More presents, also new years

Alright, this looks like a good place for the divide.

If you’re just joining us, and you are, and wondering about the jump up to 11 posts for the month (not that that particular detail should surprise you), I wrote this long present related piece, chopped it in half, and there you go. So definitely check out the post before this to be caught up. Ah, and also the post before that and the post before that, since those two just went up yesterday in a sort of similar fashion.

I was given a bunch of stuff from residents at the condo I work at. 3 bottles of wine (of course I don’t drink, so those were immediately re-gifted to OTHER residents. SHH! But I kept the one bottle bag because it was nice and also as a reminder of the generosity itself). Along the same lines I was given a rockstar energy drink with vodka in it. Again, I don’t drink alcohol (or energy drinks for that matter) so I gave that away too.

A quick note: giving away all that alcohol wasn’t as easy as it sounds, I kind of agonized over what to do, just because I’ve never felt it was okay for me to get someone else alcohol if I don’t think it’s okay for me; it’s a habit I’d rather not encourage. Regardless I (uh, mostly) gave them all away to responsible parties, and that’s that.

One funny one was a card that read “To Guard” but also had a ten in it! I can live with being called “Guard”. Ah, another quick note: yes, I did feel a little awkward getting all this stuff, and there’s more for me to mention, but nothings quite as weird as receiving actual cash. Ah well. I wonder what’s in that gift horse’s mouth?

I got chocolates and a card from this one girl, and a cool Green Lantern wallet and raccoon figure (in recollection of the time I watched over that raccoon for the night) from this OTHER girl who in fact has the same name as the first. Coincidental.

I got Lindt chocolates (I think that’s the name of the brand) from the management office, that had a card as well, that was nice, and in addition the secretary left me a $25 gift card to Tim Horton’s <- yeesh but that’s a lot!

Oh man, I also had some two bite brownies that had a Christmas themed frosting thing going on. Yes. Brownies with frosting. This was addressed to “the guards” plural, so I ate half and left the rest to the other guy. Okay, wait wait, I didn’t eat half, I actually shared with a bunch of people who came by- but only from my side! I didn’t offer up any of the other guy’s brownies.

This one family gave me a tin of these café cream chocolate stick things that were indeed mighty fine. I shared those as well, but at one point the guys visiting asked for another one, and when I reached in to grab him one… uh, I’d already eaten them all. Whoops. The way it was packaged inside the tin made it hard to gauge how many were left. Again, whoops.

Oh, and this same family gave me a panettone which I have yet to open up, but it’s just interesting that this is now the second panettone I’d been given within a weeks time, and before that I’d never heard of such a product. It’s like I’m not Italian or something (I’m not at all FYI).

I think that’s everything except for the super gloves I was given by this one lovely couple. I’d mentioned to them that I’d needed to get some gloves like a month ago, and I found a pair that, sure, made me look like a Dr. Seuss character, but still, gloves is gloves- but now I have some much nicer form fitting gloves. It’s sort of like going from Adam West to Christian Bale, from a costuming perspective. (Hey, don’t say anything against Adam West! I still stand by my assertion that he has the best handshake in the world!) Oh, also, the gloves were in this really cool sort of tiger striped box. Yay boxes! It’s unfortunate that they got my name wrong, addressing it to “Isaiah”.

If Isaiah comes around looking for his gloves, tell him to scram!

Huh, well, I guess that’s that for 2011 posts. It’s funny to see a buddy of mine comment on the year that was over on the Facebook. It was just overwhelmingly positive and excited about what had gone on for him, and looking forward to next year. Whereas MY feelings about the year being over are pretty much the same as they’ve been for several years now. “Wow, I’m glad that’s over. Sure hope the next year goes better.” Sort of like exhausted defeat mixed with cautious (cautious!) optimism.

At least I succeeded in getting a handle on my finances this year. I had to become nocturnal and quasi narcoleptic to do that, but there it is. But at least I’m as popular as ever!... great, more bad news.

Presents happened

Okay, with two to go, let’s write something then arbitrarily chop it in half. Is it cheap? You bet it is! Ugh I want to go back to bed. Stupid New Years plans.

I figured the first easiest thing to go on about is, you know, what I got for Christmas. ‘Cause it’s all about the loot, right?

Well, for starters my favourite thing is the collected hard cover reprint of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic. I got that from Jimmy and Cool Geoff (oh sure, I’ll use peoples names when I’m talking about good stuff they did, but if I’m complaining I’ll be as generic as possible. For shame.) I pretty much new what it was going in- when I did some Christmas shopping at “The World’s Biggest Bookstore” I couldn’t help but lovingly look at the book, getting a feel for its heft and the groove along the spine… well, wrapped or not, I’d familiarized myself with the feel of the book. Still, I didn’t want to get too excited- what if I was wrong? But, yeah, there it was. What a good couple of dudes to get that for me. Did I say good? I meant amazing.

Then from my two youngest brothers, they pooled their resources and got Jordan and myself a 3DS each. It’s an awful lot of money to spend on a gift, so naturally I was a little conflicted about it, but the technology involved in that little hand held device really is remarkable. You know it has this feature where you place a card on a flat surface, the camera recognizes the card, and you see on the screen the surface and the card… plus a crazy 3D dragon! I was totally blown away by that. With technology like that there is officially no reason left for CGI in movies to suck.

Speaking of the 3DS, Cool Geoff actually got me ANOTHER gift (what a generous guy!) a DS game called “Ghost Trick”. It’s sort of a puzzle/mystery game you play as this dead guy’s ghost. Also there’s some time travel. That sure is a lot of cool stuff involved!

I got a box containing a cool new sweater, jeans and socks. Actually, the box is really cool too, but that’s coming from a guy unused to presents inside impressive boxes. Yes I’m lame. I imagine my dad looked at the tag on my jeans to get the size while I was at work… plenty of opportunity to do that. I was planning on buying some new jeans, but maybe going a size up. Well, too late for that! Sure hope people like me in hipster lookin’ skinny jeans. Ah, they’re not actually “hipster lookin’” but they are mighty tight. Hopefully they just need some wearing to get them to loosen up some. I wore the new clothes to that Christmas party of last Wednesday, an act that’s gotten to be my annual unveiling of my Christmas gear. I was told the pants looked good, so there you go.

Jordan got me a collection of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four tales that look to have been drawn by the late great Mike Wieringo. Wow I hope I spelled his name right.

Jason got me a Sonic comic/magazine hybrid bit, as well as a Return of the Jedi poster. What a sweet guy!

Written on the 29th... mostly just railing against the horribleness

Need to get back to bed after a fitful five… ah, no, four hours. I dreamt of music practices where I just couldn’t get my stand in order, my instrument prepared, I couldn’t play the music at all. Horrible. I had that variety of dream a few years back when I got back into playing in the orchestra and band and whatnot. I didn’t need to worry so much about the band, but the dream came scarily close to reality with the orchestra.

I also dreamed I was with a friend of mine who tends towards the antagonistic, that we were suddenly surrounded by a gang of gun toting individuals. Completely surrounded, my antagonistic friend decided to whip out his own gun, fearlessly escalating the situation. I couldn’t help but admire how this dream version stuck to his principles of questioning why these people were giving us a hard time, even as I hated him for making a bad situation so much worse. Interestingly, I’ve never actually dreamed of being shot before- well, now I have. Fortunately my perspective almost immediately shifted, first to my friends place, then back to me, uninjured. Uh, dodged that bullet I guess.

At a party last night, one I’d been looking forward to for quite some time. Unfortunately I invited someone to come with that ended up completely disappointing me by not showing up (despite a surprising number of text messages telling me she was on her way… have to hand it to her on that one, I’ve never been ditched before while in relatively constant communication with the ditcher)

It’s very likely I will see her tonight, she lives where I work, so here are a couple options on how this conversation may go down:

a) Oh man, I’m so sorry I didn’t make it out.

Me: Well, yeah, I’m pretty unhappy about that. You kept saying you weren’t going to let me down but you did anyway. Frankly, it’s pretty disrespectful. (<- careful now, this is where it turns south)

How could you say that… I’ve just got a lot of stuff going on right now… etc. etc., something to that effect.

Me: Ah, listen, I apologize, it’s not a big deal, don’t even worry about it.

OR

b) Oh man, I’m so sorry I didn’t make it out.

Me: It’s not a big deal, don’t even worry about it.

Fin

So see, the advantage in the second version of our little production, is that I don’t end up having to apologize for anything so crazy as having hurt feelings. So that’s a plus.

If it seems cynical that I’m already going over a conversation in my head that hasn’t actually happened yet, well, that’s because I can be pretty cynical.

P.S.- it's fine, it's fine, I had a glass of egg nog, I'm fine, it's fine. But seriously, just say you're not coming. Then I wouldn't have checked my phone every minute of the evening waiting for the message that it was time to fetch you from the subway station.

Written the 28th- Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Poor little banana- left all alone to rot in a corner. Well I’LL eat you, even if those other meanies won’t.

Dude, this is like the perfect banana! I thought it’d be all gushy and brown, but it isn’t at all!

Went to see “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” yesterday (that was all my day consisted of, get up, go see movie, come home, eat two slices of pizza, a little game boy, then sleep). I originally had no intention of going to see it, I’m too much of a snob, and if EVERYONE is reading this book, then clearly I don’t want anything to do with it in novel or movie format, however a buddy invited me to go see it, and I certainly am not popular enough that I get to turn down offers to do stuff.

How was the movie? Overall I liked it, it’s good to get in touch with my Swedish roots (when people said “sköll” I knew what it meant! Not sure if I spelled that right!). An awful lot of rapists and Nazis in Sweden it seems- yeah, yeah, it’s just a movie.

There’s an opening theme to the film that was very James Bond. All inky CGI people moving to the Trent Reznor tunskies. Kinda weirded me out.

I’m afraid I was never drawn in enough to inhabit the world I was watching. Everything was very clearly a story someone made up. A cat shows up… oh no cat! Don’t you know you’re only there to get scarily killed later on? Olp there it is. (I wonder how they made that dead cat. Hopefully not the easy way.)

Sorry investigator, those phone numbers in that diary were checked out years ago, and they don’t seem to have any bearing on the case. Gee willikers, you think it’ll turn out those weren’t phone numbers at all?!?

