Merry Christmas, Everybody!!!!!

It's not actually going to be Christmas here for about four more hours, but I wanted to get this out of the way, because I'll probably forget about it tomorrow.

Cool email & cool snail mail

I got two interesting things today. I got my package from joining the Hal Spacejock support crew, and found an autographed copy of the first Hal Spacejock book inside. :) Thanks, Simon. It's now next on my reading list after I finish Eragon.

Also, I just preordered a copy of the Ask a Ninja DVD, and recieved the coolest order confirmation ever:

Dear Nathan,

You have chosen to risk life and limb to pre-order the Ask A Ninja Volume 1 DVD. You have earned Film Baby's eternal respect for your obvious bravery.

A messenger just tip-toe'd over to the Ninja's office and whispered to him in his sweetest voice that you'd REALLY like one of his DVDs. He said to tell you that he'll send it to you, and he looks forward to killing you soon. And then he killed the messenger.

Provided the Ninja doesn't kill US first, we'll ship your DVD the moment it arrives at our warehouse. We'll send you another email to WARN you that a NINJA is on its way to your house. You'll be hearing from us again shortly. Until then, perhaps you'd like to browse our catalog of ALL INDEPENDENT films, docs, shorts, instructional videos, and features. Browse here:
www.filmbaby.com

Thanks for supporting independent entertainment!

Your new friends at Film Baby

It looks like it'll be a cool DVD, and even without seeing it yet, I recommend buying it. It's only $20 + shipping, so go here and get it, and maybe the Ninja will kill you soon.

Hal Spacejock Support Crew

I always like trying to get free stuff, and the Hal Spacejock books actually look interesting. Unfortunately they don't seem to be available in the US (okay, Amazon has used copies, buy $25 for the first one and $18 for the second is a bit more than I want to pay). Anyway, without further ado I present the meme:


I joined Hal Spacejock's Support Crew

I didn't pay anything,
I didn't sign anything,
and I didn't read the fine print.
Just like Hal!

No space pilot can exist in a vacuum (hah!), and behind every successful pilot there's a talented and dedicated support crew.

Hal Spacejock is one of the least successful space pilots in the history of the galaxy, and a worldwide support crew is needed just to get him off the ground.

Join now for free Hal Spacejock goodies!
| Join the team | - - - - - - - - - | Hal who? |

Hal Spacejock ... Après moi le wreckage

Spam

I don't usually read spam. Google does a damn good job of filtering it out. Occasionally though, a spam message slips through. I recently got one in a foreign language that I don't understand. I used some internet language identification programs. One said it was Turkish, and another said it might be Italian. I'm pretty sure it isn't Italian, but I guess it might be Turkish (especially since the link at the end is to a .tr site). If someone could identify this language for me--or even better, tell me what it says--it might save me a trip to the loony bin. Here's the message:

subject: Seri Çözüm

Gazete ilan kampanya

Gazete kampanyalarinin özellikleri, süreleri ve ücretsiz yayinlari için arayarak bilgi aliniz

Sabah Gazetesi Kelimesi (3,50 YTL +KDV)
ELEMAN 2 Gün ücretli + 1 Gün ücretsiz = 3 GÜN enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
VASITA 2 Gün ücretli + 3 Gün ücretsiz = 5 GÜN enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
EMLAK 2 Gün ücretli + 5 Gün ücretsiz = 7 GÜN enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
* Çerçeveli Eleman ilanlari
* Ticari ilanlar
* Sosyal ilanlar (Vefat, Anma, Baŝsagligi, Teŝekkür.)
* Tanŭtŭm ve Duyuru ilanlari

Hürriyet Gazetesi Kelimesi (3,50 YTL +KDV)
ELEMAN 2 Gün ücretli + 1 Gün ücretsiz = 3 Gün enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
VASITA 2 Gün ücretli + 2 Gün ücretsiz = 4 Gün enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
EMLAK 2 Gün ücretli + 2 Gün ücretsiz = 4 Gün enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
* insan kaynaklari eleman ilani
* Çerçeveli Eleman ilanlari
* Ticari ilanlar
* Sosyal ilanlar (Vefat, Anma, Baŝsagligi, Teŝekkür.)
* Tanitim ve Duyuru ilanlari

