A book thingy, which I have filled out for myself. Do it yourself, if you like.


bold - I've read it
italicized - I'd like to read it
Normal - have no desire/never heard of it (but I'll willingly listen to recommendations!)

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible (most of it, anyway)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

OK, Hypnosis week is almost at an end and all I've done is post a few Derren Brown videos. So I'll be consistent and post a few more (short ones)!

Derren Brown again, this time meeting the star of Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz. I found it very funny and well worth watching at least a few times...

Hey Mesmer, nice shoes! Anyway, this Mesmer bloke did stuff that wan't quite hypnotism but is pretty closely related. Very interesting. You can learn about him here. Fun times.

I've recently discovered Derren Brown and his shows/experiments incorporating a degree of stage magic, illusion, hypnotism and probably mostly the power of clever intense suggestion.
Take a look at this and I might put a few more up...

If y'all are interested, Wikipedia has a fascinating entry about it. It's very in-depth and informative.

Also, this guy hypnotizes chickens.

Behold the video for Nick Cave's awesome song Loverman. This is from back in the day when he was kind of hot in that rock star way, and had a lot of angst and sang songs about killing people all the time. Not that Nick Cave isn't still awesome, but he's undergone some kind of personality transplant over the past few years and now only wants to sing songs about God and love. Whatever, it's all good music. But I digress.

Here's Loverman. I saw an interview with these guys where Cave said that they got in a hypnotist for this video. The band were all scoffing at it, thinking nothing was going to happen, but they actually all ended up getting hypnotized and doing some freaky stuff. Personally I think the effect is quite creepy. Maybe they were bullshitting, maybe not. But it's weird, either way. Watch and enjoy.

M and I have been having some interesting conversations about hypnotism over the past couple of days. It reminded me of some pretty cool stuff that I wanted to post to the blog, and the more I go digging around on the internet, the more I realize that there's a TON of really fascinating stuff out there. So I think I'll just go ahead and declare this Hypnotism Week here at Codename V.

And if you don't like it, Hollywood Film Legend Omar Sharif has a message for you.



Damn right, Omar Sharif. Damn right.

In which I am obligated to fill out this tedious thingy, which seems to be oriented towards married people with kids.

A- Available or Single? Uh. Shouldn't this say something like "Available or Taken"? Because 'available' and 'single' mean the same thing, and that doesn't leave one with much choice. In any case, I am neither available nor single.
B- Best Friend. Codename M.
C- Cake or Pie. Cheesecake.
D- Drink of Choice. Iced Tea.
E- Essential Item. Grenade launcher.
F- Favorite Color. Blue. Does anyone really care about this?
G- Gummi Bears or Worms. I'll pass, thanks.
H- Hometown. You're not supposed to give this kind of information on the Interweb, duh. I'll tell you my home state, though : South Carolina.
I- Indulgence. Misanthropy.
J- January or February. Neither. Too cold.
K- Kids. No thanks, I'm a vegetarian.
L- Life is incomplete without… I am so not in the mood for philosophy right now.
M- Marriage Date. To be determined.
N- Number of Siblings? Zero is the number of siblings that I have.
O- Oranges or Apples? Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clements.
P- Phobias/Fears. Crowds, falling.
Q- Favorite Quote. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - The Little Prince.
R- Reasons to smile. Oh, FFS.
S- Season. Spring/Summer.
T- Tag Three. Y'all know I don't like to push these things on people. If you want to fill this out, do it. If not, don't.
U- Unknown Fact About Me. If it's unknown, it's not likely to be something I'd post on the internet, now is it?
V – Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animals. I'm a vegetarian who resents the implication that vegetarians think that meat eaters are oppressors of animals. Stop fucking stereotyping people. What you eat is a matter of choice and personal ethics, and is none of my business.
W- Worst Habit. Attempting to kill people using the power of my mind.
X – X-rays or Ultrasounds. To what end? This is dumb.
Y- Your Favorite Foods. Broccoli, Tofishy, Chocolate.
Z- Zodiac. Was a good film.

I declare this week's Friday baddie CLOWNS! And what could possibly be worse than just 'clowns' you may ask? How about PSYCHOTIC CHRISTIAN CLOWNS TERRORISING HELPLESS OLD PEOPLE!!

OK, I remembered this from TV and looked it up on Youtube - it was as funny as I remembered!
It's a British show called 'Catchphrase' where contestants have to guess a popular phrase from an animation. The host would always say things like 'it's good, but it's not right' when contestants made ultra-lame guesses and keep repeating 'say what you see!' when the animation was too bad to guess anything.
I showed this to V. and she really laughed and she mentioned it might be worthy of putting on the blog, so...

Ya gotta hand it to angry crocodile, NY Daily News

(note: the lame headline is theirs. If it were up to me, it would be more like OMG IT'S A HAND)

So yeah, this crocodile in Taiwan bit off a veterinarian's arm. Doctors have reattached it. But you absolutely have to click on that link and look at the photo. Maybe you don't have to if you get easily squicked out. I mean, it's not bloody or anything, but it is a photo of a crocodile with a guy's severed hand sticking out of its mouth. Which, I mean, it's horrible. Horrible and tragic and OMG nobody should have to suffer these things. But also, you have to admit, it's pretty awesome. It's a HUMAN HAND in a CROCODILE'S MOUTH, FFS.

M has just pointed out that there IS IN FACT a keytar in the video for that song from Mannequin. If you let the timer get to about 1:40 remaining, the keytar is present. Cleverly hidden, but it's there. So, sorry M, you're right. This means that this is officially the most 80s video ever. All hail the keytar.

Firstly I just want to thank M for posting a video that sums up pretty much everything about the 1980s. As far as 80s films go, Mannequin is certainly in an elite league among films such as Breakin', Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Mannequin 2: On The Move.

I feel obliged to point out a few of the details which make this such a great 80s music video.

1. Two words: permed mullets. Need I say more? This is some spectacular hair, people. Also, is it just me or does the Starship woman have the exact same hair as the Starship Dude On The Motorbike? They could be twins, for serious.

2. This is one of those videos for a movie song wherein they try to make it look like the band is in the movie. That Starship woman (is that Grace Slick? I find it a little difficult to accept that Grace Slick is reduced to having a mullet perm) is getting up to all sorts of Mannequin antics. It's like they were really there in the film, OMG.

3. Shoulder pads, for men and women.

4. Comedy moments with a dog. What is the context here? It is uncertain. Suddenly, there is a dog. The dog behaves comically. This is video gold, y'all. VIDEO GOLD.

5. Starship does that peculiar 80s dance. You can do it too! Here's how:

• Keep your feet perfectly still. Never move those feet!
• Bounce slightly at the knees in a gentle up-and-down motion.
• Make a fist. Bend arm at the elbow.
  
• Pump fist in a horizontal motion. For variety, extend index finger a la Billy Idol.

Practice this daily, and you'll be totally cool in no time. Of course, it helps to have a mullet perm.

I can only find one flaw in this video: no keytar. If only there had been a keytar, this might have been the best music video of all time. Sadly, it was not meant to be.

I don't want to just keep posting videos here, but that last Mannequin vid reminded me of something I've been meaning to put up for quite a while for V. Enjoy it and remember, Dr Spankles is coming to your town soon!

I couldn't sleep as usual and on one of my nightly walks around I saw this on the dead hours of TV. I actually like the song but this video will cheer up V. with it's 80's-ness.