first time i've read scalzi. his first ever novel, written to see if he could write, yes, he can. it's reasonably paced, funny, slightly kooky and yeah pretty well thought out.
aliens who look very ugly and smell awful want assistance being introduced to humans, where would they go. 
hollywood.
i don't know, this book has everything going for it yet i was disappointed, i will have to read another scalzi novel to make my mind up about him but for no real reason i can think of this one didn't do it for me.

dark, science fiction noir, dystopian, chaldlereque, lean and mean with frequent violence, the new york future we all don't want where an ex garbageman is now an assassin currently under contract to an evangelical fundamentalist christian personality who has invented a new type of heaven. 
is it good, yeah for what it is but it's not my fave type of science fiction, neither is it my fave type of  novel, the characters are all pretty much unredeemable stereotypes, the plot slightly predictable. its an easy read, well put together with an interesting take on virtual reality but adam strnberghs novel is written for the movies not for lovers of literature and this is where it struggles. it's probably going to be a great film, snappy dialogue, lots of blood and fights, some special effects but at the end of the book i felt unsatisfied.  

old lonely captain mission wanders the nether worlds, betwixt tangents of expression, some fading hope, some glimmering prize, you gotta keep that goblet overflowing mission, don't get pulled into regret.
regret, how strange to have no regrets, what kind of life is that? charmed, sheltered or dishonest, it's extraordinary when people say they have no regrets, are they lying, surely they would have at least one?
me, i have a few dozen but it's okay, sometimes they haunt me, but mostly they don't.
so, i been playing 'static' a lot, enjoying it, seems to suit my moods, i watched the rain, my garden enjoyed the soaking, i feigned indifference, the dark skies, the massive rain cloud, the world outside waterlogged as i watched it all fall. tiny frogs jumped across my deck, some birds flew by looking for shelter, a lone kookaburra sits on my gate in a short interval between downpours. he cocks his head acknowledging me, hoping for a slice of bacon. the best i can do is a soy strip, sorry bird, i'm not your bacon kinda guy. 
my plants look happy, they give off that happy aura of nutrition and health. i hope my fern sprouts some new fronds, it looks really dead. some one told me it's the chemicals in the water, which rain does not possess, hence i can't water my garden as much as i would like. it's best nature look after them. i planted a few cacti to one side, they seem to be growing well, chasing the sun as does my aloe vera plants which have been resurrected.

anti social media is the future, isolated sites, one person controls everything, no comments, no interaction, in fact the site should be restricted from view open only to those who can hack their way through. 
my thoughts on the internet, the internet makes information flow faster, but the information get's proportionally dumber, thus people think they are smart but are in actual fact brainwashed zombies.
i take a photograph, attribute a quality to it, send it out with some memetic intention and if it's controversial enough to be infectious the boundary between lies and truth relinquish meaning. i make a statement, put it in quotation marks against a photograph of some dead respected face, and people attribute the quote to the face without checking or verification. 
the mentality slides over into all media because the verification process is dormant, nothing is true everything is permitted. the assassin is the medium itself, a war machine committing soft terrorism, infiltrating, mythologising and cutting up information, pasting it together in some bastard truth, illegitimacy runs rampant, the kingdom is forsaken, the war on terror is the same thing as the war on error.
social media self promotion, mostly lies, mostly fear, selling stuff, creating itself, self perpetuating nonsense, a distraction from the self.

