OK people, here’s the deal: I’ve had to read this book to Z about 2 million times so far, and besides wanted to burn it in an unholy inferno, I also want to track down the writer and editor and accidentally knock them into the same glorious blaze.  Why?

Because I’m anal.  I know, I know,  books for kids don’t have to be perfect – but they should make some kind of vague effort, right?  Especially one from such an illustrious (…or not) franchise as this one.

So, I’m presenting here the entire text of the book (hopefully not breaking any laws since I’m not providing the pictures, and since this is uh… artistic something or other), along with my editing suggestions and general commentary.

You may or may not find this amusing, but let it stand as a warning:

Read a book 10 or 15 times out loud in the store before you buy it.
Or else.
-God

Also, this is just a first pass done in anger by a guy with no editorial training.  I’m sure if they spent some actual money on this, the result would be more kid friendly and less damaging to adults.

Line breaks are for page breaks.
My correction suggestions are in bold, my random notes are in red italics.
Your imagination will have to provide the visuals of me digging my eyes out.

———————————————————————————————-

This is George.
He was a good little monkey and always very curious.
Today George and his friend the man with the yellow hat joined Mrs. Gray and her class on their field trip to the fire station.
Everything’s good so far – monkey goes on field trip with class, got it.  Fire station – lots of things to learn there, sounds good!  Although, “good little monkey” and “curious” do seem like an odd juxtaposition…

The fire chief was waiting for them right next to a big red fire truck.  “Welcome!” he said, and he led everyone upstairs to begin the tour.
Whu wha?  He didn’t even bother to explain what a fire truck is, or what it does?  K!

There was a kitchen with a big table, and there were snacks for everyone.  The fire chief told them all about being a firefighter.  George tried hard to pay attention, but there were so many things for a little monkey to explore.  Like that shiny silver gold pole in the corner…
Where did that pole go?  George was curious.
The pole is BLATANTLY GOLD, not silver. Yes, it is stripper pole colored.
Why put ellipsis there?  USUALLY the book puts them at the end of a page, and it sort of makes sense in that you ask it and the child thinks about it while you turn the page.  In this case, it’s right in the middle of the page.
Oh, and note that it doesn’t say jack shit about what a fireman actually does.  As far as the kids listening know, they feed you apples and lead you from one room until the next.  Sure, you find out more later, but if the dude is supposedly talking about it – he might as well talk about it.  Also, we’re never told or shown that George eats an apple, but later we’re assumed to know this.

Why, it went back downstairs!  There was the great big fire truck.  There was  also a map of the city. Aand there was a whole wall full of coats and hats and big black boots!
What am I?  A stereotypical 80 year old granny?  Hell, I don’t even think grannies talk like this anymore.  Let’s not teach our kids idiotic and nonfunctional, dated grammar k?
You didn’t mention that the fire truck was “great big” before, just “big”, so it doesn’t really fly with the definite article here.
Let’s try to avoid starting sentences with “and” too ok?  I know, I know, “real” writers can do it in “real” book – but neither of those cases apply here.

George had an idea.  First, he stepped into a pair of boots.
Next, he picked out a helmet.
And, finally, George put on a jacket.
He was a firefighter!
Suddenly … BRRRIINNGG!
Really?  Ellipsis after “suddenly” ??? No.  They are doing conflicting things here, mmk?

The firefighters all rushed in.
“This is not my helmet!” said one.
“My boots are too big!” said another.
“Hurry!  Hurry!” called yelled the fire chief.  A bright red light on the map of the city told him just where the fire was.  There was no time to waste!
He’s like 5 feet away from them, “calling” makes no sense.  And WTF is up with “just where the fire was” – again with the granny text!  The book is copyright 2004 and only on the 3rd printing – so, MODERNIZE BITCHES!
Also, note that they tell us that “all” of the firefighters are present.  I think this is pretty important…considering they leave a teacher and a man who wears yellow latex and has a pet monkey in a fire station with a bunch of kids and no supervision!

