Saturday Centus

I'm going to do an experiment with this week's prompt: I'm going to write it right here, without editing it at all. Usually I write my entry in OpenOffice and then tweak and and choose my words to squeeze it down, but this week, I'm going to work without a net.

(Oh, and apologies to Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg for this.)

Dr. Schwarzenstein staggered across the lawn, bleeding profusely, as he thought once again that maybe, just maybe, re-creating velociraptors from frog DNA and the contents of fossilized mosquito stomachs had been a bad idea, and that maybe, just maybe, genetically enhancing the raptor for super-intelligence had been a really bad idea.

And then there she was, the Queen Raptor, in front of him. He wasn't going to make it to the jeep. This was it. She bared her fangs, bristled her claws. "Surprise, I'm pregnant!" she said.

"I've created talking raptors?" he thought -- a scientist to the end -- as she leaped toward his abdomen.

Seven

He would have been seven today.



Wherever he is now, I hope there are sunbeams there....

Something for Thursday

A two-word food review

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Do you carry cash?

How to respond to failure

One of the writers of the just-released -- and just-flopped -- Conan the Barbarian movie answers the question, What's it like to be the writer of a movie that fails? This part spoke to me, for a lot of reasons:

My father is a retired trumpet player. I remember, when I was a boy, watching him spend months preparing for an audition with a famous philharmonic. Trumpet positions in major orchestras only become available once every few years. Hundreds of world class players will fly in to try out for these positions from all over the world. I remember my dad coming home from this competition, one that he desperately wanted to win, one that he desperately needed to win because work was so hard to come by. Out of hundreds of candidates and days of auditions and callbacks, my father came in....second.

It was devastating for him. He looked completely numb. To come that close and lose tore out his heart. But the next morning, at 6:00 AM, the same way he had done every morning since the age of 12, he did his mouthpiece drills. He did his warm ups. He practiced his usual routines, the same ones he tells his students they need to play every single day. He didn't take the morning off. He just went on. He was and is a trumpet player and that's what trumpet players do, come success or failure.

Less than a year later, he went on to win a position with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he played for three decades. Good thing he kept practicing.

Sometimes -- most times, even -- the only thing to do is keep going.

Yes, well, aside from THAT, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Answers, the third!

Continuing to answer queries from Ask Me Anything! August 2011!

LCScotty asks: When are we going to have another WNY blogger meetup?

I have no idea. Next!

OK, fleshing that out a bit...I'm not sure why it is, but it seems to me that the WNY blogging community doesn't really exist anymore as such. Which isn't to say that it's completely disappeared, but it's changed in a lot of ways, some of which I don't mind, some of which bug me a little. But it's the way things are.

Five or six years ago, blogging was pretty much it in terms of "social networking" online, and community formed in ways encouraged by the nature of blogging: with bloggers linking one another. At one time, bloggers in the Buffalo-Niagara region started discovering each other's existence, and links started flying back and forth, along with discussions of stuff -- politics, issues, Buffalo sports teams, Buffalo restaurants, life in this area, and other items of general interest. And in time, there were a few events where bloggers actually came together and shared drinks, food, and talked about stuff. I attended a couple of these, and they were terrific times. (Before the first one I attended, I asked in all seriousness what I should wear to such an event, and was told by one terrific person, "If you don't wear overalls, I'm gonna cry." How could I turn that down!)

Blogging, however, subsided a lot over the next few years after that, for a number of reasons. Some bloggers lost interest in blogging; others still blogged, but a lot less frequently. And some, for whom blogging was a social outlet, moved on to other outlets that were more to their liking: MySpace, then Facebook, then Twitter. There are occasional Twitter meet-ups, that I know of, but nothing that's as wide-ranging as the old 'Bloggercons' we used to have. But then, how could they be? There is so much online Buffalo population nowadays, and it's all pretty segmented. There are people I interact with on Twitter whom I am fairly confident never ever ever look at my blog, and vice versa.

And within the "Buffalo Blogosphere" itself (or, as I used to call it, "the Buffalo Prefecture of Blogistan"), things are pretty segmented, too. Links don't get shared much at all anymore. The WNYMedia.net blogs -- quite a few of which I read regularly, because they're really good over there -- seem to mainly link either each other or larger blogs elsewhere online, and those blogs tend to remain focused fairly narrowly on a few specific topics at a time.

Coincidentally enough, I'm writing this on the heels of Christopher Smith's departure from WNYMedia.net and -- one hopes temporarily -- the Buffalo blogging community. I've been reading him just about all the time he's been blogging, and I've (almost) always enjoyed his voice. His departure came out of the blue, and after he's been active in launching new ideas like the Buffalo Cash Mob and trying to brainstorm some way of jumpstarting Buffalo as an area of innovation and entrepreneurship. I can't shake the feeling that there is some kind of "Inside Baseball" involved with his exit from WNYM, but that's none of my business, really.

So, when the next Bloggercon? I have no idea. I'd be game, but who knows?

"Excitement is created by rhythmic accuracy"

So said a music teacher I had once, who was trying to convince those of us under his baton that a piece of music played cleanly and accurately at a slower tempo will sound faster than the same piece played sloppily at a faster one. It's a hard lesson to internalize, but, listen to the rhythmic precision on display in this performance of Shostakovich's Festive Overture. It's something to behold. This is a piece that will not be convincing in any way if the performers are not working with the utmost precision in mind.



That's one of my favorite pieces, by the way.

A quiz thing!

Roger has a brief quiz thing, and here it is:

If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?

One moment from my life? Wow, I'm not sure. Maybe the birth of The Daughter, or my wedding, or the first date with The Wife.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

I'd propose to The Girlfriend (now The Wife) earlier. In fact, I'd propose, period. I had her ring on order when she proposed.

What movie/TV char­acter do you most resemble in per­son­ality?

Wow, this is a tougher question than it looks. Maybe Andy Sipowicz from NYPDBlue, without a lot of the baggage (like the bigotry). I'd like to be like Scotty from Star Trek, with the whole "miracle worker" thing. Or...yeah, that's a hard question.

If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be?

Some randomly-selected right-wing FOX News talking head, I suppose. But it would be a really low cliff, with something soft to break the fall. Like, say, a pile of manure.

Name one habit you want to change in your­self.

My desire to push Republicans into piles of manure. That is not the stuff of which good discourse is made!

Describe your­self in one word.

Verbose.

Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word.

Well-rounded! (Roger's interested in a lot of stuff.)

Why do you blog? (In one sen­tence)

Because the world just isn't complete without my thoughts on stuff like the costume in the new Superman movie, or the unappreciated merits of the Star Wars prequels, or how much the Buffalo Bills stink, or the latest space opera novel, or rhapsodic paeans to bib overalls, or why Upstate New York is awesome and should be the best place on the planet, or what types of pies are ideal for throwing, or random thoughts on hand or power tools, or the excessive use of commas to stretch single sentences out to ridiculous lengths.

Tags? Whosoever wishes this quiz is tagged!

Answers, the second!

Time to clear out some more Answers from Ask Me Anything! August 2011, huzzah!

Jenny (of Saturday Centus fame) has a couple:

Were you the kid in school always getting in trouble for using the red crayon to color the sky and the blue crayon to color the grass? I was.

I did that, a bit. I was also never one to stay inside the lines. The lines sucked. I hated the lines. The lines were evil. I do remember my kindergarten teacher getting irritated when I colored a person orange, which I did because orange was the closest thing to that 'flesh' crayon that Crayola used to make, but which I didn't have in my box. (I assume they still make that color, but call it something else, right? Something that doesn't assume that 'flesh' is, well, white?)

