Ramble, Ramble...

Toil and--Bramble? Or Something

What's in the bookshelf, both actual and virtual:

Michael Crichton's The Lost World. I never should have opened it. Now I'm hooked. Started this morning, I'm about halfway through and I think I'll make myself stop now. My brain has become goo. (Although that is largely due to the pounding headache I've somehow acquired. Which is, incidentally, a lovely background-pain against my spectacularly bruised left knee. AND the ever-popular cramps. Hail Fertility >^P)

Anyway: it's a great book. Intelligent. Engaging. Fun as hell. And it's the first bestseller I've ever seen that managed to simultaneously occupy the #1 slot AND repeatedly use the word "subcutaneous". I love that word, always have; it's just such fun to say. *Sings it out* subcUUUUUUTaneousss! La LA!

Also David Brin's Infinity's Shore. Again. I can't seem to read all the way through the book ^^; Not because it's boring; quite the opposite. I just always lose it or switch books or something. Third time's the charm, I guess...

And I did have a nonfiction, layman-geared book on chaos theory, but the cat sprayed it and...too much info? Eeyeah, I think so. The point remains that I'm going to have to find another copy. If I can be bothered to. Which, on second thought, I doubt.

It does appeal to me on a broad scale: the idea that the "reality" we all experience is actually a huge, unpredictable ballet of change that mere human brains can never hope to comprehend. But seen up close, chaos theory's mostly used for fractals and that Mandelbrot's Set thingy. (All I really remember about the Mandelbrot's Set thingy is that I always failed the questions thereon, and that it had something to do with the repeated patterns contained in numbers not behaving as numbers should. Or something.)

I suppose it depresses me, actually. The idea that the universe really is, for all intents and purposes, as pointless as a fart in church. Dunno. My strengths are irrational numbers and number theory--as my teacher acerbically put it, "She's great at math that doesn't exist." So I'm hardly qualified to speculate ;^p

Back to the literature: Nyohah's The Queen's Honor Guard. Alternatively located here, albeit without the mini-chapterization in place.

What is it? A crossover mythology that puts a Star Wars race in the Mortal Kombat universe and then extracts them back into the Star Wars meilieu, with several intriguing results.

In plain English: the Mandalorians as you've seen them in The Phantom Menace did not exist at the time of her writing. Therefore, she drew up their culture, history, and people as it would be in the Mortal Kombat universe, about 30 years before the "original" Mortal Kombat. (The one with Rayden, Sonya, Liu, et. al.) And it's good. And go read it. And I'm not spoiling anything. So go read it. ;^)

Fans of Zahn's Star Wars work, and/or David Weber's (Honor Harrington series) bouts of wit sandwhiched between careful plotting, will definitely enjoy the ride. This is one of the most ambitious multipart sagas I've seen--and I've seen plenty; the Mortal Kombat fandom is rife with them. It is also one of the few that kept me reading. Bottom line: take a leaf or two from her book, you'll be glad you did.

(Small note to the hopefuls: don't email me asking me to plug your stuff on my blog. I'm not a social person to begin with. Please don't make it worse ^^;)

And now, for the more fun side of the argument: one I wish I'd thrown back.

Tony Hillerman's A Thief of Time. It had all the elements necessary for bestsellerdom: hard-bitten detectives, a theme riffed from kinda-sorta current events ("pot hunters" and their exploitation of Anasazi artifacts), and just a dash of implied gore.

So of course, it did well commercially. It has all the usual features of a well-made book: cover, spine, pages, and summary on the back. In terms of quality, enjoyment, or interest: it would do well in the average household as a firelog, blotter cloth for minor spills, and/or emergency toilet paper. Enough said.

And now for the movie reviews: (or, Why They Never Should Have Given Me The Remote)

Black Knight: Martin Lawrence. A theme-park worker experiences a prolonged medieval hallucination. Discovers hero within, blah blah blah. Painfully un-funny dialogue; Lawrence's strong suit is the physical portion of the comedy. Bottom line: a nice riff on Gladiator at the end, and average-to-good slapstick. Watch it if there's nothing else on.

Mr. Wrong: Ellen deGeneres goes on a boyfriend hunt, with disastrous results. A "some things really ARE too good to be true" comedy of errors. A sneering, snarly, pop-eyed appearance by Joan Cusack (easily the best part of the film) does nothing to save this movie. Ninety minutes of your life you will never get back. Bottom line: the same problem Anne Heche had, only they can't make it intentionally funny.

Movie of the Week: xXx with Vin Diesel. Watch it. Now.

And in the arena of politics/current events:

"Read my lips: go Bush."

Well, there you are, I'm done pounding the soapbox for now. See ya ^_^

Oh, and uh, shouts-out for Foxie who apparently had a much more interesting couple of days than I did ;^) Stay safe and have fun, girlie :^D

[ Yeah, yeah, this post has been edited--if you must know, I said "alternately" and felt "alternatively" was better. Nitpickers! ;^) ]