Yes, David Mitchell is a very smart man… a very smart English man. (That isn’t to say that his genius is any less genius than an American Genius. Just that he is a genius who also happens to be English)
And I, of course, don’t mean this David Mitchell either, though this David Mitchell is also a genius and also from England. I have to tell you, though I have always loved British humor, this particular tongue of silver fascinates me enough to make me binge on hoards of old episodes of “Would I Lie to You?” from the BBC on YouTube. He’s a quick-wit, Brit-wit, smooth-talking bit-wit who can make you laugh even when he’s playing a thick-wit… which he is certainly not. Continue reading →
Yes, David Mitchell is a very smart man… a very smart English man. (That isn’t to say that his genius is any less genius than an American Genius. Just that he is a genius who also happens to be English)
And I, of course, don’t mean this David Mitchell either, though this David Mitchell is also a genius and also from England. I have to tell you, though I have always loved British humor, this particular tongue of silver fascinates me enough to make me binge on hoards of old episodes of “Would I Lie to You?” from the BBC on YouTube. He’s a quick-wit, Brit-wit, smooth-talking bit-wit who can make you laugh even when he’s playing a thick-wit… which he is certainly not.
Anyway, that is the wrong English genius David Mitchell.
I mean the other English genius David Mitchell. The one who wrote Cloud Atlas. Also the one who wrote The Bone Clocks. And, of course, the one whose book Black Swan Greenwhich I just finished reading early this morning.
Yes, I mean this David Mitchell. The absolute genius writer who creates exactly the kind of books that I long to read.
Now, this post should probably be more of a traditional book report than it is. This book I just read is swimmingly, swannishly excellent in a David-Mitchell-is-GENIUS! sort of way. It is about an English boy from Malvern, England undergoing the trials and tribulations of his thirteenth year of life. The boy is a stutterer and secretly a poet. The girl he pines for is the girlfriend of his greatest enemy, the boy who relentlessly bullies and taunts him. One even suspects that this portrait of a Margaret Thatcher-era boyhood written in exquisitely horrible detail might be based on the author’s own boyhood somehow, so vivid is its detailing.
But this is already too cacked-up to be a proper book report just because of the two David-Mitchell-English-genius thing. If you really want that sort of book review, read it elsewhere, or read the danged book yourself. This report is more of a vow of fealty. I must now turn my hoarding disorder sufferer’s exacting zeal on the matter of reading everything this living author writes. I did the same thing to both Michael Crichton and Terry Pratchett because they are geniuses too. But they are both now no longer living and writing new books, at least, not unless there is new meaning to the term ghost writing that I don’t know anything about. So now it is David Mitchell’s turn to be the object of my intense fan-boy love of good writing.
Here are some David Mitchell books that I now must stalk and make my own;
You know that I am bad about collecting things. And on a cold, cold day, what better way to warm the cockles of my cold, old heart than to look at some of the pictures I have in my computer of Disney Princesses? Don’t inform the local loony bin about this obsession of mine… they are looking for me for enough reasons already.
Oopsie! No tangents, please! Back to Princesses!
Those are Princes! You big goof! In fact, some of them are not even royalty. Come on, Mickey! This is too simple to screw up! Just a collage of Disney Princesses!
It’s getting a bit silly now, but at least silly is better than wrong.
Umm… stick with silly, please…
Ooh, much better!
Sailor Moon? Are you kidding me?
Why do you think Tinkerbell is a PRINCESS?!!!
No, I think not! Don’t even try to go there!
Let me end this nonsense here by apologizing to all the many wonderful artists whose work I stole for this post. I appreciate your wonderful talents. But I think in pulling this whole thing together I should acknowledge that it would not have been possible without obsessive-compulsive behavior on my part, and mindlessly posting other people’s pictures on the part of everyone on the internet. It makes it seem that artwork belongs to all of us, and not just the artists who create it and the people who have all the money.
Some people might say I was born in the wrong century. I love castles and knights and everything medieval. Of course, the Dungeons and Dragons part of my life, my twenties and early thirties (1980’s and 1990’s) only made the situation worse. I am cursed by a desire to build castle walls.
I mean both figuratively and literally, of course. I have blogged already about incessant cardboard constructions that I can’t help but build and add to my ever-increasing set of Dungeons and Dragons toys. And always it is for the sake of the story. I love not only making the castle walls and castle buildings, but also the castle people. It flows in an unbroken stream of goofiness from cardboard and paper to brick and wooden towers and finally to knights and wizards and commoners and goblins. It takes all kinds to fill a kingdom.
Figuratively, I keep hoping to build ramparts against the coming enemies that I know are lurking, waiting to attack and take my life. I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor. I had two benign lumps removed from my body this school year. I can no longer teach because of health. I can’t supplement my retirement income, because part-time jobs I can physically do are either too distant to travel to or simply not available. The Dire Wolf of Poverty and the Grim Reaper are both sniffing around my barbican, looking for the way inside the castle.
But I continue to people my castle with new and fascinating folk. Endless elves and half-elves, were-creatures, and halflings all take up residence in my imaginary castles. They take over my art, my house, and sometimes… even this blog.
These are just a few of the interesting folks I’ve invited into my house and my life through the windows of my imagination.
And the most fascinating thing about this whole castle-building thing is that it touches my life in so many places. I am sincerely addicted to castle-building games on Facebook like Magecraft and Stormfall.
I have used those moments when I am waiting for things… telephone calls to insurance offices that put me on endless hold, those times after midnight when body aches wake me and I can’t get back to sleep, winding down after doing whatever yard work or house work that I can, and even when I am in the pre-writing stage letting ideas percolate. I came up with this lame idea for a blog while watching my troops take down marauders in Magecraft. And these games let me people the castles too.
So I spend a good share of my days now building and mending castle walls. Of course, I know the enemies I am trying to defend against are both undeterred and unimpressed by castle walls. They are immune to my vain attempts at constructing defenses. But even though the darkness looms on the horizon, I still have some of my bright, shining day left. And there is something majestic about castles with towers and walls.
Today it was rumored that the sinister Dr. Evil planned on invading the Mickian Library to threaten the books… just because he could. He’s been known to channel super villains like the evil Emperor Ming of Mongo. (Nobody scarier than that because Playing Mantis toy company couldn’t license DC or Marvel either one)
So, once we learned of the plot, we called on the Captain Action League to defend the library and rescue the books.
Hopefully the plans of the evil doctor with the removable brain have been thwarted.
Catch a Falling Star 