Thoughts on "The Last Jedi"

Yeah, I saw it.

In a nutshell, I was disappointed. To elaborate, I thought the plot had holes you could drive a Star Destroyer through, the writing was weak, there were sub-plots that went exactly nowhere, there were characters introduced for no good reason that I could fathom, and the treatment of Luke Skywalker as a character borders on criminal.

There were good points: Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, and Adam Driver had solid performances. There were scenes with Ridley and Driver that had good, strong chemistry between the actors and their characters. There was a pretty awesome fight scene at one point.

Overall, I don't understand the hype. This was, at best, a mediocre film. Not as bad as, say, The Phantom Menace but certainly not any kind of classic. It doesn't hold a torch to the original trilogy at all. I'm given to understand Rian Johnson's getting his own Star Wars trilogy after Episode 9 airs. Gotta say, based on The Last Jedi, I could totally skip any other treatments of Star Wars he comes up with.

Weak sauce, Disney. Weak sauce.

Review: "Persepolis Rising" by James S.A. Corey

In the last week or so, I got the latest Brandon Sanderson novel "Oathbreaker". At an intimidating 1233 pages, I gleefully dove in, grateful for a fat distraction over the holidaze. And I found the book wasn't really grabbing me.

Then my copy of "Persepolis Rising", book 7 of "The Expanse" series by James S.A. Corey came in.

I promised myself I would only read "Persepolis Rising" on my commute and would otherwise see if "Oathbreaker" would rekindle my interest.

It wasn't long before "Persepolis Rising" had more and more of my attention. A few days later (read that as "last night"), I finished "Persepolis Rising".

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

"Persepolis Rising" takes place a time jump after book 6. A fairly long time jump. The crew of the Rocinante, now expanded to the crew it had at the end of "Babylon's Ashes", have been at it for a while and settled into a comfortable life as a crew that is also a family. James Holden and Naomi Nagata are pondering retirement and the crew is pondering their next step. A universe of some 1300 worlds is open to them and colonies are thriving as humanity spreads across the stars.

Then shit goes sideways as the colony of Laconia, home to Winston Duarte's Martian mutineer fleet, makes a reappearance.

And then all shit goes sideways.

In theme and feel, "Persepolis Rising" is akin to The Empire Strikes Back of the series. It's pretty intense and brutal. Not everyone walks away. It's also a fascinating exploration of a "benign" imperialist conquest. It's not "good guys versus bad guys" so much as it's a good five hundred or so pages of conflicting ideologies in a throwdown amidst scary alien technologies and a poorly-understood threat.

There were twists in the novel I did not see coming and I found myself engaged completely and utterly.

I cannot recommend this novel or this series highly enough. If you haven't tried out "The Expanse" yet, you now have seven novels of awesome to wade through. I recommend giving it a try.

And now I'm going to return my attention to "Oathbreaker". I'm some 300-ish pages in, so I'm kinda committed...

Review: The Vakra, by Zombie Tools

A couple of months back, I succumbed to temptation and placed an order for The Vakra, the Zombie Tools version of a Nepalese kukri knife.

It arrived the other day.

I must say one thing: if zombies come a' callin', they're gonna not enjoy the reception they'll get from the Vakra.

Described by Zombie Tools as "a fist full of fuck yeah", the Vakra is a bit longer and more slender than kukri's I've played with before (or even the one I got at some convention in the distant past). Like the other Zombie Tools I've acquired in the past, the Vakra comes sharp, burly, and kinda scary looking. I keep giving it an experimental swing around my apartment and I have to learn to stop doing that. I'll either take out a wall or bookcase or I'll drop it on my foot and loose an appendage. Aside from the brutal, heavy blade, the Vakra's pommel has a jagged bit of joy for when you want to punch something close (a window, a wall, a zombie's teeth, whatever).

The Vakra comes with a Kydex sheath with all sorts of straps and loops to put on a belt and fasten to your leg, or you could pony up for a nice, black leather sheath with belt loop and cord to secure it to your leg.

