I just finished this book. I’d have to say it’s probably one of the five finest pieces of fiction I’ve ever read in my life and would easily bump one of the 15 from one of my latest posts. I hope to talk about it more at some point in the near future, but it’s going to take a while to settle, it’s as moving and profound a work of art as I’ve experienced in a while. So dense I’m not sure where I’d start…

List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you — Don’t take too long to think about it. The first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes.
From: (and in no particular order except what comes to mind)

1. Israel Regardie – The Middle Pillar (NF, occult)
2. Daevid Allen – Gong Dreaming 1 (music bio)
3. Edward Whittemore – Quin’s Shanghai Circus (fiction)
4. Aleister Crowley – (hard to pick a specific title, his work in general)
5. Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum (fiction)
6. Dan Simmons – The Rise of Endymion (science fiction)
7. The Book of Revelations (religious vision)
8. Deke Leonard – Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics (music bio)
9. Robert Anton Wilson – Cosmic Trigger 1 and several others (NF, bio etc)
10. H. P. Lovecraft – The Dunwich Horror and Others (horror collection)
11. Jack Vance – The Demon Princes (science fiction series)
12. The Real Frank Zappa Book (autobio)
13. Dion Fortune – The Mystical Qabalah (NF occult)
14. George R. R. Martin – A Song of Ice and Fire (fantasy series)
15. Tim Powers – Last Call (fantasy)

OK my 15m is up

So I haven’t done one of these what am I reading/playing posts for a little while now, so this kind of dumps the backlog of several months. I’ve actually been catching up with music a bit more of late, which I’ll post to Tom’s Unencumbered Music Reviews blog if and when I get a moment (URL in last post) and am still busy with the incense site which seems to continue to grow. I’m still astonished by the generosity of the people who love incense, lately I’ve gotten more than I know what to do with. Reviews after cut.

Been a couple months since I was playing Far Cry Predator but amazingly it’s one game that I keep remembering in vivid detail. It was kind of an Xbox to Xbox 360 revamp and thus early on in the 360’s console history, so it shouldn’t have particularly amazing graphics, but there’s something about the tropical setting that I keep going back to. For one thing, it was frustrating as hell to play at times, somewhat unresponsive controls and a few very harrowing sections that almost had me quit. One in particular about halfway through the game is in the middle of some deep cave where you have to traverse wooden planks across gigantic chasms all while bad guys shoot at you, which took me forever to finally complete. But for some reason these parts aren’t as memorable as, say, taking a speed boat through river canyons of almost astonishing beauty, with big maps that let you take a number of different vehicles in all directions. I think even though it’s a South Pacific milieu, it reminds me a lot of the keys in Florida with rundown shacks, palm trees and heat. So despite that it didn’t play as well as most FPSs, I’m definitely hanging onto it just for the sheer beauty of the experience which take you through tropical islands, both day and night, deep mines and caves and, with Evolution, into much eerier territory. The more I think of it, the more impressed I am. In fact for me, so much of playing the Xbox are these graphic vistas which are gorgeous on the new Samsung.

To books. The problem with fantasies these days, that they’re often bloated and turgid, isn’t usually a problem that affects Steven Brust, who completely avoids this issue with his 200-300 pages a book Vlad Taltos series and makes fun of it hilariously with the adjunct series The Paths of the Dead is part of, but with this book he’s apparently run into the issue itself, due to the fact that what was supposedly one big book has been split into a trilogy. And in this case there’s no question that Dead is the first third of a book, and a meandering “let’s set everything up” sort of third that hops from group to group of a huge cast of characters, some familiar, some new, some the children of the family. It’s very tough going for the first 100 pages, in fact I barely penetrated it and once it passed this point, while interesting, it was more nostalgic and in love with itself. The problem with such a thing is that as a third of a book, it’s hard to judge it on its own merits except to guess that it’s terribly overlong, especially for a Brust work. Vlad Taltos himself has already taken a trip to the world’s Paths of the Dead, so in many ways the similar journey down in this book seems somewhat repetitive, all leaving me with the feeling that it’s the least of Brust’s work to date and that I won’t be in a rush to complete the series in the same way I am to read every new Taltos novel.

I decided to read Ursula Le Guin’s books in publishing order, which means I’ve had to read what were three very early and preliminary Ekumen-related novels that probably aren’t her best work and City of Illusions is the third of these three. The only thing I’d read previous to these was the first 100 pages or so of Left Hand of Darkness, which I hope to get back to relatively soon, I had originally read it during a long period where I had stopped reading so my not finishing it doesn’t reflect on its quality but my mood at the time. City is set in the far future on an Earth post civilization through the eyes of an offworlder who has lost his memory and is trying to regain it via a long trek through what is obviously a future North America. The title sums it up quite nicely, with almost everything about the voyage an illusion of some sort as the man searches to regain his heritage. It’s unsurprisingly very Campbell-ish in its dealing with the mind and psychism and the like, so fairly typical of much SF from the era and it hints at her future Lathe of Heaven (at least so much as I can tell via one of the movies of that novel). It starts out fairly tentative and somewhat tedious in the early parts of the novels but starts to draw your interest as he reaches his initial destination on Earth and has to make a difficult and perhaps personality shattering decision to reach his offworld home with larger repercussions. Anyway the next one up if my list is right is the first Earthsea novel, which I may have read as a youth, but with my stack of books it may be a while.

