Just watched The Last King of Scotland.

It seems to me that the lesson you should walk away with after seeing the film is this: Don't trust charisma. Because Idi Amin (as presented) is charming as all fuck, and he clearly is an excellent speaker/pitchman when he's in his lucid moments (i.e. not shouting at the top of his lungs about how evil the ( Read more... )

My series of Harry Potter articles continues! There are, of course, complete spoilers for one through six here. Just so you know.

Thoughts on Chamber of Secrets:

• I'm no longer entirely certain this is weaker than The Sorcerer's Stone. Either way, it's either the weakest or second weakest book, which is still like being the weakest Pixar movie. Or ( Read more... )

Given Harry Potter Day is in a little more than a week, I've started tackling the Big Pile Of Books by rereading the whole series. Partly to see how the earlier books read now that I know the events of Order of the Pheonix and Half-Blood Prince; I don't think I reread the lot two years ago.

Some thoughts on having finished re-reading Harry Potter ( Read more... )

Finish this thought, please:

Coming in 2007: The Jack Show. With Johnny Depp, Mathew Fox, and Kiefer Sutherland. He's a stone-cold counter-terrorist, willing to do anything to protect innocent lives and bring traitors to justice. He's a doctor turned survivalist, the natural leader of the 815 survivors and a "man of science". He's a pirate.

( Read more... )

Plot bunny: Movie, entitled A Godawful Small Affair, which is by all accounts a very well made romantic drama which details first the rise and then the fall of a bittersweet relationship, over the course of let's say thirty minutes.

And then, without any warning from the ad campaign, the Martians invade.

Yes, I know, one part Sean of the Dead and ( Read more... )

Plot bunny: Iceland goes fascist and evil. Why Iceland? Because, simply, no one would expect it. Like all the post-Viking nations, it's a socialist semi-utopia, with citizens that display a Tolkienesque obsession with genealogy, a GDP per capita at purchasing-power-parity that is sixth to none, and one of the largest geothermal heating systems the ( Read more... )

Today, I sold another copy of The Eyre Affair, which is one of my favorite books to sell, and (something I'm more proud of) persuaded someone to buy the first two books of Otherland, by Tad Williams, one of my favorite authors and someone who to the best of my prior knowledge I have persuaded no one to read (besides whoever took the books I donated ( Read more... )

After some consideration, I have struck two nations off the map. Narwhelm and Anerst have been struck from the map, their citizens and cities annexed by their neighbor nations and all mention of them scoured from history. They do not exist, they have never existed, they are unnations. For I am a Tyrant!
Anyway, fiction progress is slow. It is ( Read more... )

I've been fighting a long war this week with my left shift key. When I'm bored with homework, I tend to pop out the keys that have the most hair and dust under them and clean them up (maybe you do the same; I don't know if you do the same), and somehow the one shift key refuses to stay in and function like a normal key.

This is especially annoying ( Read more... )

I think an interesting novel would be one in which Catherine of Aragon gave birth to a healthy son, instead of a healthy daughter. Because it would be a ridiculously simple and plausible change in the way the world worked out (unlike, say, Charles Lindberg running for President), but could completely change the course of Western history. No ( Read more... )