A Linkage Clearance!

 Here are some links to stuff I've perused the last few days:

::  An Incredible Move: In 1930, an Indianapolis office building was literally moved, including rotating it 90 degrees. While it remained open for business. That's amazing.

::  Dana Schwarz is sick of desaturated and dark-looking movies:

But with the coronavirus pandemic hitting its one year anniversary, we’ve reached reached a tipping point where cinematic content that perhaps was designed to be released on massive, high-contrast theater screens is now being released to our living rooms. Which means I’m stuck squinting at the screen asking my boyfriend if Superman’s new suit is actually black or if I just couldn’t make out the colors. (It’s actually black.)

::  On the eternal hopefulness of The Lord of the Rings:

The most important thing that the Lord of the Rings movies grabbed from the books wasn’t any particular plot detail, but an earnest belief that hope can coexist with despair, so long as we never surrender to it. Boyens, Jackson, and Walsh took the emotional themes of their subject entirely seriously and sincerely, imbuing the trilogy with humor that never pointed back on itself, no matter how operatic.

::  On a favorite 1990s show of mine, Millennium:

Never envisioned as an X-Files spinoff, but rather as “a sister series,” Millennium readily broke new television ground, becoming a relatively short-lived mainstream network series that spawned a host of pay-TV imitators. It engages difficult questions around violence, grief, and art in startlingly stark and sophisticated ways. Millennium’s creative team, many of the same forces behind The X-Files, took advantage of the smaller-scaled, more esoterically textured series to take storytelling risks that would have been ill-suited for Millennium’s ratings-behemoth elder brother.

::  The Medusa Nebula. Wow!

Today in Good Dogs

Meet Rudy.

Note Rudy's happy grin after he makes it to the end of the obstacle course.

Rudy is a good dog.

Linkage and Stuff (with pies)

Some stuff!

:: Oh my, I forgot about my new feature, Tone Poem Tuesday. Ugh! I'll really try to remember next week. In fact, I think I'll write some in advance. Meantime, here's an oft-featured favorite of mine, the gorgeous choral setting of Shenandoah.


:: Roger visited the Corning Museum of Glass. Oddly, I have never been there. How weird is that! A major upstate NY attraction, and I've never once been there.

:: Kevin Drum thinks we should stop complaining about the Olympics being tape-delayed for prime time viewing. I agree. In fact, as I write this I was just listening to the local sportstalk guy complaining about this.

:: SamuraiFrog begins telling the story of his own life. I look forward to this.

:: Sheila O'Malley on the Baz Luhrmann film of The Great Gatsby. I haven't seen the film, and I haven't read the book in many years (despite the fact that I loved it), but I'll generally read Sheila O'Malley write about nearly anything.

:: One of my favorite vloggers with a poem for women with a broken heart:


:: Sarah Gailey writes in defense of villainesses.

:: Bill Clinton really loves balloons.

::  A cat takes to the rugby field. The Internet provides the hilarity.

:: Finally, I recently did a favor for a friend who has enjoyed some of the "fantasy"-looking locales of parks in this region. She is a cosplayer, and she wanted some photos taken in costume in the fantasy-like setting of Chestnut Ridge Park, so I cheerfully obliged. The payment? A couple of pies in my face! Huzzah!


That's about all for now. Excelsior!

Go look at this!

Want to see a really neat photo of a flower? Sure you do!

Some Links....

A few things!

:: The tale of an awful pizza customer. Oddly, I remember a guy who was just like this! He'd stand at the counter and offer his constant input as to how his pizza should be made, and then, when leaving the place, he'd tilt the box on its side. Every friggin' time he came in. Unbelievable.

:: Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of an enormous battle that took place in the Bronze Age in northern Europe. Since it predates written history, we have no idea who fought whom and why. How much history is there that we know nothing at all about?

:: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese has changed...and nobody knew about it. Interesting stuff. (Yes, I do still like this stuff.)

:: Jason ruminates on William Shatner.

:: Finally, John Scalzi on the use of personal pronouns -- i.e., referring to people by the gender they wish.

