The Strange Thing About Jonathan Strange...

The picture on the left is of Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and is from the American edition of the book. The picture on the right is also of Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and is from the British edition. I don't know what, if anything, this says about America and Americans, or indeed the British, but I'm sure it says something.
The British edition of the book is a good inch thicker than its cousin, although the page count is the same, and the exact same text appears on all pages. We have dubbed this puzzling phenomena "fat pages". The British edition was also cheaper than the US edition, even taking shipping into account, and is blissfully devoid of the inane and all-too-common "A Novel" subtitle on the cover.

Oh, and it's quite a good read too...

For Some Reason, The Shit Won't Stick

George Bush cheated to get into office. After getting in, he almost started World War III twice, and allowed the worst terrorist attack in US history to occur so that he could use it as an excuse to start two illegal and immoral wars (with more on the way, true believers!). He crippled the economy, education, and healthcare, and through his Patriot Act, made a mockery of America as the "land of the free."

He cheated (again) in the presidential debates, and somehow still managed to lose to John Kerry. This doesn't exactly help to dispel the popular idea that he's just an idiotic puppet for Cheney and his corporate allies.

And yet, Bush is still ahead in the polls, with two weeks to go until election day. Not far ahead, admittedly, but he shouldn't be ahead at all. He should be in a jail cell. For the next forty or so years. Instead, he's on course to be president for another four years.

And Americans wonder why they have a reputation for stupidity. It seems to be because around 48% of them actually are...

We are moved to tears by the size of this thing.

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time playing the wonderful Katamari Damacy. It's great fun, horribly addictive, and should be played by everyone immediately.

Except Meg, who got motion sickness playing it.

Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads!

Look America, it's official, the rest of the world thinks you're a bit dim because you voted for a retarded monkey who can't even wipe his own arse without help. Do everyone a favour and vote for the one with a brain this time. If you let Curious George screw the rest of us over for another four years, then don't blame us if you consistently get put in the "cockroach room" in every hotel you visit on your next international holiday...

I Have The Power!

John Woo is to direct a live-action "He-Man" film!

Presumably, we should expect John Travolta to turn up as Skeletor...

For a look at what else to expect from John Woo's version of the franchise, click on the image below.

He-Man and all related characters are probably © and ® Mattel. This is a work of satire, so don't sue me!

More Tales Of Blood

I've got two new pages up at Brad The Vampire. Latest pages are here and here.
Previous pages in the storyline: 1 2 3 4
My storyline is now starting to intersect with the main plot, so you might not get much out of it by reading just my half. If you start with the first of the above pages and read through both plotlines, you should get a more rewarding story.
The newest pages are a mixed bag again. I really like some aspects, but hate others. Yet again, I'm my own harshest critic.

The Buried Pyramid

I'm not at all familiar with Jane Lindskold, I must confess, but she's apparently quite popular, as this book was a challenge to get from the local library, and moreover was impossible to renew. I was put on its trail by a very favourable description on Alan Robson's book reviews page, a site I thoroughly recommend for readers of scifi and other genre fiction.

And I can see why Robson enjoyed The Buried Pyramid. It's a very fun, exciting book. The first three quarters are a rip-roaring adventure in the Haggard or Burroughs (or, if you must, the Indiana Jones) style, a travelogue across exotic lands with dashes of adventure and intrigue along the way. Apart from some niggling editorial glitches like disappearing punctuation, this is a wonderful read. Well, there is another problem which soured my enjoyment of this part of the book, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The last quarter involves an audacious plot twist that changes the tone and the very concept of the book. This in itself, I don't have a problem with, and it is handled very well here, with the breakneck pace and sense of fun from earlier on left intact. It is the details that led to my frustration, with many questions left unanswered. Sadly these weren't questions of the "ooh, isn't this intriguing, I wonder what it means?" sort, but of the "why did this happen?", "what was the point of doing that?" and "how does that serve the story?" sort. The most frustrating thing about these problems is that a more careful proofreading could have caught them and led to them being sorted out.

