64 are the consoles nearest and dearest to my heart. GameCube and Wii weigh in at 480p at their absolute best, still falling short of HD. But now, with a PS3, we’ve got 720p gaming (mostly, some is 1080p). I have no problem with collecting a little for this system, I’ve heard good things about Uncharted, The Last of Us, and a smattering of a few other games that I will be looking out for.

Before we get into finds for the last, freakin 5 months, I have sold a couple things since the last post, and I should hope so, since its been forever! Right? Sorry. Life.

I had a bundle of 16 total PS1 games that I let go of. Titles were the likes of Syphon Filter, Driver, Test Drive 5, Rainbow Six, and a smattering of other luke warm titles. I’ve posted all of them up here at one point or another, so you have an idea. They were nothing I’d ever want to play, and since I only paid around $16 total for all of them at $0.99 a piece, I thought if I could average around $2 a pop on eBay id be doing OK doubling my money. They all added up to a value of about $95 on pricecharting. Now granted, that is fantasy prices, even those prices aren’t the prices the sellers MAKE when sold. Ultimately they all went for $52.99 as a lot. After fees and shipping it netted me $38.44, which comes to right about $2.40 each. 40 cents higher than I was hoping to get per game. Not bad!

The end of the last post left us with $9.73. Put that in with the $38.44 for a total of $48.17.

Additionally, I sold a disc only copy of Animal Crossing on eBay that I had laying around for $18.99. This came to $13.58 in pocket after fees and shipping. Tack that on and we now have $61.75 game hunting money moving into this post.

I’ll be honest, it’s been thin, it is cold here in the winter, there are no yard sales through the cold months at all. Places like Arizona or Florida where you could sale year round are lucky. Not here. Even donations to Goodwill slow down significantly as well, making the hunting quite a bit more difficult. I had zero finds for basically all of September. Which was surprising, it is really the last warm month here with temps still reaching 70′s and sometimes low 80s. But it wasn’t until the end of the month I ran across something at the Goodwill.

De Blob - Found 09.29.2018 at Goodwill

Disc, case and Manual all in pretty good shape, but nothing to write home about. If it were June and prime hunting season and I’d been getting finds, I probably wouldn’t have bought it.

But I did, and it cost me $3.21. Takes the total down to $58.54.

Next up was the first official game for my new PS3. Again nothing fantastic, but at least it rang up at the DVD price instead of the game price. Saved me $1.

Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Found 10.04.2018 at Goodwill

Minty fresh.

But, again nothing special, not even a full game. But I sat and played it for an hour anyway. Probably already had $2 worth of fun with the thing. Despite being labeled $5.99, they still only charged me the DVD rate of $1.99. Hah! So, $2.13 out of the till leaves us with $56.41.

The next find was literally the next day. Different Goodwill though.

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on PS2 and Grand Theft Auto IV on PS3 - Found 10.05.2018 at Goodwill

This was absolutely minty fresh as well. Both of them were. Discs, cases, and manuals / maps. I wasn’t going to buy San Andreas but when I saw that it was in as good of shape as it was, and had a bonus inside, I couldn’t not get it.

First time I’ve found a game in Goodwill with a Memory Card inside. Those are $8 to $10 each right there, and I am a little short on memory cards, so I had to get it. The game was technically the bonus, I bought it for the memory card. Heh.

Great shape for two Goodwill games, they look brand new. Plus I heard that while GTA V is superior graphically, GTA IV is better with exploration, in that you can enter buildings, and enemy AI is a lot better as well. So I thought, what the hell?

Those two ran $6.42 together taking us to $49.99.

The next find was from 10.15.2018, from Goodwill, another few halfway decent games. Borderlands, Alice, Dante’s Inferno, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3,  and a Disc only copy of Skyrim. It was actually in the same case as Alice, just under the Alice Disc for some reason. I wasn’t arguing with that so I left it there.

PS3 Lot - Found 10.15.2018 at Goodwill

Sucks about the two basically disc only games. Marvel Vs Capcom and Skyrim. One being from Best Buy pre-owned. The other hiding under Alice in the same case. not that I’m complaining about that one. Free game? Nothing wrong with that. How Best Buy even gets disc only copies of stuff is beyond me. Game system trades or returns with games still in them? I wasn’t aware they did pre-owned anything.

In any case... They are all in good shape. Minimal labels and damage.

Especially Alice. I dig the art on this one, and it is in very good condition.