Posta Kelimesi 1.70 YTL +KDV Milliyet Kelimesi 2.30YTL+KDV
ELEMAN 2 Gün ücretli + 2 Gün ücretsiz = 4 Gün enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
VASITA 2 Gün ücretli + 5 Gün ücretsiz = 7 Gün enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza
EMLAK 2 Gün ücretli + 5 Gün ücretsiz = 7 Gün enaz 6 Kelime ilaniniza

Gazete ilanlariniz için Tel
Fax
e-mail
www.sahinreklam.com.tr

Boredom

Since Magic the Gathering is having a Great Designer Search, I though that just for the fun of it, I'd try following their challenges (I'm not entered in the contest or anything). I created these 10 cards based on the requirements from this week's challenge. I used the Magic Set Editor from Source Forge if you're wondering. I'm not much of a designer, so most of these cards are probably undercosted and some are probably broken.

The designers were given 10 slots to fill and 10 pieces of artwork. They could mix and match as they chose. Here are my ideas:



This slot was for a whit uncommon that is "an answer to all the token making in the environment. Be subtle." I'm not sure if this counts as subtle or as an answer to tokens, but when I saw this image I thought Flagbearer, and I think it kind of works.



This slot was for a white, rare, "Johnny-style enchantment." I think my selection matches the art, is within white's slice of the color pie, and is at least slightly Johnny flavored.



This slot was for a blue, common sorcery. "No card filtering or drawing. No bounce (aka returning cards to hand)." I'm not sure how well I did with the artwork, but I think the spell is kind of neat.



This one was for a rare "Timmy" creature. As with most of the actual submissions I read, this artwork screamed "Shapeshifter with a Clone type effect." I think my take on it is pretty cool, though maybe a bit broken



This slot was for an uncommon, black aura "you want to put on your own creatures." I think I did a fairly good job here.



This slot was for any black rare. I knew this guy was a zombie, so I put him here. I think the ability matches that art, but is way out of black's slice of the color pie. Oh well.



This slot was for a red common "Instant or sorcery. No direct damage or destruction (artifact or land)." I think I did a good job with matching the artwork to the ability and keeping it in the right area of the color pie, but I doubt it's a common.



This slot was for an uncommon red creature. "Want a build around me for draft (aka something that will encourage players to go down a path or paths he or she wouldn't normally had they not drafted this card early; examples of this type of card are Lightning Rift, Mark of Eviction and Momentary Blink)." I think this one encourage playing sacrificable artifacts and artifact destruction spells, so I guess it works.



This slot was a common green creature that costs four or more mana. I added Morph since it does have one of those morph spider thingies in it. I'm not sure that this would be printed as a common, though.



Green rare. Non-creature spell. Green's lacking in "wow" factor (aka something that will impress the player by how different it is). Trying to come up with an ability that matched an artifact apparently blowing up as it destroys a creature was hard. I decided that the creature had destroyed the artifact and is being killed in the explosion. I don't know if it works well or not.

Anyway, I hope you got a good laugh out of these. Seriously, feel free to offer constructive criticism, mockery, or whatever. If you want to steal these to enter in You Make the Card Four when it finally comes out, feel free. If MaRo, or some other WOTC employee, reads this and decides to steal it for their design files (perhaps because of a recent head injury), be my guest.

My next review should be up later tonight (after Doctor Who) or maybe some time tomorrow.

A Special Message from the Yoyogod

Since I've switched to the beta Blogger, I can now add tags to my post. I've decided that for the sake of uniformity, I'm going to go back and add tags to my old posts. While I'm at it, I'll also update the reviews with the newer yo-yo rating system.

