book: Stuart Woods “Dead in the Water”

I read “New York Dead” back in 2008, enjoyed it and picked up a couple of others in this series then forgot about them.  So after “Mercury Falls” I turned to my shelves for inspiration and picked up  “Dead in the Water“.

Stuart Woods writes a lot of books, the ones I’ve stumbled in on are based around the Stone Barrington character.  This third novel (bum I missed one) in the series and sees Stone Barrington – which is obviously a name that can only belong to a fictional hero – is on holiday on the Caribbean island of St Mark’s.  However, it doesn’t all go to plan… While waiting for his girlfriend to arrive a beautiful woman arrives alone on a luxury yacht.  On her journey her husband had an accident (or did he) and she is charged with killing him (or is she) … well yes she is charged, but did she do it?

So Stone gets drawn in because the local politics seem to be railroading her and the judicial system seems to leave a lot to be desired….

Basically this book is a simple, straight forward, fast-moving thriller – but above all it is a page turner.  I picked this up and started reading it right after “Mercury Falls“(get it read it!) and finished this in two days flat – I’m a slow reader and it usually takes me a couple of weeks at least to get through a book.

book: Robert Kroese “Mercury Falls”

Certainly one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while.  This is a simple tale of the Apocalypse and some of the ‘people’ involved in trying to ensure it goes off as planned, or see that it doesn’t.  You see, the Apocalypse is just sort of kicking off according to the Apocalypse Accord worked out over many centuries by the two sides – Heaven and Hell.

However, not everybody is completely on board with the plan and it looks like there are a few factions who are trying to work against the Apocalypse happening.  Mainly by trying to kill the Antichrist, one Karl Grissom (a 37 year old pizza delivery guy who won the title of Antichrist in a book promotion and wasn’t fully aware that this meant he was the actual Antichrist).  The reasoning goes

“Can’t have an Apocalypse without an Antichrist.  That would be like The King and I without Yul Brynner”
“Yul Brynner died in 1985″
“And it hasn’t been the same since, has it?”

So, while a war in the middle east hots up to the start of the planned Apocalypse Christine, a journalist who mainly covers various cults who think the end of the world is about to happen, and Mercury, an anit-establishment angel who is avoiding playing his part in the Apocalypse end up trying to save Karl (The Antichrist) from other rogue (AWOL or ‘fallen’) angels who are trying to kill him.  Along the road they discover some double crossing is going on against the Apocalypse Accord and not everyone seems to want it to go according to plan.

This is a great book with some fantastic depictions of other-worldly bureaucracies in the ranks of angels who seem to simply follow orders by memo with the trust that someone higher up knows what is going on.  There are very funny moments, a nice complex plot where you really can’t figure out what is around the corner and some great characters.

If you enjoy authors like Christopher Moore, Douglas Adams or the movie Dogma, you’ll love this book.  There is just one problem, I couldn’t find an easy way of getting this in the UK as amazon.co.uk don’t have it but you can order from amazon.com or even easier you can read it online in various formats – full details here along with the first 12 chapters free.  http://mercuryfalls.net/

+ve or -ve

A couple of years ago I tried doing a blog once a week reflecting on good and bad things that happened that week, I’m going to try it again for a while.  The main difficulty with this sort of blog is the number of things that you just can’t name, like ‘friend called’ I’m not going to mention who but it might be something that really cheered my up (OK I’m assuming that a friend calling would appear in the +ve category).  Anyway, as I always try to remember the purpose of this blog is as a memo to myself and if others happen to read it and find it interesting because you know me or something I’ve written is of use then great, but be warned if you read the +ve/-ve posts they may be over cryptic and certainly I can’t see how interesting they could be:.

