The Insanity Klaus

My mum is cursed with an immediately post-xmas Birthday; Here is the card that her doting son (that's me by the way) drew for her. It's pen and ink, and it's a bit shit because i'm totally out of practice.

Also, apologies for the shitty quality, that's courtesy of my phone camera.

Thoughts On 'Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City'

This is why Animal Crossing is a brilliant game:

In the basement of the town's museum, there is a coffee shop called Brewsters. Once a day (and no more than once) i can sit my adorably distended avatar down at the bar and, for the modest sum of 200 Bells (I hear Bells are strong against the pound at the moment, but then, isn't everything?) i can sample a steaming mug of the local flavour. Our surly avian barman serves the beverage and instructs me to drink up; I find i am able to choose to either let the coffee cool a little or to drink it. Being a sensible sort of fellow i decide to let it cool, only to be met by a veritable tirade of fury from the barman! I can repeat this process as many times as i want. I tire of this and decide to drink the coffee. My avatar seems exceedingly pleased.

Coffee serves no real purpose in the game; It doesn't do anything; While one can argue that all in-game activities are fundamentally pointless, this one is certainly more pointless than most.

Strangely, i feel like i've accomplished something.

What the fuck did Phonomancer get for Christmas? (Part 2)

Without further ado, and because i have lots of better things to do that i would very much like to avoid doing...the second part of my overly self-indulgent festive consumerist blogging.

Paprika

I asked for this on the strength of the funky dvd cover. The box tells me that it's about a 'dream terrorist', i look forward to watching it very late at night.

Amazon link (It's cheap!)

Battlestar Galactica Series 4

It was difficult picking which cylon to embelish this post with, there are so many, after all. After a great deal of contemplation (hot, sexy contemplation) i settled on the lovely Boomer. I'd boom 'er!

Fail.

Amazon link

The Earthsea Quartet

It's technically a children's book, but it's no Harry Potter. Earthsea belongs to only the smartest, strangest and most pallid of children, and seeing as i missed out on it back then i plan on enjoying it as a smart, strange and pallid adult. I'm very familiar with Ursula LeGuin's prose (The Left Hand Of Darkness is one of those books that i read every six months or so) and on the strength of that i'd recommend anything written by her.

I've had the pleasure of reading the first book of the four included in the quartet, and although the setting is more traditionalist than i expected from LeGuin, there's something very magical and naturalistic about it, reminiscent of Tolkien's more challenging stuff, perhaps.

Amazon link

I finished Fire Down Below at precisely 3:17 this morning, it concludes William Golding's To The Ends Of The Earth trilogy. I was happy to find a pacy and exciting novel after the doldrums that were Close Quarters (the second book). No matter how much Golding i read i'm always astounded at his ability to write totally believable historical fiction and Fire Down Below was no exception to this. For the uninitiated, the trilogy constitutes the fictional journal of Edmund Talbot as he undertakes a voyage of extraordinary length and quality. Those comfortable with Patrick O'Brien and naval jargon will be perfectly at home here.

Talbot remains a hugely likable paradigm of the English Gentleman, wading through the early nineteenth century with all of the ego, vanity and poise that one might expect of a gentleman of his means and money!

It never betters the observational genius of Rites Of Passage but it was a satisfying conclusion to a hugely entertaining yarn.

Oh, and i'm listening to that Deerhunter album right now, the bassline on 'Nothing Ever Happened' is fucking amazing.

Linky.

What the fuck did Phonomancer get for Christmas? (Part 1)

Don't lie to yourselves, i know it's what you've been wondering. Allow me to draw back the veil, sweep aside the curtains and wipe away the grime obscuring the great mystery that is this question.

After the little opinion piece that i decided to share and now feel terrible for (opinion pieces on the internet are morally reprehensible - expect more of them) i thought i'd post something a little more in line with the great (did i say great? I meant morally reprehensible) blogging tradition).

Gantz volume 1

That's right, i'm one those geeks that your mother warned you about! It's some manga, it's what geeks read, it's full of things like big-eyed teens of an indeterminate age being ravaged by robotic squid-monsters, and it's awesome.

This i haven't actually started yet, but it was recommended to me by the president of the now disaffiliated UCL society Comics etc. which is as close to a guarantee of a good read as you can get.

Amazon link

Microcastle by Deerhunter

This my friends, this is pure reverb-drenched, falsetto-ridden, starry-eyed awesomeness, and it's only had approximately five listens, so the hyperbole is only going to increase. Oddly enough, i felt almost complete ambivalence towards Deerhunter's first album Cryptograms, the ambient punk of Microcastle however, has me really excited.

Amazon link

Some live Deerhunter action

Phonogram: Rue Britannia

I got turned onto Phonogram (my blogspot username is a reference to the series) through a long drawn-out process beginning with the diamond in the rough of games journalism Rock Paper Shotgun.

The author, Kieron Gillen, is a writer for that site, which is worth checking out if you're a clever person who happens to like computer games. If you're a clever person who doesn't happen to like computer games (and if so, whyever not?) don't worry, Rue Britannia is all about magic and nineties britpop. Oh, and it's brilliantly written and illustrated.

Of note is that fact that Jamie McKelvie has a knack for drawing girls that look like girls i'd like to sleep with.

Amazon link

Stay tuned for part 2 of What the fuck did phonomancer get for Christmas? I'm on tenterhooks.

WIth great boredom comes great responsibility

Allow me to explain; We all have real life responsibilities, nothing of note there. Some of them are forced upon us, some of them we choose. An increasingly large number of us are collecting web-based responsibilities, and web-based responsibilties, unless directly tangential to a 'real life' responsibility are taken entirely of our own volition.

Unlike real life responsibilities, nothing of any real consequence happens if we don't do them...i mean, we may, inadvertantly, drive a ponytailed thirtysomething of the type frequently parodied to suicide somewhere...but nothing of any real consequence happens if we don't, for example, tag ourselves and all of our aquaintances, update our twitter on a regular basis or put in a couple of hours for our lucrative gold-farming operations. Ok, so that last one can be a nice little earner, but that's besides the point.

If you detect a hint of disdain seeping into this tirade then your faculties would not be failing you, but rest-assured that this same disdain extends to my good self. After all, this blog (of which this is the first entry) is nothing but an exercise in extending my own 'responsibilities'. We all need them, they fill a psychological whole in our oh so very empty lives.

We simply don't have enough to worry about.