Linkstew

Read: The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

I finally found it at Moe's after looking at Barnes and Nobles and Cody's. It's short but good, and reminded me of a cross between Hogfather, Alice in Wonderland, and Labyrinth.

Okay, my term paper is due in almost exactly 12 hours, and I've written about 3.5 pages out of 12-15. Not bad, all things considered, but I've been sidetracked for the last couple of hours researching as much as possible the history of property laws. It's been years since I've done any research like this, and I'm really enjoying it. Everything I read dangles some other carrot in front of me that I want to go investigate.

It's very inspiring, and it reminded me of an interesting comment that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett made in this online interview. They said:

Neil-Gaiman: But, for a writer, fiction gives you very little you can steal from.
Terry: Whereas you can open an old history book and — bingo!
Neil-Gaiman: Whereas reference books give you huge huge unmined fields to go and explore.
Terry: And no one else reads them now, except us...

Another example of this is Neal Stephenson, who does a ton of research for his novels. Check out Nadia's story that her CS professor told her about Stephenson's research (for better or for worse).

Anyway, I'm enjoying my research, and I'm sad that I'm not going to be able to do nearly as thorough a job of it as I'd like. I feel bad that I can't go back to the original sources on this material, and instead I'm relying on papers that are referencing the original material that I should be using.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I didn't buy this book until nearly eight months after it came out, and even more ashamed to admit that I had the book for a month before I could make time to read it. Some Pratchett fan I am. I was busy with NACHOS and finals, etc. But once I finished my last final, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents was the first fourth book I read.

Though this story is set on the Discworld, it isn't officially "A Novel of Discworld." Rather, it's a stand alone story that's targeted at young adults, and in this capacity it works very well. No knowledge of the events that have taken place in the 25 Discworld novels to date is necessary to enjoy this book. In fact, the only time where I found myself drawing upon my previous Pratchett reading was when I knew there was more to Pratchett's ideas than were presented in these pages. But it's not that the ideas in The Amazing Maurice lack depth -- it's just that they're a different aspect of the ideas that Pratchett fans already know and love.

The story introduces us to "the amazing" Maurice (a talking cat), who is the mastermind behind a scam in which a group of educated rodents (former residents of the trash heap behind the wizard's university) run amok in a town for a few days. Then a "stupid looking kid" named Keith plays a tune on his whistle and leads the rats out of town for 30 gold pieces. Maurice, the rats, and Keith split the money three ways. It's the pied piper gone horribly wrong.

The town of Bad Blintz was to be their last heist, but when they got there, everything went wrong, and that's the tail tale told in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which I read from beginning to end without putting down.

Though Maurice, Keith, and Malicia (the mayor's daughter, and a teller of so many tall tales that no one would blink twice if she started talking about talking cats) are all interesting in their own right, it's really the rats who steal the show. For starters, there's something immeasurably endearing about their names, from "Peaches" to "Dangerous Beans," to "Hamnpork" to "Additives," the rats' names (which they picked off of labels they found in their trash heap) just left a huge smile on my face. Next, the philosophical development of the young rodents and their existential questioning demonstrated just how skilled Pratchett is at looking at old questions in new ways while at the same time forcing us re-examine ourselves.

My favorite quote from the book, on one of the primary ideas in the novel, was "If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story."-- Malicia Grim

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that it didn't even occur to me that Death of Rats would make an appearance in this book until the young rats started hypothesizing that there was a bone rat that would come to get them when they died.

Besides, how could you not like a story that has a bungie jumping rat named Sardines?

I give it a 5/5, because it did perfectly what it set out to do.

This is pretty much a quick list off the top of my head, based on what I didn't do this summer and what I know I want to do.

