The Modern Man

Because I Try to be Balanced

2011-10-23T20:31:00.007-06:00

I found this on Facebook. Now, of all the things they could have highlighted in a game about Conan, things like an awesome fantasy setting, exotic locations, high adventure, weird magic, the chance to be a hero; they had to go with violence and people wanting to ban it? I love Conan and the Hyborian Age and everything sword-and-sorcery, and I love video games, and yet this ad still fails to get me the least bit excited for playing this game. Do they really think people are going to devote hours of their lives to something every week just because it's violent? Sometimes I swear the people who write the ads for Facebook are 14. Or they're probably not 14, they probably unhip old dudes trying to fumble blindly at that demographic based on focus groups they didn't understand and what they occasionally overhear their own kids saying. Conan is so much more than just violence, and it's definitely better than just trying to attract attention by being controversial. Come on. That puts it on the same level as GWAR. You don't want to go there. It's about adventure and mystery and heroism and wonder, not about getting your mom angry when she catches you playing it.

I have a better idea for an ad. It goes, "Know, o Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread upon the world like blue mantles beneath the stars...."

Now that's something sure to get me hooked.

Don't even get me started why they're using some chick with cleavage instead of Conan himself. Reminds me of that ad with the half-naked woman for some game that was always popping up everywhere a few months ago. Just who is their target audience, considering the game is rated 18+? (That's a rhetorical question.)

Just a Little Friendly Ribbing

2011-10-22T17:22:00.004-06:00

So I saw this ad at the bottom of a story by Cracked.com and I got a chuckle out of it, partially because it was on a story about people being obnoxious. The cheerful, clean-cut, good-looking young people embracing, the logo cut off by its own picture, and the general optimism of a dating site gave me a good giggle. Plus there's that motto, "Find God's Match for You", which they're proud enough of to trademark. As though God has a match for me, and this site is the way an all-powerful divine being is going to make that match known to me.

But then I had a weird idea. Dating sites usually (not that I'd know) have a drop-down menu that allows me to search for various combinations of sexes. For instance, there's usually the option of male/female searching for male/female/both. Some of the sites even have transgendered or "other" options. So I got curious: what would the sexuality options be like on this squeaky-clean Christian site? So I just had to click the link.

Yep. I reckon.

Conan movie review

2011-08-20T10:12:00.005-06:00

This is just my opinion, and I don't claim to be an expert in movies or in Conan, though I love both. If you thing I'm wrong, please don't comment about it, but you're welcome to share your opinion. I welcome discussion, but I'm not interested in an argument, and I'll just delete such comments.

(I try to avoid spoilers, but no promises.) (Another note: I watched this movie in 2D since it wasn't available in 3D in my town, and considering how messy I found some of the scenes in 2D, I can only imagine how it must look in 3D.)

It's pretty inevitable that after coming back from the first showing of Conan the Barbarian in Lincoln, I should sit down at my computer and write up some of my thoughts while they're still fresh in my mind. I have been reading Conan stories since I was a kid. I'm a huge Conan fan, and I presented a paper about Robert E. Howard (the writer who created Conan in the 1930s) at a conference last Spring. I am fully aware and sensitive to the issues in the work, especially the ethnic and gender-based ones that don't sit well with me as a modern person, but Conan and Howard stir something in me that I can't deny.

They showed the movie in the biggest theater, clearly expecting it to be the weekend's biggest movie. I got to the theater an hour early and sat in the best seat in the house, dead center and right in the aisle where I could stretch my legs. By the time the film started, there were perhaps ten people in the theater. At least three of them walked out, including a mother and her perhaps 13 year old son after a grisly torture scene. (A brief note: some of the gore really does get over the top. If you have a sensitive stomach, stay away.)

First things first: there was a lot of talk about whether Jason Momoa could play a good Conan. By what I could tell, he put some his whole heart into the role. I tip my hat to him. He was alternately funny, scary, and badass, just as Conan should be--he had gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirths. Though they didn't digitally give him blue eyes, as some Conan fans endlessly demanded, I see no problem with that. Jason Momoa played a great Conan, and Jason Momoa has brown eyes, so that's the eyes they gave him in the movie. I really don't think anyone could have done a better Conan, and his performance is miles better than Arnold's. I really can't say enough about how good he was in this movie. It's a shame that the adventurous, fun-loving Conan he gets to play early in the movie eventually gives way to a hard-edged killer of men whose demeanor stays a little too constant, which I felt was more the fault of the writers than the director. Really, I can't say enough what a good job he did with the character. He looks and acts like a Frank Frazetta painting come to life. If this movie doesn't do well in the box office, I certainly don't think Jason Momoa should blame himself for it. He gave it his all, and it really shows.

The movie gets off to a great start after the intro. The first thing we see is battle. The scene is bloody, intense, and went right for the gut. Ron Perlman does a solid job as Conan's badass father, and the kid who played young Conan looked plain dangerous. About twenty minutes into the movie, I was starting to have hope that they actually got it right. I could see myself texting (if I had texting) my friends that this could be a Conan movie well worth seeing. They were doing so well. After a bloody childhood filled with emotional twists, Conan becomes a wandering warrior, and we get to see him raid a slave camp, kill the slavers in a blood-drenched free-for-all brawl, sweep a beautiful (and topless) woman into his arms, and celebrate in a tavern. For better or worse, that's what a Conan movie should be, and my hopes were high.

But after the intro, things really slow down. There are long sequences where just about nothing happens. I felt like the movie sprinted out of the gate and got winded before it was even a quarter done. I blame part of this on the way it was filmed, in which CGI and too-close camera work is used to make up for the lack of broad, stunning landscapes and interesting locations, probably for budget reasons. Instead, we get a lot of moving from place to place. A more than two hour action-adventure flick is pretty rare, and this one had a lot of fat that should have been cut.

The film makes copious references to Robert E. Howard lore. It references the siege of Venarium, mentioned as Conan's first battle against the Aquilonians in "Beyond the Black River," and it also talks about Conan stealing the Heart of the Elephant and slaying the sorcerer Yara, from "The Tower of the Elephant." That being said, I didn't see much color in the actual film. There are a few rough-and-tumble cities where Conan spends most of his time in taverns, but not much happens there, and most of the fights take place either in the woods, in stone rooms, or in hallways/tunnels. In a world that should be stunning and exotic, the locations that really matter feel generic, which no adventure movie should ever be.

Many of these locations are forgettable, including a room at the top of an abandoned citadel where the villains taunt the captured damsel (if you think the fact that the girl gets captured is a spoiler...). They taunt her and then they leave. Nothing happens, and the bare-bones set of columns and polished stone floors felt like something whipped up half from a sound stage and half from CGI. The final fight takes place in a cave complex that really didn't have much going on, either. It's just a lot of random stone tunnels leading nowhere. It sure did have a lot of guardrails, though. Seriously, if you watch this film, watch for all the chain railings over the yawning chasms. They might be a bunch of evil psychos, but they take safety very seriously. Earlier in the film, the ruined city turns out to be just a single city square. If only they would have had the budget to do more. It's like the filmmakers didn't know what the audience would want to look at. During the ruined city scene, every time one of the sand monsters gets killed, we have to stop, zoom in close, and watch it fall apart. Every. Single. Time. It was cool the first time, but come on! I get it. They're made of sand. I didn't think the fifth one would be made out of cotton candy or something.

Jason Momoa does a bang-up job, but the rest of the cast is a mixed bag. They threw in two sidekicks for Conan: a black pirate and a one-eyed thief. The pirate did a great job with his dialogue, though he felt like he was there more to provide background for Conan than to play an actual role in the movie. There was one utterly pointless fight scene with him in it that I felt was probably there just to give him something to do other than talk about what a hard character Conan is. The other sidekick was pretty worthless, and didn't do much at all apart from trying keys into locks until he found one that fits. That's a lockpicking skill even I have. Plus he had an outrageous accent that he seemed to lose when he got excited. Ugh.

I know the damsel, played by Rachel Nichols, was supposed to be eye-candy, but she wasn't even particularly good at that. They dressed her character, Tamara, up in costumes that were neither flattering nor imaginative. Though they tried to involve her in the fights, it felt so half-hearted that I would almost have preferred to see her in the back hiding or clinging to Conan's leg. In one scene, she gives up her wimpy dagger for a sword Conan tosses her, which she then uses to kill a guy. In the next scene, she's right back to the dagger. So much for character development. I felt the filmmakers made a major mistake letting her perspective take over halfway through the movie. Her character is just boring, and she never seems to have much motivation beyond surviving, and she doesn't even seem all that concerned about that. I know Conan needs a woman, but the original world of Robert E. Howard has quite a few strong, powerful women, and Tamara just doesn't cut it.

As the villain, Stephen Lang does well... sometimes. Sometimes he is menacing, bombastic, and scary, and I ate it up even though he is over-acting to the hilt. But other times, I felt he is just delivering his lines. It's like he decided he would put in a solid half-hour of screentime and make up the rest with just being there. Then Rose McGowan, as the villain's evil daughter, is pretty cheesy-awesome, weird yet sultry, except that she was just too obsessed with the silly finger-knives she wears . Whether she is cutting someone with them, scraping the furniture with them, or just waving them around, she just can't keep her hand at her side like a normal person. I swear half the character description must be "evil crazy sorceress" and half "finger knives."

I have two more major complaints. The first is the writing. The dialogue is okay at times, but just flat in others, partially because it rarely carries a sense of real urgency. Conan stories are known for their adrenaline-fueled frenzy, but I was never sure what the movie's plot really meant. Was it more about Conan avenging his people or about the villain taking over the world? How, exactly, did he intend to take over the world? What happens if he's successful? Howard's dialogue can be clunky at times, but it's always heated with emotion, and some of the conversations about the fate of the world felt a bit like guys deciding what to have for dinner.

Speaking of Howard, the pervasive themes of barbarism vs civilization that Howard is known for only appears in a few lines of dialogue, spoken by the pirate, which only reaffirms my belief that he was added purely to build up a Howardian hero. We never even get to see a civilized city; the only cities are a pirate town and a city of thieves. There's also a monastery, which seems pretty copacetic, and there was none of the decadent, fading civilization that Howard does so well in his stories.

The film could still have been really solid, budget and generic problems and all, if it hadn't been for the way the movie never really let me see what was happening in the action scenes. Overall, I can deal with poor sets and shallow dialogue. It's a sword-and-sorcery flick; that's expected. But the filming style (cinematography? I don't know terminology), particularly in the fight scenes, is just awful. I've complained before about modern cinema's tendency to string together a fight scene from a series of half-second shots from all different angles, but it was particularly bad in this movie. I yearned for even a single glimpse of a wider shot to establish who was where and what was happening. Instead, I got plenty of shots of faces, swords, biceps, and blood, but it all felt so disconnected that I just couldn't enjoy it. On top of that, it was so zoomed in I couldn't even enjoy the choreography, since if you zoom in far enough even a couple of kids knocking sticks together can look action-packed--though you have no idea where they are or who's winning. For a movie that put such emphasis on the fights, I was hugely disappointed.

There's one especially egregious fight scene in which Conan battles a guy on a giant wheel. It was very nearly something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. After a while, two guys swinging swords at each other just gets boring, because you know neither is going to get the other until the over-elaborate fight scene comes to the conclusion.

I'm not sure if the action sequences were due to bad editing, bad direction, or just bad luck. During one scene, I was thinking: "Now she's fleeing the bad guys... wait, Conan is there... where are the bad guys? ... now she and Conan are talking... okay, there are some bad guys, about time they showed up ... now the bad guys are chasing them ... now Conan is killing bad guys ... wait, how did the bad guys get in front of them? ... now she's being attacked by bad guys. did Conan leave? how did the bad guys get past him? ... never mind, there he is, fighting some other guy in some other location ... no, wait, he's back again and saving her!" There was a scene in which we get repeated shots of Conan fighting someone and Tamara standing there watching. The sequence cuts back and forth between her watching and him fighting, and then she hands him something. Hang on! You mean she was five feet away the whole time? What I wouldn't have given for some wide, long shots to wrap my head around what was going on.

There's a scene in which Conan fights a tentacled water-monster that features prominently in the trailer. Conan has to negotiate saving his friend, fighting off enemy warriors, and dealing with the monster. I felt it was quite good, though the camera work left me feeling confused. I felt that what could have been a brilliant set-piece was wasted. The elements were all there: a scary enemy, a cool monster, an intimidating set, and a bunch of tasks for the hero to have to juggle, all with dire consequences. It's a shame I couldn't just sit back and watch it unfold. The camera was constantly shoving my face into someone's armpit or sliding it down the blade of someone's sword.

Also, where is Crom in all of this? I was expecting Conan's god to get a proper shout-out, but it just never happens.

The movie ends with what feels like a rushed and disappointing culmination. Perhaps if they had made the film shorter, they could have focused on the good stuff instead of trying to stretch their budget and resources across so many different elements, many of which end up feeling flat and half-assed.

Overall, I wouldn't say it's a bad movie. It's easily better than the second Conan movie and could even be better than the first. But there was something in the old movie, a giddy exuberance, that seems to have been buried under all the CGI and the rapid shots between weird camera angles. Jason Momoa's performance and obvious dedication to the role should have deserved better work than this, and it feels like a film with all the right intentions but without the traction to really make them count. It has a lot of good ideas, but also a lot of generic ones, and by the end what was a promising blood-and-guts adventure flick turns into just another fantasy movie. I harp a lot on the way it was shot, but if that kind of Transformers-style rapid-cut action is your thing, you might even enjoy it.

Personally, I enjoyed it. I went in wanting to enjoy it, and for all its warts, it had enough to keep me, if not happy, at least content. There was enough there for me to walk away feeling like I had seen a Conan movie. The atmosphere (when it wasn't generic fantasy blandness) was brutal, just as it should be, and some of the locations do look cool. As the biggest highlight, Jason Momoa really nailed the character, and that alone was worth the price of admission. I came to see Conan, and I got quite a Conan.

At the start of the film, Stephen Lang's character commands an army of hundreds that devastates a village of hard-bitten warriors in a truly epic fight sequence. At the end, his entourage seems to have dwindled to two dozen men who disappear halfway through the scene, with no signs of his army or even of a colorful world beyond the dusty, dimly-lit set. I think this sums up the film as a whole for me

A Quick Thought

2011-04-25T14:03:00.005-06:00

On Saturday, I got back from the PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio, where I had the real pleasure of taking part in a panel on Robert E. Howard. I hope to write about my experiences later. For now, I just had a thought I wanted to share that's been bumping around in my mind ever since.

During the conference, we discussed that Lovecraft is more popular in our modern culture than Howard. People also made a few jokes about the way Lovecraft's influences keep appearing (and being credited!) in our modern society. As a result, I think I have one possible explanation why Lovecraft is more generally known. I think it's because Lovecraft's singular style can be mapped onto a whole host of things. Something can be "Lovecraftian" just because it invokes an unspeakable horror born from some madness-inducing impossibility, or even just because someone slapped some tentacles on it, particularly if those tentacles are "squamous," "ichorous," or "rugose." Because we identify so many things in modern culture, particularly modern horror and monsters, as Lovecraftian, we see Lovecraft everywhere.

As a result, I'm going to start referring to everything that even remotely involves a decadent civilization being opposed by strong-hearted and clear-eyed barbarians as "Howardian." With luck, this will eventually get picked up and used in popular parlance.

Just about anything can be Howardian, from Westerns to superheroes to video games. Whether I'm talking about Unforgiven or God of War or Sin City, I'm thinking I'm going to try to get one "Howardian" a day into my conversations....

What's your favorite Howardian text?

(I hope I don't have to add that I mean this entirely tongue-in-cheek, and I hope it will be received as such!)

Law and Chaos: Wendy Pini does Stormbringer

2011-02-08T23:44:00.005-07:00

Here's the link: http://www.masque-of-the-red-death.com/law_and_chaos/index.php
Since I first read some Michael Moorcock, I've had a complicated relationship with Elric. It wasn't until years later that I read Stormbringer, but even my first reaction to Elric of Melnibone, his evil runesword, and his tragic Wagnerian fate was mixed. On the one hand, I love well-done operatic drama, and the sweeping war of Chaos and Fate, free will and destiny, life and destruction that is the Elric (and, in broader terms, the Eternal Champion) saga is in many ways irresistable. The themes are staggering, and the coolness of a tall, slender albino hero of an ancient race who relies on a soul-sucking sword to survive is all rock and roll. On the other hand, I found the actual Elric stories rather flatly written, the quality of the prose leaving a lot for the imagination to fill in of the cosmic visions and sweeping landscapes Moorcock portrayed.

My relationship with the work of Wendy Pini's work hasn't been as complicated. I'm unfamiliar with the rest of her stuff, but as a boy, I was awestruck by her work on Elfquest. I remember literally crying when I realized this world would never be as beautiful and good as that world. The boy has become a man, but my affection, tempered by the greater sadness that comes with greater maturity, has only grown stronger.

As such, it was a delight for me to discover that Wendy has put online a collection of art she prepared when she was younger than I am now and working on an animated project based on Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer. It's obvious from the beginning of (somewhat slowly loading) her presentation that she not only got Elric but she connected with him, in a way I feel I haven't been entirely able to do (in that way I dig Conan). The presentation is as much a reflection on her own self forty years ago and a meditation on the creative process as it is a loving memory of the work she put into Elric.

It hardly needs to be said that seeing one of my favorite artists rendering something I really enjoy was mind blowing. It was particularly moving for me to see how involved she got with it. The creative process is endlessly mesmerizing and mysterious, and never so much as when we look back on it from years down the line. She captures the tragic grace of Elric, the drama and the unforgiving angst. Even if you're not familiar with the Stormbringer story, this is a fantastic and enchanting visual representation. And if you are familiar with it, she stays remarkably true to the events of the novel.

Enjoy.

Happy Birthday, Robert E. Howard

2011-01-22T21:44:00.001-07:00

Today is Robert E. Howard's birthday. I've already said a lot about why I love his work and why I'm so moved by his life, so I'm just going to say that much. Happy birthday, Bob.

Something Cool I Never Knew About

2010-11-09T18:17:00.004-07:00

I was just bumping around the internet, reading about things that interest me, when I came across this:

Hey, awesome! Universal Studios had a Conan live show in their tours! And sure, it might be based on the movie, but it's Conan, right?

Wait a second... why does a weedy guy pick up a sword and turn into a big musclebound dude? Does he have the power of Grayskull? And why is Red Sonja involved? Exactly what is this based on, anyway?

Okay, so this has absolutely nothing to do with Conan, but it must have been pretty kick ass to watch back in the day. As I've said before, I love cheesy fantasy almost as much as I enjoy quality fantasy. Swords, fire, animatronic dragon. What else does a boy need?

Apparently someone recorded the whole thing on a crappy camcorder (did they have any other sort in the late 80s/early 90s?). Enjoy the campy awesomeness!

Dark Horse Solomon Kane, you're sitting in the naughty chair

2010-11-07T09:05:00.004-07:00

(Note: not for the squeamish, and also plenty of spoilers)

I was a bit disappointed with the first volume of Dark Horse's run on Solomon Kane, but the second volume is making me want to drop the title. This isn't any sort of review, mind. This is how I feel. Results not typical. If you feel strongly about it, you're more than welcome to.

My primary complaint is the gore. As an avid fan of the writer's work, I don't mind pints of squirting blood and lots of violent action. But after a point it just turns my stomach. It's always a line between telling a story and just being unnecessarily gruesome. In the first volume, guts are spilled in liberal measure, including one scene in which a man's intestines are apparently twisted around Kane's sword as he pulls it out. The real turning point for me came when a monster tears off a named female character's face near the end of the story. I can take most things, but gratuitously graphic violence towards women makes me sick.

In the second volume, the gore dial got ratcheted up to 11. Practically every scene in which a monster gets shot or stabbed resulted in copious amounts of hanging (and/or splattering) red viscera. And they do get shot and stabbed frequently. And it's not just the monsters. In one scene, a man gets the top of his head cut off and his brains spill out. In another, a woman has her neck twisted all the way around, breaking her spine. A man who falls from a second-story window breaks both legs into a shredded mess with the bones sticking out. Feel free to call me a sissy, but this feels excessive.

Both stories are based around original fragments written by Howard, in the same way the Conan series has been doing in some of the volumes. The first volume deals with the fragment "The Castle of the Devil," which originally never even goes as far as to establish what the real nature of the conflict is. The comic pretty much makes up the whole story, beyond it involving Kane, a wandering Englishman, and a sinister baron's castle around which he likes to string up children for supposed crimes. I actually liked this story. The supernatural mystery and tangled strings of motivations made it an entertaining read.

The second volume uses a full Kane story, "The Rattle of Bones," and another fragment, "Death's Black Riders." Contrary to what I would have expected, "The Rattle of Bones" makes up a single chapter, surrounded by the fairly flat story built from the fragment. They really base it on a single line from the two page fragment: "They swept on, horse and rider a single formless black object like some fabulous monster." In this story, this is literal: the enemies are misshapen, vaguely centaurlike monsters. They're attacking people for reasons never clearly explained. It's suggested they were summoned by a gypsy to fight off bandits, but they stick around apparently just because they'd like a Solomon Kane sammmich. A monster gets a couple of lines about wanting to destroy the whole human race near the end, but by that point Solomon Kane has killed most of the other monsters, so that's a pretty optimistic goal. The story is mostly an extended siege of a tavern and a lot of fighting off the monsters as they try to get in. Not terrible, but nothing special.

(Aside: I like the way they did "The Rattle of Bones," but it felt rushed. It could have used a longer simmer to get the right spooky flavor.)

The dialogue isn't great, either. It's serviceable for the most part, with occasional awkward line: "Did your prayers stop that thing, priest? No! 'Twas this [the pistol], in my iron right hand!"

In the end, it's the gore that makes me pause. For a great story (and the first one is quite good), I can put up with even a lot of it. But the second story was pretty weak, and being constantly showered with visceral splatter makes me think I'm going to leave the rest of these volumes on the shelf.

(I should also mention that the coloring in the first volume was done by the excellent Dave Stewart, who also colored many of the Dark Horse Conans with art by Cary Nord. Give credit is credit is due, Stewart does a bang-up job.)

A Very Half-Assed Reaction to the Age of Conan Video Game

2010-11-06T17:22:00.009-06:00

In the tradition of my very half-assed reactions to fantasy stuff, I will here review the Age of Conan MMO. There's a free to play intro, so I decided I'd take a crack at digital Hyboria.

First things first: the game needed to download 3+ gigs of stuff before it would play. That's in addition the ridiculously long install time. Even after that, it had to update itself for at least another ten minutes after I launched the game and got into the character builder. After I built my character, I had to wait ANOTHER ten minutes before I could actually fire up the game.

If you had any doubts that I was going to make a "Conqueror" class Cimmerian hero with the height and muscles maxed out, you haven't read enough of this blog. Surprisingly, the Cimmerians in this game are quite pale. Makes me wonder, considering how often Robert E. Howard refers to Conan as a "bronzed" man. Well, maybe he was just dipped in bronze at some point in his career.

First, the good. I kind of like the combat system of selecting to attack left, high, or right depending on where your enemy is defending. Since the screen shows you were best to attack (wherever the enemy has the fewest arrows), it's basically the world's easiest game of Simon Says, but it does get more interactive than just rick clicking something and going for a pee break while the fight unfolds.

I was hoping these three basic attacks would last me, but soon enough as I leveled up (the game threw levels at me the way I throw coins at dancing girls in Tarantia), I unlocked a bunch of abilities that have a short warm-up meter and then unleash an attack that takes a few seconds to cool down. So though I could say it's more or less like World of Warcraft, what I really mean to say it's more like World of Warcraft and less UNlike World of Warcraft. Still, the three basic attacks does work for me. It's kind of fun, forcing the player to take an active role in the fight... if you ignore that you're just swinging wildly away at each other anyway while you both stand still. Hack and slash, swashbuckling brawling this ain't.

NPCs have exclamation points over their heads when they have quests for you and question marks when you're ready to complete the quest. If you don't know why this is a criticism, you've probably never played a fantasy MMO.