Back to games, I guess I more or less finally completed the Doom cycle as it exists to date, which includes a good 18 master levels on the Doom 2 Engine and a sequel/extension to Doom 3. Not really a lot to say here except that all were quite enjoyable and challenging enough, although as I went through them all I still find the whole cycle, as fun as it is, terribly short on story. ID do indeed love their Marines and it’s a set up that starts to get old (and got older as I went through both Quakes.

Bentley Little’s The Revelation won the Bram Stoker First Novel award, an amazing feat for a novel as pedestrian and Stephen King minor as this one is. Of course the good thing about most books like this is they’re quick reads. Anyway a small Arizonian town is the periodic showdown for a black and white/good and evil themed apocalypse, drawn in Christian colors for the lion’s share of the book, apparently to tug on those strings for their deeper effects, and a small cast of characters is drawn into the struggle which is basically a devil-run army of miscarriages and aborted babies. It was kind of difficult to get over the disgust of this, not just in the sense that it was horrific, but quite tacky as well. Very little of it was suspenseful or believable and I’m just happy it was relatively short. I’ll chalk most of it up first novel syndrome, but at the same time I won’t be in a hurry to read more from this guy. Maybe the horror field was a little thin that year.

Took me barely 24 hours to read Daevid Allen’s early history of the London underground, basically his years in the Soft Machine and leading up to the formation of Gong. I’d read some of this soon after it’s first edition came out on the way to my first Gong show in the late 90s and it, like the Trilogy era of Gong, had a HUGE impact on my psyche, in fact if one of Allen’s goals was to have a spiritual impact via music on a new generation, you can easily count me as one of the impactees in that it was these sown seeds that influenced me in the direction of the Western Esoteric Tradition via story perhaps too personal to recount on a blog (imagine that!) In fact I see the Gong trilogy story as something of an initiation metaphor, the journey of the everyman into a world of psychedelia and beyond, that is someone who went quite a ways past drug experiences into the malleable worlds of consciousness and the truths behind them but who inevitably found it all too much. Everything in Teapot and Angels Egg and You is a metaphor for concepts found in the works of Eliphas Levi, Manly Hall, Madame Blavatsky, William Westcott, Aleister Crowley and the like and once I even wrote an essay spelling this all out until I realized that, like Jimmy Page once mentioned in an interview, it would brand you as quite the eccentric, not to mention it’s really in an individual’s best interest to realize these things in their own time and on their own individual level. Not to mention there’s a large part of me who sees all this through the eyes of a diehard skeptic who, while allowing for these systems’ huge impacts on consciousness, isn’t as convinced that these impacts lead logically to the meanings they’re imbued with. But I digress, this book is just as much about Allen’s experiences meeting so many of the names behind the turbulent London (and Parisian) 60s, such as Jimi Hendrix (who you can tell he adored), Yoko Ono, Giorgio Gomelsky etc. It all leaves you waiting anxiously for Gong Dreaming 2 which has been pending for as long as I can remember, pushed off repeatedly despite Planet Gong having it up for preorder. Overall perhaps the biggest revelation is the connections between numerous esoteric societies and the music scene. Allen both tried and failed to unite all these fractious units under one umbrella, something I tried to do in a much lesser form with Gnosis and progressive rock, but that’s always the story, the eternal battle between unity and dispersion. As Allen says and sums up in his most inimitable manner, “It’s all too serious to get serious about.” Indeed.

Quake 2 comes with Quake 4 and 4 follows 2 (I guess 3 was more of a strategy game so I skipped it, for now) so I played through both. Both are fun FPSs although like Doom they both have the most basic of stories and by this point I think I’d had enough of being a Marine. They’re also a bit more monotone in terms of visual scenery, a lot of the same types of buildings and architecture, surely impressive enough in their own rights, but certainly not as arresting as the Halos and Far Cry. By this point I’d also felt my control over the usual FPS joystick set ups were getting more sure, meaning I’ve had less and less trouble with each successive game and very little about either Quake held me up (both Quakes have some of the easiest bosses to beat in any game). But I think this is particularly necessary when the load times are as long as they are, especially in #4. Besides, this whole milieu has been done to death both with Doctor Who’s Cybermen and Star Trek’s Borg, a great milieu for sure, but all too familiar.

Anyway now I’m reading Brooke Hansen’s The Chess Garden and must say I’m happy to be reading something as wonderfully written and challenging and deep as this book is, but more on that in the next installment of this sort.

