Saturday, December 31, 2005
Year End Site Stats
I hardly ever post about site stats anymore, largely since I hardly ever look at them anymore. I never plug this site from the D2 site, or mail out links to try and get hits, or anything like that. I'm content trying to entertain the guys and girls who read BC regularly, and the random googlers who happen across it. Even with the much-improved Urchin stats that
came in a couple of months ago, I've seldom posted about it or looked at the stats.
I'm looking tonight though, while Malaya's gaming with some D2 and we're drinking sweet wine and listening to music and anticipating the New Year in a little over an hour. I'm fooling around, in other words, and with the year ending, why not? Yes, I may be a little bit drunk. But not too drunk to HTML!
If anyone were reading this now, rather than off doing New Year's stuff, I'd ask for requests on site stats. Since no one is, I'll just indulge my own curiosity, which is pretty much what this site is all about.
Here are the ten most viewed articles since October.
1. Castration, 5,527 views, 17.70%.
2. Penis Size, 3,668 views, 11.74%
3. Circumcision, 1,972 views, 6.31%
4. Men vs. Women views, 1,885, 6.04%
5. Ann Coulter, 1,332 views, 4.26%
6. Online Dating, 1,061 views, 3.40%
7. The Halloween Tree, 915 views, 2.93%
8. Serial Killers, 603 views, 1.93%
9. Articles Index, 590 views, 1.89%
10. Conspiracy Theories, 531 views, 1.70%
11. Anna Kournikova Topless518 views, 1.66%
Apparently, it's all about the penis?
I should also admit that I haven't made any updates to the article section in months and months, and that the latest stuff archived there (taken from daily updates and preserved in thematically-related articles) is from early 2003. I need an intern. Or a finished book, a publishing contract, and about two weeks to kill just doing BC archiving stuff.
Top ten most-viewed individual blog posts. This one was sort of a pain. The Urchin stat engine is a vast improvement over the old Webalyzer one, but it can't sort the results with add and subtract words at the same time. So, when I searched by putting "2005" in the page title, most of the top returns were the week-long archive pages (For example,
#2 overall, 366 loads.), most of which have 10 or 20 or more entries on them, thus skewing the results. Since I couldn't "-blogger" in the same search, I just had to list the top 50 such pages, then skip the weekly archives. Thus these results aren't #1-10, and the percentages are correspondingly low. If there were some way to apportion the loads per weekly archive page into individual articles, the numbers would be considerably higher, and also a bit more accurate.
1. Feb 28, 2005, 693 views, 4.71%
3. Things of the Day, June 27, 2005, 361 views, 2.45%
9. Volkswagon Auto Towers, October 23, 2005, 129 views, 0.88%
17. Lazy Spamming Scammers, October 20, 2005, 112 views, 0.76%
23. Pre-blogger, March 2, 2005, 100 views, 0.68%
29. Eragon's author, prodigy or hack? September 13, 2005, 65 views, 0.44%
30. Pre-blogger January 3, 2005, 63 views, 0.43%
31. August 24, 2005, A Streetcar Named Disaster, 61 views, 0.41%
32. Pre-blogger, February 7, 2005, 60 views, 0.41%
33. September 27, 2005, Eragon Mini-Review, 59 views, 0.40%
And finally, here are the top fifteen most viewed reviews. How many of these were actually read, or just clicked to since the words in the review happened to match the unknown person's search string is another question. Also, since all of these were posted in daily blogs before getting their own review page, it's likely that several hundred people read them that way, instead of via the review page. In other words, this list has little overlap with some imaginary, "most read reviews by Flux" list. Not that anyone really cares.
Like the other stats, these are from early October through today, since that's all the time the Urchin stats cover.
1. Ong Bak, 811 views, 4.59%
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 733 views, 4.15%
3. Blade Trinity, 677 views, 3.83%
4. The Historian, 655 views, 3.71%
5. Savage Pastimes, 632 views, 3.58%
6. A Wizard of Earthsea, 603 views, 3.41%
7. Depraved: The shocking true story of America's first serial killer, 596 views, 3.37%
8. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, 589 views, 3.33%
9. Reviews Index, 570 views, 3.23%
10. Stories Rabbits Tell, 403 views, 2.28%
11. Elektra, 332 views, 1.88%
12. The Transporter, 265 views, 1.50%
13. Chili's Restaurant, 260 views, 1.47%
14. Angels and Demons, 242 views, 1.37%
15. Claim Jumper Restaurant, 231 views, 1.31%
Comparing these to the other most popular pages, you can see a lot of overlap. The daily update with the initial review of
Stories Rabbits Tell, the #10 review, is in the top ten. The article on serial killers and the book review with "serial killer" in the title both made their top ten. I also noticed that two blog updates about
Eragon were in the top ten, and wondered where the review was... until I realized that's one of the things I'm behind on, and that I've never taken it from the blog entry and HTML'ed it into an actual review page.
Football Weekend
Since SD crapped out last week and no playoff spots of any consequence are still in doubt, I'm not paying much attention to the NFL this weekend. There are some fun college bowl games going on, though with those I very seldom care who wins; I just enjoy watching the action. I taped Fresno State vs. Tulsa this morning just in the hopes that it would be high scoring and entertaining. And it was,
apparently.
I didn't actually see it, since we're having huge storms here this weekend, and the power and cable have been knocked out several times. The lights flickered and flickered and then went dead this morning around 8. That was my signal to finally get the hell into bed, and when they came back on around 9 and I was still trying to get to sleep, I remembered to get up and set the VCR to start taping at 10 for the Fresno/Tulsa game. It taped until early in the 2nd half, when the cable went out. Well, it kept taping after that, but I didn't choose to watch the static.
Tulsa ended up winning in not very special fashion, but that's okay, since they've got a funny name. Malaya and I enjoy saying "Tulsa," but it's sort of a long story why. There's a legendary story about ex-QB Troy Aikman; supposedly he was knocked silly during a Cowboys' game in his pro career, and when they got him to the sidelines and gave him the "how many fingers am I holding up" routine, he answered, "T.. Tul... Tulsa." when they asked him where he was. It's funny since the game was in Dallas, which isn't anywhere near Tulsa, and in fact Troy hadn't been there since high school. When he was probably knocked the hell out a few times.
We (Malaya and me) conflate this story with the amusing jock stereotype character in
the hilarious Coen Brothers remake of The Ladykillers, whose only dialogue was to say, "Coach? C.. c.... c... coach?" Hence when someone gets knocked out, we often start saying, "T... T... Tulsa?"
Anyway, there was a bowl game on earlier that morning, and one on later in the afternoon, but I didn't watch or attempt to tape either of them. San Diego hosted Denver in an afternoon football game too, but I didn't care about that with the result meaning nothing, and it was over before I woke up anyway. Denver rubbed the floor with SD, apparently. And now the NYG@Raiders game is on... but not here. The local listings say it should be on Channel 5 and on ESPN as well, but 5's got news and filler, and ESPN is just showing the ESPN news channel for 3 solid hours. Got to love those diehard Raiders fans making sure the game is a sell out so it's on free local TV, eh?
So Saturday's games, 3 college, 2 pro: 1 bad college game, 2 good ones the cable was out during, 1 bad NFL game I slept through, 1 NFL game blacked out here and nowhere else in the country.
As for Sunday's offerings, they're pretty blah. Early game we get Carolina@Atlanta, which is actually one of the better games on all day. Later we get Houston@SF, in the Reggie Bush bowl. And that's it. Only 2 games, and while I can accept that the local 49ers game isn't on against another game, I have no idea why there's only 1 early game on. I also have no idea how the 49ers keep selling out their games while Oakland can't, since I've seen like 2 49ers bumper stickers in my entire 2.5 years living here, compared to about 50000 Raider Nation stickers, signs, etc. Every mall has a Raiders Store, no malls have 49ers stores, I see Raiders jackets and hats on people every day while never seeing any 49ers stuff, etc. True, I'm closer to Oakland than SF, but I've never seen any 49ers bumper stickers or merch when in The City either.
Fortunately for my football needs, Monday has six good bowl games, and then there are good ones Tuesday and Wednesday night as well, as the bowl season closes out. And then next weekend the NFL playoffs begin, marking T-minus one month until the end of any good sports on TV until next fall.
Blizzcon Photo Page.
At long last, I found the time to sort through my Blizzcon photos from Halloween weekend, and they're now posted on a photos page with captions and discussion and all that.
Blizzcon Photos! These are far less visually-interesting than the recent batch from Death Valley (or pretty much any of the other vacation photo sets, for that matter), so don't go looking for eye candy, unless you count the Starcraft Ghost model, and you'll see better photos of her on other sites, many of them linked from my Blizzcon Photos page.
What you will find here are captions and talk about the event, the missing Diablo presence, the incredible waiting line to get in, and so on. Now I just have to figure a way to turn this outpouring into an article for the D2 site, 2 months later. I'm thinking top 5 and bottom 5 things about Blizzcon, in the style of my old Decahedrons, and that might even work. Since there's not much NFL football worth watching this weekend, I hope to find the time to get it done by Monday.
Here are a few sample shots, and again, click to
the appropriate page to see lots more.
You've probably heard of "the line" from Blizzcon, but you really had to see it. This is the third shot I took of it (all 3 are on the photo page). I took one near the entrance, looking maybe 80 meters down the side of the long building. Then I walked down there and turned the corner and took another shot of the next 50 meters of line, and walked to that corner, and took this one. And it just kept on going.
This guy was actually pretty funny. He was standing outside the convention center early on, shouting nonstop through his megaphone about how Blizzard was oppressing and enslaving Murlocs, and how his people should be freed, etc. His URL is
www.craftingworlds.com/savemurlocsand he's got more photos and movies and everything. Possibly including a mental disease.
The merch menu. Many of the sales items were in our goodie bags already, happily enough. The key chain, playing cards, a WoW and Blizzcon t-shirt, one of the silicone bracelets, etc. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything else I wanted. No action figures or games or convention-only t-shirts, etc. The cinematic posters were pretty cool, though, and I might have gotten the D2 one, if it had been anything other than Baal's smirking face.
Yes, I had to get a self-portrait. I'm wearing a D2X shirt, of course, and apparently readying myself to defend against a free kick. One minute after Rush took this photo with my camera I thought, "Why the hell didn't I have her point the gun at me?" but by then it was too late.
See the whole set, and captions, here.
Friday, December 30, 2005
The evil meme of four.
After giving in and blogging that
"Meme of Four" thing a few days ago, and mentioning that I'd like to see an evil version of it, I found my brain returning to that concept tonight in the shower. And here we are:
Four celebrities you'd cheat on your wife/husband/gf/bf with. (Time travel is permitted.)
Angelina Jolie, Asia Carrera (ex-porn curious), Nicole Kidman (10 years ago), Elle MacPherson (15 years ago).
Four celebrities you'd like to see dead, painfully or otherwise.
Tom Cruise, Courtney Love, George Lucas, Kevin Federline.
Four movies you'd like to erase from your brain.
Matrix 3, Starship Troopers, Ice Age, Star Wars: Episode 1-3.
Four places you never, ever want to visit.
Iraq, Detroit, Atlanta, Bombay.
Four TV shows you wish you had never seen/never want to see.
Friends, All in the Family, professional wrestling, Fear Factor.
Four websites you wish would cease to exist.
I can't list four directly, but ones that spread lies and hatred like those for Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, white supremacists, terrorists, etc would be fine by me.
Of the "Seven Deadly Sins," which four do you most frequently indulge in? (Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Sloth.)
Pride, Lust, Greed, Sloth.
Of these four, which would you give your life to save? Your mother, father, wife/husband/SO, or children. (If you do not have all four, then that just makes your choice that much easier, now doesn't it?)
No children, and none of the other three. I want to live.
Admittedly, these aren't really all
that evil. Intentionally. I considered harder questions and more ethical dilemmas, but I didn't want to make it so serious and dark that no one would play along. Most mainstream bloggers aren't going to list the four cities they'd most like to see destroyed by a natural disaster, or four politicians they want assassinated, or if they'd kill their mother or their father, if they had to pick one. Plus I didn't want to make the list all political and deep thought either. Feel free to offer critiques or additions in comments.
Also, I seriously would like to see this become popular on the blogosphere, so if you like it recommend it to others. I don't even care if I get any credit, (Someone else has surely thought of something similar already anyway.) steal the questions and remove my answers if you want. I'd just like to see some bloggers dish on questions I find a lot more interesting than the favorite movies/tv shows faff on the other four meme list.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Depressing survey results.
There's a new Harris poll out, and it's informative, in a way. They surveyed almost 2000 American adults during the second week of December, and asked them various questions about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, 9/11, and so on, and well... the results
are pretty damned depressing. Click the link to see the tables and methodology and such; I'm just quoting the intro here.
Sizeable minorities of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had "strong links to al Qaeda," a Harris Interactive poll shows, though the number has fallen substantially this year.
About 22% of U.S. adults believe Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, according to the online poll of 1,961 adults.
However, all of these beliefs have declined since February of this year, when 64% of those polled believed Mr. Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda and 46% said Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11. At that time, more than a third said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and 44% said several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.
Currently, 56% of adults believe Iraqis are better off now than they were under Mr. Hussein, down from 76% in February. Nearly half of those polled say they believe Iraq, under Mr. Hussein, was a threat to U.S. security, down from 61% in February.
The whole news page is kind of maddening, since it never actually states objective reality. They say, "still believe" several times, while never actually pointing out that all of those beliefs are Santa Clausesque! I mean okay, it's probably painfully obvious to the reporter, and if I were presenting poll results in which 27% of the people responding were unaware that the sky was blue and grass was green, I might not actually take the time to point out that they were on fucking crack... but when you've got substantial minorities who believe in nonsense, shouldn't you at least make some effort to educate them when you present the summation of their ignorance?
The last couple of questions are opinion-based and open to debate, but how about the first few?
This sort of thing probably goes some distance towards explaining why Bush still has even a 36% (or whatever the current figure is) job approval rating. I do wonder about these people, though. Are they like non-celebrity versions of Paris Hilton; all caught up in their own little worlds of clothing and parties and such, with no knowledge of current events beyond what they picked up through the crudest sort of "TV news on at a friend's house" osmosis? Or are they hardcore right wing FOX News/Rush Limbaugh types who love Bush and who choose to disbelief all the media reports that don't conform to their chosen view of the world?
Bush quotes of the year.
Yahoo News article that's funny, and also short enough that I'm just going to quote the whole thing.
Call it the wrong phrase at the wrong time but "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" was named on Thursday as U.S. President George W. Bush's most memorable phrase of 2005.
The ill-timed praise of a now disgraced agency head became a national punch line for countless jokes and pointed comments about the administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and added to the president's reputation for verbal gaffes and clumsy turns of phrase.
Paul JJ Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, a nonprofit group that monitors language use, says Bush's statement in support of the then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency may be remembered for years to come.
"The 'Brownie' quote leads our 2005 list of Bushisms -- memorable phrases or new words coined by the president," Payack said, adding that Bush may be the foremost White House creator of new words, citing such past efforts as "misunderestimate" (to seriously underestimate) and "embetter" (to make emotionally better).
Ten days after Bush verbally patted Michael Brown on the back before the TV cameras, Brown resigned amid a public uproar over his qualifications and the administration's failure to get aid to New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Although the president did not originate any new words this year, he had several notable statements, Payack said, citing the following:
-- "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," Bush said in explaining his communications strategy last May.
-- "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" Bush asked in a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting in September.
-- "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table," Bush said in Brussels last February.
-- "In terms of timetables, as quickly as possible - whatever that means," the president said of his timeframe for passing Social Security legislation in March.
-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law," Bush said in describing illegal immigrants in Tucson, Arizona, last month.
I like that all of these are relatively coherent comments. I mean no, they don't all strictly make sense, but the amusing nature of the quote comes from what he was saying, not the mangled and garbled words he used to try and say it. As it often the case.
For example:
"Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red." —George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005
And yes, if your every public word was recorded and transcribed, you'd say a lot of dumb and babbling things too. Then again, don't we have a right to hold the damned POTUS up to a bit of a higher standard? It's not as if he holds the most powerful position on earth or anything.
Four meme.
I don't know who started this four questions thing, and I don't care enough to research it (I followed the source back seven links
from this one before I gave up. It's like opening
Russian dolls.) but over the past couple of weeks I've seen it on maybe 3/4 of the blogs I read. I still think it's sort of stupid, but as everyone else does it my resistance to following the herd has eroded like a
corpse in sulfuric acid rock in the surf. And here we are:
Four jobs you've had in your life:Stadium food vendor, co-webmaster, SAT Test Prep assistant, yard maintenance engineer.
Four movies you could watch over and over:Pulp Fiction,
LotR:FotR,
Aliens,
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.
Four places you've lived:Syracuse, NY; Raleigh, NC; Arlington, TX; San Diego, CA.
Four TV shows you love to watch:NFL/NCAA Football,
UFC,
Jerry Springer,
CSI. (I don't honestly love watching any of those, but I do watch them all fairly regularly, the last three only on the couch with Malaya, who got me into them in the first place.
Four places you've been on vacation:Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; Lafayette, CA; Saint Louis, Missouri.
Four websites you visit daily:Get Fuzzy,
Political Animal,
Rotten Tomatoes,
D-Listed.
Four of your favorite foods:Pizza, garden burgers, nachos supreme, fresh strawberries.
Four places you'd rather be:Nowhere, but I'd like to upgrade to a large home of our own in this area.
Seems to me this is most effective as a framing device, or an honesty check, though you'd need to really know the tastes of the blogger to tell how honest they were being. What is a person willing to admit to, on their blog? Every blog I've seen post this has listed nothing but political blogs in their "what blogs do you visit" answer, and generally only ones from their own ideology. No one admits to any really awful movies or TV shows either. Well, I'm no exception, but I did try to answer honestly. I wish there were a few more personally-illuminating questions though, especially ones from a the other side of the coin. 4 celebrities you want dead, 4 books you hate, 4 things you've done in your 4 jobs that you should have been fired for it anyone had caught you doing them, 4 places you would never want to live, etc.
Some of those would break the short answer magic of the quiz though, so perhaps I'll streamline them and try and start that trend myself, thus helping to make the Internet a darker, less pleasant place.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Internet movies for fame and fortune?
The big new Internet movie is
apparently this one, a parody rap videos by two white guys who work on Saturday Night Live. It's new to me, but it's been all the rage for the past week or two, and it even merited a write up
in the NY Times, as part of a larger article about the phenomena of instant short film Internet fame.
For most aspiring rappers, the fastest route to having material circulated around the World Wide Web is to produce a work that is radical, cutting-edge and, in a word, cool. But now a pair of "Saturday Night Live" performers turned unexpected hip-hop icons are discovering that Internet stardom may be more easily achieved by being as nerdy as possible.
In "Lazy Sunday," a music video that had its debut on the Dec. 17 broadcast of "SNL," two cast members, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, adopt the brash personas of head-bopping, hand-waving rappers. But as they make their way around Manhattan's West Village, they rhyme with conviction about subjects that are anything but hard-core: they boast about eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, searching for travel directions on MapQuest and achieving their ultimate goal of attending a matinee of the fantasy movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
It is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace - or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills - that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, "Lazy Sunday" has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com; it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at NBC.com and the iTunes Music Store; and it has even inspired a line of T-shirts, available at Teetastic.com.