• Read House of Leaves, some Gaiman or another that I haven't read, and Pratchett's The Last Hero (assuming it gets released on schedule).
• Stumble through another semester without failing.
• Play Metal Gear Solid (I'm already half done with it) before Metal Gear Solid 2 comes out, play Xenogears before Xenosaga comes out, etc.
• Do my best to prepare for the release of the Gamecube on November 18th, by hopefully getting ahead in school before it's too late.
• Actually overhaul that other site I work on.
• Actually consolidate my Desktop computers, and turn the remains into a PC for my brother.
• Meet with my advisor to make sure that I'll be able to stay at Berkeley another year, and if I can't stay an undergrad, make plans to take tests and apply to Grad School. Yes, this is as backwards as it sounds.
• Get a life outside of work.
• Dust the untouched corners of my apartment. Notably, the shelves in my room.
• Get new ideas for The Stew from CS 170 and 188, and possibly implement them.

Yeah, that's more than I'll be able to do, and I know it. I'm already performing triage in my head, and yes, the games are (well, not counting the Gamecube) are going to be the first to get the cut.

At the beginning of the summer, I laid out these goals. Let's see how I met them:

• Yes, I finished Employees, and yes, we migrated everything to our new primary web server. Yahoo!
• Yes, I gave Linkstew a total overhaul.
• No, I didn't do anything to that other site I work on. Boo. =(
• I finished Zelda 64, but I didn't finish the other three games I planned to. Instead, I played a lot of Mario Party, flirted briefly with Star Wars Super Bombad Racing, played my Game Boy Advance and beat Castlevania: Circle of the Moon twice, and then played a lot of Gran Turismo 3 (review forthcoming).
• Not only did I read Science of Discworld, but I also read American Gods and the entire Sandman series. Reviews forthcoming.
• I didn't really even think about doing anything to my desktop computers. They're exactly as they were at the start of the summer.
• I gave my apartment a couple of pretty good cleanings, and threw away a lot of old junk as part of a bit of a purging.
• I got a TiVo, and actually ended up watching more Television than I really planned.
• And I really didn't have much of a life at all outside of work and my roommate.

I've been sitting around trying to think of something to post here all day, but I was kind of at a loss. The best thing I could think of was to post about my dinner, and ramble on about food for awhile, but I couldn't quite bring myself to write about mashed potatoes.

And yet I'm here anyway, and the subject is still apparently mashed potatoes.

Actually, I just wanted to share that as I was debating whether or not to post about my dinner of mashed potatoes, I was chatting with Peter, and he said "I have this urge to post about mashed potatos right now..."

And I figured the synchronicity was actually more interesting than me writing about my potato obsession again.

And yes, there's a Pratchett reference in this post. Points if you noticed.

I had one plan for my weekend of surgery recovery, but it's gone nothing according to plan, leaving me recovering in a completely different, but equally acceptable way.

Here's what I planned:

Completely on the recommendation of a reader, I ordered Fishing With John. And completely of my own free will, I ordered Gran Turismo 3. I was going to lug my PlayStation 2 home with me, watch Fishing With John, and play Gran Turismo 3.

This did not happen, because I apparently haven't learned my lesson about ordering things before trips yet. I placed both orders on the morning of Thursday, July 12th. I ordered GT3 from EB Games, while I ordered Fishing With John from Amazon.com. I was more concerned with getting GT3, since I knew my brother really wanted to play it (and he doesn't have a PS2), but I didn't think there would be a problem, because EB's default shipping was called "second day air." I did the math, and figured there would be all kinds of time for my package to get there before I left on Wednesday the 18th. It was the DVD from amazon that I was concerned about getting on time. But I didn't want to pay for extra shipping, and I knew I could cope if I didn't get to watch the DVD this weekend, so I just left it at that.

Here's what happened:

Well, of course GT3 didn't come in, but Fishing With John came in without a problem. And as is always the case with my shipping woes, GT3 arrived Wednesday morning, when I was on the way to catch my train. But without GT3, there was no way I was going to lug my PS2 home. And yet, I brought the Fishing With John DVD anyway... So I got stuck here with a DVD without a player to watch it with. Oops.

So I knew Tuesday night that my GT3 plans had fallen through, so I quickly tossed together alternative weekend plans -- Reading! I've had a couple of books in my queue for awhile that I hadn't gotten around to reading, because I tend to get so caught up in books that it really disrupts my sleep schedule. What better time to disrupt my sleep schedule then when I'm already going to be knocked out off and on because of pain killers?