Jack Vance fans like myself are eagerly awaiting the Songs from the Dying Earth collection at Subterranean Press, a collection edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois and featuring dozens of some of the finest spec fic writers out there paying tribute to one of the classic “science fantasy” milieus (somewhere between Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique stories and Gene Wolfe’s Urth quintet) . They’ve just put on line Lucius Shepard’s “Sylgarmo’s Proclamation” as a teaser and it’s a pitch perfect tribute in every way, with a knowledge of the Vance lexicon that goes as deep as the subtle humor and worldbuilding, yet kind of a different take on a tale of Cugel that has some nice Shepard coloring at work as well. I got incredible deja-vu reading this, like I was rereading a Vance story I’d forgotten. Highly recommended, if the rest of the stories are only half this perfect this should be a real treasure chest. Tributes are rarely about one insanely talented writer paying tribute to another insanely talented writer, but this one is.

Looks like I will be part-time contributing to a new music blog created by my long-time friend and Gnosis co-creator Tom Hayes at:

http://unencumberedmusicreviews.blogspot.com/

Tom and I are both at the “no hassle” stage of music reviewing, basically wanting to write only about things we have passion to write about, which generally means this won’t be a blog that covers a lot of new music or is up to date or comprehensive. It’ll also be intermittent, which works for our up and down schedules, and it means I probably won’t post a lot, but I’m looking forward to getting the bug again. This also means that Outer Music Diary, while still available as archives (thanks to Mike Borella!) will basically be ending its run formally.

And a heavy shout out for CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, which is possibly the best and funniest sitcom since Seinfeld. I’m not a huge fan of this genre but BBT’s look into geek culture with a cast who have insanely good chemistry and a comic genius in the works with Jim Parsons’ Sheldon is well worth looking into for anyone who has had experience with these types of personalities and quirks (progressive rock fans, TV fans, science fiction etc etc).

The Xbox special edition of Doom 3 comes with both the original games, Doom and Doom 2. I’m pretty sure, like almost everyone with a computer a decade or so ago, that I played at least the shareware levels of the first Doom way back when it was first released, but for some reason my only living memory is of the red, yellow and blue keys otherwise I’d probably have no idea. While both Doom and Doom 2 (which are basically the same game with small differences) are graphically primitive nowadays, I still think they’re quite a bit of fun, even if they probably weren’t envisioned as being played on a 46″ HD screen. I think between the two of them there are least 50 to 60 different levels, most of which I managed to get through, although one is always surprised what secrets are missed along the way. The only sticking point is that the Xbox port of Doom 2 fails miserably on the final level, freezing your system every time you try to reload a save. At least in this case I didn’t have any doubt I’d have beaten the big bad at this point with a bit of effort. But overall I’m amazed at how fun these are still, there’s something still quite visceral about levels as puzzles and demon carnage.

Doom III looks surprisingly amazing still, as an Xbox game it’s still late enough to be wide screen and even if it’s not HD it’s quite great in that area nonetheless. The first two Dooms had little in the way of a story, substituting a bit of slow moving text in between groups of levels as a way of guiding you through the story. Doom III reboots the original story with a lot more detail even if the idea of a Marine fighting the devilspawn on Mars is still basically the idea. I did think the addition of an archaelogical site was a nice touch and basically found the whole thing creepy even if I’d normally be a bit annoyed at having to play an entire game practically in the dark, switching between flashlight and gun. But it was all suitably creepy and the boss fights were all fairly challenging without being impossible, mostly thanks to the instant save system. It was fun enough I ordered the Resurrection of Evil expansion. Even though I’m playing these games years late, I think they still hold up really well in the 360 world. And it’s a nice change of pace from Lost Odyssey, a Japanese Role Playing Game, which while quite epic and movie like, has nearly lost me with its incredibly tedious battle system (I’ve gotten through 3 of 4 discs and haven’t had the interest to continue on as of yet).

So anyway for the hell of it I checked out the Doom movie from the library to ensure I paid nothing, which is a good thing as it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life, not the bad you can laugh at, the bad that’s so boring you can barely care. I guess fighting devilspawn on Mars was probably too controversial for a Hollywood studio, so they turned it into a ridiculous zombie movie. Funny seeing Karl Urban (the new Star Trek’s McCoy) in it though. But overall the lamest Aliens rip off ever made and that’s saying something.

Digging my new Blu-Ray though. Rented 3 movies as a starter once I got it: Zach and Miri Make a Porno (typical of the dirty and sweet Seth Rogen-helmed comedies that are fairly common these days, mildly funny and surprisingly charming), Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (quite good this one, I’m generally very fond of most movies that run on musical conceits no matter what the genre and for some reason it hit deja-vu in a number of spots), and The Day the Earth Stood Still (no good on any front, as a remake, movie or parody, but with Keanu in tow I didn’t expect much better). I actually had better luck with the pay channels and kid movies, Starz running Wall-E and HBO starting up Kung-Fu Panda. Apparently my nephews have better taste in movies than many critics. Or perhaps I’m just much more into optimism than I used to be.

