Arthur & George - Julian Barnes



Rav Deeves (that's his name, serious, it was on the box) is all "eh, whatever," about this book. I wouldn't put it like that, but the sentiment is the same.

I first read Barnes in university, and there was much love involved. For years, I'd intended to eat more of his books, but only now got around to it, and I have to confess that the physical beauty of the book was a fair chunk of the motivation. Cloth-bound books are just nice to stroke. No, stroking books is not weird. Shut up. Stop looking at me like that.

This book, well, it didn't trigger the big love boom I was hoping. It is very well written, and an intriguing look at the vastly different lives of Arthur (that's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to you) and George, who probably would have never met had it not been for whim. Life, you know, she's a whimsical creature. But meet they do, and Arthur is not the gallant knight he wishes to be, although he almost convinces the reader otherwise. George is not a helpless victim of hate, although it is tempting to paint him so.

The England of fiction remains a strange soggy place, and I find that the mental landscape it creates in my head tends to be dreary, bleak, and colourless, and as much as I wanted to enjoy the book, that sort of saturation is a downer.

I guess I'm not academic or intellectual enough, because I reached the end, and after their lives were spent and all had failed and been achieved, I thought to myself, "yes, and?" Perhaps the fact that it reads in a somewhat autobiographical manner brought that on - lives don't have a point, they just happen, and then they end. The last three lines;


What does he see?
What did he see?
What will he see?

and in fact the last scene of Arthur's funeral knocked down the interesting structure of thought I'd built on this story. Perhaps that is the point. What you want to know, what you think you know, all of these things are-

Verdict: Eh. A lot of people loved it, but it didn't rock my world.

Kamakazi Girls - Novala Takemoto



Leonardo totally approves of this book, because Leonardo is in touch with his feminine side.

I agree with Leonardo. I don't remember exactly why I picked up this book, but I'm glad I did. I went through a brief, three book stint of not particularly wanting to read any speculative genres, and I think this was the most fun of those books, and the most surprisingly awesome bestest.

(Disclaimer: I've just come off nightshift and I'm doing my staying up through the day to crash my sleep pattern back to normal. I'm not responsible for anything. At all. Ever. Not even my sentences.)

It is the story of two girls, one a Yanki and the other a Lolita, practically polar opposites when it comes to subcultures. Of course they fall in with each other, they're doomed to from the very beginning.

This is not the story of their growing friendship. Ichigo's impassioned speech at the end summarises precisely why they're not friends, and exactly why they'll always be there for each other. It is a story of being true to yourself, no matter what the cost.

At first, I was appalled at Momoko's first person narration. A Lolita consumed by an intense pursuit for a Rococo spirit and lifestyle, she came across as gobsmackingly selfish, self-aborbed, shallow and callous. It isn't a large book, but after the first chapter I did wonder if I wanted to put up with her the whole way. This wondering happened while I read, and read, and found myself deep in the book. First impressions, you know, they really aren't everything. The selfishness and callousness were the symptoms of a breath-stealing determination to pursue her dream, no matter what the cost. No matter what thet cost. She discard practicality and comfort and friends and company for this dream ofa Rococo lifestyle. Beneath the frills and lace, she's fucking hardcore.

Ichigo initially comes across as a naive fool, striving to be fulfill that Yanki dream of riding around in a biker gang until getting knocked up and having a shotgun wedding and 'graduating', although she failed her motorcycle licence test and only rides a scooter. It's easy to assume she's yet another dumb girl being led astray by falling in with the wrong crowd, but like Momoko, it's a first impression, and like Momoko, she's chasing her dream down, damn the consequences.

"Because Yanki are so uncool."
"Did you just dis my entire life?"
"Well, yeah."
"I'll fucking kick your ass."
"Go ahead, if you want to."
"You ask me, you're the one who's uncool, wearing those frilly-ass outfits when you're in high school already."
"They're not 'frilly-ass', they're Lolita."
"What's the fucking difference?"
"There's a world of difference."
"I'll kill you, I swear."
"Go ahead."

I love it. The book is full of clashes just like that. Neither grasps the other's choice, both thinks the other is just fucking ridiculous, and I want to reach in and tell them they're both daft and brillant.

This book is very well written, and exceptionally well translated. At no point did I feel that I was reading a translation, real care has be put into the english version. It isn't translated, it's written.

I want to say it isn't a girly book, because it isn't...but I think that maybe only girls will really get it.

Verdict: This is not a "heart-warming tale of two girls growing up in the country", it is a brilliant, brilliant, brillant piece of writing about knowing who you are.

That Camera Is Not Neenja

The train pulled into the station, the door opened, he set up his tripod, pointed and clicked.

Apparently he wasn't entirely satisfied with whatever showed up on the screen of his enormous DSLR, because he went for a second shot, and when he looked up, noticed that I'd noticed him photographing me, and was leering in an entirely "Haha, caught ya!" manner.

His smile wasn't entirely comfortable. I think I busted my chance of appearing in a photography exhibition with a caption along the lines of "Unknown Commuter Zombie, 7:08 Glen Waverley, Southern Cross on Spencer Street".

FUCK

I've lost my white hair. It's gone. Almost, ALMOST a year, and it just had to fall out. Now it'll take me another 25 years to grow another.

and the world just happens

A couple of family members who I happen to live with forgot my birthday was imminent. One them only remembered 8 hours before the clock ticked over midnight because the one family member that did remember asked if they remembered.

The fact that I forgot my birthday was coming too is quite irrelevent.

The only way to sing in such a birthday is to go and harass online roleplayers while in a mildly intoxicated state until 3 in the morning. Far more entertaining than it sounds.

Last year, I was proud to turn 25. It's a nice shiny number, 25, and a big number at that. Look how long I've hung around this Earth, 25 years, remarkable!

This year, not so much.

I am 26 years old and I still live with my parents, in the same room I spent the first 18 years of my life. I have a university degree that is useless, and a job that does nothing, goes nowhere, provides me with no skills I can apply elsewhere, and is neither challenging or stimulating. I don't have a significant other of any description, or children, or the potential for either on the horizon. I haven't seen the world, I haven't changed the world, I have achieved nothing of significance and I STILL HAVEN'T FINISHED WRITING A BOOK. ANY FUCKING BOOK.

The cake was nice though.

Warm-blooded Sunshine Batteries

I don't think I get much physical contact. The other day, someone put their hand on my arm, and my brain went "Oh!" It was the sort of "Oh!" that happens when you rediscover something that you hadn't realised you'd forgotten, like the smell of pine trees, or the taste really good cheese.

Wow. Other people are so warm.

It was exactly like sunshine, that perfect snuggly sunshine in Spring that I go nuts about. And I'm going nuts now. It isn't about sex, or affection, or raffirming my existence as a human being, but just how deliciously warm it was. I need to find someone who won't be freaked out if I say, "er, can I, like, maybe, sorta hold your hand for a bit?"

(I daresay this has been brought on by the fact that Melbourne just faceplanted into Winter in true Melbourne fashion, and I'm cold all the time. That said, if you can't find another human being to warm your bed for you, I can confirm that two dogs and a hot water bottle do an adequate job.)

Trailers - Mark Kneece & Julie Collins-Rousseau



The Other Alien is all messiah about this book. I agree with the Other Alien.

This was an impulse buy. I went shopping looking specifically for a one shot comic that wasn't about superheros, or great epic battles, or anything that wasn't the norm of life. I wanted a story that might have mabye reflected this pointless struggle I have with the mediocre humdrum of life, a story that wouldn't patronise me and wouldn't offer false hope or comfort, an ordinary story about ordinary people who don't have happy endings.

This isn't quite what I was looking for, it was better.

Josh has a shit life. He lives in a trailer with his no-good mother and three younger siblings of different fathers, and does most of the parenting, and has to deal with school, you know, school...and then his mother goes and kills her current squeeze, and he's left to deal with the body. Unfortunately, the body just won't stay buried, neither will any of the secrets, and what little control he had over his life is slipping away.