One by one, the firefighters jumped into the fire truck.
And so did George jumped in after them!
Yeah, that construction is just awkward after a “one by one” anyway, not to mention the whole starting a sentence with “and” again…  You like how I followed their style of sticking an exclamation point at the end of non-dialogue?  Description can yell too!!

The fire truck with all the firefighters sped out of the firehouse.
And so did George hung on tight!
The siren screamed and the lights flashed.
What. The.  Deuce.  George sped out of the firehouse?  Under his own power?  Uh-uh, George did jack shit as far as speeding goes, that little bitch rode the fire truck like everyone else.  Also, note that they pointed out that all the firefighters are in the truck again – even though a car full of firefighters is clearly visible following them.  Artists and writers – you know it’s ok to talk to each other right? *FACEPALM*

The truck turned right.  Then it turned left.
“WHOO WHOO WHOO” went the whistle, and George held on tight.
Wow, exciting stuff there, turning right and left.  *yawn*  Z does like the whistle sound though.  Probably just because I’m an awesome whoo whoo-er.  They really could have just put in a few more lines of truck noises, or maybe oh, I don’t know, mentioned that the truck was driving to the fire?

Soon the fire truck and all the firefighters pulled up to a pizza parlor on Main Street.  Smoke was coming out of a window in the back, and a crowd was gathering in the street.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” cried said the cook.
Again with telling us that the children are relatively unsupervised in a fire station full of powerful hoses, axes, rubber clothing and two potentially questionable adults.

The firefighters rushed off the truck and started unwinding their hoses.  They knew just what to do.  And George was ready to help. George climbed the hose reel, pausing briefly defecate on the side of the truck.
He climbed up the hose reel …
“They knew just what to do?”  WHICH WAS WHAT?  If you’re not going to show me (which they don’t – whatever the fire men do is off scene) then PLEASE, PLEASE tell me!
Also note that the firemen (and women!) are running out the door with the wrong gear on, or no gear at all – I’m guessing that would get them fired and/or seriously injured.  K!

One of the firefighters saw George trying to help getting in the way, and so he took George by the arm and led him out of the way away from the truck.
“A fire is no place for a monkey!” he said to George.   “You stay here where it’s safe.”
George felt terrible.
Why did George feel terrible?  What is a child supposed to take from this?

George sat on the bench and looked around.  Next to him on the ground was a bucket full of balls.  George reached in and took one out.  It fit in his hand just right, like the apple he’d had for a snack.
Um.  You probably shouldn’t reach into strange buckets of balls.  Especially ones left alone next to a park bench.  Note the reference to the apple snack we didn’t realize George had – and the extreme oddness of saying how well it fit his hand.

A little girl was watching George.  He tried to give her the ball, but she was too frightened.
George took another ball. And, then another.
“Look,” a boy said. , “T that monkey is juggling!”
Just bad formatting and awkward sentences.

The boy took a ball from the cage and tossed it to George, but it went too high.
George climbed scrambled up onto the fire truck to get it.
Ok, this one always blows my mind – because I’m simple like that.  THERE IS NO CAGE!  It’s totally like the Matrix and shit.  Also, “George climbed” has no kind of sense of speed, you couldn’t just amble your way up a truck and still manage to catch a flying ball!

Now George had four balls to juggle.  He threw the balls higher and higher.  He juggled with his hands.  He juggled with his feet.  He could do all kinds of tricks!
It seems for something like “all kinds of tricks”, one would need to do more than two variations on a single trick.

The boy threw another ball to George.  George threw a ball back to the boy.  The little girl reached down and picked up a ball, too.  Soon all the children were throwing and catching, back and forth.
Annoying, but better than most of the other pages.

The fire chief came to tell everyone that the fire was out.  Just then, the little girl laughed and said, “Look, Mommy–a fire monkey!”
Something weird about the story is the mysterious pair of mother and daughter on the park bench.  Instead of oh, I don’t know – taking her daughter somewhere else!  The mother casually sits on the bench and lets her daughter watch a fire.  Now, true this is probably exactly what would happen in real life – but you want to at least try to teach kids the smart thing right?