The article is interesting and the video is okay, though I hadn't heard of it until today and I wouldn't have paid it much mind if not for all of the media attention it's getting. I found it most amusing for how it lampoons all the tired conventions of "we're so bad" posing in rap videos.
I thought this article and video was ironic though, since
I read this one on Yahoo yesterday, and it reaches pretty much the opposite conclusion about fame via Internet-released independent films:
It's not that attention-grabbing short films -- whether they begin life as fan films or Internet novelties -- aren't the calling cards they once were in the movie industry. The truth is that, despite a few illusory examples, they never did guarantee the entree for which their creators hoped. Despite all the initial acclaim that greeted such short films as the "Stars Wars" spoof "George Lucas in Love" or "405," in which an airplane lands on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, their creators were not instantly given the directing assignments for which they were angling. And the flood of ersatz films that have followed in their wake pretty much has rendered the Internet fallow ground for recruitment.
...
The success of "405," "Lucas in Love" and "Troops" changed the landscape for calling cards. Suddenly, spoofs flooded the Hollywood landscape and then the Internet. "It became too much," Dowling said. "It became a lot harder to get something seen. There were like a hundred 'Blair Witch' spoofs. There were so many of them that not one of them was making an impact."
The evolution of the Internet and digital technology only made it easier to make and disseminate such shorts. But as they multiplied, they tended to cancel one another out.
"It doesn't make a splash anymore," said John Halecky of iFilm, where many shorts appear. "People are even spoofing the MasterCard 'Priceless' commercials. Well, you're spoofing a 30-second ad with a 30-second ad."
The evolution of the Internet also made it harder to build buzz. The old days of making copies of copies on VHS, messengering them around town and congregating around TVs to catch the latest parody were gone. While the Internet made such shorts instantly available, it also ended their mystique.
The article is actually pretty schizophrenic, since along with these doom and gloom examples, they discuss half a dozen success stories, starring guys who made an Internet short, and turned that into a real job in the movie industry. So overall, their point is what, exactly?
Precipitation Adventures
It's been raining for like the past week, and with
the extended forecast calling for more and more of the same, that doesn't look likely to change. I don't mind the rain, though it does get a bit monotonous. I do miss the cold weather though; it was in the low 30s at night a few weeks ago, and since it's started raining it's been mid 40s at the coldest, and upper 50s in the day. In other words, not cold enough to require a coat to go outside, unless you're going to be standing around out there for a while. I'd love to wear a coat more often, I've got a nice leather one and everything, and it feels toasty during the walk to the car and from the car to our indoor destination, but once I'm there, wherever there is, I'm hot in a coat, and I soon tire of carrying the damn thing around.
Yes, life is hard in modern civilization.
As for the rain, it's been fun to listen to and watch and such. It rains quite a bit in most parts of Northern California, but
the rainy months cluster, and we hardly see a cloud from April - October. On the other hand, it rains at least weekly during November, December, January, February, and March, and since we're still just two months into that, water from the sky is still sort of a novelty. I'll be sick of it by February, I suspect, what with my desire for any sort of outdoor activity constantly constrained by puddles and mud.
It rained far less
in my former home, though the months that could kindly be called "the rainy season" were basically the same. It's just that in San Diego the temperatures were 10-15 degrees hotter at all times, and in between days of rain you'd get one of the hated Santa Ana days with an offshore flow and highs in the 90s. In January. My basically-vampirific nature shudderes at the memory.
In San Diego, I never expected anyone to be able to drive in the rain. It hardly ever rained, and usually when it did the roads had been dry for months, and were therefore quite slippery and dangerous with all the oil and car residue floating on the surface. There I could understand why some people got so overly-cautious and tentative in even a light mist.
Now that I'm living in the Bay Area though, where it rains damn near every day 5 months of the year, I'm confused though. As I remarked to Malaya the other day, as we were ambling our way along the damp I-24 in a very light mist, stuck in a light flow of traffic that was putting along at maybe 50, when it would usually have been proceeding at 70+ on that same road at that same time of day, "Perhaps someday man will invent some sort of black, rubber-like substance that can be formed into automobile tires and enable vehicles to safely traverse slightly-moist roads."
Ahh, to dream.
In other wet-related news, the cats are unhappy. Well, let me amend that. Jinx is unhappy. Dusty could give a shit, since he's never outside for more than a few minutes at a time anyway, what with the soft and beckoning couch, chair, bed, carpeted floor, and various human laps available to him. Jinxie though, likes to go outside and look at nature and chak-chak-chak at the squirrels and smell the air. She doesn't much enjoy it when the outdoor carpets on the back patio are all squishy and there's moisture in the air though, and it's all she can do to find a merely-damp spot and hunker there for a while with her tail wrapped around her feet and her body quite compacted.
A couple of days ago she was standing by the sliding glass door and making entreating noises, and I opened the door while saying to her, "You won't like it."
I say "saying to her" but let's be honest, it's not like the cats know or care what the hell words are coming out of our mouths. We talk to them to hear ourselves talk, or to entertain the other humans in earshot. Malaya, in this case.
Jinxie disregarded my words and shot right out the door, stopped, paused, then whirled and came straight back in, prrrfafing and brruping her displeasure as she headed across the room for some more Friskies. And there was much merriment at her expense. Don't worry kitty, it'll be dry again in 3 or 4 months. Of course that's like 3 years in cat years, which gots to suck, if you're her.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Twas the day after Xmas...
I got lazy over Xmas and didn't blog, but you didn't miss much, since it wasn't a very remarkable holiday on my end.
We had a nice dinner party (white people style) at one of her coworker's homes on the 23rd, where there were about a dozen people, most of them neighbors and friends of the coworker. Good food, and interesting, since the coworker's husband is a hunter, and there's always wild game. We had a whole smoked pheasant, served cold with cheese and crackers as part of the appetizers, caribou ragu (like thick chili) over polenta, and a huge ham (store-bought, not wild boar shot) sliced up, along with salad, and more. Dinner was buffet style, with everyone serving themselves multiple times and sitting in the kitchen and dining room, casually. Dessert was a big Boston Creme Pie Malaya and I brought, and it wasn't bad either, despite basically being a twinkie with chocolate icing.
Malaya was off to a family party on the evening of the 24th, and then over to her parents' Xmas morning/afternoon, which left me plenty of free time to watch football and work on the novel. There was more of the latter than the former, fortunately, and as a result chapter 6 is finally complete, in all of its 79000 word glory. More on that in a bit.
Speaking of the 26th of December though, or Boxing Day as it's called in Canada and the UK, but not here in the US... there are supposed to be sales. Aren't there sales? I always hear on the radio and the teevee that there are "After Christmas" sales, and yet when we visited the very busy mall, and then Barnes and Noble, and then Mervyn's, then Marshall's, then Tuesday Morning, then TJ Maxx, etc, we didn't really see much evidence of that. Sure, the Xmas-themed wrapping paper and cards and such were all 50% off, and so were 2006 calendars, but that's a given.
Other stuff though, was not on sale, or at least not enough of a sale to matter. I was looking for some more sneakers (yes,
late term himbo-itus continues) and in Foot Locker, Champs, Finish Line, and Copeland's, it was the same story. (Well, not so much in Copeland's, where nothing ever seems to be on sale, and their prices are always 15% higher in the first place.) No sweeping sales on anything, just slightly reduced prices on individual items, all of them pretty clearly the stuff no one wanted in the first place. Shoes that have been not selling at $89 or $79 were down to $79 or $69. And still not selling.
We looked in a dozen stores at the mall and found nothing worth buying, other than a few calendars for delayed Xmas gifts, and if not for the gift certificates we'd received for Xmas (Malaya Barnes & Noble, me TJ Maxx), I don't know that either of us would have bought anything. I did pay real money for a shiny workout shirt and workout pants at Marshall's, but only because they were at their usual low price, and because I liked the styling of them both. I got some blue cargo pants and other stuff at TJ Maxx later, but that was just because I had a gift card for them. Same as the books Malaya got at B&N.
I know some of the sales go on early in the morning and were long over by the time we arrived in the late afternoon, but overall I was far from impressed. On the other hand, the mall was packed and the lines to buy stuff were far longer than usual in all of the stores we did enter, so maybe the merchants know what they're doing. Make a few superficial price reductions, take out some newspaper ads, and then hire extra cashiers and count your profits when the sheep flock to your store, and decide to buy stuff once they're there, even though the prices aren't very good.
As for the novel, as I said, I worked on it a lot over the last few days, and finally finished chapter 6. I should have had that one done back in early November, but I got delayed and distracted with week-long vacations over Halloween and Thanksgiving, and completely rewrote the 25k word battle scene several times during early/mid December. I'm finally satisfied with it though, for rough draft quality at least, and have passed the chapter over to Malaya to print out at work and read and comment on, when she has the time.
As for 7, I'm trying to be very diligent about the outline and the details, for once, so I (hopefully) won't get all bogged down in rewrites halfway through. And it's going well. I haven't actually begun writing the chapter yet, but I've got a sequential event outline that's very detailed and precise, and I've got a timeline worked out as well, but it's complicated. Lots of things happen in the same area in the same two week time frame.
It's not really complicated in terms of plot twists or the like (well, a little bit of that too) but mostly in terms of how I'm going to relate it. I'm not writing the novel in omniscent: it's all from the POV of several main characters, and they can't relate things for the reader's benefit unless they see them/know them personally. So I know what's going to happen and when and where and to whom, but I'm juggling how I'm going to relate it. Of the three narrators seen in the book (so far), all three are present in one place for the first time, and I'm probably going to have the one least involved in the events in that place narrate it, to give it an outside analysis, and also to keep it shorter and not be redundant to events that took place in chapter 6.
And no, I don't suppose any of that makes much sense to you guys at this point.
Overall, I'm again unsure how many chapters it will be; I'd been thinking that 7 would take the characters nearly to their objective, and then 8 would be them dealing with a challenge at that objective and moving on nearly to the finale, which would be in 9, before a short epilogue wrapped everything up. Now I'm thinking that if I divide it up that way, 7 will be like 70k words, 8 would be about 15k and all in one place, 9 would be another 15k, almost all of it the final battle/confrontation, and then the epilogue would be about 1500 words. I don't really like that chapter length breakdown though, so perhaps I'll end 7 earlier in the chronology and put the last half of third of it into 8, before 9 ends things up in relatively succinct fashion.
I'm not realy worried about the numbers, though. The whole chapter number system will almost certainly not survive into the final book form, and every chapter is broken up into 20 or 25 mini-chapters, and I could really do 7-9 as a single concluding chapter, since events in it are pretty contiguous.
Furthermore, I don't even need to say this if you've read many of my other updates on the book and my writing in general, but it's a pretty safe bet that this last stretch of material will turn out to be twice as long/detailed as I'm currently expecting, which will make all of this advance length planning superfluous. I just hope it won't take 3 or 4x as long to write, as a number of other chapters already have.
The whole "novel," right now, is somewhere around 3.7meg worth of .doc files, and that breaks down to something like 420,000 words. And I've got at least 80-100k more words to go; probably more like 150k. I'll be cutting out at least 150k of those just from chapter 2 on the rewrite, and maybe 30k from chapter 3 after that, but we're still looking at like 500k+ words, which would be well over 1000 pages even with very small print. Just going by size, (and pretending some publisher wouldn't force me to make grotesque edits and cuts) that's looking like 2 novels, and no, I can't see a convenient place to divide it in two. Not without major rewriting and reordering, at least. (Which might actually improve things, since the chapters 2-4 are largely build up for the much cooler stuff that comes later.)
In better news, I keep adding ideas (or saving old ideas that aren't going to fit into this one) for the planned sequel, which I think may well be a better and more interesting book, and should theoretically be a more managable size; I.E. one volume. And with any luck, an understanding publisher would think it a nice cap to a lovely trilogy.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Movie Reviews with Ebert.
It's been said, (
frequently by me) that Ebert's reviews aren't as much fun anymore, since he now likes everything. Well, he might not "like" everything, but he's started giving out a bloated number of three-star reviews, since by his metric, if a movie more or less succeeds at what it aimed to do, and will be enjoyed by its target audience and should therefore be mildly-recommended. I think he should tweak his star system to turn a mild recommendation into about 2 or 2.5 stars, but whatever.
His "logic" and aging/growing tolerance is put on display again this week, with 3-star reviews for
Rumor Has It (
19% on RT),
The Ringer (
39% on RT), and even execrable family-friendly swill
Cheaper by the Dozen II (
11% on RT).
There is something he doesn't like though. The new no-budget gore-fest from Oz,
Wolf Creek, a film he awards with zero stars, and
about which he says:
I like horror films. Horror movies, even extreme ones, function primarily by scaring us or intriguing us. Consider "Three ... Extremes" recently. "Wolf Creek" is more like the guy at the carnival sideshow who bites off chicken heads. No fun for us, no fun for the guy, no fun for the chicken. In the case of this film, it's fun for the guy.
..
There is a line and this movie crosses it. I don't know where the line is, but it's way north of "Wolf Creek." There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty? The theaters are crowded right now with wonderful, thrilling, funny, warm-hearted, dramatic, artistic, inspiring, entertaining movies. If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is: Don't know that person no more.
I don't have issue with him hating the film, or the reasons for which he hates it. I just wish he was a little freer with his hatred of other deserving cinematic releases, since those reviews are
always usually the most fun to read.
Update: Ironic that I posted this last night, since when I read Ebert's bi-weekly
Movie Answer Man segment Sunday evening, I saw this:
Q. It seems that in past year most of your reviews end up awarding three stars or more. I had confidence in your three-star ratings until I realized that so many of them are mediocre films. For example, "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which is composed of bad acting and unimpressive dialogue. Please be more critical of average films.
Bud Schauerte, Austin, Texas
A. I often hear I am "getting soft." A correspondent helpfully writes: "My friend says that since you had cancer, you give every movie three or four stars." A New York weekly critic says I "like everything," and he must be right, because I even liked the film he cited as an example of how much more discerning he is than critics like me.
I did some math, and found that my average rating for a feature film in 2005 came to about 2.7 stars. On a bell curve, the average should be 2.0, but consider that I reviewed 284 movies in the last year, and the extra titles were independent and foreign films that tended to skew higher. I am content with my 2.7 average.
The problem is with the use of stars as a rating system. Star ratings go back to that simpler time when film critics stood on far hillsides and signaled to the grateful peasantry with torches and brightly colored flags.
Indignant readers write me: "How could you give Film A three stars and Film B only 2-1/2 stars? I will never read your reviews again." I reply: "A wise decision! My reviews are for those who are stronger in literature than math."
He's got a point, and he always says his reviews are meant to be read, not judged by the imprecise star system (or worse yet, the "thumbs up/down" he's limited to on his TV show). Still, that doesn't address the fact that for the last year or so, his scores for major films have consistently been much higher than the mean or median scores for those films. He can give every gay cowboys eating pudding film he sees a four-star score, and I won't object. I'd just like to see less three-star "it was okay for its target audience" kid gloves reviews.
What can you do though? I certainly don't think he's taking payoffs, or that he's grown afraid to say bad things about a film he didn't like. The man's tastes have changed and he's grown less prickly with age and cancer survival. Is he supposed to fill a review with vitriol he doesn't really feel, just for our amusement?
Santa Claus in the scary news.
It's probably a bad sign if you laugh
at this story, on Christmas Eve. However, I must admit I cackled so loudly that it scared the cats. Hell, I was rolling just from the headline. I'll quote almost the whole short thing here, since it's short and if you click to the site you've got to enter a fake DoB and zip code to read it.
Man playing Santa collapses in front of elementary students
12/22/2005, 12:21 p.m. ET
The Associated Press
HUBBARD, Ohio (AP) — A man playing Santa collapsed in front of about 750 elementary schoolchildren at a Christmas assembly.
John Rappach, 60, clutched his chest and fell near the end of the assembly at Roosevelt Elementary in Hubbard on Wednesday. He was in critical condition on Thursday.
School officials ushered in crisis counselors and assured students that Santa would be fine and ready for Christmas Eve, Superintendent Richard Buchenic said.
The children were sent home with letters explaining the situation to their parents, he said.
About 700 parents were at the assembly, and those near Rappach checked his pulse once he fell and surrounded him to block the children's view, said Don Newell Jr., a parent at the assembly.
Rappach was breathing and had a pulse when he was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center in nearby Youngstown
The hospital had no update Thursday on what caused Rappach's collapse.
Seriously, what would you pay to see this on tape? Some of the parents in attendance
must have been rolling video. Oh please oh please. Envision a shot of Santa as he dramatically grasps his chest before going down like a sack of cement, followed by screams of terror and shots of horrified children, while adults rush the stage like cornermen after a boxing match ends.
In really scary Christmas news:
Pope Benedict XVI, sporting a fur-trimmed hat in the rich red colour of a Santa hat, waves to pilgrims upon his arrival in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Wednesday for his weekly general audience. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Okay, other than reconfirming that no two colors go worse together than orange and red, WTF? Do they have mirrors in the Vatican? Or would the fact that this man is clearly some sort of vampyre render that point moot? Imagine him at the mall, with a press-on beard and some elves? Would you let your kids sit in his lap?
And yes, this is a real and undoctored photo. It's been near the top of the
Yahoo most popular for the past few days, horrifyingly enough.
Update: I added a second photo from the same series after Kim pointed it out in comments. Someone needs to Photoshop in laser beams coming from his eyes, or something.
San Diego 7, Kansas City 20
See, now
there's the trouble with faith-based predictions,
like mine about the San Diego football team's future, and the Bush Administration's about Iraq. They're fun to make and roll right off the tongue, and if you happen to be right it's all good like cajun flavored sesame sticks. The problem is that they don't fare real well when stacked up against hard, cruel reality.
The Chargers absolutely had to win their last two games to make the playoffs in any realistic scenario, and they didn't even come close. I taped the game and watched it around 2pm, when Malaya's imminent departure for a family-based holiday party prompted me out of bed after a whopping 5 hours of sleep. (I just can not get tired before like 8am the past week. It's great for getting a lot of writing done, but since I'm up not long after noon every day, it's not so good for the bags under my eyes.) Even though I watched it, I can't really say why San Diego lost so helplessly. They weren't great on defense but they weren't awful, and since they average near 28 points a game, they should have been okay giving up 20 to a pretty good offense like Kansas City's. Their offense was obviously the real trouble, with only 7 points and less than 250 yards against a weak KC defense, and the weather was obviously a contributing factor there.
I began to sour on their chances right from the start, when they held KC to 3 and out thanks to a terrible dropped 3rd down pass by Dante Hall. After a weak punt SD had the ball on KC's 45, and I was thinking they would need at least 20 points to win, so they simply had to do something on this one, with just 25 yards needed to get into reasonable field goal range. They did nothing, calling slow-developing runs to LT on first and second down, and then looking confused on the requisite 3rd and long pass.
