The Brass Bed Review

{So here’s what happened. For my Sony test-driving requirement I have to review a Harlequin romance. I wrote the following review, then realised it was a Random House romance I picked up for free. So... my bad. But here it is anyway.}

The Brass Bed
Jennifer Stevenson
Random House
Fantasy

Grade: D+

So in the first few pages of The Brass Bed we are introduced to the idea that there is magic in these here worldly waters. The sky is developing some sort of pink haze/fog and pigeons are smoking cigarettes. Why? I do not know. Me of the future, having finished the book, is there a reason the pigeons are puffing up? No, although the pink fog is caused by road rage and occasionally eats people. So there’s that.

Our main character, Jewel Heiss, has been sent by her not-quite-a-cop boss to follow his wife whom he suspect has been knocking boots with a certain someone (and while he himself has had numerous affairs, pity the wife who does the same). This particular someone is also charging the wife $350 a pop that she’s putting on her credit card as a ‘sex therapist’. Seriously? This is the crack criminal mind that Jewel has been sent to decipher? After telling us that the wife can be “slippery as pup shit”, Jewel then gets her to confess to having mind-blowing sex every time she sees him within two paragraphs.

Then, under some sort of misguided attempt to bring the man in on fraud charges, Jewel ends up in the ‘sex therapist’s’ office where she falls asleep on the large brass bed that the wife has had her ‘experiences’ on. She even thinks to herself that the wife was there not two hours before. And yet, she still lies down.

Our girl is as dumb as a box of rocks.

She does, however, have mind-blowing sex with a swan. In a dream. And while my kink flag flies high, there was nothing the least bit sexy about this scene. Come on, if she’s going to have sex with a swan at least let me get turned on by it!

~ahem~ Uh, where was I?

So, the world moves on. It turns out there is an incubus trapped in the bed until he satisfies one hundred women. Jewel is lucky customer one hundred.

A genie shows up but in typical genie fashion grants your wish in the most cumbersome way possible. The incubus living in the bed gets lost, then found. Jewel starts to fall for the sex therapist. If this seems to be going by fast it’s because so little of it was worth remembering and I don’t want to re-read. Also, very little was worth remembering

Jewel, in the style of cop stories everywhere, gets suspended. Mostly over the whole genie thing. The wife steals the bed which her husband proceeds to destroy. In the interim, she and the hubby make-up before the pink fog can eat them. The bed destroying causes the incubus to take shelter in the backseat of a nearby car where Jewel hops in to have a conspicuous orgasm so that she might again free him..

I could not make this up. Well, I could... but I beg leave to think I could have written it better.

The sex therapist is involved in all of this in a totally contrived way and ends up her partner in the ‘hinky’ division which is exactly half as fun as it sounds. In the meantime, sex therapist is slightly pursuing her for reasons surpassing all human understanding and incubus has to actually love before he is allowed to be free. Maybe.

~deep breath~

And that’s where I quit caring. (Actually I quit caring long before then, but as I thought I was reading this for a review, I powered on.)

None of this is really solved at the end, which promises a sequel The Velvet Chair. I will not be purchasing said book. I can see the wisdom behind releasing the first in series for free. Karen Marie Moning sucked me in with Darkfever and I’ve read what there is of the series twice since in two weeks. But you are no KMM Ms. Stevenson. I appreciate the effort, but yours is a name I will avoid until informed otherwise.

Hello....?

Lovelace...? Internet...? I miss you. Please come back.

Dell

Dell: Hello, this is Dell technical support, how may I help you?

Me: Yeah, my laptop over-heated and shut down yesterday, since then my fan has been making a very loud buzzing noise. It’s going to need replacing.

Dell: I am sorry to hear that. We will run some tests and try to get this taken care of quickly. Okay, I need you plug in your AC adapter.

Me: I don’t have it with me.

Dell: Well ma’am, I need you to have your AC adapter plugged in before we can proceed further.

