Leper

Today I finished The Power That Preserves by Stephen R Donaldson. Well, that's the end of the first Thomas Covenant trilogy, and it was awesome, even with Covenant saying "Don't touch me!" all the time. Sure Covenant is not a happy chappy, and very unlike Frodo the Hobbit, but for Pete's sake the guy is a leper! A real one! Not a metaphorical one! Nevertheless, many reviewers on Amazon complained about Covenant being a not very nice man at all and they couldn't get over the fact that he rapes the girl Lena who cared for him when he mysteriously appeared in The Land, but I believe those people missed the point, missed the humanity of the situation, only seeing THE RAPE and running off like squawking flapping chickens to complain about it on Amazon. God only knows what these fairy bread-eating crybabies would make of Greek Mythology...
Anyway, I'm hooked now and there's The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.. (another trilogy) up ahead, but I'm thinking it might be a good idea to take a break and read Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy - an epic Space Opera (3000+ pages) - that a guy from work recommended. I checked that one out on Amazon and it too has divided people, with many complaining about the horrible nasty violence and sex scenes. Cool. It sounds like an ultra mega pumped-up mutated and amplified version of Starship Troopers.

Killing Machine

Earlier this year I watched a documentary about American soldiers in Iraq and what kind of music they listened to. They said they listened to Slayer's 'Angel of Death', which of course is a very good choice. One soldier said he liked to listen to Metallica but that's OK, he probably just had to grow up a little bit before he could appreciate the superior ferocity of Slayer.
Anyway, the soldiers explained how they could hook their Discman up to the PA system of the tanks so they could blast the music to the people outside the tank. You can imagine it. An Iraqi soldier running around on foot with a gun, then having a big TANK coming at him blasting Slayer's 'Angel of Death' would be a very effective strategy to make him crap his pants and move at high speed in the opposite direction.
The soldiers also admitted that they played heavy metal because it hyped them up for action. Of course. If you were going into grim and deadly battle, you don't want chillout music, you want some fast and heavy and aggressive METAL that pounds its way into every atom of your being, causing adrenaline to surge through your bloodstream, removing any apprehension, pushing you forward and higher with ecstatic grim bloodlust, exultant, a formidable relentless killing machine, ready for anything, ready for WAR, ready to meet the enemy and destroy them utterly, blast them into oblivion, relishing every nanosecond of the carnage, the blood and the fury, the superior firepower, the glorious and terrible delivery of death and destruction, while Slayer's 'Angel of Death' roars in your ears, terrifying the hated enemy to the very depths of despair but driving you ever on and on, higher and higher, into the stratosphere of all-powerful and righteous warmongering. Supreme. Immortal. GOD of WAR.

Why?

Why are the people on TV so stupid? Why are they so annoying? Why are they so stupid and annoying? What is it with these TV people? Why do they all have the same idiotic haircuts? How is it possible that they think they're funny? Does anybody laugh at what they say? Why are they grinning like that? How do they get their eyeballs so white like that? Why do the studio audience allow themselves to be demeaned and humiliated like that? Why do they grin and laugh like idiots while they are being demeaned and humiliated like that? Why is TV so stupid? Why is is it so idiotic and grotesque? Does this reflect our human condition of this present day? Why do I feel so sick all of a sudden? Why is it all so horrible and confusing? Why?

Metal Fantasy

I went to work today then when that was all finished came home and read some more of my book (The Power That Preserves by Stephen R Donaldson) then ate some Indian food then went over to my computer, turned it on and began downloading songs by Isis, Behemoth, Enslaved, Finntroll and Naglfar...
I knew another metal phase was coming on because in the last month I found myself looking at Terroriser magazine in the newsagent. Standing there, I would see the magazine and say to myself, there is the Terroriser magazine. I'd look at the cover and see that the free CD that was supposed to be stuck to the cover was not there. Oh, it is not available outside the EU. Well that's not fair is it?
I found myself returning again and again to look at the Terroriser magazine. The CD was never there. It was not an illusion. I would then walk back out of the newsagent in a mysterious fog of dismay.
Then on Monday I was there again, in front of the rack with the music magazines. I saw a new Terroriser magazine, a new issue. Like in a dream I picked up the magazine and almost jumped when I saw that there was a CD on the front. This one had somehow amazingly made it outside the EU.
Clearly it was a sign that the Metal Gods were calling me back to the fold.
Since that time I have been scouring metal websites for clues - obsessively scrolling through Best Metal Albums of the Year pages like a gambler at the track sweating over his form guide. There was also a clue in the Terroriser magazine: Nile - 'Annihilation of the Wicked', the widely proclaimed saviours of death metal! I figured I'd better pick that one up first. Lucky Utopia Records is right below the cinema I go to, so on Tuesday after coming out from seeing The Island, I went down and asked the guy there (the guy who always tells me I have missed yet another Opeth tour) to give me that album. I went got a bus home and quickly put the Nile album on. After a long Egyptian-sounding guitar intro the death metal sounds blasted out and my skin started tingling. Yes! Another sign! For sure now I was on the right track. Throughout the night, whenever the album reached its end, I played it back from the beginning. It was like when I heard Reign In Blood for the first time, or Slowly We Rot, or Blackwater Park (or that Mayhem album). Yes, a true METAL MOMENT. Impossible to think of anything else. The QUEST for the ULTIMATE METAL surging through my bloodstream, it is ALL.
Next Isis!, Naglfar!, Finntroll!, Enslaved!, Behemoth! and yes, Grand Magus! Oh wait, Mourning Beloveth! too!
*zooms around tiny apartment screaming, WIMPS AND POSERS, LEAVE THE HALL!*

