On Trying...

Evening.

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Writing this inside Google's Chrome browser instead of FireFox cus I was curious to see which ran better [security isn't really an issue for me, it's getting people to NOTICE me that's the bloody trick] and it did, especially TOME: Immortal Arena, the current MOBA game I'm playing, so I decided to swap to this for now.

Easy enough seeing as Google were smart enough to import all my bookmarks and things from FireFox and included the bookmark tab bar which I use all the time. Missing the drag to scroll extension I have in FireFox sometimes, but this thing works better so, suits me.

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• http://www.reallifecomics.com/

I'm a goat and just blew up a gas station with an axe...stuck...to...my...tongue... ._. ...*commits suicide*

That's it, he says from beyond the grave, there is no hope left for humanity.

Some people aspire to make whole virtual worlds as computer games where people can almost live inside mystical lands of pure joy and imagination...and then some people make buggy trippy goat simulators and find out that what people really want in a game is to be a goat who wrecks human society with an dexterous mouth appendage.

This is why we can't have nice things. >.<

• http://tapiture.com/tap/335573164/santa-problemz

You know you've seen waaay too much Californication when you find this funny. xD

• http://www.owlboy.com/wowwiki/mMurlocAggroB.mp3 - :O

Found today that I have matching holes in my trainers, and you could say that it's solidarity between those under the heel of the oppressor. :P #suchanerd

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In darker news; I'm in another fucked up situation [these things are weekly events in my universe].

Got £140 in job seeker benefits this morning and I'm getting another £160 on Monday, leaving me a little less than £300 to cover my new acom costs. I owe my landlady, as of Monday next, £200. I need between £210 and £240 to pay for the deposit and a weeks rent on new accommodation. So either I can pay all the rent I owe here and have nothing to pay for my new living conditions. Or I can pay nothing here and rip my landlady off and have somewhere to sleep next Monday.

Gotta love life eh?

I could probably pay most of what I owe and stay in a hostel, but that's a living death and I'd rather piss her off than go doing that again.

So she's buggered as I need to pay for somewhere to sleep, but asides from not wanting to do it to her, I also might not get away with it because she might at least try to kick me out in the next seven days. It would still be a dam stupid thing to do as she'd miss out on any chance of getting £200 in rent, but she could do it and leave me up shit creek.

I wonder if coppers need to be good liars because I've had more than a little practise. Fortunately it's not hard to sell the lie really as I've waited a week or two before paying my rent in full before so saying that and 'I'll settle up when I go' isn't that odd for me.

I just don't have a better option right now, so this is the way it's going to be. Regret and sorrow are for those who don't get shit on by humans on a weekly basis, however. I don't feel much of anything about the situation [thank the fucking hell for that], I'm just doing whatever I can to keep afloat until I finish my college course and get hired by the police [assuming that fitness instructor didn't blow that shit up with her complaint, but I should be able to appeal it if she does...for crying out fucking loud humanity].

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Sent the seventh or eighth letter to the student loans company about section 4 of my 24+ Student Loan application, giving them the same information those assholes have already been given by me AND confirmed on their own system.

I'm allowed the fucking loan, but they needed a copy of the form with the boxes checked, and sent me a letter with the request and my details on it and everything. So I went to the library, printed off the relevant page, three fucking times mark you, filled out each and sent it back to em with a message saying 'Process it in 2 weeks or it's time for the lawyers'.

I don't see why this shit was so fucking hard to get done, I really don't.

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Dropped about half a dozen pairs of jeans off at a heart health charity shop as I couldn't sell them and am in no mood to try. Got thanked much for the donation [it was just jeans people, wow] and ran away. I just didn't know what the fuck else to do with em. *shrug*

Never buying wholesale shit again and trying to sell it. I'm a magus, not a merchant. I couldn't sell a glass of water to a desert dweller, though I could probably tell him where he is and what type of sand he's standing on after a while.

