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Books, Boobs, and Boardgames... THE PODCAST

On Books: The Terrible Thing That Happens by Carlton Mellick III

I love a good post-apocalyptic novel; I really do. Technically this book is more of a novella than a novel, but damn. It's just so BIZARRE. And dark. And sssoooooo creative. And violent. And crude. 

So, in short, all of my favorite things.

I'd never heard of Carlton Mellick III before, but the poor bastard's officially been added to my list of authors I'll stalk badly and I've only read ONE of this books. Although, on second thought, maybe I should be a bit more careful stalking this particular author given the titles of some of his other books:

• Satan Burger
• The Haunted Vagina
• The Baby Jesus Butt Plug
• Zombies and Shit
• Adolf in Wonderland

Eh. I stalked Palahniuk and he writes happily about serial killers, so I think I'll be okay. Maybe. Anyway, if I survive our inevitable encounter I've got Punk Land on my shelf right now and Satan Burger in my Amazon cart, so I'll probably post a review here when I read them. This guy's writing style and choice of subject matter are so unique I just cannot wait to get more.

I can only imagine how twisted and bizarre these other books are after picking up The Terrible Thing That Happens. Even the freaking Introduction was fun to read, and before I even noticed I'd blasted through the whole novella. Somehow this magnificent mutant of a human created an insane, inexplicable, totally bizarre world, populated it with some of the most insane, repulsive, and grotesque monsters, then threw in an inexplicable regenerating grocery store/mass murder crime scene, and not once did I put the book down in disbelief. Somehow. Somehow. This guy makes you buy into all of this crazy shit and just accept it. And that ending man. OUCH. Heartbreakingly believable (in the context I suppose). 

Before you go grab all the guy's stuff though, as you might have assumed from the title list above, this book isn't for everybody. I mean there's definitely a bit about jerking off into a tin can to make mutant babies. It's not super graphic or anything, at least about the sex stuff, but if that's gonna squick you out maybe go read Moby Dick or something. Plus there's parts where people get exploded and apparently that's also hard for normal people to read. 

If you've read John Dies at the End or The Unnoticables, or you've got an affinity for Tank Girl comics or Mad Max, you're going to ADORE this book. If you prefer Victorian Lit to gritty, innovative, postmodern fiction, we're probably not friends and that's okay. 

In other news, Nick Harkaway, author of The Gone Away World (one of my favorite books OF ALL TIME - I should really write about it here cuz HOW HAVE I NOT), Angelmaker, and Tigerman (all GREAT go read them) just announced the publication date of his new book: Gnomon. I'm so goddamn excited.

Repeal and Replace and I Need A Better Title Also Trump is a Butt

Part of the reason this blog got abandoned is because I would start a writing project, get most of it done, take a break with the full intention of coming back and fixing it, but never actually following through. So basically I’m a flake and can’t finish stuff. To avoid this, I’ll be skipping the part where I take a break and come back, so you can expect to see pretty awful raw shtuff here that gets fixed whenever. Or never. Exhibit A: the crappy title. There’s a chance I'll fix it later, but it exists and that’s the important part.

MOVING ON.

I’ve got political opinions. I avoided posting them here previously because The Internet (or at least my interpretation of it) said that when writing a blog I should pick a couple things to write about and stick to them. My opinions didn’t always involve books, boobs, or boardgames, so instead of putting them here I just got drunk and yelled them at Fiancé. I think he’ll approve of me yelling them at an uncaring Internet instead so babe, this one’s for you. Anyway I’ve got boobs, so I’ll just say that qualifies. Also I’m in charge here.

First off lemme just say that I think President Elect Donald Buttfucking Trump is a repulsive morally bankrupt hatred-guzzling cock trumpet. For my entire life I’ve devoutly held the belief that, as an American patriot, the elected leader of our fair nation deserves respect regardless of my personal opinions of the guy. I criticized Bush’s actions but intentionally and devoutly avoided personal attacks on his character; I did the same with Clinton and Obama. Trump is literally throwing me into a personal quandary of self-doubt over what being a patriot actually means and whether or not I am one. Anyway. More on that later.

I’m here to talk about the movement to “Repeal and Replace” Obamacare, or The Affordable Care Act if you want to get pedantic. With a majority in Congress and an upcoming Trump presidency, the Republican Party will soon have the support it needs to carry out their long-touted threats on repealing the plan. The problem they’re running into isn’t so much the repeal part, but the replace part. I’m mildly obsessed with politics these days, so let's talk about what in the sam hill this is all about.

