Robert Khuu Presents

Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroo

I recently started listening to more Randy Newman. You know who he is, right? He co-wrote “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” for Toy Story. I was never a big fan until I heard this song:

I loves me the political satire!

Unassigned Reading

On the topic of books, I’ve recently started reading Iain M. Banks‘ much acclaimed “Culture” series of books. None of the books are related in terms of plot, but all take place in the same massive universe. The Culture is a pan-humanoid post-singularity socialist utopian intergalactic civilization. It’s sort of a serious version of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As it is with most science fiction, the books provide ample social commentary about the context they’re written. For example, “Consider Phlebas” was written during the 80’s at the height of the Cold War and the story involves a long-standing war between the socialist Culture and the religion and competition driven Idarian civilization.

I’m about two books in and am thoroughly enjoying the stories. It’s a bit slower paced than, say, William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy, but the pacing isn’t really an issue. Most of the books are written from the viewpoint of Culture-based characters, thus, concepts that are normal for us (like rank and hierarchy) are completely foreign to them. I really like this aspect of the books. It’s social commentary of our value system done from the perspective of a completely detached 3rd party.

On top of the social commentary, Banks does a really good job on the actual writing of the book. There are some plot twists and some of them appear very obvious. The great thing about Banks is that he creates such a flexible enough universe so that the plot twists can easily go in any number of directions. He creates a very complex story in a very complex universe, but he writes in a very straightforward manner.The reader is very rarely left confused.

I just started the third book in the series. So far, so good.

Obama taking care of business

Found this pretty funny series of pictures of a President Obama doll. Here are some pictures that I thought were pretty hilarious (click for a larger version):

I originally found it on Kotaku. Apparently, the doll is manufactured by a Japanese toy company (link to the product page here). I like how the doll comes with a stool,  an American flag (for waving purposes), and hands that you can swap out to show different gestures. Presidential action figures! I wonder if they have dolls of failed presidential candidates (I’m looking at you, Ross Perot).