Abe

Hellblazer #223

Fell #6

Nextwave #7

Just Fables for me this week.

While I found this issue more fun to read than any of the rest of the arc I'm rather dissatisfied with the whole thing. Chief amongst my dissatisfactions:

 

1) Continuinty error of the day

2) If the third place is a numb center of the whole post-mortem universe that's only reached by personal consent (which is an interesting and worthwhile idea), what is its goal? Why does the big ugly want to collect souls? Heaven and Hell want souls in order to staff their armies for the coming apocalypse or the reward/punish individuals for their sins... What exactly is big ugly's point? Even purgatory has a purpose... it's a sort of waiting hall for souls until judgement or until sufficient prayers have been said to lift them to heaven, depending who you ask. Does big ugly just want to have plenty to eat? Is he infected by poke-fever and feels that he's Gotta Catch 'Em All?

3) Why is big ugly...well, big and ugly? The third place is all about being numb and detached. Wouldn't an androgynous, indistinct, flat-effect overlord make more sense than something that looks crafted for terror?

4) Why is going to the 3rd place so bad? Yeah, it's an absence of sensation...but once you get there, you won't even have the capacity to care that you don't care. Given the logistical problems with an eternity of pleasure or pain eternal numbness doesn't sound that terrible.

5) That must have been some hell of a mind wipe to make John Constantine decide to off himself on the spur of the moment. He's gotten down in the dumps about the things he's done before but "Yeah... I suck, I'll just go ahead and die to further your crackpot scheme for world peace" is awfully out of character for an otherwise well rendered JC. Even if he expected The Big Three to bail him out, why bother? He didn't seem to know about the 3rd place before hand so couldn't have expected that dipping in, saying Hi, and getting sprung would delay Big Ugly long enough for Evans and Co to finish their plans, so why bother if he didn't actually plan to follow through?

6) What happened to the girl? Maybe something was mentioned last issue that I've forgotten, but I could have sworn we had a couple panels of John and the girl (whose name escapes me) chatting it up and her saying she was coming with him... So where'd she go? If she didn't come along then what was she doing for two weeks?

7) What's the deal with the big C? Did Mina just pick it so that she could map it onto an existing construction project or what? I can't think of a single religious emblem that doesn't have its own logic and in most cases said logic is fairly obvious once you're basically familiar with the theology. The best I can come up with is a vertical line representing Heaven and Hell with an off-shoot to the third place but that seems kind of a stretch and not terribly meaningful.

8) The whole near-death experience thing doesn't make a lot of sense. I've never heard of any accounts of people being offered a choice or asked for consent, much less Always being asked. And if any near-death experience will lead to an offer for the third place then why all the rigamarole with the burial ritual?

 

Meh. My wife tells me that I pick too many nits when I read and that I blow inconsequential side-items out of proportion, thus ruining my enjoyment of what I read. I don't generally agree, but maybe that's the case here. This whole arc I've been coming up with questions and waiting for a big reveal to answer them. Instead I get few and weak answers coupled with lead in to More of this arc (which doesn't promise to answer my questions) along with a big, demon-shaped continuinty error.

So's that people know what I'm talking about:

Amazon page for volume 1 of a (so far) 3 volume series called Flight

 

I saw part of the cover of volume 3 on the edge of a photo on the Penny-Arcade site today and was intruiged by the artwork, so searched around to see what it was (it wasn't obviously even a book in the photo; I suspected a game or movie). Turns out that it's the third volume of a series of compilation books with comics by various artists (some known, some not, mostly webcomic folks). It interests me, but I've not seen it in stores around here. Is it worth ordering them? Are any of the 3 more worthwhile than the others?

Counting just the 221 issues and not side cameos: 99.5475% (I missed one of the guest author issues back during Delano's run)

 

It amuses me that of the non-Internet-clicky answers voted for, raven and writing desk are tied at 1.

So apparently the answer to, "How is a raven like a writing desk?" is, "Denise Mina".

Hellblazer #222 (via subscription :p )

Eternals #2

 

 

Yuggoth Creatures #3

What's this one? Something Lovecraftian, I assume?

Do the fans of any other industry get all snarky when someone (eg Kate Bush, Stephen King) suffers delay in bringing out their next work? No, which is why those people don't need to call any of their fans "wanker".

John's onto something with the periodical argument: it isn't like Kate Bush was supposed to be releasing a song every month, after all...

(Given Stephen King's astonishing ability to churn out a huge fat book at the drop of a hat, he might not be the best example you could have picked of a writer dragging their feet, btw.)

 

I think King is a fairly good example. It took him 22 years to finish the Dark Tower series and he went around writing dozens of other books that touched on that story and world in the meantime. Then he got in a car accident, almost died, and said he was giving up writing...this with the afore-mentioned series only halfway done. The fact that King apparently can drop a doorstop-sized tome with less effort than is required for most mortals to move their bowels just makes it worse for those of us who were waiting and waiting and waiting for him to finish a series he started so very long ago.

The same can be said of many sci-fi and fantasy authors. Jordan, Martin, Goodkind, even Rowling have fallen behind schedule as their respective series roll along. The only series novel-format author I can think of who has stuck to a schedule with the regularity generally expected of comic authors is Terry Pratchett. He said he'd put out a new Discworld book every year until they nailed his coffin shut and he's stuck to it without any exceptions I can recall. Generally with improving quality rather than the reverse.

 

Oh, right, point needed.

Fans in other industries do get snarky. I've read innumerable forum posts about authors who need to get off their duffs and finish X book that was supposed to be out Y months ago. I think they just get less snarky because delays occur so much more often in book and movie releases. It's almost expected that any release date given more than a two or three months in advance is probably wrong.

I gave her run fairly low marks on the poll but I think my dissatisfaction comes primarily from two points, only one of which is really even relavent to Mina's writing.

1) John gave up magic, a fairly enormous event given that he's a wizard, and Mina hasn't really dealt with it at all. He's done a few little spells and dismissed them as parlour tricks but the issue has basically been dropped. I expected something more along the lines of the last time John hated his life and gave up...a descent into drunken hobo-hood. Not business as usual but with a lower caliber of magicing.

 

2) There's been very little tension in the whole arc. It's like the badguys are playing hardball ("We're gonna kill John Constantine! And then we'll summon up the empathy devourer from the unHell (or whatever that thing was)!") while John's afflicted with a somewhat annoying curse and a desire to track it back to its source that, so far as I can tell, is largely just curiosity and a need for something to occupy his mind so as to avoid the whole nergal-sister-in-hell-no-more-magic deal. There's impending doom, I guess, but the forces of good don't know about it. Thus, no dramatic tension. The only really interesting parts of the arc so far, for me, have been the historical monks of doom bits and now the romance-for-John angle.

DMZ #9

Fables #51

 

Might also pick up the third 100 Bullets TPB. Borrowed the first two from a friend and wasn't very impressed by the first but am finally getting hooked halfway through the second.

Entirely unrelated to the "is the art fucking awesome or does everyone look like clones" discussion: does anyone know if the "That's So Sprite!" thing was based on the show "That's So Raven!"? I'd never heard of the latter until today and have absolutely no intention of seeking it out to find out if they have the same catch-phrase, but the similarity in names struck me as too much to be coincidence.

 

(If anyone wonders: A friend of mine's email address somehow got attributed to a child actor by the name of Dylan Sprouse somewhere in the bowels of MySpace. While trying to find out who the heck that is I discovered that he'd guest-starred on the afore-mentioned show)

 

Oh, and I'm in the awesome camp for the art so far but it'll be at least one more issue before I decide if I'm going to stick with this one. I'm unfamiliar with the Eternals due to mostly avoiding Cape-centric books so the concept is new and intruiging to me, but I've yet to make the internal adjustments to allow billion-year-old god-figures to wear primary color spandex.

