Avaunt

Sounds disturbing

I like my reality solid and singular. I don't mind "gates" that lead elsewhere but i lke their edges to be un-blurry.

Lol. 

Try him on Ado ( Japanese punk/manga fusion 18 year old girl. )

Her Japanese is so gutteral, violent and colloquial that I "might" have "consciously" caught one word in ten, but I was a Punk Rocker just about from the time I started to question life, and so unsurprisingly I  was able to understand almost verbatim the first song of hers I  heard. 

Heavy drums and forceful heart. The conviction in her voice doubles as translation software.

Later works have Elves( the conflicted, underground sort ) Vampires ( with what i thought was extremely amusing Vampire Historical Tourism gone-wrong, ) and liberal helpings of existential despair 

Just because it works is no reason to allow something good for the working class to continue.

Ian Watson is praise indeed.

Charles Stross, did anyone ever take my advice and read his Atrocity Files ?.

I am going to have a reread of them all once I have  finished moving house.

Sorry to hear about the medical misadventure Vagabond.

Glad to hear about the fiancee thing tho. Let love thrive.

In an entirely, definitely separate matter to love, i am going on a date to see Iolus play Galileo in a Brecht play. I asked the female because I know she, like me, is innoculated against Cupid.

( yes i am aware of the various aphorisms concerning plans, mice, the Goddess being blind, whom they would destroy, etcetera, etcetera. )

Wish me not luck. 

Did anyone see tenet ?

The following is merely me boasting. Fig Jam.

The entire crew of one of the Super yachts that made it to New Zealand before the lockdown, went on holiday, and inconveniently, quests arrived  in town the very same day. The crew all being gone at once was a masterly attempt at the World Title of Bad Captaining.

The Captain being my bosses old mate from his years in Antibes, we were begged to go detail clean some of the staterooms as well as we could in the "insufficient time" available to us . . . then my boss found he had to stay home and look after his sick son.

So, knowing the Captain had claimed it was a full days work for two people, I got to the berth at 6.30 am, no one aboard and the key in the bog-standard obvious place, and I got stuck in, head down and HUMP.

Five hours later I had detail cleaned four cabins each with en-suite ( heads, in the jargon nautique ), and two saloons. Never mind other peoples expectation, I MYSELF did not think I could have done it. At one point I was so hot from pushing myself I had to leave the ( 8 foot square ) mirror for later because my body heat was steaming it up faster than I could polish off.

The Captain had turned up at lunchtime as they do, and came looking for us, was distressed to find me by myself and went trying to find some agency that would send people ( because, you know, he COULD have pitched in and helped but then who would have known he was Important ? ) but I was finished before he could.

He wandered around checking what I had done, and being a captain WAS able to find things in the staterooms that were not exquisite . . . but we had NOT been told to white glove, the direct opposite in fact, because we were asked to "do what you can, just get the obvious". He did say he wouldn't have believed it possible if he was told it had been done by one person.

Did my employer say thank you?

Or did he say to the captain "he probably would have talked your ears off if you had been there" instead ?.

The head in the main berth was ALMOST as big as my bedroom. It had a couch in it, and a bidet. Vessel cost US$ 34 million. Some people got too much money.

Isn't it cool that we have actual games that follow the divergent Spider-men, almost like the writing has value greater than the image ?.

Talking about games . . .

Valheim.

Nuff' said.

I love also "All you Zombies". 

Also, watching young people repeating my mistakes. 

I have read LotRs three times in all that I am sure of. ( edit to add that my sister read the books to my brother and I first, and then a school teacher also read much of them to our class, before I actually read them myself the first time )  I quite like the pace and language, and took the books down to the Island when I went for a couple of month stay once. I memorised the poems out of it when I was about 25, and also used to be able to quote various parts verbatim, something my twin and I got into for some reason. Yes, the third time was just before the movies started.

Only watched the movies once, never seen the Hobbit past the guy with the rabbit-wagon, walked out of the theater, never felt the least inclination to go back.

"Get your arse off my lawn, you kids, and take your sacrilege with you !". I understand why Jackson thought he had to change things, but I wouldn't shake his hand.

The thing that made me angriest was how WEAK he made the People of Rohan, even the White Lady of Rohan is written like she knew fear . . .. Wow, just writing that made me feel dangerously angry, I certainly would have to leave the room if Jackson walked into it. I just KNOW I couldn't keep my mouth shut, and I would be explaining his egregious fault . . . then the blood fills the eyes, and the weight comes on my front foot . . .

The Hobbit just made me feel a kind of commercial contempt for him, but denying Dernholm her Laughter in that hour of her need . . . I am afraid I would not be gentle with him.

Also, the Scouring of the Shire should have been in the movie ! Far and away the best battle in the whole thing !.

I also don't care if the guy was straight ( would make a more interesting story in some ways if he HAD of been gay, and people who knew him had been "Yep, gay, but also smart as a whip, very useful with a pen, just the bloke to over-throw a tyranny with !" accepting. To be honest, I  could never accept ANYTHING as proof for or against his being gay, because literally it is guessing with nothing like evidence  after all these years. Maybe an affidavit whose signed witnesses were his best friend and worst enemy, both of whom left corroborating statements and all of it in the USAs oldest law-firms records, "not to be opened until 2020". Even then it would be 50-50.