 

• +ve  listened to the entire Queen back catalog (apart from compilations and live stuff) at work this week via on Spotify!
• +ve  finishing another Pratchett novel: The Truth
• -ve   Halloween: got no sleep at all because of the number of party goers shouting in the street outside till well after 4am by which time I generally can’t get to sleep
• -ve   passed on some real hassle of a job to deal with which was probably avoidable
• -ve  had a head cold most of the week
• +ve  worked from home for two days to avoid traipsing into work with a cold (and got a few ’stuck’ projects moving)
• +ve  had a guest blog published on musicademy
• +ve  phone call from friend
• +ve  started watching ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip‘ (why the long name?)
• +ve  de-cluttering and decorating means chucking lots of stuff out and feels good
• +ve  caught up with one of my oldest friends and had a fantastic burger from Ketchup
• -ve   haven’t practiced bass for over a week!!
• -ve  Carol Service plans not where they should be by now, need a lot more work!
• +ve  I’ve built a secret passageway in my living room and it makes me smile every time I use it
• +ve  out with friends on Friday night, to Ketchup again and Grosvneor (first night out like this for months!)
• +ve  good to see friends visiting from Manchester
• -ve  didn’t get to Biblocafe enough this weekend
• +ve  finished decorating living room
• -ve  finished watching ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip‘ and there are no more seasons :-(
• -ve LOTS of tech problems at church this morning, again!
• +ve took Sunday evening off church (again)

movie: the men who stare at goats

A couple of months ago I saw a trailer for this movie, liked the trailer so got hold of the book, read the book and didn’t like it (review here) and now it was time at last to watch the movie.

I liked the movie.  I found it extremely funny, very quirky and entertaining. The movie tells the story of the U.S. Army’s First Earth Battalion which was an experimental unit to bring New Age theories into the army.  Soldiers practiced meditation, primal screams, remote viewing, etc. and ultimately tried to stop the heart of a goat by staring at it.

The movie gains over the book by having a coherent narrative to tie the various stories together, however it does let the book down (IMHO) by not showing how these experiments with the paranormal has led to more ‘legitimate’ military programs such as the psychological techniques being used for interrogation in the ‘War on Terror’.

Although this was an entertaining film in its own right, some of the biggest giggles came because the psychic spies also called themselves Jedi and this story is being told to Ewan McGregor with lines like “could I become a Jedi” “what does it mean to be a Jedi” etc.

Nice little film, but will be as good on the small screen as on the big one so wait till it comes along.

 

Food: Ketchup

In the ongoing tour of restaurants starting with a different letter of the alphabet we have reached ‘k’ and so Ketchup, in Ashton Lane.

Ketchup is a burger bar, but with an exceptional menu.  Not only are the burgers very good, but you can also choose venison, lamb, ostrich and pork.  They also have Kobe Beef, which is the legendary Japanese cows that are fed on beer and massaged…. sounded good, but I didn’t go for it.

I had “The Goodfella – Think you’re a wise guy? We pile on pepperoni slices, mozzarella cheese and balsamic-marinated tomatoes, then add red onions, romaine lettuce and an olive-herb mayonnaise”  (obviously without the cheese – because cheese is evil).

The food was fantastic, absolutely fabulous – fries to die for, salad perfectly dressed and delicious.  The atmosphere is nice, informal and a sort of 50s kitsch brought up to date.  On the down side the service was a little patchy as there seemed to be not enough people on even though it wasn’t that busy at 5:30 on a Tuesday evening.  We had to wait at the door with no staff anywhere in sight for two or three minutes then it took a long time to get served at each stage and they always opened with ‘has anyone… yet’ like no one knew who was supposed to look after our table.

That said the staff were friendly and helpful, the food arrived very quickly and no one was trying to push us out the door at the end of our meal so over all this really wasn’t a problem at all.

I would totally recommend Ketchup as the best burger ever!

Guest Blog on Musicademy site

I’m a guest blogger on the Musicademy site today.

Musicademy provides training resources for worship musicians, worship leaders and churches.  Among the resources are instructional DVDs and recently I’ve been trying to learn Bass guitar using their Beginners Worship Bass DVD.  It has been slow going because of my irregular practice, complete lack of any background in music and not really liking worship music much, but I will persevere.

