Until then, here's Briane to talk about Codes!
Wherein I Hate Stuff For No Reason (a guest post by Briane Pagel)
I
know this is the space Andrew has lately been reserving for his
discussion of how to handle, or not handle, a bad (or, as it was,
not-really-so-bad) review, and I think that’s important work.
Someone has to stand up to bullies, and Andrew has a good platform
from which to do so. That’s why I am extra-appreciative of his
willingness to lend me his Wednesday slot in order to let me provide
some thinly-veiled marketing in the guise of a LISTICLE!
P.S. WHY does everything on the internet have such a stupid name? Years
into it, I still
cannot bring myself to say that I
tweeted
something. I tell people “Oh
yeah I posted a link to that on Twitter.”
“Blog,” “Tweet,” “listicle,” etc. etc. It’s so
degrading.
I feel stupid whenever I talk about anything I do on the internet.
People will say Are
you going to try to publicize your book
and I have to say Yes,
I plan to… *sigh*…
blog… about
it.
Where
was I? Oh, right: Listicle.
People love lists! That was one of the things mentioned in an
article I read entitled, “These
5 Amazing Things People Love About The Internet Will Change Your
Life.”
(Other things included cats and lists about cats.) So I’ve been
making the rounds, promoting my new book, Codes,
and
it just made sense. What
better way to discuss a near-future book about a corporation trying
to perfect the process of human cloning by implanting
computer-programmed personalities into them and marketing the result
than to create a superficial list designed to generate fake
controversy?
Did
that sentence make any sense? It’s been a long day and I got lost
in some of the clauses there.
Knowing
that Andrew usually uses this space to discuss people’s reactions
to bad reviews, I decided that the theme for my latest list would at
least tangentially relate to that topic, and so I came up with the
idea of reviewing shows and books I’ve
never even seen,
and, of course, panning them.
If
you’re like me (and I pray you’re not. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT) then
there are LOTS and LOTS of things you HATE, almost-sight-unseen. I
am a champion
at hating stuff before I know anything about it. I can dislike
something practically
before I know it exists.
It’s a talent. Books, movies, TV shows, songs, certain shades of
green… doesn’t matter what it is, I can hate it
right
up front. And, more than just hate
quietly,
I can -- based on that completely uninformed opinion review the
bejeebers out of that thing I hate. YES! FREE SPEECH! ‘MERICA!
Let’s get to it!
1.
The Walking Dead:
I have never seen this show, or even a preview for it. That has not
stopped me from hating it so much that I have started disliking other
shows
if a commercial for TWD airs during them. Can we NOT have any more
allegories about our society told through the zombie format? This
thing is all over! I can’t go onto a web page without seeing some
picture of a sweaty guy or girl holding a machete and looking fierce
next to a headline about how TWD is really
going to amazeballs you with the storyline this week.
LET ME GUESS: They nearly get overrun by zombies but then hack their
way out! Also, where is everyone getting these machetes in the first
place? I am 46 years old and I have never
seen a machete in real life. Do the zombies bring them? Do they sell
them at the True Value ™ Hardware Store? In real
life,
a zombie apocalypse would feature 100% fewer machetes and 100% more
“Dads holding a bed lamp they grabbed off the table.”
2.
The New Star Trek Movies:
This automatic-dislike probably began when they cast Chris Pine as
Captain Kirk in the first “new” Star Trek movie. Looking at Chris
Pine gives me the same feeling I get when I grind my teeth, only less
pleasant. That was bad enough. But then I heard that in one of these
movies they had Kirk driving around in a hot rod on Earth. You know
what space operas don’t
need?
Drag races on planet Earth. But to top it off, they
remade “The
Wrath Of Khan.” YOU CANNOT REMAKE THE WRATH OF KHAN. That is like
remaking a rainbow. Like remaking a glorious, rage-filled,
fist-shaking, Enterprise-attacking, earwig-monster-injecting,
desert-planet-inhabiting, Fantasy-Island-operating rainbow.
3.
The Hunger Games.
OH. MY. GOD. From the moment I first heard of this series of books I
thought they sounded like the dumbest thing ever. Here is my
understanding of the plot: some government starves all its citizens,
so that they will send a bunch of kids to shoot each other with
arrows in order to get a little bit of extra food. HOW DOES THAT MAKE
SENSE? How would that system work? It could never! But then after all
the kids shoot each other or whatever, the two (?) winners (?) get
elected to the government or something, like Charlie winning the
chocolate factory only Jennifer Lawrence didn’t even have to give
back the gobstopper? NO DO NOT BOTHER EXPLAINING WHERE I GOT IT
WRONG. The plot doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to, because
it’s a book for teenagers, and teenagers love it when things don’t
make sense. It lets them be convinced that adults don’t
‘understand’ them. That’s why I loved The
Cure
when I was seventeen, and why kids nowadays love The
Hunger Games
and its sequels, New
Moon
and whatever the third one was with Percy Jackson.
3a.Bonus
hatred: I cannot stand
Jennifer Lawrence.
Not even a little bit. She is somehow the female
version
of that guy in 8th
grade who thought smelling farts was funny. Associating her with a
movie makes me that much less likely to see it. If “J-Law”
showed up on my doorstep with a giant pizza and a bootleg director’s
cut of the next Star Wars movie, I wouldn’t even answer the door.
Let’s
do one more. This is fun! How about:
4.
Anything by Isaac Asimov.
To be honest, I am not sure where this one comes from because I do
not know really anything about Asimov other than I dislike him and
everything I imagine he stands for. I know as a scifi-ish writer
myself I am supposed to apparently love Isaac Asimov and everyone’s
always talking about how he predicted the future and his laws of
robotics and etc blah blah blah, but I
can’t be bothered.
I’m not even sure what Asimov is supposed to have written.
Foundation,
I think? I’d go look it up but I’d rather my browser not have a
history of searching for Asimov stuff. Even I
am cooler than that. I think Asimov wrote that story that got made
into I,
Robot,
starring Will Smith, and can we as a society really take an author
seriously anymore if Will Smith likes his stuff? I’m also pretty
sure that in reality there’d be no way robots could be programmed
not to harm humans, which I think was a ‘law’ of robotics Asimov
pulled out of thin air and made people believe was a thing. It’s
so dumb: suppose I was being held hostage by Chris Pine and Jennifer
Lawrence and the only way I’m getting out alive is if C-3PO (do NOT
get me started on R2-D2!) snipes them both with a laser rifle from
across the road. OH WAIT there’s a LAW that he can’t kill them,
only if he DOESN’T, then he’s harming a human by letting me die,
right? That is NOT how laws work, Isaac Asimov. You don’t see
gravity
only holding people down if it’s nonparadoxical.
In closing, you’ll
note that the only
people I picked on in here are people who are dead, or who don’t
matter, or who are Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pine and so deserve
it. I don’t have to worry about anyone overreacting or calling me
crazy or taking me to task for these entirely unfounded and
ill-informed, and yet still 100% correct, opinions. Don’t forget
to mention in the comments how much you agree with me!
Something
I don’t hate: My
book, Codes:
Robbie
had an ordinary life, until she walked
into Gravity Sling. Now he’s seeing coded messages everywhere,
being chased by shadowy big-corporation goons, and questioning
literally everything about the world as he knows it. Some questions
need answers. This Phillip K. Dick style debut science fiction novel
raises questions about how people use technology and each other.
Links:
Follow
me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianePagel
Buy
Codes
on
Golden
Fleece Press’ site: http://goldenfleecepress.com/catalog/fiction/