And Josh is just a teenage kid in over his head, and he doesn't have special friends, lucky breaks, convenient powers, a place to retreat to, and he isn't coping, it isn't fair, and he's angry.

And that was refreshing.

Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places, listening to the wrong conversations, but lately, all I've seen is people doing their best to cheer others up, insist that the person in strife look on the bright side, and be grateful for what they have. Perhaps. In time, maybe.

It's not my approach, mostly because it shits me to tears when someone tries that on me. It's as though there is some unspoken rule that anger is bad. It is, but it isn't wrong. None of us like being powerless, and most of us don't accept that politely. If you want to be angry, then go, be angry. And when you've ranted and yelled and spent it all, then you can go on with life, pick up the pieces, and start again.

This is a very well written book. It's solid, full of real people who say real and stupid things, do real and stupid things, and don't cope with life. There are no clever answers, easy solutions and neat resolutions. There isn't a happy ending. But, the end is a better place than the beginning, and I think that's all we can really hope for.

Verdict: Excellent. Good, good stuff. Well crafted, in terms of writing and art. Muchly worth your time.

The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion - Loren D. Estleman



The Alien is trying to eat this lump of dead tree matter. I agree with the Alien.

This isn't a book trying to be a movie. This isn't a movie pretending to be a book. This IS a movie. It doesn't want to be a book, and it's thrashing and screaming and in rank bloody denial about the fact that there are no moving pictures involved.

You've seen it before: a succession of stoked boilers streaking towards the screen, intercut with close-ups of charging wheels and plunging drive rods. On the soundtrack, short cello strokes imitate the chomping of pistons and steam whistles blast from the brass. Depot signs loom at us from the far perspective...

And so on. And so forth. That is one of the tamer passages. I stopped before it got to the montage of robberies. There's even a travel montage in this book, you know, when there's an overlay of the map with a line moving across it to indicate the movement of characters from one place to another. Yeah. One of them. In a book.

I know I've harped on about respecting the medium you use and all that, but this just stumped me. I think I was too shocked at just how brazenly "THIS IS A MOVIE" the book was to be affronted. If you're going to do something, then do it properly, and this is a movie in an all balls out sort of way.

Still. It's a book. Not a great one at that. The title indicates that Johnny Vermillion is the centre role, but he isn't. Far more POV time is spent on his accomplices, who are far more interesting than he is. Vermillion has Mary Sue stamped all over his face. The others, while skirting the realms of cliche, are quite well drawn and the dynamic between them is terribly amusing. Together, they form a travelling theatre troupe which is really just a cover for the fact that they're bank robbers, and good at being both.

The story isn't much to speak of; they're criminals, they're in danger of getting caught by either the law or the other criminals whose toes they're stepping on. Nothing particularly new is attempted with the story, or the characters, and it rolls on pretending to be a movie so there's pretty much sweet fanny all in terms of proper climax and resolution. Mildly intriguing character conflicts are seeded, and then entirely ignored and forgotten.

It could be said that Estleman is deliberately playing with the great many cliches that Westerns are open to, but he fails to then do anything new with them. He fails to do anything with them at all. The story just...stops. There are plenty of nice elements, but they don't gel together as a whole.

Which isn't to say it wasn't fun, but...fuck. It isn't a movie, it's a book.

Verdict: You know, I can't recommend this as fluff, because it's just...wrong.

Music = Mountains

I went to the Nine Inch Nails concert alone. Some people flip out when they discover that I willingly go to movies on my own, so I didn't advertise this. It doesn't faze me, and I've never been able to explain how experiencing something alone makes it purer.

It was brilliant. I stood in a crowd of total strangers, strangers who ignored me and expected nothing from me, totally incognito, and loved it. There was nothing for me to do, nothing to fill up my head except a gazillion decibles of industrial rage.

For some people, music is a social thing. They get together over it, talk about it, share it.

For me, it's ridiculously intensely personal, and I don't want to share it with anyone, because if they judge it, they're judging me.

Being swallowed up and made insignificant by loud music had the same calming, clensing, euphoric affect as standing alone in the mountains. I'm at my highest when the world around me makes me so small, I cease to exist, even to myself.

Curse of the Golden Flower

Pretty, and lacking a point. The lessons I took away from the cinema were: "when families go bad, they go BAD" and "it's GOOD to be king".

Overwhelming colour though. That palace! In the first five minutes I was saturated. How can you live in such a palace and not go insane?

Also: asian women have boobs. This film is proof.

See Trumpet, Blow Trumpet

I have sold Bitter Elsie Mae to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Bitter Elsie Mae was my week three Clarion South story, so a big shout out to my class mates and Ellen Datlow for helping me fix it. The story (containing pirates and ghost ships and bad grammar), will be in issue #34, due February 2008.

I have also received word that One Night on Tidal Rig #13, which was originally slated to be released this coming June in one of the Daikaiju! sequels, has been delayed till October. Le sigh. I won't be in the country, alas. Oh well. I've already waited over two years, I can wait a bit longer.

Finally, that fine young lady Deb just announced that she sold a story to POSTSCRIPTS, and that, my friends, is AWESOME with a capital HELL YEAH. Go over and tell her to write the sequel congratulate her.

When our powers combine, we are Captain Planet. No wait, Voltron. Voltron is much cooler.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence 'After The Long Goodbye' - by Masaki Yamada, trans by Yuji Oniki and Carl Custav Horn



ANIME TIE-IN! ANIME TIE-IN!

Summary: Batou lost his dog. Batou looks for his dog.

I picked this up because it was by a different author than this tie-in, the amazon reviews actually sounded interesting, and, er, it was a pretty book. Shuddup.

And this book blindsided me. It's heart-breaking and thought-provoking and well-written, and not at all what I was expecting. The translation was excellent. Everything was good quality. Whe the...?

There was a bit of character suicide going on - Batou is a mopey bastard through the whole thing. He has his emo ON. This is not a happy, chipper, feel good sort of book. It's what you read when you're feeling lonely and miserable, so you can be lonely and miserable with a lonely and miserable book. Part of me wanted to mock him for having his whole life revolve around his dog, but then, pot, kettle, black.

The dog, the absence of dog, is almost incidental to what the book is actually about, which is consciousness. Memories. What it is to be aware. Aware, within a synthetic environment, and everything that is gained and lost. That he can program himself to release endorphins when accessing a certain memory - does that mean the memory makes him happy, or he makes the memory happy? What is happy?

There is a fair whack of giant tanks and super-cyborg gun fight spectacular-a-rama, but such things in no way subtract from the gravitas of the underlying themes.

I was surprised, and lonely and miserable, and this book rang true.

Strange thing, fiction.

Verdict: knowledge of the GIS universe will help, but this remains a startlingly good book regardless.

Snake Agent & The Demon & The City - Liz Williams



This might be cheating, lumping the two books together, but my thoughts on each are pretty much the same.

Williams has created a very tasty work, set in future Singapore Three, in which technology has eased the communication between Hell and Heaven, and people such as Detective Inspector Chen exist to investigate crimes of the celestial sort. It's a textured world, full of flavour, and left me with severe cravings for congee and noodles.

In Snake Agent, Chen is called in to investigate some soul-smuggling, runs into the demon Zhu Izrh (who is terribly easy to crush on), and generally discovers that Terrible Things Are Afoot In Hell, and must save the day.

In The Demon and The City, Zhu Irzh is not requested to investigate the murder of a socialite, but does so anyway, and eventually he and Chen uncover a plot that will shake the earth, Heaven and Hell, and must save the day. Again. Clearly they don't get paid enough.

Both books are brilliant, juicy, cop stories, with characters that I just adore (I have a great fondness for the badger-teakettle), and I can't help feel sorry for everything Singapore gets put through.

That said, I found that both books started as one thing, and transformed greatly, ending as an almost entirely different book. This in itself wasn't a problem, except that I didn't get a feel that the transition was acknowledged, when reading the final pages. What happened to so and so, and what about such and such? Life doesn't tend to tie itself up in neat little packages, but I like some balance in my books.

