Favorite Quotes – Neil Gaiman

by on June 12, 2013 at 10:45 am
Posted In: Test

I’ve been fan of Neil Gaiman since his Black Orchid miniseries, and I’ve been following his career happily since than from Sandman, to Neverwhere, the novels to whatever project is in the works be it a Doctor Who script or another novel I haven’t heard of yet.

One of my favorites is American Gods to the point where the George Guidall reading of the audiobooks is one I go for when I can’t find anything else at that given moment. (More on that later) And I can’t wait to see what HBO is going to do with it.

Anyway for this weeks Quote here’s my favorite from that book. Samantha Black Crow’s treatise on belief.

“I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mr. Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in the War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm and that thousand of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in a impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it. “

(I’d love to see someone do an illuminated manuscript of this)

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John Oliver on the Daily Show

by on June 11, 2013 at 10:03 am
Posted In: Test

Well I’d been looking forward to John Oliver hosting the Daily Show over the summer. I was interested to see how he’d handle it as while  I think the man is brilliant and funny, I’ve noticed on several occaisions both in comedy and serious journalism that not all commentators make the transition to the anchor seat perfectly. I’m happy to say  I was not disappointed. Sure I think there’s a certain roughness to work out but otherwise it was great.

Here is the opening bit.

I especially liked the second bit where the rest of the cast gang up on him over getting the gig instead of him.

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Game of Thrones Finale

by on June 10, 2013 at 11:01 am
Posted In: Test

Well of course the bad news is that we’re going to have to wait until next year for season four of Game of Thrones but of course the good news is that Game of Thrones completed another season of epic fantasy.

I was slow getting into Game of Thrones. When I read the first book it took me a while to get into Martin’s dark setting. In fact I put it down after the first hundred pages and only got back to it after watching season 1. Since then I have caught up completely (taking a break in the middle of A Dance With Dragons at the moment) and have become fascinated with the artistry of the adaption,watching all of the tough choices the creators have had to make due to budget and pacing in the process making the show increasingly different from the book. On top of this I was excited about how HBO was taking a fantasy work seriously and whatever I thought of the show itself I saw it as a first step to the fantasy and science fiction shows I dreamed of.

Half the reason for enjoying the season three was for all of the changes. It had deviated from the book enough that even though I knew what was going to happen I didn’t. While I knew all of the important points of the story would be addressed I no longer knew HOW these would happen. A good example of this is how the death of Ros caught me completely by surprise. As she was a character added to the show what I knew from the books wouldn’t have helped me one way or the other but her status as a witness to all of the goings on in Kings Landing had me thinking that she would last til the end (even in a show like this)

I am also fascinated by the way the actor’s performance makes the characters very different from their equivalents in the book. My favorite example is Charles Dance as Tywin Lannister but this goes even more so for Dianna Rigg as Lady Oleana and Michael McElhatton as Roose Bolton. All more reasons to like the show more.

If I had any problems with this season it was that it’s getting to the point where it has almost too many plotlines being juggled to the point where sometimes an episode can only adress it for only a couple of minutes. In fact there are some times if feels like a plotline is only being followed to make sure we don’t forget a character exists before they reappear in a few seasons. However while this can be seen as a nuisance in a weekly serial I’m confident it won’t be a problem in the DVDs. The other problem I had with it was that this was the season that had the Red Wedding in it. Obviously one of the seasons had to have the Red Wedding in it but if there ever was a scene that I would have preferred happening off screen with the cast talking about it in horror, it would be the Red Wedding. (on a much smaller note I worry that Isaac Hempstead-Wright is growing a little too fast for his role but obviously that is not his fault.)

Anyway this was good and I enjoyed it immensely. Season Four will be very interesting. You see there was a LOT going on in A Storm of Swords, and while they broke it up into two parts I’m still wondering how they will squeeze the rest of it into the next season.

 

 

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