For the beating of a heart is like a bird fluttering around a cage Saturday, Jun 21 2008

Following up on books by British author Mo Hayder, who really strikes me as one of the most English authors I have read (in the way that Stephen King is one of the most american authors you might read), after reading her book “The Devil of Nanking” (that’s the american edition title, apparently the original title is “Tokyo”) I decided to read her novel “Birdman” which was her first work.

Birdman is pretty interesting. The best description the plot would give away almost the entire story but it would not be enough to describe the humanity, honesty, and perversion that the work encompasses. However while I felt like “tokyo” had a certain validity that transcended the work which I frankly was not impressed by, even though I consider Birdman better as a novel I can not say the same thing. This is a book that doesn’t do the world any favors. Simply put it’s about one of the most realistic and human police investigators I can recall reading trying to solve a serial killer case.

The book is pretty graphic and inventive, probably more so than most actual serial killers are. And in that sense you have to ask yourself whether it crosses the line between fiction emulating life into fiction which the living might emulate. But as I have stated before I think people have the right to put out whatever sort of stories they want.

Back to the protagonist, Jack Caffery, he even has a real name; when I say he is realistic I mean that he doesn’t exhibit super human powers of deduction, including inhuman feats of memory, concentration, and intellect or always miraculously being on the right track like most fictional detectives. To be fair if you watch an hour long  police procedural one could assume that we are only being shown the key moments of the investigation, most of which being relevant to solving the case and making an arrest, because of time constraints. I suppose one could argue that his ability to not be notably effected because of alcohol consumption is over the top but that’s more of a writer flaw than a character element flaw.

As a total side note there’s a moment in the book that reminds me of an impression I have sometimes had about a certain type of english person. That certain type would be the stereotypical haughty upper-class which the royal family would exemplify. And the impression would be that as long as you are civil about things and of an appropriate social rank it would be OK to just stab someone through the heart. The character Veronica in this book, who is very easy to hate, gives you this kind of impression. Perhaps Hayder herself hates that type and those who act that way as well which is why Veronica ends out being the way she is.

Unfortunately the book seems to degrade as it continues on and certain elements are not thought through and very self-serving. One could speculate that the characters, especially Caffery, are only destroying themselves intentionally.

I would once again not recommend this book to anyone but the most hardened, blighted, and perverse fans of thrillers and crime fiction. Again there is not necessarily a lot of mystery in this book though there is a lot of drama. The book defies expectations and that’s notable. On the other hand if the result is always unexpected then that become an expected result into itself.

Which reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan whose feature vague twist endings. I saw online an american preview for his new movie “the happening” and it draws attention to being his first R rated movie as though that is some kind of selling point. I mean what did he finally include some nudity and cussing or something? Who the fuck cares about this guy? He sucks, his work sucks, the actors he casts suck (mark wahlberg is in this new movie), and he keeps putting giant pieces of steaming shit out because 2 of his 8 movies (1/4) have been big successes. bleh. If he’s the prolific director of his generation then that could be it for film. Then again I’m not opposed to that, movies have always been approximations of fine novels anyway.

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The vainglorious return of Q and A Saturday, Jun 21 2008

I haven’t done this in a while. I’ve never been sure just how popular it is but people hopefully find some of the things they’re looking for here.

Q: “can you get a cake made without animal byproducts?” A: probably not. If it isn’t one thing, milk and eggs, it would be another, sugar refined using cow bones, and even if it’s not that the chances that one of the ingredients in the cake was fertilized with manure is high. I think manure is a point worth bringing up because I’ve never heard anyone complaining about its usage before. Probably because the people who know anything about manure don’t give a shit (hah) about the exploitation of animals. So let me break it down for you animal activists who have never been on a farm. Manure of course is livestock feces. Being the feces of “living stock” it is typically collected from the “stock pens” at regular intervals. So if you think about it this is not totally unlike milking a cow, you pen the animal up and collect what you want from it when you want to and leave it in there the rest of the time just eating and shitting all over its space. Of course the thing is that no one wants to make shit a focal point of their cause right? I think that a lot of people imagine animals out in the field happily shitting all over the place “like animals” and then some bothered worker goes around the farmland scooping poop not unlike what people do for the dogs in their yard. But while there is certainly feed lot collection the majority of it is collected from traditional barns and modern “confinement buildings” which have now outpaced barns as the location for most live stock. Well that was quite a digression from the original question about cake but my point is that your beloved “organic” foods made with only natural methods rely heavily on manure for crop fertilization and if confining an animal in such a way that it has to live on top of its shit isn’t cruelty I don’t know what is.