Also....damn, most beautiful covers EVAH.

There's a third book in the works, and I will most definitely be acquiring it. You know how it is. Find a food you like; eat it.

Verdict: Well worth checking out, especially if you'd like a taste of something different.

(I know these write ups are short and crappy. I am hungover and have a sore throat. Just think of all the whinging I'm NOT doing.)

The Ticking - Reneé French



Just look at how beautiful that book is. Cloth-bound and embossed. I'm a shallow, shallow person, and I admit, I bought it just because it was lovely. I pick it up every now and then, just to hold it, and touch the cover.

This is not a graphic novel.



It's a picture book.

Edison Steelhead was born looking like his father, and so his father takes him away to live on an island, where no one can see them. Edison grows up as all children do, curious and questioning, and not entirely accepting of his father's own issues. Their ability and inability to be ashamed, unashamed of their appearance draws them further apart, in this quiet, soft, greylead world.

There is so much space on the pages, each picture a little window surrounded by white, as if I was only getting the slightest, cropped glimpse of the world they inhabit. I couldn't help feeling each picture was being forced to sit in the corner, ashamed of the attention it gained by being present.

All that soft pencil is marvellously printed, to the point I was afraid of brushing my fingers across each page, lest I accidently smudge the art.

I understand Edison. I understand Edison's father too. The story should make you cringe, want to turn away, but you won't.

Verdict: Yes.

Ribofunk - Paul Di Filippo



I have had this sitting on my shelf for years. You see what treasure I have just lying around in my room, and I don't even know it? Who's the ijit? ME.

I chose it as I'm still on this run of "small and easy to carry", which isn't the greatest reason to pick up a book, but didn't fail me this time.

Ribofunk is awesome. AWE-SOME. It isn't cyberpunk, not in the traditional sense. There's a lot more funk, for starters. Oodles more funk. So much funk it's off the funkitude scale.

While there is a sort-of over-arching story to the book, it presents as a collection of short stories, sometimes related, sometimes not. I suppose you could read them at random, but the information presented in one lays the groundwork for the next, so perhaps it would be better to treat them as chapters that aren't closely related. Sort of second-cousins meeting at the family christmas dinner.

Di Filippo has created a world which...

...kinda defies summary.

It's a future in which the focus is less on computers, and more on body manipulation. Tropes and splices, anything can be injected now, from moods to knowledge to horns. I didn't pick up much body horror, but some of the modifications were confronting, to say the least. People chosing to augment their bodies to become more like cockroaches, or cliched chain-mail bikini-clad barbarian women, and splices themselves, part human, part anything else you want DNA. What does it mean to be human? Does it matter?

But Di Filippo doesn't just create a funkified future, or rewrite the syntax of science-fiction (I can't say that without cackling), he makes his own genre and language, and leaves the rest of us staring in puzzlement at his frollicks. I admit, I read the first page about five times before giving up trying to decipher the lingo and just running with it. It's a great, great language. Read it, and learn.

My favourite chapter/story has to be Big Eater, a story told entirely from the point of view of a man who had a broadcasting accident, and when stressed, sick, or having just woken up, can only express himself in rhymes.

The wordbird woke me at seven out of my heaven. Not at all synthetic, just the old deltawave-syncretic. Rem-memories hazed my gaze. Just like a screamcurse, I seemed stuck in my dreamverse. Though it wasn't so bad, maybe even triple-gonad. Something about drifting forever down a river of feathers. On my back, I was catching up on my slack. Coasting along just humming a song. Mighty nice change from my strife-life brain-drain. Which the nerdbird was still harp-harp-hopping on.

You know. The sort of thing that makes me grin because it's silly and awesome.

Verdict: If you're serious about writing, and the techniques of writing, you don't have an excuse not to read this. If you like reading good books, you have even less excuse not to read this. Does not make a good hat. Wrong shape. Great cover though.

Company - Max Barry



Read this a couple of months ago. Yeah, you'd think I'd have learned not to leave it so long by now.

Jennifer Government had me in stitches with it's bleak, absurd and dark humour, and so I had the same expectations of Company. I wasn't disappointed.

This book follows Jones, a graduate just starting a job in Zephyr, and the differences encountered between what is taught in business school, and what actually goes on in the work place, among a myraid of other things. It focuses on the mundane, ordinary, trivial things that nevertheless become great drama in the work place. If you've worked in an office, you know what I mean. I consider my own office pretty tame, and still this book resonated strongly.

Despite being pretty much non-stop giggles, it is a disturbing book, precisely because it resonates. You know, truth, and all that. The potrayal of Senior Management in particular (being representative for all upper echelons of management in every company anywhere) was frighteningly close to the bone, and highlights, quite starkly, the distance between those who make the decisions, and those who do the work.

I would love to go into more detail, as Company provided all sorts of food for pondering, but there are things that I just don't want to spoil.

That said, this book won't be a laugh for everyone. I pushed this on mum, as her office is being 'reorganised', figuring she'd need to laugh at the situation. Unfortunately, her reaction was the opposite; she couldn't read it because it was ridiculous and unfunnily true. Art mirroring life mirroring stupidity.

Verdict: Terribly funny stuff. If you are in a management position of any sort, you should read this. It will make your staff like you more. Also, it makes a good hat.

When I woke up half-way through the afternoon, I was crying. I can't remember the dream, but I know it wasn't the cause.

NIGHTSHIFT.

JUST SAY NO.

Aiiiiyaaaah. If you're going to leave narky comments, at least have the decency to wear your name. Don't be ashamed of your narkiness, revel in it! Be grown-up about being a bitch! It's too fucking early in the morning for me not to get my nark on. Get me some fucking orange juice.

Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town - Cory Doctorow



I read this cover to cover. Got terrible involved in it. I can tell you what happens, but I can't tell you what it's about.

What happens is a couple of guys start up free wireless for the community/the son of a mountain and a washing machine has some serious family issues, and deals with them. Somewhere between those two plot lines is what this book is about, and I haven't quite pinned it down yet.

It is something, my gut has decided, to do with freedom. Not necessarily freedom of speech, with all the politics the phrase is loaded with. Possibly just the freedom to be what and who you are, which is something you can only decide for yourself.

Which of course can only be done after you've finished your family feud in a violent and bloody manner, but oh well.

But that doesn't seem quite satisfactory, and I think I'll have to muddle this book over some more before I come to a conclusion that I am happy with.

It is about peculiar people. They're called 'monsters' at various points in the narrative, but that's just a word to mean 'other'. They're not human in the biological sense of the word, but they have minds and hearts that seem perfect capable of fucking things up like the rest of us. They are not, or feel they are not, free to say what they think.

Mimi, part-time heroin of the story, sporting a very fetching set of functional bat wings, is perhaps the most sympathetic of this motely cast. Her thought process and her emotional reactions are nothing but raw human, and her wings a physical manifestation of that wall we all carry within us. That which renders us incapable of expressing ourselves to others, that which disconnects us from the world around us. Her moment of battered house wife syndrome cut me, and her decision to run elevated me. I've read too many family violence reports where that last decision never happens.

Adam, Alan, Andy, the main protagonist, is an odd bird. Human, and passing for human, and going so human he's popped out the otherside into oddness. His carefully moulded house, full of the trophies that signify what it is to be human, the book he never writes, his endless fascination with other people...and his family.

The war between his brothers fuels the larger part of the story, and I admit I haven't sorted it out in my head yet. There was a twist at the end that I didn't see, and while it didn't throw me, it hasn't settled comfortably either. Families are strange creatures. Strange, strange creatures. I think it might be better if I accepted, without attempting to understand. Somethings aren't meant to be understood; family is one of them.

(Especially given the conversation I just had with my brother.)

It's also a really nice book to hold. I nabbed the hardcover at worldcon, and it's just a nice size, with nice heft, and nice paper, and a really nice cover. Ahh. Purdy.

