Rotten Tomatoes posted an hour-long video interview/chat with Guillermo del Toro, director of Hellboy 2 and the upcoming Hobbit films, and it's a really good view. That they broke it up into 12 segments is kind of annoying, but I well know that page loads/ad banners gotta pay the bills, so I can't criticize too much. (Better yet, it's English affiliates of RT, so we get to hear about a film's "ruh-in tuh-mah-oes" score.)
The first few segments are about Hellboy and the plans he's making with PJ to direct the Hobbit films, and those are good, but I found the last few segments the most interesting. In those del Toro talks about storytelling and traditional film structure and his battles with Hollywood over film structure. The last part has some good stuff on pay off scenes and how the executives think films must be structured to tell a story logically, while his own focus is an emotional one. He thinks films are better adapted from fairy tales, with their very simple, pre-novel structure, rather than more modern works with multiple acts, rising and falling tension, false climaxes, etc.
I'm currently collaborating on my dad to create a detective novel; his story idea, my writing and organization, and I saw a lot of the conversations we've been having reflected in this del Toro discourse. I'm very interested in non-traditional story form and breaking the strict stylistic formulas, but I have also analyzed writing and read books on structure and studied novel construction a fair amount. So I have a pretty clear picture in my head of how this book needs to be structured and laid out; where the conflict should come from, how the tension starts to rise, where the emotional payoffs are, etc.
My dad, on the other hand, reads prodigiously, but he's not a writer and he doesn't deconstruct novels the way I do. He's got ideas for characters and some scenes, but most of them are not the sort of key, pivotal scenes that I create in my head when I'm outlining a novel, or analyzing one I've read. A lot of the scenes dad has envisioned most clearly are ones I think of as secondary, or even tertiary/irrelevant. But since they're important to him and the book is his dream (literally, if not figuratively), I force myself to reconsider and try to see how/where/why they would fit into the book. I challenge myself to find a different way to structure the plans I've made for this quick, funny, relatively formulaic mystery novel, so that those scenes aren't just there, but are crucial. It's an odd way to break the usual narrative structure, and it's interesting to see how the book is forming up as we create the outline and I start writing it.
Some intrepid reporter dared ask media darling Saint John McCain a semi-tough question last week, and he froze up like a rusty hinge, wheels turning for literally 10 seconds of awkward silence, before creaking out a laughable "I don't know enough about the issue to comment." The question? "Is it fair that insurance companies pay for Viagra, but not birth control."
Leaving aside the obvious issue of McCain's pathetic excuse to duck the question (What more do you need to know? It's not a question that requires an economic analysis, it's a simple yes/no question about fairness.), is there anyone who will defend this? I've long thought this example is about the most clear cut example of the sexism in medical insurance imaginable. Well, anti-female sex-ism. If prostate exams were covered but pap smears weren't, that would be more blatantly sexist, but that a pill to enable men to have sex is covered, and a pill that enables women to safely have sex isn't, is just laughable. (Of course there are medical benefits for women too, in terms of making periods more regular and manageable; plenty of women take the pill who aren't sexually active, while there's no purpose for Viagra other than as a male sex aid.)
As I said, this issue came up a week or two ago, and I didn't care enough to post about it then. I am now since I saw a link to this video today, and it was so LOLrageous that I had to comment. Watch the movie; it's a clip from the Bill O'Reilly show, and it's only a minute long.
Well, he's got nerve, eh? I honestly couldn't think how anyone could defend McCain on that one, but Bill found a way. See, cause when men can't fuck it's a "medical condition." Unlike say... pregnancy? The fact that this is Bill "Falafel" O'Rielly adds a lovely level of absurdity to the proceedings. What a douche bag. Go rape some more interns, you bloated sack of pus.
The mod of a fledgling Diablo 3 wiki was trying hard to pimp his site in the diii.net forums today, and got banned (not by me, I didn't see his posts until he was long-since clipped by one of the mods) for his trouble. I did use my admin powers to see the deleted posts though, and followed the links out of curiosity. And once there, I got a laugh, since it's as most fansites always seem to be. A direct cut and paste from the official site. It's quite thorough, in this instance. Every single page from Blizzard's Diablo III site is reproduced on that wiki... well, the text, at least. I'd stop well short of calling it a wikification of the D3 site, since there's nothing but the words. No pictures, no pretty backgrounds, no music, no flash animated characters, etc.
And naturally, there's no mention of the fact that the entire wiki is a copyright violation. Obviously writing their own would have been too much work, but couldn't they find a disclaimer to copy? They could have used the one from my D3 wiki.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Project:Copyrights for details). DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!
