Unidentified Earth 23

Well, Unidentified Earth 22 went unidentified for all of a few hours, as I figured would happen. It is, indeed, Glastonbury Tor, one of my "Geez, I hope I don't die before I see that" world locations. Fifty Quatloos to each person who got it right.

And I note again that Unidentified Earth 21 is still awaiting identification! Come on, people! Quit stonewalling! (And that's another hint. Any more and I'm going to have to declare victory.)

Now's the time for another entry. I suspect this one's not terribly hard either, so have at it, folks.



Where are we?

(And please Rot-13 your guesses! One person forgot last week. For shame!)

The siren call of a blank endpaper....

Sheila has a pretty wonderful link: the Book Inscriptions project. (As of this writing, the site's not loading, but it was loading an hour or so ago, I swear!) The site posts images of inscriptions written in the fronts of books, typical of the kind of thing people write when they give a book as a gift. As Sheila notes, this sort of thing is like crack cocaine to a person like myself. Go have a look, when the site starts loading again.

Listenin'

I've just started reading Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise. I'll have more to say on the book when I've finished with it (and that'll be a while; I'm only about fifty pages in as of this writing), but in reading the passages early on about Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, I realized that I haven't listened to the music of either composer in a great while – years, for most of their works I have on disc, and in several cases, over a decade. Ouch. That's too long to spend out of the company of such great composers. So, as I'm writing this post (and playing Mah-Jong on the laptop), I'm listening to Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D (the "Titan").

I'm struck anew by this symphony's earthiness. I knew a number of things about Mahler's life before I ever heard any of his work, and the things I knew mainly concerned his preoccupation with death, the giant scale on which his musical thoughts formed, his gargantuan orchestrations, and the like. When I first listened to the Symphony No. 1, with its dreamy an mysterious introduction, I heard nothing aside from what I expected. But then the work's first melody proper begins, a gentle tune in the low strings that is by turns jaunty and lyrical, almost like a folksong. In the second movement, the rhythms are straight out of folk dance, and the third movement relies on a minor-key rendition of "Frere Jacques". Only in the last movement does the symphony seem to reach the sense of scale and plumbing of epic depths that are thought to be typical of Mahler.

I'd forgotten how much I like this symphony.

(My recording of the Mahler Symphony No. 1 has Leonard Slatkin conducting the St. Louis Symphony.)

Readin'

Time to catch up on some recent reading I've done:

:: As research for a short story I finished drafting a few weeks ago, I read a fascinating book called Stradivari's Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection by Toby Faber. This is exactly what the title suggests: an examination of the violin making of Antonio Stradivari, the great Cremonese master whose hand produced stringed instruments that have never been surpassed in quality despite the fact that Stradivari died in 1737. I was most interested in the early parts of the book, the ones that deal specifically with violin making and the technical aspects of Stradivari's craft, but the remainder of the book traces five specific Stradivarius instruments through the history of Western music. It is a fascinating survey of classical music history not from the typical point of view of the composers, but from the instruments that play the music.

:: My space opera reading project continues at its stready, if slow, pace. A short while back I read A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (published in this omnibus). Strictly speaking, this isn't space opera at all, but rather its sister genre, planetary romance. After reading some early space operas months before, I expected the Burroughs work to be enjoyable but generally suffer the same faults of anachronism commonly found by contemporary readers in early SF. I was surprised to find that this was actually not the case, at least to a much lesser degree. Burroughs, it turns out, was a much stronger writer than E.E. "Doc" Smith or Edmund Hamilton, and thus his work seems to fare better in the light of the decades that have passed since he penned these tales. (I say "seems to" because, after all, I've only read the one Burroughs book thus far.) A Princess of Mars turns out to be tremendous fun, a rollicking tale of adventure in which Captain John Carter is mysteriously transported from a cave in Arizona to the plains of Mars, where he falls in with various cultures of beastly beings, engages in fights to the death, discovers tremendous powers and abilities, escapes various dangers, and falls in love with the titular Princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris. Make no mistake: this is one fun book, and you can bet I'll be returning to Barsoom sometime soon. ("Barsoom" being what the natives of Mars call their world.)

Of course, in reading a book like A Princess of Mars, one must suspend disbelief entirely. We now know that Mars holds no ancient civilizations that existed thousands of years before we emerged from the primordial ooze of our own planet, and we likewise now know that there are no canals on the Red Planet. I always find, though, that whether I'm reading Burroughs or a writer like Leigh Brackett, I just don't care if the stories invent their Marses out of whole cloth.

While I was reading this I saw via Jason Bennion that Pixar is developing the Barsoom novels into a possible trilogy of movies. Now having read A Princess of Mars at last, I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't know if the books can, or even should, be filmed as they are. Fiction from the early 20th century tends to be, well, less politically correct, and there were a number of spots in A Princess of Mars where I felt a bit of human, or even male, chauvinism creeping into the story. Additionally, the book contains more than a few scenes that are not suitable for the kinds of audiences at whom Pixar tends to aim its films. We'll see.