Perhaps the best stuff I saw recently is the last couple weeks of HBO’s In Treatment. Seems like no matter what the other channels are dishing up, HBO always has something of extraordinary quality to see and this pscyhological drama grew really sublime at the end, questioning the worth of therapy in general, touching on Jungian levels with talk about true selves and perfectly reflecting just how human the man in the chair is and in many ways how little different he is from his patients. Cheers to the writers, Gabriel Byrne’s tour de force performances throughout the series, and perhaps specifically to Alison Pill who’s role as a young 20-something with cancer was truly remarkable. Definitely one I hope returns for a third run. Especially as I’m so worn out with vampires that I don’t think I can stand a second run of True Blood. Quite frankly I’m glad it’s summer.

Got some books finished too, maybe more for another post if I get the urge, especially as none of them were memorable.

Link 1 Link 2

Dinklage is pretty much the perfect pick for this role, has recenty been touted as the fan favorite for Tyrion based on his roles in the cancelled series Threshold and others. He’s truly excellent. So far this series has the Midas touch.

This is good news for those of us completely and utterly fed up wuth one of the filthiest companies on the planet. I can’t even begin to calculate the sheer frequency of sales calls that are (and hopefully were) generated by Comcast. Two of their subcompanies used to call nearly once a day until I started asking them to stop calling and at least one of them I believe continued to call even AFTER the 30 day window where they’re supposed to shut down. It never ceases to amaze me how crooked and intrusive this company is, so this a nice little victory.

The latest editorial by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal is one of the better examples of just how inconsistent, misleading and insidious his writing is. I don’t want to reprint the article here, but I do want to address what I feel are the reasons why this article demonstrates how vague language can be used to completely mislead and reframe reality to the sheepherding of a movement.

Rove claims the Tea Party movement is significant, which we can take as his thesis sentence in the first paragraph, so I won’t yet wonder why we have to take his word for it, especially when it’s difficult to estimate the attendance of these events. The first misleading statement:

“Now Americans are reacting to runaway government spending that they were not told about before last year’s election, and which Americans are growing to resent.”

First of all, this statement confuses a general policy statement given during the campaign with the specifics and execution of that policy statement in office. It assumes there is a level at which there is some sort of agreement on what “runaway” spending is, while ignoring the fact that Rove was part of an administration that turned a surplus into a massive deficit. To be in full support of the massive government spending of the last 8 years while decrying it during the first few months is partisanship and no more. Were “Americans” told about the ”runaway government spending” that would occur under the Bush administration? Where was the resentment over this? All I see is a concerted effort to whitewash and ignore these figures and to sidestep the fact that the supposed party against government spending supported the president with the highest amount of spending in decades.

And let’s talk about “Americans.” This is part of the constant effort of the right to make it look like the country is in lockstep with the Fox News and Rush Limbaugh-led fringe, despite the fact that the Obama administration approval numbers in just about every poll taken since the election have been in the 60 percentile range. By using this method of defining Americans in this way, you could just as well say Americans are criminals, or Americans are Christians, or Americans are polygamists or Americans are Scientologists. It’s a misleading use of the language because its purpose is to make it seem that the majority of Americans feel the way the author does, which is contradicted, again, by the poll numbers.

“Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill.”

What this sentence does is define beforehand that those who feel the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill are elitists. It’s a method of demeaning and devaluing those who hold a negative opinion of these tea parties without at all taking into account any arguments for why the tea party may or may not be any of these things. It says, if you have a contrary opinion to this viewpoint you’re an elitist. It predefines a value without debating why it may be true. That is, if you’re not Christian, you’re not truly American, if you agree that the tax on the wealthy should be 39% rather than 36% than you’re quite clearly socialist, if you disagree with any of these things you’re not a patriot, the list goes on. These things might fly with those on the right but anyone with any sense is going to ask you to connect the dots. Exactly why is someone elitist for finding the tea parties any of those qualities? Rove doesn’t say and his readers and followers don’t question this. After all Fox News has been repeating these points over and over to the point where they become tenets of doctrine rather than hypotheses that must be proven with facts.

“The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration is angering voters.”

Sloppy. The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration are angering some voters. While Rove’s statement in itself isn’t necessarily incorrect, it presupposes that Rove is speaking for some sort of majority when polls continue to indicate that he’s really speaking of a minority, the same minority whose candidate lost in November.

“So far, Mr. Obama has decided to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 and avoid forcing Democrats to take a tough vote. But the tea parties reveal how hard it will be for the president to hide the Democrats’ tax-and-spend tendencies from voters.”

This presupposes the idea that Democrats are actually trying to hide something. How exactly did the Democrats hide spending increases (notice that the word investment never pops up when the right talks spending) in a stimulus bill whose language is actually public? I remember right after the bill passed going through a list of what money was going to what program. Rove writes, with backdoor language, that Democrats are aiming for backdoor taxing and spending, all of which is in clear view. It’s the continual rewriting of the economic debate to continually declare as a tenet of doctrine that government spending (read: investment) can never have a positive effect on the US economy or capitalism.

