Abstract: Too clever for its own sake. Too new age for my sake. Too long for anybody's sake.

Ok. So I have something anti-New-Age. But unlike what many think this is not because of basic assumptions, or at least the more bluntly obvious ones. It's because of the lack of other such. For instance "control your thoughts and you can control everything". Instead of arguing about its truth or falseness, which is what most pro New-Age conversants bring up, I would rather discuss the nature of this statement: for some reason this sentence is regarded as optimistic which seems to me to be, at the least, necessary of justification. Ok - "control your thoughts and you can control everything". Cheerio. A ok. But can we? Wouldn't it be like saying "Once you succeed success is yours"? Thoughts are not that easily manipulated, or at least not as easily manipulated as just stating it. Even if we are able to at least consciously fence off "bad thoughts" that is still a far cry from controlling them.

The "problem" remains - humans are social beings. Our thoughts, so to speak, are not just our own. In short, The Matrix seems problematic without a V for Vendetta.

OK. Returning to the book. It's quite funny at parts, but Im much a bigger fan of somewhat similar in style Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Hunter Thompson and a few others. I also like my books with a much reduced dosage of lecturing (at some points this book is outright pamphlet stuff). In terms of writing when Robbins gets a holds on his clever bone he is ok, but then again oh-so-many plot lines that come off into nothing really exciting. It feels as if they are playing the mortar bits for all that preaching that goes on.

As Phoebe says after kissing Rachel - "I've had better". (Yey for me another Friends quote)