Buh?

You can read it for yourself, folks.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but honestly, isn’t that the shape of the world, nowadays?  I mean, I can understand parents being concerned about their kids going up to bat against a kid throwing that fast, sure.  But aren’t we supposed to encourage talented kids to, oh, I don’t know, exercise those talents?

Good talents, I mean.  Tell that kid on your block who pulls the wings off of flies to cut the shit.

There’s a whole ruckus over this issue, but you can read that for yourself in that link up there.  For my part, I’m just going to sit here and be amazed, maybe a litle embarassed, too.

I will say this, though; as I finished off that article, I couldn’t help but think, “maybe about ten years from now, that kid’ll be a superstar and someone will dig up that old story and it’ll get emailed around as a, ‘look how funny’ kind of link.”

I hope so.

I picked it up on the Kindle, mainly because I was curious about the movie.  Also because, on the Kindle, it was very inexpensive.

I found myself enchanted.

This is, simply, a beautiful book.  Oh, the ending has that sort of, “oh crap, I’ve been telling this nice story, but now stuff has to happen,” feel to it, but you can move past that.  The language in here, the spirit you can feel as you read, it’s simply a wonderful book.

The story continues, but don’t focus on that.  Focus, instead, on this great little book.  It may be, technically, classified as a Young Adults book, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reading it.

Most highly recommended.

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Okay.  now that I’ve made sure that doesn’t get buried, I suppose there’s some other stuff to talk about.

First, I’m re-reading Gregory MacDonald’s first Fletch novel.  This is notable for the simple reason that I’m actually carrying around a physical book, as opposed to reading it on the Kindle.  Now, to be fair, the reason I’m doing this is because it’s not available on the Kindle.

But, I was curious what would be the first book to make me, “break” from the Kindle, and wouldn’t you know it but it’s an oldie.

The danger now is that I’m going to get caught up and discover, a week or so from now, that I’m re-reading all of them.  Not that that’s a bad thing, of course (the paperbacks DO weigh less than the Kindle, I guess).

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Before reading the above-gushed-over City of Embers, I read Douglas Preston’s, The Monster of Florence.  Now, for some background, you may or may not remember a movie from the 90’s, I think, called, The Relic.  It wasn’t very good, but it was based on a book that actually was quite good.

The Relic was written by Douglas Preston and his writing partner, Lincoln Child.  Since The Relic, they’ve written a good number of books together and I’ve read (as far as I know) every one of them.  I used to wait for them to hit paperback, but somewhere along the way they got good enough that I’ve been picking them up in hardcover.

Until the Kindle, of course.

I picked up The Monster of Florence for $9.99.  Let me give you an idea what the experience of reading this book is like.

First, you’re reading what seems like a pretty interesting True Crime story about a serial killer.  It’s a horrific story, made a bit more interesting by the fact that, according to Preston, The Monster provided at least some of the basis for Hannibal Lecter.

Which is pretty cool.

A little past the midway point, though, the book stops being horrific and becomes genuinely terrifying.

Not because the killer ramps things up, no.  In fact, around the midway point, there are no more killings or attacks.  The book shifts focus away from The Monster and to Preston and Italian Reporter Mario Spezi.

I won’t go into too much because it’s really worth reading for yourself, but the two of them first decide they’ll set to solving the (still unsolved) crimes.  Then they become implicated in the killings.  Then things get really nasty.

I read this book and told my wife, “honey, I am NOT going to Italy.”

It’s a hell of a read, though.  Your mind will boggle at the avenues the Italian investigators took in persuing The Monster, including the missed opportunities, it would seem, to catch him.

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We also saw the movie, Pineapple Express.  It was funny as hell and it annoyed me even more.

Without going too much into it, let me say this: if you’ve ever been the designated driver when your friends are smoking up, drinking, or whatever, and you wanted to throttle them, this movie will piss you off.

They have somehow managed to capture almost perfectly what it’s like to WATCH people get high and become complete idiots.  Is there comedy to this?  Of course.  But does it also grate under your skin to where you want to scream at the screen, similar to, say, snatching the remote from your friend’s hand when he can no longer operate it on his own?

Oh, hell yes.

