I Am Mine

Have you heard the song I Am Mine? If not, don't worry, you're not missing much and it's just this one line I'd like to draw your attention to.

North is to South what the clock is to time

What? No it isn't. North is the opposite to south. A clock is an instrument for measuring time. Those are not equivalent relationships at all. North is to a compass as time is to a clock, maybe. North is to south as the future is to the past.

This line stands out to me every time I hear this song and it's the only line I actually know, because it's a pretty forgettable song, but that line is so dumb that you can't help but notice it. Maybe that's the idea. That line is deliberately wrong just so you'll notice the song exists. If so, well played Pearl Jam.

But actually I think Pearl Jam are just idiots.

Windows 8

Since my main operating system is Linux Mint and I only use Windows to play games, I hadn't actually bothered upgrading from Windows XP until now. But Saints Row IV is going to require DirectX 10 and so I needed a new operating system. And you know what? It's OK.

I just noticed something about Joss Whedon

You know Joss Whedon, right? The guy responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, etc. You've probably seen TV shows or movies he's worked on or created. But have you actually seen the guy himself?

Yahoo! Cares

I got an email recently telling me that Flickr has new features or something. As far as I was aware I had never used Flickr and didn't give two shits about its new features, so I went to the site to try to delete my account and unsubscribe. This proved more trouble than expected.

Facebook's new Scrabble

Recently, the Scrabble game available on the Facebook changed to a new version. I'm not sure why but I assume they think this one will be more profitable somehow. That doesn't bother me, I have no problem with them making money when they're providing me with a free game. What does bother me though is that the new Scrabble is shit.

"Indie" games suck

There, I said it. We've all been thinking it, but people just keep telling us that these games like Braid or Dear Esther are these wonderful stories told through a unique medium or whatever the fuck they go on about, but it's a load of shit.

Buried Hope

My first thought on finishing this book was "Where's the rest?" It doesn't really seem to actually finish, it's more like the author just stopped writing at that point and gave up.

What is there is pretty good, but I can't really say much about it, because basically all you're left with at the end is questions. Maybe it's supposed to be part one of a serialised story, but the Amazon page says nothing about that, so I'm judging it as a stand-alone story.

If a part two appears I'll almost certainly read that, but until it does I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. Read Wool Omnibus instead.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Hercule Poirot, #20)

Another great Poirot book, this one with a nice locked-room mystery with a clever solution.

Appointment with Death (Hercule Poirot, #19)

One of the better Poirot stories. All the pieces fall together nicely, but without anything being too obvious.

Kafka on the Shore

Odd. Easy reading and I liked bits of it, but I'm not really sure what the point was, and I found it dragged a bit in places, particularly when I was more interested in what was going on with Mr Nakata and Hoshino and instead it gave me Kafka being introspective in the forest. The incest stuff also seemed pretty unnecessary.

It wasn't hard to read and it was entertaining in places, but I don't know that I really got anything much out of it, or what I was even supposed to get.