Episode: 1933
Title: HPR1933: HPR AudioBookClub 11 Street Candles
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1933/hpr1933.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 11:27:36

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This is HBR Episode 1933 entitled, HBR Audio Book Club 11th Treat Candles, and in part of the series, HBR Audio Book Club.
It is hosted by HBR Audio Book Club, and in about 134 minutes long, the summer is.
In this episode, the HBR Audio Book Club Reviews Treat Candles by David Collins Rivera.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An HonestHose.com.
Hello and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio. Today, you've got another episode of the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club.
My name is Pokey, and I will be one of your co-hosts today.
With me as well is the ever-popular Krispy 150. Howdy folks.
We got my buddy Pegwall. Hey hey. We got Super Taj. What's good, everybody?
And X1101, who I can't stop saying that now, even though I really want to say X1101 for speed.
Well, I thank you for saying it the way that I everyone is supposed to think it.
Right on and how you doing, buddy? Doing good. Doing good.
Good. So I'll say it right at the beginning of this time. So I don't have to interrupt
our flow of conversation like I do every time. This is the Hacker Public Radio Audio Book Club,
in which we review an audio book for the episode that we've all listened to. Just in case this
is your first one. The rules for the book club are that it has to be freely available audio file.
Means free of cost, free as in beer. We want something that everyone or anyone on Earth who wishes
to listen or participate with our show can do so. Once we've finished listening to the book,
we do the review show here. We're using all free software. And this is free as in freedom,
free as in speech as well as happens to be free as in beer because we use a mumble. And during
the show we'll do kind of a review with no spoilers. We'll just get in and say what we think about the
book, the production, the audio files, that kind of thing without any spoilers. We'll take a break,
midway through the show, in which we will each review a beverage of our own choosing.
And then after our beverage review section, we continue reviewing the audio book,
but we spoil it at that point. So if you have not yet listened to this audio book and you would
like to do so, feel free to stop this now and listen to the audio book. It's a good one.
And then come back to us or you can listen to us right up and through the beverage review and then
stop after that so we don't spoil the book on you because we will certainly wait until after
the beverage review to spoil it on you. And that's that for now. Did I miss anything guys?
Sounds like the plan. Yep. Let's roll. Okay, so the book that we're reviewing tonight, the audio
book that we're reviewing tonight is Street Candles by David Collins Rivera. And he is also well
known in our community as Lost in Bronx. He's a hacker public radio contributor. He's authored
several audio books and I guess internet radio series that you may be familiar with,
depending on how long you've been part of the community and how into the the hacker public
radio and the odd cast planet community you are. He's this is the second book in the series.
The first one was called Motherload and it's a short one, but both of these are standalone.
So you didn't have to listen to Motherload to listen to this. He's also done the EDK series
and a couple other things. So yeah, that's that. We all decided to do this one. Everybody was
excited for it. Everybody loves Lost in Bronx. He's a great guy and everybody seems to like his
writing so far up until this book. And I guess we'll find out what we thought of this book now.
Um, Taj, what'd you think? So I read Motherload and came out and I was like, yeah, you know,
it's pretty good. You know, Lost in Bronx. Order book. That's cool. I dig it.
Was it too terribly excited about it, but I thought it was a good, good first crack at something new.
So when Street Candles came out, I kind of ignored it and, uh, you know, just didn't pay much
attention to it. And then I heard everybody talking about it and how good it was. So I was like, okay,
we're gonna do it. So I sat down and listened to it and I'm probably the first five chapters. I was
like, yeah, you know, this is pretty similar. Everything's going down. It's about a crew in space.
And then something happens and I'm like, damn, this book is awesome. Um, I, uh, I was telling,
I think it was 5150. I was telling that a testament to how good the end of this book is, is that
I actually listened to the last chapter in real time, which for me is like practically a sin.
Yeah. Nice. X 1101. How about it? I love so much. I listened to it twice.
Yeah, I did too. I'm dying to hear what you thought of this book, Pegwell.
It was a fantastic postmodern essay on life. That's what I think it was.
Really? And in what way, did you find it paralleling your own life for the lives of people you
know and love? Many different ways. I absolutely loved it. And I cannot recommend it enough.
And see, and I thought it was more modern than postmodern. How, how so do you, do you see it going,
beyond what we know today and understand, uh, the meaning of life to be?
Because I listened to the wrong damn audiobook and I'm completely talking out of my ass.
Wap, wap. I will be surprised if I did not wake my child up with as much as I was laughing right
there. Push to chuckle X 1101. Push to chuckle. We have to trademark that. But I don't chuckle. I
cackle at the top of my lungs. You can push the cackle, push the gaffal, whatever you like.
I'm a fan of pushed a chortle myself. Oh, poor Pegwell. Listen to next month's book already.
He was so excited because he's the one that picked our next book.
So you haven't listened to street candles yet? No. Oh, you four soul.
I think I can speak for everyone else here. It, uh, it, if you're listening to this show in the
in the future and you haven't listened to street candles, pause the show right now, go down,
download street candles and listen to it because it's so much incredibly better than anything
that we could think of to say about it. Oh, yeah. Yep. I think you nailed it. It's absolutely fantastic.
This is, I don't even think we said what it is yet. It's a, it's a science fiction genre.
Space opera is what, uh, what everybody calls it though. I don't think I could define that word for
you if I was asked to, but, uh, this, I do not recall there being any opera. No.
No, you might be right. But anyway, I mean, this was, this was a science fiction adventure. It was
action based. It was, um, the very fast pace, uh, almost it, the first time I've listened to it twice
now, the first time I listened to it, it seemed epically long, but that may just be because he was
releasing it, uh, uh, uh, chapter a week. So it took a lot of real time to listen to it. Um, the
second time through I, um, you know, I flash baked it as, as quick as I could. And it, it took me
maybe three days because it is still pretty long. And it's, I mean, it's worth every second that
you spend on it. I flash baked it right after or actually started before the last book club.
And then again, last week, that just wow. Well, you know, it's the type of book. You know,
it's an audio book. You know, when it's over because the, uh, the music comes up at the end.
There are time, every time that happens, uh, you know, I'm shaking my fist at
lost and brought to say, oh, you bastard. Yeah, I know that he had, I know he had originally done
this as like a podcast and it came out once I guess a week or something like that. I wasn't
around when that, well, I wasn't around. I just wasn't paying attention when that happened. Um,
I, I would have not been able to handle that. I very much incur the man perfected the art of a
cliffhanger to the point where it would have driven me crazier. That's what I was about to say too.
He's just, he's a master of the cliffhanger. I think, uh, it was maybe 45 or 47 chapters
long and maybe three of them. I was like, okay, I better stop now where I'm not going to sleep tonight.
I just, there was only three that were not, you know, cliffhangers that I couldn't put down.
Another thing I can say about it right off the bat without any spoilers was I found the,
the main characters adventure. I didn't even realize it, uh, the first time through,
but I found it so engaging that the second time through during the first few chapters and I've never
had this feeling before while listening to an audio book and, and this is the kind of feeling
you get as a little kid when you're watching a movie. And I kept like saying to myself, no, don't,
don't go do that. No, don't do that. No, that's going to lead you down the wrong road. No, just turn
around. I kept, I'd never had that feeling before with an audio book like, no, we, we'll have to go
through this again. We can't do it. One of the things about this book that I, that I noticed is
it really makes me want to go back and, and read the first book again, because I think now,
because that first book is so short, it's kind of hard to get a kind of a beat on the character.
And now that I know so much more about him, uh, I think that first book would be a whole lot more
interesting. Can confirm. I listened to street candles and then I went back and listened to
mother load and then street candles all straight through. And you, I guess I can't say I got more
out of it since I didn't get anything out of it the first time because there was no first time,
but definitely think knowing the character, the, you could, it felt more like just another
episode of his life listening to mother load. That's interesting. I hadn't even thought to do that.
I don't know why I hadn't, but yeah, it is, it is, I don't listen to many things twice,
unless it's for the book club. So I guess I just didn't think to do that.
I have a thing with reread a book, rereading actual books. I mean, for me, it's this weird like,
I almost feel like I'm visiting old friends and doing the things we've always done. It's kind of the
nostalgic vibe I get from it. Even though you know what's happening, it's, you know, enjoying all of
the detail even more. And I, even though it was less than a month apart, I definitely still had
that same feeling. I will probably listen to this again several times in my life, even though it
is so massive, it will be an undertaking. Oh, he had such detail in this book, such subtle little
things that painted entire pictures with just a few words, you know, I think it's not a spoiler
to say that there was some, some conflict in this book. And there was a struggle for the main
character. And a lot of the people around him were living in desolation. And he, he, at one point,
one of the later chapters, he, you know, he describes a scene as he, as he goes through it.
And then a couple chapters later, he comes back and he just simply says, when I went back through
the same people were there, or at least they were similar enough that I didn't notice, or something
like that. It's some wording like that. And I just thought that was brilliant. Like that knocked me
out of my chair. I loved it. One of the things that I'm interested to see is if you take this book and
you put it on a shelf and just kind of let it set there for 10 years, how will it will hold up? I'm
sure it will hold up because it's a good story. But I mean, there's so much in this book that is
of right now, or at least kind of the last 10 years that is kind of extrapolated out. I wonder
how much it will resonate, or if it's just really resonant right now. I know for me, I was
completely just drawing parallels to just the situation in the world right now.
Well, I think what you're referring to a lot of is Zeejok. You know, a lot of the solutions that
he comes up with to be better in his job. And, and I just wish to tell people he's, he's a professional
gunner, which is, you know, in this space opera future, you know, you have unions like you would
now for ships and people will, you know, have different qualifications and get hired through union
hall or get hired off the web or whatever, make applications through the web. But he's professional
gunner. So usually nobody else on a small ship knows, but they only have one, well, he'd be like
a security person. He'd be like war fun star track, though not exactly. Yeah, he didn't say
they were dishonorable even once. But, but I think get back to my original point. Zeejok comes up
with, I mean, he's not just taking the stock items and the stock software. He's out there hunting
the web, you know, he's always coming up with combat scenarios that he's running through on the
equipment. And, and so he, you know, he's pulling from all these different sources, you know,
he, every time he saves a file and a lot, a lot of times files he's saving are not necessarily
completely legitimate. In other words, stuff, stuff is still copyrighted in the future. And sometimes
he's pulling stuff off their people that, you know, people posted to, I guess the 30th century
equivalent to Torrance. So, and going through them and seeing what he, if even if he doesn't
think they'll ever apply to a situation, he could use it and he's looking at it and taking a
part to see if there's something he could learn. So I mean, anybody who does IT work or programming
or whatever, none of us would be successful today without the modern internet because we don't,
we don't have the total knowledge of how everything works in our minds as we go, as we go through our
jobs. I mean, we know how to use the tools out there on the web to find out the things that we
don't know. I mean, it, well, I was a math major in school and they wouldn't let us bring any of
the higher math algorithms into a test with us. And I even had had a graduate assistant once
in class, he's teaching the classes. I don't know why they make you memorize this stuff. You are,
you're not being paid to memorize this stuff. You're being, you're being paid to know where to go
look it up. And the same same thing out there, you know, anybody works in IT. We come up with,
with, uh, practically every job is a new, is a new situation. Something we haven't quite seen
before. And you've got to go out and hit Google and hit the manufacturer's website and, and, uh,
learn what it is you're, you're supposed to do. And that's, that's so perfectly replicated in this
story. Yeah, I completely, completely agree with that. The other thing is the, the whole universe
that was created for this is reminiscent for me of the, the universe created in Joss Whedon's
Firefly. Different enough that I would say that there's no, you know, direct ripoff or anything.