Probably the thing that killed me the most (is this the end of my list? Not sure, I’m kinda figuring this out as I go) was the way Daniel Craig’s character Mikaal Blom-something (I have no idea how it’s supposed to be spelled- I didn’t read the book!) would hang his glasses under his chin, just barely resting on the one ear when he was lost in thought. That’s such a writerly tic to add in. Yup, what a well developed character. Except there is no one in the history of ever that would have their glasses hang like that. It’s likely I will now, but only because someone is imitating the movie. Art becoming artifice.

The eponymous Girl of the movie (are you sick of reading that line from reviewers yet? “the eponymous girl with the dragon tattoo” what an easy way to shove in four syllables) has so many tics to her that it’s hard to get a bead on her. Wait, maybe I’m lying. She seems like an easy character to write (though I can’t really remember it now, I know in the three hours I slept I dreamed of some violent scenario being carried about by that Lisabeth Salander, and I was like “yup, there’s that character”) but the hard part would be in actually going back over her history to justify why she is the way she is. What events could’ve come together to make Salander Salander? The mystery will almost certainly be better than what’s given to the reading/viewing audience. Unless it’s never touched on… I haven’t read this trilogy!

I’m making it sound like I didn’t like the film, well; I had a good time trying to figure out the mystery. Until it turned out there wasn’t any mystery, that definitely sucked. Okay, spoilers:

So Daniel Craig gets hired to find out who killed this girl, because there was no way she could have disappeared off the family’s island. Great, so let’s not check out that idea ANYWAYS since, yeah, she’s alive and just got off the island! And the old man that starts things off by hiring Craig thinks that the killer has been taunting him all these years by sending him the exact same present that the girl always gave her at Christmas time. Oh, what’s that? It was just more presents from the girl, but because there was no note she was unknowingly tormenting the guy? In the forty years since she disappeared, she couldn’t have written the guy a note saying “yeah, stop freaking out?” or the accomplice that helped her escape all those years ago, why didn’t SHE tell the old man it was cool?

Bah. THAT part sucked.

Lisabeth busting up the coincidental killer (there was a killer around, and being scared of him was the reason that the missing girl ran away, but he didn’t know what happened to the girl either) with a golf club, saving Daniel Craig in the nick of time, that rocked. To quote Casey Jones from the first Ninja Turtles movie “I’ll never call golf a dull game again.”

And FYI, if you’re watching it, and thinking that one guy is way too helpful, he’s got to be the killer? Yeah, go with that instinct.

Oh, but right near the very end, when Craig tells Lisabeth she looks nice and you get to see this generally non-emotional girl simply beam with happiness (she doesn’t grin or anything, she never smiles, but there’s a definite warmth in her look just then) well, it was a super sweet moment.

And for anyone mad that Craig and Lisabeth didn’t end up together at the end (of this book/movie at least) - dude, I’m pretty sure she ended up with a billion dollars. She got off pretty well here.

Item! Torchwood Season 1 Disc 2

Sort of losing steam a bit, but that’s okay, judging by my ranting about the episodes contained on the disk when I talked about it last night I should have enough juice to finish off here for the day. Right, also, letting you know, I just dumped a bunch of my mini post type things on you, so if you were visiting before (unlikely) and are visiting now (very likely, because you are reading this. You are visiting! The chances of you visiting are 100%!) then be aware of the one, two, three, yes, three PREVIOUS posts that I put up just now. The first one, I guess I mean the earliest of these four in total posts was actually NOT written today, but last Sunday I think, I just hadn’t had a chance to post it. So there, I’m not totally just dumping all this onto a screen at once. Well, yes, I mostly am, but whatever.

Got the second disc of this Torchwood business from the library- have I yet mentioned how disappointed I am that Torchwood isn’t a western? Maybe I confused it with Deadwood, which I also haven’t seen. I sure hope THAT one is a western. Is any one a western?!?!

Right, so this disc contains three episodes (no easy way to view this, memory then):

Ghost Machine
Cyberwoman
Fairies

They’re all fairly ridiculous and not a western at all.

Ghost machine has the Torchwood gain find HALF a machine (funny, whenever I break my machines in half they stop functioning) that picks up, they determine, strong emotional resonances that the machines handler then get to view and semi experience. When this is explained to Gwen she basically takes this as confirmation of her earlier theory. The machine shows you ghosts! Of course!

And no one corrects her. I hope they were just too embarrassed to say “no Gwen, not ghosts, we just told you what this thing does. Totally separate idea.”

And, I’m sorry, I know this makes me a horrible person, but I can’t take them seriously with their accents. “I joost sew a guh-oost.” <- that was a terrible articulation of what the one girl sounds like, further entrenching the idea that I’m horrible, but it’s the best representation I could figure. While also keeping my assertion of ridiculousness front and center. What a biased presentation!

And this Gwen girl goes to visit this blackmailer/pyro (his name is “Burny” because of the shack he burned down) and when she gets a call telling her maybe she isn’t entirely safe chilling out there she doesn’t calmly say “I have to leave” she instead says “YOU SAY BURNY IS DANGEROUS?” (Burny is standing right next to her, apparently oblivious)

For some reason the story played it like Burny didn’t hear that, but that is stupido. Yes, it turns out he was mostly harmless, so maybe he could’ve been insulted or something.

Cyberwoman is about this girl that only got partially transformed into a Cyberman during that big series finale over in the second series of Doctor Who with all the Cybermen running around and whatnot.

Just as a quick aside, are my sentences getting less comprehensible (took me WAY too long to remember the word comprehensible)? I’m getting tired and lazy. And I have to go do Christmas shopping nowish or never! Anyways.

So this girl is apparently in a relationship with Ianto (man, I do not even care if that’s how that name is supposed to be spelled) who is basically the Torchwood gang’s butler, making his the most useless position amongst the lot, which is really saying something, when that Owen guy is a scientist that doesn’t science, and Gwen is/was a police officer that doesn’t know how to shoot a gun (I think she just learned in Ghost Machine, but seriously, what? They have police officers over in Britain that don’t carry guns? Is that true?)… everyone pretty much relies on the Bat-computer to give diagrams and then Captain Jack Harkness (the leader) gives exposition about what the thing is.

Right, Ianto is a handsome guy, unless he’s shouting in despair, then he looks rather silly. This comes up a lot in this episode. Maybe the director could have, shot him from behind? The face anguish wasn’t really selling me on the scene. Or at least for SOME of the time shoot from the back. Don’t be afraid to get arty on us. So he’s secretly got this Cyberwoman in the basement and he’s trying to cure her because he loves her, so when the rest of the Torchwood group leave to get a drink (maybe if they invited Ianto out he’d be less inclined to keep horrible crimes against humanity a secret downstairs) he gets this leading cybernetic expert guy into the base to help out.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the second Ianto turns his back to hide the evidence of his shenanigans from the returning Torchwood gang the Cyberwoman loses her human personality (for some reason…) and kills the cybernetics expert guy! Ianto freaks out about this and hides the body… and the body is never mentioned for the rest of the episode! Maybe it’s me, but if someone gets killed from a dubious secret experiment I’ve got going on, and I hide the body to cover my tracks, BOOM, pretty evil. Evil-ish anyways. Yes, the guy is under a lot of stress. Did you SEE that cybernetic expert guys face? It got mess-ed UP!

So the Torchwood guys have to stop this Cyberwoman (I have got to stop capitalizing the ‘C’) from leaving and taking over the planet, even though she’s got an awful lot of fleshy parts that aren’t particularly invulnerable at all- but they needed to shut off the power to stop Gwen from getting cybernized, so now, until the system reboots, the weapons are locked down. Oh no!

This eventually leads to a gratuitous bit of resuscitation between Jack and Ianto (CPR doesn’t work that way) especially jarring because if Jack wants to kiss a guy, fine, but he’s totally mad at Ianto for keeping the secret cyberwoman around to threaten earth. Maybe he could’ve kissed Owen or something?

But this ALSO eventually leads to Jack getting some sauce/attractant on the cyberwoman so that she has to fight off the pterodactyl that hangs out in the Torchwood base. THAT was legitimately awesome. Cyberwoman versus Pterodactyl? Bravo, sirs. Then she got knocked over and the fight wasn’t nearly as cool. Hard to make defensive moves when you’re a robot on your back. Apparently it’s very much like being a turtle. That’s how it looked to me anyways.

So blah bede blah everyone escapes, the system reboots so the doors open, and the pizza girl wanders downstairs to a) her death, but also b) her body becoming host to the cyberwoman’s brain because now, all of a sudden, she sounds human again, remembering all the great times with Ianto and whatnot. What exactly brought this on? I have no clue. But then she says now her and Ianto can get upgraded properly together, so she’s clearly more machine now than man, and gets gunned down by a firing squad of the Torchwood dudes after Ianto refused to kill his girlfriend.

Why did I give a run down of the entire episode? Well, I’m crazy, first of all but also to illustrate how crazy it is that after all this goes down Ianto isn’t kicked off the Torchwood job. What? Man, I wouldn’t keep him around after this. Did you find the cybernetics expert’s body yet? Well it’s down there! And you sure didn’t do that pizza girl any favours! And he punched out Jack, even after that kiss of life they had back there.

If it was MY secret organization, I’d have flashy thinged him and sent him on his way. Give him a job at the post office or something.

In case that’s too old of a reference for you, by “flashy thinged him” I’m referring to the memory erasing device used in the coolness incarnate movie Men In Black.

Ah, I’ve gone on way to long. So yeah, the episode Fairies.

It deals more with a supernatural threat which I’ve never seen on a Doctor Who type show before; they always go “magic? Oh you silly human, no, that was SCIENCE!” but this time, yeah, sort of magic. And the fairies are depicted as unstoppable killing machines that do whatever this chosen girl wants. We’re supposed to feel bad for the girl/mother when they get separate so the girl can go become a fairy, but dude, the fairies did you a favour getting rid of her! That girl sucked! She wasn’t just a creepy little girl; she killed people with her fairy friends!

But at the very end, because Jack has to look like a hero, she holds back the little girl for a second and says “NO YOU CAN’T HAVE HER!” or something very much like that, and the fairies are like “listen, hold onto her if you want to, but then we’ll kill everyone on the planet, so there” forgetting the fact that there was nothing really stopping the fairies from killing Jack and Gwen and then TAKING the little girl (yes yes, Jack can’t be killed, but he can be death like before he pops back up on his feat. Way more than enough time to take a little girl to some fairy realm.).

So then Jack is all “You promise she’ll be okay?” <- referring to the little girl, as though, again, he could stop these guys if he wanted to

And the fairies respond that she’ll live forever (what with her being a new fairy and whatnot)

So Jack lets her go, and everyone gets mad at him for letting her go, even though there was no reason to hold onto her anyways. The girl WANTED to go, and more importantly, those unstoppable fairies wanted her to go.

