Saturday, December 31, 2005
Year End Site Stats
I hardly ever post about site stats anymore, largely since I hardly ever look at them anymore. I never plug this site from the D2 site, or mail out links to try and get hits, or anything like that. I'm content trying to entertain the guys and girls who read BC regularly, and the random googlers who happen across it. Even with the much-improved Urchin stats that
came in a couple of months ago, I've seldom posted about it or looked at the stats.
I'm looking tonight though, while Malaya's gaming with some D2 and we're drinking sweet wine and listening to music and anticipating the New Year in a little over an hour. I'm fooling around, in other words, and with the year ending, why not? Yes, I may be a little bit drunk. But not too drunk to HTML!
If anyone were reading this now, rather than off doing New Year's stuff, I'd ask for requests on site stats. Since no one is, I'll just indulge my own curiosity, which is pretty much what this site is all about.
Here are the ten most viewed articles since October.
1. Castration, 5,527 views, 17.70%.
2. Penis Size, 3,668 views, 11.74%
3. Circumcision, 1,972 views, 6.31%
4. Men vs. Women views, 1,885, 6.04%
5. Ann Coulter, 1,332 views, 4.26%
6. Online Dating, 1,061 views, 3.40%
7. The Halloween Tree, 915 views, 2.93%
8. Serial Killers, 603 views, 1.93%
9. Articles Index, 590 views, 1.89%
10. Conspiracy Theories, 531 views, 1.70%
11. Anna Kournikova Topless518 views, 1.66%
Apparently, it's all about the penis?
I should also admit that I haven't made any updates to the article section in months and months, and that the latest stuff archived there (taken from daily updates and preserved in thematically-related articles) is from early 2003. I need an intern. Or a finished book, a publishing contract, and about two weeks to kill just doing BC archiving stuff.
Top ten most-viewed individual blog posts. This one was sort of a pain. The Urchin stat engine is a vast improvement over the old Webalyzer one, but it can't sort the results with add and subtract words at the same time. So, when I searched by putting "2005" in the page title, most of the top returns were the week-long archive pages (For example,
#2 overall, 366 loads.), most of which have 10 or 20 or more entries on them, thus skewing the results. Since I couldn't "-blogger" in the same search, I just had to list the top 50 such pages, then skip the weekly archives. Thus these results aren't #1-10, and the percentages are correspondingly low. If there were some way to apportion the loads per weekly archive page into individual articles, the numbers would be considerably higher, and also a bit more accurate.
1. Feb 28, 2005, 693 views, 4.71%
3. Things of the Day, June 27, 2005, 361 views, 2.45%
9. Volkswagon Auto Towers, October 23, 2005, 129 views, 0.88%
17. Lazy Spamming Scammers, October 20, 2005, 112 views, 0.76%
23. Pre-blogger, March 2, 2005, 100 views, 0.68%
29. Eragon's author, prodigy or hack? September 13, 2005, 65 views, 0.44%
30. Pre-blogger January 3, 2005, 63 views, 0.43%
31. August 24, 2005, A Streetcar Named Disaster, 61 views, 0.41%
32. Pre-blogger, February 7, 2005, 60 views, 0.41%
33. September 27, 2005, Eragon Mini-Review, 59 views, 0.40%
And finally, here are the top fifteen most viewed reviews. How many of these were actually read, or just clicked to since the words in the review happened to match the unknown person's search string is another question. Also, since all of these were posted in daily blogs before getting their own review page, it's likely that several hundred people read them that way, instead of via the review page. In other words, this list has little overlap with some imaginary, "most read reviews by Flux" list. Not that anyone really cares.
Like the other stats, these are from early October through today, since that's all the time the Urchin stats cover.
1. Ong Bak, 811 views, 4.59%
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 733 views, 4.15%
3. Blade Trinity, 677 views, 3.83%
4. The Historian, 655 views, 3.71%
5. Savage Pastimes, 632 views, 3.58%
6. A Wizard of Earthsea, 603 views, 3.41%
7. Depraved: The shocking true story of America's first serial killer, 596 views, 3.37%
8. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, 589 views, 3.33%
9. Reviews Index, 570 views, 3.23%
10. Stories Rabbits Tell, 403 views, 2.28%
11. Elektra, 332 views, 1.88%
12. The Transporter, 265 views, 1.50%
13. Chili's Restaurant, 260 views, 1.47%
14. Angels and Demons, 242 views, 1.37%
15. Claim Jumper Restaurant, 231 views, 1.31%
Comparing these to the other most popular pages, you can see a lot of overlap. The daily update with the initial review of
Stories Rabbits Tell, the #10 review, is in the top ten. The article on serial killers and the book review with "serial killer" in the title both made their top ten. I also noticed that two blog updates about
Eragon were in the top ten, and wondered where the review was... until I realized that's one of the things I'm behind on, and that I've never taken it from the blog entry and HTML'ed it into an actual review page.
Football Weekend
Since SD crapped out last week and no playoff spots of any consequence are still in doubt, I'm not paying much attention to the NFL this weekend. There are some fun college bowl games going on, though with those I very seldom care who wins; I just enjoy watching the action. I taped Fresno State vs. Tulsa this morning just in the hopes that it would be high scoring and entertaining. And it was,
apparently.
I didn't actually see it, since we're having huge storms here this weekend, and the power and cable have been knocked out several times. The lights flickered and flickered and then went dead this morning around 8. That was my signal to finally get the hell into bed, and when they came back on around 9 and I was still trying to get to sleep, I remembered to get up and set the VCR to start taping at 10 for the Fresno/Tulsa game. It taped until early in the 2nd half, when the cable went out. Well, it kept taping after that, but I didn't choose to watch the static.
Tulsa ended up winning in not very special fashion, but that's okay, since they've got a funny name. Malaya and I enjoy saying "Tulsa," but it's sort of a long story why. There's a legendary story about ex-QB Troy Aikman; supposedly he was knocked silly during a Cowboys' game in his pro career, and when they got him to the sidelines and gave him the "how many fingers am I holding up" routine, he answered, "T.. Tul... Tulsa." when they asked him where he was. It's funny since the game was in Dallas, which isn't anywhere near Tulsa, and in fact Troy hadn't been there since high school. When he was probably knocked the hell out a few times.
We (Malaya and me) conflate this story with the amusing jock stereotype character in
the hilarious Coen Brothers remake of The Ladykillers, whose only dialogue was to say, "Coach? C.. c.... c... coach?" Hence when someone gets knocked out, we often start saying, "T... T... Tulsa?"
Anyway, there was a bowl game on earlier that morning, and one on later in the afternoon, but I didn't watch or attempt to tape either of them. San Diego hosted Denver in an afternoon football game too, but I didn't care about that with the result meaning nothing, and it was over before I woke up anyway. Denver rubbed the floor with SD, apparently. And now the NYG@Raiders game is on... but not here. The local listings say it should be on Channel 5 and on ESPN as well, but 5's got news and filler, and ESPN is just showing the ESPN news channel for 3 solid hours. Got to love those diehard Raiders fans making sure the game is a sell out so it's on free local TV, eh?
So Saturday's games, 3 college, 2 pro: 1 bad college game, 2 good ones the cable was out during, 1 bad NFL game I slept through, 1 NFL game blacked out here and nowhere else in the country.
As for Sunday's offerings, they're pretty blah. Early game we get Carolina@Atlanta, which is actually one of the better games on all day. Later we get Houston@SF, in the Reggie Bush bowl. And that's it. Only 2 games, and while I can accept that the local 49ers game isn't on against another game, I have no idea why there's only 1 early game on. I also have no idea how the 49ers keep selling out their games while Oakland can't, since I've seen like 2 49ers bumper stickers in my entire 2.5 years living here, compared to about 50000 Raider Nation stickers, signs, etc. Every mall has a Raiders Store, no malls have 49ers stores, I see Raiders jackets and hats on people every day while never seeing any 49ers stuff, etc. True, I'm closer to Oakland than SF, but I've never seen any 49ers bumper stickers or merch when in The City either.
Fortunately for my football needs, Monday has six good bowl games, and then there are good ones Tuesday and Wednesday night as well, as the bowl season closes out. And then next weekend the NFL playoffs begin, marking T-minus one month until the end of any good sports on TV until next fall.
Blizzcon Photo Page.
At long last, I found the time to sort through my Blizzcon photos from Halloween weekend, and they're now posted on a photos page with captions and discussion and all that.
