And all those smart-ass folks say we come descended from monkeys.
I swear, I heard that several times while jaunting around the glorious South. And I am home! Funny how vacations drain you. I have actually just come back not only from vacation but also from visiting my best and most beloved ex-roommate who will be wrecking havoc on Columbia University come the 17th, so we spent part of the day together. She bought me Canadian lobster soap-- in the shape of lobsters, not made from it-- and sent me home with a container of meatball soup and some spare lingerie. I suppose that's love right there.
I rather hope to type up all the crap I thought of on vacation, so you may prepare to ignore that. I hope I can remember what all this shorthand stands for. A typical page of my notes will read something like
-"It's no use. It's like pissing in the ocean. Just a little more salt."
-A rise of Star Wars incest? Harry Potter Ripple Effect.
-There's a Superlube right next door to a Badcock & Moore store. Mr. Cheap Butts is a piece down the road. Clear omen.
-I sat in the bathtub, shaving my legs while listening to my brother talk to his girlfriend over a thousand miles away. this is like something out of a grad student play. How would you cut your wrists with a Bic razor? It seems too difficult. Perhaps crack plastic open and extract balde? otherwise you'd have to drag it up and down your wrists several times, quite hard. Seems painful, which would defeat the purpose of purportedly painless suicide through wrist-slitting. Warren Ellis has probably covered this.
-Magical sting-ray powers.
And so forth. I'm just recently back from the staff dinner, and not really up to typing. In the meantime, kadrin was kind enough to be witty at me, as you can see under the cut, and besides it's been a bit since the last conversation on the pope and Pyramid Head and Stephin King and Neil Gaiman.
As always, this will make very little sense if you've never read any of his previous conversations recorded in the AIM section of the memories. I always feel I should link each topic to the previous conversation that birthed it, but it feels sort of pretentious on my part.
ThorneScratch: So, there's no samurai koala engaged in ribaldry in the background. And sorry for running off the other day. The dog thing got complicated.
KadrinHeroSchool: I do have baby now, but Mother shall take her soon.
ThorneScratch: I thought so. Distinct baby aura to be seen. At any rate do they ever identify James from SH2 as being a particular religious denomination? Google has not helped me.
KadrinHeroSchool: That became quite a distraction. Baby needed CONSTANT VIGILANCE. Anyway! I don't believe they mention it - neither his religion, if any, nor Mary's. If they werent't atheists, I got the feeling - largely, I'll admit, through his wife's name - that they were Catholic. But they could easily have been Protestant or Jewish, or Muslims, Shintoists... I'd put money on agnostic, but not very much.
ThorneScratch: HAHAHA I AM JUSTIFIED which is troublesome because then I'd have to actually play the damn game to write this thing in my brain. Oh well. I am very fond of Catholicism in its own weird way, and I agree that I think it goes with SH, what with the massive attention paid to the theme of self-torture through guilt.
ThorneScratch: Also, good job on the baby. Good man. Good constantly vigilating man.
KadrinHeroSchool: ALSO. I have a Pyramid Head poster drawn by magi which has a poem around the outside and the poem was written by Alexander Pope. DEFINITIVE PROOF THAT THE GAME WAS ENTIRELY ABOUT CATHOLICISM.
Mad-Eye Moody would be the best babysitter ever, until he threw the baby at the first person to come to the door. So, well, not very long, then.
ThorneScratch: What you're postulating, mind you, is a POPE PYRAMID HEAD THE SECOND. (The first Pope Pyramid Head was actually named Pius and only had the Pyramid Head moniker from a very specific party incident that happened on May 7, 1846) What I think is where are they going to find a pope-hat that will stay on top of his pointed head-thing?
Well, it depends. Did he hit the person with the baby?
Also, it's only, what, a couple exchanges in and we're already talking up Pyramid Head and the Pope. This is a serious medical condition.
KadrinHeroSchool: I think they would shape his pyramid head into a pope hat. Or just stick a roodoodad on top and call it good. I mean, are you going to argue with Pope Pyramid Head II? I'm not!
Really, I think it's moot. I think throwing a baby renders you a bad babysitter; it's in the rules.
We should seek help. HELP IN BEING MORE AWESOME... ABOUT THIS... I don't know.
ThorneScratch: That's very true. If you argue with him, he doesn't excommunicate you from Silent Hill, you have to stay in Silent Hill and never leave. But good lord, they need to get him some more ornate robes than that little apron thing he has. It makes Saionji feel better to know that someone else has a stupider-looking apron than he does, and we all know there is very little that makes Saionji feel better.