After coming across a maiden in need of saving literally thirty seconds into entering the game (after someone bitched at me about me being a slave who just survived a shipwreck and told me to go into town), I killed a few beach combers, freed the maiden with a key one of them dropped, and then she started following me around, cheering and clapping every time I got into a fight. She became my very own personal cheering section while I got chewed on by baddies. Yay gender equality.

At this point I should mention the performance. My six year old computer (the retired Southern gentleman planter Colonel Aloisius Dell) did most emphatically NOT enjoy playing this game. I turned the settings all the way down until the graphics looked worse than World of Warcraft (flat textures, pastel colors, crude movements), but the screen would still freeze for a few seconds when there was too much going on--usually when I was getting stabbed in the nipples.

I beat up some pirates and their pet cats, found a few slightly less awful items (I started the game with a broken oar as a weapon--apparently I couldn't even find a whole oar), and beat up a fat guy who used to be my slavemaster. In this conversation, the game made sure to earn its M rating, making reference to "raping" my ears, calling the dude a "whore's son," and various other jargon Tarantino would have been proud of. It would have been a tense scene if our conversation wouldn't have drawn on so long, or if I could have just broken it off with a kick to the groin. He's all "Hey, my slave! Come be my slave again." I'm all "I'm going to kick your balls off." He's all "Don't be like that. Let's get you into town and I'll sell you." I'm all "I'm going to tear you a new asshole." He's all "There's no need to get bent out of shape. We can work this out. Here, put these chains on." I'm all "I'm going to tear off your head and shit down your neck." He's all "If you really feel strongly about it...." I'm all "CAN WE JUST START PUNCHING EACH OTHER ALREADY?" He's all "Well, if you REALLY want to." (Conversation paraphrased.)

After I beat up some Picts (hanging out in Tortage, in the Barachan isles? eh, it's a demo area), I headed past some vine-covered idols of dark gods (points) into a forgotten jungle-swallowed temple (more points) to fight some ghoul-type monsters. After doing my usual ass-kicking, I grabbed the key to a door and headed through the rest of the jungle. I punched some gorillas in the balls (REH loved using gorillas as enemies, so even more points here), then came across a flowing river of lava.

I really could have just gone over the bridge, but I decided to see what happens when I touch the river of lava. I gingerly dipped my toe into it, only to be told that I've been incinerated. A few seconds later, my character died, and I respawned. No biggie. My cheering section even found me a moment later and we continued with our day as though nothing happened. I talked to her, and she didn't even seem to notice that I, apparently, just died a horrible flaming death not thirty seconds ago and reappeared somewhere in the jungle. There was a gimmick about me being marked somehow and not allowed to die by the gods, but this really broke my sense of being immersed in a gritty fantasy world and reminded me I was playing a game.

When I arrived at town, I was told I couldn't go into town since I was wearing my slave chains. Instead of just putting on a really loose long-sleeved shirt, I was told to go talk to the blacksmith, who then told me he couldn't take my chains off until I helped him shore up a dam to keep lava from destroying the town. I had to go grab materials for him to help build the dam. Now, anything involving lava is awesome, so I might have forgiven such an obvious fetch quest, but this is a game with Conan's name literally all over it. It's not called "adventures in extreme engineering."

The blacksmith also reminded me of another complaint, which might seem trivial, but it really chapped my loincloth-clad ass. In character creation, I maxed out my character's muscles and height, and yet it seemed like every male NPC was A FREAKING HEAD TALLER than my guy. Maybe I get bigger as I level up or something, but nothing makes me feel weenier than having to crane my neck to look up at every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wants me to fetch his widgets. And a Conan game should NOT be making me feed weenie, BY CROM!

And then I saw my first other player. He jumped out of the town, bunny hopped right by me, swinging his sword wildly, and disappeared around a corner. I wish I was exaggerating.

At this point, I exited the game to go pick up some library books, and when I went to boot it back up, I found out I'd have to download the entire three gigabytes AGAIN. I guess it just lost the first three gigs or something. In a fit of rage, I buried my axe in the monitor and shouted, "BY THIS AXE I RULE!" (Okay, that's a Kull reference, but it's close enough via "The Phoenix on the Sword" connection.)

The verdict? It's an MMO. It's got some gimmicks, but it's just another MMO. There are buff classes, healing classes, magic classes, and melee and ranged DPS classes. Maybe the graphics would be better if my computer was made during the Obama administration, but that's not really at issue here. An MMO is a grind. You fight the same enemies over and over. You execute pointless, grinding quests. You swing wildly at enemies until one of you falls over. You kill "weedy grunt enemy" and "slightly bigger, though only slightly less weedy grunt enemy" a thousand times before you finally start equipping things that aren't called "torn ragged brown-stained loincloth with a hole that lets the breeze through." You're not changing the fate of empires or thwarting evil wizards, you're doing the same linear kill sprees a thousand other players are doing at the same time.

If you're looking for the tight action, the thrilling swashbuckling, the intense emotion, the wild bloody exotic ADVENTURE that is Conan, a video game just won't cut it.

It's almost like I saw this coming before I even tried it....

Now if you'll excuse me, the necromantic ghost of Robert E. Howard is at the door, and he's got a knuckle sandwich he needs to give me.

(PS Yes, I did go back and play a little more, but it wasn't getting any better, so I got bored and did the blog. I told you it was half-assed.)

Brief Star Wars Thought

2010-10-23T11:33:00.002-06:00

"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force, but beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side of the Force they are. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

I've been watching a lot of Star Wars these days, trying to reconnect with the reasons I've loved Star Wars since I was a kid, trying to separate in my mind the wise Muppet Yoda from the CGI lightsaber-wielding Yoda, and all that comes with both. The last line of the quote stood out for me.

Much has been made of "destiny" in Star Wars, and whether the paths of the characters are predetermined. The ability to see the future has been used to explain away lots of inconvenient plot points (although "always in motion is the future"), not to mention the giant plot device of the prophecy in the prequel trilogy. But this quote seems to present another type of destiny in Star Wars.

This quote suggests you choose your own path, and that path determines your destiny. Your destiny isn't a single line that's already been laid out, but rather a number of alternatives among which you choose by the paths you take. This feels much more like wisdom about the consequences our choices have rather than an assertion of predetermination. The two paths Luke's life could go play a big role in Episodes 5 and 6: will he choose to follow his father's path or forge his own? This is about choice, not a single destiny he's bound to obey.

The same thing applies to the Emperor's taunt of "I have foreseen it" and "it is your destiny" in Episode 6. It's possible the Emperor really has seen one possible path Luke's life could go, but his downfall is he doesn't leave room for Luke's own choices. He makes the mistake a lot of Star Wars fans (and EU writers, cough cough) seem to make: that destiny is something set for you rather than something you forge yourself.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to read into it what I want to be there, but I still find this encouraging, because on closer reading it doesn't seem nearly as deterministic as it does on first watching. Your destiny is the path you choose.

What Kind of D&D Character Are You?

2010-09-07T09:26:00.003-06:00

Recently, my friend Kage took a quiz about what D&D character he is, so I decided to do the same. When I got to question 42, I knew I was in trouble.

42. Civilization makes us...

...stronger.
...weaker.

How do I answer that? I've written quite a lot exploring this issue, and the best answer I've been able to come up with is "both." I can certainly see the Robert E. Howard perspective that civilization makes us weak, but I also think that civilization ennobles us and creates art and learning.

I'm answering these questions based on what I really think, not on what I wish I think, but still, I'm stumped on this one. I don't like living in the city, and I love the country. On the other hand, I really admire cosmopolitan cultures like the Victorians and the Romans. GAH! I think I'll just go with 'stronger.' After all, I am going into academia.

Here's another one:

45. Animals...

...deserve our respect.
...are delicious.

Animals get my full respect. I really do love animals, and yet I also love eating them. I respectfully eat their delicious bodies. How do I answer this?

Also, several questions are about things like "It's better to be agile or tough?" And I'm left thinking, well, out of the two of these, I'm more agile than tough (a little vs. not at all), but I believe it's much better to be tough. So how do I answer that?

98. A powerful but corrupt lawyer offers you money if you'll testify against your friend. Do you:

Condemn your friend and take the money?
Take the money and testify, but try to keep your testimony ineffective?
Refuse the offer and refuse to testify?
Testify on your friend's behalf, no matter the consequences?

This is another really tough one. My choices are obviously between the third and fourth option, but it leaves out an important consideration: is my friend guilty? I think some of these are purposefully ambiguous. Now that I think about it, that's probably good: it allows the quiz to take into account the underlying assumptions the reader draws out of the questions.

You Are A:

Neutral Good Human Wizard (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 13
Dexterity- 13
Constitution- 15
Intelligence- 19
Wisdom- 15
Charisma- 15

Alignment:
Neutral Good- A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards- Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Honestly, I'm most surprised to get such a high Con score. Why? Because of all those toughness questions I answered? Those were personal opinion, man, not actually reflected in my puniness. The same with my Strength score. I'm average at best, and I freely admitted that. I really tried to answer these questions as would play out in real life. Also, as I mentioned on Kage's blog, I don't see being good as limiting at all. In fact, if someone tried to persuade me to be otherwise, I'd consider that to be forcing me to be something I'm not!

Black ICE/White Noise

2010-08-31T11:49:00.000-06:00

I remember the mid-90's, when cyberpunk was a legitimate genre for video games--ten years after it was a legitimate genre for fiction. Combine that with my fascination with vaporware and failed technology (the Jaguar), and you get a story that's definitely grabbed my interest.

If only I could find more about this game and its production!

Avatar: Special Edition

2010-08-28T15:23:00.002-06:00

In the time since I last blogged, I've moved to a new city and started my PhD program at a new school. Despite all this, the first post I'm making is about Avatar, and having seen the new special edition at the theater. Yes, James Cameron can add a couple of minutes of bonus footage and I'll shell out ten bucks to go see the same movie again. But to tell the truth, I would have paid the same for the chance to go see Avatar again. It was 3D. I complained about it a bit the first time, but now I genuinely think it adds something. I felt drawn closer into the world, experiencing the scenery and things around the characters more distinctly. Because of focal length, the background stuff in 2D is often much fuzzier in 3D, which means you can look around a lot more freely in 3D.

So here are the new scenes, if I can recall them all.

-While flying out on his first mission as Avatar, Jake sees a herd of creatures we don't really see in the other version. It's a scene of a few seconds, but it sets up a scene later on, so I mention it.
-On that same mission, Grace, Norm, and Jake visit the old school. We see a series of bullet holes in the chalkboard, but Grace doesn't want to talk about it. When Jake asks why the Na'vi haven't come back, Grace says, "They've learned enough about us," or something to that effect. There's also a scene in which they find a Na'vi-sized copy of The Lorax. Grace says something about it being her favorite. I really hope this was Cameron poking fun at himself, rather than hammering home his point. This was a good scene, but we gathered as much from the movie as it was.
-When Jake sits down with the Na'vi around the fire, there's a brief scene in which Neytiri introduces herself and teaches Jake how to say her name. He still says it wrong.
-When Jake startles the little swirly-flying thing for the first time, Neytiri joins him in scaring them up to make them fly. This shows that she's seeing the forest through his eyes, experiencing his childlike wonder along with him.
-When Grace moves the project to the Hallelujah Mountains, Jakes explains why the levitation works as they get off the flyer. Since unobtainium is a superconductor, it works like maglev. "Or something." I didn't feel this was necessary information, but it's still cool.
-After Jake gets his banshee, he and the other hunters shoot some of the beasts I mentioned above. This leads directly into the "stone cold aerial killer" monologue.
-Yes, infamously, we get to see Jake and Neytiri link their qeues when they are mated after his initiation. This is maybe an additional three seconds. Big whoop. Hardly the "Na'vi sex scene" people keep yammering about online. Even in the original we see that their qeues are touching, and I assumed from the first time I saw the film that they linked them.
-We see the aftermath of the Na'vi attack on the bulldozers. The humans have all been massacred and the machines have been destroyed. Especially since this is seen through the eyes of the humans, I felt this scene was particularly important, and probably my favorite of all the ones they added. It shows the Na'vi struck first (admittedly with good reason) and it explains Selfridge's decision to attack Home Tree.
-During the final fight, we see that Tsu'tey survives getting shot and falling from the shuttle at least long enough to...
-After the last fight, Jake, Neytiri, and the Na'vi come across Tsu'tey as he lies dying. He tells Jake he needs to lead the Omaticaya, and says he is proud he fought beside Jake. This is the one addition I wish wouldn't have been included, since it's so sentimental and unnecessary, but it was a bit lightened when Jake answers, "I'm not officer material." But we all know he will do it.

There were some other brief moments, but I'm pretty sure I hit everything major.

The bottom line is that the extra stuff is good, but doesn't change the movie hugely (though I do enjoy that it complicates the plot a bit that the Na'vi destroyed the bulldozers and killed the humans guarding them). What's really key is that I was worried, going in, that I wouldn't connect as much with the film as I did the first few times I saw it. But I did. I was completely immersed, and I had tears in my eyes in several scenes.

So call me soft or call me a fanboy, but I loved seeing the Special Edition, even for ten more bucks. I might even see it again.

Tell Microsoft I'm Not Speaking To It

2010-07-26T14:35:00.004-06:00

For the last few months, I've been using Microsoft's brilliantly useful Windows Live Workspace. It allows me to open my Microsoft Word documents anywhere and edit them easily within the Word application. This has allowed me to write and edit my fiction from several different places, such as my home computer and the computers at work. So far, so good. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided they're going to cancel Live Workspace and transfer everything to SkyDrive.

Any my version of Word doesn't support SkyDrive.

That leaves me with three equally unpalatable choices. One, go back to much less convenient work-arounds, such as emailing myself documents or using another, less integrated service. Two, use the crappy in-browser editor Microsoft gives you with SkyDrive, which is about equal to this cheapo text editor I'm using to write this blog. Three, buy a new version of Microsoft Office for around a hundred fifty bucks just so I can keep going with the service I've gotten used to.

I can shrug off most inconveniences, but I'm furious about people messing with my writing. You can't dangle this great service in front of me and then take it away from me if I don't pay you more money, Microsoft. That's just not right.

I can't help but think it wouldn't be difficult to continue to support Workspace. It gives me less storage space than SkyDrive, which is fine by me, since I'm only using it for text documents. If I chose to voluntarily keep using Workspace, I could save Microsoft some storage space. Yeah, storage is currently ridiculously cheap, and I'm sure it's assigning employees to keep the system running that's the issue, but that doesn't make me any happier. This just stinks of Microsoft wanting me to buy a new product just so I can keep doing something they offered me before with my old product.

I'm genuinely upset. I don't know what I'm going to do. I genuinely want to keep using this service, but I don't have that kind of money. To add insult to injury, Workspace still assures me it's in Beta. Does this mean there will never be a release version? Have I been teased this whole time? I'm so mad I can hardly even type. I'm so mad my skin's turning... kinda... green. I... can't... think straight. No... not again...! I........

RAAAAAAAAAAAAR! HULK SMASH!

A Very Half-Assed Reaction to The Legend of the Seeker

2010-07-14T17:45:00.011-06:00

I watched a single episode of The Legend of the Seeker, on which I will now base my opinion of the entire show. It wasn't even the first episode, but episode 18 of season 2, because that's the closest to the beginning Hulu would show me for free. I obviously don't care enough about writing a review to bother spending money on it, or even the time it would take to find a pirated stream of the first episode. Here be spoilers, but since I have no idea who is whom and what's going on, it would be difficult for me to spoil anything majorly.

The villain is hideously cheesy. He has a goatee, long hair, a cape, and speaks with a British accent. To add an even more obviously derivitive level of cheese, he's dead in this episode, and longs to come back to life, missing "the taste of a crisp apple." At the very end of the episode, he grabs an apple out of a basket, takes a bite, and looks meaningfully at the camera. I wish I could make this up. At that point it went from ripping off Pirates of the Carribean to being an outright homage to it. (I called him Cheesy in my mind, since I could never figure out what name they were saying.) He was also the hero's brother, which he constantly reminds the viewer by calling him "brother" at the slightest chance. Makes me wonder whether fantasy worlds are really just composed of three extended families. And a bunch of peasants, of course.

Perhaps because the episode was so late in the series, there was no character development for any of the main characters. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what any of them do. One of them seemed to have the ability to take over the mind of anyone whose eyes she looks into, which they called "confession." I guess having grown up Catholic confused me about the actual meaning of the word, but it would explain some things about organized religion (oo, burn, but I don't really mean that about religion; I only wonder if the show/writer did). There was also a wizard (played by the gyrocopter pilot from the Mad Max movies) who could shoot fire from his hands and said everything important with his eyes OPENED REALLY WIDE. There was one laugh out loud moment when he "cast a spell" by holding his hand off-camera while the spell sound effect went off. BUDGET-TASTIC.

Perhaps my biggest complaint is that the show all felt like it was set in a generic medieval world. The villains wore chainmail and tabards fresh from the prop department and got chopped up with minimal effort. Major plot events unfolded in a generic tavern. Everyone wore tunics and boots and dresses. The hot warrior women villains wearing tight tight leather seemed to have been lifted from any half-assed modern fantasy novel, which I suppose is what the source novels might well be. I confess to never having read them and having no intention to do so. So really, this review is more like quarter-assed at best.

The show was also rife with generic fantasy names. I have a theory that you can judge any fansty story by adding together unpronouncable names and generic words capitalized to form proper nouns. It's like golf: the higher your score, the shittier your fantasy. There were more than a few of the former: when spoken, I count any word as unpronouncable if I have no idea how to spell it even after hearing it a half-dozen times in the show. Of the latter there were plenty: The Keeper, The Seeker, The Spirits, The Midlands, The Stone of Tears, The Creator, The Lands of the South, The Sisters of the Dark, The Veil... seriously, is there a shortage of proper nouns in this world? It's like whoever was coming up with names for things just gave up halfway. Along these lines, I could call my magical chair The Chair, my keyboard The Keyboard, and my computer mouse Raymond, because I also haven't mentioned that half the characters have completely normal English names like Walter, while the other half have generic fantasy names. Here I should give an example of one of those generic fantasy names, but I wasn't paying close enough attention to actually pick any up. Or know how to spell them.

The episode centered around what I can only call a wacky caper by two minor villain characters, as the 'story' plot it was woven into consisted of The Seeker trying to take The Scroll from The Sisters of the Dark to protect The Veil, and the writers may have realized this was way too generic fantasy to hold even their core watchers' attention. So wacky buddy hijinx it was. (I realize it was the Scroll-of-Something-or-Another, possibly the Scroll of MacGuffin, so I didn't list it above, but they DID refer to it for most of the episode as simply 'The Scroll.')

To reiterate, there were plenty of fantasy staples: an evil temple, a tavern, a Renfaire town market, bad guys in chainmail carrying crossbows, Burning Hands, a villain with a goatee and English accent, an old wizard with long white hair, a generic fantasy hero with a destiny and no charisma (I'll rant about destiny some other time), cold-hearted villain women who are both way too good looking and way too thin to be a combat threat, etc, etc, etc.; I could go on about these at length, but it also seemed like the heroes were just too darn powerful for me to think they might not succeed. They blew through dozens of bad guys hardly taking a scratch. In one scene the characters find it almost laughably easy to transfer a character from one body to the other and bring another character back from the dead. This scene had me in near stitches because the actress spoke the 'magical language' (repeating the same phrases over and over) with an ahfahl Amahrucan accahnt. Nothing ruins the magic of a made-up language like that swallowed R.

The hero of the spoof Krod Mandoon, although that show was absolutely awful, seemed kind of likeable for his everyman personality and sense of humor. The hero of this show (the titular Seeker) only seemed really focused, because he just looked at things intensely. Or maybe he just needs glasses. But like I said before, this episode didn't center on him, and I'm not sure if he got more than ten lines in the whole thing.

There were, however, some moments I found kind of cool. ... Okay, I've sat here for literally five minutes since typing that, and none come to mind. But there really were some moments that made me think, "Hey, that's kind of cool." At the end of the day, every criticism I've had, I say with love. This is the corny, derivitive crap that I've seen pop up again and again in books, magazines, roleplaying games, TV shows, and movies. And, like an annoying friend who just keeps coming around, it's grown on me, and now those silly tropes and over the top plot devices are familiar and, yes, even dear to me.

The production values, while TV level, weren't the worst I've lived with, and I do love me some fantasy, even when it's hardly great. It's magic, heroes with swords, and escapist. I've been telling bad fantasy stories with my buddies since I was a kid, and some part of me loves even the really cheeseball stuff like this. To paraphrase what Brian Posehn says in his video about "Metal By Numbers," compared with sitcoms or reality TV, even shitty fantasy rules!

Toshiro Mifune Kills Indians

2010-07-07T21:34:00.003-06:00

Let's just get this out of the way: the most obvious drawback of the movie Red Sun is that Toshiro Mifune's voice is dubbed when he speaks English. I've heard it was one of his greatest regrets that he was never allowed to use his voice for his English lines in his movies, and that makes me doubly sad. Mifune's voice is inimitable, resonating and powerful, and any voice they choose for him doesn't do the great actor justice. I really wish there was a version with his original voice, but I'm afraid I'm not so lucky.

That being said, Red Sun is a Western with Toshiro Mifune in it. In one movie, he adds Indians, banditos, and cowboys to The List of Things Killed by Toshiro Mifune. While his voice might not be his own (save when he speaks Japanese), his powerful screen presence commands this movie, and that alone is worth the almost two hours of runtime.

It's by no means a perfect movie, and so I'll anticipate some of the complaints you might have, and answer them all accordingly.

You: It's a hackneyed Western plot with stock characters and situations.
Me: It's Toshiro Mifune in a Western.

You: The writers clearly had only a cursory knowledge of Japanese culture.
Me: Toshiro Mifune plays a samurai badass.

You: Although the plot initially balances Charles Bronson's character with Toshiro Mifune's, the middle of the movie is heavily geared toward Bronson's character, and Mifune becomes something of a sidekick.
Me: Toshiro Mifune is no man's sidekick, least of all Charles Bronson's. He badasses his way right into the spotlight, whether the director wanted him to or not. Even when he's not speaking or doing much of anything, he's BEING TOSHIRO MIFUNE.

You: The supporting cast, particularly Ursula Andres as a whore who can't keep her shirt on, is disappointing.
Me: You'd be disappointing, too, if you were standing next to Toshiro Mifune.

You: The plots and conflicts are so contrived they practically groan for you.
Me: HAVE YOU HEARD NOTHING I'VE SAID? IT'S TOSHIRO M.F.ING MIFUNE IN A WESTERN!!!

Also, Charles Bronson's character is actually pretty likeable.

The Story of a Soldier

2010-06-27T15:58:00.004-06:00

I love the song "The Story of a Soldier" from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I regularly cite that movie as one of the three best ever made (that I've seen, of course), and this sublime song is beautiful outside the song as well. I listen to it especially when I'm in a mood for Westerns. For those of you familiar with the film, (SPOILERS->) it's the song the Confederate prisoners are made to sing in the prison camp as the guard beats Tuco.

The extended version of the DVD has a longer version of the song on it, and the soundtrack CD has the full thing. I love that the song was written for the movie, but it sounds almost like an authentic Civil War era folk song. Here are the lyrics to the full version:

Bugles are calling from prairie to shore,
Sign up and fall in and march off to war;
Drums beating loudly, hearts beating proudly,
March blue and gray and smile as you go.

Smoke hides the valleys and fire paints the plains,
Loud roar the cannons till ruin remains;
Blue grass and cotton burnt and forgotten,
All hope seems gone, so soldier, march on to die.

Count all the crosses and count all the tears,
These are the losses and sad souvenirs;
This devastation once was a nation,
So fall the dice, how high is the price?

There in the distance, a flag I can see,
Scorched and in ribbons but whose can it be?
How ends the story? Whose is the glory?
Ask if we dare our comrades out there who sleep.

Count all the crosses and count all the tears,
These are the losses and sad souvenirs;
This devastation once was a nation,
So fall the dice, how high is the price we pay?

To me, the song speaks beautifully of the loss and devastation of war, and also of the way men who live in difficult times struggle on while longing for a better life. I think it's wonderful the way a song from a movie or TV show can become so important to me even away from its original context. Are there any songs like that for you?

