あけましておめでとう。
Gott nytt år!
Their love forgotten.
Treasure lost, another found—
one chest filled with pain.
It's a Nanny & Granny story, starting with a promising young witch who decides to join the Opera in Ankh-Morpork. It turns out that the Opera House is haunted by a Ghost, and the story turns rather Webberesque. Some good mystery, some good action and a great Granny/Death scene – Granny is becoming powerful, and I think that's the most important part of this book, if you're reading the Discworld series as a whole. An average Pratchett. I like the Granny character, but I'm not overly fond of Nanny, or at least not with how Pratchett is using her.
Currently reading Sterling's Zenith Angle, which turned out to be extremely geeky. For me, it's a bit over the top, and the computer-related bits of fact disturbs me, in that it feels like it's written for people who have no clue as to how networks and computers work. I'm a bit more than halfway through it, so we'll see if things pick up towards the end.
... and amuse me. Religious is perhaps too broad a term – people believing in gods and anti-scientific theories such as creationism is more exact. People who call themselves religious when they are in fact philosophers are merely confused, which doesn't really piss me off. I'll focus this little rant on Christians. Fucking morons.
Take that word, for example. Fuck. What the fuck is their problem with that? One thing I like to do to get a good laugh is browse Christian Music websites. It's a lot of fun. When a Christian person wants to judge whether a piece of music is suitable for his co-morons, the word fuck is important. One website, Plugged In, uses the terms pro-social and objectionable to classify music. Fuck, according to these guys, is not pro-social. My guess is that lyrics speaking of crusade or inquisition, two Christian historical highlights, would be positively pro-social. Not a devious swear-word like fuck, however, oh no. Must've been invented by Satan, as it is often (and was first) used as an expression for that horrendous activity that cannot be spoken of (except in the Song of Solomon, of course). Torturing and chopping off heads is a much more acceptable activity.
Back to Plugged In, because I can't help myself – it's too much fun. First off, I'll steal an example I saw somewhere when doing some Googling: Beck's Mellow Gold. It is a brilliant album, which most people with more than one brain cell can hear, but not Plugged In, who sum up the review with "this worthless disc spews refuse from start to finish". What can I say? Pay them a visit. You'll either end up rolling on the floor laughing or planning something highly illegal (I honestly can't make up my mind).
Another example, picked randomly, is Beastie Boys' Hello Nasty. Another great album, which gets the following summary: "the severity of Nasty's nastiness--obscenities, drugs, astrology and mysticism--make it one to avoid". Oh, yes, astrology and mysticism, can't have any of that. Better to stick to solid, well-researched stuff like creationism. Speaking of which, some people have claimed that there was a great gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, but that is not true. The truth, which is based on solid evidence such as things written in a book, is that it (the universe and stuff) was all created in six 24-hour days. Yes. Read all about it. More on this highly relevant debate here.
One more, and then I'll stop with the examples. Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, an incredible piece of art. "Hail to the Thief has a measured, sleepy sound that might narcotize teens, but sure won’t do anything to inspire them". Yes, it might narcotize them, you have been warned! Better to inspired them Bible-style: "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." (Proverbs 22:15)
If you've been trying out the links above, you might've noticed that I link to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible a few times. It's a great resource if you want to do some Bible research. Another good project is the Blasphemy Challenge. For me, however, it doesn't feel necessary to participate. My atheism is rather more pragmatic – I don't think there is anything that needs to be challenged. Some people believe what some men once wrote in a book, some people believe that they've been abducted by aliens, others believe that they see ghosts – they're all morons, and I only take offence when they try to push their fantasies on people.
There is, of course, much more Christian stuff that can be brought up for a good laugh, but right now I have more important things to do than discussing cults based on crap literature.
By average Discworld novel, I mean one that is entertaining. Thus, above average means very (if not extremely) entertaining. From what I can remember of Night Watch, it is one that sets the standard for what is a top-notch Discworld novel.
Oh, and I saw The Shawshank Redemption again yesterday. It's a bloody brilliant movie. If you haven't seen it already, drop what you're doing and see it immediately.
What books did you love as a child?
Submitted by hearts.
Winnie the Pooh and Neuromancer springs to mind. My mother read Winnie the Pooh to me when I was a child, and when I was maybe 15, I read Neuromancer for the first time (the first science fiction I read in English). Obiously, Neuromancer was more my type of literature, as I've re-read it a number of times. The photo on the right is the paperback version I bought back in the early 90s. It's possibly the first book I ever bought, and definitely the one that got me hooked on science fiction.