What if you're throwing the baby onto a pile of... of... magical pillows? Or what if you're throwing pre-cauldron-Voldemort-baby? Does that make you a good babysitter by default?
I think by seeking help, we should make MORE PEOPLE INTERESTED IN IT. Then we won't seem like the only ones and it'll be normal!
KadrinHeroSchool: And clean it. So that, you know, it's not covered in blood. Maybe just sew a bunch of mannequins together? That'd make awesome vestments.
Well, if you throw pre-cauldron Voldemort baby, you're a bad babysitter but a good Auror, and brilliant art. ...that last bit was an injoke that made little sense. Did you ever see that picture of Voldemort that was basically Sephiroth with red eyes?
You know, during my last game of 1,000 Blank White Cards, I did make three Pope-related cards. I imagine this wins me points.
ThorneScratch: That could get awkward for ceremonial dances and movements though. All popes need to know how to do a ceremonial dance. It's in the handbook. So, like, to make sure a Pope Pyramid Head is dead, do you hit him on the head with a silver Great Knife?
Well, I still say it depends what you're throwing the baby at. So it's a little bit of a Catch-22 or a paradox, although I bet there's not many good aurors who are also good babysitters... No, I haven't seen that picture but I'm cringing a little inside anyway.
You have accumulated enough mana to wear a special hat and do a little dance.
KadrinHeroSchool: I'm not sure if the Cardinals could lift a silver Great Knife. Maybe you get the entire College to drag it in and whack him over the head. It'd be great; you could charge admission. Get a few monsignors to do the ceremonial dance, then the Knife-Whackin', then cake.
There comes a time when everyone has to decide whether they want to be an auror or a babysitter. I bet that's what Book 7's going to be all about. I could provide you with a link, but you'd cringe harder.
As best I recall, HOT POPE-ON-POPE ACTION was worth 600 points, HOLY MAN! YOU'RE ON FIRE! was worth negative 900 points, and POPEMOBILE doubled the value of all Pope-related cards.
ThorneScratch: See, I kept wondering on vacation-- if you hit a pope with a hammer that's not silver, does it cause the pope to, I don't know, haunt the Vatican? Or not be released completely from death and instead shamble around the Vatican as a mindless zombie, intent on devouring the flesh of Jesus? That's no good, because then there's not enough communion wafers for everyone and some poor choirboy goes hungry. But I like your idea-- one million dollars. Everything's always better when you culminate with cake, or punch and pie.
I feel like one of us should make a comment about euphemisms and throwing the baby. Ron would throw the baby by accident. Snape does it for fun. And you can hit me with the link anyway, I might as well get my cringe quota in.
...you are more brilliant than a thousand brilliant suns. And I mean yellow suns, not those collapsed ones. I think there should be something referencing the hat or hammer though.
KadrinHeroSchool: Maybe it's OK if you rub the hammer with garlic? Or just holy water, I mean, it's the Vatican, there's got to be holy water all over the place! ...Really, if you're going to haunt, you should probably find somewhere easier than the Vatican. I imagine the Vatican has the highest exorcists to nonexorcists ratio of anywhere in the world.
Here - get to the pictures and go three down. Though really, they're all cringeworthy. I provide Powerpuff Voldemort as an antidote: here . I think we really should write a fanfic. Ron Throws The Baby. Rated R.
I so would have put in the hat or the hammer - well, the picture for HOT POPE-ON-POPE ACTION is a pair of pope hats sticking out of a CENSORED sign, and a speech bubble with "Hallelujah!" written in it - but there weren't enough games and not enough cards. I need to find more people to play this game with because awesome. I may track down the rest of the cards I kept.
ThorneScratch: Maybe you just bash them over the head with a Michelangelo sculpture, of which I believe there are several. Of course, those are quite heavy, so again you need the whole College there to do the lifting while someone supervises. As for the haunting and exorcism-- totally true. Although now I'm seeing it, like, as in Harry Potter where the ghosts and portraits of all the former popes hang out and give the current pope advice or snarky commentary. Probably there's a prankster pope like Peeves who is constantly switching hats around and lifting robes.
...Ow. Ow ow ow. Er. Right-o, moving on. We should totally write that fanfic (Ron's throwing more than one baby, although maybe his count is low due to radiation exposure) although I imagine this is why Hermione never lets Ron alone for long.