For Trump himself, I don’t believe replacing Obamacare was ever a huge priority during his campaign. Sure, during his speeches he said he was going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific,” but Trump’s platform seemed to be mostly based on improving national infrastructure, lowering unemployment, reforming immigration laws, and cutting back on government interference in private markets, thereby improving the American healthcare system indirectly. Cuz trickle-down economics folks. According to his campaign website:

By following free market principles and working together to create sound public policy that will broaden healthcare access, make healthcare more affordable and improve the quality of the care available to all Americans.

Looking past the cringe-worthy lack of proofreading, this statement appears to imply that whatever this “terrific” alternative is, they haven’t fleshed it out. Sure, there’s a list of 7 mostly vague ideas on reform following this grammatical train-wreck, but the entire piece is capped off with “The best social program has always been a job” and some gibberish about those goddamn Mexicans. Who the fuck knew those bastards were so ingenious and powerful that they’re actually to blame for everything.

So if Trump isn’t the one coming up with the replacement plan, who is? Fucking everybody. Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House) came up with “Obamacare Lite,” Tom Price (Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services head) has been crafting a replacement plan for years, Mike Pence has weighed in, along with a rabble of other lawmakers. The only thing every ACA nay-sayer seems to agree on is that it needs to go but definitely notrightnow and definitely not without a replacement. The ACA caused an undeniable rise in premiums and costs to the already insured, which the ACA repealers would like to alleviate, but in the end 16 million people are now insured under the act, many of them for the first time. At least the heartless bastards are sensible enough to realize that these 16 million people won’t like them very much if they get lobbed out the front door of the insurance market headfirst like a drunk out of a cartoon bar. It’s starting to look like the “Repeal and Replace” program is shaping up to be more of a “Repeal and Delay” program, particularly since they’ve openly stated that the repeal process will begin in January and end whenever but probably nowhere near those mid-term elections, which I find pretty hilarious since the ACA’s been around for over five years now. How come y’all haven’t figured this out by now? You were okay with the system when it was broken but now that we know how important universal coverage is you’ve gotta get the rest sorted? Got it.

This is what I find so fascinating about the whole thing. Like it or not, the ACA made such a profound impact on the way our nation approaches health insurance that simply pretending it never existed isn’t an option anymore. Now, ACA repeal-replacers are faced with the challenge of having their cake and eating it too. Dumbest cliché ever, by the way. Who just has a cake? Cakes are for eating. If you need a non-eating/having-only cake, make a really gross kale one so you don’t want to eat it. Which maybe isn’t such a bad idea since your diabeetus medication ain’t gettin’ any cheaper under ButtTrump.

At any rate, mandating insurance for all Americans, outlawing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and those troublesome hikes in premiums are the cake bits that generated the funding pool necessary to make these plans available to many of the people who enrolled, and those resources are precisely what many of these lawmakers seek to repeal. How exactly is this replacement plan going to fund itself?

I mean, it’s not inconceivable that there’s a better way to go about making universal health insurance a reality. I read the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act;” it’s like A BAJILLION PAGES LONG. OK, technically it’s only 906 pages and I’m still not sure what spasm of masochism inspired me to actually read the damn thing, since I know jack about legal-eze and had to have smarter people explain it to me anyway and that’s not even the whole thing, but I read enough to know that it’s far from perfect. Just the fact that it’s so long speaks to it’s inefficiencies, but let’s not forget that the reason it’s so convoluted and complex to begin with. The ACA was designed to fix an extraordinarily long-running and complex problem, namely that healthcare and prescription costs in this country are ridiculous and lots of people just can’t afford basic healthcare.  While universal insurance helps alleviate the financial burden of participating in this inflated system, it doesn’t actually address all the underlying factors that caused everything to be so expensive in the first place.  I’m curious to see how a party that religiously touts the power of the free market tackles the fact that an unregulated healthcare industry is precisely what got them in this pickle to begin with.

I wish I could say I’ve got confidence in the incoming administration to navigate this endeavor with grace, reaching across the aisle for the betterment of us Americans and honest long-term reform of a broken healthcare system, but the rhetoric I’m picking up doesn’t give me much hope. None of these repeal-replacers seem to be talking about how to stop the constantly ballooning costs of prescription drugs in our country, or why MRI costs about $1080 in the US and $280 in France, or why half a million Americans with mental illness have exactly zero access to help. And yes, I understand that Obamacare didn’t fix these problems completely either, but at least it addressed them at an unprecedented scale. It sounds an awful lot like the reason the “replace” bit got tacked on the end of this repeal frenzy is because Obamacare is actually working. And why trash the whole thing when it clearly has some upsides? Because it was a Democrat’s idea? It’s got Obama’s name on it? That’s childish, boys. The only replacement I foresee is Obamacare is getting swapped out with a privatized shit show that leaves the politicians who put it in place with enough popular support to win themselves another election, while simultaneously maintaining a system of ballooning healthcare costs that gives exactly zero shits about the poor people who apparently want this system to continue running them right the fuck over.  Then again who knows; maybe they’ll all finally play nice in the same sandbox now that they’ve kicked the other kids out and can get something done. I mean, at least they don’t have themselves standing in their way like the legislators who drafted Obamacare.