Blizzcon Photos! These are far less visually-interesting than the recent batch from Death Valley (or pretty much any of the other vacation photo sets, for that matter), so don't go looking for eye candy, unless you count the Starcraft Ghost model, and you'll see better photos of her on other sites, many of them linked from my Blizzcon Photos page.
What you will find here are captions and talk about the event, the missing Diablo presence, the incredible waiting line to get in, and so on. Now I just have to figure a way to turn this outpouring into an article for the D2 site, 2 months later. I'm thinking top 5 and bottom 5 things about Blizzcon, in the style of my old Decahedrons, and that might even work. Since there's not much NFL football worth watching this weekend, I hope to find the time to get it done by Monday.
Here are a few sample shots, and again, click to
the appropriate page to see lots more.
You've probably heard of "the line" from Blizzcon, but you really had to see it. This is the third shot I took of it (all 3 are on the photo page). I took one near the entrance, looking maybe 80 meters down the side of the long building. Then I walked down there and turned the corner and took another shot of the next 50 meters of line, and walked to that corner, and took this one. And it just kept on going.
This guy was actually pretty funny. He was standing outside the convention center early on, shouting nonstop through his megaphone about how Blizzard was oppressing and enslaving Murlocs, and how his people should be freed, etc. His URL is
www.craftingworlds.com/savemurlocsand he's got more photos and movies and everything. Possibly including a mental disease.
The merch menu. Many of the sales items were in our goodie bags already, happily enough. The key chain, playing cards, a WoW and Blizzcon t-shirt, one of the silicone bracelets, etc. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything else I wanted. No action figures or games or convention-only t-shirts, etc. The cinematic posters were pretty cool, though, and I might have gotten the D2 one, if it had been anything other than Baal's smirking face.
Yes, I had to get a self-portrait. I'm wearing a D2X shirt, of course, and apparently readying myself to defend against a free kick. One minute after Rush took this photo with my camera I thought, "Why the hell didn't I have her point the gun at me?" but by then it was too late.
See the whole set, and captions, here.
Friday, December 30, 2005
The evil meme of four.
After giving in and blogging that
"Meme of Four" thing a few days ago, and mentioning that I'd like to see an evil version of it, I found my brain returning to that concept tonight in the shower. And here we are:
Four celebrities you'd cheat on your wife/husband/gf/bf with. (Time travel is permitted.)
Angelina Jolie, Asia Carrera (ex-porn curious), Nicole Kidman (10 years ago), Elle MacPherson (15 years ago).
Four celebrities you'd like to see dead, painfully or otherwise.
Tom Cruise, Courtney Love, George Lucas, Kevin Federline.
Four movies you'd like to erase from your brain.
Matrix 3, Starship Troopers, Ice Age, Star Wars: Episode 1-3.
Four places you never, ever want to visit.
Iraq, Detroit, Atlanta, Bombay.
Four TV shows you wish you had never seen/never want to see.
Friends, All in the Family, professional wrestling, Fear Factor.
Four websites you wish would cease to exist.
I can't list four directly, but ones that spread lies and hatred like those for Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, white supremacists, terrorists, etc would be fine by me.
Of the "Seven Deadly Sins," which four do you most frequently indulge in? (Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Greed, Sloth.)
Pride, Lust, Greed, Sloth.
Of these four, which would you give your life to save? Your mother, father, wife/husband/SO, or children. (If you do not have all four, then that just makes your choice that much easier, now doesn't it?)
No children, and none of the other three. I want to live.
Admittedly, these aren't really all
that evil. Intentionally. I considered harder questions and more ethical dilemmas, but I didn't want to make it so serious and dark that no one would play along. Most mainstream bloggers aren't going to list the four cities they'd most like to see destroyed by a natural disaster, or four politicians they want assassinated, or if they'd kill their mother or their father, if they had to pick one. Plus I didn't want to make the list all political and deep thought either. Feel free to offer critiques or additions in comments.
Also, I seriously would like to see this become popular on the blogosphere, so if you like it recommend it to others. I don't even care if I get any credit, (Someone else has surely thought of something similar already anyway.) steal the questions and remove my answers if you want. I'd just like to see some bloggers dish on questions I find a lot more interesting than the favorite movies/tv shows faff on the other four meme list.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Depressing survey results.
There's a new Harris poll out, and it's informative, in a way. They surveyed almost 2000 American adults during the second week of December, and asked them various questions about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, 9/11, and so on, and well... the results
are pretty damned depressing. Click the link to see the tables and methodology and such; I'm just quoting the intro here.
Sizeable minorities of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein had "strong links to al Qaeda," a Harris Interactive poll shows, though the number has fallen substantially this year.
About 22% of U.S. adults believe Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis, according to the online poll of 1,961 adults.
However, all of these beliefs have declined since February of this year, when 64% of those polled believed Mr. Hussein had strong links to al Qaeda and 46% said Mr. Hussein helped plan 9/11. At that time, more than a third said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and 44% said several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.
Currently, 56% of adults believe Iraqis are better off now than they were under Mr. Hussein, down from 76% in February. Nearly half of those polled say they believe Iraq, under Mr. Hussein, was a threat to U.S. security, down from 61% in February.
The whole news page is kind of maddening, since it never actually states objective reality. They say, "still believe" several times, while never actually pointing out that all of those beliefs are Santa Clausesque! I mean okay, it's probably painfully obvious to the reporter, and if I were presenting poll results in which 27% of the people responding were unaware that the sky was blue and grass was green, I might not actually take the time to point out that they were on fucking crack... but when you've got substantial minorities who believe in nonsense, shouldn't you at least make some effort to educate them when you present the summation of their ignorance?
The last couple of questions are opinion-based and open to debate, but how about the first few?
This sort of thing probably goes some distance towards explaining why Bush still has even a 36% (or whatever the current figure is) job approval rating. I do wonder about these people, though. Are they like non-celebrity versions of Paris Hilton; all caught up in their own little worlds of clothing and parties and such, with no knowledge of current events beyond what they picked up through the crudest sort of "TV news on at a friend's house" osmosis? Or are they hardcore right wing FOX News/Rush Limbaugh types who love Bush and who choose to disbelief all the media reports that don't conform to their chosen view of the world?
Bush quotes of the year.
Yahoo News article that's funny, and also short enough that I'm just going to quote the whole thing.
Call it the wrong phrase at the wrong time but "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" was named on Thursday as U.S. President George W. Bush's most memorable phrase of 2005.
The ill-timed praise of a now disgraced agency head became a national punch line for countless jokes and pointed comments about the administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and added to the president's reputation for verbal gaffes and clumsy turns of phrase.
Paul JJ Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, a nonprofit group that monitors language use, says Bush's statement in support of the then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency may be remembered for years to come.
"The 'Brownie' quote leads our 2005 list of Bushisms -- memorable phrases or new words coined by the president," Payack said, adding that Bush may be the foremost White House creator of new words, citing such past efforts as "misunderestimate" (to seriously underestimate) and "embetter" (to make emotionally better).
Ten days after Bush verbally patted Michael Brown on the back before the TV cameras, Brown resigned amid a public uproar over his qualifications and the administration's failure to get aid to New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Although the president did not originate any new words this year, he had several notable statements, Payack said, citing the following:
-- "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," Bush said in explaining his communications strategy last May.
-- "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" Bush asked in a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting in September.
-- "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table," Bush said in Brussels last February.
-- "In terms of timetables, as quickly as possible - whatever that means," the president said of his timeframe for passing Social Security legislation in March.
-- "Those who enter the country illegally violate the law," Bush said in describing illegal immigrants in Tucson, Arizona, last month.
I like that all of these are relatively coherent comments. I mean no, they don't all strictly make sense, but the amusing nature of the quote comes from what he was saying, not the mangled and garbled words he used to try and say it. As it often the case.
For example:
"Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red." —George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005
And yes, if your every public word was recorded and transcribed, you'd say a lot of dumb and babbling things too. Then again, don't we have a right to hold the damned POTUS up to a bit of a higher standard? It's not as if he holds the most powerful position on earth or anything.
Four meme.
I don't know who started this four questions thing, and I don't care enough to research it (I followed the source back seven links
from this one before I gave up. It's like opening
Russian dolls.) but over the past couple of weeks I've seen it on maybe 3/4 of the blogs I read. I still think it's sort of stupid, but as everyone else does it my resistance to following the herd has eroded like a
corpse in sulfuric acid rock in the surf. And here we are:
Four jobs you've had in your life:Stadium food vendor, co-webmaster, SAT Test Prep assistant, yard maintenance engineer.
Four movies you could watch over and over:Pulp Fiction,
LotR:FotR,
Aliens,
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.