A strange book that curls and meanders and drinks too much coffee and geeks out and gets brutal and bloody. A book that you will have to chew over and take what you choose from it, because it won't tell you want to think.

Verdict: Challenging, bizarrely so. Dangerous for trains.

I am a migraine.

Fucking WARPATH

Someone just tried to get into our backyard.

My brother heard the gate open. All I heard was him thumping around as he turned on all the outside lights, threw open the back door and grabbed his cricket bat. Then he came and got me and we both went tearing out the front door, torch and bat in hand. If we had hackles they'd be all the way up.

I've processed too many police reports to tolerate some lowlife lazy fucker on MY territory.

Excuse me while I go prowl around in a seething miasma of pissed-off-ed-ness.

XD


Guys, guys, okay, guys, ready? Guys, okay? Guys. Okay. Total moment of Dumb.

I missed my stop.

I was reading (my inner ear is behaving itself again), and you know how it is when you get to the end of the book, and everything's getting really intense, and I kinda missed three stops and when I looked up there were bushes. Me, I was "the hell? What bushes? Oh. OH!" And yes, I couldn't even just wait for the next train going in the other direction, because there was no next train, being after midnight.

I got the giggles so bad.

To top it off, while loitering around suspiciously waiting for my brother to pick me up, the cops drove past, and drove past again, and pulled up right by me to make sure I was okay. Which gave me bigger giggles.

So, Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town is NOT fit for train-travelling consumption.

I'm going to finish it RIGHT NOW so the same thing doesn't happen tomorrow.

Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett

It's Terry Pratchett. You've already made up your minds.

(I think he's worn himself a deep grove with the Discworld books, and now that he knows how to write a Discworld story, he can't not write it that way. I've read this before. It's still a good book, and Tiffany Aching brings all sorts of New and Refreshing to the witches. Me & sensible 13 year old witches = <3)

The Devil in Amber - Mark Gatiss



Yes! That dashing artist/secret agent is back! Lucifer Box!

Alas...this story just doesn't hold a candle to The Vesuvius Club, which is a right shame. The first book was a great big wad of ridiculous fun. This book is in that murky region of ridiculous where it isn't quite good ridiculous, but very close to lame ridiculous.

Times are hard for Box; he's getting old, there are younger and nastier agents trying to usurp his position as The Best, and now his own agency is out to get him! What's a poor secret agent to do? Why, get the girl, uncover the secret devil-worshipping society, and save the world, of course.

Except it's not just devil worship. There's actual devil. Actual and active devil pouncing through the plot and inserting all sorts of infernal intervention when Box requires a Get Out Of Jail Free card, which shat me to tears. That's cheating. Chea. Ting. Having the devil as the great world-threatening menace also felt like cheating. No, it felt cheap.

This isn't to say the book wasn't fun. It was great rollicking promiscuous fun. It was just a bit dumb too.

Verdict: The first book is better. This one, not so better. Regardless, I won't hesitate to snap up the next when it comes. Lucifer Box is just good like that.

Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones



I've been meaning to read this ever since the movie came out and made me fall in love with it. It's not particularly common in mainstream Aussie bookstores, which surprised me. I eventually bought it from Minotaur, because Dymocks just refused to stock it.

It is as full of love as the movie, so I fell in love with it too.

There are significant plot depatures between the two, and while the movie cut a lot out, I believe it remained true to the story (which for all you book purists out there who go one about how the last two Harry Potter films were crap because they didn't stick word by word to the books, is MORE IMPORTANT, my goodness, they're two different mediums, they work stories differently! Ahem).

Sophie is possibly an even better pushy old lady than she was in the film, which made me all sorts of delighted. Marcl being Michael, who wasn't a boy but a sensible young man, took very little to adjust to. The dog, being not the dog, was a tad transparent, but a lot of fun. And Wales. Wales! That threw me, I admit, but not for long. There's something very tongue in cheek about a someone from a magical kingdom escaping to this world. Usually it's the otherway around.

What I loved most was how this book is unashamedly happy. It's joy and delight and sunshine, and totally unrepentant about it. It doesn't feint sour endings, not in the least. You know there's a happy ending, and there damn well will be one!

Here I thought most young adult stuff was gritty and hard hitting. Boy, was I wrong. How come the young adults get all the fun?

I'm not too old for happy endings. I don't think anyone is.

Verdict: It'll warm you up on the inside. I can see this being a great comfort book. I love. You love. We all love! NOW GO BUY.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - The Lost Memory, Volume 1 - by Junichi Fujisaku, trans Camellia Nieh



Cheap. Easy. REALLY REALLY REALLY SMALL. You're sensing a pattern, right?

Recently finished watching the for SAC series, and it worked for me. I know tie ins generally suck, but eh. My inner rabid fangirl fails to give a rats.

According to the bio, the writer is one of the episode writers from the anime series, so he knows his material. He's not writing fanfiction because what he writes is canon. Yep. This turns out to be the books undoing, as it reads not just like an episode, but like a tv script. There's the big print at the beginning (a laborous description of the physical setting), character placement (exactly what it says), and then dialogue. And monologue. All those voice overs. It would work just fine on a screen, but in dead tree format, it reads like a dead, dead, dead fish.

It particularly suffers from telling, given that information cannot be shown as easily as on a screen, and even though it's only 210 really small double spaced pages, it took a long time for me to read it. Bleeeeah.

Respect the mediums you work in, and the ones you don't, please.

Verdict: It's a tie-in. You get what you expect.

Chain Mail: Addicted to You - by Hiroshi Ishizaki, trans Richard Kim, adapt Rachel Manija Brown



After the last book, I had a hissy fit, and went and read all the Harry Potter books, which you don't need to hear about. Then I had another hissy fit, got mad at books at general, and didn't read anything for a month. When I finally got over that, the memory of lugging around those Harry Potter books was still raw (those lumps are heavy), and so I picked this up because a) it was cheap, b) a really light read, and c) REALLY REALLY REALLY SMALL.

On my own, I represent a new trend that publishers should consider - I don't want more book for my money. I want you to drop the prices of books and make them not nearly as heavy as they are. My wrists can't take this crap.

End tangent.

The story is very straight foward; four high school girls, all unknown to each other, get involved in a little message board online role-playing, and of course the fictional world and the real world start to reflect each other, and weird scary stuff starts to happen, and oooh, who knows how it will end?

I do! Because it's very straight forward. So straight forward, I'd assumed the writer would have known this and made an attempt to obscure the ending or provide a new and interesting twist, but they didn't. Oh well.

Despite the predictability, this is a decent read. The fact that there's a translator and an english adaptor indicates to me that they didn't leave it all to the translator to actually write the story, and gave that task to someone with the know how. It reads smoothly, if simply. The role-play sections themselves possess distinct voices, which most real online RP fails at.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that everyone wants friends. And will be weird, creepy, and stalkery to get some.

Verdict: This book doesn't do anything new, but at least it doesn't do anything new badly. A quick and easy way to kill half a day.

The Voyage of Sable Keech - Neal Asher

Because the last book I'd read was unbelievably awesome and still had its claws in me, I picked this book up next specifically because it was totally different.

Which means it sucked.

I know Asher gets a lot of love, and I'm sure somewhere out there are works of his that deserve it, but this isn't it. If you're first time to Asher's universe, like I was, stay away from this one. It's a bit of an in-crowd thing.

The story is about....hell, I don't know. A bunch of stuff happens, and I was waiting for a point to be made, but there wasn't one. Just stuff. A lot of characters feature, all of whom appear to have length backgrounds and significant history in other books, which I haven't read and don't know about, and the right information wasn't given at the right time so in the end I didn't care either, and it feels like all these characters are brought together because Asher likes them, and can't leave them alone, and they must all have last hurrahs. "Here, your beloved friends return again, isn't that awesome?" From my point of view, no. Not to mention that all the characters seemed to possess the same voice, with the same amout of smartarsery which got annoying after a while.

I mean, was there a point to the whole giant whelk thing? Giant whelks are cool, but unless they serve a purpose other than being big and squishing things for the convenience of the plot, I don't want them.

