Posts filed in Nostalgia


A Plague! A Plague on Our Houses!

In my Last.fm shoutbox, I was recently asked by one of my readers to post more frequently in my blog, and seeing as your whim is my law, I bring you this: an essay of sorts about the last topic you’d expected me to write about!
One of the things you might not know [...]

A Message from the Lost Son: Why I Love Heraclius

“The Persians were applying inexorable pressure on what remained of the empire. Heraclius was faced with a stark choice: he could either wait for the Persian grip to tighten, fighting a series of rearguard actions which offered little chance for ultimate success, or he could throw caution to the wind and take battle to the [...]

Hässelby by Johan Harstad

2007.
444 pages, Gyldendal hardcover.
This is a tale about Albert Åberg — the main character of a series of childrens’ books written by Gunilla Bergström in the early 1970s. What happened to him after his childhood in the quiet Stockholm suburb of Hässelby? How did he grow from a lively, enthusiastic boy to a disillusioned, bored [...]

Rip it apart and start again

One of the many reasons to look forward to Ripper.
As for Brian K. Vaughn’s (first, but hopefully not last) run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Season 8″ comics, the best compliment I can give is that I hardly noticed — if indeed I did notice at all, which is doubtful — that this wasn’t written [...]

Dogma

Watched Kevin Smith’s Dogma again, for the thrid time or so, last weekend. I was hardly as enthusiastic as I was the first time I watched it, but that was three years ago, so I take this simply as a sign that I have matured somewhat. And also of me having watched it before, of [...]

Night of Knives, by Ian C. Esslemont

Night of Knives,
by Ian C. Esslemont.
2005.
Bantam Press.
282 pages, hardcover edition.
Even though I enjoyed the book, and ripped through it faster than I have ripped through anything since I had a severe cold about two months ago, I am not sure if I see Esslemont as an independent author. Sure, he is the co-creator of the [...]

A Case of Tolkien Hommage

“I tipped an imaginary hat to him. ‘At your service.’
‘Yours and your family’s,’ he replied politely.”
— Kvothe and Stanchion,
The Name of the Wind, page 374.

Done the Impossible

Stumbled across this on Vuze the other day, and thought I’d better take a look at it, seeing as I reckon myself to be a Joss Whedon fan of sorts.
And it was good. Sure, if you don’t fancy watching geeks rant on about some stupid TV show for one and an half hour, you probably [...]

Moonlight, eps. 1 and 2

It’s as good as the first couple of episodes of Angel, possibly better, with some interesting characters (Jason Dohring’s Josef Konstantin’s a favourite), a sound mythology (excepting a bit of inconsistency what concerns shadows and reflections and the like), and a few moral semi-ambiguities. It’s more pure noir, though, and the dialogue isn’t as sharp [...]

Ullr, the onion of war!

From Wikipedia’s kenning article:
Bárum Ullr, of alla
ímunlauks, á hauka
fjöllum Fyrisvalla
fræ Hákonar ævi;
nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða
fáglýjaðra þýja
meldr í móður holdi
mellu dolgs of folginn
Simply based on meaning, i.e. without kennings, the passage runs: “Accursed King Harald! We carried gold in our arms during all of Hakon’s life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in [...]

Scrubs, season 5

Yeah, yeah, I know: they’re occasionally repeating the same jokes, and the whole concept might be getting a tad tired.
But I still love it. I still think it’s fun to watch the Janitor torment JD, I still laugh when Turk tries to stand up to Carla, I still pity JD one moment only to hate [...]

Movies Galore: A Summary

It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, [...]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I finished the book five minutes ago, some 18 or 19 hours after I found it in my mailbox. I’ll try to review it, and I’ll do my best to do so without any spoilers, but for those who doesn’t want to know a godsdamned thing, I’ll hide it. Naturally, there will be spoilers for [...]

Bad Behavior has blocked 164 access attempts in the last 7 days.