Beginnings...

—Damn you, cursed creatures. May your way to hell be filled with pain...

—Hold your tongue, brother! Just a few have chosen the evil path on their one and even those were pure and holy before the seed of vice took root and consumed their soul. All have a chance of redemption once their souls are freed from the rotting flesh.

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In the dark of night, a spark by itself is doomed to die; torches and bonfires die if abandoned. It is balance and feedback that keeps start alive for eons—and even those will come to an end...

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Ojala pudiera a capricho hacer hervir la sangre que corre por mis venas, obligar a mi mente a recordarte. Entonces a capricho podria olvidar el paraiso que son tus besos, arrancarme del eden de tus brazos.

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Is science a harbinger of democracy or equality? Eco's opinion on the idea of culture and mass culture may be feasible of describing science.

In old times, science was developed by a scientific aristocracy with means and time at hand—with a few exceptions.

One may think that the opportunity to stay outside of a "scientific policy" brings with itself a creative freedom that may transform the establishment—of course, the directed search brought by policing may produce development.

If knowledge is an equalizer, is it possible to produce a consumer science or a science for the masses? Per se, massification involves standarization, does this leveling to the mean with certain standard deviation signify the destruction of the intellectual value?

Is there danger in the production of a processed science, ready for consumption but unable to produce an intellectual reaction or understanding, as far as it is a way to light the spark of curiosity that could lead to thought and creation?

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

This was my first encounter with the pen of Haruki Murakami—translated by Jay rubin—and I read most of the novel while traveling back to Singapore from my vacations in Mexico. It was out of pure curiosity that I took the book from the shelf of a  convenience store in Mexico City International Airport—Mr. Murakami is very in fashion in Mexico, you can find his books everywhere and all the intellectual hipsters at the Feria Internacional del Libro seemed to be talking about him and his work. Then, the back cover got me by promising an elegiac romantic—almost erotic—coming of age novel. Well, it didn't lie.

This was also my first encounter with contemporaneous Japanese literature of the novel type—my previous incursions where mostly short stories by Nobel prize winner Professor Kenzaburo Oe.

Norwegian woods is a coming of age, slightly erotic, novel written in an autobiographic style. It tells the story of Toru, mostly his life around his 20th. birthday, in the Japan of the 60s, student movement included, where he explores pain, joy, love, sensuality, depression, vacuity and fulfillment during his first year at college. Mr. Murakami penmanship is alluring, the story is told through short, overwhelming phrases that flow one into another seamlessly. It was weird for me to find so crude, and refined at the same time, descriptions of  places, people and, most important, feelings. I guess that through the main and secondary characters we get a study  of the young adults society of Japan in the 60s embedded with a nostalgic and mournful feeling, while the faceless masses of irrelevant characters that appear just as idiotic leaders of the student movement leak a somehow acrid feeling.

In short, it is an very good read, while I don't care about Mr. Murakami's demons and surely miss all the symbols in the manuscript, Mr. Murakami's penmanship left me feeling the grass on the field, as well as Nagasawa, Reiko, Naoko and Midori's different gazes upon the world; it somehow stopped the clock, opened my mind's eye and allowed me to gaze into the soul of another human being.

Last weekend movies...

I'm keeping a very good mood these days and find myself sleeping some six hours nightly, so there's have been time to sit down with Lyx and watch movies together during my/her mornings/afternoons...

1. Crazy, Stupid Love, ****
   This film made me realize that I really like Steve Carrel's drama/comedy. The story deals with a bland gray man dealing with a family crisis—his wife cheated on him and filed divorce—that brings him a new friend, a new way of living and plenty of knowledge about women, life and love.
   
   
2. The Hangover Part II, ***
   You know the deal, it's bachelor party again but instead of Las Vegas, it is Thailand. This second part more or less repeats the first part's routine, criminal masterminds included. It's a good laugh.
   
   
3. 800 Balas (800 Bullets), ***
   This is an Alex de la Iglesia film. I have a thing with his films, I either hate them or love them. This one, well, it is a western-like story and I love it westerns, specially those with noir endings. Also, I love non-hollywood films where endings are more fulfilling and not oozing caramel.
   
