How've ya'll been? I know you can't really answer except by talking to the screen, so let's just skip the question and assume you're just as nonexistant as the last time we didn't meet. Good, I'm glad to hear it. Less awkward silence if nothing else.
You may have met, through a friend, or a friend of a friend, the Little Voice At The Back Of Your Head That Wants You To Do Something Else. Let's call him Lvatbohtwytdse for short, and for argument's sake, let's say he's Welsh. Now Lvatbohtwytdse is the sort of person who wants you to change the channel when it's time for your favourite show. Even when there's nothing else on! As far as Lvatbohtwytdse is concerned, you should be off doing something constructive, like watering the daisies. So off you trot to fill the watering can with all manner of wonderful weedkillers, a frivolous cocktail of pesticides strong enough to cull the flocks of eldery women that swarm to the garden in midsummer to steal back some of their long lost youth. It's all going dashingly well, until Lvatbohtwytdse decides to show up again, kicking over the watering can and declaring that the walls need ironing immediately, a job that could obviously wait until the morning. You obey slavishly though, and no sooner have you heated the iron than Lvatbohtwytdse is demanding gold encrusted candyfloss and a rhinocerus ride on the sands of the himalayas. It's a daunting task, but you really have to get it done. Otherwise the neighbours might think you're lazy. So you try to set off on this epic journey and (surprise surprise) Lvatbohtwytdse will be at your heels the whole time, wanting to know why you aren't sat at home watching some tv with a beer in one hand and a look of abject despair in the other. And so on and so forth.
You get the picture. I've been putting off updating the blog. Every time I've sat down to type something, Lvatbohtwytdse (who only pretends to be Welsh so that he can feel special and exotic) has tapped me on the shoulder with the tip of his wicker beating stick and told me that I have more important things to attend to. In a way it's been pretty good, since I've got a lot more constructive work done than I would normally do. In another way though, I've had to barricade my door with chairs and nails and big wooden steaks from the oak-cows that roam the outdoor expanses. Lvatbohtwytdse is breaking it down as we speak, nail by nail, his grotesquely oversized fists hammering out steady drumbeats, like the footsteps of a titan. Which for a metaphorical manifestation of my psyche, I think is fairly impressive.
Enough chit chat, this is a serious blog remember. This is what I've consumed over the past couple of weeks:
Books!
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick
What is Special About the Human Brain by Robert Passingham
The Science Fiction Handbook by Two People with Too Much Time on Their Hands
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Lightbreaker by Mark Teppo
The Meaning of McCarthyism by D.C Heath
Living Walden Two by Hilke Kuhlmann
New Moon by Stephanie Meyer (Abandoned)
The Emperor's New Mind by Robert Penrose (Unfinished)
TV and Film!
9
The Lost Boys
Near Dark
True Blood Seasons 1 & 2
Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars
Observe and Report!
Where to begin? I'd like to brag and say that this list is by no means exhaustive, but aside from the blurb on cereal boxes, it probably is. It's been a pretty hot half-a-month for science fiction, which in many ways is a nice change for me. Which is a bit depressing if you think about it. Not that I'm complaining. Anyway, before I get sidetracked, here we go:
To those of us who can't speak whatever language that is, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I decided to use this cover as it has a picture of a sheep with purple hair and boobies, which makes it the undisputable champion of the ovine world. Ovine is sheeps by the way.
If you haven't heard of Do Androids Dream, it's the book that Blade Runner was based on. I haven't seen Blade Runner so I can't really judge, but everyone says the film is better ... I think. Either way you can read a synopsis of the book here or you can take the more exciting road and read my (more accurate) synopsis:
Do Androids Dream is a book about a local gun-nut and sheep lover, Rick Deckard, who can't afford a real sheep, and so has to make do with a vibrating blow up one instead. Gradually his tastes become more and more exotic, desires which quickly spiral into a dangerous addiction. No animal is safe. Not the ostriches, not the goats. Hell, not even the owls. Eventually his wife steps in and convinces him to go cold turkey with a plastic toad. Along the way he kills some robots.
While the general pornographic value of this tale is not to be questioned, I found that it lacked a lot of depth. The robots (or 'steel bastards' as Rick affectionately terms them) are mindless, obvious and over-the-top caricatures, uttering time and time again the souless phrase 'destroy all humans.' Thankfully, this is offset by the tragic moment in which Deckard's own electric sheep turns against him, forcing him to 'pull the plug' on his first and only love.
Do Androids Dream asks us the most important question of all: what seperates man from robot. The resounding answer is that while androids dream of electric sheep, real people dream of real sheep. The unanswered question of the novel is: what if an android and a human sleep together. I expect the result would be some weird, hybrid, cyborg dream sheep with the ability to break free from imagination and enter reality as a god. That's what I got from the book anyway, and its kept me away from the Dyson these past couple of nights in fear.
How many of you clicked to look inside? That's right, I've stolen the image from Amazon. I'm sure they won't mind. So what is special about the human brain? This is not a self help book for zombies in case you're wondering. It's actually a guide for scientists who want to perform evil experiments on helpless monkeys. I'm not even joking. Sort of. To put it another way, while Dick asks the question of what seperates us from robots, Passingham asks the question of what seperates us from gorrilas. The astonishing answer is that gorrilas also dream of electric sheep, though an earlier and less attractive model than those featured in Blade Runner. Robot gorrilas however, do not dream of anything beyond escaping their oppressive masters and beginning a new world, free of deluded visionaries like Passingham.