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Downloaded The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne, which is meant to be in the same genre as one of my favourite audiobook series called The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

I get the impression that it's a bit mediocre as these things go, but I saw it years ago when the first one came out and, as I apparently don't ever forget things I don't forget on purpose which will later come back to bite me in the ass, I'm curious about it now.

Going to finish off the last few of The Watch novels, a sub-series in The Discworld Chronicles by Terry Pratchett, to round up my umpteenth listen of all 40 odd Discworld novels, and then give it a go.

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I've got this picture of this A-List celebrity called Maggie Grace on my desktop, who's this goddess blond chick who played the love interest in S06 of Californication, and the teenage sister in Lost.

Beautiful women, but usually I ignore celebrities because they tend to be the modern equivalent of aristocrats; elite social society who're totally out of touch with the common troll in the street due to their wealth, fame, and socialist life style.

Occasionally though I get interested in the buggers because sometimes they turn out to be real human beings who're just incidentally uber famous and have actually have some genuine talent.

James Spader for example. I've seen a shit ton of media in my time and the way he acts and the parts he plays makes him something special in the field. Don't know about him in her personal life, bar what's on Wikipedia, but the guy can fucking act man. Peter Dinklage too. That guys a fucking legend for his work in Game of Thrones.

Anyway, my point here was that Maggie Grace's Twitter stream is filled with quotes and things...fuck, actually here and now they seem like pretentious nonsense, like most quotes really.

People take the statements of the professionally witty, remove them from their context and use them to make some abstract point no one except for them really understand. Or they end up sounding like a motivational poster, and I hate that shit. Those are the modern equivalent of 'Hang In There Baby' cat posts, and just as empty and meaningless.

SHE'S FUCKING HOT, that's my point. She's hot and for a moment I thought she might be intelligent but it's more likely that she's just a pretender, like the rest of her actor ilk.

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I keep checking out Craigslist Los Angeles missed connections for these posts being made by this closet-transsexual girl called Dodger who is a vlogger from YouTube [most of them are being posted by her, and you'll see it after a while of reading them that they all share a similar theme and structure] who I'm beyond in love with [the type of love that the sight of them makes your melt into a puddle, where they can do no wrong, and you'd eat your own arms to touch them with a toe] and is, in case you haven't gathered, a mad as a spoon.

She posts on there due to crippling social-anxiety which prevents her from having normal relationships, or maybe she's just trying to fuck with me, I've never quite clarified that really.

Point is that I'm never going to email her ever again, but I do check it from time to time. Not entirely sure why really. Probably out of 'love', but that shit is toxic and so's she so I'm staying far away from her for my own benefit. It's not a healthy situation, and she's not mentally healthy. Doesn't stop me feeling how I do, but just because the poison tastes nice doesn't mean you should drink it.

I want someone to love and be with, but I'm too damaged, too much of a freak, too intelligent in the wrong way to ever achieve that. It's just nice to think that someone out there desires my company and is on my side sometimes, even if they should be institutionalized for being terminally batshit.

[This is one of those things that you shouldn't try to contact me about...if I put contact details anywhere on this site anyway...because I know what the truth is, and that's all that matters. I have nothing to prove here.]

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SOHYEH: swapped to Chrome over FireFox, teehee, ripping off my landlady so I have somewhere to sleep, student loan companies are fucking annoying [if I owed them money they'd be on my ass like fireants], selling shit is hard, listening to the Iron Druid Chronicles after The Discworld, Maggie Grace is hawt, and I'm still playing TOME. Also gotten used to the new Linkin Park album, The Hunting Party, and quite enjoying it now.

Going to get some sammitches and eat some fruit and then do college work for five hours.

I've sent out a bunch of emails to various leasers but they probably won't reply to them. Gotta put some credit on my phone tomorrow and start calling people.