the perfect images adorn this release for the aural journey of the apocryphacal collection of music within, some of these songs are whimsical abstract expressions, sketches of some invoked emotive landscape, glimpses of times past, future moments, transient space, static indeed, whispers within, transmission, live wire, captain mission receiving, loud and clear.
fragments of memories wash over me, activated dna collected past life memories, while these may be fictions, some come on so strong i can't help by attach some significance to their impact. it's a diverse affair, a compilation of ambience, commissioned songs, soundtracks and a strange cover of an alice cooper song, nothing really holds the songs together except for the centrifugal genius of sk.
let's investigate the whispers.
'flummoxed' kicks of with the kind of classic eighties groove i'm particularly fascinated with, i would have liked words, some poetry or spoken word but it pumps along and invites you inside the wreckage of the piano, the haunting vocal of the next song, that voice calling out 'come inside' and now i want that song to go on for so much longer, the sublime piano, simple, elegance fades fast just as the guitar gets interesting. was it just a ghost i heard? 
'the weird sisters' takes me to south east asia, a trio of black pyjama clad assassins, sisters trained by the khmer rouge, young killers with long swords moving silently through the jungle and ruins of ancient ankor ruins, the place over grown by dense vegetation, alien heat beating down on dark skin under the eye of towering buddha encased by vine.
a song arises in 'debbie and james' and i read this was written by someone else, it's very good, i really like the words and steve delivers them in some kind of languid style, the word's seem to slip away from his mouth like a dandelion being blown in the wind, spores in all directions, nifty guitars some bass notes that feel like dreams. 
'persian garden' the sound of strange arabian instruments, plucked harps, string vibration, there's an ambient pad at work, and my muscles start to relax, tension dissipates from my body, i'm slipping away now, time can't hold me. quite beautiful, almost narcotic peace descends, i wish i could sleep for a thousand and one nights. 
where doth tranquility lay?
the next number comes on like a wave of sinister western science, 'deserted exstacies,' it's forebodingly bringing me back to my body, short and slightly disturbing a transient moment, connection of vessels into the much softer 'flock' another ambient piece but almost the complete opposite of the previous song, this has an oriental mystical warmth i'm at ease with, it washes over me, soft reds and purples, some orange colour bathes me as i hear those chimes.
another song in 'crooked mile' the words blend into one another, i'm loosing myself, imagining a walk along the cliff, down clovelly to bondi, i remember my cat 'houdini' when steve mentions a cat. suddenly i'm feeling emotional, outta nowhere! i loved that cat, such sadness from divorce, sorrow slips out i guess, occasionally. 'we can go somewhere, nice' steve sings, i smile.
lovely simple piano playing along, plonk plonk plonk, i like piano. i like steve's playing, i wish he'd play a lot more, maybe do some piano gigs, in a suit with a candle. 
'elegant europe' feels out of place, i love the piano and the almost brass feel it generates, it is very european in a sense but it washes over me fast sending me into the 'fragments of a vase' to which i have immediate affinity, alien music, this is what we need on those sci fi movies. 
i've left earth now, orbiting some sexy purple planet, flirting with anterian women and those girls from pandorax 7. we watch the moons rise over the vortexian sea, we smoke alien weed and make love under the aqua moons. i'll stay here, thanks man.
'poison' had to google the original, i hated it! whatever happened to alice cooper, he was so cool, 'i wanna be elected' had a great video as well as being a great song. i recall it as a child, alice in a room dressed in a white suit with a pet chimp, and a room full of cash and they leap about singing, 'elected.' 
here we have steve doing some sort of elizabethan cover with strings and it's much more bearable than the original. the song really stands out from everything else on this cd, it's unexpected which is always good, but i never saw this coming, it's to strange for words really.
'latin ate thing' brings us back to the familiar beauty of piano bass and some very cool and groovy sounds, yeah i'm digging this tune hoping it lasts but it don't last, steve's teasing like that on this cd, it fades away into the ocean of static. 'come back, latin ate thing,' i call, but it's gone baby gone!
gone out to sea into 'seagirl' a strange pattern of harmonics, shimmering away just below the surface of a greek watery inlet. oh, that water so blue, as it always has been since homer.  
'carbon nitrogen oxygen' synthesiser sounds, haunting the home, my place shimmers in candle flame, flickering like time itself, the song goes straight through the corridor, the walls, the rooms, the space, it goes right through my bones as it leaves as eerily as it arrived.
from somewhere else, 'song for domenique' arrives with anchor points, frames of reference, sydney, melbourne via france, sexual chocolate, love, an affair, marriage, i sigh, story of the times, how come i missed out on the happy ending, i have to get out more, loves out there somewhere mission, it hides in the strangest places, molecular structures right? 
it's the sound of close encounters, i see a lonely mountain top military precision lighting, the mothership stirring up a starry night looms overhead, but it's not close encounters, it's some 'stately garden music.'
oh what a lovely introduction this would make to some thunderous rock but it fades away into...
yeah desert 'swagger and stagger' which i adore, love at first listen. its got the new mexico groove, minimal funk for rattlesnake women in cowboy boots and their lizard outlaw men, shoot first solve equations later. i been to that bar, had myself a few tequila slammers till the mescal kicked in and it all turned bad.
sweet song comes along, saves me from some situation i just created in my mind, strange song, 'and you'll leave laughing' reminds me of pierrot / harlequin for some reason, sadness under the fake smile, but you will leave laughing, 'the way fate moves is quite bizarre.' 
you got that right brother.
can't help but feel there's some secret philosophy within this simple little song, with its nursery rhyme energy but i'm already into 'the wild east' which starts off electronica and shifts gear into some fine guitar effects and loops, how i love this music, cast adrift i can feel the surf in my skin, i'd like to see some of this song used as surfing music, it would work, i hate the soundtracks they use on surf movies but this would work a treat. i can see it in my mind, just needs a good editor, those waves come in such perfect forms, just like steve's music. he's australia's crystal voyager.
'undergrowth' a portal into pans kingdom, i can follow the trail down into the woods, the animal kingdom, the flora and fauna, as the tone of the trees shift and slight alterations manifest, darker trunks, gnarly branches and root systems, i wander down, displaced and far from home, it's getting colder, the animals are frenzied as i enter the forbidden place to catch a glimpse of what mortals are prohibited to witness, the ancient gods. i peer through the dark static whispering through my hymn to pan.
when the 'panthalassic sea' kicks in i'm back in the surf, primal energies, the ocean that we came from, shall we return? i do everyday but... where is my baby?

