Deja Fu

My friend Paul thinks going a month without posting because you’ve been busy writing professionally is a long time. Try an entire quarter because you stopped, then realized you had spent so long without posting, the three readers you had probably moved on.

At any rate, I wasn’t going to let the year end without something, so courtesy of the aforementioned friend, comes a remarkable animation short by Rodrigo Blass, an animator at Pixar, entitled Alma. Enjoy.

Life really likes throwing curve balls. It really does.

I didn’t disappear, but I have been very, very distracted lately. Almost a year after we lost my Mom, Dad had a stroke and was hospitalized. Since then, I’ve temporarily moved in with him to assist in his recovery, which is coming along amazingly well. To top everything off, my XBox 360, which is over three years old now, coughed up an E74 error and died.

The consequence though, is that it took me three weeks to read a Discworld book, which, by rights, should have been devoured in a day or so. However, things are looking up on all fronts, and we’ve moved on, so although I doubt I’ll hit fifty-two book this year, I should be able to put in a good showing.

-K

This is how bad it’s gotten folks. Even Lex Luthor needs help.

-K

I write a few reviews, build up a nice healthy buffer, and then let it all drain away.

I’m still around, it’s just that The Man has his boot on my neck at the moment. No, I haven’t been in jail, unless you want to wax poetic with metaphors about ennui. I’ve just been busy with the job.

Anyway, I owe another review and hopefully will finish this book that I’ve been near the end for a week now. Until then, enjoy Blizzard’s announcement of a Diablo III class: the Archivist.

-K

Author: Robert Asprin
Pages: 200
Year Published: 1978

Way back in the early Dark Ages (when I was in high school), a friend gave me the first eight Myth Adventures books as a Christmas present. I’d read tham through more than once, but it has been at least fifteen years since I read them last. So, in the spirit of Jamie, I thought I’d go back and re-read them to see how they held up. Happily, I found, like he did, they did so remarkably well.

Another Fine Myth is the first book in the series, in which we are introduced to the two principle characters: Skeeve, a magician’s apprentice and would-be thief, and Aahz, a demon summoned to Skeeve’s world by his former mentor. The circumstances for their association are quickly provided and, before you know it, the two are off to prevent a madman from conquering the known dimensions.

Yes, dimensions. This is where Asprin’s humor begins to unfold. “Demons” are actually just interdimensional travelers. Sure they make look like monsters, devils, or imps, but that’s just because everyone in that respective dimension looks that way. If we were to travel to say, Deva, then we would be the demons, despite the inhabitants all looking like devils. Get it?

A lot of the humor comes from wordplay like this, but also from the dialogue between Aahz, Skeeve and the other inhabitants they encounter and the situations in which they find themselves. At times it feels like a lite Marx Brothers routine, or an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Regardless, it still shines through even after all this time.

Another Fine Myth is a nice afternoon’s read and certainly a very easy one. If you enjoy Pratchett and his Discworld series, you’re bound to get enjoyment out of this book.

-K