:: The Andromeda Stories is a manga that I picked up, assuming it to be space opera, but so far it's more of a mix of planetary romance and science fantasy. No matter; it's actually quite engaging. The story involves a world called Cosmoralia where the crown Prince is about to get married and become King; meanwhile, a strange star appears in Cosmoralia's sky, and then disappears as something strange crashes in a remote part of the planet. Of course, this presages invasion. Subplots include the birth of twins to the new Queen, and the identity of a mysterious female warrior. It's all enjoyable stuff, even if the book's lettering style makes it hard to read at times. I find that with reading manga, it's not the reading right-to-left thing that trips me up, but rather the stylized lettering and the fact that the Japanese sound effects (the "BAM" and "ZOOM" and "KRA-POW!" stuff) are left untranslated. (In the case of the latter, there's not really a way around this that I can see, other than destroying the feel of the panel by removing the Japanese onomatopoeia and replacing it with English.) Anyhow, I'm liking this story and definitely plan to get the next two volumes as they appear, as well as seeking out the earlier To Terra, by the same creative team.

:: Sticking with space opera, I've read a few stories in the anthology The New Space Opera, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. So far I'm highly impressed with this antho. The four stories I've read thus far are "Saving Tiamaat" by Gwyneth Jones, "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359" by Ken MacLeod, "The Emperor and the Maula" by Robert Silverberg, and "The Art of War" by Nancy Kress. I enjoyed each of these tales, although I found the Silverberg the finest. There's a lot of fine fiction here, and I'm looking forward to the follow-up volume.

:: Returning to comics, I was in the library and spotted Joss Whedon's name on a graphic novel, so I grabbed it. It's called Fray, and it turns out to be a "Vampire Slayer" story, although one set some indeterminate time in the future from the Buffy TV show, with a new slayer in the lead. Her name is Melaka Fray, and by trade she's a thief who steals antique artifacts for her criminal boss, when she's approached by a demon who informs her of her true heritage as a vampire slayer. There's a new vampire uprising taking place, and it's Melaka's job to destroy it. The main problem is that Melaka has no real sense of her own heritage as a slayer, and little desire to live up to it.

As one who found the few individual episodes of Buffy I ever watched quite entertaining but who never bothered to learn the show's dense mythology in order to really get into the show, I was glad that this graphic novel gives pretty much exactly as much backstory as is needed to understand what's going on. I assume that a lot of this stuff will be old hat to Buffy fans, but for me, it was easy swallowing. The book also boasts a lot of the snappy dialog one expects from Joss Whedon.

All of this, plus Whedon's admission in the foreword that he plans to write more comics, makes me wonder why on Earth no one's decided to do a series of Firefly stories as comics. Talk about a perfect medium for keeping those characters and settings alive!

:: Back to short fiction. As always, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror offers a huge amount of excellent fiction in books that are worth buying just for the introductory essays on the status of the genres alone. This year's edition features, as always, a large amount of short fiction. Good stories here that I've read so far are "In the House of the Seven Librarians" by Ellen Klages, "Lionflower Hedge" by Ira Sher, and the delightfully twisted "Dog Person" by Scott Nicholson.

:: Some years ago a friend sent me a copy of The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll. Over the course of two or three moves, this book wound up on a back shelf, forgotten until last week when the friend goosed me about it. Thus I read it in just a few days. What a remarkable tale this is! Thomas Abbey is a quiet teacher in a Connecticut school who harbors an intense fascination for the books of childrens author Marshall France, so much so that he wishes to write a biography of the man. Into his life comes a young woman named Saxony Gardner, who shares his fascination with the same author. Together they begin delving into Marshall France's life, eventually traveling to his final hometown of Galen, Missouri where they find that France was...ah, but that would be telling. I'll just note that what starts as a literary love story gradually shifts into horror. Carroll's characters are among the best I've seen in a book; I had that rare feeling of getting to know the people in the story, as opposed to merely watching them. And even though a back cover blurb promised that "the epilogue is a masterpiece of surprise", I was still surprised when I got there. This is a great book.

And that's what I've been up to, reading-wise.

One Hundred Movies!!! (51 through 60)

And away we go with ten more movies that I like a whole lot. Yup. A whole lot, I say! With this entry we get halfway through the Byzantium One Hundred:

60. Nanny McPhee

This Emma Thompson vehicle is one of the better childrens' films of recent years. It's the tale of an English household where the Father can't provide adequate discipline for his kids, who terrorize one nanny after another until a horrible woman named Nanny McPhee arrives, with her discipline techniques that don't seem...quite...possible. I always enjoy British stories for children; the Brits seem generally more aware than Americans that kids are often not very nice at all.

Signature moment: The wedding; nothing like a bunch of stiff Brits doing slapstick.