When someone asks you to refer to them by a particular set of pronouns and you’re reluctant to comply, are you being disrespectful? Yup! Self-identity is important, and refusing to accept someone else’s identity for your own reasons will be taken to mean that you dislike or disagree with their choices about who they are. And this is your right, but it means you’re saying that your choices in this regard are more important than the choices of the person who has to live with their own identity every single moment of their lives.

Read the whole thing. We need to be making the world better.

Later, folks!

Dispatches

Some stuff from recent days!

:: A kinetic sculpture featuring eleven thousand marbles. This kind of thing delights me to ridiculous degrees.


:: This blog is most certainly NOT SAFE FOR WORK, but it's kind of interesting, if you've ever wondered what life is like for a working stripper.

:: JAWS is 40 years old!


What a great movie. I need to watch it again soon...but meantime, here's a neat interview with the guy who, as a kid, got to be the killer shark's second victim in the movie. Poor Alex Kintner!

:: Speaking of Speilberg blockbusters, I saw this on the road the other day. I assume it's a promotional thing. Note the license plate.


:: Speaking of movies, some nifty news from the week past: the rest of Battle of the Century has been found. This silent Laurel&Hardy movie features one of the finest of the old-style pie fights in movie history, but the film itself has been mostly lost to time, until now, when the entire missing reel turned up. Details here and here.

As for the deeply sad story that's been dominating the news this week...I'm not addressing it here. I'm simply worn out by such things. My thoughts tend to mirror Jason Bennion's, though, for what it's worth.

A Dump of Links

While I've been on light-blogging duty, getting the book done and stuff, I've been bookmarking a lot of stuff for future comment. So here it all is, with sporadic and brief comment!

:: Ma Ingalls thinks I'm an asshole.

Heh. If it helps, I'm sure that Great-Grandma Ingalls thought that Ma was an asshole, too.

:: A useful history of the Gamergate fiasco.

:: Alysa Rosenberg on Black Widow and The Avengers.

I don't always agree with Rosenberg -- I find her more recent article defending Game of Thrones's focus on rape unconvincing and oddly argued -- but she generally makes interesting points, as is the case here.

:: The McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit, explained.

This case has become a shorthand in referring to our overly-litigious society which is prone to frivolous lawsuits. Problem is, this case was hardly frivolous. Read it to see why.

:: The Plot Against Trains

Good article about rail travel in the United States and how its sorry state is reflective of our bizarre attitude towards effective government policy and the way we casually accept measurably poorer policy outcomes if it means "less government".

:: Woodstock's undercover lovers, identified.

:: Want to watch fifteen seconds of the most heart-stopping parkour ever filmed? Sure you do!


:: The Scoville Scale of Pepper Hotness, illustrated with cats.

:: Next time you're in Budapest, make sure to check out the town's newest bronze statue to a beloved fictional detective. No, not that one. This one.

:: Finally, The Tragedy of Jar Jar Binks. I've already gone into my thoughts on why Jar Jar was as hated as he was, in the Phantom Menace sequence of Fixing the Prequels posts, and this article seems to partially agree: Too much "Comedic hijinks Jar Jar", and not enough "Screw-up from the warrior species Jar Jar". I do like to recall, though, that when I saw Revenge of the Sith in the theater on opening day, when Jar Jar appeared for his very-brief cameo in that film, the response in the theater was mainly people who sounded glad to see the guy, however fleetingly.

A few things

I'm on vacation now, so I won't be posting until Sunday at the earliest and Monday at the likeliest! Anyhow, a couple of things:

:: Hecklers can ruin comedy shows -- but sometimes comedians get the last laugh. (Salty language alert!)

:: Inside Steven Spielberg's JAWS vault. A look at ephemera from the making of the movie. Awesome!

:: Interesting video about hot sauce and hot sauce labels:


For the record, my favorite hot sauces are Franks, Cholula, and Sriracha with the rooster on the bottle. I have no use for Tabasco. It tastes funny to me.

:: All 32 NFL team helmets imagined as Star Wars-themed. I, for one, would proudly root for the Buffalo Banthas!

::  Interesting article about near-death-experiences and what they tell us about dying. I'm not sure I totally buy into everything here, but I don't know nearly enough to say one way or the other. I'd like to believe that something endures after death, but...well, there's only one way to know and no way to report back, thus far.

