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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 7:58 pm Post subject: |
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I want to read it again before coming to a conclusion about it. Though I'll say that I thoroughly enjoyed Bernard's character, I'm glad that he didn't fall into the Winston Smith bathos model of dystopian protagonists... The more I think about Orwell the more I dislike him... I didn't much like the way Huxley handled the Savage. I understand that he was supposed to be a foil for the Overseer, but, still, come on.
Huxley wants me to believe that some pitiful nerd, who was shunned by everybody for most of his life would resist the advances of a beautiful young girl, who literally throws herself at him. What are you?! Fucking stupid?! I was on the bus when I read those chapters, periodically I looked up from the book and saw a beautiful Asian girl sitting next to me. As was expected, I began to pity myself for my inability to ever strike up a conversation with an unfamiliar female, and, well, this lead to a train of thought that should be painfully obvious to those who know. If you don't, well, there's no use in me telling you about it.
Here I am, jerking off to the sexier NES game covers (recalling my youth, as it were), trying to squeeze as much fucking pathos out of the books that I read in the hopes that it just might make me forget about everything else for a few hours, and you're telling me that the Savage would rather have his Shakespeare than a beautiful girl. Your words are as empty as your soul!
One has to never have felt the dull, searing pain of sexual frustration for any extended period of time to romanticize "noble isolation." I understood the Savage in the chapters that dealt with his life in the reservation. He read his Shakespeare because he was excluded from everything else by the cruel pack. In fact, I understood his insane devotion to the Bard, it's clinging on to the one thing they couldn't steal from him. Yet, when you tell me that he doesn't like it when he's put into a situation where everything denied to him may be acquired, I scream heresy and bourgeoise lies!
Shoot them like mad dogs!
I need to roll myself a cigarette. _________________
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GSL .
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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seryogin wrote: | I want to read it again before coming to a conclusion about it. Though I'll say that I thoroughly enjoyed Bernard's character, I'm glad that he didn't fall into the Winston Smith bathos model of dystopian protagonists... The more I think about Orwell the more I dislike him... |
I really enjoyed 1984, but yeah, Winston pissed me off like no other.
I recommend, for the comics-savvy crowd, picking up a copy of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, the inspiration for the upcoming movie of the same name by those guys who did that really cool William Gibson/Ghost In The Shell fanfic movie a few years back.
It's like 1984 would have been if Winston had himself some testicles. |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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Greatsaintlouis wrote: | seryogin wrote: | I want to read it again before coming to a conclusion about it. Though I'll say that I thoroughly enjoyed Bernard's character, I'm glad that he didn't fall into the Winston Smith bathos model of dystopian protagonists... The more I think about Orwell the more I dislike him... |
I really enjoyed 1984, but yeah, Winston pissed me off like no other.
I recommend, for the comics-savvy crowd, picking up a copy of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, the inspiration for the upcoming movie of the same name by those guys who did that really cool William Gibson/Ghost In The Shell fanfic movie a few years back.
It's like 1984 would have been if Winston had himself some testicles. |
I really liked 1984 as well.
And 1984 is science fiction. Don't try to steal our thunder. _________________
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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i was going to simply reply "1984 is not science fiction" but here's the real rub:
how many of us, with our face in the rat cage, would have been some sort of hero? generally speaking, you get shot in the head long before that.
no one is unbreakable, no matter how stubborn. _________________
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | i was going to simply reply "1984 is not science fiction" but here's the real rub:
how many of us, with our face in the rat cage, would have been some sort of hero? generally speaking, you get shot in the head long before that.
no one is unbreakable, no matter how stubborn. |
That's what torture was designed for. Why the hell do you think millions of men signed confession slips during the great terror?
Everyone breaks under torture, or dies. Either way it sucks. _________________
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dhex Breeder
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:14 pm Post subject: |
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exactamundo!!! _________________
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | exactamundo!!! |
I thought of Samuel L. Jackson when I read that. _________________
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Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2006 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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Has anyone got insight into William T. Vollman? I just picked up Argall cause it looked interesting (and cause I recently saw The New World and wanted to compare interpretations of that whole situation), and I read about half of Butterfly Girls a while ago before losing it. Any decent criticism on the man out there? |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 11:37 am Post subject: |
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I'm reading the Great White Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson right now. It's ridiculously funny.
