The Enkindling

Also got the official Amazon leather case, blue.

I got a Kindle Paperwhite (2nd generation) and I'm going to use it to read picture books, ha-HAA!! Stickin' it to The Man, yeah...

Post-Apocalyptic

Today my brother pointed out that I like post-apocalyptic stuff "too much".
I retort that I like it just the right amount: "lots".

You can make any kind of story set in regular times. There's a virtually unlimited supply of resources out there in a pre-apocalyptic world. That ain't interesting! But in the aftermath of an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario people will have to survive by scraping up the remnants of civilizations decadence. Bullets will be in finite supply since the factories and advanced manufacturing technology will have been destroyed. Clean water will be scarce. That's a cool premise! Movies like The Book of Eli [2010], books like H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, and video games like Fallout get me in a special way because of these little details.

Books. Do You Read Them?

Well, here I am reading Let The Right One In. And, just in case you didn't know, it's a book translated from Swedish just like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

So then. What if these books hadn't been popular enough in their home country? What if they hadn't managed to garner enough attention to warrant English translations and U.S. publications? How would I have come into contact with them? Beyond wild coincidence or some Swedish language class or further forays into "it was meant to be" tosh, I simply wouldn't have.

Extrapolate how much stuff we're missing out on that's happening outside our "territories". Man, once again, I imagine how much more thoroughly I'd be able to live if I had me some immortality.
How much do I know about Swedish pop culture? Not much. It's outside my cultural territory. And only a simpleton would imagine the Swedes didn't have a pop culture at all. They have references, and in-jokes, and stock characters, and I don't have any part of it. But I wish I did.

Everyone is missing out on a lot of stuff around them. I don't think most people give it much thought, and most of those that do just take it as a fact of life and don't lament it. Maybe it's easier to get by that way.

What was the last book you read and when? Be honest now. I mean more than just skimming. And I definitely don't count any one that you were assigned or required to read. I'm asking you what was the last book you read purely by choice.

Objective Complete

Silly sammich. He's got the L and the T but no B.

When was the last time you felt satisfaction at having accomplished something? Something worthwhile. I highly recommend getting that feeling, man. This shit is thoroughly good. I'll tell ya what it was later, I promised someone else I'd tell 'er first second so you just sit tight and marinate yourself with curiosity.

Statute of Limitations

How long after a work comes out should people wait before speaking freely about it in the open? As a lover of stories I have great respect for narrative and a proper hatred of spoilers. As such, when dissecting the latest yarn I do my best to ward spoiler-averse people away.

But there has to be a certain point in time when there should no longer be an expectation of warning at all, when everyone who planned to watch/read it has had ample opportunity. When do you guys think that time should be?
For example, it's ridiculous to say "Spoilers Ahead": Jesus dies. Rosebud was his sled. Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. Etc.

I usually give a book series 2-3 months after completion. A TV series with several seasons gets longer, at least long enough for a person to marathon it at a decent pace.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

So I recently perused my local public library and noticed a book titled, "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist". I hadn't realized the movie was an adaptation.

Book was better. Natch.

Also, the movie was alright. But then I discovered and read the book. Now I see that the movie kinda sucks if it is to be considered an adaptation. Nick wasn't a pussy who grows a spine. Well, ok, I guess if you're going to cast Michael Cera in your movie, your character, whoever he may be, is going to turn out to be a pussy who grows a spine, but that's beside the point. Nick from the book is just a guy who needs to get over a broken heart. Nick from the movie is... Michael Cera.

Tris isn't a total cheating bitch. She turns out to be a decent friend to both Nick and Norah. Doesn't happen in the movie. She's just a cookie cutter jackass.

The movie lost so much of what made the book a good read. This is one of those instances when I wonder why they even bothered to purchase rights to make an adaptation rather than just making a movie. No one would have recognized where it "came" from anyway with how mutilated the story is anyway.

LOTR and The Matrix

I've always thought of these two film trilogies as a sort of twin pairing:
The Matrix trilogy - Masterpieces of science fiction cinema.
LOTR trilogy - Masterpieces of high fantasy cinema.

Since I'm going to delve into the Matrix films in depth later on I won't waste text talking about them here.

Like any true Tolkien fan, I read the books long before the Peter Jackson films started development. And as a fan, I must say that Jackson did an excellent job with the material. Too often you get film adaptations that are mediocre at best. "The book was better" is a common mantra when it comes to dealing with those types of films. In this case I was supremely pleased to see that they weren't just some cash grab endeavour. I mean, look at that! Three books => three movies. You remember when The Fellowship of the Ring [2001] came out and everyone noted that it was a whopping three hours long? But then you went and saw it and didn't even notice? You came out of the theater and the sky was black and you thought to yourself, "Whoa, its been three hours?" That was me.
I have no doubt that if it were to be released today the studio would have decided to cut it in half and double their ticket sales.
That's not a dig at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by the way. Sometimes its beneficial to have two movies rather than try to cram everything into one package.

