Bloodsucking, friendship, ukuleles, frostbite, a dead poet and a rather unusual hat
Today I left school at the perfect time, which was quarter to four. This has, really fairly improbable for a whole bunch of reasons: my school officially ends at four; I have a lesson until four on a Thursday; I am not predisposed to skive gratuitously; I am even less disposed to skive off English lessons. It becomes somewhat less surprising
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Yes, also, I was wearing two pears of socks. [emphasis mine]
...I would make some kind of crack relating to our comment thread on my entry about socks in the fruit bowl, but alas, my exhausted brainmeats do not want to be poked and it would probably be decidedly unfunny. So I'm just going to be annoying and needle your typos instead. :p
Yay for literary crushes (and yay for litslash, too)! I seem to collect them fairly easily, and Eliot is definitely one of mine; this results in far too many references in my own writing. I could write Tetris fanfiction and it would end up with an Eliot reference in it.
*is really far too tempted by that*
(Also, seen this? I keep meaning to post it and not doing so).
Ooh! Speaking of the Culture (even though we really weren't), I finally got around to finishing Use of Weapons and zomgwowz. I think I may still be in shock at the ending, which I didn't so much as come close to predicting. Must babble about it in my own eljay once I finish the backlog of planned posts that's been building up. I was decidedly less impressed by Brave New World, which I scavenged from a used bookshop and read at the age of about thirteen (though I do want to re-read it). Possibly the only lasting impact it made on my developing consciousness was the acquired habit of reading 'saxophone' as 'sexophone'. S'pose that's not so bad, as consciousness-altering goes.
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...I actually cannot spell. Or type. I mean, I can generally spot typos in other people's stuff, but I honestly can't spell anymore. Firefox's spellchecker app actually saves my life. Trufax.
I wrote a poem once that was extremely fanboyish to some of my favourite poems (and, I will admit it, to Roald Dahl's The BFG and included about 90 words of direct quotation. Um. Yes. I stand by it still actually working as a poem, though, pretentious as it may be. :D How can it not be wonderful if it has Eliot in it?
And you totally should, you know. That would be awesome.
at archduke’s haus, invisible sled!
im in ur moutainz, holding on tight.
no can has cheezburger.
oral sex metaphors in ur poem.
almost actually works as poetry itself, I think. :D
...AHAHAHAHAHA:
world cries ‘jub jub bird,’
or is diffrent poem?
INVISIBLE BANDERSNATCH!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! &c
I should find you Noldo's Dr Who Waste Lands some time. They are things of beauty and of wonder.
Use of Weapons is so wonderful and it breaks your brain, figuratively. If I remember rightly I read it after Player of Games and before Consider Phlebas (Iain (M.) Banks is obsessed with The Waste Land, because he uses the same dead Phonecian quote as the epigraph and title-source to two novels, Phlebas and Look to Windawrd, which I have sitting on my shelf) and it is certainly a very interesting look at just what Contact is. (O Zakalwe. O Zakalwe. It burns. (Although not as much as the giant awesome plasma blasta does. I need to read the book again so much. :D))
I'd definitely recommend a reread of Brave New World; I first read it a couple of years ago, and when I reread it this time I was amazed at how awesome it was. (I'd originally decided to do it for the coursework because it was a drug-fuelled, sex-crazed, hedonistic technological utopia with similarities to the Culture - I'm rather glad I did, because it is really rather fun and excellent.) Above all I completely missed the ending the first time round, and most of the satire and thus most of the point (and even this time I missed the fact that zippers, when they were invented 'had been denounced from pulpits as lures of the devil' - to quote Margaret Atwood) and probably most of the philosophy and existentialism and stuff. But then I seem to develop crushes on every book that I study for a protracted length of time, so don't mind me...
And that is really rather awesome, you know. 'I play the alto sexopone.' Heh heh heh...
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I'm actually writing video game fanfiction with Eliot (and other) references in, so the Tetris thing isn't too far off the mark. Mind you, the game series itself is full of Eliot references. I think the creators might have been as obsessed as Iain [M.] Banks.
If I do write the Tetris fic, you'll be the first to know... or among the first, at least. :D I'm dithering over how much to anthropomorphise the blocks.
Look to Windward was the first Culture novel I ever read. I found it in a library by pure chance when I was younger (while wandering around harvesting shiny-looking science fiction books), was intrigued by it and fell in love just a little bit, but didn't read any Iain [M.] Banks for a while after giving it back. Then I came across Consider Phlebas in a bookshop, and the rest is fairly recent history...
Use of Weapons is indeed brain-breaking, in the best way possible. Argh, I want to read it again already. I love patchwork books filled with stories that seem disjointed but slowly start to fit together. 'Tis wonderful.
GIANT AWESOME PLASMA BLASTA FTW. I really want an icon with that text plus appropriate picture now, just to commemorate it.
I'm cravin' a readin' of The Player of Games, but can't afford books at the moment. I have "lurking around book shelves without buying anything" down to a fine art, so perhaps I shall go and do that.
I really do want to reread Brave New World now. I don't think I gave it enough credit - its setting definitely intrigued me back then, although I think I was singularly unimpressed by the ending. When I do reread it, I will be sure to post dorky analysis on my eljay!
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Game series? Quelle joue? (And yes, that is essentially the extent of my functioning French. Um. Er.)
I once met a young man who once wrote a short piece about two electrons and a particle accelerator and was told that it was the most romantic thing he'd ever written. So it just goes to show...