   
4. The Smurfs, ***
   I grew up watching the smurfs cartoon, I guess I saw each of them at least five times as they where broadcasted five times a week on open television. I really enjoyed the film, it lived to the spirit of the cartoons and, actually, fulfilled my original expectations. Oh, and there's Neil Patrick Phillips.
   
   
5. Harry Potter. The Half-blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, ***
   It's been ages since the last time I saw a Harry Potter movie. Truth be told, I started reading the books and I got dispirited quite soon due to the fact that all the real work and thinking is made by the supporting characters. Anyway, the movies are a masterpiece of animation and in the Deathly Hallows Part 1 there are 5 minutes that I believe are a piece of art, the story of the three brothers.
   
   
6. The Change Up, *
   Another one of those I want to live the life of my fill the line, in this case it is two best friends with antipodal ways of living.

It's good to be back with the batteries all charged up, so there's not a big nee for relaxing tv-series. Anyway, this week's Big Bang Theory was O.K. just that and last week's Terra Nova still doesn't help me making my decision about liking it or not, so I'm still hooked into that waiting for more info to round up my opinion.

And that's it, another week of interesting times is gone.

The Dark Tower (1-4 of 7) by Stephen King

Five months ago, I found this beautiful boxed set containing the first four volumes of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Mixing equal parts of science fiction, fantasy and western from King's pen, the Dark Tower saga is meant to be epic by birthright. 

I must confess that these four books were my first encounter with Mr. King's penmanship and I'm already a fan. His style is sober and delicate. Reading these volumes makes you realize that he possesses a refined technique and the knowledge of what moves people's guts. He's a storyteller and, in my opinion, one of the best storytellers alive alongside Gaiman and Pratchett.

The first four volumes of the Dark Tower saga are:

• The Gunslinger. Introducing the main character of the saga, Roland, and his quest for the Dark Tower.
• The Drawing of the Three. Introducing the first set of Roland's ka-tet, a group that will play the leading role in the development of the story.
• The Waste Lands. Introduces the second part of Roland's ka-tet and King's universe. This is the one volume where King's cosmology is revealed.
• Wizard and Glass. Complements the story of young Roland, whose rite of passage was told before but this feels more like a true coming of age story, and, I believe, serves like a parting point for future developments—this is my guess from the fact that the ka-tet is complete, the past has been told and the intrigue has just been crawling in the dark between lines.

I need to read more of Mr. King's work, in particular those science fiction volumes like The Stand; but I get the feeling that Mr. King is masterfully getting to that point where he's telling us that all his stories belong to this dark multi-verse that is defined and interconnected by the Dark Tower. I said masterfully because, in the past, Robert A. Heinlein set himself up to that task, managed to do so, and, then, screw things up—again, in my very personal opinion—making a cartoon out of it by capturing all the evil doers in a Klein bottle. So far, Mr. King is far from such heroic but buffoonish decision. 

In the end, I realize that the Dark Tower epic diverges from Mr. King's well known horror pen. In general, I'm not a big fan of horror, unless it is the romantic pen games exploring the human soul of Byron, Polidori, Shelley and Stoker, the primeval and insane Lovecraft mythos, or Bloch's explorations of the warped human psyche, but I'm a big fan of romantic epics—romantic in the romanticism sense, that is, an aesthetic experience derived from strong emotions.

I strongly recommend the Dark Tower series, each volume is a beautifully connected series of stories that could be novelettes per se. I cannot wait to get my hands on the last three volumes.

Last weekend movies...

In the last three weeks, I spent a lot of time in a plane (~48 hours). Also, Lyx and I spend a lot of time together—compared to our usual long-distance situation—and we managed to watch quite a long list of movies that were in our list...

1. Cars 1 & 2, ****
   These are Pixar films, do I have to tell you more? The first one tells the coming of age of Lightning McQeen a self-centered racing car that goes through a life-changing experience in a small all-american town at route 66. The second tells how Mater, McQueen's simpleton best friend, saves the world by chance, the Jhonny English way.
   
