Musical Monday - In My Mind by Amanda Palmer

I haven't been posting on the blog the past week. This wasn't really by design, but with all of the end of the year activity going on, I just haven't had much time to sit down and write. Not that I don't have anything to write about - I have a stack of seven books that I have finished that need reviewing - but I just didn't get around to it. They will just have to wait for next year to get reviewed.

New Year's Eve is always a time when people make new promises to be better than they have before. Most resolutions seem to take the form of self-improvement promises: I'll lose weight this year, I'll give up smoking, or I'll read more, or be nicer to people, or something of that nature. And most people have the best of intentions when they make those promises of self-improvement. But most people fail. And I think it is because that the sort of person who would do the things they promise isn't the sort of person that they are. And may not be the sort of person that they would want to be. And thus, I offer Amanda Palmer's song In My Mind, in which she imagines what she'll be like five years from now.

But that person is the person she says she thought she would be now, when she imagined herself five years ago. And if we are only living for the future, then we might miss who we are really supposed to be - who we are now. When you are making your New Year's resolutions tonight, I suggest thinking about if the person who would keep those resolutions is the sort of person you'd be happy being.

Previous Musical Monday: Present Face by Garfunkel & Oates

Subsequent Musical Monday: The Misty Mountains Cold from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Other Holiday Songs     Musical Monday Playlists

Amanda Palmer     Musical Monday     Home

Musical Monday - Present Face by Garfunkel & Oates

I think almost every book lover, gamer, or nerdy individual can identify with this song. With very few exceptions it seems that most people simply don't believe you when you tell them you'd like a copy of John Scalzi's latest book, a copy of the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit, some Star Wars Legos, or an obscure gaming supplement published by Wizards of the Coast. They figure that because they would never want something like that, you don't really want it either, so instead they get you a copy of the latest Adam Sandler movie, even though you have said several times that you loathe Adam Sandler. "This one is funny!" they say, "You'll like it, I promise". And because throwing their thoughtlessly acquired piece of crap in the trash right then and there is considered impolite, you smile, say thank you, and die a little bit inside.

And, of course, because social custom demands this sort of false politeness, the cycle continues. Because you can't ever tell the gift giver that they suck at buying you gifts, you get a constant stream of junk you have no use for at every gift exchanging event. And turnabout is not seen as fair play - if you start buying everyone else geek oriented gifts then you are seen as being impolite. Because you bought them something that they didn't want, or even like. Never mind that they've been doing the same thing to you for years. Their gifts are good gifts that you, the ungrateful geek, should like, because they are "normal". Because we all need to be "fixed" so that we'll give up the things that we love and love "normal" stuff.

So, if you are a geek, holidays are, and sadly probably always will be, a time to practice your "present face".

Previous Musical Monday: Christmas Is Interesting by Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm)

Subsequent Musical Monday: In My Mind by Amanda Palmer

Christmas Songs     Musical Monday Playlists

Garfunkel & Oates     Musical Monday     Home

30 Days of Genre - What Is Your Favorite Genre?

Science Fiction
This isn't that difficult of a question for me, as there are really only two contenders for the position of my favorite genre: fantasy and science fiction. And while I love them both, star ships and aliens beat out wizards and elves by a narrow margin.

I love fantasy. Among the earliest genre novels I read were classic works of fantasy like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. I love Moorcock's Eternal Champion books, Zelazny's Amber books, and I even have a soft spot of Eddings' Belgariad and Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books. Fantasy fiction, when written well, connects us with the myth and folklore of our history. It offers us a window into the storytelling rhythms that have resonated down to us from the past, and will probably continue to resonate forward as long as humans tell each other stories. Plus, it is fun to read about bold warriors, crafty thieves  powerful wizards, ruthless villains, and terrible dragons.

But science fiction looks the other direction, to a world of future possibility. The genre looks at humans and tries to decide what the full range of possibilities might be, even if those possibilities are actually, due to the constraints of physics, impossible. To a certain extent, some science fiction novels, like Frank Herbert's Dune books or Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series, walk the line between science fiction and fantasy. In that regard, one might say that science fiction encompasses a fair amount of fantasy, and so by choosing science fiction as my favorite genre, I'm cheating a bit because I get a big chunk of fantasy as well. But the line between genres is blurred and indistinct no matter which ones you pick, so I'm not going to worry about that.

And one thing about science fiction is that the possibilities it explores don't have to be happy. Many science fiction novels take place in an imagined reality that is somewhat terrifying to the modern reader. And in some cases, the terrifying nature of the reality is that this is the best of the possible worlds that the inhabitants could come up with. Or the fictional future is intended to be bleak and awful so the writer can make a storytelling point. This almost never happens in fantasy fiction. I don't think anyone has ever written the fantasy equivalent of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Science fiction has such a wide array of directions it can go: from space opera like E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, to hard science fiction like Stephen Baxter's novel Ring, to social science fiction like Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, and everything in between and then some.

Because science fiction has such a diverse range, and because it is forward looking, exploring vistas of human endeavor to come, it is my favorite genre.

Go to Day 19: What Genre Novel World or Setting Do You Wish You Lived In?

Go to Day 21: What Genre Novel Has the Most Interesting Character Interactions?

30 Days of Genre     Home

Book Blogger Hop December 21st - December 27th: There Are Twenty-Nine Knuts in a Sickle

Jen at Crazy for Books has restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another. The hop is currently traveling about the blogosphere and is being hosted by Tea Time With Marce. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them. A complete explanation of the history and the rules of the Hop can be found here.

This week Jen asks: What book were you determined to read this year and you still didn't pick up? Is it at least on your bookshelf or e-reader?

