If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
- Fear Death By Water
- The idea behind this blog is to share my opinions about Post-Apocalyptic Literature, Films and Ephemera as well as my random nattering on a regular basis.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Autumn (finished)
Well ... I'm about twenty-five minutes from the end of the movie. I had to stop the viewin' because my lovely wife wanted to watch her stories (as is her wont). So far one word sums it up: yawn. Don't get me wrong there's a good twenty-five minutes left and those are zombie-filled horror-movie minutes. Everyone knows those are like NFL minutes. Anything may happen. I for one hope it does.
More updates as events warrant.
**update**
About those last twenty-five minutes... they were sorta like NFL minutes in that they seemed to be endless. The movie never got better. It did have the obligatory 'zombie tears the human apart' scene near the end (as all good Romero homages aught) but that wasn't enough to redeem it in my eyes.
So it all begins with a vicious plague that kills 99% of the people on earth. So far I'm in, in a giant way. The scene when the kids in class all start spouting blood from all their face holes and then snuff was particularly jolting. The kids die horribly in front of their teacher who turns out to be one of the 1% who live. Later the survivors begin to find each other. For some reason they do nothing with all the corpses. They don't bury them, burn them, move them out of sight or anything. They just leave them to rot in the street and wonder if they might be at risk for cholera or typhus. Bit later the corpses begin to blink and twitch and some stand and begin to shuffle around. The author, David Moody, decided to go with slow moving undead. They begin to move faster but they do it veeeerrrrrry slowly. I waited for the payoff at the but I was disappointed.
My opinion here is that since David Moody released the first book in the Autumn Series for free, he didn't put much content in it hoping that people would return for the second part. A bit like the give you the razor sell you the blades that Gillette does. The movie would have probably been better if Autumn would have been half the movie and Autumn: The City would be the other half. The way it is now I not only will probably not only not watch any Autumn sequels I bet I won't read Autumn (or the sequels) either. Just too many good books to read and movies to take in.
More updates as events warrant.
**update**
About those last twenty-five minutes... they were sorta like NFL minutes in that they seemed to be endless. The movie never got better. It did have the obligatory 'zombie tears the human apart' scene near the end (as all good Romero homages aught) but that wasn't enough to redeem it in my eyes.
So it all begins with a vicious plague that kills 99% of the people on earth. So far I'm in, in a giant way. The scene when the kids in class all start spouting blood from all their face holes and then snuff was particularly jolting. The kids die horribly in front of their teacher who turns out to be one of the 1% who live. Later the survivors begin to find each other. For some reason they do nothing with all the corpses. They don't bury them, burn them, move them out of sight or anything. They just leave them to rot in the street and wonder if they might be at risk for cholera or typhus. Bit later the corpses begin to blink and twitch and some stand and begin to shuffle around. The author, David Moody, decided to go with slow moving undead. They begin to move faster but they do it veeeerrrrrry slowly. I waited for the payoff at the but I was disappointed.
My opinion here is that since David Moody released the first book in the Autumn Series for free, he didn't put much content in it hoping that people would return for the second part. A bit like the give you the razor sell you the blades that Gillette does. The movie would have probably been better if Autumn would have been half the movie and Autumn: The City would be the other half. The way it is now I not only will probably not only not watch any Autumn sequels I bet I won't read Autumn (or the sequels) either. Just too many good books to read and movies to take in.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Finished 'Wolf and Iron'
OK. I changed my mind. The first go 'round went poorly. I divorced the book on page 288. I did it because of the wolf. I just got bogged down with the wolf. For some reason this time around I didn't notice the wolf so much. I viewed it as more a secondary character.
Although I didn't have the same problems I had when I first read it, other problems did rear their collective heads. There was pretty much no violence (well pretty much none that was directed at Jeebee). I kept
expecting Jeebee to get into a fight of some type with neighbors. A bit of back story is needed here I think. Further back in the book Jeebee meets up with Paul and his crew who pilot an armored Conestoga Wagon. Jeebee rides with and learns the bulk of his survival skills from them. He takes his leave to continue 'The Quest' for his older brother and a safe place to store his massive cranial knowledge. When he does the final thought Paul leaves Jeebee with is to be careful on the hunt for food. He says whatever you do, DO NOT kill any farmer's cattle. Seems they tend to get a bit pissed off when people russell their live stock. Later on Jeebee finds a burnt out ranch (where he finds books about wolves). He goes up into the hills and finds a cave. He widens it and makes a home of it. Not too long after he gets hungry and goes strait for ... cows. I kept expecting for a neighboring rancher to eventually move in and lay claim to any surviving livestock as well as any salvage from the ranch proper. I bet they would have done this because they were close friends. NEVER HAPPENED! Jeebee just goes on killing a cow a day and nothing happens. He survives two bear attacks but never is given a chance to test his metal against an invading pissed off horde who want to string him up. I bet the story would been have more entertaining had Mr. Dickson taken that route.