Q:”When does it start snowing in Philadelphia” A: Assuming that we are talking about Philadelphia Pennsylvania in the United States of America, being in the northern hemisphere (and at that rate being somewhat in the north eastern area of the united states winter officially starts in december. So it can technically already be snowing in “Philly” when the year starts on January 1st  though allegedly in recent years snow doesn’t start until later in januaray. To my knowledge it is only during the summer months when it will never snow in Philadelphia (this holds true of many US states). So after weather warms past the point of freezing at night (in some parts of the US this year it continued to snow instead of rain at night well into april) in the spring the earliest it is likely to snow in the fall seems to be november in recent years. I don’t live there myself so I could be off with this.

Q:”what kinds of things do women do sexually to a man’s scrotum?” A: For those who don’t know the scrotum is the sack like protrusion of skin below the penis which houses the testicles, hence its slang name “ball sack” or just “sack”. Typical sex acts include fondling, holding, squeezing, licking, and insertion into the mouth followed by sucking all done lightly because of the extreme pain sensitivity of the testicles. Occasionally a woman will attempt to insert either the entire scrotum with both testicles or part of it with just one testicle into either her vagina or anus but this is pretty awkward and I consider it a novelty act. Less typical sex acts (more for the sexual satisfaction of the sadistic woman), follow ing BDSM ranges of sexual torture include  binding, clamping, flogging, piercing, icing, heating, singing, burning, cutting, and severing. It is important to note that it is possible and not especially difficult to eventually damage the testicles to the point where it becomes extremely difficult for a man to impregnate a woman  due to low sperm production and so caution must be taken if this is not a desirable outcome. A similar caution is that testicular damage is not a reliable method of birth control although castration (the surgical procedure called a vasectomy being the accepted and reasonably safe modern method) is. Conversely of these methods only the first ones I mentioned are likely to be considered acceptable and pleasurable to men who aren’t masochists.

Q: “what does nekketsu mean in the SRW games?” A: “nekketsu” 熱血 is a “seishin” 精神 command available to some pilots and sub-pilots in the Super Robot Wars series of japanese video games. As to what nekketsu means, an english translation might be “zeal” but you will typically see it referred to as “hot blooded” because that is what those two kanji mean individually. Seishin by the way means “mind” in the sense of “spirit” and could be used as a term for will. Supposedly the idea behind the seishin commands which function much like support spells (the majority of which being self-afflicting) in other RPGs is that the pilots, who are mostly exceptional characters, are exerting their will on the battle. So in this case the likes of Amuro Rey from Gundam might get fired up when he’s battling his sworn enemy Char Aznable and unleash an especilaly damaging attack. various seishin might be approximations of piloting techniques or mechanical abilities but I’ll leave that to your imagination. As of the most recent traditional SRW game (OG gaiden as opposed to OG saga) I belive there are something like over 40 distinct seishin commands which have been used over the years in the games. As to what the newest one is, I’d say it would be one of the twin formation only seishin like the one that synchronizes the stats of the two who join together to their highest value, the oldest one would probably be ひらめき (flash) or 集中 (concentration).

Q:”how do you write a split perspective story” A: the simplest way would be to write a story directly from the protagonist’s perspective and then copy the story but replacing it with the perspective of a secondary character who witnessed the same events. Alternately you can write two or more shorter stories and alternate chapters of each within the same book. For the most part that isn’t going to help you write a good story but that really seems to be what most people do. The thing to note about a split perspective story is that you don’t have to repeat the same things for each perspective, but you can. A non-traditional way to write such a story would be from multiple perspectives within the same event in the same chapter but this could quickly get muddled. I will recommend once again that you just write a normal story since for the most part splitting the perspective dilutes the story and retards the pace. Then again if you need to do that then by all means.

Q: “is the “his dark materials” series of novels deistic?” A: People have stated as such, or if you prefer made that accusation. I think that a lot of terms like that get confused and misused though. Like is it still deism if you think that god exists, took an active hand in the world, and then forgot about it and took an active hand elsewhere? I would personally describe the book as encouraging self-determination regardless of what any entity or organization has done in the past or mandates doing. If you want to consider that deistic or anti-religious then that is your business. I will say that the book is likely to offend self-righteous people of any persuasion though.

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