Monday, October 31, 2005
Random stuff.
No blogging lately, but don't feel neglected, since I'm not doing anything else on the computer either. I didn't even have a chance to turn Malaya's laptop on Sunday, and that's after I spent maybe 30 minutes late Saturday night reading over the first 1/3 of the nearly-completed chapter 6. I've been doing stuff with the parents, shopping, eating out, eating in, watching TV, and generally being a lazy son of a bitch. What is this, a vacation? Plus, since I once again forgot to bring along the 50 foot Ethernet cable, I can't get this laptop online without carrying it into dad's office, unplugging his computer from the router, and plugging this one in. And as instant gratification as I am about blogging, it's hard to find the interest to type stuff out in here on wordpad, and then walk in there and hook it up and get it online.
It's funny too; I've been toiling away, on and off, for more than 3 years on a novel that only two people have seen any of, but that seems fine. I have no burning desire to stick parts of it online, though I have with a few deleted excerpts. Yet I can't find it in me to write a few paragraphs for a blog entry when there's a 2 minute delay built in by technical issues? Bleh. (Make that 10 minutes, since the blogger page turned every asterisk I pasted over from Apple Word into ASCII gobbledegook.)
If I were here for longer I'd do more, but with my return scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, I'm in a "I'll catch up tomorrow" mood. I've not written a word about the Blizcon stuff, either for my own use or for the D2 site's, and I'll have to get on that Tuesday evening, while some memories remain. I'm just going to go through the dozens of pictures I took from there and do a sort of retroactive live blogging thing, with images to comment on and spur my memory. It will be an entirely content free article, when it comes to gaming info, but what else is new around here...
One thing I am enjoying on this trip/vacation is a book. I brought along Harry Potter 6, finally meaning to get started reading it, especially with the much-desired
Feast of Crows coming out in a week. Yet as I sat in the Oakland airport Thursday afternoon, over an hour early for my departing flight (They make you check in an hour and a half early so you’ll have more time to wait at the gate, I think.) what book did I pull out? Not Harry Potter, but another one I brought on a whim.
First King of Shannara, by Terry Brooks.
I picked it up in paperback at a library give away some months ago, but had never opened it until Thursday. Why I picked it up or brought it along is unknown, given
my unmitigated scorn of the first two Shannara books by Brooks, but I'm going to blame it on curiosity. He'd written around twenty best sellers in his fantasy universe -- they couldn't all be that bad, could they? He had to get some original, non-Tolkien/lite ideas eventually, didn't he? His prose had to improve after his first couple of dull, seemingly-unedited novels, didn’t it?
Well there's good news about all of the above.
First King of Shannara is the 13th novel in the series, and while it's still not very good, and it's kind of "Fantasy Novel 101" in form and characterization, it's not unreadable. The action scenes are okay, the battles make sense, the characters aren't loathsome, the bad guys are bad, the good guys are noble and heroic, and the writing is tolerable. Plus it's not so blatantly Tolkien-derived as to make my teeth hurt (unlike the first two ADA-sponsored efforts). I'm on page 337 with about 100 to go, and while I've never for an instant doubted that the good guys will triumph and the evil lord will be defeated, their various quests and adventures along the way are enjoyable enough to keep me reading.
This novel is apparently a prequel, of sorts, or at least it's set like 800 years before events in later books. Fortunately for Brooks' need to be lazy, his land has seen zero technological development over that time, so everything in this one reads exactly like things did in the first two novels. I just think it's set earlier because I recall references in the first two novels to events and characters that are featured in this one. And I'm probably glad I don’t know the later books well enough that these would give me
Episode 1-3 douche-chills as everything is foreshadowed with 2x4 subtlety.
On the down side, the dialogue is still quite wretched, with endless long expository monologues where one character explains exactly what they've been doing, how they feel, what they're thinking, and so on, and then the other one in the "conversation" does the same thing in turn. It's not as bad as the first two books were, but it's still very artificial and jarring when you witness it.
The characters are also pretty lame, just in terms of being cookie cutter fantasy types, following the mold created by Tolkien and others (including Brooks himself, I suppose). The mages are mysterious and powerful, the warriors are noble and hot-headed, the women are mysterious and beautiful, and so on. Brooks is also very lazy about the races; there's really nothing to set elves, dwarves, gnomes, humans, and trolls apart other than height and physical strength. They could all be humans of different tribes without making the slightest difference in the book. No one has any cultural issues, they all speak the same language (or else the characters who meet up conveniently all speak overlapping languages), and if Brooks doesn’t actually say, "So and so, the elf" you have no way to know what sort of character is now being encountered. Not that it ever really matters.
There's also zero insight into the bad guys. They're just bad and evil and murderous and they want to kill and destroy, and they don't need a reason. The good guys are pretty much the same though; none ever consider running away or trying to negotiate or just avoid conflict. They march nobly out to face the enemy, and they want only to achieve freedom for their people, and they just want everyone to be friends and live in peace, and so on. None have any private envies or jealousies or desires, or fears, or sloth, or anything that would make them human. There are various characters on the side of the good guys who do betrayals or stupid things, but that's their one-aspect; they're as one-dimensional as the heroic good guys and the dastardly bad guys, in their own way.
For a fantasy novel targeted at the undemanding "young adult" market though, it's just what it needs to be. It doesn't make you think, it gives you a lot of adventure, and the plot keeps moving with one event after another. It can't really be compared to quality adult fiction, but I've read worse. Frequently by the same author. I'll add a full review once I've finished it, an event that will likely occur on the flight home tomorrow.
And yes, I've laughed at myself a few times while reading the novel, as I give the author a soft little golf-clap for not completely sucking. Terry Brooks, multi-millionaire, multi-multi-best selling famous author, who surely has winning the mild approval of random aspiring author idiot with a blog right on top of his, "please God before I die" list.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
San Diego, Blizcon, etc
Just a quick note here from my dad's old computer with the janky keyboard. I did go to Blizcon on Friday, but got bored (to no one's surprise) and decided one day was plenty. So I left there around 5, met my mom's old friend who I've known since I was 9 and had dinner with her in Santa Monica, and then I drove back here last night, greatly aided on mydrive by several long cell phone conversations with Malaya, my mom, and my dad. Aided in terms of keeping me awake, since I'd been up since 5 (after literally zero sleep Wednesday night) and was fading badly. It's funny but true; talking really does keep you awake.
I hardly made the 40 mile drive from Anaheim to Santa Monica, was wide awake for 3 hours of dinner and talk, and then after 30 minutes and 10 miles on the 405 south at 9pm, (LA traffic is all you've ever heard and worse) I was literally shaking myself to stay awake.
Blizcon was pretty good. Better than I had expected, though the 2+ hour line to get in, at 11am opening day, was kind of a disaster. Luckily, my pass was at the press window, which had 3 people working it and a 1 person line. No, I didn't feel guilty for that. Not even a little bit. The goodie bag was pretty cool too, with a Blizcon and a WoW t-shirt, a black Diablo rubber bracelet, a Bliz key chain, deck of cards with custom bliz artwork on the face cards and aces, and some other misc stuff. As for the games there; WoW X looked exactly like WoW, and if you'd told me SC Ghost was Halo, Iwouldn't have known any different. I played neither, even though there was never a line to get in on the 16 person SC Ghost deathmatches they had going. There were an astonishing amount of computers set up too, at least 1000 in total, probably more like 1500, with rows and rows and rows of them set up running the WoW expansion, more for regular WoW battlegrounds, hundreds more for SC Ghost, many more for the other gaming tournaments, etc. I'd hate to have been the tech support guy for that set up.
I took tons of photos and will write up something for the d2 site at some point, but I went to bed as soon as I got back to dad's house last night and slept for 11 hours, and now we're going out to run errands and do some other stuff here, so don't expect further word from me until tonight or Sunday. Not that any of you were eagerly awaiting me anyway. Look at worldofwar.net if you want some blizcon stuff, Rush was uploading cam corder movies he'd taken at the morning address, and there were a bunch of new cinematics and such. New to me, at least, with a long SC Ghost one that basically recreated the plot of Starship Troopers. The big SC Ghost innovation was that now you can play as a Zerg, too. AVP anyone?
The best thing about that title? The blonde booth babe they had roaming around with a huge plastic gun and skin tight outfit. She really looked the part too, though it was impossible to envision this dainty, 5 foot blonde in grey spandex as a dangerous assassin. Unfortunately her costume did not light up with cool glowing blue stripes, unlike the life size statue they had on display. And yes, I took photos of that too. Anyway, more later, when I'm typing on a decent keyboard and have time to think.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Halloween News
Two timely articles with Halloween coming up on Monday.
Every year, in America at least, there are hysterical articles about the dangers of poisoned candy, or candy apples with needles in them, or candy bars with razor blades, and so on. The only problem?
It's never actually happened:
Each year, police and medical centers across the country follow another ritual, X-raying candy to check for razors, needles, or other objects that might have been placed there to hurt or kill innocent children. Special events are held that offer kids "a safe Halloween," suggesting that there are real lurking dangers far worse than spooky costumes.
Yet year after year, few if any sinister foreign objects are found. This scary tale is essentially an urban legend.