“Hey!” called the fire chief.  “What are you doing up there?”
“What a wonderful idea,” the little girl’s mother said to the fire chief. , “B bringing this brave little monkey to help children when they’re frightened.”
“Oh,” the fire chief said.  “Well, er, thank you.”
I guess I’ll let “called” fly here, since he’s more than 5 feet from the monkey. The writers (evidently it took two – one must be the illustrator, I hope.  Then again, maybe it’s all random cut and paste, that would make sense too) really need to work on their dialogue formatting.

Before long the fire truck was back at the After putting out the fire, george and the firemen climbed back onto the truck and rode back to the firehouse., where When they arrived, a familiar voice called, “George!”  It was the man with the yellow hat.
“This little monkey had quite an adventure,” said one of the firefighters.
“Is everyone all right?” asked Mrs. Gray.
“Before long”!?  Again with the bizarrogrannyworld terms.  Also, when you use “before long” it needs some kind of a preexisting condition that would uh, I dunno, imply that something was happening to predicate the situation that occurs afterwards.  I’m not going to try and come up with a sentence though, because just thinking about using it gives me the Alzheimers.
Also, they passed up a great chance to use a semicolon!  For shame.

“Yes, it was just a small fire,” said the fire chief.  “And George was a big help.”
Now the field trip was coming to an end.
But there was one more treat in store…
Now it was time to go, so Mrs. Gray started rounding up the children.  Just as she wrestled the last axe away from a bleeding child  the fire chief stopped her – he had one more treat!
Really?  Just a small fire?  Then why did you take the entire fucking fire crew?  Is that SOP?  Maybe it is… probably not when a bunch of school children are running around in your firehouse though. Those last two sentences are just so awkward. Mine aren’t much better, but at least they look like I finished high school.

All t The children got to take a ride around the neighborhood on the shiny red fire truck, and they all got their very own fire helmet.  Even George!  And it was just the right size for a brave little monkey.
Yeah, I could have done more here, but can’t bear to look at the words anymore.

Warbreaker
by: Brandon Sanderson

His latest, although evidently it was written a while ago, or something.  He also released early drafts of it on the web for free.  I probably should have checked them out, to see more about how his process went but I hate reading books on computer.

So. Yeah this was good, it took me a while to get into it – 15 chapters or so, so that makes it probably his “least” good book, but it was still quite enjoyable.  The whole magic system came off kind of goofy to me BUT with the caveat that if he has a good explanation for it in a later book I may change my mind.  Only having certain phrases invoke the magic just seems silly.  I suspect that’s not the case, and it’s just that certain things are simpler than others, but we’ll see.  The whole color thing is rather strange too, but I suppose there is energy of some sort stored in colors sooo…ok, sure.

My only real complaint is that we didn’t get enough info about the magic system.

The story itself was entertaining though – a really rather classic multiple bait-and-switch setup – probably the most “normal” of his 5 books so far.  I think it was the shortest too.  Still, none of these things are real negatives – I recommend it for any high fantasy fan.

3.85 STARS out of 5

Elantris
also by: Brandon Sanderson

Wow, what a debut.  I’m not even going to bother shooting this high.  Definitely stronger than Warbreaker (I know, I read the new one before the old one but they are only microscopically related, so it doesn’t matter, nyah!).

There were very few parts I skimmed – just some annoying banter about food.  People talking about food…yeah that’s pretty much something I’m not going to waste more than half a second on.

The rest of the novel (you know, the other 99.9%) was excellent, especially for a debut.  He created a fascinating world – almost as interesting as the Mistborne world, and more so than the Warbreaker one (so far) – and populated it with some good characters.  That being said, the story was definitely not as unpredictable as his other books.  Even though I said Warbreaker followed more of a formula, that formula included lots of twists and turns – this one had very few.  The ones it did have were great though.

I wish he’d explained a little more thoroughly what they had to do to fix the magic, but I’m sure it’s out there on an internet discussion board somewhere, waiting for me.

Highly recommended for fantasy lovers.

4.1 STARS out of 5

Having finished all his (published) books, I’m definitely seeing a reoccurring theme of religion: examining it, its strength and roles in society, and its relationship with various forms of resurrection.