As for Skyrim, well, I had a spare case laying around for FIFA 09, and I figured, why not print out a cover for it. I couldn’t give a shit less about FIFA Soccer. You can see the print lines, but it’ll do to hold the disc.

All of this ran me $12.86 being I paid for four games at $2.99 each plus tax. This takes the hunting money down to $37.13.

Moving into November, I had a spectacular find. At least, for the hunting money total. Not so much on the video game front, because it was just a Blu-Ray movie.

Wing Commander Blue-Ray - Sealed - Found 11.08.2018 at Goodwill

This thing, just looks like cheese from the cover. I picked it up, and immediately put it back down and walked around the corner to where some more shelves are. Then I said to myself you know what? No, let me check that, immediately dismissing something out of hand like that loses people money. Pulled up eBay on my phone and about pooped my pants. A sealed one was listed for $180. I thought that has to be some looney toon’s listing. I kept scrolling and no, used ones were just under $100. Check sold listings and there were real sales for $80+. Suffice to say I bought it, of course. Listed that sucker up, and I was hoping to get over $100 for it since it was sealed, but, there was some damage to the corner. The plastic was not in tact anymore.

This made the listing go for a lot less than $180. However, I was still pleased to see it sell for $85.00. For a $2 item? That’s a home run! After fees and shipping it netted us a nice cool $68.67. To be fair I will pull the money I used to buy it from the game hunting money, it was $2.12 ($1.99 plus tax) dropping us to $35.01. Then, adding $68.67 gives us...

**** DRUM ROLL****

$103.68!

We are now officially above the original $100 I started this game hunting journey with.

Not a bad note to end this post on. I’ll post up the finds for the very end of 2018 in the next post. Hopefully I can cobble that together here in the next couple of weeks and have it up much faster than I got this one up. There’s a really nice co-worker find to detail.

2018.03.25

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1152

Monday, February 20, 2017

 Happy Family Day. Some folks will have this day off but it's too bad that the warm weather has forced the Rideau Canal Skateway to close down. I walked by it yesterday on my urban hike and it was a stretch of puddles. It was a beautiful warm sunny day as I walked home along Bank Street from Waverley to just south of Heron Road lugging a bunch of books that I borrowed from my partner Chris. It was so nice that not even an oblivious driver splashing me head to toe could wipe the smile off of my face for long.

 Gamora #3 - Nicole Perlman (writer) Marco Checchetto (art) Andres Mossa (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Nicole pulls out a deus ex machina to make me want to read the next issue. So now Gamora has something in common with L'Wit, the last member of the Badoon Royal Family. Made me wonder if Gamora will let the princess live. We'll see.

 Super Sons #1 - Peter J. Tomasi (writer) Jorge Jimenez (art) Alejandro Sanchez (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). I would have called this new book World's Tweenest. I was happy to see this team-up of Damian Wayne/Robin and Jonathan Kent/Superboy hit the racks because I'm a fan of Peter's stint on Batman and Robin. The first two pages piqued my curiosity before showing us what trouble the two boys have gotten themselves into. I was still wondering what those first two pages were about by the time I got to the last page uh-oh moment. I hope this doesn't wind up with Batman and Superman coming to the rescue. That would disappoint me. I really like these two kids and hope they have a long run.

 Cerebus in Hell? #1 - Dave Sim (writer) Gustave Dore (pencils) Dante Alighieri (inks) Sandeep Atwal (colours) Dave Sim (letters). I moved to Vancouver in late 1979 and one of the first comic books that I bought at The Comicshop was Cerebus #1. I remember picking it off the spinner rack and looking at that red cover with Cerebus drawn like Conan by Dave Sim. I sold my copy years later to a kid from Gibsons during the counterfeit Cerebus number ones scams. My big selling point was that it was authentic and probably one of the very few copies that Dave Sim had not autographed. I faithfully read every issue of Cerebus until the book got too political for me even though I loved Dave and Gerhard's art. I never did finish the run. Here we have Cerebus back on the racks forty years after issue #1 hit and Dave uses Gustav's Dante's Inferno prints with Cerebus superimposed to tell some jokes. I kind of snickered once. There are three more issues to come out and I will read those too just to support poor old Dave.

 Mighty Thor #16 - Jason Aaron (writer) Russell Dauterman (art) Matthew Wilson (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). Part two of "The Asgard/Shi'Ar War" had Thor being challenged by the Shi'Ar gods Sharra and K'ythri and the Asgardian Bor being challenged by the Lady Sif. I love the massive scale of Jason's stories in this book. It's befitting a comic book about mythical gods. Russell's art is just beautiful to behold.