What I remember as particularly frustrating was that creativity was generally to be exercised mainly in Art classes, and I was terrible at art. Just terrible. So other kids were being all creative and stuff, and there I was, trying to make sure that the clay ashtray was in the shape of a heart in the first place. And if memory serves, I didn't include the little divots in the sides, where smokers lay their cigarettes. How was I to know? My parents weren't smokers. And besides, how weird was it, anyway, that in school we were actually required to make an ashtray? Yeah, it was 1977 and all, but Ye Gods, here were schools just assuming that we all lived with smokers! Wow.

Creative writing assignments, however? Those didn't come down the pike all that often, and when they did, I didn't much like them, because the topics would be assigned by a teacher. I'm not sure why this bugged me so much, but it did. I recall one assignment called "Turkey Talk", in which we were to write about Thanksgiving from the perspective of the bird. Now, if you tell me to write that story today, I'm seizing the opportunity and writing a horrifically bloody tale about the turkeys who achieved sentience and staged a rebellion at the abbatoir. Back then, however, my brain just shut down. (In that particular case, I did the smart thing and...just didn't do the damn assignment. Brilliant plan, that. Especially when my parents found out that I had adopted a personal policy of "I'm just not gonna do the stupid assignments.")

Writing just wasn't much encouraged in my school years, sadly enough. I never really knew why; maybe it was just out of fashion back then. Maybe it still is. I craved the assignments -- very rare -- where we were simply given a genre and told to write something in that genre. (And then there was the "write a piece of descriptive prose" assignment, wherein I wrote a detailed description of the girl I had a crush on at the time. In retrospect, holy shit, was that creepy.)

Music, which was my other passion, employed a rather different kind of creativity. The only real outlet at the time for creating something new, musically-speaking, was in jazz band and improv solos. My problem there was that I was simply never really temperamentally inclined toward jazz. I like to listen to it, and I was a serviceable section player, but soloing just wasn't something I was born to do. Go figure.

So, going back to writing and whatnot...I see the Centus prompts as a way of, well, making up for lost time. And apologizing to that English teacher whom I refused to take seriously in 8th grade.

I did want to ask if you'd like to be a guest blogger for me.

Sure! I've never been asked to guest-blog. This is exciting. Let me know what you're thinking of!

Reader Bill asks:

Have you kept your trumpet chops up? If not why not?

Sadly, no, I have not. The answers are all the usual suspects: time, opportunity, and life's other pursuits. I sometimes wonder how I'd sound if I picked up the trumpet again right now, and how long it would take me to recover some reasonable percentage of the proficiency I had back in the day (and I wasn't half-bad, really, if I do say so myself). But this is unlikely to happen, so long as I live in an apartment.

Time is not my friend there, as well -- I only have so many hours in the day, the same as everybody else, and I've gravitated strongly to writing as my prime creative outlet. The time I might spend practicing if I was still a musician is time I now spend writing. And finally, there's opportunity: my finest musical moments always came when I was a member of one ensemble or another, and I tended to find that the greatest musical rush for me came from being one voice in a group that was hitting on all cylinders. Those are the opportunities that are hardest to come by now. There's nothing at all wrong with local amateur groups, but...well, I have some pretty heady musical memories, and I'd almost rather keep those memories close in my heart than try to recapture the lightning in a bottle, if that makes sense.

It's a shame, sometimes. I do miss music now and again, as an active concern.

More answers to come (and new questions are still welcomed, so drop 'em here!)

Well, now I know what percent I'm in.

Political rant below the fold....

Sentential Links #257

Join us for the two-hundred-fifty-seventh iteration of Sentential Links! Or don't. See if I care. Jerk.

Anyhoo....

:: Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, even though we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words. Our descendents will view the grasping politicians and cowardly bankers responsible for this about as uncomprehendingly as we now view the world leaders who cavalierly allowed World War I to unfold even though they could have stopped it at any time. (That's actually the entire post, but I agree spot-on.)

:: These are my mother-in-law’s hands, she has arthritis and so her hands are somewhat twisted and gnarled and she can no longer play the piano fully.

:: I was very, very disappointed when I realized it was just a dream and the place doesn’t really exist. I want to go there.

:: Actors hate having to give exposition. It’s dry, it’s informational, it’s not fun. Unfortunately, SOMEONE has deliver the exposition. The trick is to spread it around, find ways to hide it, and make it entertaining. Necessary information woven into a joke is a great solution. (You can switch the word "actors" with "readers" and be equally correct here. In my current Novel-In-Progress, I recently reached a point where some stuff had to be explained, and I was concerned about that passage for quite a while leading up to it. And I'm still concerned about it. My solution was to reveal the absolute smallest amount of information that I had to, and then have someone change the subject. More stuff will get revealed later. I hope that works. Anyway, there's a reason why my favorite infodump of all time -- the "Council of Elrond" chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring -- comes about 200 pages or so into the book.)

:: Because if you lock ten children under the stairs for the first eleven years of their lives, I'll bet you a Time Turner that you'll get four supervillains, three deeply wounded individuals so desperate for love they will do anything they're told to by the first person who hugs them, two completely shattered psyches incapable of meaningful speech, and one Harry Potter, a basically normal, gently dented boy who is good at sports, naturally likeable, and willing to sacrifice himself for the group of your choice.

Them's some long odds, D-man. Glad that worked out for you.

:: So, fans, does that count as a "cop-out"? YOU MAKE THE CALL!! (I call shenanigans.)

:: You could read it in a tree.

You could read it with some tea.

I would not read it in a tree.

I would not read it with some tea.

I do not want to read that book

I will not take a single look. (I knew I should have taken a picture of that book....)

More next week!

Geekin'

Just a few pop-cultural items knockin' round my head....

:: I love this poster, for the upcoming film Red Tails, which tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen and is backed by executive producer George Lucas:

Of course, I look at that poster and I see that Lucas is only the executive producer. He's not the actual producer, nor did he write the screenplay or the story on which the film is based, nor did he direct the movie. But anyone want to lay odds on whose name gets mentioned exclusively if the film flops?

:: I think that the existence of this is frakking hysterical:



Why? Well, if you know anything about Norman's somewhat infamous series of sci-fi novels set on the world of Gor, you can imagine just what his sexual recommendations are like (i.e., great if you're a man and you're into dominance, not so much if you're, well, not).

:: I really am starting to get an appreciation for cosplay.

She's makin' it up as she goes along, folks!

Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: In the "Awesome" camp, we have this righteous rant by Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the subject of NASA and our apparently scaled-back ambitions as a society.



Great stuff. I could not possibly agree more.

:: Here is a fantastic set of wedding photos. Kudos to this happy couple! (Scroll down slowly for best effect. Don't stop after the first four or five photos.

::: Not that I had a burning desire to go there in the first place, but I really don't think I'll be touring the islands of Indonesia any time soon. AIEEE!

More next week!

Saturday Centus

This week we get 150 words, but we're not allowed to use pictures. Oh well!

From the liner notes to the remastered If I Die Young, the one album released by Thrash Davis:

He was born Reginald Aloysius Bixby III, so it's not hard to see why he eventually changed his name to Thrash Davis. His quiet youth ended in his mum's kitchen when he found a wooden spoon and a saucepan, giving rise to a noisy passion that would last him all his short life. Davis would later revolutionize the drum set in much the same way that EVH revolutionized the guitar....