SD's second drive was better, as they answered the Chiefs and tied the score at 7, but that was effectively it for the Chargers' offense. The weather was cold and drizzily, and while the field looked okay through most of the first half, by the 3rd quarter it was terribly chewed up and basically resembled wet hay on mud. Neither team scored in the second half, and after SD's first possession ended in a wimpy little interception that went right through LT's hands on the KC 15 yard line, I gave up hope.
It's almost a blessing that SD didn't come back and at least make it close at the end, since my tape ended with 3:30 to play, when the network cut to the start of the Raiders' latest surrender. The national media keeps making jokes about Detroit, but have they checked out the
Raiders during the last month? They've lost four straight, and by game it's been 10-34, 10-26, 7-9, and 3-22 today, in Denver. Thirty points in a month isn't exactly the stuff of offensie legends, and it's pretty clearly they're not really making much of an effort. Unless that effort is to get another high draft pick, and they're doing pretty well there, thanks to recent wins by Baltimore, Cleveland, Arizona, and others. Hell, they could make the top five yet, if SF or NO, or NYJ or others aren't careful about winning their last game of the season.
Anyway, that's it for SD's playoff hopes, though at least they finally lost a game by more than 3 points, and looked bad doing it. It might not even matter, since Pittsburgh slaughtered Cleveland and Jacksonville finally scored some points and triumphed over Houston, and if those teams both win against next week, SD wouldn't have made the playoffs anyway. Perhaps this will put that "best team to not make the playoffs" chatter to rest. Hell, if SD folds up next week against Denver they'll barely even have a winning record, and could finish 3rd in their own division, ahead of only hapless Oakland.
Elsewhere, I was looking at
the NFL standings and had to laugh at the NFC West. Seattle won again today, beating Indy's backup players and coach 28-13, to run their record to 13-2. And with one week to go, they have as many wins as the other 3 teams in their division have put together. Arizona and Saint Louis have 5 each, and SF has 3. Sadder yet, of those 13 wins, 6 of them came head to head, since those teams play each other twice each season and hell, someone has to win. (SF's got 3 wins all year and 2 of them came against StL.) On the other hand, Seattle got 6 of their 13 wins in divisional games too, so maybe they shouldn't crow too loudly.
And in one final football note, I'm currently recording the Aloha Bowl and hoping it will be fun to watch later, though I have absolutely no interest in either Central Florida or Nevada. I just want to see some entertaining football after today's lackluster Chargers game, and since this one is already
28-20 at the half, hopes are high. Though I must admit that it will be odd to see a football game from Aloha Stadium where the
teams actually care who wins.
Holiday Kitty Pictures
A few recent cat photos, some even with an Xmas theme. Mainly because it's late and I'm too tired from fiction'ing to type anything more coherent.
My, aren't they cute. Whatever could they be studying so intently?
Ahh yes, the mousie. Jinxie loves nothing more than hurling herself into the shower in hot pursuit of a flying cat toy, to the point that she usually races straight down the hallway when we throw it in that direction, but rather than swatting it she turns right, runs through the bathroom, and hurdles into the tub. And then stays there, for long minutes, peering over the edge in foxhole fashion. It's cute that she's in there. It's cuter when it's dark, and the human entering the bathroom turns on the light and beholds Jinxie blinking and squinting like an abruptly-awakened toddler.
She never plays with the mousie in the shower, despite the "hit up the bank and catch it when it slides back down" possibilities. She instead bites it and carries it out into the hallway, or all the way down to the living room, places it down very neatly with a sort of bow, (she never just drops it, as Dusty is wont) and whirls and runs back into the tub, as if either human in her home has ever shown the ability to throw the mousie five meters down the hallway, with enough spin to then turn right and fly into the tub.
As part of our recent home redecoration, we moved this big ass bookshelf from the bedroom into the living room. We also moved a lot of books around, and ended up with multiple empty slots in the 5x5 Ikea bookshelf. Since we had the space, I had the idea of leaving one cubbyhole over the sofa empty, and putting one of the cat blankets in there. Neither feline showed much interest in it initially, but since I soon took to lifting them up and letting them climb into the opening, they've grown a bit more accommodating of it. As Dusty is here demonstrating.
Bonus view of Jinxie in the background, as she pulls up the couch coverings and prepares to wedge herself behind them. The plant is a winter addition, since it started to lose leaves madly in November, when night time lows were dipping into the 40s. It's doing surprisingly well inside, even with rather limited daylight.
Our condo has one source of heat in the winter, and its a gas heater burning behind the grill you see here on the right. Three guesses where the cats end up on cold nights? Dusty never lies right in front of it, the way Jinxie is doing here. He can't take the heat, or perhaps his sleek black fur gets too hot, while her thicker and puffier light gray doesn't soak it up so much?
My mom sent us a nice package of presents this year, and she either wrapped them in catnip or let her two cats help out, since from the minute we took them out of the box, Jinx was all over this large, probably-blanket-containing parcel. She sniffed and pawed at it, and when that didn't satisfy her, out came the teeth.
Yes, she's really biting at the corners here, and yes, she tore off a few bits of paper and apparently ate them. I'm sure there's nothing harmful in wrapping paper, other than the lead inks and other highly toxic chemicals they make the dyes out of; you know, the stuff that makes burning it up such multi-colored fun!
Let this picture be a lesson to the young among you. If you're cute doing it, you can get away with damn near anything. Dusty would probably get yelled at for this sort of thing. Jinxie, since she does it with such gusto, while emitting endearing squeaks and high-pitched "prrrorrppp" type noises, is laughed at and indulged and immortalized with digital photography.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Technical Difficulties
No posts for the last few days, but it wasn't my fault. This site has been inaccessible to me since Tuesday evening, via browser or FTP client. I could still pull email, which was odd, but I figured it was just one of those things, so I gave it 24 hours before mailing my host. To their credit, they replied the next day, and didn't even blame me for the problem!
The issue you are having, not being able to access your site, is due to a router outside of our network having problems. This router is owned and operated by AT&T Communications.
We believe that AT&T is aware of the issue, however you should still contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and report it to them.
Unfortunately, this issue cannot be resolved by Gate.com. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Your site is up and functioning at this time. It seems that only people passing through their router are affected.
Annoyed, I tried pinging to it from
a few other servers, and sure enough, they all went right through. I could even surf to my site via
Megaproxy, but their free service won't let you upload anything, so I couldn't even make a forum post saying why I hadn't been making any blog posts.
Desperate, I actually did what they suggested, and mailed Comcast about the problem. I'm sure my email spurred
immediate action, and as you can see, access has been restored.
As for the last three days... work, work, work. Lots of novel writing and editing, last Kali class of the year on Tuesday, heavy time at the gym Wednesday and Thursday, Chinese food with Malaya on Thursday, and an Xmas party tonight with some friends of hers from work. And after that, there will likely be a lot more novel work; I did something like 8 hours on it yesterday, and I'm pretty happy with how things are going.
No word yet from Flagship about the job, but I figure that's mostly about them not wanting to proactively ruin anyone's Xmas with a job denial. I'm not nervous about it, since I don't think I've got a chance. I would love to hold the Community Manager position, and I think I would do a great job at it, but I don't think I'll get hired. I think they'll pick some young kid fresh out of college with a CS degree and the ability to code CSS and other web languages from scratch. He'll have a minor or some slight work experience in PR-stuff, and who knows, maybe he'll even do a good job for them. Not as good as I would have done, especially in terms of website content and ideas and fan relations, but hey, they'll have a hella pretty website. And the whole application process has inexplicably given me a big boost on my novel-writing motivation, so something delightful will/has come out of it already.
As for my weekly NFL belaboring... I'll keep it short. Amazingly, the local TV listings claim that I'll get to see the SF@StL crapfest, and the Oakland@Denver massacre, but that through some act of mercy, I'll also have the option of SD@KC, showing at the same time as the SF game. I continue to be perplexed by the NFL on TV issues in the Bay Area. Why did the first 12 weeks pass with just SF and Oakland on TV, and never a third game, when now, we've had 3 weeks in a row of multiple viewing options? All when SF's game has been on? Is there some arcane rule that the home team's road games can be programed against once they're officially out of playoff contention, or what?
On the playoffs, for several days I've been possessed of an illogical and yet peaceful serenity about my old home town SD Chargers. I had a dream earlier this week, and in it I was watching media reports about them, with people talking about them having gone on the most amazing six game run in memory. They'd won their last 3 games of the season, all against very good teams, and then won three playoff games on the road, and were in the Superbowl. And there was much rejoicing.
I'm not claiming any psychic abilities, but since I almost never remember my dreams, and certainly don't have them about sports teams, this has been an odd week. The peaceful feeling lingers though, and as a result I am entirely confident that SD will win their last 2 games, and that front-running Pittsburgh or Jacksonville will spit the bit, thus letting SD into the playoffs. I think Pittsburgh will win out, but since Jacksonville has played like shit for a month, it might catch up with them this week in Houston. If not, they'll have a playoff spot clenched going into week 17, and they might actually want to lose, dropping into the 6th spot and facing either Denver or Cincinnati, rather than the suddenly-terrifying New England Patriots, in the first round. Either way, SD will win out and get in, though I'm not taking the dream so far as to guarantee a superbowl appearance.
More blogging later, perhaps. For now, we've got to run some pre-party errands and pick up a pie for dessert. TTFN.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
False Alarm
Just checking email and enjoying an omelet, and got a bit of a start. It was an email to my diabloii.net account, from a well-known Diablo II producer who used to work at Bliz North and now works at Flagship. I took a minute to settle my nerves, in the process realizing just how much I want that job, or at least the chance to interview for it, and opened it up:
Subject: Flagship Studios' Community Manager Search.
Dear Elly, Rush, and Flux:
We are looking for a Community Manager/PR Assistant to join our staff. Please spread the word among your colleagues.
If you know someone we should contact directly, please let me know.
Here is the link: www.flagshipstudios.com
D'oh! Well, the good news from this is that at least they haven't already hired someone for it. I had been slightly concerned by that possibility, since they'd had the job posted for more than a week before
I happened across it. Obviously not, though.
The waiting and wondering about this is doing me some good, though. I've told myself that every time I start daydreaming or worrying, I have to stop that at once, and work on my novel. And it's working. Plus, I've also told myself that
when if I don't get the job, I have to forge my disappointment and frustration into action, and turn the heat of my failure into a creative light. Just two chapters to go, damnit!
Death Valley Photos Page
While spending my Thanksgiving hiking around Death Valley National Monument, I took my camera everywhere and gave it quite a workout. The results of that are now online, with 95 photos, all informatively captioned. (The captions you see in the following examles are not the info-rich ones on the actual photos page.) I've split it into two pages simply to make loading times more reasonable for those of you not blessed with broadband, and sorted all the shots by the location they were taken in.
My favorite places in Death Valley are
Ubehebe Crater, the
sand dunes,
Golden Canyon/Zabriskie Point, and the
salt flats/
Badwater Basin, most of which are found on page two, simply due to a quirk of chronology. I'd recommend that you look at all of the pictures, but then I would say that, being as I took them. I'd also strongly recommend Death Valley for a future vacation of your own. If you like hiking, scenery, the rugged beauty of the desert, and have a few days free in the spring or fall, it's hard to go wrong.
Click for
Page One and
Page Two, and here are some somewhat random sample images/captions, to give you a taste of things.
Artists Palette, with the colors courtesy of various mineral deposits;iron, mica, manganese, and so on. And yes, you can walk right out there on top of them and sift the greens and purples through your own hands.
A view from the dining room balcony at the Furnace Creek Resort.
Looking down the shallow side of Ubehebe Crater. Click to see it much larger.
The dry waterfall that ends your hike up Mosaic Canyon.
A shot from atop the highest and therefore most-trafficked of the hundreds of sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells.
Gorgeous view down at Golden Canyon, from just beneath Zabriskie Point. Click to see it much larger.
Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
NFL Action
Just to keep up with tradition, here's my weekly bitch-fest about the NFL games on Bay Area free TV.
The only early game; SF (2-11) @ Tennessee (9-4). It's a crucial game for SF, since they're fighting hard to lose their way to the top draft pick, and they remain a win ahead of 1-12 Houston. Houston hosts the very beatable Arizona Cardinals, but given these teams, you've got to bet on them both losing twice more before the big week 17 showdown in San Francisco, with the loser almost certain to take the top draft pick, thanks to GB and NYJ winning their third game last weekend.
The only late game should have been even worse, with 4-9 Oakland hosting 4-9 Cleveland. Thanks to the NFL's TV
mercy blackout rules though, and Oakland's inability to sell the game out, we're getting 10-3 Cincinnati @ 4-9 Detroit. It's far from a blockbuster match up, but hey, it beats Raiders/Browns. Of course the other late game this Sunday, Dallas@Washington, is one of the best games of the day, but since both teams there are in the NFC, and CBS gets the late game, we have to see an AFC game. It qualifies thanks to Cin, even though the NFC Lions are hosting, I guess.
As usual, there are just 2 games on, despite the fact that one local team is on the road, and the other is blacked out. Why we can't have 2 early games, with a wide selection of AFC matchups available for the CBS station to pick from, is a mystery. Miami@SD was on last weekend at the same time as SF's slaughter up in Seattle. Why isn't the game of the weekend, SD@Indy, on early this time? Fortunately, I realized that last Sunday's 3 games was a once-a-year fluke, and didn't get my hopes up, so I'm not disappointed by the 2 crappy games TV games today.
Plus, there were 3 games on Saturday, and even though I only watched the Tampa@NE one on tape, and didn't bother with the other two, that's a lot more football than I saw last Saturday. None of Saturday's games were that impressive anyway, all the favorites won handily, though NE looked pretty impressive against a theoretically-talented Tampa team. NE's gameplan was simple; stack the line, stuff the run, blitz Chris Simms a lot, and force him to beat them. He's a young, mediocre QB, and of course he couldn't handle the pressure, and of course NE won easily, shutting Tampa out 28-0. Why every team doesn't do this to Tampa is a good question, but I'm not a fan and don't follow their division, so I really have no idea.
In retrospect, I would have liked to seen the NYG/KC game, but I didn't care enough to record the second half after I finished watching the Tampa@NE game on tape, and therefore missed the sight of the KC defense being trampled into the ground by a 30 year old RB. Any idea why they don't replay the day's better NFL games late at night, on the NFL network, or ESPN2, or the major networks? They show college football games again late at night every weekend, and there's no way an NFL repeat wouldn't destroy the ratings of whatever combination of infomercials and reruns they're throwing at the screen at 3am now.
KC's loss pretty well ends their very dim playoff dreams, and as expected, they died thanks to their impossibly-difficult late season schedule. I think they're loss has doomed SD too, since Pittsburgh has the head to head tie-breaker against SD, and I can't imagine SD winning more than 2 of their last 3, and I can't see Pittsburgh losing 2 out of their 3, with only one debatably good team left. And there's no way KC is getting into a 3 team tie, unless both SD and Pitt fall apart. Especially with SD@KC next week, in a game one of them is obviously going to lose. SD was a long shot and a Pittsburgh collapse away before last week; after losing at home to Miami they were doomed.
As previously discussed, Jacksonville has a 1 game lead for the two wildcard spots, and with the easiest last 3 games in the history of professional football, they're in for sure. They'll probably go to NE in the first round though, step in the snow, and draw an immediate Go Direction To Jail card, heading home to the tune of oh... 27-10, perhaps. It looks like you'd rather be the 6th seed now, with both Cin and Denver looking more beatable than NE, at this point. Pity SD couldn't have been that seed, but at this point they need to win out and hope Pittsburgh loses once to either Minn, Det, and Cleveland. That might happen, but SD isn't going to win today, much less all 3 of their games, which means they need Pittsburgh to lose twice, with two tomato cans left. As if.
Pitt's 3 straight losses made things interesting for a couple of weeks, but
as I belabored all the way back in November, the AFC playoff spots were essentially wrapped up with barely half the season played. Imagine if Pittsburgh had only lost 1 or 2 of those games during their injured QB slump? They'd now be tied with Jacksonville, and the wildcard and division races would be so over that even the idiots on ESPN couldn't manufacture fake excitement about the AFC playoff run.
Lastly, what's up with Pitts' closing schedule? Three of their final four games and the last two are against teams not even in their conference, much less their division? What happened to key last week matchups to decide division titles? Week 17 features classics like Denver@SD, Miami@NE, Chi@Minn, Carolina@Atl, Wash@Philly... and Detroit@Pitts?
Friday, December 16, 2005
Book Review: Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger
Another random book I read on an airplane after picking it up from the new section in the library based entirely on its interesting title. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either, and should be read only if you are already very interested in the content. To the scores:
Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger, by Margaret Mittelback & Michael Crewdson
Concept: 7
Presentation: 5
Writing Quality: 6
Presents/Explains the Topic Clearly: 5
Entertainment Value: 6
Rereadability: 3
Overall: 5.5
There's nothing really wrong with the book, but there's nothing real special about it either. It's basically a somewhat anarchistic travelogue detailing the wacky, naturalistic travels and travails of the two authors and their pot-smoking artist friend Alexis Rockman as the three of them bang around Tasmania, hunting for various odd local animals and interacting with numerous odd local locals. A decent amount of historical and biological information is worked into the book, and it's not uninformative; it's just sort of there. This might have played better as a series of magazine articles; each one detailing another adventure as they hunted for the world's largest freshwater crayfish, or staked out roadkill and waited for nocturnal Tasmania Devils (devils, not tigers -- the former are common, the latter are bigfoot-esque in their probably extinction and popularity).
As for the tigers of the title, they were real animals, large masupial predators that lived on Australia and the island of Tasmania, until the white man brought civilization and extinction. The last one died in rather tragic fashion in a zoo in Tasmania in 1936, though many people in Tasmania still think (and hope) that they might persist, hiding in the dense forests and jungles of the island. The book does not answer that question, but that's more about the inability of proving a negative than anything else.
There are lots of eyewitness sightings and legends and rumors discussed in the book, but no one's brought forth any dead tigers or fur samples or live captures or anything else in more than 60 years, and the authors certainly didn't see one during their brief visit. Hope is not dead, since there are efforts underway to clone them from the DNA in preserved specimens, but it seems pretty clear that there are no surviving Tasmanian Tigers.
Read this book if you're interested in the varied and bizarre wildlife of Tasmania, and you enjoy wacky travelogues. If you're more interested in hard science, or books about cryptozoology, or books about the Tasmanian Tiger, you're better off looking elsewhere.
You can
buy this book or see more reader comments here, on Amazon.com.
Dream job?
Bolty, an old friend from the old D2 days, recently emailed me to point out the
new job opening at Flagship Studios. An excerpted quote:
Community Manager
The Community Manager is directly responsible for maintaining the websites for both Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London, providing them new content, growing their fansite communities, and maintaining a high-quality presence for Flagship Studios in online forums. This position communicates extensively with online gamers and the whole of the online community, while fostering personal, yet professional, relationships with leaders in the worldwide gaming site community.
Requirements:
Experience in website development and maintenance.
Proficiency with a wide range of web tools.
Proficiency with Photoshop or similar art package.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office.
Good written and verbal communication skills.
A desire to build and serve the world's best online fansite community.