There’s a pile of rich white guys in power again ladies and gentlemen, and if you think they give a single solitary fuck if you can afford your band-aids if it means giving up their fat, fat pharmaceutical paychecks you’ve got another think coming.

Time Capsule Camera (fiction/short story)

Greg loved the smell of photo developing chemicals. Even the sharp vinegar smell of the stop-bath gave him nostalgic shivers as he hovered over the plastic pan in his dark room. Dark room really was a generous term for it, since in reality it was just a converted basement closet, but it was one of the only places in the house that remained his and his alone. Veronica hated the smell he loved so much, and her ever growing suit collection claimed pretty much every other unused corner in the place, so the basement was where he set up his little shop.

An avid analogue photographer, Greg had lately been experimenting with vintage, sometimes slightly busted cameras. Veronica called it “Lame-O-graphy,” mocking him with the term that was so trendy a couple years ago, then bought a DSLR and told him to grow up. Whatever. Greg was excited to see what kind of photos his new acquisition would produce. He wasn’t even sure what model the thing was, but he’d found it lying on the ground by a pawn shop dumpster and couldn’t resist.

As pictures started to form, Greg’s brow furrowed. The images appearing were so foreign that if he hadn’t put the film in the camera and taken it out himself he wouldn’t have believed them. There was a mild distortion in the images, but when had he taken a picture of a freakin’ birdbath? Who the hell even HAS birdbaths anymore?

Racking his brain, he started compiling a list of the photos he’d taken. It had been a couple of weeks ago, but not that long. Let’s see… There were a couple shots of the flowers in the yard, a few of the flowers in the neighbor’s yard. Then he’d gone for his usual Sunday walk around the nearby park and took some photos of kids playing, then several more when he got home. He’d been entranced by the way the fading light cast shadows all over the kitchen, but that was pretty much the end of the roll. Weird.

One by one the photos went in the bath and one by one they developed, showing confusing but somehow familiar images.

After the birdbath came pictures of grubby grass, dirt, some rocks, then a little foot-tall shrub. Squinting closely Greg recognized a… A rhododendron? Those things take OVER. He’d know; he’d planted several about that size a while back and then fought them for years until he finally ripped them all out in a rage. Next came a scene he recognized but his brain tripped over the results. Greg rubbed his fists hard into his eyes and looked again; the scene was still there. His hands shook far more than necessary to remove the fixer as he held up the photo. It was the park alright, but instead of the plastic play structure covered in laughing children it was the open grassy clearing that used to be there, years and years ago. Even more confusingly he could see Veronica clearly, but she was so young! Her hair was still long and its natural dark blonde color, beautifully framing her face as she glanced back at him with laughter and love in her eyes, their golden retriever leaping up alongside her. The golden retriever that had died of old age five years ago.

Greg reeled. He remembered that afternoon. It had to be what, ten years ago? Back when Veronica laughed more, talked to him more, went with him on his Sunday walks. Back when he was still allowed to call her “Ronnie,” and the worst they’d argue over was who had to pick up Shadow’s poop in the morning and who had to do the dishes. Still shaking, Greg began rushing to develop the remaining photos. There were more of Veronica playing with Shadow in the park. God she was so beautiful.  He stared at her smile as the photos from his kitchen began their slow travels through the developer. Greg held his breath, trying to avert his eyes as the photos began their finishing bath, but pictures emerged.

The same sun and shadows played across the cabinets, but the appliances were different. The stainless steel fridge was gone, the microwave was smaller and cheaper. The espresso machine was a plastic Mr. Coffee and right in the middle of everything was Veronica. She leaned back on the counter blowing steam off her old Looney Tunes mug, a smile playing at the corners of her lips and across her eyes. He lingered over this photo, smiling as he remembered how upset she’d been when he’d accidentally broken that mug in the sink.

Glancing over at the next photo in the bath, Greg inhaled sharply. There he was. Grubby Nirvana t-shirt, the silver hair at his temples gone, caught in the act of pausing while filling his own mug from the Mr. Coffee to lean over and plant a kiss on his beautiful wife’s shoulder. When the next photo emerged he saw only his own back, as his younger self had just enveloped his wife in an embrace and a deep, deep kiss.

Greg felt a resonating pang of nostalgia; had they really been so happy and young and in love once? Had kisses ever been anything other than the perfunctory peck on the way out the door? Tears pricked the corners of his eyes as his heart swelled with these fond, beautiful memories. He couldn’t wait to show Veronica. Maybe this would be the spark they’d been missing for years.