59. X-Men 2

I remember being quite frustrated with the first X-Men movie when it came out in 2000 or whenever. It felt like the producers had taken a really, really good superhero movie and cut half an hour from it, thus turning it into a merely pretty good superhero movie. Luckily, they got it right with X-Men 2. They didn't scrimp on the running time or the character development, making for a slickly fine film. I haven't seen the third movie yet, having heard little good about it. But X-Men 2 really is quite good.

Signature moment: Ian McKellen as Magneto has a tiny moment when he gives his helmet a knowing tap. Hard to describe, but it's a perfect moment.

58. Batman Forever

Ah, the strange trip of the Batman movies. I never much liked the first one, actually; for all the talk of its dark tone, I found it decidedly un-dark, with much of the film outright played for laughs. The production design was amazing, sure, as were the performances, but it just left me cold. The second film, Batman Returns, worked a lot better for me. This one actually was quite a bit darker. Batman Forever is the film with Val Kilmer in the title role, and this is my favorite Batman film yet. (Full disclosure: I haven't seen Batman Begins yet.) The tone is a bit more fun, but not so campy as to be, well, Batman and Robin.

Signature moment: Alfred,w hen he tells Bruce Wayne that Mr. Grayson has borrowed the car – the "other" car.

57. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Tim Burton's version of the Roald Dahl story is chock full of creepy weirdness as befits a filmed version of a Roald Dahl story. I was skeptical of a second filmed version of this book, but Burton did well, I think. Johnny Depp's turn as Willy Wonka is interesting; he seems at times to be channeling Michael Jackson.

Signature moment: The animatronic "It's a small world" type display thing at the outset of the children's visit to the Wonka Factory...and that display's horrible destruction.

56. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

And here's the earlier classic. This film is much sweeter in tone than Burton's later effort, choosing to emphasize heart and warmth over the Burtonesque dark fantasy. There is still some fairly dark stuff, particularly the fates of the naughty children and the world reaction to the news that Willy Wonka is going to allow visitors to his factory.

Signature moment: "Pure Imagination".

55. The Incredibles

Superheroes, via Pixar, who have yet to make a bad movie. (I wasn't wild about A Bug's Life, but it's not bad.) This movie boasts some terrific design, and some sneakily dark material, such as the roster of heroes who have fallen before the villain's steady progression of improved killing machines. Michael Giacchino's music is reminiscent of John Barry's James Bond scores. This is kind of a "meta-superhero" movie.

Signature moment: The Sam Jackson character shouting, "Honey, where is my super suit?!"

54. The Fugitive

What a great movie! I don't think it gets enough love these days, but it was certainly highly regarded back in 1993 when it came out, getting a Best Picture nomination and a Best Supporting Actor win for Tommy Lee Jones. It's just a taut, riveting story that still manages to depict its characters as real people with genuine concern.

Signature moment: Is there another one? The train wreck. One of the most spectacular such sequences ever put on film, and even more impressive by virtue of not being computer-generated.

53. Excalibur

I don't know why this film works as well as it does, because it probably shouldn't. Telling the King Arthur story in a single film is hard enough, as the Matter of Britain consists of a huge number of interrelated stories. The film's design is highly stylized, with often-impenetrable dialog. The music is a mish-mash of original scoring by Trevor Jones combined with selections from classical works like Carmina Burana and Wagner. Nevertheless, the movie in many ways sets production precedent for later fantasies like The Lord of the Rings, with its carefully selected locations and stylized shots.

Signature moment: Merlin's magic to help Uther seduce Igraine.

52. The Man Who Would Be King

The Rudyard Kipling story, with Sean Connery and Michael Caine as the British con-men and adventurers who journey to a distant land in India and convince the locals that they are gods and kings, is a grand entertainment, funny and poignant and sad.

Signature moment: The last time Connery sings "The minstrel boy".

51. Legends of the Fall

This big-hearted horse opera is a tale of three brothers (Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn, and Henry Thomas) and the woman (Julia Ormond) who comes between them. It's set in the rural country of Montana. There are scenes set in World War I France. Anthony Hopkins plays the family patriarch. The tale spans several decades, and features mystical narration by a wise old Native American. There is nothing at all that's subtle about this movie. Maybe that's why I like it so much; it plays out with operatic intensity (helped along by one of James Horner's best scores).

Signature moment: When Tristan (Pitt) meets Susanna (Ormond).

All for this week. Next time we'll delve into the Top Fifty. You may have noticed that thus far on the list we haven't referred to a certain sextet of space opera films. I wonder how long that can last?

The Batman School of Business Management

I love reading comics, but I think I love reading blogs about comics more.

How hard was it?!

Unidentified Earth 21 is still unidentified! This is, as yet, the most successful entry in this series. I think I'll celebrate with a cold glass of water. (Which is hard to come by these days 'round that location. Heh.)

Sentential Links #117

Here we go. Or not.

