One step closer!
So Monday night, I laid awake in my bed, thinking 'holy crap I'm going to Korea very soon.' This...was an interesting thought. A bit intimidating, but ultimately the adventure will be good for me. I've been in a rut for a bit, and I imagine getting out of my element will do good things for me. Or...something.
In any case, before I can actually go over there, I sort of need a visa- and so, with that in mind, I went up to Chicago on Tuesday in order to leap through the bureaucratic hoops. I took the train, which was an experience. And a train ticket's cheaper than gas, to boot. Bonus!
It was funny, as for part of the ride up, I had a car all to myself- made me feel like an 1980's oil tycoon. Should've worn a top hat. Was prett uneventful- if LONG. Then again, it's about the same amount of time as a drive, and I had more room to move around and so on.
On the ride up, I read Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint , which was an...interesting novel. I'd heard the title mentioned here and there, and I hadn't read anything in the 'fantasy of manners' sub-sub genre before, so I picked up a copy cheap at a used bookstore. That, and the fencing angle was pretty enticing. Swashbuckling, y'know.
It was a fairly interesting read, if not as swashbuckly as I was hoping for. The plots and politics were appropriately twisty- and the descriptions themselves were quite melancholy and baroque. Kushner really likes describing hands.
However, there's one thing that stood out at me. Namely, the main relationship between Richard and Alec struck me as a bit...familliar. I mean, you have two skinny, pretty guys (with long hair, I think) who are in lurrrrve but also ridiculously angsty and dysfunctional about it. Really, it reminded me of a slash-fic, or maybe some sort of yaoi thing. I may be using the terms incorrectly, but it seems Richard & Alec can be pretty easily mapped to the Uke/Seme 'roles' as it were. Or maybe I've just spent too much time on TVtropes and so have had my brain corrupted.
Regardless, I'm a bit curious as to what a gay reader might think of the novel. It's at this point I realize the only gay nerd guy I know on LJ is elmerg. Still, from a gay perspective, I have to wonder if it reads as authentic, or does it seem more like a fetishization of male homosexuality?
Also, skimming Kushner's wikipedia entry tells me she's married to a woman. Well, there's another interesting complication. Hm!
Anyway, I made it up to Chicago (or, rather, an hour outside of Chicago, where my uncle lives). I only visited him for a brief time, but it was fun. We hit up this place called the Roundhouse Brewery- it was built into the train station's old roundhouse, naturally. Pretty tasty beer, even if all their stuff tended to go to the sweet side (Seriously, they had a cream ale, a blueberry ale, a chocolate ale, a cherry imperial stout, and a milk stout). The bartender told me that a lot of their sweeter beers were essentially the same thing, just with different extracts added- which is fine, really. Just not quite my style.
Wednesday, I went into Chicago proper to get my visa interview taken care of. It was kinda funny. There was me and some other guy there taking the interview, which mostly consisted of the consul putting down manuscripts of Sunday-morning news-talk programs, and having us explain the various turns of phrase and American idioms. It was pretty interesting, as it made me realize just how screwy spoken American English is, as a language. They're supposed to send me the visa in the mail, so...yeah, waiting game.
I still had a couple of hours before my train went back to St. Louis, so I hiked around downtown Chicago for a bit, occasionally stopping here and there to warm up (and drink a beer). I thought about getting a hot toddy somewhere, but I kinda doubted the places I went to (pretty standard upscale-ish hotel bars) knew how to make them right. Of course, I've never really HAD a hot toddy before, so I prolly wouldn't know the difference, but I digress.
Also visited the Chicago Cultural Center, which was pretty interesting. I'm sure I would've enjoyed it more if I was an architecture nerd, as really, the building's gorgeous. That, and they had an exhibit on some guy who influenced Frank Lloyd-Wright, so that too. The other exhibit was a bit less...comfortable. As it was an art gallery of works about violence against women across the world. Well done, if not particularly cheery. The exhibition was called 'Off the Beaten Path,' which my pun-sense had to chuckle at while the rest of me felt kinda guilty about it.
So yeah, goofed around Chicago a little bit (likely missing a bunch of the really cool stuff) and then hopped the train back to STL. The ride back down was a little more fun- as I was better prepared. Which is to say...I brought beer. Goose Island Sophie (their Saison) to be exact. I just got one 22 oz bottle, which wasn't enough, but it was far better than drinking 5 dollar Bud from the cafe car, lemme tell you.