Funny thing though, those unstoppable fairies, well, when they finally showed up at the end of the episode instead of killing dudes semi-off-screen, well, they looked pretty shoot-able. Like, get some silver or whatever works on fairies, and shoot ‘em up. But they didn’t even try that! What kinda western IS this??

To be ABSOLUTELY fair, there was a bit of exposition that skipped over while I was watching it (this IS a library DVD after all) so maybe there was a line in there that would’ve totally convinced me of the brilliance of everything that happened later. I actually pretty much missed the part where they even connected the killings and figured out where to look for this chosen girl. But… yeah, yes, I’m definitely fine. I think I’ll be okay without having seen that bit. I’ll soldier on, anyways.

And that’s it; I’m done, and quite a bit closer to getting all my blog stuff done for the month. Also, I called these mini posts, but for the most part they’re quite a bit longer I think than a lot of entries of mine, so there you go.

Probably no more posts until after Christmas, so Merry Christmas.

Item! The Stone Rose

For those just tuning in, and you sort of are in that there was no way to be with me beforehand because I’m posting these entries all at once (oh, but you mostly aren’t because this is the internet you’re reading, and there’s no tuning required, mores the pity), I’ve just posted two entries before this one here, so if you don’t want to miss out, you should maybe go have a look.

This one will be short, since I seem to have gone all out on that last one, also there’s I think much less I want to say about this one.

The Stone Rose is a Doctor Who novel by Jacqueline Rayner that stars the David Tennet iteration of the Doctor plus Rose as the companion (the Doctor X Rose FOREVAH!)- As my parenthetical interjection just now has alluded, I’m quite fond of this pairs TV chemistry, so I grabbed the novel for some good times.

The book is… kinda junky. It’s a good thing no one that isn’t already a fan would be reading this, because it fails to paint much of a picture, rather it alludes to the usual visions the tv audience would be familiar with, queuing up our own nostalgic remembrances to enjoy the book with. Never seen an episode? Don’t particularly like the David Tennet Doctor or Rose? Well, definitely don’t read this book.

But the font is definitely large, so it doesn’t take long to get through. Huzzah!

It was silly verging on annoying how the characters met during the course of the adventure insisted on introducing themselves with little prompt (I would have settled for someone going “say, what’s your name?” that would have been a decent prompt), and telling everyone their full name, first, last, middle, you name it. Occupation. Ah, there aren’t THAT many characters, and I suppose it only really happens for the two… but it stands out like a sore thumb.

Stands out like a sore thumb. What a weird thing to say. My thumbs are rarely ever sore (surely a testament to a sedentary, garden-less lifestyle). How about “stands out like Powder at a tanning salon”. Do you remember Powder? That white white white guy in that movie of the same name? Came out in the 90’s? Yeah, I actually didn’t see it either. But I think he may have had, like, electrical powers or something!

Oh, right, Stone Rose. So the main duo is shown a statue of Rose in a modern museum and they think- awesome, let’s travel back to ancient Rome and get a statue made of you. Which is fine as far as it goes. A Doctor Who adventure set in Rome circa one hundred something A.D. (or some when about there).

So they have to figure out this mystery about a disappearing kid, a future girl, an evil artisan who turns people to stone (watch out Rose!) and it turns out… a technological genie from the future did it.

What.

Whew, well, that was close; you almost told a story that held together there. By the way that’s GENIE as in “Genetically Engineered Neural Imagination Engine” which, turns out, means it can do whatever it wants, so long as someone wishes it. Yes, good, because Rome is known for its GENIES. I wouldn’t even be complaining if this story was set in, you know, Agrabah or something (yeah yeah, Agrabah isn’t real, you get my meaning.).

So yeah. I don’t recommend this book; also, I’m done talking about this book. Next!

Item! Murder at the ABA

Okay, I have a lot of catching up to do here, so I’ve got I guess some mini updates that I’m just going to write and separate by topic. Oh, also, I’m posting a thing that I wrote a couple of days ago but hadn’t got the chance to put up yet, so feel free to look back at that if you’re so inclined. This month is a tricky one, you may miss things.

Uh, the book is downstairs, but I don’t want to go get it. I’ll need my USB anyway, but forget it, it’s gone forever for now. Forever!

So the book is “Murder at the ABA” and it’s by Isaac Asimov- handsome name, I know. Someone looked over my desk at the spine of the book and went “whu-? Did this guy write a boo- oh, Asimov, that famous guy.”

I’m glad I read this AFTER “Bimbos of the Death Sun” because there’s a lot of crossover while this is the superior book. Written about a decade before Bimbos of the Death Sun.

…

Progress!

So they both take place at conventions, Bimbos at a science fiction convention, ABA at the American Booksellers of America convention (THAT’S what ABA means! I just got it!... no, that was a lie, it’s quite clear what ABA stands for throughout the book, it’s not a secret). Both stories are murder mysteries, both murderees are unlikable characters, both amateur sleuths are writers themselves, both murders take place around the hundred pages mark so that I’m left sitting there going “hey book, I thought this was a murder mystery, aren’t you forgetting something? The only mystery so far is when there’s going to be a murder!”

Both stories, interestingly enough, quasi feature Harlan Ellison, but in opposite roles. I’m given to understand that Harlan Ellison, brilliant writer though he may be, is famously short and short tempered. The murdered party in ‘Bimbos of the Death Sun’ is the star writer of the science fiction convention, a short guy, prima donna, that insists on obscure British candy at all hours (okay, that happened once- and it wasn’t all that obscure a candy for us Canadians- they were Smarties!). I’m given to understand that the writer has denied that this character is based off of Harlan Ellison, but that plenty of readers have suggested otherwise. It sounds like it’s in the writer’s best interest to deny, deny, deny.

Murder at the ABA is in fact DEDICATED to Harlan Ellison, and the amateur sleuth protagonist is a short and short tempered character by the name of Darius Just. So, I figure he’s a Harlan Ellison expy. Interesting, yes?

Ah, a note on “Darius”. For the first chunk of the novel I was reading it in my head as “Dairy-us”, a not unconventional reading of the name, until a section takes the time to specifically inform me that I was reading it wrong, that it was in fact “Dare-I-us”. The book tries to teach us this by saying it rhymes with some other words (the book is downstairs remember, so I can’t drop the books method) - but I still didn’t get it until the last example they used, the first two were still a little ambiguous to me. My “Dare-I-us” has got to be the superior explanation, quick and easy. Anyway.

I think it’s kind of silly to not go into this at the beginning of the book- we should know the characters name! - it makes me think that Asimov just sort of plotted the book, rolled up his sleeves, and then wrote whatever came to mind until a book was done, without bothering to re-arrange after the fact something the would be maybe better served at the start. Then again, it’s a decent method if it gets novels written. He’s gotta make his cheddar. By which I mean money.

On the other hand, it could be a great ploy to get into the readers head, KNOWING that they’d spent all this time calling the protagonist by the wrong name, then calling the reader out on it, then correcting him, then watching the reader squirm and readjust to a new name, slowing down the reading until you get into the new swing of things. If this was some kind of pacing tactic, then it’s an absolutely brilliant move. I doubt that’s what happened, but who knows?

(Funny that for most people I’ll just assume lazy writing, but if this book was written by, say, GRANT MORRISON (!) I’d probably give the benefit of the doubt and assume the brilliance.)

The book feels padded to the extreme. I seriously don’t need to know about how you feel about the fried chicken dinners, or your suspicions about everyone looking down on you, Mr. Narrator-Is-A-Short-Guy Darius Just. I admire the effort at capturing everything that happens in the four day time frame of the mystery, it’s a technique I had long favoured for its verisimilitude to life, but I’ve fallen out with it with the clear realization that it undercuts the drama/storytelling to a huge degree.

I just remembered that there are some cool bits or something that I left a note to myself that I wanted to get them recorded here, but I forget what they are. So now I definitely do have to go downstairs and pick up the book and my notes. Be right back.

Whoah, dude! You’re still here? That’s patience. That’s dedication! I thought for sure you’d get tired of waiting for me since I decided to get that bowl of cereal. Well, great, let’s finish up this entry.

Okay, so my notes allude to two pages near the beginning of the novel, right next to each other actually. Page 26 has the narrator say:

“…it’s not what you know, it’s whom you get drunk with.’
‘If I sound bitter, it’s because I don’t drink. I have no moral objections understand, but it is by my keen, incisive brain- or whatever adjectives you prefer- that I make my living; and I have never quite seen that banging it with a hammer called alcohol (or dope) can improve its functioning.”

I find the idea of someone not drinking fascinating, just because it’s so universal… he said, even though he doesn’t drink at all himself.

Also interesting is that we’re told through the course of the novel that Isaac Asimov, who is a character that shows up in this Isaac Asimov novel, also doesn’t drink. So does that mean there are three pseudo characters here that don’t drink; Darius Just, Isaac Asimov the character and Asimov the writer of the book, or just the one Isaac Asimov highlighting his own views on the subject?

I don’t think we’re getting quite a reliable bit of self description here when Just says he has “no moral objection” to drinking. After he does discover the body and is quite shaken up about it, he goes and sits at a bar, wishing he could drink to dull the experience. Well, if he has no moral objection to it, why doesn’t he?

The next thing I wanted myself to copy down is from the next page over, lucky 27, a sort of exultation of writers:

“But an editor can be fired, I eventually learned. And when he is fired, he is no longer an editor, merely an item in the statistics of the unemployed.’
‘Not so a writer. He cannot be fired. He might be rejected, he might fail, he might starve, he might be forced to keep body and soul together by taking some menial (i.e., non-writing) employment, he might be ignored by the critics and denounced by the public- but he was a writer, a failed writer, an unsuccessful writer, a starving writer, a writer. No editor could change that fact.”

I really enjoyed that passage, obviously.

The best part of the book, a device that doesn’t get used nearly enough here, were the footnotes. Not just any footnotes! The idea as told to us in the novel is that Asimov the character has been tasked with writing a story called Murder at the ABA, and Darius Just actually FINDS a murder at the ABA, so the former agrees to help the latter write the book, the very book we hold in our hands! Awesome! (it’s sort of a let down when at the end Asimov has a page asserting that Just is a fictional character and all the murderous events were his own creation, though he DID attend an American Booksellers Association convention, with certain other true particulars)

So every now and again we get a foot note, either Darius or Asimov suggesting some conceit from the other, with a rebuttal underneath. It was a ton of fun, and again, I wish there were more of these diversions in the book. I’ll find an example so you get what I’m talking about.

