While I haven’t read anything of her writing yet , I’ve planned to do so for several years. But this sad news matters to anyone who cares about SF literature: Octavia E. Butler has died.
Category: REVIEWS
On V
First off, a little occupatio, in which one starts blathering about the thing which he said he was not going to describe(*): I’m not talking about V the miniseries. V was immensely popular in Korea, so much so that only a couple of years ago, during a discussion over dinner with some old Korean friends, when the show came up, some of my tablemates were spouting out the names of major characters in the show, details I couldn’t for the life of me remember. Lime and I talked about the show recently and she said that it had a major …
Gaaaaaaaaaah, more horrid amusements
Four Asian-American guys training up to do a rap on MacBeth for extra credit. It’s a hilarious send-up of life in a home where, even if you got A or A+ in everything else, a B+ in English just won’t do. They embrace the stereotypes, and the geekery is TOTALLY hilarious. Especially brilliant is Earl, the Filipino who is, uh “all ghetto” and stuff. And from the comment section of the post where I got the above, this one is sorta funny too. I can’t speak for dating culture in North America, but most of the interiracial couples in Korea …
Bwee Po Bwendettuh Bendettah
My friend Marvin has posted his review of the film V for Vendetta (with spoilers, be warned). In his review, Marvin complains that Hollywood doesn’t trust its audience. It doesn’t trust its audience to understand the standard themes of a future fascist-dystopian story, so it has to spell out every little thing. Now, I haven’t seen it, yet, as I’ve been too busy, but I’ve been seeing V for Vendetta posters all over the place here. (Actually, over here in Korea, “Bwee po Bwendettuh” — the fact that there’s no V in Korean makes the title funny on a few …
The Ralph Ellison Experience
I don’t kno much about the man himself, but his book Invisible Man is is a hell of an experience. Can any of my readers attest to this? It’s a qualitatively different book than anything I’ve read in the last few years, in a few different ways. For one thing, it just grabbed me from the first page, and has drawn me on ever since. I found the book on the sale table in a shopping mall when I was walking with my mom and my nephew, and since it was only fifty cents, and a book I’d intended to …
Happy Birthday in Korea…
I was reading one of my student bloggers’ comments about it being her birthday, and I thought back to the rendition I heard at a recent department party. As usual, people were singing and clapping and the rhythm of the clapping struck me as totally wrong, but in a vague way — mostly because I just never devoted brain power to figuring out why. Now I know. You see, Koreans are ardent clap-and-sing people. People love to clap along with the beat at concerts (even sometimes when it’s inappropriate, as I witnessed occasionally at the Jeonju Sori Festival), and when …
Cory Doctorow Story — Printcrime
It took me a total of about 3 minutes to read the whole thing, and I quite enjoyed it. I think you will too.
I would like some milk…
I can’t believe that I’ve had this Aphex Twin CD (Richard D. James Album, I think it’s called) for over four years — my friend Jack gave me a copy only a couple of days before I left Canada — and in all this time, during many listenings, I never made out exactly where Mr. Aphex was saying he would like some milk from. It’s quite perverse, and it’s only NOW that I understand why Jack commented about the album something along the lines that the artist was a rather twisted fellow. I just can’t believe I never noticed he …
Primer (2004)
Have you seen Primer? I watched it just before I moved, and I have to say, my initially bad feeling washed away as I suddenly got the movie, understood what it was about, and followed it happily to its conclusion. The thing is, it’s SF. It’s also deadly quiet, deadly calm, slow, and very geeky. Spooky and geeky. It’s spooky because it seems to me it’s realistic in a way that isn’t common in SF. It brings to mind the comments from Ritu’s LJ which I bookmarked on my other computer, where she linked to this essay by Pam Noles …
Cory’s Podcasts
Are any of my readers doing like me, and enjoying the absolutely wonderful podcasts that Cory Doctorow has made of his short (and longish) stories — some of them in progress, others previously published? I’m really enjoying them, so much so that I’m even considering doing something like this myself with stories in progress, or stories at the beta stage — you know, things finished but needing a rewrite or some fine editing. Reading aloud helps with this, and why not let others enjoy the reading aloud bit. Would any readers be interested in me podcasting older stories of mine? …