:: I suppose, then, that my strongest feelings about Into the Wild as a film are feelings of disappointment -- disappointment at the lost potential to film the story as something unique and powerful, something that escapes received ideas and gestures; disappointment that the fleeting moments of real excellence couldn't be extended.

:: Leave it to Hollywood. One of the big questions about the strike is what affect it will have on the Oscar telecast? Of course, this is the same industry that when President Reagan was shot, one of the trades had this headline: OSCARCAST POSTPONED. And then below in much smaller type: PRESIDENT SHOT.

:: Some folks don’t seem to realize that most Hollywood writers really don’t make a whole lot of money. There are hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the entertainment industry for their income including janitors, caterers, carpenters, and craftsmen of all kinds (like me), as well as high priced actors and producers.

:: So, a few weeks ago near the end of September, Jane and I decided that it was time to step out in faith. We would leave St. Luke’s, we would join the Roman Catholic Church, and we would trust that Christ would show us the community He wanted us to become part of. (I find faith journeys fascinating, no matter where they end. Well, almost no matter where they end. This is one of the interesting ones.)

:: All writers can do is to write the stories they have in them.

:: I drove across the country with my boyfriend years ago. We went to many many states. We saw many beautiful things. We went through mountains and plains and prairies. But the states that touched us the most - the states that, frankly, blew us away ... were the Dakotas. (I drove across South Dakota with The Girlfriend (now The Wife) many years ago, and it really is compelling landscape; the way the soil changes color once you cross the Missouri River, the way the Interstate has exits right into farm fields, the way the exits to towns are marked with mileage to the next town so as to warn you to get off NOW if you need gas, and the longest horizon I've ever seen.)

:: Conservatives often seem to miss, when raging about the stuff on their teevees, that it's really their beloved Invisible Hand that's slapping them in the face. They would rather believe it was Betty Friedan. If they stopped to consider how much of the damage they perceive to their "culture" is actually done by the free market, it would drive them mad.

:: A century from now, even the very best blog posts will be long forgotten. Let's face it: they aren't that good. But bad blog posts will still be every bit as bad as they were on the day they were spawned. They'll endure. So really, we're doing this for the children. And the grandchildren. (I know, this is all a pretty childish exercise -- but yes, I voted. Althouse, Derbyshire, Du Toit, Hindraker, and Whittle.)

And that's it for this week. Be careful out there among them English.

Bills 33, Bengals 21

The Buffalo Bills are, right now, a .500 football team.

Yes, you read that right. The team that found ways to lose to Denver and Dallas at home despite leading at the exact moment the clock in the 4th quarter ticked to 00:00, and that got manhandled on the road by New England and Pittsburgh, is now at .500. All they have to do to meet my preseason prediction for a 5-11 season is go 1-7 the rest of the way out, and this team is frankly showing too much character to go 1-7 the rest of the way out. Wow.

So yeah, color me impressed. Of course, I'm one who thinks that they're beating decent teams, while other, more pessimistic Bills fans might say that the fact that the Bills are beating these teams makes those teams bad teams. Well, to that I saw, Pshaw. That's right. Pshaw. So onto the commentary!

:: JP Losman. He only had one really bad throw all day, he managed the game smartly, he spread the ball around to different receivers (it seemed like he was only throwing to Lee Evans, but eight different Bills caught passes in this game), and he did some decent running when there was nothing to gain by throwing. I don't know if this game was enough to convince the Bills' brass to keep him around, but I still think he's got a decent NFL career inside him, even if it's not here, so games like this can only enhance his trade value. I've always liked Losman, so even if he's not the guy in Buffalo, I'm rooting for him to have success.

:: Marshawn Lynch. What a stud. He always keeps his feet moving, he always seems to grind out at least a yard or two after he takes the initial hit, and he finally broke the long run we've been waiting to see from him. When he ends up running behind the next great Bills O-line, he's going to be an absolute force.

:: The Bills' young players. Just think, folks: these guys will be coming of age when Darth Brady and the rest of his Sith apprentices in New England are on the physical decline of their careers. Heh!

:: Coaching. This game was, as far as I could see, very well coached. Nothing really stupid was done, with one exception (see below). The defense always seems to have guys right around the ball, wherever it is. Tackling has been improved immensely. The motivation continues to be amazing. I don't know that this is a championship coaching staff, but they've got to get some mad props for getting this team back up off the mat after what had to be the most dispiriting start to a season ever.

:: The NFL's flex schedule! The Bills' resurgence has given the league cause to move their upcoming home game against New England to Sunday Night Football on NBC in two weeks. Huzzah! Now I really hope that this week at Miami doesn't become a "trap" game. And how sweet would it be if Buffalo was the team that ended the talk of an undefeated season? (Not that I'd bet on that outcome, but it could happen!)

:: I guess I'll file this under "Meh", even though they had a pretty good game. I'd still like to see the offensive line improved over the offseason, preferably with a high draft pick. Ditto the D-line. Those guys play incredibly hard, and they'd only benefit from having a nice big body in the middle.