::  The Baltimore Orioles are pretty cool in that when they do a post-game pie-in-the-face for the game's hero, they don't put shaving cream on a towel. A local bakery makes their splatting pies for them, out of real edible stuff. I respect that and partially root for the Orioles on that basis alone! (Although I think I'm rooting for the Royals now, since the Pirates got bounced by the Giants in the wildcard game. Get 'em next year, Buccos!)

::  Finally, speaking of pies in faces, you may recall from when I did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that I expressed hope that a pie-in-the-face challenge would come around next. Well, a bunch of them have been going on, pertaining to a number of ailments: depression and suicide awareness, Huntington's Disease, Parkinson's, Childhood cancer, and even cerebral palsy. (Obviously that last would hit too close to home for me.) Well, seeing as how a lot of the good in these "viral" fundraising bits of goofery lies in the idea of "raising awareness", I was fascinated to see a pie challenge for a syndrome I'd never heard of before: Porphyria. This thing is both nasty and rare, so I decided that's what I was going to do. Yesterday morning I launched my vacation by taking the Porphyria Pie Challenge.


Pies and a good cause: you can't go wrong with that. (Yes, I donated as well.)

::  Oh wait! Really finally: check out my Official Author Site, if you haven't done so already! The ACTUAL TITLE is revealed!

That's really it. See you all in a few days!

Linking some stuff!

Time to link a few items that have been languishing while I've been otherwise occupied!

:: Friend and fellow writer SK Waller has been paying tribute to the rock bands of California's Gold Coast:

But the Tri-counties didn't adhere to the British Sound. Instead, they took what they liked and cast off the rest. While southern California topped the charts with Folk-Rock (the Byrds, the Mamas & the Papas...) and Progressive Rock (the Mothers of Invention, the Doors...) and northern California grabbed national attention with Acid Rock (the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company...) the Gold Coast, overlooked and passed over, was busy mixing up their own brew that included all of that, but whose base was Surf. Welcome to 1960s proto punk, California style.

She's created a whole site about this part of rock history, California Gold Coast Dreamin'. Check it out!

:: Farran Nehme, one of the best film-bloggers around (under the title Self-Styled Siren), has a novel on the way. It sounds amazing, steeped as it is in her astonishing knowledge of film history:

New York in the late 1980s. Ceinwen Reilly has just moved from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and she’s never going back, minimum wage job (vintage store salesgirl) and shabby apartment (Avenue C walkup) be damned. Who cares about earthly matters when Ceinwen can spend her days and her nights at fading movie houses—and most of the time that’s left trying to look like Jean Harlow?

One day, Ceinwen discovers that her downstairs neighbor may have—just possibly—starred in a forgotten silent film that hasn’t been seen for ages. So naturally, it’s time for a quest. She will track down the missing reels, she will impress her neighbor, and she will become a part of movie history: the archivist as ingénue.

As she embarks on her grand mission, Ceinwen meets a somewhat bumbling, very charming, 100 percent English math professor named Matthew, who is as rational as she is dreamy. Together, they will or will not discover the reels, will or will not fall in love, and will or will not encounter the obsessives that make up the New York silent film nut underworld.

As it turns out, I know nothing at all about silent film...but I might have learned some, had I gone to college a couple years later. The music director of my school's orchestra was a part-time player in a Des Moines ensemble that played the scores to accompany silent films, and just after I left with diploma in hand, she made this passion of hers a part of the college's orchestra scene! I've always been bummed that I missed out on that.

:: It's Monday; your to-do list at work is probably short and manageable. So go waste some time learning stuff! Atlas Obscura is one of those sites you can lose yourself in, quickly.

:: I'm a sucker for reading other writers discuss their procedures, what tools they use, their workspace, et cetera. I obviously don't subscribe to the "Maybe if I use the same pen Stephen King uses!" kind of thinking, but I still like hearing about process. I find it a bit inspirational, both in general terms (these folks still have to sit down and work), and in practical terms (lots of successful folks have good thoughts on how to organize and create a workspace). George RR Martin is very particular about the word processor he uses.

:: Chalkboard art, created in secret.

Have a great Monday, folks!

Sunday Burst of...a lot of stuff

Time to clear the decks of some stuff I've been saving up! Some of this stuff has been lingering in my Bookmarks folder for a while, and I've long-since lost track of the sites from which I originally filched the links.

