The Blog of Rob

This week I've been reading 'Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West' by Gregory Maguire. I first saw the book when I was out Christmas shopping (for me, mostly an excuse to visit bookshops) but couldn't afford it at the time, when I went back when I could afford it I couldn't remember what it was called or who it was written by... Last Saturday I spotted it in the Waterstones in North Finchley and, being conveniently flush, I purchased it and repaired immediately to the Costa next door. Since then it hasn't quite been "couldn't put it down" but every moment when I've had time to be reading I've spent engrossed in this book. As the title suggests, it is the story of the life leading up to the moment when Dorothy pours a bucket of water over the Witch, Elphaba, but it takes the black and white, good and evil morality of it's source material and turns it on its head. The Wizard is a totalitarian dictator and Elphaba a freedom fighter. Of course the ending couldn't really come as a surprise, but the story leading up to it is frequently surprising, shocking and sometimes very funny. The main themes of the book are the nature of evil and the possibility of free will, but the book manages to avoid getting bogged down in philosophy and is an excellent read as well as a thought provoking one.

I'm just about finished reading the new Harry Potter book for the second time, and before I go any further I'd like to point out that I liked it enough to have read it twice within two weeks of release I can't help feeling this is the first Potter book which isn't 'stand alone' - that is, there's not really enough plot in the book to keep someone reading if they didn't care overly about the major revelations going on every other chapter (ie. someone reading their first HP book). It seemed to me a bit more like "Here's all the things you're going to need to know before the final book" with a few chapters of action tacked on at the end.

This week I've just finished reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I actually bought the book before Christmas but it's been languishing in a Waterstones bag under a pile of other stuff at the foot of my bed until I got round to doing some tidying earlier this month.

I can now say I wish I'd tidyed up sooner! I've been a big fan of Murakami's since I read his Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World back when I was a student. His writing is clear and uncomplicated - or I should say the translations are - yet the books generally feature ordinary (if sometimes over-imaginative) people in extra-ordinary situations, and we're not contained by mere physical reality here. Oh, and cats, usually several of them.

Very real characters in very unreal situations are a feature of Kafka on the Shore, in a plot which deals with dreams, reality and destiny. And cats. If you like slightly off-beat fiction then you'll find this an excellent read.

Now that the results are mostly in I have a few things I'd like to say about this UK two party fallacy.

I'm looking at the figures with two seats undecided, and we have:

Labour 9,539,730 votes (35.2 %)
Conservative 8,756,242 votes (32.3 %)
Lib Dem 5,977,043 votes (22.1 %)

For a start I think it's fairly ridiculous that we now get to be ruled for five years by a party that 64.8% of voters didn't vote for, but that's the way the system is and it's quite difficult to come up with viable alternatives. The really scary thing is when you realise those percentages are of people who actually voted rather than of actual voters - 38.7% of voters didn't vote at all, that's 17,000,000 people (approximately).

Now imagine that one in ten people didn't vote because they felt a vote that wasn't for either the Tories or Labour "wouldn't matter" - this isn't too far fetched when you consider that out of a sample of three non voters I know, 66% gave this reason. Let's also be cunning and assume that one in ten people who did vote voted tactically - ie. they didn't vote for the party they really like, they voted the way they did because they really didn't want to see either Labour or the Conservatives win a particular seat. In a very rough and ready way I'll just take 10% off each party a share that with the other two. This isn't excellent statistical analysis, but none of these assumptions are too outrageous I think, and gives the following figures:

Labour 8,884,609
Conservative 8,656,456
Lib Dem 8,004,550

I upgraded my EMusic account this week, so I could download an extra 25 songs a month. I've downloaded quite a few things as a result but, at the moment, my favourite has been The Decemberists, I've been listening to their album Picaresque which reminds me a bit of 90's indie band Cast.

This weekend I've been reading Jennifer Government by Max Barry, a satirical look at a near future world dominated by free markets and corporate greed. It was a highly entertaining and not overly heavy way to pass the time, the main characters were engaging and the plot was gripping enough to keep things moving along. Overall a recommended read. I should add, the only reason I bought the book was because I started playing Max's online game - Nation States - a few months ago, a cunning marketing strategy by the authour I think.

I read this phrase quite a lot in the last week. I don't think it really means what people who're saying think it means, though. Is the world really more uncertain than it was, say, 90 years ago? Not really (and you know I picked that particular figure because it landed right in the middle of WWI), with advances across all areas of life people (in this country) now live longer and have far better medical support than they did then. Communication has improved to the level where the speed of light is the principal limit to how fast you can find out what is going on elsewhere in the world - there is more certainty now than there has ever been in the past. the problem is that what has replaced ignorance is the certainty that there are many things and people around the world that can threaten us.

Not posted for a while, not that anyone's reading, but just to keep things ticking over I thought I'd mention that I've been thoroughly enjoying listening to Manda and the Marbles recently. Sort of like a smoother Transvision Vamp, I downloaded the whole album from Emusic.com.

Office Sweeties Have No Secrets, which is apparently news to some people. Now I can read the email of everyone in my office and find out every web site they visit when at work, if I wanted to, and if I could spare the time, but, quite frankly, there's a lot of other stuff I'd rather be reading.

A good Superbowl this year I thought. The Eagles handled themselves well and were really only a couple of plays away from forcing overtime (if they hadn't gone for an onside kick they wouldn't have been trying to pass out of the endzone with less than a minute to go), however I they didn't make me feel at any point like they were going to do anything New England had no answer for. With the Pats co-ordinators departing for pastures new next year will be quite interesting - people are starting to form the opinion that the main reason Bill Parcells has been so successful is because he had Belichick as a co-ordinator, next year they might decide that the reason Belichick has been so successful is because of his co-ordinators...