:: Ocho Cinqo. I like that guy, and I hated seeing him go down like that. I hope he's OK.

:: No defensive pass rush. Oy.

:: Red zone efficiency. Gotta get better down there, guys. Had those four FGs been TDs, this game would have been a blowout.

:: And speaking of red zone efficiency: first-and-goal from the one yard line and you got cute with the playcalling? Aieee! I have a feeling that given four chances to run it up the middle, Marshawn Lynch would have picked up the yard and scored.

Other stuff from around the NFL:

:: Wow, this Peterson kid in Minnesota seems to have some potential, doesn't he?

:: My preseason pick for the Super Bowl? Saints over Ravens? Yeah, it could happen -- and, in the immortal words of Wayne Campbell, monkeys might fly out of my butt.

:: It's OK, Indianapolis. In the James Bond movies, Blofeld always wins Round One.

Next up: the Bills travel to winless Miami, who are off this week after losing in London last week. Be careful, guys! This looks like a classic "trap" game! Be mindful, for past the Dolphins, Eeee-vil lurks!

Strike for the Shores of Dover

I occasionally get search engine hits for people looking for the lyrics to "Strike for the Shores of Dover", a rousing sea-shanty chorus that is heard at a particularly triumphant moment in the Errol Flynn movie The Sea Hawk. Thanks to the recent Naxos release of the film's score, here are the lyrics:

Pull on the oars!
Freedom is yours!
Strike for the shores of Dover!

Over the sea,
Hearty and free,
Troubles will soon be over!

Sing as you row;
Here we go,
For we know that we row
for home, sweet home!

Pull on the oars!
Freedom is yours!
Strike for the shores of Dover!

Over the sea,
Hearty and free,
Troubles will soon be over!

Here we go,
For we know that we row for Home!
Sailing for Home!
Home!

Those lyrics may look insipid, but believe me, watch the movie and try not to grin when this stuff kicks in.

Go Mirna!

The Amazing Race starts tonight, with a whole new batch of racers. I've only been on the TAR bandwagon for about a year now, having now seen three seasons through (starting with those great hippies' win). The downside? No Mirna, sadly. The upside? No Dustin-and-Kandice, whose antics made me think that the show's rules should include "No having anyone drive you to your destination, no having anyone let you follow their car to their destination, and no having some local ride with you so they can point which way you should turn to get to your destination".

Obviously, I have no idea which team I'll end up pulling for overall, since it takes a few episodes before anyone really starts to stand out. But let's be honest: early money has me pulling for this Goth duo. But as interesting as that pink Goth lady looks, there'll always be a special place in my heart for Mirna. Sigh....

(Geez: A Bills game, followed by Colts-Pats, followed by The Amazing Race? And I didn't think to buy chips or Cheetos yesterday when I did my grocery shopping! AIEEE!)

Snap-hiss

Last week I posted a YouTube thingy collating the ten best sound effects of Star Wars, and I indicated that I thought one sound was horribly missing while one made no sense to be included at all. Here it is again:



The one that I don't think belongs there at all is the Techno Union guy. I think he's a neat touch, but he's a throwaway gag, really. What's missing? The Millennium Falcon, obviously. That ship has a totally distinctive sound to its engines, such that in the movies you can always tell when the Falcon is onscreen or approaching. The best example of this comes during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, when there's a tracking shot that follows some Rebel fighters as they pursue a group of TIE fighters. All of a sudden, you hear the Falcon's engines offscreen and the ship then roars into the frame from above, as if overflying the audience.

Other ships have different sounds as well: Slave One's engines have a roar of their own, and I love the "lumbering bomber" drone of the Naboo cruiser that lands on Coruscant at the beginning of Attack of the Clones.

Other great sounds in Star Wars? The pod-racers in The Phantom Menace are terrific; many of them have distinctive sounds, especially Sebulba's racer with that pounding pulse it makes. The blasters held by the destroyer droids have their own sound, apart from most of the other blasters in the series; Han Solo's blaster also has its own sound. The various astrodroids throughout the films also all have their own sounds, although all are roughly similar to R2-D2's familiar beeps. And if you really listen carefully, you can tell that the lightsabers don't all sound the same either. Luke's green lightsaber from RotJ has a different ignition sound than his earlier, blue saber; Count Dooku's saber also has its own ignition sound.

That's what makes the sounds of Star Wars so great: objects of similar types make similar sounds, but none of them ever really make the same sound. This is the type of thing that mechanics know; two cars of the same make, model and year will nevertheless sound slightly different at idle. (George Lucas probably knows this, as he's an old car hound.) Everything in Star Wars always sounds like a real thing with real moving parts. I love that.

Sunday Burst of Weirdness

This will be kind of a link-dump of some stuff I've found this week, combined with some stuff I've had sitting in my "Blog Fodder" bookmarks folder for a long time. In the case of the latter stuff, I may well have linked some of this stuff in the past and not remember it. Also, I can no longer credit where I've found a lot of this.