It's, it's a, it's a similar version of the future. Now I'm surprised, uh, and maybe you've not
read Nathan Lowell's books, but I was, I was, you know, I kept faking this, this, and I'm not,
I'm not saying that it's not original, but seems like a, you know, in Nathan Lowell's universe,
either a few hundred years before or a few hundred years after because they're not using the,
the, uh, solar sales for, for propulsion, but a lot of the other things, uh, you know, are similar.
There's no, no such thing as subspace communication and that, uh,
ships, you know, have to drop into, uh, drop into a solar system far, far out of the gravity well.
They, you know, there's, there, there are, uh, plotted points that are an appropriate place to
drop in just out, out of hyperspace into the solar system. But, uh, then the first thing you do is
make contact with the planet and you upload, essentially, the contents of their internet and
download the contents of what you have of the universal internet. So, in other words, messages
between planets might be delayed by months, uh, because it, it, they can only go so fast as the
ships can go. So the whole galaxy running on a whole bunch of our sync. Uh, yeah, very much so,
actually, um, now I was gonna, I was, I'm glad you brought that up 50 because I was gonna bring
that up as well. I, I, um, I did get a little bit of a, a feel of firefly from this, um, not a whole
lot, just, just a little, just enough, just a little sprinkling of spice in there and it was good.
And I did not find many similarities to Nathan Lowell's universe, even though I was kind of
looking for them, um, because, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, lost a Bronx used
some similar verbiage in this book. And I don't know if that's because they're common words
in current sci-fi writing or if it's because Nathan Lowell just did such a good job, uh, naming,
you know, put, put in a real specific name to a certain event or, or a certain, um, procedure.
I think he used some similar words and yeah, the gravity well was similar, but I, I easily can see,
like parallel invention on that, um, the jump points, again, once you're out of the gravity
well, there's, that's pretty similar, um, um, yeah, I didn't see a whole lot of parallel between,
between this and Nathan Lowell other than some verbiage. And a lot of the concepts also pop up in,
you know, Star Wars extended universe when you're talking about gravity wells and jumping in and
out of the system and dealing with mass shadows and things like that. It almost feels like the,
the middle ground between the Firefly universe and the Star Wars universe. If I had to pick a
technological settings thing to generalize it as. Yeah, I, I kind of, maybe I just read a lot
of science fiction books. I don't know. It didn't seem very unique to me. I think that, uh, there's
really, you can kind of break books down into like, you know, three faster than like travel methods
and, and books just pick one and go with it. Um, so I mean, this seemed pretty standard to anything
that kind of uses what I assumed to be some sort of hyperspace, um, delio to get from, you know,
bypass faster than light. So I didn't see anything remotely too different from other books that
use the same mechanism. I like that while they were traveling in hyperspace time passed for them,
even though to the outside observer, it was an instantaneous jump. Is that fairly common to other
books as well? Or is that unique to this? Not in the, in my limited sci-fi experience. I've not seen
that before. I've seen it as more of a parallel, you know, you are jumping as long as you're jumping.
There's no time differential. And if you think about it a little bit, this way seems to make a little
more sense. Yeah. My understanding of like, you know, baseline physics and then science-fiction
physics on top of that is that like the whole idea of hyperspace is you're basically punching
into another sub dimension where time and space are arranged in a different fashion. And so things,
it would probably still take time to get from one place to another, but it may be a shorter distance
or time may pass differently inside that other dimension. And then when you pop back out,
you go back into real space. So I mean, it would make, to me, it would make sense that it
traveling through that hyperspace would take time to them. Now, I guess if you pop out of one
reality and pop back in, maybe that takes no time, but I don't think there's like a standard way
of dealing with it. I liked it either way. I thought it was, that was interesting. It was one
layer deeper than the actual story to think about, you know what I mean? And I like one book's
provoked thought. Well, and I liked, I liked a lot of mechanisms like that, the faster than like
travel and other technical details. We got enough of it to kind of extrapolate what the picture was
without going into nuts and bolts. But at the same time, it seemed ubiquitous enough that
the characters are like, oh, it just works that way. We like the food. No, I hate to keep going
back to the first book. But I think part of the reason that I didn't, wasn't too keen on the
first book, like I liked it, but you know, it wasn't that, wasn't all that to me was it was basically
a couple ships, you know, sub light in space dealing with issues, which is a great story. But if
you're looking for like space operas, probably not exactly what you're thinking of. And I would
argue that this book isn't exactly what you're thinking of, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I can't find like he would mention things in street candles and just like not explain it.
And then you got a better picture of it, like as it went on, like you didn't have to explain it.
It was definitely like show don't tell, like you got an idea that, oh, all these people that have
the same accent are from the same group. And like you never have to say that, but you just keep
meeting people and then it makes it starts to like coalesce. Like if you got dropped in the middle
of the foreign country, and you know, you had to learn about all these different ethnic groups
they were there, unless you had a tour guide, nobody's going to tell you, you're just going
to figure it out. And it was very natural. I kind of liked that about it. That's kind of,
that's a much more succinct way of saying what I was, what I meant.
I loved the names of the languages. I thought that was fantastic.
Yeah, I definitely see classes in low speak in these jocks future.
I didn't quite possibly say Sean. Yeah, I loved English and say Sean. I thought that was
fantastic. Just the subtle change. Of course, knowing E. Jock, he's probably figures he's never,
ever go sit, sit foot on the planet again. That's one of the things about the character. He, he
may have been born on a planet, but he hasn't spent a whole time on one sense.
That doesn't seem, I seem to recall him being born on a space station. So still in a gravity
well, but not on the actual planet. Yeah, he went out of his way to say he didn't like planets.
Never felt comfortable on them. The specific language in that sentence was really
it evoked. You could almost feel what he felt about it. It was, it was well done.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, at one point, geez, I think that might be a spoiler. You know, it wasn't
a spoiler. And, and I emailed Austin Bronx about this to mention it. The audio quality is
fantastic on this. I mean, he really spent some time getting everything perfect. Everything is
is perfectly documented as well because everything that he used that was not his own was license
creative commons. He's released this creative commons. I think just by essay, you can even use this
for commercial purposes. Fantastic. He crossed every tee dotted every eye to put out the absolute
best product. Not just that he could, but the best product possible. I mean, I know and speaking
to him in the past, he custom built his operating system specifically for producing ebooks and
audio books. He learned text editors. He learned audio editors. He learned tag editor. I mean,
he went out of his way to put together the absolute best product that could be put together.
And the only criticism that I could find as far as the quality of the writing, the the sound,
everything was that if I was listening late at night, sometimes when the chapters would change
from one to the next, the music came on a bit loud in the next chapter and it might start
on me awake again. I mean, that's the only nit picking detail that I could that I could pick out of
this quality wise to criticize, but see only criticism I can find other than than one particular
one in the story, which should be a spoiler. And I'll have to talk about it later. Yeah, that's one
that's one of the things I'm really worried about about this book is it is so good and it is
so long and I've I've heard him talk about like the process of it like Poke was talking about.
I'm afraid that this took it all out of him and it's going to be a really long time before we get
the next book. I hope I'm wrong because I really want a sequel. Yeah, to add to what Poke was saying
with the quality, I agree that it was really, really fantastic. When we first decided on listening to
this book, I went to go grab it and the RSS feeds were broke. They did not work and we a couple of
us mentioned in the HPR mailing list and I want to say it was David Whitman maybe who fixed it before
I got a chance to, but we both sent Lost in Bronx corrected feeds and almost instantly it was
up corrected and usable again. That was nice. Yeah, that was that was the same day that was a
same day fixed and it was the day after we announced it on the mailing list.
One thing I wanted to say, our friend Ken Fallon, he criticized Shaman's tale because he didn't
think that the in the story were evil enough and all I could say is, Ken, you missed your perfect
opportunity to be on the book club because the corporations in this one are right bastards.
Yeah, you get that right. I'm pretty sure that's in the requirements for becoming a corporation.
Yeah, you get that right. No soul check can be a corporation.
I mean, not even the Chinese make the core constricted children workers live between the
machinery the way they do in this story. And yet life aboard the ship sounded pretty good.
You know, it didn't sound bad. You know, I mean, it's not like what we're used to today, but it
didn't sound terrible, you know, especially compared to, you know, the station and the planet's
side life. I mean, it didn't sound good, but it sounded like, you know, you worked hard and
were rewarded. Well, you know, and the part of the book was Ejaxe's worldies. I mean, he felt
sorry for the way the workers were treated on this world, but even so, he could not condone the
incredible cruelty and savagery that they visited upon the people they perceived as being their
masters. And, you know, I thought maybe that could have been fleshed out a little bit.
All fairly early in the book, and I won't say who it was, you guys all know that Ejaxe encounters
someone who sympathies with the workers. And, you know, this person was surprised to learn Ejaxe was
not an owner of the ship. He was just hired on as a worker and thought, well, you know, Ejaxe
loyal, he's ought to be entirely with us. It was just, well, it was all black or white for this
other character. And, you know, I would have gone into a little bit, you know, hey, you know,
even the people I work for, they're owners, but, you know, they're, they're mortgaged up to the
hill. And if, you know, if anything goes wrong, they lose their shirts in the ship too, so that
it's not like they're, you know, living the life of Riley out there on the ship. They're essentially,
you know, living the same, under the same conditions, all the crew members are.
That's almost commentary of the difference between, you know, a small business owner and
a corporation. They both may technically own the business, but one of them's got a little more
skin than a game. Todd, you're lit up, but I don't hear you.
Can everybody hear me and or touch?
Can hear Pokey. I do as well. I hear everyone but Taj.
I think it hasn't Taj had this problem before on the, on the server.
How about now? There you go.
