INTERESTING! Especially having the German weather charts too...!

Just Finished Reading: I Don't Like Mondays – The True Story Behind America's First Modern School Shooting by N Leigh Hunt (FP: 2022/2026) [309pp] 

I don't remember the actual shooting when it happened on 29th January 1979. I don't even know if it was reported here. It probably was, being SO unusual at the time, but if it did then it didn't register. I only really remember knowing about it after the Boomtown Rats made her (apparently disputed) reason for the shooting into a hit song (below) – at least in the UK. It's also why I 'clocked' this book when I saw it in a local "we sell EVERYTHING shop'. 

The story is surprisingly simple. One morning 16-year-old Brenda Spencer told her father that she wasn't feeling well and would be taking a day off school. Shortly after her father left for work Brenda got her .22 rifle and, from her own front door, began firing across the street at her local Elementary school killing the Principle and Head Janitor and injuring 8 children all under ten. When she was finally arrested and was asked WHY she did what she did (a particularly unusual thing at the time but increasing common event today) she is supposed to have responded "I Don't Like Mondays" - which she later denied. 

Covering the shooting in detail (including extracts from the police dispatch and SWAT Team) before moving onto the arrest and fallout from the event this started out quite strong, but I slowly became a little bored as, despite the attention (and sometimes honestly over-attention) to detail, it didn't feel like there was a whole lot of SUBSTANCE here. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I did feel more than once like I was making my way through a plot made of cotton candy. I think that a big part of that was the fact that Brenda never went to trial (having eventually pled guilty) and that we never got to the bottom of why she did it or what circumstances made her at such a young age into a person who could gun down little kids in the school yard. There was talk of abuse (both physical and psychological), a broken home, drugs, a history of petty theft and 'trouble making' but nothing substantial or of substance. It was more than a little frustrating. 

 I was definitely looking for much more analysis here, both of the event and the larger (post-1979/future) context but that was rather thin on the ground. Whilst not a 'bad' book I think this needed a little less focus on Brenda's jail time (and seemingly endless delusions of eventually going free) and more focus on the causes and impacts of school shootings. Reasonable and more on school shootings and other aspects of the 'Dark Side' of American history/culture to come.     

Well..... Actually Sarah (and friends) blew up the Headquarters and main Research hub of Cyberdyne Systems in California who were under contract to supply advanced computer chips to the US military for its Skynet Project.... So..... kinda close..... [lol]

My 10 Most Played Computer Games (according to Steam). 

I've been meaning to post something like this for a while now but wanted to wait until my latest gaming obsession made my Top 10 List. So, here they are... 

Borderlands 2 – 1,407.5 hours 

This is a 'cartoonish' FPS (First Person Shooter) with a WICKED/Twister sense of humour. A group of us played it to death (as you can tell) and it became one of our all-time favourite games that we still talk about. 

Warthunder - 1,325.4 hours 

I was VERY surprised by how much I liked this game. You have an option of playing Land, Air or Sea combat in vehicles against other players usually in teams of around 16 of so. The era of the vehicles goes from the 1920's up to present day (bunched together in rankings so you're not fighting grossly superior enemies. It was VERY frustrating at first but once I got the hang of things you can see how many hours I put in. I played Ground Arcade mode. 

Company of Heroes 2 - 1,205.5 hours 

Another game that I played endlessly with my main gaming partner. It's a WW2 small unit RTS (Real-Time strategy) game where you get together a bunch of tanks, infantry & other units and try to kill the enemy (we played against the AI) before they killed you. Lots of fun mayhem. 

Generation Zero – 993 hours 

Yet another FPS but with a fun twist. This takes place in 80's Sweden where you've been on holiday, and you're suddenly presented with an invasion of strange robots that are hunting humans. I was MOST impressed by the AI on this one where it really felt that they were HUNTING you! A very emotional and immersive game. 

Borderlands 3 - 857.8 hours  

Although this was an enjoyable fun game it didn't quite match the quality and originality of the early Borderlands games. Certainly quirky and hilarious it just didn't have the replay-ability of especially Borderlands 2. 

Oxygen Not Included – 804.4 hours 

This was a 'try something different' single player game that became quite the obsession for my gamer buddy & me. It's a weird survival game where you get to control the lives of a group of duplicate humans (called Dupes) INSIDE an exploded planet by resource mining and coping with a hostile environment. The trick is finding or producing enough oxygen to make it through the next day! 

Dawn of War – Retribution 655.5 hours 

I'm a HUGE fan of the Dawn of War franchise and we've played most of them until recently. One of the great things about THIS variant was the ability to play arena matches against AI opponents and we became VERY good at it. Part of the fun was 'pugging it' where me & my gamer mate would team up with a random person and fight to the end boss – whether the pug could handle the strain or not. We had some terrible teammates, but we had some great ones too. It just added to the fun. 

No Mans Sky – 585 hours 

Another strange one for me – essentially a galaxy wide explorer game where you hop from planet/system to planet/system mining, building, finding/buying cool ships and essentially doing whatever you felt like. It was multi-player, but the galaxy was SO big I think I only detected one or two other people ever – and immediately left the system...  