I had intended to do a reread of The Hobbit and all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings this year, but I just never got to them. I've read them before, several times in fact. But with the first of Peter Jackson's three Hobbit movies out this year, I figured that this was an opportune time for a reread of that volume. And because the The Lord of the Rings won the International Fantasy Award in 1957, and I am coming to the end of my project to read all of the International Fantasy Award winners, that would be a natural follow-on to rereading The Hobbit. I didn't get to them this year, and I probably won't in the short time left in the year, but they are still all on my shelf (and probably always will be) and I will certainly get to them early next year.

Go to previous Book Blogger Hop: Esperanto Has Twenty-Eight Letters in It's Alphabet

Go to subsequent Book Blogger Hop: The Thirty Years War Lasted from 1618 to 1648

Book Blogger Hop     Home

Follow Friday - One of My Ancestors May Have Been a Sooner in the Land Rush of 1889

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - JC's Book Haven and Lite-Rate-Ture!.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: What have you learned from book blogging that you didn't know before about the publishing industry?

I didn't know how tilted towards appealing to women the publishing industry was. Before I started book blogging, I assumed that people who regularly bought and read books were more or less evenly distributed between the sexes. But once I began book blogging, it became clear to me that a clear majority of regular readers are women, and that this has resulted in a publishing industry that tries to produce works that will entice that majority to continue to buy their product.

The first indication I had that this is true is simply the demographics of book bloggers. The book blogging world is overwhelmingly female. Although I can think of several dozen book blogs off the top of my head, I can only think of a single book blog other than this one that is primarily written by a male writer. Sure, there are numerous author blogs on which a male author tries to get exposure for himself and his work, but almost every book blog dedicated to reading, reviewing, and promoting books seems to be written by women.

The second indication resulted from talking with authors. I remember listening to Catherine Asaro talk about her writing career. Asaro, for those who don't know, is a very successful science fiction writer, with a couple dozen science fiction novels published. But when she was approached by a romance novel publisher, she said that the advance she was offered to write a novel in that genre was substantially larger than any advance she had ever been offered for writing science fiction. And Asaro is a very successful science fiction author - having written the very successful Skolian Saga, won a Nebula award and served as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's of America. But despite her proven track record in science fiction - she was offered a lot more money to write romance. And publishing companies make those offers based upon what they estimate the market for the resulting book will be. The message here is clear: The male-dominated genre of science fiction is substantially smaller than the female-dominated genre of romance. Women read. Men don't.

And that is what I learned from book blogging that I didn't know before: I'm an oddball because I am a man who reads a lot.

Go to previous Follow Friday: In Kill Bill O-Ren Ishii's Gang Was the Crazy 88s

Go to previous Follow Friday: Sparrowhawk Bound the Dragon Yevaud to Protect the Ninety Isles

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Review - Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids by Isaac Asimov

Short review: Hot on the trail of the pirate gang he tangled with in David Starr, Space Ranger, Lucky heads out to the asteroids to finish the job.

Haiku
A ship used as bait
To catch asteroid pirates
A job for Lucky

Full review: This is the second Lucky Starr book, and the first Asimov wrote after it became clear that no television show would be made with the character. This is also the book where David Starr morphed from being a Lone Ranger imitation to being a Cold War counterintelligence agent. The books also began referring to the character as "Lucky" Starr, because Asimov apparently thought that David was too mundane a name for a planet hopping spy.

The Lucky Starr books were supposed to interest young boys in science, although it is hard to figure out how, as there is very little actual science in the books. They are, however, pretty good adventure tales. Having been to Mars in the previous book, Lucky heads out to the Asteroid Belt to take on the pirates referenced in the first book. Lucky accompanies a ship that has been booby trapped by the Science Council and intended to cause trouble for the pirates. Once in the belt, the pirates predictably board the ship, and seem to know all about the Council's trap. Lucky infiltrates the pirate band, has to fight to prove himself (something that seems common in the Lucky Starr books), and eventually figures out who the leader is, and has to undertake a daring maneuver only made possible by his Martian mask. On the way, Lucky finds out about the Sirian involvement in the pirate plots. The Sirians become the antagonists for the rest of the series, plotting against Earth over and over again.

This is not deep, philosophical science fiction, and some of the information in the book is now dated to a certain extent (planetary astronomy has made significant strides since the book was written). The book remains a solid adventure story aimed at teenage boys, and a reasonably good adventure story for older readers too, who will see some of the seeds of ideas Asimov fleshed out in books such as The Caves of Steel in this book. This isn't great science fiction, but it is fun and readable.

Previous book in the series: David Starr, Space Ranger
Subsequent book in the series: Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury

Isaac Asimov     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - David Starr, Space Ranger by Isaac Asimov

Short review: David Starr goes to Mars and becomes the interplanetary version of the Lone Ranger.

Haiku
Starr goes out to Mars
Meets strange exotic Martians
Becomes Space Ranger

Full review: David Starr, Space Ranger is an Isaac Asimov story originally published under the pseudonym Paul French. This book was originally to form the basis for a television show aimed at younger viewers featuring a Lone Ranger type character set in space, and Asimov wanted to use a pseudonym for the story to avoid the possibility of being embarrassed by a shoddily made production. The show was never made, and Asimov later wrote books in the series under his own name.

David Starr, as presented in this volume, is a crime fighter for the Science Council, the governing body of Earth. (As a side note, for someone who said he was in favor of democracy as a form of government, Asimov sure loved technocracies run by "smart people" in his fiction). Starr is sent to Mars to try to uncover the source of poison that has cropped up in the food supply. Starr gets himself hired on as a new hand at a Martian farm and begins to investigate. On the way, Starr befriends a diminutive Martian farmhand named Bigman who fills in the Tonto role, meets up with some benevolent aliens who provide the substitute for the supernatural anointing of the Lone Ranger as the defender of goodness, and unravels a conspiracy to starve Earth into submission.