Unplugged, unplugged, back in fixes most things. Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Or crushes them. I literally have that as my signature on that email. It works. That's usually
my first reply. Anyways, like I was saying, I thought that that was without going into the spoiler
realm. I thought that was one of the really cool things about the book is that it is very careful
to never sit its foot solidly on one side of anything. It's always kind of in the middle,
and I think a little more realistic that way.
Well, it does a good job illustrating that every situation, no matter how black and white you might
feel it is, has plenty of gray.
And I think let me kind of set the tone a little without spoilers for people listening to this.
Because we really have it. What the book is about is Ejak gets hired on sort of the last minute
as a replacement for a dead crew member whose responsibilities were to work the very basic
gun systems of this fast and relatively small freighter the Griselda.
And their next assignment after he ships out with them is dictated because a news crew
is going to this little planet that you see sort of things, sort of the realism
that unlike all the planets you visit in Star Trek where the whole planet is available.
This is a very very cold planet and there's just a very small,
temperate zone around the equator that is just barely livable and usable for agriculture.
And so they're going there and this can felon point where you said the bastard corporations
because that was because of a shoddy job terraforming the planet that some bastard corporation did.
So I didn't meet the interrupt you but wanted to get that in.
Right and well on that point you could always use the Chinese labor argument.
You know well they weren't working for a dollar a day they wouldn't have any job at all so
but this this is a planet where it's very you know it's it's very hard to get anything out of it
so there you know it's not like this usually resourced and and rich plant now we do find out later
that it's not all the fault of the atmosphere on the planet that that that comes later
that these corporations are running at such you know minimal margins that they at well you
say they choose to treat their workers horribly you know that's that's one thing I may have a
little bit discussion with later but I really don't want to get in that so much but they're
they're going this planet because there's unrest and since you know because you have this
you know weeks or months out of sync getting getting news from one planet to another planet
they're getting theirs things are just about to hit the fan and they'll be lucky to get out again
that's not that's that come fairly early so that's not really much of a spoiler.
Yeah and they have to basically stick around and wait for this news crew to leave their ship
for the station head down to the planet and do their job and then come back they have to wait
for them to make it back or they won't get paid for their contract and the owners of the ship
who are all officers and crew members on the ship as well they're so indebted that if they
lose this contract they're going to miss a payment and they're going to lose their ship so
everything for everyone in this story is right on the ragged edge of of what's
possible and survivable as well so that there's always that conflict throughout this whole story
and we should tell people there are as they say on tv sexual situations talked about if not
described in the book so they're you know it's probably an elder teen age limit on it
yeah it wasn't so much sexual content in there but there was some descriptions of sexual
assaults it's not it's not the kind of you know risque type of thing it's it's more like the
brutality more more of a violence warning than a sexually explicit warning I would say
well you're right you know and there's a whole lot of horrible violence actually
actually described in in pretty much detail now I I'm curious as to what you guys thought of
the main character hijak I found him very relatable but that also may be a a a weird kind of
coincidence and I can explain that after I want to only hear you guys think about him the main
character first I think he's relatable but he's not he doesn't make the same decisions I would
make in the same situation so like I understand why he makes his decisions but like you were saying
earlier a lot of times I'm standing back to shaking my head going it's not gonna work out well
for you bro I have some thoughts that I think I better choose to save until the spoiler section
50 how about you well I think I've already said you know I think anybody who's ever worked
an IT is gonna recognize the IT guy and hijak I mean he he you know he's he's not exactly athletic I
mean he's a he's a guy you know when he's when he's you know he when he's running the ship's guns
you know he you know he's like maybe the best guy he could get but you know he's he's no soldier
right right he's not running back and forth on the ship with the and manning hardware
and you know essentially and this isn't much of a spoiler because it comes from the first
couple chapters he comes in and you know and he's putting this hard position because the guy he's
replacing who got killed what you know was incredibly popular with the crew and he has to go
to him and say look this guy doesn't know didn't know what he was doing if you ever got in the
firefight with this guy you would be dead because you know he didn't have the gun set up right and
you've got all this you know sort of junk equipment everything not made to talk to each other
that's one of the first things he said he said well actually it's kind of reference to a
Raspberry Pi almost and the future equivalence like look I can go out you know and get and get
this really cheap device and plug it in and all your weapons systems will suddenly talk to each
other and they'll you know they'll they'll they'll talk to my modern modern equipment that I've
got on my on my pda essentially in my and my retinal implants and everything will work so
much better if you spend just this little bit of tiny amount of money yeah he the guy before him
I think it wasn't that he bought shawty hardware he bought like high-end stuff but he bought you
know different systems it would be like if you tried to buy a he player and a sony tuner for
your stereo and a and a samsung television and now you've got 74 different remote controls and
there's no way to really tie him together and and not have the same ins and outs right right
everything needed a converter to plug into the one thing into the other and hijok was the guy who
knew how to make the you know the remote control out of a Raspberry Pi basically is what 50 was
getting that and and he was like yeah none of this stuff it all works but you can't use it all at
the same time because it's not it's not coherent it's not tied into one system so he was making like
fighting that getting permission to make these things work when everybody thought his predecessor was
God's gift to gunner me and and he was telling him look you know he tests fired the guns on the way
out of the first port and they said well what was that we've never seen him do that before and he
says well that's the way it's supposed to look you know the last guy didn't know what he was doing
I mean overall as a as a character I think that his mindset hijok would not at all be out of place
in in the community yeah right on so the reason I asked I found this guy incredibly relatable and
I think he did make many decisions that I would have made while I was in his if I were in his shoes
and I don't know if that is by design or by accident because I remember early on when lost
in Bronx was beginning to write or maybe he had written mother load he asked me if I would be
interested in voicing the character in the audio book and it didn't wind up happening of course
he wound up reading it himself but he told me at the time it's because he thought I'd be perfect
for that role he thought I was very similar to his character and I don't know if he saw
similarities and kept writing them that way or what but I really related to this character in a
way that was almost uncanny so for the rest of the evening we're just gonna call him spacepokie
I second this that's not where I was going with this but I mean like right down to the
you know this dumpy guy who who's got a run for his life and can't run you know like a hundred yards
and he's winded and that kind of thing like right down to the very last detail the the way that the
guy stuck to his word because he gave his word like that kind of thing a lot of people in the
situation he was in he had several opportunities throughout this book where he could have just bailed
and no one would have blamed him for it and things would have turned out okay but it would have
meant that he would have broken his word even if just to himself about the people that he cared
and I find that I've done that to myself several times and it's shot me in the foot and this guy
talks about how he shot himself in the foot several times throughout his career and several other
places too yeah right by sticking with his principles you know and just I don't know I like
D. Jack and I was really rooting for him well there are a lot of places in the book you know listen
you know they said no come come back you know let's let's regroup don't go out being a hero and he
was like I'm not being a hero but I can I can go around here and I can you know I can I can do
something I can find out something then I'll be back and then you know things don't go exactly
as planned I'm getting thirsty I was just about to say the same I need to step away to grab my
beverage I can be three minutes or something I'll be back sure 50 you must have a drink in your hand
surely I don't sound plowed already but it wasn't it's not the one I'm planning to introduce
no no you don't sound plowed I just I know you're well enough to know that there's a 5150 to 50 shot
that you have got one in your hand the required podcasting fluid yeah fuel for podcasting
well I don't want this show to be like a recent show where as soon as it came out I had to
listen to the last 20 minutes to make sure I didn't get too far off the handle
well you don't have to drink it all during the beverage review just take a sip and tell us
what you think you still with us yeah I'm here I didn't know that need a response
well what are you drinking tonight what's your beverage well this is one that I have had before and
I was I was I was saving some for tonight and last time I went by my liquor store fortunately
had more so I picked up another couple six packs this is Newcastle Weirwolf and Newcastle is
it's actually imported from Great Britain and let's see it's actually in Scotland they don't
they don't claim to be a Scottish ale but yeah it says it's an Edinburgh so obviously it's
Scottish read the description what a better way to toast the falls and have a bottle of this
formidable dual character brew at first with male overtones of sweet berry fruit a bite of
bitterness suddenly cuts through long deep and lingering brew with rye malt it is naturally blood
red in color unlike mythical wolf creature said to roam the bleak morlands surrounding Newcastle
this is real so consider yourself warned so it pours I'd say a light amber color I wouldn't call
it dark red like they do pouring down certain glass so there's quite a bit ahead on it's
it's pretty light in alcohol content it's only 5.7 percent so it's not a complete light
weight beer but it's not one of those hard hitters either and it's you definitely can taste the
rye in the rye in the rye ale if you've had one before unlike most of the rye ale I've ever had
this like description says it starts off as slightly sweet and then as it rolls against the back of
your tongue you can feel the hops in there then they're not abrasive hops they're you know I wouldn't
call this a really hoppy beer it's not it's certainly definitely not one of those my hops can
beat up your hops kind of beers but I you know I had this last month and you know I've been
getting it just about every trip back since this is in you know definitely makes one of my top 10
less which is hard to get into you know top top down in my favorite beers definitely
and it's not what I would call an expensive it's nearly $9.6 pack so I think the last time
we discussed this someone said on the coast that that's pretty cheap for a six pack
well for craft brew anyway it depends on the level of craft brew new castle around here it runs
probably $7.8 for a six pack but I've only ever seen new castle brown ale I haven't seen
or heard of werewolf before but you make it so very interesting what's the finish on that like
because I know the the brown ale kind of it's way too sweet up from not way too sweet it's very
sweet up front it's in it's a little stale on the aftertaste how about the werewolf
well if you don't like a sweet beer I do but if you don't like a sweet beer this is probably
still still a little too sweet for you I would say it's probably not that's you know that sweet on
the start I need I need to get some of that brown ale to compare with it because I have had that
before it's probably not as sweet to start as the brown ale but the hops certainly don't
don't come through hard enough to wash it all away I see now and I actually do like a sweet beer I
just find a lot of them take it one step too far and I'd rather them be on the the side of a
little less sweet than a little too sweet if you know what I mean like once they gone too far it's
like too much I don't know I do like a sweet beer just summer too sweet well I guess I would say that
when on the valuation my last sip the hops do wash through and they you know they kind of wash
the sweetness out but then the aftertaste comes back and it's still sweet oh okay that's not bad
I I'd rather have that than like a stale aftertaste cool so that was a werewolf a new castle werewolf
yes that's correct cool and 50 if you wouldn't mind did I give you the link for the ether pad that we're
using I did right yes they're in the in the text chat would you mind just throwing up a couple of
words about that in the beverage section okay I'll do that I'm on my phone so I'd rather not
try to type on that during during the show oh okay sorry yeah no that's perfectly understandable
all right uh pegwall what have you got a beverage tonight I have coffee right on man we'll
kind of coffee anything special nope I know what you had last time yeah well ladies and gentlemen