:: Fellow gripers about For Better or For Worse will enjoy April Patterson's real blog.

:: Thirty-nine questions for Charlie Daniels upon hearing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". I've probably linked this before, come to think of it, but here it is again. I've never liked that song; frankly, both the Devil and Johnny are crappy fiddlers. If Natalie MacMaster or Joshua Bell walked in there, they'd both wipe the floor with both of those idiots.

:: A magical pet adventure, that isn't safe for work. Hmmmmm.

A few links from Stephen Frug:

:: The twelve devices of Peanuts. I've previously commented on that second Schroeder strip in this space myself.

:: A do-it-yourself open letter.

:: Star Trek fans remember that before Kate Mulgrew was cast as Captain Janeway on Voyager, the role briefly belonged to Genevieve Bujold. Some of Bujold's clips have surfaced, and man, she was not cut out for that role.

:: Not really weird, but quite cool actually: Twenty-five photographs taken at exactly the right time. I suspect that a bunch of these are of the "take lots of repeated shots and pick the best one later" variety, but who cares -- the photos are all very interesting, and across many different subject matters to boot.

:: Finally, because I love me some Pac-Man, here are two odd variants: Steampunk Pac-man and Text-adventure Pac-man.

There ain't no "vista", there ain't no "view", and there certainly ain't no vista of no view.!

Shamus tracks the evolution of Windows, from 3.1 to Vista. He seems to be staunchly against Vista, and he has definite reasons for being so. My new laptop runs Vista, actually, while our current desktop machine runs XP. Personally I'm happy with both, although I don't do anything really that gives me reason to be concerned about the memory usage of Vista, so basically, for me my appreciation of Vista boils down to that it looks cool and shiny, and I like cool and shiny. I will note that the infamous "security warnings" in Vista don't bother me all that much; they don't pop up nearly as often as I'd been led to believe, and it seems to me that they pop up once and then don't occur again once a particular program has been cleared.

As an aural companion to Shamus's post, here are all of the Windows start-up sounds to date:



And then there's this, which is another reason why nobody but me is allowed to touch my laptop!



My point? None, really. I just like XP and Vista.

Joss! Joss! He's our man!!!

Joss Whedon has a new show coming to FOX. It's called Dollhouse. What's it about?

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

There are some interviews at the site linked above. The show sounds promising -- it's the creative team behind Firefly, after all -- but it's worth remembering that this is FOX we're talking about here. If things go according to past practice, FOX will air the fourth episode filmed first, put the show on at 7:00 on Sundays so it's constantly pre-empted by football, insist on multiple pilots being filmed, and run ads for the show only on Friday nights during the last commercial break during the 9:00-10:00 timeslot.

In the immortal words of Jon Lovitz: "FOX -- they should spell it with a 'U'."

Teetering

It's been a while since I linked James Howard Kunstler, so do check out his October Eyesore of the Month. This is the funniest building I've ever seen.

Unidentified Earth 22

OK, time for the next installment -- even though Unidentified Earth 21 is still unidentified. Oh well; tomorrow is another day. (There's another hint.)

Anyhoo, time for the new installment! This one's probably pretty easy:



Where are we?

Rot-13 your guesses, please!

Can the Colts have haloes attached to their helmets?

In comments to this post, Jess Nevins, who is a fan of the New England Stupid Patriots, takes exception to the fact that I used the word "evil" in reference to his team. Here is his comment, in full:

Yes, by all means, go Colts--let's root for the team whose coach is out there giving speeches against gay marriage and shilling for a poisonously homophobic organization. (Just do a search for "Tony Dungy" "gay marriage").

All Bill Belichick did was cheat at a game. (And run up the score). Tony Dungy is actively making life harder for millions of gay men and women. (Not to mention claiming that the homophobic organization is doing God's work, which by extension means that those who oppose that organization are doing the Devil's work).

I can understand hating the Patriots and rooting against them--but when you bandy around words like "evil," let's remember who the really bad people are.

[second comment]

Also--do some searching into Belichick's work with Jim Brown's Amer-I-Can Program, or his work with the Lazarus House Ministries.

Everyone's entitled to hate a team and individuals on that team. But, finally, *enough* with the "evil." Belichick may be boorish, asocial ,a philanderer, and a bad sport (although he's always been more gracious in defeat than Peyton Manning has been--Belichick never blames anyone else for his losses, which Manning can't say), but the man does good work outside of the realm of football, while Dungy is an activist for homophobia outside of football (and undoubtedly inside--if one of the Colts were gay, there's no way they could come out in that locker room environment). "Evil" is for God (if there is any such creature) to decide. But I know which one is the better person.