I came to Banks a little later than I should have done, really, and at exactly the right time. cenestpasunewok (then known to me as Thrawn McEwok) a bit of a legend (in the original sense of the word) on the fanfic forums that I used to haunt before I drifted over here, being very eloquent, very talented and very wry. I ended up being a bit of a McEwok groupie (along with elenathehun) and commenting and theorising on his 'fic, which was really rather exceptional by the standards I was used to, and having great fun when the politics came down by arguing the case for Rishathra Rights rather voraciously - but the point that I was actually attempting to get to before getting lost down memory lane was that he was a rather big fan of Iain (M.) Banks and repeatedly plugged him. Eventually I found a copy of Inversionsat the library and took it out.
I hated it.
Well, that's a lie; I just didn't understand it, and couldn't work out where it was going or why it existed at all. A few years later I saw a copy of Dead Air on sale for a pound or somesuch ridiculous price in Books etc and, recognising the name, picked it up and subsequently devoured it and any other Banks that I could get my grubby little hands on, which is now almost all of it...
(Also, as I am rubbish at uploading images, may I suggest you check the inbox of the e-mail address in your profile? :D)
I'd lend you my copy, but am currently using it for the purposes of writing a dorky analysis of it for coursework. :D And I rather liked the ending - but that's because I realised what Huxley's doing. (I think the book's a tragedy - just not one with an individual subject...)
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The Halo series. Extra-canon materials are full of Eliot references, and the games themselves contain some too - most notably, repeated variations on and echoes of the line "This is the way the world ends". The series references a lot of things, from obscure!highlyliterary!poetry to older pulp SF. 'Tis full of much yay.
Then again, the Halo 'verse is also surprisingly reminiscent of the Culture 'verse in some ways - and the Haloes were actually inspired in part by the Culture Orbitals (I knew it! Knew it as soon as I saw them! Though they're more Ringworld-esque in appearance, if not scale...)
I am now officially intrigued. Who was said young man, and is said short story available for reading anywhere?
I'm a little surprised that I knew instantly what "Rishathra Rights" meant, because I a). haven't been on the tf.n boards for ages and b). never was a regular there anyway. Go go interspecies team! :D And having acquired a working knowledge of Larry Niven, I now know where rishathra comes from as well... but I'm veering sharply off topic here.
I need to read some of IMB's Banks stuff, as opposed to just his M. Banks stuff.
Icon = full of win and love. What did you use for the background image? It looks somewhat familiar.
Eh, my copy's around here somewhere and the house is tiny... I should be able to find it. Though the tendency in houses of any size to spontaneously devour random objects is quite worrying. I used to insist that they fell through cracks in space-time somehow - that, or people crept in at night to steal things. It was the only explanation I could come up with for the frustrating and mysterious disappearances that went on.
It's certainly a tragedy - and one that I'm almost nervous about reading again now, because the more I think about it, the more I realise that it hits several of my specific, personal squicks extremely hard (as well as being generally disturbing, natch). Still going to re-read, of course.
[Edited for annoying bit of repetition - why yes, I am compulsive about these things. Comment-editing is my new friend].
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I really should play Halo some time. Find a cheap PC version or something...
Orbitals were pretty much stolen from Ringworld anyway, I believe. I'm pretty sure that was what he said in an interview somewhere, anyway...
The young man was a youth leader on a camp that I went on four summers ago now (is it that long ago? is it that recent?) and sadly I never got to see it. However, there was a different young man the year after who taught me to tell stories... :D
*laughs* The whole Rishathra thing was so ridiculous, but at least I'm now innoculated against fandom for life. :p But oh, Nrin/whatever-her-name-is for ever... :P
You do, yes. You'd also probably appreciate this... :D (I recently picked up State of the Art and The Bridge, and am currently about half way through the former. Yay for short stories, I say...
The background image is of a Warhammer 40k plasma gun, Imperial standard issue (he says, revealing his inner 11 year-old) found by searching 'plasma gun' on Google and grinning. Str7 Ap2 Rpdfr, overheats on a to hit of 1 :D
It's gnomes. I swear. Gnomes.
Thinking about it, isn't squick essentially what it's all about?
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Oh, you should, you should. I love it so very much. I managed to get Halo very cheaply, but the two sequels were slightly more expensive - though I still got them on special offer, so they weren't nearly as highly-priced as they would have been. *worships at Bungie's altar* 'Twas all worth it, despite my limited funds.
I may have read that interview! Was it the one where he mentioned someone having bought the film rights to The Player of Games? Am currently unsure how I feel about that... although film rights being owned doesn't necessarily mean that any such thing will ever get made, of course.
I have acquired a +8 resistance to Fandom Dramatics over the years, along with a +10 saving throw against Bad Fanfiction/Art (with a modifier added if it involves excruciating smut). 'Tis a very useful thing, fandom inoculation. :p
I... I... I appreciate it enough to give a virtual stutter! That's scintillatingly wonderfully awesomely fantastically full of win. And woo, Sma! *bookmarks for further reading* The temptation to write that Culture/Halo crossover lurking in my brainmeats (or at least to write an eljay post on how said crossover could potentially be written) is growing at a frightening rate.
Yay for short stories indeed! It has occurred to me that I might have more success with regards to getting back into writing if I put the Huge Epics of Doom that have been prodding at my brainmeats on indefinite hiatus and wrote short stories and drabbles instead for a while. I am also vere srsly considering signing up to fanfic100.
The picture reminded me a little of certain video game guns, at first glance; most notably, the zero-point energy field manipulator gravity gun from Half-Life 2. I have no idea why, since they don't look even remotely alike on second glance.
I was going to write something about BNW and horrible squicky false-utopias here, but I fear that long comment is becoming too long, and really should go to sleep now after having not done so all night. *points to timestamp* Maybe later, when I'm awake and in more of a position to brain. :p
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