well i feel like i travelled a long long way after listening to this music, i even feel like i seen many wonders in the static, places i never saw before, heard voices beckoning and strange hidden sounds desperately trying to be heard, all those colours and memories, transcended space and time and now i come back i feel kinda lonely, left here laying on my big deep rug, soft stoned, candles burnt down low, wobbly fan spinning around above me, coming out of an opium dream into the mundane. 

the next day i wander down a supermarket isle lost and confused, alienated from everything around me, nothing connecting up, people i can't reach, colours i can't cope with, signs that drive me mental and i think about that place, miscellanaea.
like the great adventurers and explorers who discovered new continents, kingdoms and people and tribes, they have to leave to file their reports, i make myself the pact to return soon, back to the static i know and love.







  

another perfect surf, powerful waves propel me with my fin cutting through, speed king, steering myself, if i wear flippers i will increase the speed by 100% the thought occurs to me, i even have good flippers in the garage, just need to put them in my car. there's no one else out there, me and the sunrise, in water clear enough to see the fish, they dart around me as i watch them with one eye on the horizon, the land curves around to a point in the north, the coastline of australia, i wonder what a voyage would be like, circumnavigating the whole country, how lovely, surfing beaches, staying in little beach towns. 
but i'm here, terrible beach, where the surf is perfect.
the last week i managed to surf myself to exhaustion, do the 24 hour crash, my body to weak to move from home, i can't even lift myself to answer the phone. i get the caffeine shakes as i cold turkey, sleep through the day, night, then back in the surf. 
it's shifted, small choppy waves, difficult to catch, i practice my underwater swimming,small lung capacity puts me at a disadvantage but i can negotiate a wave. 
the beach is covered in pumice stones, some volcanic activity out there. the water is so warm, bath like. 

i read two books, 'the last policeman' by ben winters. it's okay, the premise is interesting, 6 moths before a huge rock smashes into the earth and destroys all life a detective investigates what appears to be a suicide. under the circumstances suicides are part of the norm, a population dealing with the terrible inevitable circumstances in their own way, this forms the background that gradually becomes as fascinating as the main plot.