Let’s just be honest here. Some economists think spending works, some think it doesn’t. That’s the facts. Aspirin doesn’t make everyone’s headaches go away, pest control doesn’t necessarily always kill every cockroach, and the sky during the day isn’t always cerulean, so how can one say that spending is always bad? We can’t. But again, Rove’s method is to overgeneralize, to make it seem to his audience that there’s a majority viewpoint in what he says, when little could be farther from the truth. Instead a conspiracy must be at foot, as the secret agenda of quickly turning the country into some sort of parody of communism, fascism, Naziism or whatever the latest fearmongering tactic of the Limbaughs and Becks of the day is now being revealed to you. It’s all meant to evoke the Antichrist, the flag of the USSR, and all those things the right fear. Anything anti-doctrine is the harbinger of doom.

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25% while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.”

Obama must have superpowers. In 3 months he’s already ensured that he’ll be continuing to damage the economy for two years after he could possibly even be in office. To me this is similar to evangelical reasoning which says that when good things happen to you it’s the blessing of God, but when bad things happen to you it’s because you’re a sinner. When the economy is bad it’s definitely the fault of a democract, but when it’s good, it’s because of something Reagan originally did or the delayed effects of a Bush policy. After all we don’t need to wait and see if Obama’s policies work because we’ve already predefined them as socialist or fascist which means even if they do work it’s preordained to be “unAmerican.” And I don’t even have to go into the plans of Obama to actually cut the deficit by a certain point.

“It hasn’t gotten a ton of attention, but people are fed up with the complexity of their tax code and ready to do something about it.”

Didn’t Obama actually mention the same thing, like YESTERDAY? Could Rove even give him the credit of saying such a thing?

“The 2009 Tax Foundation survey…”

Read: surveys that support a viewpoint I hold are fair game, but those, like the ones that show great support for the Obama administration, can just be duly ignored. That’s the issue with polls though, you can pretty much pick and choose not only the polls you want to use but the data within the polls. It can be true for instance that in a poll for what taxes people want are going to show a low number at the same time that a poll showing the approval of a president who wants to raise taxes and spend money can be high. One does not predispose the other. 

“But to tap into that constituency Republicans will have to link lower taxes to money in voters’ pockets, and economic growth and jobs. They must explain why the GOP approach will lead to greater prosperity. Such arguments are not self-executing. They require leaders to make them, time and again, as Reagan once did.”

More importantly than linking an idea with approach is linking an approach with reality. A 3% tax cut for the wealthy did not trickle down and lead to  greater prosperity for the middle and lower classes over the last eight years. Surely there were other factors involved but that’s just the problem with stating economic ideas as doctrine. A trickle down theory can not operate outside of a box, it has to operate in tandem with a multitude of factors that all influence each other. This, it would seem, would lead to the idea that sometimes different approaches work and sometimes they don’t. The problem is that some of these different approaches are now being demonized by the right as “the other.” That is, if your approach adjusts a tax bracket, we hop all the way along the spectrum to the extreme side and start calling people names like “socialist” and “fascist.” If moving the tax bracket three percent during the Clinton years did not lead to the New Socialist Republic of the United States then, why would it do so now? Why isn’t the 36% tax bracked for the wealthy ALREADY socialist?

My memory isn’t that short. Clinton left with a surplus. Bush with a deficit. That only got there from spending. For a man who was literally part of this spending to be trying to hawk this bullshit about spending being a bad thing is truly hypocrisy of the highest order. That he’s still demeaning the English language and bending the facts on WSJ, Fox News and elsewhere while Bush has virtually been exiled by those who want to quickly forget who got us into this mess is a blight on the thinking human being who would add this man to the list of true believers, idealists and conmen of the past who think that might means right and that a statement of doctrine is somehow magically a fact.

“But political movements are often a reaction against aggressive overreach by those in power. “

These tea parties are somehow significant, but the election of Obama on the heels of an administration who practically defined “aggressive overreach by those in power?” is what, a footnote?

I guess it’s roughly time for some updates. Of late, probably like everyone else, I’ve turned to thinking about financial stability. I bought my folks’ old Toyota Camry 94 about 2 1/2 years ago and it’s turned out to be a bottomless pit in terms of repairs. In the last few months I’ve had the car in the local shop about 5 times and this doesn’t include appointments for new tires and an oil change. The auto started cutting out on me especially at standstills so I turned it in only for $600 of tune up related repairs, only for the problems really to never go away. Apparently the problem is a big carbon build up, which means after having it in a bunch of times the next step, after my gas tank hits empty is to hit the local Chevron and get Techroline-laden gasoline to try and remove the carbon. I’m told this isn’t an issue that will leave me stranded but it’s really offputting when the car is at a stop. I’ve also still got a few hundred dollars of minor repairs needed doing, so it’s been a serious drag. But it’s increased my resolved to get fully debt free by late next year and ready for a new car as soon after as needed.