a returning favor pegwalls coffee you should at least try to have different coffee every time I think
last time was a french roast this is a medium roast oh hi fluton might I recommend recommend a nice
sumatra next time I will keep that in mind I might even go crazy no Colombian X1 101 you said you
returned with something special yeah I was out over the weekend at the one of the many
vocal natural markets swear you can't swing a cap without hitting a dozen of them around here
but I got a black island organic oatmeal stout got it because I hear so many good things about
oatmeal stouts but I've not I've yet to have one so here goes it's got a chocolatey multi
nose to it almost no head but that's because I poured it down the side of the glass to get more
stout out of it it's got a chocolatey little bit of coffee but mostly a chocolatey malt flavor to it
it's not overly carbonated but it's not at all sudsy it doesn't have quite the same thick texture
that I'm used to from like a Guinness but it is definitely a stout
what was that I have no idea 50 150 I don't know something just happened it's on it like you
were squeaking a dog toy or something or laughing at me are you still with this 50 killed by the
squeak yeah something got to his connection I'll bet all right X1 101 where were he said it was
not quite as okay he's answering a call not quite as thick it was like a Guinness yeah the mouth
feel it doesn't have that you know creamy oily texture to it as much I mean it's definitely a
stout but it doesn't have that same creamy oily texture to it but otherwise very very good it
tastes a lot like a chocolate stout beverage I guess I don't know why it's called an oatmeal stout
and as it's made with oatmeal or it's supposed to taste like oatmeal but it's good
you use oatmeal in the brewing process at some point and I've always I think of only had one or
two oatmeal stouts and I thought they were very thick and and filling like it's stick to your ribs
well it is Scottish yeah there you go and I'm looking for the alcohol by volume give me a moment
course it's a measly 7 percent that's not bad 7 percent can you taste all 7 percent of it
not at all oh that's dangerous so it sounds like overall you give it a thumbs up yes nice can you
give us any one more time black isle organic oatmeal stout all right hey where is that brewed is
that is that remain or is it less local considerably it's imported from Scotland oh oh it's actually
from okay I'm thinking like Scottish style all right sorry about that now it has it says product of
Scotland imported by orchard gate flushing a certified organic cool oh thanks for that man
touch what do you got by since I ran in the door just to get here on time the only thing I have
to drink is my half empty now gene bottle full of water that I brought from work woo-hoo now gene
oh that's our second repeat to you did that once before yeah typically run a little late
right on all right and I am drinking something a little different this week I've been trying to get
into some sort of shape other than pear and I've been going to the gym and doing a little bit of
running for the past few weeks and so tonight for my drink because I have to go to the gym after we
record this I am drinking six star pro nutrition creatine times three elite series fruit punch flavor
and it's not nearly as bad as it sounds I get I got this special little shaker bottle at Walmart
it's got like a stainless steel ball in it that like an agitator and you can pour it in this thing
and shake it up and it gets gets it to dissolve a little bit better and maybe puts a little foam in
there and I like to throw it in there with about I don't know almost twice as much water as it says
to use and then some ice cubes and shake it up and drink it real cold and it's actually pretty good
it's not it's not too terrible going to the gym after this wow yeah I got to go to the gym after
this a guy put together a workout routine for me and I've been trying to stick with it as best I
can and it's it's a six day a week routine and it'll be disappointed if I don't you put a lot of
work into my routine for me and it's it's kind of work and I'm getting stronger I haven't lost much
weight I lose about a pound a day but I've dropped two notches off my belt in the past week or so
and and I am able to get through most of the routines that he's given me whereas my first week
I couldn't finish like all the reps in a set and then I couldn't finish all the sets and one night
I did about half of the exercises in the routine I just could not go any further I was hurting so
bad and my muscles just weren't responding or cooperating but and then the first day I went out
running I mean literally the first day I've ever tried running I made it around a quarter mile track
one time and then I felt like I was going to die and I had to walk for about the next half an hour
but one night I even made it around seven times so you know to a mile and three quarters
made around just jog and I'm not flat out running yet I'm not in that kind of shape but
it's working slowly and surely it's coming along and a couple of people say the creatine helps
to build muscles so maybe it's part of the reason why I'm not losing weight because I'm just
converting all my copious amounts of fat oh hush and I've also been going back to the going to the gym
I've started in March and I've been fairly faithful I go three days a week and do about a half
hour of cardio and the difference is really amazing the the the the weeks I miss or don't go as much
instead of no energy but no one I went between work and dinner and that's how I'm still awake
it's better than a cup of coffee yeah it's pretty good I was I was talking to pegwall before
the show and I was telling my even I even changed the way I drink my coffee I stopped taking sugar
in my coffee and I'm now adding coconut oil to it just because that's got some I don't know
pretty unique characteristics to it and I learned you know what there's a fun fact for tonight's
show I was I'm trying to research everything that I'm doing because there's so many people out there
that just there's so much quackery in the health food industry and I'm trying to change my
diet and eat a little healthier too so I did some research and the water that's in a coconut
and and the nutrients that are in it are so close to human plasma that you can take coconut
water intravenously and in some third world countries they do exactly that they put a couple of
coconuts onto an IV tube and they can rehydrate people with it directly is that astonishing or what
that's fantastic yeah coconut water is like Mother Nature's Gatorade like except for it actually works
yeah yeah exactly that's exactly what what I read it sounded exactly like that two or three
different independent pages made it sound exactly like that and maybe the fourth and the fifth
one both said this is Nature's Gatorade yeah it was one of those things many many years ago when I
was I would get up at like four o'clock in the morning and go to two hours of yoga before I went
to school because I was insane back then that was the traditional post yoga drink was was coconut
water and it at that point it is very refreshing but just imagine like you're in some hospital like
close to death and you open your eyes and there's a couple coconuts with tubes coming from them
going into you and your brain would go but surely I'm hallucinating I can imagine it but I'm
imagining it in black and white I would just assume I'm in a Monty Python skit to be honest that
would scare me a whole hell of a lot less than most of the things that would be hanging there going
into my body that's not that point not now but I know it anyway I've been rehydrated with saline
solution and I think I would have taken the coconut water how to had a choice yeah I've been there too
when I had to have it done the cap on the IV now they have the cap so you can add more tubes and all
that well one of them came off so the saline was going in but it was pushing blood out that was a
frightening experience to wake up to yeah that sounds terrifying weird so that's that for my
beverage back to the review back to the review all right now listener dear listener here is where
we will spoil the book and we will spoil the hell out of it here if you have not listened to the
book yet you probably want to stop the show now and go download it and listen to it if you don't
plan on listening to this particular book you can listen to the rest of the show but I don't
know if any of us are going to like you after we find out you didn't want to listen to this book
if you don't plan if you haven't heard this book and don't plan on listening to this book please
send me an email and tell me what's wrong with you actually better yet if if this is the kind of
book that you don't like if this is not for you we actually do still like you I was being facetious
when I said that but we probably need you to come on the next show and help us review our next
audio book or maybe the one after but yeah we'd like to hear your opinion
all right so I need to get into my first spoiler of the book and that is my other criticism of
the book and I don't I don't feel bad stating this publicly because I did in fact email
lost and Bronx about this and had a discussion with them and I sort of wished he had run this one
by me before he wrote it because it was way too late to do anything about it but the panther
which is E. Jock's gun in this book I thought was a bit too much like the weirding modules in the
the film version of doom I thought it was to doom excuse me the film version of doom I thought it
was more of a plot device than an actual weapon it was just a little too far fetched and
a little too convenient that it helped him get in and out of situations and it just it felt like
more of a plot point for a plot tool or whatever you call it sorry can we not bring up that version
of doom no I love that version of doom 50 actually no I thought about that gun the other the other day
of course I'm subscribed to like the same g plus groups as a flying rich and there was actually a
gun like that you know where it's broken down broken down in the case and without you know it says
yeah you can grab it and fire it without the barrel attached I mean I guess at a certain point
to get to the book you have to have a gun that shoots plot bullets just to get out of situations
and I mean I don't fault him for that I mean you got to do what you got to do I like plot bullets
it's not bad and yes I understand it I don't you know have a big problem with it like it was the
only criticism of the plot that I could come up with at all and I don't fault him for it but
and yes 50 I know that that parts of the gun were not impossible science fiction the whole package
you know the fact that it could shoot an RPG that's the size of a bullet and again okay sure we're
in the future this is possible now but the fact that it was you know he had the only two seemingly
inexistence nobody else had technology this advanced until they got into super high-end energy
weapons it just that was the only part that that I thought was a little of the a little far-fetched
well I could see it maybe up on the station because the security police you know they had guns
that were made not to blow holes in the side in the side of the station whereas his gun was made
for planetary use but yeah you're right maybe the that it seems to be so much more powerful than
anything that the planet side police had had as a weapon right right and we got space station
bullets now they're called frangible bullets they're just they're made out of centered metal
instead of a solid piece of metal and they've been around for over a hundred years it's what
they used to use in the carnival booths was was centered bullets so that it would you know go
through the paper and the target and it would probably go through you if it hit you but it wouldn't
go through that booth if they hit the back wall I don't know I kind of feel like we have that we
got to have that random time delay on the push to talk but no and I imagine air marshals probably
carry something similar I kind of feel like we talked about like the firefly similarities I think
inside eject there's a little Han Solo and and I imagine that if there was a situation like
this Han Solo would just like reach into cabinet somewhere on the millennium Falcon and pull out a
badass gun and just be like yeah just head slaying around yeah Han would already have it under the
table but I have to agree that it shoots plot bullets if you needed he's like oh I need bullets that
will hurt people but not shoot this to the space station I have those oh I need like super rocket
lots around it does that too oh I need to shoot it from my bag yeah I can do that well any gun can
do that that's okay I just it can shoot shoot like half assembled though yeah well I mean that's
possible too there are guns that break down and and that are reconfigurable it's it's completely
possible you know and I said to him like this gun the barrel can come off but it can shoot without
the barrel and the only thing I said to him was well then why have a barrel the only reason
that you have a barrel on a gun at all two reasons one is for sighting and the second is for
velocity the longer the barrel the faster the bullet is gonna come out the end of it but if this
thing shoots RPGs you really don't care too too much how fast the bullets come out and this thing
was supposed to have a sighting module built into it that interfaced with your eye implants
your retinal implants so it kind of need it for that either so so the barrel was a little
unnecessary and I just thought he he and it was weird the first time I listened to it I thought
he broke it down and reassembled it a little too often but the second time I listened to it I
that I didn't notice that so I'm like at all I didn't notice it at all so I don't know maybe it was
just me nitpicking too much as as I have a tendency to do it seems like it seems to me that it
stayed broken down through a majority of the middle third to like middle half of the book
and I you know I don't know I mean he did make it clear that without the barrel it was
not very accurate it was just randomly spraying bullets and he never did shoot a you know an RPG
round without without the barrel I don't think so I you know and you know even a newsy you know
you you've got an option between the little stubby three inch barrel and you can you can also
screw screw on a you know like a 30 inch well not 30 inch 20 inch barrel make it a carbine so
