A little known fact on this site, is that I like to read books without pictures. Comic book author Warren Ellis has written a book without pictures. It’s called Crooked Little Vein. Here is an excerpt taken from the Amazon.com Chapter One PDF:

“I have a stressful job. This is how I like to relax. I like to go to a small hotel and take heroin. Just lay on the bed and feel my bowels slowly unclench.”

He leaned back and sighed with relish, as if he were sinking into a warm bath.

“I like to lay on the bed, naked, with my guts oozing onto the sheets, nodding out and watching the Fashion Channel. All those skeletal smacked-out girls. The faces of angels and the bodies of Ethiopians. I find that sexy, son. It’s not like I have an easy job, and I feel I should be cut some slack in this area. Heroin angels, strutting around for me. With Enya playing. They play a lot of Enya on the Fashion Channel. Great regiments of heroin angels lined up in endless long dressing rooms elegantly banging smack between their delicate toes to the soundtrack of British TV shows about Celtic people. You should try it. It’s a poetic thing, you know?”

His eyes closed, a beatific grin spreading across his weathered face like an old wound opening.

“In that moment, son, I am as beautiful as they, and you are to ignore the rabbit droppings steaming on my bed: interior chocolates placed on the pillow by the solicitous maids of my bowel. Sometimes I get up and dance, scattering the gifts of my intestines across the Edwardian carpet, ignoring the shrieking of the housekeepers and the priests they call in. `Phone the White House,’ I sing to them. `I control the nuclear bombs.’ All of which is to say: I am a functioning heroin addict and also the most powerful man in the world, and you should pay attention now.”

Go and buy a copy now. If you need reassurance here is the quote off the back of the book from Kinky Friedman:

Warren Ellis writes like a bipolar Raymond Chandler. Crooked Little Vein injects at least two welcome elements into the tired, clogged mystery field: a little death and a little life. It’s also funny enough to make you shit standing.

Finishing Crooked Little Vein left me in the mood for hard boiled detectives. Raymond Chandler‘s Philip Marlowe is my favorite. Now I dig the Bogart Big Sleep movie. But Bogie just isn’t Marlowe to me. The perfect Marlowe is the 80’s HBO show staring Powers Boothe. A show which I vaguely recall as being this perfect translation of Chandler’s stories.

I found it on Amazon, Phillip Marlowe, Private Investigator. A New York Times article from back then seems to back up what I think I remember.

Although he should perhaps look a bit more lean and hungry, Mr. Boothe creates an emotionally convincing Marlowe. His private eye prefers to be an objective observer rather than a soiled participant but, when pushed, he leaves no doubt about who is in charge. Dark, dour, almost sullen but not quite sour, this Marlowe would have had Raymond Chandler’s approval.

It’s also set in the right period. I hate when they try to set it in the present. Marlowe’s time and place was the 1940’s Los Angeles. I really hope the show is as good as I remember.

So it’s been exactly one year ago that I would have been fired for the second time from the worst hotel ever. I say this only because I ruined the sheriff’s chance to personally fire me by checking the schedule the day before and then calling him to ask what was going on. To celebrate the day I submit for everyone’s listening approval the unedited version of that call:

[audio:ramada-fired-james-one-year-ago.mp3]
Played [drain file 48 hits] Times

In ten days I will also be celebrating my one year anniversary at the new hotel. Which is a nice place to work. With any luck in another year the worst hotel ever will finally be dead. What a happy day that will be.

Got a new poll going. One year later exactly since the last poll. The new poll is game related. I’m interested in how many people fell for the hype machine that is Halo 3.

Did you buy Halo 3?

• Yes
• No
• Don't care at all

View Results

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Incidentally this is my one year anniversary working at the new hotel.

Honestly I hadn’t planned on getting it. But I did. And I’m glad I did. With Halo 3 I had low expectations. With one feature in particular it has me really liking the game. That is the Theater mode. In theater mode you can replay saved films. In these saved films you can take screenshots. Screenshots that can be uploaded onto the net. It maybe a minor thing to some. But I happen to love taking screens of the games I’m playing. You can see a total of 33 screens here in my gallery.

Now if they would enhance these features. It’s a pain in the ass to use the file share to upload one picture at a time. I should be able to upload the entire lot. Or at the least flag shots I want to upload. Further negatives about all this, the default file share max is six slots. For replays, screenshots, game modes, etc, etc. You can pay 750 Microsoft Points to increase the file share to a total of 24 slots. That’s per month by the way. Hopefully this is something that more console games will enable players to do.