Me: No, I mean, it’s like a hundred miles away.

Dell: I am afraid we will need the to have the AC adapter to assess your problem.

Me: Okay, explain to me the link between my power cable and the fan and I’ll go get it.

Dell: That is a very good question ma’am. We will be testing many things on your computer including the software, the hard drive, the keyboard, the mouse, and the AC adapter.

Me: This is a hardware problem. You are not going to fix it by assessing my keyboard.

Dell: Ma’am, I’m sorry but we must run these tests.

Me: Even thought they are an absolute waste of time?

Dell: I do not believe that they are ma’am.

(Silence)

Dell: Ma’am, are you retrieving your power cable?

Me: No. I told you it’s a hundred miles away. And unnecessary. This is a hardware problem.

(After some discussion we decide to spend the next thirty minutes running a system check. All the while I am quietly fuming. At one point, we have the following exchange.)

Dell: (sounding worried) I see here that you did not purchase our complete care extended warranty package.

Me: Excuse me? This laptop comes with a warranty. It sure as hell should cover something that should never break to begin with.

Dell: Oh no ma’am, your warranty covers any issues with the cooling fan. However, you may wish to purchase the extended-

Me: Are you trying to upsell me? Really? Now?

Dell: Ma’am I-

Me: No, I don’t want the extended warranty. I only wanted the one year warranty for the out of the box problems. Like this one.

(Again, much later after we have diagnosed that my computer believes everything is peachy keen.)

Dell: Okay, do you have wireless access from your computer?

Me: Yes...

Dell: I am sending you a file to download to your hard drive. It will update-

Me: No.

Dell: I’m sorry ma’am?

Me: No, I don’t put anything on my computer without knowing exactly what it is. And nothing you could send me is going to fix a hardware problem.

Dell: It is a very small file ma’am.

Me: I don’t care how big it is, I’m not putting it on my laptop.

Dell: It is an exe file.

Me: I can’t open an exe file anyway. I am running Ubuntu. (Right here is where I really start flipping my shit because surely they have it on file that I bought a Inspiron with and Ubuntu OS. Right? Apparently not.)

Dell: Oh, I am going to need to transfer you to our Ubuntu specialist then ma’am. Be sure to tell him that you are running Ubuntu.

Me: Why should that even matter with a hardware problem? And am I going to have to go through all this again?

Dell: I will conference in this representative, you will not have to do all this again.

Me: Whatever.

(transfers)

Dell: Hello, this is Dell technical support how may I help?

Me: You don’t know? He was supposed to talk to you.

Dell: I’m sorry ma’am, your call has been automatically transferred to me, how may I help?

(And then, gentle reader, I lost it.)

Me: I don’t fucking believe this. I’ve just spent forty-five minutes on the phone doing absolutely nothing useful and now I have to do it all again with you.

Dell: I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.

Me: Un-fucking-believable.

(After I got a hold on myself we finally got around to the issue. What followed was him transferring me to his manager as he attempted to speak to the Ubuntu specialist [again, why?] so his manager could apologise to me. Finally, he comes back and says...)

Dell: I have spoken to our Ubuntu specialist and he assures me this is a hardware problem. We will arrange to have it shipped to one of our service centres to be fixed.

Me: I have been on the phone for an hour and twenty minutes trying to tell you that exact same thing.

(In short, fuck you Dell. If I didn’t already have my computer, I would never buy from you. In fact, if I get so much as a whisper of a problem from you over this, I’m going to return this one.)

Romulan Ale

Found this over at Geek in the City. Made a few changes since some ingredients were unavailable to me.

Makes about a 750ml (wine bottle) worth. Well, mathematically, it makes about 960ml, so you can cut down on some of the measures.

2 Cups Blue Curacao
1 Cup Clear Rum, no flavor or spice
1/2 Cup Grain Alcohol - (NOTE - You may substitute Vodka if you can’t get or do not want the Grain Alcohol. Insert picture of cat with 'Do Not Want' caption).
1/2 cup Red Bull (or some other mostly clear energy drink, believe me, you'll need it. Blue energy drink would work too).