There wasn't even a something about the dead not being dead and la di da.

So much telling, not much showing.

So much technobabble.

In a weird way, I saw this book as a warning to myself, as all the flaws I see in it, I'm guilty of. Plenty of cool shit and cool stuff for no point whatsoever. If I write like that, with that many pages involved, stop me, please.

Very glad I read this after my giant crab story was picked up. There's even a character called Thirteen. I know, I know!

Verdict: If you like Asher's stuff and want more, here's more. If you don't know Asher's stuff, go start at the beginning. If you want. No pressure.

Bold as Love - Gwyneth Jones



There are many reasons that I am a bad, bad person. One of them is the fact that I read this in September, and it's taken me this long to get off my arse and write about it. It deserves better attention than that. I'm a bad person. Ai.

I mean, I can barely remember what I was going to say about it. Other than "OMG, THIS IS TEH ROXOR!!11!!"

It was one of my targets for worldcon, and is a dangerous book to take to work. Far too addictive. I kept taking little nips, every couple of minutes, because I couldn't let it go. It was almost a relief to finish it.

A sort of near-future modern-world apocalypse turning post-apocalyptic world, the events of which are set in the UK, and seen through the perspective of rockstars. It's a brilliant piece of work, strange and familiar and new and true all at once. I couldn't tell you what the message is, and I don't think that it's necessary to know. I don't need to know.

I had a moment of idiot though, upon finishing and seeing 'to be continued in doodidoodidoo' and then waiting patiently for Nightshade to announce this new title, only to discovere that about six books in the series have been released under various other publishers and are actually available in normal bookshops here. Not that I've seen book 2 on the shelves yet. Don't make the same idiot moment I did.

I found it particularly interesting to dissect as a buddy story. Although world-breaking events happen, the story is mostly about the Trio of Ultimate Cool, and how these events bleed into their lives, or how they don't. There's time for that special close and stupid chatter between really close friends, all the time, and I got a kick out of seeing the balance at work.

I'm all for slash. *cough*

Anyway, I know this write up sucks, and I'm very sorry, because this book deserves much better treatment. It received a lot of hype a couple of years back, and you should believe it. It's fresh and full of awesome.

Verdict: This book is fantastic. I am not.

Strange places can be familiar places, and familiar places can be entirely unknown.

00:00 01/01/2007

I was sitting alone on a train between Heidelberg and Rosanna, on my way home from work. A minute prior, random play on my iPod had brought up The Weeping Song by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

We can only ever hope for different a year.

Cornelius's Sensuous Showcase

I nearly didn't go to this concert. Grief.

Cornelius was opened by Mountains in the Sky and Crayon Fields.

I'd been curious about MinS for a while, but I'm not sure why. On thinking, I was probably crossing wires with Explosions in the Sky, a rather awesome prog rock group. They're playing in the same musical field though, so I wasn't disappointed with my unrelated expectations. They play electronica, a lot of found sounds involved, and were quite good at bringing up a catchy beat. Unfortunately, the set they performed this night was plagued by technical difficulties, which they could have hidden, but instead showed their panic on stage, which I found painful to watch. Regardless, I bought their CD. Not that I've been able to listen to it yet, what with having a dead iPod, stupid bloody iPod.

CF, in contrast, played a fantastically tight set. They were a bunch of adorable dorks, trendily untrendy nerds, if that makes sense. I have no idea what genre they'd be slotted in. Some of their music reminded me of the Beach Boys, and some of it not so much. Good stuff, and I would definitly recommend catching them live, even if it's just to check out Mr Funky Xylophone man.

The Cornelius show, because it wasn't a gig, it was a whole show, started as they were setting up, with a teeth-grindingly annoying ever-so-slightly out of sync
'bip...bop...bop...bip' ping-ponging from one speaker to another. This continued for half an hour or so, until the lights came on, putting four colour bars on the white screen set up behind the stage. Each time a speaker bipped, a different colour bar came on. By this time, the crowd was a little restless and drunk, and started cheering every time a bip/colour change happened. Except for blue. For some reason, blue was booed quite vehemently.

And then, yes, at last! The band came out, tiny little Japanese people doing tiny little Japanese bows, and took up their instruments.

The bipping then controlled not just the colour bars, but the musician that stood in that colour. Turn by turn they played little bits and pieces, dribs and drabs, a tinkle of super mario, faster and faster until the chaos became a coherant piece of music, and they proceded to perform the greatest show I've ever seen.

The music was accompanied by a light show which was not just flashing lights, or random images thrown up on a screen to fill the space while the audience stares at the band, rather the opposite. The band were as unobtrusive as possible, directing all attention to the great show around them. One song was accompanied by a constant scrolling animation of birds, silhouetted against a twilight sky as trees and buildings whirled past. Another with perfectly and disturbingly syncronised mouths popping up everywhere. Drop was played to some astonishing footage of water, another a surrel montage watching someone walk their fingers through a mundane desk top. Unfortunately, I don't have a set list handy, and the internet doesn't know either.

The animation and the playing was so intricately linked, it was down to slivers of seconds, and it was perfect. Stunning. Faaaaaaaaaan-bloody-tastic.

I don't imagine they'll be back for another handful of years, but when they do, keep them in mind. Even if you don't know the music, they're more than worth seeing. I ran home full of delight and squees.

And I'm sorry for booing at the blue. That was the bassist. Didn't know. Really sorry.

Passion - Emminence Online

This was the first of a new line of concerts for EO; neither solo piano or symphony orchestra, but somewhere in the middle. Two violins, a piano, guitar, and drummer. A sort of orchestra rock band.

I found, as with the solo piano, the music adaptations a bit hit and miss. Some pieces left me cold and hearing nothing but what was taken out. That said, when they hit, they hit.

The theme to Super Mario Bros just goes OFF. I mean, OFF. That just rocked the whole house. The theme to Chron Cross (I'm not sure if the game was ever released in Australia) was also a piece of brilliance.

But the high point - they played Danse Macabre! This is neither anime or game music, it was written for an orchestra to play for the sake of being played. I love this piece; I played it on violin in high school. Badly. They tore the building down with it, it was just brilliant and amazing, and only one violinst and the piano slamming away... I suggested Danse Macabre at the last concert, in a survey I filled out. Happy conincidence or not, I loved it.

It's funny, how music that makes me that explodingly delighted also makes me cry.

I still prefer the full orchestral concerts, but I'll keep this series in mind when the next round comes up.

HOLY SMOKE, BATMAN! BATMAN, HOLY SMOKE! CORNELIUS DIDN'T JUST ROCK THE KAZBARHI-FI BAR, THEY BLEW IT OUT OF THE WATER. CORNELIUS SUNK MY BATTLE SHIP!

WHAT? YELLING? SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING. WOO! YEAH!

WE LOVE YOU! GOOD NIGHT!

So...

Exactly why do you read this?

WANTED: a pony.

(What? It worked last time.)

WANTED: one proofreader. Now. As given a recent reminder that I suck at proofreading, I do not trust myself. Story at 3,500 words, and involves privateers.

Fourteen Years Ago I Thought-



The year before I finished grade 6, my primary school started a tradition of giving the graduating grade 6 students a wall, and letting them paint something of themselves on it. For my year, they gave us the theme of what we wanted to be when we grew up.

For the state election last weekend, my area's voting centre was at my primary school. I brought a camera along, just in case my painting was still there, and it is.



Yeah. All girls want a pony.

Subterranean Gold Pirates!

(When I'm at work, I'm usually doing my best not to work.)

I for one am not sure they warrant the application of the word 'pirate'. They're thieves and trespasses, but I don't sense pirate vibes from their activities.

I am also not sure how they do it. Underground for that long? My skin crawls at the thought. How do they not die of rickets? How do they not utterly destroy their eyes?

THE PRESTIGE

That is a film well worth seeing. I won't write any sort of review, as I know the blogsphere has already munched it through, and better munching than I could provided. I do like that neither of the central characters are particularly likeable people, yet this is made irrelevant by the fact that they are fascinating.