So I've already finished The Science of Discworld, and I'm well into American Gods. And I have GT3 waiting for me when I get back to Berkeley. It wasn't what I had planned, but it's certainly not a bad way to spend a restful weekend . More in depth reviews of all of the above are coming later. Right now, I need to get back to Shadow's tale.

My roommate works at one of the local theaters, which means he's got the hook up. So today we took advantage of that hook up and saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and AI. The strange thing about seeing a movie in the theater for free is that it makes it much easier to enjoy. I don't have to sit there feeling bitter that I blew $9 on a movie that I'm only marginally enjoying, and instead I can just marginally enjoy the movie. Which isn't to say that I only marginally enjoyed AI, but that it might explain why I seemed to enjoy it so much more than everyone else in the audience. But I'm planning on writing up a whole separate entry on AI, so for now I'll talk about Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is back in theaters for some reason.

I like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I like it so much that I've probably seen it 30 times. I like it so much that I've seen it so much that I would have never seen it in the theater if it hadn't been free. The first thing I noticed was how crisp the picture on the big screen was compared to the VHS copy I've seen so often. And other than that, it was the same movie I knew inside and out, which meant I spent a lot of time feeling bored. You see, when we used to watch the movie, we would actively do other things, and only pay attention to the movie at certain favorite scenes -- Why watch captivated when you know the punchlines, and some scenes just seem to go on longer than they should? I hadn't seen it for about three years, so I enjoyed seeing it again, but it was still something I would have rather flipped through on DVD.

The one interesting thing about seeing it in the theater was the ending. As Pratchett pointed out, the Python's don't know how to write an ending, and the Holy Grail is the prime example of that. And once Arthur had been driven off in chains and the black screen with the silly music came on, no one laughed. Well, a few people, myself included, laughed, but I was laughing at all the people who weren't laughing. At all the people who apparently hadn't seen the movie before, and were waiting for.. something else. And so I laughed at their nervous shuffling, and their questioning murmuring, and I sat waiting and laughing to see how long they were going to wait and not laugh -- but I eventually got hungry and left.

I think the ending is a great joke in it's own right, but you can't get it the first time you see it.

Well, I mentioned The Magnetic Fields last night, and then Peter mentioned them, and suggested that Rabi liked them, and then Kevin jumped in and suggested that now he was going to have to look into them, which prompted me to walk down the street to Amoeba and pick up a copy of their box set -- 69 Love Songs. 3 CD's with 23 songs each.

And I've been listening to the album for the last 12 hours, since I picked it up at about 2 this afternoon. And I'd be lying if I claimed I felt qualified to do this album justice in a review at this point, so I'm just going to attempt to channel my gibbering happiness with this album into a quick and dirty endorsement. As if Pratchett and Gaiman (and Peter and Rabi) endorsing The Magnetic Fields wasn't enough, now you've got my endorsement too (and probably Kevin's soon as well).

The first song, all by itself, brought a huge smile to my face, and I listened to it three or four times before moving on. And then, at Peter's recommendation, I listened to the first disc twice, and then the second disc twice, and then the third disc twice. And now I need to go back and listen to the whole thing again reading all the words, because I'm already hooked on the music, and I already love the words I catch (there are a few tricky spots).

The album obviously has a theme, and it executes that theme with incredible skill. And the interesting thing about packing that many love songs into an album is that everyone will find something that speaks to them in the set. Be it the feeling that "I don't want to get over you," or the sentiment that "No one will ever love you," or loving "The Way You Say Good-Night." And the reason I grabbed those sentiments and not others is because those are the titles of songs, and ones that popped out at me as I scanned the list. It seems like it's got everything there, and you'll find something for you. Really.

As far as their style goes, it runs the whole range. When I was about halfway through, I felt like I couldn't actually identify The Magnetic Fields' own style, and instead I was confused by all of the misdirection. It seemed to my like every song was parodying some other style. But I'm pretty familiar with bands who flirt with every style under the sun, and so now I think I can more or less pick out the unifying elements between the songs. But even unable to detect those unifying aspects, I was still enjoying every new song as it came along.