DMZ #8

Fables #50

Y: The Last Man #46

BPRD Universal Machine #3

and last week's Black Gas #3 if my shop still has it in...

Was going to say nothing and leave Black Gas #3 for next week, but then I saw Five Fists of Science tucked away in the Image section, so...

 

Five Fists of Science GN

Black Gas #3

Just finished Timeline which was fairly typical Crichton. Fast pace, good action scenes, plot and 'science' holes you can drive a truck through. Also The Drawing of the Dark by Powers and The Time Traveller's Wife by Niffenegger, both of which I recommend highly to all and sundry.

 

To those reading The Historian I wish you luck. The premise is interesting and the material is great but it seems like the author purposefully works against both facts in order to write the driest, most emotionally disconnected narrative possible. The framing of the story completely destroys any tension (romantic, dramatic, or the straightforward fear of death/violence/maiming) that could have existed (and in a book of its subject matter should have existed). The chosen style of presentation (skipping between two disjoint narratives) left me foundering every time it jumped. I'd finally start to care about what I was reading again, only to have the narrative cut to the other side where I couldn't recall what was going on or why. I'm down to 150 pages or so and just can't bring myself to go back. I'm fairly certain that I've known how the ending will play out for probably 85% of the book but it's so slow and so dry that I just can't push on through to it.

 

Currently trying to read The Man Who Tasted Shapes which is also turning out to be a disappointment. It's supposed to be a clinical story about a couple of the author's patients and his quest to understand synesthaesia (a neuropsychological condition wherein your senses are interconnected, so sounds cause you to see colors or tastes make you feel textures). So far most of it is about how much he hates the modern medical profession because of their reliance upon technology. I agree with him, mostly, but I'm sick of reading about it. Think I'll take a break and try Ian Graham's Monument instead.

 

I'm rapidly running out of books left over from Christmas that I couldn't read during the semester. All graduated now (yay me) so finally get to read things that aren't physics or math again. Vinge's The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime are on the way from amazon, hopefully those are as good as Deepness in the Sky.

Fables #49

Wolfskin #1

 

What's 52 about?

Middle name: John, after 1981. Before 1981 it was Abraham, which is my first name in this brave new post-1981 world. I don't know why, so don't ask. The vagaries of my mother's behaviour are beyond me. Also, it was nearly changed to 'dreamweaver' in 2004 for similarly unknown reasons.

 

Type of Pets: 2.5 cats (one's a loaner) Boson, Bella, and Lucifer (the loaner)

 

First video game you remember playing: I'm not certain. It may have been Adventure on an Apple II of some variety or Berserk on the Atari 2600.

 

Crush you had in high school: Girl whose name I can no longer remember that was in ROTC with me. She was the CO, so even if I weren't a pitiful loser with bad skin and no self esteem at the time I'd probably not have had the nerve to ask her out. Turns out she wasn't totally adverse to the concept but I didn't discover this until too late.

 

Favorite car: Toyota Corolla. I've had 4 of them, I think.

 

Favorite snack: Cape Cod veggi tortilla chips and the hottest salsa available.

 

Favorite European City or Place: Rome, I think.

 

Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? Nope. But to add a bit of trivia: this didn't die with McCarthy. I've had several friends receive military clearance at the Top Secret and above levels and when conducting background investigations the officers will still ask, "Did they ever plot to overthrow the government?" and "Were they members of any subversive political groups?" (which, it turns out, includes the Communist party). They just don't ask you directly anymore (at least not for Secret or below).

I picked the interesting habits option, though I'm in the camp with the 'I'm apparently weird but I never realize it until someone comes up and says, "Damn, you're odd."' people. I'm struck by a sudden inability to actually think of which habits are interesting, but I know they're there. I guess my candy collection is a bit odd. I love candy but I'm a bit anorexic, so I only eat it at holidays. Therefore I have somewhere between 5 and 20 lbs of candy stored in a drawer in my desk at home at any given time and another couple pounds here at work. Just in case I want it, it's there. I especially love those little 'raspberry' and 'blackberry' candies. They're jellies shaped like a gum-drop but covered with red or black candy dots. That's a pretty inacurate description, but the best I can do. I can't go somewhere that sells those and not buy some.