Also the ending just sucked ass. Normally I can see the ending looming and prepare myself for it. Like in Blindness. I saw that ending roaring at me like a locomotive. The deal with Blindness is that the ending made a lot of sense. The ending to Wolf and Iron was ... well just lame and disappointing.
Wolf and Iron is the definition of the 'cosy catastrophe' genera. If for some reason you plugged that term into google and even more improbably have read this entire post, just trust me here: the plot of Wolf and Iron is a prototypical cosy catastrophe.
Bit of a side step here. This book comes from a short story called 'In Iron Years'. I mistakenly assumed that it was 'The Stand' to 'The Stand Uncut'. I was wrong so wrong. It was 'Night Surf' to 'The Stand Uncut'. Look into it, you'll see what I mean.
What annoys me most here is that Harry Frank Ph.D. wasn't mad about a wolf being portrayed as having dog-like characteristics. He was angry that the picture on the font of the book was of a wolf yet the animal inside was more a German Shepard type dog. I wish someone had instead pointed out that a .30-06 looks nothing like an AK-47. Imagine the book that may have resulted.
So to sum it up: you are correct ft_ball_fn from the PA Media Forums, it's a great book. I did in fact get sucked into it and perhaps read it too much. All this sort of makes me want to get Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel out and give it another go too.
Although I didn't have the same problems I had when I first read it, other problems did rear their collective heads. There was pretty much no violence (well pretty much none that was directed at Jeebee). I kept
expecting Jeebee to get into a fight of some type with neighbors. A bit of back story is needed here I think. Further back in the book Jeebee meets up with Paul and his crew who pilot an armored Conestoga Wagon. Jeebee rides with and learns the bulk of his survival skills from them. He takes his leave to continue 'The Quest' for his older brother and a safe place to store his massive cranial knowledge. When he does the final thought Paul leaves Jeebee with is to be careful on the hunt for food. He says whatever you do, DO NOT kill any farmer's cattle. Seems they tend to get a bit pissed off when people russell their live stock. Later on Jeebee finds a burnt out ranch (where he finds books about wolves). He goes up into the hills and finds a cave. He widens it and makes a home of it. Not too long after he gets hungry and goes strait for ... cows. I kept expecting for a neighboring rancher to eventually move in and lay claim to any surviving livestock as well as any salvage from the ranch proper. I bet they would have done this because they were close friends. NEVER HAPPENED! Jeebee just goes on killing a cow a day and nothing happens. He survives two bear attacks but never is given a chance to test his metal against an invading pissed off horde who want to string him up. I bet the story would been have more entertaining had Mr. Dickson taken that route.Also the ending just sucked ass. Normally I can see the ending looming and prepare myself for it. Like in Blindness. I saw that ending roaring at me like a locomotive. The deal with Blindness is that the ending made a lot of sense. The ending to Wolf and Iron was ... well just lame and disappointing.
Wolf and Iron is the definition of the 'cosy catastrophe' genera. If for some reason you plugged that term into google and even more improbably have read this entire post, just trust me here: the plot of Wolf and Iron is a prototypical cosy catastrophe.
Bit of a side step here. This book comes from a short story called 'In Iron Years'. I mistakenly assumed that it was 'The Stand' to 'The Stand Uncut'. I was wrong so wrong. It was 'Night Surf' to 'The Stand Uncut'. Look into it, you'll see what I mean.
What annoys me most here is that Harry Frank Ph.D. wasn't mad about a wolf being portrayed as having dog-like characteristics. He was angry that the picture on the font of the book was of a wolf yet the animal inside was more a German Shepard type dog. I wish someone had instead pointed out that a .30-06 looks nothing like an AK-47. Imagine the book that may have resulted.
So to sum it up: you are correct ft_ball_fn from the PA Media Forums, it's a great book. I did in fact get sucked into it and perhaps read it too much. All this sort of makes me want to get Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel out and give it another go too.
Post Apocalyptic Tinker Toys
Today's sub job took me to a local Head Start. It was super-fun. The little ones are way more fun than douchey junior high schoolers . The best thing today happened during free play time (read 'all day'). The kids were introduced to Tinker Toys at the beginning of the day. Many of the girls started building people and houses and the boys (to no ones surprise at all whatsoever) built guns and proceeded to have an epic gun battle. Then one little guy built a battle tank and kicked it up a notch. I would have posted audio of the wicked-sweet sound effects the little dude was giving the cannons but student confidentiality precludes it. Best I could do was take a quick snapshot with my shitty cell phone camera.
Anyhow I give you the Tinker Toy Battle Tank:
Anyhow I give you the Tinker Toy Battle Tank:
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