The book is very clearly the Lone Ranger in space, with easy to draw parallels. The science is also somewhat dated, especially with respect to conditions on Mars, which is balmy enough to serve as a prime producer of agricultural products, and for humans to wander about on the surface in nothing more than breathing masks. Mars also has a surprisingly dense atmosphere in the book. Granted, these failings were the result of the knowledge of the time period concerning Mars, but they do require one to suspend disbelief. Taking the story as a pulp adventure story, it works well enough, even if the plot is a little simple, and a little too much serendipity is involved (always explained away because David Starr's nickname is "Lucky").

For a younger reader, this book is quite good. For an older reader who will spot the derivative nature of the story and the dated nature of the science, it is merely a little above average.

Subsequent book in the series: Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids

Isaac Asimov     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Musical Monday - Christmas Is Interesting by Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm)

I know Christmas is supposed to be happy and uplifting, but I increasingly find the holidays to be wearing and a little bit sad. As Jon Coulton says, he started writing this song with the intent of making a cheerful and funny tune, and ended up writing a sad song. I understand completely where this sentiment comes from. And when you think about it, so many of the stories he references in the video are filled with a certain amount of sadness layered within the ostensibly happy message that they try to hit you over the head with.

Even the happiest and most child-like of tales, such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, referenced in the lyrics "So you're and elf, but you want to be a dentist/Maybe you're a train with square wheels/Maybe you're a squirt gun that only shoots jam", carries an undertone of unhappiness. In the story it is only when the "defective" people and toys are found to be useful that they are accepted into society. Fairly early on, I started hoping that Rudolph would tell Santa to solve his own damn problems when the big man comes and asks for help after spending the entire movie taking part in making Rudolph's life miserable. Though the story is supposedly joyful and full of Christmas cheer, it seems to me that it is about excusing bullies and accepting differences only when they are able to be exploited by the existing order.

Is Christmas a happy time when families get together and share goodwill and make memories? Sure. But that's generally true any time a family (at least a reasonably happy family) gets together. But the truth is that so many of the accompanying stories and images that go along with Christmas are sad and depressing when you spend any amount of time thinking about them. And of course, if you are sad and depressed during Christmas everyone thinks something is wrong with you and you need to be "fixed". So people put on an artificial happy face and pretend that the forced cheerfulness is actually real.

Previous Musical Monday: Kidnap the Sandy Claws by Lock, Shock, and Barrel

Subsequent Musical Monday: Present Face by Garfunkel & Oates

Christmas Songs     Musical Monday Playlists

Jonathan Coulton     Paul & Storm     Musical Monday     Home

30 Days of Genre - What Genre Novel World or Setting Do You Wish You Lived In?

Andre Norton's Science Fiction Future This is always a difficult question to answer, because there are some choices that seem attractive at first glance, but upon further reflection would have substantial drawbacks that would make them less than ideal choices. I love Middle-Earth as presented in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but like all quasi-medieval fantasy worlds, it has the drawback of a pre-industrial society without access to things like modern medicine or indoor plumbing. And if you don't think that indoor plumbing is a big deal, imagine having to use an outhouse or a slit trench for the rest of your life. And I hope you don't mind cholera and typhoid fever running rampant through the populace every now and then. Sure, most quasi-medieval settings have magic as an part of the fantasy world, but how much does it help your typical inhabitant of Bree to know that "the hands of the King are the hand of a healer". Even after Aragorn becomes king, he lives in Gondor, hundreds of miles away. And there is only one of him. I'd rather live in a world in which trained medical personnel are at least reasonably common.

Other fantasy worlds share many of the same problems. I love Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, but I doubt I'd want to deal with Arawn's unkillable cauldron born. I enjoy reading about Ursula K. le Guin's Earthsea in her Earthsea series, but the lives of the inhabitants would not suit me. Even when one advances into science fiction, the fictional worlds depicted in most books seem less than attractive. While Robert A. Heinlein's imagined future in Starship Troopers has advanced medical technology and all the modern conveniences one would want, it also seems to have constant war and a less than appetizing political system. I love reading the stories set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, but I'd rather not live in a galactic empire ruled by a genetically superior aristocracy and their favored lieutenants where computers are banned. Some fictional futures, like William Gibson's Sprawl books, seem downright unpalatable, and others, like most of Samuel R. Delany's offerings, are so alien that anyone from our time living in them would feel completely out of place. In many cases it seems that what makes a book fun to read is also what would make it less than fun to live within.

As I often do, I fall back on an old familiar favorite of mine: my first science fiction love Andre Norton. Norton only wrote a few books that could properly be called a "series", and those were usually limited to a book followed by a sequel, such as The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars, or Judgment on Janus and Victory on Janus. But many of her science fiction novels seem to have shared the same meta-setting, with a collection of commonalities: free traders plying the space lanes, a common collection of alien races, various struggling colonies trying to scrape out an existence on newly settled planets, space pirates, the patrol, clues about the mysterious long-gone forerunners, and so on. The future Norton imagined was a place full of adventure, but a familiar kind of adventure involving commerce and intrigue, in which war was rare and localized, and a single person could own a star ship and ply the space lanes. A future in which a person from the 20^th century would almost feel at home, just with a little bit more technology. And one can see the fingerprints of this meta-setting in popular science fiction television such as Babylon 5, Firefly, and Farscape. So, Andre Norton's science fiction future is where I'd want to live, roving outer space between the colonies on a free trader.

Go to Day 18: Who Is Your Favorite Protagonist in a Genre Novel?

Go to Day 20: What Is Your Favorite Genre?