This editorial blindness also perhaps accounts for the problem that distracts from the otherwise excellent first, pre-twist, part of the book. The heroes are occasionally sent messages by a mysterious ally who warns them about the perils that surround the party. Of course, as is the tradition of these things, the messages are written in code, and whenever the heroes receive one, we're treated to delicious passages of them sitting around with pencils and paper, trying to work out the key to unlocking the codes. The problem with this ongoing plot thread is that it's quite clear from the beginning who the mysterious benefactor is. It's certainly arguable that Lindskold is making no atempt to hide this person's identity, and that it's supposed to be obvious, but all evidence points to the contrary, especially the climax of the novel in which the revelation is treated as being one last, quite important, loose end that needs tying up. Adding to the frustration is the fact that editorial laxness leads to one character correctly working out the identity of the message writer both at the climax and earlier on, around the point at which the plot takes its interesting turn. I've read and re-read the bit in question, thinking perhaps I've missed or mininterpreted something, but it's quite clear that the hero discovers the identity of her ally 117 pages before she, er, discovers the identity of her ally...Surely that's something an editor should pick up?

All that said, The Buried Pyramid is a good fun read. I think it's perfect for the younger reader, who'd be sophisticated enough to follow the subtleties, but perhaps not so on-the-ball that they'd pick up on the klunky bits that led to me not enjoying it as much as I could have. Still, well worth a read, especially if your literary diet has been devoid of fun of late.

Religious Conflict

Think that monks are cuddly, benevolent fellows, who wouldn't hurt anyone? That's not true of these ascetics...

The Disappointing Side Of The Force

That title alone is going to earn nasty comments from some people, I'd imagine...
Well, I had no intention of buying the new Star Wars dvd set, but I did decide to rent my favourite of the films, (The?) Return Of The Jedi.
(Pause for more ridicule, as everyone knows that The Empire Strikes Back is the best one...)
Anyway, it was fun to see the film again. I don't think I've seen it since about 1999. But...

Much has been made of the changes and additions that Lucas and his cronies have made to these films for the dvd release. I have no real problem with changes generally, although I do think that Lucas should perhaps divert this creative energy to making the new Star Wars films watchable, rather than faffing about with films we already like.
My problem here was that the cleaning up seemed very half-hearted. I only rented the third (sixth?) film, so it may have been that the cgi boys at Lucasfilm got bored by the time they got to this one and just gave up. Who knows? The much-publicised enhancement of the lightsaber effects stumble because they're too enhanced, looking like the lightsabers are floating above the film, rather than being part of it. This is a common problem with Lucas' cgi effects, turning up in the new trilogy quite often too. A similarly big fuss was made over how Jabba's cgi model in Star Wars was tweaked and improved, and we didn't rent the first (fourth?) film, so I don't know how well it worked. The rest of the Special Edition additions seem to have been left as is, however, so there's a lot of 1997-era cgi in there, which hasn't aged well at all. The Sarlacc pit sequence looks especially bad when presented through dvd picture quality.
I was also informed that all the Stormtroopers in the original trilogy were going to have their voices dubbed over by the chap who played Jango Fett in Episode II: The Really Important (Honestly) Story Of Boba Fett, but if that's the case, they again didn't get as far as ROTJ. You could make an (unconvincing) argument that the oh-so-cool bike-riding troopers aren't clones like their rank-and-file cousins, but when the actual troopers turn up later, they sound exactly like they always did. Odd.
What's frustrating about this isn't that they were done, or not done, but that it seems entirely random as to which bits got touched up. Jabba gets improved. The Rancor pit sequence is tidied up considerably, and for the first time in twenty years the beast actually looks like it's in the same scene as Mark Hamill. The space battles look to have been improved a bit, too. But then there are other bits that look or sound really ropey, and you begin to wonder how they decided on what to improve, and whether anyone actually checked the product before it got released.
On that note, the sound quality is really badly screwed in places. Of course Lucasfilm deny a problem, because the recall would cost a bomb, but it's definitely there. Sound drops out or amplifies at apparently random moments. The opening titles are the worst offender in ROTJ, with the sound jumping about all over the place. What this means is that the dvds are a waste. Yes, the picture quality is much improved over the vhs versions, but the sound quality isn't even up to vhs standards. A terrible shame.
As I noted at the top, I had no intention of picking up the set anyway, but after seeing some of it, I'm even more convinced. Perhaps the (apparently) final set in 2007 wil fix these problems, and be a better purchase, but I'm not enough of a fan to pick this current set up.
Worth a rental, though, especially since there's a preview of the next (and hopefully final) film on there. It will most likely be a big pile of Bantha shit, but Vader's back for the first time ever (or is that introduced for the second time?), and that's got to be worth the ticket price...

Meeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww........

Proving that you can in fact find anything and everything on the internet (or perhaps just that there's a lot of strange people out there), behold The Infinite Cat Project, pictures of cats looking at pictures of cats looking at pictures of cats looking at pictures of cats looking at...