I've divided the labels into five categories: media (the format), genre, series, rating, and other. Here are all the current ones:

media

book
internet
movie
music
comics
game
magazine
clothing
TV


genre

fantasy
science fiction
horror
childrens
humor
adventure
mystery
nonfiction
romance
foreign
short stories
animation

series

Conan
Series Of Unfortunate Events
Harry Potter
Wodehouse
Repairman Jack
Necroscope
MTG
Dirk Gently
Book of Years
Adversary Cycle
Black Magician
Sundering
Thlassa Mey
Wheel Of Time
Chanur
Garret
Ender
Darkover
Newford
Sandman
Exiles of Boq'urain
Quartermain
Soldier Son
Tears Of Artamon
Night Watch
Age Of The Five
Dragon Quartet
Dresden Files

ratings

-5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5

Other

special--any non-review
mockery--a non-review where I mock something
ratings--What the ratings mean
labels--this page

A Pointless Update and a Bad Pun

Since I like to try and post at least every other day now, I thought I let you all know that I've just about finished OSC's Shadow of the Hegemon and I'll probably have the review up sometime tomorrow.

Okay, now for the pun. I rented the DVD Masters of Horror: John Landis - Deer Woman, and I have to say that the Deer Woman sure had a nice rack. Sorry, but I just couldn't help myself.

Gotta Love That Coinstar

Well, I just cashed a big jar of coins in at my nearest Coinstar Machine. Not for the cash--I wouldn't pay 8.9 cents per dollar for that--but for an Amazon gift certificate (they waive the fee for those). Anyway, once Amazon ships my stuff, you can expect to see the following reviews sooner or later:


The Arm of the Stone By: Victoria Strauss


From a Whisper to a Scream By: Charles de Lint

Necroscope: The Lost Years By: Brian Lumley

Necroscope: Resurgence: The Lost Years: Volume Two By: Brian Lumley

Necroscope: Avengers By: Brian Lumley

Necroscope: Defilers By: Brian Lumley

Necroscope: Invaders By: Brian Lumley

The Sandman: Endless Nights By: Neil Gaiman

Jill the Reckless By: P. G. Wodehouse

Love Among the Chickens By: P. G. Wodehouse

The Collected Jorkens, Vol. 1: The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens and Jorkens Remembers Africa By: Lord Dunsany, S. T. Joshi (Editor)

The Weird Al Show - The Complete Series [DVD]

Of course, Amazon says that Victoria Strauss's book will be shipped next week and the others won't be shipped until next month. I'm not sure why for some of them. Sure, The Weird Al Show isn't going to be released until next month, and the Jorkens book says it ships in 2 to 3 weeks, but the others all say they ship in 24 hours. Sigh, Amazon can be a pain sometimes. They still haven't shipped my copy of Dominic Deegan: Crystal Clear and I ordered that almost 2 months ago. Oh well, this is Yoyogod signing off.

And Now For Something Completely Different

No, I'm not going to review Monty Python's Flying Circus. I'm not reviewing Kornwolf either, because I still haven't finished it. Instead, I'm going to share something that amused me, the book descriptions at Lulu.com.

As you probably know, Lulu allows anyone to publish a book for free. This means that they publish some of the most godawful crap imaginable. Some of their stuff seems to be good too, though; I noticed one book that has a positive review by Kirkus in its description. Books like that don't interest me right now. I'm going to share some of the descriptions from their Science Fiction & Fantasy section that are so horribly written, you just wonder about how bad the book is.