Except for "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan" (disc 2, track 22). The way that one bounced back and forth between the two speakers of my headphones built a standing wave inside my head and made it explode. Really. It was one of the most obnoxious things I've ever experienced, which is a shame because without headphones on it's another nice song.

It's worth mentioning that the set comes in two forms: Either the whole box set can be bought at once, or the three discs of the set can be bought individually. I highly recommend you dig up the change to get the box set (or all three discs), but if you can only afford two, go for discs 1 and 3, I guess, but I can barely recommend that -- it's like breaking up a family. But it's really an amazing album, and I only regret two things about it: 1. That I didn't look into it right after Pratchett recommended it to me, and 2. That I can't fit the whole thing on my Rio -- only 2/3 of it -- and I don't want only part of it there.

While waiting for Gaiman at Cody's tonight, I overheard someone behind me say "Yeah, Gaiman just did a concert with the Magnetic Fields..." Which immediately caught my attention, and actually motivated me to turn around ask for some information about the band. You see, when I saw Pratchett speak last year, I was wearing my They Might Be Giants Flying Carpet/Mysterious Woods T-Shirt, and when I went to have my copy of The Fifth Elephant signed, the first thing Pratchett said to me, before I'd even had a chance to say anything to him, was "Have you ever heard of the Magnetic Fields?" Well, no, no I hadn't, I told him. And I tried to find something about the band at the time, but couldn't (I obviousy didn't look very hard), and forgot about them right up until tonight at Cody's.

It would seem that the Magnetic Fields are tied to that shirt, because, of course, I was wearing my They Might Be Giants Flying Carpet/Mysterious Woods shirt tonight as well. And the guy behind me suggested that Amoeba has their CD's, so I'll have to go look into that one of these days, because if Pratchett recommended them and Gaiman likes them...

After a final, a vegetarian chili deluxe spud, and a rousing game of Mario Party 3, I set off for Cody's on Telegraph to see Terry Pratchett do a silly little dance. And while I was at it, I drug my roommates along with me, despite the fact that neither of them had ever read a lick of Pratchett. I figured it'd be cultural. Y'know, Ethnic or something. And thankfully, topics too closely tied to the books were avoided, and my roommates seemed to enjoy themselves well enough.

That said, there were some negative points to the evening. Notably, an adolescent girl threw a bit of a tantrum when Pratchett revealed the truth about Monty Python. Other than that, though, the problems were merely circumstantial. First, there's the matter of the british accent which, when combined with Cody's sound system which wasn't prepared for the crowd Pratchett drew, made him a little hard to understand at times. At the worst, though, the punchlines were still clear, and as the hour wore on, my mind got better at interpretting what he was saying.

And the final "problem" I had with Pratchett speaking was only when I compare this year to last year. You see, last year a whole ton of people were crammed into the little tiny store "The Other Change of Hobbit." In addition to this, last year Pratchett made stuff up to talk about as he went along, because a lot of the people in attendance had admitted to having also seen him in San Francisco the night before... This year, after immediately determining that no one had already heard his prepared presentation this year, he launched into that. And he delivered it well, and it didn't seem prepared, but... Well, it was less personal. Maybe it was because this year everyone had a chair to sit in, and room for limbs and the like. Or maybe it was because at some level I knew he was mentally reading from previously prepared material despite evidence to the contrary. But whatever it was, it was a less intimate experience than last year. For that matter, it seemed shorter this year, though my watch tells me that the same amount of time elapsed. This I directly blame on the seating arrangements... Last year, squished in like sardines, five minutes was an eternity.

So with the enjoyable bits out of the way, it was time for the unfortunate business of the book signing, and as there was no reason for them to wait with me, I told my roommates they could go home if they wanted to, which they did. Thus it was that I waited silently in line for half an hour, alternately eavesdropping on the webmistress of this site and playing with a little baby sitting on the shoulders of a nice couple in front of me.