Despite e-mail warnings, scary stories, and Ann Landers columns to the contrary, there have been only two confirmed cases of children being killed by poisoned Halloween candy, and in both cases the children were killed not in a random act by strangers but intentional murder by one of their parents. The best-known, "original" case was that of Texan Ronald Clark O'Bryan, who killed his son by lacing his Pixie Stix with cyanide in 1974.
...
There's no need to waste medical facility or police time making sure that a small free candy bar is safe to eat.
Children are in far more danger from being hit by a car on a dark street.
X-raying candy helps parents feel like they are protecting their children, but in fact parents are simply wasting resources and feeding children's fears unnecessarily.
I love the common sense at the end, there. Why in the hell are people x-raying free candy bars if they're really concerned? Just spend $5 on a couple of bags of them at the store and have your kid eat those. If you seriously thought there might be tampering with the food your child was going to eat, why on earth would you trust an x-ray, when it would be infinitely easier for some unknown psycho to drip some rat poison, or peanut oil extract, or whatever, over the candy?
Elsewhere, there's a
Yahoo news item about some anti-Halloween backlash in Europe, as the holiday gets more and more popular around the world.
"It's an American custom that's got nothing to do with our culture," Kohler wrote in letters sent out to households. By midweek, the mayors of eight neighboring villages had thrown their support behind the boycott. So had local police, annoyed with the annual Oct. 31 uptick in vandalism and mischief.
Although Halloween has become increasingly popular across Europe — complete with carved pumpkins, witches on broomsticks, makeshift houses of horror and costumed children rushing door to door for candy — it's begun to breed a backlash.
Critics see it as the epitome of crass, U.S.-style commercialism. Clerics and conservatives contend it clashes with the spirit of traditional Nov. 1 All Saints' Day remembrances.
...
Halloween "undermines our cultural identity," complained the Rev. Giordano Frosini, a Roman Catholic theologian who serves as vicar-general in the Diocese of Pistoia near Florence, Italy.
Frosini denounced the holiday as a "manifestation of neo-paganism" and an expression of American cultural supremacy. "Pumpkins show their emptiness," he said.
...
In Austria, where many families get a government child allowance, "parents who abuse it to buy Halloween plunder for their kids should be forced to pay back the aid," grumbled Othmar Berbig, an Austrian who backs the small but strident boycott movement.
In Sweden, even as Halloween's popularity has increased, so have views of the holiday as an "unnecessary, bad American custom," said Bodil Nildin-Wall, an expert at the Language and Folklore Institute in Uppsala.
Italy's Papaboys, a group of pope devotees who include some of the young Catholics who cheer wildly at Vatican events, have urged Christians not to take part in what they consider "a party in honor of Satan and hell," and plan to stage prayer vigils nationwide that night.
Bad news guys; the same type of people (curmudgeons, religious leaders, anti-crass consumerism folks, etc) have been protesting Halloween for the same type of reasons in the US for my entire conscious life, and the holiday has done nothing but steadily increase in popularity. I'd say give up now, but since people protesting this sort of thing are more about getting some personal recognition than actually stopping whatever they're protesting, it's not like they'd listen.
Blue-eyed, blonde-haired, racists.
I thought this was a joke at first, but apparently it's serious. See
these adorable, singing, 13 y/o sisters? They're as cute and blissfully devoid of talent as the formerly popular and virginal Olsen Twins, and their daddy is raising them up to be good little hate-filled crackers. They do hippie-sounding folk music type songs with aimless guitar strumming, and coded, white supremacist lyrics.
Check out their blog!
It all sounds like a bad sketch on Saturday Night Live, but it's quite real. The twins and their parasitic family members were even the focus of an ABC News Magazine special,
which you can view here, if you have the stomach for it. The weirdest things in the news special are the shots of them in concert at the various biker bar hellholes Nazi music is played in. There are these two adorable little white children on stage, strumming and yodeling tunelessly away, while scary ex-con looking skinheads, guys who would no doubt eat the children alive in one second if they weren't fellow Aryan Nationalists, and who clearly came for head banging, insteady throw mindless Nazi salutes with their flabby, entirely tattoo-covered right arms. While the girls strum away in front of them, apparently comfortable with the whole situation, since that's what daddy's trained them to do.
I guess it's disturbing because the children look innocent and sweet (Why exactly do we associate that with white blonde children more than any other hair color or ethnic group?) and we expect them to be nice and friendly. And when you see them being interviewed and talking about how they liked Hitler's ideas and such, it's just depressing. Like a 13 year old suicide bomber, with a mind already poisoned by the lies and manipulations of their sick parents. Obviously the girls, who have been doing this since they wre 9, have no real clue what they're saying or singing. They're just doing what their parents taught them to do, which is what makes it all the more tragic.
And yet, this being America, with freedom of speech and expression and religion, what can you do? The whole point of freedom of speech is that you have to support that even for speech you personally find abhorrent. That's not to say you can't vigorously argue against the points they make, but you've gotta grant them the right to say it. And while there aren't any lyrics from the twins online, I don't think they're doing the white death metal thing and singing about killing blacks or jews or whatever. Not yet, at least. It's hate music for kids!
Flux + Weekend = Elsewhere
I've not blogged much lately since (amongst other reasons) I'm working hard on the book, trying to finish editing chapter 6 (another 55k words) so I can print it out and take it with me when I head down to San Diego on Thursday. Mom has been reading the chapters, you see, and since I've got 5 sitting here ready to go as well, I'd like to double the pleasure.
As for the vacation trip thing, I'm theoretically going down mostly for
BlizzCon, which takes place Friday and Saturday. The plan is to fly down on Thursday, borrow mom's car to drive up to Anaheim Friday morning, stay overnight with an old friend Saturday, hit day 2 of Blizcon, and then drive back to SD that afternoon. And no, the sizzling allure of an Offspring concert wasn't enough to keep me there late. Not with a two hour drive home afterwards, at least. I'll then do various things with the parents Sunday and Monday, before returning home Tuesday afternoon.
As a result, you can probably expect blogging to continue to be rather light until early next week. That's not a promise though; sometimes I end up with a lot of free time and blogging thougths while on vacation, and since I'll have a laptop with me, there may be blogging galore. I'll at least be writing up some sort of article about Blizcon, though that'll be posted on the D2 site, or perhaps on Loaded Inc, the main site for the .net work.
The ironic part is that I was only going down to Blizcon and adding in the SD visit because Rush and Elly asked me to and were going to provide me with a Blizcon ticket. They're over in Scotland and weren't about to spend $1000+ and 18 hours flying time each way just to attend a two day gaming convention with nothing new other than some early WoWx footage. I asked them if they really wanted me to go, if they couldn't find someone in the SoCal area who cared about WoW and wanted to write about it, if they really cared, etc. They had no one else and wanted me to go, and then last week Rush mailed me and said that Blizzard Europe had suddenly decided to send him along. Perhaps no one in Europe was paying attention to BlizzCon and they wanted some UK attention? I dunno, but I was pretty annoyed at that news, since I wouldn't have gone if they hadn't needed me to, and suddenly... they didn't need me to.
Well, I wasn't
that annoyed, or I would have cancelled the plane tickets. I didn't, but only because my parents were all excited about my visit and making plans for us to do stuff while I'm there. So I'm going, even though BlizCon is pretty much irrelevant to me at this point, and who knows, maybe I'll even enjoy myself a bit if I can pretend it's a voluntary vacation. I doubt anyone reading this is going, but if you are and you see me, feel free to say "Hi." I'll be the bored one in the Blizzard North t-shirt.
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Football!
Despite all my bitching about the awful NFL options on Bay Area TV, there have been some decent games on today. I taped the 49ers@Washington game from 10-1, and when I got up at 1:15 I turned on the TV, just in time to see SD lose at Philly. It was on CBS, who was showing the late game, but apparently when their telecast time began at 1, they chose to show the end of an early game rather than the start of the late game.
Lucky me, the only team I sorta root for was on!
Unlucky me, since SD was down 20-17 with 2 minutes to go, and they promptly completed a pass on 3rd and 10 at about the Philly 40. The WR dodged the CB, broke another tackle, ran it down to the 19... and got stripped like the proverbial bitch by a single arm tackle. Eagles recovered, long and unnecessary replay confirmed it, and that was that.
Reading
the game wrapup now, it was even worse than that. SD's superstar running back was completely shut down, so I guess Philly was blitzing and selling out against the run all afternoon. SD still should have won, since they were ahead 17-13 with 2:20 to play, when their OT-clenching field goal was blocked (that never happens in the NFL) and then returned 60 yards for a touchdown (which also never happens in the NFL).
The Chargers' coach gets a lot of shit for always folding up in the playoffs, but hey, at least he gets there in the first place. That being said, they were 12-4 last year and they're 3-4 this year, with all 3 wins by more than 20 points, and all 4 losses by 3 or less. So are they a great team whose coach keeps choking away close games? Or have they just gotten lucky three times, or what?
After that, the late game eventually came on, and it's NYG@Denver, despite the local TV listings still claiming that the Oakland game would be on. I considered watching it, but after watching football on tape all year, I just found the live version intolerable. The first quarter was nearly over by the time they switched away from the end of the SD@Philly game, and I witnessed a sequence of 3 actual plays in about a 15 minute stretch.