& other assorted comics chatter:

Iron Fist 27: Yes, Danny Rand/Iron Fist will also be a father soon, following in his perennial buddy, Luke Cage/Power Man’s footsteps.  Also of note, and implied by my goofy title, is that the mother of said child (and soon to be wife of Danny) is Misty Knight.  Now.  This is comics.  So her or the baby could go kaput or turn into an alien at any time, for no good reason BUT, luckily no one else seems to care about writing Misty at the moment – so I think they are safe!

Also, this was the final issue of Immortal Fist.  Such a shame, it’s been a great series so far and deserved more than it got (much like Captain Britain & MI13).

X-Factor 45: Answers a question asked by only the most diligent fanfolk (ok, that’s still a lot): were Rictor and Shatterstar together?  Beyond that, the ongoing arcs continue in interesting ways, and things start to come together.

Astonishing X-Men 30:  Something happened here. Forge “died” I think, in a really strange and silly ending that I don’t think anyone saw coming to a story that started looking like something out of 90s Claremont’s and wound up 90s Ennis.  Not bad, but not particularly good, and I think Ellis can do better.

Apparently the entire point of Avengers-Invanders was to resurrect Toro, who no one cares about.  Or the original Human Torch, one of them.  DUMB.  Leading into the new Human Torch mini coming out later this year I’m sure.  The ending was rather horrid – but how else are you going to end a story where the bad guy is omnipotent?

Whatever the current Messiah Mini Event is finally ended a recent issue of X-Force or Cable.  It was actually decent, except that in the end it didn’t mean anything.  Except that Dom killed Kiden in the future.  That’s basically it.  Fun.  Curious to see how X-F will pick up the pieces of Boom-Boom now though.  Shame, she was wonderful with the right writers.  Go NEXTWAVE!

A bunch of Dark Reign minis came out.  They’re all pretty stupid.  The Lethal Legion thing may stir up some interest with the Wonder Man in jail angle though… that last panel was a little creepy.

Daken has taken over Wolverine’s title, which is good because there was too damn much of one Wolverine – thankfully now we have 3 separate Wolverine’s to spread around.  !?

Now Wolverine’s “main” book is the Weapon X one – doing stuff that would have been in the normal Wolverine book so uh, whatever.  !?

Guardians of the Galaxy 15 was good and ended pretty much the only way it could (on the War of Kings angle), although still somewhat surprisingly.  And I hear the “old” Guardians are returning… that actually makes me very vary.  I think I’ll drop the book if it becomes about them.  Their time is over.  Vance I can take, but the others… meh, they work in the future, not in the past.  For me anyway.

I skimmed through Transformers: All Hail Megatron – it seems pretty decently written, if you’ve got a Transformers itch that the movie just didn’t scratch (which is understandable, as it was mostly trying to scratch your scrotum).

Note: No d*nkeys were harmed in this post.

If I have any avid blog readers, they may have noticed me removing all direct traces of the infamous “d*nkey p*rn” phrase from my blog.  It was funny for a while, but now I’m trying to clean up my hits and see what people are actually finding me for, as well as umm… ward off the wierd ass fucks who came here actually looking for the aforementioned crap.

The original post and follow up still exist, for purposes of historical amusement, just with the text changed a little bit, hopefully that will help.

Starflyer and me.

[This an update of something I posted to my website a few years back]

Starflyer is one of the few bands whose albums actually have character to me.   There are very few bands I have this connection with, probably because one of the prerequisites is that you have to be in on the ground floor without preconceptions and really experience each album – getting them far enough apart that they have make a distinct mark on that portion of your musical life.   Many bands that I dearly love I come into late -Rancid grabbed me on their 3rd, the Clash were long gone when I caught that late train, I was 10 years distanced from early Springsteen,  and modern awesome bands like the Mendoza line I just came in a little late wound up absorbing 2-4 albums at once, probably in the wrong order.  What other band(s) to have a connection like this to?   Counting Crows is somewhat similar in that I came to the first album without much media influence, and stuck with it, really devouring and enjoying each album on its own.  Tiger Army is another band I was in on the bottom floor with, same with Death on Wednesday, but now they are long gone. *sigh* Anyway…onward! Read the rest of this entry »

