Application of Monkey Steals the Peach

Whip the arms as described and strike the enemy’s groin with the open palm, fingers bent at the first joint in a Monkey Paw or Tiger Claw fist. The impact will lift the enemy off the ground. Those skilled in chi kung can direct energy up the Chueng Mo channel of the body and stop the heart. Followers of the Iron Hand styles immediately clench their fists tightly, with a crushing grip, and jerk the hand sharply back to the near hip, effectively ripping away the genitals. Massive blood loss causes death.

Boy oh boy. Love a book with the phrase “effectively ripping away the genitals”.

Ninja Mind Control is a filled with 1980s-style black and white photos showing a ninja pulling a variety of moves on a guy who, I swear, is wearing denim jeans with with his karate outfit. Was he some hobo they pulled off the street for the photo-shoot? I wonder where he is today. Perhaps running a small muffin bar or maybe shouting at mailboxes and doing karate outside a local McDonald’s.

Want some power?

Kuji-Kiri are the nine levels of power, or more correctly, nine interlacing finger positions which will enable you to be invisible, control time and space and all the rest of it.  Wow, I just have to lace my fingers in some way and I’ll be able to read minds? Get me this book right now.

This crazy mixture of breathing exercises, ways to use hypnosis in combat, principles of “Ninja Magic” and denim-jeans karate guy comes across as terribly earnest. Someone, somewhere, believes the utter bullshit that is this book.

A Comedy Tour De Force

As a comedy masterpiece with a kickass cover that you can keep on your bookshelf and use as a conversation piece it is simply brilliant. Put it facing out and people can’t help but pick it up. Ashida Kim is perhaps one of the unrecognised comedic geniuses of our time. This pseudonym protected author writes about ninja techniques with an absolutely straight face, much like Max Brooks and his Zombie Survival Guide (I own this and will be reviewing it in the future), knowing that in always maintaining his facade of deadly ninja seriousness he is part of a most brilliant and hilarious joke.

Buy Ninja Mind Control from Amazon, or you could check out Dojo Press, apparently Ashida Kim’s publisher of choice.  In looking for the front cover so I didn’t have to scan it, I also found a PDF version for download here.

For more hilarity from Ashida Kim, check out his website (in particular his $10,000 challenge. Spies are apparently after the guy).

How I got this book: I think from an esoteric bookshop that used to be in Swanson Street, Melbourne. The cover is all shiny and new so I don’t think it came from a second-hand shop. I’m pretty sure I bought it simply for the front cover and title and didn’t realise at the time I was buying a masterpiece of comedy.

sidenote: I read some reviews out in the world (check out the Amazon ones in particular) reviewing this book like it was an actual book on ninja mind control. How Ashida Kim must be laughing it up that people have taken his work seriously. He truly is the Andy Kaufman of the ninja world.

For more Ninja fun check out Dr McNinja (a doctor who is also a ninja) and White Ninja comics.

Happy reading,

Mat

the trojan guinea pig – the lesser known of the trojan wooden animal army

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What is with the black and white? Urgh.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYhfpOLOzts

She does eventually get to the review

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NacXZJEH_s

Buy this book before the meteorite comes and wipes us all out!

Good Omens is one of those books that once you start reading it you are suddenly struck down with the fear of “what if I had died before reading this?”

It is simply so good it is possible it could alter the fabric of space and time and if you’re not careful, thoughts from you now might travel back in time, distract you and you’ll die in some bizarre milk-related accident.

Good Omens tells the story of Adam, a 12-year-old boy destined for a starring role in the Apocalypse if various demons and angels have anything to do with it. Of course, the angels and demons (Aziraphale & Crowley) have spent so long on Earth doing their respective jobs that maybe they don’t want the Apocalypse right at this moment.

Add in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a book containing the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nice the Witch, a Witch-finder, A Painted Jezebel, some Satanic Nuns of the Chattering Order of St Beryl and, as the book says, a full chorus of Tibetans, Aliens, Americans, Atlanteans and other Rare and Strange Creatures of the Last Days … you get the idea. It’s crazy and fun and brilliant all wrapped together with the kind of Englishness of comedy that, well, only the English can write.

For those who are Pratchett fans, you’ll recognise the style and the humour (and some of the ideas he has repeated in future novels). For Gaiman fans … hmm … I’m honestly not sure. I’ve read some Sandman graphic novels and Coraline but I get the feeling Pratchett’s style overwhelmed Gaiman’s a little. Not that it matters – both of them are amazing writers and Good Omens is perfection.

A sample:

“The only things in the flat Crowley devoted any personal attention to were the houseplants. They were huge and green and glorious, with shiny, healthy, lustrous leaves. This was because, once a week, Crowley went around the flat with a green plastic plant mister, spraying the leaves and talking to the plants. He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it an excellent idea. Although, talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.

What he did was put the fear of God into them.
More precisely, the fear of Crowley.
In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn’t look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. ‘Say goodbye to your friend,’ he’d say to them. ‘He just couldn’t cut it…’
Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.
The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.

If you can’t buy Good Omens go to the library and borrow it right now before the end of the world comes.

How I got Good Omens: Mine is a second-hand copy so I’m presuming a second-hand shop. I first read it when I was twelve and my mum borrowed it from the Horsham library. It can be hard to find second-hand (Pratchett books usually are because people keep them).

Websites:

Sir Terry Pratchett

Neil Gaiman website and journal

Happy reading,

Mat

what if you are allergic to panda and don’t know it?

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