Divinity: Original Sin II - 501.2 hours 

A Fantasy RPG (Role Playing Game) with quests, mysteries and baddies to overcome. Mostly fun but could be VERY annoying at times. Although you could pick from a number of character types we did find that replay-ability was very limited. 

The Long Dark - 353.1 hours 

...and to my latest obsession! This is a walking survival game based in a post-apocalypse frozen Canada after some sort of geo-magnetic 'event'. Essentially, you're on your own (the next version is multi-player) against the environment (known as PvE) and in the mode I'm playing the only objective is to survive. So, you have to keep warm, keep hydrated and fed and don't do anything stupid like falling off a bridge, getting caught in a sudden blizzard or attacked by a wolf you've antagonised (or in my case a MOOSE!). There are no other people, not even NPCs (non-player characters) except a disembodied voice on the radio from time to time. I find it all VERY restful.  

Happy Birthday: James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete. He made history at the 1936 Olympic Games by winning four gold medals, setting individual Olympic records in each event, plus another as a member of the 400-meter relay. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes in track and field history.

Owens excelled in short sprints and the long jump and was lauded in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". Earlier he won four events, set five world records, and tied another—all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a feat that has never been equaled and was called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport". He won four NCAA titles in both 1935 and 1936, bringing his total to eight—an unparalleled achievement still unmatched.

He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited by ESPN with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy".

The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track & Field's accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. In a 1950 Associated Press poll, Owens was voted the greatest track and field athlete for the first half of the century. In 1999, he made the six-man short-list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century. That same year, ESPN ranked him sixth-greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century and the highest-ranked in his sport.

Or sometimes we DID try it at home but no one blamed the cartoons. Either it was "kids being kids" or kids being stupid. So, we got told off, shouted at, told to wash off the muck or blood (not always our own) and, from time to time, got driven to A&E for stitches.... Or very occasionally fitted with a wrist cast... to show off to our mates in school on Monday... 

Just Finished Reading: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal-El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (FP: 2019) [198pp] 

It started as almost a joke, a tease, a way of snubbing the enemy. At first s/he was annoyed, even amused in a way but also intrigued. They had been at war for countless years across countless worlds and countless realities, but they had never communicated at least not directly. Almost on a whim a response was sent and forgotten. When another letter was discovered s/he experienced something akin to pleasure. She wasn't even sure before that if she could experience such things. The letter itself spoke of admiration for a skilled opponent even if the effort was wasted as they, the other side, would eventually win. Knowing that such a victory was impossible for the other side this caused much amusement. Despite some misgivings the correspondence continued. At first, it was a teasing, but mutual admiration of battles well fought, and strategies well played. But admiration turned, slowly, into something akin to friendship. Could you be friends with an implacable and dangerous adversary? Apparently so... Control, of course, must never discover their conversations. Both 'Red' and 'Blue' would have a hard time explaining themselves without the words loyalty and betrayal being thrown about, especially now that they were both avoiding situations where it might be possible they could come into actual physical conflict. But could they meet? Could they discuss, face to face, what they do next? Could there be a third way or will one side finally lose the Time War? 

I'd been aware of this book for a while (YouTube had gone crazy over it) so snapped it up when I saw it on offer at my nearby Indie shop. Then, as usual, it sat unread for a year or two. When I finally got around to it, I was not disappointed. It was a little confusing at first, but decades of Sci-Fi reading helped me ease into the narrative. From my intro you might assume that the novel takes place as a series of letters between the two protagonists in the story. The letters (in various intriguing formats) are certainly central but there's a lot more going on here. We do spend quite a bit of time in the minds and memories of both 'Blue' and 'Red' throughout as they both progress their own faction's war in time to ultimately bring about their preferred outcome in the far future. So, there are actual battles, assassinations and other violent acts, but there's also people just being delayed so they don't meet someone or a message is delivered to puts a scientist on a different train of thought – subtle manipulation. The reason I used s/he earlier is that it's not always clear exactly what gender either 'Blue' or 'Red' are. Indeed, it's not 100% certain if they're exactly human as we would recognise it. One seems to be more machine than human and is at least a cyborg. The other appears to be more mythical, almost Elvin in nature or maybe even a plant (I kid you not). They both also seem to either swap gender as required and sometimes even appear to be non-human. It's an interesting identity fluidity that, in part, shows them to be more similar (despite their differences) than they first appear. I did feel distinct resonances of Michael Moorcock at times (although I have no idea if that was deliberate) which I found interesting – and it prompted me [again] to re-read some of his work. Overall, I found this to be a delight from beginning to end. I do tend to be rather 'out of the loop' where more modern Sci-Fi is concerned but this has certainly prompted me to focus more on it in future (no pun intended for a change!). Definitely recommended if you're up for something a bit strange and rather haunting or if you're a fan of Time Travel stories without too much actual science to spoil the fun.