Review: The Android’s Dream

Posted by | Filed under Books, Reviews

The Android's Dream

The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi
My Rat­ing: 5 out of 5.

This book is a delight­fully wacky tale of one man’s fight to keep a very spe­cial sheep alive. In the process, our hero will have to fight off var­i­ous aliens and a few treach­er­ous vil­lain­ous humans. Scat­tered through­out The Android’s Dream are numer­ous one lin­ers. Each one of these taken by itself and out­side the con­text of the story are funny, but put together and in con­text they’re hys­ter­i­cal. LOL is a com­mon abbre­vi­a­tion used online that stands for “Laugh Out Loud”. These days it is mostly used to indi­cate some­body found some­thing else amus­ing and does not actu­ally mean any truly laughed out­side of their own head. I bring this up as I repeat­edly found myself laugh­ing out loud while read­ing The Android’s Dream. Below are a few of my favorite lines from the book:

  • Jesus, for­give me, he thought. I really shouldn’t have eaten that panda.
  • “No more shoes in advance for any­one,” he said.
  • “Today peo­ple have tried to kill me, the police are look­ing for me, and I’ve just dis­cov­ered every Easter of my child­hood, I ate one of my rel­a­tives with mint jelly. I’m just fine.”
  • “I don’t know … You’d have to ask the sheep.”
  • It dri­ves physi­cists mad and every few years on e will snap and begin rav­ing that sen­tient beings should nae fuck with that which they ken nae unnder­stan’

    • If my lit­tle review here fails to entirely con­vince you to rush out and find a copy of this book to read, then try Bookgasm’s review

    Smart or Stoopid

    Posted by | Filed under Quizzes

    I found this smart or stu­pid quiz via a photo in Lorenzodom’s pho­to­stream. Def­i­nitely not a good real­is­tic test of one’s IQ but it was a fun diversion.

    Heroes and Villians (and a Happy New Year)

    Posted by | Filed under Life, Quizzes

    Happy New Year!

    And since I don’t have a proper post writ­ten up to enter­tain you; here’s some quiz fun.

    Your results:
    You are Spider-Man

    Spider-Man
    		85%
    Super­man
    		70%
    Green Lantern
    		70%
    Hulk
    		65%
    The Flash
    		60%
    Robin
    		58%
    Cat­woman
    		55%
    Super­girl
    		51%
    Iron Man
    		45%
    Won­der Woman
    		36%
    Bat­man
    		30%
    		You are intel­li­gent, witty,
    a bit geeky and have great
    power and respon­si­bil­ity.


    Click here to take the “Which Super­hero are you?” quiz…

    Your results:
    You are Mr. Freeze

    Mr. Freeze
    		75%
    The Joker
    		73%
    Two-Face
    		69%
    Dr. Doom
    		68%
    Venom
    		61%
    Lex Luthor
    		60%
    Rid­dler
    		60%
    Green Gob­lin
    		57%
    Apoc­a­lypse
    		56%
    Mag­neto
    		56%
    King­pin
    		53%
    Dark Phoenix
    		51%
    Jug­ger­naut
    		49%
    Poi­son Ivy
    		49%
    Cat­woman
    		45%
    Mys­tique
    		33%
    		You are cold and you think every­one else should be also, lit­er­ally.


    Click here to take the Supervil­lain Per­son­al­ity Quiz

    Merry Christmas!

    Posted by | Filed under Life

    Merry Christ­mas to all and to all a good night!

    Review: Casino Royale

    Posted by | Filed under Movies, Reviews

    Casino Royale

    Casino Royale
    My rat­ing: 4.5 out of 5.

    Bah. I was plan­ning on writ­ing this up as a proper review but now I’m feel­ing tired so you’re going to get the bul­let point version.

    • The lat­est install­ment in the James Bond film empire is Casino Royale. This also hap­pens to be the first install­ment of the books. The film doesn’t quite cover Bond’s ori­gins, but we do get a few min­utes of Bond “work­ing up the cor­po­rate lad­der”. Kind of inter­est­ing but given how lit­tle time was spent in those scenes; I won­der if there weren’t other areas that the time could have been bet­ter spent on.
    • Daniel Craig brings an inter­est­ing inter­pre­ta­tion to the role of Bond. He has back the panache of Connery’s Bond but with a bru­tal vio­lence that we’ve not seen before. I’m still not con­vinced this is the best path to go with but it’s cer­tainly bet­ter than Brosnan’s some­what stilted performances.
    • Some peo­ple seem to really like the vil­lain of this film, Le Chiffre. How­ever I found him to be weak and inef­fec­tual; though to be fair had a bet­ter plan than some we’ve seen1.
    • The chase scene at the begin­ning was incred­i­ble. Though I know there are other movies out there which also do this sort of thing. For­tu­nately, I’ve not actu­ally seen many of those movies so this still looked new/fresh/interesting rather than old and derivative.
    • It’s a pity they killed off Cate­rina Murino’s char­ac­ter so early in the movie. She was much more in the style of clas­sic Bond women than Eva Green.2
    • Prod­uct place­ment sucks. In this case, I’m refer­ring to the fact Bond was dri­ving a Ford towards the start of the film. On the other hand, win­ning the clas­sic 1964 Aston Mar­ton in a card game was pretty cool.

    1 Banker to world ter­ror­ists vs. Russ­ian EMP satel­lites, no con­test here.
    2 Smok­ing hot vs. vaguely attractive.

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