I've seen this quiz a few times in the last couple of days. It's straightforward enough:
1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times.
Casablanca.
2. Name a movie that you've seen multiple times in the theater.
When The Wife and I were first dating, we saw Aladdin together four times.
3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a movie.
Hmmmmm. Not really sure, anymore. Harrison Ford used to be gold, but then he stopped picking good movies to do. Liam Neeson, maybe.
4. Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a movie.
Adam Sandler (although he was quite good in Spanglish, where my dislike of the film had nothing to do with him).
5. Name a movie that you can and do quote from.
I'm always good for a Star Wars quote or two. (Big surprise.) And Wayne's World; for years, my standard reply to anyone telling me that they have something for me is, "If it's a severed head I'm gonna be very upset."
6. Name a movie musical that you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs.
Singin' in the Rain.
7. Name a movie that you have been known to sing along with.
My Fair Lady.
8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see.
Princess Mononoke.
9. Name a movie that you own.
Just one? Odd question, so I'll name the first DVD I see. [glances at shelf] I own Ben Hur.
10. Name an actor that launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops.
Morgan Freeman. (Maybe not quite in the same vein as what the question is getting at, but who watched The Electric Company and saw in that guy Red from The Shawshank Redemption?)
11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what?
Dammit, every year The Wife and I agree that we're going to take The Daughter to the drive-in, and we never do. Anyway, my family went to Star Trek III at the drive-in.
12. Ever made out in a movie?
People do that at movies? You can do that at home! Why pay to see a movie and then make out?
Seriously, no, I've never done this. Hand-holding, sure, but that's it. I'm watching the movie.
(When we saw Titanic, the couple in front of us starting necking during the friggin' previews. They barely came up for air the whole movie. God, they were annoying.)
13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven’t yet gotten around to it.
Oh, God, too many to name. Portrait of Jennie, I suppose. A friend tells me this is the most romantic movie ever.
14. Ever walked out of a movie?
No. But I've shut off movies I rented before.
15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater.
Dances with Wolves. First time I saw that, I started when the soldiers shot Two-Socks. I'm not that bad with it anymore, but I still cry when Wind In His Hair climbs the promontory just to shout his farewell to his friend.
16. Popcorn?
I can't see a movie without popcorn. I happily munched my way through a medium popcorn during the first half hour of Schindler's List. (But I did not make out during Schindler's List!)
17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)?
Fairly rarely anymore. I love going to the movies, but the price of doing so has reached the point where it's now a special occasion. Alas.
18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater?
Casino Royale.
19. What’s your favorite/preferred genre of movie?
Anything that entertains me, really. I just like movies.
20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
Snow White. My mother tells me that it scared the living shit out of me, and having seen it in recent years, I can see why. There's some grim stuff in that movie.
21. What movie do you wish you had never seen?
Highlander. Never has the gulf between the expectations I had based on the gushing by my friends and my actual experience of watching the movie been so wide.
22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed?
Not sure what we mean by "weird" here...but I seem to be pretty weird in my steadfast admiration for The Phantom Menace.
23. What is the scariest movie you've seen?
The Silence of the Lambs.
24. What is the funniest movie you've seen?
Ask me this question tomorrow and I'll say Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But you're asking today, so I'm saying A Fish Called Wanda.
Your turn.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Sequential Art
I've been reading some comics and graphic novels lately, and I have more to go over the next few weeks. Here's what I've read:
:: Marvels, by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross.
I liked this quite a bit, but I wanted to like it more. The conceit here is an encapsulation of the first few decades of the Marvel Comics universe, starting with the debut of the Human Torch and ending shortly after the death of Gwen Stacy. The tale is told, however, from the viewpoint of a normal person witnessing all this: news photographer Phil Sheldon, who documents the adventures and battles of all the superheroes who would fill out the Marvel universe.
The best thing about this work is the art. Alex Ross's paintings are often stunning, and it turns out (via a series of appendices) that he includes a lot of visual in-jokes along the way. The images are cinematic in the things they focus upon, how the characters move, and in how the action plays out.
Of course, this wouldn't be a Marvel series without a nice-sized helping of angst, and we get that a lot here. Sheldon's feelings about the sudden oncoming of superpowered beings tracks the general feeling that the Marvel Universe always posited, right down to the hatred and mistrust of mutants, and -- well, frankly, a little of that goes a long way. Our narrator, Phil Sheldon, stews constantly over the public treatment the heroes receive from the public, so much so that about halfway through the four-episode set I was thinking, "OK, we get it. People suck even in the presence of superheroes."
But the panoramic view of a large segment of the Marvel history is often amazing in a way that I, as a comics fan, often failed to notice when buying my titles each month. I enjoy the attempt to portray just what the effect on the populace would be -- not just that heroes exist, but also because superheroes have enemies who like to destroy large whacks of large cities at a time.
As noted, I loved the artwork. (Gwen Stacy, as pictured here, is utterly beautiful.) I just wish the story had invested itself more in the sense of wonder than in the constant Marvel angst.
:: The Death of Superman.
Somehow, when this massive stunt by DC in 1991 (or thereabouts) took place, I never read it. Now I have.
And it sucked.
There's a way to kill a major comic book character, and there's a way not to do it. The right way is to make their death dramatically important. Superman's...wasn't.