We also went back and saw The Dark Knight again, this time in Imax.  It was sold out opening weekend, so we had to, “settle” for a normal theater.  Poor us, I know.

I don’t know that TDK was vastly improved by being in Imax, but it was nice to do, nonetheless.  Also, as we waited a couple weeks, the movie wasn’t as fresh in our minds.  Jessy, of course, says she’d go back again, and has been offereing to friends who haven’t seen it yet that she’ll happily accompany them.

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Speaking of Jessy, she finally finished reading Watchmen this week.

The book’s been out, what, twenty years, so I’m comfortable giving vague spoilers.  If you havent’ read it — shame on you! — go read it and then you can finish the last bit of this post.  Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you . . . . . . . okay, now that you’ve read it, we can continue.

She didn’t like the ending.

And not because she didn’t like the ending itself, she just didn’t like that it was basically a “Villain Speech Ending”.

We talked about it briefly.  My basic stance is that the point of the book, in many ways, is that direct violence by a superhero or heroes is not an actual solution to the problems which plague the world of Watchmen.  The resolution which, “saves” the world is, by its very nature, not an active one.

However, I can see the problem she has where, after all the twists and turns and this and that, it comes down to one character giving a speech.  “Explaining my master stroke,” is I think the way the book puts it.

I find that to be an interesting objection.

I’m not sure how one might fix that, or what another way to finish things off might be.

I think the point there at the end is that the heroes think they’ve solved the mystery, but they really have no idea what’s actually going on.  Why?  Because they simply cannot conceive of the scope of things.  And when they’re told what’s really up, all they can really do is shrug their shoulders and deal with it.

It’s a powerful message.

As I think about it, I’m realizing that the, “Republic serial villain speech” does work as a way to close things out.  Because the alternative is that Nite-Owl, Silk Spectre and Rorschach would be able to figure things out for themselves and I think a very big, central idea is, like I said up above, they cannot conceive of the scope of the plan.

Then again, I’ve probably read Watchmen at least twenty times, maybe more.  Sometimes just a chapter here or there.  I keep meaning to read it again, in order, including the appendices, to get the full effect.

So, I’ll have to put that on my To-Do List.

We’ve got some changes coming — big changes.  Some downloadable content (sample chapters, short stories, etc.), a new design, and more frequent updating.

Also, we’re moving in ~2 weeks, which will probably make life interesting for a bit, but then things should normalize in a spectacular fashion.

Which will be nice.

“Reads”?  Yeah.  I think this is my third time through.  The Kindle is funny that way — I’ll pick up new stuff I might not ever look at and really enjoy it, but I’ll also fill it up with “comfort food” for when I just want to curl up with an old friend.

It’s also funny in the stuff that you can’t read on it.  J.K. Rowling remains adamant that she won’t allow the Harry Potter books to appear in any electronic forms (even though you can download pirated versions of all seven).  Do I really need to re-read those again?  Not just yet, but I’m sure I will eventually, and I’d really appreciate not lugging around monstrous hardcovers when I do that.

I want to read Jose Saramango’s, Blindness, though that’s not on the Kindle, either.  Same for Cory Doctorow’s, Little Brother, which queerly enough WAS available, but only for a couple days (I missed my shot on that one).

There are a few Robert A. Heinlein books available, like Glory Road and Stranger In A Strange Land, but not his whole booklist, stuff like Time Enough for Love or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

Some of the choices are downright odd, to be honest.  And I’m a bit of whore when it comes to “collecting” stuff like this; doubly so when its stuff I can collect that won’t pile up in my house-of-many-piles.

I’ve also grabbed a couple “Complete Works Of” collections for the Kindle, finding them to be, almost universally, utter crap.  Why?  Well, I got “The Complete Conan”, which I thought would be a funky thing to have.  Problem: they formatted the text wrong so, instead of flowing from line to line when you read, it cuts off every 1.5 lines so it looks like some extended damned poem, or something.

You try to read it and you find yourself trying to squeeze the lines into meter and/or rhyme — NOT a pleasurable way to read.

What started this sort of free-association post going, by the way, is I was thinking about re-reading some other, non-Kindle stuff.  Stuff like the Hellboy collections and the Sandman Ultimate editions we have in the house.