It begins with the words:
"To Richard Milhouse Nixon
Who never let me down." And doesn't let up from there. _________________
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:21 pm Post subject: |
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man, i hit the strand today. it was hot. i fucking love that place.
http://www.strandbooks.com/home/
it's much more awesome than the website makes it look. though it's more like a high school library than the ancient and dusty old university feel. the basement is ace though. it even had a puddle today. a bit dangerous, but endearing.
gift cards make good gifts.
i bought:
the blank slate and how the mind works by steven pinker
the civilization of europe in the renaissance by john hale
cocaine nights and a user's guide to the millenium by jg ballard
the book of illusions by paul aster
suburban safari by hannah holmes
if i could buy one place on earth to make into a work/living type situation, i'd buy my old town's library and build a studio on the top floor. it's originally from the early 1800s and probably haunted.
"natural law: or don't put a rubber on your willy" is a great title for a book attacking natural law. it may also be the only book on natural law worth reading. _________________
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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Both of those Ballard books are massively bad.
Ballard ain't much of a critic, so his reviews read like a toxic mix of pretentiousness with that bland British newspaperman style, sort of like Orwell without the bite. And he never did cocaine, so that novel is a cheap, posturing piece of shit. Ballard should've just stopped writing after Empire of the Sun. _________________
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Dracko .
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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No-one disses Ballard on my watch.
And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:25 pm Post subject: |
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Dracko wrote: | No-one disses Ballard on my watch.
And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists. |
Have at you! Just try to defend anything that limey bastard wrote after Empire of the Sun. I'll take pleasure in watching you squirm. Ho-ho. _________________
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 4:30 pm Post subject: |
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most of my devoutly religious friends have read and loved the Da Vinci code. I think everyone's a sucker for conspiracy fiction (that is a wonderful phrase).
My group gave its presentation against Dan Brown last week; I only spoke for about one and a half about the allegations of plagiarism. It's a large class, and my group had 13 people, so we never really went in-depth. After the pro-and-con groups had their turns, my professor spent most of the rest of the class ripping the book apart piece by piece. She noted that a year of research for a book of such supposed historical knowledge is far, far too little. |
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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seryogin wrote: | Dracko wrote: | No-one disses Ballard on my watch.
And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists. |
Have at you! Just try to defend anything that limey bastard wrote after Empire of the Sun. I'll take pleasure in watching you squirm. Ho-ho. |
Now, now, I didn't say all his material agreed with me, but it is my opinion that he needn't be overly criticised for his few mistakes.
P.S. The Kindness of Woman, Millenium People and possibly Running Wild. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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Dracko wrote: | seryogin wrote: | Dracko wrote: | No-one disses Ballard on my watch.
And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists. |
Have at you! Just try to defend anything that limey bastard wrote after Empire of the Sun. I'll take pleasure in watching you squirm. Ho-ho. |
Now, now, I didn't say all his material agreed with me, but it is my opinion that he needn't be overly criticised for his few mistakes.
P.S. The Kindness of Woman, Millenium People and possibly Running Wild. |
The Kindness of Women was indeed good, but only because half of was just a rewrite of Empire of the Sun.
Millenium People was an interesting concept, but one that Ballard didn't have the talent or skill to write properly in his old age. He was too careful and his ultimate conclusions were unconvincing. I'm not saying I hate the man or think that his books aren't worth the paper that they're printed on, but...
Okay, let me try it again. I like the early Ballard, before he started posturing too much to weasel his way into the mainstream. Philip K. Dick tried to do that in the fifties, failed and went back to writing science fiction and never looked back. And he was a better man for it. Ballard, a denizen of those vile British Isles, which had much more tolerance for SF, understood that he could become famous as both a science fiction writer AND a "cool" mainstream "voive," if he didn't write as clearly and made it all "edgy." In Russia we call that "wanting to eat a fish and suck a dick at the same time."
And, well, he was succesful at that. I don't really like what he did in the seventies, but it wasn't horrendous.
His best work, though, is Empire of the Sun, which is a startlingly beautiful paen to childhood and great appreciation of the beauty of the Dai Nippon Guntai. I was really amazed that Ballard could sustain such a pitiless, enthusiatic, and marvelous outlook. The ending was kind of sudden and lame, but that didn't surprise me that much. _________________
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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I happen to come from the British Isles.
They are indeed vile. I've lost hope in seeing brilliant TV series and musicians coming out of them again. At least we have the comic writers...