Four places you've lived:Syracuse, NY; Raleigh, NC; Arlington, TX; San Diego, CA.
Four TV shows you love to watch:NFL/NCAA Football,
UFC,
Jerry Springer,
CSI. (I don't honestly love watching any of those, but I do watch them all fairly regularly, the last three only on the couch with Malaya, who got me into them in the first place.
Four places you've been on vacation:Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; Lafayette, CA; Saint Louis, Missouri.
Four websites you visit daily:Get Fuzzy,
Political Animal,
Rotten Tomatoes,
D-Listed.
Four of your favorite foods:Pizza, garden burgers, nachos supreme, fresh strawberries.
Four places you'd rather be:Nowhere, but I'd like to upgrade to a large home of our own in this area.
Seems to me this is most effective as a framing device, or an honesty check, though you'd need to really know the tastes of the blogger to tell how honest they were being. What is a person willing to admit to, on their blog? Every blog I've seen post this has listed nothing but political blogs in their "what blogs do you visit" answer, and generally only ones from their own ideology. No one admits to any really awful movies or TV shows either. Well, I'm no exception, but I did try to answer honestly. I wish there were a few more personally-illuminating questions though, especially ones from a the other side of the coin. 4 celebrities you want dead, 4 books you hate, 4 things you've done in your 4 jobs that you should have been fired for it anyone had caught you doing them, 4 places you would never want to live, etc.
Some of those would break the short answer magic of the quiz though, so perhaps I'll streamline them and try and start that trend myself, thus helping to make the Internet a darker, less pleasant place.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Internet movies for fame and fortune?
The big new Internet movie is
apparently this one, a parody rap videos by two white guys who work on Saturday Night Live. It's new to me, but it's been all the rage for the past week or two, and it even merited a write up
in the NY Times, as part of a larger article about the phenomena of instant short film Internet fame.
For most aspiring rappers, the fastest route to having material circulated around the World Wide Web is to produce a work that is radical, cutting-edge and, in a word, cool. But now a pair of "Saturday Night Live" performers turned unexpected hip-hop icons are discovering that Internet stardom may be more easily achieved by being as nerdy as possible.
In "Lazy Sunday," a music video that had its debut on the Dec. 17 broadcast of "SNL," two cast members, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, adopt the brash personas of head-bopping, hand-waving rappers. But as they make their way around Manhattan's West Village, they rhyme with conviction about subjects that are anything but hard-core: they boast about eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, searching for travel directions on MapQuest and achieving their ultimate goal of attending a matinee of the fantasy movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
It is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace - or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills - that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, "Lazy Sunday" has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com; it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at NBC.com and the iTunes Music Store; and it has even inspired a line of T-shirts, available at Teetastic.com.
The article is interesting and the video is okay, though I hadn't heard of it until today and I wouldn't have paid it much mind if not for all of the media attention it's getting. I found it most amusing for how it lampoons all the tired conventions of "we're so bad" posing in rap videos.
I thought this article and video was ironic though, since
I read this one on Yahoo yesterday, and it reaches pretty much the opposite conclusion about fame via Internet-released independent films:
It's not that attention-grabbing short films -- whether they begin life as fan films or Internet novelties -- aren't the calling cards they once were in the movie industry. The truth is that, despite a few illusory examples, they never did guarantee the entree for which their creators hoped. Despite all the initial acclaim that greeted such short films as the "Stars Wars" spoof "George Lucas in Love" or "405," in which an airplane lands on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, their creators were not instantly given the directing assignments for which they were angling. And the flood of ersatz films that have followed in their wake pretty much has rendered the Internet fallow ground for recruitment.
...
The success of "405," "Lucas in Love" and "Troops" changed the landscape for calling cards. Suddenly, spoofs flooded the Hollywood landscape and then the Internet. "It became too much," Dowling said. "It became a lot harder to get something seen. There were like a hundred 'Blair Witch' spoofs. There were so many of them that not one of them was making an impact."
The evolution of the Internet and digital technology only made it easier to make and disseminate such shorts. But as they multiplied, they tended to cancel one another out.
"It doesn't make a splash anymore," said John Halecky of iFilm, where many shorts appear. "People are even spoofing the MasterCard 'Priceless' commercials. Well, you're spoofing a 30-second ad with a 30-second ad."
The evolution of the Internet also made it harder to build buzz. The old days of making copies of copies on VHS, messengering them around town and congregating around TVs to catch the latest parody were gone. While the Internet made such shorts instantly available, it also ended their mystique.
The article is actually pretty schizophrenic, since along with these doom and gloom examples, they discuss half a dozen success stories, starring guys who made an Internet short, and turned that into a real job in the movie industry. So overall, their point is what, exactly?
Precipitation Adventures
It's been raining for like the past week, and with
the extended forecast calling for more and more of the same, that doesn't look likely to change. I don't mind the rain, though it does get a bit monotonous. I do miss the cold weather though; it was in the low 30s at night a few weeks ago, and since it's started raining it's been mid 40s at the coldest, and upper 50s in the day. In other words, not cold enough to require a coat to go outside, unless you're going to be standing around out there for a while. I'd love to wear a coat more often, I've got a nice leather one and everything, and it feels toasty during the walk to the car and from the car to our indoor destination, but once I'm there, wherever there is, I'm hot in a coat, and I soon tire of carrying the damn thing around.
Yes, life is hard in modern civilization.
As for the rain, it's been fun to listen to and watch and such. It rains quite a bit in most parts of Northern California, but
the rainy months cluster, and we hardly see a cloud from April - October. On the other hand, it rains at least weekly during November, December, January, February, and March, and since we're still just two months into that, water from the sky is still sort of a novelty. I'll be sick of it by February, I suspect, what with my desire for any sort of outdoor activity constantly constrained by puddles and mud.
It rained far less
in my former home, though the months that could kindly be called "the rainy season" were basically the same. It's just that in San Diego the temperatures were 10-15 degrees hotter at all times, and in between days of rain you'd get one of the hated Santa Ana days with an offshore flow and highs in the 90s. In January. My basically-vampirific nature shudderes at the memory.
In San Diego, I never expected anyone to be able to drive in the rain. It hardly ever rained, and usually when it did the roads had been dry for months, and were therefore quite slippery and dangerous with all the oil and car residue floating on the surface. There I could understand why some people got so overly-cautious and tentative in even a light mist.
Now that I'm living in the Bay Area though, where it rains damn near every day 5 months of the year, I'm confused though. As I remarked to Malaya the other day, as we were ambling our way along the damp I-24 in a very light mist, stuck in a light flow of traffic that was putting along at maybe 50, when it would usually have been proceeding at 70+ on that same road at that same time of day, "Perhaps someday man will invent some sort of black, rubber-like substance that can be formed into automobile tires and enable vehicles to safely traverse slightly-moist roads."
Ahh, to dream.
In other wet-related news, the cats are unhappy. Well, let me amend that. Jinx is unhappy. Dusty could give a shit, since he's never outside for more than a few minutes at a time anyway, what with the soft and beckoning couch, chair, bed, carpeted floor, and various human laps available to him. Jinxie though, likes to go outside and look at nature and chak-chak-chak at the squirrels and smell the air. She doesn't much enjoy it when the outdoor carpets on the back patio are all squishy and there's moisture in the air though, and it's all she can do to find a merely-damp spot and hunker there for a while with her tail wrapped around her feet and her body quite compacted.
A couple of days ago she was standing by the sliding glass door and making entreating noises, and I opened the door while saying to her, "You won't like it."
I say "saying to her" but let's be honest, it's not like the cats know or care what the hell words are coming out of our mouths. We talk to them to hear ourselves talk, or to entertain the other humans in earshot. Malaya, in this case.
Jinxie disregarded my words and shot right out the door, stopped, paused, then whirled and came straight back in, prrrfafing and brruping her displeasure as she headed across the room for some more Friskies. And there was much merriment at her expense. Don't worry kitty, it'll be dry again in 3 or 4 months. Of course that's like 3 years in cat years, which gots to suck, if you're her.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Twas the day after Xmas...
I got lazy over Xmas and didn't blog, but you didn't miss much, since it wasn't a very remarkable holiday on my end.
We had a nice dinner party (white people style) at one of her coworker's homes on the 23rd, where there were about a dozen people, most of them neighbors and friends of the coworker. Good food, and interesting, since the coworker's husband is a hunter, and there's always wild game. We had a whole smoked pheasant, served cold with cheese and crackers as part of the appetizers, caribou ragu (like thick chili) over polenta, and a huge ham (store-bought, not wild boar shot) sliced up, along with salad, and more. Dinner was buffet style, with everyone serving themselves multiple times and sitting in the kitchen and dining room, casually. Dessert was a big Boston Creme Pie Malaya and I brought, and it wasn't bad either, despite basically being a twinkie with chocolate icing.