That is awesome indeed. I don't even know what the game is but it's still awesome.
KadrinHeroSchool: The ghost-Popes have ghost-food fights in the corridors, and laugh when one of their pies passes through a visitor or nun. For some reason, this reminds me; I saw a picture that had Henry V in it in Venice, and... he was Edmund Blackadder. I mean, he looked exactly like him.
The fanfic would, of course, culminate in Ron throwing a baby at Voldemort, although whether he's throwing a baby or throwing a baby is up to the reader to determine.
The description of the game is here . It's brilliant. I only wish I could actually, you know, play it. Ever. I got a few games in when the Australians were here but that was it.
ThorneScratch: I bet they goose nuns. Who hasn't wanted to do that? Certainly not me. And I.... have no idea what to say to that. Except that there was clearly an accident with a time machine and a contraceptive involved somewhere.
And by doing so, Ron saves the world. You know, I wonder how Ron and Saionji would get along.
***
[a brief interlude here]
***
ThorneScratch: Sorry. All that talk about popes and Silent Hill got to me, and I went to Mass so I wouldn't be exiled to a town of perpetual guilt and despair.
KadrinHeroSchool: An excellent plan; wise countermeasures.
ThorneScratch: But all I could think of was how Pyramid Head would conduct mass. I think the homily would lack something. Mostly coherent words.
KadrinHeroSchool: Pyramid Head drags a mannequin along and re-enacts the Crucifixion. Congregation gapes.
ThorneScratch: I think I've seen that in an avant garde play, somewhere.
[another brief interlude]
ThorneScratch: As for Stephen King, it was simply that Neil Gaiman was pimping the auction that King's doing on his blog, which I feel is evidence for something. And that I'd bid for the chance to get King to name something really embarrassing, but that's just me. Did you see the link for it? I don't even know if you follow his feed.
KadrinHeroSchool: Maybe Neil is turning to the dark side and will become King's cowriter. Which would make King's cowritten books twenty hundred times better, not that that is hard. (This is all Black House. If I reread The Talisman, I'm sure I'd feel much more kindly.) Another thing I didn't like:
THE TALISMAN: Jack's mother works in obscurity, but that's OK, really. It makes her more human.
BLACK HOUSE: Everyone has heard of Jack's mother. Everyone loves Jack's mother. Jack's mother has won an Oscar.
PATRICK: Shut up.
ThorneScratch: OH DISS. Yeah, Black House wasn't good at all, but I actually blame that more on Peter Straub, since I read a couple of his books over vacation and while Kin made a lot of mistakes, I think Straub didn't help. Jesus, now all I see is Sith!King tempting Jedi!Gaiman to fall to the Dark Side.
Jack himself is kind of annoying as an adult.
KadrinHeroSchool: I didn't like Straub's writing style, and I didn't like how he complemented King's failings of "the saints are saints and the devils are devils and ne'er the twain shall meet" (HINT: EVEN IF A REPORTER IS REALLY OBSTREPOROUS, POLICE BRUTALITY IS NEVER EVER HEROIC), and I generally didn't like the book, no. ...Beats me why I keep reading it. You know, that image really does make sense. I like it!
ThorneScratch: You see, I kind of did like the way the reporter got smashed but not because I approve of police brutality or because the reporter was well written enough to make you want to cheer for the police. It was sort of the opposite-- the reporter was pretty flat as a villain (and Mr. Munshun, I'm not even going to start about your villain qualities and getting killed by a fucking baseball bat) and I sort of hoped it would get rid of him from the story. Alas. There are bits of the book I like, but overall I think it doesn't meld with the Talisman well enough and the voice is off. Which makes me wonder if T3 will ever get written.
You must admit, Gaiman would make one sexy mofo of a Jedi. And Pratchett and Mace Windu together would kick a lot of ass.
KadrinHeroSchool: I agree on the flatness. I didn't like the reporter - he was a jerk - but what was there to like? He was an amalgamation of bad qualities, in the same way no real human is. But even so, policemen hitting civilians who aren't actively attacking you at the time = always badness, all right? It's fine to think "great, reporter guy's out of the story", but it's damn appalling that we're still meant to cheer for the cops. I really don't think they were even trying to meld with the Talisman world; I think it was just King getting his Dark Tower on, and trying his best to make it fit. Which sucks. I wouldn't expect a T3 and I kind of think that's a good thing; quit while you're ahead, yez bastards.