Ah, here’s a fine example:

* I think Asimov dedicated this book to Harlan Ellison because of all the checks he signed with that name. – Darius Just

Quite the contrary; out of sincere admiration. – Isaac Asimov

Pretty cool, eh?

Oh, but that said, I’m sure there are better books for you to read. Go check out a Sherlock Holmes if you want a mystery. Oh, but not Hound of the Baskervilles- Holmes was barely in that one, that was such a cheat. Oh, or go see the new Holmes movie, that’s going to be awesome. Yes, okay, I understand the critics aren’t crazy about it. Whatever, it’s Robert Downey Jr. man.

On this mornings gym and yes, last nights show.

Argh this is ridiculous. I keep playing computer solitaire recently (the “computer” part is so that people don’t confuse me with a card solitaire person… IF I was any good at shuffling, which I’m not, maybe that could conceivably not feel like the biggest waste of time ever. But I doubt it.) It has this slight addictive quality in that you think “just one more game, only takes a second” and then half an hour is gone. Plus, there is some enjoyment to be had in finally being able to beat something that so defeated you when you were little.

Not that it doesn’t still defeat me sometimes. There’s totally a strategy here that I’m missing. This isn’t something I need to worry about.

“Isaac! We need you to save the Earth!”

“Whoah, okay, what do I need to do?”

“Beat those aliens at solitaire!”

“NOOO!”

(That’s ignoring the fact that solitaire is played… uh, solitarily. I guess there’s a score that the aliens could use to judge who won or not.)

Wasn’t able to make the gym the past two days (lousy not open at 3am on weekends) but I went this morning. You know I skipped bicep curls and went straight to the hard shoulder stuff? Now THAT is maturity for you. The power went out, which was fine. It’s well lit from outside, so it was pretty much business as usual for me. I think a guy was stuck in the elevator. Okay, I’ll say it- serves you right for coming to the gym and taking the elevator up to the place.

There was some trouble when I left, the locker room was entirely without light, and of course anti-social creature that I am, I always use a locker as far away from the entrance (i.e. the only source of light) as possible. My locker was around a corner and everything. So it was slow going with my feeble little cell phone light, and feeling around a lot. A dime fell out of my jeans pocket, and I almost said “it’s not worth it, Isaac” but then I reminded myself “No! It’s a full dime on the ground, not some lousy penny!” And I found it! Extreme!

The only real trouble the power outage cost me was the fact that it meant there was no music to listen to. Again, not that big a concern, except I was really hoping to switch gears today as far as what music was in my head. I’ve still got this song stuck in my head (just a couple of bars, as usual, which is so much worse) from the show I went to last night… a show that, ahhh, yeah. I didn’t like at all. I’m sorry!! I went because my friend was in it, but man I probably shouldn’t have gone at all.

I was really uncomfortable with how the show went out of its way to, and I know this makes me sound lame, be blasphemous. I get it, you’re all apparently atheists (I guess), but there’s plenty of good material with Santa Claus, or just anything light and fun, that can be made a little bit sexy (this was a burlesque show, by the by). The birth of Christ is, and I can’t believe I have to say this, not cool to use.

Dude, during the intermission the “Bad Santa” host had people up on his knee for photos, he tells this one woman to smile and say “Merry Christmas!” and she goes “I don’t want to say that because I’m atheist.” And the Santa says “fair enough.”

Is that fair enough? REALLY? That’s like me going “Hey, my Jewish friend, happy Hanukah- oh, wait, I take it back, I’m not Jewish. I don’t celebrate that holiday.”

And then the whole second half the “Bad Santa” host switched into a Catholic priest costume to get mock fellated by two altar boys! What does that have to do with Christmas?? (oh, plus it’s, you know, kind of a horrible thing to make light of)

I hate that my complaining about this stuff makes me seem like an overly serious nutbar, well, fine. Leave a comment to that effect and I guess never return to read what I have to say.

I wasn’t even going to write much about the experience, for fear of seeming, again, like a no-fun-having-prude or some such, and also because I’d hate for my friend to read this and find out how much I didn’t like the show (it’s because of that latter reason that I’ll often hold back specifics on this blog), but man!

My ticket said 8pm, and I got there right on time, but then I find out that the show wasn’t supposed to start until 9:30… I knew I had forgotten something from the Facebook event page… but then it didn’t ACTUALLY start until just before 10:30! And I was already half asleep from only being in bed from 12:30pm-6pm (my sleep schedule is so messed up). But yes, that was a bad start to the evening right there. I could have slept two more hours at home! I’d probably be a lot more forgiving if that had been the case.

Of special note was the sexy cat act, prowling on stage, lip synching to this Christmas carol as sung by meows. I can’t tell you how annoying those meows were. They weren’t Batman Returns Catwoman meows, they were Alvin and the Chipmunks/oh-look-my-cat-has-rabies meows. Okay, so I guess I could tell you how annoying those meows were.

That lip synching stuff is for the birds. The Bad Santa announcer guy actually did sing with his real voice- he was pretty good. An actual performance!

And the last act of the night was the re-enactment of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a decent topic as far as it goes), but never seemed to want to stray from the grotesque Grinch… who was herself lip synching the song about how the Grinch is a mean one and whatnot (a fact which is just itself confusing from a narrative standpoint). Maybe I just don’t know what ‘burlesque’ is? I thought I did- wait, so is it something organized to show to kids so that they will completely lose the will to have sex? Some kind of advanced abstinence program? Is that what burlesque is? ‘Cause I thought it was something different.

After the program my friend said she appreciated my coming out, and I said “good”. I hoped it sounded like “good, I’m glad to help” as opposed to “good, you should appreciate it, because it was in fact not fun for me”. The second the word “good” came out of my mouth I started worrying about whether it sounded like I meant the latter version, you know, the jerk version. I tried to keep supportively monosyllabic until I could get outta there, but I’m concerned my ruse will be discovered by my sucky lying skills. Also, this blog is a dead give away. (Please don’t read it…. I really shouldn’t be posting it, I just feel kind of strongly about the subject.)

Well, there we go, enough material for two of my regular postings, condensed into one. It’s not like I’m behind on my posts or anything.

Dreadfully behind

Yeah, I'm feeling really behind on entries this month. Should have posted yesterday, but instead I travelled to pick up a Christmas present for my brother Simon (by his own criteria, I got him a brand new video game. Nothing pre-owned. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as expected as he'd like, so, well, it's clear I don't love him that much. What can you do?)

So aside from my more materialistic brothers, everyone else I have... yet to shop for. I'm planning on getting people cool books. I like books. What's wrong with books?

Do you remember my one tradition of picking up a toy for toy mountain or whatever? Well, this year I was getting groceries at Wal-Mart and went "wait. I have money now. It's early yet in December. There are more options as far as action figures go at this point. Why not get that toy to donate NOW?"

So I did. I picked up the basic Hal Jordan Green Lantern figure from the movie. It comes with a ring for the kid to wear, which, as far as encouraging imagination, I thought put this option over the Spidey figure.

That said, I hope I'm not ruining some kids potential comic reading career by starting him off with a toy based off that crummy Green Lantern movie. Too bad the toy/ring aren't brighter either. It's like if Tim Burton made Green Lantern. Except it's not anything like that at all really.

Okay, that's going to have to be all for now, I have plans tonight and I haven't actually been to sleep yet this evening (it's almost noon now... whoops)

The alternatives

I just tried this morning some whey protein stuff after my workout. It was far thicker than I'd imagined it would be, like I was trying to drink cake batter.

Which is pretty awesome.

The stuff is pretty expensive, but I suppose you get a fair amount of the stuff. We'll see how long it lasts.

Spent yesterday, besides picking up comics and posting that blog about Gulliver's Travels, hanging out with Jordan, to go downtown and get him hooked up with Iron Horse Security (that's the outfit I work for). I had a good time with the guy, which is something I can sometimes forget, whenever I get too busy making sure the guy is looking both ways before crossing the road or whatever.

They hired him, so now he just has to get through the training and pass the licencing. All very do-able. It'll be a big help when he gets all that going. All part of my plan.

Got my youngest brothers present delivered yesterday- that guy is going to love it. Take that! Checkmate. Etc.

I don't really want to go anywhere today. I've got some library books to pick up, maybe Jordan will go get them.

Oh! Dude, I got a Christmas card from an old friend of mine. She's so sweet! You know, she actually gave me the Superman patch that rests inside my wallet for my high school graduation!

Also, know what I watched this morning while I ate a spinach and provalone pizza? Napoleon Dynamite! Love that movie- it's got skills. Heartwarming skills.

Okay, you're tired of reading just daily minutia. But good news! I bet by my next post I'll have finished this Isaac Asimov book that I can then talk about.

(I'm working under the assumption that me talking about things I've read is more interesting than the alternatives.)

Augh I forgot that this "post" button doesn't like to work on this laptop for some reason. Guess I am going to the library after all.

Not so swiftly read

A poster of a sleeping baby on the subway has infected me with some happiness. It wasn't a picture of a posed baby, all looking into the camera. Those tend to suck.

This shot just captured pure contentment. I found it enthralling for that.

Maybe it WAS just a cute baby and I've been tricked. I hope not.

Tired, had to get up to go pay for my brother to take the security guard course so that he can get a job, thereby relieving me of some money worry pressure, thereby helping me pay off debts sooner, thereby allowing me to move on with my life.

It may help him too, who can say?

Finally finished Gulliver's Travels. You know that book was published in the early 18th century?? Like, 17-something! I had no idea it was that old! It makes the whole thing that much more impressive, plus I can forgive it its dryness (which was the style at the time).

No it really isn't much of a story, but as early speculative fiction it's remarkable. Each section is "what if [crazy premise] was real?", each premise used to sucker punch contemporary society. The sections are mostly divided into the one with the little people, the most famous story, then the land of giants, sort of well known, and then the last two parts that no one has ever heard of: the weird people that live on a floating island (it uses magnets! This was written in 17-uh, something! Magnets!) and then the land populated by rational horses and animalistic Yahoos (i.e. humans).

Sadly, most of the text boils down to descriptions of how things are different in each land, specifically with an eye to size in the first two parts (duh). Like I said, it could be pretty dry, and if you already get the gist of it, yeah, there really isn't much point in reading the whole thing.