Part 2:

1. I Can’t Be With You - Cranberries – This one should be in the last list, as it reminds me of my whole Cuesta period, what I can remember of it anyway.   I was still struggling, trying to stick with the religion thing, I was depressed because I had put off “real” college to stay back with my friends (stupidly), then many of them left, or changed, or whatever.  Another in the long line of idiotic decisions I’ve made regarding my education for completely the wrong reasons…  I had several opportunities to make new friends, and I pursued a few of them, but not enough.  I also passed up some good chances to reconnect with old friends too.  I spent most of this time being dumb.
2. Sidekick – Rancid – This one reminds me of living out on …shit, whatever street I lived on with Kailen, Devo & the rest.  Tim & I used to play together, and I *think* this was one of the songs we jammed on.  Plus, it says “Tim” in the lyrics, so it always reminds me of him.
3. Heartspark Dollarsign – Everclear -Ahh, Everclear.  Man do you suck ass now.  But back in the day they put out two solid rock albums.  And this little gem was on one of them.  This, I think, was one of the first songs Jen & I bonded on.  If we ever had “a song”, this would probably be it.  Some of the reasons should be obvious.   O.O
4. I Drive a lot – Starflyer 59 – The listlessness of post-college graduation, trying (and failing) to find a job in Santa Barbara.  This came out a few years before this period, but this is where the memory deposits me when this song kicks in.
5. Anodyne – Uncle Tupelo -This one reminds me of working at Borders in Santa Barbara. I met some good people there, two of which I’m still in contact with from time to time.  Thanks to one of them (Wayne), I found out about all kinds of new music.  I’m not sure if Uncle Tupelo came out of that, or just from me finally backtracking from Wilco, but I know I bought the CD there with my employee discount :).
6. Baby, I Know what you’re thinking – The Mendoza Line – Another song Jen & I bonded on together.  No idea where we heard this – I think it was ..shit I really have no idea.  But we heard it, then tracked down the band, and consumed.  It reminds me of our first place in LA – pretty sure we were in the living room when we heard it.  So – the radio maybe?  NPR?
7. Underneath - Starflyer 59 – Driving on the empty streets of Phoenix on a warm night.  Jen and I drove out there from LA once…and at night we just drove forever, probably in circles, on these wide open empty streets.  They were laid out in such a nice grid it was nigh impossible to get lost.  The air was wonderful.
8. Staring at the Sun – TV on the Radio – Our second place in LA, the one in Hollywoodish.  I think I heard about them on NPR or something, then a Rolling Stone comment reminded me, so I walked up to Amoeba and picked up the album.  Hearing it reminds me of listening to the album in that tiny little place, and of some of the better times we had in LA in general.
9. Mission Viejo – The Crush – In trying to find something that has hit me since Portland…this is what I get, and I’m not even sure why.  It just reminds me of life here.  I heard this, a cover of a Lifter Puller song that I still don’t think I’ve found the original version of, while trying to hear Lifter Puller after discovering The Hold Steady.  I thought this cover was sick, and indeed it is, and grabbed the entire album, which is also awesome.

Edit, forgot to link to the first part.  HERE.

Jeff Loeb really annoys me.

So there was the fiasco with Red Hulk (let’s call him “BullshitHulk” for short) doing some sort of idiotic shit with gravity in order to “hold” Thor’s hammer.  That was dumb.

Then evil murdering Magneto in Ultimate land can somehow just stroll around holding it?

OK, maybe his hammer is just a toy/false hammer/something over there in Ultimate land… but it’s still annoying.

Resurrecting Steve Rogers/Captain America really annoys me.

Marvel stuck its balls out there with killing him – and at least did it better than DC did with Superman or Batman, but now it looks like they are undoing everything like a bunch of pansies.  The leaste they could have done was use the Truth version “original cap” instead of Steve. Sigh.  Whatever.

The Batman death was horribly executed.