:: The Uncomfortable, an art project described thusly:

The goal is to re- design useful objects making them uncomfortable but usable and maintain the semiotics of the original item.

:: My Husband's Stupid Record Collection, in which a woman is listening and reviewing her way through her husband's record collection. Despite the word "stupid" in the blog title, she is really making an honest effort with each record. If I remember correctly (it's been a while since I bookmarked this), she calls the collection "stupid" because they've moved a few times, and thus so have the records. Moving a lot of records is a pain in the ass if you do it a lot. (Kind of like...books...hurg!) It's interesting to read reviews of music from the perspective of someone who likes music just fine but isn't really into it.

:: Weird American things that Americans don't realize are weird. I don't disagree with some of these; mainly this is a list of things someone not from a place found odd about the place they visited. It just happened to be our place. (If you're an American reading this, that is. If you're not, you're likely reading this list and nodding along, thinking, "Yeah, you guys are weird!")

:: Two older ladies go on an airplane. For the first time in their lives.


:: Wow:

On a nature hike along Germany's Baltic Coast in 1913, 20-year-old Richard Platz scrawled a note on a postcard, shoved it into a brown beer bottle, corked it and tossed it into the sea.

The bottle was recovered from the Baltic last month. Researchers haven't yet figured out what the note said (conditions and age have faded it badly), but they did manage to identify the author and contact his living granddaughter, who is 62 now.

:: The worst jerseys in the history of the NHL. I'm not a hockey fan (in fact, I tend to be irrationally anti-hockey owing to the game's odd emotional hold over this area), but I link this because a recent Buffalo Sabres jersey makes the list.

And to be honest...I didn't hate the infamous "Buffaslug". I liked that more than the red-and-black "angry goat" that the Buffalslug replaced.

:: Romantic pictures from Russian dating sites. I don't for one second claim that this bit of oddness is unique to Russia, because Lord knows you can find a lot of bizarrely creepy photos on good old American dating sites. In fact, it's kind of endearing (or depressing, not sure which) to learn that "creepy dating site profile pics" seems to be a universal thing about our species.

:: Everything you don't know about tipping.

:: Worst excuse for criminal behavior ever:

Police say an Iowa City man claimed a faulty belt was to blame after he dropped his pants in front two women.

Most amusing to me is that this happened in Iowa, which is the overalls capital of the universe. And I know, I went to college and found a Wife there!

:: Finally, pies in the face...in slow motion!






OK, that's it. Back to packing. Damn, I have a lot of books....

Cats being jerks to dogs

I feel that I should at least post something here just to show you folks that I'm still around (Lord why can't we just be moved already this sucks why do we still live here GAHHHHH), so here are some cats sleeping on the beds belonging to their much-bigger canine housemates, and saying to those housemates, "And there's shit you can do about it!"

More posting to follow, sometime....

Some Lazy Linkage!

Just a few links to some nifty stuff seen 'round Blogistan of late:

:: Cal reports on a saloon in the Yukon that serves a cocktail with a pretty odd addition. No cocktail olive or Maraschino cherry up there, nosiree, Bob....

:: SamuraiFrog has been blogging off-and-on, and pretty bravely in my view, about his struggles with anxiety and depression. We do not, as a society, tend to appreciate nearly as much the degree to which such things are a major struggle for those who suffer them, and the degree to which they can turn what non-sufferers see as normal events into harrowing ordeals. Here's his latest report on this. As always, I wish him the best in conquering these particular demons.

:: Roger reports on attending a taping of an NPR radio show. The show is Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, a quiz show with a live studio audience.

:: Ken Levine on being asked to do an improv scene...with Robin Williams.

:: John Scalzi went to Worldcon, and brought himself back some hardware. I'm not a big fan of the book he won the Hugo for, but as I've indicated elsewhere, it's not a function of his writing but rather that it's just not my cup of tea (being "meta-fiction" and all). But still, congratulations to him. He's having a terrific career, and it's interesting to recall that I first got wind of him a little over ten years ago, when a story circulated Blogistan of some blogger who had stuck his book online and then had a publisher pick it up. Now he's winning Hugos. (Should the plural of Hugo be Hugi?)