The third story, despite having a floating island (magnets!) was the section I enjoyed the least, if you had to skip a section I'd go for that one. But definitely read through the last bit when Gulliver lives with the rational horses- with that one Gulliver is convinced humans suck, and because of that his character actually has some kind of arc. It's a bit of a downer that he doesn't end up thinking humans are okay after all (after returning home it takes him years to be able to stand the company of his wife and children again) but seeing as the point of the book isn't an enjoyable story but to tear down and expose the worst of humanities foibles (that, big surprise, are still true today) then how could I ask for some apologetic turn around ending?

That Jonathan Swift kept his integrity, at least!

(okay, the guy didn't originally publish under his own name, so he wasn't exactly risking himself in the writing of his attacks... but it is pretty amazing that he published AS Gulliver, saying the book was a non fictional travelogue.)

Crossing a finish line- again

Ah-ha! Ye thought ye got me, eh? Well, no sir, all eleven, just as ordered.

And no, I didn’t just throw together three separate posts just now, I’d actually written them up Monday and Tuesday- but Monday’s wouldn’t post (lousy weird button not doing anything…) and Tuesday’s, well, I didn’t make the trip to another computer to post the two up. So, before work today I’ll be stopping off somewhere, USB firmly in hand, to post all these up.

In that case, I guess I’m telling you to scan back a few entries if you wanted to catch anything you missed.

I didn’t end up going to any theatre Tuesday night, couldn’t get anyone to go. True, I only tried three people… wait, I tried three people! That’s a fair number of people!

Instead I spent time on the Doctor Who TV tropes page and spent some hours at the gym. I paid particular notice to the music being piped in, listening for hints on song structure because, as I wrote Monday (but only posted today) I’m wanting to write a song.

I think I may have hit on an appropriate topic for the song. Or at least a fun topic. At this moment, I’m thinking it’ll be about Pluto. We’ll see how it goes.

Needed to pick up some cereal, so 3am trip to the expensive Metro. Got Vector, a chicken salad thing, and- TWIZZLERS!

Aw yeah, Twizzlers! I saw ‘em, and I wanted ‘em.

Note to self about the salad: the red onions are no good for you. It feels like I’m on the verge of suffering from heartburn. Pretty sure the culprit here is the onions, they’re my prime suspect. But don’t leave town yellow peppers.

It’s 6:18am now, spent the rest of my night watching Muppet Treasure Island. Should probably read the book. Wonder if the Captain really did have a lover that took with Captain Flint and ended up marooned on the eponymous island, or if that was added so Ms. Piggy could be in the picture.

Man, I want to see that new Muppet movie. I probably shouldn’t have said I’d watch it with this one person that I can hardly ever get in touch with or see. Feels like that one Simpsons episode where, once Bart has finally become chief justice of the Supreme Court, Homer finally takes Bart to see the Itchy and Scratchy movie.

That reminds me of the time I explained… something in my modernisms class (forget what) then immediately said “like in that one Simpsons episode”. The professor stated that I had said something really well, but then ruined it with the reference. That stuck with me, obviously. As far as academics go, I’m sure I learned the most from that professor, that guy’s the best.

Of course university teaches much more than academics and most of those lessons aren’t to be found on any lesson plan.

Ah well. I should be off to bed then. If you’re curious it’s now 6:28am. Time flies.

Nov 29th

Nine in the morning, and I’d really like to get back to sleep. Debating whether or not to invite a cute girl to a movie this evening-seems like a no brainer, right?

This morning I watched Jodie Foster’s “The Beaver”, and the other day I finished “Terminator: Salvation” (or whatever it’s called) and I realized they both had Anton Yelchin in them. That’s pretty surprising. The only thing I knew the kid was in was the awesome Star Trek pic, I go out and get two random films from the library, and he’s in both.

Guess I should actually talk about Terminator first, I saw that one first. It kinda sucked. Playing it on my playstation 2 it skipped like crazy, but I didn’t care much at all. There just wasn’t anything to it; the movie feels like it was a twenty two minute show, as opposed to a feature length film.

And I thought John Connor was supposed to die in it? Did I hear wrong? I kept expecting him to die, and that the human-terminator hybrid would assume his identity to lead the resistance. Could I have made that up? No, probably I just misheard someone.

Instead! The terminator guy gives up his heart so John Connor can live, and not ONE person was like “hold up buddy, you don’t have to kill yourself!”

Well, the girl that loved the terminator was sort of against it, but she didn’t exactly put up much of a fight.

The CGI Arnold was actually really good; I was impressed on that front. Not that the skill of one computer generated image has any bearing on the story.

And that creepy little girl that hung out with Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) - nothing happened with her! Zip! I expected her to turn out to be another infiltration terminator unit, maybe with a broken voice modulator or something, and that’s why she never spoke. Nope, just a scared girl that gets to hand John Connor the big detonator at the finale. She couldn’t even press the button herself? At last that’d have been cool.

I wonder if part of the problem is that the original Terminator movie (the only one I’ve uh… mostly seen all of) is tense because you don’t think anything is going to stop that villain, the action building and building until finally it’s stopped, the end. It’s tense, frightening. In this film, you start off with giant flying ships and motorcycle robots, all of which get taken out by the humans, so right away the film has shifted from that tenseness to an action/war emphasis. Only at the end do we get that near unstoppable Terminator, but ten minutes of getting chased by the thing isn’t enough to build the kind of necessary dread. It’s like the film remembered what franchise they were shooting half way through, but it was too late to switch gears.

Yeah, that’s enough of that one.

The Beaver… it’s good, sure it’s good. I guess I have to applaud it for its true to life nature (beaver puppet notwithstanding). I imagine for me to sit back and think a movie is “great” I have to be tricked, manipulated into thinking “THERE! That’s the answer!” and I walk out of the theatre thinking I’ve got life all figured out.

(Alternatively, a particularly instructive movie, like, ACTUALLY instructive, would also be great, but for now I’ll assume that I’m fool enough to not be able to tell the difference between actual answers and getting my proper emotional strings plucked to think I’ve got the answers, because… how should I know the difference right away, if ever?)

But The Beaver’s principle statement is that life is messy. The father isn’t magically cured of his mental illness; the son still faces a daunting future. They all get a little closer together by the end, and I liked the concern on the son’s face as he accompanies his father to the hospital after the garage accident- this kid has spent the whole movie trying to get away from his father, but at that moment he’s scared for the guy. It’s a moment that strikes me as being off message in a more traditional film, but in a movie about life you can just capture that honest little moment without structuring the whole piece around that sole revelation.

I liked all the performances, I liked the story- Jodie Foster (the director) could probably have stood to cut more of Jodie Foster (the actor, but yes, the same person), leaving more focus on the father and son dynamic, but eh, whatever.

Man, I really want to go see the Muppet movie, but I’m supposed to see it with a friend of mine who really has a hard time making plans to do stuff. What else is playing? Hugo looks pretty cool, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that one. Arthur Christmas has been getting surprisingly good reviews even though, to me, it looks terrible. No, I’m not going to see that one.

I’ll figure it out.

Stuff to do in the coming year

Even though I'm tired after a full weekend of work, the night before last I got pretty inspired and energized. Here's what I'm going to do.

Write a song- a friend of mine has encouraged me to write some music, something I really haven't done much before. In response, I've decided to write a song for her as a Christmas present. It's gonna be rough, but I bet she'd like it.

Write a novel- I've already discussed the novel I'm working on. I haven't done much more since then, but the story has been percolating in my head, and I'd really like to get it on a page/screen. I just need to suck it up and pick up a little laptop to write on.

Write a short story- I got an e-mail as a "friend of Merril" or whatever about a speculative/science fiction contest happening in February. Seems pretty cool, I'd like to contribute to it, so I will.

Make more money- I don't have a choice about this one, I plain need to be making more. To that end I have to, again, suck it up, get my smart serve certification, and pick up some extra security work for my days off. Hurgh I'm tired just thinking about it.

The more exciting stuff:

I'm going to apply to be a tree planter for this upcoming season. When is that season? No idea, I presume the summer. Where do I apply? No idea. The deadline? How should I know! But I'm pretty sure I've got a friend who did this that can give me this info, also, when I discussed this the other day the people I was talking with suggested this could be work in B.C. which is way more awesome than my thinking of doing it in Ontario.

Assuming that takes the summer months, what next? What else!- apply to teach english over seas! I'm thinking if I apply nowish I can make a September session. I've been told to check out "footprints" as far as an organization to do this with. It's a lead, I'm a detective, just go with me on this, don't bring me down.

But Isaac, what will you do before that stuff? Hey, I don't know, what about finally pursue my bike courier ambition?!?! Wouldn't that be insane? If I managed to do all this stuff this coming year? What's great is, if I totally hate the courier thing, then who cares, I'm off to plant trees! If I love it? I can always go back to it!

I'm excited, do I look excited? Trick question, this is a blog, you can't see me right now.

I have some obstacles to over come, but I think all of these things are achievable. If I didn't, I probably wouldn't be so pumped.

Hitting targets and getting credit

It LOOKS like I'm posting two in the one day, and I am. But it's not my fault! I wrote the previous entry yesterday and the button wouldn't work for the posting! Not sure what the deal was, but it's thoroughly unfair.

I spent the night napping on the couch, fully clothed and then some, with three sweaters on to fight back the cold, and my OTHER sweater and jacket combo protecting my poor chilly feet. I'll probably have to return for ANOTHER nap, today being the start of one of those three day weekends (like all my work weekends).

I dreamt a friend of mine gave birth to a polar bear, also that Tom Welling punched out a wave in the ocean. The Tom Welling bit isn't such a mystery, his face is plastered along the back of most of my comics this week advertising that final Smallville season on sale. I don't know WHERE the polar bear came from. That may just be me being weird.

I stayed up late, reclining and warm, watching my brother play Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. To hear everyone talk about it, it's a pretty big deal. Okay. All I know is that he repeatedly failed to hit these ten targets on his bird in the alloted 120 seconds, and I thought it was hilarious. I challenged him to let me have a shot, and no, I didn't succeed, but I did easily beat his tries while refusing to take a moment outside of the trial to figure out the controls- they are pretty intuitive, and I had been watching him beforehand, so I had the gist.

Boy I gave him a hard time about that. Very funny.

I just received and activated a new credit card, a good thing for several reasons. One is that I now have credit powers again (online purchasing, the all important parking lot convenience), the other is that it gives me a little hope that maybe my credit ain't as bad as I thought- I have almost payed off my other card ($300 to go, down from $1,800+!!!)