The title of Thrash's first-and-only album proved eerily prophetic when his tour blimp crashed into that tire fire, leaving rock lovers worldwide to forever wonder what might have come in future albums, after fiery songs like "Comet Vomit", "I Hate Jude", and the ribald "Rhymes with Trucker"....

Mr Dylan can knock all he wants, but Thrash Davis is drum drum drummin' on Heaven's door.

Don't forget -- All Centusians are invited to Ask Me Anything!. I've started answering questions, but new ones are still welcome!

Page One: A Tale of Two Cities

Page One: A Tale of Two Cities, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I posted about A Tale of Two Cities last week, but I figured it was still a prime candidate for Page One feature.

(BTW, is this feature popular at all amongst the readership? I'm enjoying it, but I'm not sure anyone else is....)

Da doo Ron Ron....

Politics, below the fold.

Something for Thursday

It's been a while since I featured the Chieftains here, so here they are, joined by Mick Jagger, performing "The Long Black Veil".

I apologize in advance....

...for this bit of pictorial humor, but it made me laugh.

(via)

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

This will be of limited interest to non-sports fans, but the question was asked yesterday on WGR and I thought it an interesting one, so: If you're a football player, would you rather be on a Super Bowl winning team or make the Hall of Fame?

Answers, the first.

OK, we're two weeks into the month, so it's time to start dishing up some answers to questions asked as part of Ask Me Anything! Augusts 2011. (By the way, I'm not closing submissions yet! You can still ask stuff!)

Andy asks: So I was up there at the Sabres store in HSBC Arena AND everything WAS 1/2 TO 75% OFF!!! Do you know why?

I honestly don't know, but I assume it's for the usual reason: clearing out the old stuff in favor of the new stuff. I know that's a boring answer, but there's no way they're not going to be selling lots of Sabres stuff there, so my guess is they're clearing out inventory before they start bringing in newer items for next season, which I further assume Sabres management is banking upon for drawing in tons of people again. Anyone who doesn't live here anymore might not realize it, but the excitement that surrounds the Sabres these days -- especially since the new owner took over -- genuinely rivals the excitement that surrounded the Bills during the Super Bowl years.

Or, maybe it's all just a front and Terry Pegula is planning to move the Sabres to Albuquerque!

Sketch Element asks: I visit family in East Aurora about once a year in May or June. Can you recommend some neat things to do or places to go that I may not know about?

Any mention of East Aurora must include Vidler's, of course, but everybody knows about Vidler's. East Aurora also has a nice Mexican restaurant called Arriba Tortilla! that The Wife and I like a lot. (No, it's probably not "authentic" enough for folks who care about "authenticity" in their ethnic-themed food. I, personally, do not.) East Aurora has a terrific farmer's market that runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays, although The Wife thinks that there are more vendors present on Saturdays than Wednesdays.

Striking out a little farther from East Aurora, there are a bunch of nature options. It's about a twenty minute drive to the Beaver Meadow Audubon Center, which includes a lot of walking trails and a nature center; in the other direction is Chestnut Ridge Park, in Orchard Park, which is a big park in the hills that is an incredibly popular summer picnic destination and place for walking, jogging, biking, and even a frisbee-golf course. If one enjoys antiquing, there is the amazing Orchard Park Antique Mall (fifteen minutes from East Aurora).

And these two suggestions don't really help a May or June visit, but East Aurora is quite near any number of locations for New York State's Maple Weekend (in March), and E.A. is a great starting point for what is, in my opinion, one of the finest autumn drives in the country, Route 20A between E.A. and Canandaigua.

As with most other spots in the Southtowns, the one thing that E.A. really lacks that would put it over the top, for me, is a good bike path. There aren't any down here, and it's a damned shame.

And a reader asks via e-mail: Why is August my favorite summer month?

Well, first, there's weather. I dislike weather that is too hot and humid, and in Western NY, while our summers are generally fantastic, we almost always get one big blast of hot-and-humid, and it is almost always in July. Basically, every year I find two weeks of July sufficiently unpleasant that I don't want to leave the apartment unless it is to ride in an air-conditioned vehicle to a place that is also air-conditioned. (One of my big fears of global warming is that the length of Unpleasant Summer in Buffalo is going to get longer and longer as time goes by.)

August, however, usually sees the trend shift a bit. The temperatures start to fall, only slightly at first, but enough to be noticeable, and humidity also starts to take a downward trend. In July, there are days when we have to run our apartment's A/C all day; in August, we start to see days when I only have to run it for several hours in the evening when the heat of the apartment lags behind that of outside.

What else does August have going for it? Starting in late July and through a chunk of August, my favorite summer fruit is in season: peaches, nectarines, blueberries. Sweet corn peaks in August, and for several weeks we will dine on BLTs and sweet corn at least once a week. The Erie County Fair is in August. In sports, baseball's pennant races are starting to heat up and football training camps are in full swing. And usually sometime in August is when I can think about wearing overalls without being all sweaty and stuff.

And really, August just starts five terrific months. August leads right into September, and then to October (my absolute favorite month of the year), and then November (Thanksgiving and the beginnings of Christmas), and finally December (Christmas, snow, the culmination of football). So much of the stuff I look forward to on a yearly basis happens during these five months. Sweet corn and BLTs, the Erie County Fair, Labor Day weekend, school starting, my birthday, the now-annual trip The Wife and I take to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, my now-annual pie in the face from The Wife, Pumpkinville, Halloween, Thanksgiving, snow, shopping with The Wife, decorating The Store and Casa Jaquandor for Christmas, and Christmas itself.

Oh, and Little Quinn was born in August.

August is a great month!

More answers to come...and feel free to ask more questions!

Avada....

And, just like that, Harry Potter is over.

I'd like to think that we're not done with him, actually. JK Rowling is still on the young side, and she should have many years ahead of her. I wouldn't mind at all if, maybe ten years from now, she decides to take up the pen again and let us in on what happens now. Maybe Hogwarts: The Next Generation. I posed this question on Facebook a bit ago, and one person said, "What's wrong with having a story finished?" And I'm thinking, Was this Harry's only story? The kid's only in his 40s when the first story ends!

But anyway, about the movie of Deathly Hallows, or more specifically, part II of the movie of Deathly Hallows. I don't think that a single bad film was made out of the entire lot of the Potter films -- Chamber of Secrets comes closest, and even it is quite entertaining and watchable, even if it doesn't really do a single thing to expand on the cinematic Potterverse from Sorceror's Stone -- and this one is, like all the others, quite fine indeed. No, it's not perfect; none of them are. But they get a lot right in this one – just about everything they need to get right, actually.

It's an odd thing, how the Harry Potter franchise has ended twice. First the books were all out, but the arrival of that final book – even though it finished the story and told us all that happened – didn't really have that feeling of ending, precisely because we knew, at the time, that there were still three movies (which turned out to be four, what with the split of Deathly Hallows in two) to come. And sure enough, the real feeling of an ending, of an era closing, of Harry Potter now joining the ranks of things that are complete is here now, with this final movie.

When I discovered Harry Potter, there were just two books, but Prisoner of Azkaban came out shortly thereafter. This was in 1998 or 1999 or so. The movies didn't start coming out until 2001. At the time I was skeptical that the filmmakers would be able to make all the books with primarily the same cast; I figured at least one of the major characters would have to be recast at some point in the line, but as it happened, the only one that had to be recast was Dumbledore, and that was because Richard Harris passed away after Chamber of Secrets.