The last photo sat in the developer, but he barely glanced at it as he studied all the hanging pictures that showcased how beautiful his marriage had once been. When he finally brought his attention back to the bath, he was a bit confused. The images coming through weren’t of their old kitchen; this was their old bedroom. Then he remembered. When he’d grabbed the camera off the dresser to develop the film that afternoon there’d been one photo left, so he’d snapped a quick one in their bedroom on his way downstairs, just to finish the roll. Greg leaned forward in anticipation. Veronica lay naked on the bed, resplendent with her familiar post-sex glow and a cigarette in her hand, covers bunched up around her young, shapely long legs. Greg stared, growing lust tickling at his senses, when a stunning realization drove an ice pick straight into the base of his stomach.

There was a figure lying in the bed next to her, naked and smiling while propped up on an elbow, and it was not him.

Content Going Forward... CUZ FORWARD IS GOOD

Since I haven't done shite on here in ages, I've decided to just make this a crapshoot of writing projects. I'll still put up the occasional book review or boardgame review, and I'm still working on some projects that fall under the "boobs" category, but otherwise you can expect to see all manner of random stuff going forward.

I mean short stories. Maybe journal-type ramblings. Interviews, perchance. THERE'S NO TELLING WHERE THIS MIGHT LEAD.

So. Hold onto your butts.

Orlando, Hatred, and Bloodshed

This has nothing to do with books, boobs, or boardgames.

Our country has mass shootings regularly. VICE magazine has been chronicling them. At a certain point, I became numb to the stories of people dying for nothing at all, beyond some crazy person with a gun and a bone to pick walking into a crowded area and making complete strangers pay for whatever crazed, hurtful, personal vendetta they have. As fucked up as it sounds, I just accepted it as a flaw of my country and figured we'd get it right eventually.

On Sunday, June 12th, at 2 in the morning, we witnessed the most horrifying mass murder of our country's modern history. As the gay club Pulse in Orlando Florida was preparing to close, as the bartenders stopped serving drinks and bar backs cleaned tables and got ready to shoo everyone out for the night, one man leveled a semi-automatic weapon at the 320 people in the club and began wreaking the most horrific bloodbath we've ever seen.

The Columbine High School massacre taught me what grief and helplessness and bitter anger meant in my formative years. Sandy Hook made me sick inside; it still does. The Virginia Tech shooting made me question everything I knew about humans and their ability for violence. I read the news; this has become a fucked up commonplace occurrence.

Something is broken in this country I love. I used to be the person yelling the oft accepted line, "Make guns illegal and only lawbreakers will have them!" The scariest part about this is that Omar Mateen, with a history of violence, abuse, and a brief stint on the FBI's watch list, bought his assault rifles and ammunition completely legally.

This time, after all the shootings I've watched and cried over, I openly wept. At my desk, in my bed, sitting on my couch trying to watch movies, I bawled and my heart broke. I lost the ability to think of much outside the moment when I heard that 1/3 of a club was slaughtered. I'm scared to go to the Solstice Parade in Fremont this weekend, or even the Pride Parade that is one of my city's crowning achievements and a source of joy and exuberance every year. I love gay safe places in Seattle like Pony, or R Place, or Neighbors. My thoughts are laced with this crippling fear that this can happen anywhere, at any time, for no fucking reason at all. And the worst part? I'm not wrong in being scared.

This was a hate crime. A hate crime against a group of people that already know what it's like to be beaten, raped, publicly ridiculed and discriminated against on a daily basis. This man may have cried "ISIS" but his agenda of hatred and violence is purely American. I don't know how to go about my life anymore.

The thing is, I understand hate. I've hated. I hate the men that beat one of my best friends at his front door for no other reason than they thought he was a "fag." I hate the man who took my best friend from me because of his addiction. I hate the men that convinced a beautiful woman that she wasn't worth anything beyond her drive for the next hit. I can't say killing wouldn't be on my mind if I met these men again, and I struggle with this every day. But this? This blind hatred that didn't care who died at all? I don't understand. I almost wish I could.

I'd give up on humanity, give up on the United States of America, if not for the few people that still give me hope.

Edward Sotomayor Jr. died from being shot in the back while he pushed his lover to safety through a back door. Joshua McGill, while fleeing from the club, saw a wounded man, took his and a bystander's shirt to use as bandages, and bearhugged the bleeding man in the back of a cop car until they reached the hospital. DJ Ray Rivera helped a woman escape from behind his DJ station after the shooting started.

I cling to these stories. I cling to the idea that there is still goodness in this world. I weep for those that believed this and were proven wrong. I need to know that there is something, anything, fucking anything I can do to stop this from happening again. I hear people saying, "This is why we need guns" and I weep again.