Malaya was off to a family party on the evening of the 24th, and then over to her parents' Xmas morning/afternoon, which left me plenty of free time to watch football and work on the novel. There was more of the latter than the former, fortunately, and as a result chapter 6 is finally complete, in all of its 79000 word glory. More on that in a bit.
Speaking of the 26th of December though, or Boxing Day as it's called in Canada and the UK, but not here in the US... there are supposed to be sales. Aren't there sales? I always hear on the radio and the teevee that there are "After Christmas" sales, and yet when we visited the very busy mall, and then Barnes and Noble, and then Mervyn's, then Marshall's, then Tuesday Morning, then TJ Maxx, etc, we didn't really see much evidence of that. Sure, the Xmas-themed wrapping paper and cards and such were all 50% off, and so were 2006 calendars, but that's a given.
Other stuff though, was not on sale, or at least not enough of a sale to matter. I was looking for some more sneakers (yes,
late term himbo-itus continues) and in Foot Locker, Champs, Finish Line, and Copeland's, it was the same story. (Well, not so much in Copeland's, where nothing ever seems to be on sale, and their prices are always 15% higher in the first place.) No sweeping sales on anything, just slightly reduced prices on individual items, all of them pretty clearly the stuff no one wanted in the first place. Shoes that have been not selling at $89 or $79 were down to $79 or $69. And still not selling.
We looked in a dozen stores at the mall and found nothing worth buying, other than a few calendars for delayed Xmas gifts, and if not for the gift certificates we'd received for Xmas (Malaya Barnes & Noble, me TJ Maxx), I don't know that either of us would have bought anything. I did pay real money for a shiny workout shirt and workout pants at Marshall's, but only because they were at their usual low price, and because I liked the styling of them both. I got some blue cargo pants and other stuff at TJ Maxx later, but that was just because I had a gift card for them. Same as the books Malaya got at B&N.
I know some of the sales go on early in the morning and were long over by the time we arrived in the late afternoon, but overall I was far from impressed. On the other hand, the mall was packed and the lines to buy stuff were far longer than usual in all of the stores we did enter, so maybe the merchants know what they're doing. Make a few superficial price reductions, take out some newspaper ads, and then hire extra cashiers and count your profits when the sheep flock to your store, and decide to buy stuff once they're there, even though the prices aren't very good.
As for the novel, as I said, I worked on it a lot over the last few days, and finally finished chapter 6. I should have had that one done back in early November, but I got delayed and distracted with week-long vacations over Halloween and Thanksgiving, and completely rewrote the 25k word battle scene several times during early/mid December. I'm finally satisfied with it though, for rough draft quality at least, and have passed the chapter over to Malaya to print out at work and read and comment on, when she has the time.
As for 7, I'm trying to be very diligent about the outline and the details, for once, so I (hopefully) won't get all bogged down in rewrites halfway through. And it's going well. I haven't actually begun writing the chapter yet, but I've got a sequential event outline that's very detailed and precise, and I've got a timeline worked out as well, but it's complicated. Lots of things happen in the same area in the same two week time frame.
It's not really complicated in terms of plot twists or the like (well, a little bit of that too) but mostly in terms of how I'm going to relate it. I'm not writing the novel in omniscent: it's all from the POV of several main characters, and they can't relate things for the reader's benefit unless they see them/know them personally. So I know what's going to happen and when and where and to whom, but I'm juggling how I'm going to relate it. Of the three narrators seen in the book (so far), all three are present in one place for the first time, and I'm probably going to have the one least involved in the events in that place narrate it, to give it an outside analysis, and also to keep it shorter and not be redundant to events that took place in chapter 6.
And no, I don't suppose any of that makes much sense to you guys at this point.
Overall, I'm again unsure how many chapters it will be; I'd been thinking that 7 would take the characters nearly to their objective, and then 8 would be them dealing with a challenge at that objective and moving on nearly to the finale, which would be in 9, before a short epilogue wrapped everything up. Now I'm thinking that if I divide it up that way, 7 will be like 70k words, 8 would be about 15k and all in one place, 9 would be another 15k, almost all of it the final battle/confrontation, and then the epilogue would be about 1500 words. I don't really like that chapter length breakdown though, so perhaps I'll end 7 earlier in the chronology and put the last half of third of it into 8, before 9 ends things up in relatively succinct fashion.
I'm not realy worried about the numbers, though. The whole chapter number system will almost certainly not survive into the final book form, and every chapter is broken up into 20 or 25 mini-chapters, and I could really do 7-9 as a single concluding chapter, since events in it are pretty contiguous.
Furthermore, I don't even need to say this if you've read many of my other updates on the book and my writing in general, but it's a pretty safe bet that this last stretch of material will turn out to be twice as long/detailed as I'm currently expecting, which will make all of this advance length planning superfluous. I just hope it won't take 3 or 4x as long to write, as a number of other chapters already have.
The whole "novel," right now, is somewhere around 3.7meg worth of .doc files, and that breaks down to something like 420,000 words. And I've got at least 80-100k more words to go; probably more like 150k. I'll be cutting out at least 150k of those just from chapter 2 on the rewrite, and maybe 30k from chapter 3 after that, but we're still looking at like 500k+ words, which would be well over 1000 pages even with very small print. Just going by size, (and pretending some publisher wouldn't force me to make grotesque edits and cuts) that's looking like 2 novels, and no, I can't see a convenient place to divide it in two. Not without major rewriting and reordering, at least. (Which might actually improve things, since the chapters 2-4 are largely build up for the much cooler stuff that comes later.)
In better news, I keep adding ideas (or saving old ideas that aren't going to fit into this one) for the planned sequel, which I think may well be a better and more interesting book, and should theoretically be a more managable size; I.E. one volume. And with any luck, an understanding publisher would think it a nice cap to a lovely trilogy.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Movie Reviews with Ebert.
It's been said, (
frequently by me) that Ebert's reviews aren't as much fun anymore, since he now likes everything. Well, he might not "like" everything, but he's started giving out a bloated number of three-star reviews, since by his metric, if a movie more or less succeeds at what it aimed to do, and will be enjoyed by its target audience and should therefore be mildly-recommended. I think he should tweak his star system to turn a mild recommendation into about 2 or 2.5 stars, but whatever.
His "logic" and aging/growing tolerance is put on display again this week, with 3-star reviews for
Rumor Has It (
19% on RT),
The Ringer (
39% on RT), and even execrable family-friendly swill
Cheaper by the Dozen II (
11% on RT).
There is something he doesn't like though. The new no-budget gore-fest from Oz,
Wolf Creek, a film he awards with zero stars, and
about which he says:
I like horror films. Horror movies, even extreme ones, function primarily by scaring us or intriguing us. Consider "Three ... Extremes" recently. "Wolf Creek" is more like the guy at the carnival sideshow who bites off chicken heads. No fun for us, no fun for the guy, no fun for the chicken. In the case of this film, it's fun for the guy.
..
There is a line and this movie crosses it. I don't know where the line is, but it's way north of "Wolf Creek." There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty? The theaters are crowded right now with wonderful, thrilling, funny, warm-hearted, dramatic, artistic, inspiring, entertaining movies. If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is: Don't know that person no more.
I don't have issue with him hating the film, or the reasons for which he hates it. I just wish he was a little freer with his hatred of other deserving cinematic releases, since those reviews are
always usually the most fun to read.
Update: Ironic that I posted this last night, since when I read Ebert's bi-weekly
Movie Answer Man segment Sunday evening, I saw this:
Q. It seems that in past year most of your reviews end up awarding three stars or more. I had confidence in your three-star ratings until I realized that so many of them are mediocre films. For example, "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which is composed of bad acting and unimpressive dialogue. Please be more critical of average films.
Bud Schauerte, Austin, Texas
A. I often hear I am "getting soft." A correspondent helpfully writes: "My friend says that since you had cancer, you give every movie three or four stars." A New York weekly critic says I "like everything," and he must be right, because I even liked the film he cited as an example of how much more discerning he is than critics like me.
I did some math, and found that my average rating for a feature film in 2005 came to about 2.7 stars. On a bell curve, the average should be 2.0, but consider that I reviewed 284 movies in the last year, and the extra titles were independent and foreign films that tended to skew higher. I am content with my 2.7 average.