 

I'm a bit obsessive but I'm getting better. Down to 1 or 2 (sometimes 3) showers a day rather than 4+ and it takes me Way less time to wash my hands anymore. I've still got a bit of a hang-up about worrying that my tires are flat on my car and that my apartment is on fire, but I feel those are justified.

Big week for me.

 

DMZ

Desolation Jones

Fables

Black Gas

BPRD Universal Machine

 

For anyone interested in Black Gas, Ellis said on his page that #1 completely sold out and that orders are lower for #2, so if you want it let your FLCS know about it.

Any of you following "Full Metal Alchemist"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not as such, but I watched the whole series as it was being released in Japan. One of these days I'm going to find a copy of the movie where you can actually hear the voices, too...

FMA is definitely up there amongst the best anime I've seen in recent years. Not that I've watched much anime the past year or so, but I blame this on the lack of anything that's really grabbed me. Bleach is good, but also LONG. After 75 episodes I just don't have much drive to see every episode as it aires anymore. Same with Yakitate Japan. It was hilarious for 13 episodes, funny for 26, but at 55 it's starting to drag. I fear Japanese production companies are starting to envy the enormous (comparatively) lives of US TV series. I mean, I know there were the Ranma's and Rouroni Kenshins back in the day, but it seems like there are an awful lot of long-running, open-ended series out there nowadays. I need more shows like Haibane Renmei, Kino no Tabi, SaiKano, Samurai Champloo, or even Gungrave. Not necessarily the best anime I've seen but with a point, a story, and short enough to watch in a couple of sittings before it loses its punch.

 

*cough* er, sorry for the mini-rant.

 

Back on topic... the only actually 'new'-ish thing I'm watching is Life On Mars. I missed the initial run, but I've downloaded the first 2 episodes and am hooked. I've gotta say the little girl from the test card in episode 2 is creepier than most of the horror movies I've seen recently. Also watching season 1 of West Wing (which I loved on TV and is even better without commercials...) and season 2 of Stargate SG-1 (got season 1 of Atlantis for x-mas, burned though it rapidly and had to expand backward through time to get my continued fix).

 

I caught an episode of 'Deal/No Deal' the other night. 1) Howie Mandel looks downright satanic with no hair and a goatee and 2) failing a basic probability test must be part of the selection process for that show. That is the most brain-dead game show I've ever had the misfortune to experience. There is no skill, intelligence, or even cleverness involved whatsoever. It's pure random chance and down to the artificial atmosphere of tension and excitement that the show attempts to cultivate in the contestents (and therefore the viewing public) to keep them from thinking rationally. And the fact that they manage to drag out a person picking 23 or so random numbers out to a half hour long TV show is just criminal.

 

Bah. I need to go back to not getting cable TV.

Let it All Bleed Out from Rob Zombie's Educated Horses album. I have to say that this is not one of his better offerings. I've avoided seeing Devil's Rejects, but I suspect this is a soundtrack album since so much of it is background-y, filler-y stuff rather than actual songs.

The big one for me is the word 'bury'. I'm not sure if it's a regional thing from my formative years or what but the only person I know of who pronounces it the same way I do is my mum. I pronounce it just like it's spelled.. 'buh-ree' Up until about 4 years ago it never even occurred to me that this might be incorrect. My then girlfriend noticed it and ridiculed me constantly. Thanks to her my friends noticed and so now everyone I know does.

 

A bit of 'bury' trivia: 'Bury' is the only word stem in the english language wherein 'bu' is pronounced 'beh' rather than 'buh'. The reason for this is that the word is a holdover from a dialect of middle (I think, may be wrong about the period) english which has otherwise completely left the language. So we have 'bury', 'burial', 'buried', etc all pronounced 'beh' while 'burn', 'burst', 'bust', 'bungle', 'bunny', 'burnish', 'burrito', and all the rest are 'buh'. Bloody crap if you ask me.