Picked up Tim Aker's The Horns of Ruin before I hopped on the train. Fun read. Kind of a swords and sorcery/noir sort of thing. It's marketed as steampunk, but I really wouldn't classify it as such. Of course, steampunk's a pretty loose definition to begin with, and I can't fault them for wanting to sell books. Was also interesting in that it had a pretty kick-ass central character- Eva, a gun-toting, sword-swinging warrior paladin. Think a sepia colored Jedi. Though she was kind of genderless over the course of the book- guess one could call it the 'guy with boobs' analogy. Seriously, I should stop reading both tvtropes and tor.com, as they're making me overanalyze everything.
Though really, the most interesting part of the book was the magic system. Namely, the 'spells' (called invocations, here) were all based on great heroic feats of the gods of the setting- so every time anyone cast a spell, it was a little clue into the backstory. I couldn't help but find this rather clever. All and all, a fun and rollicking read- I'd recommend it to anyone who likes adventure/fantasy novels.
So yeah! Got back in town, Add_films_inc came through and drove me home (seriously man, you're awesome. I owe you beer) at a late hour...and now I'm just taking it easy. Which isn't to say I haven't got stuff to do, of course. But that's trivial, and I figure after a big trip, it's okay if I slack, just a little. Of course, I'll be heading off to Korea in two weeks, which is kind of a sobering thought. I've got to pack! Say goodbyes! Hide away my transformers so nothing terrible happens to them! (There may be booby traps). Sell my car! Soak up as much American culture and food and beer as I can before I'm thrust into a completely different environment!
Oh, and maybe I should start studying Korean, too.
Aaand, even if it's old news by now-
A shame, if it's something to expect. I went through a big Redwall kick when I was a kid- even then, I knew it was kinda silly, but it was accessible and full of adventure and violence, and so on. And it so happened that my Redwall kick just came as my folks were getting teh intarwebs in the house, which in turn led to my tentative steps into online hijinks and fandom and what have you. Seriously, because of some cheesy Redwall RPG thing I found (I had a big badger with a warhammer, whose name I forget), I found myself poking around other stuff- somebody on the Redwall chat-game-whatever actually pointed me at White Wolf's stuff, for one. Heck, teh intarwebs probably taught me how to type a lot faster than any boring typing program, I can say that much.
Over the years, the books have sort of blurred together- as for better or worse, they can be pretty formulaic. But even this is pretty comforting. I think I'm gonna dig around in my bookshelves to see if I still have any of those books handy. From the other tributes I've seen scattered here and there online, people are saying Mossflower was the best, so I think I may give that a re-read sometime. I may have outgrown Brian Jaques' work, but damn if I didn't love it when I did. Ah well. Such things happen.
Man, now I'm a little melancholy. Boo! I'm sure I'll get distracted by something soon enough, however. I'll keep you posted!
In any case, before I can actually go over there, I sort of need a visa- and so, with that in mind, I went up to Chicago on Tuesday in order to leap through the bureaucratic hoops. I took the train, which was an experience. And a train ticket's cheaper than gas, to boot. Bonus!
It was funny, as for part of the ride up, I had a car all to myself- made me feel like an 1980's oil tycoon. Should've worn a top hat. Was prett uneventful- if LONG. Then again, it's about the same amount of time as a drive, and I had more room to move around and so on.
On the ride up, I read Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint , which was an...interesting novel. I'd heard the title mentioned here and there, and I hadn't read anything in the 'fantasy of manners' sub-sub genre before, so I picked up a copy cheap at a used bookstore. That, and the fencing angle was pretty enticing. Swashbuckling, y'know.
It was a fairly interesting read, if not as swashbuckly as I was hoping for. The plots and politics were appropriately twisty- and the descriptions themselves were quite melancholy and baroque. Kushner really likes describing hands.
However, there's one thing that stood out at me. Namely, the main relationship between Richard and Alec struck me as a bit...familliar. I mean, you have two skinny, pretty guys (with long hair, I think) who are in lurrrrve but also ridiculously angsty and dysfunctional about it. Really, it reminded me of a slash-fic, or maybe some sort of yaoi thing. I may be using the terms incorrectly, but it seems Richard & Alec can be pretty easily mapped to the Uke/Seme 'roles' as it were. Or maybe I've just spent too much time on TVtropes and so have had my brain corrupted.
Regardless, I'm a bit curious as to what a gay reader might think of the novel. It's at this point I realize the only gay nerd guy I know on LJ is elmerg. Still, from a gay perspective, I have to wonder if it reads as authentic, or does it seem more like a fetishization of male homosexuality?
Also, skimming Kushner's wikipedia entry tells me she's married to a woman. Well, there's another interesting complication. Hm!
Anyway, I made it up to Chicago (or, rather, an hour outside of Chicago, where my uncle lives). I only visited him for a brief time, but it was fun. We hit up this place called the Roundhouse Brewery- it was built into the train station's old roundhouse, naturally. Pretty tasty beer, even if all their stuff tended to go to the sweet side (Seriously, they had a cream ale, a blueberry ale, a chocolate ale, a cherry imperial stout, and a milk stout). The bartender told me that a lot of their sweeter beers were essentially the same thing, just with different extracts added- which is fine, really. Just not quite my style.