About 2 1/2 weeks ago, I was 10 minutes into Lost when what turned out to be a leak from the shower fixture upstairs had gone underneath the tile, soaked the particleboard underneath the tub and started dripping out the airconditioner vent. I then had 3 maintenance guys in my apartment for the next few hours. Fortunately one of them thought the particleboard would dry but it looks like I’ll be getting some bathroom work done in the (near? future?). Still haven’t heard anything.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my oldest nephew watching Doctor Who, which is one of my best and influential childhood memories from living in England. He is taking to it like nothing else (7 years old and so far only one moment too scary where I had to hit the fast forward). We’re through Season 1 and through the Eccleston to Tennant regeneration so watching him deal with it was quite interesting, in the internet age you generally know these things in advance, but kids don’t so he was clearly a bit bummed that Eccleston became Tennant, but I think he’ll take to Tennant pretty quickly, he already likes him although “he’s weird.” True that, at least that early. But hey, I’ve always thought you need to watch the show through the eyes of a kid, so I’m having a lot of fun and so is he. He generally cuddles up a lot during the show so it’s pretty obvious to tell when he gets a bit terrified. Speaking of which I thought Planet of the Dead, the most recent special, was brilliant.

I spent most of a past Sunday going through a huge box of stuff needing filing. It took almost the entire day but sported one bonus. In coming across the receipt for my DVD player I found out it upconverts to 1080p, which is really nice considering that was the main reason I wanted to get a Blu-Ray, now I feel I can safely wait for that. With my car costing me a small fortune lately, it’s a bit of a relief. The other thing I wanted it for, was to see the Planet Earth BBC documentary. And then a week ago Discovery started airing it on the HD channel so even though it’s cut up a bit I managed to DVR the lot. Well worth it for sure.

Anyway in between being responsible and dating back a few weeks or months are the latest games I’ve been Xboxing, the new TV is dominating life of late. I must have spent a good 20 years being nowhere near video games, after growing up like everyone else my age on the Atari 2600 console. Video games are a lot different now (duh), but not just because the graphics are a lot better, but because the storytelling is. Mass Effect, in particular, is something of a triumph of this art, mixing a first person shooter with a Choose Your Own Adventure type of conversation tree. You captain a starship (or at least you do starting a fraction into the game) and send missions to various planets in various parts of the galaxy. In this game the side quests are a bit too simplistic for the most part, but the main quest is pretty incredible, with lots of nice twists and some great dramatic moments (not to mention being able to date the blue girl a la Captain Kirk). There is one moment about half way through I thought might kill the game for me, basically an incredibly difficult “boss battle” where you have to fight squadron after squadron before fighting what is essentially a “magic user” of a sort. Ironically I missed the autosave when I finally made it through the squadrons, not knowing the whole thing was really continuous. The final boss was actually pretty easy in retrospect. Mass Effect also has some pretty great music, with some sequences straight out of the 70s/80s Tangerine Dream playbook, all that was missing was the wailing guitar solo. Anyway, lots of fun and I’m really looking forward to Part 2 due next year. Bioware really does rock when it comes to video games, I’ved liked everything I’ve tried so far (mostly Neverwinter Nights, Baldurs Gate, and Jade Empire below).

Legendary was extremely problematic, one of those games you want to take your rage out on. It’s a cool idea, a thief opens Pandora’s box, you end up first person shooting various mythological creatures like werewolves, griffons, krakens and such, but the engine seemed annoyingly clumsy creating dreadful unneeded stress in tense moments as various clutter hindered your movement. I’ve made it almost all the way through this one, but the mission where you’re finally on the roof and have to knock out certain areas as soldiers and werewolves constantly move at you has proved a little too difficult for me and combining that with the frustration made it worth putting away for the time being. At least unlike Diablo II and Dark Corners I didn’t feel it completely wasted my money. But anyway I have to agree with the hoards of poor Legendary reviews who thought cool idea, bad execution.

Fable: The Lost Chapters I bought even though it was an Xbox game to prepare me for Fable II. It’s an RPG with a third person active real time fighting style. It too also had a pretty difficult mid game mission, which was one of those dreaded escort situations, in this case rescuing a kid from a cave full of hobbes (evil dwarves or hobbits I guess). With a bit of on line assistance I found a way to lessen the threat on the way out of the cave by going in and out of rooms. I found that none of the later boss situations were nearly as difficult but as is the case with real time fighting, once you get the hang of the controls you generally can hold your own. For me it was a matter of having two main offensives, one being able to handle a weapon really well and having a beefed up long range lightning attack for anything not within melee range. Fable was interesting because it’s one RPG where you can marry your character off (more than once, thanks) and have some interesting conversation situations, although I didn’t think they were fleshed out enough to really come to life. Overall it was pretty fun, but not at all on the level of a Morrowind, Oblivion or Neverwinter Nights.

