Area 7 Absurdity

I have just finished reading my second Matthew Reilly crazy action / thriller - Area 7 - and all I can say is what the hell was that? Where does this guy get his imagination from?  I am now definitely a fan of the Shane Schofield / Scarecrow series, even though the plots are the antithesis of how I usually like my narratives to unravel.  Meaning action novels are not really my thing.

I do, however, like how Reilly turns classified government information on its head.  If governments don't want to divulge their secrets to the populace, I am delighted that authors with insanely active imaginations take the basics of weaponry and espionage and then just make up a whole lot of shit to fit their storyline.  And governments can't say the storyline isn't true because they can't defend classified information one way or the other.  Love it. 

Postscript:

Just finished Reilly's third novel in the Shane Schofield series - Scarecrow - and it's just as farfetched and captivating as the other two.  Now onto Hell Island.  Sounds delightful.

Crazy Town Narratives

Last weekend, after years of saying NO THANKS to Australian author Matthew Reilly's crazy town action / thriller works of fiction, I picked up Ice Station and didn't really put it down until I got to the other end. The bastard hooked me in right from the get go, and before I knew it, I had read my first completely improbable, multi-plot, non-stop-action roller coaster thriller ride of a narrative.

And I've been dreaming and hallucinating of kick-arse commando units, maghooks, Antarctic ice shelfs (shelves?), mutant nuclear radiation-generated elephant seals and killer whales ever since. Yes, that makes for a quite a daunting dream. And I don't always live through it either, so clearly I am not the leading man / super-marine superhero that I think I deserve to be in my own dream.  Perhaps my subconscious has self-esteem troubles like the rest of my brain.

The hero of the series, Captain Shane Scholfield, or Scarecrow - his Marine call sign - is relentlessly subjected to the vicissitudes of commando life. One minute he is standing around looking splendid in his flash-free ray bans, the next minute he is fleeing from an overgrown elephant seal the size of Sydney's Centrepoint Tower or a rogue British SAS commando that suffers from numerous and varied psychological and personality disorders. Ain't nothing mundane about being a kick-arse marine.

I've decided that my life, perhaps, would be more exhilarating if I too could own a maghook like Scarecrows. The maghook  is a small, albeit powerful, cylindrical electromagnet that can be used as a grappling hook. The magnet is activated and deactivated by pushing a button on and off, or some such. 

The maghook is guaranteed to get you out of any sticky situation, and it had its heyday during the Star Wars years.  But where does one purchase such a device? I doubt it's something you can pick up from K-Mart, or even Bunnings. Perhaps an army surplass store stocks what I want. Imagine how your life could change with a spiderman-esque gadget of this nature?

If you find yourself in a meeting that doesn't meet your exacting requirements for timeliness, efficiency or interest, you could simply excuse yourself briefly and maghook your shit out of there. Work would become most exciting; or, at least, like a Bond movie starring a plank of wood as the antagonist.  Or maybe that's just the bad guys in my workplace. 

The Pariah Cough

I have a cough at the moment which, if spreaded carefully and pandemically, could wipe out Tottenham.  Wouldn't that be terribly sad for the world if we lost so many rioting morons?  I could surreptitiously slip it into their water supply and then market it as 'Mindless Criminal Thug Napalm'.  You're welcome, Scotland Yard.  How stupid do you have to be to burn your own suburb to the ground?  Anyway, back to me.  I'm not contagious (anymore) - having what the medical fraternity like to label a 'postinfectious cough', which is a cough that you have, um, post infection. And it sucks a great deal.

She's coughing, not crying.  
Central Casting Fail.

They should call it the pariah cough, because you aren't sick enough to stay at home, thus you are in the public domain, thus you are open to the judgement and criticism of every average Joe, Tom, Dick and Harriette on the street who is not riddled with pariah germs, but probably has a home full of grotty, little germ-spreaders.