then it's the 'cambodian book of the dead' by tom vater, a german detective looking for a heir to a coffee empire in darkest khmer. this was a harrowing read, an education into the atrocities of the pol pot regime and the communist experiment of the khmer rouge. brilliantly written fast paced with some excellently well thought out characters including the terrifying villain, the white spider.

drummer moves in across the street, practices all day making a racket, but i hear she's improving, which is good, i hope she is diverse though cos at the moment it's all heavy metal. i have a head ache, migraine but pond man is coming over, i have to lift rocks, loads of them, reconstruct the pond. i get bitten by bugs, funnel web nest is discovered in the earth, fuck i'm panicked but it's okay, pond man comes and crushes the spiders with a rock. 
it's against my policy but he says we gotta work and it must be safe and i don't argue. he shows me the nest, lifting up a big rock, 'there's always an escape hatch, two exits.'
'clever critters,' i think aloud, 'that's what i need.'
after two hours the pond looks amazing, completely cleaned and restructured. i'm exhausted. 
the morning started very early, surfed the best it's ever been, caught many waves, out there on terrible beach alone, no one around, just me and the waves. perfecto.
my head ache may develop into migraine, i get them, my eyes burn, i have a shower and lay down, read a little of my new book, 'cambodian book of the dead.'
i think about writing the australian book of the dead, maybe start in a bar, a toilet cubicle with a girl in a tight red dress doing a line of cocaine and having sex. bursting out into a crowded club filled with hedonistic beautiful people all whacked out on drugs and alcohol, but then i loose interest and think about space, my mind floats out drifting past the horseshoe nebula, suddenly i think about jakob back in london and then my dad. i miss them both, i'd like to take my dad to the movies. 
i skype him, tell him i have posted the clint eastwood double pack, 'mystic river' and 'million dollar baby' movies, the only two he has not seen and the best clint films. we chat for a while, he's in fine form, i feel really happy and then its time to say goodbye. i don't wanna, i wanna stay and chat but my brains stopped working and can't think of anything else to say. 

