Archive - 2009 - Article

So I gave in and saw Avatar today with the gal and my oldest brother (not the crazy one) & co. In Real-D, not IMAX 3D. Some observations:
The plot was paper thin and the story was as crippled as the protagonist. Who? What? Why? Where? all thrown out the window.
Very much the standard "Chosen One" BS we've been getting for far too long. Another stunner is the use of the "Samurai" described in Michael Moorcocks 'Starship Stormtroopers' essay: he rejects their training and education, he doesn't need it-he has superior instinct.
Real shockers from James Cameron.

My new home cinema is now complete, and tonight officially opened with a showing of David Lynch's 1984 masterpiece, "Dune".

Here are some photos of the cinema.

Yeowie helped with setting everything up, here he is directing where the speaker cable should be placed.

In the last three book buying trips since mid November-ish I've picked up:
The Winter Queen - Boris Akunin
Fantasy Masterworks #32 The Broken Sword - Poul Anderson
Trouble is my Business - Raymond Chandler
Penguin Classics The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Gather, Darkness* - Fritz Leiber
The Green Millennium*
The Wanderer*
Ship to the Stars*
Night of the Wolf*
A Spectre is Haunting Texas*
Our Lady of Darkness*
Changewar*
Interfaces, an anthology of Speculative Fiction* edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd

Friday night Venkmans vicious ribbing was interrupted by a suggestion he introduce me to the joys he partakes in during the long nights he spends clubbing:
is this man Venkmans doppelganger? Is he the only one capable of ending this madness?
No further word came from Venkman, we thought his feelings had been hurt. We were wrong.
Using arcane rituals and practices learned in the Dark Lands from worshipers of the Old Ones, the fiend that was once Venkman has hijacked my IRC name!

Here is a very manly steak. Sprinkle with ground black pepper, salt and olive oil. (or lard if you are strum). Never trim the fat off, this is a very evil practice.

I recall reading somewhere that the anti-aging industry, feeding the chimeric hope that women may grasp onto a few more years of youth, is larger than the budgets of all the world's defence forces combined. Whether this be true or not I don't know, but newsagents aren't stocked with hundreds of magazines advertising to women the benefits of the military. So women everywhere should take note of the release of the first new photo of Jaycee Dugard, a woman who was abducted at age 11, and held in captivity for 18 years.

Here is a critic's list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die": http://www.librarything.com/bookaward/1001+Books+You+Must+Read+Before+You+Die or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Books_You_Must_Read_Before_You_Die

And of those 1001, I have read 144 of them, as follows:

The Winter Queen - Boris Akunin
Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks #46 Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories - Leigh Brackett
Penguin Classics The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Gollancz Science Fiction Masterworks #16 The Dispossessed - Ursula K. leGuin
Conjure Wife - Fritz Leiber
Elric the Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock

I had wanted to also get Bloods A Rover by James Ellroy, but not one bookstore in Melbourne city centre had it!

With the advent of high-speed trains, rail travel in Europe has become so popular that some intercity flight routes are being cancelled.

Why would you fly from London to Paris, for example, and tackle Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle airport check ins plus security when you can catch a high-speed train that lands you right in the centre of town?

Now about 90 per cent of people travel by Eurostar between these two cities.

And there's no longer any flights on the Paris-Brussels route. Many now also go by train between London and Brussels.

To arms men!