Gaiman would. He really, really would.
...you know, I think I instigate these conversations solely to get him to say "yez bastards." And now I'll stop being so bloody uninteresting and go to bed.
I rather hope to type up all the crap I thought of on vacation, so you may prepare to ignore that. I hope I can remember what all this shorthand stands for. A typical page of my notes will read something like
-"It's no use. It's like pissing in the ocean. Just a little more salt."
-A rise of Star Wars incest? Harry Potter Ripple Effect.
-There's a Superlube right next door to a Badcock & Moore store. Mr. Cheap Butts is a piece down the road. Clear omen.
-I sat in the bathtub, shaving my legs while listening to my brother talk to his girlfriend over a thousand miles away. this is like something out of a grad student play. How would you cut your wrists with a Bic razor? It seems too difficult. Perhaps crack plastic open and extract balde? otherwise you'd have to drag it up and down your wrists several times, quite hard. Seems painful, which would defeat the purpose of purportedly painless suicide through wrist-slitting. Warren Ellis has probably covered this.
-Magical sting-ray powers.
And so forth. I'm just recently back from the staff dinner, and not really up to typing. In the meantime, kadrin was kind enough to be witty at me, as you can see under the cut, and besides it's been a bit since the last conversation on the pope and Pyramid Head and Stephin King and Neil Gaiman.
As always, this will make very little sense if you've never read any of his previous conversations recorded in the AIM section of the memories. I always feel I should link each topic to the previous conversation that birthed it, but it feels sort of pretentious on my part.
ThorneScratch: So, there's no samurai koala engaged in ribaldry in the background. And sorry for running off the other day. The dog thing got complicated.
KadrinHeroSchool: I do have baby now, but Mother shall take her soon.
ThorneScratch: I thought so. Distinct baby aura to be seen. At any rate do they ever identify James from SH2 as being a particular religious denomination? Google has not helped me.
KadrinHeroSchool: That became quite a distraction. Baby needed CONSTANT VIGILANCE. Anyway! I don't believe they mention it - neither his religion, if any, nor Mary's. If they werent't atheists, I got the feeling - largely, I'll admit, through his wife's name - that they were Catholic. But they could easily have been Protestant or Jewish, or Muslims, Shintoists... I'd put money on agnostic, but not very much.
ThorneScratch: HAHAHA I AM JUSTIFIED which is troublesome because then I'd have to actually play the damn game to write this thing in my brain. Oh well. I am very fond of Catholicism in its own weird way, and I agree that I think it goes with SH, what with the massive attention paid to the theme of self-torture through guilt.
ThorneScratch: Also, good job on the baby. Good man. Good constantly vigilating man.
KadrinHeroSchool: ALSO. I have a Pyramid Head poster drawn by magi which has a poem around the outside and the poem was written by Alexander Pope. DEFINITIVE PROOF THAT THE GAME WAS ENTIRELY ABOUT CATHOLICISM.
Mad-Eye Moody would be the best babysitter ever, until he threw the baby at the first person to come to the door. So, well, not very long, then.
ThorneScratch: What you're postulating, mind you, is a POPE PYRAMID HEAD THE SECOND. (The first Pope Pyramid Head was actually named Pius and only had the Pyramid Head moniker from a very specific party incident that happened on May 7, 1846) What I think is where are they going to find a pope-hat that will stay on top of his pointed head-thing?
Well, it depends. Did he hit the person with the baby?
Also, it's only, what, a couple exchanges in and we're already talking up Pyramid Head and the Pope. This is a serious medical condition.
KadrinHeroSchool: I think they would shape his pyramid head into a pope hat. Or just stick a roodoodad on top and call it good. I mean, are you going to argue with Pope Pyramid Head II? I'm not!
Really, I think it's moot. I think throwing a baby renders you a bad babysitter; it's in the rules.
We should seek help. HELP IN BEING MORE AWESOME... ABOUT THIS... I don't know.
ThorneScratch: That's very true. If you argue with him, he doesn't excommunicate you from Silent Hill, you have to stay in Silent Hill and never leave. But good lord, they need to get him some more ornate robes than that little apron thing he has. It makes Saionji feel better to know that someone else has a stupider-looking apron than he does, and we all know there is very little that makes Saionji feel better.
What if you're throwing the baby onto a pile of... of... magical pillows? Or what if you're throwing pre-cauldron-Voldemort-baby? Does that make you a good babysitter by default?