The problem is with the use of stars as a rating system. Star ratings go back to that simpler time when film critics stood on far hillsides and signaled to the grateful peasantry with torches and brightly colored flags.
Indignant readers write me: "How could you give Film A three stars and Film B only 2-1/2 stars? I will never read your reviews again." I reply: "A wise decision! My reviews are for those who are stronger in literature than math."
He's got a point, and he always says his reviews are meant to be read, not judged by the imprecise star system (or worse yet, the "thumbs up/down" he's limited to on his TV show). Still, that doesn't address the fact that for the last year or so, his scores for major films have consistently been much higher than the mean or median scores for those films. He can give every gay cowboys eating pudding film he sees a four-star score, and I won't object. I'd just like to see less three-star "it was okay for its target audience" kid gloves reviews.
What can you do though? I certainly don't think he's taking payoffs, or that he's grown afraid to say bad things about a film he didn't like. The man's tastes have changed and he's grown less prickly with age and cancer survival. Is he supposed to fill a review with vitriol he doesn't really feel, just for our amusement?
Santa Claus in the scary news.
It's probably a bad sign if you laugh
at this story, on Christmas Eve. However, I must admit I cackled so loudly that it scared the cats. Hell, I was rolling just from the headline. I'll quote almost the whole short thing here, since it's short and if you click to the site you've got to enter a fake DoB and zip code to read it.
Man playing Santa collapses in front of elementary students
12/22/2005, 12:21 p.m. ET
The Associated Press
HUBBARD, Ohio (AP) — A man playing Santa collapsed in front of about 750 elementary schoolchildren at a Christmas assembly.
John Rappach, 60, clutched his chest and fell near the end of the assembly at Roosevelt Elementary in Hubbard on Wednesday. He was in critical condition on Thursday.
School officials ushered in crisis counselors and assured students that Santa would be fine and ready for Christmas Eve, Superintendent Richard Buchenic said.
The children were sent home with letters explaining the situation to their parents, he said.
About 700 parents were at the assembly, and those near Rappach checked his pulse once he fell and surrounded him to block the children's view, said Don Newell Jr., a parent at the assembly.
Rappach was breathing and had a pulse when he was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center in nearby Youngstown
The hospital had no update Thursday on what caused Rappach's collapse.
Seriously, what would you pay to see this on tape? Some of the parents in attendance
must have been rolling video. Oh please oh please. Envision a shot of Santa as he dramatically grasps his chest before going down like a sack of cement, followed by screams of terror and shots of horrified children, while adults rush the stage like cornermen after a boxing match ends.
In really scary Christmas news:
Pope Benedict XVI, sporting a fur-trimmed hat in the rich red colour of a Santa hat, waves to pilgrims upon his arrival in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Wednesday for his weekly general audience. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Okay, other than reconfirming that no two colors go worse together than orange and red, WTF? Do they have mirrors in the Vatican? Or would the fact that this man is clearly some sort of vampyre render that point moot? Imagine him at the mall, with a press-on beard and some elves? Would you let your kids sit in his lap?
And yes, this is a real and undoctored photo. It's been near the top of the
Yahoo most popular for the past few days, horrifyingly enough.
Update: I added a second photo from the same series after Kim pointed it out in comments. Someone needs to Photoshop in laser beams coming from his eyes, or something.
San Diego 7, Kansas City 20
See, now
there's the trouble with faith-based predictions,
like mine about the San Diego football team's future, and the Bush Administration's about Iraq. They're fun to make and roll right off the tongue, and if you happen to be right it's all good like cajun flavored sesame sticks. The problem is that they don't fare real well when stacked up against hard, cruel reality.
The Chargers absolutely had to win their last two games to make the playoffs in any realistic scenario, and they didn't even come close. I taped the game and watched it around 2pm, when Malaya's imminent departure for a family-based holiday party prompted me out of bed after a whopping 5 hours of sleep. (I just can not get tired before like 8am the past week. It's great for getting a lot of writing done, but since I'm up not long after noon every day, it's not so good for the bags under my eyes.) Even though I watched it, I can't really say why San Diego lost so helplessly. They weren't great on defense but they weren't awful, and since they average near 28 points a game, they should have been okay giving up 20 to a pretty good offense like Kansas City's. Their offense was obviously the real trouble, with only 7 points and less than 250 yards against a weak KC defense, and the weather was obviously a contributing factor there.
I began to sour on their chances right from the start, when they held KC to 3 and out thanks to a terrible dropped 3rd down pass by Dante Hall. After a weak punt SD had the ball on KC's 45, and I was thinking they would need at least 20 points to win, so they simply had to do something on this one, with just 25 yards needed to get into reasonable field goal range. They did nothing, calling slow-developing runs to LT on first and second down, and then looking confused on the requisite 3rd and long pass.
SD's second drive was better, as they answered the Chiefs and tied the score at 7, but that was effectively it for the Chargers' offense. The weather was cold and drizzily, and while the field looked okay through most of the first half, by the 3rd quarter it was terribly chewed up and basically resembled wet hay on mud. Neither team scored in the second half, and after SD's first possession ended in a wimpy little interception that went right through LT's hands on the KC 15 yard line, I gave up hope.
It's almost a blessing that SD didn't come back and at least make it close at the end, since my tape ended with 3:30 to play, when the network cut to the start of the Raiders' latest surrender. The national media keeps making jokes about Detroit, but have they checked out the
Raiders during the last month? They've lost four straight, and by game it's been 10-34, 10-26, 7-9, and 3-22 today, in Denver. Thirty points in a month isn't exactly the stuff of offensie legends, and it's pretty clearly they're not really making much of an effort. Unless that effort is to get another high draft pick, and they're doing pretty well there, thanks to recent wins by Baltimore, Cleveland, Arizona, and others. Hell, they could make the top five yet, if SF or NO, or NYJ or others aren't careful about winning their last game of the season.
Anyway, that's it for SD's playoff hopes, though at least they finally lost a game by more than 3 points, and looked bad doing it. It might not even matter, since Pittsburgh slaughtered Cleveland and Jacksonville finally scored some points and triumphed over Houston, and if those teams both win against next week, SD wouldn't have made the playoffs anyway. Perhaps this will put that "best team to not make the playoffs" chatter to rest. Hell, if SD folds up next week against Denver they'll barely even have a winning record, and could finish 3rd in their own division, ahead of only hapless Oakland.
Elsewhere, I was looking at
the NFL standings and had to laugh at the NFC West. Seattle won again today, beating Indy's backup players and coach 28-13, to run their record to 13-2. And with one week to go, they have as many wins as the other 3 teams in their division have put together. Arizona and Saint Louis have 5 each, and SF has 3. Sadder yet, of those 13 wins, 6 of them came head to head, since those teams play each other twice each season and hell, someone has to win. (SF's got 3 wins all year and 2 of them came against StL.) On the other hand, Seattle got 6 of their 13 wins in divisional games too, so maybe they shouldn't crow too loudly.
And in one final football note, I'm currently recording the Aloha Bowl and hoping it will be fun to watch later, though I have absolutely no interest in either Central Florida or Nevada. I just want to see some entertaining football after today's lackluster Chargers game, and since this one is already
28-20 at the half, hopes are high. Though I must admit that it will be odd to see a football game from Aloha Stadium where the
teams actually care who wins.
Holiday Kitty Pictures
A few recent cat photos, some even with an Xmas theme. Mainly because it's late and I'm too tired from fiction'ing to type anything more coherent.
My, aren't they cute. Whatever could they be studying so intently?
Ahh yes, the mousie. Jinxie loves nothing more than hurling herself into the shower in hot pursuit of a flying cat toy, to the point that she usually races straight down the hallway when we throw it in that direction, but rather than swatting it she turns right, runs through the bathroom, and hurdles into the tub. And then stays there, for long minutes, peering over the edge in foxhole fashion. It's cute that she's in there. It's cuter when it's dark, and the human entering the bathroom turns on the light and beholds Jinxie blinking and squinting like an abruptly-awakened toddler.
She never plays with the mousie in the shower, despite the "hit up the bank and catch it when it slides back down" possibilities. She instead bites it and carries it out into the hallway, or all the way down to the living room, places it down very neatly with a sort of bow, (she never just drops it, as Dusty is wont) and whirls and runs back into the tub, as if either human in her home has ever shown the ability to throw the mousie five meters down the hallway, with enough spin to then turn right and fly into the tub.