Seriously.  How unclear was that?  A “fake” death in the main series that led to a death in the crossover series that happened in the wrong sequence?  Or some junk?  I don’t remember really.  Revealing ALREADY that Bruce is still alive is really dumb.  I mean, we know DC has even less balls than Marvel when it comes to these things, and Bruce WILL be back – but don’t show us that already!

Cosmic comics in the big two are having a mini-golden age

Marvel AND DC are both putting out some killer “cosmic” books these days.  The whole Annihilation cycle at Marvel was awesome, almost every issue buy-worthy (I waited for the trades), and DC didn’t isn’t doing too shabby lately either with the current Green Lantern & Corps & Co. incarnations – The Sinestro War was excellent, as was almost everything between then and now leading up to Blackest Night.

Sure, I think Hal Jordan is tired and played out as a character, should have stayed dead, and John & Kyle should still be the main GL, but that’s probably just because I’m a later generation of GL reader.  “Legacies” were the one thing I really valued in DC over Marvel, then they went and shat on both their functional legacies (GL & Flash, both resurrected) while Marvel showed some big balls in creating a legacy character out of Captain America (and potentially Black Panther, but I don’t think that will last).  So yeah, ignoring that I don’t like Hal Jordan as a character, Geoff Johns & co are turnning in stellar (no pun intended) work over there – if I had cash flowing like water I’d actually buy this stuff – and I did buy the Sinestro War finale…probably the only DC book I’ve bought in ages.  Some people are turned off by the whole “Rainbow Corps” thing, but I love it – it’s “wide-screen space opera” at it’s best.

Back over on the Marvel front the new Guardians of the Galaxy book is awesome  – it’s only had 1 slow issue out of 12 so far, and the new Nova book is very good as well.  Not to mention War of Kings – THAT SHIT is looking awesome so far.  The Darkhawk branch seems a little weak thus far, but I suspect that’s because it’s from a different writer.

One thing both cosmic universes have in common is that they’ve both got a heavy guiding hand in the way of being driven by one creative team – Geoff Johns @ DC & Abnett & Lanning for Marvel.  The internal consistency and continuity generated by having a whole line orchestrated by a single point of contact is really beautiful in the way that just sharing an editor isn’t.

I just re-read the entire Grant Morrison X-Men run this weekend.

And it still stands up quite well.  In hindsight, the only thing that bugs me about it was the poor characterization of Magneto.  It’s not entirely his fault though, as he was just following up on a few years of shitty mcshitty Magneto writing.  Honestly, I think Mags shined best under Claremont – he was a real character that you could empathize with and still think was wrong.  I’m not sure if I’ve seen a post-Claremont Magneto story that I actually liked.  Some, like the Joseph clone thing, were *decent* but not good/excellent.  Morrison’s writing was topnotch, and I can buy him being Xorn in disguise – sure sure, except the issue from Xorn’s perspective where he’s hanging out with the Chinese dude – that issue makes me think he just pulled the Magneto thing out of his ass near the end.

One thing he definitely did right was Emma & Emma/Scott.  Which brings me to my final point.

I’m afraid all this Dark X-Men/Osborn bullshit is going make Emma obnoxious and useless and uninteresting again.

Just a hunch, we’ll see.  I like her and Scott together, breaking them up and injecting all this unecessary drama annoys me.

So Jen & I just watched the first season DVDs over the last few weeks.  And it was decent – I mean we watched the whole thing right?
However (always a however!), the characters pissed me off.  I don’t know if the writer(s) just think everyone from the South is an inbred moron, or just everyone on this show but – everyone on the show is an inbred moron.  The way the characters are written anyway.

Wait, I should take that back, Tara and Lafayette are actually not inbred morons.  For the most part.  The do do some pretty stupid shit though.

First off – what the hell is the deal with vampire blood/V not having a consistent effect?

• Sookie drinks it from the vein and it magically heals her
• Jason has a vial of it (much less than Sookie) then has to get his dick drained.  Quite the opposite of healing.
• People have small tabs of it, and get awesome happy trippy highs.  Nevermind that Sookie MUST have ingested oh at least 100 drops when that vampire died in her face (and in the book, this was evidently a plot point) and nothing happened to her. How  convenient.