Bonus Points Awarded:
Prior experience as community manager for an online game, publisher or developer.
Okay, I'm sure there are persons out there who are even more qualified for it than me, but they can't have too much of a lead. I've worked on the biggest D2 website for 7 years, I did the vast majority of the content for it back in the very busy old days, I dealt with literally hundreds of fan emails a day, I know all the software they mention, and I live about 15 miles from their offices. Best of all, their upcoming title is literally the only computer game in existence that I'm paying any attention to and feeling any anticipation for.
On the other hand, I've hardly touched any computer games for the past two years, denying myself that joy since I get too involved in them and don't get any work done, and I need to get work done since I'm trying to finish my novel and support myself full time as a writer, rather than as an odd-jobber and a webmaster and an SAT test prepper and the various other things I've done over the past decade and a half. So yes, I would be great at this job, and yes I'm highly-qualified for it, and yes, I live in the area, and yes I know virtually everyone working at the company now, from my old days covering their previous mega-blockbuster game.
It's quite the conundrum, I must admit.
If you've forgotten, Flagship Studios was founded a couple of years ago when the creators of Diablo and Diablo II left Blizzard North for various largely-undisclosed reasons and created
their own gaming company. Again. Back when they were starting up, I actually emailed them and ended up talking to Ken Williams, a very nice guy who was largely responsible for putting the names of various prominent D2 fansite webmasters (myself included) into D2 as hireable mercs. He was handling the initial glut of incoming resumes, and told me nicely that though they didn't need anyone to manage their websites or create content for them, they might at some point in the future. I guess the future is now?
The really ironic thing is that Arena.net, another gaming company started up by ex-Blizzard guys, needed their own community manager some years ago, and hired Gaile Gray, whose bio and job title you can see on
their staff page. It's ironic because, as any long time reader of diabloii.net could tell you, Gaile started working on the D2 site way back in 1999, shortly after I did, and got her dream job with Arena.net based largely on that experience.
Should I try to do the same? If it were a part-time job, I'd be all over it. I wouldn't even really care about the pay, I'd just like to be involved in the gaming community again with a title I really like. Working on the D2 site was a blast, which is why I put in the 10 and 12 and 16 hours a day on it for years, even before there was a penny of ad revenue coming in to make it anything more than a labor of love. Unfortunately, I would almost certainly get as or more involved in the Flagship job, and that would really wreck my novel writing time, which is the most important thing in my life, aside from my relationship with Malaya. Decisions, decisions.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Movie Review: King Kong
So there we were, opening day, in the theater 30 minutes early, tickets in hand. We went to a 5:20 showing and found no line and no difficulty getting a good seat; the theater was maybe 10% full once the film started, though I'd imagine the prime time showings are doing better business. Before the film though, while Malaya saved us good seats and I paced around the lobby, killing time, avoiding the horrible pre-movie pop music, and doing my filial duty by chatting a bit with dad, I kept thinking one thing; let it be good.
I wouldn't have turned down masterpiece, and I would have been overjoyed with great. I wasn't considering that it might suck, but I'd skimmed a lot of reviews, and while most of them liked or loved the film (
84% 117/139 good, 7.8 average on RT), almost all that didn't said the same thing. Brilliant, but too long, overdone, bloated, etc.
Three+ hours later, after cheering and laughing and even tearing up a bit, I hate to say it, but I have to be honest. I agree with the detractors. It's a brilliant film, full of unbelievable moments, and it's well-directed, and well-written. There's just too much of it. I couldn't point to any individual scenes of more than 30 seconds that could be cut entirely, but the whole picture just drags, and loses momentum even as everything on the screen is at least good.
To the scores:
King Kong, 2005
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 8
Action: 9
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 10
Fun Factor: 8
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
My scores don't remotely average out, and that's not an accident. As I said in the intro, all of the individual elements of the film are good or great. It's just that the whole is less than the sum of the parts, mostly because it just goes on too long. And I'm quite disappointed by that, and my reaction. Lots of critics seem to have loved the whole thing, and I very much wanted to join them. I couldn't though, and Malaya was far more bored than I, nearly nodding off several times as things dragged on.
I'm torn on a number of the scores, too. Script/Story most of all, since I liked the script, and the story is epic. The dialogue is great, the characters are all interesting, and the storyline is a classic. I'd have given it a 9 without any debate if the film had been 2 hours long. As it was though, I'm tempted to drop this score to about a 5, since I've got to blame something for the bloat, and the overlong 2nd and 3rd acts are the prime culprits.
I also have to mention how great the special effects were, especially Kong and his interactions with Ann Darrow. A few of his finger pokes and the times he picks her up are a bit fake, and the humans and dinosaurs don't quite interact during one long stampede/trample scene, but most of the rest is A+ quality. Kong especially. I didn't think they could improve on Gollum just 2 years later, but damn the monkey looked good. I would have sworn 90% of the face and body shots were real life ape footage, edited into the film, and the backgrounds Kong is acting in are so perfectly-rendered that they look completely real too. I often caught myself wondering how they could make the CG ape look so perfect in the jungle as he knocked over trees and such, until I remembered that the ape and the jungle and the dinosaurs and rocks and trees and waterfalls were all CG, and that I should have been looking at the tiny human figures, the only reality in site, to see if they were cleanly composited into the image.
Overall, I had no trouble believing it was really a giant ape, and a lot of that suspension of disbelief was thanks to Naomi Watts' performance. She's easily knocked Frodo and Sam with Gollum out of the top spot in human to CG acting. She's great in her role; totally believable in her dozens of reaction shots to various special effects, and her emotions for and warmth towards the ape are completely believable.
The film can be roughly divided into thirds. The first hour takes place in New York and on the ocean, as Carl Denham (Jack Black is enjoyable and perfect in the role, the first film work I've ever seen of his.) faces the ruin of his film and career and desperately tries to find a writer, an actress for his film, and a way to escape New York before the movie financers can arrest him. The scenes of the city during the Great Depression are fine, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is great, Adrian Brody's character is great, and so are all of the supporting characters in New York and on the boat. Honestly, I enjoyed the first hour the most, even though there isn't any action or special effects or giant apes, etc. Peter Jackson can definitely write a script and direct it without the crutch of action or elves to keep things interesting.
The second hour is pretty much non-stop action and special effects, all taking place on Skull Island. Here we see dinosaurs, giant bugs, the massive King Kong, creepy murderous natives, and the most amazing large scale special effects I've ever seen. It's also the best set design I've ever seen, and if I could go explore Skull Island tomorrow I would be on a plane tonight. There is nothing but impossibly gorgeous scenery in the jungles, ancient stone temple ruins, dark tunnels, rotting forests, and so on. If I had not seen all the behind the scenes stuff on KongisKing.net, I would never have suspected they didn't shoot 95% of it out in some incredible jungle somewhere, rather than all in a studio, with extensive CG work. It's just about flawless.
The action on the island is great, in several set pieces. Unfortunately, they're basically microcosms of the film. There are too many of them, they run too long, and they're not really required by or in service of the plot. They're the "and hilarity ensues" type of thing, with PJ larding in more and more action just because no one stopped him from doing so. None of the scenes are bad, they are just unnecessary and redundant. Remember the scene where Legolas kills the oliphant all by himself in the big battle in
Return of the King? It was awesome and funny with Gimli's, "That still only counts for one!" remark, and because it punctuated a great battle scene. Now imagine that after that, Legolas did basically the same thing to a second oliphant, and then a third, and then an even bigger oliphant with orcs on top of it, and then a flying dragon, and then, and then... I never thought I'd say that there could be too many great action scenes in a film, but that's pretty much what happens.
The third hour takes place back in NYC, with the huge broadway show of the ape in chains, his inevitable escape and rampage and reunion with the girl, and his tragic last stand atop what was then the tallest building in the world. It's more good stuff, though I was fidgety during the long, long build up to the broadway show, and then once Kong is rampaging there are quite a few scenes of him doing it, and doing it. They seem to be atop the Empire State Building for a good half hour too, and while PJ didn't revisit his "five endings are better than one" work from RotK, the final dying and sad goodbye seemed to go on damn near forever. I was crying through most of it, moved by the tragedy and the beauty of it, but eventually enough is enough.
The second and third hour were also handicapped, for me at least, by the fact that I knew how the movie turned out. Since I think almost everyone else does too, the lack of suspense is a problem. Everyone knows they find Skull Island, natives steal the girl, Kong takes her, the movie guys rescue her and capture the ape and take him back to NYC before he busts out and climbs up the Empire State Building and biplanes come to shoot him down, and so on. If someone somehow didn't know that, I think
King Kong would be an enormously-entertaining movie, since there would be constant suspense and surprise. As it was I didn't get that caught up in some of the action, since I knew how it was going to turn out, and I wanted the plot to continue.
I enjoyed the first hour the most since I didn't know what was going to happen next, and there was always something new happening, even though nothing even approached the spectacle of later events. I knew they'd end up on the boat heading for Skull Island, but I enjoyed meeting all of the characters, enjoyed the performances by the actors (Jack Black and the maniacal gleam in his eye most of all), and wasn't bored a bit. It wasn't until they started running through one long action sequence after another that things bogged down, and they action sequences were great, both technically and by appearance.
My hope is that I'll like the film more on a second viewing. That won't be for a while, not until the DVD, but I liked the first 2 LotR films far more when I saw them for a second time and then even more on the extended edition DVDs, so there familiarity bred greater appreciation. I knew most of the plots of those films too, and spent much of my first viewing (unintentionally) analyzing how things were happening and comparing the movies to the books, which clearly sapped my enjoyment. Whether King Kong, which I knew far less about than the LotR books, will equally improve with subsequent viewings remains to be seen. I sure hope so, though, since I feel left out after my lukewarm reaction to a film with so much potential to be loved.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Things of the Day, Forgotten Edition.
I've basically forgotten that I even used to post these TotDs (in much the same way I end many a day saying, "Oh yeah, I was probably supposed to do something on the D2 site lately.") But as I was contemplating a quick post on my anticipation for seeing
King Kong tomorrow later today I remembered that I used to post regular updates with lists of films I wanted to see in the semi-immediate future, along with quotes and other nonsense. And here we are...
Quote of the Day: (
QotD Archives)
"We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or explore. All you have to do to educate a child is leave them alone and teach them to read. The rest is brainwashing."
--Ellen Gilcrist
Soul-Devouring Worry:Smaller circles and sore index fingers.
Answer of the Day:Because it grows rusty if it's never used.
Curse of the Day:May your chapters all end in the same way (by never seeming to end at all).
Books Lying Open:Fevre Dream, by George R. R. Martin
The Last Duel, by Eric Jager
Movies to see list:
King Kong, December 14th
Syriana, Now playing (maybe)
Munich, December 23rd (maybe)
Bloodrayne, January 6th (Just kidding.)
Tom Yum Goong, God only knows.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Celebrity Pre-Nups
Amusing article about celebrity pre-nuptial agreements, the clauses in them, the perils of not signing them (Roseanne didn't have one, she fired her attorney for telling her to get one, and then Tom Arnold took a $50m parting gift after just four years of marriage.) and so on. A quote:
Attorneys say some recent celebrity prenups include:
Limiting the wife's weight to 120 pounds or she must relinquish $100,000 of her separate property.
Allowing a spouse to perform random drug tests, with financial penalties for positive results.
Requiring a husband to pay $10,000 each time he is rude to his wife's parents.
No mother-in-law sleepovers.
Only one football game per Sunday.
Mandatory sexual positions.
Infidelity clauses are common... Michael Douglas agreed to pay Catherine Zeta-Jones millions should he stray, and Denise Richards made similar requirements of Charlie Sheen.
Custody of pets is another common concern. Bennett once handled a case that dictated the destination of a couple's taxidermied horse. Even gardeners, baby sitters and pool men have been addressed.
Needless to say, I found the bit about "mandatory sexual positions" the most intriguing. Who wanted that clause, the man or the woman? (Assuming they weren't gay.) I can see a man insisting upon X number of sexual events per week or month, but even then, how would it be defined? "Wife must deliver twelve total points of sexual favors, with handjobs worth 1, blowjobs worth 2, and intercourse worth 3, or 4 if more than two positions are engaged in." So what are mandatory positions, then? Like the guy really likes doggie, but the woman doesn't, and he's willing to negotiate for that?
The article also mentions why we tragically hear about so few of these cases; celebs hire retired judges to handle the divorce proceedings, and thus avoid entering their salacious details into the public record.
The article saves the best for last, too, revealing that Britney Spears was so in love that she didn't want a pre-nup with Kevin Federline, until her mother and financial advisors insisted. Good lord, she really is that dumb!
New books!
If you liked The DaVinci Code (
I did, sorta.), there's good news.
Here come the even more ripoffs!
Labyrinth," by Kate Mosse, features a rival sect to the Catholic church and a search for the Holy Grail. In "The Templar Legacy," a thriller by Steve Berry, a former government agent attempts to unravel a mystery about an order of knights whose power rivaled the Pope's. Matilde Asensi's "The Last Cato" features the head of the Vatican's secret archive and his efforts to solve a murder with clues dating back to biblical times.
...
Nearly three years after it was first published, "The Da Vinci Code" has more than 25 million copies in print worldwide, inspired dozens of parodies and critiques and increased interest in religious thrillers, art history, Gnostic texts and speculations about the life of Jesus.
With "The Da Vinci Code" movie, starring Tom Hanks as symbologist Robert Langdon, due out in the spring or early summer, publishers and booksellers expect yet another surge for the Dan Brown novel and for books like it.
The article gives more info about the various titles mentioned, and even quotes their authors or publishers as they explain how their book is very, very different and original and unique. Of course it is. As for the master copyist himself, Dan Brown, (
DaVinci was 90% rewarmed
Angels and Demons, after all.) there's no word on his next novel.
His FAQ doesn't seem to have been updated since I last looked at it, maybe 18 months ago, and all it says basically the same thing about his new book that the back cover of DaVinci said:
What are you working on now?
Currently I'm writing another Robert Langdon thriller -- the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. For the first time, Langdon will find himself embroiled in a mystery on U.S. soil. This new novel explores the hidden history of our nation's capital.
I'd imagine that he got distracted counting his money and
churning out umpteen cash cow DaVinci-themed books, but I do hope that he finishes another book at some point. Brown's not a great writer, but he can keep the suspense going pretty well (certainly in comparison to other historical mystery writers:
Example one and
example two.) and maybe this time he'll even come up with a new plot. Even if everyone thinks it's a rip off of
National Treasure.
Monday, December 12, 2005
High or Low Stakes in Fiction?
I've done a ton of writing this weekend, and while going over my outlines and ideas for how my novel will end, I've returned time and again to an old issue that comes up in every sort of fiction. How high are the stakes? By this I mean, what's the key challenge or struggle in a work of fiction, whether film or book or TV show or whatever. Are the main characters fighting for their lives, or are they trying to get rich, or are they trying to save the world? And does it matter?
My novel appears to be largely one man's quest for personal gain, before it becomes a much larger struggle/war between two nations halfway through, and then it takes another turn at the very end. But since no one has read it but me, I'll give examples of other things. Most epic fantasy has very high stakes. LotR has heroes trying to destroy a dark lord who will enslave their entire world, or at least their entire continent. Jordan's Wheel of Time series (which Malaya is reading now, hence my thinking about it lately) has a band of heroes trying to stop the Dark Lord from being reborn and destroying everything. Star Wars has a band of heroes as they try to stop the evil emperor from taking total domination over the universe. And so on.
Is that necessary, though? Of course not. Plenty of great stories are about much smaller stakes. Take some early Stephen King classics. The Stand was about a battle between good and evil for the fate of the world. The Shining was about a guy and his wife and kid in a hotel. They're both good books, but it's obvious that The Stand isn't millions of times more thrilling just because that's the number of lives at stake. Since readers are more interested in individual characters they know, rather than the fate of entire worlds they know nothing about, writers have to focus on the micro even as they juggle the situation of the macro. If you only talk about the world at large (in fantasy or whatever genre), and your individual characters aren't interesting, no one is going to enjoy the book.
James Bond movies are another easy example. In lots of the older films, the story was much more personal. Bond had to solve a mystery and chase down a rogue spy, or defeat one evil gun runner, or whatever. Over time though, the plots have become more and more grandiose, until every story now has to threaten global armageddon, or World War III, or whatever. Either movie can work, but the enjoyment of the viewer is always going to hinge far more on the individual characters and their struggles, rather than being overly effected by world peace or the survival of democracy.
Returning to fantasy literature though, since that's my current area of preoccupation, I think there are somewhat different standards. Fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, tends towards the epic. Readers want big stakes and huge themes, especially in longer works. Like trilogies, or longer series (as they all seem to be). I'm not sure why, but it seems odd for a fantasy novel to just tell a regular story, set in a fantasy world. Most fantasy readers have come to expect the future of humanity (or various other fantasy races) to hinge on a final showdown between good and evil. And they usually get it, with the basic fantasy archetype of some low-born boy/girl following their destiny and answering a prophecy and ascending to the saviour king/queen role almost the default in fantasy series. It's such a common theme that most of the time, every reader knows it's going to happen from page one, and this often turns maybe half of the first book into pointless preamble.
I
didn't dislike Eragon (much to my surprise), but it's obvious from the get go that the title character was born to be a king/hero/dragonrider, and that makes his various close scrapes and adventures sort of anti-climatic. Of course he's going to be forced from the small village he grew up in, of course the evil king is going to chase him, of course he's going to find new powers and magic, etc, etc. The same was true of Rand in The Wheel of Time series, Ged in The Wizard of Earthsea, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, Harry Potter, the main character in every book of Shannara, and so on.
The question is; is this a bad thing, since it's so predictable, or is it a good thing, since the reader can anticipate enjoying the main character's inevitable rise to power and mastery? (Answer: it all depends on how the author handles it, but that's a boring answer, so I'll continue as though I didn't give it.) Is there even any point in an author of such a fantasy epic with the archetypal savior character trying to hide it, or beat around the bush? Everyone knows right from the start that the character will suffer and struggle a lot along the way, but that eventually they'll overcome and be great. So why not just get on with it, rather than having the character deny their manifest destiny, or making it seem (to the reader) that maybe that character isn't the chosen one after all?
I know I'll never write a story where the poor young man/woman is destined to be the savior, just since it's become such a cliche now. I will likely delight in screwing with reader expectations though, as the young struggling ones they think are destined for great things turn evil, or die, or fade away, or whatever. I would also like to see a story where the handsome, strong, and intelligent prince, born into wealth and power, raised with every privilege and advantage, with few goals higher than bedding another wench and hunting another stag, ends up saving the world, perhaps even by accident or with indifference to his triumph. Not his noble younger brother, not his bastard squire of unknown parentage, and not the orphan girl he insults and ignores in chapter one. Him. Who would expect it?
Of course the question that comes up then is a familiar one. Is that a good idea? It would be shocking to have James Bond die early in the film, or have him lose the final battle and the bad guy triumph, but would viewers appreciate the novelty, or would they be disappointed that they were cheated out of the inevitable triumph they paid $9.50 to see?