The story? While Superman is going about his daily business, a horrible being named Doomsday bursts free from...somewhere, and makes his way to Metropolis, destroying everything he touches on his way. The tale ends with a fistfight between Superman and Doomsday, at the end of which both characters are dead.
Then there's a follow-up storyline called World Without a Superman which fares a bit better; there's some sense of real emotion there that was absent in the whole Death storyline. All the Metropolis stuff is still fairly dull, though; the only really interesting stuff is to be found in the reactions of Jonathan and Martha Kent to the passing of their adoptive son.
I started reading The Return of Superman, but I haven't made a lot of progress and I'm not sure I care enough to finish it.
As much as I love comics, I have to admit that I may be losing my taste for superhero tales.
:: The Yellow Jar and Silk Tapestry (volumes one and two of Songs of our Ancestors), by Patrick Atangan.
Now here is some beautiful work. These two very small books -- I read them both, taking my time on the words and savoring the art in their 96 total pages, in about ninety minutes -- each tell a couple of short folk tales. The Yellow Jar is from the Japanese tradition, while Silk Tapestry's stories come from China. (There's a third book, Tree of Love, which tells tales from India that I haven't read yet.)
I don't really want to say anything about these more than that. It's just that after all the heavy superhero stuff where the Fate of the Earth/Universe/Multiverse hangs in the balance, turning back to lovingly illustrated folk tales is a pleasure not unlike a bit of lemon sorbet after a heavy meal.
:: Marvels, by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross.
I liked this quite a bit, but I wanted to like it more. The conceit here is an encapsulation of the first few decades of the Marvel Comics universe, starting with the debut of the Human Torch and ending shortly after the death of Gwen Stacy. The tale is told, however, from the viewpoint of a normal person witnessing all this: news photographer Phil Sheldon, who documents the adventures and battles of all the superheroes who would fill out the Marvel universe.
The best thing about this work is the art. Alex Ross's paintings are often stunning, and it turns out (via a series of appendices) that he includes a lot of visual in-jokes along the way. The images are cinematic in the things they focus upon, how the characters move, and in how the action plays out.
Of course, this wouldn't be a Marvel series without a nice-sized helping of angst, and we get that a lot here. Sheldon's feelings about the sudden oncoming of superpowered beings tracks the general feeling that the Marvel Universe always posited, right down to the hatred and mistrust of mutants, and -- well, frankly, a little of that goes a long way. Our narrator, Phil Sheldon, stews constantly over the public treatment the heroes receive from the public, so much so that about halfway through the four-episode set I was thinking, "OK, we get it. People suck even in the presence of superheroes."
But the panoramic view of a large segment of the Marvel history is often amazing in a way that I, as a comics fan, often failed to notice when buying my titles each month. I enjoy the attempt to portray just what the effect on the populace would be -- not just that heroes exist, but also because superheroes have enemies who like to destroy large whacks of large cities at a time.
As noted, I loved the artwork. (Gwen Stacy, as pictured here, is utterly beautiful.) I just wish the story had invested itself more in the sense of wonder than in the constant Marvel angst.
:: The Death of Superman.
Somehow, when this massive stunt by DC in 1991 (or thereabouts) took place, I never read it. Now I have.
And it sucked.
There's a way to kill a major comic book character, and there's a way not to do it. The right way is to make their death dramatically important. Superman's...wasn't.
The story? While Superman is going about his daily business, a horrible being named Doomsday bursts free from...somewhere, and makes his way to Metropolis, destroying everything he touches on his way. The tale ends with a fistfight between Superman and Doomsday, at the end of which both characters are dead.
Then there's a follow-up storyline called World Without a Superman which fares a bit better; there's some sense of real emotion there that was absent in the whole Death storyline. All the Metropolis stuff is still fairly dull, though; the only really interesting stuff is to be found in the reactions of Jonathan and Martha Kent to the passing of their adoptive son.
I started reading The Return of Superman, but I haven't made a lot of progress and I'm not sure I care enough to finish it.
As much as I love comics, I have to admit that I may be losing my taste for superhero tales.
:: The Yellow Jar and Silk Tapestry (volumes one and two of Songs of our Ancestors), by Patrick Atangan.
Now here is some beautiful work. These two very small books -- I read them both, taking my time on the words and savoring the art in their 96 total pages, in about ninety minutes -- each tell a couple of short folk tales. The Yellow Jar is from the Japanese tradition, while Silk Tapestry's stories come from China. (There's a third book, Tree of Love, which tells tales from India that I haven't read yet.)
I don't really want to say anything about these more than that. It's just that after all the heavy superhero stuff where the Fate of the Earth/Universe/Multiverse hangs in the balance, turning back to lovingly illustrated folk tales is a pleasure not unlike a bit of lemon sorbet after a heavy meal.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Yeah, I'll have a Screaming Viking!
Back when I was soliciting space opera reading suggestions*, a reader e-mailed me (or maybe he commented, I can't recall) about a book called Space Viking by H. Beam Piper. I saw a few copies on eBay, but never acquired one.
Now, I see that I won't have to. Viva Project Gutenberg!
OK, all you geniuses, what's a good gizmo on which to read e-books?
(via)
* Not that I've stopped soliciting space opera reading suggestions, folks. Feel free to keep those coming!
Now, I see that I won't have to. Viva Project Gutenberg!
OK, all you geniuses, what's a good gizmo on which to read e-books?
(via)
* Not that I've stopped soliciting space opera reading suggestions, folks. Feel free to keep those coming!