Oh right: I agree, by the way. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:15 am Post subject: |
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Dracko wrote: | And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists. |
Now, now, be fair: though Clancy is heavy-handed and detail-oriented to the point of being boring in the most anal of manners, at least he gets his facts reasonably straight.
Brown could only hope to aspire to such heights.
Although, to be fair, I did enjoy Rainbow Six. I can't quite explain why, but it could be because it didn't FEEL like a Clancy novel. It was, you know, fun. |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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Greatsaintlouis wrote: | Dracko wrote: | And anything Dan Brown is Tom Clancy for teenage atheists. |
Now, now, be fair: though Clancy is heavy-handed and detail-oriented to the point of being boring in the most anal of manners, at least he gets his facts reasonably straight.
Brown could only hope to aspire to such heights.
Although, to be fair, I did enjoy Rainbow Six. I can't quite explain why, but it could be because it didn't FEEL like a Clancy novel. It was, you know, fun. |
Oh, no, no. Clancy gets everything wrong that can't be stolen out of Jane's Monthly.
He has a stunning lack of shame and a complete ignorance of Russian military culture. Culture in general, actually. I guess that's what you need these days to make 200 million dollars. _________________
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Dracko .
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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I'm fairly certain my point still remains. It's all well and good to know exactly what mark boots specific counter-terrorist cells use, but the man has, as stated above, little grasp of any culture past, possibly, his own, not to mention the politics and tactical accuracy. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:55 am Post subject: |
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I just started Rainbow Six out of pure boredom. The book itself is alright, it;'s nothing that would blow anyone's mind. The details are there I supose, it has stereotypical characters and has a problem with hiding some of the author's problems with culture, as stated before in the previous two posts. That's really true about Clancy, all of his cultural ideas and facts are messed up beyond belief.
One that sticks out is when he described the Team's Sniper, Dieter Weber and compared him to looking like a face on a WW2 Gestapo poster. That just didn't sit well with me. All the detail in his books lies in equipment and nothing else.
Aside from crappy reading, I just finished Tom Mes's "Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike". The book was a Valentine's Day gift, and was probably one of the best gifts ever. The book deals with all of Miike's films from his V-Cinema days, to his current, mediocre budget movies in theatres. The great thing is that it deals with the director's constant themes of rootlessness in all of his film, which opens up a lot of explanations for some of his more "prolific" films. It's an excellent book if you dig that kind of stuff.
I'm looking for a copy of Crime and Punishment now, as I stated I would read that book for my own sake. _________________
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SuperWes Updated the banners, but not his title
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:59 am Post subject: |
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This is my favorite thing ever:
How awesome is it that Tom Clancy is in huge letters at the top and the actual author's name is in tiny print at the bottom?
-Wes _________________
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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SuperWes wrote: | This is my favorite thing ever:
How awesome is it that Tom Clancy is in huge letters at the top and the actual author's name is in tiny print at the bottom?
-Wes |
I just don't know what author could stand to have that done. He must have been really desperate. Perhaps due to the popularity of the game he thought sales of the book could catapult him to a clone status of Clancy? Hmmmm..... _________________
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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My dad reads Tom Clancy shit. He even read one of the Splinter Cell books. After he finished it he recommended to me because we swap books sometimes. I read the first chapter even.
It was, well, it was a book based on a videogame. I mean, really, how far inside the mind of Sam Fisher can you get before you realize there's not a whole lot there. At least it had no shortage of cool superspy moments and stealth killing. |
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Persona-sama Weltbeherrschen Mangaka
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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I recently read a book called THE TURK by someone, I have no idea. It chronicled a automaton (well not techincally) that was able to competently play chess against a human player. It was made in the mid-1800's and passed through dozens of owners before being lost somewhere in America.
Automatons are an interesting subject!
Did you know a Frenchman made a small machine duck that could waddle, quack, eat food, digest, and then poop it out? It was all powered by weights too! Fascinating stuff. _________________
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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Mr. Mechanical wrote: | My dad reads Tom Clancy shit. He even read one of the Splinter Cell books. After he finished it he recommended to me because we swap books sometimes. I read the first chapter even.