I'm off track again, but I do wonder about it in fantasy literature. Could someone write and sustain a good fantasy series where the novels weren't building up to higher and higher stakes? Where the fate of the entire world, or at least the kingdom, wasn't coming into question? I think so, and I'm sure it's been done, but was it a good idea? Wouldn't the same novel have been more entertaining if it had been much the same, but with a final battle that had the fate of the world in the balance? Of course in that case you'd lose almost all worry that the good guys/main characters would lose, but then again, how often does the main hero character ever really lose at the end of a book or series? And I mean lose, not just suffer a temporary set back.
I'm really curious to see how Martin's series turns out, since through four books (Well, I've not read #4 yet, since I don't get to until I finish my novel.) we've grown to know and care about main characters on all sides of the action. There aren't any obvious "lf course they'll win, they're the good guys" moments, (especially since numerous good guys have already lost/been killed, through book 3) and with dozens of main characters, we never know which are going to survive and triumph. That adds to the suspense, since it's entirely possible that someone the reader really likes will die and leave the book entirely. On the other hand, since we know and care about both sides in most of the struggles, no matter who wins, it's someone we want to read more about (with the possible exception of Sansa). It's not like major characters and plot threads just end suddenly. Well, they do, but only by being rubbed out or absorbed by other main plot threads, so something continues on.
I didn't consciously do it to emulate or pattern myself after Martin, but I'm going to enjoy having people read the end of my novel, since it winds up in a confrontation between two sides who are deadly enemies, but who the reader has lived with for hundreds of pages. I honestly don't know which will be considered the good guys or bad guys, or which the reader will sympathize with and root for. I hope the reader will be torn, and wonder how it can possibly end in satisfying fashion, and will be surprised by how it turns out. And I really hope I actually get to write the damn thing someday, given the way my chapters turn into damn novellas, and then get completely rewritten during editing.
Anyway, this essay has gone far afield, as usual, but if you've got some comments on this or that, feel free to tack them on.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Miami 23, San Diego 21
Well
that's it, then. SD falls to 8-5, loses at home to a team with absolutely nothing to play for, and fully deserves the crushing blow to their hopes and dreams. Much to my confused surprise, the game was on here afterall, despite the fact that San Francisco was playing (and being destroyed) at the same time, up in Seattle. That was SOP for the many years I watched the NFL while living in San Diego, but I believe it's the first time all season another game has been on while either Oakland or SF were playing. (Oakland lost miserably on Sunday as well, true to Bay Area form.)
So I got to watch the Miami@SD game, though I'm not sure that was such a blessing. I saw most of the first half, while waking up and making breakfast, but thanks to SD's woeful play, I began rooting against them in the second quarter, and was fully cheering on Miami by the 3rd. SD simply didn't deserve to win, and though by the end I hoped they would come back, I wasn't entirely dissatisfied when they did not. I'm not much of a loyalist, I guess.
The final stats are somewhat balanced, thanks to SD's two long 4th quarter drives, but I remember laughing at the halftime stats. Brees, the SD QB, was 20/30 passing, for 138 yards and an INT. I saw at least 28 of those passes, and to the best of my recollection, perhaps 2 or 3 were thrown more than 15 yards down field, and none of the longer ones were completed. There was one fly pattern all day, on about the 3rd play of the game, and on it Brees overthrew an open receiver by at least 10 yards, with the ball sailing well out of bounds for good measure. Other than that, virtually every single pass was about a 5 yard dink over the middle, with at least 8 or 10 (in just the first half) desperation dump offs to the fullback or running back.
Miami's defensive scheme was simple; they played with a 4 or 5 man front all the time, stuck their linebackers and safeties about 10 yards downfield, and waited for SD to run plays right into them. When SD handed off, invariably on some slowly-developing trap back, the LBs rushed up and destroyed it. When SD threw, their WRs and TEs ran 8 or 10 yards and turned left or right, just about where the LBs and Safeties were standing already. Repeatedly, Brees would back up, stand there, and look, and look, and look, with great blocking, but apparently no one to throw to. Eventually he'd force about a 5 yard throw to someone well-covered, or run for his life and dump it off to a fullback who had absolutely nowhere to run.
The TV coverage was horrible, with never a long shot of the entire field, but from the few looks downfield I saw on replays and such, the SD receivers were usually blanket covered by a single guy. Either Miami has the best secondary in the NFL, or SD's receivers are very slow and run terrible routes.
The sad part is that Miami was helpless early on. On their first 10 plays they'd gained 10 yards, and had 3 punts and a fumble. And yet it was just 7-3 at the half, thanks to SD's incredibly conservative passing game. Since SD's secondary sucks, and anyone can score 20 points on them if they just throw it a lot, the second half seemed sort of inevitable. Miami started throwing, Miami started scoring, and SD didn't open up their own offense until it was too late.
As for the playoff picture, Jacksonville lost as expected, Pittsburgh rebouned and won, (as expected, (
see comment #11.) and KC lost, as expected. Denver won, though it was ridiculously close, so now they're 2 games up on SD and KC, and have by far the easiest remaining schedule. We'll give them the division, which means 9-4 Jax, and 8-5 KC, Pitts, and SD are fighting for two wildcard spots.
Jax has a comically easy last 3 games, so they're a sure bet for at least 11 wins. Pitt is inconsistent, but they play 2 horrible and one mediocre team, so they're a good bet for 10 or 11 wins. KC plays 3 tough teams, and they'll be lucky to get to 10 wins. SD, on the other hand, is screwed. They absolutely had to win this week though, since their last 3 games is probably the most difficult 3 game stretch any team plays all season (assuming Indy and Denver play hard, rather than resting starters for the playoffs). They're at 13-0 Indy next week, then at 8-5 KC (5-1 at home), before hosting 10-3 Denver. And they have to win all 3 to be sure of a playoff spot, and absolutely have to win at least twice, when they might well be the underdog all three times.
Ironically, SD might have been best served by KC winning today. KC is likely going to lose twice more (assuming SD beats them, which they have to to have any wild card hopes), and SD's only chance to beat Pittsburgh is a 3-way tie. Pitts beats them head to head tiebreaker. Jacksonville isn't going to come down to 10 wins, so SD has to have Pitt lose twice (unlikely), win twice themselves, while hoping KC wins next week in NYG, and wins the last week at home against Cincinnati.
It's possible, but for now I'm trying to decide who to root for in the AFC playoffs, with my only sort of favorite team out of them. Jax is boring and will lose painfully in the first round without any offense. I can't root for Payton, I've never liked Pittsburgh or Denver, and I'm pretty indifferent about KC. I guess I'll be pulling for Cin and NE then, with NE being root-for-able despite winning the last 2 superbowls, just because they've had such a tough season with injuries and are looking very vulnerable. And it's fun to root for the underdog.
Fantasy novel excerpt.
This brief chunk isn't anything special, and when it got orphaned during some editing
tonight this morning I was just going to delete it, since it's not long enough or interesting enough to save in my notes file. And then I thought of you guys and the effortless blog entry I could use it to create.
This is from near the end of the 75,000 word chapter six (which may well be early/middle in book 2, if they break it up for length considerations), near the end of a long (too long, my inner editor proclaims) battle scene that started off being planned as a very short battle scene, and grew from there. Sarissa is a Fury, Issachar is a Templar, and they're not exactly friends, but they share a common enemy. I'd give more context to this, but that would make it sort of spoilery, not that anyone is likely to remember this blog bit a year or three from now when this is (hopefully) eventually published.
Comment on this if you are moved to do so, but don't worry about punctuation or grammar or cliches or repeated words or any of those handy editing type things; it's technically rough draft, I would fix it up a lot if I had further use for it, and anyway, this bit has been deleted from the book. (Though the events described in it still take place, more or less.)
----------Watching Sir Issachar out of the corner of her eye, Sarissa nodded in approval when he wasted no movement, and raced charged directly into the side of the armored palanquin, his two glowing lances driving in so violently that one actually protruded out the other side of the magically-hardened box of wood and brass. A scream rose from the Fire Mage within, one that the Lightning Mage matched an instant later, when Sarissa plunged her new sword through the side of his palanquin.
She had not aimed, since she could not see into the box, but luck was never an unwelcome ally on the field of battle. Grinning, Sarissa jerked the sword out and thrust it back in, half a hand below and to the left of the smoldering hole she'd just cretaed. The sorcerer screamed again, a deeper, desperate sound, and when the sensation of magery suddenly left the air, Sarissa realized she had killed the man. Killed or rendered unconscious, at any rate, and just as she started to relax, a huge wave of magery filled the ether above her.
"Get back!" she screamed, flickering away from the palanquins and right past the last few battling
hevola and Templars. Few reacted to her words, and before Sarissa could turn to see who had followed her lead, a massive gust of flame covered the entire top of the hillside. Men who were merely near it screamed in scalded agony, while those caught within the flame were virtually incinerated.
Such a massive fire could not burn for long, and when the inferno winked out, just seconds after its arrival, Sarissa flickered back to the central palanquin, seized her blade, sent ice into it, and turned to the third armored chest. Sir Issachar had fled the flames, but he was back almost as quickly as she, his tunic smoldering over both shoulders and along the hem. As Sarissa watched he thrust two more glowing spears straight through the palanquin, triggering a brief cry of agony from within. The note was not held, and after a moment Sarissa lowered her sword and nodded to Issachar. The feel of magery had been banished; his attack must have finished off the Fire Mage.
She might have been satisfied, but Issachar was not, and leaving the spears where they were, he drew his Morningstar, sent glowing light coursing through the metal club, and began bashing in the side of the palanquin, his arms moving too quickly for her eye to follow.
Stepping back, Sarissa dropped the heavy sword and moved out of the way, allowing a swarm of footmen to attack the palanquins. They had armed themselves with axes and hammers, and there came an immediately cacophony of clanging and crunching as they threw themselves at the armored boxes turned coffins. The battle was over, the enemy defeated, and it was all Sarissa could do to keep on her feet as fatigue settled into her bones. She was exhausted, she was bruised and bleeding from a dozen cuts, and when a Templar advanced towards her, his glowing hands held out, she beckoned him forward.
----------Yes, it just ends like that. I never said it was anything resembling a self-contained excerpt. I'll do those in the future, though they'll likely be from much earlier in the book.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Narnia Mythology and Christianity.
I don't have a lot to add
to this post, since Kevin Drum basically gave the reaction I would have myself, but I thought it was interesting enough to recap and link to. The subject is the Christian elements in C. S. Lewis' fantasy series, and their intended purpose. Here's what Drum quotes as an "
explanation from George Sayer, CS Lewis's pupil, friend, and biographer:"
It is possible to extract from the Narnia stories a system of theology very like the Christian....But the author almost certainly did not want his readers to notice the resemblance of the Narnian theology to the Christian story. His idea, as he once explained to me, was to make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life. He hoped that they would be vaguely reminded of the somewhat similar stories that they had read and enjoyed years before. "I am aiming at a sort of pre-baptism of the child’s imagination."
This brings up two issues. 1) Would this work? Wouldn't hearing stories similar to the ones in the Bible, but staring English children instead of Cain and Abel, or a talking lion instead of Jesus Christ, make kids think the Bibibal versions are just more stories, rather than literal truths? 2) If CS Lewis doesn't want people to take his work for an immediate parallel to Christian mythology, how are his depictions of magic and fantasy and sorcery any different than something like Harry Potter, a series that the Fundies are constantly up in arms about? What if J. K. Rowling threw in some sort of, "Harry dies and is resurrected to defeat the Satanic Voldemort" in book 7, and then said her whole series was just a primer to Christian thought and belief? Would her work suddenly become Christian and acceptable to the people who are currently boycotting and protesting it, just like CS Lewis' apparently is?
The comments thread of that post is an interesting one, as various readers attempt to answer Kevin Drum's questions. There are lots of different answers though, and while each is necessarily true to their authors, seldom do any actually agree with each other. People say Narnia is all an allegory and meant as a teaching tool and not to be taken literally, just like Dante's Inferno, or Milton's Paradise Lost, or other famous Christian works.
My thought, and it's a cynical one, is that Lewis might be right, though I don't think his work is effective at its goal, or necessary. People love magic and mystery and invent it constantly. No one has to work hard to make little kids to believe in the monster in their closet, or Santa Claus, or magic, or Baby Jesus. They come out completely blank and gulliable to anything. And yeah, brainwashing is best begun at an early age, and the sooner you get kids believing something, they harder they'll have to work to throw off those beliefs later. Just ask any "recovering Catholic."
(I don't think Lewis' actual "they'll like Narnia and then be accepting to Christianity later on" makes much sense either -- after all, how many kids
don't get indoctrinated into their family's religion at the earliest age possible? It's not like people raise their kids in secular fashion, and then present them with a logical argument as to why they should believe in religion X once they're 10.)
People like to believe in things that aren't there and that can't be proven, whether it's faith, or loving someone bad for you, or rooting for a sports team that always loses, or thinking your hood/city/state/country is the best just because you happen to have been born and/or raised there. (I
compared those three in an article some years ago.) And if they get started on this early, with Narnia or anything else, it probably helps them keep going on it throughout their lives, once they move on to one religion or another. So Lewis was right, in that believing in fantasy prepares children to continue believing in fantasy, but I think he was wrong in thinking his Christian-themed fantasy had any special effect. It's not like Christian (and other religious) belief floundered for the hundreds and thousands of years before he wrote Narnia.
I'm less serious about my question on Harry Potter. At this point I think the Fundies who don't like HP are never going to like it, no matter what the author did in the seventh book, or any possible books after that. She could turn the entire thing into a blatant good vs. evil story, with Jesus and Satan metaphors galore, and the fundies would still object and want it banned -- the first six books, at least. Why they've decided the magic in HP's world is so different and so bad compared to the magic in Narnia (or every other fantasy series ever written) is a good question though, and not one I think anyone could answer logically. I'm cynical, so here's my answer. In a nutshell, it's all about popularity. HP sells more than any book series ever, and it gets headlines, so boycotting it and calling it evil gets headlines and attention for the boycotters.
Football... bleh.
This weekend is always the worst of the season, for football on TV. The college season is over, and while the pros still have 4 weeks to go, they never schedule any Saturday games this weekend, for some unknown reason. They do next weekend, and the two after that, and then in the playoffs, but this weekend... nada.
Well, not nothing. Saturday offers plenty of college basketball, if you care about that sort of thing (I don't), and ESPN and ESPN2 are showing Division II college football playoff games. You know, playoffs? Those things they have after the season in sports where they actually want to determine a national champion?
Worse yet, and to zero surprise on my part, there aren't any decent NFL games on TV in the Bay Area this Sunday. That's the usual state of affairs here, thanks to exclusive local TV coverage and two crappy local teams, (What would it take for Al Davis to drag his underachieving Raiders back to LA?) but it's pretty much true across the entire country this time, thanks to the amazing number of really bad teams this year. Bill Simmons lists 13 teams as shitty in
his weekly NFL picks article, and if I argued with that number it would only go higher. When damn near half the league basically sucks, and only about 5 or 6 teams are actually good
and exciting, the odds of there being a good matchup drops dangerously low, and the certainty of there being at least a few awful games skyrockets. On top of that, there are another 4 or 5 games every week where the only question is whether the superior team will cover the spread, and for non-betting fans, it's not a whole lot of fun to watch when the only real suspense is if the Jets/Saints/Raiders/Bills/etc will lose by 6, or 9, or 13.
Anyway, with my Bay Area address bearing on
this weekend's slate, I'm being treated to 4-8 Oakland @ 2-10 NY Jets early and 2-10 SF @ 10-2 Seattle late. A crappy game and sure blowout, but hey, at least the first two teams are somewhat evenly matched, and I get to see the best team in the NFC late, as they scrimmage against the JV 49ers. There are a few good games; Chi@Pitts, Tampa@Carolina, and Indy@Jax early, and KC@Dallas late, but none of those are on free TV where I live, and I've been beaten down by the situation to the point that I no longer really care. I'm a bit sad that I can't watch USC or anyone else good play on Saturday, and that the Sunday night (4-8 Detroit @ 2-10 Green Bay) and Monday night (3-9 New Orleans @ 7-5 Atlanta) games suck too, but hey, it's free TV. If I wanted to see quality NFL games I shouldn't have moved to the Bay Area. Or I should have trumped the local TV bullshit by buying NFL Sunday Ticket and getting every game on digital cable. Someday, perhaps.
In the meantime we'll likely be doing Xmas shopping on Saturday, and then I'll go to the gym and try to work on my novel on Sunday, while checking the scores from time to time and anticipating the evening highlights shows. I might tape the SF@Sea game late, just to watch it in high speed and try to see if Seattle is really any good, or just the product of a horrible division and lots of luck against non-divisional foes. At least I can look forward to next weekend, when there are 3 decent-to-good games on Saturday, and an acceptable game on Sunday Night. During the day I'll be stuck with SF@Jax early and Cleveland @ Oakland late, while seeing nothing of the SD@Indy showdown at all, but didn't I just say I was now resigned to my fate? (I think I did, but I doubt I am, since if I were, I wouldn't post about it again next weekend, with freshly-manufactured outrage.)
Friday, December 09, 2005
Thursday's schedule.
Imagine the following came with bulletpoints, if you appreciate that sort of formatting. Convert the times to 24 hour/military standard if you prefer; just a 0 before all of the numbers, and add 12 as you replace the "pm" on the others.
2-6am -- Worked on novel, editing and rewriting mostly.
6-noon -- Slept, with frequent wake up moments to kick the silver cat off of my feet.
12:30-1:30pm -- Wandered around, half-naked and still mostly asleep, wondering why I was not still in bed.
1:30-2:30pm -- Surfed mindlessly, ate 3 PB/J rice cakes.
2:30-5:30pm -- Worked on the novel some more, with more rewriting and editing. A few breaks for Malaya interaction when she got home from work and also to nuke and eat a big plate of white rice and red beans.
5:30-6:15pm -- Wondered why I'd stopped working 45 minutes before I had to leave for Kali; read EW on the couch with Malaya napping on my shoulder. No drool.
6:15-9:30pm -- Drove to Kali (traffic galore), spent two hours practicing kicks and blocking punches and breaking legs after blocking punches. Got sore knees. Drove home and wondered why my right index finger felt badly strained when I hadn't noticed it in class and couldn't remember falling on it or jamming it.
9:30-10pm -- Ran inside, kissed Malaya, grabbed gym card, ran over to the gym to work out for half an hour since Kali wasn't very physically tiring tonight.
10-11:30 -- Showered, made garden burgers and french fries for two, ate with Malaya while watching Survivor and CSI on tape. Offended the curious and begging cats by poking food I knew they wouldn't like into their sniffing noses.
11:30-midnight -- Crawled around on the bathroom floor, fixing the toilet. It suddenly stopped filling up after a flush today, and after various experiments with turning the stop valve on and off, I concluded that no water was coming out of the wall pipe. A conclusion that lasted about three minutes, by which time I had
unscrewed the supply tube and placed a bowl beneath the plug to catch all of the water that came dripping out. Inspection revealed that the supply tube, a foot-long metal cord, was completely blocked by black gunk; gunk that fortunately was popped free by the surgical insertion of a length of coat hanger. While painfully (thanks to the strained forefinger) reassembling the crapper, curses and imprecations were leveled at the contractors who recently tore up the plumbing downstairs and undoubtedly put enough crap in the pipes that it eventually clogged our toilet intake.