Random Writing Thought

2010-06-25T23:25:00.003-06:00

I'm currently writing a story with the working title "The Month of Two Suns." I can't help but think that "The Day of Two Suns" sounds much more dramatic, not to mention much more like a good fantasy story. A month is just too much time. It's hard to remain excited/scared about anything for a whole month, even if you're living in a fantasy world that has no TVs or Internet. The first few days you might run around and bump into things, but sooner or later, you have to eat something.

"Month" is, naturally, the amount of time the two suns appear in the story (which is to say, the sun and a comet), but I can't help but want to change it to "Day". If I see anything titled "Month" in a journal, I might just skip it, thinking it's just too long to bother with. I don't have the imagination at the moment to follow a whole month's itinerary, even if it's stuffed full of swashbuckling action and rip-roaring adventure (what exactly is the origin of that expression?). And the story isn't about the whole month anyway, just the end of it.

Do you think this hard about the titles for things? I know it really doesn't matter, since it's just a working title anyway. So, what did YOU spend your free time today doing?

The Web Ebb

2010-06-05T16:05:00.004-06:00

I'm coining that, by the way. If this becomes a real thing, then I'm the first one who came up with it. Even if someone else has used it, I testify that I haven't heard of it, so I came up with it independently. Anyway, on with the show.

Lately, I've noticed that some of my friends are either thinking of leaving Facebook or outright leaving it. Most of my friends have either closed down their MySpace or at least stopped using it. Five years ago, I would have seen five to ten of my friends on instant messenger at any given time, and now I see maybe two or three.

I don't know whether this is a real trend or just something in my demographic. I know that my generation, the ones in their mid to late twenties, was the first to be immersed completely in the digital age. I was around eleven or twelve when I first really started getting into computers: the internet, email, that sort of thing. I remember when I fell for one of the first "Bill Gates will send you money if you forward this to all your friends" ploys. I remember the days I would type in a topic, add .com, and see what came up. Those were the days before Google, when WebCrawler, Lycos, and Excite were my main search engines. Within a few years, everyone I knew had instant messenging and email. And a few years after that, we started hearing about just how plugged in we are. I've heard it said that the computers have gone from another activity you do to the way we live.

But these days, it seems like that mad rush into the digital frontier, the topic of so many TV specials and documentary films, is slowing down. Maybe it's across the board and maybe it's just those of us who have been immersed in it for more than a decade, but it feels like people are starting to come up for a breath. I've heard it said many times that the internet age sneaked up on us, and we found ourselves plugged in without realizing how far in we'd gone, but I think that awareness is becoming more common. We've been jacked in for so long that we're starting to see the effects it's really had on our lives--and we're starting to pull back.

I won't claim that I'm starting to use the computer less, just that my desire to do so has waned. I still get anxious if I go more than a couple of hours without checking my email. I still check Facebook at least three times a day. But when I do so, I spend much less time on it. I visit my favorite sites out of habit, but I don't stay long. I've stopped playing massively multiplayer online games and online RPGs. I'm no longer really interested in having conversations with people I've never met. That novelty has long since worn off.

I noticed a smaller web ebb a few years ago when people stopped using MySpace and blogs quite as much. For a while out of high school and into college, it felt like a half dozen of my friends had regular blogs. These days, no one I know posts more than once a week. Sure, there are sites like Twitter, but I don't know anyone in my age range who's really jumped into that. In particular, I feel like we are less and less likely to all get excited about something new, getting on some new service or program.

It's possible the web has become just so integrated into our lives that it's no longer exciting, but I don't think that's it. I think we're genuinely starting to drift away from our computers. In some small way, I think the real world is starting to have that novelty effect that the digital world had for us fifteen years ago. We've gone so long plugged in that unplugging has become the new frontier.

Freedom and love

2010-05-14T16:24:00.003-06:00

(I apologize that much of this isn't gender-neutral, but I am a man, and I'm putting these questions primarily to myself. I look forward to hearing your comments, though!)

I am fascinated by difficult choices, the moral quandaries in which the choice isn't good and evil, but two nearly equal qualities.

One of the first of these I thought excessively about is mercy and justice. This became particularly important to me when I started teaching college a few years ago. While judging student performance fairly is vital (after all, we wouldn't have grades without it), it's also difficult to look at a student who's genuinely struggling and say there is no room for circumstances. I'm still a sucker for the sob story. As much as it's important to be just (for the sake of the respect of my students, if not for Crom's sake!), I can't ignore that there is a personal relationship in all things, and people are not robots who exist to write papers and take classes mechanically. Life is a complex, varied mix, and it's impossible to foresee every eventuality that might net a student some leniency. Not only that, but I also have to keep in mind what the just grade would do to the squishy things like a student's self esteem and enthusiasm for a subject, which in many cases is on shaky ground as it is.

I have been pondering another question these days: freedom and love. Our modern society is fortunate--and spoiled--by having more freedom than almost any other people in history. Naturally, true freedom is largely rhetorical, since it's impossible to be absolutely free outside an anarchy. As opposed to Mad Max, a modern human is always immediately beholden to someone, whether a corporation, a government, or a religion. When we speak of freedom, then, we speak of degrees of freedom, of the difference between being free to light someone on fire and being free to express my own opinions or pursue a life that makes me happy. It's the freedom of women to live without fear or shame, as equals to men, and the freedom of all people to embrace their identities without prejudice.

It's difficult for me, I think, to imagine a world without freedom. I see it on the news, and I recognize the threat when the government steps up surveillance and detention, but I don't know the feeling of another man's boot on my neck.

Often I see the sentiment repeated that love is the greatest thing a man can aspire to, that life isn't worth living without it, and that it is man's greatest happiness. I believe true happiness can be found in love, and that humanity is by nature lonely without the embrace of a kindred spirit, the union between two souls, and the building of a family.

But the two may conflict. Perhaps the clearest conflict is the choice than comes with oppression and injustice. Does one stay home and safe, or leave everything he loves to fight? Does he risk losing all those things to go far away, fighting for something much less tangible than what he has? Is it worth dying for, leaving a family fatherless and hearts broken, for a cause like that? It is much easier, after all, to make do with the sacrifices oppression demands. It is safer to say "we cannot change these things, and it is foolish to try." We more readily bow our heads before the great inevitability of forces beyond our own strength.

This is a question I can't answer now. Is it a noble, good death to die for freedom? Is it just a word, an amorphous concept that never really exists? Is it all rhetoric to send men to their deaths, a bourgeois tool of control? Or is there true freedom, and is it really worth dying for? After all, it's not just the one life at stake, but the life and happiness of many that depend on that one.

I can only be glad that I do not yet have to answer these questions, and hope that, if the choice is put to me, I will choose well. Now, because I am young and idealistic, I believe I would choose one way, but I can just as well see the other side. After all, I have no love, and so it feels easier to give up the idea of it.

The poem that springs to mind when I think about this topic is one by the legendary Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi:

Szabadság, szerelem!
E kettő kell nekem.
Szerelmemért föláldozom
Az életet,
Szabadságért föláldozom
Szerelmemet.

(My translation:)
Freedom, love!
I need these two things.
For my love I sacrifice
My life,
For freedom I sacrifice
My love.

And he did.

Why I Love Star Wars

2010-04-27T19:22:00.005-06:00

It's difficult to explain why we love anything because love is a pure emotion. Never ask your significant other, "Why do you love me?" We can no more explain the reasons we love than we can explain the feeling of love itself. Poets have been trying since the dawn of language, and we are no closer, not for lack of flower and moon imagery.

But I can get into some of the memories I have with Star Wars, and the joy it has brought me. I can still remember when I was a boy and I watched Star Wars for the first time with my parents. My dad tried to convince me that the lightsaber was really called a "life-saver." He also tried to say that Obi-Wan was Luke's uncle. I'm still not sure to this day whether he was serious or just screwing with me. I do remember he had pictures of himself with some original AT-AT models, since he told stories about how he had met some of the guys who worked on them.

Most of all, it's the moments from the movies that stand out to me the most. I remember the thrill that went through me the first time Luke turns on the lightsaber in Ben's hut. A simple piece of metal turned into a glowing blade in an instant! After seeing that, everything vaguely stick-shaped for me became a lightsaber. I remember playing Darth Vader and lightsaber fighting my brothers when my bed still had bars on the side and legs. I was convinced for a while that Darth Vader was a robot.

I particularly remember that my parents were scared that the rancor would freak me out, so they told me not to look. Naturally, nothing terrifies a kid as much as his imagination when he hears something scary and is told not to look at it. What our mind paints for us is far more terrifying than anything a creature shop can whip up. I still can't watch the rancor scene without flinching a little inside.

I remember watching the Ewok movies on cable. I remember it as something of a dream: I knew Ewoks and Endor from Star Wars, yet they were set apart from the characters and stories I knew and loved. It is still bizarre to me to watch them, like discovering after all these years that The Bible has a Part 2 starring only the apostles.

Years later, when I was perhaps 7 or 8, my mom read my brothers and me the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn. I remember running to our bedroom every night, singing the Star Wars theme song over and over until she got out the big hardcover from the library with the glossy cover and started to read. She read to us on the bumpy roads through the desert, and when she took breaks when the road got too bad to see the pages, I would look out the window and imagine the rolling sagebrush scenery filled with blaster fire, whirling starships, and the glow of lightsabers.

A few years after that, I owned just about every Star Wars action figure you could imagine. I would play with them constantly, inventing new stories, based on the movies and the books I was reading. For a while, I had every published novel read (except Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which I would only read many years later, to my horror). I owned dozens of the books and made my way through them without much awareness if they were good or not. I remember being vaguely disappointed with Darksaber, which I see now is one of the worst books I've read.

I got into the Star Wars video games. As a teenager, I owned Shadows of the Empire, but I never played it all that much. Later, I bought Jedi Academy, which is one of the better games I've played, and I particularly enjoyed playing it multiplayer. Every game eventually descended into flailing with lightsabers. I played a few hours of Battlefront and Battlefront 2, playing through the campaigns of each several times. I especially enjoyed the galactic battle modes. I played through The Force Unleashed and enjoyed it, but never played it again.

I've read and enjoyed much of the comics, especially Republic, which I hold to be head and shoulders above all other Star Wars comics I've read.

Perhaps my most striking memory is watching the Star Wars Holiday special with my brothers. For a while, we tried to make fun of it, but our quips and snarky comments became fewer and more hushed. Finally, we sat in stunned, awkward silence. It was like walking in on a woman you love hooking up with a drunk bald fat dude. It seemed like Star Wars, but the similarity only made it all the more awful.

Now, I enjoy (more or less) the Star Wars cartoon, and I eagerly anticipate the live-action TV show. I have a feeling that, despite everything that has happened, my love for Star Wars will stay strong. Those early memories full of lasers and lightsabers won't easily fade, no matter how many times I see Darth Vader say, "NOOOOOOOOO!" at the end of the Revenge of the Sith.

"Anakin. Go to the Senate and ask Chancellor Palpatine to speak with her about this matter."

2010-04-11T12:07:00.010-06:00

I'm still on about Attack of the Clones. What can I say? I have a lot of hate stored up.

So Mace Windu, instead of trying to convince Amidala himself or asking Anakin or Obi-Wan to speak with her, tells Anakin to go tell Palpatine to tell Amidala to get out of Dodge? What!? That sounds like the kind of railroading a dungeon master might do.

But my real problem is still with the thin string that connects all the steps that lead to the Clone Wars. I know what fanboys will say: that the Force meant all this to happen, and therefore the wildly unlikely crap that goes down is all part of a greater plan. But let's go through this one step at a time:

1. Count Dooku hires Jango Fett to kill Amidala.
2. Jango Fett doesn't bother, you know, just shooting Amidala or something. Instead, he hires an assassin. Because nothing says badass bounty hunter like hiring a subcontractor.
3. Instead of, you know, just shooting Amidala, the assassin sends bugs into Amidala's room, giving Obi-Wan and Anakin the time to save her. (Did Jango Fett tell the assassin he doesn't REALLY want Amidala dead? Did Dooku tell Jango this in the first place?)
4. Obi-Wan and Anakin run down the assassin. Instead of, you know, just shooting the assassin with a blaster, Jango Fett decides to use a poison dart that is traceable to one particular world. This is the only time we see Jango use equipment other than his standard loadout. (Again, did Dooku tell Jango to not do stuff the logical way? As far as we know, blasters just leave burns that aren't traceable.)
5. "What you got here is a Kamino saber-dart." Yeah, because some greasy spoon hash-slinger knows high-tech weapons. Well, maybe he was someone else in his old life, but note that the reference to the weapon wasn't in the databanks, so instead of checking some other research source like some other library, Obi-Wan goes straight to the burger joint.
6. Obi-Wan takes the dude's word for it without any other evidence than a guy with grease all over him and a mouth that could swallow a yak telling him so.
7. Obi-Wan decides to research Kamino further, since apparently the weapon used is clearly linked to the assassination. That's kind of like if my enemy used an AK-47, I decide to check out a bunch of books about Russia.
8. Dooku erased Kamino from the Jedi databanks, but didn't doctor the files to adjust for the gravity of the star, so it's still obvious it's there. (I can only assume he did this on purpose to make it that much more suspicious.)
9. Obi-Wan decides to go check this stuff out by going all the way to the planet. At this point, he's still just researching the assassination, since he's probably not going to find out on Kamino why someone wiped the databanks on Coruscant. He hasn't researched who the assassin was or who hired him. He hasn't researched any of Amidala's political enemies or anyone else who might profit by her death. Instead, he runs down the source of the ammunition used to kill the assassin. Nobody gives a damn about the bugs that were used to try to kill Amidala herself, which could well be just as rare or specific to one world. We never even find out what those bugs are called. (Now, I know what you're thinking; maybe they did all that, but they just didn't show it. Well, they show so much useless nonsense between Padme and Anakin, that they could have filled in a little more of the plot holes. Just one line: "Everything else connected with this case has been a dead end, so I thought I'd research this dart.")
10. So what exactly is Obi-Wan expecting to do on Kamino? This is only what I imagine would have happened if there wouldn't have been a clone army on Kamino, which of course no one knew there was.

Kaminoan: Hey, a Jedi. You could have just called, you know, but I guess you came all the way out here. That's cool. Whatever. So, what's up?
Obi-Wan: Yo. I found this dart in the neck of a dude who tried to kill someone. I need to know who you sold it to. Does it have barrel grooves or a serial number or something that we could nail down?
Kaminoan: Hell no, since it's never mentioned in the movie.
Obi-Wan: So you have no way of tracking down who you sold that to.
Kaminoan: Dude, we might not have even sold it. He could have stolen it or taken it from the body of someone he killed. We don't even know how recently he came by it. We'd have to go through years and years of sales data.
Obi-Wan: Well, shit. I guess I went through all that for nothing.
Kaminoan: Don't let the sliding door hit you in the ass on the way out.

And just where the HELL does the clone army come from? I'll tell you where. Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas apparently bought an entire army because he FORESAW that the Republic would need it through the Force. Because, you know, the logical solution to troubling premonitions of war is to buy an entire army. Because the Jedi are all about warfare and armies and stuff like that. As Yoda once said, "Wars not make one great. Wars make one BITCHIN' AWESOME!"

And who the hell is Sifo-Dyas? He was an old Jedi buddy of Dooku, which is why Dooku knew about the clones and could set up the whole sequence of events that would lead to the formation of the Grand Army of the Republic. Dooku killed him and incorporated his clone army into his long-term plans. But I've got a few questions:

1. Where did a Jedi come up with the cash for an entire clone army, not to mention weapons, equipment, and starships? He must have gone through a lot of couch cushions to come up with that kind of dough. Dex stresses in his conversation with Obi-Wan that the Kaminoans are a very mercenary lot, so I doubt they're doing it for charity and a tax writeoff.
2. Why didn't Sifo-Dyas tell anyone he was doing this? This isn't the kind of thing you just keep to yourself, is it? "Mace Windu, what are you up to these days?" "Oh, you know, meditating. Keeping the peace. You?" "Nothing, really." "You're not purchasing an entire clone army complete with warships and everything, are you?" "Erm... what makes you think that?" "Hell if I know! I just ask that sometimes for shits and giggles." "Oh... right."
3. And what about this presumed conversation on Kamino: "So, Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, who would you like to use as the basis for your clone army? A Jedi? An honorable soldier from a Jedi-aligned world, perhaps?" "Yeah, maybe something like that. I haven't really thought about it." "Well, if that's the case, we've got another option we thought you might like. How about an amoral bounty hunter who kills for money?" "Shit yeah! Even better. Let's get this assembly line moving!" Of course, it's possible the Kaminoans just came up with using a bounty hunter on their own, but is that really the kind of decision you just delegate to the long-necked weirdos and hope for the best?

Beat. Slam. Uncensored.

2010-04-02T23:25:00.003-06:00

It was a good night for poetry, man. It was a damn good night for poetry. I gotta say, it was all killer tonight. Everyone who got up in front of the mike rocked it. That's way too rare these days, when I end up cringing through sets, but everything tonight was tight and together and the energy in the room was like the world's slowest atom bomb wanted to cut loose and have a good time.

A Faith Betrayed

2010-03-27T22:40:00.000-06:00

I watched Star Wars Episode 2 again today. In the past, I have defended Lucas because of all the things he's given me, characters and stories that have shaped me and given me great happiness. I have been loyal, and I have suffered and endured patiently. But no loyal servant deserves that. That movie is a travesty against the name of cinema. Not only is the dialogue horrible, the logic is completely incomprehensible. Why is there a secret army no one knew about? Why does Obi-Wan traipse around the galaxy following half-baked clues like a Jedi version of Carmen Sandigo? Whyyyy? Why couldn't they just debate and decide to FORM an army, rather than have to decide whether to USE THE ONE THAT MAGICALLY APPEARS? I believed in you, George. I TRUSTED YOU, GEORGE!

The Most Offensive Ad Ever?

2010-03-19T20:36:00.003-06:00

I saw it on rottentomatoes.com, which is a fairly reputable website, and it's advertising a major retail video game, not some Flash crap. But the ad itself... wow. Where do I even start? I'll just let you be appalled for yourself.

And double shame on you if you tried to click it. :o!

A Memory from High School: MUN

2010-03-10T11:03:00.004-07:00

I took a Model United Nations class mostly for fun, since it would be an easy grade and I've always been interested in politics. That was around the time I was hitting my version of the senior slump, in which I just started taking classes out of fun and interest rather than a sense of obligation, particularly since I had already taken most of the classes I needed to graduate. For years, the MUN class had been taught by the father of a friend of mine, but that year a woman was teaching it who hadn't taught it before.

The overwhelming impression I have in my memory is of her humorous incompetence. It became fairly clear early on that she didn't understand Robert's Rules of Order or even much of modern politics. Being handy with a piece of news trivia or a well-crafted piece of BS would guarantee you a pass. I also remember that we were given entire class sessions with the nebulous instruction of researching the non-government organizations or countries we were meant to represent. Inevitably, those classes turned into sharing fun links with each other and trying to trick each other into going to whitehouse.com. (It was a pretty infamous porn site at the time; I'm not sure what it is now. Those were the days some people still navigated by typing in the name of what they wanted and adding a .com to it. Yes, there was internet before Google.) I remember that my friend Dima would regularly give the teacher trouble by calling her out on her ignorance, but I was particularly impressed when my friend Steve refused to do something she demanded of us since it was so childish and we were high school students. I don't remember what the task was, but that was the first time I had witnessed open rebellion from an excellent student. (Steve was, and I'm sure continues to be, a whiz in the sciences.) I also remember that, when we were told to make up fictional countries for debate, I created an impoverished country run by a theocratic Christian dictatorship. Someone else created a society dominated by robots, where humans were the slaves. Good times.

The memory that brought about this reminiscing is that, when we were getting on the buses to go to an event in another city, we were supposed to have our suits on, and I forgot. It was early in the morning, before the sun was even up, and the teacher gave me a real tongue-lashing outside the idling bus with most of the students already on board. She at first refused to even let me on the bus. It was a real ego shock for me, a reversal of power that my slip had allowed the teacher the class had until then almost completely undermined, and it stayed with me as an illustration of the way a mistake can give someone else power over me--particularly someone I had until then practically dominated.

Nothing in particular brought about this memory. It's just something I remembered.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

2010-02-16T18:09:00.002-07:00

I thought I would be disappointed in the highly advertised Starz TV show based on the life of Spartacus. I'm certainly not fond of the over-produced, sentimental mess that is the Kirk Douglas movie.

Watching the first episode made me a believer. The world of Spartacus is brutal, dark, and treacherous. After pitched battles with Getae, who are depicted as subhuman barbarians, that are strongly reminiscent of the best stylized violence of 300, the Thracians (of whom Spartacus is the de facto leader) decide it is better to defend their villages than follow Roman orders. The Romans, protesting that this is treason, crush the Thracians, whose village is burned by the Getae.

The first episode was particularly cinematic, with long shots of broad vistas and several creative cross-cuts from scene to scene. The scope is epic and the pacing is brisk (neither of which the show could maintain, but that's the nature of television). I enjoyed the choice of making blood spray behind the action as backdrop rather than as part of the scene, which is both awesomely over the top and stylized. That's not to say the violence isn't intense: limbs are removed and bodies are mangled.

Later episodes, once Spartacus is a gladiator, skimp more on the highly elaborate shots as well as the ultraviolence, but one has to expect that in television. The show also slows down from the sweeping majesty of total war to the day to day brutality of gladiator life; it's not a welcome change, but my disappointment at being hemmed in and hobbled by the change of scope is, I'm sure, something like Spartacus's own frustration at life as a gladiator.

Though the action tames itself somewhat and even the erotic splendor of the first episodes fades to slightly more tasteful (or less tasteless) shots, the show maintains a pacing to keep my appetite whetted like a good blade. Also, by then I had enough attachment to the characters to pull me through.

Though some of the characters are fairly detestable, even some of Spartacus's enemies are fully drawn characters. I was pleasantly surprised that Crixus, the best gladiator in the ludus that also own Spartacus, doesn't just antagonize Spartacus but also struggles to win the heart of a female slave despite his coarseness.

My biggest complaint is Spartacus's recurring visions of his wife. It's getting to the point that it's almost like "Harvey" in Farscape. That's bad.

The swearing and sex are rather too much for my taste, but the action and the surprisingly intricate drama keeps me coming back. I only hope they keep up the promise of the show by continuing to develop the plot rather than focus only on the sex and violence.

Happy Birthday, Chucky D!

2010-02-12T16:16:00.002-07:00

Today is Charles Darwin's birthday. Unfortunately, it's difficult to wish him a happy birthday, as his theories continue to be attacked and mocked by the ignorant and superstitious. Though his theories about the origin of species were not perfect, they form the basis for evolutionary theory as we know it today. To clarify, evolution is a fact, not a theory. It is the exact process, natural selection, through which evolution occurs that is a theory, though evidence for it continues to mount.

All I can say about this is that, at a time, people believed the Earth was at the center of the solar system, so much so that they accused anyone of heresy that postulated that the Sun might instead be the center. Now, all reasonable people accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

It is a sad truth that superstition continues to attack science and reason. Though some may provide "evidence" to the contrary until their faces turn blue, I take heart in Galileo's (supposedly) muttered words after recanting before the Inquisiton: "Eppur si muove." Despite what men might say or believe, the Earth moves.

It is one in the morning. Do you know where your Akuma is?

2010-02-09T11:16:00.002-07:00

There is something in a man that seeks out competition, even conflict. There is something that yearns to be the best, that seeks to defeat and destroy the opposition and see his enemies scattered at his feet. The noblest form of this pursuit is the duel, and the true modern duel is the fighting game. Well, that and martial arts.

I have never really been a Street Fighter player. Sure, there was the youthful crush in the arcade when I was around ten, followed by brief dalliances with emulators and a fling with the Capcom characters in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. The truth is, ever since I got my Dreamcast, my one true love has been Soul Calibur. Compared to Soul Calibur's dynamic rhythm of dance, Street Fighter is a combo frenzy, more brutal and less artistic. Plus Soul Calibur had weapons and a late medieval theme, while Street Fighter has offensive stereotypes. As a young man, I played Soul Calibur for hours on end, beating every single mission in the first game (even the ones that warned you how difficult they were) and logging untold hours on Soul Calibur, Soul Calibur 2, and Soul Calibur 4. We skipped 3. Not sure why.