"I'll be right here"
Over at AICN they've started running a series of articles that are apparently a tribute to 1982, which Harry Knowles bills as the "best genre year ever". Now, I'm not sure about that, but it's a personal thing -- Knowles was twelve, which as we all know actually is the true Golden Age of science fiction. Anyhow, the first article he runs is about that year's megablockbuster film ET: the Extra-Terrestrial.
Here's something about E.T., and only a few, few other movies... it gets childhood intrinsically, so completely RIGHT. High praise indeed for Melissa Mathison's script, which has the cadence and the smart-assery that is inherent in every kid. Childhood is messy and joyful, dangerous and crude. Everything is truly an adventure, and nothing is certain. The kids cuss, like I certainly did. They ride their bikes recklessly, just one skid or sharp turn away from slamming into the pavement and serious injury. There is a sense of danger every day. And when you're a kid, you LOVE it. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, like waking up a summer's day and having no idea what the day will bring. Spielberg nailed that.
Yeah, I still blubber like a baby at that damn movie. Sometimes I blubber just thinking about it. The moment that always gets me started is when ET goes into defib, and they get out the paddles to try to shock his heart back into beating. The doctor puts the paddles on ET's chest, yells "Clear", hits the button; ET's body convulses as the voltage pours through him; and about twenty feet away, little Gertie (Drew Barrymore) recoils with fear, and then starts to cry.
Uh, I'm gonna go check something out in the corner...don't mind me....
Sentential Links #89
Let's get right to it, shall we? (More political ones than usual.)
:: Outside of Berkeley, you'd have to swing several hundred dead cats before you'd be likely to come across an actual socialist.
:: Obviously, I'd forgotten the Conservative Rule of Decency which is that calling, explicitly or implicitly, for one's political rivals to be killed and/or imprisoned is fine, but using naughty language is not. Coulter, by unleashing the other F-Bomb, joined me in forgetting this rule and wound up being punished.
:: Terry Nitpicker notes (in a post that deserves to be read and re-read and handed down through the generations as a priceless family heirloom) that George W. Bush has now dressed up as 2/3rds of the Village People, putting him only a Red Indian or, um, some sorta horse show traffic cop away from tying James K. Polk’s 1847 record of five Village People impersonated while in office.
:: "What is this 'incivility'?" you may be asking. 'Incivility' is using a naughty word. Now, you might think that you could simply excise the naughty word and be done with it, but no, that’s not how civility works. (Yes, two to the same blog. I couldn't decide which to use.)
:: All your fictional universes are belong to Holmes. He's in ur c0ntinuity, c00pting your can0n. Give in. Resistance is futile.
:: And now the literary journal Canadian literary chapbook Tickled by Thunder has published my short story "TKO." (Congrats!)
:: Some day, I hope to visit Apache Junction, particularly the new baseball, basketball and other sports and recreation park that was named for my brother and where his ashes were spread, and maybe I'll get to meet one of the Brian Hosey Youth Award/Scholarship winners and let them know a little bit about the man the award is named after, my big brother, Brian. (A beautifully written tribute by Kevin.)
:: Paul was the third child and the last child. My father had made a great fuss about only having two children and the proper use of condoms, but when Paul came along three years or so after Mark (In those days one was supposed to leave a two-year gap between children), it was my mother who went back into the hospital for "repair work." It was a tubal ligation. (And a haunting tribute.)
We'll return next week.
:: Outside of Berkeley, you'd have to swing several hundred dead cats before you'd be likely to come across an actual socialist.
:: Obviously, I'd forgotten the Conservative Rule of Decency which is that calling, explicitly or implicitly, for one's political rivals to be killed and/or imprisoned is fine, but using naughty language is not. Coulter, by unleashing the other F-Bomb, joined me in forgetting this rule and wound up being punished.
:: Terry Nitpicker notes (in a post that deserves to be read and re-read and handed down through the generations as a priceless family heirloom) that George W. Bush has now dressed up as 2/3rds of the Village People, putting him only a Red Indian or, um, some sorta horse show traffic cop away from tying James K. Polk’s 1847 record of five Village People impersonated while in office.
:: "What is this 'incivility'?" you may be asking. 'Incivility' is using a naughty word. Now, you might think that you could simply excise the naughty word and be done with it, but no, that’s not how civility works. (Yes, two to the same blog. I couldn't decide which to use.)
:: All your fictional universes are belong to Holmes. He's in ur c0ntinuity, c00pting your can0n. Give in. Resistance is futile.
:: And now the literary journal Canadian literary chapbook Tickled by Thunder has published my short story "TKO." (Congrats!)
:: Some day, I hope to visit Apache Junction, particularly the new baseball, basketball and other sports and recreation park that was named for my brother and where his ashes were spread, and maybe I'll get to meet one of the Brian Hosey Youth Award/Scholarship winners and let them know a little bit about the man the award is named after, my big brother, Brian. (A beautifully written tribute by Kevin.)
:: Paul was the third child and the last child. My father had made a great fuss about only having two children and the proper use of condoms, but when Paul came along three years or so after Mark (In those days one was supposed to leave a two-year gap between children), it was my mother who went back into the hospital for "repair work." It was a tubal ligation. (And a haunting tribute.)
We'll return next week.