12-2am -- More Malaya and TV time, with some bonus mutual mindless surfing thrown in up until her bedtime.
2-4am -- An hour of writing, broken up by random blogging and surfing and sports reading, culminating in this update.
4-6am (hypothetical) -- More writing and editing, until the eyelids grow too heavy to be denied.
Friday afternoon (hypothetical) -- Lunch and then new Kali sword shopping over in Berkeley and perhaps Concord, if an appropriate weapon can not be obtained at the first stop.
Friday evening (hypothetical) -- Malaya's work's Xmas party, where much revelry will ensue and many hors d'oeuvres will be consumed.
The Grammys!
The nominees for
this year's Grammy awards have been announced, and in keeping with my habit for the past two decades or so, I have not heard any of the nominated music and could frankly care less. I did click to the official link though after seeing some nominees on various blogs. I wondered, and had to find out, why there were awards for Song of the Year
and Record of the Year
and Album of the Year? Aren't at least two of those the same thing? How does a record differ from an album?
The Grammy's site doesn't exactly spell it out, but here are the official descriptions:
Record Of The Year
(Award to the Artist and to the Producer(s), Recording Engineer(s) and/or Mixer(s), if other than the artist.)
Album Of The Year
(Award to the Artist(s) and to the Album Producer(s), Recording Engineer(s)/Mixer(s) & Mastering Engineer(s), if other than the artist.)
Song Of The Year
(A Songwriter(s) Award. A song is eligible if it was first released or if it first achieved prominence during the Eligibility Year. (Artist names appear in parenthesis.) Singles or Tracks only.)
So it seems that Record of the Year is an individual song on an album. Album of the Year is an album, one of those shiny plastic discs that cost about $19, or that you can buy the only 2 good songs off of for $2 on iTunes. And Song of the Year is a song that was released as a single, even if that same song is almost certainly found on an album. And yes, Record and Song can overlap; the same Mariah Carey song is nominated in both categories, though far more names appear on the nomination in the Song category, since like all modern pop stars, Mariah has only very minimal involvement in the actual creation of her music. I would bet there is substantial overlap between best male/female vocal performances as well, though I don't care enough to look.
Looking further down the list, I had to laugh when I saw the nominees for Best Rock Solo Vocal Performance. Not one of them under 50, with the possible exception of Rob Thomas, whoever he is.
I'm also proud to announce that I have never so much as heard of any of the nominees for Best New Artist: Ciara, Fall Out Boy, Keane, John Legend, and SugarLand. I'm just happy that none of them were (AFAIK) shat forth from the abomination of pop insipidity that is American Idol.
The Grammys will air sometime in the future, on a channel you're better off not watching that night, and possibly ever again, in case the contamination lingers.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Hotel price fixing.
Amusing article about why hotels cost so much in Paris. Here's a tip for the guys running them. If you're operating one of Paris' ritziest hotels, and you're going to fix prices with the other big hotels in town, it's probably best if you don't invite a documentary camera crew into one of your strategy meetings.
It was a November 2001 television documentary on the Palaces of Paris that prompted the investigation. A camera crew from channel M6 was invited into a chandelier-filled suite at the Bristol Hotel to film what it described as a monthly meeting of marketing directors from the six hotels.
Seated on a silk brocaded chair, a representative from the Ritz -- apparently not realizing she was confessing to illicit activity -- explained on-camera how regularly exchanging data helped each hotel to analyze its competitors and sometimes reach agreements on prices.
Within a month, the antitrust regulator opened an inquiry and carried out raids at all six hotels, seizing documents and computer hard drives.
...
The George V was fined $135,000, the Plaza Athenee $124,000, the Ritz $122,000 and the Bristol $95,000. The fines were levied according to each hotel's sales and the length of time they engaged in the illicit activities.
Thanks to their crafty maneuverings, they were able to keep prices averaging an astonishing $825 a night, and even avoided any long vacancies even during the low-traveling days after September 11th, 2001. Now if they'd only kept their mouths shut on camera...
Sangria snacks?
The odyssey began with a gift bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. A white wine (hence the name), but not one that I liked when I cracked it open. My dad gave it to me (an origin shared by 99% of my spirits) and presumably he'd had a bottle of Brancott Vineyard's 2004 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc that he enjoyed in the past. I did not, and in fact I found it quite bad. Bitter and acidic, with a tang of something that was almost like grapefruit. The label says I should have tasted bell pepper too, along with the zingy citris and acidity, and once I read that I could sort of go there. Bitter green bell pepper, not sweet red or yellow, though.
Anyway, I drank half a small glass and when even peanut butter pretzels didn't make it palatable, I was about to throw it out... until I remembered sangria. My dad is always urging me to try new wines, and to just make them into sangria if I don't like them. I've seldom had that drink, but I understand the concept; it's essentially spiked punch. Cheap wine with some fruit and sugar mixed in.
Curious what others recommended, I searched online and found plenty of
white wine sangria recipes (though far fewer than I found
involving red wine). The white was undrinkable on its own, and we had some fresh fruit, so I waited for a couple of days, letting the pears and kiwis ripen, and then yesterday I began.
Into a pitcher went the wine, followed by a sliced pear, half a peeled and sliced kiwi, a healthy pour of sugar, two king size cherry Jolly Ranchers, a fun sized packet of Skittles, and a roll of Smarties. That unwholesome brew fermented and marinated overnight (in the fridge; I'm not making prison wine in a toilet bowl, you know), then was sampled yesterday evening, in a glass with about 50% ginger ale, and a squirt of lime juice. And you know, it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it certainly beat the hell out of the wine by itself, and while the alcohol content was no more than a beer-esque 5 or 6%, I could tell there was some booze in it. Not a lot, but some.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend this sort of treatment on your wine, but if you crack open a bottle of hooch and find it intolerable, sangria it up. You can use most any sweet fruit, and just dump in some sugar if all else fails. The recipes also call for something tangy and citric, lemon or lime juice usually, though you could probably use orange peel and no one would complain. We got a can of peaches in heavy juice while at the store for the ginger ale, and while they weren't necessary this time, they'll be on call if ever circumstances demand.
My question though, as referenced in the title of this blog post, is what does one eat with sangria? A meal would work, I suppose, but the drink is such a fruity concoction that it would overwhelm the taste of most dishes, and I was thinking more about a snack anyway. What do you have with fruit juice booze, though? I like pretzels or other dry things with white wine, and red wine goes well with various types of nuts, walnuts especially, and both types of wine go perfectly with cheese and bread. I suppose sangria would be edible with that traditional wine fare too, but it's not exactly adventerous. Or unique. What do you eat with sangria, though, if you had unlimited options? I did in my share of a pitcher of the stuff years and years ago in a bar with two women, and it was fine going down, and got me half drunk without tasting a bit like alcohol, but we had zero snacks with it. So that half-remembered experience is of no assistance. Perhaps a reader has a better suggestion to put to the test? We've got 80% of the mixture left, after all.
Movie Trailers
The
teaser for X-men 3 is now online, and it's pretty good, if rather solemn. And if you've got a much more powerful computer than mine, you might even be able to watch it in high definition. I guess rumors of a major character dying are true, judging by the numerous shots of a funereal (most of which feature enough of the other major characters that you can probably guess who's dead). Everything still looks way too clean and clear and pretty and plastic (SW Episode 1 & 2-esque), even the scenes of mass destruction, but it looks to have good action and perhaps even some interesting character stuff, though there's no way to judge that from the trailer.
They also put some grey into the horrible white wig Halle Berry wears, but it still looks completely fake. Would simply braiding her own hair and dyeing it white have been out of the question, or what? It's not as if they didn't take liberties with the other visual aspects; changing all of their costumes to monochromatic leather and so on. I'm not a big fan of Angel's perfectly pristine and snow-white feathers either; his wings look too Victoria's Secret runway, I think, and the grey-speckled ones in Constantine looked both more realistic and more impressive.
Petty costume design gripes aside, I'll probably want to see this one, even though I thought
the first and
second X-men films were perfectly mediocre. I'm not exactly excited about it, though, director change or not.
In other upcoming movie news, there are a bunch of
new King Kong film clips that I'm not even considering watching, since I want to enjoy my actual cinematic viewing to the fullest possible extent. I know way too much about the movie already, mostly due to watching everyone of the ongoing production diaries. KK reviews are coming online too, and thus far they are little short of rapturous; 12/12 positive on RT thus far, and with taglines like these, they're certainly not going to have much trouble filling the movie posters out with good quotes:
"Peter Jackson's King Kong is the most thrilling, soulful monster picture ever made. At last, it can be said without irony -- I laughed, I cried."
-- Jami Bernard, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
"This is spectacle filmmaking at its best, where a director is in tune with the story's underlying emotions and his own boyish love for adventure fantasy."
-- Kirk Honeycutt, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"King Kong will further Jackson's reputation as the leading visionary among fantasy filmmakers and it restores the Empire State Building to the stately glory of its past."
-- Jack Mathews, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
"What's up on screen is rarely short of staggering."
-- Todd McCarthy, VARIETY
It's opening next Wednesday, and I am so there.
In other special effects film news,
The Chronicles of Narnia is opening this weekend, and we may see it just to have something to leave the house for. Neither Malaya or I have read the book(s), and
the allegedly heavy-handed Christian symbolism in the story is discouraging us, but it's full of magical wars and talking animals and such, so how bad can it be? Even though you know from the first second that the adorably-plucky band of children will triumph in the end? There are
a bunch of new film clips from this film as well, none of which I have seen or will see.
Reviews are pretty good too, with
16/20 positive on RT, thus far.
In other movies... eh. Malaya is interested in
Memoirs of a Geisha, but now that it's getting killed by the critics, maybe not so much. Most of the critics are raving about
Brokedick Mountain, but having long-since memorized Cartman's blanket condemnation of all independent films, I can't do anything but laugh and wonder if they actually eat pudding when I hear the film's premise. So that's out too.
The World's Fastest Indian>, which has nothing to do with Pocahantus strapped to a rocket, has a cute premise and pretty good reviews, but I can't see spending 2 hours and $9.25 to watch a movie about an old guy riding a motorcycle over a salt flat. I demand empty, computer-generated spectacle with my movie dollar! And if we didn't go see
Aeon Flux when it was brand new and only somewhat critically-disapproved, we're certainly not going to now that it opened with a whimper and is sitting at 12% on RT.
And that about covers our holiday movie options, I think. Looking a bit farther ahead, I had to share this. Did you know they'd thrown together a
Bloodrayne movie? I had no idea. Better yet, it was directed by
the legendary Uwe Boll, who is to quality video game movies as battery acid is to a tasty cocktail. I've never played the game, but Bloodrayne is some sort of Castle Wolfenstein reprise with a female vampire as the lead character. She kills Nazis with huge swords, guns, and blood-sucking bites, and achieved some minor level of fame
by posing topless in Playboy. Yes, the computer modeled female was topless in a magazine. Pixel boobies.
I had to see, so I downloaded the Bloodrayne trailer while typing this entry out, and having just watched it, I can say that it looks... um... well, horrible. We're talking special episode of Xena here, with slightly lower production values. It looks like a cross between Elektra and Zorro, set in a fantastically-anachronistic midieval England, and has a truly dreadful trailer. Nothing but Mr. Voice spouting cliches, and not even good ones! "A leader with a dark army... A land without law... A land with the potential for greatness... A mighty hero... And a mysterious stranger who would aid him!" It wraps up with a shot of the untelegenic female lead and Mr. Voice saying, "Bloodrayne, the adventure begins." Bit overly optimistic there, eh kids?
What this movie has to do with the game, which seems to largely feature a hot, redhead vampire female killing Nazis, is beyond me. Also beyond me is the sword fighting in the film; just the few seconds of it in the trailer actually made me laugh out loud, and I'm trying to be quiet since Malaya is long since asleep with a 7am wake up time. Let's just say that when the narrator says, "A mighty hero." and you cut to a guy doing a very limp-wristed twirl with a short sword, and he looks like he just fell off stage from a boy band concert, it's not especially inspiring.
If you want more laughs, scroll down to the bottom of the
Rotten Tomatoes coming soon page. It currently extends to the weekend of January 6th, 2006, and the five films listed for release that week are enough to make you weep. Yes, the first week of January is the ultimate dumping ground for studio rubbish, but Jesus Christ.
Hostel might be a watchably cheesy and gory horror flick, but the rest include
Bloodrayne, an Adam Sandler-produced movie about a 35 year old video game tester who has to move in with his grandmother, a movie starring the members of Outkast as mobsters in the 1920s, and a crime drama starring Fast and Furious beach twinkie Paul Walker as a mafia hit man. Wow. I'm guessing Ebert won't feel any real need to rush home from his Christmas vacation this year.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Worst MNF Game Ever?
Okay, it wasn't the worst ever, at least not until the second half (which was certainly the least-entertaining half of professional football I've ever witnessed) but damn what a shitty game. Philly's season was long over, but there was still widespread hope that they might suck it up and scratch out a defensive victory over Seattle, the team with the best record in the NFC.
Not so much. 42-0 final, 35-0 at the half, and the funny part was that Seattle didn't really play that well. They killed their offensive stats by tallying less than 200 yards, but thanks to 2 interception returns for TDs, a 3rd that came back to the 2 yard line, and a fumble return for a TD on the first play of the second half, they didn't need any offense. They certainly didn't try for any; happy as they were to run the ball 99% of the time in the very boring second half.
All season I'd been wondering why the Eagles hadn't just checked McNabb in for hernia surgery early on. It was obvious his injury was keeping him from running or throwing very well since he couldn't set his feet and had to sling it with his arm only. They had a good defense; couldn't they muddle along to a 6-6 or so and then bring him back for the last month, fully healed? Probably not.
First of all, it looks like more than 9 or 10 wins will be needed to make the playoffs this season in the NFC, and secondly, with an offense designed without a running game, how they hell were they going to score points without a quality QB?
Philadelphia Passing:
C/ATT YARDS AVG TD INT
K. Detmer 13/29 84 2.9 0 2
M. McMahon 4/10 61 6.1 0 2
Team 17/39 145 3.3 0 4
Anyway, I'm glad I taped it and was able to watch the whole crapfest in under an hour, and I'm glad the Eagles were so horrible that the first half was sort of fun, with their two QBs hurling the ball up for grabs with amusing results. But my god, did anyone actually watch that whole game live? I can't imagine anyone so bored as to sit through the entire second half, so long as their TV had more than one channel.
The funniest part was that ex-Eagle Reggie White was getting his number retired at halftime. Reggie died a couple of years ago, and he was a tremendous football player in his time, but his value as a human being dropped rapidly once he retired and became a full time Christian preacher, where he distinguished himself by constantly perpetuating racial stereotypes, spewing sexist bullshit, and blaming homosexuality for all of the problems in America. On the other hand, he was a freakishly-large, steroid-fueled man who had a great ability to knock down other men on a football field, one who showed great loyalty by leaving the Eagles once his skills began to decline and selling himself to various second-tier teams during his last few, injury-plagued years.
It's almost enough to make you believe in God, what with Reggie's fate. He sullied his legacy by playing past his prime, finally retired due to numerous nagging injuries, then dropped dead just a few years later, but not before he managed to ruin his reputation with
a great deal of hate speech. Then, when his old team decided to retire his number, God cursed them with the worst first half in team history, and even threw in a minor blizzard for good measure, ensuring that at least half the seats were empty long before the halftime hagiography began.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Intuitive Eating.
This article about a revolutionary new non-diet diet describes pretty much how I eat. I'm worse about indulging in snacks though, and saved only by the heavy amount of exercise I do, and the fact that my snacks are along the lines of fruit, nuts, plain corn chips, and so on, rather than coming in bags with the word "Hostess" on them. Now if I'd only thought to publicize my diet through my university health job, and thought up a clever name. Behold, it's
Intuitive Eating!
SALT LAKE CITY - When Steven Hawks is tempted by ice cream bars, M&Ms and toffee-covered almonds at the grocery store, he doesn't pass them by. He fills up his shopping cart. It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five years. Hawks calls his plan "intuitive eating" and thinks the rest of the country would be better off if people stopped counting calories, started paying attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever they wanted.
...
There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eaters only eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full. That means not eating a box of chocolates when you're feeling blue or digging into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else at the table is. The trade-off is the opportunity to eat whatever your heart desires when you are actually hungry.
...
In a small study published in the American Journal of Health Education, Hawks and a team of researchers examined a group of BYU students and found those who were intuitive eaters typically weighed less and had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than other students.
He said the study indicates intuitive eating is a viable approach to long-term weight management and he plans to do a larger study across different cultures. Ultimately, he'd like intuitive eating to catch on as a way for people to normalize their relationship with food and fight eating disorders.
"Most of what the government is telling us is, we need to count calories, restrict fat grams, etc. I feel like that's a harmful message," he said. "I think encouraging dietary restraint creates more problems. I hope intuitive eating will be adopted at a national level."
The trick of it seems to be knowing when you're actually hungry, and knowing when you're just having a food craving.
I wrote about that several times a couple of years ago, when Malaya and I were battling through a week of nothing but lemonade drinks on the Master Cleanse, and still remember the feeling. Being totally stuffed with liquid, knowing I had enough calories in me to function normally, but still desiring food in my mouth, for reasons having nothing to do with nourishment.
Pet and Flux Photos.
As promised a few days ago, and in lieu of some long, text-intensive update, since I'm ready for bed... here are some more photos. I've got seven new photo pages nearly ready to go; they just need more captioning and the hundreds of images to be optimized and uploaded. Expect them one at a time starting later this week, or month, or perhaps decade.
Jinxie loves to get up in the linen closet and prowl around or nap. She's not allowed up there very often, and she's not allowed in the bottom at all, since there we store not linens, but paper, pens, files, and other things we do not want the cats getting into. Not that we're real overjoyed by them shedding all over our clean sheets and towels either, but at least there it's sort of cute.
Two more shots of Jinx in action, on the shelf she prefers... the top one. She shouldn't be able to get up there on her own, but she can, by climbing ladder style up from the lowest of the upper set of shelves. I try not to leave her up there, or at least put a chair by the closet when I do, since it's well over head height down from the top shelf, and she'll leap all the way down, crashing into the carpet with plenty of force to result in expensive vet bills. Not that she ever has, yet, but since her main entertainment skill is leaping and running, a broken leg would be rather inconvenient.
Malaya was a big fan of the small portions mandated by those tiny boxes of breakfast cereal they sell in Denny's and other such places. They also sell them in multi-packs at CostCo, and that's what Jinx is sitting in here. Why she felt the need to climb into the narrow box, inside the larger snacks box is unknown, but she sure was cute doing it. Especially since it wasn't my food underneath her long-haired ass.
And finally, here's a recent photo of me, for no particular reason. This shot was taken by dad in July or August, when he last visited and we drove up to the wine-themed Napa Valley. This shot was taken outside one of the many vineyards we visited that day, as you could probably have guessed by the burgundy-stained barrels stacked up behind me. The tiny sun in my right hand is an accident; those are the sunglasses I was wearing until removed them for the photo. And no, I don't dress up too much for wine and dad visits. You can tell it's not that recent a photo by the fact that I'm not wearing one of my shiny workout/kali/himbo shirts.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Saturday TV, movie, shopping.