   
2. Super 8, ****
   In the beginning I thought it will be a retold of the Cloverfield story with the difference of being locate in rural America, but it actually surprised me with quality of the scenery and the good acting of the teens.
   
   
3. Captain America: The First Avenger, ***
   This Marvel film telling the story of super soldier Steve Rogers hits the spot big time! I really don't want to say much about this film, I think it was good and is a must in order to prepare for The Avengers movie.
   
   
4. Love and Other Drugs, ***
   It's Pittsburgh, it's the 90s, and Pfeizer is about to launch Viagra. This is the backdrop for the romance between a stage one Parkinson girl, Anne Hathaway, and an upstar pharma rep, Jake Gyllenhaal. The story a little bit of a movie I saw a few months ago with the same sick girls meets successful boy theme whose name I cannot remember.
   
   
5. Real Steel, ***
   I'm a big Hugh Jackman's fan, he can sing, he can do theater and, most important, he's Wolverine! The movie tells the story of a father meeting his 11 year old son for the first time and resetting his life's values.
   
   
6. Horrible Bosses, **
   I guess that sooner or later everybody has to deal with a horrible boss and plot to kill him/her. Uhm, well, not the kill part... maybe...  It is a comedy, not so good, not so bad, about three friends suffering from that kind of bosses that you don't want to have but you find yourself having.
   
   
7. Friends with Benefits, **
   Can you have monogamous and frequent sex without a relationship? Well, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis explore that kind of relationship in this romantic-comedy. I was really surprised by Timberlake's acting, I was expecting a cartoonish character like the one he played in Bad Teacher, but actually he managed to play a nice role.
   
   
8. The Invention of Lying, **
   Imagine a world where everybody tells the truth. Then, one day comes the first liar and, among other things, religion is born. This is my second comedy of the year with Ricky Gervais playing the main character.
   
   
9. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, **
   One of the stars is because I really liked transformers when I was a kid and the other is because the CGI is just fantastic. Otherwise, please let it be the last one in the series, unless they really put themselves into it.
   
   
10. Mr. Popper's Penguins, *
    Jim Carrey plays Mr. Popper, a motivated real state agent that can close any deal and tries his best to get partnership in the firm he works for... at the cost of his family. During the film, we find out about Mr. Popper's childhood, while six penguins change his life and make him meditate about what's important in life.
    
    
11. Green Lantern, *
    These years, the last 5 and most probably the next 5, have seen a bonanza of super-hero movies picturing our favorite uber-men from the Marvel, DC and independent universes. In my opinion, and I have to disclose that I was an avid Green Lantern Corps reader during junior high, Green Lantern does not live up to the standard set by the GL and GLC comics.
    
    
12. Bad Teacher, *
    Gold digger Elizabeth Halsey, portrayed by Cameron Diaz, looses the life-chance of marrying a super-rich guy due to her lack of self-control, and goes back to her school teacher job where she hopes to catch the new super-rich teacher, portrayed by Justin Timberlake, but ends ups learning about life, love and laughs from the PE teacher, played by Jason Segel.
    
    
13. The Three Musketeers, *
    I love both the three musketeers novel and the steam-punk genre, but I hated this film. Don't get  me wrong, I loved the steam punk weaponry and air ships, Mila Jovovich playing Milady. Also, Aramis and Porthos are nicely portrayed by Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson, I could say that Waltz and Bloom are not so bad Richelieu and Buckingham. But, and this is a huge but, everything else sucks big time. I really hope production improves greatly for the sequel if ever make it.

Relax time requires relax tv-series, it is a good thing that Big Bang Theory is running its fifth season. We managed to watch the last three episodes where Howard learns that he's going to the ISS, Sheldon finally makes peace with Will Weaton, and Leonard finds out that Priya is having fun in India. We also discovered Terra Nova, a science fiction series dealing with a colony of futuristic humans living in a pre-historic world. It has just started running its first season and Lyx and I are already hooked.