Well...lately I've noticed that more than a few commentators, as well as outright New England and/or Boston sports fans, seem utterly shocked that someone out there isn't swooning over the dreamy football feats of Brady-and-company. A few points in response:

:: This is, first and foremost, my blog, and I'll choose the words I use, thank you very much. If I want to use the word "evil" to describe Bill Belichick and the Patriots, I'll do just that.

:: That said, I will also assume that my readers are capable of differentiating "evil" used in the context of a sports team and "evil" used in other contexts. Now, I'm not sure if Jess is just a Patriots fan or if he's a fan of all the Boston-area sports teams, but I've noticed that some people are upset about the "evil" label being applied to the Patriots, where I don't recall ever seeing any such disapproval toward describing the New York Yankees as "the evil empire".

Of course, everybody knows that the Yankees are neither "evil" nor an "empire". Everybody recognizes that as a metaphor. That so many hyper-defensive Pats fans suddenly seem to be unable to recognize an over-the-top metaphor when it smacks them in the face when applied to their team strikes me as funny. Get a grip. More on sports metaphor in a moment, but....

:: Jess has been a sporadic reader of this blog for a long time, and he's been reading my over-the-top venting about the Patriots for an equally long time. I was calling the Patriots "evil" before it was "cool" to do so (here's my post from their Super Bowl win in 2004, if you don't believe me), and Jess knows this. I've also led off each season of football blathering in this space with a frank admission that what I'm doing is pure blathering, and to that point I've even taken to decorating my football posts with pictures of Homer Simpson. So Jess knows that he shouldn't take me seriously when I say that the Patriots are "evil". I suspect then that he's reacting to all the other commentators out there who have glommed onto the word -- such as the sanctimonious claptrap recently penned by Gregg Easterbrook on the subject. I've seen other Patriots fans reacting thusly to the "evil" characterization, and I never saw Yankees fans react that way. Or Cowboys fans, back in the 1990s -- in fact, they relished it. (Here's a profanity-laced post on another blog that illuminates that very point.) Tell a Yankees fan that their team is evil? They'll laugh at you. Same deal with a Cowboys fan. Tell a Pats fan that their team is evil? Break out the corkscrew, because here comes the whine.

:: Point-by-point comparisons of the off-the-field activities of the various personages involved are, for the purposes of this discussion, a waste of time. I'm not excusing Tony Dungy's stance on gay marriage, because I stand totally opposed to it (Dungy's stance, that is). But really -- since we're talking over-the-top language here, this is really all rather pointless, because except for extreme cases, sports fandom just doesn't work that way. I'll bet there are plenty of Indianapolis Colts fans who find Dungy's anti-gay views objectionable, but forgive them because he's their coach. That may be an ugly reality, but that's the reality. Arguing about it here seems odd. If, in the future, some turn of events transpired that brought Tony Dungy to the Patriots sidelines, would Jess then dump his investment of fandom in that team? Would I? Well, maybe he would -- we all have issues that are deal-breakers. I know that if the Bills are the team that gives Michael Vick his second chance in the NFL, I'm going to have a pretty hard time rooting for them.

:: This is perhaps a harder point to defend, but I can say with experience that one can hold some pretty dispiriting views on certain issues and still be a decent person. We once had a family friend who was a fine, fine friend indeed -- and he was also a terrible bigot, to the point where he stopped going to his favorite bar when the bar hired a black bartender. I don't like Dungy's stance on gays; it leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. But picking sports teams isn't like picking a political party, and we shouldn't act like it is.

:: From what I've read about the NFL and its general approach toward masculinity, I find it hard to believe that an openly gay player would be any more welcome in the Patriots locker room than any other. This is a serious problem with the NFL in general, not just with Tony Dungy.

:: No, Jess, you don't "know who the better person is", unless you know both of these guys personally and can assess their lives and their vices and their virtues as part of a whole package. And neither do I. This is just silly. My general impression is that Belichick is a creep. Yes, this is certainly colored by my being a Bills fan -- after all, I get to watch my team get clobbered by the guy twice a year, and he coached the Giants' D in Super Bowl XXV. But yes, his public persona is, to me, that of a creep. (And I'm not a complete homer here; I didn't like Gregg Williams when he was here, or Mike Mularkey, and Lawyer Milloy lost me with that stupid "You can't feed your family on Super Bowl rings" nonsense.)

:: I'm going to need an explanation someday about why it is that Barry Bonds's cheating is so horrible, so beyond the pale, that his Hall of Fame credentials are besmirched and that an entire era of baseball records needs to be asterisked at best and completely ignored at worst, while Bill Belichick's cheating is just "Oh, that whacky Bill, just looking for an edge!", and he pays his fine and the matter's closed.

:: On a more general point, objecting to the use of the word "evil" in a sports context seems a tad naive. Sport is founded on the entire notion of competition, and competition with rooting interests pretty much implies that for the spectators, there are "good guys" and "bad guys". And football amps this up to a very high degree. It's inherent in the game's very terminology: offense and defense. Aerial attack. Long bomb. Front lines. Shotgun formation. Blockers described as battering rams. Heavy hits. Quarterbacks as "generals", in "command". "Gridiron warriors". "Monsters of the Midway". "The Killer B's." "Steel curtain". The Bills' offense during the Super Bowl years, called the "K-gun".