Halo 3 had me go back to check out Halo:Combat Evolved and Halo 2, both of which were very easy to pick up with virtually the same controls, even though both are Xbox originals rather than the Xbox 360 Halo 3. Halo 2 could nearly compete graphically though, it was at least wide screen and I believe HD and looked beautiful. Really the whole trilogy is a total blast, with missions ranging from regular first person shooting to driving a number of vehicles all with their own unique styles. Often it’s a matter of having a playfield with a number of options which you can use to battle your way out. Halo’s relatively primitive in retrospect, with some repetitive spots, including a long sequence in a “library” battling a wave of The Flood that I had to repeat when I forgot to save one night. But overall all three games are amazing and well worth the hype they come with and certainly I’ll end up replaying 2 and 3 again. There’s a reason these break sales records.

Gears of War isn’t terribly far off from Halo, although it’s much more adult and grimmer, a post apocalyptic scenario where you are a marine that looks like he lived his life on steroids with other similar marines (including one with the nickname Cole Train ) battling really ugly aliens on a wartorn Earth. The graphics are pretty amazing and about as close to lifelike as it gets on the current next gen consoles (although I suspect the sequel’s a bit better), however the story is a bit on the short side overall. I’d basically beat the final boss before I realized it really was so it was over before I knew it. Was fairly tough and challenging in “normal” difficult but not too much. The most challenging moments were using a laser pointer to bring down a satellite weapon on baddies you couldn’t normally kill, but they were also pretty satisfying.

The game I most recently finished Jade Empire was also an Xbox original but my what a great game. An RPG based on a sort of fantastic steampunk China that never was, it had a similar sort of third person fighting system to Fable but heavier on the kung fu. And even more so than Fable, I found myself struggling with it at first but as soon as I had it mastered I barely lost to anyone, even taking out the final boss on a first try (basically jump around like crazy and switch between fast and special attacks depending on occasion). It had a very cool plot, if, like most games, a bit on the cliche side, starting you as a protege of a martial arts master with the typical stirrings of a greater fate to come, moving from situation to situation in longer arcs only to end with a strange sequence of shorter encounters that end up utilizing your minor characters. There’s even a hilarious minigame for when you’re using a flyer that was like playing Galaga in the early days. Very beautifully done though, with great voice acting including a hilarious John Cleese cameo as a British outlander.

Anyway I’m also trying to keep up with an endless array of TV programming and movies, so I’m glad I have a DVR which at this point I’m just doing my best to keep it from getting full. I’ll be very glad when summer comes so I can reappraise what I watch as it’s way too much.  Anyway a quick summary starting with:

The Best: I recently mentioned Lost, which has really gotten my attention of late, it’s also one of work’s bigger watercooler programs. Just terribly inventive in structure on all accounts, perhaps even on the edge of unravelling. But I’m terribly invested now.

Season 2 of Damages just finished, another really tight FX show to replace The Shield. Basically an unusual legal drama about a high stakes firm that goes after dangerous and influential big companies with plotting structures that get tangled up and are untangled unusually over the course of a season. An unbelievable bevy of great actors starting with Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, but featuring a wide cast of ex HBO greats from shows like The Wire and Deadwood and even a creepy part for SNL alum Darrell Hammond (whose McCain impersonations over the last year or so never cease to crack me up).

Also great but on the bubble are NBC’s Kings which debuted so poorly on Sunday nights they’ve practically already shelved it, but its modern metaphor on the David and Goliath story was instantly fascinating no doubt due to Ian McShane’s turn as the King of a monarchal New York City equivalent. It’s really a shame this one didn’t get a chance to shine, but then again anything that reduces the pile is OK by me at this point.

Also on NBC is Monday’s Chuck which is just a hilarious spy/geek humor combo that manages to set up what seems like a limited scenario only to spin out great episode after great episode. It doesn’t get a lot of figures, no doubt placed next to shows like Dancing with the Stars and House, but it’s got a hilarious cast of characters and a bunch of great guests and more than any show on the bubble right now it’s the one I’d like to see go on the most. Anyone who lived through the 80s should appreciate its humor, it’s almost like Family Guy (well when it was good) that way.

Following Chuck on Fox at 9 is 24 which can suck one year and then be great the next and fortunately Season 7 ranks with 1, 2 and 5 as the best of what is a hilariously and inherently ridiculous but ineffably fun piece of work.

Also cancelled and finished unfortunately is Wednesday’s Life on Mars (of which I still have 2 eps on my DVR to go). I think the original English show is one of the best television works ever made and surprisingly found myself loving the US version as well, possibly because it reused a lot of the same plots and had a superb cast. Possibly the most heartbreaking cancellation of the last few years, ABC made a huge mistake not sticking with this one.

Breaking Bad on AMC continues to be really good as well, following the exploits of a chemistry teacher and cancer sufferer turned meth cooker. It’s a harrowing view but also one of the most in your face shows on the air that rarely flinches from its consequences. Dark and daring.

I’m still catching up on the first season but the Starz show Crash is really impressive so far, a mosaic story and current Dennis Hopper vehicle. It’s part Shield, part Desperate Housewives, part Blue Velvet and perhaps a bit early to tell, I’m only watching it when I need to before it falls off On Demand (read about 3 or 4 eps in).