30 Days of Genre     Home

Book Blogger Hop December 14th - December 20th: Esperanto Has Twenty-Eight Letters in It's Alphabet

Jen at Crazy for Books has restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another. The hop is currently traveling about the blogosphere and is being hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them. A complete explanation of the history and the rules of the Hop can be found here.

This week Jen asks: What bookmarker are you currently using?

I have a pile of bookmarks that I use, with no particular preference for any of them. The most numerous bookmark in the pile is the bookmark given out by the Book Mooch website. I have several of those, and as a result I probably use them more often than other bookmarks, but they are not my favorite.

My favorite bookmarks are those that have resulted from my book collecting. I collect books, and I'm usually looking for older books,many of which are not even in print any more. So I spend a lot of time hunting for books at library book sales, used book stores, and sometimes garage sales. And people leave bookmarks, and many other things, inside used books. I've found all kinds of odd things in used books, often old pictures, grocery lists, half finished letters, and the like. And bookmarks. Lots of bookmarks. Usually they are from some used book store in a distant state that has probably gone out of business. And I save them all and keep them in a pile on my desk. I love using these bookmarks, partially because I got them almost by accident, but mostly because they have a story behind them that I don't know, and will never know.

Go to previous Book Blogger Hop: There Are 27 Bones in the Human Hand

Go to subsequent Book Blogger Hop: There Are Twenty-Nine Knuts in a Sickle

Book Blogger Hop     Home

Follow Friday - In Kill Bill O-Ren Ishii's Gang Was the Crazy 88s

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - My Library in the Making and Read, Breathe, Read Everyday.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: What is the last book that made you cry? Tell us about that scene.

I've been reading a lot of short fiction lately, so I could pick a couple of short stories rather than a full book. Two of the stories come from the same book - The Hugo Winners: Volume 3, Book 2 (read review). The first is The Meeting, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, involving a father attending a meeting at a school for special needs children. His own son is disabled, and he desperately hopes that this school, at last, will be able to help his son at least a little bit. This seems completely understandable, until he gets home, and his wife tells him the doctor called and has asked for a decision concerning their son. Slowly the reader realizes that the doctor is not asking them to allow him to perform an operation to save their son, but rather to allow him to transplant a terminally ill "normal" child's brain into their son's body. In the end, the parents are left with the terrible choice of whether to kill their own son, an infant in the body of a ten year old, or refuse, and condemn another child to die. This is science fiction at its best - yes, it is about technology, but it is about the moral choices that new technology brings.

The second is The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, also from The Hugo Winners: Volume 3, Book 2. In the story Le Guin imagines an idyllic city blessed with peace and prosperity where the inhabitants live happy and joyful lives. But Omelas has a terrible secret: all of the good things that rain down upon its citizens only do so because a single child is kept locked away and ignored. All of the citizens of Omelas are told this, and all who stay consent to this practice, while those who refuse to live burdened by the knowledge that their happiness is bought with the misery of a small child can choose to "walk away" and leave the city. But despite their stance, no one who walks away every seems to choose to try to take the child out of the dank cellar, and that made me sad.

But the one story that always makes me weepy is Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, which I have read both in novel form and in its original shorter length in The Hugo Winners, Volume 1 (read review). Even though Charlie Gordon is not the nicest guy when he becomes smart, it is still crushingly painful to watch him as he sees all of his gains slipping away. Maybe because the story is told in the first person in the form of Gordon's own journal entries, but his anguish is palpable as he slowly returns from his short time as a brilliant super genius to his original mentally retarded state. You can feel his frustration at being unable to do things that came easily to him mere weeks before. You can sense his fear and dread that he will have to live as he was, which would have been fine had he never undergone the experimental treatments that enhanced his intelligence, but now, having been given a view into what he could be, that life is no longer tolerable to him. Even the fear that he will die, as the mouse Algernon did, seems almost trivial compared to living a life as "Charlie Gordon, who was once a super genius". The final lines of the story, in which Gordon plaintively asks that people keep putting flowers on Algernon's grave, a desperate cry that seems to ask if maybe they would remember Gordon too, always choke me up.

Go to previous Follow Friday: Lincoln Mentioned "Fourscore and Seven Years" in the Gettysburg Address

Go to subsequent Follow Friday: One of My Ancestors May Have Been a Sooner in the Land Rush of 1889

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Review - Fugitive from the Cubicle Police by Scott Adams

Short review: Dilbert deals with the inanities of the modern working world and surprisingly acquires a girlfriend. Dogbert continues to exploit the stupidity of stupid corporate drones.

Haiku
Can't use "Gestapo"
At least not on the cover
"Police" is okay

Full review: The eighth collection of Dilbert comics, Fugitive from the Cubicle Police contains many classic strips and story lines from Adams' ongoing vicious skewering of the inane and idiotic realm of the modern office. The name of this volume derives from a series of strips in which Dilbert is plagued by an enforcer of cubicle regulations. In the original version, he titled this enforcer the "Cubicle Gestapo", but the editors of the strip made him change it to the slightly less offensive "Cubicle Police". Oddly, despite the fact that the title of this volume uses the revised version, the strips in the book use the original "Gestapo" moniker (even the strip on the back cover of the book uses "Gestapo" instead of "Police").

In any event, this book contains Dilbert at its best. Though there are fewer ongoing story lines than in many other comic strips (a fact that Adams somewhat references in an aborted series in this volume involving genetically engineered cucumber warriors), the themes contained in the Dilbert strip are all ongoing. Basically almost everything boils down to one of two categories: poking fun at Dilbert and other technical types for their lack of social skills, or (more commonly) poking fun at the stupidity of the cubicle driven world in which people who don't understand the products their company makes are supposed to manage those that do.