The New News
Updated Below
This post is a placeholder of sorts; I'll update it later on after I've had a chance to peruse the Buffalo News's new website. Longtime readers know that I've long found the current incarnation of Buffalonews.com to be a joke, but they are apparently finally moving into 2007, with a page that updates more than once per day and including blogs and other cool stuff. They go live later this morning, and I won't be able to look at it until later this afternoon after I get home from work.
Between now and then, feel free to use the Comments thread here to voice opinions of the new News site.
UPDATE: Or don't use the comments here to say anything. Sheesh.
As for the News site: I like the initial look. I'm sure it will change a lot over the next few months as things are tweaked, but the overall visual look is orders of magnitude better than the old site. The old version crammed everything together toward the left of the browser window, with lots of empty space at the right; so much stuff was jammed together that navigation was difficult; and most annoyingly, the day's content went up all at once, at 9:00 am every day. (Thus making pre-work online newspaper reading impossible in this town.)
Now, the new site has a much more elegant and open design. The actual organization is actually similar to the old site, but it's more spread out, with the paper's sections listed across the top of the page (just below the masthead), and with mouseover menus used as well. They do need to work on story formatting a bit, I see; take this article from yesterday's edition on fiddler Natalie MacMaster. The article had a sidebar with MacMaster's discography, but the sidebar isn't mentioned in the story and it's only linked in a fairly easy-to-overlook menu halfway down the page containing "More Entertainment Stories". They need to work more on getting articles that are clearly meant to be taken together linked as such on the Website.
The blogs are interesting as well, although without exception they all need to evolve a bit. Writing on a blog is different from writing for a newspaper, and the initial entries of each blog exhibit "New Blogger Syndrome", wherein new bloggers just kind of fumble about a bit in short form until they settle into their natural "blog voice". (And yes, I went through that syndrome as well; you can go back to the first month or so of entries here and see for yourself, if you don't believe me.) Lots of them seem to want their blog content to basically advertise their print content (either existing or forthcoming), and a few times they forget the formatting (in blogging, you really need to put a double-return between paragraphs). But that's all "baby steps" kind of stuff. That they accept comments is a welcome sign; hopefully they'll link others as well.
(By the way, one of the posts I read over there referred to a topic the writer will specifically "blog" about sometime soon, and that got me thinking about the verb "blog". When I say that I "blog", I use it as a general type of verb, a collective verb if you will, to refer to the general act of maintaining a blog or putting content on the blog or whatever. However, when I'm thinking of a specific topic or even formulate a specific post in my head, then I don't think of "blogging" that topic, but rather posting about it. I wouldn't say "I'll blog about Pirates of the Caribbean later", but rather, "I'll post about Pirates later". I'm not mentioning this as a complaint, mind you; it's just a bit of grammatical fluff that suddenly lodged in my head.)
Anyhow, if any of my three Buffalo-based readers hail from the News, welcome to Blogistan!
This post is a placeholder of sorts; I'll update it later on after I've had a chance to peruse the Buffalo News's new website. Longtime readers know that I've long found the current incarnation of Buffalonews.com to be a joke, but they are apparently finally moving into 2007, with a page that updates more than once per day and including blogs and other cool stuff. They go live later this morning, and I won't be able to look at it until later this afternoon after I get home from work.
Between now and then, feel free to use the Comments thread here to voice opinions of the new News site.
UPDATE: Or don't use the comments here to say anything. Sheesh.
As for the News site: I like the initial look. I'm sure it will change a lot over the next few months as things are tweaked, but the overall visual look is orders of magnitude better than the old site. The old version crammed everything together toward the left of the browser window, with lots of empty space at the right; so much stuff was jammed together that navigation was difficult; and most annoyingly, the day's content went up all at once, at 9:00 am every day. (Thus making pre-work online newspaper reading impossible in this town.)
Now, the new site has a much more elegant and open design. The actual organization is actually similar to the old site, but it's more spread out, with the paper's sections listed across the top of the page (just below the masthead), and with mouseover menus used as well. They do need to work on story formatting a bit, I see; take this article from yesterday's edition on fiddler Natalie MacMaster. The article had a sidebar with MacMaster's discography, but the sidebar isn't mentioned in the story and it's only linked in a fairly easy-to-overlook menu halfway down the page containing "More Entertainment Stories". They need to work more on getting articles that are clearly meant to be taken together linked as such on the Website.
The blogs are interesting as well, although without exception they all need to evolve a bit. Writing on a blog is different from writing for a newspaper, and the initial entries of each blog exhibit "New Blogger Syndrome", wherein new bloggers just kind of fumble about a bit in short form until they settle into their natural "blog voice". (And yes, I went through that syndrome as well; you can go back to the first month or so of entries here and see for yourself, if you don't believe me.) Lots of them seem to want their blog content to basically advertise their print content (either existing or forthcoming), and a few times they forget the formatting (in blogging, you really need to put a double-return between paragraphs). But that's all "baby steps" kind of stuff. That they accept comments is a welcome sign; hopefully they'll link others as well.
(By the way, one of the posts I read over there referred to a topic the writer will specifically "blog" about sometime soon, and that got me thinking about the verb "blog". When I say that I "blog", I use it as a general type of verb, a collective verb if you will, to refer to the general act of maintaining a blog or putting content on the blog or whatever. However, when I'm thinking of a specific topic or even formulate a specific post in my head, then I don't think of "blogging" that topic, but rather posting about it. I wouldn't say "I'll blog about Pirates of the Caribbean later", but rather, "I'll post about Pirates later". I'm not mentioning this as a complaint, mind you; it's just a bit of grammatical fluff that suddenly lodged in my head.)