Apparently my pariah cough is going to last for another 4 - 6 weeks, so that's just tops.  The pariah cough is a conniving little bastard. It involves intermittent, spontaneous, excitable coughing outbreaks that generally occur when I am in an elevator, in a restaurant, waiting in the queue at Woolies, or anywhere else that packs the public into a confined space. However, when I go to the doctors or the chemist people, my symptoms are on their best behaviour, and my bellowing attack dog impersonation turns into a faint, whimpering "uh-uh-uh". It's humiliating.

How do you tell the chemist people that you have a evil devil cough when you politely utter "uh-uh-uh"? Stupid pariah cough. It's trying to alienate me from the human race, one medical professional / work colleague / random Woolworths shopper at a time.

So far I've worked out that, in the middle of a coughing fit, all the Benadryl, Robitussin, Duro-Tuss, Butter Menthols and Strepsils in the world won't help me; the only thing that seems to work is a glug or two of Pepsi Max. It's probably because my throat is so stunned and confused that it is not being severely punished with some pungent, apricot health poison that it just shuts the hell up. So take that pharmaceutical industry. And pull your finger out. (By the way, it is practically impossible to say "ROBITUSSIN!" whilst coughing your lungs out.)

I don't mind my annoying new habit when I'm at home, because I can cough my little heart out without do-gooders (and do-badders) bothering me with annoying cough-esque queries and proffering sometimes idiotic and illogical medical counsel and tracking me - no, JUDGING ME - with their healthy eyes, as if coughs and pariah sicknesses didn't occur in their work bays. I know most people are well meaning, which is often code for investigating whether you are contagious, but one concerned person after another turns into a marauding horde of condescending cough quasi-experts.

I have been saying to people "I'm not contagious" as part of a two-pronged attack. Firstly, it enlightens them of the non-threatening nature of my cough. Secondly, it notifies them that I have already been to the doctor, that I don't want their half-assed opinion and that I don't want to discuss my medical condition with them any further; so thank you and good day.

A fairly irritating history of August

It is rather telling that on the first day of August, President Obama plopped himself into the international news via a potential, monumental economical epic fail that was sort of narrowly avoided but could have been completely avoided if only he weren't from the hapless Democratic Party and was capable of behaving like a proper President. Or alternatively, if only he were more like Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire, or Lord Voldermort, the Dark Wizard / Raging Psychopath. 

It's hard to keep track of all the monikers of Augustus, because he changed his name more times than Facebook would ever have allowed.  But Augustus must have been his fave because the month of 'Sextilis' was renamed August in his honour in 8 BC, after he picked this particular month because it was the time of several of his great triumphs in his rise to power, including the conquest of Egypt and when he killed Lily Potter. Perhaps the Obama Messiah will now rename August in his honour; now that he has saved the U.S. economy from being swallowed by Death Eaters. 



Poor Augustus didn't get a salad
named after him. But he got the month
of August, so he no complain.

Similar to the Obama Messiah and Voldermort, Mr Augustus held a collection of powers that were granted to him for life by the Senate, including those of tribune of the plebs and censor, and the intellectual property rights for use of the Killing Curse as a threat. His magical powers stemmed from financial success, ability to apparate out of awkward press conferences, resources gained in conquest, the building of relationships with dodgy, decrepit nation states throughout the Empire, the loyalty of many military soldiers and veterans, and the respect of the muggles, believe it or not.



Although the most powerful individual in the Roman Empire, Augustus wished to embody the spirit of the average muggle's virtues and norms, so he tried to relate to them and pretended to connect with their pathetic little concerns. He did this by throwing good money after bad, pretending to cut back on lavish excess and banning Twitter tweets that use the wrong version of there/their/they’re and you’re/your.  He didn't even have to pretend about the last thing - he hated it for real.    



In 28 BC, in an attempt to appear frugal and modest and ghetto, he generously decided to melt down 80 silver statues erected in his likeness that he had built because he was "born this way" and everyone needed to know it. And in 29 BC, Augustus paid 400 sesterces each to 250,000 citizens, turned bad romans into Horcruxes and raised the debt ceiling so he could keep buying spears and whores whilst looking like the savvy shopper.



The good news is that Augustus eventually died. The bad news is that his reign laid the foundations of a regime that lasted for nearly fifteen hundred years. And this is why they have four-year terms in the United States.