I think by seeking help, we should make MORE PEOPLE INTERESTED IN IT. Then we won't seem like the only ones and it'll be normal!
KadrinHeroSchool: And clean it. So that, you know, it's not covered in blood. Maybe just sew a bunch of mannequins together? That'd make awesome vestments.
Well, if you throw pre-cauldron Voldemort baby, you're a bad babysitter but a good Auror, and brilliant art. ...that last bit was an injoke that made little sense. Did you ever see that picture of Voldemort that was basically Sephiroth with red eyes?
You know, during my last game of 1,000 Blank White Cards, I did make three Pope-related cards. I imagine this wins me points.
ThorneScratch: That could get awkward for ceremonial dances and movements though. All popes need to know how to do a ceremonial dance. It's in the handbook. So, like, to make sure a Pope Pyramid Head is dead, do you hit him on the head with a silver Great Knife?
Well, I still say it depends what you're throwing the baby at. So it's a little bit of a Catch-22 or a paradox, although I bet there's not many good aurors who are also good babysitters... No, I haven't seen that picture but I'm cringing a little inside anyway.
You have accumulated enough mana to wear a special hat and do a little dance.
KadrinHeroSchool: I'm not sure if the Cardinals could lift a silver Great Knife. Maybe you get the entire College to drag it in and whack him over the head. It'd be great; you could charge admission. Get a few monsignors to do the ceremonial dance, then the Knife-Whackin', then cake.
There comes a time when everyone has to decide whether they want to be an auror or a babysitter. I bet that's what Book 7's going to be all about. I could provide you with a link, but you'd cringe harder.
As best I recall, HOT POPE-ON-POPE ACTION was worth 600 points, HOLY MAN! YOU'RE ON FIRE! was worth negative 900 points, and POPEMOBILE doubled the value of all Pope-related cards.
ThorneScratch: See, I kept wondering on vacation-- if you hit a pope with a hammer that's not silver, does it cause the pope to, I don't know, haunt the Vatican? Or not be released completely from death and instead shamble around the Vatican as a mindless zombie, intent on devouring the flesh of Jesus? That's no good, because then there's not enough communion wafers for everyone and some poor choirboy goes hungry. But I like your idea-- one million dollars. Everything's always better when you culminate with cake, or punch and pie.
I feel like one of us should make a comment about euphemisms and throwing the baby. Ron would throw the baby by accident. Snape does it for fun. And you can hit me with the link anyway, I might as well get my cringe quota in.
...you are more brilliant than a thousand brilliant suns. And I mean yellow suns, not those collapsed ones. I think there should be something referencing the hat or hammer though.
KadrinHeroSchool: Maybe it's OK if you rub the hammer with garlic? Or just holy water, I mean, it's the Vatican, there's got to be holy water all over the place! ...Really, if you're going to haunt, you should probably find somewhere easier than the Vatican. I imagine the Vatican has the highest exorcists to nonexorcists ratio of anywhere in the world.
Here - get to the pictures and go three down. Though really, they're all cringeworthy. I provide Powerpuff Voldemort as an antidote: here . I think we really should write a fanfic. Ron Throws The Baby. Rated R.
I so would have put in the hat or the hammer - well, the picture for HOT POPE-ON-POPE ACTION is a pair of pope hats sticking out of a CENSORED sign, and a speech bubble with "Hallelujah!" written in it - but there weren't enough games and not enough cards. I need to find more people to play this game with because awesome. I may track down the rest of the cards I kept.
ThorneScratch: Maybe you just bash them over the head with a Michelangelo sculpture, of which I believe there are several. Of course, those are quite heavy, so again you need the whole College there to do the lifting while someone supervises. As for the haunting and exorcism-- totally true. Although now I'm seeing it, like, as in Harry Potter where the ghosts and portraits of all the former popes hang out and give the current pope advice or snarky commentary. Probably there's a prankster pope like Peeves who is constantly switching hats around and lifting robes.
...Ow. Ow ow ow. Er. Right-o, moving on. We should totally write that fanfic (Ron's throwing more than one baby, although maybe his count is low due to radiation exposure) although I imagine this is why Hermione never lets Ron alone for long.
That is awesome indeed. I don't even know what the game is but it's still awesome.