My Soul Competitur moved away a few years ago, however, and my circle of friends are Street Fighter fans. So, like a boxer teaching himself jujitsu so he can get into MMA, I had to teach myself Street Fighter IV. It was a struggle, especially considering some of my friends have been playing Street Fighter at least as long as I've been playing Soul Calibur, and their power level is right around, say, NINE THOUSAAAAND. But if this was the way I was going to get my fighting, I would see it through.

I learned quickly that the charge characters are completely contrary to my brain's way of processing moves, so I switched to the circle characters. I also had the advantage of having played Darkstalkers as a teenager, which taught me all the basic circle moves (half roll forward, tap forward+half roll forward, double attack buttons for EX moves, etc.). (I know Darkstalkers also has charge characters. But those characters suck.)

After experimenting with a few of the characters, I settled on Akuma. Above all other reasons, he is the ultimate badass, a fireball-flinging maniac with glowing red eyes and a supervillain's sense of superiority over the human race. Plus his super move is identical to Morrigan's from Darkstalkers, which is also a plus.

Though I have worked to forge myself into a warrior in this new art, I have continued to lag behind, getting increasingly frustrated along the way as I saw Akuma hit the dust again and again. Finally, I made a decision. In order to be the very best with Akuma, I would set myself the goal of beating all of his hard trials. (This would also give me some nifty icons to use for myself in online multiplayer, which is lovely.) This was quite some task, as I was still struggling with the normal trials.

Trials are a series of combos of increasing complexity that you have to perform on a standing opponent. Some are frustratingly hard. Others are even more difficult.

I finally beat the normal trials, sometimes taking as much as half an hour per trial, but then I moved on to the first hard trial. And I could not do it. I spent two hours late into one night trying without success. I just couldn't pull off the focus cancel move in time. Every time I was either too late with it or the focus attack would go off instead of cancelling into another move, wasting too much time.

But I was driven. Like a dog with his teeth in his prize, I did not want to let go. Like that boxer after getting his face pounded out of shape his first night of MMA, I refused to let it get the better of me. I was going to become a warrior, no matter how much longer it took. I tried again the next morning for another hour without success. And more that night, with building frustration and swearing, alternating soothing Akuma to console him on his failure and threatening him to shape up or else. Finally, by what felt like pure luck, I did it. After copious pelvic thrusting and a victory dance I was ashamed even my TV could see, I moved on.

The next trials brought the same level of frustration. I would try for hours, take a break, and come back. My brain was aching. I was learning to string together moves from pure muscle memory, though even then it was a matter of trying it over and over until all the stars aligned and it went off perfectly. The third trial was relatively easy, and the fourth was a matter of getting the tricky timing down. Then it came down to the fifth and last trial.

It was brutal. To say the timing was split-second would be an understatement: even a fraction of a second would have given me some leeway, and this sadistic trial gave me none. If it's true that the jiffy is the very shortest possible measure of time, then I was measuring the timing in jiffies. Not only that, but I had to stand the character in the exact right place. EXACT. Too close, and he would do the wrong move. Too far away, and the move wouldn't land.

It went on for hours. I didn't eat. Papers went ungraded. I told myself I would stop at 7. Then 8. Then midnight. I practiced each step of the sequence individually and in tandem with the steps around it. I had to get every move down perfectly. My thumbs changed colors. They became sore, then numb.

"It's not your fault, Akuma. I know you're trying."

"Damn you, Akuma! Just do what I tell you!"

"Are you playing with me, Akuma? Is this fun for you? Do you like to see me hurt?"

"I just don't know if this relationship is going to work, Akuma."

"I'm sorry, Akuma. Don't be cross. You know I don't mean any of those hurtful things I said."

And copious swearing.

Finally, at precisely 1:01 in the morning, I did it. Through some random chance, through some combination of providence and sheer tenacity, because even if I can pull it off only once in ten thousand tries it has to go off right some time, I did it. And then I went to bed.

I wish I could say that I don't feel a sense of accomplishment, that I realized at the end how empty and meaningless succeeding at a video game is. I know none of this translates into real world skills and I can't put "Passed all of Akuma's Hard Trials in Street Fighter IV" on my resume. I know in twenty years no one will care about Street Fighter.

But I do feel accomplishment. I set myself on a task that seemed almost impossible and I did it. My thumbs are still hurting, as I'm reminded every time I tap the spacebar. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some facts about plate tectonics or the Cambrian explosion or the Hapsburg dynasty have been displaced in favor of the exact timing of Light Hurricane Kick -> Gorshoryuken. But I did it. Akuma is supreme. I am Akuma.

By the way, I also beat the game on Hardest Difficulty. But that was nothing compared to this.

((PS I know Akuma is called Gouki in Japan, but I don't care. These are the facts: M. Bison is white, Vega wears a mask, and Balrog is a boxer. While we're at it, I'll probably always say "Rye-you" rather than "Ree-you". That's just the way it is. Oh, and I did grade the papers during a break in gaming. I may be driven, but I'm not negligent.))

HAPPY ROBERT E. HOWARD DAY

2010-01-22T12:40:00.007-07:00

TODAY I WILL WRITE MY BLOG IN ALL CAPS TO SIMULATE ME YELLING THE WAY ROBERT E. HOWARD USED TO YELL WHEN HE WAS WRITING HIS STORIES ON HIS TYPEWRITER. ROBERT E. HOWARD WAS BORN ON JANUARY 22 (OR 24, DEPENDING ON THE DOCUMENTATION YOU LOOK AT). AT ANY RATE, AS YOU HAVE PROBABLY NOTICED IF YOU READ THIS BLOG, BOB HOWARD IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS. HE DIDN'T HAVE THE TECHNICAL SKILL OF YOUR TOLSTOYS OR YOUR DICKENSES, AND HE CERTAINLY DOESN'T ENJOY THE POPULARITY OF TOLKIEN (WHO I WOULD ON ANY OTHER DAY NOT DARE TO CALL INFERIOR TO HOWARD FOR FEAR OF UPSETTING THE FANBOYS, BUT BY CROM, ON HIS BIRTHDAY I MIGHT AS WELL COME OUT AND SAY IT: HOWARD WAS THE BETTER WRITER), BUT HIS STORIES ARE FILLED WITH ADVENTURE, EXOTIC LOCATIONS, AND LARGER THAN LIFE CHARACTERS WHO NOT ONLY LEAP BUT FLYING AXE-CHOP OFF THE PAGE. MANY OF THE TROPES HE ORIGINATED BECAME FANTASY CLICHES. CONAN THE CIMMERIAN IS OBVIOUSLY THE MOST WELL KNOWN OF HIS CREATIONS, BUT MANY OF HIS WORKS STILL INFLUENCE WRITERS INDIRECTLY TODAY--THE IMAGE OF THE PURITAN-DRESSED HERO FIGHTING EVIL WHICH WE SEE IN EVERYTHING FROM WARHAMMER TO VAN HELSING STARTED WITH HOWARD'S SOLOMON KANE.

phew okay gotta get a cup of water

ROBERT E. HOWARD AND I DO NOT SEEM TO HAVE MUCH IN COMMON. HE LIVED HIS WHOLE LIFE IN TEXAS, AND I HAVE NEVER HAD MUCH AFFINITY FOR THE SOUTH. HE WAS AN AVID SPORTSMAN AND AN ACCOMPLISHED AMATEUR BOXER, AND I SOMETIMES HAVE TROUBLE OPENING TRICKY PACKAGING. HE BELIEVED IN THE NOBILITY OF SAVAGES AND HATED CIVILIZATION, WHILE I BELIEVE TRUE CIVILIZATION IS THE PEAK OF HUMAN EXISTENCE. ON THE OTHER HAND, WE BOTH LOVE HISTORY, THE IMAGINATION, AND ADVENTURE. WE BOTH LOVED BOOKS FROM AN EARLY AGE (LEGENDS SAY HOWARD SNEAKED INTO LIBRARIES AFTER DARK AS A BOY, TOOK OUT BOOKS TO READ AND MAKE NOTES FROM, AND RETURNED THEM THE SAME WAY DAYS LATER). PERHAPS MOST OF ALL, WE BOTH FELT WE WERE BORN IN THE WRONG TIME, AND FOUND A WAY OF EXPRESSING OURSELVES IN BOOKS AND WRITING THAT THE REAL WORLD DOES NOT PROVIDE.

HOWARD IS TRULY A LEGEND, A MAN WHO CREATED SOME DAMN BRILLIANT FICTION AND CHARACTERS THAT HAVE STOOD THE TEST OF TIME. PERHAPS I WILL 'OUTGROW' MY FASCINATION WITH HIM AND HIS CHARACTERS, BUT ALL THE GODS, I HOPE NOT!

REST IN PEACE, BOB HOWARD. YOUR LEGACY LIVES ON.

Edit: of all the tributes to Howard I've read today, this is so far my favorite

Dragons are the Bad Guys

2010-01-08T12:08:00.003-07:00

Just a brief note to all writers and filmmakers out there. Dragons are not lonely and misunderstood, the victims of ignorance and superstition. They are not majestic creatures filled with magic and wonder. They are particularly not talking friends of humans.

Dragons are the villains. They symbolize cruelty, greed, and gluttony. They are the ultimate challenge, the ultimate threat, and the ultimate proof of heroism. If you take away the need to kill dragons, you take away part of what makes a hero great. Heroes need mighty foes, and the mightiest foes are dragons.

Also, if dragons are friendly and beautiful, they're just a step above ponies, and we really don't want that.

The Conan Video Game

2010-01-05T19:42:00.004-07:00

I'm not reviewing the MMO, for reasons I stated earlier. Instead, I'm reviewing the game for the 360 and PS3.

When I found it used for twelve bucks at GameStop, I wasn't expecting much. I thought it would be some vague attempt at creating a fantasy game with the name tacked onto it, something completely un-Conan with orcs and elves and crap like that. I expected awful graphics, awkward controls, and a storyline that stuck to the source material about as closely as Conan the Destroyer did. Which means not at all.

But I was surprised to find that wasn't the case. The game actually stuck more closely to the original stuff than the books did. Conan looked and acted like Conan should, even throwing out brash quips when he kills his enemies that sound like something straight out of Robert E. Howard, such as "Let Crom judge you" and "I'll cleave your skull to the teeth!"

The storyline was vaguely Conan-esque. My only complaint was that Conan, like many heroes in video games these days, loses his powers after the first mission and has to use experience points to recover them. For some reason, the pieces of his armor are also imbued with magical spells, which he can use as he recovers them piece by piece. As any fan will know, Conan never uses magic. But really, magical power (let's just call it mana) is very rare and the spells aren't much more effective than a good piece of steel, so that does make up for it somewhat.

If you've played God of War, you don't need to know anything to play Conan. The control system is ripped directly from the other game. It's derivitive to the point that it can hardly even be called a different game; the only 'difference' is that Conan can pick up and use the weapons of his enemies. Everything else is precisely the same as God of War. Don't get me wrong; I love a little Kratos action, but Conan could have used his own control system, something more reckless and swashbuckly. Most of the time, the camera behaves and the controls work, but they do sometimes get awkward. Particularly annoying is the need to tap a button to climb walls, and if you don't tap the button quickly, you casually release (and usually fall to your death).

Ron Perlman does the voice of Conan and Claudia Black does the romantic interest, which really lends the game a leg up. Sadly, the graphics don't match; despite this being a PS3/360 title, the graphics don't look any better than many PS2 games I've played.

The stages feel nice and Conan-y, from savage-infested jungles to sand-swallowed cities. At one point, Conan seems to travel to ancient Greece, which felt completely wrong because the Hyborian age is thousands of years before Greece ever existed. But hey, even Howard borrowed from time periods up to the age of piracy, so it's hard to be critical of that. (Conan even appears in one story wearing a buttoned coat and a tricorne hat.) A particular joy was a demon-worshipping cult in a cave that kept killer gorillas. (Howard included gorillas as villains almost as often as he used snakes.)

One surprising pleasure was the boss fights. Apart from the interminable final fight in which you have to repeat the same process four times to defeat the end boss, the boss fights are all unique and interesting. Half the time, it's more about solving puzzles than about button mashing. The game does incorporate push-button cutscenes, which I hate, but you can't have everything.

Because of the gratuitously topless women and the over-the-top gore, the game will appeal only to a limited number of fans. Robert E. Howard himself was never above making a buck from his own creations at the price of the world's 'integrity,' so I can see him approving of this game. Though it's derivitive, there are worse ways to spend ten bucks.

Christmas Wishes

2009-12-25T22:30:00.002-07:00

To everyone and the whole world, I wish you a very happy Christmas. Despite the religious associations of the holiday, I'd like to think that it has become rather secularized. Some might think this as a shame, but I like to think it means everyone can enjoy it equally, as it means something special for all of us. Joy, gratitude, peace on Earth, and good will towards everyone are universal, and so I hope we will all have just that. My favorite thing about Christmas is that it gives you an excuse to be happy for no good reason, and that is reason enough to celebrate.

So no matter what your condition or situation, I wish you great happiness this Christmas. And hey, happiness every other day, too. I don't think there's anything wrong with just being happy and glad without any reservation. So go ahead, be happy. You have my blessing. :)

Airing of Grievances

2009-12-25T22:00:00.003-07:00

Two of my friends have posted on Facebook that, according to Seinfeld, Christmas is the time of an airing of grievances. I think this sounds good, but I don't have any grievances that are light enough to post merely on Facebook. I thought I'd post here instead, to write how I really feel.

After all, though I may have petty grievances against all sorts of annoyances in my life, my biggest grievance is against myself. No one has harmed me or disappointed me more than I have this past year. It's a sobering thought, but there it is.

I'm not angry or miserable about any of it. In life, we fall but we get back up, and so shall I. There could be no joy without sorrow, no success without failure, and so I look forward to doing even better with all I have learned from my shortcomings. And that, maybe, is something to be grateful for this Christmas.

So, this Christmas, my biggest grievance is against myself, but that's not so bad. Merry Christmas.

Spam email is POETIC!

2009-12-10T11:40:00.004-07:00

"Aloha, my gentleman

Two souls and one thought, two hearts and one pulse.Honey, I came here almost hopeless to find you. I am waiting for you for such a long time that I already feel your soul, but I still can not meet you. I know that we are both imperfect, but somehow we will perfectly match together. I do not know what the life has in store for us, but I hope that we will share it together. (link) I will bring you tenderness and happiness, a feeling of deep and everlasting love. I will take you to a place of colourful world and crystal dreams. You are my life and my love, I can feel that you are also somewhere here also looking for me.

Hugs
Li"

I know you're not a real person, Li, but with such a touching and heartwarming offer, how can I refuse? Well, I do refuse, since I'm not a chump, but by my word a "colourful world and crystal dreams" is just about as irresistable as it gets.

The "SyFy" channel's "Alice"

2009-12-07T23:31:00.005-07:00

From American McGee's Alice to Tim Burton's Alice to the treatment of Alice in Lullaby, it seems like everyone has had a shot at "re-imagining" Lewis Carrol's classic of children's literature, Alice in Wonderland. When the "SyFy" channel (quotes required since it's such a silly name) decided to remake it into a two-night show, they dropped the better part of the title and made it just Alice. Why? The reason soon becomes obvious: because there's no wonder in this version of Wonderland.

The premise is fairly thin. The Queen of Hearts has taken over Wonderland and is using a casino (get it? she's a playing card?) to leech emotions out of humans from our world. She then sells these like drugs to the populace of Wonderland, keeping them within her power. Enter Alice, a girl who is, despite what you may be thinking, actually completely unrelated to the Alice of legend. There's plenty of speculation that she might be "the" Alice, but there really doesn't seem to be any connection. Apparently her only qualifications are that she wears a blue dress and her name is Alice.

Alice in Wonderland is full of vibrant and colorful locations, Alice, on the other hand, seems to take place mostly in dilapidated old hotels. The characters in Alice in Wonderland are quirky yet full of a strange kind of wisdon. The characters in Alice are virtually all human in appearance, and are only connected to the novel's characters by their names. The Mad Hatter, who isn't mad and doesn't make hats, is one of the best characters in the program, as charming and British as any Artful Dodger. Another standout is the White Knight, played by the guy who plays Taggart in Eureka. Another Sci Fi regular making an appearance is Colm Meaney, further proving my theory that the Sci Fi channel doesn't hire actors for certain shows, but just owns certain people. In my imagination, if I spilled my lemonade in the Sci Fi waiting room, Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, or Michael Shanks would come out in overalls with a bucket and a mop to clean it up. Meaney does a capable job, but his character, the Queen of Hearts's weak-willed husband, doesn't have much to do. Alice herself is well played, but her writing is so dull that she doesn't have much to work with. The Queen is played by Kathy Bates, who is neither very menacing nor amusing, but whose acting rather gives the impression that everyone is just humoring her.

Apart from traipsing around run-down old buildings and nondescript forests (neither of which have much Wonder in them), the other real set is the casino, which is brightly lit and consists of three fairly small rooms: the casino room, the Queen's throne room, and the third room.

The plot, such as there is, involves the Queen's son falling in love with Alice and giving her the ring which controls the portal into our world (the looking glass of the second novel's title). The Queen needs this to keep up enslaving humans and leeching their emotions, so she's determined to get it back. The rest of the film revolves around the characters evading capture, getting captured, escaping, evading capture, getting captured again, and escaping again to victory. The writing is remarkably lackluster (Alice's big speech to make the humans in the casino remember who they are is basically "REMEMBER! REMEMBER! REMEMBER YOUR FAMILIES!"). Although she's introduced as a karate expert, Alice needs rescuing several times. The March Hare, called Mad March, is introduced as the queen's top assassin, but gets taken out with one punch by the Hatter, whose combat skills really are second to none in this show, and make me wonder why he didn't just save Wonderland singlehandedly ages ago. The casino is left unguarded at a crucial moment when the White Knight dresses up a lot of skeletons in armor and stands them up outside. Why nobody notices him setting them up, and why they subsequently fall for attacking an army that only stands there, is anybody's guess; I suppose it's because everyone's mad in Wonderland.

The bottom line is this: this is a show about a wonderous place that could have used a giant heaping more wonder. A couple of charming characters can't do much to save a show with a weak script and no eye-popping set pieces. For a story that revolves around imagination, this show is sorely lacking, and that lets down what could have been a fun adventure.

THAT BEING SAID...

I have a suggestion for a new "SyFy" channel special:

"They fed him honey. They broke his house. They stole his tail. This Spring, Eeyore's really pissed... and he's not going to take it any more."

Kleenex, Monasteries, and Vituperation

2009-11-23T10:56:00.004-07:00

I was horrified to find the following message on the bottom of my box of Kleenex:
"Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip... [their ellipsis] Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike. Whoop it up! Laugh, scream, cry and holler! And when tons os stuff stuffs up your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud! Show your heart and show some tears... of joy and sorrow, in awe and pride. Just let it out!"

I don't want to believe that my Kleenex is telling me to behave like a simpleton and a lunatic, abandoning decency and decorum for the sake of becoming an emotional mess and a public nuisance, but I can't help but think that's exactly what my Kleenex is saying. To me, this speaks to a broader issue, one that continues to replace the educated gentleman of previous generations with the rude, ignorant, and utterly reprehensible self-absorbed man-child of the twenty-first century, the kind of willfully stupid Philistine who refers to a well-spoken man such as our president as a "snob," who dismisses the arts and history as "artsy", and who finds a purpose in television and sports.

Well, my friends, the raving populace has always been weak to bread and circus, but when I start to despair about the state of humanity in the modern day, I reflect that the world has always been filled with a cacophonous rabble who, among their more heinous offenses, belittle their betters for their knowledge and refinement. Not that I am particularly either, mind, but I do aspire to be. Not only has there always been this noisome crowd, there have always been refuges where proper sensibilities and learning are protected.

Even in the Middle Ages, when the majority of the world ran around burning witches, the wisdom of the ages was preserved in manuscripts copied in monasteries. While there will always be the threat of Dark Ages, whether through the collapse of civilization or, as we see today, through a purposeful preference towards ignorance and idiocy, there will always be a minority of people who stand up against this kind of barbarism and hold out.

Thank you, ancient monks. And thank you to you, too, if you are also someone who loves reading and writing, and all things worth preserving.

Sometimes I take myself much too seriously.

Here's Looking At You, Google.

2009-11-07T01:52:00.002-07:00

Just for fun, I decided to run a line from the poem "Over the Misty Mountains Cold" by Tolkien in Google to see what it came up with. I didn't use any Boolean functions (no 'ands' or quotes). The line was "The heart is bold that looks on gold." Google arbitrarily decided that the word "looks" is not relevant to my search and told me so at the bottom of my page. Instead, it filled up my page with ads for things like heart-shaped gold trinkets. Despite the fact that I included the line word for word, Tolkien only appeared on page 4 of the search results.Smartest search engine? Sure. My conspiracy theory is severely disappointed.
I was originally going to make this my Facebook status, but then I realized that would make me the biggest nerd ever.

Borderlands

2009-11-02T16:28:00.005-07:00

As readers of this blog will know, I'm a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, particularly of the Mad Max movies, which I think are still the epitome of that world. It's not a stretch, therefore, that I should be interested in the new game Borderlands, which a friend of mine rented for me for the PS3. Before I continue, I should include that my friend and my brother both like the game a lot, so it seems I'm the minority opinion here.

The graphics are cell-shaded and stylized, which makes the game feel like a weird dream. The characters you meet are all varying degrees of ridiculous charicatures, which is a major strike against giving the world the right feeling. A lot of the apocalyptic (the game is actually set on a border planet, but let's call a potato a potato) elements are played for laughs. There are also no conversations: the characters, of whom there are precious few, are only there to give you quests, and shops are just dispenser machines.

The game is marketed as a mixed FPS and RPG, but it doesn't hold up as either. I've been playing FPS since the Doom days, so I've developed a bit of talent, but the game requires none. It's a slog of shooting each other a lot, and hiding when you need your shield to recharge. Since the game is heavily hit point dependent, it translates to just a lot of lead in the air while you whittle down the opponents' health bars. The controls are fine, except for the vehicles, which always move in the direction you're facing rather than turning the direction you're turning the control stick, which just doesn't feel right.

The game doesn't work as an FPS, because you really don't use any skill in fighting, but it doesn't work as an RPG, either, because you can't make any choices in the story or even interact with the other characters. Character customization is pretty flat (you get a tree of buffs like in World of Warcraft, but they're really not that great), and you get a grand total of one special ability. This might change later in the game, but I played to around level 20 of 50, so I'd like to think I at least scratched the surface.

You've seen these characters before. The big brute, the magical slender woman, the standard soldier, the skinny sniper. Hell, apart from the woman, you've got them all in Team Fortress 2, and in that they're actually more fun.

The guns have varying effects, including shocking your enemy, eating through their armor, or setting them on fire. This does provide a level of picking the right weapon for the job, which is nice, but the plethora of guns the game advertises just isn't attractive to me. The guns have a bunch of different modifiers, like the yellow weapons in Diablo, that make them more or less unique, but they're about as consistent and useful as those weapons: just because you can pile a bunch of random modifiers on something doesn't mean it feels 'right', which many of these guns don't. A gun that shoots really fast AND has low recoil AND does fire damage is just... fair, since it really just boils down to raw damage output. If the guns were closer in damage potential, like they are in most FPS games, you could pick the flavor that suits your style best. When it comes down to it, I'm really not that excited about shooting weird guns, particularly when it's shooting them at the same enemies over and over.

Which brings me to one of the biggest downfalls of the game: the enemies level along with you. I don't understand why games these days all seem to have a level-up system. It makes sense in games like Dungeons and Dragons, where it means (or should) that you can fight bigger and more interesting enemies, but what's the use if you never get other enemies to fight, but just tougher versions of the same ones? In a world where most of your enemies are human anyway, it doesn't make sense. Why should one particular noggin take ten (or a hundred) times as much destructive power to go 'splode as another? For that matter, is any one gun really a hundred times more deadly than another?

Now, I know that these complaints can really apply to many games, even games I love, such as Fallout 3, but those games have elements that rise above the rest, elements such as writing and interesting characters and mood. Borderlands lacks all of these. It's a long grind. There were a few standout moments of "hey, that was kind of cool", but really it was hours and hours of slogging through the same enemies with little to make it worthwhile.