It was, well, it was a book based on a videogame. I mean, really, how far inside the mind of Sam Fisher can you get before you realize there's not a whole lot there. At least it had no shortage of cool superspy moments and stealth killing. |
My father is the same way. He just finished "The Bear and the Dragon". I browsed over it and it looked so boring, I thought my eyes would bleed from just looking at it. _________________
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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Persona-sama wrote: | I recently read a book called THE TURK by someone, I have no idea. It chronicled a automaton (well not techincally) that was able to competently play chess against a human player. It was made in the mid-1800's and passed through dozens of owners before being lost somewhere in America.
Automatons are an interesting subject!
Did you know a Frenchman made a small machine duck that could waddle, quack, eat food, digest, and then poop it out? It was all powered by weights too! Fascinating stuff. |
Cool. That really explains a thing or two about this site |
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Lackey .
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Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada
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sawtooth .
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Joined: 02 Nov 2005 Posts: 419
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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TheRumblefish wrote: | Mr. Mechanical wrote: | My dad reads Tom Clancy shit. He even read one of the Splinter Cell books. After he finished it he recommended to me because we swap books sometimes. I read the first chapter even.
It was, well, it was a book based on a videogame. I mean, really, how far inside the mind of Sam Fisher can you get before you realize there's not a whole lot there. At least it had no shortage of cool superspy moments and stealth killing. |
My father is the same way. He just finished "The Bear and the Dragon". I browsed over it and it looked so boring, I thought my eyes would bleed from just looking at it. |
The last clancy book I read was the bear and the dragon. it was relentlessly boring. I don't even recall what it was about, other than Russia and China.
Aside from that, Clear and Present Danger was a fun read for me in 7th grade. |
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Persona-sama Weltbeherrschen Mangaka
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 709 Location: acrylic polymer dismutation
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, uh, that Boilerplate guy seems to be entirely bullshit. All the photos look Photoshopped and there was no way an automaton was capable of making conscious decisions by itself. The mystery of the Turk was that it was actually a giant decoy for a man to hide in a box and move gadgets that would make a lifelike mannequin to move and play chess. The mechanics behind automatons are amazing but there's no way it's capable of doing lists of complicated movements without some sort of control disc or human interaction. :o _________________
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Lackey .
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Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada
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Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 10:50 pm Post subject: |
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Quote: | All the photos look Photoshopped and there was no way an automaton was capable of making conscious decisions by itself. |
That's sort of the idea. Boilerplate helped out the Rough Riders! _________________ | Little bird fighting against a bat sect game | |
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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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found myself in upstate new york this weekend. (don't ask)
found ourselves a very nice used bookstore, decent prices, not too much conneticut markup, etc.
found myself a 2nd edition of the soft machine by uncle bill. for ten bucks. very nice.
also found myself a complete translated copy of the taoist classics from the 1970s, to further compare and contrast with other translated copies i have lying about. that and chuang tze is teh (mythical) man. _________________
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:53 am Post subject: |
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I now own more books than I will probably have time to read all year. Some of these include, but are not limited to:
Idiot
The Sailor who fell from favor with the sea
Ubik
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
and more manga than I can shake a stick at (includeing 4 volumes of Berserk to get myself caught up!) _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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dark steve .
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Ubik's pretty good. It's my favorite "normal" PKD book. |
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:16 am Post subject: |
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dark steve wrote: | Ubik's pretty good. It's my favorite "normal" PKD book. |
I bought the book on this exact same recomendation from someone else! _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 886 Location: Occupied Stalingrad
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:53 am Post subject: |
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Shapermc wrote: | I now own more books than I will probably have time to read all year. Some of these include, but are not limited to:
Idiot
The Sailor who fell from favor with the sea
Ubik
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
and more manga than I can shake a stick at (includeing 4 volumes of Berserk to get myself caught up!) |
The Idiot (just Idiot is fine as well, because Russian doesn't have a "the") is one of my favorite books. It becomes better with each rereading. It has the most vapid archetype in all of Western literature as its main character, the Christ character. That Dostoevskii makes this character not just palatable, but unimaginably compelling to an atheist like myself is a testament to his skill as a writer.
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea is probably my favorite book of all, though Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy is much more profound as a literary construct and final testament. It's worth noting that he delivered the final pages of its manuscript on the day of his aborted coup and seppuku.
Both Dostoevskii and Mishima are actually quite similiar, though different in one crucial point. Dostoevskii thought that in beauty one saw the glory of God made tangible, that only beauty could save the world and give one a sense of overpowering joy which could make life bearable. Mishima agreed that beauty made life worth living, though he only saw decay and mortality in it. To him it was also devoid of morality. Though discussions about Mishima tend to be dense, so I shall refrain from continuing.