Dogbert is heavily featured in this volume, as is Ratbert. Early in the book Dogbert bullies his way into a job and a promotion at the firm where Dilbert works, eventually making millions in stock options and retirement benefits. He and Ratbert take up consulting, offering their outrageously overpriced services to the company in such areas as corporate fitness, technical support, and downsizing. Ratbert straps liver to his waist to serve as evidence of extra brains. As a lawyer, this volume contains my favorite strip in which Dogbert tries to decide whether building an army or starting a religion is the best way to conquer the world. When calculating which way would involve the least loss of life, he counts law students as two-tenths of a person, on the grounds that they won't drop to zero until they pass the bar.

The strips in this volume also take a slightly violent turn - Dogbert acquires a phaser to punish those who annoy him, while a secretary begins to shoot her coworkers with a crossbow. Phil of Insufficient Light makes several appearances to punish those guilty of minor errors by darning them to heck. Of course, the pointy-haired boss doesn't need to resort to such crude methods to inflict pain, firing individuals with abandon, reassigning them to new cubicles on a whim, cutting budgets, and changing projects specs he doesn't understand (which means all of them).

Unusually for Dilbert, who usually has no success in his personal life, things seem to pick up a little for him in this volume. Although there are numerous strips depicting the many ways an engineer can have a date go completely awry, in this volume Dilbert acquires his girlfriend Liz, a woman attracted to men who can write code in short sleeved polyester shirts. (Dilbert also experiments with cologne that makes him irresistible to women, with humorous results). The strips with Dilbert and Liz are funny as Dilbert confronts a woman who is just as nerdy as he is.

Still, it is the work-related strips that make Dilbert what it is. Over and over again Adams shows that he can take the painful reality of business jargon laden meetings about nothing at all, power point presentations with no content of any kind, and corporate rules that make no sense and turn them into humor that is all the more funny because it is so depressingly true. This volume is no exception: from Dogbert declaring himself the patron saint of technology to drive out stupidity, to dog collar trackers for employees, to "Harfurd" educated bosses, every page is classic bitterly satirical Dilbert.

Previous book in the series: Still Pumped from Using the Mouse
Subsequent book in the series: Casual Day Has Gone Too Far

Scott Adams     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Book Blogger Hop December 7th - December 13th: There Are 27 Bones in the Human Hand

Jen at Crazy for Books has restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another. The hop is currently traveling about the blogosphere and is being hosted by Angler's Rest. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them. A complete explanation of the history and the rules of the Hop can be found here.

This week Jen asks: We are well into the Festive season, so what is your favourite festive reading?

This is actually an easy question for me to answer: Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a beautiful book, full of stories about Father Christmas written by Tolkien for his children, most of which have accompanying illustrations lovingly crafted by the author. The interesting thing about the book is that it's contents were never really intended to be used in a book. Each year, as most children do, Tolkien's children would write letters to Father Christmas. But in the Tolkien household, Father Christmas, or his elvish secretary, would write back.

Those letters are what make up the bulk of this book. And Father Christmas didn't just write perfunctory responses. He told stories about what had happened to him and his friend the North Polar Bear in the past year (sometimes with extra comments added by the Polar Bear himself in his crude handwriting). First Father Christmas writes from Christmas House located right next to the tall and imposing North Pole, but after the North Polar Bear accidentally broke the pole while climbing on it, causing the spire to fall onto and destroy Christmas House, Father Christmas built a new house on a nearby cliff which he called Cliff House. The adventures continue through the pages, from minor misadventures such as the Polar Bear falling down the stairs while trying to help pack Christmas presents, to explaining the Northern Lights as Father Christmas' massive fireworks, to the travails of repulsing an attack by goblins on Cliff House. Every story reflects the wonder and joy of Christmas and is a testament to a father's hand crafted love for his children.

Go to previous Book Blogger Hop: There Are 26 Spacetime Dimensions in Bosonic String Theory

Go to subsequent Book Blogger Hop: Esperanto Has Twenty-Eight Letters in It's Alphabet

Book Blogger Hop     Home

Follow Friday - Lincoln Mentioned "Fourscore and Seven Years" in the Gettysburg Address

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Bookworm Brandee and Writer's Block.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Activity! Who do you want to be? If you could choose any character from a book. What do you think that character looks like and what do you have in common?

This is a deceptively difficult question, because although there are many characters that I enjoy reading about, most of them live lives that I would not want to have to endure. For example, while it seems at first glance that it would be enjoyable to be Ian Fleming's James Bond, given that he frequently get captured, beaten up, tortured, and forced to navigate painful death traps, I don't think I'd actually want to be him. Paul Maud'dib is a fantastic leader who gets to be the ruler of the galaxy, but I don't think I would particularly enjoy the part where prescience drives him mad and he wanders the desert as a blind lunatic before being stabbed to death by his own sister.

This holds true for the protagonists of many books that I read. I love reading about Aragorn, but I don't think I'd want to spend the bulk of my life traveling the wilderness and sleeping on the ground so I could fight trolls and orcs. I love Hari Seldon, but the prospect of being condemned as a criminal for coming up with a new form of mathematics seems less than ideal as an option. I like partaking vicariously of Dominic Flandry's adventures, but I don't think I'd want to live them. Elric is an interesting character to read about, but probably a less than enjoyable character to be. Wishing to be one of these characters would sort of be like the people who wish they were Batman but don't consider how Bruce Wayne got to that point.

I guess given that, that I would choose to be Murdoc Jern from Andre Norton's two book series of The Zero Stone and Uncharted Stars. Leaving aside the down note of his father being murdered, I suppose that inheriting the key to unlocking the secrets of a long-forgotten alien race and, along the way, making a romantic connection with one of the last surviving members of that telepathic species would be some compensation. Throw in the ability to travel the galaxy in a star ship you own while engaging in lucrative trading deals and Jern's life sounds pretty good.