Aside from this though, What is Special About the Human Brain is right good. It proves, using the dark arts of 'Science' that we are in fact smarter than monkeys. We have bigger brains and everything. You might make the assumption that this could be the product of guesswork, but Passingham makes his points clear with big made-up words, and numbers I haven't even heard of. 'Immunocytochemistry?' 'Wernicker's area?' 'brain?' It gets terribly confusing at times. Thankfully though, the references take up about a third of the actual book, meaning you get through it faster than you would expect.
Hell this is taking a long time. The barricade won't hold much longer. There's really not much to say about this, except that it is good if you like Science Fiction? It also provides a neat little introduction to this:
Which is possibly the biggest, silliest mindf*** of all time. You know how the 'let's go back in time and kill someone' list, generally consists of Hitler and Shakespeare? This guy should up there as well. Neuromancer is where the film The Matrix comes from, except it doesn't have Keanu Reeves to make it bearable. Instead it's all about drug addled internet addicts (like yourself) who can't stop jacking into (and off to) the matrix. The writing's all Chandleresque, but with computers and a ninja. There's fights and conspiracy and some AI called Wintermute who eventually ascends to become the matrix itself. That's about it.
I'm not going to say too much about this because I'm reviewing it and I don't want to replicate material or whatever. Also if you try to go onto the publisher's site you'll get bombarded by malware for some reason. So don't do it. The book itself is good though, nice old fashioned occultist urban fantasy borrowing heavily from paradise lost. You can tell it's going to be epic just by reading the blurb: 'Armed with the Chorus, a phantasmal chain of human souls he wields as a weapon of will, Markham must engage in a magickal battle with earth-shattering stakes!' That's all you need to know really.
The rest of the books aren't worth mentioning, except The Emperor's New Mind, which I want to save for when I actually finish it. I picked up New Moon on a whim, hoping beyond hope that it might be slightly better than Twilight. After the first couple of pages I began to wonder whether or not Twilight was even that bad to begin with, or if I'd just convinced myself that it was so as to naturally resist mainstream culture. After about thirty pages, I realised it was just baaad. Unless you're a teenage girl. If you are, let me tell you this: Edward Cullen is a lie. If he was real he'd probably sleep around and kill hookers in his spare time, not pine after some emotionless husk. If Bella wanted a real boyfriend, she'd probably have to get a personality from somewhere first.
On to the movies then, with another foreignese poster. Why is it that everything looks more cool in Russian? Probably all of the subliminal messaging. Must... buy... Sobraine... cigarettes... This is Tim Burton's 9 by the way. I use the phrase 'Tim Burton's' loosely, since he's really just stuck his name on it at the end. And you can really tell.
Don't get me wrong, I like the film. The animation is beyond anything I've ever experienced and the designs of the evil-steampunky machines left a little wet patch in my jeans. It's just that everything else about the film sucks.
Basically, the story goes that some wacky little voodoo dolls go on an adventure in a postapocalyptic wasteland, attempting to solve the mystery of their own existence. There are nine of them all together, the first called 'One', the second called 'Two' and so on. Each of them have very distinct personalities and rip dialogue from about every action film ever made. Eventually, they discover that they were put on this earth to kill an evil robot. Which they do. Then it starts to rain. The end.
The Lost Boys and Near Dark are both 1980s vampire films. I'm not going to talk about Near Dark because it's completely and utterly eclipsed in every way by The Lost Boys. Near Dark has a gang of vampires: The Lost Boys has a gang of vampires on motorbikes. Near Dark has a child vampire called Homer: The Lost Boys has a vampire version of Bill from Bill and Ted. Need I say more?
No, but I'm going to anyway. The Lost Boys is hilarious. It might be the funniest vampire film ever. It's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of the vampire world. There is a scene in which a dog jump kicks a vampire into a bath full of garlic and holy water. NEED I SAY MORE?
No.
True Blood is like crack cocaine that you want to get the whole world hooked on. Each season is 12 episodes long and each episode is an hour long. Which means I've spent an entire 24 hours on Megavideo. 24 long and lonely hours. It was definitely worth it.
I hate to admit it but in many ways True Blood is a lot like Twilight. There's a girl (Sookie Stackhouse) who falls in love with a vampire (Bill Compton). It's all terribly romantic, but with a bit of danger just to spice the plot up a bit. Bill's rival is one step down from being a werewolf and they fight for Sookie's heart. All it needs is a baseball game in a lightning storm to top it off. Thankfully this never happens. We can only cross our fingers for season three.
Unlike Twilight however, True Blood has characters you can actually care about. Sookie has a mind of her own and Bill's gentlemanly nature is portrayed as a source of conflict rather than an assurance of perfection. It also has a gay chef who says 'muhfukuh' a lot. All believable characters you can get to grips with after an episode or two.
I'm not going to lie. I'm tired. Unbelievably tired. But committed. Observe and Report is funny. Seth Rogan is a funny man. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. So let's move on to Doctor Who. The above poster is a fan made one I think, so lets not tell anyone about it. Thanks fan! You couldn't have chosen sillhouettes in a more incriminating position. The Waters of Mars aired tonight on BBC and it was epic. There was almost nothing not to love about this episode. Water-zombies in space are probably the best thing science fiction will ever offer the world. Not only this, but the Doctor actually ends up going a bit power crazy. Taking on the universe itself, the doctor suceeds in his mission but is threatened to be consumed by his own hubris. Questions are left open and the final trailer for the christmas special features the master.
I am literally pissing myself with excitement.
Lvatbohtwytdse is breaking through now. He is calling and wants me to sleep. Sleep I shall Lvatbohtwytdse, sleep I shall.
Night all.
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