Those two Dick books are very good as well. I first read Ubik three years ago, not too long after first playing Final Fantasy VIII. I recall imagining many of the scenes taking place in a city not unlike Galbadia, for some reason. I recently wrote a long letter to Chris "greatsaintlouis" St. Louis about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which I guess I will quote here to save myself the trouble of fawning over it again.
"I find it odd that it has taken me so long to realize this. If Gibson’s novels are Japanese (or at least what an American imagines Japan to be like), then Dick’s novels are very Russian. Not in the stereotypical “Russian” sense of brooding, drunken declamations and falling snow but the real Russia, the Russia that I’ve lived in. Dick must have a had a seismograph lodged in his brain; I can’t fathom how he could sense those subtle tectonic shifts of history and emerge with a modern day portrait of urban Russia, a place which he couldn’t possibly have known for it didn’t actually exist in his time. I’ve always wondered why Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? felt so familiar and nostalgic. The ruined, abandoned apartment buildings, the black skies, and general hopeless worldview are all things that I’ve lived with. If you look at the sudden exodus of people from the former Soviet Union as being similar to the off-world colonies of Dick’s novel and the ruins of California as the Russian provinces you emerge with something very interesting. It’s hard to convey exactly what living in Russia’s like, but it’s like being in Blade Runner without the futuristic stuff. It’s seeing two punk rockers shoot up smack in front of a stained glass mural commemorating the Revolution at Kievskaya’s Station, while listening to the incomprehensible techno-babble going through the loudspeakers having to do with a train being delayed. It’s getting into an Akira-style revolutionary street fight with riot police under gargantuan neon advertisements for Coca Cola and Nokia, which stand side by side with statues of Lenin, hammer-and-sickles, and slogans like “Communism is the youth of the world and it is to be built by the young.” It’s being nine years old and seeing the president declare martial law and order tanks to shell the parliament building, while radical monarchist fascists and leftist/Stalinists hunker down inside, firing sporadically at the tanks below. Years before Koji Igarashi took helm of the Castlevania series, Moscow was the place that could truly deserve the description “harmony of dissonance.” My guess is that Dick would find much to depress over in the former Soviet Union (the man had a true compassion for the people of the world, unlike the evil subhumans that maintain the gloating American press corps, which loves the fact that “god” has punished the evil Russians for resisting American consumerism and imperial hegemony for so long), yet he would also find it a place that was both comfortable and familiar. I guess I really miss Moscow, both as a city and as an idea, New York seems to be about hipster shopping and working a shitty office job, I don’t sense as much frenzied energy here as I did in Russia. The only time I’ve even truly enjoyed living in this city is when my Russian friends came over: one was a real cyberpunk fashion and music devotee acid-weed freak with anime hair (upon first seeing him I thought belonged in a Gibson novel, with his yellow Jamaica t-shirt, ripped up denim jacket and globular, ridiculous shades), the other was cold-eyed youth in beige velvet jacket hiding a red hammer-and-sickle shirt in workman’s jeans held up by a red star belt; his entire demeanor screamed: “badass.” Both were radical street fighters back in the day (one still is and the other’s in jail for anti-government activities) and allowed me to bring some of the Moscow magic back to the bland American reality. And since I have already described the “armor and relics” of my two other party members, I might as well describe the appearance of the protagonist. I was wearing a white and red track jacket from the Tokyo Olympiad and red and white Onitsuka sneakers. In these outfits we proceeded to carve out one epic, gin-soaked, blood-tinged weekend in Chinatown. It was an interesting experience and I felt really down when those two had to leave. It was a pity that I could not follow them, though serving seven years in a Russian prison to satisfy a sentimental whim is not a very meaningful way to end my life." _________________
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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:59 am Post subject: |
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i read pkd and see a guy who fired one too many neurons, mostly to his benefit work-wise, if most certainly not life-wise. his writing is often obsessed with farce of the police state of the future, both real and imagined, perhaps because he'd spent so much time ripping apart his own mind and trying to police it himself.
i hope they don't fuck up a scanner darkly. _________________
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dark steve .
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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It's gone horrendously over-budget and they've been swapping animators out pretty heavily.