 

I also have difficulty with the word 'milk'. Innoccuous little old 'milk'. I pronounce the I somewhat closer to an 'a'. Nobody notices unless they're listening (thanks to having noticed my 'bury'-related oddness) or I point it out. Then they point and laugh as I ask for the 'malk'.

 

I'll also occasionally toss off an 'idear' or 'warter' thanks to my years in New Jersey.

 

I hold that, any possible evidence to the contrary, nobody can pronounce 'vehement' correctly. It's such an awesome word but sound so utterly ridiculous whenever someone actually says it.

Obviously you can do it cheaper on your own but since it's your honeymoon I'm not sure how ghetto the two of you would want to go.

 

I found that food was one of the cheaper things, if you eat mainly at the corner noodle kiosks and not do the big restaurants.

 

I spent a couple of weeks travelling around in Tokyo, Nara, and Kyoto a few years ago but I was with a Japanese family so it that helped in expenses.

 

Personally I think the two of you should go it alone as you seem to have a fairly good idea what to expect but sometimes travelling in such a manner with your sweetheart can put some stress on the relationship.

 

Have fun....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not really looking for ghetto cheap. We're willing to spend the money for nice hotels, good food, etc. Just not sure getting a tour package is worth it. I'm planning on ordering a bilingual Tokyo Atlas for getting around purposes. Don't suppose you can recommend any good walking-tour guidebooks or less well-known sights to see?

Hey peoples,

I'm getting married this June and the wifey-to-be and I are planning a honeymoon to Japan. Neither of us have a lot of experience with travel, though, so we're at a bit of a loss. We've shopped around a bit for travel agents and online ticket/hotel prices and aren't sure what the best way to go is. (Note that prices below are USD).

 

The firmest quote we've gotten from a travel agent is a 10-day trip to Tokyo, Hakone, and Kyoto for $4500 (not including plane tickets, most meals, or incidental expenses... just lodging and city-to-city travel). That seems like a reasonable deal when I total up hotel prices, a Shinkansen pass, etc, but it's at the upper limit of our price range. So we inquired what the price change would be to just stay in Tokyo for 10 days. He quoted $4250, which leads me to conclude that there's shenanigans afoot. A 7-day Japanese railpass runs ~$380 per-person and is the best deal for several days travel by bullet train (which would be necessary to go to Hakone, Kyoto, and back to Tokyo). That alone, not including the loss of 2 nights at Ryokans (high-price traditional Japanese inns), should drop the price well over $250.

 

So I wrote up my own trip itenerary and approximate budget. Seems to me that I can cover most of the bases that the tour agency was covering for about $2000-$2500 less.

 

So basically what I'm asking is, should we try to go it alone? I've not done a lot of world travelling and never outside of the US and Europe and my fiancee has never left the southeastern USA. I speak Japanese (not fluently mind, but I think my 2 years of it at university should let me tourist around well enough), so I'm not Terribly worried about not having a tour guide on hand, but I don't want to end up screwing myself in the name of savings.

 

Any glob-trotting STH'ers have some sage advice?

What would be the immediate effects of short-term exposure to high levels of ultra-violet radiation on a human?

 

What would be the effects of electromagnetism on a human?

 

Electromagnetism covers pretty much everything. Electromagnetic radiation accounts for everything from long wavelength, low-frequency stuff like radio waves up through microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x- and gamma-rays. The further down the spectrum (the higher the wavelength and lower the frequency) a given wave is, the less energy it has (energy is directly proportionate to the frequency of a wave, y'see).