Seriously. They were in commercials, came back for a Denver FG, went to more commercials, came back for the kick off (which was a touchback), went to more commercials, came back and ran one play, at which point the first quarter ended and they went to... you guessed it... more commercials. I had time to cut up a huge bowl of salad ingredients (cucumber, zuchini, carrots, red onion, black olives, broccoli, tomatoes, red and green bell pepper), tear up a bunch of lettuce, throw in some of the ingredients, sprinkle it with shredded cheese, put on dressing, put away all of the remaining ingredients, clean up the kitchen and come back into the living room... and I hadn't missed a single play.
At that point I got sick of waiting and played the taped game, which was a highly-entertaining blowout. Lots of points, and since I didn't care who won, I liked it for the scoring. The
49ers lost 52-17 to the Redskins, and if you think that's bad, consider that it was 52-7 with 6 minutes to play. At that point the Redskins' defense was all backups, and the 49ers went 40 yards, kicked a FG, got the ball back with 2 minutes to go, and on a simple dive into the middle by a backup running back, a play simply meant to run the clock and get things over with, the RB bounced off the back of his line, scrambled to the left, found a seam, and miraculously ran 72 yards for a touchdown.
So when you look at that box score and see that the total yardage was 194 to 457, remember that 72 of the 49ers woeful 194 yards came as a complete fluke, on their last play, and that another 45 or so came on their second to last possession, against backup defenders. So yeah, they actually gained something like 85 yards during the 50 minutes that the Redskins were trying.
The funny thing was that the 49ers offense didn't look that bad. Their defense was completely non-existent, letting Washington move the ball at will, by ground or air, but on offense the 49ers tried... they were just helpless. Washington seemed to have about 15 guys on the field at all times, since they rushed at least six guys on every single play, frequently more like 7 or 8, and yet whenever the 49ers rookie QB survived long enough to throw it, his receivers were always tightly-covered. I would assume it was the QB's fault, but he was under seige by a blitz of Biblical proportions all afternoon, and whenever he threw it, he never had anyone open. It was reminiscent of those college games where Florida State or Miami or whoever plays someone like Duke, or Wake Forest, and you actually feel sorry for the completely helpless small school, since it seems like they're playing with about 3 fewer players.
The 49ers had so little time to throw that it seemed like every pass was either a quick slant or an out to a smothered receiver, or a long bomb, since that's the only way their QB could stay upright long enough to throw the ball more than 10 yards downfield. They never ran any sort of delayed crossing pattern, or screen, or hook route, since they literally never had the time, with the swarm of Redskin defenders around their line of scrimmage. Washington simply attacked with 2/3 of their defense on every play, and apparently none of the 49ers receivers are good enough to require double coverage. In short, Washington made it look ridiculously easy. The final score was not deceptive at all; if they'd played a doubleheader, game two would have been another 42-7 type score. It was as one-sided a football game as I've ever seen.
And when it ended, I had the end of the
GB@Minn game on the tape, and that was unexpectedly entertaining too. Both teams suck, but GB was supposed to be 1-4 this year. Minnesota was supposed to be a playoff team, but they lost their first two games in diastrous fashion, and now half their defense is under investigation for participating in some sort of
stripper/whore boat orgy. As you'd expect from such a group of dead men walking, GB leaped out to a 17-0 lead at the half, before deciding to show that they deserve their 1-4 record too, and doing nothing for 2 quarters, allowing Minnesota to score 20 straight points. At that point GB got a clue and tied the game with a field goal with 24 seconds left. At that point, just wanting the game to end so I could see some of the early highlights on the post game show, I asked aloud, to no one in particular, "Did anyone really want to see these godawful teams play overtime?"
The football gods must have heard my plea, since GB made only a minimal effort to tackle on the kickoff, and allowed the Minn return guy to bounce around and get to his own 35. GB then expertly-deployed the prevent defense, rushing no one and covering deep, which allowed Minnesota to throw a pair of short passes and gain 25 yards in 15 seconds.
Then, with 2 seconds left the Minn kicker nailed a 56 yard kick, his career long, and mercifully we were spared overtime. And there was great exultation amongst the Minnesota faithful. "Two and four! Two and four!" Yes, and when they finish the season at 5-11, their new coach can look back on this key victory and blame it for moving them from 4th to the 9th pick in the draft, causing them to just miss the college player they most wanted.
While typing this I've been taping the late Den@NYG game, so I can watch that and then the taped NFL highlights later. (It's sad, but you've got to tape even the highlight shows now, since Chris Berman just can not shut up with his impossibly-superficial analysis.)
Apparently there's baseball on later too, but my interest in the world series is non-existent, so I'll see the score later, at most. The paraphrased quote of the post season thus far came from Malaya, when I remarked that the White Sox were in the playoffs, and she asked, "Those aren't the Red Sox? There are two teams named after their sock color? What city are they from?" Yes, the other
other Chicago baseball team, the one no one cares about. Even in Chicago. I'm sure the FOX TV execs were just overjoyed when the Yankees and Red Sox exited the post season without much of a struggle, clearing the way for national indifference in the face of an Anaheim/Chicago ALCS, and resultant World Series. Chicago's up 1-0 in the series, leading to a scene where Chicago city officials gather in a room to ask each other, "So, do we have a parade if we win, or what? What if no one turns up, and it's just a bunch of Latino guys riding down empty streets in convertibles?"
If they win three more times I guess we'll find out, eh? It probably beats a Houston win though, since that victory parade would inevitably end in a jumble of twisted metal and exultation, when the
Streetcar Named Disaster plowed into the convertible holding the universally-reviled Roger Clemons and severed both his pitching arm and penis, simultaneously preventing him from winning any more games and giving birth to any more
K-named children.
Volkswagen Auto Towers
I know little about this, but I saw the photo on German Yahoo, and thought it was just too cool not to reproduce. Yes, that's as big as it looks, and those are full-sized Volkswagens, and that's a scary-big elevator without anything even resembling safety rails. Here's the image caption:
A Volkswagen Polo is loaded in the "Car Towers" of the VW Autostadt in Wolfsburg, northern Germany, pictured on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005. The Autostadt, situated next to Volkswagen's headquarter, is Volkswagen's theme park, and distribution centre where daily 5500 visitors view Volkswagen brands like Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini. (AP Photo/Fabian Bimmer)
A quick search turned up a lot
of articles that made mention of the car towers, but they all seem to cover the computers and mechanized operation of the facility, rather than talking about what it looks like, why they made it that way, etc.
The official site isn't much more informative, and it sounds like those towers are just futuristic parking lots, rather than some sort of magical vending machines. Pity that.
At Autostadt, collecting your new car is an event in itself. The best idea is to begin that special day with a relaxing trip to Autostadt followed by a tour until the big moment arrives: In a fully automated procedure, your new car is brought down to you from one of the 20-story Car Towers. Large signboards in the Customer Center show you when your turn has come. Then, you're handed the keys, your picture is taken, the glass doors open and your brand-new car appears. You're all set to go.
I was trying to envision some sort of viewing area that would let you climb up and down staircases, or ladders, or wear a jetpack as you zipped around and looked over the cars. But even with that, you couldn't get in them (not with a 20 story drop behind you) or test drive them or specify the options and colors and such you wanted. It's still a nifty way to see your new car come out, but it's more novelty than revolution.
Movies and trailers.
I haven't blogged about films in a while, other than belatedly reviewing them, because there haven't been any movies I've cared about. That still hasn't changed, but since I spent the last half hour checking out some new trailers, I might as well mention them.
First of all, the one new major film this weekend didn't interest us. It's Doom, and the reviews are about what you'd expect for a mindless action shoot-em-up that aspires to be a rip off of Aliens. 21% on RT, but at least it's not horrible; most of the reviews are bad, but they're not horrible. It's at 32% on Metacritic, which isn't good, but at least it's not getting zero star scores. Which, for a video game movie, is something of an achievement.
As for the trailers, there are a ton. Apple's Quicktime Trailer Page has undergone some renovations, and they've added a lot of high definiton trailers. These are pretty much broadband only, checking in at at least 70meg, and rising all the way up to 160meg and more for the best ones. They are glorious to behold too, with near-DVD image quality. Unfortunately for me, my nearly three year old computer can't handle them. Not even the small ones; I get the sound, but it's like watching a slide show with a new image about every three seconds. Malaya's somewhat newer iMac does a better job, but she still can't watch the large ones. Did you ever think you'd see the day when your computer needed an upgrade to watch a movie trailer? If your machine can handle the load, check them out though; quite a few are worth watching just for the imagery and such, even if you don't much care about the movie.
The biggest one I've yet tried to view is V for Vendetta, the larger version of which is 136meg and displays in a gigantic 1920x1080. So yeah, you need a new, powerful computer, and a monitor with enormous resolution, or best yet, one of those glorious Apple Cinema Displays that are so gorgeous they're worth venturing into the hacky sack-scented environs of an Apple store just to drool over.