it never ceases to amaze me how hypocritical the left wing are, how much hate they project is inversely proportional to the truth of their arguments, i find it fascinating and also irritating. 
examples of this, well it's everywhere. using something current lets look at the abc.
we should invert the argument, lets say we got various right wing ideologists to host the shows, who in turn invited right wing guests and right wing experts, rightwing comedians and right wing journalists, musicians, bloggers and philosophers. i imagine there would be a riot somewhere. i would join in.
well that's what the abc has, only in a left wing prison / prism, therefore all the current affairs is basically a one dimensional perspective. the only show broadcast by the supposedly right wing (libertarians) was on radio national once a week called, counterpoint. two brilliant journalists hosted this show and they were really smart, dry wit, intelligent guests and took the counterpoint on most subjects in the zeitgeist offering a wider perspective. this was quite interesting as much additional information about matters was aired, making a listener who is willing to be open minded broaden their knowledge, i found it healthy. however they were removed and replaced with someone less smarter and who towed the abc group think and now counter point is somewhat a pale imitation of the original.
so on the abc current affairs lets take a look at, mmm, okay media watch, been on the airwaves since 1989 hosted by 8 different personalities all from the left. so very little of the content actually focuses on anything that upsets or is controversial about anything to close to home. multiply this with various other shows all with a left agenda and what you have is propaganda. 
now, many people will attack the so called right wing murdoch media sometimes rightly so. they will say they control all opinion without realising the murdoch media actually employs far more lefties than the left wing media employs right wing journalists, and let's face it, the right wing is no longer the right wing of the old skool conservatives, they pretty much have the same agenda as the left, globalist, so we are all fucked either way as far as i am concerned. one side will tax you and burn the cash on building bigger government the other side will use the logical idea that by helping business grow they help everyone else, hence their alignment with big business often perceived as greedy but the horrible reality is the left do the same thing in a way, only they don't offer the incentive for business to expand, in fact why would a company start in australia if they are taxed heavily and there's heaps of red tape, when they can do the same thing some where else. therefore i find the whole argument pointless.
the other point about the press is murdoch is private, he can print what he likes. the abc is paid and funded by all australians so i don't think it's to much to ask for balance and fairness from them specifically.
take the broom through the abc, get rid of the wankers from the very unfunny chaser team, who are not funny and selectively offensive, get rid of barry cassidy host of insiders who should declare he's in the labour movement every time he makes a political statement, get rid of david marr who is a very poor excuse for an intellectual, jesus is that the best we can do? get rid of the media watch hosts and lets have an anarchists perspective, get rid of the drum and lets have a show where people actually disagree with one another, get rid of q and a which is basically a stacked deck where tony jones only interrupts the libertarians who are arguing well against whatever some stupid politically correct zombie has said. 
the comedy shows are basically politically correct diatribes and bland as fucking you can get, entertainment is shallow and fickle, adam hills your the beige of comedy, become edgy and dangerous instead of whining on about edgy and dangerous comedians like joan rivers whom you just don't get. comedy should be provocative and clever not fucking scatological inane comments. 
the abc is crap. it's lost whatever kudos it had, i don't care about the mistaken reportage over the navy, i just think they produce rubbish when it comes to political shows. 
why are people so resistant to change, why are the left so frightened of allowing the other side to have a say or platform? 
basically because the whole planet is divided now.
as william burroughs said, countries as we know them will cease to exist, the only thing that defines us will be ideologies. a communist in luton will be affiliated with a communist group in prague, a nazi in lima will be affiliated with a group in iceland and an anarchist in new deli will be affiliated to a group of individuals from where ever. these are the new nations, it's already happened and the left in their ignorance just re-enforce their own agenda.
for them there has to be an enemy, same with the greens, they need an enemy otherwise their argument is over. 
the liberal party in australia may not be perfect but they offer the individual far more in the way of liberty than the other main parties, the problem is you would never hear about that if you only read left wing media. 
i always hear both sides and make my own mind up. i'm no fucking clone, i think independently, i'm no sheep and i never will be, if you don't like it to bad sister. i'm never going to be a slave to ideology. people should be free to think what they wish to think, and as voltaire stated so eloquently, 'i disapprove of what you say but i defend your right to say it.'
actually he didn't say that at all, he said, 'think for yourselves and allow others the privilege of doing the same.' 
so reader, don't immerse yourself in one side of a debate, go read the australian for a change if you start your day with the smh and vice versa, challenge yourself before you start bleating your way into the slaughterhouse, have a wide range of views available along with an open mind, there lies the contradiction of captain mission. he smokes weed, he's well read and travelled, dead man is his fave film, he's sort of arty, he is a social worker, he makes songs about esoteric stuff and writes weird sci fi, yet he's not a green socialist, how can it be?
i am not into the environment, i'm into ecology, i'm not into the control or power games humanity plays, it's boring shit that belongs in history, we have to learn from the patterns of the past as they repeat themselves, i'm into spirit. love thy neighbour, love your enemy, all i see from the left wing is hate. yet some of these people constantly talk in spiritual terms, i don't align myself to it, where's the beauty, where's the truth? it ain't in the left any more than the right but there's no need to be hypocritical about it because its in the heart sister, not the head.

vegan butcher in newtown, i pop in while i'm on an excursion with some people, i heard lots of stuff about it and never had a chance to investigate and to be honest i'm underwhelmed considering i've looked at some of the english supermarkets who have whole isles dedicated to vegan products and a lot cheaper, however kudos as australia is a different market and the culture here is very different, it's going to take time for people to change and suzie spoon has her heart in the right place. plus her chilli vegan sausages are amazing so i suggested they start an online shopping so they can distribute widely. the central coast has no vegan butchers whatsoever. it wouldn't surprise me if suzie spoon was the first in australia although melbourne seems to have everything you could want when it comes to food.