 

Radiation does damage to humans (and anything else) by exciting its component molecules. Your microwave oven works because the waves are tuned to make the polarized water molecules in your food flip back and forth really quickly, generating a sort of friction effect that results in heat. Radiation burns (and the cancers caused by exposure to high-energy, high-intensity radiation sources) are caused by waves knocking into the nuclei of your component atoms with so much force that they knock bits out. Those bits hit other nuclei and knock more bits out, etc. All of this interaction generates a lot of weird chemistry, burns (from all the heat generated), and can damage the strands of DNA in cells near the incident surface. Cancer in particular results from the destruction of the chemical balance composing your immune system coupled with the breakdown of telomerase (the process responsible for cell death). Cells reproduce out of control with no particular purpose and your body can't kill them, so you get hazardous growths.

 

UV in the levels present in regular sunlight or from the light of an welding tool is generally not intense enough to cause cancer. Obviously it can if you expose yourself to high enough intensity bursts or for a long enough period of time. Light-complexioned people are more at risk because the melanin that tints your skin acts as a filter, preventing radiation from penetrating deeper into your body.

 

So, short answer: high intensity burst of UV will burn you (wherever they hit you.. your eyes are especially sensitive because they're designed to let light In, not keep it Out, like your skin is). Given enough intensity or long enough exposure you'll develop skin cancer.

 

As for the effects of electromagnetic fields (I assume you're referring mostly to magnetic fields here... an electromagnetic field is a wave of the type above and big electric fields will tend to end in someone getting a good shock)... Depends on the field intensity. I've personally stuck the majority of my body into a 100 Gauss field, which is a couple of orders of magnitude stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. I didn't feel anything and it required a big, water-cooled apparatus to generate that field in a space all of a meter or so across. A friend of mine who had metal pins in his hand said he could feel a tug, but I think he was imagining it. You'd not want to put your credit card anywhere near a big magnetic field, but humans are mostly unaffected. Now... if you had a really Huge magnetic field going you could get some interesting effects. Do a google search for levitating frogs.

 

I guess if you had a really huge magnetic field suddenly switch on around you it could do some damage. Travelling electrons in a magnetic field experience a force shoving them in a direction perpendicular to their direction of travel (and, incidentally, perpendicular to the magnetic field as well). Since your nervous system is comprised of a series of electrochemical reactions, a really giant field causing all those free electrons to go spiralling off violently to the left could probably lead to some discomfort.

 

Abe

Saw several movies in the course of writing my finals last week:

 

The Machinist excellent flick right up my alley (the kind with people going crazy that spends the first 1/4th not making sense so that you don't guess the twist ending, then spends the other 3/4ths throwing around little foreshadowing clues so that the people who guessed the ending have something to do hunting for them before it arrives). I have to say that Christian Bale at 110lbs (or so says Google, it said 120 in the movie, which confused me... if the man got down to 110, why not just say he weighs 110?) was downright disturbing.

 

Suspect Zero also an excellent movie where you guess the twist as soon as it starts making sense (which was considerably more quickly in this case). My only problem was the idea that the government would let the Project Icarus subjects go free when the project was terminated (which I don't think counts as a spoiler since they say as much in the trailer.

 

Fantastic Four was, as someone else said, worth a $1.50 admission (or, in my case, $3.00 rental). Cheesy and fun with decent effects and a story so goofy that it didn't offend my physicist's BS-ometer by means of being too absurd. I was a bit disappointed in Dr. Doom, though. He wasn't pretty enough to begin and wasn't disfigured enough when he put on the mask.

 

Chronicles of Narnia was great. Similar to my memories of the old straight-to-TV movie but with the added bonus of extremely good CGI (I can usually detect CGI from a mile away but honestly couldn't tell when they were using a real lion and when he was CG when it wasn't a face shot). The battle at the end was a tactical travesty (who puts archers in the charge? and if the defenders had a hill behind them, why in god's name would they not stay on the hill and let the attackers kill themselves climbing up it?) and I didn't quite manage to wrap my brain around the idea of kids holding their own in melee combat with experienced fighters, but overall a fine film.

 

Shultze Gets the Blues haven't actually watched this one yet. The DVD is sitting on my entertainment center at home waiting for me, but it looks like fun. Anyone else care to comment on it before I commit myself for 2 hours?