Or else these credit guys think I'm sucker. Well, past evidence would support that, but I'll show them.

Oh, it's also good in that I gave all my money towards the family finances, and maybe I'd like to eat sometime in the next week before I get paid again. That's a definite plus.

But yes, it's burning a whole in my pocket/consciousness, not in the classic sense of "ooh, money to spend!", but in the sense of "you have an explosive in your pocket, that can be used for good or ill, so use your head!"

And as long as I'm thinking like that, I should be okay. Unless I have a nervous breakdown or something.

Or to put it another way, great power great something something. You know the line.

Last saturday in certainly more detail than none at all. You have to give me that!

So my couple of days off have consisted of bed. Very disheartening. I'd like to be not tired please. Also, I'd like to be not cold, my feet were ice cubes last night.

A friend of mine has been encouraging me to write some music, I think because she kind of wishes I was someone that went around writing music all the time. To that end, today a couple of lines with potential have come to me, I hurried down to pen and paper to record them, and I'm thinking this will make a lovely Christmas present for her.

Ugh, but music notation... well, whatever.

Yes, last weekend I was supposed to have a late lunch and a movie with someone, but it didn't happen! She said she was going to be late, so I told her to call while I napped- but no call, C'apn!

It's relatively cool, she got me apology chocolates, so there you go.

That evening (and why I couldn't switch things up to a late supper... boy was I hungry that afternoon) I had a bud's house warming to go to. I recorded the address in my cell phone as a draft text, but when I got to the area the draft was all messed up and the info gone! I called up a guy that I knew would be there to ask for the address only to find the party cancelled! The host had gotten sick and cancelled the event whilst I napped that afternoon (or maybe earlier, I forget when I last checked the event page)!

So instead I ventured down to the Lakeview restaurant at ossington and dundas to hang out with that excellent gentleman who told me of my sudden change in evening plans. A good time was had by all, we discussed Marmaduke crossing the terribleness threshold into brilliance (my words) and the strip Scary Gary- which I'd planned to do that night anyway, I cut out examples from the paper for this purpose.

(What other purpose could they be cut out for?)

The minute our party left the restaurant, two other friends of mine were randomly going in! So I went back in the restaurant with that group! And soon after, the friend of mine that leaves nearby and with whom I was going to spend the night showed up!... okay, that last bit wasn't a surprise, that part was actually planned.

We had apple/pear pie- quite a combination! I spent way more money that night than I'd planned, and that was just for the all day breakfast and then the pie. I seriously don't know how people spend so much on alcohol. I mean, how is it possible to have that much disposable income? Crazy. One of these days I'll try having money, that seems a popular lark.

Leaving the restaurant (again) I almost immediately went horizontal on the couch, it was really comfy. The place was crazy warm, I'm definitely not used to that (he says, currently wearing four sweaters and a jacket, because he just doesn't want to deal with cold right now). We talked for a good long while, it was nice.

I couldn't really sleep much. 5am-6am happened, then I was awake and headachey. I got to watch Thundercats, though it took too long to load. When that was over I returned to that couch, read a bit of that Put Out More Flags book, fell back to sleep from something like 11am- 1pm, but with lots of little phone time checking in between.

Man, I'm leaving a lot of specifics out, mostly conversation details, but I could certainly paint a more interesting picture of these set pieces. But, eh, a lot of that isn't my laundry to air, so to speak.

That's good for now, I'm going to lean back on this (relatively) big, comfy couch right here, continue to keep all these clothes on, and stew a bit. Or sleep. Mostly sleep. We just got back from Tucker's Marketplace. And I wanted to sleep BEFORE we went there!

Put out MORE Flags!

Wanted to hop on here yesterday, gave myself some time before work to do so, but someone else was on the thing, and even though I felt vastly entitled, I kept my mouth shut, waited a few minutes (i.e. wasted a few minutes) then left for work.

Finished reading that "Put Out More Flags" book. The parts with Basil Seal were fun, which makes sense with him being the main character, but the book was too fractured for my tastes, with a lot of characters getting screen time that ended up requiring too much effort than I wanted to put in to keep straight. That may actually not be the books fault, since all these characters were apparently in previous Basil Seal stories, it could be that I was supposed to get to know all of them from a previous adventure, and just jumped in at the worst possible moment.

80 pages into Gulliver's Travels and having a great time, though the very begining, the first five pages I'd guess, was slow going, just setting up Gulliver's history and whatnot. So much of the book is detailed measurements of things and how they compare to the distorted landscape of the lilliputians and brobdignagians (I only just started that latter section).

Spent the weekend off being hugely tired, at one point suffering from a great headache (likely from tiredness), but also hanging out with three and a half separate groups of friends (the half is indicative of the time I spent crashed on the couch belonging to one person, as opposed to a group of people).

I'll talk more about the weekend later, I suppose tomorrow (tomorrow being in five hours, and I only just got up and ate a bowl of cereal, a pasta supper almost completed in the meanwhile).

Right now I have to get cleaned up a bit and buy comics before the store closes!

Doctor Who two

Ah my head. I really didn't get enough sleep.

So, first thing then- snogging. Naturally I'd heard the word before, but it's been brought back to attention thanks to Doctor Who and the word is fantastically amazing. When I tried to quantify what exactly had struck me about it, it's the fact that it's somehow simultaneously high AND low brow. Isn't that just quintessentially British? I think that's amazing.

Obviously there's some culture shock involved, but I wonder if the constant hand holding between the Doctor and his companion is a sort of normal thing over there, or if this is particular to Doctor Who. Well, how can I really know? Sure, I could ask someone. Maybe later.

Either way, it shows a closeness, an easy familiarity and tenderness that really draws the viewer in. Well, it draws me in anyways.

I really like Rose Tyler. "Rose X The Doctor forever!" I should say in my best shipping voice. Particularly near the end of her run (the writers knew where the character had to go... well who else would know?) you could see her coming into her own, having learned the Doctors methods, she could save a day or two on her own at this point.

She was an excellent cryer. I can see people that'd think she went too far, almost more like stage acting versus the small screen, but it was a good counterpoint to the Doctors reservation, and even then, it's not like she was gushing tears when a flower got stomped on- it was always in response to a very personal hurt and fear, when she thinks she's lost those close to her is when she cries... and that's a pretty good reason! And her last episode in series 2 is genuinely heart breaking.

Same with the Paul Cornell scripted "Father's Day" from series 1.

Actually, did I say this was a crazy sad show yet? Wel it is! Tragedy upon tragedy.

There's the one episode where the Doctor gets to manipulate these nano machines that were the cause of all the trouble, and they brought back everyone they'd messed up, and the Doctor is stoked "EVERYONE LIVES! JUST THIS ONCE, EVERYONE LIVES!" I think I quoted that right, the everyone lives bit is correct, that's for sure. A happy episode, just flat out happy. I'm spoiled, most of MY heroes save everyone all the time. Except Uncle Ben. That guys got it rough.

Martha Jones, the companion after Rose in series 3, didn't emote as much as I thought she should have, but then again she had it tough. Rose was the every-woman who got elevated to the Doctors level (or thereabouts) by the end, Martha starts off as a sensible med student, a VERY different character. Even in the fact that she decides to leave the Doctor of her own accord, that she can resist that thrill addiction of travelling all over time and space- by definition she's a low key character.

And that's not a bad thing- I understand the fourth series has Donna as the companion, she was featured for one episode "The Runaway Bride" or something, the episode before Martha Jones arrived, and she was always yelling and being high strung and whatnot. Pretty annoying. Hopefully it'll be toned down some when I do check out that fourth series.

All right, that's post, I'm bouncing.

A little nostalgia for JLA Secret Origins

Ah man, I'm so far behind on this thing for the month. I'll catch up okay, but yeah.

Noticed an odd little shift the other day. While it's certainly nothing new to feel down I actually realized that I had moved a step beyond that- that I was thinking more like "I deserve to feel down".

That's rather excessive. Rather harsh, self.

Rather.

I've got a couple of library stuff to return, so that means it's now or never if I'm going to talk about them. Well, "never" or "the next time I take out these books, if I do" whichever comes first.

There's the first two volumes of "Justice" by Jim Krueger, Alex Ross, and Doug Braithwaite, notable for name dropping Robert McKee (too lazy to check the spelling, but I've talked about "Story" before, so maybe search through my previous posts if you want to fact check me. Oh, what's that? You'd have to manually search 'cause I never tag my posts? MWAHAHAHAHAH) and the concept of the villain thinking of him or herself as the hero, all things being a matter of perspective.

I say perspective, in place of "all things are relative" i.e. good and evil, because I've got a pretty good rubric for "good" and "evil" in my head. If an action does good to you and harm to all others... that's an evil act. Pretty straightforward.

I bring that up because Gorilla Grodd can think he's the hero of his own story all he wants, but it's pretty hard to argue with the fact that he'd be happy to eat the Flash's heart given the oppourtunity.

That was a gruesome example I just came up with. No heart eating is actually contained in Justice.

But that's not actually what I wanted to talk about- this other book, "Secret Origins Featuring the JLA" is a collection of single issues outlining the origins of the JLA as of the years of the Morrison League.

There are 7 stories, one for each of the members (except Martian Manhunter who ALWAYS gets forgotten. Which sucks 'cause he's awesome) and then one for the origin of how this iteration of the Justice League got together.

Of the six individual character origins, half of them are pretty terrible. Like, crazy terrible. Like, "why would anyone buy this?" terrible. That's mostly just an art issue, however Aquaman has both the worst art AND the worst, most convoluted origin story as of this time.

Maybe Erik Larsen (the writer) just hates Aquaman? That could explain it.

The three for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are appropriately the best. All three have art that tricked me into thinking they were done by much more famous artists (I'm looking at you Batman by Staz Johnson and James A. Hodgkins who tricked me with their skill into assuming it was Kevin Nowlan on art. What? Nowlan is great! I hope that's how his name is spelled!)

BUT!

The narration for the Batman comic is really stupid. "Predictability, here, is a complex calculation between logical occurrences and dubious motives. While destiny is the elusively simple matter of becoming who you are."

Elusively simple. Riiight.

Also, pretty sure "bestial" isn't a word. You mean "beastial"?

