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The Importance of Silliness
Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones did an interview for Rock Paper Shotgun a few months back to promote the release of a Monty Python Facebook game, but they spent the time discussing imagination, history, and consumerism. Note: this post contains a video that appears to be a bit shy of RSS readers…
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Anansi Boys
Anansi Boys (audio) by Neil Gaiman Published: 2006 Narration: Lenny Henry This was the first audio book I tried to get through, probably a year ago now, and I just couldn’t do it. I listened to the first two chapters over and over, each time I went for a jog, because I couldn’t focus on the story and would lose track of where I was. I thought it was Lenny Henry, who I’ve never even really found funny as a comedian, but now that I’ve developed a basic attention span, I can see he does a fantastic job on this narration. Quite often during this, I’d listen to him deliver…
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Thai Beef and Peanut Curry
I’d best be described as a moderately adequate, yet unadventurous, cook. If you locked me in a stocked kitchen for a weekend, I wouldn’t die or have to eat spaghetti with ketchup for 48 hours, but I wouldn’t mind having some cooking skills beyond what is needed for survival. My problem is that I’m a little lazy, and it’s easier to fall back on tried and true recipes than try something new. That routine gets a little stale, though, so I’ve decided to try to branch out a little more by trying at least one new recipe each week. I’ll post the successful trials here, I think. First on the…
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An Evening with Ray Bradbury
Not to turn this into a Bradbury fan site, but here’s his 2001 keynote address at The Sixth Annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea. Great stories from a writer’s life. I love listening to someone who takes no shame in their enthusiasm and passion for a topic. It’s also healthy to listen to adorable, old people talk about their lives sometimes.
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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (audio) by J.K. Rowling Published: 2003 Narration: Stephen Fry **This will contain some spoilers, but I figure everyone who’s at all interested in Harry Potter has read the books or seen the movies by now. I’m fairly new to audio books, so I’ve only recently discovered that I quite enjoy being read to like a child. Who better for that than Mr. Stephen Fry? I read the first three of these and lost interest, but that interest was renewed when I found that Fry narrated the UK versions. He’s likely in my top five list of best people ever, so I decided…
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Perspective
I was recently reminded of my favourite bit from Slaughterhouse-Five, where Billy Pilgrim watches a war movie in reverse. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation. The…
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Silly Damn Bird
There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we…
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Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Published: 1953 I’d previously read, and thoroughly enjoyed, Bradbury’s Zen and the Art of Writing. I always felt a bit ashamed of myself for never having read any of his fiction, so I decided to start with his best-known novel. The story follows Guy Montag, a fireman in a dystopian future, one that seems eerily possible in many ways. In this future, fireman have nothing to do with putting out fires. Homes have been made fireproof, so there is no need for that. His job is to light fires, specifically to track down illegal books and set them alight. He very much enjoys his work…
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I’m In Yer Aggregator, Updatin’ Yer Feeds
Like returning home from holiday and finding squatters in your apartment, I popped on here last month to find my old blog’s security had been compromised. I’d left the poor thing for dead, I’m afraid. Well, I’ve now chased away the tramps, brushed away the cobwebs, and blown away the dust, and I’m actually somewhat interested in starting up again. I haven’t been writing much of anything in the past year, fiction or otherwise, so it might be nice to slowly get back into the habit, though I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be posting. I’ll start with some reviews of what I’m currently reading and see what catches my…