I actually don't have a great deal to say about Deathly Hallows part two -- just some random notes, really. I thought it a wonderful close to the series in general.

:: I'm hard-pressed to think of a single weak link in the entire cast of this entire series of movies. I particularly admire Michael Gambon's work as Albus Dumbledore, though. I've read some critiques of his interpretation of Dumbledore, but what he's always managed to capture for me is the sense of distance that surrounds the character. In the books, even though Dumbledore often comes off as a kindly old man, there is always the hint of many things going on underneath his surface and that he has thoughts which are forever off-limits to Harry and friends. There's an air of mystery that always surrounds Dumbledore that Gambon very ably captures. It would have been too easy for Gambon to play Dumbledore as "Gandalf the Second", but to his credit, he never did.

:: Maggie Smith has been in great need of a real moment in these films, ever since the first one. And boy howdy, did she get one.

:: If ever they needed a partial reason to muddle with the script a bit and deviate from the books, the first ten minutes or so was probably it. Part One of Deathly Hallows ended on a perfect break point, but it left a less-than-enthralling starting point for Part Two. The plot gets boiling quickly enough, but there's a bit of talking at the beginning that keeps the pacing down a bit.

:: Our Big Three – Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson – have really grown well over the course of these films. They've developed finely as actors, and the series frankly would not work at all if they hadn't. Grint and Watson shine as they come together finally as a couple, and Radcliffe? He just takes over. He really does. His Harry Potter in this movie (and in the previous half) is finally coming of age as a Wizard, and Radcliffe nails that portrayal, right down to his sad but serene acceptance that he must go to what he thinks is his own death.

:: I love Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. I really do. Until now he has played Voldemort in a quietly menacing way, but then, when his victory seems utterly at hand, he begins to mug and preen and gloat and allow his overconfidence to show. It's really quite superb, and I think Voldemort will be remembered well in the annals of movie villains.

:: And then there's Alan Rickman, who finally gets his payoff as Severus Snape. He's just a great, great actor. He truly is. His resignation when he knows that death is less than a minute away, and his willingness to at last show emotions to Harry Potter that he has kept tightly in control for all these years, is terribly heartbreaking. "Take them," he says, referring to his own tears; and, of course, his last reminder to Harry that he has his mother's eyes. The only thing missing – and it's more JK Rowling's problem than anyone's with the film – is insight into just how Snape was able to keep hold of himself during all the years he had to do awful things on little more assurance than Dumbledore's faith in him.

:: OK, the very last battle between Harry and Voldemort? I can't quite make up my mind about it. It's filmed wonderfully, but it's done very differently in the book, where Harry and Voldemort circle each other, talking, before the final bit of magic comes. Harry's explanation as to why the Elder Wand won't kill him no matter who commands it to? In the book, Harry says that to Voldemort before the end, and it creates terrific suspense: Is Harry right, or is he wrong? In the movie, though, we don't learn this until afterwards, and to me it felt like the wrong time to do it. Even if David Yates was going to save the explanation for afterwards, there still should have been a line for Harry, something like "The Elder Wand will never kill me, Tom Riddle. And you're too blind and twisted to figure out why."

I also loved how, in the book, that final confrontation comes as everyone – the entire cast that isn't dead by that point – is gathered round to watch. Everyone sees what happens, everyone hears it. In the movie, Harry and Voldemort have their final moment alone, unwitnessed by everyone (except Ron and Hermione). But then, I loved Harry's "Let's finish this as we started – together!" before he grabs Voldemort and jumps off the tower. And I loved how Voldemort's demise was depicted – no sudden flash of death, but his screaming as his body suddenly and slowly fragmented into ash that fluttered away in the breeze. It was a very striking moment. The problem was that there wasn't enough build-up to it, so when Voldemort started to disintegrate, I was thinking, "Wait, that's it? Harry beat him already?" At the very least, those last two dueling spells should have been shouted out, as they were in the book, with Voldemort's Avada kedavra meeting Harry's Expelliarmus head-on.

So on one hand, it bugged me that Harry never explained to Voldemort just why the Elder Wand wouldn't work for him. But on the other, how great is it that Hermione asked Harry why the Elder Wand didnt' work for Voldemort? The most important bit of magical knowledge in the entire series comes down to something Harry knew and figured out, something that no one else did. He's come along way from having to ask Hermione to explain things. Harry won't be looking to Hermione to explain the pronunciation of "Leviosa" anymore, that's for sure.

:: But then, I am glad that Yates and company didn't include the Hogwarts ghost who flew around right after the battle in the book, chanting "Voldy's gone moldy, so let's have some fun!" That may have worked in the book, but it would have been an awful thing in the movie.

:: The film's overall look is fantastic, and I love how in the epilogue, the washed-out colors are gone and we're back to the bright palette of the first film. It's a key visual way in which the film shows us that the rightful order has been restored. I still think that a nice touch would have been to have Dudley Dursley show up on Platform 9.75, with his own muggle-born wizard kid in tow, but that's Rowling's fault, not the filmmakers. Oh well.

So...that's it for Harry Potter, I suppose. I do find it kind of saddening, but that's the great thing about stories, isn't it? They're always writing more. And hey! So am I.

(But really, Ms. Rowling? You need to start writing something, if you hadn't already.)

Head on Desk

Spoilers for Hell's Kitchen and Master Chef, under Inviso-text -- highlight to read.

Good lord, both of these shows irritated the hell out of me tonight. If anyone has ever questioned the clear fact that for all the onscreen stuff involving Gordon Ramsay and the other two guys on Master Chef are deciding who stays and who leaves, it's really the producers who are calling the shots, there can be no doubt now. Each show had a person or two who really deserved to leave on the basis of what they did in the episode, and in both cases, those people were spared.

On HK, either Elise or Carrie should have been booted. It was painfully obvious, from the way both cooked terribly, and from the way that as soon as both of them were booted out of dinner service, the Red Team found its groove and completed dinner service with few hitches. And on Master Chef, it was clear that Christian attempted to weasel out of responsibility for his and Suzy's loss in the challenge, and that his lemon meringue pie was not as good as Suzy's. But on HK, both Elise and Carrie were spared and Ramsay pulled a surprise eviction of Jamie (who had been part of the red team's recovery after the Drama Queens were sent upstairs), and on Master Chef, Suzy was given the boot.

I really can't see any rationale for this other than the producers of each show basically telling Gordon Ramsay and company that he had to keep around the people who produced the most conflict, which in reality teevee terms translates to "the best teevee". This is the problem with these shows where eliminations are supposedly decided by the show's star/host: it's clear that the producers have input.

I remember the second or third season of The Apprentice, when in a "shocking" boardroom sequence, Donald Trump fired four people at once. This was billed as a stunning development, but if one considered that the show's numbers of both contestants and episodes were known well in advance, it became clear that that season was specifically set up so that Trump would have to do a mass firing at some point or other. It's the same thing here. There's no doubt in my mind that the producers told Ramsay, "No way are you getting rid of Elise or Carrie just yet." And that sucks, because watching the two of them is just annoying now.

And what exactly makes a 'sexy' dessert, anyway? OK, end of rant!

Sentential Links #256

OOPS! I had this post done yesterday and saved it as a Draft, instead of actually scheduling it to appear at its normal time. Whoopsies. Anyway, cruisin' right along!