Wednesday, I went into Chicago proper to get my visa interview taken care of. It was kinda funny. There was me and some other guy there taking the interview, which mostly consisted of the consul putting down manuscripts of Sunday-morning news-talk programs, and having us explain the various turns of phrase and American idioms. It was pretty interesting, as it made me realize just how screwy spoken American English is, as a language. They're supposed to send me the visa in the mail, so...yeah, waiting game.
I still had a couple of hours before my train went back to St. Louis, so I hiked around downtown Chicago for a bit, occasionally stopping here and there to warm up (and drink a beer). I thought about getting a hot toddy somewhere, but I kinda doubted the places I went to (pretty standard upscale-ish hotel bars) knew how to make them right. Of course, I've never really HAD a hot toddy before, so I prolly wouldn't know the difference, but I digress.
Also visited the Chicago Cultural Center, which was pretty interesting. I'm sure I would've enjoyed it more if I was an architecture nerd, as really, the building's gorgeous. That, and they had an exhibit on some guy who influenced Frank Lloyd-Wright, so that too. The other exhibit was a bit less...comfortable. As it was an art gallery of works about violence against women across the world. Well done, if not particularly cheery. The exhibition was called 'Off the Beaten Path,' which my pun-sense had to chuckle at while the rest of me felt kinda guilty about it.
So yeah, goofed around Chicago a little bit (likely missing a bunch of the really cool stuff) and then hopped the train back to STL. The ride back down was a little more fun- as I was better prepared. Which is to say...I brought beer. Goose Island Sophie (their Saison) to be exact. I just got one 22 oz bottle, which wasn't enough, but it was far better than drinking 5 dollar Bud from the cafe car, lemme tell you.
Picked up Tim Aker's The Horns of Ruin before I hopped on the train. Fun read. Kind of a swords and sorcery/noir sort of thing. It's marketed as steampunk, but I really wouldn't classify it as such. Of course, steampunk's a pretty loose definition to begin with, and I can't fault them for wanting to sell books. Was also interesting in that it had a pretty kick-ass central character- Eva, a gun-toting, sword-swinging warrior paladin. Think a sepia colored Jedi. Though she was kind of genderless over the course of the book- guess one could call it the 'guy with boobs' analogy. Seriously, I should stop reading both tvtropes and tor.com, as they're making me overanalyze everything.
Though really, the most interesting part of the book was the magic system. Namely, the 'spells' (called invocations, here) were all based on great heroic feats of the gods of the setting- so every time anyone cast a spell, it was a little clue into the backstory. I couldn't help but find this rather clever. All and all, a fun and rollicking read- I'd recommend it to anyone who likes adventure/fantasy novels.
So yeah! Got back in town, Add_films_inc came through and drove me home (seriously man, you're awesome. I owe you beer) at a late hour...and now I'm just taking it easy. Which isn't to say I haven't got stuff to do, of course. But that's trivial, and I figure after a big trip, it's okay if I slack, just a little. Of course, I'll be heading off to Korea in two weeks, which is kind of a sobering thought. I've got to pack! Say goodbyes! Hide away my transformers so nothing terrible happens to them! (There may be booby traps). Sell my car! Soak up as much American culture and food and beer as I can before I'm thrust into a completely different environment!
Oh, and maybe I should start studying Korean, too.
Aaand, even if it's old news by now-
A shame, if it's something to expect. I went through a big Redwall kick when I was a kid- even then, I knew it was kinda silly, but it was accessible and full of adventure and violence, and so on. And it so happened that my Redwall kick just came as my folks were getting teh intarwebs in the house, which in turn led to my tentative steps into online hijinks and fandom and what have you. Seriously, because of some cheesy Redwall RPG thing I found (I had a big badger with a warhammer, whose name I forget), I found myself poking around other stuff- somebody on the Redwall chat-game-whatever actually pointed me at White Wolf's stuff, for one. Heck, teh intarwebs probably taught me how to type a lot faster than any boring typing program, I can say that much.
Over the years, the books have sort of blurred together- as for better or worse, they can be pretty formulaic. But even this is pretty comforting. I think I'm gonna dig around in my bookshelves to see if I still have any of those books handy. From the other tributes I've seen scattered here and there online, people are saying Mossflower was the best, so I think I may give that a re-read sometime. I may have outgrown Brian Jaques' work, but damn if I didn't love it when I did. Ah well. Such things happen.
Man, now I'm a little melancholy. Boo! I'm sure I'll get distracted by something soon enough, however. I'll keep you posted!