Football's entire persona as a sport is steeped in terminology of conflict, war, and the like. Just watch any of those old NFL Films documentaries, with John Facenda's voiceovers droning on about the "gladiators of the gridiron" tumbling over the "frozen tundra" of the field, and you'll hear this kind of thing over and over. To take a sport like this, and then complain about the word "evil"? Come on, Pats fans.

A Halloween Quiz Thing!

Hooray! A Halloween quiz-thing! This one comes courtesy SamuraiFrog and Messrs. Tosy and Cosh.

1. What is your favorite work of horror fiction?

As is my typical form, I can't name a single one. In terms of novels, Steven King's 'Salem's Lot was truly unnerving. I also admire Robert Cormier's Fade, a young-adult novel about a not-so-nice kid who develops the power of invisibility. John Bellairs's Gothic novels for young readers have more than a few unsettling moments; the scariest ones are The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring and The Curse of the Blue Figurine. (By the way, Hollywood, if you're looking for a good author to mine for movies, Bellairs is just sitting there, waiting.)

I've read a lot of horror short fiction as well, and the one story that has stuck in my head for years is Graham Masterton's "The Secret Shih-Tan". It's not supernatural, but it's damned creepy.

2. Who is your favorite monster?

Monsters, eh? Well, let's see -- I'll go with the Flukeman from that episode of The X-Files.

3. What horror movie gives you the most chills?

The Exorcist.

4. Freddy versus Jason?

Freddy. He's an actual character, not an unstoppable doofus in a mask.

5. Ghosts or goblins?

Well, that depends, doesn't it? You can do great things with either, although ghosts tend to be more creepy in an unsettling way than pure goblins. Goblins you know are made-up beasties, but ghosts have that human quality.

6. What is your scariest encounter with the paranormal?

I don't believe I've ever had an encounter with the paranormal, so probably typical stuff like bumps in the night after I've watched a scary movie or teevee show.

7. Do you believe in ghosts?

No, but I'd like to live in a world where they were real.

8. Favorite Halloween costume?

My mother made me an awesome Captain Marvel costume when I was a kid. That thing ruled.

9. If you had an unlimited budget, what would your fantasy costume be for this Halloween?

I'd love to be one of the Riders of Rohan.

10. When was the last time you went trick or treating?

For myself? First grade, I think. After that I preferred to stay in and hand out the candy. We take The Daughter out each year, obviously.

11. What's your favorite Halloween candy?

I'm the only one in the household who likes candy corn. I buy myself a bag every year and grin as The Wife and The Daughter whine about how gross the stuff is.

12. Tell us about a scary nightmare you had.

I genuinely don't remember any scary nightmares, although I do recall going to my grandmother's house in Pittsburgh on overnight stays and being terrified when this awful sound rose up from the basement. Turned out it was the automatic garage door opener; my uncle was a mailman and left for work really early each day.

13. What is your supernatural fear?

I don't have any.

14. What is your creepy-crawlie fear?

I'm not a big fan of insects. Spiders don't bother me, so long as they don't try to board me as a passenger. Large bugs, though, trigger my often-overpowering Squish 'em! instinct.

15. Would you ever stay in a real haunted house overnight?

You mean, a house reputed to be haunted? Sure. I don't believe in the supernatural, as far as houses go.

16. Are you a traditionalist (just a face) Jack O'Lantern carver, or do you get really creative with your pumpkins?

Oh, who the hell knows. Every year we buy a gorgeous, wonderful pumpkin that would make an outstanding Jack O'Lantern, and every year we forget to carve the damned thing until November 1. And sure enough, we did the same thing this year. Pity, because I love the toasted seeds.

17. How much do you decorate your home for Halloween?

We have an apartment, so not much at all. We should. I love that there are Halloween lights these days.

18. Do you think Halloween is too commercial these days?

No, but it bugs me that on Halloween you can't buy Halloween candy anymore because stores have the Christmas stuff up already. Come on, folks.

We're the Fugowee!

Hmmmmm...Unidentified Earth 21 is still unidentified. Here's a hint: I cut the notable feature of this location in half for the image used in the original post.

Also, Unidentified Earth 20 has been identified -- actually this happened last week, and I was remiss in noting it. It is the ancient city of Petra, located in present-day Jordan. In the second hint, I noted that part of the Unidentified Earth location, but not the part I used for the puzzler, was used in a famous movie, but as a totally different location. The film is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, wherein the most famous part of Petra -- the buildings carved directly out of solid cliff face -- are said to be the lost Temple in the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, wherein lies the final resting place of the Holy Grail.

The winner? Shawn, who now earns ten thousand Quatloos.

A new puzzle will run on Thursday.