you know it's it's not that far fetched like it like I said I saw gun just like that that they
are advertised you know it was a suitcase gun and they are advertising you know where it's
broke down and all the pieces in the suitcase and I saw one earlier work you know actually did
like the CIA thing and you had a button in the suitcase handle to shoot the gun out through
the side of the suitcase but this this one I saw recently wasn't like that but it said yeah you
you can you can grab just the primary unit slap a clip into it and fire it so it was almost
like a handgun that you could then add a barrel to to make it a long gun exactly I think and exactly
like Lawson Bronx the scenario this is this was that you know this is not the optimal scenario
to use this weapon but if you know if if you're holding this briefcase and they're you know you
come up against the fella drawing a pistol against you know you can flip open the briefcase and
try to beat him to the draw still a better option than being shot so what I think we're all trying
to say here is Poke your arguments in valid I can move it down space Poke shoots plot bullets
at real Pokey possibly at least at my one argument and I'm sorry guys I had another phone call
and then it was bleeding through on both sides understood so I want to bring something up
when you finally figure out where the title comes from holy crap yeah that was pretty horrifying
and I didn't even understand it until the second time I listened because it was more horrifying
than my imagination could handle because I heard it and I was like there's no way that's what that
just said so I rewind it and I listened to it three times to make sure that it was exactly what I
thought it said and yeah I was just like I'm not sure I would have the balls to name this book that
and I think we should sort of leave that you know for the for the future readers to find out but
yeah wow no I was gonna say I haven't listened to it twice it was more horrifying the second time
because I think I got more detail the second time yeah this is for people who've already listened
the only one we're spoiling this for is pegwall and he deserves it but yeah I mean the street
candles were these people that they put in a barrel of oil and set on fire in the street and
left them burning like human candles all night long to light their party when they won the war
it is pretty horrifying yeah it's like it's like calling the book burning rich people yeah the
essentially the people were the wick in the candles and the whole you know whole system was
designed to burn them the death as slowly as possible and to be honest the title burning rich
people might be a little more enticing yeah and don't forget the lit the candle with a
cattle prod that didn't work on the first strike now my you know my only problem with the book
I thought it got a little drawn up and drawn out in the whole chapter leading up to that you
know describing the everything going on in the arena and the and the local comedian and all
that now now a lot of that description you know and a lot of it has to do with e-jocs divided
no he understands why these people why these people are rising up because they've just been horribly
horribly disenfranchised and abused but on the other hand he can you know he just can't condone
you know this this treatment of the people including you know the children of the people these
folks considered their enemies some of whom he knew he recognized on the TV monitors one of
these people that was being burned to death as one of the kids had befriended him or he had
befriended in his flight through the city and but I you know I'm sorry lost him Bronx you know but
it's just David it's just that whole leading up to it the whole description of the gala and all
that and that got just a little tedious for me seemed like e-joc was his point of view was you know
what you have grievances fight your fight but you won you don't need to be as vicious and brutal to
them as they were to you after you've won and I think it goes a long way towards saying you know
you before that you build up a little or at least I did you build up some sympathy for
the the revolutionaries before you kind of know what's really going on and then you see this and
you're like oh my god like these people are horrible like I can't believe I had sympathy for them
and then you get all way to the end and you realize that those people are getting played by the
same people they thought they were disposing like it's all this huge show game of people just
being bastards to each other yeah that's what I was going to say and I for that reason I did not
find this scene long and drawn out I found it very detailed he talked about the the blacks and
the show that they had put on the day before and hanging some of the the elites that they found
and then this was a contrast of that this this was the show that the blues put on and it was a
contrast of that and he just I thought he went into detail as to you know the setup of it the
the people who were there you know the the plebians how they dealt with it how their leaders their
new leaders were now dealing with it the reasons behind it all I thought it was well laid out
and well detailed they did not find it to be tedious I mean as far as details go you know how
he got in there was to pretend he was a worker he picked up the end of a pipe and boy I'll be
helping here and it was one of the pipes that they tied these people to to light them on fire it
with and like his heart was just you could feel that was just a soul crushing moment for him
this whole thing was horrifying and it changed him emotionally and mentally he kind of had
had an emotional nervous breakdown here and had to recover from it a lot of the book from
that he was a changed person and that was only the first time he changed he went through another
change later in the book as well but this was a real thing that he had to live through and
and I just I thought it was very well done so I had to disagree with you on that one
that's one of the things that I was this whole scene kind of is the best example of what I was
talking about earlier just kind of like mirroring what's going on in the world right now just I mean
just absolutely recently the last couple of weeks you see these groups that their entire
motive is to do the most horrifying things and get them in the biggest public display that they
can to win influence and power I guess is the way to or to at least push their viewpoint
and it's just that that's that's really close to home and getting to see it is close as he joc is to
it is like ridiculously powerful and grotesque and I think it goes a long way towards
making the end of the book make a little more sense and while I was gone did you guys
explain the difference between the two rebel groups the blacks and and the greens were one
one group is secular and the and the other group is non-secular and that you know they kind of
brought in a whole religion religion in as well as their you know as their revolutionary principles
because if you hadn't explained that you know a few minutes ago pokey was talking about how the
blacks were hanging people and we should say that that's the color of their hats and their arm bands
not a not a racial reference so I want to make sure people listen and this did not hear that
construit the wrong way yeah thanks for that um no we didn't really talk about it but then
it's not really um it's not really any more detailed in the book than what you just said either
it's product you know I just wanted to make that clear as I knew that reference by you out of
context would get letters that's a good point that that probably would not have come across
correctly if if someone hadn't listened to it well that's true you're only supposed to be
listening to this if you have read the book so even so maybe pegwall thought I was a horrible
person for just a minute there clearly pegwall is afk because normally he would have said no it's
been more way more than a minute um now uh you had brought up 50 you had alluded earlier to a
character um I think you were talking about uh I think is it tacky are blue is tacky are at the
butler is that who you were talking about before the spoilers yes exactly and well I don't want to go
too far off the rails but you want to talk about the only other weak point I saw in the book was
del dies because hijak does not respond fast enough like he stunned and you know hijak earlier in
the book when he took his revenge against tacky are uh for you know he'd warned him on the radio
while you know he and the elites were uh you know uh hijak was escaping with the elites or well
after that but uh he he knew tacky are suspected tacky are was a rebel high rebel leader and he says
you know he told tacky are if you hurt these kids the children of the elites that he had met and
befriended I don't you know I don't know how I'll do it but I will come find you and I will kill
you and that's exactly what he does later in the book with that you know with the uh automatic
weapon in the bag that you you have such problems with pokey that you know he saw tacky are standing
there you know with a with a bunch of his uniformed buddies and he just walked straight up to him
blew him away and the only way he got away was that the uh uh you know that the that the other rebels
standing around were just so constantly drunk on grain alcohol the time when bullets came flying
they had no idea where they were coming from so everybody else just ducked for cover you know if
he took out the only really sort of more professional soldiers there in the whole place so I you
know I I don't you know I don't want what to suggest to lost in Bronx if you ever had to rewrite this
you know for syndicate you know some other thing if there was a way to make it you know so it's
just not ejected each eye could just standing there and doesn't doesn't react when uh when Del is killed
may you know maybe that does make it poignant because it's completely hijax fault but it's you
know it it doesn't seem to fit with what he'd been doing earlier but that happens before he
kills talk here okay I guess you're right I guess you're right that's what that was after they got back
I would say I would say that when Del dies he is completely flat-footed because at that point
he's not successfully engaged in close quarters violence he he's a gunner he deals with you know
objects in space and it's not until then that he starts to apply those same tax to person to
person close quarters combat well I guess you're right because while he had not really well he's
shown reluctance but you know we had do you when he had no other way out of the situation he hadn't
shown any hesitation using the guns and shooting at people at least earlier in the book I guess
that probably was the first uh face to face combat that he'd been in at the very least he's the
first time he when Del dies it's the first time he executes any you know personal maneuvers was
any kind of finesse all the instances before that were him blundering through to survive it's
not until when Del dies that he somehow makes the connection of him being a gunner for the ship
he can apply those same tactics in personal combat well he he came very close to applying them
very early on when he landed at the space station but before he could take action there was a game
changer and you know the wall blew apart on him but I think that when he shot tacky are that was
the first time he actually shot at a person the first time he used that gun he was shooting at a ship
and trying to blow that up and yes he did kill people but not directly so I can see his mind
getting over the the damage of it uh well he also shoots a soldier when he's with the kids fleeing
does he shoot a soldier I remember he shot at the ground and he blew up a steam pipe and it stopped
to crowd I don't remember him shooting the soldier okay that okay that might have been it you know
you could be right I don't I know I'm not saying that you're wrong I'm saying don't remember it
well either way there was gunplay there him discharging the weapon to you know protect himself
but what I guess my point is he was blundering his way through that with the scene with talk here is
the first time he deliberately approaches that the way he deliberately approaches his uh
ship to ship combat scenarios yeah and that that scene with tacky are I have to say was very well
done it was very it was so subtle um I did not even catch it the first time around I didn't know
who he shot it didn't it didn't make sense to me uh the second time I listened to the book
it I I caught on as I go how did I miss that the first time and how did I don't rewind it to
to figure that out it was so pivotal because I think Ejok suffers three very serious emotional
blows in this book which which lead to him being such a basket case at the end and needing so much
treatment um and the first I mean maybe even for if you count the first day that he was there just
all the physical things he went through although you know horrors that he saw people being beat to death
you know all those things affected him I'm sure um but then the scene in the street where they
burned the people had to have had an effect on it did have an effect on him and the second
was one del died and that had a further effect on him and he assumed personal blame for that
and then that third scene where he became a murderer he there's no two ways about it he murdered
tacky are um and i'm not saying tacky are didn't deserve it he was obviously very bad um but
but this was the case of Ejok giving his word you know saying if you hurt those kids I will come
find you and I will get you tacky are hurting the kids and Ejok living up to his word even though
it made him a murderer and that was the kind of duty that I found unique in Ejok that I just
I mean just that was so fantastic um and I can see those things have a serious mental consequences
on a person and I almost when he's talking about duty I almost think that it's at least in part
him projecting some of that duty of what being made honorary family member I'm not even going to
try and pronounce the word they use for but the honorary family member of of that household
part of that is you know continuing to protect them and I don't know maybe he saw some
implied duty there and chose to act on it in addition to you know I said don't do that you did
that and you know I told you what was going to happen and so here it is I think that I think
