Obsidian, Hrab, Poles, spam and carnage

Admit it: You have no idea what this post is going to be about.

Well, it’s going to be just a collection of short bits.

* * *

Just listened to the final episode of J. C. Hutchins’s Seventh Son: Obsidian anthology, and hoo boy he had left the best for the last. The last story was writ and read by Scott Sigler.

Please, never ever let that man narrate a nature documentary. There would be people pushing pens into their eardrums out of sheer terror.

Also, if I see ants, or even a single ant, within the next three weeks I shall hugely and embarrassingly freak out.

Remember, it ain’t a good piece of horror unless it traumatizes you for life!

The other Obsidian stories — well, liked some more, some less. Mostly I grumbled over the fact that they had so little to do with the Seventh Son trilogy universe, but I guess that was inevitable, as there wasn’t much they could have taken a hold of: all the parts were so tightly wound around the delicious trilogy itself. (Well, there could have been a bit of frozen rumble in Alaska, but anyway. Maybe there are limits on how close you can get to another’s material without being rude and pushy.) And there were real gems among the listener-contributed stuff.

The best three of the anthology, in my breathtakingly arrogant opinion: Sigler at 32, the Hrab-Soccergirl episode 21 and the ham radio operator episode 8.

* * *

Also: I think I’m developing a severe addiction to George Hrab — curiously more to the podcast than to his music, but that’s my fault since if it isn’t anime-pop or Iron Maiden heavy metal I most likely have no patience for it.

Now, if Mr. Hrab played Zankoku Tenshi no Te-ze (“A Cruel Angel’s Thesis”, the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening bit), I’d probably by some ectoplasmic transference soil every single pair of pants, under and other, I possess, simultaneously and hugely.

* * *

Next: Mathematicians and the constant jokes about “removable poles” — both mathematical objects and people from Warsaw — got a new layer today, as a Chinese exchange student pronounced “poles” as “boors”.

I wonder how Polish mathematicians cope with things like this.

Then again, here in Finland it has been said that foreigners don’t get naturalized, they get Finished.

* * *

WordPress just caught, within a few minutes, five spam-comment attempts on the post “About creeping cows“. Four were linkfests trying to hawk insurance; the fifth, casino gambling.

I have no idea how these people and their machines choose their targets. (I wonder if anyone’s written about spam-bots and how they work. If you know, please let me know!)

* * *

Finally: NaNoWriMo at 16 345 / 50 000 words, still a little bit ahead of my schedule. Currently a Satanist is trying to find a man she’s never seen before all Hell breaks loose.

Er, figuratively. And though I’m writing the thing I don’t know whether any breakage will happen — I’ve killed off most of my characters already (always a chancy thing after writing just a fifth of your novel, unless you do zombies) so maybe I should wipe out Helsinki as well.

“Virtual carnage is fun!” he cried with a demented leer.