Anyhow, if any of my three Buffalo-based readers hail from the News, welcome to Blogistan!
Sunday, March 04, 2007
I am your geography god minor deity.
He giveth, and he getteth riddeth to make room for what he receiveth
It's time to make room on the shelves floor next to the shelves for newer acquisitions (like these), so I'll now be putting old books of mine up on eBay. There's a link over there in the sidebar, in the section labeled "Support your humble narrator". There will be more things appearing there over the next week as well; I've identified quite a few books to go as well as some music to which I rarely listen anymore.
Go forth and buy stuff for the person in your life whose tastes mirror mine!
(But not me. If you want to do that, just give me the money directly. There are links to do that as well, if that's your thing.)
Go forth and buy stuff for the person in your life whose tastes mirror mine!
(But not me. If you want to do that, just give me the money directly. There are links to do that as well, if that's your thing.)
Two literary blegs
OK, folks: for research purposes, I need these items:
:: A good telling of the classic "Dick Whittington" tale.
:: A good nonfiction resource on the history and function of lighthouses. Not contemporary lighthouses, mind you, but ones from the Middle Ages and onward. Pictures helpful.
Anyone?
:: A good telling of the classic "Dick Whittington" tale.
:: A good nonfiction resource on the history and function of lighthouses. Not contemporary lighthouses, mind you, but ones from the Middle Ages and onward. Pictures helpful.
Anyone?
What kind of life is that?!
Kevin Hosey and his spousal unit Val are good urban types, to judge by the writings on their respective blogs. So apparently they ventured out of their urban comfort zones and out into...the suburbs! All the cars! Streets with multiple lanes! Big box retail! Cookie-cutter restaurants! The horror!
OK, I'm just needling a bit here -- they've never struck me as the obnoxious "City good, suburb bad" kind of people. What got me is something in his opening paragraph:
OK, I'm just needling a bit here -- they've never struck me as the obnoxious "City good, suburb bad" kind of people. What got me is something in his opening paragraph:
Val and I ate dinner at Friendly's in Cheektowaga Saturday; we saw a commercial for Friendly's Thursday night, and we started talking about eating there many years ago. We both noted how good their sundaes were and that we hadn't had ice cream in months, so we decided that Saturday would be the day.
Did you notice it? No? Here it is again, with the passage that tripped me up in bold:
Val and I ate dinner at Friendly's in Cheektowaga Saturday; we saw a commercial for Friendly's Thursday night, and we started talking about eating there many years ago. We both noted how good their sundaes were and that we hadn't had ice cream in months, so we decided that Saturday would be the day.
If there's anything I find harder to understand than the impulse to vote Republican, it's the idea that anyone could meaningfully measure the period between instances of consuming ice cream in a unit larger than hours.
(I notice that Kevin didn't mention the service at Friendly's, which in my experience can make the progress of glaciers seem sprightly by comparison. Maybe they've improved in this area? It's been a long time since I've eaten there. They used to have a sundae that consisted of half a Belgian waffle topped with a fairly large scoop of vanilla ice cream, which was then saturated with hot fudge. And I'd better stop writing this post right now, because I think I just heard my pancreas whimpering.)
UPDATE: Contrasting with my light tone here is this blogger's experience with Friendly's. That's astonishing, truly astonishing. I'm glad the guy's kid is OK...and if I'm trying to pour water on my child's burn and someone tells me "Gee, you're making a mess", I'd want to hit the guy as well.
Sunday Burst of Weirdness Jaw-dropping Coolness
I like to think I'm a geek in good standing, but I must bow to this fellow. That is the greatest room in the history of rooms.
UPDATE: I should warn those of you with dial-up connections that this post has a lot of photos. It's worth it, though.
UPDATE: I should warn those of you with dial-up connections that this post has a lot of photos. It's worth it, though.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
I am your geography god.
I got 'em all in three minutes, forty seconds.
I remember a similar running joke on an episode of Friends, when Joey was proud because he was able to name fifty-six states, and later made fun of Ross, who'd been stumped at forty-six, as "Mr. I forgot ten states".
I remember a similar running joke on an episode of Friends, when Joey was proud because he was able to name fifty-six states, and later made fun of Ross, who'd been stumped at forty-six, as "Mr. I forgot ten states".
Little Annie
Glenn Greenwald on Ann Coulter, who continues to get the plum speaking engagements when members of the Right get together:
[T]he single most prestigious political event for conservatives of the year is a place where conservatives go to hear Democrats called faggots, Arabs called ragheads, and Supreme Court justices labeled as deserving of murder -- not by anonymous, unidentifiable blog commenters, but by one of their most popular featured speakers.
...
But we should, at the very least, be able to have a moratorium on all of the scandals driven by their claims to be so offended and upset when anonymous commenters on a blog say mean things, or when bloggers use curse words, or when Senators transparently botch a joke. The ugliest and most obscene sentiments are openly expressed not by their blog commenters or even bloggers -- though that is true -- but by their most admired and successful political leaders, the ones whom their presidential candidates desperately seek to embrace and for whom their most committed throngs cheer wildly.
...