Here I dreamt I was an eagle,
and could fly where I would,
but some evil bad guys had all my friends hostage at the top of a building in a very Bladerunner-like city,
and I rescued them instead,
and the eagle went away.


Here I dreamt there were bears trying to get into the house,
that no one else could see,
and they kept opening the doors,
and I am not quite so strong as bears
who force open doors,
and I didn't want to be eaten.

And the world sings

Yesterday, while bored out of my mind at work, I stumbled across this article on the age website: Mystery humming sound captured. Apparently, Auckland hums. For no easily discernable reason, and at a low frequency, so not every one can hear it. There's a sample at the end of the article. It's rather ominous, and I imagine for those who can hear it and live in Auckland, really bloody annoying.

The article also linked to another about singing dunes, on a physics site. Me and physics, we're not friends, and I don't care. How utterly fascinating! I don't want there to be a scientific explanation, I just love the fact that the sand sings! (So of course now I want to go to somewhere in the world that has such dunes and play with them.)

I like it when the natural world gobsmacks me. *petpetpet*

DTE? GSOH? WTF?

This morning's copy of The Age came with a supplementary magazine that was nothing but introduction ads, and because I find these creatures fascinating reads, it consumed my morning. After such a concentrated exposure, I couldn't help but start composing my own ad in my head.

I: moody, anti-social, difficult, overly-imaginative, contrary, silly, two-faced, contradictory, too-sensitive and will not return your calls. You: either really like a challenge or have murky motives. Give up now.

Hmmmmm. Maybe not.

Vampire Hunter D: The Stuff of Dreams - Hideyuki Kikuchi, Kevin Leahy (trans)



Lookit'im. Look at that face. What a prissy boy.

This book contained the sentence of ZOMGWTFBBQ, only two men hitting on D, and NO THREAT OF RAPE TO THE MAIN GIRLY.

I feel I must state that again; the 17 year old girl in this book was never under threat of rape. By anyone. At all. Ever.

I was amazed, and pleased. It made the book more fun, less infuriating. But I still don't think there was a point to fighting the giant chickens or the floating blood bubbles that appeared after them. Methinks Hideyuki realised that unless he forced the issue, there weren't going to be any big scary weird monsters slain in the book.

Here, D dreams, and when he wakes, finds the village he visited in the dream. Everyone is expecting him - they all dreamed about him in return. No one knows why he has been called, or what he is supposed to do. The only hint he has is in the keeping of a sleeping girl, who has slept for thirty odd years after being bitten by a vampire.

It is about dreams, various sorts of dreams, and dreams within dreams, and after a little while becomes terribly confusing, until the end - one of those lucid moments dreams occasionally grant you, when everything becomes clear.

This is definitly one of the better D books so far. It poses an interesting question; if vampires dream, what do they dream of?

Verdict: If anyone actually reads these things, then you already know what I think about these books.

Passage - Connie Willis



Willis is one of those authors I've been meaning to read for a long time, but never quite got there. After hearing her read an except of her current project at worldcon, I went and grabbed the first copy of this I found in the dealer's room. What a mind! What amusement! What amazing dialogue!

I started reading it while standing in line for her signing. Very nearly ignored the author in favour of her own book.

Joanna Lander and Richard Wright work at the Mercy General Hospital, researching the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDEs). Their investigation is geared towards what an NDE actually is, in terms of the human body's functions, and thus they spend a significant amount of time reproducing the brain-state in others. Mandrake, another working in the field, looks after all the angels and golden light and departed dear ones.

Their research isn't going well, however, and Joanna finds herself volunteering to go under and experience and NDE for herself, with strange and not altogether pleasant consequences.

Although the majority of the book consists of Joanna powering from one part of the hospital to another, asking questions and not quite getting answers, this book turned out to be one of those dangerously addictive books. I kept sneaking it out to read at work, every couple of minutes I'd grab it and dip in for just a little more. It was such a different idea, NDEs, and something I knew nothing about. The characters were incredibly engaging and with such depth, especially Maisey. At once a remarkable simple and gob-smackingly complex book.

Despite the intensely distracting story, I couldn't help but spend time pondering Willis's writing technique. This book is, for the most part, talking heads. Nothing but talking heads tossing theories at each other, questions, answers, pushing the story and reader onward, always onward, with nothing but a couple of people standing around arranging and organising and discussing. With all the criting and editing I've done and had done, and all the workshops I've attended, it's been standard to be warned away from talking head stories. Why, I wonder? Perhaps they're easy to to badly. Willis makes them look easy and intriguing and fascinating.

Another interesting aspect was the utter dread and fear she managed to inspire in me. Having not read much on horror, I'm not sure what it is the horror genre tries to provoke in a reader - fear, horror, or a romp with the gruesome and ghastly that has little to do with either. This book scared me something fierce until I figured out what was going on, by careful application of fear. Fear is contagious. If a character is afraid, truly afraid, the reader can and will pick up on that. Lovecraft uses the same technique, only he uses it like a sledgehammer; "YOU ARE AFRAID AND AGHAST AND HORRIFIED." Willis is far more insidious.

I found the ending satisfying, although I've yet to conclude on exactly what it is that Willis is trying to say. I drew my own conclusions, and that appears to be enough.

Verdict: The general consensus is that Connie Willis is a brilliant writer, and everyone should read her. I agree.

So Yesterday - Scott Westerfeld



Another piece of worldcon booty. In reality, I should have bought it ages ago, as it's available out here, and has been for ages.

Hunter is a Cool Hunter; his job is to go out, sus out what the next cool thing will be, and the big companies out there pay him for it. This is a legitimate job, just in case you were wondering.

He meets Jen, a rather awesome girl, takes her to a cool tasting, and after finding his boss's phone (but not his boss) in an empty warehouse along with some hot shoes, thing start getting interesting.

Jen and Hunter make a good team, with a great dynamic that is easy to get caught up in. Suprisingly, for a story about cool, what really hooked me in was how very geeky it was. All the fiddling with features on phones, wifi, wizz computers - it made me giggle. Nerds will always be considered nerds, but the territory is slipping more and more to the front, rather than the back, of fashion.

That said, the geekery didn't stop at the technology. While there is nothing geeky about Jen, Hunter smacks of nothing but geek. It isn't the trappings of his life, but the person he is. It's part of being a cool hunter, I suppose. A watcher, an observer, at the edge, not the centre. That slight rumpling around the edges which means he'll never quite fit in properly, because he's not that comfortable in his own skin.

I'm inclined to think that is the only prerequist for 'cool'. Being comfortable in your head.

This is a great fun book - you know how I'm a sucker for fun - and surprisingly touching at the same time. Image, fashion, style; they're all a big deal these days, and with the amount of money involved, it's a big corporate industry and a big deal of superficialness, if you let it be. While Jen and Hunter are running around playing at being private eye (which is where the fun is) there's a thoughtful look at what trends and images, our images, can mean. This book could have been shallow, and it isn't. It's honest. We all tailor our images; clothes, speech, music, how we laugh. It's about what we try to show, how much we really show, how much control we let others have over what we show, and perhaps most importantly, what we don't show. There is a lot that Hunter thinks he doesn't show, the key word there being 'thinks'.

...and as a slight tangent: it is great to see a mystery/crime book understand the incredible phenomenon that is the mobile phone, and pump it for all it is worth. Yes! Score many many points!

Verdict: This is a great book. It's fun, engaging, warm, and will make you think. And if you use the 'young adult' tag as a reason to pass this book over, you're an idiot. And a dweeb. And totally not cool.

Dragon America - Mike Resnick



Spoilers. But not really.

I bought this at Worldcon. I have the vague feeling I'd heard of it sometime before, because when I saw it I had an 'oh yeah,' moment. Alternative history with red coats and dragons, why don't mind if I do.