As for V for Vendetta... eh. Check out the normal trailer, if you can't swing the big ones. The movie is an adaptation of a comic book no one has ever heard of, produced by the unspellable-Wachzowski Brothers (of Matrix fame/infamy) and directed by the 1st A.D. on Matrix 2 and 3. Whether or not that's a good resume is open to debate. I've still never brought myself to watch Matrix 3 on DVD; the initial theater viewing was so depressing. Vendetta might be pretty cool, and I like that they didn't bow to pressure to change plot elements around (it's set in a futuristic fascistic England and features bombings) after recent real life terrorist events in London. The trailer has grown on me over time, but it's initially very hard to get past the silly Mardi Gras mask the good guy terrorist/freedom fighter wears. Plus he spends the entire trailer hurling ornate daggers (which are not properly balanced to be thrown) at people armed with machine guns. Hasn't he heard what happens to people who bring a knives to gun fights?
Elsewhere, the full trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia is online. (Only on AOL Moviefone, but for once they don't make it too hard to find the link to the big Quicktime version. It's not yet available in HD.) I have never read the books, so I know nothing about the story, but the film looks interesting if only for the sheer amount of completely CG characters. There are talking lions, hawks, moles, and all sorts of goblins, trolls, and other monsters, so it will be interesting to see if people can suspend their disbelief and get into the film. Some people balked at Gollum, never getting over the fact that he was just a bunch of pixels. How are they going to handle lip synching CGI lions and moles and such?
I doubt kids will have any trouble with it, but the all-too-perfect lip synching can get sorta close to uncanny valley issues, for adults. Especially if you think about how completely unsuited to producing human speech the mouths and tongues and fangs and vocal cords are of the animals in question. As always when attending a Hollywood movie, it's best that you don't think.
There's a second Underworld movie coming out (no, really) and it's now got a trailer online. Judging from the not-too-spoilery trailer, the plot of Underworld: Evolution seems to pick up shortly after the first film ended, with Selene, the female vampire lead from the first film, on the run from both Vampires and Werewolves. She's trying to find and un-imprison the first werewolf ever, or something like that, for some reason that will likely make zero sense. As such the film seems to be set largely outdoors, though always outdoors at night, conveniently enough. (As I noted in my absurdly long review of the first mediocre Underworld film, there was never any mention of sunlight whatsoever, and all of the vampires lives in buildings with floor to ceiling windows.)
One of the vampires (who appear to be the bad guys in this one) has somehow grown huge bat wings, and much of the trailer shows him swooping around the night sky and attacking people. I predict an ending fight between him and the super werewolf in which they kill each other, or one survives and has to be killed by Selene, in order to save the world. Why a vampire wants to save the world (I.E. common people) will not be explained. (And yes, Underworld: Evolution seems to be a combination of the worst parts of the plot of Blade Trinity and Van Helsing. That is not a good sign.)
The odd part is that I never saw Scott Speedman in the trailer. He played the male lead in Underworld, a half vampire/half werewolf (don't ask) who Selene falls in love with. I figured they'd written him out of this one, and then when the trailer ends and the credits roll... he's listed second, after Kate Beckinsale. There are a lot of shots of a white werewolf in the trailer. Is that him? Wasn't he black in the first film? Is he never in human form anymore? Or is the trailer just oddly-edited so that we never see the male co-star?
Tom Yum Goong is the next Tony Jaa film, and after Malaya and I loved Ong Bak (strictly for the amazing martial arts), we were immediately interested in this one. Unfortunately, as seems to be the case with all imported films that involve subtitles or dubbing, Tom Yum Goong opened in August in most of Asia, opens in Europe early in 2006, and isn't set for release in the US until December 31, 2006. Which is, I assume, the date they stick on films that will actually open here sometime between next year and never. We'll have to try and track this one down sooner, ordering a copy on VCD from the Philippines or picking one up in one of the little shops in Chinatown or something. Hell, we've never even seen Ong Bak on DVD yet anywhere, and might just have to buy it from Amazon.
I would have liked to watch the new flim clips from Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic, but they're on iFilm, and I can't watch anything there. I don't know which of my security features stops it, but their pop up viewing windows simply do not function. I click; nothing happens. And yes, I've turned off my browser and anti virus pop up blocker, to no avail. So I went and watched the trailer again. And laughed all through it, again. It's recommended, obviously.
It feels like I've been blogging about and wanting to see Night Watch for like two years, until I check the date and realize... I have! Christ it takes forever for any decent foreign films to show up in the US. Anyway, a cool for trailer forDay Watch,the second film in the Night Watch trilogy, is now online. It's in Russian, with no subtitles, and there are far fewer Matrix-esque, reality-bending special effects shots in this one than in the Night Watch trailer. But I still want to see it. And at the rate they're going I might be able to get the whole trilogy, with subtitles, in the US, by 2011 or so.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Things of the Day, Weekend Edition
Quote of the Day: (
QotD Archives)
"If you believe in God, you believe in a supernatural power which does not have to obey the laws of science. Trying to discredit it by pointing out scientific implausibility is futile. Believers shouldn't need science to justify their belief in God. They have faith... Christianity is non-rational. It is a historical invention, and once the assumption that everyone should believe in it is removed, no amount of reshuffling the details can alter its essential absurdity. Trying to defend religion by invoking science is like claiming that three plus four equals ice cream."
--Decca Aitkenhead
Soul-Devouring Worry:Insufficient shiny clothing.
Answer of the Day:Because rust may form on even the most over-lubricated parts.
Curse of the Day:May your lettuce forever outlast your salad ingredients.
Books Lying Open:Harry Potter 6, by J. K. Rowling
The Eight, by Kahterine Neville
Movies to see list:
Jesus is Magic, November 11th (Wait for the DVD.)
Harry Potter 4, November 18th (maybe)
Tom Yum Goong, >God only knows.
Military Confusion
Here's an article that got me thinking about an issue I've long been perplexed by.
RALEIGH, N.C. - Scores of illegal immigrants working as cooks, laborers, janitors, even foreign-language instructors have been seized at military bases around the country in the past year, raising concerns in some quarters about security and troop safety.
The immigrants did not work directly for the military but for private contractors, as part of a large-scale effort by the Pentagon to outsource many routine rear-echelon jobs and free up the troops to concentrate on waging war.
...
This month, officials arrested three foreign language instructors at Fort Bragg. Over the summer, authorities apprehended 74 construction workers lacking documentation at Camp Lejeune, the Marines' major base on the Atlantic Ocean, and caught 49 illegal immigrants at North Carolina's Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. Illegals have also been caught at bases in Idaho and Florida.
Some of them were deported; others were escorted off base and released.
The total of about 150 does not include those working for military contractors off base. The off-base arrests have included hundreds of illegal immigrants hired to prepare field rations by a Texas company that admitted falsifying their employment records. Off-base arrests have also been made in North Carolina, Mississippi and California.
In North Carolina, the military paid contractors $823 million this year and last to perform work at Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune and Seymour Johnson. Such outsourcing is likely to increase, said defense analyst Loren Thompson of The Lexington Institute.
The basic problem is that rather than having soldiers do the cooking, cleaning, and other non-combat work, the military is increasingly contracting with private companies like Halliburton. (And paying far, far more of our tax dollars to have them do it than it would cost to do it themselves. You didn't think Halliburton and all the others gave millions a year in "campaign contributions" for fun, did you?) They do these tasks poorly, at best (see
this post about Heather Yarbrough, or read any of the
daily articles about a complete lack of
oversight and accountability for the billions we're pissing into reconstruction ratholes in Iraq and New Orleans.) but keep getting the contracts thanks to political connections, and as military recruiting continues to fall short of goals, and the National Guard continues to be grossly overextended in a foreign country, this practice will only increase. And the companies getting these contracts will continue to perform them to the absolutely minimum level, and as cheaply as possibly, which guarantees that they will continue to hire illegal immigrants for the work.
Okay, that's all depressing and horrible, but what I've never understood about the military is how they get a blank check for every operation, but how like 0.0001% of that money actually goes to the soldiers or other human elements. Why is it okay that we have billion dollar aircraft and tanks and such being operated and repaired by men and women earning vastly sub-minimum wage? Low level soldiers, sailors, etc earn like $15,000 a year, while working every day, living in crappy barracks in the Iraqi desert, risking their lives, and doing absolutely critical tasks. Meanwhile, Halliburton gets multi-billion contracts, pays foreign nationals in Kuwait $3 a day to do the work they require, charges our armed forces $10 a gallon for gas, and watches their profits and stock price soar.
How does that make sense on any level? How about we increase pay for all active duty military personnel by about 500%, hire a battalion of auditors and accountants to pour over the books, take about $50 billion back from what Halliburton and others have skimmed off the top, and greatly increase standards and requirements for future work? The budget would come out $40b ahead, the recruiting problems would vanish overnight, morale would improve, good people would stay in the service longer, and no one but the blood-sucking parasite defense contractors would be inconvenienced. It's a win win across the board!
Now the chances of anything like this ever happening, with business interests basically merged with the Republican Party leadership, are far less than zero. I mean good lord, the Vice President was Halliburton's CEO 5 years ago, and he and others in the administration will go right back to those types of jobs when they leave public office (potential jail time aside). But it's fun to dream about easy ways to save billions of dollars while strenghtening the national defense, isn't it?
