The Springfield, Oregon, police have been overrun by gnomes among other things. “Somebody stole 75 lawn ornaments from around town and placed them meticulously on and around the lawn of one house on Oct. 17,” reports the AP. Now they are at the police station.
“We need to get them out of here,” Capt. Richard Harrison said.
Oh, yes, you do, Captain Harrison, but that won’t be the last of them. They will come again, and they will come here too. The gnomes are on the move!
I agreed to review The Dark River, second in the Fourth Realm trilogy, in part because I had not read the first book. I thought I could give a unique perspective. Most reviewers would have read the first book, wouldn’t they? After I agreed, I thought I may have made a mistake. I read somewhere that the plot was so complex a reader should start with book one, and if I had picked up The Two Towers without any knowledge of the rest of The Lord of the Rings story, I’d be lost at the start. But I didn’t have any trouble following the story. There are many times the narrative recalls past events, all of which could be part of book one, but I don’t know and not knowing didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the story here.
The story begins exploring the black hats’ attempts to eliminate the white hats. The black hats in this story are The Brethren, a high-tech, international organization that wants to virtually imprison all free people through data networks, security checks, and surveillance cameras. They believe that once everyone in the world agrees to being watched or recorded for security reasons then everyone will become fairly controllable. The Brethren believe people are fundamentally products of their environment, so if the environment can be completely controlled, then everyone in it can be controlled. This belief earned the black hats the label Tabula by the white hats, who are Travelers and Harlequins. Continue reading The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks (JXIIH)
Here’s the perfect gift for the reader who complains about big books and the length of modern literature–800 pages, 18 inches tall, complete with display case, all on The Big Apple.
“To wake the sleepers high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!”
Daylight Saving Time ends tonight, so if you are affected by the time change, turn your clocks back one hour. By way of encouragement, I pass on this news:
Pedestrians walking during the evening rush hour are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, two scientists calculate. Ending daylight saving time translates into about 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October, the researchers report.
Have a good weekend.
Will Smith is in another sci-fi novel adaptation, this time I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which has been adapted twice before. Apparently, a four writer team undertook this adaptation. Either that or two writers adapted a previous two-writer adaptation. Matheson has many stories in the public mind, in part because he worked on The Twilight Zone, in part because authors like Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz have praised his work highly. Another adaptation from him, one of a script seen on The Twilight Zone, is coming in the movie The Box. Still another in The Incredible Shrinking Man.
From what I understand of the story, I Am Legend can’t be called a vampire tale, though there are vampires in it. It’s better described as a post-apocalypse story, focusing on a man as a representative of all mankind. Speaking of the Matheson’s book, Dan Schneider says it focuses “on human loneliness. . . Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre.” (Spoiler warning on that link.) It could be a good movie. Probably is a good book.
Just a couple links tonight, I’m afraid.
First of all, Phil drew my attention to this piece from the Tominthebox website. I’ve never seen this site before, but it seems to specialize in the kind of sophisticated, subtle satire that I confuse so many people with myself, in some of my columns at The American Spectator Online.
Luther’s body found lying on its face? It could happen.
Dave Lull sent me a link to this piece from Pajamas Media, about Hege Storhaug, a brave Norwegian woman who’s challenging the multiculturalist blitzkrieg.
There are, in fact, a few brave, freedom-loving Norwegians left. I’m in the process of interviewing another myself, and the results should be visible eventually at the Spectator site. I’ll tell you more when I know more.
Have a great weekend!
Reading foreign novels help us understand foreign writers, says Israeli novelist Amos Oz upon winning the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. This appears to come naturally from this upbringing. In his memoir, he says, “Books filled our home. My father could read sixteen or seventeen languages and could speak eleven (all with a Russian accent). My mother spoke four or five languages and read seven or eight… Out of cultural considerations they mostly read books in German or English, and presumably they dreamed in Yiddish. But the only language they taught me was Hebrew.”
Delancey Place quotes Groucho Marx on being a comedian.
My guess is that there aren’t a hundred top-flight professional comedians, male and female, in the whole world. They are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world. But because we are laughed at, I don’t think people understand how essential we are to their sanity. If it weren’t for the brief respite we give the world with our foolishness, the world would see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of lemmings.
Yesterday, of course, I should have titled my post “Happy All Saints’ Eve,” or “Happy All Hallows’ Eve.” Eve, not Day. Today’s the Day. Today is the Feast of All Hallows. I should have noticed that at the time, but I often miss things, don’t I?
S. T. Karnick has a nice tribute to the festival on his blog here, along with a video link and everything.
We ought to pay more attention to All Saints’ Day. You don’t have to be a Catholic to believe that we’re part of the universal Body of Christ, and that “a great cloud of witnesses” is watching from Heaven, like spectators at a ball game, cheering us on (as the author of Hebrews writes). Or, to use another metaphor, that we are part of a great host (“Like a mighty army moves the Church of God”) that’s on a long march through history. The army’s so big that we can only see a small part of it from where we stand in time. I often slump into a worldly point of view, imagining that I’m standing at the end of Christian history. All Saints’ Day helps us remember that we’ve been through worse before, and it sets up good examples for us to follow. This is a day to pick up a book on church history and meditate on the sufferings and victories of our forefathers in grace.
Here’s a bit of a hymn by Charles Wesley that pleases me very much:
One family, we dwell in Him;
One church above, beneath;
Though now divided by the stream,–
The narrow stream of death.
One army of the living God,
To His command we bow:
Part of His host has crossed the flood.
And part is crossing now.
I have neglected to point out the national scope of the War over Poe. Who killed Poe and far more here. John Ball suggests:
[Last night was] an occasion to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe, the secular patron saint of American Gothic Horror, and when we’re talking about Poe, the drinks should come first:
CELEBRATE LIKE POE:
1. Gulp a double shot of the cheapest rotgut available.
2. Fall down because your body can’t handle it.
3. Suffer posthumous defamation by an envious hack journalist.