She is the face of what the hard-core Republican Party has become, particularly during the Bush presidency. That is why she holds the position she holds in that movement. That's why Mitt Romney was giddy with glee when her name passed his lips. He knows that her endorsement is valuable precisely because she holds great sway within the party, and she holds great sway because the hard-core party faithful consider her a hero for expressing the thoughts which they themselves believe but which other, less courageous Republican figures are afraid to express.
This is not about a single comment or isolated remark. The more Ann Coulter says these things, the more popular she becomes in this movement. What this is about is that she reflects exactly what sort of political movement this is. She reflects its true impulses and core beliefs. If that were not the case, why would she continue to receive top billing at their most prestigious events, and why would she continue to be lavished with rock star-adoration by the party faithful?
I have nothing to add, really.
UPDATE: Still nothing really to add, except to note the fact that the Right gets the vapors whenever left-wing bloggers swear, and yet they cheer this kind of stuff. By current American standards, Democratic presidential candidates can't hire people like Amanda Marcotte but Republican candidates can accept the endorsement of Ann Coulter even as she calls prominent Democrats "faggots".
It seems that Republican "civility" mainly means "We can say whatever we want, but you can't."
O for a bunch of shelves!
Today was the quarterly Used Book Sale at the local library. I always find some treasures there -- and even treasures within the treasures themselves -- but today was an even better haul than usual, with far better pickings in the SF department than usual. Behold:
And those are just the books I bought for myself. I also picked up five books each for The Wife and The Daughter. And the grand total spent?
Nine dollars.
Folks, if you like to read and if you like to own books, then you really have no reason to not be frequenting your local library's used book sales. It's just that simple.
And those are just the books I bought for myself. I also picked up five books each for The Wife and The Daughter. And the grand total spent?
Nine dollars.
Folks, if you like to read and if you like to own books, then you really have no reason to not be frequenting your local library's used book sales. It's just that simple.
Huzzah!!!
Since I've been away from blogging for a few days, I've therefore failed thus far to acknowledge good news for the guy whose blog inspired me to launch this blog in parlaying his long experience of blogging into paid work: Sean Meade will be Project Editor for the Aviation Week website, concentrating on defense tech (if I'm reading it correctly). I guess that means Sean will now be the resident expert in flying machines that can kill us all? That's very cool, and I wish him the best of luck. It's always nifty when a person gets to make money doing something that's genuinely interesting to them.
I will, of course, be closely following Sean's work over there to see if he manages to sneak in anything like "Maybe smart bombs don't exist, but rather subsist!" (That's an unimaginably lame in-joke that only the six people who were in a certain class in college with Sean and I will get.)
Anyhow, go give Sean some congratulations. Or he'll sic the bombers on you. He can do that now. (I'm a little surprised that they send out launch codes to any G-mail address, but hey, Google probably had the launch codes years ago.)
I will, of course, be closely following Sean's work over there to see if he manages to sneak in anything like "Maybe smart bombs don't exist, but rather subsist!" (That's an unimaginably lame in-joke that only the six people who were in a certain class in college with Sean and I will get.)
Anyhow, go give Sean some congratulations. Or he'll sic the bombers on you. He can do that now. (I'm a little surprised that they send out launch codes to any G-mail address, but hey, Google probably had the launch codes years ago.)
I think we left the stove on, dear.
Sorry for three days away from Ye Olde Blogge. It's been a busy week in "real life", what with Lenten potluck dinners and services at church and Friday fish fries and trips to the library on Thursday night and a fairly large project at The Store and a new novel by Guy Gavriel Kay to read. But I'm back now, more or less. (Sometimes less is more, after all.)
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Love, exciting and new....
This woman loves her husband:
Twenty-two years ago today, Mr. M-mv gave me an engagement ring. I was surprised about how and when he proposed, yes, but the idea of marriage? No surprises there. He had already told me that we would be getting married. He announced this about two weeks after our first date.
Silly boy.
So does this woman:
In our early days together his friends and family were all shaking their heads, figuring my man was going through some sort of middle age crazy to hook up with "that head-in-the clouds hippie girl" and my pals were wondering what in the world I was doing with some straight Republican cowboy with good manners when they knew me to generally have a strong preference for bad boys in leather on motorcycles who never called anyone Mame. Clearly, by most accounts, our being together made absolutely no sense.
But when I'm in the crook of this guy's arm I feel like all the planets have lined up and the universe is smilin' on my soul. After twenty five years of marriage we've learned to compromise and negotiate a plenty. Some of the differences have been quite humorous, and a few have caused frustration, disappointment or outrage. But through it all, there's never been any question that our spirits were meant to fill each other up.
Ahhhh, l'amour!
Answers! (Part Three)
More answers to recent questions posed by Persons Who Reade Thysse Blogge:
:: A couple of queries from Roger:
:: A couple of queries from Roger:
If you were to live anywhere else, where would you be? What are your favorite 5 or 10 cities?
Call me crazy, but I really like Upstate NY. So I'd be happy in Rochester, and I could probably even live happily in Syracuse. Longtime readers will recall that for a time we did live in Syracuse, from September '02 until April '03. I didn't find that a long enough period living there to really form an impression of the place, but coming from Buffalo Syracuse felt...familiar, and small. Outside of "rush hour", it's possible to drive from one end of the Syracuse "metro area" to the other in less than twenty minutes.
Casting my net wider, I really love the entire Great Lakes region and the Upper Midwest. I could live happily in Chicago, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities (not Great Lakes cities, but on the cusp of the region). And if I had to live abroad, I'd be thrilled to dwell in Toronto.
