Went to See Zombieland Last Night

Last night was Pokeno night for the ladies, so the guys (three members of the Silver Horde) bunched up and went to see Zombieland.

It’s definitely rated R for gore, violence and cussing.

It was extremely funny, though. We all enjoyed it, on balance. It reminded me of Monster Hunter International, a novel by Larry Correia that I read recently. Lots of shooting, humor, and great fun. Even a bit of romance. I did notice a certain lack of concern for the Four Rules in the movie.

This movie was strangely good, in the sense that you can’t really put your finger on any one thing, but you find at the end that you had a really good time watching it. I may even watch it again, but not with Texas Grandma in the room.

Recommended, for non-squeamish adults only. Snort.

Also recommended: Music. Popcorn, by Crazy Frog. We listened to it all the way to the movie.

Older people have fun, too!

-Popgun

Web Comics

Here recently, I have gotten interested in web comics. Normally, I do not use my computer for entertainment, but I do read a number of blogs daily. The very first blog I got interested in was The Lawdog Files. I’m pretty sure it was Lawdog who mentioned Roswell, Texas. That got me started. Later on, he mentioned Digger, and i’m still reading that one. So now I find myself following several comics daily. I’m going to list my favorites, and why I like them.

The ability to save multiple pages in tab sets in the Safari browser is really handy when you are doing comics. I’ll open three or four at once, read one and tell it to load the next page, then read the next tab while it’s loading, and so on. When I’m done, I save the tab set so I can pick up where I left off. This works great.

In no particular order:

Roswell, Texas – a fun alternate history in which Texas is a sovereign nation. It’s a good read, but be warned, it is designed to introduce the concepts of Libertarianism. I’m not quite a libertarian, but I enjoyed the Texas as depicted in the story. Complete story. Addendum: I especially like the fact that all adults in Texas are required by law to go armed…

Escape From Terra – this is a good sci-fi read by the same people that did Roswell. In process. Same Libertarian slant, but don’t let that slow you down. Most of it takes place in the asteroid belt.

Digger – an interesting story with good artwork. Fantasy. The main character is a wombat who winds up on a quest of sorts, and has a lot of peculiar friends. In process.

Schlock Mercenary – a space opera, and it is hilarious. It’s been around a long time, and is still in process. Anybody with a gun that goes ‘ominouuus hummmmm‘ when turned on, has got to be funny, and it is.

Freefall – science fiction, with often accurate science. Funny. Still in process. The main character is Florence, a genetically engineered Bowman’s Wolf who is smart, funny, and has moral sense. This is one of my favorites.

Girl Genius – this is steampunk, pure fantasy, and a great read. Adventure with a lot of humor. This is one of my favorites. Great artwork, fun characters, and even some of the bit characters are really funny. Starts off in black and white, but changes to color in a few chapters. Still in process.

Winters in Lavelle – I just discovered this one, and it isn’t very long yet. In process. A portal-into-another-world type fantasy. Good so far but too soon to tell if it will hold my attention. Artwork is good.

The Wandering Ones – this is a future-history science fiction, in which American Indian type tracking skills are combined with future military capability in a post U.S.A. world. Ongoing, this is a long running story, and it has held my interest. Good quality.

Code Name: Hunter – is a fantasy, with a feel of late 1800’s England. The characters seem to be all intelligent dogs. Great artwork and humor, with a good dash of adventure as well. I like this one a lot. Ongoing.

The Dreamland Chronicles – I wasn’t too sure about this one at first, but I got hooked. The premise is that in reality, where you go in your dreams is real. The artwork is 3D software created rather than cartoonist work. It’s a good story. In process.

Tomb of the King – fantasy, with elves and things. Great art, pretty good story. Ongoing.

Odd-Fish – pure humor, in a fishy kind of way. I had no idea there were so many ways to make puns with things fish-related. Ongoing.

Paradigm Shift – great werewolf story. Really good artwork, interesting story, engaging characters. Ongoing, but hasn’t updated in a while. I’m going to be ticked if I don’t get to see how this comes out.