that book does a really good job of never actually calling out um and saying that he's struggling
with this and like his slow um kind of creep towards um doing what he does but it just shows it
like you just kind of understand that like he is getting to the point where things are so desperate
that he's willing to do things he was never able to do before and um a part of that is his
character I agree with Pokey part of it is I'm like I already told you this was going to happen
and here it is um but another another thing is is I think he's just slowly almost devolving um
into into something that he he doesn't really like and I think at the end of the book that makes
a lot of sense why he just never revisits that part of his life ever again yeah I just it it made
me feel that he was very consistent uh you know what I mean it just it helped layer that on there
um and while we've been talking here we've been joined by another person who'd like to participate
uh someone I don't believe I've met before Tojette uh hey Tojette is your is your audio work and are
you here to talk yeah I'm here can you hear me yes sir um so you you listened to uh street candles
yeah so you'd posted it while back and got the feed from it and
interesting series yeah it's what we've all been saying we're into the spoiler part of the review
at this point uh the third segment of our show so anything you'd like to say feel free to say it
so I did have a theory I wanted to float by the rest of you guys and see what you thought
after having listened to mother load and then um street candles
e-jock is several times put in the situation where special operatives kind of happen around him and he
responds very well to it and several times it's implied that he may be an operative of some kind
himself and based on the fact that the book is being told all from third or first person memory
I'm almost wondering if he might be eventually or he might be deep cover or something because he
he seems to make I'll call them either lucky or unlucky guesses and choices at pivotal moments and
that could just be he's got the magic gun that shoots plot bullets again I see what you're going
with I see what you're getting at there but I think his guesses are better than luck I think he's
and this is where he and I depart a little in our characters he's got a very good analytical mind
and he he walks you through his decisions and this is another one of the things where I got more
out of it the second time than the first is I I felt like he walked me through those decisions and
I understood what he was saying and what was going on uh whereas the first time through the book
there were probably four or five times where he made from my point of view he turned two pages at
once and I just didn't follow and just said okay well that's fine I'll I'll go with it um it wasn't
too jarring or disturbing but the second time through I kind of picked up on the subtler details so
I mean maybe he's an operative but I think he's just very analytical
well yes that's what I that's kind of what I think I go ahead 50 I think he's just very good at what
he does uh you know he puts a you know he obviously puts an extra effort to what he does I mean he's
always scouring and that to find some you know some scenario that he hasn't thought of
and I take what he can get from it uh I mean you know most most of us we watch cat videos on YouTube
in our free time we don't you know we'll come home from our work and go out there and
and uh and I know not everybody hears an IT not everybody listings an IT but I don't come home from
working and always go looking for okay let you know uh let's go find some uh networking situation
that I've never dealt with before and learn how to handle it ahead of time so he's he's obviously
very dedicated and you know this is his vocation this is what he wants to do but I think a lot of it
on this whole thing Alan Small's you know keeps insisting well you can't be just a civilian you've
got to be an operative it's just Alan Small's own hubris that you know oh no I can't be beaten by
some amateur yeah but the end there when he's recovering in the hospital and he gets to visit
from the uh gunner from the uh military ship asking him how he managed to defeat such an advanced
ship he goes through and he's basically saying well listen to enough crackpot theories and I'd
followed one of them and it actually worked yeah but that's what x1101 meant I think when he said
that since it's told uh in the first person that he could be lying to us at that point if he
were an agent that's he would lie to us at that point but um you know I just don't I'm not sure
x1101 what were you going to say to when when you and 50 were colliding there I guess what I was
saying was you were making the point that he's you know an analytical mind and he puts things together
right at pivotal moments or puts them together beforehand and plays them close until pivotal moments
what I'm saying is because this sounds like it is told from the first person memory it could be
that he becomes an agent or is a deep cover agent or something and this is part of his history or
backstory as to how he became that you know all of these skills developing and then he becomes that
but at the same time I also questioned that if his personality would allow him to because there's
a dishonesty and duplicity in that that I'm not sure he could stomach that's a good point I think I
agree with that more so than the other I think especially I think especially after meeting some
of the people he met in this book I think he would find it very unsavory to be like them right now
I think the whole point V job he's only an accidental hero he you know he's not you know he does have
this code that pushes him once he gets in these situations you know to to not get to not back down
and not give up but he you know he's he's not out there glory sinking you know he you know he's
just out for this nice little ride where he never has to use his guns hopefully but he is a gunner
and you know I would assume that if you choose the profession of gunnery you have to go into that
with your eyes open knowing that you know it's my job to shoot and be shot at I hope I never have
to do my job but it is my job to shoot and be shot at so you have to be willing to accept that too
going into that kind of a career no no no he's just never having fight for it up close he's only
from far away he's too different yeah that that was very well done Pokey very well done yeah but uh
I mean a lot of it was with him choosing a gunner he was attending to shoot at range not actually
see the person you shooting at but sort of deal with him abstractly in the whole story he's having
to deal with everything first person which is completely outside of his normal realm of operations
but even through all that he's trying to be the professional uh doing his job the best he can
going through there that that really wonderful Pokey and I'm come I'm completely in favor on the
next next hijack store you you voicing whatever imperial space character uh David decides to come
up with no no no no I said as I said to him when he first I mean of maybe two years ago now
or longer possibly when he asked if I'd be interested I said I would gladly ride his coattails
and that's that's it I would never presume to take it once it's been done if this he's he's
doing this the way it's intended to be I think after last months uh you know fake can fallon and
this this year or this time's uh fake then rock stone I think you have a career man you just do
uh bad impressions of people that'd be awesome thanks man yeah Ben Roganston might have been my
favorite character in the whole book I at one point um before hijack went playing it side I thought
Ben Roganston was was a gunner I thought for sure he was gonna die in the next chapter and I was
so upset and then he didn't and I was so happy did anybody else like this is probably just my
mess that my did anybody else picture him as a dwarf the entire time every time he came on I
mentioned to be like three but all no no no now um has anyone has rise to the guardians it's a animated
movie about these like Santa and stuff and I kind of pictured Ben Roganston as the Santa from that
movie no I thought he must have looked like um my creek barber who sadly passed away a couple months
ago but he's just I mean a little short but not short no not dwarf and and or a little person I
think is what 50 said we're so so calm but um just kind of a a stout roundish old man and very
likable with a a kind face and I just I really liked Ben Roganston a lot no I'm with like three
foot tall like braided beard in an axe like this literally what I imagine you're a dope no I
imagine all the way through this you know this really massive guy you know but maybe
shorter than you know you know you know you know maybe a tick below average hide or something but
just you know the huge presence nice very much a large very much a large presence and yeah I'll
throw that in the uh the show notes as well yeah Lincoln the show notes I hear Ken saying it
any other characters stick out to any you guys well I had an image of E-Jock through the whole
thing of being just like skinny guy just being thrown through the whole thing now at the end when
he's recovering and they talk about the fact that he lost so much weight so through a strange method
of reconstruction that um made me think that maybe he was a bit chubby going through the whole
thing and then when they were reconstructing with the end they made him thin
E-Jock is definitely a guy to spend a lot of time in a chair oh yeah he made mention of that of
of uh he's spent a lot of time in the chair not a lot of time in the gym or none of the gym and
eating lousy spacecraft food I like this guy oh yeah he's strangely sounds familiar
it's so mild you might have liked it more if you'd have listened to the book
shot fired in coming in coming pig will use your lantern guns
well my my second favorite was the armless jazz guy who I should should remember the name of
it's the blues not jazz you got to you got to be particular it's the blues
yeah he was a very cool character he was he was fantastic and uh I I looked up tar hill Lincoln
and there are hundreds of results but it wasn't a real singer I was kind of sad
yes you can find if you can find anything creative commons as outro music or something that's
passed in the public domain I don't know if it's been quite long enough I kind of imagine I don't
know how many people in here like blues heads but it reminded me of like in my head I was hearing
like Robert Johnson or something like that oh yeah or um oh let's do the guy's name gate mouth
now I don't remember his name but real old tinny sounding recordings I tend to like my blues
played about double speed and threw a nice aggressive amplifier usually sounds like metal at that point
I like blues just not all day just just little you know a couple songs and then maybe
on the something else yeah I like the blues best after divorce maybe a year or two is worth
that's deep man that's deep hey it's how I survived I thought the character was really cool though
and I can't remember his name um but I I constantly was like are we ever gonna find out what
does God did to where he's he's telling like no I'm cool I live in squalor and I I have no arms
or no hands but you know this is way better than actually going back to real space and trying to get
fixed because at least I'm not dead right apparently he was some sort of mob informant
I I liked him I liked about him that he was he reminded me of you know one of these dudes who
surfs three or four IRC channels at the same time and just makes it his business to pay attention
and to help when he can be helpful and kind of gets along I mean because he obviously couldn't
do anything for anyone that didn't involve uh communication and and you know sniffing out
some data so it's it really this guy had a real IRC feeling to me he also is a character that
shoots his own plot bullets every once in a while there were there's a couple of times that
each other getting a jam he's like oh wait a minute let me call my buddy and then it just
magically gets fixed don't you have an IRC but it's exactly how it works yeah well I know who he
is now that this this is the space Jay Lindsay actually could be kind of cross between Jay Lindsay
and Klaatu maybe most of my IRC buddies are right here I was kind of say earlier um that uh I
now I forget who was even saying it but they were saying that E-Jocks the kind of guy who goes
home from work and then works on more work and uh it just it reminds me of someone who would
play net hack just to learn how vi works hey I represent that remark ahead of boy
yeah I use them all day just so I can figure out how you play net hack nice one
I I play net hack and then use the emax am I doing it wrong yes this explains why I never
got more than 30 levels down in net hack I think we should continue the game of taking people from
our cast planet and just casting them in the book I think that would be fun well the
double end Dan it has to be syndrome seconded yeah unfortunately unfortunately there's no monkey
was a gun so and my bill is out well maybe he was the other part of E-Jocks personality
you know I do want to say um what uh what's tacky are he out of all the people in the book
I think he was the one character who I couldn't quite come to come to grips with because he just
he changed so much and I I get that when he was in the service um of oh I forget the guy's name now
they vealy nearly yes yeah I get that when he was in his service it was a put on I understand that
but I just I couldn't come to grips with him being so um such a lunatic when he was screaming at
E-Jock over the the phone and I go well communicated whatever you want to call it um he seemed to
like flip his lid at that point you know well that seemed a little strange to me because this is
guy who was apparently butlers are now bred and trained in academies so uh you know it's
it it seems a little incerned gross that some somebody who has uh been trained from early life that
you know you're you know you're servant for the uh for the rich and that you know that's
your uh that's your purpose in life I mean it's like Alfred going to work for the joker
that that that struck me is you know I a little trouble believing that too
and everybody take a drink there's a Batman reference for the night
where it had to be one now we have we had Star Wars now I have to get Star Trek and uh well we
had a dune reference that was pretty cool yeah everybody pegwalls ages can we say what's dune