Well, my hopes for some entertaining college football didn't quite materialize. We got up a little before noon, then proceeded to hustle up showers, food, and clothing, with a desire to make the 1pm matinee showing of Harry Potter 4 motiating us. While the food was warming and we were checking movie times, I turned on the TV and laughed out loud at the score. Texas was up something like 42-3 over Colorado, early in the 2nd quarter. I was then out of the room cooking and getting dressed and such, but I kept checking back every few minutes, and every time I looked they had another TD, video game style. 49-3, 56-3, 63-3, the points just started pinballing.
There was obviously no reason to tape the rest of that game (Texas finally relaxed and stopped scoring after the 3rd quarter,
and won 70-3.), so I set it to start at 1:30 for the USC/UCLA game, and off we went. The movie was good, dinner at Sweet Tomatoes was mediocre, shopping at Ross and TJ Maxx was uneventful, and when we got home around 6 I was pretty eager to see the USC game. So I set the tape to rewinding and got out some chips and sour cream and salsa, and even cracked open the last Dr. Pepper in the house. I ignore all TV ads with extreme prejudice, but the one that works on me is for Dr. Pepper, and they blanket them over seemingly every college football game. So I just opened up a can before the game even began.
The USC game was some fun, mostly to watch Reggie Bush dance around UCLA as though he was a greased cat and they were clumsy dogs, but it wasn't any more of a contest than the Texas game.
USC won 66-19, and led 59-6 until UCLA's scored a couple of late mercy touchdowns. I watched well into the 3rd quarter, but only made it that far thanks to FFing after every play, and when my dish of salsa ran dry, so did my patience.
Even though both games were laughable mismatches, and UCLA's run defense was worse than I ever imagined a run defense could be, the fact that USC played some tough defense against a quality offense is encouraging for the title game. USC set or nearly set numerous all time NCAA offensive records this year, but they sure didn't set any on defense, and their high scoring is all the more impressive when you consider how mediocre their defense has been. USC seems to gain around 650 yards every game (679 Saturday) because they're constantly getting the ball on their 20 yard line due to their defense allowing touchdowns, or possessions long enough that the other team reaches midfield before they have to punt. That has made the USC offense capable of gaining such ungodly yardage (Texas scored 70 while gaining only 486 yards.) since they always seem to have a long field to drive down. If their defense were better they'd probably score more points, while gaining less yards. They went 12-0 again, so no one's complaining, but after seeing Texas win most of their games something like 50-7, I wondered if USC's defense was up to the task. I still wonder that, but at least they showed that they could stop someone, and coming after they allowed Fresno State to put up 42 on them, that was big news.
I have no idea when the Rose Bowl is, probably sometime in February the way they keep stretching out the damn BCS bowls past New Year's Day, but I'm looking forward to it already, with the clear top two teams ready to face off. It's even enough to make me forget the idiocy of a non-playoff system for Division 1 college football. For one season, at least.
We didn't just watch football on Saturday, though. We saw Harry Potter 4, in a 1/5th full theater on Saturday afternoon. There were lots of kids, but aside from a few slight crying jags, they were well-behaved, and none of the little grubs ruined the film with noisy antics -- always a risk at any kid's movie, especially during the weekend, and double especially during the daytime. As for the film, I'm way behind on reviews and don't have any real desire to catch up, but here's a quick review.
Looking back, I see that
I gave HP3 a 7.5, though I have no idea why. I haven't seen it since and have no desie to see it again, and there's nothing that sticks in my mind about it. I remember thinking it would have made no sense if I hadn't read the book first, and I remember thinking they did a far better job explaining all of the time travel confusion and overlap in the film than Rowling did in the book. I think it was just such an improvement over the ever-boring first two films that I was overly-generous.
That being said, here are my quick scores for HP4, with a few comments afterwards.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Script/Story: 4
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 7
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 6
Must See on the Big Screen: 4
Overall: 7
I'm torn about most of these scores, since I don't know if I should review just the film, or incorporate the changes they made from the book to movie, or what. The film's plot is much streamlined from the novel (From what I remember of it; I recently reread book 5 and book 6, but it's been more than a year since I read book 4.) and that's mostly for the good. Yet I'm giving the story a 4 since it's so straight forward and simple. We see an opening sequence of Voldemort coming back to life and scheming, and the film ends with a battle against him. In between we've got virtually nothing but the straight forward presentation of the Triwizard tournament. Most of the subplots are gone, and we see little or nothing about Hagrid and the Countessa, Hermoine's house elf emancipation efforts, Malfoy and Harry's other school enemies, anything of the classes, anything of Quidditch, etc.
I'm not really criticizing; the film runs 2.5 hours and it's got zero fat to trim. This is just what happens when you turn a 750 page book into a single movie. All of the little details and subplots are history, though the film did have small moments and hints at the topics the book explored in much more depth, though it lacked the payoffs of those subplots. The annoying reporter lady never got any sort of commupance, for instance.
I found the casting odd too, for very superficial reasons. Neither Fleur whatever her name is of the Beauxbaton chippies, nor Cho Chang, Harry's would be fling, were pretty. They weren't ugly or anything, but they were just relatively average girls, and Fleur was pretty much a useless little victim throughout. Much was made of her being a beauty, and there were scenes of Harry and Ron growing dizzy after her kisses of gratitude, but since she wasn't really very pretty, it seemed forced. Plus she was completely worthless in every bit of onscreen challenge.
Cho being quite ordinary was a bigger surprise, (though seeing a Chinese woman speaking with a Scottish accent was a close second) since I figured she was like the prettiest girl in the school. Sure, Harry's smitten by her, but she's got something going on that makes the 17 y/o BMoC Cedric ask her to the ball, and you know a 17 y/o asking a 14 y/o out like that would be quite a scandal. So if she's not a great beauty, and she's not outstanding with her magic or anything, why would he notice her? On the other hand, Hermoine is getting prettier with each movie, and she was damn near the hottest woman in the room once she was dolled up for the ball. Cho looked gorgeous then too, but she was supposed to, and it just made her ordinariness the rest of the time seem more pronounced. I thought Hermoine was supposed to be plain though, distinguished mostly by her mind, and now she's turning beautiful, which seems to change the dynamic.
Cedric looked hunky enough, and Harry is a cutie for the girls (long topless scene with him in the bath and he clearly worked out to get ready for it, since he had some pecs and abs going, without looking overly-muscly for his young age/hairless frame), and Ron might be, though I can't see past his head-devouring shaggy mop of hair. Victor Krum, the super German dude though, was another surprise, since he wasn't all Aryan and gorgeous either. He was just a meaty looking guy, sort of David Blain-esque, while I thought the book portrayed him as this uber-male that every woman in Hogwarts would kill for.
I was puzzled by the
Tiger Beat aspects of the casting, is my point. I guess.
I wasn't entirely sold on the Voldemort casting either.
Ralph Fiennes is fine in theory, but I didn't really like his noseless-makeup, and as he emoted and snarled and looked scary, I kept seeing
him as Dolarhyde, the serial killer he played in
Red Dragon. Those heavy brows are just too distinctive, and the similarly-awful dentures didn't help me keep them separate either.
I wasn't a big fan of the whole Voldemort scene either; the graveyard looked too neat and maintained, I thought. Too much like a stage, and the mist was too conveniently-thick. I did love the Death-Eater costumes and masks though. Voldemort wasn't quite what I wanted either. Too monologue-y, and he seemed whiny and bitchy and full of explanations, rather than just being commanding and fearsome. It's hard to equal the dread and power of words with images though, since fear is so much harder to give to the audience with images than by activating their own imagination.
I'm nitpicking though, and I liked all of the acting in the film, and though the action sequences were handled well. The dragon battle wasn't great, but I liked the chase a lot, and loved the sequence with Harry hanging atop the tower while the dragon crawled ponderously and destructively around the wooden roof. Nice graphics and nice characterization of the dragon; making it powerful and nasty, but not smart enough to just flame Harry, or to kick off and fly around to him.
I wouldn't really recommend the film to people who haven't read the book, but if you've seen the previous films and pretty well know what's going on in the series, you won't be disappointed.
Lastly, I have to comment on Ross vs. TJ Maxx. Both are discount clothing stores, though that's a misleading term. Both sell 100% new clothing, and almost all of it is name brand, designer stuff. They just get the overflow from department stores, or last year's stock, or whatever, and they sell it at steep discounts. All of the shiny himbo workout shirts I buy there are around $12 or $14, with retail prices of $40 or so. Jeans are much the same, though I never buy any; $20ish at TJ Maxx and $40-80 on the label, or at The Gap, department stores, etc. They sell lots of women's shoes too, along with luggage, housewares, accessories, socks, underwear, and so on. You can throw Marshalls into the same description, too, for that matter.
The odd thing, and one I'll have to document with some photos sometime, is how differently the stores are run. TJ Maxx and Ross and Marshalls have about the same selection and prices, but every Ross store I've ever been in, up here or down in Southern California, appears to have been stocked by drunken chimps. I'm talking zero organization, beyond the most general clothing type. They do okay at keeping men's and women's separate, but if you want a given type of shirt, or a given size, you've got to be prepared to hunt through the entire section.
The Ross we usually hit is over in Walnut Creek, and the end of the men's section has knit shirts, active shirts, and coats. There are six long racks, maybe 5 or 6 yards each, and you have to literally go through all six racks, sliding apart every single garment hung there, to be sure you don't miss a shirt you want. Seriously, there is no organization of any type, and every kind of shirt in all sizes is mixed in together. It's like a treasure hunt, since you never know where you'll find a shirt you like, and when you do you have no idea what size it will be. And it's not like they are a few mistakes. I mean out of 25 shirts between the medium and extra large signs, in active wear, maybe 5 or 10 will actually be large, and 5 or 10 will be active wear. Sadder yet, the overlap between those groups is no larger than chance would dictate, and you might well look through the entire two dozen shirts without finding a single large active wear shirt. They've got them; selection isn't the problem at Ross... you've just got to look through all 500 shirts (pawing past a heavy scattering of mis-stocked sweat pants, jackets, sweaters, and so on) to find the 25 or 30 that should be in large/active wear. At least half the clothing I have that's the wrong size for me was bought at Ross, when I saw something I liked a lot, at a great price, and then decided to get it anyway since it was within one factor of my actual size. XL and M fit nearly as well as L does anyway. Right? Plus, it's not like clothing makers exercise all that much quality control or consistency -- your average Nike Large polyester shirt can swallow an XL from UnderArmour or Russell without even taking a wrinkle.
Marshalls is a bit better organized than Ross, but only just, and don't go into the clearance racks if you want to keep the happy illusion of order in your head. Sizes are meaningless there, and you're luck to find shirts and pants on separate racks.
I would just conclude that keeping shelves organized in a discount store is impossible, at least not without hiring more workers or paying the current ones well enough to end the discount pricing. I would, it not for TJ Maxx. There's one in our bougie small town area of Lamorinda, and it's damn near military in bearing. We went in there Saturday night, just to get the crazy-uncle's-attic taste out of our mouths after the Ross visit, and it was amazing. Like going from a used book store to a brand new library, with the S, M, L, XL, XXL tags all perfectly lined up, all the clothing sorted precisely by type, and the prices still low. I almost wept at the active shirts rack, which had perhaps 70 garments on in it, all grouped in exact stretches of identically-colored tags. (The hangers have the size on them, and they're color coded with all large light blue, all medium brown, etc.) And they were all active shirts! No sweat pants or jackets or blazers or jeans made an appearance, as they invariably do at Ross, and when I walked over to the clearance racks and found them just as perfectly-organized, I could hardly believe it.
The saddest part of all is that I didn't find anything I wanted at either store, and Malaya got low-heeled dress shoes and two t-shirts... at Ross. For $23. I guess if there are enough needles in that particular haystack, and you've got a good enough magnet, you can get lucky, sometimes.
Worst President Ever?
Lots of people seem to think that about Dubya, but I'd never seen a case laid out in quite this fashion. A few quotes from the current
#1 most emailed article on Yahoo News:
Poor James Buchanan, the 15th president, is generally considered the worst president in history...
...he was a confused, indecisive president, who may have made the Civil War inevitable by trying to appease or negotiate with the South. His most recent biographer, Jean Clark, writing for the prestigious American Presidents Series, concluded this year that his actions probably constituted treason. It also did not help that his administration was as corrupt as any in history, and he was widely believed to be homosexual.
Whatever his sexual preferences, his real failures were in refusing to move after South Carolina announced secession from the Union and attacked Fort Sumter, and in supporting both the legality of the pro-slavery constitution of Kansas and the Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott class declaring that escaped slaves were not people but property.
He was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.
...
This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:
He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
I've quoted most of the article here, but it's worth reading in its entirety. I don't necessarily agree with every point, or think the cited sins are Dubya's worst, but I'm obviously pretty sympathetic to the overall gist of things, and I'm enjoying the shift over time, as more and more US citizens lose confidence in the man.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Movies.
I have not hit the theater with Malaya for a while, but we're going to see something on Saturday. Probably in the afternoon, probably to get the slight matinee discount, and probably to see Harry Potter 4. We were considering Aeon Flux, but apparently it sucks. The studio didn't screen it for critics, which is almost invariably a really bad sign. Due to them hiding it, there are only
23 reviews now on RT, rather than the 100+ most major films have on opening day. Worse yet, 20 of them are bad, and they're very bad. Numerous mentions of "worst film of the year" were sighted, along with the mandatory
Catwoman comparisons, since both were action movie paydays for actresses who had recently taken home Best Actress Oscars.
So that's out. We're not dying to see HP4, but there's nothing else of much interest showing now, and it got good reviews and is making a ton of money and I've seen the other three, so why not? The rest of December is full of other movies, so we'll probably see a few more. We're mildly curious about
The Chronicles of Naria next weekend, and then very eager to see
King Kong which opens Wednesday the 14th. Malaya's also hankering for
Memoirs of a Geisha. There are a ton of
other films opening too, many of them of high quality and intelligence. Needless to say, we're not paying them much attention, not while there are big dumb spectacles of talking lions and exploding spaceships and boy wizards to be distracted by.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Football.
Yes, my semi-weekly post on the subject. I didn't post on it last weekend since I was gone, but if I had the refrain would have been similar. I don't know precisely which games were on in the Bay Area, but with SF@Tenn (2-8 vs. 2-8) early and Miami@Oak (3-7 vs. 4-6) late, I imagine those two would have been my only televised options. Throw in the Saints@NYJets (2-8 vs. 2-8) in the night game and Jesus... worst NFL on TV weekend yet, perhaps? Aggregate records of the six teams playing: 15-45.
The Oakland game might have been blacked out though, since they can't sell tickets to this year's awful team, but that would only have allowed an upgrade to Jacksonville@Arizona; a dubious improvement at best, given that Arizona was involved. They throw the ball madly though, and Jacksonville has playoff aspirations, so I can't really argue that that wouldn't have been an improvement over yet another lackluster Raiders' game.
I was not here, though. As previously chronicled, I was in Death Valley. That desert vacation destination is located in Southern California, more or less due east of LA, and though DV is in a San Diego area code, the TV in the hotel was getting LA stations. I wasn't there to sit around and watch football, but if I had been I could have picked a worse day to do so. SD@Washington was the early game, with Tampa@Chi and NYG@Seattle on late. Three games, all good ones, featuring five winning teams, all for a city that has no local team at all. Any LA football fans who think that's a bad thing are directed back to the start of this post, for a reality check.
I saw the start of the San Diego game, after we returned from breakfast and before we headed out to scramble around the sand dunes, and returned in time to see the end of the late game, and the Giants' amazing field goal failures leading to their defeat in overtime. Then I was back in San Diego by Monday night, in time to watch what was supposed to be the best game of the weekend, Pitts@Indy. It didn't turn out that way, of course, but hey, at least the two teams involved were both winners going in. (Though it's looking less and less likely that Pittsburgh will still be a winner 5 weeks from now.)
This weekend the Bay Area is once again cursed with just two day games. Happily, Oakland has their one prime time excursion, a journey to San Diego and a sure thumping at the hands of the Chargers. I'll enjoy that one as a Charger fan, and better yet, Oakland's night game frees up a day slot for a decent game. Sunday's afternoon game here is painful: Arizona@SF, but the early time slot is wide open, and local TV listings tell me they've chosen wisely; Cin@Pitts, arguably the best option of the ten early games. Dallas @ NYG and Atl@Carolina are good games too, but with the late game on FOX, we're getting the best option of the early AFC games. I've already mentioned Sunday Night's game, and then MNF isn't bad either, with Seattle@Philly. Yeah, Philly's season is done, but they've got a good enough defense to be spoilery, and Seattle has the best record in the NFC, so one can't really complain about that matchup being televised.
The best football of the weekend will likely come on Saturday anyway, with the USC/UCLA clash on in the afternoon, sandwiched between two very anti-climactic conference championship games. I'm pulling for USC just so the USC/Texas national championship game remains on track, and I'll be out with Malaya all Saturday (party at a friend's house, movie, and then dinner out), but I'm hoping to return in the evening without knowledge of the games, and a tape full of 56-52 type shootout goodness.
I missed the USC@Notre Dame classic earlier this year, but I was fortunate enough to see the last quarter (literally, the local Fox Sports channel showed the San Jose Sharks game, then switched over to college football at like 10pm) of USC's
wild 50-42 victory over Fresno State two weeks ago. Malaya went to bed early that night, and after I tucked her in I came out and turned on the set just in time to see Reggie Bush dance and streak his way to a long TD run that made it 41-28 USC. I was surprised Fresno had kept it that close for that long, but assumed USC would put it away then.
Imagine my surprise and delight when the teams then traded punts, Fresno scored to make it 41-35, recoved a Reggie Bush fumble on the next kick off, and quickly scored again, taking the lead 42-41. USC got organized then and marched for a long TD, then added a FG, but were only up by 8, and had to make a last second stand to stop Fresno from tying them at half-a-hundred. As with all descriptions of a sporting event, you really had to see it to know the flavor and excitement, but it was easily the most fun I've had watching a sporting event this year. I doubt USC/UCLA will be that good, but both teams have a lot more offense than defense, and they'll likely be playing in excellent weather, and for very high stakes, so I'm looking forward to it.
As for the NFL playoff picture, the one
I wrote about at such length a couple of weeks ago -- it hasn't changed much. Indy is still the sure #1 seed and division winner and the AFC East still sucks with NE scraping along in 1st place. Things have definitely tightened up in the wild card races though. Two of the guys on Football Outsiders wrote
a long article about the playoff odds, and other than the painful and outdated wrestling references they found a way to graft in, I enjoyed it. I don't really agree with their conclusions though, mostly because they were too optimistic about victory totals.