Mix and serve chilled. Don't let the Federation know you have it. Mix with absinthe for a 'Cloaking Device'. Hide under table and throw snacks at peoples feet. Make ptew-ptew noises. Think you're funny.

Notice that you've become the Nerd Heroine. Either think your awesome or be mortified.

Repeat.

(Almost worse than Stumble)

Dear TV Tropes,

I know that the time sucking vortex you call a website has been commented on before. Several times in fact. Any link to TV Tropes must be treated with caution.

So I had an idea. Why not, every dozen or so pages you click on, throw up one if those 'go outside and play' screens like stumble does when it goes down for maintenance. It would be hilarious. No really, it would. Yours could say 'Hey, why don't you go watch some television instead of just reading about it?'. See? I'm laughing already.

Just a thought.

I love you.

Really...

The Heroine

T-Rex up for Auction

I don't just want to win the lottery now, I need to.

T-Rex skeleton up for auction, expected to go for $2-8 million.

District 9

Drug my dad to see District 9. Explained it as ‘aliens land and are put in concentration camps’ which is just about all I knew about it. I started following the early viral sites: Multinational United, D-9, Maths From Outer Space, MNU Spreads Lies - but not with any kind of regularity.

I saw Wolverine last May, which despite what other reviews say was not a total waste of time, and before it was the preview for what at the time I described as a strange and fascinating little movie. That is totally what District 9 is, this completely bizarre movie that will leave you both enraptured and confused. It’s this year’s Cloverfield.

Not-So-Quick Summary: Twenty years ago a large alien spaceship arrived on earth and settled over Johannesburg. After a few months of nothing happening, humans finally broke into the ship to discover about a million aliens in a cargo bay malnourished and maybe a little crazy. After spending some time helping the aliens, deemed ‘prawns’ for slang, the alien camp is turned over to Multi National United. MNU is a private corporation, weapons manufacturer and mercenary distributor. On the plus side, we cannot use alien technology. On the downside, shit is about to hit the fan.

Wikus van der Merwe works for MNU. Wikus has put in charge of alerting the prawns that they are being moved from District 9 away from the city to District 10. Wikus van der Merwe is not the brightest bulb on the porch. Finding alien technology, he sprays himself in the face. Rather than immediately knocking him out (which would have been hilarious at that point), it slowly begins to change him into an alien. MNU is at first not pleased, until they discover he can use the alien technology. Wikus solicits an alien(who has the best alien name ever)’s help to get himself un-aliened; but the prawn wants to get to his ship so he can go home and then rescue his people on earth.

Shit, it is going down. Loudly.

Here’s the thing. There is not a doubt in my mind that if a group of aliens showed up on earth lacking in some sort of defensive capability that would stop us – we would totally do exactly this to them. Relegate them to second class citizen status and experiment on them. Humans, by and large, are nasty, brutish creatures. Honest, I do believe that at the edge of our solar system there is a little flashing beacon warning ‘Abandon Hope all ye who enter here.’ And if there’s not, there should be. In fact, while I expected to argue this point with my dad on the way out, he was there before me.

I will say this, the third act, while engaging, devolved into thirty minutes of people exploding, losing limbs, or dying in otherwise horrific ways. I’m telling you, shit is going down. In my perfect movie, they would have left a lot of that out and focussed more on what (if anything) are the repercussions of the ending. As it is, while several Very Important Things happen, we have no closure. No way of knowing if it was all for a purpose or nor naught.

I enjoyed the movie immensely. It was no Star Trek to make me go back half a dozen times, but I will probably try to see it at least once more before it leaves the theatres. I’d say it is easily the best alien movie in years, maybe since Independence Day. But ID was never really about the aliens, it was about humanity. I’d go so far back as ET on comparable movies – although the theme and message of this one is quite different.