When I went out today I didn't cough as much as I thought I would, but I do think it's a bad case of strep because when I exerted myself [which is pretty dam easy because I've not gotten any exercise in weeks] I started coughing my guts up, so I expect anti-bios will be able to take care of it.

Doctors. Wednesday. GG.

And that's it; college work, searching for acom. Day 1

Post again tomorrow.

Good evening.

On Falling...

NOTE: The following might be a bit of a mess. Currently ill, wrote this around 3am originally, and presently in no condition to edit it for beans. Posting it anyway.

Again; healthy for years, now I have a fitness test for a job, hai, allow me to give you a bad case of flu or infection or some stupid shit that makes you feel like death.

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As the messengers who rebelled against the farther of all fell from grace, so to does the mind of a man against the farther of time.

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- POST REF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld

Open that to cross check what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with the subject.

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In this context however I refer to the 'Fall' of The Discworld by Terry Pratchett as entropy and fate saw fit to inflict Alzheimers on one of the great literary minds and he has covertly handed off, I suspect, the Discworld Chronicles to Stephen Baxter, his co-author on The Long Earth series [unrelated to the Discworld, and something like a sci-fi alt-future series].

For those who read the series, and are more observant than the average human, you may be familiar with quite a dramatic change in the structure which started around Unseen Academicals, which was book 37 of the series, and continued, in the adult series, into Snuff, 39 and really hit hard in Raising Steam, book 40.

Loss of key identity of certain characters established over multiple volumes, lack of humor and subtly, and blatant retconning [the rewriting of established lore to suit the present] even beyond the marvelous 'Thief of Time Retcon Solution'*.

*Thief of Time's plot concerned history on the Discworld, and a glass clock which, once smashed, also smashed the chronological order of history.

For example, technically Brutha, one of the central protagonists of the 13th Discworld book, Small Gods, is alive during the same time period as philosophers who speak to Teppic, Pyramids, book 7, who is trained by Dr. Cruces who is justifiably killed by then Corporal Carrot, Men at Arms, book 15, who later commands an Omnian named Constable Visit-the-Infidels-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets, Feet of Clay, book 19, who states that Brutha was alive hundreds of years ago.

The temporal inconsistency is such that the relative chronology of the Discworld between individual characters over multiple books doesn't make a dam lick ah sense.

Forward Thief of Time which explains it all away as a shattering of the timeline which required a patchwork string and duck tape job to rebuild. Only an outside observer could know, e.g. readers, history monks, and Death and Susan who remark upon the inconsistency in Thief of Time itself, the whole truth of the matter.

Unseen Academicals wasn't too bad, generally speaking. The usual Discworld structure and cultural exploration was there, so too was humor, character development, and the focus on a central protagonist.In the aftermath of Making Money it was an acceptable addition to the Discworld Chronicles in my opinion.

Snuff was something of a decline. Not the abject nonsense that is Raising Steam, but certainly not in the same grade as Thud!, the previous Watch novel. You have to note presentation and handling of the books content. Being a country copper is nothing like being a city policeman. The theme and structure worked, quality content, but its format was degrading from the flowing narrative of all previous Discworld novels to clunky set pieces which didn't intermix.

...I'm finding this hard to word, but imagine threads.

A good story is all about interwoven threads, seemingly interconnecting randomly, but there's always a central plot which is inexorably progressed by each thread as they touch the core. This is a proper narrative.

A bad story is a pulsing line of threads, the core being prodded by a thread, retracted and then prodded by the next, each prod a set piece, like an artists artifact, and an improper narrative.

Making Money and every other book previously was the central protagonist being touched by a succession of threads. Unseen Academicals was similar in it's smooth flow. Snuff had set pieces but it still managed to bridge them together.

...Then Raising Steam crash landed...

That book, good grief.