 Batwoman #1 - Marguerite Bennett  & James Tynion IV (writer) Steve Epting (art) Jeromy Cox (colours) Deron Bennett (letters). This is a fantastic first issue introducing the hero to fans old and new. If you've been reading the latest Detective Comics you'll already know what Kate Kane is up to but still the last page surprised me. This new Bat book is going on my "must read" list.

 Kill or be Killed #6 - Ed Brubaker (writer) Sean Phillips (art) Elizabeth Breitweiser (colours). Quite a clever way that Ed came up with for Dylan to deal with the surprise of being seen by the police. I like how the dominoes are being set up for them to eventually fall all over Dylan's life.

 Monsters Unleashed #3 - Cullen Bunn (writer) Leinil Francis Yu (pencils) Gerry Alanguilan & Michael Jason Paz (inks) David Curiel (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). Well then, that explains everything. We find out why monsters are falling from the sky and given a hint to how the heroes are going to save the planet. The Inhumans play a big part in the plot.

 Batman #17 - Tom King (writer) David Finch (pencils) Danny Miki (inks) Jordie Bellaire (colours) John Workman (letters). How the heck did Damian, Dick and Jason wind up there? I hate when stuff isn't explained from one issue to the next. In part 2 of "I Am Bane" Batman finds out that he can't protect everyone he cares for when Bane gets to Gotham City. The bad guy wants the Psycho Pirate back and he will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. This is intense.

 Wild Storm #1 - Warren Ellis (writer) John Davis-Hunt (art) Ivan Plascencia (colours) Simon Bowland (letters). We haven't seen these Wildstorm characters on the racks for quite a while now so it's okay for Warren to take them and make them into something new. I used to be a big fan of Jim Lee's line of comic books so all these people seem familiar but they have been changed enough to make me interested to see how different they are. I would describe this book as corporate warfare. I want to see how the good guys and bad guys shake out so I'm going to keep reading.

 Doctor Strange #17 - Jason Aaron (writer) Frazer Irving (art) VC's Cory Petit (letters). This is an issue of "Where's Wong?". The inscrutable manservant is missing and the sanctum is in disarray. Poor Steve is worried sick.

 Superman #17 - Peter J. Tomas & Patrick Gleason (writers) Sebastian Fiumara (art) Dave Stewart (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). This is a great one issue story but Superman fans may be disappointed because the big guy isn't in it. Young Jonathan Kent helps his friend Kathy look for her grandpa in Deadman's Swamp. Boston Brand does not show up but something spooky this way comes. I really like Jon and I'm glad they feature him solo every now and then. I don't think that he should have his own book though, but I won't be surprised to see DC put out a Superboy comic book on the racks some day.

 Clone Conspiracy #5 - Dan Slott (writer) Jim Cheung (pencils) John Dell, Jay Leisten & Jim Cheung (inks) Justin Ponsor (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). "Dead No More" ends with some of the bad guys alive no more. Sure as web shootin' Peter and Anna save the day. Now we'll see what the fallout to the Jackal's nefarious scheme will be.

 Invincible Iron Man #4 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Stefano Caselli (art) Marte Gracia (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). This is a super fantastic all out action issue with Riri and Pepper Potts fighting Tomoe the Techno Golem and her ninjas. The bad guy is an Inhuman who can take over tech and she has control of both girls' armour. This issue goes a mile a minute but it's paced so well that you don't feel like you got ripped off with a five minute read. Stefano draws the best eyes.

 Punisher #9 - Becky Cloonan (writer) Matt Horak (art) Frank Martin (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Here's another comic book where the star is hardly in it. This issue features DEA agent Ortiz and the bad guy Face. I'm excited for the next issue because Frank goes to Canada, our home and native land.

 Spider-Man #13 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Sara Pichelli (art) Justin Ponsor (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). We find out more about what happened in Spider-Gwen's dimension in "Sitting in a Tree" part 3. The suspense would normally be killing me but Miles is telling the story to Ganke and Fabio so we know that he's okay. I still want to know if he and Earth-65 Gwen have a thing. This is turning out to be a major crossover with Spider-Gwen so I will be reading the next two issues of that book to get the full story. As Brian is fond of making his characters say, "aargg!".