It's NaNoWriMo again!

2009-10-27T23:24:00.003-06:00

National Novel Writing Month is almost here again! In less than a week, thousands, perhaps even millions, of people across the world will be tapping furiously at their keyboards for a solid month, struggling to reach that golden mark of 50,000 words. For everyone who has been putting off writing that great novel because there just isn't enough time in the day, NaNoWriMo takes away the excuses. If so many other people are doing it, so can you! I've participated twice in the past. I actually finished a 52,000 word novel in 2007, and I participated but only made it to 30,000 words in 2008, mostly because I'm lazy. I was also writing my Master's thesis at the time, but that's just an excuse! Just like with all things in life, if you really want to do something, you do it. You don't complain about how much else you have to do.

This year, I fully intend to participate, and to win! I think the real joy and success of the project comes from the communality of it. Novel writing is a generally lonely business, full of self-doubt and misery, asking myself why I'm pretending to be a writer when everyone else is out having fun or being productive. NaNo is the time everyone else is engaged in the same struggle, and with that comes strength and a sense of real purpose. The website lets you keep track of what your friends are writing and how they're doing. There are also forums to let you talk to both local and other writers about your trials and your triumphs. Really, the overall feeling is that we're all in it together, and that, for one month, whether you're writing about sweeping tragedy or ninjas, all that matters if that you keep going. Everything is positive, encouraging, and optimistic. We can do this! We can write a novel in a month!

Now I just have to buckle down and do it.

If you're like to do it, please do! ^_^ And we can be friends on the site and share encouragement and all that stuff!

Future Love

2009-10-21T11:19:00.010-06:00

Warning. I'm not very politically correct. I apologize to everyone who is offended. If you're not offended, I'm not apologizing. I won't be giving you any links to what I mean because, really, I don't want to do that to you. If you're really curious, a simple keyword search will bring you all the horror your fragile sanity can stand.

The Internet, namely YouTube (which is about a third of the Internet anyway, the other two thirds being Facebook and porn, and maybe a little 4chan), keeps trying to make me watch videos of fat peoples' stomachs. And fat people poking their stomachs. And stroking their stomachs. I must admit I first clicked one of these links because I was baffled about what could be in such a video (not to mention baffled by why the Internet thought that I would be interested by it). The videos themselves are pretty tame, as far as I can tell: fat people sitting around playing with their bellies. It's the kind of thing children do when they're bored. And let's be honest, we all enjoy a bit of belly button lint picking every now and then.

But it's the comments that disturb me. Just for you, dear Internet, I'm going to delve into one of these videos to give you a sample:

"I wanna rub her belly and stick my finger in her belly button."
"So beautiful, darling you should try to make it to the point of almost exploding. But be careful~"
"Please pull your pants down just a little bit so we can see you underwear. Thanks"

And each of those comments had people clicking the thumbs up button to recommend it. I would think the other button was the one that meant "Creeeeeeepy!"

Now, I'm all for a realistic body image, but doesn't encourage people to eat excessively fly in the face of everything we know about good health and diet? I'll be the first to give a bony model the sammich she so desperately needs, but this is people encouraging obese people to be even more obese.

There are plenty of bizarre fetishes out there that don't involve hurting anyone. I really only know about these because I watch Attack of the Show's "Around The Net." Things like balloons and giving people piggyback rides. I don't understand how this is in any way sexy, but at least nobody is getting hurt. But encouraging people to become obese? That's just about as sick as those people who want to be amputees.

What this all comes down to, though, is that I have a theory. I believe this is an evolutionary coping mechanism. As obesity becomes increasingly common, our brains start to change the way we see beauty to compensate. What would happen to fat Western society if we still held on to our old notions of athletic being beautiful? Imagine that poor minority of women who still fit that image who would increasingly bear the burden of continuing the species. Meanwhile, the rest of women have nothing to do but sit around, eat pizza, and watch Oprah. It only makes sense that, in order to preserve the species, somebody has to "hit that." And, in order to steel those brave souls to the unenviable but necessary task ahead, Mother Nature puts new thoughts into their heads. Thoughts like "your belly looks hot with it all bloated keep it up never stop of course take breaks but its sexy"

Yes, Internet, I went out of my way to find the creepiest comment on there. I hope your appreciation will make up for the mental scars.

I used to think that future babes would look like Raquel Welch. Or maybe Molly Millions. Oh, my poor, poor illusions.

PS I tracked down the source of YouTube's tragic mistake. In Rammstein's "Keine Lust" video, they dress up like fat people. I guess for YouTube it was either an unnatural attraction to fat people or else just burly middle-aged East Germans....

And, of course, by watching the videos necessary to gather the comments for this post, I have only confirmed YouTube's opinion of my deviance, so I can look forward to many more of these videos in the weeks to come.

Rasputin

2009-10-20T16:36:00.005-06:00

Sometimes I take a little thrill out of knowing that a man like Rasputin lived in what might still be considered living memory. It's a wide, weird world out there. Perhaps the strangest thing in it ist he human mind and the worlds that mind creates. There are men who, despite the vast systems of power in the world, can control the world with purely the power of their intellect and personality. In that, perhaps, is the greatest magic of humanity. WE MAKE THE WORLD.

An in a world with all that (alleged) poisoning, shooting, freezing, and drowning, there's this:

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/10/all_hail_klenginem.php

Klingon Eminem. Thanks, Lord Admiral. Thanks for BLOWING MY MIND! The dude really has to speak up, though. KLINGONS DON'T HAVE MULTIPLE VOLUMES! It sounds like he's whispering because his mom has her bridge club over and she doesn't want to hear Klingon coming through the vents again.

Strange Thought

2009-10-18T10:51:00.004-06:00

It just occurred to me that I can't remember the last time someone tried to convince me to change my mind about something. It seems that people are just too eager to live and let live. Have we gotten to the point that we just don't care how other people see the world? Are we so diluted and soft that we don't care enough to separate right from wrong, to see that some choices are better than others?

Now, I'll admit that I don't know what to associate this trend with. Rather than just picking one out of a hat, as I would normally do, and rant against it, I thought I'd let you write your own rant! So, dear reader, what has caused us to stop trying to better our friends and fellow humans?

1) Hippies. The influence of dirty, unwashed liberalism in modern America has made all conservative values moot.
2) Anthopology. Cultural relativism has infected society in general.
3) Television. We see too much of everything, so it all seems familiar.
4) Urban life. The breakdown in traditional small-town connections and values leaves us without a basis for culture.
5) Space aliens. Divide and conquer!
6. Commies. Because they can't stand our red-blooded American ways!
7) The internet. Everything now has a forum and a support group, so it all seems normal.
8) Secularity. People no longer turn to religion for a grounding basis.
9) 4chan.
10) Loki. He's behind everything, isn't he?

Open Letter to Facebook

2009-10-11T13:16:00.003-06:00

Dear Facebook,

We used to have so much fun together. You were a place to post funny or interesting links. I could share my pictures or look at other peoples' pictures. It was good times. Do you remember those times, Facebook?

Because then everyone started using games. Really crappy games. And you kept telling me about it. You kept telling me ALL about it. Then eventually you let me tell you to shut up about it, and it was good.

But then the status thing started getting worse. People started enjoying talking about themselves, and the 'like' button just fed their ego. The results? Chaos. Madness. Now I have friends who tell me half a dozen times a day that they're washing their car. Or going to the mall. Or watching TV.

Facebook, I feel dirty. I feel like I know way too much about the lives of people I don't know. I feel like I need help. I need a restraining order. I need the world to give itself a little more privacy.

Because if I really wanted to know, I could always, you know, ask.

Your friend,
bluefish

Truth in Writing

2009-09-23T22:52:00.003-06:00

The students in English 1010 are working on their personal essays, which means personal essays are also constantly on my mind. I just had a conversation today in which I confessed that I believe that, in general, people are cruel, selfish, and petty. I wish it wasn't the case, but I have an unfortunate (and undoubtedly prideful) view that the average person is mediocre, and mediocrity breeds pettiness. People do not aspire to be great, to transcend this mortal coil, to create beauty and wisdom and fantastic thought, they....

But then something catches me off guard. It's a thought I hadn't expected, although I've heard it before. The thought is this: of all the essays I read, I can't help but feel for every single writer. I feel a connection, some slight touch, like the spark of electricity jumping between two wires. Even for the briefest moment, we touch, like strangers in a crowd who brush together and then feel our eyes meet. And for everyone, even for the kids who only want to write about how cool that game was, or for the ones who have to be there and can't be bothered to treat me like a person, I can't help but feel a little sympathy. A little compassion.

Writing is beautiful in that. More than any other medium, it transmits pure thought. It places me into the mind, the experience of the writer. Rather than capturing the objective truth, it captures one person's truth, one particular person's imperfect memory rather than a completely factual recollection of the past. And in that imperfect memory are housed all the fears, all the hopes of a real person. If a person misrepresents a situation, leaves out the things they fear or mourn, their own actions they wish they could forget, that is beautiful, because I can feel even in the absence that shame, that guilt, that grief. If the writer admits it, embraces it, presents it to me like a gift upon a cushion, it is beautiful, because, no matter what it is, it is so wrapped up in heartbreak and truth that I can't help but pity them. Even the ones who don't see how thoughtless, absurd, or even cruel they were implicitly admit their childishness, their lack of understanding, and I can't blame that, because they don't know what they did.

If we could all write and all read, all come to understand our own thoughts and the thoughts of all others, to live not in their shoes but in their minds and memories for the space of even a few brief pages, how could we ever have war? How could we allow poverty, misery, suffering?

(And then there are those who walk in and say, "I hate writing. It's so pointless." Bastards.)

American Writer

2009-09-22T18:38:00.002-06:00

We need a reality TV show about writing, to make writing edgy and cool. It should be a reality-based contest to try to find the best writer among a gang of colorful characters. There could be the rebel who never wants to accept criticism (I'll use to be verbs if I want to, that's just my style!), the lovable one who can never get it quite right (oh, I thought haiku was 7-5-7!), and the misfit who struggles to fit in with everyone else (no one appreciates my sonnets about death!). Just imagine the hilarity when people from the street cue up to come write for the celebrity judges, who tear apart their cliche-riddled personal essays! The tears when we're getting close to the finish but one of the characters is still trying to wrap up the climax of a short story! The thrill of listening to the final product each week and calling in for our favorite piece!

I'd be happy to help produce the show, TV people. Just drop me a line.

The Kings Cross Bogan rolls 20s

2009-09-19T19:12:00.003-06:00

I played in the worldwide D&D Day game today. Near the end of the game, I decided to stop trying to play a character and just go a bit crazy. The first thing I did was, when I used an ability called Sword Dance or something, I said that my character shined her (yes, I got stuck playing the girl) sunrod into a globe of glass while she danced with her sword, all Saturday Night Fever. Later, I quoted the Kings Cross Bogan by saying, "I will call on my fully sick boys!" and I rolled a 17 to hit with my daily attack. Next, I used an ability called Booming Blade, and went "chk-chk BOOM" as I used it, and rolled a 20. Critical hit on the chk-chk BOOM? Very appropriate.

Sometims, I blog about nothing at all.

Relevant to My Interests: The King of Elfland's Daughter

2009-09-12T11:20:00.002-06:00

"No spell indeed!" she hissed. "No spell indeed! By broom and stars and night-riding! Would you rob Earth of her heirloom that has come from the olden time? Would you take her treasure and leave her bare to the scorn of her comrade planets? Poor indeed were we without magic, whereof we are well stored to the envy of darkness and space. ... I would sooner... give you a spell against water, that all the world should thirst, than give you a spell against the song of streams that evening hears faintly over the ridge of a hill, too dim for wakeful ears, a song threading through dreams, wehreby we learn of old wars and lost loves of the Spirits of rivers. I would sooner give you a spell against bread, that allthe world should starve, than give you a spell against the magic of wheat that haunts the golden hollows in moonlight in July, through which in the warm short nights wander how many of whom man knows nothing. I would make you spells against comfort and clothing, food, shelter and warmth, aye and will do it, sooner than tear from these poor fields of Earth that magic that is to them an ample cloak against the chill of Space, and a gay raiment against the sneers of nothingness."

So speaks the witch in Lord Dunsany's novel The King of Elfland's Daughter. I am a dreamer at heart. My favorite book, as I have attested time and again, is Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. Dunsany's novel touches on many of the same themes: the slow waning of wonder and magic from the world of humans, pushed back by rational thought and the gradual wearing down of time and worldly concerns. The description is wonderfully unbalanced: Dunsany spends paragraphs describing the way sunrise creeps over a forest, or goes into deep detail about the wonderous splendors of Elfland, of which no speech can tell, but gives us very little to characterize the major characters in the story. Often the vital actions of characters are glossed over in a few lines, while the folly of minor characters gets entire paragraphs. The reason for this is obvious: the theme, not the characters, is paramount. The story itself, the wonder and beauty of it, is much more than the sum of what the characters do. In fact, the characters are frequently at the whims of the setting; Elfland itself is as much a character as any of the elves, humans, or trolls.

In the modern world, it is almost not worth mentioning that we deride fables and fantasies and hold up dull, mundane things as what we should direct our lives to. This novel is fantastic perhaps primarily for what it manages to do with the richness of its language and story: mock the common world, with its short-sighted people and its daily toil, and extol the beauty of fantasy.

What more is there for me to say? Don't expect a fantasy adventure in the modern sense. There are no towering heroes or mighty deeds here. The only phsyical fight is over by page 24. The conflict in this novel isn't person to person, or even hero to monster, but the clash between two ideals: reality and the imagination.

As Padraic Colum explains perfectly in a quote on the back of my edition: "Lord Dunsany is that rare creature in literature, the fabulist. One can hardly detect a social idea in his work. There is one there, however. It is one of unrelenting hostility to everything that impoverishes man's imagination."

To Be A Hero

2009-09-08T13:54:00.003-06:00

Maybe there's something to be said about all of us based on what heroes we most look up to. Some people see their mom or their soccer coach as their hero, for bravely driving a minivan and cooking pancakes or selflessly encouraging good self esteem and sportsmanship.

And some of us aim for something a bit more epic.

Shitty One-Ply

2009-08-31T13:57:00.003-06:00

I used to have a friend at Ithaca College who would go on about the sad unfairness of one-ply toilet paper. While all the student dorms and the bathrooms the students used were stocked with one-ply, dry and scratchy and irritating and easily ripped, all the bathrooms in faculty areas had soft two-ply toilet paper. He used to point out how very unfair and classist this is.

I'd like to go beyond this Marxist rhetoric and speak instead to an even wider problem: the very existence of one-ply toilet paper. Why in the world do we need this product? Is there anyone out there who prefers what is universally known as a genuinely inferior product? Of course not. The only conceivable reason anyone would buy one-ply is because it's cheap (and, in the case of universities, the people who buy it won't be forced to sandpaper their asses on it). Imagine if factories only produced acceptable classes of toilet paper. I would be willing to bet that the greater efficiency involved in having fewer choices would ensure that the decent two-ply would cost as much as one-ply does now. This leaves me with the conclusion that one-ply exists only to justify the existence--and higher cost--of a separate, BETTER variety in two-(and multi-) ply toilet paper. We don't have shitty one-ply so we'll actually buy and use it. We have it so two-ply costs more when we actually do buy it.

This theory extends to other products. Take, for instance, optional packages on automobiles. For instance, optional passenger airbags. How many people are going to say, "No, thank you. I feel pretty confident that I'm not going to get into an accident, and if I do, I don't like my passengers all that well anyway."? This also applies to just about everything we can buy, from video games to operating systems to razors. So many of them are genuinely inferior products that it doesn't make sense to me not to offer just one product that's the very best it can be. Instead of having a $1000 and $2000 version of a computer, for example, can't we just only offer the very best at, say, $1400? The efficiency of only having to make one model would make it all the more worthwhile. What's wrong with letting everyone enjoy the very best of things? And nobody would have to put up with shitty one-ply toilet paper anyway.

Yesterday

2009-08-29T11:33:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, I went into one of the local used bookstores, Books of Yesterday, and delved into their dungeonlike basement, where half the books are just lying around in towerlike stacks or unsorted on big shelves behind the desk I never see anyone at. In the back corner, they keep their fantasy books. I saw a copy of R.E. Howard's King Kull stories, but the book had mold in several places, and I'm not about to pay five bucks for a moldy book. I also found an Ace paperback edition of Fritz Leiber's Swords and Deviltry. Wikipedia says Fafhrd amd Gray Mouser is one of the seminal swords and sorcery series. The only other time I remember reading about Gray Mouser is when he dueled Zorro way way back as a joke in InQuest magazine. The store had two copies of the book. One had a laminated cover, and they wanted more than ten bucks for it. The book cost 1.25 in 1973. The other, the one I bought, was five bucks. It has a page loose and several pages torn, so I was going to try to talk them down, but my nemesis at the register beat me to the punch.

When they say Neanderthals would fit in with modern men, I wouldn't be too sure. This guy had a brow ridge that would do a silverback proud. He barely spoke three words to me, didn't say hello when I did, and literally threw my credit card onto the counter when he was done swiping it. Since I was worrying about whether I was going to get brained by a stone-headed club, I didn't have the audacity to question him about the quality of his product. And so I walked out, five bucks plus tax poorer, but with a book that, according to the back cover, promises "the greatest heroes in the annals of fantasy." Can't go wrong there, now can ya?

The Truth Will Out

2009-08-28T13:58:00.001-06:00

Every now and then, if I'm very bored and I think no one is watching, I make the little plastic men talk to each other.

Developments

2009-08-14T18:03:00.002-06:00

You might notice that I've removed the bit about where I live and it not being very cyberpunk. The reason for this, as I alluded to briefly in my last post, is that I'm really not very cyberpunk these days. The reason for the original theme of this blog was that I was writing a cyberpunk novel, and it was to be things that I came across tangentially or just material related to that genre, in which my mind was revolving at the time. Things have changed, however, and by no choice of mine that novel is on hiatus. For the time being, my writing is more along the lines of burly men swinging swords at snickering sorcerers, not to mention whatever else I come up with on ficly. I am also ghostwriting a fantasy novel, which comes with its own thick share of challenges, so I do my own writing in my 'free time.'

So be warned that, aside from a general writing theme, this blog will be about just whatever's on my mind. Well, I suppose it will continue to be. Excelsior!

Wild West FPS

2009-08-02T13:54:00.007-06:00

I think I abandoned any coherence of theme or topic in my blog a long time ago, so now I'm going to write something that might even interest one person in the world: why I believe no one will ever make a Wild West first-person shooter game that feels right. I have tried Call of Juarez, Red Dead Revolver, and Gun, and none of them made me feel like I was either in a Western movie or in a real-life Wild West situation. The reason is that video game developers are too tied to traditions of first person shooters, traditions that are opposed to the way a Western game should feel. These include:

1. You Run Everywhere. Since the days of Doom and Quake, first-person shooters have featured a guy running endlessly. Although some modern games attempt to make this a bit more realistic by giving you limited amounts of running, these still, more often than not, give you superhuman abilities to dash from place to place like a giddy pony, prancing merrily while laying down a hail of bullets.

Why it doesn't work: How many Westerns have you seen in which the heroes, instead of moseying down Main Street while tumbleweeds blow by in the background, instead charge down the dusty lane like a maddened bull? Or, in the middle of a firefight in the tavern over the only good-looking showgirl, dodging back and forth like a paranoid with a bladder problem? It just doesn't work. If there's a run function at all, it should be used extremely sparingly: very brief bursts of speed paced far apart.

2. You Piss Bullets: In the original FPS games, the only limit to your ability to shove out a living wall of ammo was your total ammo capacity. Even in more modern games, your guns carry dozens of rounds and take only a second or two to switch magazines. This lets you spew out such a ridiculous number of bullets that it makes that scene from Hot Shots Part Deux seem like a tea party with stuffed animals by comparison.

Why it doesn't work: In the Wild West, your gun didn't have an ammo belt leading down into a mystical lead reservoir in the Marianas Trench. In fact, the famous Colt Peacemaker held six bullets, five if you didn't want to shoot yourself in the leg if your gun got jarred. To reload, you first pull the hammer back to half-cocked, then use the reloading rod to push out every used cartridge, one at a time, rotating the cylinder as you do so. Next, you insert each new cartridge, one at a time. Even assuming you walk around with a handful of cartridges and have completely steady hands while bad men try their very best to improve your body with convenient blood ventilation (as all games seem to do), this is highly time consuming. Of course, some guns allowed for entire cylinders to be swapped out for pre-loaded ones, but I doubt even a skilled gunfighter would carry more than a few of these at a time. And that only applies to pistols; rifles were frequently single-shot, and even lever-action rifles had to be reloaded one bullet at a time.

3. You Mow Down Hordes of Bad Guys: This one is self-explanatory. In most games, you practically win entire battles single-handedly. Considering how many busloads of remarkably similar-looking enemies you kill, I'm surprised your character doesn't get carried off to Valhalla by valkyries during the inevitable death sequence. (The Call of Duty games are particularly bad at this: on the one hand, they expect you to chew through more bad guys than Rambo. On the other hand, despite your jaw-dropping killing power, you get walked through the missions by your squad commanders like a directionally-challenged twelve year old, as though having a single set path to travel from beginning to end of the map wasn't enough. Apparently, your supervisers think you are the embodiment of god's wrath on Earth sent to mete out justice on the unworthy, with the problem solving skills of a kidney bean.)

Why it doesn't work: While there are Westerns with high body counts (The Wild Bunch comes to mind), these inevitably involve Gatling guns. Since I don't want to go on another tangent about what annoys me in FPS games in general, let me just say these parts are basically pointless mini-games; entertaning only so long as the thrill of massacring the entire population of a small town with a powerful weapon lasts. In most situations, fights are between fairly small numbers of people. In The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Tuco and the man with no name sneak up and blow up a bridge and everybody leaves. In an FPS, they would have to shoot everyone anywhere near the bridge, blow it up, and then fight and kill the army that shows up to avenge it. Actually, it wouldn't be both of them. It would be the man with no name doing it all, while Tuco shoots one or two enemies, tells the same jokes ten times, and complains about how poorly you're doing as your soft squishy organs are slowly and forecefully replaced by lead.

4. Everyone is a Superhero: You shoot a bad guy in the stomach at point-blank range. He convulses for two seconds. Then, he shoots you in the face. Everyone takes as much killing as a buffalo, not to mention your own character survives so much he might as well make a living dynamiting train tunnels by holding the explosive in the right place and waiting patiently for it to blow, only to repeat again once he waits a few seconds or consumes a few health packs for his health to recover.

Why it doesn't work: Nothing is worse than shooting someone with your last bullet, only to have him shoot you right back as you struggle to reload. Also, just how well would Unforgiven have worked if Gene Hackman would have gotten up, brushed himself off, and squared off with Clint Eastwood all over again after Clint shoots him the first time? What about if during the climax to The Quick and the Dead, if Sharon Stone had to shoot Gene Hackman seventeen times instead of twice(actually, let's not talk about The Quick and the Dead. It's a silly movie.)? It's just not right, man.

HOW IT SHOULD WORK: Fewer bad guys. Fewer bullets. Each bad guy has a good chance to kill you; one or two hits and you're gone. No health packs or bandages or any such bullshit, except maybe bandages to partially repair limbs crippled by one bullet. When you're done, you light a cigar, toss your poncho over your shoulder, and ride your horse off into the sunset.

Bonus: Oh, and no freaking half-hour cut scenes. I don't want to have explained to me why my character wants to kill these people. I can fill that in for myself. Heck, I can do so in three words (four if you count the contraction): he's being paid. And that's plenty good enough for me.

Here's the final scene to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, my favorite Western. Now imagine if, instead of standing there firing one shot, they all charged in from opposite ends of the cemetary, banging away the whole time. Then, once they closed to within the ring, they were all three dashing around in circles, shooting off bullets all over the place, each getting hit a dozen or two times, reloading all the while, before finally collapsing... and respawning to start shooting all over again. It's just a good thing Sergio Leone doesn't play FPS.

My Wicked, Wicked Ways, p 424

2009-07-25T18:39:00.002-06:00

"In those days I would pick up a script, or a script would be sent to my home and a description of the male lead would say: Spike Rudling; lithe, lean, handsome, piercing-eyed, a man not to cross. That would be me.

