I was sent a review copy of this book a couple of weeks ago (hmm, actually it might have been months ago, now I think about it), and I’ve only now finally had the chance to write my review about it. I had never came across Lenore before, but when hearing it was like an “unholy union between Tim Burton and Dr Seuss” I just knew I had to try it.

Lenore: Noogies is the first volume of Roman Dirge’s Lenore the Cute Little Dead series. It’s a collection of 1-3 page mini stories, starring Lenore, a 10 year old dead girl who lives in a mansion with her creepy friends. The stories are delightfully dark and twisted, with a weird dark humour. A part of me knows some of the jokes are just gruesome, but I can’t help but find it funny.

Some of the comics are twists on known stories like children’s songs, games, and nursery rhymes, turning them into something more macabre, like the Raven and the Crooked Man. Other stories just have unexpected dark endings, like Little Bunny Foo Foo. Here’s an example:

It’s a great book for those of you that are dark and twisty. It’s not everybody’s type of humour, but if you liked the above example, this might be something for you.

Lenore: Noogies is available on Amazon.co.uk for £7.75.

Interesting links for December 6th through December 16th:

• ABC of Branding – Beautiful poster with embossed logos (or just the first letter) of brands. Some of them are so pretty and recognizable!
• The Geek Map – Ooh, a mind map of geek culture!
• These Pictures Will Melt Your Mind – Hehe, yes these pictures will melt your mind 🙂
• Countryside Church Building Converted into Luxury Home – Pretty!
• My Twitter quiz hell – Ooh, I want to go to this type of pub quiz!
• Orange/Blue Contrast in Movie Posters – After the Floating Head syndrome and the Trajan lettertype overkill, now another trend has been discovered in movie posters.
• Millennium Predictions That Got Things Right – and Those That Didn’t – Interesting article looking back at predictions made around 2000 about the future.

When I first heard that Ridley Scott would be doing a Robin Hood movie with a twist, I thought it would be awesome. Around that time the main plot was reported to be much different though and it was an interesting take on a well-known story. I’m not sure how much of that original twist is still in that movie, but none of the descriptions seem to mention it at all. It’s just another Robin Hood movie.

Now maybe that’s just because the twist is actually meant as a shock surprise twist ending that you don’t find out about until halfway (or something like that), which if that is the case would make the film awesome. Seeing this trailer though just makes me think: Gladiator in medieval times. Russell Crowe plays Robin Hood, Cate Blanchett plays Maid Marian.

It’s that time of the year again that I’m listening to Christmas music, but my playlist always has some non conventional choices. This year I thought I’d share them with you! I love Nightmare Before Christmas, so (of course) most of the songs are in my Christmas playlist.

My favourite though is What’s This? And it has the most Christmassy feel to it. I really like Danny Elfman’s voice; I’ve tried searching, but does anyone know if he has sung any other stuff? Enjoy:

I should have blogged about this gift idea a little bit earlier, cause the deadline for Christmas delivery of domestic orders was yesterday. Ehm, well, anyway… these still make great birthday presents!

The xkcd comics is one of the geekiest (in the techy sense) around. I gave Cristiano these posters last year, and (even though he still hasn’t hung them up) they are brilliant:

Online Communities $15.00 (the original comic)

Map of the Internet $15.00 (the original comic)

Besides posters they’ve got a couple T-Shirts of some of the comics and just recently they published a book! It features a selection of the first 600 comics, including various author and fan favourites.

All the above is available at the xkcd store.

I got my first Secret Santa present a couple of days ago for one of the Book Bloggers Secret Santas I’m participating in:

The Lion of Ireland from Morgan Llywelyn! Thank you, Secret Santa. I have no idea who sent this to me, but I know I’m going to like it. I can’t wait to find out what my Secret Santa person thinks of what they’ll receive.

The past couple of years I haven’t been gaming that much; besides the occasional small game on the Nintendo DS, I think the last real proper games I played were Kingdom Hearts 2 and Final Fantasy XII on the PS2. A couple of months ago I borrowed a Wii, but I haven’t actually “played” anything on that besides EA Personal Trainer. There are however a lot of games out there that I want to try, but just never got around to getting.

Also so far it hasn’t seemed like a good idea to invest in a PS3 or an Xbox 360; I know what type of games I like, and nothing that has come out so far seems worth getting a new console for. Especially with the amount of PS2 and Wii games I have yet to try out. But looking at the titles to be released in the next couple of months, I think that’s going to change. For starters Final Fantasy XIII is coming out in March and that for me is finally a game worth getting a PS3 for.

So here is a list of the games I’m interested in getting. Some are pretty old, some aren’t even out yet, but they all look like fun.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3 & Xbox 360)

As I said above, Final Fantasy XIII is a must-have on my wish list. I’ve been addicted to this series ever since VIII came out, and I still can’t get enough from them. I’ve actually only finished 2 of the games I’ve played properly (from the 8 I own), but with “properly” I mean unlocking all items, all secrets, etc. I think I’ve put in at least 50 hours per game (with some of the extreme ones topping at least 150 hours). It’s one of the few games I know I will play exhaustively and the price-to-hours-of-gameplay ratio has kind of spoiled me for most other games. Release Date: March 2010

Dante’s Inferno (PS3 & Xbox 360)

I got to play this last week at a demo day from EA and I really like the look of it. I’ll try to post a full review of what I saw later this week. It’s based on, well, Dante’s Inferno, the first part of Dante’s poem Divine Comedy. The levels in the game actually correspond with the 9 circles of Hell mentioned in the poem and it’s interesting to see how they’ve interpreted the different aspects of the poem. Release Date: February 2010

God of War I, II & III (PS2 & PS3)

I’ve never played any of the God of War games, but they look awesome! You know how much of a sucker I am for Greek mythology, so God of War shouldn’t disappoint. Release Date: March 2010 for III, I and II are out now.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel (PS3, Xbox 360, PC)

I was addicted to Sacred when it came out 5 years ago, but the game was so buggy I got stuck and never finished it. I’ve been eyeing it’s sequel since it came out, but was never sure if it was worth getting or not.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (Nintendo DS)

I’ve played all the previous Kingdom Hearts games and it’s another series I just love. It combines Final Fantasy with Disney! How could you not love that!

Scribblenauts

I’ve heard so much about this game, but have yet to play it. You basically have to solve puzzles by summoning objects by writing their names. You can write down anything you can think of which might help you, like ‘ladder’ but also stuff like celebrities, animals and internet memes.

What are the games you are hoping to get for Christmas? Any suggestions of games I might like?

Episode 152: “mauw”

Another installment of Simon’s Cat!

I’ve written about how much I love this series, so I thought it would be perfect book to giveaway during Christmas!

To enter, leave a comment behind answering the following: What is your favourite fantasy series? You’ve got until Wednesday 16th 18:00 to enter. Btw, if you re-tweet you get an extra entry!

Anybody is free to enter, as long as there isn’t any weird delivery costs and restrictions.

From the designer’s website:

The strings of the book-harp are a play of light and statics, three-dimensional picture and bookend, transparent and complete simultaneously. Depending on the angle of the literary instrument it seems once closed, sometimes translucent – and turns to life upon passing. It captures the passer-by at the corner of his eye and draws attention to itself, the variegated content, or out into the sky.

I do like the look of this, would love to have a flat with something like this built in: