Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I just realised that I am absolutely starving. I've been trying to cut back on the meals a bit, lately, and this is what happens. 'Scuse me while I go pig out.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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King's Comics had the Azumanga Daioh manga - yay! I'm a huge fan of this wonderful show, but as far as I know the anime is currently not available. The fansub has been pulled from distribution now that the series has been licensed, but it hasn't actually been released yet.

Not that I care, because I already have it. Ha ha!

Then I took my few remaining dollars to Galaxy Bookshop (Sydney's best Science Fiction and Fantasy book store) where I found Lois McMaster Bujold's new book, Paladin of Souls. This is the sequel to her fabulous Curse of Chalion, which was nominated for the 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novel.* (The winner was Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I didn't like at all.)

Oh, and Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think and Lawrence Watt-Evans' Something-or-Other. Sorry, LWE, I just buy your books, I don't notice the titles so much...

But it's Paladin of Souls that's going to keep me away from the blogs for a couple of days. Try not to break anything, peoples, and beware of frogs. They're up to no good!

* Bujold did win the Hugo for Best Novel in 1991 for The Vor Game, and again in 1995 for Mirror Dance.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:17 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Well, not literally. Back in February, after a few months of blessed non-employment (just as it was moving from extended holiday to out of work), I was offered a job with a company I had previously worked for. This job, Job X, involved a certain amount of system administration, web mastering, network tweaking and so on. Only a short-term thing, but once things were sorted out, I would move on to Job Y, which involved producing complex analyses of very large data archives. Since those data archives were not yet available, there was plenty of time for me to work on Job X while they were prepared.

Which was all well and good, until management decided that they were unhappy with the person performing Job Z, and started looking for a replacement. Since I had previously performed Job Z myself, I was the perfect candidate. And since I had the most critical parts of X under control by then, and the databases for Y were still not available, I was not exactly overworked at the time, and it was hard to avoid Z even if I had wanted to.

So I took on Z, which turned out to be in something of a mess. I started sorting out the mess, and handling new Z-related projects as they came down the pipeline. There was a fair bit of work involved, but I was dealing with it and things were getting easier.

Then the databases for Y arrived. Suddenly I had more work than could reasonably be done, and all of it was needed now. Suffice to say that there was rather less blogging time for Pixy.

The worst of it seems to be over now, and as I move into blessed October, I hope to be bringing you more of the anime reviews, funny news items, and incoherent rants that a few of you were accustomed to.

Also, thanks to the wonders of percussive maintenance, I have fixed the light bulb in my microwave.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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On my way home from the salt mines this evening, I dropped in on my friend Richard, who owns a book store. (Dymocks on the corner of Pitt and Hunter streets in Sydney.) I was looking for a copy of Kushiel's Chosen, the sequel to Kushiel's Dart, the latter having been my bedtime reading material these last few nights.

Normally I avoid long fantasy novels; it's a rare author who can hold my interest for eight hundred pages (much less ten volumes of eight hundred pages each). But when work gets particularly hectic, I sometimes find it hard to get to sleep, because my mind is still buzzing hours after my body has left the office. During one particularly wearing project I read the entire Recluce series, something I wouldn't contemplate when my brain was functioning normally.

As I was saying, for the past week my sleeping pill of choice has been Kushiel's Dart. This book - I don't know how many of you have read it - this book has the same strange attraction as a road accident. You know that you don't want to look; you know what you will see if you do look, and you know that you won't like it. But you have to look anyway, just to have your fears confirmed.

Kushiel's Dart takes place in an elegantly conceived world, with most of the story occurring in a version of France called Terre D'Ange, the land of angels. The D'Angelines are literally descended from angels, and consider themselves something of a breed apart from normal mortals. More beautiful and longer lived.

Though, I must say, rather less intelligent.

The well named Eight Deadly Words in story-telling are I don't care what happens to these people. That's not quite the feeling Kushiel's Dart inspires. Rather, it is a case of I would quite enjoy seeing the villains of the piece being disembowelled and buried upside down in a nest of fire ants. As for the heroes, well, they all need to be whacked upside the head with a clue-by-four, and then sent off to trade school so they can become good and useful members of society.

Post-hole diggers, perhaps. Latrine attendants.

The story is told by Phedre, a masochistic whore sold into slavery by her parents. Her role in the tale is almost entirely passive; she is tossed about on the sea of events and rarely takes a hand in anything. Even when, late in the book, she makes a heroic bid to get a vital message through to a besieged town, there is little sense of excitement or adventure. And she is promptly captured anyway.

The book has been described as erotic, but if you find some of the sex scenes in Kushiel's Dart erotic, then you are a very disturbed individual. The whips, well, those were bad enough, but when Phedre finally gets together with Melisande and the Warning: If you are easily squicked, stop reading now. I mean it! scalpels come out, well... Ugh.

If I had written this book, it would have been about six hundred pages shorter, because Phreddie would have driven a stake through Mel's heart right after that scene. Or possibly even before. Maybe that's why I'm not a best-selling author. Or maybe it's because I haven't finished writing my first book yet.

Well, anyway, I never claimed to be able to resist a good train wreck, so I went to look for Kushiel's Chosen. I didn't spot it immediately, because someone neglected to inform the people stocking the shelves that Card (Orson Scott) comes before Carey (Jacqueline).

What I did find while I was browsing, though, was a copy of A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, in the wonderful Fantasy Masterworks series, and - completely unlooked for - a new Terry Pratchett novel, Monstrous Regiment.

Well, that goes straight to the top of my to-be-read pile, of course. And since I have nothing planned for the weekend other than setting up a blog or two, maybe a forum, and a little light house keeping,* I may as well go get started on it now.

See you all in the morning.

* Trim the wick, clean the lenses, sound the foghorn, that sort of thing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:13 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Yes, my DVDs have arrived. (Almost. The Post Office says it has them. I'll have to drop by and pry them loose tomorrow.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:39 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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