Whatever. The important story is the JLA origin my Morrison and Millar, with art by Howard Porter- so pretty much the actual creative team for JLA at the time. Why is it important? Because somewhere, in some comic or magazine, or maybe even someone else's collection (but seriously, probably my own) I read this story when I was little-ish. I'd have been about 12, and this was probably my first time reading a book with all these characters, my first glimpse into the wider DC comic universe outside of a couple of Batman books (a very different animal) and that ONE issue of Superboy that so informs my tastes to this day (in case I've never mentioned it before, I now own all of that Superboy series. If some one told me I had to get rid of all my comics, but got to keep my Superboy series and my first two Spider-Man comics... I'd be okay with that. And as long as we're talking hypotheticals, if I had to keep only one comic out of my collection, it'd be that second Spider-Man comic. I should really talk about that comic sometime.)

Got distracted there, didn't I?

You know this JLA comic taught me the concept of super conductivity? I think that's amazing... but, what's funny about it now that I'm older (in fact it seems crazy that this never occurred to me before) is that they just throw super conductivity into the book with no real explanation of why the temperature is dropping so much to allow super conductivity of the metals in the building.

The evil alien menace just asks Batman (who's the only one who can save the day, naturally) what he did, and Batman says he "Sabotaged the air-conditioning system."

See, it could be I'd have to wait until high school to grasp just how cold it'd have to be before we'd be talking super conductivity time, but now... couldn't they have thown in that Batman used Mr. Freeze's gun or something with the... air... conditioning. It just sounds so silly now.

Don't get me wrong, the whole thing is still awesome, and I love the fact that it did actually teach me something science related ("Drop the temperature of most metals to absolute zero and they have no electrical resistance." "Super conductivity"- though I doubt ANY metal would have ANY electrical resistance at ABSOLUTE zero. I suppose I could be wrong, though it seems a pretty intuitive fact.).

Plus this comic simply bleeds cool. Like the bit of stubble and the merciless smile on the Flash's face as he smashes the alien complex, while Batman is all cloaked in the shadows... and they don't even bother showing the pair race out of the building as it explodes in a faux bit of drama because "They don't call me the Flash for nothing."

And then there's Green Lantern's awesome dialogue- while everyone else is the established super hero, a bit on the stiff side, Kyle is almost the side kick/viewer stand in. After saving the day, but losing their powers in the process (they come back) he says "Yeah, cool deal, but what are we supposed to do now? Join the concerned mothers of america? Look at the state of us. The Flash is the only one in the team who even SMELLS like he's got super-powers anymore. You must admit, this kinda sucks."

Ah, Kyle. You'll ever be the best Green Lantern ever.

Alright, sweet, that's a post people.

Talking Doctor Who 1

So I've wanted to talk about Doctor Who for about the last two weeks- and now I'm going to do just that. Let's see what I say.

So I got loaned the first three series of the modern Who show, and the first thing to know is that for the first two series the companion to the Doctor is Rose Tyler, and the third series has Martha Jones. This is key because the Doctor is a sort of set character, most of the development happens on the part of the companion. They are (like all good side-kicks) the viewer getting the chance to hang out with their hero (I forget what the word is I'd usually use to describe that phenomenon...), and the reason that things get constantly explained. The Doctor may know everything, but that companion is always asking what's going on, so we the audience get to hear it.

As with most big series, I was resistant to getting into it. It took me years before I got with the crowd and read a Potter book, for instance. Interestingly, even now, with me quite liking the Doctor Who stuff, I have far more reservations about the series than I usually associate with a series I like.

That last sentence was confusing: what I mean is that I can sit here and say "yes, I like this Doctor Who business, BUT there's a bunch of stuff that drives me crazy and comes close to breaking my willing suspension of disbelief."

That's a weird mix that doesn't usually come up with a property I like.

To get into specifics, the show drives me crazy with the fact that the bad guys can be shaking in their boots at the thought of the Doctor... even when they've got him surrounded, they each have some super disintegrator, and he has no weapoons.

Just shoot him! You want the universe? Just shoot him!!

The one time they actually DO shoot him, he happened to have a personal shield device that episode. That was awesome, I was good with that, but it just drives the point home that these villains are generally lacking in good sense where the Doctor is concerned.

To compare to another series, take Batman (particularly Adam West Batman). This was a constant complaint back in the day, the Joker or whomever never shooting him, but instead putting him in an elaborate death trap. However, I've never had a problem rationalizing this for Batman, because I was either too young to question it (now THIS stands as the best evidence that Doctor Who is a kids show), or, when I got older, there were always the suggestions of the villains various psychosis getting in the way. Joker loves having Batman around, he's not going to kill him. Two Face ALSO used to be friends with the guy, plus that coin has a habit of flipping good at the most inoppourtune times for him. Riddler wants to prove he's smarter than Batman, what's smart about firing a gun?

Oh, and to take the famous Harry Potter example: why does no one there grab a gun, since spells take longer and there's no real defence? I always assumed everyone in that story is kind of stupid about mundane solutions. It's a weird rationalization, but there you go.

The point is, I've never been bothered by this kind of thing before. Fortunately, the show has plenty to offer to redeem itself. The deep mythology, the limitless invention of setting, the great companion development (I love Rose, and will talk more about her in a later post), and some of the best techno babble I've ever heard.

I really do think that the best techno-babble eschews words that do mean something in a proper context, because with even a little bit of study the whole thing falls apart and becomes cheesy to the extreme.

Why does this happen? Time vortex.
How'd you open that? Sonic screwdriver.

It mostly avoids tellings us the impossible specifics of tech jargon- how else is a modern day writer supposed to go about describing the science of the billionth century? You can't really research that.

Some panelling conversation

The following is an e-mail I sent in response to reading this article: http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-steve-ditko-stan-lees-amazing-spider.html

The site is more than worth the time to check out if you have any interest in comics literacy. But right, that e-mail I sent.

"I wanted to share a bit about how I think you’ve just flipped my perspective on things. When I began my university career, I guess this was 2004, as a hobby that I probably devoted too much of my work/study time to, I worked on a comic of my own (just pencil drawings, shown only to friends for the most part). This was long before I began doing comic reviews, also many personal intellectual advances due to education/experience had yet to be made (I’m not too worried about stating the fact that I’ve made progress, so long as I acknowledge that it’s a lifetime process, and I’ve got a long ways to go still), but the comic’s still pretty fun I think.

Anyways, with each page I’d always be concerned with varying the layout from what came before, for the sake of mixing it up a bit. I didn’t want to change it for the sake of change alone, and for that reason I’d really wrack my brains to justify mixing it up, to justify the move from a 3X3 grid (even then I was aware of how short changed I was with modern comics storytelling, with three panels to a page, a splash page, a DOUBLE page splash. Wanting to emulate those early Marvel’s I admired, you’ll be hard pressed to find one of my pages with fewer than six panels… well, okay, not hard pressed, that’s exaggeration, especially since I usually opened up the issue with a splash page.).

The flip on my perspective that’s been brought about is the fact that those reasons to break out of the 3X3 mould, if they don’t jump out at you on their own, I certainly don’t need to chase after them. At least, that’s if I’m writing comics more to my taste; it may be a different matter if I’m trying to be marketable to the “wider” modern audience of, you know, that rump that keeps coming up in conversation here. Well, that’s a bridge I can cross if I ever get to it.

Ah-HA! But before I fall into yet ANOTHER trap of thinking in one set way, it’s important to be aware that visual variety is indeed key to keeping that eye on the page and finger turning the corners over. You rightfully point out the various different camera shots Ditko uses on a single page- exciting AND communicative, rather than just exciting in the “look at all the crazy assortment of panels on a page”.

It must be said that of course there’s a place for the storytelling of the crazy panelling variety- I’m hardly going to tell J.H. Williams to knock it off with the beautiful (often beguiling) Batwoman stuff (I’m just going by the Detective Comics run and the little of Promethea I’d read, I haven’t actually checked out the new 52 Batwoman, though I assume it’s done in the same style), but there should maybe be a label for new comics readers, and a reminder to the seasoned veteran: “Warning- this comic for advanced readers only, otherwise you run the risk of continuous head scratching and loss of interest in the comics medium!”

It’s like you say, there has to be some* mastery of the basics of the language before it can be messed around with, this is true of both the creators AND the readers, though I often forget that about the readers.

*I say “some” because I consider myself notorious for being woefully ignorant and antagonistic towards the specifics/scientificity of (particularly linguistic) grammar. Participles, infinitives, other… grammar-y words… how is it that in trying to make clearer communication possible, the rules to express that effort are as clear as mud? AND frequently argued over amongst the experts regardless! So, yes, I specify “some mastery” to avoid being that most hated of things- a hypocrite!"

Kuiper belt? I guess I can look it up...

My floor is currently littered with newspaper bits that I wanted to talk about, but I don't really feel like getting them right now. Some other time then.

The most important entries down there are the Scary Gary and Marmaduke strips that showcase their redeeming qualities. It's important!

And yes, I'm surprised about the Marmaduke love too- it's crossed the hate threshold and is now a brilliant strip, all without changing a thing about itself.

Maybe that's what those republicans down south are counting on. Ho ho I miss Daily Show.

Speaking of shows that I want to see- Community! I haven't seen ANY of the new season, and there're SIX episodes out. I'm hoping nbc.com will hook me up, though that looks increasingly unlikely. Helpful youtube has been advocating I check out any number of sketchy sites to satisfy myself. So sketchy. Plus I just got rickrolled into a scary halloween thing, which then rolled me to some, I don't know, armenian guys account.

It's only funny if I get to hear "Never gonna give, never gonna give"

Oh, but even then, it's gotta be the full song. Who doesn't want a bit of Rick Astley still? Maybe it's only me that's still good with it.

Got up at 5:30pm today, which is fine, but I don't have a whole lot on the agenda tonight. Wish the gym was still open. Well, I did laundry anyways.

By the way, I've started plotting a novel. I've got the general idea down, but it's in the fleshing out that things happen. I've only written either the ending, or just before the ending, waiting for some resolution. I'm excited, but I'd still rather do something else this evening.

As an aside, my spirits have generally picked back up. I feel more hopeful, which is crazy, since things have actually gotten worse if I start the think about things too hard. So I won't.

I was loaned a book on the hubble telescope and astronomy in general. I didn't want to spend the whole night reading it in detail, but I still learned a thing or two. Uh, I may have forgot what I learned. I think Pluto is currently classified as a dwarf planet in the "Kuiper belt" orbiting the solar system? Is it Kuiper? Not sure. But there's another dwarf planet that's bigger than Pluto, and I guess is the main reason Pluto got demoted from Planet status (which is messed up). I think that other dwarf planet is named... Eres?