NFL Weekend
I post about this every weekend, and I'm as sick off writing them as you are of (not) reading them. But Jesus Christ, they did it to me again. Sunday's NFL games on Bay Area TV: 10am, SF@Washington. 1pm, Buffalo@Oakland. And no, there's no third game on. Who could possibly want for more than those two examples of professional football excitement?
The real suckery is that last week's Oakland home game featured San Diego, my fave team, and it was not on local TV. Yet this week, with the bland and boring Bills in town, it's on TV. WTF? I keep wondering why there are never two games on at the same time, and I thought maybe it was due to some sort of fan-fucking NFL on TV rule that when the local team is on TV, there can't be another game competing with it. Such a rule would make no sense, but even beside that, it doesn't exist. There are two late games on next week in San Diego, and KC@SD is one of them.
Is it some special rule only for markets with two teams? Why would they do that anyway, essentially forcing forcing fans to watch the local team or no football at all? Don't higher ratings = higher commercial rates? It's like some football widows sneaked in that provision to encourage yard work and vehicular maintenence. Also, what happens when the 49ers and Raiders have home or road games at the same time? Are they both on? Wouldn't there have to be a third game on that Sunday, to fill the other time slot?
In the NFL's defense (if you can call it that), it's sort of
a perfect storm weekend, with no Sunday night game at all, and an absolute slew of terrible matchups. Contests include an NFC North showdown between 1-4 powers, two games where both teams are 2-3, another one where both are 2-4, and a 1-4 vs. a 2-4. In fact, of the 14 games this weekend, just 3 feature two teams with winning records, and neither of those are available on my television. Even the Monday night game sucks, thanks to the Jets' ongoing disaster of a season, so perhaps I'll show inner strength and skip the NFL entirely this weekend, and just concentrate on my novel.
The real irony may hit next weekend, since I'll be visiting the parents down in San Diego. Every weekend I've checked (including this one) there have been three good games on TV in SD, compared to 2 shitty ones on here. I won't be surprised if that reverses next week, and it's the one weekend of the season when better games are on in the Bay Area. That seems unlikely, since I'll at least be guaranteed of seeing KC@SD next Sunday, but the fact that I'll have to watch it with my perpetually gloom-prophesizing father might cost it some bonus points.
Non-Lazy Spamming Scammers
In contrast to that lazy spam scam
I posted about yesterday,
here's a good article about the hard-working locals who run those ubiquitous Nigerian 419 scams:
FESTAC, Nigeria — As patient as fishermen, the young men toil day and night, trawling for replies to the e-mails they shoot to strangers half a world away.
Most recipients hit delete, delete, delete, delete without ever opening the messages that urge them to claim the untold riches of a long-lost deceased second cousin, and the messages that offer millions of dollars to help smuggle loot stolen by a corrupt Nigerian official into a U.S. account.
But the few who actually reply make this a tempting and lucrative business for the boys of Festac, a neighborhood of Lagos at the center of the cyber-scam universe. The targets are called maghas -- scammer slang from a Yoruba word meaning fool, and refers to gullible white people.
...
Samuel is 19, handsome, bright, well-dressed and ambitious. He has a special flair for computers. Until he quit the game last year, he was one of Festac's best-known cyber-scam champions.
Like nearly everyone here, he is desperate to escape the run-down, teeming streets, the grimy buildings, the broken refrigerators stacked outside, the strings of wet washing. It's the kind of place where plainclothes police prowl the streets extorting bribes, where mobs burn thieves to death for stealing a cellphone, and where some people paint "This House Is Not For Sale" in big letters on their homes, in case someone posing as the owner tries to put it on the market.
...
The e-mail scammers here prefer hitting Americans, whom they see as rich and easy to fool. They rationalize the crime by telling themselves there are no real victims: Maghas are avaricious and complicit.
To them, the scams, called 419 after the Nigerian statute against fraud, are a game.
Their anthem, "I Go Chop Your Dollars," hugely popular in Lagos, hit the airwaves a few months ago as a CD penned by an artist called Osofia:"419 is just a game, you are the losers, we are the winners.
White people are greedy, I can say they are greedy
White men, I will eat your dollars, will take your money and disappear.
419 is just a game, we are the masters, you are the losers."
Yes, they've even got a theme song. Whistle while you work? The article goes on and on, talking about the bigger crime bosses who handle the final parts of the deal, their Nigerian contacts in the US who pay personal visits to people who get cold feet during their deals, and so on. It's quite the enterprise, and in a country where $300 a month is a good salary, fleecing some gullible American for a few thousand dollars is an enormous reward.
They're making a colossal amount of money with this too; far more than I would ahve believed.
Asishana Okauru, acting director of financial intelligence for the government's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said $700 million relating to 419 crime had been seized in the two years since the establishment of the EFCC. There have been 12 convictions in such cases brought during that time, he said.
If they were seizing 100% of the money these scams net, that amount would astonish me. Since the corrupt and easily-bribed officials there are actually catching maybe 1 or 2%, it's literally mind-boggling.
It's a sad state of affairs, but whenever you hear someone say that crime doesn't pay, just remember that they're only talking about the wages earned by dumb criminals.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Quick Movie Reviews
Since I keep falling further behind on my review writing, and all of my non-quick-blog-entry writing of late has been on the novel, I finally got in the mood Wednesday night, and banged out several quick reviews. I'll elaborate on these when I give them each their own page in the
Reviews Section, which will happen sometime between tomorrow and never.
Reviewed here:
Serenity,
Fight Club,
Wallace and Gromit in the Case of the Were-Rabbit,
Saw, and
Team America. And away we go.
Serenity, 2005
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 8
Combat Realism: 6
Humor: 6
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 7
Overall: 7.5
Seems to be a lot of 7s there, eh? I didn't plan it that way, but quite a few elements of the movie were very good. Not quite great, but certainly better than average. I was pleasantly-surprised by the clever script, interesting characters, plot twists, and especially by the action scenes. The trailer shots of the pixy-sized girl kicking ass weren't especially convincing, and she was far from perfect in the film, but she moved well (past training as a dancer comes in very handy for fight scenes in film) and the scenes were choreographed and shot nicely. Especially compared to the chop chop chop style most directors use to ruin fight scenes/disguise their actors' complete inability to fight.
The other action elements were fun too, and much larger scale than I expected. The huge space battle near the end too me completely by surprise, and damn was it a lot of fun. You can't help but compare the scene of "one small ship darting through a massive space battle" to the opening of Star Wars III, and the fact that this one is far better, and that it cost perhaps 1/20th what Lucas' did, is actually sort of depressing.
Fight Club, 1999
Script/Story: 8
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Combat Realism: 7
Humor: 5
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 4
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 7
Overall: 7
Malaya and me were quite surprised by this film, which we recently saw on DVD. Yes, it's been out for 6 years, and it's a cult favorite, and
it's very well-regarded, but we'd just never gotten around to watching it until we borrowed the DVD from a friend. I'd never seen it since I thought it was just some stupid thing about men who felt emasculated by the modern world rediscovering their inner strength by beating each other up. Sort of an R-rated version of those
Promise Keeper "no wimmen 'lowed" wankfests.
It is in some ways, but it's a much larger and more interesting story than that. What really surprised us though was that not only did we not know there was a huge plot twist, along the lines of
The Sixth Sense or
The Crying Game, but that we had never even heard that there was such a plot twist. As a result, it took us completely by surprise when it happened near the end of the film, and sent us crawling avidly over the IMDB movie trivia page to see tidbits about how it was foreshadowed and developed.
The big "yank the carpet out from beneath you" twist is believable, more or less. What I found less believable was the whole plot of the film, and the way all of these men, from every walk of life, willingly join up to do anything, legal and otherwise, for their charismatic leader. And seemingly every single guy was 100% committed, even the ones who just showed up at the various fight club meetings to beat each other up. They sat quietly while Brad Pitt lectured them on the evils of materialism and how superficial our lives have become, and then they beat each other, and then they went home, happy and revitalized.
It's basically a fairy tale, and if you buy into it and suspend your disbelief it's a great story and a meaningful film. If you don't it's just 2 hours of bloody brutality that you'll roll your eyes at. The fun factor score is the key measure; I was entertained and appreciated the artistry of the film, but I didn't really buy it and I didn't really enjoy it. Seldom does a movie come along with a real message and this much verve and attitude, so it's certainly worth seeing to make up your own mind about.
Wallace and Gromit in the Case of the Were-Rabbbit
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 8
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 6
Overall: 7
I'm admittedly a huge fan of Wallace and Gromit, and my score is definitely higher than it would be if this was the first W&G film I'd ever seen. With that caveat given, I can recommend this one, but not all that highly. It's cute, it's not painfully stretched out to fill the 90 minute run time, and all of the characters are well done. The sets are great, the claymation is believable and enjoyable, the voices are good, it's got a plot, lots of laughs, tremendously-groanable puns, and some good action set pieces.