:: The last leg of the half marathon was the hardest. People gather down the home stretch to cheer you to the finish line. They wouldn't shut up no matter how much I yelled at them. I couldn't concentrate and forgot what I was doing. Someone brought their dog with them and I remember thinking how easily I could beat it up. (Greg Bauch is a radio producer in Buffalo, with WGR, the local sports-talk station. He's also an extremely funny guy -- he's the voice in WGR's "Greg Buck" segments, such as this hilarious example.)

:: Ever have a bad editor?

It is the Tenth Level of Hell. (Former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Jim Shooter has a blog! It's interesting reading, especially since his stewardship of Marvel was when I was at my height as a comics fan and reader.)

:: I too am an analog man. While I bought CDs, eventually, my first love is the LP. (I keep thinking about these kinds of things. I tend to get sad whenever something new supplants something I used to use and like a lot, but I tend to adapt fairly well. But I suppose everybody has their point, and I'm not sure I'll ever give up paper books, even though I know that I'll have to get an e-reader at some point. Hmmmm.)

:: I suppose every writer eventually gets to this place. The place where the words pour onto the keyboard relatively effortlessly (relative to the previous place where writing is, as RW so aptly put it, "like shoveling sludge"). The hands become robotic and are connected to the brain through a direct, straight-lined channel. You hear, view, smell, taste, and feel life around you through the writing. Everything and everyone you encounter is material that can be used somewhere. It gets weird. Multi-dimensional. Surreal. (In my experience, this state is the reward for writing every day. The mistake many make is in waiting for this state to happen, all on its own. Doesn't work that way.)

:: Yet, as I contemplated the possibility of change, I came to the conclusion that -- just because my story has a fantasy trope or three -- I don't have to fall into any ruts or cliches.

:: Incidentally, what the hell is Goofy anyhow? I never have gotten an answer to that question... (Stand By Me is twenty-five years old. Wow. You know what was really stupid about this movie? It was rated R. I had to have my mom take me to see it. That's insane.)

:: No, really. The man was buried with a power saw.

More next week!

Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: After Harry Potter and friends win the war, how do they win the peace? I prefer my version, where all the Death Eaters surrender and either repent or go off to Azkaban and that's that.

:: Fascinating BuffNews article about how it's sometimes difficult to sell houses where notorious murders took place. The subject matter might sound like a "Well, duh!" kind of thing, but it's an interesting story.

Sorry, but that's about it. I wasn't online as much this week. Stupid productive writing week!

Saturday Centus

This week we get another fifty-word prompt, and we're told that pictures are allowed. So, in keeping with the prompt and my love of whipped-cream related slapstick, here's my entry:

"This is what you do for fun?" he said. "I'm a mess!"

She grinned through the whipped cream. "I told you I'm a blast! Now kiss me, and try not to laugh out loud?"

"Too late," he said, laughing, but he kissed her anyway.

"We should go shower."

"Yeah."

Best first date ever.

What can I say? I'm a silly kind of mood today.

And hey, Centusians -- don't forget to Ask Me Anything!

Acquiring

For the first time in four or five years...I have a new pair of overalls!



They're a white painter's pair by Carhartt. I haven't owned any painter's overalls prior to these, and I haven't owned any Carhartt's, either. So, I managed to strike two birds with one stone, huzzah!

I was actually kind of surprised by these, when they finally came in the mail and I opened the box. The fabric is thinner than I expected, so these will wear quite a bit lighter than my usual blue denim overalls. But I'm happy to have a pair in a color other than blue or black or hickory stripe; these will contrast nicely with dark-colored shirts and sweaters this fall and winter. So, color me excited!

Sorry, Michele

An opinion: I do not think that Newsweek's cover photo of Michele Bachmann 'went too far' or whatever we want to call it. I've seen plenty of photos of Bachmann, and she just plain flat-out has crazy eyes, which I suspect is because she's...well, she's dumb and crazy. I'm sorry to say it, but that's the only way I can interpret the fact that most of the things she says are dumb, crazy, or dumb and crazy. Plus the fact that her eyes really do look like that. Lord knows, we all don't photograph well all the time -- some of us (yours truly among them, I think) don't photograph well even a majority of the time -- but I've never once seen a photo of Michele Bachmann that doesn't make me think, "Wow, I really hope the docs from the loony bin find her soon."

I mean, the woman was caught hiding behind a bush once, to spy on an opposing rally. She's crazy. And she has the eyes to prove it.

Page One: 2001 - A Space Odyssey

Page One: 2001 - A Space Odyssey, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I mentioned this book in yesterday's NPR 100 SF Books list, so it seemed right to use it today for Page One. I actually think I prefer the book to the movie, as amazing as the movie is.

Hey!

Well???

Top 100 SF Books!

NPR has come up with a list of The Top 100 F&SF Books, although it's not a list of 100 books per se, as it includes a number of entire series. But as usual...I'll bold the ones I've read and italicize the ones I'd like to read at some point. And I'll add occasional comment.

Here's the list:

(Oh wait, complaint the first: there is no GGK on this list. WTF!!!)

(And yes, I voted.)

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Probably my single favorite book of all time. I re-read it this past spring.)

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (Own it; haven't read it yet. Maybe one of the next few books.)

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (I started this once and didn't get into it, decided to save it for another time. Since then, I've discovered that OSC is a lout to the degree that I will not read him again, ever. I dumped my copy of Ender.)

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert (Just the first one, and recently, too.)

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin (All except A Dance with Dragons, which I own but will need to re-read the entire series before tackling this one. I'm not as enthusiastic about this series as many -- the bloat of the books is off-putting.)

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (Probably should re-read sometime. Read them in college and liked them a lot.)

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman (Wonderful book, as I recall. Maybe a candidate for re-read.)

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (Fantastic book, and quite different from the movie...which is still fairly faithful in its adaptation. You have to read the book to see what I mean.)

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan (Just the first one. Gave up a hundred pages into the second. Not my cuppa joe.)

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson (Cheating here...I'm counting having started this book a dozen times as 'reading' it. I really tried to get into cyberpunk, I really wanted to like cyberpunk...and yet, ultimately, I had to admit to myself that I just didn't care for cyberpunk.)

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore (So frakking brilliant. Just astonishingly good.)

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov (I haven't read Asimov in a long time.)

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein (Just because. I generally find Heinlein kinda weird.)

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss (Great stuff. Love this series.)

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick (All titles I need to read.)

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood (Wait, isn't this the one that Atwood swore up and down was NOT science fiction, because she doesn't want to be one of those writers?)

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King (Started it, bounced off. Maybe another time.)

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke (This is one of the first 'pure' science fiction books I read, if not THE first one that wasn't a Star Wars or Star Trek tie-in book. A truly great book -- I love Clarke at the top of his powers. 2010 was also very good. 2063 was decent. 3001? That one I could have done without.)

25. The Stand, by Stephen King (This is one of the all-time horror classics, as far as I'm concerned. I'm due to re-read it.)

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (Really good. Liked it a lot. I haven't read Stephenson at all since Cryptonomicon, though.)

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (A classic.)

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman (I really need to read this. I own the first three of the TPBs, for Crom's sake.)

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams (I read half of it. Don't tell my mother.)

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey (Tried her in junior high, and never again. McCaffrey just didn't do it for me, and I have little interest in trying again.)

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein (Bounced off this one some years ago. I have a feeling that Heinlein and I will never be 'besties'.)