Why the hell did I spend money on this thing? Oh I don't know. I have no illusions as to how long I'd last in a zombie apocalypse, but it's kind of cool to have. And if I ever have to do yard work (or get dropped in the jungle), this puppy's sure going to be handy. I don't think even I could break this.

Review: The TAD Gear Talisman Jacket

So Triple Aught Design had their big warehouse store sale thing this past weekend. Hung over and praying a bit for death, I made the trek out to the Dogpatch and went there wondering what sorts of deals I'd find. I was mainly looking for a good deal on their Talisman Jacket, as the weather's been a bit chilly of late and I like the look of it.

As fortune would have it, I found one in exactly my size for a ridiculously-good discount. Given it's a goddamn expensive garment, I didn't hesitate. I made a beeline straight for the cash register. And saw the line.

In all, it took me roughly a minute to find what I wanted and an hour and ten minutes to get through the winding line to pay TAD Gear for the garment.

Halfway through the line, I discovered why the jacket was discounted so steeply: the zipper holding the hood in the collar was stuck. Not just stuck, but completely un-budging.

I bit the bullet and bought the jacket anyway. I briefly tried to loosen the zipper with my Leatherman in line but that wasn't working. I got home and tried two pairs of pliers. Wouldn't budge. I tried all the little online tricks for a fixed zipper (pencil, Windex, etc.). The goddamn thing wasn't budging.

It's not raining, so I said "fuck it" and wore it anyway. Today, while fussing with the zipper during a meeting at work, I popped the zipper off then re-fed it through the teeth.

I now have a rocking warm jacket with lots of pockets that works perfectly.

Takes the edge off the rest of Monday's challenges, which I most certainly am not complaining about.

The Talisman is warm, comfortable garment with a cool, kind of retro, look to it. It comes with four large, button-flap pockets on the front and an interior pocket for small stuff (a wallet or a phone and maybe some packs of gum). It's made of the same kind of material as the lighter Sentinel Field Jacket but is an overall warmer coat.

Compared with the Sentinel, I find the pocket capacity a bit lacking. The Sentinel just has a lot of capacity. Still, when I don't want to layer too much, I'm finding the Talisman pretty nice. It's certainly going to be a nice winter coat for the Bay Area's mild weather.

A bit of this, a bit of that

I keep neglecting my blog and depriving it of random, incoherent nonsense! Naughty me!

Must correct behavior...

Thanksgiving


So how was your Thanksgiving, fellow Americans? Mine was gluttonous, as usual. Sucks to be back to work. Sucks harder to have Xmas music playing in full force in the stores. The hell of the Holidaze is upon us. Oh well, apparently North Korea's missiles can now reach DC, so I suppose nuclear conflagration and self-destruction may trump (hah!) that problem.


Things Breaking


What the hell is it with misfortune happening in clusters, anyway? First my phone jack in my apartment dies a mysterious death, then my computer chair breaks (maybe that extra slice of pumpkin pie was a bad idea?), then a goddamn storm drain breaks (flooding my balcony), then lightbulbs on the back of my building (including my balcony) burn out (not ominous at all), then my key-holder breaks (causing said house keys to stab me in the thigh - AWESOME!). I swear, if this is related to offending those pagan gods while breaking a mirror under a ladder I'm gonna be miffed.

BART Weirdness


This morning, I swear to the FSM, my BART car smelled like cotton candy.

Do you have any idea how weird that is? On a good day, BART just smells like unwashed train car and possibly marijuana. Most times one notices an odor, it's extreme body odor, feces, urine, or some combination of all those mixed in with indescribable horror.

Cotton candy just isn't a BART smell. I'm really curious what that was about.

A Job Medium Rare


Hah! I made a funny! Get it? Medium rare instead of we... oh never mind. Anyway, I've been deluged with projects over the last few months and actually managed to complete the big one two days ahead of deadline! I'm giddy enough that I am actually mentioning a semi-positive work thing!




Yeah, okay. It sound stupid when I see it written out.

Futility


Few things are more fun than finding out you've spent an hour of your life doing testing on a product by using an unsupported browser. So all those nasty issues you found? That nice, long list of detailed notes? Totally useless.

