Word of the day: "nescient"

Another week passes, sans blogging. It seems everyone this week is caught by a surfeit of sianness; the inclination to render into blog abated by the unceasing cares and demands of wretched Life. Have just purchased from Kinokuniya two of my favourite classics: Alexandre Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo and Herman Melville's Moby Dick; and it will not require too much literary insight to ascertain the driving leitmotiv behind these two great works - the ramifications of vengeance. It is also easy to see, I think, why these two works are amongst my favourite. (It also explains why my writing tone is a bit overblown.)

However, was damn pissed when it transpired that the edition of Monte Cristo I purchased was not the Penguin classic, but rather, a Signet edition which was severely edited by some unknown translator. The final punishment of Danglars; and the total omission of Jacopo as a character were but the most egregious mutilations of this great book. After exploding in fury after a quick browse-through (already purchased, unfortunately), I resolved to hunt down a proper, actual, unabridged translation next week.

Ah well.

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing put forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike; strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside but by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is the wall; sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But tis' enough. He tasks me; he heaps me, I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me! For could the sun do that, then I'd do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. For with little external to constrain us; the innermost necessities in our being; these still drive us on!"

Reading of this kind of compelling hate is really what I need to put some motivation back in my listless existence. Nevermind that the circumstances of such hatred are also painted very vividly in both books; in Moby Dick, by the complete destruction of ship and crew (save the narrator, who survives by clinging on to a life-preserver built out of a coffin); and in Count of Monte Cristo, we see the moral emptiness of vengeance giving way to redemption - even if, gratifyingly enough, that occurs only *after* vengeance has been taken.

Am heading down to Singapore today after work for a brief sabbatical. A weekend carousing with some old university friends; maybe checking out a few career and business opportunities if I can survive the inevitable hangovers. Eric assures me that drinks at Amara Hotel are at Melbourne prices(!). Looking forward to the brief respite from work, as well some funky debauchery although it means that today will have to work doubly hard to clear my outstanding stuff from my in-box. Another friend also recently got engaged; the condemned wishes a final night out with the guys:)

More literary righteous fury was engendered in me when I glimpsed a hard-cover copy of the new Dune prequel; Legends of Dune (by the hack-work of Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert, the latter who has desecrated his father's legacy beyond measure). I involuntarily exclaimed, "What the FUCK?" as I saw it sitting on the sci-fi shelf in ill-deserved place of honour, and upon reading the blurb, felt a surge of nausea which only true Dune affocionados will share. The new storyline revolves around the period of the Butlerian Jihad, and while in Frank Herbert's original this period is alluded to briefly as a few centuries of semi-religious fervour against sentient technology, the new book retcons (comic jargon: "retroactive continuity") it into some Terminator-like saga of actual physical domination by cybernetic AIs. It also paints the founder of the Bene Gesserit as the original Harkonnen noble's lover, as well as the original Atreides as a servitor to one of these machine overlords. Gag. Retch.

Although most of the readers of this blog and my fellow bloggers are in no means Dune fanatics, (except insofar as the original computer game Dune 2 is concerned - that venerable father of the RTS), I feel compelled to record my complete disgust at this instance of a contemporary writer completely bastardising and corrupting a richly drawn fictional world with modern hackdom and swashbuckling sensibilities. It's not just the factual digressions from established continuity which piss me off (Frank Herbert himself had a poor grasp of consistency between his original six novels), but .. it's the corruption of Frank Herbert's inimicable literary style that really gets my goat. That and the awful, *awful* characterisations of primary characters and organisations in the original novel. Not to mention the literary inclusion of cloaked spaceships, fighters, cyborgs and artificial planetoids; these were concepts that existed in the original Dune series as sidebars and technological concepts with social ramifications - whereas in the prequels, they exist as excuses for space battles and Star-Wars-esque pastiches. Above all; Frank Herbert's Dune was about social and metaphysical complexity in a feudal futuristic society; the prequels are about technological gadgetry and gratuitous blood-letting.

Ah well x2. Rant over.

I shall arrive in Singapore at approximately 2am. A friend of mine is grudgingly putting me up at such late hours; in exchange for having to accompany him on his out-of-camp run at Bishan Park on Saturday morning. Am filled with trepidation at having to humiliate myself in another display of my physical infirmity. Am also pissed off at the kind of "friendship" which requires me to take a cab from Golden Mile Complex at 2am to MacRitchie Reservoir. Bitch bitch bitch:)

This week I've been playing the PC port of Grandia 2; decided to choose a somewhat more oblique RPG as filler entertainment until a raft of new games is released on the piratical market. Grandia 2 is the typical Jap console RPG-lite; with all the conventions - fairly simple plot with complex trappings; characters who are oddly one-dimensional despite their gratuitous emotional conflicts, large-scale magicks, weirdly-cutesy textured models running around the gameworld; bizarre names for every attack and move, etc etc. The battle system is a unique mix of real time and turn-based which I find works very well - go check out the Grandia 2 review here for a decent summary.

