Posts by Rich Lock
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Quite surprised we made it all the way to page 7 without someone mentioning JKR.
It's my suspicion that some authors of series which become hugely popular, are all like, <i>now I have the power and I can leave in all the tedious nonsense they cut out of the first two if I like</i>.
Stephen King went one better once he realised that not only could he pay the piper, but could probably afford to buy the band outright if he chose to. He actively revisted books of his that had been heavily edited when they were first released, and made his publisher put the pages back in for later editions. 'The Stand', for example, is now three to four hundred pages longer than the original version.
He know how to write, he just doesn't know how to stop....
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The Man in the High Castle isn't half bad.
No, it's all bad. It must take some kind of genius to turn a premise that good into a book that dull.
Andrew Davies is working on the script. Against my better judgement, I watched his (depressingly typically) "sexed up" Room with a View on Sunday.
Andrew Davies was described to me by my wife at the weekend as 'her nemesis'. He is (apparently) a one-trick pony who got lucky with the whole Colin Firth/Mr Darcy thing (and the wet white shirt wasn't his idea - it was the directors and the actors). Somehow, he has managed to parlay that into being the go-to guy for period adaptions. He has one tone, and one idea (this script needs more explicit sex!).
Hey, don't shoot the messenger....
LoTR - the smartest thing Peter Jackson ever did was get rid of 'Hey nonny nonny, Dingdongadildo, merry old Tom Bonkadoll'.
'The Hobbit' is pretty good, though.
My personal, A-number-one literary peeve is Martin Amis. I was given 'London Fields' by a family friend when I was a young teen, handed over with the reverence that accompanies a holy text, and I read it with that in mind (if the adults say this is a work of stunning genius, it must be, right?). Couldn't quite shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right, though....
Re-read it again a few years later as an adult. What a load of sneering, supercilious, hateful old shit. That man's writing would curdle milk at 20 paces. I have the greatest difficulty reconciling the fact that not only is this oxygen-thief still alive, but is lauded as a premier member of the UK's literary set. if there is ever a Martim Amis lynching party, I'll be holding the rope.
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For pretty obvious reasons, the Secret Service don't post every death threat the President receives on the White House website, but I don't think they spend a lot of time sitting on their arses because there's a honky or a Republican in the job. Remember five of the forty three Presidents of the US were assassinated, and a number of others were the object of serious attempts.
Not trying to suggest they do. 'Polishing' was probably not the best choice of wording.
My point is this: The secret service will (if pushed) admit that it's a numbers game. They simply cannot offer 100% infallible protection every simgle moment of every single day - it is an impossibility unless the president sits in a concrete room for four years and never comes out.
There are going to be times when there are gaps in the cover they provide. Being an extremely professional bunch of men and women, they make sure those gaps/windows of opportunity are minimised - the aim being to ensure that the gaps never overlap with the times when a lone gunman just happens to be strolling around on the grassy knoll. But sooner or later those two things can (and as you have pointed out will) come together.
My feeling (and I freely admit that is all it is) is that the level of feral anger we are seeing at the moment in the US is creating a higher concentration of nutjobs than in, say, the last 16-odd years (last four presidential terms, and yes, I did pull that out of a hat). A higher concetration of nutjobs means more opportunity for them to overlap with the holes in the protection.
I'm doing nothing more than expressing a fervent hope.
Oh, and my original post could just have easily read onto a McCain presidency. Lots of disillusioned/disenfranchised dems out there if McCain gets in.
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the overwhelming majority of Americans and New Zealanders, of whatever political persuasion, will wake up to the results of their elections. They may be pleased with the outcome. Or not. But they will accept it, and just get on with their lives -- because there's more than enough bullshit you've just got to deal with on any given day, without making some more.
I'm not so sure. I've read a reasonable amount of analysis that suggests one of the reasons Clinton was hounded so relentlessly over his indiscretions was because a lot of powerful neocon republicans simply could not accept a Dem in the oval office.
Cetainly, there will be a majority of supporters who will shrug and get on with it. but am I the only one hoping the the US secret service is frantically polishing their A-game as we speak? There's a lot of disaffected nutters out there.
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Not only funny, but terrifyingly accurate.
Can't see the clip (no longer available), but that quote more or less sums up the whole show.
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My 3-disc Special Edition boxed set says "Yes".
Ahhhhhhh. Snap.
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Who would have thought genuine post-scarcity societies would be... well, quite so dull? :)
Yep, the Culture is only really intersting when it's at war.
I thoght 'Excession' was the last half-interesting book Banks wrote, and it was only half-interesting. Hints of possible civil war within the Culture that I had hoped he would develop, but never really seemed to go anywhere.
'Excession' was published in 1996. The last interesting 'mainstream' book he wrote was 'Complicity'. Everything since then (that I've bothered reading) has been pretty dull.
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Since we're talking about Simon Pegg, comic book geekiness and all the rest of it...
Any 'Spaced' fans lurking?
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It could also explain those Britons' belief that NZ hasn't progressed since the postwar period.
A sizeable proportion of Britons seem to (consciously or unconsciously) think that Britain hasn't progressed since the empire disintegrated.
"Two world wars and one [soccer] world cup", anyone?
Local pig-ignorance is not a local phenomenon. One NZ'er of my acquaintence was on his OE and living in Portsmouth, and was asked if he lived in a mud hut back home.
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texan: wurz noo zeel-and?
me: an island in the pacific ocean
texan: iz that south a' mexico?
me: pretty much.You should have told him it was next to Rand-McNally: the country where people walk on their hands with hats on their feet, and hamburgers eat people.