Plus, with the Watchmen movie coming out this Winter, you sort of have to give that one another go, no matter how many times you’ve read it before, right?

Unless that’s just me.

I doubt I’m the only person who reads and re-reads stuff ad infinitum, but I have to wonder sometimes.  I mean, it takes a while to chug through all 75 issues of Sandman — do lots of other folks do that on a regular basis?  Do folks just read them once, think, “hey that was nice” and then move on with their lives?

Dunno.  I figure in a given year at least a quarter to a third of everything I read is stuff I’ve read before.  I couldn’t guess if that’s grossly high or grossly low or what.  It works for me, though, and the “comfort food” is good to hit between the really big meals.

I spent most of the movie with my mouth open, stunned into silence.

I cannot believe we live in a world where Wall-E and Hellboy II can premier in theaters mere weeks apart.  Any sense that the wonder — just sheer, unadulterated wonder — might be going out of mainstream movies in favor of crass commercialism . . . well, lets just say I’m feeling significantly better about things now.

Absolutely amazing, beautiful, breathtaking, and wonderful.

Sheer wonder.  Don’t miss it.

There are people shitting all over this movie online, saying Wall-E is a condemnation of our crass commercialism, that it’s a denoucement of humans and their ways.

Anyone who says that must have walked out in the first 30 minutes.  There’s no other explanation, really.

This is a magnificent movie.  Not just for the art, the animation, etc..  This movie’s got heart.  Wall-E and Eva are amazing characters, especially in how much emotion is conveyed with almost no words and by creatures that are, let’s be honest, not really getting a lot through by way of facial expressions.

The crew at Pixar have completely outdone themselves with this one.

More than anything, Wall-E is a message of hope.  It shows us how down one can be — a person, a robot, or a species — and how no matter how easy it may be to stay down, no matter how comfortable one may become, you can still want more.

And fight for it.

What I find interesting about Wall-E, and this is something that many watching and condemning the movie may not have thought about, but the humans in this movie didn’t choose their way of life.

I’m going to delve into spoilers for a bit — you’ve been warned.

Okay, it’s 700 years since folks left Earth.  To be more specific, it’s 700 years since the folks who could AFFORD to pay for the luxury of The Axiom (the ship) left Earth.

In those 700 years, the entitled folks on board The Axiom have been waited on hand and foot.  Gradually (or perhaps not so gradually), they fell into a Dionysian life of sloth.  They don’t get up out of their chairs.  Robots feed and (presumably) wash them.

The crop of humans on board The Axiom in Wall-E have never known any life but the life they are leading.  Their parents and their parents’ parents (and so on for many generations) lived like this.

To put it another way; for generations, we humans have been waring pants.  Imagine if someone came along and cried to the heavens, “AWAY WITH PANTS!”

So, this is the world they know.

I don’t feel we can blame them for it.

These humans are certainly not to be blamed for the state of the Earth.  They had nothing to do with its polluting.

Now, take the Captain.  Take Bill.  Take Mary.  The first moment those three humans — who are clearly as slothful as the rest, at first — are given the option to experience life for themselves, for raise their hands and take a stand . . . they do.

In spite of 700 years of civilization standing in their way, the Captain, Bill and Mary go against their society and strive for something more.

The Captain fights against the counsel of the Autopilot even though its opinion is quite reasonable.  They have to fight for the possibility that Earth could be theirs again.  That humanity can be more than just a chubby invalid in a floating couch, being waited on hand and foot.

And, if you stayed for the credits, you can see that the rest of humanity (at least, some amount, though the end sequence makes it look like everyone’s in for the haul) joins the cause.  They’re working with the robots to clean up and start growing again.  Humans in the credits are even getting skinnier, doing without their floating couches.

Wall-E has a wonderfully optimistic message that is relevant to our times.  People!  We don’t have to lay back and let our comfortable lifestyles dictate the state of the world!  We can stand up and refuse to be sheep!  Refuse to let the media blind us!  Refuse to let our leaders tell us what’s best!

We can think for ourselves, and we can act for ourselves.

That’s a lot for a G-rated cartoon about a robot.

That’s a hell of a movie.