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller (Own a copy, right here. I can even touch my copy from my desk. Should read it.)

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells (Oh yeah, memo to self: write blog entry about the movie Time After Time.)

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne (I read this in grade school, so I think I understood damned little of it.)

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny (Just the first one.)

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings (Wow, really? Is this actually good? I always figured it was your standard 1980s-era Tolkien clone fantasy series.)

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley (Lots of folks have told me how amazing this is, but I didn't care for it. I'm open-minded about a lot of stuff, but this book seemed so gleefully hostile toward Christianity that it turned me off.)

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson (I might have read this...but Sanderson's recent nauseating comments about gay marriage have plunked him in the "Authors I'm almost certainly never going to read" list. Maybe I'm denying myself some good stuff, but way I see it, I'm never going to be able to read all the books I want to read anyway, so what's the occasion political filter going to hurt?)

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven (Didn't like it as much as I wanted to.)

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Well, I've dipped into it a lot.)

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White (Wonderfully wonderful.)

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan (Well, the first fifty pages or so. I was not terribly impressed with Sagan's voice as a fiction writer.)

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons (Really need to read this one.)

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson (I loved this book for all the wild, wooly fun of it. I'm sure I didn't understand a lot of it.)

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman (Fine, fine book.)

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson (The first two trilogies. I haven't gone near the current series yet, though. I'd like to.)

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold (The first three books only. I absolutely plan to read the rest!)

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke (Wonderful prose, fascinating story, but it's also something of a slog in parts.)

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks (This, the most blatantly blatant of all Tolkien rip-offs, makes this list. Nothing by Guy Gavriel Kay does. Ugh.)

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard (Some of the stories, nowhere near all of them.)

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson (OK, I'm sorry, but this has been out less than a year. Give me a break, even if it is really good.)

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi (Good book...but one of the best F&SF books of all time? I'm really not sure of that.)

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke (I loved this book. Never read the sequels, though.)

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey (The first two, and I'll tackle the third one this winter. I love this series. It's amazing.)

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin (I read this in junior high. I didn't understand it at all.)

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson (Just the first one. What a commitment, this series is.)

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks (Several of them, anyway...and I need to blog about the most recent one that I read, come to that. Very good, cerebral space opera.)

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart (I'm definitely re-reading this series -- a trilogy with a fourth novel added later on -- this winter. It's a gorgeous telling of the Arthur saga that strikes the best balance, I've found, between the "magical" versions of the tale and the "post-Roman Britain" versions of it.)

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn (Yes, they're media tie-ins. But they're so good they really deserve to be seen as terrific space opera books on their own.)

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan (Wait, what?)

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge (I'll be re-reading this sometime soon...and there's a sequel coming out this fall, too.)

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson (Wow, I'm due to re-read this one, too! This trilogy made a powerful impression on me fifteen years ago. I wonder how it holds up.)

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony (Oh, come now. I'm not as down on Anthony as many F&SF fans are, but inclusion on this list? Really?!)

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

So there you have it. Always fun to rant about book lists!

Something for Thursday

For some reason, versions of this with good sound to go along with good performances have been hard to find on YouTube, but I've finally tracked one down. The choir at college always ended their concerts with this (before doing a standard encore or two), and it's one of a few pieces of music that transports me back to those years in my heart each and every time I hear it. Here is Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal.

Hell's Masterchefs

Spoilerific musings on Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef!

:: Elise is freakishly annoying. She's not a bad cook, but she's lazy in the challenge loser punishments and just a generic loudmouth. And I frankly don't understand why people don't learn that taking the "I'm not here to make friends!" approach to a reality teevee competition never works.

:: If a favorite is emerging -- and it's not a strong favorite -- it's probably Will, from the Men's (Blue) team. He doesn't get a whole lot of screen time during services, which is a good thing, because screen time during services tends to go to the people who blunder. Will's main screen time comes during challenges, when he does well. I don't think he's had a dish criticized yet, and he did a 4-for-4 performance in the "cook four cuts of beef to specific doneness" challenge.

:: They made a big deal out of the 'balcony tables' overlooking the kitchen, but nothing's happened up there that I know of. Odd.

On MasterChef:

:: I like Jennifer a lot. She definitely has cooking skill, and...well, she's pretty. I'm shallow.

:: I wonder if the producers worked on Joe Bastianich's personal skills or something, but he is not nearly as obnoxiously arrogant as he was last season. He's still an occasional hard-ass, but he actually looks like he's enjoying doing the show this time out. There's a lot less of the "I shall now descend from Mt. Olympus to mingle with you groveling monkeys" air about him this season.

:: But then, it could just be that Bastianich is simply the second most insufferable prick in this year's edition of MasterChef. This guy Christian is just a complete douche. He's also a very good cook, obviously, but really -- douche. He's so convinced that he is carrying around giant bags filled with Awesome that it's been noticed by the chef judges, who are starting to take shots at him for it. Which he is ignoring. He reminds me of the awful Benjamin from two seasons back on Hell's Kitchen, a bullying toad who doubled down on his own screw-ups when one of the world's greatest chefs told him he was full of it.

:: I'd love to see a Mystery Box Challenge where contestants are not given a bunch of "the most amazing" ingredients, but rather, a whole bunch of crap. I'd like to see a challenge where they're told to make something decent out of beef kidneys, regular old American white bread, Velveeta, and stuff like that. Now there would be a serious Challenge!

That's about it. More in a few weeks, probably.

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Laundry. Do you have a set "laundry day", or do you take the "Huh, laundry pile's gettin' pretty big and/or I'm out of work pants" approach to deciding it's time to run a few loads through the washer?

You disappoint me, Mr. Quint.

I've been enjoying the "Behind the Scenes Pic of the Day" feature over at AICN for quite a while now, even if it's curated by 'Quint', who is my least favorite of the regular AICN commentators. I think that Quint tends to be full of crap and tends to get on top of his hobbyhorses and ride them for broke. A good example of the former? In today's Behind the Scenes pic, which comes from Dr. No, Quint reveals what he thinks to be the three best Bond movies: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Thunderball.

One of those titles I can see. The other two? No way in hell.

Cool Behind the Scenes pic, though.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done...."

I never liked Charles Dickens.

My first encounter with Dickens was in seventh grade, when we read A Christmas Carol. This was OK, as those things went. The story is very famous and everybody knows it and it's not a long story, so reading it wasn't terribly difficult. I was less than thrilled, however, two years later when another English teacher handed out copies of David Copperfield, which I hated. Hated hated hated it. I just couldn't see the point of the book, I thought the characters were all a bunch of melodramatic dunderheads, and as soon as the teacher told us how Dickens serialized his novels, I decided that David Copperfield and its ilk were basically soap operas for the Victorian age. And dead certain was I in these convictions, even though my own mother, when I opined thusly, said: "When it comes to literature, you're pretty wet behind the ears."

What can I say? If I had a nickel for every stupid thing I've ever believed, to paraphrase Stephen King, I could buy myself a pretty nice steak dinner. I've suspected for years that I was full of crap when it came to Dickens, but I never tried to rectify that situation by, you know, reading one of his books until just a few months ago, when I decided to give A Tale of Two Cities a go.

Now, the problem here was that I already knew how the book ended. I didn't know all of the plot particulars, by any means, but I knew – from watching a teevee movie version of the book years ago – that the plot basically hinges on these two guys, one an Englishman and one a Frenchman, who happen to look nearly identical to one another, and I knew that the Englishman decides to save the Frenchman from the guillotine by putting himself in the other guy's place and going to the guillotine for him. Basically I was watching these events unfold and see how the story got from Point A to Point B.