well you can tell there was no Star Trek in this this story because otherwise they would have
just beamed him back up and E-Jock wouldn't have had the whole episode on the surface
well either I am uncategoristic for my age or pegwalls even younger than I am because I read dune
in high school and pegwall will be mad at me because I know I know he's uh uh read dune I have
and I've just watched the movies I've never read it I read all of them and I mean all of them
and there's only three you should ever really read which three do you think that is the first three
don't read the three after and don't read anything that his son had anything to do with it
they weren't awful they weren't the same no not at all it went for being Frank Herbert doing like
a young adult novel almost I don't know it's just like the tone was completely different
yeah my only really literary accomplishments is reading the entire dark tower series and all
of the Lord of the Rings the dark tower is quite a hike if you haven't also read the Sumerillion
I don't think you can call Lord of the Rings a literary accomplishment and I'll scratch that one
off my list then now here's here's where I'm gonna kick off the show because I read most of dune
I read I'd say probably four fifths of the way through it and I had to put it down I was too
frustrated wasn't as much it wasn't enough like the movie that I love so much and see I couldn't
watch the 1984 version of the movie because it wasn't enough like the books that I love so much I
love them both like just I they exist in different universes I'm totally cool with both being there
yeah yeah they're totally different stories as I see I you're the only the person I've ever met
liked that movie besides me and my brother we both we just sit down and watch that movie any time
but yes it's not it's a different story it's not the same story it's a David at the David Lynch
movie with some characters from a book I like have you guys seen the 2000 or 2005 sci-fi mini series
of the movie as well we don't talk about that one oh I completely disagree I think that it is
much closer to the book and I loved it 2005 it might have been 2000 I'm I think it was
two yet had to have been because I bought it while I was still in high school yeah it was good we
also I've got the DVDs of it I watched it when it was on TV and I bought the DVDs like a six-part
mini series right Frank Herbert's noon I did like that do we also not talking about the latest
Star Trek movies yes don't bring that up he still found ways to kill guys in red shirts because I'm
not gonna lie I don't like Star Trek but I like those well that says it all doesn't it I think
that was the point and that's why I'm a huge Star Trek fan then I hate those movies and I'm
looking at the entire set of Star Trek and Star Wars sitting on my DVD shelf at the moment and I
have to split the difference I am a Star Trek fan and I still like those because maybe we can get
Star Trek restarted again because it's been too long without good Star Trek you will never be
the same again oh it'll never be the same but it could be new and it's still okay I don't know
it didn't got a hold of Star Wars yeah don't remind me I mean how did you go on you go on you
know a hundred years past next generation and you know because I don't unless they say that the
timeline heals itself or something like that you can't base anything after that on anything
happened in next generation because it never happened unless they come out of the hollow room again
and coming out of the hollow room was a hologram no no no but on the original series either the
next generation so on the new series they're going to do the alternate generation actually I'm
such a big dork that I know this um even though that like okay I'm such a nerd even though that
they like went back a time and rebooted the timeline um according to like the Star Trek I guess
if you can call a can and it's ridiculous anyways the the prime timeline actually kept going so
like the books and stuff that are coming out kept going after the destruction oh well I don't
know if it's after the destruction of Romulus but like after next gen they kept they kept going on
well it worries me about the new Star Wars movie is that you know they said only only the six
movies are canon and I mean there there's not been no series you know why Star Wars were the
games and the books and you know when the cartoons have all been incorporated into canon you know
so as far as you know it's just laziness of the of the producers oh we're just going to watch
the six movies and then you know we're free we're free to contradict the entire rest of the
universe so you know everything's come out with with Haunted Lay and their kids and all that
oh no that's you know uh we don't have to pay any attention to that oh it's not even good
laziness because good laziness would be to pick somewhere in the you know several thousand years
of extended universe and make them into movies somebody already wrote the story I've already
gotten over the fact that anybody making a movie of something I like is making a movie for me
I'm past that magic target target demographic where they want and they're just making
movies to make money and they're not interested in what I love and so for Star Wars I have 30 years
worth of books and comics to keep me happy and if I don't like the new movies so be it I didn't like
the prequels it's pretty much ignored them you know what I'm worried about is Ben Affleck as Batman
now he's he'll kill that Ben Affleck kills every movie he's ever been in the only movie to ever
survive Ben Affleck in one piece and just barely survived at that was Dogma I was hoping you were
going to say Dogma I just because of all the like crap that's gone on with that and everything I
I'm just like secretly like that the movie's going to be awesome like because I have no expectation
of it being anything other than a tight giant suck fast um it's going to come out and be awesome
it just has to he's about to have like in mall rats I didn't dig mall rats a whole lot
he was the right guy for that role though you're right yeah I think they're they're over reaching
unless they want to actually rename this movie Justice League they've come out with too many
DC characters that's why you can't do a Justice League movie because they'd all be on
screen for 10 minutes I guess they they do it with X-Men but look at X-Men they you know they go
with the they only do the top seven or eight you know you have this whole pathion of X-Men and
you know people always complain about their several important X-Men and they're
been in the movie you know we did we had the Avengers and the Avengers were only four of them I
I'm not that up on the list Marvel stuff but I thought they were more and four more
Avengers in the comic book I guess more and six whatever I think thought there was more than that
but you know you split it too many ways and nobody has any kind of screen time and it just
seems like on this Superman versus Batman a few months every month there's been a new a new DC
character added well DCs already said that like that's why they changed the title on Batman versus
well I'm sorry Batman v Superman because they're not versus each other at least that's what the
director says and they gave it the subtitle Don of Justice is because the next movie after that
is Justice League like they're just setting up a Justice League movie because they're trying to
catch up with Marvel and they're not doing a very good job so maybe all of this inconsistency and
canon and poor storytelling and short cutting and and lack of quality maybe that's what motivated
Lost in Bronx to write such a complete and well thought out story that that is true to itself
all the way through bring it back I like it
poking his master of directing back to on topic well I got to edit this thing and I still
to go to the gym tonight well are we the point where we can talk about the whole
Denny Mocha of the story because you know I was kind of just
thrown for a loop as you know when it came came back
Hey 50 you just died I don't know what just happened you started kind of
blinking in and out and now your lips are even just flashing at us and there's no sound coming
through I thought I heard you ask if we can talk about day new ma and that's fine we can talk
about that if someone tells me what that word means lol yeah I'm getting a whole bunch of
notifications all at once that may be part of it but it's it's just how he ended the story you know
but the last two chapters we had we're having this wrong fucking space battle and
e-jogga just done the quarter-grow and that's right when pronounced that anyway
how it's most and we haven't seen how that was going to be resold and suddenly three months later
he's y'all fucking in the hospital bed um yeah I thought it was the only way you could wrap that
up I mean he was in a severe space battle I'm still not sure how he survived it the ship
was at zero g uh excuse me um zero atmosphere and they were all in their spacesuits which was
something I'd never heard in any other sci-fi I thought that was brilliant that you know you
should draw the atmosphere out of here and everybody should be in spacesuits in case there's
a whole breach that that was brilliant I've never heard that done before but that's beside the
point so like he took a tremendous physical damage and he didn't die in that space suit in the
time that it took you know a hospital ship to reach them and I I don't know exactly how that
happened and it wasn't explained um but explaining his long long recovery and tremendous amount of
debriefing um I felt like it was the only way you could close the story but I like that he took it
that one extra chapter to explain his mental condition and he's emotionally a broken man and why
he can't return to the ship and why he can't get out of his bed I thought that was fantastic
yeah I really liked it because I think um you as a reader your cheer you're kind of want him to do
one thing but then I don't know about anybody else me as a person I completely understand like
everything he does at the end of the book like I get get that I've been in that situation where
you've had a really really really meaningful experience with a group of people and you've just
have to walk away and you you can't go back it's over like you just can't you can't be around those
people you can't anything you do is just going to bring it back in a negative way so you just
kind of have to walk away um which is not what you as a reader I think what I think you to make it
you know the best fairytale ending he joins the career the grizzled does owner and goes on and does
you know space piratey things or whatever uh but I think it was more true to him as a person to
to end it the way it did well I agree I was kind of rooting for he's shot to go for Zelda but
that's not the story of hijak hijaka is a sloner hijaka is the outsider
in in every in every situation it would not you know this this this is the series is not the story
of grizzled it's it's a story it's a story continuing adventures of hijak and having said the
president's in the first book I mean I agree that's the only way it could him for hijak to go
off on his own to to a new ship and to new to new people but he you know he really never
completely connects with there is shipmates but you know they're just as co-workers they
they they never become his family he you know the the characters just this
loner type guy you know and like I said I understood that into the book I you know at the end
man this is great this this is brilliant but you know when he when he first you know day
first did it it was just so jarring it's like what you know you know I've never seen that before
in science fiction you would just jump out of the battle without exactly how it ended and it's
three months later you know and I agree with the fact that they that they fight in vacuum I mean
that had just so much realism this book I mean you know nothing else in this book could make it
more plain this is not the Star Trek Star Wars universe where you know but that combat is this
clean and and high tech and no big deal thing that we've become the thing it is in in science fiction
stories that's you know it's just incredibly inconvenient and dangerous damn thing that you don't
want to be involved did that come through it I lose you guys I'm still here yet came through I was
trying to let someone else have a turn talking and I was typing up my beverage review
well I thought it was interesting at the end they were he cleaned it up and with each
jock having to go through all the rehabilitation where they basically did a genetic remaking of
them they said they weren't sure about his memories and all means for the author if he continues
the story he can change whatever he wants about the character and just tie it all into the reconstruction
while still having it be the same person more magic plot bullets well I mean the only reason that
he got the treatment he did I mean I think if it was in the other character in any other book
they just sort of let him die because he's not that important but he had something they wanted
like he had information and so they were going to keep him alive long enough to get it so I
wouldn't pass him to do some shady stuff with him while he's in a incapacitated state especially
when they gave him those drugs they could have probably sent him out on some missions or something
crazy well they want to know how he's how he beat their shiny missile that that was that was
incredibly unbeatable no they didn't ask him about that that was that was just an enlisted guy he
was just a crew member that wanted to know they wanted to know everything else of the whole political
situation and legal situation behind it it was it was weird but not uncommon that this bureaucracy
didn't even think to ask him how he defeated this uh with a called star shark I think or that's
what they wanted him to think I would think that with Ejox character he would be much more likely
to tell the truth about how he beat it to an unassuming fellow gunner than more being
bludgeoned over the head by suits asking well how did you do that crazy thing that no one should be
able to do yeah I totally think that guy was a plant that they'd send in to get that information
yeah that definitely did they ever say that they didn't ask him about that because it seems like
they were very detailed and everything else that they asked him you know if one of us went into