No one should have this power over me and my fellow Americans. No one at all.

On Books: Water Music by T.C. Boyle (also I stalk authors)

I’ve never been much good around celebrities. Upon meeting Ryan Benjamin, comic book artist for Batman Beyond, at Emerald City Comic Con a few years ago I practically climbed into his booth while frothing at the mouth. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that when I met the author of My Favorite Book of All Time, I was a smidge less than smooth.

 My favorite book of all time is Water Music by T. Coraghessan Boyle. 

 Before I tell you how I stalked this man through the streets of Seattle, finally ambushing him in a dark alley, I should tell you a little bit about My Favorite Book of All Time.

 Set in the eighteenth century, Water Music is a historical-ish fiction detailing the first white man’s travels to the Niger River in Africa. This man would be Mungo Park, one of the book’s two main characters. Boyle got his mitts on Park’s publication, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed Under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association, 
[... seventeen pages of descriptors because eighteenth century], and refashioned it into a profoundly visual, vivid, often raunchy portrayal of the explorer’s journey loosely based on his writings. Mungo Park, a genteel surgeon from Scotland, and Ned Rise, a shifty whore-mongering con man from the grungy streets of London, skirt death over and over again until finally meeting in the most unlikely of places: pre-Western influenced Nigeria. Ned Rise totally isn’t real, but there’s enough truth and solid research peppered throughout the book to make you second guess practically everything. This book smacks of the gritty action novel, and is still a subtle mockery of traditional 18th century writing style. That might be why I love it so much. This novel will make you laugh, cry, and nauseated all within a few pages, but still has enough literary depth to really sink your teeth into. 

 So. Now that I’ve gushed about My Favorite Book of All Time a bit (and trust me, I’m being mercifully brief), you might understand why my friend Savannah and I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading to promote his (at the time) new book T. C. Boyle Stories II at the Seattle Central Library. I sat enraptured through the whole thing. Finally, the reading over, a line formed to buy the new book and get it signed. I abhor lines, but for the right author I'll do it. I joined the herd, purchased the book, and then confused the hell out of him when I gleefully presented my clearly very worn copy of his first book, Water Music. That probably should have been his first clue that I was bonkers. Anyway there were a million people behind me and most of them were staring and lines make me stressed so I blurted out something stupid, gathered up my suddenly embarrassingly ratty book, and fled.

 Once outside I smoked a cigarette, gathered my wits, and informed Savannah that NO. We CANNOT go home now. Not like this. I HAVE QUESTIONS DAMMIT. The library was almost closed, so with some quick sleuthing I figured out what door he'd most likely exit through. My friend was such a good sport. We hung out in that alley and chain-smoked until finally, ages later, the frizzy-haired leather-clad punk genius emerged with his beautiful wife on his arm. Bursting from the shadows much more alarmingly than I intended, the man immediately shielded his wife from me. That should have dampened my enthusiasm, but it did no such thing. I began happily rambling about the papers I'd written on his book as both travel writing and postmodern historical fiction, how much I loved that he clearly was making fun of 18th century literature, blah-blah-blah-fangirl, and fortunately he began looking less scared and more interested. After I finally slowed down and let the man speak, he pointed out that Water Music really was more a picaresque novel than anything (holy crap how did I not notice that before), and that it was partially inspired by his studies in British lit. He mentioned how he was happy somebody wanted to talk about a book that wasn't World's End (OH but I love that book too), then we moved on to how much we both love Don DeLillo. He really was far more generous with his time than he should have been.

I glowed. 

(It's not just the crappy photo.)

On Boobs: Tinder – The Drinking Game

When I first downloaded Tinder, I didn’t intend to find my boyfriend of two years; I just wanted an amusing way to get really drunk, really fast. It worked. These rules were drafted primarily regarding the straight males on the app, but during my extensive studies (translation: drunken ramblings with fellow single people playing this game) I've learned that with a little tweaking they pretty much apply across the board. So, here are the rules:

• Drink if you can’t tell which person in the main photo is the right one. Finish your drink if none of the other pictures clear that question up.
• Drink every time you see someone with a drugged-up tiger. Seriously, there are tons of them and I don't understand. Is going to Thailand and manhandling a glorious yet wacked-out predator now a thing?
• Drink when the main picture is the person standing on top of a mountain. Huzzah you’re outdoorsy, or at least you were that one time on a sunny day two Septembers ago.
• Drink if the person has a drink in their hand for the main picture. Finish your drink if they've got a drink in their hand for every picture.
• Drink when it’s clear someone has been cropped out. 
• Drink every time the person is wearing a hat. Finish your drink if the person is hatted in every picture. Pro-tip for guys: We know why you do this.
• Drink if they don't post a single full-body shot.
• Drink if something in the picture clearly shows that this photo is out of date, e.g. an Avatar poster in the background or people planking.
• Don’t drink if the main picture is a full shot of just the one person doing something they clearly enjoy (that isn't drinking) and they don't seem concerned about their flaws. Message them about a common interest and then go on the best date of your adult life. Probably don’t tell them why you had a Tinder to begin with.