:: Help a clown to deliver a pie to his 1000th face. I'm on board with this, obviously!

A few random links and stuff!

I haven't done a 'lazy linkage' kind of post in a while (of course, Sentential Links and the Sunday Burst are that sort of thing, I suppose), so here's a bit of 'lazy linkage'!

:: Neal Asher on tracking word counts in writing.

I upped this to 2,000 and still found it too easy, but then this was all my words, so next I discounted journal entries, blog posts, and stuff I put on message boards (yes, I even counted the words in them) and reset my target to 2,000 words of fiction. This is what I’ve stuck to ever since. When I get started each day I read through and correct the previous day’s 2,000 words, then start on the next. As I reach that figure I try to simply stop, and not go on until reaching a natural break. If you just stop while you know what you’re going to write next, it’s easier to get going again the next day.

I should try that...the 'not trying to get to a natural breaking point' idea. I should say, I have tried it, but I often wind up staring at the screen and thinking, "Where the hell was I going with this?" So now I'll just leave a little note in parentheses, indicating what's to happen next, like this:

"It was you!" she exclaimed.

[The murderer is the butler. Later, having solved the crime, the two Princesses have hot fudge sundaes followed by a pillow fight.]

:: Charles Stross on why he doesn't self-publish:

Anyway: this is why I don't self-publish. Yes, I could do it. But it'd suck up a huge amount of time I would prefer to spend doing what I enjoy (writing) and force me to do stuff I do not enjoy (reading contracts, accounting, managing other people). The only sane way to do it would be to hire someone else to do all the boring crap on my behalf. And do you know what we call people who do that? We call them publishers.

I do think about self-publishing from time to time. For me, it's a notion of last resort, for these reasons: I don't want to spend the necessary time doing all the marketing, design, and all that jazz. If it comes to that, I will, because I frankly believe very strongly in the book I wrote and the one I'm writing and I also believe very strongly that I'm going to get better at this (based on the fact that I can look at my writings from years past and see that I already am better at this). But I won't do that unless absolutely no one out there is willing to do the heavy lifting for me.

:: Phil Plait sums up some new cosmological findings. They are mindblowing. Go read it! As he concludes:

I still hear some people say that science takes the wonder out of life. Those people are utterly and completely wrong.

Science takes us to the wonder.

:: Ten small changes you can make to help avoid another Steubenville.

:: In the early to mid-1990s, I became quite the rabid baseball fan, falling deeply in love with that game. I've fallen away from it for many reasons, which always makes me a little sad, because I remain convinced that of all the major sports, baseball is the most inherently beautiful.

Anyway, any baseball fan from that era likely remembers the awful day in 1993 -- now twenty years ago -- when horrible news came out of the Cleveland Indians' spring training. Two of their players, pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews, were killed in a boating accident, and only by some incredible quirk of fate did Bobby Ojeda avoid the same fate. For a franchise that was on the upswing, the accident was an absolute punch in the gut. Today, I read a deeply sad but well-written article about that accident and the lives it altered forever.

The cloudless sky, the shining sun and the still waters betray the truth of what happened here.

This is where the world lost you, Tim, and you, Steve. On Little Lake Nellie in Clermont, Fla. This is where you boarded a black power boat shortly after sundown on March 22, 1993, hoping the bass would be biting on that overcast evening. This is where you saw the headlights flashing from the shore, alerting you that the rest of your friends had arrived. This is where you hit the gas, Tim, not knowing that, in the blackness of a night with a new moon, the 18-foot, open-air Skeeter had drifted out toward the unlit dock on the opposite shore -- a 185-foot-long wooden structure that extended far into the water. This is where the boat slammed, head-high, into the end of that dock.

This is where life met death.

The baseball world couldn't fathom what happened here, because ballplayers aren't supposed to die. Not during Spring Training, when optimism is abundant and nobody frets over standings or statistics. Not when they have young, growing families waiting for them on dry land.

That's why baseball fans remember the names Tim Crews and Steve Olin. They remember the way your Cleveland Indians teammates wrestled with the emotional intensity of that 1993 season. The way Bob Ojeda, who had been with you on the boat and survived only because he happened to be slouching at the moment of impact, dealt with survivor's guilt and suicidal thoughts before returning to the team later that year.

What they don't know, what they can't know, is what it's been like for your families to live with the losses. What it was like for your wives to explain to their children that Daddy wasn't coming back. What it was like -- what it is like -- for them to wonder what their lives would be like today, if only you were still here.

Twenty years. You've missed so much.

You know what's really odd? While writing this, something jogged in my memory, and I realized that I once linked, for another site, an article for the tenth anniversary of the Little Lake Nellie accident. I wonder if I'll still be here in ten years, to link someone's observation of the thirtieth anniversary of it.

And now for something completely different....

That last post is kind of a bummer, so...here's the Brady Bunch doing the Charleston!


(I don't recall exactly why Bobby is pouting at the top of the stairs....)

I love this guy.

You'll need volume for this. Content-wise, it's safe for work, but it could be misinterpreted by someone walking by the cubicle at the right (or wrong) time as being not-so-much....


I'm not sure I recommend recording one's passions for all to see in quite this way, but there really is something to be said for having something in your life that makes you as happy as this fellow.

Clearing House o' Linkage

Here's some stuff I've been meaning to link but...haven't. Enjoy!

:: SamuraiFrog, always a fine writer, has been on something of a tear of late. I'll highlight two recent movie reviews of his: Blade Runner and Red Dawn. I don't totally agree with his assessment of Blade Runner, a movie which I have to assume, at this point in my life, just isn't ever going to cross over from 'movie I admire but feel little emotional connection with' to 'wow, I love this'. But he brings quite a few good insights into the movie.

As for Red Dawn, I'm in total agreement. That movie is crap on toast and always has been; I've never understood why it's a quasi-classic for a lot of people. Aside from the fact that it's basically right-wing action pron, that is.

:: In keeping with my long-professed fascination with photos of American Presidents in moments that aren't the most Presidential, here's Gerald Ford with soccer star Pele.

(via)

:: I am generally able to be forgiving of media from decades past, in their reflection of prevailing views of their day toward matters like race and women, but I have my limits. Witness Retrospace's exploration of men spanking women in comic books from yesteryear. Ye Gods, this is stunningly creepy stuff.

:: It's odd how, in some cases, "Hey, it's been X years since Y happened!" can make me feel old, and in some other cases, it just makes me say, "Huh. Been a while, eh?" The fact that Cheers first aired thirty years ago? Not sure how that makes me feel. But really: wow. Anyway, Ken Levine reflects on that first night.

:: Joe Biden: smartass VP. (Hmmm...some of these quotes don't seem real. Like, all of them.)

:: Wow, why do I mess around with that stupid egg separator?


:: From time to time, Sheila O'Malley posts commentary on her iPod 'shuffle' results. It always amazes me how she manages to say something insightful about every song she hears therein.

:: John Scalzi on Mitt Romney as a person. I tend to agree, although my feelings are a bit more negative. (Not 'OMG I find this guy to be a loathsome turd' negative, but...if Romney was my Mayor, or maybe something else like that, I'd probably be OK with it. In fact, given my general lack of good feeling for the current Mayor of Buffalo....)

:: Lynn links a piece of music by a modern composer with whom I am unfamiliar. Go and give it a listen -- it's interesting and good!

:: Finally, he's me with the sun shining over my shoulder. Just like the John Denver song!

Randomments from Facebook

Here's a grab bag of stuff I've reposted on Facebook of late, for your amusement!

Enjoy!

A rule for life

Seen in comments on SamuraiFrog's post about Hell's Kitchen:

Here's a tip: as the percentage of people around you who think you're an asshole approaches 100%, the odds that they're wrong drop precipitously.

This is extremely high in truthiness.

Drain. Very important.

I'm stealing this from MeFi, but it's awfully funny.

First, read Paula Dean's recipe for English Peas. Then, click through at the bottom and read the comments.

That is all.

Stuff that's cool

Apparently when you set an official World Record, as recognized by the fine folks at Guinness, you get a certificate. And the official World Record certificate, which is cool enough, has a fake beer-mug stain on it, ostensibly from the certificate being used as a coaster for one's flagon of, say, Guinness Stout. That's just neat.