Go to previous Follow Friday: There Are 86 Metals on the Periodic Table of Elements

Go to subsequent Follow Friday: In Kill Bill O-Ren Ishii's Gang Was the Crazy 88s

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Review - Still Pumped from Using the Mouse by Scott Adams

Short review: Dilbert continues to be a clueless nerd. Dogbert continues to milk the rubes for money. Ratbert travels to another dimension and returns to continue his perpetual search for acceptance.

Haiku
Talking rats travel
Dinosaurs hide behind couches
Still less weird than work

Full review: As I read this volume of Dilbert while listening to the Blue Man Group's album The Complex, it occurred to me that they were essentially dealing with the same theme, but from two entirely different angles. I think, on the whole, I prefer Adams' surreal and humorous take. Of course, just about every strip Adams has produced has its own absurd brilliance, so the comparison may not be entirely fair.

I have seen people struggle with the juxtaposition of workplace strips next to clearly absurdist humor involving talking rats being transported to other dimensions, egocentric dogs scamming idiots, and dinosaurs hiding behind the furniture, but I believe that this is the mark of the true brilliance of Adams' work. By placing these sorts of elements alongside the brutally honest strips about pointy-haired bosses, annoying coworkers, and insane workplace rules, Adams highlights just how silly the modern workplace has become. The strips in which Dogbert tries to conquer the world, or bilk idiots out of their money in many cases seem downright reasonable compared to the idiocy that Dilbert has to put up with when trying to deal with his job. And the thing that makes this juxtaposition work is that Dilbert's struggles in the workplace are not far removed from a reality that most people who have spent time in the cubicle driven working world are familiar with. By making the surreal seem reasonable in comparison with the familiar, Adams manages to highlight what a truly strange place we have let our workplaces become.

No one parodies the workplace better than Adams. Very few strips of any kind are as good as Dilbert, and this collection is a fine representation of what makes it such good reading. Anyone who has ever sat in a cubicle and wondered how in the world they got from childhood dreams about being a fireman, astronaut, or cowboy to compiling a database of product requirements for a boss who will never even look at the end product will find Still Pumped from Using the Mouse both amusing and depressing at the same time.

Previous book in the series: It's Obvious You Won't Survive by Your Wits Alone
Subsequent book in the series: Fugitive from the Cubicle Police

Scott Adams     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Review - Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy! by Scott Adams

Short review: Dilbert goes to work and finds it to be a surreal place filled with insane bosses and equally insane coworkers.

Haiku

When you go to work
Your boss demands insane things
Like coworker heads

Full review: This is a compilation of Dilbert strips. For those who don't know, Dilbert is a long-suffering engineer who must deal with the idiocy of the work environment, personified by his clueless pointy haired boss who is continually trying to make the workplace a more nightmarish and Kafkaesque place with his various instructions and "improvements", while also dealing with his megalomaniacal dog Dogbert at home (and sometimes at work as well).

The comic strips in this volume begin in earnest the brutal satire of the modern office workplace, and employers who don't understand what their employees actually do. Dilbert sends up how bosses make silly decisions to assert their authority, how people deal with incompetent, lazy, or seemingly insane coworkers in the office, and other elements that make the workplace an almost surreal place. In the book, the workplace centered humor takes an increasingly greater portion of the strips, as the comic matures from its beginnings as the travails of a nerdy engineer with his wisecracking dog - a sort of Garfield like beginning - to the office satire that it is today.

Despite this increasing focus on work oriented humor, much of this book also deals with Dilbert at home, and the oddities of the life of a poorly socialized nerdy engineer with a dog that wants to rule the world. Alongside the travails of Dilbert as he navigates the insanity of the modern office workplace, we see the travails of Dilbert as he navigates the modern world away from the workplace, and most of Dilbert's difficulties stem from being a square peg that the world around him insists should be rammed in a square hole.

Despite the pressures on Dilbert to conform, he remains resistant, whether due to his own obliviousness, or just his inability to become a beer-swilling sports-loving, "real" man, and fit in where society around him thinks he should. And this, I think, is a large part of Dilbert's success: when you strip away the workplace humor, the satire, and the general insanity of talking animals, you are left with a nerdy guy who thinks it is okay to be a nerdy guy, despite all of the problems this causes him. This book is really good, but then again, almost all Dilbert is really good.

Previous book in the series: Shave the Whales
Subsequent book in the series:  It's Obvious You Won't Survive by Your Wits Alone

Scott Adams     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Musical Monday - Kidnap the Sandy Claws by Lock, Shock, and Barrell

The Nightmare Before Christmas is my favorite Christmas movie. I don't know exactly what that says about me, but at the least it probably means that there aren't any Norman Rockwell paintings in my future. I love all of the music in this somewhat demented fairy tale, but some songs stand out, including this sung by Halloween Town's best trick or treaters Lock (Paul Reubens), Shock (Catherine O'Hara), and Barrel (Danny Elfman). The trio have been tasked with kidnapping the monstrous ruler of Christmas Town, the red coated lobster man "Sandy Claws". And so they sing about all the inventive ways they will ensnare their scarlet prey, although in some cases it seems like they would kill their target rather than kidnap him, and a kidnapping is what Jack had explicitly told them to do. Perhaps this sign of inattention to detail explains why they trapped the Easter Bunny on their first try rather than Sandy Claws.

But the real point is that this is what Christmas should be like: Terrifying and scary, with a side helping of scorpions and walking claw foot tubs. Enough of the saccharine elves with their sugar plums and happy thoughts. Let's have a holiday in which the mistletoe means the druids are going to sacrifice Santa to appease the gods and throw a giant Saturnalian party. And children who will boil Santa until he's ready to be handed over to Oogie Boogie.