KadrinHeroSchool: The ghost-Popes have ghost-food fights in the corridors, and laugh when one of their pies passes through a visitor or nun. For some reason, this reminds me; I saw a picture that had Henry V in it in Venice, and... he was Edmund Blackadder. I mean, he looked exactly like him.
The fanfic would, of course, culminate in Ron throwing a baby at Voldemort, although whether he's throwing a baby or throwing a baby is up to the reader to determine.
The description of the game is here . It's brilliant. I only wish I could actually, you know, play it. Ever. I got a few games in when the Australians were here but that was it.
ThorneScratch: I bet they goose nuns. Who hasn't wanted to do that? Certainly not me. And I.... have no idea what to say to that. Except that there was clearly an accident with a time machine and a contraceptive involved somewhere.
And by doing so, Ron saves the world. You know, I wonder how Ron and Saionji would get along.
***
[a brief interlude here]
***
ThorneScratch: Sorry. All that talk about popes and Silent Hill got to me, and I went to Mass so I wouldn't be exiled to a town of perpetual guilt and despair.
KadrinHeroSchool: An excellent plan; wise countermeasures.
ThorneScratch: But all I could think of was how Pyramid Head would conduct mass. I think the homily would lack something. Mostly coherent words.
KadrinHeroSchool: Pyramid Head drags a mannequin along and re-enacts the Crucifixion. Congregation gapes.
ThorneScratch: I think I've seen that in an avant garde play, somewhere.
[another brief interlude]
ThorneScratch: As for Stephen King, it was simply that Neil Gaiman was pimping the auction that King's doing on his blog, which I feel is evidence for something. And that I'd bid for the chance to get King to name something really embarrassing, but that's just me. Did you see the link for it? I don't even know if you follow his feed.
KadrinHeroSchool: Maybe Neil is turning to the dark side and will become King's cowriter. Which would make King's cowritten books twenty hundred times better, not that that is hard. (This is all Black House. If I reread The Talisman, I'm sure I'd feel much more kindly.) Another thing I didn't like:
THE TALISMAN: Jack's mother works in obscurity, but that's OK, really. It makes her more human.
BLACK HOUSE: Everyone has heard of Jack's mother. Everyone loves Jack's mother. Jack's mother has won an Oscar.
PATRICK: Shut up.
ThorneScratch: OH DISS. Yeah, Black House wasn't good at all, but I actually blame that more on Peter Straub, since I read a couple of his books over vacation and while Kin made a lot of mistakes, I think Straub didn't help. Jesus, now all I see is Sith!King tempting Jedi!Gaiman to fall to the Dark Side.
Jack himself is kind of annoying as an adult.
KadrinHeroSchool: I didn't like Straub's writing style, and I didn't like how he complemented King's failings of "the saints are saints and the devils are devils and ne'er the twain shall meet" (HINT: EVEN IF A REPORTER IS REALLY OBSTREPOROUS, POLICE BRUTALITY IS NEVER EVER HEROIC), and I generally didn't like the book, no. ...Beats me why I keep reading it. You know, that image really does make sense. I like it!
ThorneScratch: You see, I kind of did like the way the reporter got smashed but not because I approve of police brutality or because the reporter was well written enough to make you want to cheer for the police. It was sort of the opposite-- the reporter was pretty flat as a villain (and Mr. Munshun, I'm not even going to start about your villain qualities and getting killed by a fucking baseball bat) and I sort of hoped it would get rid of him from the story. Alas. There are bits of the book I like, but overall I think it doesn't meld with the Talisman well enough and the voice is off. Which makes me wonder if T3 will ever get written.
You must admit, Gaiman would make one sexy mofo of a Jedi. And Pratchett and Mace Windu together would kick a lot of ass.
KadrinHeroSchool: I agree on the flatness. I didn't like the reporter - he was a jerk - but what was there to like? He was an amalgamation of bad qualities, in the same way no real human is. But even so, policemen hitting civilians who aren't actively attacking you at the time = always badness, all right? It's fine to think "great, reporter guy's out of the story", but it's damn appalling that we're still meant to cheer for the cops. I really don't think they were even trying to meld with the Talisman world; I think it was just King getting his Dark Tower on, and trying his best to make it fit. Which sucks. I wouldn't expect a T3 and I kind of think that's a good thing; quit while you're ahead, yez bastards.
Gaiman would. He really, really would.
...you know, I think I instigate these conversations solely to get him to say "yez bastards." And now I'll stop being so bloody uninteresting and go to bed.