They both think San Diego will make the playoffs, an event I am rooting for, but am far more pessimistic about than they are. They both also think that basically every good team will continue winning nearly all of their games, and that there will be some huge log jam for the wildcard with 3 or 4 teams at 11-5 or 12-4, with at least one and probably two of those teams missing out. Such an outcome would be exciting, but it seems highly unlikely. I can't recall an 11 win team ever missing the playoffs in the modern era, and I'm sure no 12 win team ever has. And while it's possible that SD, KC, Pitts, Jacksonville, and Cincinnati could all go 5-0 or 4-1 the rest of the way, I'd bet everything I own that they won't. Some team will collapse. Some team always collapses. Often more than one team, leaving a city full of shocked fans wondering how their 8-4 or 7-3 hopes turned into an 8-8 nightmare.
One thing the FO guys pointed out that I hadn't thought of was the possibility of a three-way tie breaker. Right now Pittsburgh's biggest advantage, besides easy last two games, is their head to head win over San Diego earlier this year. If those 2 teams finished tied, Pittsburgh wins on the tie-breaker. However, if 3 teams finish tied, the tie-breaker is conference record, where SD holds the advantage. Right now Pittsburgh's 6-4 and San Diego's 5-2, with 5 conference games left. Since SD will have to end up at least 10-6 to have a realistic playoff chance, they have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way, and would end up 8-4 in the conference. Pittsburgh has just 2 conference games to go, and one of them is this weekend when they host Cincinnati. If they lose that one, or their remaining game in Cleveland, they're at best 7-5 in the conference, and they lose a 3-way tiebreaker against SD.
Denver is 9-2, and if they win at KC this week we can stick a fork in the Chiefs. If KC wins this weekend though, things would get much more interesting. SD would be 8-4, KC would be 8-4, and Denver would be 8-3, with a game in SD to end the season.
Elsewhere, Cincinnati is 8-3 and Pittsburgh is 7-4, which puts Cin in a situation similar to Denver's. If they can win this week, on the road against the 2nd place team in their division, they'll pretty well put that team away. Pitt would still have faint wildcard hopes, but few for the division. If Pitt wins though, they'll be tied with Cin, and own a 2-0 season record against them, which would be the first tie breaker for the division.
Cin looks sure for a wildcard at least; after this week their next three games are almost sure victories, before they close in KC, which could be tough, or could be effortless, if KC has lost all playoff hopes by then and has nothing to play for. I can't see Cin not winning at least 11 games this year, with a good chance at 12 or 13. Pittsburgh is the more interesting story, since they're not looking good. They've lost two straight, scoring a total of 20 points in the two games, and after hosting Cin they then host red hot Chicago, then journey to suddenly-respectible Minnesota. They lost to woeful Baltimore 2 weeks ago, got whomped on Monday Night in Indy, and could easily take a five game losing streak and a 7-7 record into week 16 in Cleveland. And if they lose more than 6 games, they're pretty well done.
Kansas City is the team using the most of their fingernails to cling to playoff hopes. They're 7-4, and they beat New England last week, but they've still got five top teams left: Denver, @Dallas, @NYG, SD, Cincinnati, and they need to win four of those to feel confident about their wild card hopes. Three might get them into a tiebreaker, but I suspect their season will end with losses in their next three games, long before their miracle hopes as they close out by hosting SD and Cincinnati.
San Diego hosts Oakland and Miami the next 2, and they've got to be 9-4 with 3 games to go if they want to make the playoffs. Unfortunately even that's no guarantee, since they're then off to undefeated Indy, to desperate KC, and then they host 9-2 Denver, and they've got to win 1 and probably 2 of those to make the playoffs. Sometimes it's good to play a top team the last game of the season, as they're resting players for the playoffs and to avoid injury. This time though, Denver might have to play hard, since they might be tied with Cincinnati for the #2 seed. And since #2 gets a bye week and hosts a game in the second round, while the #3 has no bye and hosts a wildcard game, that's a huge difference.
With Pitt falling back and KC and SD having harder schedules, the way should have been cleared for Jacksonville. They're 8-3, the #1 wildcard now, a game ahead of KC, SD, and Pitts, and they've got a ridiculous 4 games left against celler dwelling Cleveland, SF, Houston, and Tennessee. Their other game is against Indy, but even assuming they lose that one, 3 wins out of the other 4 games is 11 on the season and almost sure wildcard joy. The problem is that their QB broke his leg last week, and they weren't much good at scoring points even when he could walk. Still, they've won all year on defense, and should be able to manage 20 points a game and another 3 or 4 wins, even if they do it all with turnovers and field position.
All this said, I'm surprised to find myself leaning towards SD making it in. I want them to, which in my experience is a sure recipe for making a bad pick, but I'm going to do it anyway. Den, Indy, Cin, and NE win their divisions, Jax finishes 11-5, SD 10-6, and KC and Pitt win 9 or 10 games, but lose out on tie breakers. I ridiculed the FO guys' thought of a three-way tie breaker at 11 wins, but I can easily see that happening at 10 or even 9, and featuring SD, Pitt, KC, and maybe even Jax. Picture SD, Pitt, and KC all enter week 17 with 9-6 records, with SD praying they all win, or all lose, so SD can win the tie-breaker, and Pitt praying KC loses (and Jax wins) so they can beat SD in a the two-team head-to-head tie breaker they would lose if any third team enters the equation?
Another interesting possibility would be Denver losing to KC this week, and losing to SD in the last game, ending up tied with SD for the AFC West. Unlikely, since SD would either need to win out to go 12-4, or Denver would have to lose at home to Balt or Oakland, or on the road in Buffalo to put them both at 11-5. But just for the sake of the argument, SD and Denver tie, and they're 1-1 head to head. Next tiebreaker is divisional record, and Denver's 3-0 now while SD's 2-1. If SD wins out and Denver loses to KC, SD would be 5-1 in the division and Denver would be 4-2. Division to the Chargers. I can't see that happening, given their respective schedules, but hell, it would be fun. Both teams would surely make the playoffs anyway though, so it would almost be more fun if Jax, Cin, and Pitt all won out, so that hypothetical Den@SD game was for the division title, or nothing at all. Or better yet, Cin and Pitt collapse, Jax keeps winning, and the Den@SD game is for the #2 seed, or the #6 seed. First round bye and a home game in the 2nd round vs. no bye and nothing but road games throughout the playoffs? Now that's some high stakes. Of course I'd be stuck watching SF@Tennessee or something in that time slot, but that's the joy of the NFL on TV! (Actually, I just checked, Den@SD is on
Saturday the 31st, with no other games at that time. Joy to the Flux.)
News Bits.
A post so named despite the fact that it contains no news, and even fewer bits, whatever they might be.
Prompted by yesterday's cat photo post, Aahz sent me this link to a page full of theoretically-adorable cat photos. Someone with two cats got a large and very sturdy artificial Xmas tree, and let the cats have their climbing fun all holiday season, despite the fact that there were ornaments and tinsel and lights and such on the tree. I wouldn't exactly say that hilarity ensued, but there are some amusing and cute photos.
I shudder to think what Jinxie would do with such a climbing toy at her disposal, but I am sure that she would enjoy it alone; Dusty's not exactly the climbing type.
Article from a British tabloid about the funniest and dumbest answers ever given on UK game shows. I laughed more than once, though I wish I knew if the answers were jokes from would-be comedian contestants, or if they are serious replies and therefore unintentionally funny. And therefore much funnier. A few quotes:Anne Robinson: In olden times, what were minstrels, travelling entertainers or chocolate salesmen?
Contestant: Chocolate salesmen.
Name the capital of France? F
What is Hitler's first name? Heil
Some famous brothers? Bonnie and Clyde.
An item of clothing worn by the Three Musketeers? A horse
Something a cat does? Goes to the toilet
A sign of the Zodiac? April
Something people might be allergic to? Skiing
Something sold by gypsies? Bananas
Wright: What is the capital of Australia? And it's not Sydney.
Contestant: Sydney.
A much-needed college course at the University of Kansas has been cancelled after the teacher and head of religious studies at the university sent out a far too truthful email to some prospective students.TOPEKA, Kan. - A University of Kansas course devoted to debunking creationism and intelligent design has been canceled after the professor who planned to teach it caused a furor by sending an e-mail mocking Christian fundamentalists.
Twenty-five students had enrolled in the course, originally called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and Other Religious Mythologies," which had been scheduled for the spring.
...
Mirecki recently sent an e-mail to members of a student organization in which he referred to religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course depicting intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face."
Yes, it would have been a slap, and yes most "fundies" are fat, especially the ones you find in Kansas... but leaving the larger issue for now, why is the term "fundie" an insult? I'm not being obtuse, at least not intentionally, but I didn't think or know that term was loaded. They are self-proclaimed "Christian Fundamentalists," so why is calling them "fundies" a bad thing? I figured they self-identified as that, just to save time and letters, if nothing else. Names like "Jesus freaks," and "Christ crispies" clearly are meant to be insulting, but what's wrong with fundie? It's just like calling a communist a commie, for example. If the full term isn't considered an insult, why is a non-slur abbreviation?
The teaser trailer for Pirates of the Carribean 2 just went online, and since my opinion of the first film has grown steadily over the years since I first grudgingly saw it in theaters and found it somewhat incoherent, I'm unhappy to report that this teaser sort of sucks. Sure, Johnny Depp was the best thing about the first movie, but from this trailer you'd think he was the only character in the sequel. Also, in a movie called "pirates," shouldn't there be some, um... boats? Captain Jack Sparrow reprising every old, "white man running from wacky cannibal island natives" joke wasn't really what I wanted to see from this picture. Or even the first trailer for it...
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Cat photo blogging.
Jinxie has never been known for her patience, but the most acute manifestation of her feelings are regularly demonstrated by the bag of cat food. She's thin and not a glutton, and she doesn't eat that much food from their dish, but my god does she go after the new bags of cat food. These are made from two layers of tough brown paper, layers that are covered by the outer laminated label layer. None of which deter or slow Jinx for a minute, as she bites and rips and tears her way through them, no matter where the catfood is located or how much food she's got out in her own automatically-refilling bowl.
Every bag of catfood we buy soon gains half a dozen strips and pieces of duct tape, as we repair the damage our cat has inflicted. The funny part is that she'll sniff at her food dish while she eats every bit of food that drops from the mangled bag. Dusty even comes to help her, and it's quite amusing to watch them grazing across five feet of carpet, as they consume every last bit of dry food that fell and bounced hither and yon.
Fortunately, Jinx gets sick of ripping up the new bags after a day or two, and she's completely forgotten it 3 or 4 weeks later when the food runs out and we buy another one from CostCo. And yes, the cycle begins anew the minute I carry a new 25 pound (11 kg) bag in and set it down anywhere within feline reach.
Like most pet owners, I like to tell myself that this sort of thing means they love me and don't want me to go away. It's fun to pretend.
Inspired by our own outdoor cabinet for cat box storage, Glenn constructed this complex outside their kitchen window and beneath an outdoor counter. The poo box is behind Bubba here, and you see him easing back through the swinging door in the second photo. The lizard is plastic, and yes, he looks pretty much exactly like Jinx, pelt-wise. He's larger though, and his face is very different, with a long, somewhat unattractive nose that you can't really see in this photo, framed by the wire mesh as he is.
The cats like their poo setup though, and this keeps any stink from entering the house. The only error is one that Malaya and I suffer from as well; the box is not very easy to remove from the enclosure, and it's therefore kind of a pain to scoop or add more litter to. If you build or scheme one like this for your own cats, make sure you consider just how you'll be getting at the litter, and make something very easy to use for that portion. Put the box on a tray that swings out, or something like that. After all, you'll be there every day, and if an hour's more work and planning and expense now, saves you several minutes a day for the next ten years, that's a pretty damn good investment.
...More cat photos and lots of other photos as well, coming tomorrow or perhaps later today.
Photos and Housework and Ramblings.
So, first day back and not a lot to report. I managed to avoid playing games and surfing pointlessly all day, though I didn't exactly churn out a great deal of fiction either. I stayed up late Tuesday night, delighted at the opportunity to sleep 1) later than 8am, 2) in a dark room, 3) in a comfortable bed, 4) with no more interruption than occasional cat encroachement. Malaya reported that Dusty and Jinx were simply all the hell over her, in bed, while I was gone. Since it's been in the 40s or high 30s here at night every day for a week, that wasn't such a bad thing without me there to warm the bed. It can get a bit hot and crowded when we're both in there though, and the cats are using us for pillows and/or backrests.
I was asleep almost as soon as I got into bed last night so I have no memory of either cat entering the sleeping arena. I woke up to pee around 8, and found Malaya eating breakfast and doing some computer work with both cats wandering around the living room. Determined to sleep until at least eleven, thereby securing the first 7+ hours of sleep I'd enjoyed in a week, I went right back to bed and woke an hour or two later, to find myself giving birth to Dusty. Not that I had actually grown a womb, mind you, that's just the term we use for his "climb upon the sleeping human's thighs and then sink happily down between them as my Jupiter-like weight spreads them like a drunken coed" tactic. It worked on me at least, but since sleeping for long like that results in sore hips, I lifted him over to the left, rolled onto my right, and went back to sleep.
I woke up an hour later to find another weight in the same location, but when I reached down to pluck Dusty once more from the promised land, I discovered much longer hair than he possesses. Jinx is a bit lighter and smaller, but giving birth to Saturn isn't much less taxing than when Jupiter is in the birth canal. She got moved too, and despite having the entire bed available, with no Dusty in sight, she curled up against the back of my knees seconds later, resting most of her body atop my lower leg, in her typical fashion.
I suppose it's true of all pet owners, but it seems sort of absurd to me that we can almost immediately identify which cat is which, while 90% asleep, in a pitch black bedroom, just based on how they are sprawling across our torpid bodies.
I did at last get out of bed, something like 9 hours after I got into it, and after a bit of yoga and a nice hot shower, I felt ready to waste the day with bullshit. I did not though, and after cooking up a huge omelet and studding it with the only fresh vegetable in the entire kitchen (onions), I got to work... sorting and Photoshopping images, and sticking them, by the dozen, onto new photos pages. None are yet online, and they all want for captions, but all of the images are sorted and cropped and optimized and such, so that shouldn't take too long. I am going to try to post a new one roughly each day this week, so unlimber your salivary glands in giddy anticipation. I will likely post 3 or 4 shots and their associated captions in blog entries, with a link to the photos page for those who wish to see the other 20 or 30 or 40 pictures from that set. They're all going into the misnomered
vacation section, though for a change most of these shots are actually coming from various vacations.
The list of upcoming pages currently runs, in no particular order:
- Xmas, SD & Vegas, 2004
- SD Zoo, December 2004
- Napa Valley, 2004
- Chicago, 2005
- Napa Valley, 2005
- Granny's Funereal, 2003
- Blizzcon, Irvine, 2005
- Death Valley, November 2005
And no, I don't expect that anyone is really all that eager to see any of those photo pages, much less all of them. It feels good to get caught up though, at least on this one aspect of the site, and I do want/need to do the BlizzCon and DV shots, at least. I'll work on the Death Valley shots tomorrow, since I've got about 400 pictures to go through, of which I'll likely post 40 or 50 on the page. And no, if I'm using 1/9 or 1/10 of the total shots taken, there won't be much excuse for any of the pictures not being really outstanding.
Excuses are for lesser men! Expect some tomorrow!
Just to get started now, I had my camera set on large sized images, something like 2200x1600, but I didn't have it on the highest image quality setting. So the shots are large, and most of them will look crisp when reduced down a more reasonable 500 or so pixels in width, but I wanted the images so detailed that every last little rock (8,321, 764 of them per photo, on average) would be clear and just as rocky as a rock can get. And now that dream is deader than the grandmother featured in several rather disturbing photos coming soon to a photos section page near
you me.
Aside from all of the photo cropping and page creation and code insertion, I ate leftover Chinese food for lunch and very late dinner (leftover from Malaya's birthday dinner with her parents, I must shamefully admit), and filled the evening and my piehole with half a frozen pizza. I also watched several hours of UFC (on tape, of course, for that sport as telecast on Spike has more deadtime than the 4th quarter of an NBA game) with Malaya, took two showers, and accompanied her to the gym.
The first gym visit after a week's vacation is always a strange one. I usually feel sluggish and tire quickly on the cardio, whether I do elliptical, stairmaster, or treadmill, but feel really strong on weights, though I never last as many reps as usual. Wednesday's running and lifting was further skewed by the iPod blasting Marilyn Manson in my ears, since I tend to lose track of time and exertion while I'm listening to music, and find myself doing more reps than usual. That's about how it worked out Wednesday, and it was with some relief when Malaya finished her second trip through the express circuit of machines and agreed to accompany me home.
My left wrist is still sore from some unknown hiking-related strain; it aches when I bend it far forward or back, but it's much better than it was Monday or Tuesday. My left knee still feels funny too, like the ligaments are a bit overstretched, but it was strong at the gym and hasn't popped at all out of joint for nearly two days, so I guess I'll be okay for Kali Thursday night. Hopefully we won't do anything requiring much left hand strength or a great deal of footwork or maneuvering, and even if we do I can always sit out or go at my own pace; it's not like Gura is trying out for the Cruel Tutelage role in Kill Bill 3 or anything.
I'm rambling, so I'll pull this to an end. I'll post some random recent cat photos in a post after this one, and then head off to bed, with thoughts of chapter seven bouncing around my head. I read parts of George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire on vacation, since mom's reading them and was just finishing book 2 and starting on book 3 while she was there, and while I really enjoyed the writing, I was also somewhat vexed. There's just so much to Martin's world; such a vast and sweeping and detailed scope to things that it makes me feel like I'm just scratching the surface of the world in my ongoing fantasy novel. I am intentionally keeping my story on a much smaller scale, and it's moving along much more quickly than his, and I just want to finish it whether it turns into 1 or 2 or 3 books. But all the same, I can't help feeling that it's so much less than it could be, (I feel that way about every other fantasy series I've read too, but that's another issue.) at least in comparison to the masterpiece Martin is turning out. So I keep working on it, and thinking about it, and adding depth where I can, but I have to just keep going with the story that got me this far, no matter how I'd like to redo pretty much everything.
Yes, it could be a lot bigger and somewhat better (at least for readers with the patience to appreciate it), but it still wouldn't be more than a candle before Martin's forest fire of a series, so I'm just not really worrying about that. It's not marvelous, but it's not utter hackery either, and I can be proud of it while still knowing that my better and best work is far in the future. The concept of this story just isn't vast or grand enough to support an entire epic/classic of the genre, and even if I were willing to rework it, it's still not a world that's interesting and unusual enough for me to put that kind of work into it. Someday though, someday I hope to really write a big one, something with a world as complicated and detailed as those in various other long fantasy series, with races that are different in more than appearance, with non-humans playing large roles other than as disposible bad guys, with royal characters and political battles and plotting and treachery as good as what Martin's done in Fire and Ice, with magic and sorcery through and through, etc, etc.
Someday, yes. And in a world completely of my own invention, rather than just the default Tolkien-esque, Diablo-flavored land I'm using now. It will be long, and glorious, and unappreciated in its day. But I don't see its day coming for some decades yet. Don't be sad though. I've got lots of other stuff I want to write first, and besides, what fun would it be to write my masterpiece in my first novel? Who wants a career that's in perpetual decline ever after their first effort?
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