Previous Musical Monday: Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm)

Subsequent Musical Monday: Christmas Is Interesting by Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm)

Christmas Songs     Musical Monday Playlists

Danny Elfman     Catherine O'Hara     Paul Reubens     Musical Monday     Home

Book Blogger Hop November 30th - December 6th: There Are 26 Spacetime Dimensions in Bosonic String Theory

Jen at Crazy for Books has restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another. The hop is currently traveling about the blogosphere and is being hosted by Angler's Rest. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them. A complete explanation of the history and the rules of the Hop can be found here.

This week Jen asks: Apart from being readers, many of us collect books on a specific subject or by a particular author. What books or which author do you collect?

This is actually two questions for me, so I'm going to give two answers. One for the type of books I collect, and one for what authors I collect.

As to the first, what type of books do I collect, that should be pretty easy to figure out: science fiction and fantasy books. But I'm a little more selective than that. My main focus is to collect all of the major award winning and award nominated science fiction and fantasy books, plus books that have won or been nominated for a few other lesser awards. Specifically, I collect books that have won or been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, the Campbell Award, the Clarke Award, the Prometheus Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the International Fantasy Award, and the the World Fantasy Award. But this isn't limited to novels. I also collect compilations of short fiction that include award winning and nominated short stories, novellas, and novelette, nonfiction books related to the science fiction and fantasy fields that have won or been nominated for awards, and science fiction and fantasy movies and television shows, that have won or been nominated for awards. At this point I have a substantial portion of books (and other media) that meet these criteria, but as most of these the awards are handed out annually, I am always playing catch up.

As to the second, the list of authors whose books I collect is moderately long, but there are a few that I am somewhat more serious about than the others. My first science fiction love was Andre Norton, and I have been working for quite a while to collect all of her books. The trouble is, she was a very prolific author and a decent number of her books are out of print, so even though I have more than a hundred books by her, I still have many more to find and acquire. I also collect books by Isaac Asimov, but just like with Norton the trouble is that he was a prolific author. In Asimov's case, he was an extraordinarily prolific author, and trying to complete my collection of his works is even more difficult. I used to collect books by Robert A. Heinlein, but I believe that I have every title he ever published, so I don't collect him any more, rather I have collected Heinlein's works. I have several other authors that I am working to collect all of the fiction they have written: Catherina Asaro, Ursula K. LeGuin, C.J. Cherryh, Poul Anderson, and several others. My book collection is likely to never be finished. But the point of collecting is to always be hunting, so a "completed" book collection is, in my opinion, kind of sad.

Go to previous Book Blogger Hop: A Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Must Be at Least 25 Years Old

Go to subsequent Book Blogger Hop: There Are 27 Bones in the Human Hand

Book Blogger Hop     Home

Follow Friday - There Are 86 Metals on the Periodic Table of Elements

It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - Novel Reveries and Oh! Paper Pages.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Activity! Who is your to-die-for book crush? What do you think they look like? Add an image to make us all happy.

Questions like these remind me how far outside of the mainstream of book bloggers I truly am. In short, until I saw this question, I never really thought about any characters in a book as a "to-die-for book crush". I suppose I could go with the obvious option and pick Eowyn of The Lord of the Rings as my book crush.

Eowyn confronts the Witch-King

After all, Eowyn was probably the first female character in a book that I really noticed and even remotely considered in a semi-romantic way. On the other hand, I was about ten at the time I first read The Lord of the Rings, so I'm not even sure if that qualifies as a crush. But I've always loved Eowyn, who refused to accept the fate that her gender relegated her to, but instead disguised herself as Dernhelm and rode with the Rohirrim host to the Battle of Pelennor fields. Who, when all others deserted Theoden and fled in fear from the Witch-King, stood her ground and became the fulfillment of a 1,500 year old prophecy, although she was grievously wounded in the process, having her arm broken and being struck down by the "black breath". The only down point in her story is that once she became romantically involved with Faramir she had to give up her shield-maiden status and settle down to the life of domesticity she had spent the previous portions of the book fleeing. In effect, at the end of the book Eowyn gives up much of what had made her an interesting character. So even though I am a big fan of Eowyn, I don't think she's the right choice.

Eilonwy with her Bauble

A more magical choice, and probably a more interesting one, would be Eilonwy, from Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. We first meet Eilonwy in The Book of Three (read review), where she has been made a ward of the evil Queen Achren who is in league with Arawn of Annuvin, the main villain of the series. And it is here where she begins to shine. It is Eilonwy who rescues Taran, and inadvertently rescues Fflewddur Fflam. It is Eilonwy, and not Taran, who recovers the sword Dyrnwyn. It is Eilowny who convinced King Eiddileg to help her and her companions. Unfortunately, after this promising beginning, Eilonwy more or less morphs into a headstrong but fairly standard fantasy princess who serves as a damsel in distress and a supporting character for the hero. She tags along with Taran in The Black Cauldron (read review) but doesn't have much impact on the story. She is kidnapped in The Castle of Llyr (read review), and has to give up her magical inheritance in order to defeat the villain. She doesn't appear much in Taran Wanderer (read review), and in The High King (read review) her primary contribution to the war against Arawn is to sew a banner for Taran. In the end, Eilonwy must surrender all of her magical abilities in order to stay with Taran. Once again, much of what made Eilonwy an interesting character is leached out of her, and at the end, she can't even remain as a practitioner of the magical arts, but like Eowyn, must give up those things that make her unique and take up a life of domesticity in order to wind up as a suitable partner for her chosen man. And so, like Eowyn, I think I have to pass on Eilonwy as my chosen crush.

