chris t

Bought and read Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein.

It doesn't quite live up to its opening line. Nothing would live up to that. Nothing with plot, anyway. Nothing you could read and parse more than a page at a time. But it's pretty damned good. The thing basically opens with the main character attending the "only genuine and authentic Godzilla Bukkake night in America" and goes from there. (Same page: "The door guy entered the room, carrying cages of thirsty-looking monitor lizards, long tongues flickering.") It's obscene, gleeful -- and most of it is actually stuff that is familiar to us depraved denizens of the intertron. I actually find that kind of scary.

If you want to sample that atmosphere, the best place I know to start is with Ellis' The Dinner of Cathcart Zen.

Today in "ludicrous consumption news", I acquired a fur coat. I would rather have a personal demonic milquetoast, but one makes do with what one has.

In my defense, I didn't really mean to. There was an ebay auction, and I put in the minimum bid as a lark, and then I won it, to my chagrin. It's not like I can wear it anywhere. It's dyed rabbit, which I think is the fur equivalent of polyester. But it is very warm, and I don't hold heat well on my own. Also, it makes me feel the very model of decadent monarchy.

(And, yes, it bothers me, but I eat meat and wear leather, and I have never had pretensions to saintliness.)

Relaxing with a glass of Flying Dog Brewery's "Double Dog" double pale ale.

"Relaxing" might be the wrong word. This is not a beer for relaxation. With the first sip, I asked myself: "Did Ian brew this?" Start with the Ian-esque alcohol content: 10.5%. Move on to the hops: extreme. If you concentrate really hard you can feel some syrupy caramel tones from the malt, before the hop flowers kick down the door. Aftertaste is pleasantly roasted, bitter but not unreasonably so.

All in all, good, but totally immoderate.

Edit: I found a perfect review, searching to see what other people thought of this stuff: "Like eating a grapefruit in a flower garden." I don't know why I bother sometimes.

Today I went and ate the meal prescribed in the penny-arcade of our forefathers. It was. . . grand in scale. Epic in size. Between 1743 and 2173 calories. (Decided to skip out on the ham, but I'm not sure how to tot up the chocolate shake.) Cost me $9.20, which has got to be at least twice as much as I've ever spent at a Burger King.

I might as well get an arrow tattooed on my chest, pointing to my heart, with a label that says "BLOOD CLOTS HERE"

"Berries & Cream Dr. Pepper" tastes like it's been spiked with hummingbird vomit. I know there are people out there who like this stuff -- I beg you, leave my demographic and never come back.

Watched Howl's Moving Castle the other day. Amazing movie. Wonderful.

But there is one detail I have to mention -- it's NOTHING like the book. The witch of the waste? Genuine villain. Soliman? Dude. Most importantly, though, there's no war in the book. It's this giant Miyazaki antiwar theme coming in, and I'm pretty sure it didn't need to be there.

I think it's kind of funny, myself -- I thought as I was reading the book that it'd be the perfect Miyazaki film, but now I see that it didn't give him a chance to work his themes in. And I would have been okay with that. I didn't think that was too much to hope for. He's been saying the same thing for thirty years; you'd expect him to be satisfied and move on to something else.

But really, it's a great, riveting, compelling movie. It's hard to believe I waited this long to watch it.

. . .

I also watched Mirrormask, and it's so good that I don't feel I need to say anything about it.

Finished watching Narutaru. Eleven episodes in the past six hours or so. Flagrant irresponsibility, but I found myself unable to stop.

In summary? "If you have enjoyed the experience of this anime, why not share it with your friends?"

"Because I want to keep them."

Bought and read volume 11 of Hot Gimmick.

I don't read much manga in Japanese, because it's really more a deciphering than a reading process. The language is more moon-man than I care to admit, and reading manga is slow, difficult, and punctuated by visits to the kanji dictionary. (Of course, it depends on what I'm reading.)

Hot Gimmick, though. . . that's something. Well worth the effort. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I enjoy it more in Japanese than in English, because the mental effort required is such that I can't think about the fact that I'm reading a high school romance comic.

And now I discover that v. 12 has been out in japan for months now. And there's "Hot Gimmick S." (It goes without saying that I am consumed by a desire to read it immediately.) At this rate I ought to just get a subscription to betsucomi and have done with it.

Today I read Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, just as I'd been meaning to do for several months. I think it may well be perfect in every way.

Still consuming like mad. These works all seem so wonderful. It's not impossible that I've simply lost some critical facility. Good riddance if so.

( reviews, in reverse chronological order. )

Dreamed the other day that someone had replaced my happy hacking keyboard lite with a happy hacking lite 2, and it made me happy. (Note: if anyone would like to do such a thing in reality, I'd be much obliged. Although I'd be even happier with a blank key top model.)

Yeah, sometimes my dreams are really boring. Obviously my subconscious is a consumer.