essentially dropped ourselves into into another country and shot about people you know because
that was the only way to get out and that turned back over to our government oh there's you
you'd be in some dark hole somewhere still well he did say a couple of times during the recovery that
they kept asking him questions and he started becoming uncooperative and fighting with them and so
maybe they were trying to ask him and never could get down that train of questioning that's kind of
what I meant that you know he has a contrary streak of mile wide and so maybe they figured out the
best way to get information out of him was professional curiosity you know playing to his ego where
I'm sure he couldn't help but talk about how to apply his trade he doesn't trust us sending the
kid from Wisconsin but it doesn't it seems strange that an enlisted guy was able to get into a maximum
security area to question him about something like that with nobody interrupting him no
even when he jok started yelling at him at the one point yeah maybe then yeah yeah but I mean if
you work at a place you know how to get around the place oh basically we can watch guys not
to take this sideways when I when I send you my notes poke y'all I'll send you a link I just found
this day you know and for me the last the last review we did what was down and out the magic kingdom
but I just found a link on YouTube and I want once the show comes out I'll put it in the comments too
but oh you know I mentioned when we did the review on down and out that I'd been watching
Disney ride videos because you know I developed a certain fascination and you know there you
know there's Disney secrets videos and all that but you know one that there's one on there it
actually shows I don't there's some actually show the tunnels below this thing lad and I haven't
looked you know there's like service tunnels all over and people got in there and filled them
even though they can get you know arrested for doing so but there's a couple kids and they
start out going to the quote secret pets cemetery which is a very secret around the haunted mansion
but then they I don't know if one or both of them was dressed in Butler's uniform like cast
members so one I must have been working for Disney and he's probably unemployed now because if anybody
saw this video but they actually go you know around where the pets cemetery is there's the cast
interest entrance which isn't locked and then they go up in the facade of the of the haunted
mansion and you know I did a little poke around here what's actually in the mansion part of the
haunted mansion because the ride the whole thing from when you get in the cars and you go around
and all that that's actually this huge complex that you know when you're when you and at least
in this land you know when you're in the stretching room you're actually going down the level and
you're going when you go through you know you take the walking part of the ride towards the doom
buggies it's you know you're crossing under a man-made river and coming out the other side and
there's like this you know huge factories well factorized with this big industrial building on
the other side where the actual ride takes place and then you come back around and you get out
and you exit through the facade place actually looks like the haunted mansion but you know I
I did a little look so what well what's in the upper stories of the haunted mansion and you know
actually that you know you have the two stretching rooms the big the big huge elevators
go down and really it's not room for much else because there's that final partner stretching
where you look up and the guys hanging from the ceiling which is a story or two above you so
you know they said these elevator parts actually extend way up into the facades there's not much room
up those upper two floors for anything else but get back to this video you know it's you know
these kids are going in the first room after again there is a cast leisure area because you see
it's it's very poorly shot but you see a bunch of people standing around drinking pop or something
and then they go down a hallway and up a stair you know it's and most of it is not you know
set up like the haunted mansion there's one door to go through it's like a haunted mansion door
but the you know but you can tell they're in places where they got to be careful how loud they speak
because they're in places where they could be seen by you know people going going into the rooms
and you know the foray of the haunted mansion and going out into the into the stretching rooms
and interesting piece of trivia I found out the last few weeks that actually the stretching room
in the in in the Disney world you're not actually it's all in one level so you're not
you're not actually descending the top part of the room actually raises above you
so there's there's a difference there but you know I found that pretty interesting because I
haven't seen anything else that actually shows pictures from you know behind the scenes and
while there's behind the scenes stores but not not down the hallways and the and the
nor normally public inaccessible areas of the building so I've been talking five minutes about
this I need to shut up so continue with the book review where are we we were talking about the
Denium on and and uh Ezio and and and the the abrupt transition from the end of the battle to
he you know to his recovery and even after all the rehabilitation and the money he gets he's
still wants to go out and be a gunner right he's a possession where he could just get a room
and stay there for us to his life well I think he I think he kind of is is a standard for kind
of the Unix philosophy he has one thing and he does it really well and uh he I don't think he
knows what to do besides that he's a natural being a gunner so that's just he he can't think of any
other way to be than that way he's either a gunner or he's eating grease or dine greasy diner food
yeah he just looks up with threat space travel I mean and I can't really say that I would be any
different I'm sure that if I played the lottery and if I won the lottery and didn't require going
to work for my paycheck I would find somewhere I liked to work and continue doing what I'm doing
because somehow I like being an IT I mean this is why rock stars and movie stars uh die broke you
know because you know you know I'm not saying they're easy jobs I mean when they're when they're on
you know it's like uh you know nine ten hours a day for rock stars
on the bus or whatever going from one place and then three hours to just kill on yourself on stage
and then you know a few hours of sleep and then on onto the next place
movie actor sits you know when they're recording and then you have this rest of the year
you know you know TV actors you know when they're not when they're not filming movie actors
between movies and you know and here you have this pile of money and on the other side you have
all this time that you have to fill and they tend to do very expensive things to fill their times
with packages from Columbian stuff and you know so that's that's why they run out of all their money
you know and some of them work in a job or whatever if they got a moderate amount of extra income
you know suddenly a matter from heaven they would you know but not enough so they could quit
in fact uh well sit on it it was all the Katherine Heldenberger's uh character on uh CSI who happened
to be the secret daughter of one of the mob guys running the casinos uh and she finally went to her
to her father to get money for daughter's education and she described it to somebody
as would now now we've got enough money where we can do anything and not enough money where we can
do nothing there's a similar character in a series that my family's been watching through and
that's bones where one of the guys is secretly the sole inheritor to some mega corporation and he's
just got he's made of money and he has like three PhDs and works in a lab studying bugs and
slime because that's his thing except now that he doesn't because a couple seasons ago the big
evil character for the season you know said you know had a thing like uh you can you can either go
online and disfuse this bomb or you can stop me as I quietly empty all your accounts you know
wasn't you know and and uh put all your property in my name and take your car and stuff so it's
you know we're in and anybody works with computers just a completely absurd sequence you know
it's as bad as when somebody's breaking a password and they get they get it one letter at a time
well you know I have pretty much given up the hope of having any realistic technology scenes
ever in anything so you should watch the speakers then everything in there's pretty good
are you telling me that hackers was not factual?
well there were facts they were just wrong facts
there was that one part in the new trunk movie where they put who am I on the command line and
it shot out who it was and I was like hey that's actually a thing a computer will actually do
the matrix reloaded some of the scenes where Trinity was hacking she's actually using end map
and she's actually exploiting a vulnerability and old versions of SSH so they have one little
snippet of actual real like security work who are you hacking as boring and in and in all the CSI
shows every time like the computer's printing characters in the screen there's a little bit for
every character a little bit noise my phone does that because that wouldn't drive me crazy
so you mean I can't hack by flying through a virtual environment like something out of Tron
no no it's a lot more like lawnmower man you can you just have to move to Washington state or
Colorado hey I know this it's a unique system I know you next and apparently somebody's left
to turn them off and because that's the only way you're gonna get in all right is anybody
have anything else or should we wrap up let's bring this thing in for a landing or at least a
docking did anybody want to close anything about the audiobook I just want to say again what I
said earlier and just wow yeah do yourself a favor read this one if you haven't it's it's definitely
worth your time if you listen to us ramble on this long about it and you haven't listened to it
please please do and then you need to go to cavalcadeaudio.org.com and you know if you like
rivaled irreverent and completely not safe for work humor listen through the entirety case
series and then I I think his earliest published at least online uh uh science fiction work uh
oh god blue world I knew it earlier in the cast uh but go back that is just brilliant
I'm gonna take a step further if you liked this book anywhere near as much as any of us did
head on over to amazon and do a search for David Collins Rivera and buy the ebook editions
just to kick a couple of bucks his way just in some way to say thank you I mean I it's I I know
lost in Bronx um that's not why he did this you know it was not for money this is this is a labor
of love and he I'm sure I he'd much rather just here you say it you just write him an email
and tell him how much you like it or leave a review on amazon um but still I mean go get the ebook
and buy it for you know friends of yours who who might also want to read it or or want to
listen to it it's just you know it's worth it and he's he's more than earned that's all I can say
hey uh and uh story short stories trying to think of my blue heaven and just it's it's it's it's just
mind blowing I mean it's an insight into the obsessed person it's it's really nothing at all uh
what uh like uh the e-joc stories but uh I think you'll enjoy it as well uh blue heaven my blue heaven
was a uh movie Steve Martin movie okay blue heaven they'll know what I mean when they get to the
site right right on so what are we listening to for next month all it is was pegwall's uh genius idea
pegwall you still with us sure am so what's the book you're assigning to us for next month for
October next month is call of cthulhu by hp lovecraft i am excitement yeah i was so excited i
listened to the wrong audiobook are you sure that wasn't cthulhu just warping your mind to
bring him into his clutches you didn't say cthulhu juice three times did you
cuton lujus cuto the Jikki kikki kikki gajyu the
i'm the walrus
all right so clearly nobody said that cuz nobody can
all right so we'll uh meet back to hit meet back here again boy i'm really tired
meet back here again on October 14th that'd be Patch Tuesday of October 7 p.m. Eastern
U.S. time on mumble we're at oh geez I don't even see the mumble address
yeah it's on the HPR website look it up there join the HPR mailing list the
email subscription list because I always post them there and you can join us in
the show you can give your opinion on that book at that time just like
Tojette popped in and helped us out with this one and actually thanks a lot
Tojette and to everybody else who showed up this week it this has been a lot of
fun and and we're gonna do it again next month yeah the address from the
mumble server is Charlie Hatrack the number one dot team speak dot CC port
647 47 and HPR room and no password and whatever you want to call yourself
as optional yep and for anyone who is very new to mumble if you ever try to
get onto a mumble server that you've been told does not require a password
and it asks you for a password that's because you've picked a user name that
someone else has already used on that server so just pick a different user name
if you've been told it does not require a password then it does not require
a password and that's a user name issue because this this one does not require
a password and you should just be able to hop on in here with us so thanks again
everybody for listening to Hacker Public Radio thank you for sticking with us
through the audio book club we're really hoping you're enjoying the series
we've got some positive feedback from some HPR listeners and even some of
up the authors whose books we've reviewed we've gotten some some really
positive feedback from them which is a lot of fun but we're doing it for you the
listener and we're hoping it will encourage you to either join us on the
book club or listen to an audio book that you haven't heard before or put out
a show for Hacker Public Radio we can always use new shows we can always use
new hosts and now you've got something to say and we're dying to hear it so
with that I will say good night everybody have a good one guys nice folks
later good night good night
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