Raederle meets Morgon with
the skull of Farr in her hand

So who can I choose? How about Raederle from Patricia McKillip's Riddle of the Stars trilogy. Raederle is the Princess of An, and her father King Mathom had promised her hand in marriage to any man who could win a riddle game against the cursed ghost of King Peven of Aum. Despite being offered as a prize in a riddle-game, Raederle is a powerful woman, and becomes determined to aid her promised husband Morgon. In Heir of Sea and Fire she embarks on a quest to find Morgon and rescue him from the evil wizard Gisteslwchlohm. Through this book and the next, Harpist in the Wind, Raederle takes an active role in the story, first gaining power and understanding, and then using them to help defeat the antagonists. In the end, while she doesn't end up as the land ruler of the entire region, she doesn't have to give up her hard-won powers and surrender her own identity to gain the love and respect of the man she desires. So, for being a feisty and independent woman who will fight for causes she loves, and for refusing to give up herself to be subsumed into someone else's identity, Raederle is my book crush.

Go to previous Follow Friday: NGC 85 Is a Galaxy in Andromeda

Go to previous Follow Friday: Lincoln Mentioned "Fourscore and Seven Years" in the Gettysburg Address

Follow Friday     Home

Review - Shave the Whales by Scott Adams

Short review: Dilbert at home isn't as funny as Dilbert at work. But it is still funnier than most other comic strips.

Haiku
Dilbert goes on dates
Dogbert makes fun of Dilbert
Some workplace humor

Full review: Shave the Whales is the fourth collection of Dilbert comic strips. Dilbert is now known as a vicious satire of the modern office environment, but the early years of the strip were more heavily focused on the personal problems of Dilbert as a nerdish engineer trying to meet women and navigate a social environment for which he was temperamentally unsuited.

This collection is drawn from that earlier era, so the biting office humor is not nearly as prevalent as it would become later. Most of the now-familiar denizen's of Diblert's workplace are noticeably absent, and as a result the Dilbert character must carry most of the comedic weight by himself with little more than an assist from Dogbert. To provide a little bit of help, Adams introduces the pathetic Ratbert to the mix, and in the handful of office oriented strips we get the first iteration of a Wally-like character, although the character isn't actually named and it isn't quite Wally.

This remains a very funny collection though, as flashes of the satire that would come to the forefront later show up, and the strips featuring Dilbert's attempts to get dates are viciously funny as well. Though not as exceptional as the strip would later become, this is a great collection nonetheless.

Previous book in the series: Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless
Subsequent book in the series: Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy!

Scott Adams     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Musical Monday - Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton (with Paul & Storm)

Now that it is after Thanksgiving, it is permissible to begin anticipating Christmas. But, as usual, I don't really see the holiday the same way many other people do. In my opinion, The Nightmare Before Christmas is the greatest Christmas movie ever made, and no Holiday season is complete without an ode to the joys of living in exile on an asteroid while being watched over by armed robot overlords. I mean guards. I mean protectors. Simply put, Jonathan Coulton's song is one of my favorite season appropriate songs.

In addition, Jon Coulton is such a fun performer. In this rendition, as he does at all of his live shows, he brings an audience member on stage to provide the "Message Redacted" line late in the song. Often (although not in this video), the audience member also voices the "keyboard solo" in the middle of the song. But the best part of this video is when Colton forgets one of the lines of the song. His response? To ask the audience when the line is. Because he knows that they will know, and will be more than happy to bring him up to speed. So sit back, enjoy your Soylent Green pie while inhaling the delectable fumes of the ammonia scented snow while being good so Robo Santa doesn't kill you, and listen to the delightful saga of the Andersons as they ring in Christmas with some holiday cheer.

Note: Here's an alternative version of the song. It is still Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm performing, but it is at a different venue with a different audience member sharing the stage with them. her name is Alyssa, and she steals the show with her personality onstage. The video quality isn't that great though, which is why I didn't pick the clip for the Musical Monday selection.

Previous Musical Monday: King Kong by Tripod

Subsequent Musical Monday: Kidnap the Sandy Claws by Lock, Shock, and Barrel

Christmas Songs     Musical Monday Playlists

Jonathan Coulton     Paul & Storm     Musical Monday     Home

Biased Opinion - A Rant About Holiday Posts

At the outset, I will say that I do appreciate the irony that is inherent in what I am about to write. I also know that it will make me seem fairly curmudgeonly. It is also, more or less, an explanation of why I don't normally do holiday posts.

I really don't like Thanksgiving posts. Rather, I really don't like special holiday posts no matter what holiday they celebrate. Whenever I sit down at my computer and head to my favorite blog, or web comic, or other website and punch in the address, and then feel the let down of yet another post that says "Happy Thanksgiving", usually accompanied by a cute picture. And why is it a let down? Because on most holidays I am already inundated by holiday related messages and yet one more seems redundant and almost pointless. If I wanted a Thanksgiving Day message, or a Halloween message, or a Christmas message I could find a thousand places to get one of those. But when I go to a webcomic about weregeeks, or stick figure fantasy adventurers, or a website about role-playing games, or a book blog, I'm usually looking to get away from the hubbub of the holiday.

But my objection to holiday posts isn't just that I am looking for something non-holiday related. It is that when someone puts up a holiday post it seems like they are just mailing in their material for the day. It seems like an almost perfunctory decision to put up a post saying "Merry Christmas!" or 'Happy Fourth of July!" or whatever holiday is being mentioned in the post or strip for that day. It requires no real thought on the part of the creator, and is more or less just a placeholder until the next "real" entry or update is put out there.

As a result, because it seems to me that holiday posts are so boringly routine, and because they seem almost lazy in a way, I dislike them, and I rarely post them.

Biased Opinions     Home