... The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

I finished this off this morning. It was an interesting read hampered by an awkward writing style - as I shall show in Chapter Two - and frequent lapses out of an objective viewpoint.
I found most of the ideas in the book to be quite well thought out but it did reach into the edges of hysteria in parts in an apparent attempt to show a dangerous slippery slope effect.

Chapter 2
It might be just me but, on consultation with The Maple Maverick who is widely read in all things non-fiction, I think most of us would find it damn annoying to be continually told that this and that will be shown later in the book. Okay I'll make an exception for the introduction but once you get into the text proper it is merely annoying and should not be necessary.

As to the objectivity question an editor really needs to modify quite a few the sentences as shown below:

I will refute their ridiculous arguments

Overall worth the read to find out what all the fuss was about but I'm going back to my Genre fiction.
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... The Girl's Night In

This Friday past I was over at Rugrat Twin's with Alecto, Emma, Kate and Jane.
Alecto and I watched the romantic drama as Rugrat Twin worked on her dressmaking.
I was lured into this fest of girlyness with the cunningly thought out trap of free beer and home made pizza.

Unfortunately it was quite enjoyable - maybe because of the beer - although the drama itself did become a bit "What the?" towards the end when I'm sure (though it may have been the beer again) I heard the handsome hero proclaim that he had loved Emma since he held her as three week old baby, and also other aristocrats proclaiming "don't they make a wonderful couple, just like a brother and sister". I guess it must have been a realistic portrayal of the British aristocracy...

Suffice to say that in the end I went home confused and with a full stomach.


In order to reset my testosterone balance I went to ArchEnemy's on Saturday to watch footy with him and ElfBoy. There was beer there to but no freaky revelations so I felt that my extreme masculinity had been restored to it's usual high level.
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... The Ends of the Earth

(Skye actually)

Yesterday Redneck Ben and I saddled up and made the great journey down south to visit My Guitarist and partner to marvel at her enormous baby bump.
My initial concerns were alleviated when our late afternoon arrival was still in time for lunch (one of the reasons we arrived late was my attendance at a BBQ lunch at MatrixMan's which also included ElfBoy and various spawn of those attending).
Luckily the shock of my annual visit didn't trigger any early labour so we were able to have a comfortable chat and far too much dinner before zooming home at a late hour.

It was a good way to top off the shortened post-Easter working week - even though I felt like I had achieved quite a lot in those scant four days, partly thanks to Devil's Advocate ordering everyone else to ignore me so I could finish things off (I will have to try that again sometime as it was blessedly peaceful and conducive to productivity).
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... The Manga Marathon

This Easter has seen another of Alecto's traditional anime watching festivals. This years took place over 11 hours of Good Friday with Swing, Hemy and another also in attendance.

This time we were watching Azumanga Daioh a cute one about the lives of a group of girls during their three years as high-school classmates. Alecto had a bountiful table of nibbles on hand so the only disappointment was the lack of giant fighting robots in the anime itself.


Sticking to the comics theme yesterday I attended a comics discussion get together organised by The Real Greg Dean and attended by myself and Zombie Monkey. We had a good chat and some great food and booze from the venue. We wrapped up just after Doom showed up claiming it was his local cafe. Personally I am concerned that there is some sort of blog appearance stalking going on.


The final piece in the comics puzzle is my finishing reading the novelisation of the computer game of Dredd vs Death of Judge Dredd of the 2000AD comic. I quite enjoyed it as the writing was easy to read and it captured the feel of the comic.
Reading this book did give me the dilemma earlier in the week of deciding which was the geekier reading material for the work lunch room - a comics novelisation or a RPG supplement? I went with the RPG supplement figuring it would look more like a non-fiction text book and protect me from awkward questions.
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... The Doom of Killer Bunnies

Under threat of painful Lepusitic death I have been forced to write about the affair of my previous Sunday night.

So I am forsaking any imparting to you of the strategy meeting of Monday which was yummyly catered for by Mr Prada and Days of our Libraries. Of the lunch beforehand where Mr P and I were the only ones to fully prepare for the afternoons talk fest - me with the main and he with the booze - I mean who hasn't learnt by now that having a big meal or a glass of wine before the meeting gives you the excuse for falling asleep "It's not you, it's the parma". Amatuers.

I shall also not be talking about my new character in the The Blithe Bogan's fantasy sage spending all the final hour's action loading his crossbow after running headlong into realistic weapon rules.

Nor shall I mention the first session of trenchcoated investigations that began on Tuesday night under the guidance of ElfBoy, leaving me at the mercy of Pirate Dave's puns as I am now back to being a lowly player.

Nor shall I mention the misunderstanding that led to me thinking Mr Prada was suggesting Easy Em as the blog name for our new staffmember.

Instead all you shall hear from me is the pure, unadulterated events of last Sunday Eve.

It was a sultry twighlight as Legion2 and I arrived in horse country for a catchup evening with The Fungi Lady at the demesne of Doom and The Doctor. Some would say we were late, and then early, and then late again as the clock was repeatedly mis-adjusted for daylight savings, but regardless we indulged in a passing amount of smalltalk and then commenced the main event - tackling the monstrosity that is Killer Bunnies the card game.
Our instructor had a pile of cards that ws a metric foot high but luckily we played with a smaller amount as it was a beginner's game. It was fun and we played a second game which went on a tad too long but it was all okay in the end as The Doctor returned from work at the hospital and regailed us all with enthralling tales of nurses involved in pillow fights - she may have mentioned other things but I wasn't paying attention for some reason.

Phew. That should keep Doom from kicking in my door in a murderous "why didn't I make the blog?!?" rage.
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... The Big Pain in the Neck

No I'm not talking about The Viking Hat GM or Supervisor Grand Chief K or even Days of our Libraries (and especially not AntagonisticAl).

What I am talking about is waking up in the morning unable to get out of bed for the painfulness of the neck muscles. It is not a fun way to start your week.
Eventually, after much flopping about like an upended turtle I managed to gain my feet and begin some attempts at recovery. A long hot shower only aggravated the neck muscles causing waves of pain - I find out later that the neck only likes a few minutes of heat and after that it gets a tad upset.

A visit to the Physio revealed that I sprained my neck sleeping. I immediately thought that I must need more practice but apparently it can happen from sleeping too well so it's most likely that I was perfect again and suffered for it. There is an alternate theory that many and various activities over the weekend strained the muscles and since giving my place a thorough vacuum was one of said activities I will be testing this theory by not vacuuming and seeing if I still have a sore neck.

In the end I was able to take a couple of days off to recover enough to soldier on at work.
I was a little perplexed when the physio presented me with a doctors certificate stating that I had presented with "Acute Cervical Pain". My first thought was that I had been in LibraryLand too long, however when I confronted the Physio with this grave insult to my rugged manliness he fobbed me off with some rubbish about "cervical" vertebrae - if only there was some handy way to research the truth of his words.

Now at another weekend - this time housework free - I am still a little stiff but it is all loosening up so unfortunately I think I'll have to be back at work on Monday.
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... The Months of Ash

Last weekend I made one final push and finished my three month reading of Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle, as sadistically recommended and loaned to me by Badger.

So this brick of a book with it's 1112 pages has, apart from ruining my shoulders by trying to hold it up, provided me with a well-written, enjoyable and entertaining read. It enlightened me somewhat to the life of a late 1400's mercenary and ended up touching on quantum physics and other such matters which I find to be a delightful subject for discussion.

I give it 4.5 stars and heartily recommend that you sacrifice a quarter of a year to reading this fantastic monstrosity.
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