BOOK REVIEW: You Suck by Christopher Moore

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You Suck (A Love Story, #2)You Suck by Christopher Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t read Twilight or any of the many YA vampire books that have glutted the market in recent years, but You Suck perfectly captures what real teenage vampires would be like. Tommy Flood is not a confident, suave, sexy vampire. He’s an awkward, if likable, dumb-ass. Christopher Moore’s characters are hilarious and, sadly, true to life.

Moore tickles the funny-bone as he tells a love story of a young couple up against an elder vampire, a group of other young idiots, and the cops. The fact that the couple isn’t pitted against each other– despite the fact that the female, Jody, turned Flood into a vampire– is testament to the strength of the relationship. If anything can sour a relationship, it’s one half of the couple turning the other into a vampire (or a Zombie for that matter.)

While the tension is not intense, the humor is ubiquitous. More importantly, one gets food for thought on such mundane vampire questions as:
– how does one recruit a good minion? (Abby Normal holds her own as a font of humor.)
– do cats make suitable substitutes for a blood meal?
– what happens when you bronze a vampire?

I enjoyed this book, and suspect you will too.

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DAILY PHOTO: Moon Over Incheon Airport, Seoul

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Moon over Incheon

Moon over Incheon

Sitting in the terminal at twilight, waiting to catch a flight to Phnom Penh, I watched the moon rise.

TODAY’S RANT: TMI in Advertising

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I was reading the label of a bottled tea this morning. It said something like:

To offer you the fullest flavor, our leaves are not washed prior to steeping. The first time they experience water is when boiling spring-water is poured over them for brewing. This is why it’s so important that we use organic farming methods. This ensures the product you get is only tea… and water… and trace amounts of poop.

Sometimes I think big advertising is out of control. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than on Sesame Street. Big money letters like “M” get all the play and “Q” ends up being the stumbling block letter in the road-trip “ABC” game. No one wants to make more words starting with “X” or “Z” any more. Sure there’s a grassroots counter-culture movement, such as Ernest Vincent Wright’s short novel called Gadsby. Wright’s book was written entirely without the letter “e.” To be sure, “e” is a big money letter; it’s made more money off of Wheel of Fortune than any other vowel. Vanna turns the “e”s and the whole puzzle becomes clear. I heard e’s manager wanted to make its purchase value higher than the other vowels, but Pat Sajak showed his ugly side and “e” backed down.

You probably thought this post was going to be about the Super Bowl ads. I didn’t get past the first Go Daddy ad, which creeped me out. I still don’t know who Go Daddy is and what he does. (His name sounds a little like a pimp.) Which, by the way, is just like the medicine commercials. They have these ads for medicine that leave me like, “I don’t know whether your product will give me a boner or loosen my bowels, why are you advertising to me– especially if you’re going to end by telling me that, ‘Side effects may include a bleeding rectum?'”

Here’s said Go Daddy ad. Bon appetit.

BOOK REVIEW: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide, #2)The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The adventures of Arthur Dent and company continue as Zaphod Beeblebrox chases after whatever it was that he made himself forget, and the group seeks the question to match the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Neither of these issues is resolved with great satisfaction (leaving plenty to be covered in the remaining three books of this five book trilogy.) However, we do learn why Earthlings are so prone to war and bureaucracy.

Time travel is a key plot device in this book. If hilarity will get you over any hurdle, you’ll love The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. But if you’re the kind who geeks out on the minutiae like the grandfather paradox, this book may drive you crazy. They travel forward through time from a period shortly after the end of Earth until the end of the universe. Then they go back to a period 2 million years before the end of Earth.

Spatially they travel from a Vogon-threatened Heart of Gold (ship) in deep space to the Ursa Minor headquarters of the publishers of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to a planet in the Frogstar system that is home to the Total Perspective Vortex (or so Zaphod thinks) to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (which, coincidentally, is on the same Frogstar planet) to a planet where a ship full of management specialists and telephone sanitizers (and Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect) crash lands. All the while they run into new puzzles and adventures.

While the book is named for the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, that locale is not especially significant to the story. They visit the restaurant in the middle of the book. The restaurant does provide more than its fair share of gags. For example, the group’s interaction with a cow that is bred to encourage diners to eat it is classic Douglas Adams.

This is definitely a character-driven novel. There’s not much of a plot to speak of, but it is hilarious.