I love The Matrix for making me think. The LOTR series doesn't have all those metaphysics and ontology issues. What it did was make me feel and make me love these characters. The movies did the same.

Sometimes I feel a sadness for Tolkien fans who died before they ever saw these movies. They missed out on something beautiful.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Hope everyone had a nice holiday, and didn't get super drunk like I did. (- -___)

In other news, I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson in two days. I then proceeded to watch the Swedish film. It has been too long since I've read a good book or watched a good movie. I remedied both. Yay!! New Year is off to a great start.

Oh wait, wrong book.

My Crooked Smile

It wasn't always this way. My smile, when I smiled at any rate, used to be perfectly normally balanced.

Non-crooked. A rare sighting.

You might have already gathered that I didn't often have occasion to smile in public for a long time and so I didn't give it much thought.

This changed in high school. The library had the odd copy of Dragons of Winter Night, the second book in the Dragonlance Chronicles series. The second book but they didn't have the first. Man, I hate when that happens. I have to pick up the story halfway in, you know? Anyway, one character- fans of the series should probably know where I'm going with this already- is described as having a crooked smile. Kitiara uth Matar, human, dark hair, evil. But none of that other stuff is important. I thought to myself, "Hmmm, a crooked smile huh?" And I tried it on in front of the mirror. "Nice. I like it." And that was that. Now it's my default smile, I don't smile any other way, really.

On the minus side, the crooked smile gives me a smirky look, which amplifies my air of arrogance a bit too far sometimes. And I smile a lot these days. Ah wellz, can't have it all.

On the plus side, it gives me an almost perfect troll face.

Idiosyncrasy #4: No Worries (Mate)

I say 'No worries' in lieu of "You're welcome" or "No problem". Unlike 'wanker' I know exactly where I picked this one up!

You ever read the children's book series Animorphs? One of my favorites while growing up; however, I don't think it ever received as much popularity as it deserves. There is still a good section of it at my local public library though.

Specifically it was book #44, The Unexpected. One of the characters ends up stranded in Australia and meets up with a local boy who said "No worries".

I thought this was an awesome turn of phrase and started using it. 'No worries' has so much more to offer than 'No problem' or 'You're welcome'. The latter two concern only the immediate situation and the action which prompted the response. 'No worries' is a sort of well-wishing for the rest of this other person's day.

<(º_________º)>

Fight Club

No, not the movie. I'm talking about the book, written by Chuck Palahniuk. It was good stuff and as always I'd recommend everyone read the book even if, no especially if, you've watched the movie.

This isn't a review of any kind, by the way.

Today I happened to be thinking about the first time I read the book. I got stuck on the first page for a good 15 minutes. Thinking about how the gun modification would work. Dunno what I mean? If you don't happen to have a copy of the book lying around, even I don't, you can actually read the first page on Amazon.

I'm no kind of gun expert but the mechanics of that mod seem a little off to me. Any one know if it would actually work?

HALP MEH!! I Can't Swim!! *glug glug*

So I was just watching The Green Hornet [2011] and I got to the scene where Seth Rogen and Jay Chou fight.

Seems like the inability to swim is an easy weakness to give to otherwise super bad-ass characters. They can do almost anything and everything requiring athletic ability with ease except swim. And that's when the "main" character can jump in and save them, showing that they really can do something this other person can't. Otherwise, you'd think to yourself, how come this one isn't the main character? I'd rather watch him in his day-to-day life, not this wimpy hack. Or, in this case, I still think that. I wanna see The Kato Show, not The Green Hornet. *tsk tsk*


Exhibit A: The Green Hornet [2011]
Kato is a genius with martial arts, mechanics and latte art but never in all his years did he learn how to swim on a planet that's 71% covered by water? Nawww....

Exhibit B: Pendragon Series by D.J. Machale

Two separate bad-ass characters, Loor and Kasha, both prove physically superior to the main protagonist, Bobby, in every respect except swimming. Bobby saved them each at least once with his special ability.

Exhibit C: Deltora Series by Emily Rodda

Jasmine, again a female who is much more physically capable than the male lead, needs saving whenever the adventurous gang falls into some body of water.

