But oh no.

Anyway, for those who dont know, its the final collected volume of the 4 Volume collected Sandman series. The series as a whole is beautifully and expertly written by one Mr. Neil Gaiman (yes I would have his babies), and I’m busting to read the goddamn thing at this stage…

Image via Wikipedia

Was also reading stuff on lucid dreaming, something I’ve long been interested in. Imagine being in a really cool dream and being able to take control of it, going on a wild rampage through the solar system, trying to make the sun go nova. Actually there’s an interesting thought, if you could take control of your dreams and do anything you wanted, in an environment where there can be no consequences, what would you do? Would you go on a murderous rampage, slaughtering millions for the hell of it? Imagine yourself to be a giant zeppelin, possibly made of lead, that farts its toxic wayt through the sky causing untold disasters? Or would the fantasies be…. naughtier? Untriguing….

Damn caffeine and its wearing off-ness.

So lets say the new iPhone launched on Tuesday, that being two days ago, by the way if I was an early adopter I would probably be WHOPPINGLY pissed at Apple right about now, and you’ve decided you can’t live without one, and like me are too cheap to sign up for a long and expensive contract to get one, just how long do you think it will take the new beasties to appear on eBay? A swim sounds good right about now actually.

Clever lad that I am I managed to bust my glasses last Friday, and (should’ve gone to SpecSavers) had no spare pair to tide me over. I’m quite lucky in that my prescription is pretty light, so I really only need them for computer work. On the downside I’m a Software Engineer so computer work accounts for approximately 9 hours of my day. Went to SpecSavers on Tuesday and got a new pair, two actually, substantially stronger and sturdier than the last ones, so hopefully the ear piece coming off in my hand wont be such a problem.

Something else I was about to write has just disappeared.

Came across “The Lives of Others” group blog there recently thanks to a friends page (Prototype of a Person) and its a really interesting blog, a fascinating project. Obviously one of the appeals of the web is anonymity and the ability to say what you normally couldn’t, but with this one there’s got to be an element of group think kicking in at some point? If people are posting regularly to this thing, is it possible that the tone and content of the posts will begin to influence each other so that the blogs will become more and more similar so that the many becomes the one? Will each poster be able to maintain their individuality or just become part of the gestalt?

I’d love a really good speech to text interpreter so I could spew this stuff out nice and fast and top of the head instead of having to slow down and do it all through the irritation of the keyboard. A neural interface would be good too.

Comics Rock. Redshirts are expendable. Buy low.

My brain hurts now.

I’m a big fan of the Gaimanator’s work, so much so that I’ve just ordered over €100 worth of his work off Amazon, including Vols 1 and 2 of The Sandman. Never read it but I hear its fantastic work. I already have several of his other works, including 1602, a fantastic piece set in 1602 in the Marvel Universe.

Frequently people write into him asking, How can I become a good writer, What are your secrets, blah blah blah, and to do him credit he doesn’t just tell them to fup off, he does give a reasonable answer to people. But a separate question still stands of what actually makes a good story?

For me personally, its got to have characters with real depth, or at least the possibility of depth. Characters that are blatantly two dimensional are, to put it bluntly, crap. Similarly the universe it’s set in needs to provide a convincing backdrop to the story, so it can’t be hard sci-fi set in pinky pony land. You’ve got to have some real meat to the story, something that will draw you in and hold your attention, something that will physically stop you from putting that beast down until you’ve milked every last drop of literary goodness from it.

The more I write and think about this, the harder it actually appears to be to quantify… Obviously there are always different criteria for different people. Some of my favourites would include the almighty HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Discworld series, a short story called Flowers for Algernon, I am Legend, and sweet Jeebus too many to write down. But its an interesting subject, one of those things that drags you off on a tangent and wont let you go.

Maybe that means that the question itself qualifies as a story