All you need to know about the story is that it boils down to a basic Lord of the Rings meets Star Wars* fantasy epic with an teenage überemo, human/elf-hybrid dragon rider as protagonist. You know the type of story I’m talking about: walking (and flying) around a lot in Middle Earth Alagaësia, an evil overlord in a remote mountain stronghold that needs to be overthrown by a rebel army of elves, dwarfs and orcs Urgals, magic, epic battles and unpronounceable names. Not a lot of singing though.

If I were an editor and this book would come across my desk, I’d suggest the following:

1. Burn your thesaurus, and change all the big words meant to impress your readers back to something that actually makes sense.
2. Omit needless words.
3. Likewise, omit scenes that don’t help the story along. For example: dragon rider boy runs back to the rebel army, and comes across a hermit spellcaster in an abandoned tower. He does some gardening, gets a meal out of it, listens to the magician rant, and runs away. While this guy may prove useful in Book IV, he is absolutely insignificant for the rest of this story. Another example: while Yoda Oromis is explaining something important that might actually help them overthrow Darth Vader Galbatorix, a hummingbird flies by to feast on some leftover lunch. Just some random observation in an onslaught of exposure.
4. Speaking of exposure: show me, don’t tell me.

Bottom line: this book should have been shorter. The small amount of plot doesn’t need 700 pages. When Book IV in the trilogy is eventually released, I predict more filler**. It wouldn’t surprise me when both books could be condensed to a much better single volume. We’ll see. Meanwhile, Brisingr drags the series down from “derivative and mediocre fantasy genre piece” to “I wish I hadn’t bothered with the first part, but now I’m in too deep to consider stopping.”

Christopher Paolini — Brisingr —or— The Seven Promises of Eragon Shadeslayer and Saphira Bjartskular

Eragon stared at the dark tower of stone wherein hid the monsters who had murdered his uncle, Garrow

* Disclosure: I haven’t seen any of the Star Wars movies (nor was I planning to rectify that), so I’m just going along with what the other geeks are saying.
** Also, I predict dragon rider boy defeating the evil king, him getting the elf-girl after all and then sailing away into the sunset from whatever the equivalent of Grey Havens will be called in this world.

Today, I was hit by an overwhelming dose of “who gives a shit anyway?” and just stopped trying.

Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing contains a wide range of short stories (mostly available in other volumes), speeches talks, essays and book introductions, all of them related to the art of writing. It was released by the American Book-of-the-Month Club as a companion of sorts to On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, which was released about the same time.

And actually, it’s kinda appropriate that I finished this book just now. The last few days I’ve considered taking part in NaNoWriMo, which would mean that I’d try to write a 50K word novel in November. But as I have no ideas worth pursuing at the moment, and I’m going to spend a couple of days in Germany next week which would eat some valuable time, I guess I’ll be putting that off some more.

(I also considered participating in NaNoReMo 2008, but believe it or not, there isn’t a single copy of Lolita to be found in Amersfoort.)

But yeah, as I’ve mentioned before, taking up some creative writing is something that I plan to do ever so often. And every time, I find some lame excuse not to put in some effort. Maybe I should put it on my to do list for next year. The thing is, I seem to need a deadline, or as we’d call in Dutch, a stick behind the door. This freewheeling is getting me nowhere.

But back to the book. I’ll have to confess that I didn’t actually exactly finished the whole book. It contains a lengthy excerpt (over 100 pages) from King’s book on the horror genre, Danse Macabre, which I skipped completely. That is the only one by King that I started in and didn’t finish, on account of me nog giving a rats’ ass about how horror works in movies and literature. Eventually, I might give it another try, but right now, I can’t be bothered.

It’s first line is from the introduction written by King’s colleague, friend and “Talisman” co-writer, Peter Straub:

Stephen King — Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing

Let us deal with a potential embarrassment, or what may seem at least a conflict of interest right away.

“Midnight” was Meat Loaf’s contractual obligation record to Epic / Cleveland International, and was recorded amidst an orgy of legal and financial troubles. In an interview with the Herald Sun in 2006, mr. Loaf claimed it was the worst album he’s ever done, blaming the songwriting and production. But he only has himself to blame for that: even I wasn’t happy with the stupid songs I’d written, he says in his autobiography, To Hell and Back. Eventually I turned to Tom Dowd, who was producing, and said, ‘Look, you finish it. I’m outta here.’ Tom Dowd, whose credits are a mile long and include classics like “Dusty in Memphis”, supposedly pieced the album together using demo takes.