"Today it is so refreshing. I don't have to look any further than the description, of say, Pete Anderson--a once-handsome man, now decadent, a shadow of his former self and who has taken to the bottle and . . .

"Then I know that must be me." - Errol Flynn

I haven't felt the way I feel today in so long

2009-07-23T17:14:00.002-06:00

I remember chasing butterflies in fields of wildflowers
with my brothers and my mother watching over me
like the rotted black hunters' towers sleeping

I must have been tiny
I must have been very young

Where has that gone now
Where is that boy
Where are the butterflies

Where is the bamboo butterfly net catching, catching

In my memories there is no one else

I feel like so much less now
So much of me is gone

Butterflies flying through torn netting

Today's Moment of Horror

2009-07-20T01:39:00.006-06:00

You know those moments where you question everything you thought was good and true as the world comes crashing down like a buzzbomb on your coastal British city? I just had that moment. And that moment is this: http://ficly.com/stories/4809

It's nonspecific--the solitary detail is the line near the end about holding her pillow and screaming 'why!', something I doubt anyone outside a Disney teen movie has ever done. It's full of cliches--"heart and soul" being among the worst. It's written in intrusive second person, constantly reminding me that it's not really talking about me. It starts off with quite possibly one of the worst rhymed couplets short of 'life' and 'strife.' It uses 'your' for 'you're.' It uses the word 'heart' four times in twelve lines.

It's from that website I've been touting, and the betrayal of something I championed only makes the pain that much worse.

Because it's covered in praise. Dripping in bleating, sparkling, slack-jawed fawning. While it violates everything I hold sacred about the theory of good writing, it gets a featured slot on the main website. It's like seeing someone beat my best friend to death with a rusty meat tenderizer and then get handed the key to the city by the mayor.

While rocking back and forth clutching my knees in the darkest corner I could find (which in this case was among the spider family living behind my boiler), I've tried to convince myself that it's a satire and everyone is in on the joke. But I just can't believe it. I can't bring myself to.

And if your response is, "Oh, but it's so heartfelt," so is putting your head in a toilet.

The problem here is that this situation raises an inescapable point: when a small percentage of the population thinks clear, detailed, poetic writing is excellent, and a much larger percentage thinks wordy, nonspecific, melodramatic nonsense is excellent, who is right?

Have I just spent the last seven years of my life learning to write the wrong way?

I need to go cry myself to sleep.

(To those who think this is all tongue-in-cheek poking fun at this poem, it's not. Despite the jokes, I'm genuinely distressed about this. My stomach hurts.)

Random Thought

2009-07-13T09:22:00.002-06:00

I learned the other day that American English has one remnant from Cockney rhyming slang. "To blow a raspberry", from the rhyming phrase "raspberry tart," meaning "fart."

Don't you feel better about American English now?

Twilight of Legends (Major Sasuke spoilers!)

2009-06-21T21:41:00.006-06:00

I had long looked forward to seeing the 22nd Sasuke competition broadcast on G4TV, and the day finally came today. Sasuke is a Japanese contest called Ninja Warrior in America, in which "one hundred determined athletes have accepted the challenge to become ... Ninja Warrior!" It's an obstacle course that tests the body and the spirit, a true measure of skill and willpower.

As the show progressed, my eagerness changed slowly to disappointment, and then to despair. One by one, my heroes all failed on the first stage, and relative nobodies advanced to the second stage... and then on to the third, and one actually made it to the fourth stage.

My giddiness mounted as an introductory program introduced a new G4 Ninja Challenge winner, David Campbell, a likeable bald guy with a very photogenic way of channeling mystical energies. Then the show announced, to my thrill, that freerunner and promising Ninja Warrior Levi Meeuwenburg would be returning; not only that, he made a one-week tour of Japan before the contest, visiting contest favorites Yamamoto Shingo, Takeda Toshihiro, and the legendary Nagano Makoto. Each of them were glad to welcome him and give him tips, but they were also all humble and encouraging rather than proud. We got to see Takeda's fire station, Yamamoto's gas station, and Nagano's fishing boat as they chatted with Levi and encouraged him. I think it's the humility and team spirit that I welcome so much about the Ninja Warrior All Stars: they all genuinely want everyone to succeed in the challenge. As Levi himself said, to him it's not a contest, it's a team sport.

They also brought back Luci something, who competed in the last Sasuke as well, but, frankly, I don't know why. It's good to have a girl, but she couldn't even compete the mini-Sasuke challenge G4 built in America. If she couldn't beat the practice run, what chance did she have in the real thing?

When the tournament itself started, I was giddy. Then, things started to happen. In a pair of bad signs, Yamamoto Shingo, who competed in every single Sasuke challenge, rising from gas jockey to the manager of three local gas stations in the eleven years of Sasuke, fell when he stumbled unexpectedly dismounted from the mat following the Halfpipe Attack. Then, the heroic Akiyama Kazuhiko, who completed the Fourth Sasuke (one of two men to have completed the challenge), slipped while attempting to climb up the side of the Halfpipe Attack and slid off. Akiyama, a former crab fisherman, was once a top competitor, but a degenerative disease has left him nearly blind. Still, he made it farther than most.

One of the men I was most looking forward to seeing was Yamada Katsumi. A former favorite to win it all, his wife and family left him for his all-out dedication to the contest, which also cost him his job. I used to think he could make it, too, but for years, he has failed to even get past the first stage. This time around, he fell from the Jumping Spider. If there is one person who I wish would make it all the way, I'd choose Yamada, because he's such a tragic figure, a real life Ahab.

Returning American decathlete Paul Terek also failed the Slider Jump, who was the first American to do exceptionally well in Sasuke, having gone to the third stage a few years ago (he's apparently also big in Japan, having won several other athletic game shows). I'm thrilled he tried again, though, and I hope he keeps going.

Then, disaster was compounded by further disaster. Several other favorites fell out with barely a mention. Then, Levi Meeuwenberg himself failed a new obstacle, the Slider Jump. Although five competitors had made it through, they were all relative unknowns, particularly two who were fresh from the Sasuke trials in Japan.

It was time to change pace. It was time for a dragon to spread his wings. It was time for hardened, smiling, tanned fisherman Nagano Makoto. Like a wise sensei, his positive attitude and wisdom, his encouragement and acceptance of all, are inspirational. And he started well, powering through the early parts of the course with no problem.

A calamity shook the heavens and the earth. All sound ceased, and a dragon fell flaming to the ground in an inferno of scorched hopes. Nagano failed to dismount the Slider Jump and splashed into the muddy water below. The great legend himself was humbled, stunned at his own failure. Every one of my favorites was out. I was heartbroken. I lost my composure, yelling, "No!" in disbelief. I wasn't being dramatic; I was genuinely moved.

The rest of the show was fascinating, but for reasons other than what I had hoped. Five newcomers entered the second stage, and, amazingly, four passed. Of the four, one made it through the grueling third stage, beating even Nagano's performance in the previous tournament. Then, he came within seconds of total victory. It seemed for the first thirty seconds of his climb like the humble shoe salesman who failed to qualify for the last two Sasukes would do it, but then he ran out of strength. Although I was hoping he would do it because that's what Nagano would have wanted, I am ashamed to say I'm glad he didn't make it. It shouldn't be so easy.

The show asked an interesting question: does this Sasuke mark the end of the All Star era? We've watched Yamada, Yamamoto, Takeda, Akiyama, and Nagano compete since almost the first. No tournament seems complete without Yamamoto's gas station cap, Takeda's orange fireman trousers, or Nagano's frosted hair and affable smile. But it's been ten years since the tournament started, and it might just be time for the new generation to take over.

Then again, the 19th competition was also a total wash for our favorites, with two no-names slipping through the first stage to wipe out early in the second. In the 21st tournament, Takeda and Nagano put in a fantastic performance, getting the two best results.

Will our heroes learn from their mistakes and come back stronger for one last hurrah? Will the All Stars who haven't succeeded yet have a chance to taste the sweet cup of success that has eluded them for so long? Will Nagano add a second victory to his dragon's hoard? Or, like all things, has the time of these legends ended, and is it time for a new group to rise to glory? I can't imagine now that anyone could take the place of the All Stars in my heart, even if they do take their place on top of the final climb to immortality on Mount Midoriyama. The All Stars are too loveable, too diverse, each with their own legendary stories behind them.

But one day, perhaps a new dragon will take flight.

((PS: It's sad to say, but I was almost as moved by this event as I was by the funeral of a dear friend that I went to over the weekend. There's something epic in Sasuke that I can't explain even in a blog of this length.))

My Newest Fascination

2009-06-13T14:36:00.003-06:00

So my good friend has gotten me involved with ficly.com, which is all about writing short stories--VERY short stories. Because they're limited to only 1024 characters (that's like letters, but includes any keystroke), it takes the old excuse of "I don't have time to write a story" and slaps it in the face with a dumptruck. Anyone has time to write 1024 characters. If you have ten minutes, you have time to write a story on ficly.com. It also teaches economy of language, because the writer has to create a character, setting, and plot all in a very limited space. Another interesting dimension of ficly is that anyone can write a 'prequel' or a 'sequel' to any story, so stories become chained together.

I recommend any of you who have an interest in creative writing to check it out. And don't tell me you don't have the time.

James Cameron to Remake Dances With Wolves

2009-06-05T10:28:00.004-06:00

((I don't usually complain about things I have next to no idea about, but this really got under my skin. I sat there fuming for half a minute, blinking back tears of hate and dreaming of convoluted vengeance schemes against the whole universe, probably involving the Anti-Life Equation. But then I decided to write a blog instead.))

Not literally remake it, but he is making a video-game-and-movie both called Avatar, which is about a world on which the ignorant, invasive humans clash with the peaceful, nature-loving Na'vi, and a human goes from being part of the oppressive human force to joining up with the locals. If this doesn't sound like a certain Kevin Costner flick, you haven't been paying attention. (It's also the same as The Last Samurai, but Dances With Wolves is the better movie, and I'm standing by that statement.)

To make matters worse, a BBC News story on the movie-and-game quotes a producer: "'Our industry has not created a new universe in 32 years,' said Mr Landau. 'We have now.'"

You can't be serious. I've already played this game. It's called Starcraft, in which the wise and benevolant Protoss come into conflict with the expansionistic, greedy Terrans, and the hero Jim Raynor switches sides when he realizes what a bunch of toads his leaders really are. In fact, when I first saw a vaunted screenshot from Avatar, I had a reaction very similar to that.

"Oh, look. It's a Terran Marine standing next to a Goliath. I guess they're shooting at Zerg."

Now, I'm no scholar, but this is a common storyline--and recognized trope--in science fiction. It appears in Ender's Game and that whole nonsense. It's pretty much the whole film Princess Mononoke. It's even in the first Final Fantasy movie, and you don't want to be associated with that, do you?

And, of course, this goes back at least as far as Gulliver's Travels, in which Gulliver figures out how greedy, corrupt, and cruel humans are and ends up siding with a bunch of super-intelligent horses. And when you'd rather hang out with horses than humans, that's pretty bad.

Dr. Jonathan Swift wants his cut of the profits, Mr. Cameron.

Simple Gifts

2009-06-04T23:10:00.004-06:00

I remember learning that song in perhaps third grade and thinking it was remarkably dull. "To turn, turn will be our delight?" Sounds like a bunch of hippies. And hippies are just a step above Wiccans.

Setting aside my burning torch for a while, let's talk shop. People say it's the little things in life that matter. That's not true. It's just that the 'little' things many people overlook are the things that are really the big things. Ever since I was a wee lad, I've had a fanatical devotion to creative writing. Some novels are dearer to me than most people are.

I value reading things written by my friends. Like a child who is given a blank piece of paper by a psychiatrist and some crayons, the blank page shows the soul of the creative writer with clarity not found in anything else. In a piece of creative writing, be it nonfiction, poetry, or fiction, we reveal our inner selves, our longings and our doubts and our terrors. When we create from the heart, our veils are penetrated, and readers nestle into a private nook of our soul. Even more so than in a painting or a sculpture, which is only a snapshot, a piece of creative writing is a world in itself, with its own rules and values. It reveals if the writer is calloused or romantic, cruel or kind, petty or generous.

Flannery O'Connor believed in a just world, one where truly good people are rewarded and the sinful are punished. She then went on to demonstrate how all of her characters were flawed.

Charles Dickens wanted to believe in a happy world that is safe and good, but they always came out flawed.

Courage and loyalty were paramount to Rudyard Kipling.

Of course, you can argue any of those sweeping generalizations, but my point remains: creative writers don't write about the absolute real world, but rather the world as filtered through their hearts. It's the world as they see it, as they hope it is, as they fear it is, as they wish it was, as they are terrified of it becoming.

This is why I value the writing of my friends above almost anything else. In it, I feel like I really get to know the person. It's not just when you hold a person over a volcano (what, you haven't seen Firefly?) that you meet him, but when you read his poetry.

Perhaps a year ago, a good friend of mine gave me a chapbook of his poetry to read and critique. I never did get to critique it, but I read it every now and then, and I am amazed by both the depth of the writing and I feel like I truly meet again a person I only glimpse in 'real life.' Frankly, I feel a little guilty to hold onto this poetry and read it, but that's a part of someone's soul. It's not the kind of thing I can throw away.

Moments like those, like a sunrise over a treasured landscape I'll never see again, are as unforgettable as they are sacred.

(PS Probably fortunately for my digestive system, the bacon did stay green after it sat on the frying pan for a minute, which dissuaded me from chancing it.)

Not an Ideal Circumstance

2009-06-02T18:07:00.003-06:00

Just a few minutes ago, I set about making myself something to eat. Not having finished off the bacon I bought maybe a week and a half ago, I took it out of my fridge to find that it had gone green. It didn't smell awful (it didn't really smell at all), so I asked myself just what could have happened to it. Is a week and some in a fridge too much for some slices of dead pig to handle? Even more perplexing, was it still edible despite the color change? I decided to throw some strips on the frying pan to see if they returned to their natural color with a little heat.

You're probably thinking that I'm crazy, and green food is bad for you, but I learned early on that green food isn't so bad. A very sage man named Seuss (he's a Doctor, people!) informed me that eating green eggs and ham isn't injurious to my health; if it was, the little boy could just have said "I will not eat it, Sam-I-Am. I will not eat green eggs and ham, because it could probably kill me, and I don't want to risk it." Instead, the boy provides the much weaker argument that he simply does not like green eggs and ham, suggesting that, apart from taste preferences, green eggs are perfectly safe to eat.

Of course, I came to my senses soon enough and threw out my green bacon, but it did give me pause.

Completely unrelated:

Whenever I write a blog post, I'm filled with blog fever all day and am full of ideas for more blogs. I pass them up, however, not wanting to post more than one a day and make my loyal readers feel overwhelmed. However, after that day has gone by, my ideas and my desire to write about them both seem to go away.

It's like my old rule for writing: if I want to finish writing something, I make sure to write a sentence a day, no matter what. It's a way of tricking myself into writing. If I aim to write a long time, I feel overwhelmed, or I think I don't have the time for it. But if I only set out to write a sentence, I can accomplish that easily and with very little time, but then I'm already writing, so I keep going.

Let that be my advice to you today, writers out there: write a sentence a day.

Perspective

2009-06-01T13:33:00.003-06:00

I've been watching a lot of pirated television recently, mostly because I have a lot of time that's not regimented by outside sources that I should be using to write rather than enjoy television that I don't technically have a legal right to be watching--or is it legal to watch but illegal to upload? In any case, it's on YouTube, and if the world's most up-and-coming software giant lets it go (or, in any case, hasn't found it yet), I see it as my Google-given right to enjoy it.

If you're curious about what I'm watching, it's mostly the British car show Top Gear, because I know nothing about cars and can't even drive, but find something hilarious about watching middle-aged English men complaining about cars and each other. Also, the book series I was reading at the time of my last blog entry is The Dresden Files. It's not the greatest writing, but it's a solid Summer page-turner, the chief draw of which, for me, is that the narrator is so sarcastic.

At any rate, as I was watching unhealthy amounts of Top Gear, I came across an episode in which the gang race against a team from a German car show I've never heard of. I watched the episode in English, naturally, but then I decided to watch the German version for a lark. The difference in the focus was obvious: the shows focus on their respective teams. What struck me was that I bought the perspective offered by each show. In the British version, the Top Gear team seemed the way they usually do on their show: fun, enthusiastic, and a little acerbic in their sense of humor. They laugh, they smile, they make fun. The German team seemed like a bunch of Germans complaining, which is something they do with German efficiency. On the German show, however, the German team seemed much more likeable (although they still spent most of their time complaining), and the British team looked arrogant and obnoxious. The point is that I actually found myself rooting for the British team on the Top Gear version and for the German team on their version.

Side-note: on the British show, they made lots of jokes about World War II and its aftermath, even playing up the team showing up to the challenge in Spitfire fighter planes. On the German show, although they showed the Spitfire entrance, neither the team nor the narrator said a thing about it. On the other hand, even the polite Germans couldn't help making cracks about Dunkirk and Arnhem when they were given miniature tanks to play with.

This naturally got me thinking about my own life and opinions. I must admit that most of my opinions were formed not by my independent thinking but by the persuasive charisma of people I have run across, the people I respected and treated as teacher. Now I can't help but wonder if I would believe things completely differently if I had other teachers, not to mention other parents. Would I be riding around in a pickup truck with my hound dog's ears flapping as he puts his head out the window, listening to Country and Western and flying an American flag above the porch of my house? Would I go to church if I had genuinely connected with one of my priests? Would I have majored in something actually useful instead of English, and therefore be working at a solid career instead of sitting in my apartment on a Monday afternoon writing a blog?

Perhaps. But the revelation I've had, or think I've had, is that it's vital for me to examine myself, to weigh for myself what I believe and what I hold most dear, and to determine for myself, not by the influence of others, who I am. Ever since I was in high school, I have defined myself by the reading and (attempted) writing of fiction. Perhaps it's time I had a good long look at that as well. It's not too late to become a theoretical physicist.

Viable Alternatives

2009-05-18T00:22:00.002-06:00

Today, I woke up at around ten thirty. I played Fallout 3 on my PS3 until 5:30 in the afternoon, barely pausing for bathroom breaks, and not eating or drinking anything. I also didn't change out of my pajamas. When I was done, I felt very hungry and rather disoriented. Then I read a book for a while.

And I enjoyed reading much, much more than I enjoyed playing the video game.

Is there something wrong with me? Or am I just more literary and less digital than I think I am?

To lie back from the world, listening only to the sound of my own thoughts and the dry rustle of pages turning, to immerse myself so deeply in a book to the point that I no longer see the page but the scene that the words are weaving, this is a pleasure unique and wondrous.

If you read this blog...

2009-05-15T21:46:00.003-06:00

You are invited to join a forum that we are putting together just to have a place to chat and share thoughts. So if you're at all interested in swords, ninjas, guns, video games, movies, books, dragons, or air, you're welcome to join the forum.

Seriously. If you're the kind of person who would read this blog even for .73 seconds, you should join the forum.

Yes, you.

http://forum-of-doom.proboards.com/

Freaking Thesis

2009-05-13T16:42:00.003-06:00

I think I may have complained to every human being on the planet about this already, but I'm tired of all the hoops I have to jump through for getting my thesis approved. Who would have thought that by far the easiest and most enjoyable part of my thesis would be actually researching, revising, and writing it, while all the formatting, approval, and running from place to place is far more aggravating than it should be.

This university has a massive, unwieldy bureaucracy filled with underlings who could and should be doing this piddling stuff. I suggest we use it.

To other graduate students: I'm not suggesting you shouldn't do a thesis. It was wonderfully rewarding, interesting, and even exciting to work on the actual thesis part of my thesis. All the hoopla, on the other hand, interests me about as much as a turd on a shoe. It might be funny if someone else was dealing with it, but if it's me, it's just aggravating and kind of disgusting.

The Reason I Crunch Numbers

2009-05-06T15:42:00.007-06:00

Although my crunching of the numbers for Star Wars might be excessive, I enjoy it, and I find it to be a useful activity, both as a fan and a writer. It's important to try to understand the way a world works, its nuances and behaviors. To be able to understand and write about a world, it's important to understand how it works. And that's where something like crunching the numbers comes in. A few years ago, I wrote an entry in another blog somewhere about why Sauron could never bring the amount of forces shown to bear on Gondor--there is no way that, with medieval technology and supply routes, he would have been able to provide food, shelter, equipment, stables, etc. for such a vast force. I brought in some modern arguments about things like the supposed million-strong army of the Persians: it's just not possible to have a force that vast all in one place. It's very rare to see an army over 200,000 strong in the ancient world for that reason, and even that army needs massive numbers of followers and support personnel. Historically, I've heard it said that an army would have followers on a 1/1 ratio. Even assuming orcs don't bring their families along... but now I'm getting carried away again.

These are the considerations every fan needs to take into account when thinking about a world. It's the little things that turn a book or movie from just a story into a living, breathing world in which the audience's imagination can run wild. Whenever I'm watching or reading something that moves me, I imagine myself into that world, creating new stories and characters on a whim. That is the deepest level of immersion in a world, and it's necessary to understand the mechanics of that world in order to do that. It's also the reason I read slowly: I can go through text very quickly if I'm just reading for comprehension, but I prefer to read slowly, to stop to picture scenes, to think about what if and to fill in the gaps in the story with my imagination.

That's my reasoning behind spending all that time on crunching the numbers for my favorite stories. It's fun, and it's useful. Maybe you should try it, too. Keep your favorite writers honest: what's possible and what isn't?

By the way, I notice now that I didn't take the modern navy numbers by a third, as I was doing for the others to simulate the lack of extreme poverty in Star Wars. In that case, there would have been 800 Star Destroyers rather than 2,400. Fewer, but that's still a lot. Then again, I doubt the extreme poor contribute all that much to military economies, so perhaps my initial figure was reasonable.

Crunching the Numbers On... Star Wars

2009-05-03T15:41:00.007-06:00

It's complicated to imagine what a galactic war would be like, but I can't imagine it would be much like what's shown in Star Wars. The numbers just don't add up: the war would be much, much bigger than the one we're shown. Don't get me wrong: I love Star Wars passionately, but the numbers just don't make sense.

Let's start with a little math (and then move on to much more math). How many worlds are there in the Old Republic (by world, I mean populated mass, whether it's a planet, moon, or something else)? To answer that question, we look to the Galactic Senate. Remember those shots of the huge Senate room with the floating platforms? Each of those represents not just one world, but one system, which may have several worlds in it. How many worlds is that? Thousands. And that's just the Republic members. Even assuming most populated worlds are members of the Republic, that's a lot of populated worlds.

According to Wookiepedia, George Lucas once said there are 24,372 worlds in the Republic. Even taking that with the typical grain of salt that all of Lucas's statements that aren't directly in a movie come with, let's use that as a baseline. 24,372 worlds with at least enough population and development to qualify for membership in the Republic.

Now, let's come to Earth. We have a population of roughly six billion. Of those, perhaps two billion live in what we could call reasonable comfort (less than luxury but better than poverty). According to Wikipedia, the world has 17 million active duty troops. Even assuming a third of that (taking just the part of the world that lives okay, because Star Wars worlds generally seem to do all right for themselves) that's at least five million troops.

In other words, we have five million troops from a planet like ours. Admittedly, Earth is pretty well populated... until you consider that the planet is mostly ocean and our agricultural practices are pretty slim. Naturally, we'll have a higher population than Tatooine or Mustafar, but I assume Coruscant must balance worlds like that out.

Then again, according to Wookiepedia, Naboo (which seems outrageously fertile), only has a population of 600 million, making it one-tenth the Earth's population, and one-third the number I stated as a benchmark. But you repeatedly hear Naboo referred to as a small world, so I have to assume it's an exception. Ryloth is listed as having a population of 1.5 billion, and that's a pretty backwards agricultural planet. Corellia weighs in at 7 billion, so I seem to be pretty close.

So, let's assume that my previous numbers are sound. Two billion people per world, five million troops per world, and more than twenty-four thousand worlds. That comes to 120 billion troops.