As part of our recent home redecoration, we moved this big ass bookshelf from the bedroom into the living room. We also moved a lot of books around, and ended up with multiple empty slots in the 5x5 Ikea bookshelf. Since we had the space, I had the idea of leaving one cubbyhole over the sofa empty, and putting one of the cat blankets in there. Neither feline showed much interest in it initially, but since I soon took to lifting them up and letting them climb into the opening, they've grown a bit more accommodating of it. As Dusty is here demonstrating.
Bonus view of Jinxie in the background, as she pulls up the couch coverings and prepares to wedge herself behind them. The plant is a winter addition, since it started to lose leaves madly in November, when night time lows were dipping into the 40s. It's doing surprisingly well inside, even with rather limited daylight.
Our condo has one source of heat in the winter, and its a gas heater burning behind the grill you see here on the right. Three guesses where the cats end up on cold nights? Dusty never lies right in front of it, the way Jinxie is doing here. He can't take the heat, or perhaps his sleek black fur gets too hot, while her thicker and puffier light gray doesn't soak it up so much?
My mom sent us a nice package of presents this year, and she either wrapped them in catnip or let her two cats help out, since from the minute we took them out of the box, Jinx was all over this large, probably-blanket-containing parcel. She sniffed and pawed at it, and when that didn't satisfy her, out came the teeth.
Yes, she's really biting at the corners here, and yes, she tore off a few bits of paper and apparently ate them. I'm sure there's nothing harmful in wrapping paper, other than the lead inks and other highly toxic chemicals they make the dyes out of; you know, the stuff that makes burning it up such multi-colored fun!
Let this picture be a lesson to the young among you. If you're cute doing it, you can get away with damn near anything. Dusty would probably get yelled at for this sort of thing. Jinxie, since she does it with such gusto, while emitting endearing squeaks and high-pitched "prrrorrppp" type noises, is laughed at and indulged and immortalized with digital photography.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Technical Difficulties
No posts for the last few days, but it wasn't my fault. This site has been inaccessible to me since Tuesday evening, via browser or FTP client. I could still pull email, which was odd, but I figured it was just one of those things, so I gave it 24 hours before mailing my host. To their credit, they replied the next day, and didn't even blame me for the problem!
The issue you are having, not being able to access your site, is due to a router outside of our network having problems. This router is owned and operated by AT&T Communications.
We believe that AT&T is aware of the issue, however you should still contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and report it to them.
Unfortunately, this issue cannot be resolved by Gate.com. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Your site is up and functioning at this time. It seems that only people passing through their router are affected.
Annoyed, I tried pinging to it from
a few other servers, and sure enough, they all went right through. I could even surf to my site via
Megaproxy, but their free service won't let you upload anything, so I couldn't even make a forum post saying why I hadn't been making any blog posts.
Desperate, I actually did what they suggested, and mailed Comcast about the problem. I'm sure my email spurred
immediate action, and as you can see, access has been restored.
As for the last three days... work, work, work. Lots of novel writing and editing, last Kali class of the year on Tuesday, heavy time at the gym Wednesday and Thursday, Chinese food with Malaya on Thursday, and an Xmas party tonight with some friends of hers from work. And after that, there will likely be a lot more novel work; I did something like 8 hours on it yesterday, and I'm pretty happy with how things are going.
No word yet from Flagship about the job, but I figure that's mostly about them not wanting to proactively ruin anyone's Xmas with a job denial. I'm not nervous about it, since I don't think I've got a chance. I would love to hold the Community Manager position, and I think I would do a great job at it, but I don't think I'll get hired. I think they'll pick some young kid fresh out of college with a CS degree and the ability to code CSS and other web languages from scratch. He'll have a minor or some slight work experience in PR-stuff, and who knows, maybe he'll even do a good job for them. Not as good as I would have done, especially in terms of website content and ideas and fan relations, but hey, they'll have a hella pretty website. And the whole application process has inexplicably given me a big boost on my novel-writing motivation, so something delightful will/has come out of it already.
As for my weekly NFL belaboring... I'll keep it short. Amazingly, the local TV listings claim that I'll get to see the SF@StL crapfest, and the Oakland@Denver massacre, but that through some act of mercy, I'll also have the option of SD@KC, showing at the same time as the SF game. I continue to be perplexed by the NFL on TV issues in the Bay Area. Why did the first 12 weeks pass with just SF and Oakland on TV, and never a third game, when now, we've had 3 weeks in a row of multiple viewing options? All when SF's game has been on? Is there some arcane rule that the home team's road games can be programed against once they're officially out of playoff contention, or what?
On the playoffs, for several days I've been possessed of an illogical and yet peaceful serenity about my old home town SD Chargers. I had a dream earlier this week, and in it I was watching media reports about them, with people talking about them having gone on the most amazing six game run in memory. They'd won their last 3 games of the season, all against very good teams, and then won three playoff games on the road, and were in the Superbowl. And there was much rejoicing.
I'm not claiming any psychic abilities, but since I almost never remember my dreams, and certainly don't have them about sports teams, this has been an odd week. The peaceful feeling lingers though, and as a result I am entirely confident that SD will win their last 2 games, and that front-running Pittsburgh or Jacksonville will spit the bit, thus letting SD into the playoffs. I think Pittsburgh will win out, but since Jacksonville has played like shit for a month, it might catch up with them this week in Houston. If not, they'll have a playoff spot clenched going into week 17, and they might actually want to lose, dropping into the 6th spot and facing either Denver or Cincinnati, rather than the suddenly-terrifying New England Patriots, in the first round. Either way, SD will win out and get in, though I'm not taking the dream so far as to guarantee a superbowl appearance.
More blogging later, perhaps. For now, we've got to run some pre-party errands and pick up a pie for dessert. TTFN.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
False Alarm
Just checking email and enjoying an omelet, and got a bit of a start. It was an email to my diabloii.net account, from a well-known Diablo II producer who used to work at Bliz North and now works at Flagship. I took a minute to settle my nerves, in the process realizing just how much I want that job, or at least the chance to interview for it, and opened it up:
Subject: Flagship Studios' Community Manager Search.
Dear Elly, Rush, and Flux:
We are looking for a Community Manager/PR Assistant to join our staff. Please spread the word among your colleagues.
If you know someone we should contact directly, please let me know.
Here is the link: www.flagshipstudios.com
D'oh! Well, the good news from this is that at least they haven't already hired someone for it. I had been slightly concerned by that possibility, since they'd had the job posted for more than a week before
I happened across it. Obviously not, though.
The waiting and wondering about this is doing me some good, though. I've told myself that every time I start daydreaming or worrying, I have to stop that at once, and work on my novel. And it's working. Plus, I've also told myself that
when if I don't get the job, I have to forge my disappointment and frustration into action, and turn the heat of my failure into a creative light. Just two chapters to go, damnit!
Death Valley Photos Page
While spending my Thanksgiving hiking around Death Valley National Monument, I took my camera everywhere and gave it quite a workout. The results of that are now online, with 95 photos, all informatively captioned. (The captions you see in the following examles are not the info-rich ones on the actual photos page.) I've split it into two pages simply to make loading times more reasonable for those of you not blessed with broadband, and sorted all the shots by the location they were taken in.
My favorite places in Death Valley are
Ubehebe Crater, the
sand dunes,
Golden Canyon/Zabriskie Point, and the
salt flats/
Badwater Basin, most of which are found on page two, simply due to a quirk of chronology. I'd recommend that you look at all of the pictures, but then I would say that, being as I took them. I'd also strongly recommend Death Valley for a future vacation of your own. If you like hiking, scenery, the rugged beauty of the desert, and have a few days free in the spring or fall, it's hard to go wrong.
Click for
Page One and
Page Two, and here are some somewhat random sample images/captions, to give you a taste of things.
Artists Palette, with the colors courtesy of various mineral deposits;iron, mica, manganese, and so on. And yes, you can walk right out there on top of them and sift the greens and purples through your own hands.
A view from the dining room balcony at the Furnace Creek Resort.
Looking down the shallow side of Ubehebe Crater. Click to see it much larger.
The dry waterfall that ends your hike up Mosaic Canyon.
A shot from atop the highest and therefore most-trafficked of the hundreds of sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells.
Gorgeous view down at Golden Canyon, from just beneath Zabriskie Point. Click to see it much larger.
Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
NFL Action
Just to keep up with tradition, here's my weekly bitch-fest about the NFL games on Bay Area free TV.