Anyway, after looking through the book, I'm walking outside, it's dark like always, I look up into, you know, infinity, then back down to this little mudball of ours, and couldn't help but laugh at myself, my problems, really, everyones problems. Wow is it all so small.

Just looked it up- BAM Kuiper belt was correct. Man, I kinda rocked that one. Wait, let me chack the name of that other dwarf planet... oh whatever it's Eris. One letter off.

Happy halloween I guess

Last one for the month. Not going to keep you long, I want to get to bed, I'm already up a good hour later than I should be.

At work there was a party going on, the baptismal after-function for someone. A baby I guess. In the lobby there're halloween decorations all over. Nothing too fancy, but there is a little zombie guy who pulls his head off and talks when you press a button (maybe there's a mode with a sensor, but I didn't care to touch the thing... how many random kids must have been pawing at that thing over the years? Forget it!)

Anyway, this sweet little girl from the baptismal thing, her family is about to leave, and she asks if she can see the thing? (Meaning: can she press the button so the zombie guy will pull off his head.)

She was really cute with how she asked her father: Can I- can I see the thing? Sil vous plait? Sil vous plait??

(uh my french... that is supposed to be 'sil', right?)

But THEN her father is all, "NO, THAT'S WITCHCRAFT, IT'S SATAN WORSHIP!"

"Sil vous plait?"

"IT'S WITCHCRAFT! DO YOU LIKE WITCHES?"

It was pretty ridiculous. The little girl, by the way, must have been five or so, so there's some extra context for you. I'm just glad I heard the father start to freak out like that BEFORE I told the little girl it'd be all right for her to press the button, because you know I would've gotten an ear full for tempting her and damning her soul forever. That would've sucked.

This one youngish couple at the condo came to me for a parking permit this evening, er, yesterday evening, and they ended up chilling out with me for quite some time. They were really nice, talked a bit about DeLoreans and "the Ottawa shift" which is apparently what the guy calls my working hours because I guess Ottawa paramedics can have the same 6pm-6am shifts.

I got side tracked- anways, they were really nice, and I enjoyed their company, but man, what were they doing talking to me? You've got your girlfriend over for the night, maybe you have other things to do besides chat with the securtiy guard?

I guess... I must be a really interesting guy to talk to? Like, REALLY interesting?

Awesome news, my buddy got me a ticket for a screening of Ghostbusters at the Paramount theatre tonight. And so that's why I'm done here, will check a couple of web comics, then go to bed.

Ahh sunlight! *hssss*

Some Steel

I’m really cutting myself short of time today. I’m still going to have to post this, and my comic reviews when I get up tomorrow, before heading off to that job I don’t want to do.

Hmm, I’m kinda hungry.

Spent the night writing reviews, making my food for work tonight, watching an episode of Sliders, right, and watching the film Easy A. I know I already talked about that movie at length when I saw it in theatres. That thing would fall apart without Emma Stone in the lead role. Anyways.

I did want to give a shout out to Real Steel before it completely drops off people’s radar. I was surprised to the degree that I disliked both of the main characters (Hugh Jackman and the kid who probably isn’t a much better actor than Jake Lloyd was doing Phantom Menace, but surely had better direction. Or hey, maybe this kid just IS a better actor than Jake Lloyd, how should I know?).

That dislike, I’m wondering if it’s a sort of a short hand for displaying the characters at the beginning of their narrative arc? Both these guys change massively through the course of the film, and good for them, but there probably should’ve been an element of that potential shining through at the beginning. You know, the old “diamond in the rough” business.

Oh, man, when that one evil genius Asian guy shows up, and he’s all calm and deep voiced and says something to the effect of “Zeus is unbeatable” it was amazing. He was intense, almost comically intense. Maybe I’m describing it wrong, but when that guy showed up out of nowhere it blew me away, I thought it was great.

I thought they dropped the ball in not including a degree of bitterness towards robots for destroying the sport of human boxing on the part of Jackman’s character. It would have been more rewarding to see this lost man find his niche as a champion when he gets to use his past skills to their fullest to operate his robot for the final match. But I’m being crazy, ‘cause I know it was already plenty rewarding, so whatever. I nitpick.

Most promotional stuff I saw focused on the ‘Atom’ robot, which doesn’t have that great a design. It’s not particularly exciting. I know, again, that’s the idea, but I was really surprised at how cool a lot of the other robots were when they showed up in the film. Maybe I’m talking crazy, I probably didn’t even see that many trailers for the movie or whatever.

I’d better wrap things up, I need my sleep, and it’s that full weekend of work ahead of me to deal with.

I should maybe buy Real Steel when it comes out. And Tron: Legacy too. Or just the sound track to Legacy. Also, I should figure out a way that I could do that without feeling guilty about the expense. Man, it took me six months to get myself to buy Sliders- and I was still guilty over the purchase! It’s been a lot of fun watching it though.

Great Expectations

I just got finished telling someone a few days ago that I didn't like 'Great Expectations' as much as 'David Copperfield'- well, a hundred some odd pages and I'm singing a different tune.

As far as they are both purported to be a bildungsroman/maturation novel, I stand by David Copperfield as the superior work. However! Great Expectations has been mislabelled!

The protagonist is very often an ungrateful sort, almost from his earliest appearance, which put a limit on how much I could root for the guy and enjoy the proceedings- but coupled with the moodiness of the scene, the tragedy of Ms. Havisham as a broken and corrupting woman, the hints of the supernatural (though never actually utilized, all played with in the eye of the narrator- Great Expectations reminded me more of Wuthering Heights than anything else... with an odd mix of Frankenstein as well (a connection I made JUST BEFORE Dickens actually makes an allusion to Frankenstein... on the one hand that subdues any brilliance I felt on my part, like I was shouting out the punchline to a joke only after the speaker has uttered nine tenths of it, however I take comfort in knowing that I was at least in synch with what Dickens was writing. A helpful thing as far as being assured of my understanding of the text.)

But not long after that Frankenstein bit, the novel shifts into an almost spy thriller, and/or heist film! Sprinkled throughout are the comedy aspects involved (not that there wasn't plenty of comedy in David Copperfield)... in short Great Expectations is a rather marvelous blending of genre.

It could maybe be shorter for the modern audience, but even then it may be impossible to create that same sense of mood without the length as is.

And I forgot to mention that I made a connection between the unlikability of the protagonist and the sorts of doomed individuals that star in various horror tales, EC Comics, Twilight Zone and the like.

Ah, plus, if I wanted to be fair, flawed Pip is perhaps a more realistic character than almost perfect David Copperfield (even though David does marry the very obviously wrong girl the first out... well, he gets it right in the end.) Everything works out perfectly for Copperfield, Pip has a less satisfying end, though more hopeful and (necessarily) philosophic than Copperfield's.

There's actually an alternate, original ending to Expectations that's included in the notes. I'm not really into it, it SORT of perpetuates the tragedy of Ms. Havisham onto the now grown Estella, while also undermining it by having her not REALLY be as tragic a figure?... No, I don't dig it. Better to have Pip and Estella meet up on what once was their shared meeting place, and maybe move past uh.. the past, and forge something new in the future.

Could be I just wanted Pip to get the girl.

A two hup

When I’m not writing these entries directly on blogger.com (which is a relatively rare occurrence these days) I write them up at home on Microsoft word. I see this thing has immediately capitalized the ‘m’ in Microsoft. How about that.

I usually save them as the date when they’re written, not the snappiest of titles, but it keeps things simple. I didn’t make it out to a convenient place to upload yesterday’s entry, so today I’ll load both up. That’s, you know, why I’m mentioning all this. To let you know that there’s a new one just before this entry you may have missed.

Instead of working on reviews or uploading blog entries, or even going to the gym, I spent yesterday watching my brother play the new Batman game, or playing it some myself, or watching Sliders with my family (Cool Geoff, who I assume will read this, is like my sixth brother). Not a very accomplished day, but a very nice one.

I do have to get back to sleep though, four hours isn’t going to cut it. It’s early yet, just shy of 6am, but I’ve got a lot I want to do today- reviews, gym, groceries, friend’s party.

Let me tell you a bit about Sliders.

It’s a show with a tumultuous behind the scenes that ended up, naturally, greatly effecting the on air story. The consensus is that the first two seasons are a lot of fun (it’s those first two seasons that I now own) but the third season went off the rails with a more action oriented drive to it. The scripts suffered, and Jonathan Rhys-Davies vociferously pointed out that the scripts suffered. So he was fired from the show, character killed off.

(I’d really like to fact check the spelling of “Jonathan Rhys-Davies”, but I’d have to get up, walk across the room, and look at my box collection. It’s far, and it’s dark. Also, I’m kinda cold. All great reasons to fuggedaboutit.)

It seems similar scenarios played out with Jerry O’Connell and Sabrina Lloyd (wow, I’m guessing at a lot of peoples names and the spelling thereof. With the natural exception of Jerry “Mr. Rebecca Romijn” O’Connell. I certainly will have to make a precautionary google search to make sure that’s all spelled right.) though I’m less sure of whether or not they had problems with the quality of the writing (as laudable a reason to get fired as I’ve ever heard) or whether or not they just got too big for their britches. Despite the fact that O’Connell managed to strong arm his real life brother onto the show as a main character, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume these two also had an artistic integrity that grated against higher ups/producers. It does sound like a lot of these guys didn’t like this Steve Peckinpah producer guy.

Anyways, at its heart the show is considered the spiritual successor to Quantum Leap, a fact that I find fantastic, since I’m also into that show- though I’d never heard of Quantum Leap until years after Sliders was off my radar, so I got things a bit backwards there.

Apparently there was a ten issue Sliders comic (I knew about the comic thanks to that old YTV review show “The Anti-Gravity Room”, but I never knew how long that series ran.), one of the issues was written by Jerry O’Connell which I think is a cool fact, but much much better is the idea that before the series was cancelled there was talk about doing an issue that crossed over with… Quantum Leap! How awesome would that have been??

So yes, it’s not just coincidence that I always lump Sliders and Quantum Leap together, a lot of people have been drawing connections between the shows for years. It’s apparently hinted at that the character of Maggie Beckett, who replaced Professor Arturo (Rhys-Davies), was the niece of Sam Beckett!!

Uh, to keep you in the loop, Sam Beckett is the star of Quantum Leap.

Hmm… oh, did you want me to actually talk about what happens on the show itself? Like, story wise? I don’t know, I’ve already written more than a page of stuff here… Maybe later, I think I can sleep a little bit more now.

I did a lot of parentheses stuff this entry, eh? I mean, even for me, that was a lot of parentheses stuff.