I guess the easy answer is that it’s different when its “straight from the vein” of a vamp, that’s why it healed Sookie.

No, wait, Jason and dead crazy bitch had some basically straight from the vein of poor Newsradio dude.  Who totally did not deserve that bullshit.

Alright then.  Still waiting on that one.

So back to the characters:

Jason: Duh. Everything he does is stupid.  For those of you who have known people this stupid – are any of them still alive? Sure fine, he’s the stupid character – but it’s passed the boundaries of suspension of disbelief.

Sookie: She somehow assumes that vampires are just like people, and operate under the same morals, because why?  She’s the postergirl for every petulant dumb girl you’ve ever met.  Standard soap opera fare: she drives her vamp boyfriend away, then accepts him again when he risks his life for her TALKING OVER HIM as he tries to tell her either a) that he just killed some innocent person to rejuvenate himself or b) that he had to kill/turn/make that stupid biblepire bitch.  You never know which with the show’s writers because they go out of their way to make phrases ambiguous and string the reader along.  She gets mad at people for really stupid shit too – Sam did tell her she could read his mind – so technically he wasn’t hiding the shapeshifting thing.

Tangent: Her powers are an idiotic plot device – the only occur at random points in the story. When it’s useful for the writers to use I guess.  I have to wonder if this was done better in the book.  They go to all this trouble building up how hard it is for her to block out people’s thoughts and then, huh?  Needs to be used better.

Sam: He’s that lovable nice guy everyone has for a friend, except that he’s in love with your girlfriend and is cool hitting on the moment you have a fight.  In a word, he’s a douche.  Still, he seemed to be a somewhat honest douche (keeping magical natures a secret is ok, mostly) – until that last episode when they start framing it like he’s a thief.  HRUMM.  Oh, and he’s in life-long love with Sookie but in “really strong like” with Tara? DOUCHE.  And he doesn’t tell Tara whatever is going on. Dooo-shay.

Tara: Speaking of Tara.  She’s possibly the best of the bunch.  She only does one really stupid thing – she buys into the exorcism stuff (although honestly, in that world there’s no reason why an exorcism wouldn’t work – so even that it somewhat forgivable).  They play her as a smart, well-read girl, but then all of a sudden she’s too dumb to know how faith-healing works?  KAY.  Other than that, the rest I can forgive.  Her protectiveness/bitchiness makes sense, the drunken night makes sense – although tramping around in that dress…dunno bout that.  Oh wait, she doesn’t catch on to the “too good to be true” thing at the end, that’s kinda dumb too.  Especially when dude takes her phone/erases her messages – kay?

Lafayette: I really didn’t like the whole drug dealer aspect of his character (for some reason the prostitution and home-made porn were more tolerable – maybe because they don’t “hurt anyone”….?).  It probably would have been fine, except that he pushed what he knew was an addictive and dangerous drug onto a “friend” (?). He knew Jason was a fucking idiot – how could he not?  Yet he still gave him a huge dosage of something (how could he not know Jason would misuse it?) – not to mention that he suggested it to him in the first place.  That was his moment of huge stupidity – getting Jason involved.  He’s also played as a smart guy – then he WOULD KNOW that Jason would fuck everything up.

Vampire dude: I forgot his name.  The writers go out of their way to frame his “evilness” (killing and turning the girl – then making her so obnoxious that you want her dead again) as something so out of his control that he’s still a nice guy but still, he doesn’t have the balls to stand up to them.  Aren’t there other vampires who want to “mainstream”?  Some of them must be high up in the ranks – make some friends bitch.  Think ahead of the game.  Also, in the bar, he could have just thrown the guy away he didn’t have to stake him.  Seriously.  The way they shot it anyway. /shrug.  Oh, and he starts attacking Sam when Sookie is making out with him when she’s obviously cool with it… knowings she’s a petulant child, he really should have known better.  Other random point – he fed on the guy that molested her: wouldn’t that mean her molester is “in” him?  Ewwww.