The only early game; SF (2-11) @ Tennessee (9-4). It's a crucial game for SF, since they're fighting hard to lose their way to the top draft pick, and they remain a win ahead of 1-12 Houston. Houston hosts the very beatable Arizona Cardinals, but given these teams, you've got to bet on them both losing twice more before the big week 17 showdown in San Francisco, with the loser almost certain to take the top draft pick, thanks to GB and NYJ winning their third game last weekend.
The only late game should have been even worse, with 4-9 Oakland hosting 4-9 Cleveland. Thanks to the NFL's TV
mercy blackout rules though, and Oakland's inability to sell the game out, we're getting 10-3 Cincinnati @ 4-9 Detroit. It's far from a blockbuster match up, but hey, it beats Raiders/Browns. Of course the other late game this Sunday, Dallas@Washington, is one of the best games of the day, but since both teams there are in the NFC, and CBS gets the late game, we have to see an AFC game. It qualifies thanks to Cin, even though the NFC Lions are hosting, I guess.
As usual, there are just 2 games on, despite the fact that one local team is on the road, and the other is blacked out. Why we can't have 2 early games, with a wide selection of AFC matchups available for the CBS station to pick from, is a mystery. Miami@SD was on last weekend at the same time as SF's slaughter up in Seattle. Why isn't the game of the weekend, SD@Indy, on early this time? Fortunately, I realized that last Sunday's 3 games was a once-a-year fluke, and didn't get my hopes up, so I'm not disappointed by the 2 crappy games TV games today.
Plus, there were 3 games on Saturday, and even though I only watched the Tampa@NE one on tape, and didn't bother with the other two, that's a lot more football than I saw last Saturday. None of Saturday's games were that impressive anyway, all the favorites won handily, though NE looked pretty impressive against a theoretically-talented Tampa team. NE's gameplan was simple; stack the line, stuff the run, blitz Chris Simms a lot, and force him to beat them. He's a young, mediocre QB, and of course he couldn't handle the pressure, and of course NE won easily, shutting Tampa out 28-0. Why every team doesn't do this to Tampa is a good question, but I'm not a fan and don't follow their division, so I really have no idea.
In retrospect, I would have liked to seen the NYG/KC game, but I didn't care enough to record the second half after I finished watching the Tampa@NE game on tape, and therefore missed the sight of the KC defense being trampled into the ground by a 30 year old RB. Any idea why they don't replay the day's better NFL games late at night, on the NFL network, or ESPN2, or the major networks? They show college football games again late at night every weekend, and there's no way an NFL repeat wouldn't destroy the ratings of whatever combination of infomercials and reruns they're throwing at the screen at 3am now.
KC's loss pretty well ends their very dim playoff dreams, and as expected, they died thanks to their impossibly-difficult late season schedule. I think they're loss has doomed SD too, since Pittsburgh has the head to head tie-breaker against SD, and I can't imagine SD winning more than 2 of their last 3, and I can't see Pittsburgh losing 2 out of their 3, with only one debatably good team left. And there's no way KC is getting into a 3 team tie, unless both SD and Pitt fall apart. Especially with SD@KC next week, in a game one of them is obviously going to lose. SD was a long shot and a Pittsburgh collapse away before last week; after losing at home to Miami they were doomed.
As previously discussed, Jacksonville has a 1 game lead for the two wildcard spots, and with the easiest last 3 games in the history of professional football, they're in for sure. They'll probably go to NE in the first round though, step in the snow, and draw an immediate Go Direction To Jail card, heading home to the tune of oh... 27-10, perhaps. It looks like you'd rather be the 6th seed now, with both Cin and Denver looking more beatable than NE, at this point. Pity SD couldn't have been that seed, but at this point they need to win out and hope Pittsburgh loses once to either Minn, Det, and Cleveland. That might happen, but SD isn't going to win today, much less all 3 of their games, which means they need Pittsburgh to lose twice, with two tomato cans left. As if.
Pitt's 3 straight losses made things interesting for a couple of weeks, but
as I belabored all the way back in November, the AFC playoff spots were essentially wrapped up with barely half the season played. Imagine if Pittsburgh had only lost 1 or 2 of those games during their injured QB slump? They'd now be tied with Jacksonville, and the wildcard and division races would be so over that even the idiots on ESPN couldn't manufacture fake excitement about the AFC playoff run.
Lastly, what's up with Pitts' closing schedule? Three of their final four games and the last two are against teams not even in their conference, much less their division? What happened to key last week matchups to decide division titles? Week 17 features classics like Denver@SD, Miami@NE, Chi@Minn, Carolina@Atl, Wash@Philly... and Detroit@Pitts?
Friday, December 16, 2005
Book Review: Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger
Another random book I read on an airplane after picking it up from the new section in the library based entirely on its interesting title. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either, and should be read only if you are already very interested in the content. To the scores:
Carnivorous Nights: On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger, by Margaret Mittelback & Michael Crewdson
Concept: 7
Presentation: 5
Writing Quality: 6
Presents/Explains the Topic Clearly: 5
Entertainment Value: 6
Rereadability: 3
Overall: 5.5
There's nothing really wrong with the book, but there's nothing real special about it either. It's basically a somewhat anarchistic travelogue detailing the wacky, naturalistic travels and travails of the two authors and their pot-smoking artist friend Alexis Rockman as the three of them bang around Tasmania, hunting for various odd local animals and interacting with numerous odd local locals. A decent amount of historical and biological information is worked into the book, and it's not uninformative; it's just sort of there. This might have played better as a series of magazine articles; each one detailing another adventure as they hunted for the world's largest freshwater crayfish, or staked out roadkill and waited for nocturnal Tasmania Devils (devils, not tigers -- the former are common, the latter are bigfoot-esque in their probably extinction and popularity).
As for the tigers of the title, they were real animals, large masupial predators that lived on Australia and the island of Tasmania, until the white man brought civilization and extinction. The last one died in rather tragic fashion in a zoo in Tasmania in 1936, though many people in Tasmania still think (and hope) that they might persist, hiding in the dense forests and jungles of the island. The book does not answer that question, but that's more about the inability of proving a negative than anything else.
There are lots of eyewitness sightings and legends and rumors discussed in the book, but no one's brought forth any dead tigers or fur samples or live captures or anything else in more than 60 years, and the authors certainly didn't see one during their brief visit. Hope is not dead, since there are efforts underway to clone them from the DNA in preserved specimens, but it seems pretty clear that there are no surviving Tasmanian Tigers.
Read this book if you're interested in the varied and bizarre wildlife of Tasmania, and you enjoy wacky travelogues. If you're more interested in hard science, or books about cryptozoology, or books about the Tasmanian Tiger, you're better off looking elsewhere.
You can
buy this book or see more reader comments here, on Amazon.com.
Dream job?
Bolty, an old friend from the old D2 days, recently emailed me to point out the
new job opening at Flagship Studios. An excerpted quote:
Community Manager
The Community Manager is directly responsible for maintaining the websites for both Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London, providing them new content, growing their fansite communities, and maintaining a high-quality presence for Flagship Studios in online forums. This position communicates extensively with online gamers and the whole of the online community, while fostering personal, yet professional, relationships with leaders in the worldwide gaming site community.
Requirements:
Experience in website development and maintenance.
Proficiency with a wide range of web tools.
Proficiency with Photoshop or similar art package.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office.
Good written and verbal communication skills.
A desire to build and serve the world's best online fansite community.
Bonus Points Awarded:
Prior experience as community manager for an online game, publisher or developer.
Okay, I'm sure there are persons out there who are even more qualified for it than me, but they can't have too much of a lead. I've worked on the biggest D2 website for 7 years, I did the vast majority of the content for it back in the very busy old days, I dealt with literally hundreds of fan emails a day, I know all the software they mention, and I live about 15 miles from their offices. Best of all, their upcoming title is literally the only computer game in existence that I'm paying any attention to and feeling any anticipation for.
On the other hand, I've hardly touched any computer games for the past two years, denying myself that joy since I get too involved in them and don't get any work done, and I need to get work done since I'm trying to finish my novel and support myself full time as a writer, rather than as an odd-jobber and a webmaster and an SAT test prepper and the various other things I've done over the past decade and a half. So yes, I would be great at this job, and yes I'm highly-qualified for it, and yes, I live in the area, and yes I know virtually everyone working at the company now, from my old days covering their previous mega-blockbuster game.
It's quite the conundrum, I must admit.
If you've forgotten, Flagship Studios was founded a couple of years ago when the creators of Diablo and Diablo II left Blizzard North for various largely-undisclosed reasons and created
their own gaming company. Again. Back when they were starting up, I actually emailed them and ended up talking to Ken Williams, a very nice guy who was largely responsible for putting the names of various prominent D2 fansite webmasters (myself included) into D2 as hireable mercs. He was handling the initial glut of incoming resumes, and told me nicely that though they didn't need anyone to manage their websites or create content for them, they might at some point in the future. I guess the future is now?