I came at it with some high expectations; Resnick seemed to be all over worldcon. Everywhere. Mile long queues for his signings. Too many Hugo nominations. He was a happening man.

Alas, his book wasn't.

The story is set during the War of Independence, witn Washington sending Daniel Boone of into the wild west to find some way of winning the war, be it by recruiting natives or taming dragons. Boone decides to tame dragons.

And that's what he does.

And Washington holds the English off just long enough.

And the day is saved.

And that really is it.

I scrummaged around looking for a sense of depth, a message, a point, anything to make this book other than 'this happened, then this happened, then this happened', and I couldn't find anything.

The writing was simple to the point of being boring, although the banter between characters was fun. And...that really is it.

It probably didn't go in the book's favour that I started reading it at LAX, terminally exhausted and with 20 hours of flight looming over me. That said, the fact that it didn't distract me from my circumstances says something as well.

Still, I wish I hadn't ripped the cover. That's how tired I was. Careless with my books. And too tired to care as well.

Verdict: This is a nice light bit of fluff, but there is better fluff to be had.

Someone just hit this blog by googling the phrase "space sphincter".

My life is complete.

I, Claudius & Claudius the God by Roberg Graves, and Vampire Hunter D vol 4: Tale of the Dead Town by Hideyuki Kikuchi, translated by Kevin Leahy

Yes, this is cheating. I'm bad, I know. I read these books before my holiday, and to be honest, what impact they had has been knocked out of my head.

The Claudius books are brilliant. They were wonderful to read, Claudius being an excellent and amusing narrator, although he second guesses himself far too much in Claudius the God. Graves demonstrates his skill as a writer by taking a story for which the ending is already fortold, and keeping the reader entertained and entranced regardless.

I found them hilarious, although when I mentioned this to a rather big name editor at the Tor party, said editor looked taken aback. Yes, the books containing an incredibly ruthless and bloody story, a story which happens to be absolutely chock full of absurdities, and I do love an absurdity. I near fell in love with Caligula. He nearly destroyed the Roman Empire, and I don't think I would have wanted to live within two centuries of him, but what a mad man! He waged war with Neptune, and had his army wade into the ocean and stab the waves! Fantastic. Just what I want in a tyrant.

These books are more than worth your time. They're not good books, they're great books.

I can't say the same for Tale of the Dead Town. As I've said so many times, the Vampire Hunter D series is one of those so bad it's good addictions. This book, was so bad, it was just bad. It had no point. He arrived at a town, some shit was going down, the town was doomed...and so the town was doomed. That was it. He left. At least there was no rape/threat of rape this time around, for which I am very thankful.

That's all. Talk amongst yourselves.

THE SIR TESSA USA ’06 TOUR – DAY 1
Melbourne -> Auckland -> Los Angeles -> Seattle

Ugh.

If there is a hell, if hell is personalized for the individual needs, if I am going to hell, then it will involve being several thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, in a tin can, suffering motion sickness, with no relief in sight.

Let me rewind.

They slotted in a nightshift before my annual leave kicked in, to minimize the number of days I had to apply for. Working ten days in a row means getting six days off afterwards. Some of you may remember that that particular nightshift kicked my arse. Even after several days of sleeping and resting, the day before I flew out I was still very FUBAR. I was stressing about the long flight and motion sickness that I knew awaited me, so of course I did not sleep that night. I wasn’t really expecting to.

As I was due to flight out of Melbourne with Air New Zealand at noon, I had to be at the airport by ten, (this being before the English caught those smuggling liquid explosives on board, with check-in times still something reasonable). That meant leaving home at nine, which meant getting up around eight for a shower. I was up a bit before seven.

From the carpark to the check-in counter was the first time I carried my rucksack for any length, and with the strap around my waist secure, the weight was off my shoulders, and it was surprisingly comfortable. Black Wolf make a good sturdy bag.

But of course, my flight was delayed by an hour.

There was time to sit around the tiny food court, and notice just how banged up Melbourne airport is getting. She’s showing her age; the lights aren’t being replaced, the tables are chipped, the grills fallen out. The poor old dear. We drank tea, shared a Danish, and watched the painted Qantas jet take off.

I’m not very good at waiting when my nerves are up. Hear that stomach churn.

Finally, I told my family to go home. They hadn’t intended to wait with me the whole time as it was, and the extra hour was just more time staring at the walls. It was, in my mind, a step towards going – I hugged and kissed them at the wailing wall, and passed through The Sliding Doors of Doom. Through Customs, to be pulled aside by the most unsettling security worker I have ever met. It was a standard explosives swipe, but his manner, the way he spoke...he was either high as a kite, or dumb as a rock. Possibly both. And he was unsettling. According to mum, they’re independent contractors. Make of that what you will.

After an airport-priced sandwich, I sat, and waited, and waited, and churned.

The flight from Melbourne to Auckland is on a smaller plane (2 seats by 3 seats by 2 seats), and takes only four hours. Air New Zealand has great food in my experience, and given the sandwich was all I’d eaten, I was looking forward to lunch.

Tip: airline stewards will not, if you are sleeping, wake you up for food.



Morris ze Dinosaur. On a plane.

We came up to New Zealand in dusk, with the sun behind that famous long white cloud. I hogged the window, and watched as New Zealand drew closer, and closer- and then we passed over it in thirty seconds, to come around for another pass. I could imagine the pilots crying, “crap! We just ran out of New Zealand! Go back, go back!” It was pretty, with the lights coming on, dotting the islands and hills. I will get there in a more than transitional way, one day.

At Auckland I changed planes, not flights. The leg from Auckland to Los Angeles is 12 hours in the dark, and after an accidental nap, I didn’t like my chances of sleeping through it. Churn, churn. I sat in the waiting lounge on the floor, by a family who were reading books to their daughters, one of whom was a Tessa. This little Tessa had an enormous pink shiny unicorn stuff toy. It had wings. And pantaloons.

Thankfully, the Fates, Destiny, Chance and Luck decided to take pity on me, and I was granted a window seat as well as an empty seat next to me.

Tip: if there’s an extra pillow, claim it. Right now.

And thus began my ascent into my private hell. New Zealand vanished in seconds, and then there was nothing but plane.

I felt yuck.

The exact magnitude of ‘yuck’ will be lost on any of you who haven’t experienced motion sickness. Imagine you are sick, a minor case of food poisoning, for example. Normally, a decent vomit will result in you feeling much better. Not the case with motion sickness, as what is making you sick is not what’s in you’re stomach, but what you happen to be sitting in. There is no way to alleviate motion sickness without stopping the motion, which needless to say, wasn’t an option.

Still, when you get to the point of vomiting, it’s better to have something to bring up than nothing at all. Once the dry heaves start, they don’t stop.

Tip: for those of you who get plane sick, eat everything they give you. Just do it.

Further tip: chew lots. Masticate that sucker into mush. That way, it won’t hurt so much on the return trip.

I discovered during dinner that moving made me feel worse, and so after a very nice dinner of roast chicken and vegetables, and some absolutely wonderful ice cream, I curled up with my pillows and jumper, pulled the blanket over me, put the chair arm up, put my feet up, and tried not to move for the next 12 hours.

The extra pillow comes in there. The chair arms against the wall don’t move, so if you want to lean against it, you’ll need some padding. I didn’t sleep. I spent those 12 hours very awake, very ill, very miserable, and very focused on my misery. There used to be a display in the Air New Zealand flights, showing where the plane was on the map, and how many hours to go. They’ve replaced it with a very fancy entertainment system that I can’t use for aggravating my motion sickness. This misery had no known end.

I remember being that upset with my circumstances, that I decided I was never going to leave Australia again. Flying was just too bloody awful, and no destination would be worth the journey.

The sun came up. The blinds came up. They served breakfast, and I chewed well, and moved little. We began our descent into Los Angeles. The end was finally well and truly nigh. About bloody time.

The descent also destroyed the intense willpower I’d exercised during the whole flight, and just before we touched down, I hurled dinner and breakfast into a wax paper bag. We landed at noon, and I felt ever so much better.