MTV Hell

I found a metal site, there's some good stuff in the Articles section, like How To Piss Off Black Metal Dorks 101. The writing reminds me of Beavis & Butthead, it's really great. MTV Hell.

Snake Vs Electric Fence

This goes into the TOTALLY BIZARRE category - a really BIG snake trapped under an electric fence. Far out.

The Island

What do you do when you get to leave work halfway through a sunny Tuesday? Go and see a movie of course! That's what I do anyway, and that's what I did today. The movie was called The Island.
The movie is set in the future - 2050 or somewhere around there - and there's a guy Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson). Yes those are funny names aren't they? You get to find out why they have such funny names later in the movie.
Lincoln and Jordan work in a big futuristic-looking place with hundreds maybe thousands of other people and they all wear the same white Star Trek-looking uniforms. It's a strange place, kind of creepy, in a space age mental institution kind of way. Everything seems to be overly controlled, for instance when Lincoln wakes up in the morning and goes for a piss, a digital messageboard above the toilet tells him his salt level is a bit too high. Then when he goes down to breakfast in the big cafeteria, the mean serving lady won't let him have any bacon and eggs.
He is friends with the girl Jordan and she sees that he is having a problem with the breakfast lady, so she goes up to him and says stand back and watch this. The mean breakfast horrorhag seems to like Jordan so Jordan gets some bacon for Lincoln. Then they have a laugh about it and touch each other on the arm or some such innocent display of affection when a big security guy in a black spacesuit comes up and says "Watch your proximity!" What the hell? What kind of wacky place is this?
The next minute, everybody is watching a big video screen and there's a lottery on. The prize is a trip to *The Island*. Everybody there wants to win a trip to this island because it must be a great place like Hawaii or something, much better anyway than being in some big robot factory where black-suited Nazis come up and tell you to watch your damn proximity.
Lincoln likes to sneak off and hang out with his friend, a guy (played by Steve Buscemi! Yay!) who works in what looks like the boiler room. Then we notice that Lincoln is not very smart. It's not exactly that he's not smart, but he doesn't seem to know things that even a not-smart person would surely know. Like he asks Steve who God is. Steve says, "You know when you close your eyes and really wish for something? Well, he's the one that ignores you."
Lincoln starts doing some weird things (weird for this place, that is) and behaving unlike a robot so he gets called in to see the doctor, or actually the director of the place I guess, a guy played by Sean Bean, who I can't see now and not think of him as Boramir in Lord of the Rings. Anyway, Sean gives him a hard time for getting too close to Jordan, then Lincoln starts asking questions like why do we have to wear these stupid white uniforms all the damn time, how about some colours?
Then he sneaks off to a different part of the building and accidentally witnesses something dodgy, so he finds out this place, well there's something fishy going on.
Anyway, it's impossible to say more about the story without giving away spoilers, although I find it almost impossible to believe that there is anybody out there who didn't know what the big mystery was even before they saw the movie.
There's a big WHEN MAN PLAYS GOD theme going on here, and aspects of other books/movies like 1984 and The Matrix, also Minority Report.
The actors do an excellent job. Ewan McGregor is a very likeable guy, and Scarlett Johansson, well I've been a *fan* ever since Ghost World.
It was cool (huh huh, is that the right word?) to see Ethan Phillips (Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager) in the movie - the second movie I've seen him in.
Anyway, the movie was pretty damn good, if a little long, although those cinema seats get uncomfortable, and I'm a twitchy nervy guy at the best of times. But how did it only get 40% on Rotten Tomatoes? That's really hard to believe. I think there's a lot of sci-fi *haters* out there.
Woops! I almost forgot my audience report!
There was plenty of space in the theatre. Only two or three people in front of me, but from experience that is no indication of numbers - most people seem to like to sit further away from the screen. Anyway, space was no issue, no Asian teen gang sat next to me cruelly keeping their girlfriends from sitting next to me, but this time the problem was kids behind me. They were eating chips and it sounded like they were moving their heads right up behind my head, so I could hear this deafening crunching sound as their jaws ferociously masticated the chippies like they had a microphone jammed in their gobs connected by a cable to small but powerful speakers that hovered in the air millimetres away from my ears. Man it was LOUD.