Anyway, it is a privilege to blog for them about my passion, the integration of video in worship. If you read it, do let me know what you think.

Book: Terry Pratchett “The Truth”

My ongoing quest to work through the Pratchett back catalog continues.  I decided to read the books according to ‘type’ as described in this diagram and have worked through all the ‘Watch’ and ‘Death’ books as well as the odd other ones not specifically in sequence.  This book “The Truth” falls in the group of books under the heading Industrial Revolution and deals with the introduction of the printing press.

The dwarfs who run the press are in it for the money, and naturally their appearance in the city doesn’t go down well with the  guild of engravers for whom this new technology is obvious competition.  But who actually needs things printed in the city of Ankh Morpork where it is unusual for people to be able to read.

It turns out that what the city needs is a free press – though not free in every sense – and so is launched “The Ankh Moorpork Times: The truth shall make ye free . Extra” paper.

Concepts of journalism are new and developing with tough decisions about what exactly is news – root vegetables which look like …ehh “bits” always seems to go down well, but political intrigue and investigation doesn’t seem to sell so well.  Indeed, in time a red-top competitor turns up, which appears (with the help of CMOT Dibbler) to be simply ‘making up’ stories!

With Pratchett technology tends to come down to boxes with imps in, such as the iconograph, which is a small box with a hole in one side which is covered over.  When the iconograph is put in front of a subject and the hole is uncovered for a short time, the imp inside paints a picture of what it has seen through the hole.  In The Truth, the Times hires Otto as an iconographer, a vampire, but one who has signed ‘the pledge’ so is trying to go without blood.  Otto is developing new ways of making iconographs in the dark by using the light given off by a salamander when startled, the only drawback being the effect this light has on vampires often causing Otto to crumble into a rather inconvenient pile of dust after taking a picture.

This is Pratchett at the top of his game explaining and expanding how new technology is developed on discworld, there is a plot to take over the city and Captain Vimes and The Watch are just around every corner.

Why blog?

I’ve always looked on blogging as a personal record for myself of what I’ve been doing, ‘reviews’ are more reminders of places I’ve eaten, movies, books, etc.  to remind myself as much as anything else.  It is also nice to share the odd and quirky things that you find in life or online.

I’ve user various ‘rules’ to blog such as trying to blog once a day, trying not to blog for a month, doing a weekly summary of good things and bad things from that week (might do that again it was very cathartic).  Anyway, one thing I’ve always been slightly confused about is how any of it is of interest to anyone – if it is I am very pleased but I think if I started to think about writing for an ‘audience’ it would change how I approached a post.

So a few weeks ago I was surprised to get an email from an author offering me a copy of his book to review.  There was an outline of the book and a link to a web site with a sample chapter and it did look like a book I would enjoy.  It also looked legitimate rather than a scam so I gave him my address to post the book to.

It arrived today.

I do hope it is good, as I would feel very guilty about getting a freebie and then having to give it a bad review.

DeepRiver web site

After many months of neglect I have finally managed to redesign the Deep River web pages.  These now reflect much more what we do with DeepRiver, rather than selling video, photos, DVD’s, etc. we are better placed to actually go along to a church or event and run the visuals for them or train them how to integrate visuals into what they do.

Also, just wrote up a little about how we used an overhead camera at St Silas this weekend on my “Christian Visualist” blog.

Action Movie wish list… The Expendables

If you could choose the cast of an Action Movie how would it compare to the cast list for ‘The Expendables‘ due for release next year?

Sylvester Stallone	Jason Statham
Jet Li	Dolph Lundgren
Mickey Rourke	Bruce Willis
Arnold Schwarzenegger	Eric Roberts

OK, so a lot of them are past their prime, and no doubt some will be cameo roles but still this is some line up!  It would have been good to see Bruce Lee or Patrick Swayze around for this sort of thing and I hope it is a decent film so they don’t just make fools of themselves.