Last year, I got my copy of The Fifth Elephant signed, because, well, everyone was doing it. Last year, Alert got a copy of The Last Continent signed that a friend of hers who had visited left behind accidentally. One of these things is meaningful, while the other is not.

I own a lot of Pratchett books. I own multiple copies of more than ten of the books (long story, I don't want to get into the details). I didn't have much interest in getting my copy of Thief of Time signed... What would be the point? I've got a copy of The Colour of Magic that was published in 1983, but what would be the point of getting that signed? So faced with this dilemma, I realized what I should get signed -- the book that got me into this whole mess... The copy of Guards! Guards! that I first picked up at Book Mark that fateful day while grocery shopping with my dad... The copy I devoured every word of... The copy I subsequently lent to all of my friends, getting two of them (and one of their moms) hooked on Pratchett... So I took that otherwise unassuming, battered book with me, and I got it signed. Other people had fancy imports of Thief of Time (the UK editions have different covers than the US editions), any of the books released in the last three years in hard back, and a few other random things. I was the only person I saw with such a worn and loved book. And after it was signed, it didn't magically transform... It's the same book, it just has another scribble in it now.

I've got a strange view on meeting people. Everyone in line around me had something to say to Pratchett, but I didn't say a thing. He asked me who it should be made out to, I told him, he signed it, and I was done. What was I going to say to him in a 30 second window? And whatever I did say, he's already heard, and isn't of interest to him. So why should I waste his time by telling him about the tattered book he signed? (This isn't about Pratchett in particular, it's just in general) Admittedly, the experience is not for for the signer, but the signed... But in my mind, I was doing it for him. He'd already signed a half an hour of books, and there was probably another half hour behind me, so why should I keep him waiting? And yes, I'm aware he probably didn't even notice it...

For me, the experience of the evening wasn't about the 30 seconds I had his attention, but what he had to say during the hour he had my attention. Others probably attend these events with opposite priorities, intending to tell Pratchett all about a flaw in his latest novel... But that's not... polite, I guess. I'll remember what he said, but he wouldn't have remembered what I'd said anyway... Terry Pratchett is a very funny man, full of great ideas, and if you even have the opportunity to hear him chat, you shouldn't pass it up. Even if you've never read the books, you'll probably still enjoy 90% of the experience.

update: As Kevin pointed out, Douglas Adams died yesterday. I read everything Adams before I ever got into Pratchett... Adams may have turned from writing to other media, but his few novels (relative to Pratchett, it's a few) have had an influence on a generation of geeks -- including me. And contrary to what Kevin suggests, it's not so much that I found Pratchett's Presentation lackluster, as I found Pratchett's Presentation lacking compared to last year. And yes, it would have better (though much sadder) had Pratchett known of Adams' passing. So long and thanks for all the books.

As you may have heard, Terry Pratchett's latest novel, Thief of Time, has been out for a little more than a week now. Once I'd gotten my other obligations out of the way, I devoured it in a day, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Unsurprisingly, the primary subject of the book is time, in it's many forms. It covers the typical Pratchett fair of how important people are to time, and the importance of belief in the universe, etc. When I saw Pratchett speak last April, he said that the purpose of this novel was to patch up all the holes in continuity in the Discworld, and Thief of Time accomplished that goal admirably. In fact, he not only patched up every hole that's come up in the course of 25 novels, but he also covered any future slip ups as well. It also has a few things to say on the subject of Nougat.

The narrative focuses mainly on the History Monks (of Small Gods fame) and Susan (Death's Granddaughter), though Death himself and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (along with the forgotten fifth horseman) all have their own roles to play. The main focus of parody in the story is any kung fu movie you can name, though considerable homage are also paid to The Matrix and Star Wars Episode I.

There was a lot to enjoy in the book, and nothing horrible jumped out at me, unless you're a nougat fan. It definately ranks in the top third of my favorite Discworld books... That's not a very useful statement, though, because every discworld book except for two rank in the top third of my favorite books. Anyway, Thief of Time is a 5/5. I have no complaints about anything in this one.

Tick.