When I decided to read A Tale of Two Cities, I thought it might be fun to replicate the original reading experience in a way. As the book was serialized, the chapters are all fairly brief, so what I planned to do was read two chapters a week: one on Sunday, and one on Wednesday. I think the actual publication frequency in Dickens's day was a bit less frequent than that, but I figured that in this way I would be able to experience the book in something approaching the way the original readers did: in small pieces, with the story being doled out slowly, over time, in a way that they couldn't do anything about.

This lasted until Chapter six or seven, somewhere in there. From that point, I was hooked and read the thing every day. I couldn't stop, and I certainly couldn't wait a few days to read more of it. I soon had to parcel it out a bit, because I didn't want to finish it too quickly. I didn't want the book to end.

All the elements were there: the intrigue in revolution-era France, with the commoners rising up against the aristocracy and sometimes proving to be little better than their previous superiors; the long queues of condemned prisoners being brought to the guillotine; a love triangle that unfolds in front of this increasingly tense and violent backdrop; hiss-worthy villains whose comeuppance cannot come soon enough; heroic acts of self-sacrifice and redemption. I couldn't be happier that I decided to give A Tale of Two Cities a try, because it propelled me along in a way that few books do. As the book's concluding chapters neared, I found myself wishing that I actually didn't know how it ended, and that I could come to Sidney Carton's final moments unsullied by foreknowledge. I wondered what it must have been like, having this amazing story dolled out, one short chapter at a time, and I can only imagine the gasps of the readers – and more than a few tears – as they realized just what was involved in Sidney Carton's final plan for Darnay and his final honoring of his pledge to Lucy to make any sacrifice that she might be happy.

The book's opening sentence – "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." -- is justly famous, as is the book's closing sentence (alluded to in the title of this post). The title is evocative, and it seems to me that it's not just referring to Paris and London, but to the two Parises, the Paris of the wealthy aristocrat who can think to make atonement for accidentally running over and killing a commoner's child by throwing his father a single coin, and the Paris of the poor, the Paris of those very commoners, where things like this can happen:

A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.

All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud- embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.

What an astonishing, amazing, heartbreak of a book. A Tale of Two Cities is one of those books that makes me temporarily despair as a reader ("What can I possibly read next to rival that?") and as a writer ("That book is on a plane of existence that I'll never reach."). It also makes me rejoice as a reader and a writer, on much the same grounds.

I wonder if my ninth grade English teacher is still around somewhere. I'd like to tell her that I'm ready to give David Copperfield a better shot.

Notes on the PopStuff

Some thoughts on a bit of pop culture stuff of late:

:: Here is actor Henry Cavill as Superman in the new movie about Superman, titled...Man of Steel.

In all honesty, I'm just not very thrilled with this. He looks OK, himself, although I wonder why the "Superman Curl" is missing from the middle of his forehead. The costume, however, bugs me. Proportionally it looks fine, but I hate that texture. I wonder why Hollywood decided that superhero costumes need to not look like cloth anymore; this looks like it was sewn from the material they use to make basketballs. I'm also not thrilled with the washed-out colors. I hope the film doesn't look like this.

:: A sequel to Cosmos is on the way, apparently. I'm kind of glad to hear this, but any such project will be missing one key element: the poetical prose of Carl Sagan. The new show will be "hosted" by PBS science show mainstay Neil deGrasse Tyson. I hope this is done well, and doesn't pander at all.

Of course, there has already been a sequel to Cosmos, at least in print: Sagan's own book Pale Blue Dot. (I excerpted this book once, here.)

:: Oh my God, they've killed Sean Bean!



You bastards!

[Insert joke about cutting the cheese here]

IBM Gouda Cutter At the Cheese Boutique, originally uploaded by BuffaloPundit.

Alan Bedenko posted this photo in his Flickr stream, and I had to post it here. Obviously it's a big cheese sitting inside some kind of cutting tool, which I at first wondered if it was some kind of antique miter saw...but Alan points out that it's actually a tool once manufactured for the purpose of cutting Gouda cheese. And it was made by IBM, believe it or not! If you click through to the big version, you can see "International Business Machines" engraved on that nameplate.

Who knew that IBM was once making food service tools? And I wonder what Apple's cheese-cutting implements looked like?

Wow, what was in the coffee today?!

Today at work, when I went to my break, I sat down with a legal pad to do a bit of outlining. Now, I've never been one to do a lot of outlining when I write. Mainly, I prefer to keep a few rough ideas in my head and then charge toward an ending, or I prefer to figure out my characters and then get them into a situation and see what they do. For the Space Opera project, though, I've found the going a bit rougher, to the point where a few months ago I realized I'd made the proverbial Wrong Turn in Albuquerque and ended up setting aside three whole finished chapters.

At that point, I decided to try an outline. Not a super-strict one, not a scene-by-scene and blow-by-blow accounting of everything that would happen, and not for the rest of the book -- just some brainstorming on the next two or three chapters from that point. It worked wonders, and those chapters have flowed pretty well. But now I'm where my last bit of outlining left off, so I sat down to repeat the process.

And suddenly...about eighty percent of the remaining plot of the book suddenly sprang into my head. I figured it all out, along with several plot twists that should lend excitement, and some character motivations that I'd been struggling with (one character in particular has to do something at some point -- this person just has to do this thing -- but I couldn't figure out why they had to do it, until now).

It's a heady moment, when you finally see the story in front of you. I haven't had that feeling in a long time. Back to the Planet of Mystery!

(No, it's not called the "Planet of Mystery" in the book. Nor is the book called "Planet of Mystery". Even though, right now, I kinda wish both of those things were true.)

Sentential Links #255

Two hundred fifty-five! I've always liked the number 255. It goes back to when I used to noodle around with my old Commodore VIC-20, writing little programs in BASIC. The number 255 came up a lot back then, because values for the POKE statement had to be between O and 255. Anyway:

:: I’ve long been confused by the saying that people come into one’s life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. To me, it actually makes more sense to say that every single person comes into one’s life for a reason, yet some of those people hang around for a season and others for a lifetime. (Maybe I'm just cynical, but the older I get, the less I believe that anything happens for "a reason". But I do wish it was the other way around.)

:: For now I’ll just give you a catch phrase: Shakespeare is not Dr. Phil. Reading Shakespeare is not an occasion for extracting neat, packaged “lessons” about life, love, or lawyering. (The fact that he is so quotable obscures this.) If Shakespeare had meant to write an advice manual, he would have written an advice manual. He was demonstrably well acquainted with the two main models for such a manual widely available in Renaissance Europe, Machiavelli and Montaigne. (Couldn't agree more. I'd almost say the same for the Bible...someone tells me that we should all live according to the Bible, there's never a convincing answer to my follow-up question, "Which part?" New blog to me, btw.)

:: Lately, when I read other blogs, I find myself getting more and more annoyed with "guest bloggers." I'm not reading Blogger X to get the thoughts of someone else, I want Blogger X. (I agree. I rarely read a blog when it's given over to guest-bloggers, and I myself have never once deployed a guest blogger here.)

:: So, always remember, when the shit is going down, Your Own Mask First.