People are often smarter than we give them credit for, so if you're trying hard to hide something or project a particular image we'll know and it's kinda funny. If you're on Tinder, don't do any of these things and prepare to get giggly wasted making fun of everyone who does. 

Now that I don't have your attention...

Since your expectations are now all nice and low, I believe it is time to fire this baby back up.

I must warn you, I may deviate from the aforementioned blog topics of books, boobs, and board games. I'll try to incorporate something about these things in those posts, or at least throw up some links to reviews I've written on Good Reads, but I've got some ideas I'm testing out that I may just throw up here for shits and giggles.

P.S. I GOT AN EMAIL FROM NICK HARKAWAY. MORE TO COME.

P.P.S. If you haven't read his stuff, go do it. Like, now. 

On Books: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

So I've finished piles and piles of books since starting this blog, and have I done a review of any of them?

No. No I have not.

It seems like every time I finish a book, I feel like I should digest it a bit more, ponder the themes, and maybe brush up on a few bits before I tackle it in writing. This, it seems, is a grievous error, since I never seem to get around to the actual tackling.

So tackle I must! And Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is a great start.

I love Neil Gaiman. He's got this fantastically whimsical writing style that still manages to jar with his casual descriptions of violence and harsher realities. In Neverwhere he takes a secret, mystical underworld of London, called London Below, and throws in an extraordinarily boring and doofish businessman named Richard.

Richard meets Door (yes, that's her name) bleeding on a sidewalk and, to the chagrin of his flaming bitch of a fiance, takes her home and tries cleaning her up. The next morning, after some craziness with a bird and a rat and a mystical marquee character, Door disappears and Richard goes invisible. Taxis don't stop for him, his apartment is rented out right in front of him, his flaming bitch of a fiance barely recognizes him after he chases her down, his job doesn't exist anymore. As Richard rejoins Door and the marquee, he is drug through the sewers and the subway tunnels of the mysterious London Below, meeting strange creatures and running from psychotic killers.

It's not Neil Gaiman's best, but bear in mind I read American Gods first. That said, the main characters in this tale are multifaceted and interesting, it's hard to know for sure if you've got the good guys and the bad guys pegged until  the very end and I loved it. The protagonist, or at least that's what I'll label Richard as, is a lovable bumbling idiot who's afraid of heights; his charge is a generally terrified and mildly clueless teenage girl, and everybody else is suspect. Especially with this whole magic business, Neil can lead you by the nose for a chapter or two and then POOFfuckingmagic into a startling conclusion. There were a few moments where I thought he went a bit far with the POOFfuckingmagic but 99% of the time it was masterfully done. Amid all the action, London Below as written by Gaiman is at times carefully described and at others left as a blank canvas where you can fill in your own scary crap, making the whole backdrop of the story fraught with tension.

So yeah. Believable narrative, good flow, interesting characters, and a couple plot twists that actually twist. This one goes into the books-I-will-militarily-foist-on-my-friends pile.

On Boardgames: Hive

I've been playing the game Hive (designed by John Yianni and published in 2001) for ages, and I still love it.

With average play time lasting around 20 minutes, it's a fun game to play while you're waiting for the rest of your boardgame buddies to show up. It's also simple enough to play whilst intoxicated, and the heavy, colorful tiles seem designed around this. Or, you know, Yianni designed the game for children (although I'd like to argue that the two groups react to losing this game in similar fashions).

This is a game for two players, composed of 22 bug tiles in black and white. Each player gets three soldier ants, three grasshoppers, two beetles, two spiders, and one queen bee tile, and each type of bug tile has different rules that govern its movement. Players place tiles one at a time, with the main rules being that you cannot place your tile adjacent to your opponents' tiles, you cannot break apart the "hive," and the tiles need to be able to slide in and out of the spaces they are moving to, with a few exceptions based on the move actions available to each tile.

The goal of the game is to completely surround your opponent's queen bee. Once that happens, the game immediately ends and you may commence swearing at that punk kid who just smugly beat you at the game you've been playing for ages.

I like to think of this game as a combination of checkers and chess. Once you get the hang of it, it's easy to start planning two, three, even four moves ahead, and you have to carefully balance both the defense of your queen and the harassment of your punk kid opponent's. The pieces move almost like chess pieces, such as the queen moving one space in any direction and the grasshopper moving directly over pieces in a straight line, but the options for movement can get pretty limited since all pieces must stay connected. With that in mind, it's important to plan how you'll control the board, or "hive", early in the game. The rules may be simple, but the strategies get more complex the more you play.

