Traitor prawns, high-fat and high-priced, thorns and the Hole

I'm on leave now, and on the bus home from camp I saw this ad on TVMobile for Myojo instant noodles that (pardon the pun) made my stomach turn. Several cartoon prawns were singing, dancing and playing musical instruments to herald the arrival of this new flavour made from their flesh, their bodies, their very prawnness. Gee, I don't know, would you sell man-flavoured noodles to a tribe of cannibals?

This awful promotion of consumption of one's own meat isn't new. I remember cringing at the sight of a teriyaki sauce commercial on the side of a bus that showed yet more cute, cuddly cartoon animals singing and marching with bottles of the stuff hanging from their necks like deadly necklaces. C'mon, advertisers! Is this how you market products, by turning animal representatives into traitors? Extending the above analogy, it's like promoting just the right herbs and spices to marinate your colleagues in just before they're stewed. Burger King's big enough without needing a cartoon cow.

But I won't even talk about KFC's Chicky.

On a happier (though more expensive) note, I loved the Ultimate Cheesecake at Jurong Point's McCafe, though at $4.50 it certainly wasn't cheap. And the Double Chocolate frappe was indulgence itself... though at $3.60 I felt ripped off when I could've done something similar with ice, Milo and cold milk "at home for nothing," to quote the incomparable Meera Syal on the BBC comedy Goodness Gracious Me. Much as I loved the Cheesecake and its accompanying sweet caramel sauce that left me hungry for more, the price was sufficient for me to decide enough was enough. $8.10 for a light snack? Puh-leeze!
But the barista smiled at me and said, "See you again!" When I feel rich and deserving enough once more, why ever not? :)

I'd forgotten how much I love going to the library. I throughly enjoyed rereading Pete Hautman's book Hole in the Sky, the first time I read it being six months ago. Make no mistake--Mr. Hautman knows his stuff and delivers it well. What if in the near future an influenza pandemic killed off nearly every human on earth? Eerie, action-packed and funny. I loved the book, I really did. From the race to prevent the flooding of the Grand Canyon to a journey to find a mystical Hopi portal into another world, you feel you haven't read a story but an adventure through history, time and space.

But not so funny is the way Pete sneaks in a thinly-disguised attack on organised religion in particular, near the middle of the book. Thankfully, it's all over by the time you flip the page and the story regains its magical flavour. It was something I was uncomfortable remembering, and if it were up to me I'd have it removed since it doesn't advance the plot in any way, doesn't explain anything, and leaves a bad taste in readers' mouths. If it did the first two I wouldn't have minded the third, but since it doesn't...

But HITS is truly an amazing story. To enjoy it for its own sake, forget what I said in the preceding paragraph. I heartily recommend it.

At the same library trip I picked up my first Christian-themed novel in a long time--Sigmund Brouwer's Crown of Thorns. Picking up on the adventures of astronomer Nick Barrett, Brouwer takes usthrough a dark tale centred around Charleston, North Carolina, a priceless painting, an ancient murder, and a deadly cult. God's grace is given freely, and it shows his ability to meld the Christian issues of morality and redemption into a real-world framework.

They're in there somewhere, I'm sure of it. Too bad I never finished reading it.

It's not the story, which is thrilling.
It's not the writing, which is suspenseful.
It's not the author, who is on my favourites list thanks to his Christian writings, and whom I have every desire to emulate.

It is... the viewpoint. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Brouwer switches between first-person narration by Barrett and the third-person omniscient, which is just, well... odd. That, coupled with the time Brouwer takes in introducing the exciting stuff, just made the first few chapters a plod to read, and after the third I got lost and gave up. Someone more erudite than me might enjoy it, but I can't. It's a good book, it really is; it's just not my kind.

But I'll give Brouwer's novels another chance. After all, he is a brother in Christ, and a crackling good writer to boot.