What I found so amusing and a-historical was the certitude young ignorant people have argued for it in their conviction. I was interested when they began talking about it, thought "Oh, this must be something about the guy I never understood, maybe there has been some research . . . ?" and asked them what they based the claim on.

And was given quotes from a typical 18th century Educated English speakers letters, where he wrote (to SOMEONE ELSE) and said things like "So-and-so is my intimate friend " and "I am heart-sick for the days when (he and I) shared everything and were happy though we had little enough to share".

And the ignorant young people, without the least understanding of normal colloquial English of the day, immediately read the words as if one of their contemporaries had written them. They literally called me a homo-phobe when I gently tried to explain that EVERYONE educated wrote exactly that same thing about their close friends, in 1780.

That is how religions start ! Ignorance and its hand-maid, certitude.

I actually really liked the stories of his I read, and that is why I felt such a strong distaste when I subsequently read "War of the Winged Men" by Poul Anderson, and thought "Wow, this is an exact copy,  number of characters, structure, plot, resolution, of that A D Foster book I read and liked ! ! ! " then checked the publishing dates and it was Foster who had blatantly copied. Then later on I found another instance of it, and then later again a third.

It was my first experience of the crime, and it really made me sour on the guy. I remember thinking at the time, no wonder he can publish two novels a year. It was a lot more than influences imho.

( Tigers are not humble but they will persist in claiming they are. )

edit to add I really enjoyed Splinter in a minds eye.

Actually the A-Historical part i was thinking about was the people who are positive Hamilton was a closeted bisexual or outright homosexual, based on their ignorant understanding of affectionate letters he wrote to male friends.

But, yeah . . . Of course i knew all the political incongruities you guys refer to . . . 

( i lie of course )

Um. Alan Dean Foster?.

Am i the only one who has read his very many wholesale rippoffs of other authors in the series where the kid had a pet dragon-thing ?

Far too many years ago now for me to quote chapter and verse but he was pretty blatantly a plagiarist for years.

I understood that reference /Cap

I watched some clips of the show. Amusingly ahistorical 

Oh well. Sometimes, Christian, your rhetoric slants over to the partisan side of things, with the codicil that, as you just said, your particular barrow has both right and left baggage in it. So it varies regularly which group you are scornful about.

You are not overbearingly unpleasant about it, but i second dogpoets feeling that your words often read as passive aggressive towards people that don't agree with you.

And i for one am your friend first, and political-thought opponent very second, and wish you would moderate the heat sometimes.

New Zealands theaters are doing a roaring trade.

Actually the country is running full bore, you can't get a bed in a hotel, the launching ramps have boats lined up ten deep all the daylight hours, people can't get staff enough to serve all the customers, and the sports stadiums are packed even for second grade matches.

Why i am bored is i agreed to help my brother with stuff down here in moo-cow-land and there was a delivery hiccup, so i have been sitting around his farmlet . . .

Sure, it is summer, he has a large swimming pool, there is a horse i can ride, i have a set of weights, one of my bows and somewhere to practice with it, internet, two beer fridges, a cupboard full of books, neighbours who have some puppies i am allowed to play with . . . and no doubt much else that escapes my notice . . . but i didn't say i was reasonable, just

BORED !

What i want to know is, why is it always expected of the LEFT that we "forgive and forget" , or just ignore the "acting out" and other miserable shit of people like trump ?

The minute the balance of power changed, suddenly people start saying "oh, for the good of the Nation we should put all this behind us"

trump literally spent the last four years under-mining Civilisation.  He encouraged and rewarded racists and fascists and the sort of religious who literally are trying to bring on the endtimes. And suddenly people talk about "the good of the Nation" ?

If it were my Nation in fact, i would insist on a determined policy of punishment for all of his enablers. For the same reason Napoleon hung the blokes of his Old Guard.

It would be funny, if i wasn't so bored.

OMG being in Hamilton is so boring.

Apparently not.

I never watch tv now, literally have an uncontrollable compulsion to leave any room one is playing in. I am sure it is a reaction to watching first dad, then mum, evaporate into passive, limp, staring blobs sitting in a chair, not interacting beyond an occasion facial expression.

I am sure watching the Dr now would be actual pain, because i used to enjoy watching it mostly to share it with mum.

Thank you for that, Christian.

I love his characters tho. He has his faults but  not in the characterisation 

I have spoken to my dr a couple of times about it , and he is actually a surgeon, the second highest scoring graduate of our school of surgery when he graduated, no fool, and he told me i was better off suffering the nights rather than risking medication. And i have never been one for medication.

I get up and go to the gym at 2 am half the times i am tossing and turning. At the moment i am staying at my brothers place in Hamilton's rural suburb. It is so quiet at  night, and all the farms around have dogs just waiting to nut-off at an unusual noise, so I can only lay still and groan.

It sure can be a horror to endure sometimes. 

First world problem of course.  I have my health, am financially secure now, employed, no debts . . . I should be grateful. Bloody primates, never contented.