In the Middle: I did like the season finale of Battlestar Galactica although I’m of the opinion that the show took a fairly big dive in quality after Season 2 and the move to New Caprica. Ever since then there’s been enough about it to keep me watching, but there’s something unravelled about the whole thing, like it just doesn’t hold together and the whole Starbuck as an angel thing and all of that was kind of like a revelation that was cool for about ten seconds and then felt like a deus ex machina. Or Planet of the Apes. Part of any good show for me is having characters to have some investment in and sympathy for and it was getting remarkably thin for me by the end of the show. I’m debating whether I want to start with Caprica, but it’s superb cast will probably reel me in.

For example House is a pretty good example of a complete jerk written where you manage to still be interested in where the arc goes even when the procedural part of it is becoming ridiculously predictable. In fact I’d probably like it a lot more where it not so by the numbers every week and it’s one that gets the DVR nearly every time when it’s up against Chuck. If I didn’t like Hugh Laurie so much I’d have diced this one two years ago.

Friday Night Lights just ended on its NBC run last Friday and while it doesn’t have the impact it did for me the first Season, probably because it has too many soap opera elements for me to be fully comfortable with, it’s certainly better than it was last year. The characters definitely have a lot of heart, which always feels somewhat uplifting, some dynamics of relationships that actually work that you rarely see elsewhere where rifts tend to drive the drama. Just renewed for two 13 episode seasons too.

Big Love on HBO has always been a bit too serious for me, a little boring but I thought Season 3 reached something of a crescendo towards the end. Perhaps there’s something just inherently uncomfortable about a working polygamous relationship that keeps it edgy, almost like you don’t want to believe it’s possible given the ramifications. But the whole cast of bizarre backwoods polygamists that were trotted out were pretty freaky and the unravelling and eventual redemption of Chloe Sevigny’s character towards the end was a good idea, for me it was just happening when I could barely stand her anymore. Some great acting all around.

United States of Tara on Showtime was an interesting take on multiple personality syndrome with an interestingly modern like family, certainly the wisps of Juno you might expect given Diablo Cody. Definitely the kind of new gen work that makes me, at 38, start to feel just a bit older.

Just OK: Dollhouse was the heralded return of Joss Whedon to TV and basically fulfilled all the prophecies you’d expect given the death of Firefly. A top half series of tedious procedural episodes that were apparently rejiggered by an unhappy Fox, only for it to get mildly more interesting in the last couple of weeks. I doubt it will last so I’ll probably see it out, but at least of late it’s more Joss-like, perhaps too little too late.

Eastbound & Down: Just finished, a mildly funny HBO show about an offensive misogynist ex baseball player. Like coexecutive producer and guest star Will Ferrell, it’s only occasionally funny, but it does have something of a sweet heart at central despite there being little too love about the lead. But 6 1/2 hour episodes wasn’t a painful burden.

Reaper: Not nearly as funny or strong as it was the first Season, I doubt this one will last despite every episode still having a couple hysterically funny moments and a great actor playing the Devil. The constant on again off again romance starts to drive you nuts after a while and the secondary romances with the sidekicks are almost unbearably ridiculous. One I hope gets the axe just because I’m afraid to be reeled back in next year.

South Park: Like the last two years, this season started out with a brilliant episode (skewering Disney and the Jonas brothers and purity rings) only to continue to churn out substandard, rushed nonsense. It’s only that it still can shine really bright that I keep watching. But I stopped buying the DVDs after Season 9.

Family Guy: Similar without the brilliant opener. Without substantial improvement in the final run of episodes, I’ll be hanging this one up. There doesn’t appear to be much effort behind it anymore

Anyway after several sessions trying to finish this post, I’m worn out so that will have to be enough for now.

About 10m ago I got a virus notification at work on Symantec and then a call from our administrator. I’d gotten the bloodhound.exploit downloader caught by the program. My first thought was what did I accidentally click on to get this, so as for it not to happen again? At the time I was just scanning Huffington Post for news headlines, something I’ve done since in the early days of last year’s campaign. I did a Google search on the downloader name plus Huffington Post and came up with a number of hits indicating that this news site was probably responsible (I had no other windows open). So basically byebye Huffington Post. Kind of the last straw. My other two issues with the site were extremely misleading headlines on a consistent basis, usually to inflate the site’s liberal outlook (something I often share might I add) on something minor (and in several cases often fixed when people complained) and also a heavy emphasis on Hollywood-ish sorts of issues, long blogs on the fashion of Michelle Obama, loads of Perez Hilton celebrity stalker sorts of articles, basically all things I could do without. What I liked was having the headlines of Washington Post, New York Times, AP, etc etc all together, so I need to find a new downloader-free site that does the same thing. The only other time I got a downloader notification was a year or so ago at progrock.com, which is a place I never really look at or use but probably ran across when researching something. Now I get these things show up at all sorts of nefarious sites but it gets irritating when they’re at places you’re supposed to trust not have these things. Grrr.