All that said, it's not as good as their previous shorts, since those are just jam-packed with action and wild fun. This film works better as an actual film, but that means there are long stretches of dialogue and exposition and character interaction. All of it very well done, to the point you forget you're watching clay figures move, and the characters have 10x more life in them than
The Corpse Brides' boring stereotypes, but I wanted more excitement and action. The climactic chases in
The Wrong Trousers and
A Close Shave blow away the action in Were-Rabbit, and this film would definitely have been improved by turning it into a short. It's not a short story, it's more like a novella, and at 50 or 60 minutes it would have been a masterpiece. At 90 minutes though, it needed just a bit more action and fun, with less repetitive vegetable worship and rabbit chasing.
I recommend it to everyone, but not until you've seen the first three W&G shorts. If you've seen them, then buy a ticket to this one. If you haven't, get them on DVD and watch them a few times and wait for this one on DVD.
Saw, 2004
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 7
Humor: 3
Horror: 8
Eye Candy: 3
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
Saw is a brilliant film and a horror masterpiece, when you consider they made it in 18 days, for 1.2 million dollars. It's far better than numerous action/horror films that cost more than $40 or $50 million, and it has one of the best concepts of any horror movie ever made.
In a relative scoring chart, like the one I use on my
Chop Socky reviews page, this one would have 8s and 9s across the board. Compared to other films though, quality films with quality actors and scripts, it falls a bit short. But for the target audience of horror fans, it's absolutely brilliant.
The concept is what it's really all about, and while the Jigsaw Killer is never believable except as an elaborate plot device, and the conclusion is completely ridiculous when you consider the leaps of faith it required by the person who set it all into motion, it's still a damn nifty idea. In a sick, twisted, devious, and gruesome sort of way. This is definitely not a film for children, though teens will likely adore it. I would probably have watched it every day, to the point of memorizing the dialogue, if it had come out when I was 16ish.
The biggest drawback, besides the plot holes that gape in retrospect, is the acting. It's uniformly horrendous, especially by the actual actors in the film. One of the leads is the co-script writer, and he's fine, for a horror movie. Danny Glover is featured as a crazy ex-cop, and he's awful. Totally out of his depth trying to play a nutty guy; he's like
Sergeant Murtaugh on LSD. Worse is
Carey Elwes, whose bloated, blotchy-face will make you think
The Princess Bride was released
far longer than 18 years ago.
Given the acting, an unfortunate amount of the film is spent in one small set, with two men chained to opposite walls of a bathroom, and a bloody corpse lying between them. It's a great set up, and the cool stuff we see in flashbacks and elsewhere keeps our interest, but when there are two guys in a room and neither of them can act, it gets painful, after a while.
Imagine Silence of the Lambs, but with Denise Richards and Freddie Prinze Jr. playing the leads.
Okay, that was mean.
Saw isn't that bad, but 90% of the coolness is the plot and the scenarios it shows us, with acting that steadily drags it down, and a plot that grows more and more absurd as the surprises are revealed. It's far better than it has any right to be though, considering the resources the filmmakers had at their disposal.
Team America, 2004
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 5
Action: 8
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 4
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
This one is hard to score, since it's a puppet movie that lampoons every Bruckheimer-esque action film ever made, as well as the fact that it's actually a movie starring puppets. Marionettes, to be more specific. Made by Matt and Trey of
South Park fame,
Team America is awesomely-obscene, completely ridiculous, and frequently hilarious. It's also rather challenging to get into, since you have to just buy into the fact that they're puppets, on visible strings, on sets that are obviously about two feet high. It took me a while, and I was bored early on with all of the exposition and such, but I began to enjoy the movie halfway through, and I laughed a lot during the last half hour.
This is one that's either going to work for you, or not, without a lot of middle ground. I can see watching this one a few times and liking it more each time, as it gets easier and easier to suspend my disbelief and astonishment. And I can also imagine a person making it through ten minutes before storming away and cursing about it being the stupidest movie he/she has ever seen.
It is stupid, awesomely so, but that's all intentional. Every character is a broadly-drawn stereotype taken straight from other cheesy action movies, and almost every event is much the same. The titular Team America chases comically-cliche terrorists and blows up most of the world's major landmarks in their efforts to stop the WMD-packing, bearded, turban-wearing bad guys. In every case, as they stand in the smoking ruins of Paris, or beside the rubble heaps they reduced the Sphinx and Pyramids to, they give each other high fives and celebrate, with no remorse, regret, or even any comprehension of what they're doing.
The whole film is satire, often going way past the level you expect it to reach, and it's brilliant, in a way. Really, it gets funnier the more I think about it, as stuff that was just "WTF?" inducing at the time seems clever and subversive in retrospect. It's really hard to suspend your disbelief and get into the film though, and the frequent jokes about the puppets are either hilarious, or off-putting. Several scenes show them in the real world, where they are obviously about one foot high, riding around in toy cars and such. I was surprised that no shot ever featured a puppet getting stuck on something, or hit by a car, and yanking one of the puppeteers down from above and right into the model of an Egyptian town, or Team America's secret base inside Mount Rushmore. That's about the only thing they could have done to further lampoon the technology of their own film, but I guess even they thought it would be going too far.
If I ever get around to watching this one again I'll post an update to say if it was hilarious and perfect the second time, or even harder to enjoy. I'm actually sort of curious how I'll react, since this one definitely grew on me over time, and it seems funnier every time I think back on it.
Lazy Spamming Scammers
This one came in tonight, and I thought the URL was amusing enough to be worth posting. Here's the full email:
Hello,
We are USA electronics company.
We need cooperation with you.
You can earn some cash for the small help in one matter.
Please contact us only by this URL for more details: http://financial-corporation.com/
Thanks,
Alex Butheman
Manager.
What kind of corporation? A financial one! It's sort of surreal; like getting an email from esquire@legal-lawyers.com. Or something. So I
checked out their site, wondering what the scam was, and had some laughs at the mangled English.
We are happy to announce about the upcoming employee recruiting at the Financial Service Inc. Yes, the vital moment has come and Your chance of getting the top-rated financial manager position is as close as never before.
Wow! As close as never before! Actually, I think that's the truth, if only by accident.
They go on and on from there, spending an amazing amount of words to say nothing at all, before finally getting to a text entry box into which you are supposed to enter your resume and email. I wouldn't be surprised if the resume box isn't even hooked up, and all they really want are live emails from brain dead people, who will fall for their version of the Nigerian email scam. At least I assume that's what it is, with their mentions of bank account transfers and such. Either that or one of those things where they transfer you what appears to be real money, but that you can't touch for a week or so until it clears. During that time you send them your money, and when the week ends the advance they sent you vanishes since it never had any actual money backing it up at all.
I tried
googling part of the key phrase from their site and to no one's surprise, the top site results all have "scam" in their URL. I also checked the site registration, but it just points to an amateurish-looking
domain name buying service, one that exists exactly to facilitate anonymous scam websites like this one.
I'm left wondering what I always wonder in this sort of situation. Who falls for this? What human being with the ability to operate a computer and read email actually believes some random emailer is going to give them money for doing nothing? Or better yet, give them a job as a banker if you are just "well-motivated and diligent" enough? Does this sort of thing appeal to the uneducated, who have an ignorantly beligerant attitude? "I don't need no book larnin' to do what them fancy lawyers and bankers take mah money fer!" It puzzles me deeply.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Yet Another Hurricane
So Tropical Storm Wilma turned into Hurricane Wilma in record time, and was the strongest Atlantic Hurricane ever measured yesterday, before weakening a bit while still remaining a category five storm. As
the numerous articles on the subject point out:
Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, tying a record set in 1933. It was also the 12th hurricane and tied the record for most hurricanes in a season set in 1969.
The season still has six weeks to run but has already spawned three of the most intense hurricanes on record -- Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Hurricane experts say the Atlantic has swung back into a period of heightened storm activity that could last another 20 years. Climatologists also fear global warming could be making the storms more intense.
Seriously, it might be time to stop trying to live along the US Gulf Coast, or at least the southern tip of Florida. First of all, it's way too hot and humid for humans who don't want to survive a jungle simulation, but now with global warming you're going to get hit by a devastating hurricane every few weeks. Imagine if there were a massive earthquake in California every month? Who would tolerate that? How long would it be before every insurance company pulled up stakes and the rest of the country began to rebel at paying federal loan and bail out money for the inevitable losses suffered?
The funny part is that all the news stories talk about how hurricane X and Y might hit the US, and how much damage they might do here... meanwhile, every single one of them
rips the hell out of Cuba, Trinadad/Tobago, Haiti, the Bahamas, the Yucutan Peninsula, etc. Either a direct hit that scours their shacks to flat heaps of corrogated aluminum, or a glancing blow that still drops half a meter of rain and causes massive mud slides that bury an isolated village or two. But since those aren't actual US states, no one in the US media gives a shit.
On a similar theme, I've enjoyed the sporadic US reporting on the recent earthquake in Pakistan. Remember when Katrina hit New Orleans and killed maybe 1000 people, and it was like the end of the world? Well, the earthquake has killed
up to 80,000 people, with scores of villages and towns basically shaken flat and tens of thousands more stuck out in the mountains in their own Superdomes of isolated helplessness. And it gets a below the fold mention here, if it's mentioned at all. Eight times worse than Katrina, but hey, we've got our own problems in the US of A. Plus there's no good video of the actual shaking, unlike the Katrina flooding, and it's really the eye candy that sells news on US TV. If everyone in Pittsburgh woke up dead tomorrow morning, I'm talking 500,000 mysterious overnight deaths, a car crash downtown would still get more media coverage, if there was color video footage of the vehicles impacting and the resultant fire.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Rich, poor, view poverty differently.