That last one was from a children's book series you might not have encountered. Nevertheless, this trope exists and I find it annoying to say the least. But then maybe that's just me. I say make 'em some kind of ~phobic if you must. At least that's more believable, but no less cheap, than simply never learning to swim. Unless that character came from a desert or something. Then it's believable.

P.S. The title of this post is a lie. I'm an awesome swimmer. (And most humble, too) (O_O)-b

Living a thousand times

You want to know why I rant so much about movies and such? It isn't because I have lots of anger. No, no, it's because have standards for things, entertainment included. The movies and books are especially important to me because these are the ones that mass amounts of people will read or watch. These works of fiction serve to weave people together. Everyone has different lives, different experiences, but when two people have read the same book, watched the same tv shows they have a common ground of vicarious experience. And there's one of my favorite words right there by the way.

Vicarious.

I have never actually fought demons on mountaintops nor have I caught the hand of a friend as they fell into an abyss but through the many fantastic stories I've consumed, I kinda have. These adventures have allowed me to 'see' and 'do' so many things. I've killed, loved, saved, and lived (and died) thousands of times through these stories. And that's why I'm like, "Hey now hey, I wouldn't do that, hey wait a- dammit. whydja go and INVESTIGATE alone you idiot!"

Artemis Entreri

This name probably doesn't sound familiar to most of you, but today I have a rant about a fictional character from one of my favorite book series, The Legend of Drizzt. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, you can skip this post since laying out the background information behind the ranting's specifics would take too much time.

When Artemis first debuted as a character I loved his story.
Artemis - A cold-hearted assassin who has devoted  sacrificed his entire life to become the best swordsman alive meets Drizzt on the battlefield.
Drizzt - A dark elf whose skill with the blade matches Entreri's perfectly.
However, there remains one crucial difference between their two lives. Drizzt has friends, companions, people who care about him and fight alongside him. This difference cuts Artemis deeper than any blade ever has. If Drizzt surpasses him, or even equals him, in swordsmanship then his entire life has been wasted. This fuels Artemis' obsession with defeating Drizzt in combat.

Furthermore, Entreri must deal with his limited human lifespan and the knowledge that Drizzt will live many times longer than he. Indeed, Entreri, about 40 years of age upon introduction, has already reached his physical peak. He knows that even if he proves a better fighter than the dark elf now, his edge will fade in but a few years time, whereas Drizzt will remain in top form for centuries to come.

All of these psychological issues that Entreri must face made him the compelling character he was. I completely sympathized (sadly I could not empathize) with his frustration.

In time, after Drizzt bests him on several occasions, Entreri comes to terms with his life and his mortality. At this point everything turned towards a great conclusion. He could have a few more stories with him as the protagonist, doin' his thang. But then the author, R.A. Salvatore, made an extremely poor plot decision in my opinion.

Artemis carries a jeweled dagger that allows him to drain the life-force out of people, yeah? Well, in one of his later books, ol' Arty drains the life-force out of an otherworldly being and some of that being's essence fuses with his own. Some of the effects: He regains the vitality of a man about half his age and his aging slows down considerably. How considerably? Well, he'll probably live about as long as Drizzt would now. Oh frabjous day! Callooh callay! Right? WRONG. This is cheap. You just robbed Artemis of one of the things that defined his identity. He had to deal with his (comparatively) imminent mortality and move on, but now? You should have just made him an elf or something to start with. All those pages of character development and you just threw it away Salvatore. But hey, now you can keep writing stories for him for years to come because he has plenty of life left in him now, eh? God dammit.

Adaptations

So, with the latest Harry Potter movie passing us by, what are your thoughts on film adaptations of books? Or, more generally, adaptations going from reading material to watching material, or vice versa. Almost always, the movie/series turns out to be disappointing compared to the source material. It's just the way it is. The reason companies invest money in an adaptation is because the original gathered a following, right? If only those same companies cared about disappointing that following just a little more. Too often the adaptation isn't just disappointing compared to the original, it downright sucks by itself. The problem stems from the fact that these people know that a certain amount of revenue will come in no matter what due to the fanbase. Whether or not they leave cursing the movie doesn't matter, the tickets have been paid for. On the other hand, sometimes we get so lucky as to have gems like the Lord of the Rings movies. Furthermore, in some cases the movie brings attention to some under-appreciated things. For example, I had never considered reading Watchmen until I saw the trailers for the movie (2009). And that ain't no shame. Without that movie I wouldn't have ended up reading the comic. And even then, that wasn't due to underexposure. In fact, a few weeks prior to the movie news, my room-mate at the time had suggested I check it out. I didn't and I forgot about it, even though he left his copy on the coffee table the whole time, a mere 2 feet from my usual spot in the commons area.