In the same interview, Meat claims that both “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” (later recorded by Bonnie Tyler and Air Supply) were written for him, to use on “Midnight”. But as his record company was anti-Steinman at the time, they wouldn’t fund the recording of those tracks, because his epic songs came with epic budgets. I have my reservations about these claims.

Anyway, on the the singles. Three tracks were released as singles (one of them twice), and every batch of singles contains an alternative version or a remix, a live track and once even a previously unreleased track. As you might notice, these alternative, remixed versions are not altogether that different. Just some different guitar parts or a synth-intro and stuff like that. Unless noted, I’m talking about the 12″ version. Dive into the archive for more details.

An alternative version of If You Really Want To was the leading single. On the B-side we find the album version of “Keep Driving” and the previously unreleased track “Lost Love”. Why it wasn’t included in favor of, say, “Priscilla” or “You Never Can Be Too Sure About The Girl” remains a mystery to this day. Apart from the Australian edition of “Hits Out Of Hell” and an obscure box set from South Africa, this song was never issued on CD.
→ Download If You Really Want To (alternative version)
→ Download Lost Love (previously unreleased)

The second single was the album version of Razor’s Edge, and was coupled with “You Never Can Be Too Sure About The Girl” and an ‘alternative version’ of “Don’t You Look at Me Like That”. The song is a duet with Dale Krantz-Rossington, and features her husband Gary Rossington (founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd) on guitar. I can’t quite figure out what it is that is so alternative about it, but I guess that you, dear Lazyweb*, will tell me that.
→ Download Don’t You Look at Me Like That (duet with Dale Krantz-Rossington) (alternative version)

Then came a a “Special 4-Track Tour Edition” of the album’s title track, in at least four different versions: a 7″ version spread over two records, a regular 12″ single, and 7″ and 12″ picture discs. Apart from remixed versions of “Midnight” and “Fallen Angel”, all versions included the album version of “Dead Ringer for Love” (labeled as ‘long version’) and a live version of “Bat Out Of Hell”, recorded live at Wembley Arena, april 1982. For the 7″ this take was severely edited down.
→ Download Bat Out Of Hell (live version)
→ Download Midnight at the Lost and Found (remix)
→ Download Fallen Angel (remix)

The fourth and final single was once again “Razor’s Edge”, but this time remixed. The b-sides are “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” (abruptly cut off before the play-by-play on the 7″) an “Read ‘Em and Weep”.
→ Download Razor’s Edge (remixed version)

Worth mentioning is that the 1993 release Twelve Inch Mixes is a total scam. It claims to include the single versions of both “If You Really Want To” and “Razor’s Edge”, while in both cases the album version appears. Which makes it essentially a worthless release.

* Let me explain this one more time: I ask a question, and you, dear bunch of readers collectively known as lazyweb, bust your collective hive-mind to provide me with a satisfactory answer. The last two times I asked something, I got no responses whatsoever. Do not fail me this time. [back]

We’re crusaders of the heart
And going all the way is just a start

Happy birthday, Jim.

Once upon a time, back in 2003, I was sitting on my knees, putting stuff out of sight under my desk. I made an attempt to get up, and failed miserably. My left knee locked up in an uncomfortable position and hurt like hell.  Luckily for me, my mother was nearby fixing the curtains, so she could take me to my doctor, who at the time was an inconvenient 60 kilometers away. Don’t ask me how, but somehow my knee came back to some sort of working order, and I found a doctor closer to home.

Over the next five years, that knee would be mostly doing exactly what it should. But then I’d make a wrong move, and it’d all go wrong. It would ache and hurt and be annoying for a week or two, and then it’d be alright for another length of time. So that mostly wasn’t much of a problem.

Until April 16th of this year. Five minutes before the end of the last of the six games of volleyball for that night, everything broke down. And this time, it wasn’t over in a week. Nor was it in two. So about two months later I had an appointment with my doctor, and I told him more or less exactly the same I told him the last time I saw him for that particular knee two and a half years earlier, and this time I got an instant referral to the orthopedic surgeon at the hospital. (I guess that my trip to the emergency / weekend doctor’s service the previous saturday for a preemptive second opinion might have had something to do with it.)