If you get bored with the base game, there are expansions available that add additional bug tiles to the mix, such as the ladybug, mosquito, and pill bug. Or, if you don't want to purchase or heft around the actual tiles, that stupid punk kid can stomp you at the Android or iOS version of the game.

On Books: Lexicon by Max Barry

I am a shameless lover of action novels.

There. I said it.

Now that we have that out of the way, Lexicon definitely satisfied my love of things-that-go-boom, but it also managed to tickle my inner language nerd and my mild obsession with science fiction. Not as much as I'd hoped, but also not enough to stop me from recommending it to my sci-fi loving friends.

Max Barry immediately drops the reader into an airport bathroom where Wil is having a very bad day. His very bad day involves being savagely ambushed at a urinal and having a needle rammed into his eye while fielding really random questions.

From there the book doesn't let you down for a second. It moves along two narrative arcs, one providing the background to the main "antagonist" (Emily) and the other following a seemingly random buffoon (Wil) that is thrown violently into a world he knows nothing about.

The basis for this book is that there are certain people, called Poets, who have been trained by an enigmatic secret organization to effectively hypnotize people through the neurological effects of the spoken word. The mumbo-jumbo used to explain this is a bit vague, but the premise is logical enough for sufficient suspension of disbelief. Barry also throws in a lot of catch phrases that lend his story a teeny, tiny bit of credence, such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and some basic concepts behind the Lexical Approach. But like all science fiction, don't pick at it too much or it all starts sounding ridiculous.

The two characters the book focuses on, Wil and Emily, both have intertwining stories and the way the two narratives play off of each other gives each character additional depth. They're both highly sympathetic and I was left in tears more than once as Emily's story unfolds.

Then there are car chases, subterfuge, conspiracy theories... All classic elements to an action thriller novel with a smidgen of sci-fi thrown in. If you're looking for a fast summer read, this is your book. I can't say it's a classic, despite having some masterfully crafted characters and a unique premise, which was a bit disappointing. The setting seemed to leave lots of room for speculation over the power of the spoken and written word, but the extent of it seemed to function simply as a plot device.

So yeah. Go read it.

Also I'm back blogging, so expect more regular updates.

On Boobs: The Trouble with Blurred Lines

I KNOW I KNOW.

Blogging 101: post regularly.

So I'm sorry. Won't happen again.

To apologize, here you go:

Unfortunately there is a problem with these boobs, and that is (a small) part on what stayed my hand from updating the blog. The problem with these boobs isn't the boobs themselves, or the ladies that are attached to them, or in my opinion the music video they are in, but the song the music video is for: Blurred Lines  by Robin Thicke.

Dammit but that's a catchy song, but as the internet quickly pointed out, this song has some pretty serious problems. I'm still not completely sure I've made up my mind about it, but having batted around ideas with enough smart people I can confidently say three things:

To all the people who directed their outrage at the models, you are jerks. JERKS. Who are you to tell any woman what she can and can't do with her body? Shaming beautiful women for appearing naked on camera is just reinforcing the idea that a naked woman is merely an object. The director, Diane Martel, gave an interview after the video came out regarding the controversy, and I think these models did a bang-up job fulfilling her vision:

I wanted to deal with the misogynist, funny lyrics in a way where the girls were going to overpower the men. Look at Emily Ratajkowski’s performance; it’s very, very funny and subtly ridiculing. That’s what is fresh to me. It also forces the men to feel playful and not at all like predators. I directed the girls to look into the camera, this is very intentional and they do it most of the time; they are in the power position. I don’t think the video is sexist. The lyrics are ridiculous, the guys are silly as fuck. That said, I respect women who are watching out for negative images in pop culture and who find the nudity offensive, but I find [the video] meta and playful.

The foot-slap in the face, the lack of eye contact with the men in the video, the subtle eye rolls, all these elements combine to give the women in the video an aura of power and control.

So boo-yah ladies, well done. Please spend as much time naked as you want.

That said I come to my second point: Robin Thicke is a boob. AND NOT THE GOOD KIND.

Having read the interview above, I was prepared to defend the music video until I read this quote from Robin Thicke himself:

We tried to do everything that was taboo. Bestiality, drug injections, and everything that is completely derogatory towards women. Because all three of us are happily married with children, we were like, "We're the perfect guys to make fun of this." People say, "Hey, do you think this is degrading to women?" I'm like, "Of course it is. What a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I've never gotten to do that before. I've always respected women."

It really did inspire a moment of pure speechlessness (which for this author is a blessed rarity).  So apparently Robin missed the point on this one. Which, upon giving the lyrics a closer look, is totally understandable because the man wrote a rapey song and didn't notice.

