Monthly Archives: September 2005

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God is Dead. Meet the Kids.

I finished Anansi Boys last night, in two sessions. Now I am in that unhappy state of mind that is brought about upon the realisation that I would probably have to wait fo a long, long while before a new Neil Gaiman novel comes out.

Gaiman had already pointed out that the book was more humour than fantasy, and rightly so. There was the friendly Douglas Adamsy-PG Wodehousey narrator’s voice throughout the writing, and the observational gems that Gaiman indulges, the kind of opinions about everyday things that make you go – “Damn, now why didn’t I think of that?” I have been thinking of a way to write about the book without giving away any spoilers. Probably the best way to make you go and read it is to repeat the tagline – “God is dead. Meet the kids.” and to say that in the book, much like all other Gaiman books, Things are Not What They Seem, and Events Happen in Different Layers of Reality. I think it would also help if you read up on Kwaku Anansi, the trickster-spider-god character of African myth. I had bought a collection of Anansi stories off a sale sometime back, and could not but help smiling at the entertaining Gaiman spins on the myths.

It’s self-referentially humorous. I mean, just look at these lines:
Daisy made a noise. It was not a yes-noise and it was not a no-noise. It was a I-know-somebody-just-said-something-to-me-and-if-I-make-a-noise-maybe-they-will-go-away sort of noise.
Carol had heard that noise before.
“oy”, she said. “Big bum. Are you going to be much longer. I want to do my blog.”
Daisy processed the words. Two of them sank in. “Are you saying I’ve got a big bum?”
“No,”, said Carol. “I’m saying that it’s getting late, and I want to do me blog. I’m going to have him shagging a supermodel in the loo of an unidentified London nightspot.”

I must have spent three minutes, probably more, just laying back on the bed and laughing hard after reading these lines.

The version of the book I bought, the British trade paperback, has a deleted scene, a scanned excerpt from Gaiman’s diary ( which contains such entertaining information as an idea to begin every chapter in the book with a punchline of a popular joke, which was vetoed later) and an interview with the writer. On an aside: How much did I pay for it? Nothing at all. Bought it with the book coupons collected from KQA quizzes. Muhuhahahahaha.

Also picked up an Iomega 160 GB External Hard Drive yesterday. Looks really cool, but has an American 3-pin plug, so I need a converter for that, even though my spike-buster does have a socket that works with it. I need to work everywhere, that’s why.

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Further Wish-list Fulfilment

You get all kinds of DVDs at National Market. Especially blockbusters, the kind of big-budget movies that go on to make a lot of money and win awards and all that. All three of the Lord Of The Rings movies have been available at National Market, and in different formats too. You can get the fullscreen versions, the widescreen versions, all three movies in one disc, all three movies PLUS Spiderman 1 and 2 on the same disc, or if you are really feeling adventurous, all three LotR movies and the three Harry Potter movies in the same disc.

Me? I was feeling a bit more adventurous.

And a good thing I was, too.

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I was reading a book the other night in my room, and as is my habit, enqueued a couple of albums on Winamp. The volume was moderate, the book was funny enough to get me laughing loudly at times (note to self: more Tom Sharpe. ), and there was a ready supply of fruit juice and Haldiram™ Bhujiya near the couch to get me going for quite sometime.

Except I kept getting a quivery feeling of dread every now and then.

It was the music. The band in question was Coil, a group I had heard being mentioned reverentially in lots of places. Curiousity made me seek out a couple of their albums. Creepy, to say the least. Layers and layers of atmospheric voices and sounds, distorted, breathy, disjointed at times – all of which makes for tracks that mess with your head if you aren’t paying too much attention. I just had to keep Wilt aside, and listen to Coil with reverential attention for the rest of the album. I like it when a band does that.

Did some reading up on Coil’s music and there is this impressive list of techniques used by them: (All information from the Wikipedia article on Coil)

As well as such exotic instruments as:


Listening to an album called “Hanzo Steel”, a collection of remixes of the songs from Kill Bill – as expected, ranges from outrageously cheesy to catchy. “My Baby Shot Me Down” is largely unchanged for the first bit, and then there is a beat that could have been much better with a bit of thinking. What’s nice is the snippets of dialogue from various martial arts movies – I could idenfity Sonny Chiba from “The Bodyguard”. “Six million ways to die, choose one.”, – sounds freaky. “Battles Without Honour or Humanity” is completely screwed with vocals, while the theme from Twisted Nerve, juxtaposed with “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” ( the song that plays when the bride fights with O-Ren Ishii ) sounds extremely cool. The Ironside theme is masticated beyond belief, but manages to stay in “catchy” territory. The best bits are the dialogue snippets that are scattered throughout the album. Nothing I would spend money on, but good to listen to on a lazy afternoon.

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Indulgences

So bought five box-sets of the first five seasons of The Simpsons, over at National Market. Good thing I did too, I go there again three days later and all copies are sold out.

Found volume 6 of Negima at Blossom, and picked that up. Had just finished volume 5 the day before, so much rejoicing. Also picked up the first two volumes of Genshiken. A trip to Magazines(which happens to be the definitive magazine shop in India, with a fair stock of back issues and even *boggle* 2000AD comics) yielded quite a stock of Wire, Mojo and Uncut *with* CDs. Wire releases a yearly 2-disc compilation called “The Wire Tapper”, chockful of undiscovered music – the last time I had bought one was in 2003 – volume 9, for full price, let me add, and that was the first time I heard Múm, Sigur Ros, Sonic Youth and Amon Tobin. That was also the CD in which I heard the weirdest song ever, called Tsuginepu To Ittemita by this three-man band called Asa Chang and Jun-Ray. Trust me, you have to listen to this piece to figure out how weird it is. (Click here for a link to a delightful video by this band. Quicktime and WMV formats)

Bought Wire Tapper Volume 12 this time, and there is a comprehensive track-listing here. Can’t say I’ve heard of any of the outfits before.

Bought seven magazine with discs in all. Mojo had some cool Soul and Punk cds, Uncut had tracks compiled by REM and Keith Richards, among others. Guess what, REM loves Bill Hicks too. And each for 100 Rs, hoo-hah!

Been doing some nightly Double Bill movies for quite sometime now. Stuff like watching two movies by the same director back to back – did Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q and City of Lost Souls sometime back, David Lynch’s Eraserhead and The Lost Highway, Takeshi Kitano’s Boiling Point and Violent Cop, Bigas Luna’s Jamon, Jamon and The Ages of Lulu ( this was on a night and a morning, but that’s acceptable, I guess). Of course, nothing beats watching all six Lone Wolf and Cub movies back to back in a single day. Hyuk.

Watched Conan The Barbarian again after a long time. Mostly because of my Finnish friend, who suggested that some scenes ought to be savoured as they get better with time. Sample this:

Warrior Bigshot: Tell me, what is best in life?
Warrior Trainee: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcon on your wrist, wind in your hair!
Warrior Bigshot: Wrong! Tell me, Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Warrior Bigshot: That is good.

Try saying that dead-pan, as only a man with a bad East Asian accent can say, and try to respond the way you think Ah-nuld would respond. Try. Try not to laugh. Not possible, right? Especially the part when he goes “lamentation”. If there’s a Hemant Birje Award for WAH! (Woody and Ham, people, don’t forget) acting, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan bags it.

That said, it would be so seriously cool to have a Conan movie series that tells the story the way it is. Robert E Howard was a pulp God, man. A movie based on Conan’s life, beginning with his career as a thief and ending in him being crowned king would make for an enviable franchise. Heck, they could even use the Marvel comics as storyboards!

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