As a kid we lived for a handful of years in Portland, OR, an area which I loved dearly at the time. However, it's close to twenty-six years since I've been back there, so I don't know. My parents used to comment on how it seemed to them that people in that region had some kind of inferiority complex, in that they'd always say things to my parents like, "Aren't you glad you don't live out east anymore?" But I don't know if that's really the way things are anymore. Having become used to the fact that living in Buffalo, we can take daytrips to so many cool places, I suspect the main problem I'd have with living in Portland again would be that in that part of the country, distances are so much greater, and it becomes a day trip just getting to someplace else. But again, I don't know how much that would bother me. I do know that I'd dearly love to see Portland again, and visit some of the places I remember -- the ones that are still there, anyway. And I'd love to walk the sands of Cannon Beach and gaze upon Haystack Rock again.
I guess I'd just like to be able to travel more.
Valentine's Day: a wonderful opportunity to show love and affection or a capitalist ruse?
A bit of both, I suppose. We're pretty low-key with it in our family (it helps that The Wife's birthday is less than two weeks after Valentine's).
(And here's a small rant: it never bothers me much when stores put Christmas merchandise out on display in early October. But what does irritate me is how Valentines stuff starts showing up on December 21, and how they start rolling out the Easter shit on February 10. Who the hell buys Valentines candy eight weeks before Valentines, and then just keeps it around? Don't retailers get that Valentines shopping is of the "Oh crap whatamIgonnagetforher!" variety?)
You know what is a friggin' ruse, though? If you live outside of my part of the country, you may not have heard of Sweetest Day, which was cooked up by a bunch of candymakers decades ago. It's celebrated almost exactly six months after Valentines Day. Every time Sweetest Day rolls around, I end up thinking of the fake greeting card-company created "Love Day" from The Simpsons.
What's bigger, Wyoming or Colorado?
Colorado, by about sixteen thousand square kilometers. But Wyoming feels bigger, because it's got a lot less stuff in it.
("I thought I was dead once. Turns out I was in Nebraska." - Little Bill from Unforgiven)
If you were forced to give up overalls, what would you wear, and would anyone have the faintest idea who you were?
Khakis, I guess. And shorts. I used to be the kind of guy who wears shorts year round, although in recent years my body's thermostat has set itself to "pants in winter". Oy.
I'd hope people would recognize me! People at work, by definition, rarely see me outside of work, so I suspect I'd look stranger to them in overalls than anything else. If I were to cut the hair, though -- and maybe even shave -- then I'd be well-night unrecognizable. I look at photos of my former short-haired, clean-shaven self, and I think, "Jee-bus, I looked like an idiot."
(Oddly, I don't like regular old blue jeans, and I almost never wear them. I only own two pair. I've never found jeans all that comfortable.)
:: Belladonna also had more than one query:
What piece of writing are you most proud of and why?
The obvious answer is my "Twelve Presidents" story that won the Buffalo News contest a few weeks back, but I'm just not sure. There are a number of stories sitting on my hard drive that haven't appeared anywhere of which I am very fond; I suppose both of those will end up in this space at some point. And The Promised King is the largest-scale thing I've done (using a fairly broad definition of "done", of course, since it's not done).
"Graveyard Waltz" is special to me because it's the first story I ever submitted for publication. It was rejected, of course, but the rejection slip -- my first ever -- at least garnered a brief hand-written note from that particular editor, scrawled in the corner of the form letter. That first rejection slip didn't feel bad at all; in fact, it felt kind of good in a weird way, because it meant that I was in the game. Kind of like the young pitcher who gets his first start in the Majors. Sure, he gives up eight earned runs in two innings and gets yanked as soon as he walks the first two batters in the third, but hey, he's in the Majors.
And there are lots of posts here of which I am quite proud, and it's on the behalf of those posts that I'm always a little frustrated that my traffic here so stubbornly remains exactly where it's been for so long now. A representative example here would be "Diary of a Ring". That post was a lot of fun to write, and yet it came and went with little notice at the time. Alas.
If you could meet any one person, living or dead, who would it be?
The most obvious answer here is Jesus, but since I'm all about eschewing the obvious, I would have loved to spend an evening talking music with Leonard Bernstein.
More answers to come. I think I'm almost done.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Sentential Links #88
With this installment, there is one Sentential Links post for every key on a standard piano. (But I've got four more to go for one of those extended bass Bosendorfers.)
:: As I think I mentioned here before, I firmly and irrevocably, and with no irony or insincerity of any kind, believe that Kermit the Frog's rendition of "Bein' Green" is one of the greatest vocal performances of the 20th Century.
:: For years homeschooled children have had to rely for all of their information on Wikipedia, which is full of dangerous ideas that homeschooling was supposed to prevent from seeping into the home.
:: Am I the only person who really believes in the Matt/Harriet relationship? (Probably. I think they're the worst couple since Lea Thompson and Howard the Duck.)
:: W. H. Auden's 100th birthday is this week.
:: As the Oscars came to a close Sunday night, my immediate two reactions were "well, they got it just about right" and "man, those dancers, while admirably flexible, were just kinda creepy."
:: It’s the Superbowl of entertainment except when your favorite team wins there’s a big parade in your city, when your favorite movie wins there’s a big party you’re not invited to.