I know coercing a taken woman is not a new thing; it's a theme that's been written and sung about for ages, and at some level I think that's all Robin was shooting for. This does not make the line "I know you want it" that is looped through the whole song any less troubling. A friend of mine put it well when he said that the song removes the woman's agency; she is being propositioned but is never given a rebuttal, and is essentially being told that the singer knows what she wants better than she does. It just smacks too much of the disgusting idea that at some level a woman wants to be raped.

And then that jerkface just straight blows smoke in one of the model's faces during the video. I'm surprised Martel kept that.

I come to my final point: The culture that this was released into negates anything good Martel put into this video.

Briefly put, we weren't ready. This music video relied too heavily on subtle satire to justify itself, and the only thing most people took away from this video was OoooO NAKED LADIES and some bizarre idea that you can argue a woman into bed. Maybe in a few years we can appreciate Martel's intent for this music video, but in the meantime too many idiots (like Robin) just aren't getting it.

Boobs are wonderful. Let's treat them well.

Screw you Robin Thicke.

On Boardgames: a review of Legendary, the Slightly-Rubbish Deck Building Game

As far as board games go, I generally prefer there to not actually be a board involved. Deck builders are my absolute favorite. I'm also a screaming nerd when it comes to Marvel comics, so when I found this bad boy at my local game shop I made embarrassing squeaky noises and jumped up and down. It was relatively pricey as far as games go but it had Deadpool. So pffft.

I bought the thing and 80 bajillion card sleeves.

Setting up this game will take you into retirement age, especially if you let your dumb friends pick their favorite superheroes. If you make my classic mistake and do not read the rules AT ALL before you invite people to play with you, you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to decipher rules that have obviously been written by an immigrant kindergartner. 

That said, the game moves pretty quickly and is silly easy to learn. Cards are pulled from a giant Bad Guy Deck and you fight them, and cards are pulled from a giant Good Guy Deck and you buy them. It's a classic deck builder in a lot of ways, mainly in that you have two mechanics: fight stuff and buy stuff, and you have to balance them. 

The game creators gave their superheroes plausible abilities which I think adds to the game flavor, like for example The Hulk hurts himself and everybody else a bunch but then turns that into damage. Superheroes gain special abilities when you group them with similar types, so if you flood your deck with all X-Men or all Avengers you can get some pretty neat ability stacks. I wish there would have been some indicator of this in the rules, such as it is exponentially harder to defeat Magneto if you have no X-Men in play. But the rule book barely even told you how to play, so there's that.  The way the mastermind works is pretty ingenious with thematic scary things happening whenever the Bad Guy Deck activates him or his Scheme. Some are vastly harder than others, and depending which superheroes you've let your dumb friends pick they can  be significantly easier or more difficult to defeat. 

If you thought setting up this game took a long time, eventually you will have to put it all back. And then you will know the true meaning of the word forever. 

So all in all I quite like it. The long-ass setup and take-down is a pretty serious deterrent, but overall it's got great re-play potential and the learning curve isn't too steep. It falls into the category of simple rules - complex strategy games I love so much. That said it wasn't epic; the game mechanics are a bit blah. It's almost like someone threw comic art at Ascension. 

Oh, and the box it originally came with is infuriatingly designed to dump everything into a big slurry of bullshit the moment you move it. Which, as a game made out of eleventy-million cards, is generally enough to send me straight into a murderous rage. I highly suggest either putting it into a card box or one of the expansion boxes. 

On Books: You should read books all day long.

So I love books. I love starting them, finishing them, talking about them while drunk, hearing about them from drunk people.

 Books are lovely. Even the terrible ones are lovely. Twilight is complete trash and I fed it to my rodents but it was also wonderful. If that twat can get published well then hope is not dead for the rest of us. Even the rodents couldn't quite choke it down completely; there's still a bit of the spine getting crapped on in the corner under the water bottle.

 I got a Kindle and it's just not the same. On the one hand I had an entire library ratting around in my purse, it stayed charged for a billion years and I never had to worry about getting pizza sauce on the pages. I can also read complete trash without anybody ever knowing. Sadly this also meant I could never show off whenever I decide to re-tackle Atlas Shrugged before admitting that I'm actually a terrible person who will probably never finish it. You also can't force Kindle books on your friends which is my absolute favorite thing to do.

Just finished Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World and that man is a goddamn genius. I then proceeded to get all action-novel happy and burnt through his almost-as-awesome Angelmaker. I'm currently working on reviews of those two books, and then I'll go through John Dies at the End  and This Book Is Full of Spiders.

At least that's the plan. Let's hope I don't go all Atlas Shrugged up in here.