musings

Absolutely everyone should watch The Shock Doctrine, a short film by author Naomi Klein and Children of Men director Alfonso Cuarón. The film is an accompaniment to Ms Klein’s new book of the same title and it’s a deeply moving work. I’ve just watched it twice and it’s horrifying and edifying and has left me thoroughly shaken. With little exception, we live our lives so blissfully unaware of the horrors our governments perpetrate on the world and the range of their effect. I’m thankful for work like this which peels the filters off our eyes and shows us what truly shapes our world. Take the time, watch the movie – it’s just six minutes, but maybe you’ll learn something that’ll change your world.

Robert Anton Wilson died today. It’s been years since I’ve read the Illuminatus trilogy, I think I must go reread it.

Great Caesar’s Ghost, has it really been more than three weeks since my last post? What have I been doing? I don’t know why I’ve left this fallow for so long ; just didn’t feel like writing anything. One of the things I like so much about blogging is that it’s something I can just do when the urge strikes ; I never feel obligated to keep writing.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Neil Gaiman came through Toronto as part of the Anansi Boys promotional tour, and Stephen and I went to the reading and signing. Neil’s a captivating speaker – we had a great time. Because he was signing for all 750 attendees, there wasn’t time for photo opportunities, but there was a draw for five photo ops, and I was one of the lucky five. I’ve put the photo up on my flickr site. Neil Gaiman’s one of my favourite authors, so the whole evening was quite a thrill for me. After the show we met up with Kourosh (who has finally started a blog – see the links section) and Coralie, who were in town for (Canadian) Thanksgiving, and we went to the 7 West Cafe, where we had great coffee, great cake, and great conversation. Always fun to hang out with those guys.

This past Saturday, Stephen and I made our way up to Caledon to take advantage of autumn colours for some photography. We first went to the Cheltenham Badlands where we spent way too much time (and I spent way too much battery). The badlands are just stunning – I found it hard to pry myself away from the place. After that we visited the Bellfountain Conservation Area which was also beautiful. I got some great photos on Saturday – hopefully I’ll have some time to go through them and put the highlights up on my flickr site.

I just finished reading China Miéville’s The Scar, the second of his Bas-Lag books. Like Perdido Street Station before it, it’s brilliant. Being familiar with the world of Bas-Lag it wasn’t the revelation that Perdido Street Station was, but it is a damn good read. It was a bit slow to start, but once it got going it gripped me with tremendous ferocity. I was reading it over the holiday break, which was intensely busy, so I had little enough time to read it, but every free moment found me wanting to go back to it. I found myself forgoing video games and DVDs just to get back to the book. If you liked Perdido Street Station, you’ll definitely like The Scar. I’m now eagerly awaiting the pocketbook release of Iron Council. Sadly, I can’t justify the cost of hardcovers or trade paperbacks any more.

I’ve come to realize that I’ve been looking at this movie karma thing all wrong. See, it’s not movie karma that I’m accruing here. It’s media karma. See, while my movie karma has been almost uniformly horrible, my book and music karma has been singularly excellent. Take, for example, my most recent book purchase. Two piece of SF bubblegum from Tanya Huff, Valor’s Choice and The Better Part of Valor, David Rees’ masterful, biting and timely Get Your War On (also available as a netcomic), Sharon Shinn’s wonderful Angelica and the utterly spellbinding King Rat. Each of them a great read in their own right. Obviously this is where I get back the karma I burn by seeing tripe like The Day After Tomorrow.

The funny thing is the way I go about buying this stuff. Each purchase is carefully considered. I spend time mulling over how much I want each book, and what my book (or music) priority is, and where in the purchase order this stuff should go. Sure, sometimes I’ll see something that I haven’t been able to find for ages (like King Rat) and just buy it on the spur of the mo’, but generally it’s a complicated and mysterious bit of voodoo I go through before buying books or music.

And then I’ll just pull $13.50 out of my wallet and set it on fire by walking into a theater to see Van Helsing.

I’ve figured out why this is. Books and music are, by and large, pretty solitary things to enjoy. Movies are social. I never go see a movie alone, but gather a bunch of friends (or even just one) and I’ll even go see The House of the Dead.

Stupidity grows in packs.

(By the way, I’m only linking to Amazon.ca because that’s where I found info for each book – I don’t get anything from them for these links.)

I finished reading two books in the last couple of days, Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, and Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson.

Perdido Street Station is wonderful. One could not possibly praise this book highly enough. Shortlisted for the Hugo, winner of the British Fantasy and Arthur C. Clarke awards, it’s an utter marvel. I don’t want to try and describe it at all, because it’s so rich and fresh that you really need experience it yourself. Mieville is a staggering talent, and I need to go hunt down his other works.

Screwjack, on the other hand, is really disappointing. I don’t know what I was expecting, and it shouldn’t have been much, given the size of the book – it’s really three short stories, the longest of which is apparently Thompson recording his very first mescaline experience. I’ll give that story one thing – it really made mescaline sound like an experience worth trying, if only once. The other two stories were, well, lame. The thing’s a $22 (CDN) hardcover. If I hadn’t found it remaindered for $7 I think I’d be pretty annoyed. As it stands, I think the book was worth the seven bucks, because though the content lacked, Thompson’s delivery is always entertaining.

In all the excitement over the Killing Joke concert, I forgot to mention that I got my copy of The Ultimate Book of Perfect Energy yesterday. It’s brill. It has me giggling like a raver doing whip-its. And, of course, it’s the Ultimate Book of Perfect Energy. With it I can crush my enemies, and see them driven before me, whilst listening to the lamentation of their women and children.