Yup. Great fun.

Review: "Thor: Ragnarok"

Let's be honest here: this is more of my reaction than a proper review. Kind of like everything I post, really.

So I just got out of a showing of Thor: Ragnarok and HOLY SHIT WAS THAT MOVIE A BUCKET OF FUN!!!!

If one were to be honest, Ragnarok is more of a spiritual cousin to one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. It's got goofball humor, a fair amount of '80's nostalgia, flashy space opera craziness, campy villains, and a lot of snark.

A lot of snark.

Chris Hemsworth continues to knock it out of the park with the perfect combination of arrogant badass and snarky humor as Thor Odinsson. Tom Hiddleston returns as Loki, the villain who is sometimes just an anti-hero. Mark Ruffalo returns as Bruce Banner/The Hulk. And this time we get classic, comic book Hulk. Idris Elba returns as Heimdall, the Asgardian who is as badass or more than Thor. And there's other returnees from the previous Thor films. They also introduce Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, a fairly obscure heroine from the Defenders comics in the Marvel universe. An interesting take on the character in this film.

On the villain side, we get Kate Blanchet who rocks every scene she's in as Hela, Goddess of Death. With her is Karl Urban playing the villain known as Skurge the Executioner.

I won't bother going into the plot. It's pretty crazy and I really don't want to spoil it. Suffice it to say, the story doesn't have many slow points. There's always something going on. When there isn't, the film cuts away for some villain to chew the scenery or some hero bonding and snark.

I honestly think this was the best of the Thor movies, hands down. A low bar, sure. Still, I would put Thor: Ragnarok up against possibly one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies for well-paced fun.

As a bonus, I got to see trailers for Justice League and Black Panther. Until Wonder Woman, I really had no desire to see any of the DC movies. The previous ones were largely crap. The last Batman film I liked was The Dark Knight. Now that I've seen the Justice League trailer, I have to say I'm sold on seeing it. As to Black Panther, that just looks like a massive ton of fun. It's good to have films to look forward to.

Review: "Eutopia" by David Nickle

To be honest, this book caught me off-guard. I'd seen a review of the sequel, "Volk", on BoingBoing and the premise intrigued me. I got "Volk" and "Eutopia" off of Amazon after skimming the reviews. I got "Eutopia" first, which is just as well and...

Damn.

Set in rural Idaho (and bits of Colorado) in 1911, "Eutopia" is essentially a tale of a would-be utopian community set up by an industrialist in Idaho, as seen through the eyes of two protagonists: the first is Andrew Waggoner, an African-American surgeon educated in Paris. As one might imagine, he encounters no small amount of discrimination and trouble being a "Negro" (this term is used constantly in the book) doctor in rural America a little bit into the 20th century. The other is Jason Thistledown, an orphan of a terrible plague that kills everyone in his flyspeck town in Colorado, save him.

The two wind up meeting one another in the town of Elidia,the aforementioned would-be utopian community just as shit goes sideways. You see, there's not just your backwoodsman, Klansmen (the early part of the book has Waggoner nearly lynched by KKK dickweeds), outlaws, and the like. Oh no. This book is a horror story. It's got non-human monsters to go with the human ones.

In this case, there's parasitical creatures known as Jukes who can alter one's perceptions and induce people to worship them as gods.

And it gets worse, but why spoil the story?

"Eutopia" is a horror tale told through an interesting filter of early 20th Century America. It's got eugenics (and all the racist baggage that comes with that), straight-up racism (above-and-beyond the eugenics), and just a lot of fairly horrible examples of humanity in it. Nickle's story almost doesn't need the Jukes in it to be a horror tale, truth be told.

But he's got 'em in the story, and they're creepy as fuck.

"Eutopia" was, at first, a slow read and not really the sort of thing I'd pick up, but I'll be honest: I couldn't put it down. It was gripping and fascinating. Andrew Waggoner and Jason Thistledown were engaging protagonists and the rest of the cast were fascinating in their own way.

If you're looking for a bit of Americana horror, go no further.

I'll be interested to see if "Volk" can keep up the intensity.