Galaxion – science fiction in the vein of Star Trek, only with great artwork, good character development, good story. Ongoing. I particularly enjoy this one.

I check all of the above daily, except for Roswell, which is completed. Since most of them update only a couple of times a week, this doesn’t take long. There are two that I am still reading to get to the current page – Freefall and Schlock Mercenary.

Almost forgot – the first one I hit every day! Day by Day – political cartoon. Wit, on current events.

Enjoy!

-Popgun

Current Reads

What I’m reading today:

Liberty and Tyranny by Mark R. Levin

So far, it’s really good. I’m a couple of chapters into it, and so far Mr. Levin has explained quite a lot about the history of the battle between conservatism and statism. It sheds some light on Obama’s intentions, since he is clearly a statist. I think I’m going to be happy with this, but I’m not through yet.

David Falkayn; Star Trader by Poul Anderson

This is actually a series of novelettes and short stories written by the inimitable Poul Anderson from the ’50’s through the 70’s. I read every one of these in my earlier years, and it was with great joy that I saw that they’ve been re-published in this collection. This book is one of four which are encompassing Anderson’s work. If you read Heinlein’s work, you will almost certainly enjoy this. One thing I have noticed is that my own attitudes have changed since I originally read some of these. The gender-based stereotypes paint the women mostly as damsels in distress, which is far different than today’s writing. So when you read it, bear in mind it was written when these attitudes were different. Recommended.

-Popgun

New Favorite Web Comic

Girl Genius! A lot of fun. Good graphics, marvelous humor.

Recommended.

-Popgun

“Angels and Demons” the novel

Angels and Demons – the novel, not the movie. I started it, but gave up after a hundred pages.

It seemed extremely unrealistic to me that somebody with an actual college degree, a Harvard professor no less, had never even heard of anti-matter. The grade-school level explanation of this and related technologies, to Robert Langdon, college professor, annoyed me. Most colleges require at least basic physics and chemistry for almost any degree. Although the author must present that material in some way, he should have found a way to do it that fit; maybe by having the scientist explaining it to a college freshman, or a reporter.

Having said all that, the science itself was plausible. However, nobody has made anywhere near the quantity of anti-matter described. The novel did cover that aspect, though, with a reasonable fictional explanation. I did have a bit of a problem with the idea that an extremely intelligent top physicist would allow that much anti-matter to be stored in a container requiring electrical power to sustain it, considering the consequences. Such a scheme would be criminally irresponsible in the real world. By comparison, nuclear bombs are very safe – you have to set them off. With this thing, all that has to happen is an interruption in the electrical supply.

The book is probably a pretty good read for some people, but I just lost interest because the factors above.

-Popgun

Atlas Shrugged

I’m about half-way through Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

I got started on this out of curiosity – I kept seeing references to John Galt, on protest signs at the Tea Parties. So I looked it up – and he’s in this book. Spooky – references to “Who is John Galt?”

It’s amazing. Published in 1957, it could have been written with the present administration and push towards liberalism and redistribution of wealth in mind. Today, the fed wants power to take over control of private companies. It’s in Atlas Shrugged. This book is almost prophetic.

It’s about a thousand pages. I can’t wait to see how it comes out. I’ll let you know what I think when I get finished.

ADDENDUM: Wesley Mouch, of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources, sounds amazingly like Treasure Secretary Timothy Geithner as he seeks power to take over companies as he sees fit.

-Popgun

Book of the Moment # 7 and so forth

I’m behind on my book reporting. Since the last entry, I’ve read:

“The Witches of Karres” by James Schmitz. Still a good light-hearted space opera. A fun book to read, but not one with much darkness in it. You could hand this to your 12 year old and he/she would enjoy it.

“Crossover” by Joel Shepherd. This was a pretty enjoyable action shoot-em-up, well written. It’s in the Bionic Woman genre, so to speak, except the main character, Cassandra Kresnov, is a completely artificial person. And yes, she has lots of special abilities. Besides the action stuff, there is some good coverage of social interaction between androids and humans, and the rights of self-aware intelligences. All in all, a great read. There are more books about the same character and I will probably read another when I get a chance.

“Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross. Oddly enough, it’s another book about an artificial person, a woman, but this time it is about a post-human society of the robots and androids we left behind. It’s a lot of cloak & dagger, espionage amongst the androids, and it’s an interesting idea. I believe this may be the best one I’ve read covering post-human artificial intelligence. Not recommended for children – lots of gratuitous but non-graphic sex, the sort where you know what’s going on but it’s not intended to be too graphic. It was an interesting read, but I doubt I’d read it twice.

I’m currently reading “Use of Weapons” by Iain M. Banks. I haven’t figured this one out yet, but it has some interesting characters. More later.

-Popgun

Book of the Moment #6

Just Finished: “Soul Music” by Terry Pratchett. This is the second or third time I’ve read this book. Needless to say, I enjoyed it; any of the Discworld novels are good, although I have my favorites, and this is one of them. For those of you who haven’t tried it, I urge you to go out and get one of the Discworld novels and at least try it; they’re addictive. And very, very funny. Discworld is a fantasy world shaped pretty much like a pizza, which is held up by four elephants which in turn stand on the back of the Great A’Tuin, a gigantic turtle which is swimming through space. Living on the Discworld are various analogues of places on earth.

In this novel, Susan, the grand-daughter of Death, has to step in when Death takes some time off. At the same time, some magical music takes off with some characters loosely based on Buddy Holly. The satire of rock-n-roll is marvelous. Susan has got to be one of my favorite characters of all time.

Enjoy.

I haven’t had a chance to pick out my next book.

<UPDATE> I’m reading “The Witches of Karres” by James Schmitz. This is actually an old book, published 1966, which I read a good many years ago and am re-reading. This book is light-hearted space opera, and I remember it was fun to read. I’ll let you know if that is still true, these many years later.

-Popgun

Book of the Moment #5

Just Finished: “The Stars Down Under” by Sandra McDonald. As mentioned before, this is the sequel to “The Outback Stars”, which I’ve already read.

I enjoyed this book and it’s predecessor, but there are aspects that I don’t particularly like. It’s basically science fantasy; the story is science fiction with elements of pure fantasy mixed into it. Quite a bit of this is written from first person perspective, and the author sometimes tried to convey the sense of disorientation and confusion of the individual. At least, I hope that was the intent, because it was successful.

The story is an interstellar space epic, tied in with the Australian Aborigine culture and beliefs. Kind of a weird mix, but fresh in the sense that I don’t think anybody else has done this before. It’s nice to find a new idea out there. There are villains amongst the humans, and adversaries (militant aliens).

The writing and character development were good, the reading enjoyable, mostly, but I don’t care for the psychedelic parts. The book was left open for a sequel, and when it comes out I’ll probably read it. On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give this book a 7.

Next Book: “Soul Music” by Terry Pratchett. Be warned, I am a Terry Pratchett fan, and I’ve read most of what he’s written. Including this book; this is a re-read. I love his weird humor. It makes you re-examine your own reality.

-Popgun

Book of the Moment #4

Just Finished: “In the Courts of the Crimson Kings” by S.M. Stirling.

Think “John Carter of Mars’ combined with ”Flash Gordon”, set on a Mars that is a bit more habitable then the reality. A cross-species romance, Indiana Jones type adventure combined with palace intrigue. It even has giant mushrooms, super-technology, and underground horror. All in all, a good read.

The only part I didn’t like too much was the very beginning, which was set up to pay homage to various sci-fi writers who have written fiction set on Mars. The idea is worthy, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the story line. But it was only a few pages, and I did enjoy the rest of the book.

Next Novel: “The Stars Down Under” by Sandra McDonald. Sequel to “The Outback Stars”, which I’ve already read. This may take a while since I am also starting “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition” by Aaron Hillegass, and that one will take a while to work through.

-Popgun