Here's one for a book called Weird Wide Web. This one is actually fairly intriguing, and I'd almost like to buy it just to find out if it's any good. If it was written this way on purpose, it may be very funny, or it may be the deranged ramblings of a lunatic:

Weird wide web Fantasy and Science Fiction authors invent weird worlds. Often with planets with unlikely names like Google or Lycos with gods with names like Sergey and Brin who live on a mountain called Altavista, high view, the centre of a weird world endlessly searching, searching, like the Flying Dutchman. My computer came from a company called Time Computers. It is was a Time machine. But Time computers have ceased to exist. Time has stopped. But the clock still ticks. The internet has heroes with made up names like Captain Bill Gates on spaceships with names like Explorer. The starship Internet Explorer has a wizard to magic you up. No witches though. Sexist. The Weird Wide Web invents non-existent characters. They invent a world where nothing and nobody is real. Fantasy land. Arthur Brownwindsor is on all the major search engines. As is his lady wife Lucinda Brownwindsor. And their friend, mime artist star of Windsor Silent Radio, Marcel L’Aise. I bet you are not.

Here's one called Eden (sic throughout). I'd also like to say, "Mr. M. C. Duncan, if you want to review your own book, please use a better alias than Melvin Duncan.":

A lost colony. Supplies run out and they revert to horses and water wheels. For two thousand years they live the primitive life. New customs develop to fit the situation.Poor Mark, He becomes a keeper at age eleve with a mystery to solve. At age thirteeh he has to choose a bride. Who should he chose. Find out what happens. How do they survive? Will Mark make a good choice? Will the space ships come again?

From the description of Carouse the Planet Paltip, I'm guessing it might be a Choose Your Own Adventure type of thing, but at only nine pages, it seems a little short even for that:

Carouse of the Planet Paltip is a guided sci-fi adventure to land on the planet, and this broadminded fun here begins at describing it as a miscellaneous panorama.

Here's the description of The International Guild, which leaves me with a few questions. How can a novel that seems to be set in the future take place in contemporary times? Wouldn't a woman who is unique be very special by definition? Why would a Christian organization be preserving science and a Secular Humanism organization be trying to destroy it when experience indicates the opposite is far far more likely? Anyway, here's the quote:

The Guild is the result of the world going into the dark ages and a group of scientists, theologians, and philosophers that formed a secret society to preserve knowledge. Through the years the Guild became far more advanced than the rest of the world. The First Caste is the adversary of the The Guild. War is imminent between the two. The book is set in contemporary times. The main character is Michael, and a very special and unique woman named Jane. The longer Michael spends time with Jane the more he realizes there is something very different about her and her family. He learns that she is part of a secret society, a society that he will join. As Michael and Jane’s relationship grows a war breaks out between the two groups. Michael and Jane both get caught up in the war. The book portrays The Guild, the protagonists, as Christians. The contrast is between the Christians and those with humanist world views, The First Caste.

Despite the fact that Revelations has a good review and a high rating, it's description is very poorly punctuated. A comma is used in place of a semicolon, and there's no comma in a compound sentence:

A disease plagues the dark streets of Colton Falls, a disease that bleeds softly up from the catacombs below. Men and women dissappear into the night and those few that are seen again are something different. Into this nightmare scape walks a man whose days are destined to be numbered.

Okay, that's all the time I have for now. I'll be back soon.

A bit OT

Well, I still haven't finished Kornwolf, mainly because I got the latest Fortean Times yesterday. I don't particularly feel like doing another web comic review, so I'm going a little off topic today.

A few weeks ago, while reading the news on the FT website, there was a link to an article about a spy blimp. Among the comments, I noticed this little gem (sic throughout):

Is this the same blimp that started 2 illegal wars, cages protestors, forces book outlets like Amazon to stop stocking books like "America Deceived" by E.A. Blayre III and spies on all citizens? No that's not a blimp, it's the people buying the blimp. I'm sure they won't use it in any nefarious way.
Last lnik (before Google Books gets a visit from the blimp):

Despite the fact that the author forgot the link, I was some what intrigued. I Googled EA Blayre and came up with about 85 unique hits. Other than his iUniverse listing, their all comments on blogs and news sites that say practically the same thing. There are some differences in the posts . Some mention an Ernst Zundel. Some claim the book was banned because of scenes featuring Fox News anchorwomen:

Sickening. About Foxnews anchorwomen. There’s a great book called “America Deceived” by E.A. Blayre III that features a demented CIA character who dreams of FoxAnchorwomen and animals. They got it pulled from Amazon and B&N. It’s on Google Books for the stuff about E.D Hill. Fu*k Foxnews

I couldn't help but wonder why the government would ban a book because of sex scenes featuring the women of Fox News. I also couldn't help but wonder why the government could pressure big companies like Amazon into pulling the book, but they couldn't get a vanity press like iUniverse to stop publishing it. The obvious answer is that the government didn't force Amazon to stop carrying the book.