June 3rd I woke up and my knee felt like it hadn’t felt in weeks. Figures. But since I had an appointment at the hospital, I went anyway. The x-ray showed nothing, and my knee wouldn’t be provoked into any kind of shenanigans. (Well, until the next morning…) But since I was having problems for such a long time, they set me up for a MRI-scan, as that might show more. And it did. My meniscus seemed to be fine, but there was indeed a loose bit of cartilage roaming around. Nothing that a little arthroscopic surgery couldn’t fix.

And that happened on July 21st. After they jammed a big freakin needle up my spine, I was laying there on that operating table while some people were poking around inside my knee. They took out the loose bits, cleaned up the place where it broke off, and cut of a piece of my meniscus, as it was hanging loose anyway. And as there was almost no cartilage left on the outer side of my knee, the surgeon thought it would be best to drill some holes in my femur, so some stem cells could flow out and form a layer of so called scar-cartilage. Well, he’s the expert, he knows what he’s doing and what’s best given the circumstances, so, ehm, who am I to argue.

As I was laying in the recovery room, one tiny bit of information began to work itself to the font of my brain, and started craving some attention. I wasn’t allowed to put any weight on my left knee for six weeks.As you might realize, that’s quite inconvenient if you live all by yourself, on the second floor, with no elevator.

So I did what any smart mamma’s boy would do, and I went on a camping trip and spend the next eight weeks at my parent’s. And while that was definitely a much better idea than trying to wing it here in Amersfoort, it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either. After living (more or less) on my own for eight years now, it started to clash a few weeks in. I was glad to be back home, once I was allowed to stand on both feet again.

The recovery and revalidation process is mostly a cakewalk on easy street. Once the epidural and painkillers had worked their magic, I can’t really say it has hurt a lot. Okay, it still hurts a bit after that evil witch of a physical therapist has forced me through another boot camp worked her evil mojo on me, but if I take it slow, I can more or less do anything.

Earlier today, I went for the second check up with the surgeon who manhandled my knee. And he said that everything looked alright, it still might take some time until everything’s back to normal and I can play volleyball again, but there was no need for me to come back there again. It wasn’t as much an accomplishment as the day I was finally able to ditch those crutches, but it still was one of the best messages I got this year.

So there you have it: the whole story of what happened to my knee. Sure, I still need some more physical therapy to get my knee back to strength, but I think I’m mostly done with the whole episode. Time to start looking for some new opportunities, instead of being held back by some physical restrictions.

The book opens with the boy we come to know as Nobody Owens getting away before the man Jack can kill him, just as he murdered his parents and sister. He escapes to the nearby graveyard, where the ghosts take him in, raise and educate him, and keep him safe from the dangers that lurks in the land of the living.

With it’s young protagonist it may be marketed as a young adult novel, but it’s just a wonderful book. It’s funny, it doesn’t get sappy and it got quite some thrills (the man Jack may have failed at first, but he does not give up). Labeling it as ‘The Jungle Book set in a graveyard’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s a magnificent story, and I highly recommend it.

Neil Gaiman — The Graveyard Book

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

En daarmee heeft het Reformatorisch Dagblad het bij het rechte eind. Want zoals iedereen die tijdens de biologielessen waar de evolutietheorie behandeld werd een beetje opgelet heeft weet, is de evolutietheorie de wetenschappelijke verklaring van het ontstaan van soorten. Darwin’s boek heet ook niet voor niets On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. De evolutietheorie doet geen uitspraken over het ontstaan van leven op aarde. Het ontstaan van leven is een complex vraagstuk waar nog geen sluitende wetenschappelijke theorie voor is. Dit is ook absoluut geen nieuws.

Evolutie is een feit. Dat er volwassenen zijn die dit met hun volle verstand, ongeacht de overdaad aan bewijs en met de kennis die nu beschikbaar is blijven ontkennen en achter tweeduizend jaar dogma aan willen lopen, soit. Moeten zij weten.

Waar ik echter niet zo goed tegen kan, zijn groeperingen zoals Stichting De Oude Wereld—de organisatoren van het eerder genoemde symposium—die onder het motto want kinderen hebben recht op informatie en een eigen mening ‘het bijbels ontstaansmodel’ als wetenschappelijk alternatief voor de evolutietheorie als lesmateriaal aan kinderen wil voorschotelen.

Ik mag toch hopen dat de eigen mening waar kinderen recht op hebben gebaseerd zal zijn op correcte en verifieerbare informatie, en niet op overduidelijk niet-wetenschappelijke interpretaties van een van de vele scheppingsmythes.