Tip: two chuck bags are better than one. If you’re stuck holding it, well, it’s only waxed paper, you know.

The Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave. Or the other way around. I left my chuck bag on the seat, and fled the plane, dreading the return trip. I was rank with vomit-induced sweat, having stewed in my clothes for a good day already, and more than a little wobbly on my feet, and damn I was happy to be on solid ground.

No, wait. Possibly my personal hell will involve dealing with the Los Angeles International Airport, again, and again, and again.

I, and a few hundred other souls, rolled down the corridor, to meet up with a few hundred souls from an Air France flight that had arrived at the same time, and we headed to the immigration line-

-which was staffed by eight people.

I remember it taking a long time to get through immigration last time I visited the States, and since then they’ve ramped up security measures to include taking everyone’s finger prints and photos. It took me well over an hour to get through immigration. The immigration works were trying to be proactive, shuffling the queues around, which only extended my wait. I watched the minutes tick by, and tried not to think about my connecting flight to Seattle, which was down on my itinerary as 1530. It was close to two when I finally hit the line. My impatience must have worked its way to my fingers, as my prints went through first time. Now, if I resort to a life of crime in either Australia or America, I’ll have to do it with gloves.

I grabbed my bag, shouldered it, and wobbled my way to domestic transit. American Airlines flight to Seattle at three-thirty.

Except, the woman working the terminal said, checking her sheet, there was no such flight.

This isn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.

Did I mean Alaska Airlines? They had a flight to Seattle at four-thirty. I had no idea. I didn’t want to know. A check of my itinerary didn’t help.

You mean Alaska Airlines, she said firmly, terminal four.

Okay, I said, and went. There comes a point when you stop fighting back (generally after 12 hours of motion sickness), and can’t even work up the energy to be worried, stressed, frightened, or frustrated. Zombie mode can be your friend at times.

There isn’t much difference between inside and outside LAX. It swelters. I staggered my way to terminal 4 – my bag really is a comfy bag, despite the weight – and found Alaska Airlines. As I had nothing in the way of a confirmation number, I couldn’t check-in electronically, and had to go via the service desk. There was a queue. It took an hour. There was a small child with a remote control car that he insisted on driving into every obstacle around him, including me. I have mad jedi skillz when it comes to patience. LAX = standing in queues in the heat.

Yes, it was Alaska Airlines, not American Airlines, and yes, the flight was at four-thirty, not three-thirty, and yes, everything was as it should be. I was too zonked to be relieved.

After proceeding through security, which aside from having to take off my boots and show my boarding pass five times was no different to any other airport security, I ducked into the toilets and tried to clean up.

Tip: it’s not just emergency undies/socks/bra you need, it’s an “I really smell” t-shirt.

I took my tee off, and just wore my jumper. I sprayed deodorant everywhere. I wiped my face, neck, bits I could reach. It made very little difference. The best I could do was not move, and thus keep my aroma to myself.

Next order of duty was to find food.

Melbourne Airport might be showing its age, but in comparison, it shines. LAX is a shithole. It’s nothing more than a bunch of portable buildings which should have been replaced years ago, and each terminal has maybe two places to eat. In the case of terminal four, you can choose between Burger King – a great big lump of greasy might-be-meat – or Starbucks - cakes.

All I wanted was a piece of fruit.

But lo! There was a chicken Caesar salad sitting in the Starbucks fridge, and even though it was pretty ordinary, it was the best Caesar salad I’ve ever had. Food has a wonderful way of making you feel better. The zombie wore off, and something resembling normalcy returned. Salad is best for those with a twitchy tummy and another flight to go. Nevertheless, chew that sucker into oblivion.

I watched as business glass and special member passengers were allowed on first, and watched the rest of us plebs mill about and edge closer to the queue. They let me on, and yes, the last leg! The end was almost nigh! I’m not sure flying business in a USA domestic airline is worth it – the seats are a bit wider, but that’s about it.

Saw the painted Qantas plane as we took off, and left bloody hellfire LAX behind.

I can’t say I remember much of this flight. I know I was trying not to move, as I was in a middle seat and thus wanted to keep my smell to myself, and that’s about it. I roused when we landed.

First impression of Seattle; gosh, that’s a lot of green trees. Actual green trees. I never realize just how grey/black/brown gum trees are until I look at something else.

Picked up my luggage without issue, and wandered around like a lost dog until I found a shuttle bus – any shuttle bus – that would take me downtown. The Greyline folk were very helpful, and called in a connecting shuttle to get me to my hotel.

The ride from the airport to Seattle proper was spent re-emphasising the tyranny of absolutely green trees, and staring at planes. The Boeing plant takes up most of the highway, and makes for interesting scenery. There’s something amusing about seeing bits of plane lying around like a do-it-yourself kit. The hotel had information about tours which run through the plant and aviation museum, but I didn’t go on any. I’d had enough of planes.

Perhaps it was because I was so exhausted, perhaps it was because it wasn’t my first time in a foreign country alone, but there was no fear to be had. The last time I visited the States, and I had to find a shuttle bus to my hotel for my one night in Los Angeles, I was terrified. I was alone, and nothing worked quite the way I expected it. This time, I didn’t even freak out when the bus started driving on the wrong (right) side of the road.

Probably because I was so exhausted, I forgot to tip the driver. Sorry, mister.

I was dropped of at the Days Inn on 7th, and on check in discovered that all non-smoking rooms had been taken. I didn’t care at the time, I just wanted a room. As soon as I got to said room, I cared, oh boy did I care. If you book a non-smoking room 6 months in advance, make some noise when they don’t give you one. It reeked. There was some fierce stench ground into the carpet. I stopped smelling it after a while, thank goodness.



After 24 hours travel, you'd look green and blurry too.

It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to work the shower. Don’t laugh – it was the one thing that had kept me going since LAX. It nearly broke my heart. To save you the same torment, I shall impart the secret bit of wisdom to you.

Secret Wisdom: Pull and hold the knob thing in the tap up, until the water diverts to the shower. Water must be running while doing this.

There. Look, it wasn’t obvious at the time, okay? Greatest shower of my life.

Clean, and with clean clothes, the only thing left to do was get some dinner. Unfortunately, by the time I’d made myself human against, it was getting towards ten at night, and nothing was open. The receptionist directed me to a service station a couple of blocks up the road. There were police cars and families every where, due to a torchlight parade. I felt, with my inability to cross roads without a lit crossing and inability to press the right crossing button – like everyone could see the great neon flashing sign on my head, crying “foreigner!” It was a lovely night for walking. Coming from Winter to Summer is a bit of a shock. I’m not a Summer person by nature, but I do love a warm balmy night for walking.

Service stations don’t tend to offer much in the way of decent food. I found a hard bagel with cream cheese, a piece of banana bread (BANANAS!), and I figured I’d be safe with a Kit-Kat. I was terrible bemused that a meal which would have been around $7-10 at home cost a mere couple of dollars, and that I was getting change in 1 cent pieces. With my great bounty, I headed back to my rank abode.

At this point, I discovered that while my phone would work, my carrier wouldn’t, and no other mobile network wanted anything to do with me. I’d promised to give the family a buzz to let them know I’d arrived without hitch, which left me with the hotel phone. There was an 85% hotel surcharge tax on international calls (oh my freaking-), but I figured, a 5 minute call couldn’t cost that much.

All the stress and exhaustion piled up when I heard their voices. I nearly cried, I don’t know why. It was a relief to know that despite the fact that I’d woken up in another place and another time and I’d vomited in front of strangers, they were still there, normal, sane. Touch base, children, touch base.

I channel surfed. I find foreign TV fascinating, especially so given that so much of American culture appears to revolve around the TV. I was stumped to see there was a channel just for asian programs, and that it was actually called AZN. That tickled the gamer in me. I caught Tokyo Godfathers just as it was starting, and watched till I couldn’t watch any more.

Morris Ze Dinosaur surveys the Mountains of Puppy Dogs

I had a bed, once.