There’s more but I’m tired and just wanted to get started before I forget entirely.

All the characters are “bigger than life” in the sense that they all dumber than the average high school graduate/college dropout.  That seems unlikely.  Or maybe not – hey southerners, are ya’ll that dumb??

Didn’t think so.

I was also annoyed that the “answers” to the murder just kind of fell at their feet – he finally got to Sookie on his list, and we, the audience, got to partake in some cheesy 80s slasher flic for a bit – except that the non-virgin got away.  Wee.   Sure, it makes sense, but something just felt off about it.

So yeah. I “finished” my rough draft last Sunday  @100k words.  Yeah, I wrote 50k words in 19 days.  That’s seems nuts.  I didn’t even realize that until I went back and looked.

Note that I’m not saying it’s anything other than voluminous crap – but one can hope.

Then I spent a week or so re-reading the whole thing, attempting to clean-up and re-unify the beginning, cutting out the prologue (because I wouldn’t want to send that as a “1st 5 pages” type thing…whatever it is you submit – I don’t think it’s gripping in any way, so I just cut it.  Maybe it would have some use as the inside-jacket thing on in a hardcover printing :) heh), trying to catch as many typos & grammar-ish things as I could.  I’ve got it 75% printed and ready for my dear 1st reader.  I cut it down to 99.4k – I really wanted it to be under 80k – funny huh?  No way I could cut that much.  Or is there… ?  Still, 100k is not that long anymore… maybe it’s just about right.

I’m not really sure what to do now.  Start writing something else I guess? I think I have an idea for another series, which I figure I should start before this sequel – because if I finish a sequel, then I’ve still only got 1 book to sell – can’t sell #2 without selling #1.  But I think I should keep in the habit.  It was pretty draining though, basically writing every free second I had.  Maybe I will take a break.  I suppose it’s like riding a bike.

It better be.

Ouch.

I actually wasn’t expecting that. It makes sense – no one really cares about her anymore I suppose.  But still. Well played.  Poor Gladiator.

What else?
Oh, Batman & Robin has lots of potential, in that wild Morrison & Quitely way.  I suspect it will be a great ride, and then collapse into itself when they move onto another project.  Just a guess really – who can carry on a post-Morrison run?  The choice always seems to be regression, retcon or ignorance.

I can’t stand Hal Jordan as a “character”, but dammit if Johns isn’t turning out the best books I’ve seen DC put out – Sinestro War was excellent, and the Blackest Night business COULD be decent.  Except they decided to make a fucking yearly event out of it SO I expect it to suck in that regard.

Captain Britain & MI13 was cancelled – shame if there ever was one.  More than any other book Marvel has cancelled in the last few years, this one has real quality, guts, etc.   There are better books running (X-Factor, the Abnett & Lanning stuff), but none that I can recall being cancelled.  And certaily drek of  lower quality still continuing.

I’m still tempted to pick up the New Mutants series, and the Claremont X-Men Forever potential fiasco but man, money you know.  Maybe if they’d cancel half the x-books I’d buy the rest.  Wolverine certainly has enough titles – Wolverine (Daken),  Origins, Weapon X, New Avengers, Dark Avegers (Daken), X-Force (& girl wolvy), Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, First Class, the new X-Men First Class series…um, did I forget any ongoings?  That’s not even counting all the idiotic guest appearances and limiteds.  Of those titles…I only buy 3 so yeah, even that is too much Wolverine sometimes.

Looks like they may be bringing Steve Rogers back already – boo hiss to that if it’s true.

Huge boo hiss to bringing the other Flash back.

Conner Kent was missed, but the manner in which he and Kid Flash “returned” was like  “WTF?  You couldn’t just have Superboy Punch that shit back?”

Let’s see… what else.

The Greg Land cover for the Cap/Mi13 annual is fuckhideous, as usual. It’s not really worth linking too, you’ve seen that face in every single book he’s ever worked on. I suspect that must be his masturbation muse, because it’s really entirely too much, even for a tracer.

Umm.

Stuff. Yeah, let’s call it there for now.