In today's, "They had to poll people to figure this out?" news,
a new survey says:
Polling by the Marguerite Casey Foundation also found that both rich and poor are optimistic about future prospects for their children.
Those at the poverty level or the near poor were almost twice as likely to say factors beyond their control are responsible for their impoverished state. Those who make higher incomes were evenly split on whether poverty is caused by external factors or by people not making enough effort.
In response I say, "Well, duh." Of course poor people aren't going to conclude that they're poor because they're lazy, and of course rich people aren't going to admit that poor people might try just as hard as they do. No one wants to be responsible for their own poverty, and rich people want to blame the poor for their own poverty since then they don't have to bother with nuisances like compassion or support for better school funding and jobs programs.
Seriously, how much money did the
Marguerite Casey Foundation spend on this "told us nothing we didn't already know" survey? Just drop me an email and a check for $1000 next time, kids. I've gotcha covered.
Gym Lifeform Classification
This is a post I've been meaning to make for months, but I was in a prolonged information gathering period. I'm still in it, but I might as well report some initial findings. The theory is to group a majority of health club members into several distinct groups, based on their appearance, behavior, attitude, or some combination of all measured factors. Categories should be easily measurable by laymen, as well as at least mildly amusing. Here are the few I have (with assistance from Malaya) thus far delineated:
Grunters: The first group named an the easiest to classify. These are invariable men, or perhaps boys, mostly in the 16-24 age range. They have some muscles, but often a pot belly to go with it, and they never do any of the cardio machines. What they do is head straight to the weights, where they commence to pump up. What makes them grunters is not that they are beefy, but how they go about getting that way. They mostly do dumb bells, almost exclusively in bicep-building exercises, but it's when they hit the various weight machines that they earn their classification. Grunters are defined, most directly, by high numbers over reps. One will routinely get on the sitting bench press machine, dial it up to 140 pounds, and strain out 3 reps, rest for five minutes while sitting on the machine and keeping anyone else from using it, then manage three more before wandering off, shaking his arms.
They do every machine that way; always moving the weight up to as much as they can possibly lift, never doing more than five reps, and always occuping the machine for at least three times longer than anyone else in the gym would. Needless to say they leave the weight setting as high as they set it, so the next person to come along can't help but notice their mighty strength.
Fortunately for me, I'm neither 18 nor worried about my penis size, which frees me up to set the same machine to 60 or 80 pounds, do my 25 or 30 reps, and move on to something else, all in less than two minutes, and while using far more energy than they did with their Herculean display.
Coasters: The next easily-identifiable group are pretty much the opposite of the Grunters, in behavior. They may sometimes actually be Grunters, but Coasters are defined as people who occupy cardio machines, while never actually doing anything that would give them a workout. I've often done an entire workout; half an hour of running or fast elliptical, 15 weight machines, free weights, stretching, etc, and left while the same Coaster spent the entire time pedaling along on the same exercise bike, reading the same magazine, and never even approaching a sweat. Bikes beneath the ceiling fans and with good sightlines to the televisions are their main concern.
Coasters are often old people, but in those cases it's difficult to be sure of a classification, since they might just be too old and fragile to go any faster. You can be sure you've spotted one when they're young though, and far more interested in walking along and talking to their friend, or reading their magazine, than they are in getting exercise. You'll often see a Coaster walk on a treadmill for an hour, or work the elliptical on zero resistance for 45 minutes, or sit on an exercise bike while moving their legs in a circle, but never at a speed that would burn more calories than they could do on the couch at home. While they can be found on all the machines, they favor the exercise bikes because, duh, they can sit down and thus not even use the energy required to stand up. The bikes have all sorts of digital tours with a variety of hills and such, and I seldom use them, but Coasters all seem to find a course that's got a lot of hills; all of them down.
Free Range Rude: A term stolen directly from Hannibal Lecter, the FRR can be Coasters or Grunters, or any other sort of gym patron. What makes them FRR is their obliviousness to others, and the way they get in your way without even realizing they are doing so. These are the people you get stuck behind in supermarkets when they leave their carts right in the center of a crowded aisle while they browse the boxes of cake mix, or while they greedily gobble down free samples of pretty much anything.
At the gym they are the ones who sit on the same weight machine for 5 or 10 minutes without actually using it more than 5% of that time. Or who get on the good elliptical machines (the ones with the arms that swing) and walk slowly for half an hour, without using their arms for anything more than turning pages in their magazines. Or who spread out their yoga mat and do stretches or sit ups while blocking an aisle.
Their moment of glory though, comes in on the express workout machines. Those are a dozen machines that are set up in a long row, with pneumatic resistance rather than weights. The theory is that you do them all in a row, going for no more than 30 or 40 seconds each, and going as hard and a fast as you can on each, with resistance in both directions, courtesy of the pneumatics. These machines at our gym are all in a row, are color coded, and have stickers on each one saying Express, along with several huge signs and banners hanging from the ceiling above them. They're also the machines you constantly see people working in rapid sequence, heading from one end to the other.
None of these clues tip off the FRR though, or else they wouldn't be FRR. They'll wander right over and plop down on a machine in the center of the Express Station, set to looking over the machine, puzzling at the pneumatic resistance, and so on. All while remaining mercifully oblivious to the annoyed Express workout people who are moving up to their left, machine by machine, and then skipping past them to the next machine, while throwing them dirty looks. The thought process of a FRR: "What a strange machine? However can it work? How odd that other people keep moving past me... I must not be in their way though, or they'd stand and wait for me to finish with this one. I wonder what this dial, numbered 1-6 does, when I turn it? Perhaps it somehow relates to the resistance I feel when I lift the padded bars beside my ears?"
At our gym, the FRR are almost exclusively 50+ y/o white women, though since that describes a large percentage of the white bread suburban gym clientele on the whole, I can't conclude that that demographic is most likely to be a clueless FRR, or if it's just coincidence.
Past Their Prime: This group is quite small at this point, and made up of just two or three men at our gym. They are quite dinstinct though, and their scariness more than offsets their numerical scarcity. The PTP guys are in their 40s, or perhaps early 50s, and they are in great shape for their age. Unfortunately, they still dress like they did when they were 25, in 1978, and are wholly oblivious to how a man of their age looks in short shorts, knee high socks, and a bushy Magnum P.I. moustache.
What looks best on a physically fit man in his early 50s? Dignity.
The sad part is that if these guys had some current workout fashions, or even just plain sweats and a t-shirt, and they could maybe shave, they'd look damn good. The sadder part is that they strut around like peacocks, obviously proud to still be in good shape at their age, and have no idea how ridiculous they look doing it. I see other gym patrons, especially younger women, actually averting their eyes when these guys strike a jaunty pose with a dumbbell, or perch themselves on a weight machine and look around, cleary hoping someone will notice how much metal they're pressing.
PTPs never go anywhere near cardio machines, or break a sweat, needless to say. They may overlap somewhat into Grunter territory too, but their reckless vanity generally sets them apart. That and the fact that they've at least matured enough not to waste their workout doing sets of 3 reps on far, far more weight than they can safely lift.
Other Classifications: These categories are a good start, but there are still many more groups that need to be identified and described. Our gym is near a college, and gets tons of college girls in, but they can't be classified that easily, since they behave in different ways. Their greatest unifying theme is their clothing, which almost invariably includes shorts with a waistband low enough to allow their hip fat jelly roll to flop over. They roll down the waists of their sweats to create this look, if necessary. But other than that, and a generally lackadaisical approach to exercise (hence the jelly rolls), they differ widely. Some actually workout hard, while others treat the gym like study hall, and talk and talk and talk, often while Coasting, as if they had to keep gabbing to kill an hour before they are allowed to go home. Malaya suggested a name with the word "hen" in it, but we haven't figured out a pithy description or non-all-inclusive definition yet.
There are also a lot of older women, 40 and 50-something housewife types, who are usually Coasters, but who sometimes actually workout, though they seem to mostly be there for the spin classes or the yoga classes. They might be classified by their clothing, but many of them manage to blend in pretty well. The occasional 60ish woman in a sports coat is good for a double take, but they're not there often enough to get their own category.
I could probably also create a "No Nonsense" category, to which both Malaya and myself would belong. These are people who enter the gym in their workout clothing, go hard for 45 or 60 minutes, and leave. No socializing, no posing, lots of cardio, weights after that, and so on. Unfortunately there's nothing there really worth joking about or describing, and in fact these people tend to be pretty invisible, since they're constantly moving between stations and aren't preening or taking up more than their share of space and thus coming to the attention of others. Though I and my girlfriend belong to this group, I realize that the gym would be a pretty damn boring place to blog about if everyone else did, too.
If anyone else has any nominations or gym observations, feel free to hit up the comments. I need a few more groups, so I can codify these on a content page, for easy reference.
Monday and Football.