The really ironic thing is that Arena.net, another gaming company started up by ex-Blizzard guys, needed their own community manager some years ago, and hired Gaile Gray, whose bio and job title you can see on
their staff page. It's ironic because, as any long time reader of diabloii.net could tell you, Gaile started working on the D2 site way back in 1999, shortly after I did, and got her dream job with Arena.net based largely on that experience.
Should I try to do the same? If it were a part-time job, I'd be all over it. I wouldn't even really care about the pay, I'd just like to be involved in the gaming community again with a title I really like. Working on the D2 site was a blast, which is why I put in the 10 and 12 and 16 hours a day on it for years, even before there was a penny of ad revenue coming in to make it anything more than a labor of love. Unfortunately, I would almost certainly get as or more involved in the Flagship job, and that would really wreck my novel writing time, which is the most important thing in my life, aside from my relationship with Malaya. Decisions, decisions.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Movie Review: King Kong
So there we were, opening day, in the theater 30 minutes early, tickets in hand. We went to a 5:20 showing and found no line and no difficulty getting a good seat; the theater was maybe 10% full once the film started, though I'd imagine the prime time showings are doing better business. Before the film though, while Malaya saved us good seats and I paced around the lobby, killing time, avoiding the horrible pre-movie pop music, and doing my filial duty by chatting a bit with dad, I kept thinking one thing; let it be good.
I wouldn't have turned down masterpiece, and I would have been overjoyed with great. I wasn't considering that it might suck, but I'd skimmed a lot of reviews, and while most of them liked or loved the film (
84% 117/139 good, 7.8 average on RT), almost all that didn't said the same thing. Brilliant, but too long, overdone, bloated, etc.
Three+ hours later, after cheering and laughing and even tearing up a bit, I hate to say it, but I have to be honest. I agree with the detractors. It's a brilliant film, full of unbelievable moments, and it's well-directed, and well-written. There's just too much of it. I couldn't point to any individual scenes of more than 30 seconds that could be cut entirely, but the whole picture just drags, and loses momentum even as everything on the screen is at least good.
To the scores:
King Kong, 2005
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 8
Action: 9
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 10
Fun Factor: 8
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6
My scores don't remotely average out, and that's not an accident. As I said in the intro, all of the individual elements of the film are good or great. It's just that the whole is less than the sum of the parts, mostly because it just goes on too long. And I'm quite disappointed by that, and my reaction. Lots of critics seem to have loved the whole thing, and I very much wanted to join them. I couldn't though, and Malaya was far more bored than I, nearly nodding off several times as things dragged on.
I'm torn on a number of the scores, too. Script/Story most of all, since I liked the script, and the story is epic. The dialogue is great, the characters are all interesting, and the storyline is a classic. I'd have given it a 9 without any debate if the film had been 2 hours long. As it was though, I'm tempted to drop this score to about a 5, since I've got to blame something for the bloat, and the overlong 2nd and 3rd acts are the prime culprits.
I also have to mention how great the special effects were, especially Kong and his interactions with Ann Darrow. A few of his finger pokes and the times he picks her up are a bit fake, and the humans and dinosaurs don't quite interact during one long stampede/trample scene, but most of the rest is A+ quality. Kong especially. I didn't think they could improve on Gollum just 2 years later, but damn the monkey looked good. I would have sworn 90% of the face and body shots were real life ape footage, edited into the film, and the backgrounds Kong is acting in are so perfectly-rendered that they look completely real too. I often caught myself wondering how they could make the CG ape look so perfect in the jungle as he knocked over trees and such, until I remembered that the ape and the jungle and the dinosaurs and rocks and trees and waterfalls were all CG, and that I should have been looking at the tiny human figures, the only reality in site, to see if they were cleanly composited into the image.
Overall, I had no trouble believing it was really a giant ape, and a lot of that suspension of disbelief was thanks to Naomi Watts' performance. She's easily knocked Frodo and Sam with Gollum out of the top spot in human to CG acting. She's great in her role; totally believable in her dozens of reaction shots to various special effects, and her emotions for and warmth towards the ape are completely believable.
The film can be roughly divided into thirds. The first hour takes place in New York and on the ocean, as Carl Denham (Jack Black is enjoyable and perfect in the role, the first film work I've ever seen of his.) faces the ruin of his film and career and desperately tries to find a writer, an actress for his film, and a way to escape New York before the movie financers can arrest him. The scenes of the city during the Great Depression are fine, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is great, Adrian Brody's character is great, and so are all of the supporting characters in New York and on the boat. Honestly, I enjoyed the first hour the most, even though there isn't any action or special effects or giant apes, etc. Peter Jackson can definitely write a script and direct it without the crutch of action or elves to keep things interesting.
The second hour is pretty much non-stop action and special effects, all taking place on Skull Island. Here we see dinosaurs, giant bugs, the massive King Kong, creepy murderous natives, and the most amazing large scale special effects I've ever seen. It's also the best set design I've ever seen, and if I could go explore Skull Island tomorrow I would be on a plane tonight. There is nothing but impossibly gorgeous scenery in the jungles, ancient stone temple ruins, dark tunnels, rotting forests, and so on. If I had not seen all the behind the scenes stuff on KongisKing.net, I would never have suspected they didn't shoot 95% of it out in some incredible jungle somewhere, rather than all in a studio, with extensive CG work. It's just about flawless.
The action on the island is great, in several set pieces. Unfortunately, they're basically microcosms of the film. There are too many of them, they run too long, and they're not really required by or in service of the plot. They're the "and hilarity ensues" type of thing, with PJ larding in more and more action just because no one stopped him from doing so. None of the scenes are bad, they are just unnecessary and redundant. Remember the scene where Legolas kills the oliphant all by himself in the big battle in
Return of the King? It was awesome and funny with Gimli's, "That still only counts for one!" remark, and because it punctuated a great battle scene. Now imagine that after that, Legolas did basically the same thing to a second oliphant, and then a third, and then an even bigger oliphant with orcs on top of it, and then a flying dragon, and then, and then... I never thought I'd say that there could be too many great action scenes in a film, but that's pretty much what happens.
The third hour takes place back in NYC, with the huge broadway show of the ape in chains, his inevitable escape and rampage and reunion with the girl, and his tragic last stand atop what was then the tallest building in the world. It's more good stuff, though I was fidgety during the long, long build up to the broadway show, and then once Kong is rampaging there are quite a few scenes of him doing it, and doing it. They seem to be atop the Empire State Building for a good half hour too, and while PJ didn't revisit his "five endings are better than one" work from RotK, the final dying and sad goodbye seemed to go on damn near forever. I was crying through most of it, moved by the tragedy and the beauty of it, but eventually enough is enough.
The second and third hour were also handicapped, for me at least, by the fact that I knew how the movie turned out. Since I think almost everyone else does too, the lack of suspense is a problem. Everyone knows they find Skull Island, natives steal the girl, Kong takes her, the movie guys rescue her and capture the ape and take him back to NYC before he busts out and climbs up the Empire State Building and biplanes come to shoot him down, and so on. If someone somehow didn't know that, I think
King Kong would be an enormously-entertaining movie, since there would be constant suspense and surprise. As it was I didn't get that caught up in some of the action, since I knew how it was going to turn out, and I wanted the plot to continue.
I enjoyed the first hour the most since I didn't know what was going to happen next, and there was always something new happening, even though nothing even approached the spectacle of later events. I knew they'd end up on the boat heading for Skull Island, but I enjoyed meeting all of the characters, enjoyed the performances by the actors (Jack Black and the maniacal gleam in his eye most of all), and wasn't bored a bit. It wasn't until they started running through one long action sequence after another that things bogged down, and they action sequences were great, both technically and by appearance.
My hope is that I'll like the film more on a second viewing. That won't be for a while, not until the DVD, but I liked the first 2 LotR films far more when I saw them for a second time and then even more on the extended edition DVDs, so there familiarity bred greater appreciation. I knew most of the plots of those films too, and spent much of my first viewing (unintentionally) analyzing how things were happening and comparing the movies to the books, which clearly sapped my enjoyment. Whether King Kong, which I knew far less about than the LotR books, will equally improve with subsequent viewings remains to be seen. I sure hope so, though, since I feel left out after my lukewarm reaction to a film with so much potential to be loved.
Archives
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2012
