Platypus of Truth

 It's not often that we get to enjoy two Hellboy volumes released within six months of each other.  After the groundbreaking "Wild Hunt," however, it's hard not to imagine a short stories volume being something of a let down.  I was very much pleased, then, to find that "The Crooked Man and Others" holds its own.  There are only four stories in this volume, but each one is a masterpiece of the "wierd tales" genre while also deepening our apreciation of Hellboy and his journey as a character. *Caution: Spoilers Ahead* The most important short-story in the volume is the one from which the collection takes its name: "The Crooked Man."  In "The Crooked Man" Mignola again reminds us just how much folklore there is to explore in the world by setting the tale in the back-woods of Appalachia.  After a long string of stories featuring Hellboy in Europe, Africa, and England, the return to America and American Folklore is welcome cha...

We discovered Thursday evening that out garbage disposal was home to an inter-dimensional horror of Lovecraftian proportions! It soon became clear to us who the culprit was behind this non-Euclidian invasion: C'thulhu! Braving the sanity-threatening forces of the elder gods, the Platypus was able to drive back the trans-cosmic horrors and ensure the safety of earth.  For now...

As usual, my summer reading plan has taken a bit of a detour.  While waiting for some of the other books to come in, I picked up Verlyn Flieger's "Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World."  I'm not all the way through it yet, but I am frankly bothered by what I've read.  As a seeming result of her commitment to the philosophy of Owen Barfield, Flieger casts Tolkien's work as essentially dualistic and rooted in Barfield's idea of the fragmentation of meaning.  The problem here is twofold: 1.) though Barfield was a fellow inkling, Flieger thus far has failed to make the case that his thought was as influential on Tolkien as Flieger claims (what precisely Flieger is claiming is often hard to ascertain), 2.)Flieger attempts to cast Tolkien's imaginative project as essentially dualist, a claim that Tolkien the Catholic would have flatly denied.  Such claims demand real and painstakingly collected evidence that is carefully argued and ...

Character Killing It's a rule of storytelling that killing off a likable character (all else being equal) deepens audience commitment to the story. As we've discussed earlier, technological advances during the early and mid-nineties allowed video game designers to create narrative driven games.  Squaresoft led the way with its landmark Final Fantasy series.  However, at that time, video game designers creating products for Nintendo had to work within the parameters of the company's ethics code.  This code was meant to ensure that Nintendo products were child-friendly; children being the target audience for video games during this time period.  This meant that story elements like permanent character death that could be traumatizing to young children were frowned upon or disallowed.  Final Fantasy II went out of its way, as a matter of fact, to bring back characters from otherwise fatal situations (falling out of an airship and being turned to stone come to...

Summer is finally here, and with it the Summer Reading List. This year's anticipated titles include: 1. "Education for Human Flourishing" by Paul Spears 2. "At the Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft 3. "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien (Again) 4. "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis (Again) 5. "Hellboy Vol. 10" by Mignola et al. 6. "She" by Rider Haggard As usual, I'll be keeping you all posted as I work my way through.

My doctors have finally decided that the super-meds I'm on aren't working so I'm up for a round of tests this month.  I just got finished with a PH probe; a wire running through my nose and down my throat to the top of my stomach (it feels like having a really bad cold).  Next week, I get to have a scope put down my throat and a tracking pill left in my stomach to record the acid levels.  Fun, fun, fun.  The goal is to find out if anything is agitating the hernia and causing it to over-react.  If they can't find anything, we go to surgery, but that's looking unlikely in the short-term due to some insurance problems (not the company's fault; it's a complex issue).