:: If I'm going to get my sluttysparkle outfits out and make up my face and drink blue and purple drinks and dance with my friends, I do not want to do it to music that is sad as shit or that wants to hurt me (or make me hurt myself). (I'm not one for dancing, really, but I do agree with this. I much prefer pop music that sounds happy. Which is why...(oh lord)...I kinda dig some of Lady Gaga's songs. There, I said it.)

:: It's hard to envision a more thorough case of a lack of ideas, to come up with a more damning case of creative bankruptcy. Paramount has rebooted the franchise because of all that pesky continuity...and then all they can come up with is to "re-imagine" retell the old stories?? (I commented over on Snell's post about my lack of enthusiasm for the Star Trek reboot, for much the same reason. We're not going to get new stories; we're going to get the superhero-ization of Trek, where every time a new film is announced, everyone starts clamoring to know "who the villain is".)

:: It's never too late to write what you might have been writing. (This is utterly, absolutely true. As I noted in her comments, my space opera work-in-progress is a recycled story idea from back when I was happily writing Star Wars fanfic. It's got a whole new cast now, but the story is still there. Speaking of which, I've got to do some work on that story now!)

More next week!

News, snooze....

I know, two posts about the Buffalo News in one day...but seriously, BuffNews, what in the heck is this? Political reporter/columnist Bob McCarthy spends his last two grafs venting about a local blogger.

A local blogger named Chris Smith has been downright giddy in recent days criticizing The Buffalo News for reporting that SEIU Local 1199 is paying employee Jennifer Hibit to manage Poloncarz’s campaign for county executive. Around here, something unusual and of interest to voters makes a good story.

But not over at WNY Media Network, where Smith toils. More important to the network, apparently, is the $3,750 Poloncarz paid to WNY Media Network for website design and video editing, according to state campaign finance records. In fact, the same records show WNY Media Network has handled Poloncarz’s video campaign for years.

Some local bloggers receive money from politicians. The Politics Column does not — and that says it all.

Well, that's fascinating stuff, right there. You've got all the hallmarks of a newspaper reporter who still -- in 2011, ferchrissakes -- thinks that bloggers are just dirty little folk who pound out missives without fear of retribution, or something. If he'd had more column space, I'm sure McCarthy would have thrown something in there about Chris's mom's basement, his Cheeto-stained fingers, and his pasty-white complexion. (Full disclosure: I've been reading Christopher Smith for years. But I'm not affiliated with WNYMedia.net, I don't get paid by anybody to blog, I have never accepted money from a candidate, et cetera, yada yada yada, sotto voce, e pluribus unum.)

What's interesting here is that McCarthy completely ignores any of the substance of whatever it was that Chris Smith wrote and went straight for the character attack. Now, I don't know what the substance of whatever it was that Chris Smith wrote might be, because...well, I just don't care. What does interest me is a newspaper columnist ignoring criticism entirely and instead directly accusing Chris of receiving money from a local politician. Nothing like a little ad hominem in your Sunday reading, huh? This is not just weak tea, it's lazy tea. Weak tea is what you get when you don't steep the tea long enough. Bob McCarthy didn't even take the tea bag out of the foil package before throwing it into water he didn't bother to boil. That's how lazy this is.

One might wonder just how crap like this made it past the editors and into print, but then you realize that the Editor at the News is only just now getting up off her fainting couch after learning that people like the paper for the coupons. That shocking revelation must have her seriously off her game.

(Oh, and as to the "They only love us for the coupons!" thing? Well, I wonder why it is that Buffalo News readers might value the paper highly for its large amount of coupons and ad circulars. I wonder just why that might be....

Notice no parallel headline trumpeting "Over 200,000 words of Pure Journalism Goodness!)

Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: Cracked.com's 5 Biggest Promotional Disasters lists five promotional offers that companies ran that ended up backfiring badly. They left out my favorite, which happened to Pizza Hut back when I was working for them. In 1997,the PH's in the Baltimore area (which I assume to have been franchised) ran a promotion connected with the Baltimore Ravens, in which for every sack the Ravens recorded, they'd knock $1.00 off the price of a large pizza. (This was a few years before the Ravens' defense developed into one of the best defensive units ever.) Well, along came a game against the Philadelphia Eagles, against whom the Ravens racked up nine sacks. Honoring the deal meant that you could get a large pizza from Pizza Hut for under two bucks. They made more than 15000 large pizzas (not sure over how many locations) in a four-hour period, and I assume that many of those were sold for either pennies over cost or at an outright loss. Whoops!

:: I never once thought about how slugs mate in all my life, until yesterday, when PZ Myers posted this video. It's one of the most fascinatingly wonderful things I've ever seen.



:: Astronaut Suicides. Your mileage may vary, but I found this to be a near-perfect blend of black humor and goofball absurdity.

More next week!

Saturday Centus (Sunday edition)

Day late, but I have a good excuse! Really! This week we have a shortened word count -- only fifty words, plus our prompt -- but how hard can that be, really? Time for some good old science (micro)fiction!

James entered the generation ship's flight-deck after being awoken first from two hundred years of cryo-sleep. All systems were nominal, and soon he'd awaken his fellow five hundred colonists. First, though, he wanted to see their new star. He opened the viewport to white light, and then he softly sang.

"You are my sunshine...."

(A meta-writing note: I know that a lot of Centus participants are not SF fans, so when I do SF, I try not to engage in much use of some jargon that would be familiar to regular SF readers. In order to get the word count down, though, I had to use just such a term in my entry this week. So, for those wondering what a "generation ship" is, here you go!)

(Oh, and by the way, hey, Centus participants! I'm doing my twice-yearly Ask Me Anything! game, in which I solicit people to pose questions to me on the blog, which I then answer later in the month. I do this in February and August. If anyone wants to ask a question, just leave it in comments on this post. Questions can be serious or silly -- you can ask me serious questions about writing, or you can ask me things like "Hey, who did write the Book Of Love?" Anything goes, so join in if you wish!)

The Buffalo News has a sad....

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything more unseemly than last week's column in the Buffalo News by editor Margaret Sullivan, in which a focus group of readers revealed that what they liked most about the paper was the selection of coupons. At least, that is, not until this week, when a bunch of other readers chime in to say "We like more than the coupons!".

So today we have the Editor of the Buffalo News writing a column that is mostly cut-and-pasted from a series of e-mails in order to give the paper a sense of self-satisfaction. It's almost embarrassing to read this stuff. Exactly when did modern journalism become so damned masturbatory? There's a history to be written here, I think.

Page One: The Lord of the Rings

Page One: The Lord of the Rings, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I started "Page One" with The Hobbit, so here is page one of The Lord of the Rings. I love how the books open with contrasting chapter titles.

Something for Thursday (Friday edition)

Sorry, folks, but yesterday was one of those "Wow, do I got a lot goin' on!" days. Not a bad day at all, just not a day that left a whole lot of time for posting here.

Anyhow...Ennio Morricone is not one of my favorite film composers, for various reasons (the main one being that I find a lot of his music emotionally distant), but he's been extremely prolific over the years, and thus I do like some of his work. Here is a selection from his score to the 1979 Jaws rip-off flick, Orca.



Happy Friday!

A reminder: Queries needed for Ask Me Anything!

A reminder, folks: Ask Me Anything! August 2011 is underway. Post questions in comments on this post, or via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pony Express. No limit on questions! No subject matter off limits (although answers may not be what you expect)! Every answer of value must GO!!!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

So, how hot is it where you are? And how do you cope? Are you a fan of heat, or is heat something you endure because you like most other aspects of where you live?