Even though I have no way of know if Amazon ever even carried the book--they do carry a lot of iUniverse books, so they may very well have--I would suspect that if the book was pulled, it wasn't at the instigation of the government. They might have pulled it because they were afraid of getting sued by the anchorwomen in question. I tried to contact Amazon to see if they had anything to say, but their customer service people only gave the singularly unhelpful reply:

I tried to find "America Deceived" by E.A. Blayre III on our web
site for you, but it appears that we do not currently sell this
particular item on Amazon.com.

We do expand our selection frequently and want to know what products
you'd like us to offer. You can submit your product suggestions at
this URL:

http://www.amazon.com/o/subst/stores/catalog-builder/index.html

I've also included some information below that may help you find
what you are looking for from another source.

Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com.

As far as the book itself goes, you can browse it online. The writing contains such wonderful pieces of prose as, "The blemish occurred in his hometown Boston when an obnoxious, repugnant, detestable Yankees fan smashed a Budweiser bottle across his face..."

I would quote more, but the book pages are saved as GIFs, which makes quoting a pain in the ass. PDFs would really be much better. Anyway, besides not putting commas around Boston and way overusing adjectives, the writing isn't all that great. I can't help but suspect that all the comments I came across are part of an exceptionally lame publicity stunt by the author. If I'm wrong, please come and leave me a comment Mr. Blayre.

My Ratings System

A lot of people have been asking me about my ratings system (actually no one has, but I thought it would be a good idea to share it with you anyway).

My system is pretty much the standard 1-5 "star" system, except I use yo-yos instead of stars. For instance, I might give The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy 5 yo-yos. The things I generally consider when reviewing a book are the writing style, pacing, plot, dialogue, characterization, and how much I like the story overall.

The ratings can translate as:


5 Yo-yos = Run out and buy this book now! Or if you want to help the Yoyogod out, click the Amazon.com link.



4 Yo-yos = This is a good book, and I would certainly recommend reading it.



3 Yo-yos = This book is fairly average. It's not that great, but it's not bad either. Read it if you don't have anything better handy.



2 Stars = This is a bad book. I certainly wouldn't recommend reading it.



1 Star = You would be better of reading the phone book than this piece of garbage.

(I also sometimes issue half yo-yos, which is slightly worse that the full one. ex four and a half yo-yos is worse than five yo-yos)

On a side note, I'm a little behind on my reading of Wizard of the Grove, so since tomorrow is the big release, my next book will probably be switched to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

What This Is All About

Hello everyone. I am the Yoyogod. I'm a 30 year old with a B.A. in Professional Writing. Unfortunately, a B.A. in writing isn't any use in getting a job in my area, so I've decided to start this blog so my writing talents won't go to waste (and hopefully I can pick up a little extra cash). Anyway, this is a brief FAQ:

What is the purpose of this blog?
I'm going to review books I've recently read, and maybe some other stuff, and tell you what I like or dislike about it. I am, of course, hoping that you'll click on a link and buy a copy so I can earn some dough.

What do you mean by "other stuff?"
Well, I may decide to review a movie or a CD (especially if They Might Be Giants comes out with something new). Or maybe I'll review a game or a TV show, or something. I don't know.

How often will this blog be updated?
I'm planning on trying for evey week, but I might manage to make two or more entries a week sometimes, and maybe less than every week other times.

Wow, you're such a great reviewer. Would you review my book?
Sure, send me a copy and I might.