Okay, so say that the vast majority of worlds in Star Wars aren't warlike or don't feel like having a standing army (and can't raise one in an emergency such as the Clone Wars, either, which is a stretch). So let's take that number by one-tenth, because I'm being generous. Twelve billion soldiers, being, as we've seen, a very conservative estimate for the amount of soldiers that we can call on.

Devaronian's advocate: Many worlds, if not most, are ill-suited to serve as regular soldiers. Several races in Star Wars (Ewoks, Toydarians, Tusken Raiders, etc.) could never be in a galactic army. Counter: Let's be honest: the majority of worlds in Star Wars are human or close enough to human; the rest are rare exceptions.

Devaronian's advocate: Many worlds, such as moons and colonies, are vastly underpopulated, therefore my average of two billion is too high. Counter: Come on. Coruscant has one trillion people living on it. That's 500 worlds right there. Besides, in order to have representation in the Galactic Senate, there's got to be at least some people living there. According to Wikipedia, Alderaan has about 2 billion people living on it (pre Death Star), and there's nothing to suggest it's exceptional in its population.

Next, let's add some more numbers to try to understand how many soldiers there would have been in the major battles of the Clone Wars. Total number of clones from Kamino? Wookiepedia lists three million clones as the general standing number. There's some disparity about numbers, but even assuming the very highest number they guess at, which is 700 million, that's still very slim.

How slim? Let's take those 24 thousand worlds again. That's about 30,000 clones per world. The podunk city I live in has a population of 42,000. Assuming we're particularly scrappy, we could take those clones by ourselves.

Let's look at it from another perspective. Remember that our planet has 17 million active duty troops? It also has about 45 million reserve troops. Assuming those would be called up if the planet was threatened, we'd be looking at about 1/11 of the Grand Army of the Republic right here on Earth.

How many major campaigns theaters are there in a war encompassing Earth? Half a dozen at least. And yet in each major planetary campaign, we see only one big battle. They're even referred to as battles: the Battle of Kashyyk, the Battle of Mygeeto. If you're really trying to conquer a planet, you would have to fight long campaigns over vast theaters, not conquer one big city and call it a day. And for that, you need many more troops.

Devaronian's advocate: Although the clones form the core of the Republic army, the Grand Army of the Republic is actually composed of local forces who fight within their own sector. Counter: In virtually every representation of the Clone Wars, we see clones, not local soldiers, fighting. The reason given for forming the Grand Army was so there wouldn't have to be an army drawn from the worlds; there was an attempt to create a separate army in the comics, but it failed, which suggests the clones form at least the majority of the Republic's army.

Remember the battle for Hoth? The Rebel Alliance was more or less quartered within a base the size of a standard military base. How many troops could possibly have been involved in that fight? Not even a million. Considering some of the numbers we've been bandying around (24 thousand worlds. Twelve billion troops.) that's a drop in an ocean the size of every ocean in the galaxy combined. How could a force this size possibly hope to face off against the Imperial navy? For that matter, why would the Imperials only send a few Star Destroyers to destroy the Rebel base if they knew it was their chance to crush the Rebel Alliance once and for all?

Now let's look at the navy. An Imperial-class Star Destroyer has a mass of 25 million tons (I got this from a disreputable source, but bear with me). An aircraft carrier might weigh around 70,000 tons. That comes to about 1/350th of a Star Destroyer. The world today has 22 aircraft carriers (again, thank you Wikipedia), which means about 1/20 of a Star Destroyer (I'm using rough numbers here). I've done some quick math and I assume we can double that easily with the rest of the world's navies; this brings us to 1/10 Star Destroyer. Going back to 24,000 worlds, this gives us an estimate of 2,400 Star Destroyers in the Empire. Wow.

Where are they all? We see none when the Death Star comes for the Rebel base on Yavin 4, and only perhaps a hundred at most at the Battle of Endor. Wouldn't the Emperor focus all of his Star Destroyers at the place he can destroy the entire Rebel Alliance--not to mention needing them for his own protection? Wouldn't he bring in at least half his fleet?

Then there's the question of the number of starfighters we see in space battles. According to Wookiepedia, the average complement of a Star Destroyer is 100 ships, of which 48 are fighters. Compare this with a modern aircraft carrier, which can carry more than 90 fighter aircraft. Consider again that an aircraft carrier is 1/350th the size of a Star Destroyer. Of course, a Star Destroyer also carries soldiers, assault vehicles, etc, but if even a tenth of it was dedicated to fighters, it should hold 35 times the number of fighters as an aircraft carrier (not to mention a TIE fighter is only about 6 meters and a TIE Interceptor 10, while an F-16 is about 15 meters, more than double the length of a standard TIE fighter). That means each Star Destroyer should be carrying more than three thousand fighters. Considering Earth is currently listed as having 28,000 fighter aircraft (a third of which is about 9,000, going by our earlier-used ratios), we see that there would be more than enough to equip those Star Destroyers. Phew! Take that, Rebel scum! So if there were even one hundred Star Destroyers present at the Battle of Endor (not unreasonable, considering the vital importance of the battle), there would be three hundred thousand Imperial fighters to contend with. Those TIE fighters might be crappy, but that's a lot of green laser beams!

By the way, can a 16 meter X-Wing ever really hope to destroy a 1,600 meter Star Destroyer? I'm not C-3PO, but I'm going to say the odds should be 100 to 1. And that's not including the Star Destroyer's fighters.

It could be argued that the majority of the Imperial army and navy are occupied with controlling the Empire elsewhere, and only a fraction is free to fight in any given battle. Some evidence for this would be the presence of stormtroopers on Tatooine. I would argue that those stormtroopers are only there to search for the droids and the stolen plans; local pacification is probably done by locally recruited troops, if it's needed at all, as in Vichy France. Surely the majority of Imperial worlds don't need a standing garrison. They should be able to focus on the major threat to their dominance. Even if there is rebellion on other worlds, an overwhelming defeat of the Rebels at Endor would destroy hope and go a long way to re-establishing order.

Not to mention there are no Star Destroyers or even more than a couple dozen fighters on the whole first Death Star? What in the world was the Empire thinking?

Let's be honest with ourselves: Star Wars is a story, not a simulation of real galactic warfare. The numbers just don't add up. As a story, it draws its influence from our modern experience: each planet becomes a city in scope of battle, so that the galaxy becomes the planet. Explained this way, we see why the battles are really on a planetary, not galactic, scale. The writers can only create a world as far away as their own imaginations can go... and those didn't go far from this planet we call home.

It came from real life!

2009-04-28T15:57:00.004-06:00

Just two little snippets of information, just to pretend that I still have a blog (and to encourage other people to start writing in their own blogs, grr argh!)

I trimmed my hair again the other day. My mother has always said that my hair is quite thick and tough, but I never really believed it was extraordinary. The other day's adventures proved otherwise. Midway through cutting my hair, the length extension snapped cleanly in two. It is no ordinary hair of this Earth that can defeat something specifically made to destroy it. I even took a picture of the corpse (with a shorter extension on the clipper).

The other thing I wanted to do was complain about grading papers. I'm sick of grading papers! Argh! Papers everywhere! I hate them! Hate them! My floor is just about tiled with them! In the middle of the night, one of them bit me on the toe! I have a strange rash on my back, and I think they're causing it! I took a picture of the mess across my apartment floor, but I decided not to post it for privacy reasons (student names are showing).

The Modern Man needs your help!

2009-04-20T01:51:00.002-06:00

My poetry chapbook is due on Tuesday for class, and I'm still struggling with a few last poems. I'd like your input on this one:

Tomorrow’s Future

They pay a shilling to enter the Great Exhibition’s lower gallery.
Riding his father’s shoulders behind the top hat,
the boy’s eyes grow every time he turns his head.
More patient than Virgil, the man strokes his mustache
and waits for his son’s mind to drink down
the reaping machine from the endless fields of America,
the quickest steam gurney from the smooth raceways of Britain,
the big bore rifles from the towering foundries of Germany.
And most of all, the promises of Prince Albert’s new era
represented in the vastness of the exhibition’s scale:
the arched steel girders, entire ash trees beneath acres of glass,
goods from every corner of the Empire and the globe
brought by steamship to the queen’s home in London.
The boy’s imagination cannot be filled,
grown to a bucket as wide as the borders of empire.
Long after the sun has set and even electricity,
new marvel demonstrated by science magicians,
cannot replace it, they turn for home.
Pausing in the halo of a bulb as the lamplighter makes his rounds,
the man asks what the boy thinks of the World in Hyde Park.
“I wonder,” his son whispers, “what the boys will go to see
when they can speak to each other with the power of lightning.”

A little contentious today, aren't we?

2009-04-15T17:48:00.004-06:00

I hate to swear. It's crass and ignorant. But sometimes I can't think of a better way to say it. So you have been warned

*****

Fuck the tea party. Our country keeps a torture facility open for years in Cuba, opens secret prisons across the world and makes people disappear without a trial, hands over prisoners to foreign countries because we can't torture them as much as we'd like but other countries can, and we, the people, do nothing. Then the government--rather than just curtailing our civil liberties, occupying foreign countries, and abusing our trust--imperils our MONEY, and we're up in arms.

Fuck that.

If you want to be angry, be angry about something that means more than your wallet.

Another Dream

2009-04-13T13:56:00.004-06:00

Last night, I had another one of those dreams. Better than any video game. I was a drow assassin armed with a sword and a laser gun working for a group of rebel soldiers on a space station. It started with me sneaking onto the station, since it was being surrounded by deep space monsters (looking like giant space ticks crossed with dogs). Then I crept through the deserted, rusting under layers which were populated by scavenging punk gangs. Then I arrived in the main control room to be greeted by cheers and praise; apparently, I was quite the hero. I came not a moment too soon, because the walls shattered, and a platoon of battle droids entered. After dispatching them in fierce fighting, we started planning a counter-attack to break free, but then the dream ended. My colleagues were all very interesting characters; I wish I could remember more of them. One of them was Toshiro Mifune in a battle suit. Those battle droids never stood a chance.

Sometimes, I think being asleep is better than being awake.

On a more melancholy note, sometimes I spend a lot of time reflecting on the friends I have lost or drifted away from. This life is far too transitory. I can too easily count the friends I've had for longer than five years, and it seems like that number is steadily decreasing. Leaving friends, like any habit, becomes easier the more I do it. I wish it wouldn't. I wish I had the strength to cling to those friendships more tightly; then again, maybe there is wisdom in letting them go if they're not worth the both of us trying to hold on.

One of those days

2009-04-12T17:49:00.005-06:00

I've been down all day, but that's okay. I got up early to join my family for Easter breakfast, then accompanied them to Church. It was a good sermon, and I even got a little teary at one point, but I didn't feel the presence of anyone or any greater thing but the crowd pressing in around. I couldn't help thinking how many of them, like me, wouldn't be there next week. I couldn't help wondering how many were there just in case. I wondered again, as I often have, whether religion is all one great act of collective wishful thinking.

But that's not what I set out to write about. I set out to write about my feelings. I have no immediate reason to feel the way I do, but that's not a sin. It's a beautiful day. Not a good day for melancholy. Maybe that's why I'm writing this, deep down: on a warm, sunny day, I feel as though it's my duty to the day to feel more cheerful.

But I don't feel in any hurry to cheer myself up. I don't mind feeling down. I put a melancholy song on, sit and think. Be glad I don't have anywhere to be this minute, no one to be with. Maybe there would be that rush to try to cheer me up, and I would have to put in that effort, as though making me feel better were another task on that daily list, and I could help them get there if I only smiled a little. And of course I'd try, because I don't want people to feel bad. The worst part about feeling bad is that trying to hide it, and I'm not a bad actor. But when I'm alone, I can kick back, grab a pillow, hum along with Billy Corgan. I'm not hurting anyone and no one is hurting me. Just time to breathe between heartbeats, let it go for a minute. Just be melancholy for a while, no rush to be anything else. At least not yet.

towards humility

2009-04-06T00:48:00.003-06:00

How vast the cosmos, the inescapability of depth,
the scope by which galaxies are clouds
of dust. Consider the shapes of nebulae,
the deep breath of the eye that shapes them thus.
How meaningless the quarrels of humanity.
Expansive the star's bright cradle's comfort,
deep the hole of its dying despair.
Can you sing across the galaxies?
What black well shall your suffering make?
Never draw the lines of constellation
for fear of painting with dead stars;
you know no better, nor could you learn.

A "Review" of Street Fighter IV

2009-04-04T02:08:00.003-06:00

My friends recently rented Street Fighter IV for the PS3, and since neither of them has a PS3, we've been playing it at my apartment, and they left it here for the weekend.

When I was a kid, I spent hours in front of this game. On the rare occasion I had quarters, I'd play, mashing buttons like a fiend and usually getting my ass not so much handed to me as shoved in my face by older kids who knew what the hell they were doing. More often than not, I watched those kids playing each other. I wanted to think that, one day, I, too, could make those cartoon characters beat the crap out of each other as well as they could.

It's past two o'clock in the morning. I've been trying to beat the final boss with Abel since 1:00. I finally did it. I've been swearing more than I probably have all year. I said things aloud to the screen that I never thought I'd say to anyone. I've railed, I've seethed, I've punched the air. I have Nintendo thumb so much my left thumb is literally purple.

But I finally beat that sonofabitch Seth. I unlocked the last character it's fairly(!) easy to unlock. I feel like I accomplished something epic. I feel like long poems will be written in heroic couplets about this day. The day Seth met Able, and, after a grueling war that lasted long into the night, stood victorious.

And unlocked some sad dumbass Bruce Lee wannabe I will never bother playing as.

Dream

2009-04-03T15:48:00.003-06:00

I had a dream. I got up in the morning, walked around, started getting ready for going to the presentation today. Then I noticed that there were things in my apartment I haven't had for a while; to check to see if I was in a dream, I pinched my cheek. I didn't feel a thing; I panicked, expecting to get attacked by some horrible nightmare monstrosity in a moment. Instead, the floor opened into blackness, and I fell through.

I fell down toward the Earth from high above. I almost collided with the street, but wound up hovering over it. I was in China outside some official function. A shouting policewoman was pushing people onto a rickety bus to go to the event, screaming at the top of her voice. When she saw me, she started screaming at me to get on the bus. I told her I wasn't from around there, I was just a dream manifestation, and I didn't have to do anything she said. She just screamed louder that everyone has to get on the bus, dream or not. I didn't get on the bus. She kept screaming. I woke up and went to the presentation.

I'll leave it up to you to interpret, readers.

Not an April 1st Blog

2009-04-01T17:22:00.002-06:00

One thing wrong with April 1st is that you can't do anything serious without people wondering if you're just pulling their leg. I'm not. I just wanted to clarify that right off. If necessary, I will repost this tomorrow.

It's a sad thing to realize that I don't know people as well as I sometimes think. Even upon casual meetings, people start to tell me that something is "like me" or "unlike me," they start to tell me what films would "suit me" or make suggestions about ways to accomplish "my goals." I put all these in heavy, heavy quotes because the first thought that always comes to mind in these conversations is that they don't know me as well as they think they do. How would they know what books I'll like? Have they seen me cry? Do they know what moves me? How do they know what secret fire burns in my soul?

Before this turns into a bad song, let me pan back a second and finish my thought. As sad as it is to realize I don't know people as well as I thought, or that others don't know me as well as they think, it's even sadder to think about whether I know myself as well as I think.

What do I really want? What moves me? What is that fire thing? When the remnants of my fleshy brain finally starts shorting out in my robo-body a thousand years from now, will I look back and be glad of this or that? Or will I long for something else, something I never had even in that long life?

Who am I really? What do I stand for? What do I want to do with my life? And no thanks, poetry teacher, for bringing up these unanswerable cosmic questions I've spent long hours in front of glowing screens trying to push down.

Razor Sharp

2009-03-25T20:09:00.002-06:00

I teach college English (although not really, since this will be the last semester I teach it, having nothing to do with how well I did and everything to do with the fact that it wasn't ever going to last anyway, and I am supposed to pretend to be an expert when I am unemployed in three months with really no job prospects, but I'm sure I've complained enough about that before and I will again later). In my classes on Tuesday, I had the students compete to see which team could come up with the most cliches. When my students asked why cliches are bad, I explained that it's because they no longer evoke images in our heads. They're so familiar that they've lost their power, and all we hear is the cliche.

But this isn't always true. Whenever I hear the phrase "razor sharp," for intance, it puts a very specific scene in my mind.

I'm standing in the upper bathroom of our house. I am holding a pink disposable razor from my mom's sink cupboard in my hand, the blade resting against my thumb. I am fourteen, attending Catholic school, and my father won't allow me to shave my first mustache. He says it's just peach fuzz anyway and it's not a problem. It is a problem: the dress code forbids facial hair and I've been warned. My father likes to brag that he was born with a mustache, and I have never seen him without one except once, in a photo of him as a small child.

I'm looking at myself in the mirror. Looking at my mustache, the dark hairs individual and straight, brushing my lip. I hate it. I don't want to have a mustache. I don't want to get in trouble.

Then, I hear someone at the door, the door starts to open, and I grip the razor tightly, trying to make it disappear in my hand. My brother tells me to hurry up so we don't miss church, then leaves. When he is gone and I check my hand, the razor has left two deep straight cuts half an inch deep in my thumb, the skin white and puffy around them, the blood just starting to seep up.

It starts to hurt later, when I lie that I cut my hand on a knife. I only hope no one notices there are two parralel cuts, not just one.

And I learn just how sharp razors are.

I Am Who I Say I Am (and now I proved it)

2009-03-21T16:26:00.004-06:00

It was a two and a half hour drive to Rexburg, Idaho, because that's where BYU Idaho is. Why they put it there, I can't say. I guess they liked it better that way. I went there to take a one hour test, to prove that I speak Hungarian, the first language I learned to speak. Needless to say, the test was about as easy as being asked to point to an apple in a bushel of apples when someone is holding my hand and I'm already kind of poking one finger out.

As I was sitting there, one of the kids I was taking the test with said BYU in Provo had the same test last week. I don't know. The website didn't say that. I guess they really should update the website, if nothing else, to save people from having to go into Idaho when they really don't mean to.

It's like walking all the way through Mordor to get to Mount Doom, just to find out that throwing the ring in the hearth fire would have sufficed after all if I just left it in there for a while.

I Dream Avatar Fanfiction

2009-03-15T18:49:00.005-06:00

Warning: Avatar Spoilers

Because she is his sister, Zuko decided not to throw Azula into prison after the events of the third season of Avatar. Instead, he found it a fitting punishment to exile her to an island-fortress kingdom in the far west of the Fire Nation. The island is ruled over by a teenaged king who had spent the war grudgingly watching the western boundaries of the Fire Nation against an enemy that never appeared; most believed there was nothing west of the Fire Nation. He would be both her guardian and her friend while she was in exile.

Azula, of course, was furious when she arrived. She behaved spitefully to the young king, whose laid-back exterior betrayed an intense interior. Finally, he grew tired of hearing that she deserved to rule the Fire Nation because she was the best, and he challenged her to a race around the outer walls of the fortress. Using a form of firebending similar to a flamethrower, he beat her in the race, using fire like jets out of his feet to drive himself to breakneck speed around the perilous course of the parapets. Humiliated by her defeat at the hands of a nobody, she challenged him to Agni Kai, but he refused, saying he knew she would beat him in that. The lesson to her was obvious: play to your strengths. It was a humbling moment, but Azula's new wisdom would be tested when a ship with dark sails appeared in the western ocean.

I dreamed all of this two nights ago. I am a major geek, I know.

"...what I do with my own time" PS

2009-03-12T16:23:00.003-06:00

I blinked hazily from my bed, trying to lift a hand to block out the bright light in my face. I noticed two things immediately: first, I couldn't move my arm. Second, the bright light was being held by someone I knew well. Neuromancer. And Neuromancer was holding a very sharp knife.

Even though his face was shadowed behind the bright light, I could see his eyes, dangerous and cold like an old dog's. "I read your blog from Tuesday," he said, his voice as hard as a steamshovel.

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, trying to keep my voice light. "What did you think?"

He looked at the knife like he was trying to read something on the blade. "You said some pretty serious stuff. About William Gibson. About his books."

I tried to laugh. My voice cracked. "Oh, come on, Neuromancer, you know I love you! You know William Gibson is..."

He put his finger against his lips and my voice failed under his glare. "Oh, I know," he said, his voice hushed. "I just wanted to make sure you know. When you wake up, remember that there are some lines you just don't cross."

I was about to protest when he hit me right in the forehead. His fist was harder than I expected. When I woke up, he was back on the shelf, like he had never left. Or like he had accomplished what he wanted to do.

And the knife was resting on the pillow beside my head.

...what I do with my own time

2009-03-10T14:38:00.008-06:00

I was listening to my Pandora radio station and came across a song called "Mona Lisa Overdrive" by the band Juno Reactor. It sounded like something from the soundtrack of Ghost in the Shell, which means, as my good friend the Lord Admiral would put it, it is relevant to my interests.

Upon investigation, I discovered (thanks to my old nemesis Wikipedia) that the song was performed by request for The Matrix Reloaded. This is, after all, very relevant to my interests, despite the fact that the second two Matrix movies sucked robot ass.

I frequently refer to William Gibson as my favorite living writer, and I am not about to withdraw that praise, but here I would like to say how disappointed I am with the majority of his writing. I found Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive very underwhelming; I kind of liked Virtual Light, quite liked Idoru, but couldn't stand All Tomorrow's Parties, which I found endlessly dragging to a flat finale--the whole novel could have been condensed to a hundred pages without losing a damn thing. My reaction to The Difference Engine was mixed (I found the story creative yet flawed in plotting), and the jury is still out on my final verdict. I flat-out loved Pattern Recognition, a postmodern romp through the high-tech modern world. I haven't read Spook Country yet because the reviews I found were generally negative.

This is a mixed bag, of course, but I haven't mentioned my two favorite Gibson works: Burning Chrome and, of course, Neuromancer, which needs no introduction. Some of the stories in Burning Chrome are some of Gibson's best work, particularly the title story, which I feel shows that perhaps he should constrain some of his big ideas to the short story format.

This is all a tangent based on one song, but this is my blog, and it's my business...

Impractical

2009-03-06T10:16:00.004-07:00

He kicked the motorcyle's stand down and let it sit on the sun-baked sand beside the dealer man's wagon, the amped engine purring like it was happy with something. He pushed the goggles back, unhooking the heavy rubber mask with one hand, careful with the bad catch. He wore soft brown leather, real good against sand, and heavy mesh metal under all that in case someone got ideas. For as far as he could see beyond the rusty old wagon, nothing but sagebrush, stunted desert trees, and the blue-black mountains under the darkling sky. There was this heavy, ugly cloud blowing up from the south, but it wouldn't get there for at least half an hour, which gave him time to take the mask off and breathe the air for a bit.

The other guy was a pretty old one, both legs gone below the knee, his sweaty rolls of flesh wedged into a harness strung up all through this mobile home on runners. Made it so he bobbed around like a drunk spider getting from here to there, so he mostly just sat when people were watching. Didn't want to look stupid--too close to looking weak. His ride had these solar panels like some giant bug's wings. Why he parked in the middle of nowhere, only he knew. Maybe he knew he could deal here, like rats smell food. He had one of those cheap plastic helmets that made him look like a confused astronaut, and he was watching the guy in leather, waiting to see what his hands would do.

"You selling?" The guy in leather, voice heavy, no accent.

The guy in the harness just about coughed up a wad of phlegm getting his voice in gear. "Sure." Helmet made him sound like he's stuck his head in a well.

"Guns? Ammo?"

"Sure." Like it's just another thing, the harness guy's hand starts going for the piece they both knew was there, because if you're buying, it means you ain't selling, and you ain't selling what you ain't got. No point trading with a dead man, and that bike could come in all sorts of useful.

But leather guy's knife came out in a flash, but real casual, because they're still doing business. "Trade you vitamins. Got a half bottle."

Harness guy didn't like the development. Still had his hand half there, thinking about it. "Pulled it off some poor dead bastard, I'll bet."

"No one you knew." Eyes black like obsidian under the smear from the goggles. 'Don't try it' eyes. 'You'll like me better if you live' eyes. Real crazy eyes, the crazy you work at.