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DAILY PHOTO: Central Market in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

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Central Market

Central Market

Phnom Penh’s Central Market is an art deco building that dates to the 1930’s. This “X”-shaped building has a circular, domed core. On the inside of the building one can find clothes, jewelry, sunglasses, and– sadly– ivory. Most of what you will find there is knock-offs, as should be apparent from the prices.  The “V”-shaped spaces between the wings of the building are chock full of more mundane goods such as foodstuffs, hardware, and tourist T-shirts. In the market one can get anything from wriggling seafood to rice to produce (I’d recommend those with Western constitutions –cast-iron or not– stay away from the meat.) Refrigeration is not so common in Cambodia, a few places get large blocks of ice to put their meat on, but many just lay it out on cardboard until it sells.

DAILY PHOTO: The Chattanooga Choo-choo

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The Chattanooga Choo-choo

The Chattanooga Choo-choo

Yes, there is an actual Chattanooga Choo-choo. It sits outside a Holiday Inn off Market St. When we went (several years ago) there was a free electric shuttle that traveled down Market street from the Aquarium at one and to the Choo choo stop at the other.

Chattanooga has a beautiful downtown area.

BOOK REVIEW: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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Brave New WorldBrave New World by Aldous Huxley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Huxley’s utopianish dystopia, an individual’s fate is determined through a combination of genetic engineering, operant conditioning, and hypnopedia (sleep-teaching.) It’s a different dystopian vision than that of Orwell or Atwood; individuals are drugged and encouraged in unlimited promiscuity in order to pacify them and keep them believing that they are happy (without allowing exposure to alternatives by which they might contrast their lives.) Gone are the arts and religion as we know it, and science exists only as a shadow of its former self.

The book follows the story of a “Savage”, named John, brought from an Indian reservation on which this “Brave new world” is unknown. He cannot understand the “civilized” world, and to its occupants he is an interesting anomaly to be gawked at at cocktail parties.

The book ends on an upbeat note as the reader learns of a third world, a world beyond the Brave New World or the brutally impoverished aboriginal lands.

Everyone should read this book to learn that one can be killed with “kindness” as well as with sternness.

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TODAY’S MINI-RANT: On Groundhog Day

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Attribution: Marumari (through Wikipedia)ALL HAIL, GREAT GROUNDHOG

Attribution: Marumari (through Wikipedia)
ALL HAIL, OH WISE GROUNDHOG

Today is the one day each year that I hope for first contact with an alien race, because I want their first report back to their home world to be: “Earthlings anxiously await the weather prediction of a large rodent.”

Furthermore, when the aliens ask to be, “taken to our leader”, they will be stunned to find that it isn’t the chubby omniscient rodent. They will be dismayed to learn that our political leadership not only isn’t omniscient, but isn’t even that “scient.”

On the other hand, perhaps they will back the rodents in an overthrow of  our kind. I’m not saying this will happen, but have your varmint rifles at the ready.

BOOK REVIEW: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Grahame-Smith

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire HunterAbraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In this alternative-history / paranormal novel, Abraham Lincoln is re-invented as a man who experiences great tragedy at the hands of vampires and then devotes his life to hunting them- a battle which culminates in the Civil War. In the Civil War of this book, slaves are not just valued as plantation labor but also as vampire food.

Grahame-Smith’s book is written in the mold of Bram Stoker’s, as a series of journal entries, letters, and missives.This helps to give it a feel of authenticity as that seemed to be a common device in the late 19th century.

Lincoln comes into contact with a number of contemporaries, some vampire but most humans knowledgeable about vampires– such as Edgar Allen Poe.

The perspective jumps can be a bit confusion, but all-in-all it is entertaining.

A movie was made about this book, which I haven’t seen.

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DAILY PHOTO: Reflections in Rangsit, Thailand

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Rangsit, Thailand

Rangsit, Thailand

I thought I’d take a break from posting pictures of either monuments to wealth and power or pristine nature scenes. I took this in Rangsit, Thailand, which is a northern suburb of Bangkok out past the Don Muang Airport. I was there studying at the Muay Thai Institute for one week. (Muay Thai is a martial art and the national sport of Thailand.) If you’re curious about what my experience with that was like, I have posts about it here and here.)

It was fascinating to see what a love/hate relationship water has with these people. It nourishes them. It bathes them. But every once in a while it tries to kill them. A kindly restaurateur showed me pictures of his landlocked restaurant underwater during the floods of 2011. At that time the tree tops you see were probably just jutting out of the water– if they weren’t entirely submerged. (I base this on the height of the elevated express way to the left that I think was at water level, based on pictures I’ve seen.)