Spent a fair bit of this week surfing through RPG sites - and I mean table-top RPGs. I was struck by just how little - *time* - there is these days for me to pursue my interests. I mean, I was never really a fanatic RPG-er, only dabbling in the occasional foray, but I enjoyed reading through the mythologies and source books and actually kept up with all the mainstream products by White Wolf, TSR, and Palladium for a long time in secondary school. These days, however, of all my nerdesque interests; comics, RPGs, computer games, movies, anime, and books - only computer games remains the actively indulged hobby. I simply haven't the time or money to go hunting for Vampire: The Masquerade source books to peruse; and unlike Melbourne where the libraries actually *stocked* RPG sourcebooks, and the comic book stores didn't mind you sitting around reading for hours on end, in Malaysia such sources are far harder to access. For one, there's no local equivalent to Elizabeth Street's Minotaur proximity to my apartment in Melbourne; most of the better RPG/comics stores are located in fairly hard-to-reach areas as far as my places of residence and work are concerned. For another, they *shrink wrap* every one of their damn RPG books and comics.

The mainstream bookstores don't stock RPG stuff as well, unlike Borders (albeit admittedly limited) in Singapore.

I mean, there is just so *much* I could be immersing myself in if I could just.. muster up the energy. Or have the money. Or time. I have zero familiarity with 3rd Ed. D&D, other than glimpses in Neverwinter Nights; I never got to explore most of the less famous TSR worlds in detail (everyone knowns Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and even Planescape; how many people know Oerth, Mystara, Greyhawk, Athas - even Ravenloft or Spelljammer?). Virtually anything after Wizards of the Coast's takeover of TSR (a move I feel ambivalent about) is alien to me. What about the White Wolf offerings? I had a fascination with Mage: The Ascension; and of course Vampires: The Masquerade was hellishly popular in the period of post-Anne Rice gothic trendiness - but I haven't followed up on developments there in over a year. I've also completely lost touch with Palladium's Rifts (the only sourcebooks I bothered to purchase:) since the Tolkeen Siege story arc, and despite what people say about the triteness of the world and the hellish numerical complexity of the game systme, I *like* post-apocalyptic settings with character.

Even Dragonlance, which was my neonate introduction into the joys of fantasy fiction; well, I'm not too embarrassed at having outgrown it - but I really should at least obtain some passing familiarity with Fifth Age events, particularly now that Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have been lured back into the writing fold. Have been horribly tempted to buy the Annotated Chronicles; perhaps I shall if some of my more dubious attempts to supplement my meager income bear fruit.

Anyway, I was listlessly surfing away through Planescape and Dark Sun webpages; and I remembered just how.. fascinated I used to be, and still can be, by these richly drawn game worlds, their myriad complexities and mythologies, and how I used to be able to just devote time to reading the books, devouring all I could, even if I almost never played them. As a pre-adolescent, I was constantly lost in wonder in these worlds of escape; and I relearned with startling clarity *exactly* what Neil Gaiman means when he writes in Books of Magic: "These worlds do not exist; thus they are all that matters. Do you understand?"

Depressing; but nevermind. Mayhaps I shall prevail on Gabriel to let me peruse through his gamebook collection this weekend, if he can squeeze me into his busy social schedule.

Computer games coming out include Mechwarrior: Mercenaries, Medieval: Total War, Freelancer, Halo for PC, and possibly Hitman 2. I still have yet to watch Signs in its entirety, although I did catch XXX last week. The latter was a terribly loud, boisterous "asshole-James-Bond-meets-extreme-sports" affair - yet oddly fun to watch if one shut off one's brain and enjoyed the stunts. Although I couldn't hardly help but burst out laughing as Vin Diesel chases a hydrofoil in his GTO Oldsmobile (note; the so-called "solar-powered submarine" *never* voluntarily travels underwater). And what is it about today's pop-modern sensibilities where villains have to dress in hip leather, listen to dance music, and generally villainously sneer and watch the carousing crowd below from some elevated position in a trendy disco or metal concert? In addition, Rammstein looks as grotesque in real life as their music (of which I enjoy; Du Hast is particularly stirring) would imply.

I also haven't upgraded my drivers, software and PC for an interminablly long period of time. My venerable old P3-1 Ghz is starting to show its age. *tender affection* Perhaps I shall make the giant leap to AMD, as well as a decent graphics card. - once again, pending a resolution of my financial straitening. On the technological front, however, it seems my district may *finally* be DSL capable. Issues have arisen because the apartments where I live in have the temerity to use a non-Telekom exchange (Maxis) - and these independent upstarts apparently aren't allowed access to the local DSLAM multiplexers. That may change, however, my father received a proposal from some IT company which apparently has the connections (both figuratively and literally) to bypass this commercial stand-off and hook us all up at affordable rates (DSL prices in Malaysia are fairly draconian, dollar-for-dollar-wise, particularly the start-up costs). The joys of being able to download porno avis at two or three-digit kbps speeds on Kazaa are once again within my grasp!

Parents nagged me interminably about the excessive numbers of books threatening to overload bookshelf. I've already divested of many old games and VCDs to friends in an effort to clear space, but books inherently occupy more cubic volume. Argh! What's wrong with using piles of hardcovers as a nightstand??? In a related topic, I really need to find a decent history book to read - am getting just a tad tired of fiction.

Nothing of major import in the world financial or current affairs news to merit much comment; although I do hope we see a second war on Iraq. It makes good popcorn viewing on CNN.

And.. that's the blog for today. Banal, mundane, lengthy, and preternaturally self-absorbed; ie. par for the course. Shall report on my trip down south in a few days. Sub umbra alarum tuarum.