Author: Purple Wyrm

Blood Pact

Blood for Book God! Skulls for the Abnett Throne!

My copy of Blood Pact arrived. Hooray! I’m about halfway through and was seriously concerned for a bit there that Abnett was going to kill Tona Criid. He hasn’t – yet – so I’m happy. For now.

It’s occurred to me while reading that if Daniel Craig isn’t available to play Gaunt in my theoretical TV/Movie adaption, Anthony Stewart Head could also do a very good job. And would probably be a bit cheaper 🙂

Captain Fishface agrees!

Casting out Ghosts

Yes, it’s one of those “who would play so-and-so” entries…

Woke up this morning intending to have a shower, shave, put a load of washing on and get into some much needed cleaning of the apartment. All of these aims have been frustrated by the revelation that I have no water.

There’s a lot of banging coming from the apartment next door, so I suspect they’re doing bathroom renovations and have managed to switch off my water along with their own. I’m tempted to head out to the… what do you call the place where all the pipes and taps are? A tap cupboard? That’ll have to do. I’m tempted to head out to the tap cupboard and start messing around in the hopes of restoring my water while leaving theirs off, but I’d probably screw up and spray scalding steam all over the renovators – not that that’s a completely unappealing idea in my current waterless mood.

Anyway, of late I’ve been indulging in my Imperial Guard fetish (oh man, that doesn’t sound good does it :)) by reading my way through Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series. They’re bloody good reads (often summarised as Sharpe in space) and I’ve caught up all the way to Blood Pact, which I will commence upon as soon as Amazon gets its act together and actually delivers it.

When reading a sprawling novel series with a cast of dozens I generally find it useful to consider who I’d cast if I had an unlimited budget to produce a movie or TV series of it. This helps me keep everyone straight in my head. I’ve done this with some of the Ghosts, and – since this is my blog, I can do what I like with it and I’ve got nothing better to do while waiting for the water to be reconnected – I thought I’d list them here.

(I should note that this list is rather strongly influenced by one that I stumbled across online, lest anyone accuse me of casting decision plagiarism. I’d link to it if I could find it again)

Colonel-Commisar Ibram Gaunt: Daniel Craig. As far as I’m concerned Daniel Craig is Gaunt, which makes the current crop of James Bond films rather odd viewing 🙂

Major Elim Rawne: Eric Bana. I think he could easily pull off the combination of charisma and menace required for Rawne.

Master Sniper Hlaine ‘Mad’ Larkin: Hugh Laurie. Not an obvious choice but I reckon Laurie would make a really impressive Larkin. Everyone thinks of him as House of course, and as far as personality goes you couldn’t get much further apart than the domineering doctor and the mentally vulnerable sniper, but Laurie is such a gifted actor that I think he could do it, and do it well. You’d just need to give him a different accent (which you’d be doing anyway) and haircut so everyone doesn’t think “House!” any time he appears on screen.

Sergeant Agun Soric: Bob Hoskins. Another casting choice that just seems to work for me. Hoskins is Soric.

Chief Scout Sergeant Oan Mkoll: Robert Carlyle. Another from the casting list that I stumbled over. At first I thought it was a ridiculous idea, as Carlyle looks nothing like the Mkoll in my head, but after watching his performance in this week’s episode of Stargate Universe I’ve reversed my opinion. He’d make a great Mkoll.

Eszrah ap Niht: Jason Momoa. Momoa seems to be the go-to-guy for big menacing dudes in sci-fi/fantasy at the moment. I can’t recall if Eszrah is meant to be particularly big, but he’s certainly menacing, which makes him seem big 🙂

Major Gol Kolea: Tahmoh Penikett. He’s probably a bit young to really be (former) family man Gol Kolea, but I reckon he’d do the job.

Ayatani Zweil: John Hurt. If he wasn’t willing to commit to an ongoing role, Hurt would also make a great Lord Militant General Noches Sturm.

Trooper Brinn Milo: Colin Morgan. Get rid of that ridiculous haircut and he’d make a great Milo.

Sanian/Saint Sabbat: Ellen Page. Now that’s a casting completely out of left field I know, but I suspect that if she could handle the role, she’d be fantastic in it. Put her on the audition list and see how she goes.