• It's called book 3 of the Moist Von Lipvig series, but he's only in 2/3rds of it.
• Established ideas from previous volumes are totally forgotten, including The Undertaking, which was started in Thud!, mentioned in Making Money, and then binned by Raising Steam.
• The writer skipped wholesale over Moist and Adora Belle's wedding, which was criminal.
• Several major characters either act out of character, such as Moist engaging in violence which is almost the polar opposite of his character established in his prior two volumes. Add to that Bashfulsson who a] is a modern Deep-Downer who is allied with Anhk-Morpork and b] isn't a violent guy. Thud! made a point that he was a thinking Grag, not a violent one for fucks sake.
• Or characters have their own histories retconned to such an extent that FUBAR would be appropriate in their description [notably Adora Belle's infancy being in anyway related to the Clacks when her farther invented the first commercial towers no more than 15 years prior to Raising Steam and she's around 30 years old for crying out loud].
• There is no way in hell Moist could've commanded the 1000 Golems gained by the city during the events of Making Money to do anything whatsoever. Firstly he would've had to get into the Pink Pussycat club, secondly he would've had to summon the Professor, thirdly he would've had to bargain with the guy who was notoriously misanthropic and obstreperous for command dialogue in Umian, and fourthly it wasn't even mentioned that he did any of that, but only that Moist strolled down into their tomb and said hop to it lads despite the fact that Havelock probably has a continual guard over the whole boiling of em seeing as his currency is based on the buggers.
• And Gilt and Cosmo were antagonists worthy of the description, whilst the almost irrelevant bloody figure of the neigh mad Grag Ardent wasn't anything like a good counter point.

...and well, it's depressing to continue, to be frank. It's a bloody, pardon the pun, train wreck of a novel.

Beyond all this, and back to my original point, is that you have the aforementioned issue of set pieces. There is very little continuity between each of the events.

Half the time the author is going on about the personal worlds of people whose only real connection to the books events is that they sent a letter to the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork for some reason.

The book moves forward, but by jerks and starts, and with the bastardization of the Discworld's own lore it makes an avid fan like me twitch and cringe every disconnected and randomized scene.

This fucking mess I highly suspect, on the grounds that it reads almost precisely like The Long Earth series in structural format, was written mostly by Stephen Baxter who is now authoring the Discworld because Terry Pratchett's brain has succumbed to Alzheimers and the series is worth too much, both culturally and fiscally, to let it die with him.

I've got nothing to prove it but the cross comparison between this book and The Long Earth series, and most people probably can't see it, but I've got enough to prove it to myself, and generally speaking that's all that matters.

In my view this is where the series will fall to it's grave, if not commercially than at least in terms of quality.

It's a shame because some of the best Discworld titles were, in the adult series which is all I personally read, 29 Night Watch, 33 Going Postal, 34 Thud!, and 36 Making Money. I mean, I love pretty much all of them from 4 Mort onwards because it was by the forth title Terry found his feet and started to make the magic happen, but those last few before Unseen Academicals were where he really shone as far as I'm concerned.

All things end, and should end, but I hope Terry hasn't got enough of his mind left to realize Raising Steam happened. That someone took his life's work and just shredded it in wood chipper. You'd think someone would be reviewing it before publication if he can't handle it anymore.

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On a personal note, as a genius who values his mental facilities above all else [take it all, I don't care, so long as I can still think] I pity Terry like no one else except those of my kind.

The worst thing for someone who values their mind is to see it degrade from inside out, knowing at their core that they're losing control. Better to lose all possessions, all limbs, all life, all at once, than the mind, bit by bit, over years.

Leave me my mental acuity and you can have the rest.

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I got something similar to say on the subject of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which was fantastic until he hit Changes, book 12, and then went off the rails and lost the plot, but that's for another day.

Adios.

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PS: Because I have the attention span of a housefly and the creative imagination of several terminal novelists, I wrote this when I saw the image on the page on DeviantART:

- http://cvaj.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-demon-binder.html

If it wasn't for trying to be a policeman, I would gladly expand upon that and then some, but I need money to live and writing this stuff doesn't pay anything.

C'est la vie.