I'm not sure where the day went. I got up at a reasonable time, and I did some yoga, and then I ran some errands, and when I got home Malaya was at the gym, and when she got home we did some Kali and then I went to the gym, and I cooked once I got home while the Monday Night Football game finishing taping, and then we hung out on the couch for a while, and then she went to bed and I watched MNF on tape, and here it is, 3am and I've done nothing of any substance all day. Imagine once we're married with kids and all the attendant, time-consuming bullshit they bring into life? *shudder*
Anyway, the MNF game wasn't much fun past halftime, though it was instructive. It was too bad that the Rams QB got injured in the 2nd quarter, since that ended any hope they had of winning, since they had to keep scoring to stay ahead of the Colts, even after being spotted a 17-0 lead. They didn't, and once the backup QB started throwing passes up for grabs in the second half it got ugly in a hurry, and went from 17-0 to 20-45 in nothing flat.
As I said,
the game was instructive though, in two ways: 1) We now know that Mike Martz coaching
is in fact better than a dead man. Even though he frequently costs his team the game with insane play calling and challenges, at least he's got a pulse and some guts, and would have at least tried to do something to change the momentum of the game when the Colts began steamrolling to their comeback. 2) I'd often wondered how it would work if a team played in a prevent defense for an entire game against a quality offense like the Colts'. Now I know. They'd stop any plays from going for more than 20 yards, but with only 3 or 4 guys on the line they'd give up at least 8 yards per rush, and every single time the offense threw a pass shorter than 10 yards, it would be caught by an essentially uncovered receiver.
It looked for a time like we'd get #3, and see how this year's Colts' team fared against an opponent with a pulse, and how their defense did against a real offense. Early results have to be encouraging to the rest of the league, with the Rams sprinting out to a huge lead, thanks largely to a fumbled kick off. But then their QB threw a pick, got hurt trying to make the tackle, and that was that. Predictable running and short pass plays took over the Rams' offense after that, and anyone can defend against that sort of wimpiness.
It's not the Colts' fault
their schedule is so easy; it's mostly luck and their weak division that is letting them go into November without a single decent opponent (that and the fact that Jacksonville wasn't playing well yet when they lost to the Colts in week 2), and more luck that New England has been devastated by injuries for a second straight year. Things do eventually get interesting for the Colts though, starting in week 11 when they play @ Cincinnati, host Pittsburgh, host Tennessee, @ Jacksonville, host San Diego, and @ Seattle, before closing out with a freebie (hosting Arizona).
Their ridiculously light early schedule and hard finish make me wonder though; which is better for a successful team, in whatever sport? Is it better to streak out to a 7-0 record built by playing one quality team in 2 months, while saving a stretch of 5 tough games in 6 weeks for the end, when you've already pretty well clinched a playoff spot? Or do you want to go through hell early on, come out of that at 3-3 or whatever, before gaining strength and confidence every week during a long winning streak against pushovers? Which builds more confidence? Which is more likely to have your team playing well come playoffs? Which is better to avoid injuries and fatigue over a long season?
It's worth study (not that I'm going to study it), but it would have to be calculated carefully. It wouldn't be hard to check win/loss records and see teams that won many more early season vs. late season, and then how they did in the playoffs, but that's superficial. You'd also have to factor in strength of schedule, figure if they had a streak of good luck or bad luck that skewed the results, note their injuries, etc. In theory, I'd think a team on a late season winning streak would be a better bet, since they are, in theory, playing their best ball then, and you expect that to carry over into the playoffs. But what about teams that dominated early and got a big enough lead that they lost focus and stumbled near the end, or that were far enough ahead to rest their best players the last week or two. Could they then turn it back on in the playoffs, and play even better, being rested and ready?
Sunday, October 16, 2005
The fantasy novel and writing plans in general.
I started to write this as part of the previous post, but when it took off in a strange direction and went very off topic, I decided to present it separately.
As I said previously, Malaya plowed through the rest of chapter five on Saturday evening, and said it was the best one yet, and that she was dying to read more, and that she really liked and was curious about the 3rd main character in the novel, who finally makes his/her appearance in 5. Better yet, I'm already done with 6, though I've got a few days of work editing and fixing things in it now. Plus, while thinking and doing notes and such I figured how to resolve a couple of sticky "How do I get X to happen in Y?" issues I'd been wrestling with in the later chapters.
so for the novel, I'm at least 2/3 done, I know exactly what's going to happen from here on out, and I'm eager to write it. Now all I need is a publisher eager to give me lots of money, and you guys would actually have an opportunity to spend real money on something I wrote. Although,
that's an option now, I suppose. *cough*
The one thing I'm wondering about now is the length of
my novel. Just going by words, it'll be at least 400k total, and that's assuming I do
major trimming in chapter 2 and 3. Chapter 2 alone is 171,000 words right now, which is longer than quite a few complete novels. I think 2 will come in 40-60k words in the final version though, and won't really lose that much content in the editing process; most of the length now is stuff that will be much improved by editing/summarizing anyway. (And yes, I'll save it for some superduper unexpurgated version.)
The just-completed chapter six is going to be around 50,000 words, and it's got virtually no fat to trim away, unlike chapters 2, 3, and 4. Malaya didn't think there was much dead space in 5, and while I'm sure I can clip away a few thousand words here and there, it's just over 40,000 words now, and can't get that much shorter. It's hard to estimate the whole thing since I've still got 3 or 4 chapters to write (not sure exactly where the chapter breaks will be since the last stretch is all pretty much one long chain of events taking place over a relatively short time frame), but figuring those will be 40-50k each, the whole thing will be 400-600k or so. Most novels are in the 100-150k range, though fantasy tales often run longer. Unfortunately, my massive length is
apparently sort of bad for a first (published) novel, and while I like to think mine is special and wonderful and unique, it remains to be seen if publishers or agents (or the book-buying public) will agree.
On the other hand, fantasy is rather overrun with sequels and trilogies and even longer series, and while I think of this first one as a single novel, it's quite common for publishers to break up longer single works into multiple volumes for publication. Lord of the Rings and Martin's new Fire and Ice novel, for instance. (Completely unjustified comparison of my own work to their masterpieces aside.) A more reasonable comparison would be to Paolini's Eragon, which I recently read and found surprisingly enjoyable, but haven't gotten around to reviewing yet. His fantasy tale is being published as a trilogy, the
second of which just came out on top of the best seller list. I've not read it yet, but given how book one ended I think his trilogy is just going to be one really long story, posted in three individual 700 page (not small print) novels.
So assuming my novel comes in around 500k and agents/editors don't force massive changes, we're looking at one 1000 page novel with tiny print, or more likely a pair of 600 page novels with normal print, or possibly even a trilogy, if they stretch it out and pare down each book to 450 pages with easy-to-read print. Complicating things further is the sequel, which I've got largely thought out and outlined. It's definitely a sequel too, not just a continuation of the first book (which might appear as 3 continued books anyway); events are set a decade or so after events in the first book/series/trilogy/whatever, and the world has changed in major ways over that time. Furthermore, knowing my writing the planned sequel novel will almost certainly blow up to 300,000 words or more, which will lead to another round of one huge novel vs. two long books vs. a cash cow trilogy debate.
I guess having too much good stuff is not such a horrible problem, (though counting chickens before the eggs are even properly laid can be) but it will be interesting to see how the whole situation resolves itself. In the outside case of the whole thing going to 5 or 6 novels, which would theoretically be published at a rate of about one a year... damn! Even if this thing got off the ground next year, as I sincerely hope it will, they'd still be putting out books from my first novel and sequel in like 2011. That's a bizarre thought, considering I hope to be finished with this first novel/trilogy/whatever by December, and then done with the sequel/2nd trilogy/whatever in 2006. Especially when you take into account the fact that I don't really consider myself a fantasy writer.
I always figured I'd be doing it with contemporary horror, since that was my first great interest as a reader and a writer. I've got several ideas for horror novels, possibly even sort of combo horror/mystery novels, and tons of ideas about characters and situations based on real life that I can't in any way work into the fantasy world I'm writing now. I want to write some novels set in the modern day, sort of along the lines of Stephen King's early stuff, and I don't want to finish them and then have a publisher sit on them until 2012, as they wait for the fantasy stuff to be published.
On top of that genre confusion, there's no way the fantasy novel I'm doing now is my fantasy masterpiece. I don't know if I even have one of those in me, but I love fantasy and have tons of ideas for reinventing the traditional faux-Tolkien Middle Ages sword and sorcery schtick that I'm pretty much wallowing in with my ongoing effort. Ideas that I can't put into the current novel(s), but that I certainly hope to flesh out in other novels, someday. That shouldn't be a problem, though. Plenty of authors have more than one series in very different fantasy/scifi worlds, after all. And some of them even do other genres at the same time, though I have no idea how they work that with their publisher(s).
I hope to find out though, since I want to write in a variety of fields, and I wouldn't rule out non-fiction either. Hell, I might go to grad school and take classes in writing prose and non-fiction, and do a non-fiction book for my thesis. A research and interview-heavy book about fantasy, fan-fiction, and the Internet, perhaps? Being able to interview myself for major portions of it would certainly cut down on the footwork.
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