“Where’s the override?”
Found Iron Chef Japan on the Fine Living Network. Now I need only suffer through the occasional Martha Stewart commercial to get my fix. Sadly, NBC / Universal came down on them about the Backdraft music, and the whole show’s been re-scored by someone who didn’t really get it; but it’s better than nothing.
There’s a tire fire in North Carolina this week, and the smoke’s traveled all the way up here. The air in Portsmouth is nasty. I feel like someone in a cyberpunk book who should be walking the city streets with a small respirator. Sucks, because otherwise the heat’s much more tolerable today.
Thank goodness for the Baen Free Library and the Baen CDs. Because of those resources, I didn’t pay any money for John Ringo’s The Hero. Now, I enjoyed his first “Posleen” books well enough, though the ending of the war was unsatisfying; but this book pretends to be one story for 100 pages (!) and then, without warning, changes its mind, abandons nearly everything, and becomes a completely different story.
Imagine you’re watching the second Trek movie, getting into the story, and the first face-off between Kirk and Khan has just ended. Suddenly, a renegade cadet from the Enterprise steals the Genesis Device plans, uses the prefix codes to cause warp core breaches and destroy both ships, and hides in the Mutara Nebula in a 72-hour survival spacesuit to wait for an arranged Romulan pickup. Unknown to him, one of Khan’s men got out in a similar spacesuit, and is hunting him down as the only chance for survival.
While the “hunting each other down” part of the movie might be gripping, I assume most people’s reaction would be, “WTF? What happened to the plot I was just watching? Who are these people? I don’t even like these people.” That was my reaction to this book. Ah, well, it’s not like I don’t have lots more to read, including In The Serpent’s Coils, Grave Peril, and Little Brother (yes, it’s a free download).
Oh, and while I’m reviewing things, have I mentioned that I am now quite the Steven Moffat fan? The ending of “Forest of the Dead” had me saying to myself, “Bit of a downer, but everything lined up properly, lotsa neat stuff, some good lines. Good episode.” Then: the actual ending happened, and I was floored, damn near cheering out loud. That is my Doctor. That is the man who bends Time and Space to make things right and be a beacon of light in the darkness. I want to watch more of that guy. Well done indeed.
Speaking of which, the reason there’s not going to be much 2009 Who is that David Tennant will be playing Hamlet on stage that year, which I’d love to see. Here is Neil Gaiman writing Tennant’s Tenth Doctor as Hamlet:
“To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll…. More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you’re looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and… for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?”
I’d so watch that.
“There’s a tire fire in North Carolina this week”
Actually, it’s a 40,000 acre, 60-square-mile forest fire in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, about 70 miles south of Norfolk, that was started by a lightning strike around June 3rd. Here in my area, we’re under a constant “haze”, and the whole of outdoors smells like a fireplace. It’s going to be that way all day today and all day tomorrow. As for Sunday …
Now I really, really would love to see a Gaiman-authored episode of Dr. Who.
You will get your wish next season. 🙂