This morning, Anno-Dracula, Tales of Phantasia, other readings, new music

(08:52:15 CDT)

This morning, Anno-Dracula, Tales of Phantasia, other readings, new music

Drinking a cup of Twinings' "Christmas tea". It says it has the flavors and spices of Christmas. Not sure what flavors and spices the Brits consider Christmas, but it's good. In American, our spices for fall and winter are cinnamon and nutmeg and maybe, if you are good, ginger. That's it. Three "warm" spices that go into every cake and pie and cookie and Yankee Candle and potpourri and every hot chocolate totty. The fact that his seems to have currant and some other stuff? Awesome.

I am listening to a band called The Kokoon. The CD is Berlin. I have no idea where this came from or why I have it, but it's good. I don't even pretend to know music genres anymore, every time I get a grip on them, it slides away, like some sort of elusive snake toy. I guess you would call this "slightly dark new wave"? Oh, look, here's an official The Kokoon website. I don't see any mention of their genre on here, but I notice the track listening for Berlin is slightly different from what I have. It puts "How Do I Work This?" as the last track. On mine, it is track 2 and the rest are pushed down a track number (except the first one). That might be a clue of where I got the CD from.

Speaking of music, I had about forty extra dollars in my paycheck this morning and picked up some new, generally cello-centric, music from Amazon MP3. I'm going to burn it to a data CD and take to work with me (in a few minutes) and I'm excited by it. I love the cello and I find that entirely too little interest is shown in the various "new classical" genres. Again, I don't know musical genres, I just guess at them, but whatever you call Zoe Keating or The Kronos Quartet. The albums, by the way, are Zoe Keating's One Cello x 16 (EP) and the LP by the same name (but with different tracks and the word Natoma appended to it), Rasputina's Oh Perilous World, Philip Glass and Wendy Sutter's Songs and Poems for Solo Cello, and The Kronos Quartet (w/ Wu Man) playing Terry Riley's The Cusp of Magic. I think that's the right pedigree on the last one.

As I mentioned a few posts back, I am trying to get some rereads in this year, and just finished rereading Anno Dracula, a 1992 vampire/metahistory novel by Kim Newman. It assumes a) that Dracula was the victor at the end of the eponymous novel featuring him, and 2) that most Victorian (well, the fantastical offshoots, generally) and Vampire fiction share the same basic universe. You get Dracula, Mycroft Holmes, Jekyll/Hyde, Francis Varney, Jack the Ripper (and his victims), and more all rolled up into one narrative. For a list of all the various historical and literature figures that show up for at least cameos or mentions: the Anno Dracula wikipedia page. I read this novel about 1993 or so, mostly with Dracula, alone, under my belt, and so missed a lot of the references. I think knowing 98% of the things the novels refers to is almost to its detriment, as it comes dangerously close to cleverness over substance. It still makes a good read and a strong variation on a Jack the Ripper plot. The ending and it's romance are wonderfully up in the air, which I like, and the creeping horror over Britian is as scary as you want it to be (for instance, it is mentioned that political prisoners are sent to a prison designed to raise them as cattle, and notes that Beatrice Potter and Sherlock Holmes, amongst others, are there). I am glad that I reread it. A lot of times, novels are better on a reread. The first time through, you are a bit nervous about where it is going and it is not hard to get lost and trip over turns of phrase. The second time through, you are able to go faster or slower as you need, and you see a lot of things in light of the ending. Just like movies and shows where you catch some jokes or references only on the second or third watching, books play by identical rules.

One thing interesting to me is the concept of vampire bloodlines. Vampire: the Masquerade had been out about a year when this book came out, and I have no idea if it made it to England. Is this one of those things where two people came up with the same concept (more than one strain of vampire, with subsequent generations taking on characteristics from their "parents" so that each generation is more and more different from each other) or is there a third source that talks about vampire bloodlines? Or did Kim Newman get ahold of a copy of Masquerade? He doesn't mention it in the acknowledgements, or I overlooked it if he does, and I'm curious.

My current reads are Thomas Pynchon's new novel (Inherent Vice), the first issue of The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, and Brian Keene's Urban Gothic.

I am also playing Tales of Phantasia. While it is a fun RPG, and I like it, I have to call it out for having every single thing that can be bad about RPGs in it. It has needlessly yo-yo-riffic fetch quests (go here! go back and get this first! now go here! here! over there! back to the first city! now to the second! back to the first! now complete the quest!), cut-scenes where character painfully choose the worst possible outcome, and sidequests that do little more than give you a percentage bump towards completion (if that). Oh, and the obvious traitor character. I just reached something of a major turning point and the storyline seems to have changed directions, so I am hoping that the first few hours were the game purposely trying to be a cliche RPG and now it's going to throw some fresh newness on me. I'll let you know.

Ok, time to get ready for work. It's going to be a hot walk already, and I put it off any more, I'll pay the price.

Si Vales, Valeo

PS: Strange, but something seems up with most social sites this morning. Livejournal, Twitter, and Facebook are all having serious glitches, or seem to be down. Some sort of attack? Who knows? I just thought it was interesting.

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