So that’s where my casting list stands at the moment. Yes, it leaves out a bunch of important characters, but I simply haven’t decided who should play them yet. I know I did have a great idea for Varl, but can’t remember who it was. So, roll on the pilot episode people! Let’s get this underway! ;D

Do you Remember Jacko?

He’s an individual – you can’t fool him.

For years I’ve had a vague memory of a TV show or movie from many, many years ago. I only ever saw a few minutes of it, but those few minutes involved footballer Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson driving around in a time traveling truck – or at least a truck that somehow got sucked back to the 1940s where people were very concerned about the Japanese characters on its tyres.

Now this is a concept weird enough to suggest that I dreamed the entire thing. I mean, who would cast Jacko in anything outside of an Energizer commercial? But, a bit of Googling has shown that I wasn’t hallucinating, and the series did in fact exist – The Highwayman, a fairly shambolic semi-sci-fi series that ran for a few episodes in 1987 and 1988.

Good. I’m not completely mad then.

Oh, and who remembers this?

Creepypasta

Not for the faint of heart

Recently all of us at the office put together a big, combined order from Amazon. Included in mine was some Warren Ellis, some Warhammer novels and a few bits and pieces including a book about weird things in American history by one Robert Damon Schneck named The President’s Vampire.

This proved to be a damn good read. I was familiar with several cases he covered (I mean who hasn’t heard about the phantom attackers of colonial Gloucester?) but there were several new to me. And the final case covered, well.

As the start of the last chapter says, people of a nervous disposition or those prone to obsessive thoughts would probably be better off not knowing about the case. So if you’re one of those, tune out here…

Still here? Good.

OK, the last chapter covers a very strange and downright creepy series of events encountered by a friend of the author who started playing around with a ouija board. Over the period of several months he and his friends made contact with some “entities” (a catch all term for whatever it is you contact via a ouija board, be they ghosts, demons, elementals, aliens, dolphins, the NSA or fragmented sections of the sitters’ subconciousnii) who eventually (quite reluctantly) supplied them with information about a malevolant being whose name I shall not repeat here, because (so the entities claimed) if you know his name he’ll come and hunt you down.

A series of very weird and eerie events followed, including one of the group having an inexplicable late night encounter with something that may or may not have been the creature in question.

After relating the events Schneck goes on to present a very well thought out (although – as in the best stories of this kind – ultimately inconclusive) analysis of the case. You can (and he does) come up with a perfectly rational explanation for it all, as long as you’re willing to accept the subconcious-action theory of the ouija board, but it’s still downright weird – and I speak as someone so well versed in the paranormal that I don’t count things as weird until crop circles start appearing in solid concrete.

Now, just out of idle curiosity I googled the name of the murderous being spoken about via the board. And to my surprise I discovered a simplified account of the case being circulated around the net as creepypasta!

(What’s creepypasta? Get with the program man! It’s the 2010’s for crying out loud! :))

This is strangely cool. Creepypasta is generally assumed to be complete grabage but here we have a case where it’s based in truth. I don’t know if Mr Schneck is aware of this, but I may drop him a line and tell him.

For the brave of heart, creepypasta accounts of the case may be found here and here. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The Plan

They has one

After watching the Battlestar Galactica finale a few years back I actually tried to create this chart, but gave up after the sheer volume of information overwhelmed my fairly feeble infographic mojo. But it matters not because Billy Ray Stephens Jr. has done it for me!

Is that awesome or what?

(Well, apart from the various typos :))

U’m Raptured uz Bro!

Go Tell it to the Whales

Last week there was a bit of a stir in the local media over a whale caught in fishing lines off Rottnest island. A rescue attempt was launched, but had to be abandoned due to oncoming storms. They did however manage to get a GPS tag attached to the lines so they could go back and free the whale later.

They finally got around to it yesterday (or was it the day before? I forget…). They got the rescue team together and headed out in boats to track  down the tag. They found it alright, still attached to the tangle of lines, but there was no whale!

The media are all saying that the whale managed to free itself. But, what if that’s not the case? What if the whale was raptured!?

C’mon, you (and Harold Camping) know that it makes sense! ;D

And on the subject of good ol’ Harold, he’s announced that the rapture that didn’t happen on Saturday did happen, it’s just that it was a mystical/spiritual thing rather than a physical thing, and the world is still going to end in October. Yeah, you just keep on truckin’ Harold!

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