i'm back in the surf, it's huge this morning, the pounding roar is still echoes in my ears, the moment i felt the water my heart seemed to wake up, my skin absorbing it's glory, man it was beautiful as i cut through the white wash out into the turbulent breaks and positioned myself for the waves.
one by one i surfed back to the shoreline, wave after wave, my body shuddering in the energy, massaged violently i stretched out, pushed down and was lifted. 

as far as the abc goes, yes it needs a complete sweep, it's ridiculously bias and stupidly adopts a group think approach. i don't want to watch a panel of people agreeing with one another in terms of good or bad, i want critical thinking, i want both sides of the argument, i want to hear the other side not blindly accept the primal notion that left is good and right is evil. that may have existed after the second world war and in the fifties but these days politics is slightly different. people are brainwashed zombies soaking up one side because they appear warm and fuzzy, the reality is left and right are almost the same in an area that i object to, they are both globalists. only one side lies about it more than the other. one sides taxes the public to fund waste and corruption, the other seems to think the wealthy will assist the poor, this has been the case considering some wealthy people are adopting various causes but any free thinking individual will be able to see it's all a lost cause. any country that surrenders sovereignty to the united nations is finished, the un has its own agenda and as i repeatedly report, it's more dangerous than anything you can imagine. 
however i'm just an observer, watching it all from mission control, watching information become manipulated and twisted as it always has been by various agendas and their followers, the problem is if you adopt a side you are the problem. politics like religion will never offer us answers, the secret is in the politics of the self. individuals have to sort their internal conflicts and agendas, their own power and controls, their own agendas before anything fundamental can change. 
in the john le carre novel 'the tailor of panama' a simple tailor gives false intelligence under pressure and starts a war, this is reflected in the bush administrations war on terror and possibly the events around 9-11.
what ever happened we were not told the full story, we were deceived and from that deception spread many others from all sides until information becomes useless, it's all lies. any individual creates a tube video that creates conspiracy and a million followers agree, is it true. must be. hitler made some videos that said, jews, gays and gypsies were descended from rats, he used science and some photographs. look how that story ended, conspiracy is real, yeah people in power are corrupt, we all know this to be true, it won't ever change, even rome suffered corruption. 
as long as people focus outwardly, they are not looking at themselves, and that's why nothing is true until you know who you are, until you heal thyself, and that can take lifetimes. 
i know it's wrong to do harm, i try not to, i have my pet hates and my own passions but they belong to me, i don't want to inflict them on others except occasionally they slip through. i don't like the big govt. it's the end of everything.
i'm so influenced by orwell's books 'animal farm' and '1984' i can't help but see things through their prism, he was as close to the truth on politics as you can get.

early morning starts without the prospect of the surf for three long days.  i drive down the freeway, its dark, i'm driving through dawn watching the first few rays of sunlight, i drink it up. 
there are people that eat light not food, there's a technique to it, i learnt it. you go through the spectrum, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. richard of york gave battle in vain. do this at dawn or dusk but never between.
sometimes if you feel creative you can throw in the odd cobalt blue or vermilion but if you feel like being extreme you have quite a few to chose from.

here's something that may help
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors_(compact)

i can't really remember anything other than the mnemonic and i think to be honest that's all that's required. it's about intention, imagination and ones sense of will.
i have no idea if this works or effects me in anyway what's so ever, the idea is preposterous but given that lot's of lifeforms can do this, after some consideration has a certain value to me, my objective is not to eat light only to see if i can, its vitamin d at worst. that's a form of energy, just like food. 
sometimes i find my mind just defaulting to this exercise as i cruise down the highway, it's not about really reaching the destination, it is the journey, because often there's enough information in the journey to be the destination.
anyway's i eat some light but i rather be in the surf catching waves.

the next morning is overcast and my drive feels like an english country road, i cruise in slow and easy observing a lot of police cars, their flashing lights beaming through the mist like a lifeboat in an angry foggy ocean. 
i'm listening to my breathing this morning, doing some pranayama, my mind slowly empting, cleaning itself, focused.