Varg Vikernes, Greifi Grishnackh, Buzrum… pick the name, but here is a bit about the music.

The original explosion of media attention around the Norwegian black metal scene occurred and was in full swing around the times of my fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth birthdays. I missed it, really. Being in my mid-teens, having a media that was still largely only one-way, and being in a country where the so-called music industry is basically entirely a suck on the knob of American and Japanese conglomerate music divisions, lent itself to that.

Guild-building in World Of Warcraft

So I did what I have been speculating to myself about for some time, and started a new guild of my own on World Of Warcraft. The act of starting the guild, in itself, was quite a learning experience. Whilst it has changed over time, the present system with founding new guilds involves getting a charter, getting five signatures from unique players, and then turning it in to an NPC who basically hands you the keys to your new guild. So whilst I have my own guild that I am very slowly building up to what I want, I am also very slowly and staggeringly learning the ins and outs of running the damned thing.

Went out and bought a “reader”…

I am a man of impulses and impulsive habits. So when I looked at my bank balance for the fortnight and discovered it was substantially more than I was expecting, I decided to do what I had been thinking of doing for a couple of months prior and purchase what is being loosely termed an e-reader.

What really makes us different? A theoretical musing…

As I have been writing other pieces of fiction about one of my proxy characters, the proxy character of a woman he is in love with, and so forth, I have been doing what all good science fiction authors do. That is, I have been thinking about the message of the stories and how it relates to the world that inspired that message.

Revisiting the classics: A look at A Scanner Darkly

Okay, A Scanner Darkly (the film) is not that old that it really should be called a classic. But is one anyway. The novel on which the film is based is now thirty-five years old. The film turns six years old in July of this year, which should tell you something about the lasting dark appeal of the novel. Now, I will step up to the plate right here and admit that I have not read the novel. Unlike some assholes I can name, I did not rush out and buy an e-reader the second they were brought out because it is the hip, “noooooooow” thing to do. And unfortunately, controlling the flow of literature into a country like Arseholia is even easier than controlling the flow of unapproved films or music.