All signs point to beautiful disaster. |
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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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the trailer was good, though, you know? i thought they captured some of the flavor of that book.
frankly, i woulda just hired david cronenberg to do it, since he seems to be the only guy on earth who can film unfilmable books correctly.
unrelated: the old man and the sea is still fucking awesome each time i read it. _________________
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 886 Location: Occupied Stalingrad
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject: |
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The Old Man and the Sea is a horrible book. I mean, it's pathetic, like Hammy Hem needed to make himself feel better about growing old. It reminds me of the plucky proverbs that my mother likes to throw around everytime I lose another job. In the sense that that it's equally cringe-inducing. You aren't old enough to like that book, dhex! _________________
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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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you're fucking crazy. it's about patience. i'll explain later. _________________
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 886 Location: Occupied Stalingrad
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:21 pm Post subject: |
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We'll see... _________________
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:40 pm Post subject: |
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Now I see why Chris never emails me. You stole my boyfriend with your poetry! _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | frankly, i woulda just hired david cronenberg to do it, since he seems to be the only guy on earth who can film unfilmable books correctly. |
Dead Ringers is the only fiml that I can't watch anymore. It unnerves me far too much. In fact, I refuse to watch it because how disturbed it makes me feel. I am the only person I know to feel this way about the movie though. _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 8:08 pm Post subject: |
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so cocaine nights by jg ballard is the story of nights and cocaine, but not really, you see, it's a sleazy 80s noir set in the 90s, or like crash with retirees instead of cars. _________________
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GSL .
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Joined: 16 Nov 2005 Posts: 725 Location: Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:39 am Post subject: |
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Seryogin! I have not forgotten nor abandoned you, I've just been really really busy with the sort of real-life events that sound absolutely banal when described, but are utter hell to actually suffer through, i.e. trying to balance the week before finals and a part-time job with shaking one's groove thing in a vaguely Japanese manner, as well as moving to a new and less trashy apartment. I shall elaborate more on the above in a large e-mail, Coming Soon! By the by, have you recieved the books yet? I'm growing a little worried--this would be an adequate delay in delivery if I were shipping them to Japan. I fear the Postal Service is behind this.
And Shaper, don't fret: I find your prose to be as breathlessly exhilirating as Seryogin's ideas vis-a-vis Russian cyberpunk. I've got more than enough love to go around! |
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seryogin JRPG Kommissar
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 886 Location: Occupied Stalingrad
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Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:46 am Post subject: |
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Shit, dude, your book have yet to arrive, I suspect treachery on the part of my doorman or the post office. _________________
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Dracko .
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Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 11:32 am Post subject: |
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I happened upon a copy of Nick Cave's only novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel a week ago. I'm a fairly big Nick Cave fan, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing his upcoming movie The Proposition, so I figured I should treat myself. It's an uncompromising book, harsh and Earthy in its details. Can be quite lyrical, as is to be expected. I'm still early into it, and I'm still left wondering if Cave's typical tongue-in-cheek quality is to be found yet.
For my courses, I'm reading The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry and W.G. Sebald's On the Natural History of Destruction. The former is a thorough collection of various WWI poems from authors of all kinds of nationalities. What interests me particularly is the very experimental style most of them adopt, even if some of their later works appears more conventional. The latter collects Sebald's Zürich lectures on the subject of post-war Germany and his examination of the seemingly avoidant attitude Germans have adopted towards their bombing experience.
Issue 4 of Warren Ellis' Fell, his experiment in cheapo comics, was released after a substantial delay. It's a great read and one of my favourite stories in the series so far, as we get to see how Richard Fell copes with losing a case in a city gone to Hell.
I'm going to see V for Vendetta tomorrow with some friends, because we all know how terrible an adaptation it's going to be, not to mention how overtly anti-Bush the Wachowski siblings will have made it, it will make Fahrenheit 9/11 look subtle, and we want the laugh. On that note, you're better off familiarising yourself with the classic comic first if you intend to see it. This goes for any Alan Moore adaptations, really, From Hell being the most lackinbg one in my opinion. Not that the movie was that bad, but because there was just so much material and research involved in the comic that the movie barely glances over. _________________ "This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!" |
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GSL .
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Joined: 16 Nov 2005 Posts: 725 Location: Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong
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Posted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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Damn, I never knew From Hell was based on a Moore comic! V For Vendetta--the comic, at least--comes highly recommended. I've said before that it's like 1984 if Winston had more balls and wore a mask, and I'll keep saying it until everyone reads it and is awed by the awesomeness. |
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