"Got this thing." Harness guy levered something down from the ceiling, where he had most of his shit taped up, because he needed the floor space for things like beans and those big plastic jugs of water. "Bought it off some of pilgrims going to see the old city. Said they'd bought it from some militia types who found Jesus. I reckon they found him all right, so now they go together permanent, know what I mean. This thing, impractical. Ain't much good past two hundred feet." Been waiting to pass it off to somebody crazy.

"Talk, talk," growled leather guy. He was looking at the thing, the barrel thicker than his head, this crank on the side and a hanging necklace of beads the size of coconuts that could have been the magazine. "You trading?"

Talking lazy, like it's not really a problem. "Half a bottle? Stab me and take it, at least that's honest. Throw in the knife. This little doggy leave a hole like a melon. Pieces everywhere."

"Impractical, you said."

"Real impractical."

He gave him the vitamins and the knife. Threw in some seeds, too, real good desert wheat. Never know if you're coming back again, need a good place to buy.

The Topaz Internment Camp

2009-02-24T23:35:00.002-07:00

One of the less wholesome legacies of the Second World War in Utah is the memory of the Topaz Internment Camp, where more than eight thousand people of Japanese descent, many of them United States citizens who had lived in the country all their lives, were taken and held for three and a half years. They were placed behind barbed wire fences surrounded by guard towers manned by soldiers with guns. All Japanese, even those with just one-sixteenth blood, were considered potentially hostile.

Today, I went to a presentation by a survivor of that camp, a tiny woman with fluffy white hair, and a man whose parents had been in another camp. He introduced a number of black and white photographs taken from the National Archives, most of them about Topaz, as he told the story. At times, he would prompt the lady to tell a little of her own story. At the beginning, I had tears in my eyes, but I pulled it together before long and listened intently.

She had been seventeen and in high school when Pearl Harbor happened. She said she remembered going to school that next Monday and sitting in the back shivering, afraid of what might happen to her. Her teacher took her aside to tell her everything would be all right. Later, when they got the order to "evacuate" to the holding area they would stay while the camps were built, some of her friends from school came to see her off. As she described that to the audience, it was one of the moments she was genuinely touched with emotion.

She said they were first kept at a former racetrack in a stable with no windows that still reeked of animals. Later, they were moved by train to Utah. She had grown up in the San Fransisco area, so both the snow and the heat were new to her, and they were particularly bad because heating was by one stove. They lived in military-style barracks, with communal bathrooms, cafeterias, and laundry rooms. At first, there were no dividers between the bathroom stalls. She laughed when she said that they finally built shoulder-high dividers with curtains; it was a very sociable experience to use the bathroom. He told the story of one elderly woman who was so ashamed to be seen using the bathroom that she put a brown paper bag over her head with holes cut for eyes.

Many of the fathers were separated from their families. Because her father was a businessman who sold miso soup, he was taken away by the FBI to another facility.

Throughout the presentation, I was struck by her good humor and good will. She didn't express any bitterness toward the government, which, as the gentleman pointed out, she had every right to feel. Many of the stories he and she told were heartbreaking. High school and college students volunteered to teach elementary school. People of Japanese descent were called on to enlist in the Armed Forces to serve in the European theater; when they returned on leave, they had to visit their families behind barbed wire.

Topaz is now mostly abandoned, with just trash, foundations, and one re-built barrack at the site. There are plans for a permanent museum in the nearby town of Delta, though, and I do hope those plans come to fruition.

In the late eighties, the government offered formal letter of apology signed by the President to all survivors, along with twenty thousand dollars. As the gentleman pointed out, however, I doubt anyone would agree to live behind barbed wire under constant guard for three and a half years for twenty thousand dollars more than forty years later.

So often I forget that the past isn't just something in books and in videos. For someone, that was their present day, their experience in the passing moment, and they had to live with it. And they still do.

My Random Bathroom

2009-02-20T15:09:00.003-07:00

I'm convinced my bathroom has a link somewhere to another dimension, or perhaps just Narnia. It seems it has a random scent every day (and not the scents you'd think, either). Today, it was incense. Maybe I'll keep you updated about what it smells like (no, I won't mention the scents you'd think, either).

Of course, I'm aware that the bathroom fan probably just links to another apartment through the ducts, but there's more magic to it this way!

EPIC Cyberpunk FAIL

2009-02-19T17:58:00.009-07:00

(I apologize for profanity in this post, but you really shouldn't read it anyway)

It had some interesting visual elements. Few and far between, especially buried under a combination of Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Dungeons and Dragons ripoffs. But it had some interesting visual elements.

The above is the only praise I can imagine for The Gene Generation. I have been following the progress of this film for a few years (has it been so long?) now, ever since I watched a trailer for it and was fascinated by the cyberpunk feel of it. The premise is really kind of awesome: there is a society in which one's worth is measured by the value of one's genes (a bit like Gattaca, but what's original these days?). There is a generation of criminals called "DNA hackers" who can alter a person's genes. There is, in turn, a group of assassins whose job it is to kill these DNA hackers because of the threat they represent to the delicate balance of society.

I found this quote about the film on another website: "In the dark decadent world of our future, Mankind has found themselves close to the extinction with the last city on Earth. Forced to implement a controversial Natural Selection process, the government built a wall surrounding the last city named Olympia. By a careful selection process using our genes and DNA, the Kalafkan Government chose only the best and most promising to survive the destruction of Olympia, before building a new city where it once was. This process led to a crime known as DNA Hacking, where people steal genes and DNA in hopes of entering Demeter. The government started hiring assassins, to take out and kill these hackers who have polluted the system. In exchange, the Assassins are granted entry to Demeter. Michelle (Bai Ling) is one of those Assassins. Forced to render her services to the government by any means necessary, Michelle can only hope that death wouldn’t take her soul down like Olympia would. The Gene Generation is a science fiction movie about romance, revenge and redemption" source

Holy shit, I say to myself. This sounds like a damn good movie. Apart from that incomprehensible line about death taking her soul down. That's a warning sign. ((Edit: And I also noticed later: how can the government implement a "Natural Selection" process? If the government is doing it, how is it natural? Isn't that the exact opposite of natural? Like this movie is the opposite of good?))

The first problem is what the film means by "altering genes." When I read the synopsis, I assumed that altering one's genes would, for instance, change eye color, hair color, possibly some physical features, depending on how implausible the show decided to be about the capacity of a device the size of a person's hand that jabs needles into your arm. I was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong like losing my glasses and mistaking an angry Doberman that's just been kicked in the nuts for kindly aunt Gretchen whose only happiness in life is a kiss on the cheek.

As it turns out, changing someone's genes can, in fact, do one of only two things in this film. The first is to close up wounds and heal disease (something shown in the show's intro and only mentioned later, never to play a part again). The second is to make a person sprout a mass of tentacles, writhe around, and die.

Re-read that last sentence. I should probably stop writing right there and let you fill in the rest of the movie for yourself. It probably wouldn't be far off the mark, and certainly won't be much worse than what I had to endure. The suck is endemic in this movie, like it was shot in Sucknicolor. There's a large middle-aged villain with long blonde hair and a deep voice; I'm convinced I've seen this exact character in another movie, possibly several others. There's a goateed mafia boss with a comically incompetent but seemingly limitless supply of leather-clad goons who spends most of the movie bitching about people not taking him seriously enough. There's a bunch of midgets wearing leather who show up just to have midgets wearing leather in the movie. Oh, hell. I'm sick of even thinking about this movie. Let's move on.

Bai Ling is in this movie. I'm not entirely sure who she is, other than a very good-looking Chinese woman whose English is not so very good. She appears in a different outfit in every scene, and I have a sneaking suspicion the film's entire raison d'etre is for the producer/director to see her in these various skimpy leathery getups (not to mention out of them: there are two random shower scenes and an almost equally random sex scene). She wears so many different scandalous outfits, in fact, that in one scene where a character actually gives her clothes and says, "I brought you some clothes," I just about did myself in laughing. If there's one thing this chick has in abundance, it's clothes, although she appears to be hard up for cash in every other way.

She has this brother who is constantly getting into trouble for gambling and getting involved in crime. At one point, the mob boss I mentioned above pees on him. Although I really can't think of a good reason for ever doing so, I stress: he got peed on. I bring this brother and incident up only because, later in the film, he complains about having shit in his hair and smelling like shit. Another character comments that he smells like shit. Later, the mob boss laughs about having shat on this character. I'm not sure whether nobody on the set knows the basic but fundamental difference between the two bodily wastes, or whether they changed the one scene without bothering to change every bit of dialogue referring to it.

Speaking of bad changes: at one point, a character gets thrown through a window. I suppose they couldn't find a cheap graphics program that would simulate cracking glass and movement at the same time: the movie freezes for several seconds while cracks spread across the glass, and then the guy falls through. I was flabbergasted. In another part, during a hastily-cut fight scene, a still frame is shown for a full second. A small nitpick, perhaps; I guess nobody caught that nothing was happening in that clip. Was this thing edited in iMovie? The 3D effects are laughable, including 1990's style fire effects and unconvincing but repetitive shots of the city with a flying ship circling overhead. Oh, and apparently, in the future, cities exist in stone basins flanked by huge walls. And those stone walls have giant demons carved in them. Yeah.

But I've saved the worst for last. Faye Dunaway inexplicably appears in this movie... for about one minute. She gets a couple of lines, then suffers a catastrophic accident that leaves "her" a hanging torso prop covered in CG tentacles for the rest of the movie, never once moving from one tiny but oft-reused set. Her voice is also mushy, which I assume is because she got one look at the movie, called her agent, and finished the rest of her contract recording her lines over the phone from as far from the set as she could get.

Now, there's some leeway I could give this movie. It's apparently based on a comic, but since I have no knowledge of it nor any desire to gain any, not even with a Google search, I'll leave it at that. Also, the concept of "hacking" one's own genes is interesting. This movie, though? Come on.

Final Word: This film might have been just kind of bad with some redeeming qualities if it weren't for the tentacles, which feel like an afterthought added in post to spice things up. Cut out the writhing tentacles on the gene-altered people and just let them flop around and die instead; maybe their eyes go all black or something to show they're afflicted. Imagine watching a tender death scene where the main character watches the man she loves die... as his tentacles flop around. Mmmhmm.

Aloisius's New Teeth

2009-02-17T11:03:00.005-07:00

Aloisius Dell, a kindly old Southern gentleman, sat in his rocking chair on the porch of his charming mansion, watching the young people going up and down the road he rememebered when it was just a muddy cart path. He squinted his old eyes as he watched the old country doctor stop his new automobile next to Aloisius's buggy and then walk up the path carrying his black leather bag.

"What can I do for you, doctor?" said Aloisius with a smile.

"Just coming by to check up on you, Mr. Dell. Sure is a lovely little garden you have here." The doctor pushed his glasses further up his nose. "How have things been?"

"Oh, just about as fine as ever. Enjoying a beautiful day," said Aloisius, adjusting his monocle.

"I'm mighty glad to hear that, Mr. Dell," said the doctor. "You know, I have something here, just for you."

Aloisius narrowed his eyes. His eyesight wasn't as good as it used to be. "And what would that be, doctor?"

"Well, I've heard it through the grapevine that you've been having a bit of trouble chewing your food, Mr. Dell. So I thought I'd get you fixed up with some new teeth."

Aloisius stood up so quickly he almost knocked his rocking chair over. Keeping one hand on the chair's arm for balance, he shook the other at the doctor. "Now listen here! Aloisius Dell, Esquire does not need no false teeth! I'm still hale and hearty, and don't you forget it!"

"But they'll be just like your own teeth! It'll make a world of difference," insisted the doctor.

Aloisius put his hands on the hips of his waistcoat. "Don't you start that with me! They still call me 'Colonel Dell' in town. Go ahead, ask me which war I fought in!"

The doctor mopped his brow with his handkerchief. He could see this was going to take a while. He rested on Aloisius's veranda and said, "What war were you in, Mr. Dell."

"Just about all of them!" said Aloisius fiercely. "I stormed Omaha Beach more times than you've had warm meals! Just you ask anyone in town."

The doctor smiled gently. "And when's the last time you've been to town, Mr. Dell?"

Aloisius scratched his head, sighed, and sat back down heavily in his chair. "Been a while, I reckon. Oh, all right. Just leave them teeth on the step."

The doctor smiled and nodded. "Of course, Mr. Dell. You just let me know if they cause you any trouble."

After the doctor's car drove out of sight, Aloisius rose and went to the strange object on his porch. He tried them in. They didn't feel so bad at all.

"Hmm," he said, scratching his white goatee. "Maybe it's time me and Jenny went to the town again. And who knows, maybe it's time I got some new spectacles, too. But first I'll see how them teeth work out."

Of course, Mr. Aloisius Dell, Esq. was a lifelong bachelor.

Jenny was the name of his rocket launcher.

*** In completely unrelated news, I bought 2 gigs of RAM for my Dell computer to bring the total up to 3. It seems to work well so far. Maybe eventually I'll get a new graphics card, too. But first, I'll see how them RAM work out.

Putin, Say It Ain't So!

2009-02-07T12:15:00.002-07:00

Vladimir Putin. The name alone inspires fear and awe in mortal men. He shoots down rampaging tigers with tranquilizers and goes fishing without his shirt on. He knows judo. And, apparently, he likes dancing to ABBA songs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7875372.stm

What's particularly mystifying about this is that the Kremlin has denied it even happened. Oh, Putin. Whatever happened to your old hobbies, such as skydiving out of a fighter plane over the ocean without a parachute to punch a shark in the face? All I can imagine is that he was hanging out with someone much less manly, such as his wife, who wanted to hear some ABBA, and he, being the caring leader of men that he is, decided to humor her.

Christian Bale

2009-02-06T13:47:00.003-07:00

I don't usually talk about real life on this blog, let alone make my own comments about a celebrity incident, but I feel valid talking about the infamous Christian Bale outburst because it's been made into so many remixes on YouTube, and that makes it part of cyberculture. What is it about the event that I find so compelling (and that causes so many people to put time and effort into remixing it)? I think it's two things. The first is meanspirited: we like to see people on pedestals brought low and shamed. The second is more sympathetic: we understand what it's like to lose control, and in many ways, we idenify with Christian. Like the infamous Bus Uncle becoming a quirky sort of hero in Hong Kong, we all live in a very high-stress corporate world, one that's only gotten worse since the recession. And I think that we all, deep down, also feel like just exploding at people and letting them know just how we're feeling.

I like Christian Bale. I like his movies, and he's always seemed like a decent guy in his interviews. I have a terrible temper myself, and I know the struggle of having that deep inside. What he said was stupid, crude, and inexcusable. And the thing I like best about this regrettable situation is that Christian himself admits that. He didn't make excuses or try to defend what he did; he said that he acted like a punk, and he regrets it.

We all have terrible moments, Christian Bale, when we become our own worst enemies. I can only imagine what it would be like to have my own worst moments ridiculed by thousands of people. You're you did right sucking it up and admitting you were at fault. Good on you, mate.

News story of his apology

Now that I think about it...

2009-01-31T22:13:00.002-07:00

Lord of the Rings names really ARE pretty good names for animals. They're definitely not as bad as naming your dog to sound like a transsexual or French prostitute.

And I do know an awesome cat named Gandalf.

Imaginary Conversation With The Loud Table Near Where I Was Eating Today At The Hub

2009-01-27T19:24:00.003-07:00

I think it would be cool if we named all of our pets after Lord of the Rings characters. You know, things like Samwise Gamgee and Legolas. Yeah, Aragorn would be a really good name for a dog.
Maybe if you want your dog to kill you, then quest for the One Ring.

You know what's awesome, dude? You don't even like that girl. You hate her, but you really like cuddling with her.
Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

So he said agriculture is the single greatest achievement in human history. But that can't be true, since the advent of agriculture made it possible for populations to become sedentary, which in turn led to things like the growth of cities, pollution, and the overconsumption of natural resources.
You're right. It's so much better to just huddle around fires and hope the cave bears don't get us.

Yeah. Technology is the downfall of humanity as we know it. (as she flips open her cell phone and starts sending a text message)
I guess it was just a big mistake to climb down from the trees, huh, dumbass.

Heh. I especially love the "as we know it" part. Genius.

Another Important Birthday

2009-01-23T18:10:00.003-07:00

Speaking of awesome, today is Robert E. Howard's birthday. That's right, the guy that brought you the unbridled genius of Solomon Kane and the sheer awesomeness of Kull the Conqueror turned 103 today. Without him, we would never have had that Kevin Sorbo movie!

Oh, and he also had something to do with that Conan guy as well....

I don't have time to write a blog entry to truly do this man's birthday justice, so look for that in the near future. Maybe.

Happy Birthday, Mac!

2009-01-23T17:33:00.004-07:00

The Macintosh is 25! To celebrate, watch this:

And remember, without the Macintosh, we wouldn't have the iPhone or the iPod.

The Demon of Poetry Revision

2009-01-22T23:20:00.002-07:00

Every now and then, and frequently in my case, a poet comes to the point where he and his poem are standing in the middle of dusty main street, looking squinty-eyed into each other's faces as a tumbleweed blows by in the background. As you can gather, being the perceptive type, that time is very much like thepresent.

I am in a poetry class, and part of that poetry class is the regular requirement to write poetry. Writing it isn't bad; I am all for writing poetry. The drawback is that, once the poem is written, I have to show it to people (and not the people of my choosing) for their feedback. Now, I have a real problem showing things before they're done, and this insight became the reason I sat down today with the germ of a blog entry in my head: before I show a poem to someone, it is mutable, elastic, in a transitory state from present to perfect. I can change whatever. But once I have shown someone, it becomes sedentary, the consistency of old honey, because I have put my name on it. I have presented it by saying, "This is my poem. These are my words." And in that moment, something shifts from "How can I improve this?" to "How can I justify this to myself?" I tell myself that the poem has to be good enough now, regardless of its actual quality, because to admit otherwise is to admit that it wasn't good enough then, when someone else read it and heard its imperfection.

Ideally, I could take a poetry class in two parts. The first semester would be just writing the poems. The second semester, with a summer or so between the two for cooling down, would be about revising those poems. That would give me the time to sit and chew the poems I've written for a few months before anyone else has to see them, so I have a chance to make them as good as they can be. Otherwise, what's the use of receiving advice when I know it's something I myself will change soon?

But then again, perhaps all that time would just make me like every word, every comma all the more, and I would be all the more resistant to change when the time comes.

Maybe I should just move to a cabin with a sheepdog named Roger and keep all my poems in a big iron-bound chest, only to be found years after my death.

If you have a cabin and/or a sheepdog that looks like a Roger, look me up.

Another Ennui-Laced Blog of Ennuiness

2009-01-19T19:34:00.003-07:00

I have just spent about the last half-hour doing nothing. "Eff all," if I were to use harsh language. I've done nothing but look at websites that don't amuse me. Of course, I know what I should be doing: I should be finishing my homework for poetry class. Failing that, I should at least call one of my very good acquaintances and say, "What's up. Wanna hang out?" But I haven't even been able to do that. I've eaten just about an entire packet of lebkuchen cookies, but even that rush of sugar hasn't been enough to yank me out of my stupor. I feel as though all of my motivation has fallen off the bottom of the car with a "plunk" when I hit a bump. It's a dangerous time to be blogging, my friends.

Speaking of blogging, I am hereby putting a moratorium on the term "blogosphere." I just don't like it.

And between you and me, artist-formerly-known-as-blogosphere, I'm annoyed that I have to actively read the poetry of a small group student poets randomly assigned to me by my poetry class and try to make fruitful comments on it. Every week. As though I wasn't doing that enough already for the full-class workshops. That's reading and improving six student poems a week. How am I going to find the strength to write my own poems, I ask you, particularly after tromping through six more or less crappy poems and trying to give a damn about each of them? Particularly with the especially soul-sucking addition of knowing that the comments I finally do tear bloodily from my cerebrum will at best be ignored and will at worst cause offense and consternation not normally seen outside natural disasters. Don't tell my teacher I said this. I'm a good boy. I'll behave.

Oh, screw it. Come 'ere, last lebkuchen....

New(er) Blog Post

2009-01-13T23:51:00.002-07:00

I typed this up a minute ago, but the internet erased it. As one colleage would term it, it disappeared into "dataspace," the realm electronic information goes when it doesn't go to its destination. That being said, the term already exists as merely the data storage role of the entire linked electronic system, which I think is a much more logical use for the term anyway. Sorry, colleague. You're going to have to coin a different word.

I dug out my old digital camera this Christmas and even recharged it, but I couldn't find any floppies to put in it. Yes, it saves to floppy. Yes, it is that ancient. It is practically a relic. It might count as a historic artifact. At any rate, I still don't have any pictures for you here. Just more words.

The resolution this year is the same it's been since 2002: finish a novel.

It's about damn time I did.

Back in the Cockpit

2008-12-23T21:41:00.003-07:00

It seems that no matter how hard I try to be respectable, I just can't escape my Star Wars roots. Like the tentacles of the Sarlacc, it just goes too deep. Ever since my brother came to visit for Christmas, we've been doing all sorts of Star Wars things: playing video games, watching the animated TV show, and even watching the movies. Why is a grown man still playing with lightsabers?

Well, because they're just that cool.

It's worth thinking about, though. I think that we as a culture embrace some things as a guilty pleasure without stopping to consider their true depths. Star Wars is a fairy tale for the present, full of wise wizards, brave knights, even the princess in need of rescue. The same cultural principles that bound society for thousands of years continue to be passed on in this new medium, and we also encounter and experiment with new styles of thinking. That's one of the advantages of science fiction: you can create whole new worlds of thoughts and norms without having anyone label you a rebel (or perhaps they will... if they're Imperial! :)).

From ancient samurai to modern fears of an oppressive government regime, Star Wars is a chronicle of our culture. Best of all, the exploration of a galaxy far, far away helps us better understand who we are and what we could be.

Now, if only I could make things levitate with the power of my mind....

Fine Eyes

2008-12-22T14:50:00.002-07:00

"I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow." - if you don't know where this quote is from, you don't get a cookie.

I haven't written about it in my blog before, but I felt it was time to do so. This blog really hasn't been so much about my life as about my thoughts, but over the last few months my thoughts have been very agreeably engaged in the company of the finest young lady I know. We met at the local poetry reading, and we are engaged in the same great enterprise - that is, of course, the infinitely noble pursuit of writing literary criticism nobody cares about, not even the writer. Of course, it's not half that bad most of the time, but this is Christmas vacation, when any thought of academia (or, even worse, teaching composition classes) brings the kind of hideous terror that only mention of Cthulhu usually produces.

But I'm on a tangent. The simple truth is that I'm finding myself becoming increasingly cheesy and even, dare I say it, cliche. There's truth to all those things that used to make me cringe, things like just finding joy in being in her company and feeling like I'm a better person when I'm around her. It's hard to talk about. Love doesn't lend itself easily to writing because it feels like everything wonderful and worthy on the subject has been written.

Let it just be said, then, that as I'm surrounded by my family for Christmas, and she is with hers, I am nonetheless filled with happiness and contentment. I feel like Scrooge waking up on Christmas day.

Merry Christmas!

In Like Him

2008-12-11T22:47:00.007-07:00

I dreamed I was in an old-fashioned magical movie theater with huge ceilings and all sorts of carvings, and all the old stars from the black and white era were arriving. They came larger-than-life, fifteen feet tall as a solid hologram. Each name was announced as the star appeared by an invisible voice, and the huge image was a three-dimensional representation of the star from a famous role. Olivia de Havilland, Fred Astaire, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn. But I, of course, only wanted to see one person, whose giant Robin Hood made me just about pass out when I finally saw it. But as the stars became human and started to mingle, drinking champagne and laughing, he sat apart. While the others were themselves from their heydey, he was different, an air of palpable sadness and majesty around him.

Errol Flynn was his aged self, a faded relic, but he was sitting in a high-backed chair apart from the rest looking regal and wearing a blue tragedian mask, one half comedy, the other half tragedy. I had tears in my eyes when I saw him. I pulled up his mask just for a moment, and his hair was white and his face lined. I helped him put the mask back on, seeing that he wanted it that way, and he knew better than I that it was meant to be so. And when I spoke to him, he told me that he saw what his life had become, a symbol of an ephemeral ideal and a charicature of himself, the real man destroyed by drugs, alcohol, womanizing, and cigarettes. This was his final performance, as a shadow of himself, the man gone while the actor remained for one last show.