At ~2:45 am (GMT+1) this morning, Christer Fuglesang became the first Swede to leave Earth's atmosphere. I watched the live broadcast from Kennedy Space Center, and I must say that it was pretty cool. Being a non-nationalist individualist, my main feeling was that of happiness for Mr. Fuglesang. He has struggled to reach space for many years, and his name has been used by sports commentators as an expression for people who spend all their time on the bench. Being a science fiction geek, my secondary feeling was simple astonishment over the reality of space travel. For 50 years, we've been doing something that was unthinkable (except for science fiction authors) only 100 years ago. Pretty cool.
One thing that bugs me, though, is all the people who feel that they had to comment everything that happened during the launch. On Swedish television, the programs they had put together to cover the event consisted of a bunch of amateur reporters saying pointless things and asking stupid question to invited experts. Being Swedish experts, these people didn't impress either. They might be good at what they do, but they sure don't sound like it. TV4 did better than SVT2, by simply broadcasting the official NASA coverage (I think). There, a calm American focused on what was happening and threw in some interesting facts along the way ("the shuttle has now used over 100 billion gallons of liquid concrete and is travelling at a speed of over 50 miles per hour", stuff like that).
Another thing that bugged be was a short discussion about life in outer space on the first channel. An expert, who was pretty sure that there is life elsewhere in the universe (which is nothing new – the alternative, that life exists only on Earth, is a far more bizarre idea), seemed to consider only carbon-based life. Life "as we know it" – I hope she's aware that we don't know much, and that it is narrow-minded to assume that the only kind of life possible is that which has evolved on Earth (resulting in the deadly virus Homo sapien). But that's a topic that could (and does) fill volumes, so I'll shut up now.
Finished Icehenge last night. It's an old Robinson novel from 1984. The story unfolds through three different journals, the first written by a miner and eyewitness to one of the central events, the second by an archaeologist who researches the events told of in the first journal, the third by a historian who disputes the theories published by the archaeologist. When people in live for more than 500 years, with no increase in memory capacity, and the government is a semi-totalitarian regime, the past, on both the individual and universal levels, can easily be distorted. Icehenge illustrates this by creating a constant sense of reality (and KSR is good at realism), which forces you to re-evaluate what seemed real in the last chapter. A good book, and a must-read for any Kim Stanley Robinson fan.
Next up is Pratchett's Interesting Times. Rincewind and Cohen the Barbarian seem to be two of the main characters.
- Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge
- Bruce Sterling's The Zenith Angle
- Pratchett's Interesting Times, Maskerade and Feet of Clay
Picked Icehenge as my next read. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of six authors where I've decided to read every novel published. The others are (in no specific order) William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett and Bruce Sterling. The status of this project is as follows (percentages based on gut feeling):
- Kim Stanley Robinson: 80%
- William Gibson: 100%
- Neal Stephenson: 95%
- Philip K. Dick: 65%
- Terry Pratchett: 50% of the Discworld novels
- Bruce Sterling: 50%
I can't seem to settle for a blog. So here I am. Vox looks promising. My other blogs are bergius.org (not much action), 2 Comments (dead), Nu på svenska (in Swedish, semi-regular updates) and ? (not yet official, but will be tres cool). I'm thinking of dumping 2 Comments. bergius.org needs a lot of work before it becomes what I planned to create. Nu på svenska is concept that suits me, and which I probably won't stop updating (for those of you who can't read Swedish, it's all about things that annoy me, of which there are a lot). The as of yet unofficial new project is a music blog, where I and a good friend publish tracks as we create them – no rules, no plan, just things we happen to create.
Enter Vox. It seems like a brilliant idea. A place to publish anything, combining tools like Flickr, YouTube and a bunch of Vox stuff to make it a kind of hybrid blog thing. I need to explore further in order to figure out what to do with it. Perhaps merge the bergius.org concept with a general blog concept. Perhaps a combination of new and old music, old ASCII, new and old photographs, and some interesting thoughts on stuff that interest me would be something that someone would like to consume? Perhaps my random nature could work in this context, whereas blogs usually need specialization to attract a crowd.
Anyway, time for some Canis Canem Edit.