:: Had an aggressive glioblastoma not gobbled his brain in 1991, the late Republican political strategist Lee Atwater would have turned 56 today.
:: However, there are ways to adapt or revive clams even after they start to smell. Ways to extend their usefulness.
:: Watching Joe Quesada and Mark Millar destroy the Marvel universe has been no fun at all. (I haven't read any of this "Civil War" thing, but I also haven't read anything positive about it.)
:: "Speaking of rape, let's discuss your possible boyfriends." (Yeah, what an awful moment that was....)
More next week.
:: As I think I mentioned here before, I firmly and irrevocably, and with no irony or insincerity of any kind, believe that Kermit the Frog's rendition of "Bein' Green" is one of the greatest vocal performances of the 20th Century.
:: For years homeschooled children have had to rely for all of their information on Wikipedia, which is full of dangerous ideas that homeschooling was supposed to prevent from seeping into the home.
:: Am I the only person who really believes in the Matt/Harriet relationship? (Probably. I think they're the worst couple since Lea Thompson and Howard the Duck.)
:: W. H. Auden's 100th birthday is this week.
:: As the Oscars came to a close Sunday night, my immediate two reactions were "well, they got it just about right" and "man, those dancers, while admirably flexible, were just kinda creepy."
:: It’s the Superbowl of entertainment except when your favorite team wins there’s a big parade in your city, when your favorite movie wins there’s a big party you’re not invited to.
:: Had an aggressive glioblastoma not gobbled his brain in 1991, the late Republican political strategist Lee Atwater would have turned 56 today.
:: However, there are ways to adapt or revive clams even after they start to smell. Ways to extend their usefulness.
:: Watching Joe Quesada and Mark Millar destroy the Marvel universe has been no fun at all. (I haven't read any of this "Civil War" thing, but I also haven't read anything positive about it.)
:: "Speaking of rape, let's discuss your possible boyfriends." (Yeah, what an awful moment that was....)
More next week.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Malazan
A few days ago I finished Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, which is the first book in the fantasy mega-series The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I can't say I loved the book, but I found it highly compelling, and I definitely plan to continue reading the series. Just not for a while.
This is epic fantasy, no doubt about it. Boy howdy, is this book epic. The sense of scale in this book is, to my way of thinking, even more vast than in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. In fact, Erikson has given himself a canvas here that is so big that for much of the book, I barely knew what was going on.
So a word of warning: if you like moral clarity in your fantasy, with heroes fighting against all odds against the Horrible and Magical Villain who is firmly ensconced in the Giant Granite And Iron Citadel that squats at the exact center of the blasted region where nothing grows that he has called his own, don't bother with Gardens of the Moon. This ain't that kind of fantasy.
But if you have at least some taste for following characters without knowing just who the good guys are, or if you like not knowing if the 700-page volume you're reading even has "good guys" in any general sense of the term, then Gardens is for you.
There also isn't much plot here, in the traditional sense; the book follows a more "situational" path. There's a continent called Genabackis, which is the subject of a military conquest campaign by the Malazan Empire, and the book follows the exploits of a fairly large cast of characters as they react to events shaped by the Malazan invasion. Some of the characters are military officers, some are soldiers, some are mages, some are assassins, some are thieves, some are unclassifiable, and some are gods.
I mentioned last week that Gardens of the Moon contains almost nothing by way of the traditional infodump, which only serves to heighten the reader's sense of being at sea here. There really is no place in the book where anyone sits down to give a lengthy precis of the history involved, so the reader has to be pretty attentive. In the short run, this makes the book rather hard to follow as the lack of a "big picture" hampers things a bit. But in the long run, as the various details that are handed out piecemeal throughout the narrative begin to fall into place, the tale becomes quite a bit more satisfying.
(My understanding is that Gardens is something of a stand-alone novel.)
This is epic fantasy, no doubt about it. Boy howdy, is this book epic. The sense of scale in this book is, to my way of thinking, even more vast than in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. In fact, Erikson has given himself a canvas here that is so big that for much of the book, I barely knew what was going on.
So a word of warning: if you like moral clarity in your fantasy, with heroes fighting against all odds against the Horrible and Magical Villain who is firmly ensconced in the Giant Granite And Iron Citadel that squats at the exact center of the blasted region where nothing grows that he has called his own, don't bother with Gardens of the Moon. This ain't that kind of fantasy.
But if you have at least some taste for following characters without knowing just who the good guys are, or if you like not knowing if the 700-page volume you're reading even has "good guys" in any general sense of the term, then Gardens is for you.
There also isn't much plot here, in the traditional sense; the book follows a more "situational" path. There's a continent called Genabackis, which is the subject of a military conquest campaign by the Malazan Empire, and the book follows the exploits of a fairly large cast of characters as they react to events shaped by the Malazan invasion. Some of the characters are military officers, some are soldiers, some are mages, some are assassins, some are thieves, some are unclassifiable, and some are gods.
I mentioned last week that Gardens of the Moon contains almost nothing by way of the traditional infodump, which only serves to heighten the reader's sense of being at sea here. There really is no place in the book where anyone sits down to give a lengthy precis of the history involved, so the reader has to be pretty attentive. In the short run, this makes the book rather hard to follow as the lack of a "big picture" hampers things a bit. But in the long run, as the various details that are handed out piecemeal throughout the narrative begin to fall into place, the tale becomes quite a bit more satisfying.
(My understanding is that Gardens is something of a stand-alone novel.)
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