Oh wait, I guess that wouldn't work so well after all.
For a bonus chuckle, check out this link from their navigation. Down at the bottom, it says, "Pre-unvieled Diablo III Wiki." Think about that. Imagine that it were spelled correctly, and if the link were updated to the current version of the page, and think about it. What does "pre-unveiled" mean?
I want to put that line into a story. I see it being uttered by an unctuous PR spokesman, trying to make something sound more impressive than it is. "Please, Good Sirs, do join us at our pre-unveiling celebration!
And since that phrase is tickling my inner Grammar Nazi... I must ponder it aloud.
The linked-to page (which I wrote earlier this year) is a compilation of all the D3 rumors and leaks. It's info about D3 from before the game was revealed. And the game's announcement could be termed an unveiled. But does that mean D3 was pre-unveiled before then? Technically, wouldn't "pre-unveiled" mean before the "it" in question was veiled? Like it wasn't yet secret, and then became secret?
A bride is unveiled when she reaches the altar. She's veiled before then. She's pre-veiled when she first arrives at the church. When is she pre-unveiled?
Damnit, now I'll be thinking about this all day.
On the larger issue of that D3 wiki being entirely copied from the official site (Well, not completely. They stole a bunch of images on the monsters page from diablo.wikia.com. Nothing from my wiki yet, though. I feel so unloved.), that doesn't surprise me at all at this point. In the all-too-many years I've been involved with fansites, I've learned to expect that, since there doesn't seem to be any concept of writing your own material, or not treating the official site as a final draft of your own fansite. I'm not sure why that is; they never quote employees of the game and try to pass those words off as their own, but somehow they never seem to see any need or reason to credit the official site when they copy it word for word. I used to joke with my coworkers that if the official HGL site had implemented one of those "no right clicks allowed" scripts, every other HGL fansite webmaster would have had to close up shop, or take up transcription.
I think it's partially laziness, partially an inability to write, partially a lack of pride, and largely the youthful solipsism that fuels a "stealing isn't stealing unless it's stolen from me" attitude. That's what enables young men across the globe to fill their hard drives with pirated movies, music, anime, games, and porn, while doing nothing to prevent them from freaking out if their little brother so much as touches a pencil on their bedroom floor.
In the HGL days, the competition had a wiki that was about 60 pages, of which maybe 56 were direct cut and paste from the official HGL site. With nothing added. Just the HGL.com page, wikified (minus most of the pretty images and fonts and such). Need you ask if there was any indication given on those pages that the content was taken from the official site? Need you ask if the admins of that site perpetually bitched that some of the citations on my HGL wiki didn't specify which fansite interview they were taken from? These were blockquoted quotes of some Flagship employee answering a question about the game, all of them clearly labeled as quotes, most with a link back to the source. Quotes spotted about my wiki, which was hundreds of pages long and comprised entirely of original content I'd compiled from countless interviews, screenshots, features, previews, gameplay movies, etc.
Pot meet kettle? No no no! See... that was their pencil. And just because it was on the floor didn't mean they weren't going to use it later.
I posted a few times about the various bullshit involved with the HGL fansite, and "competing" with other fansites for attention and news and such. I don't make a habit of talking about that sort of thing, since it's dirty laundry that my various website associates prefer not to air in public. But I just saw this one tonight, and it made me laugh, so here it goes.
Diablo 3 was announced at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational 2 weeks ago, on June 28th. That same day, an ex-Blizzard North employee named Mike Huang posted an entry on his blog about D3 and his thoughts on it. It was an interesting post since he compared the design direction Blizzard Irvine is taking to the original project they began at Bliz North, and he's one of the few insiders to have talked about that sort of thing.
I saw his post a few days later, but didn't post news about it on diii.net since I was trying to get Mike to do the full seven-question interview I got Ben Boos to do, and didn't want to scoop myself. Mike didn't seem interested, so I finally gave up on that on Friday, and posted news about his blog post. (Ironically, I heard from him later that day via email, and the interview might happen anyway.)
What makes this funny is that tonight I couldn't find any D3 news worth posting, and wound up taking one of my rare looks at the competition, diablofans.com. Lo and behold, they've got brand new news! It seems that ex-Bliz Norther Mike Huang made a blog post with his thoughts about D3, and here comes the news masters at diablofans.com to bring their readers that breaking story. Two weeks after Mike posted it. A day after it was main page news on diii.net.
What a coincidence! They must have been running google searches and got lucky, since there's certainly no way they could have seen the news on the only other major English language Diablo 3 site, shamelessly ripped it off, and made up a name like "Lyquid" to attribute the tip to. No, that could never happen. Not in a friendly, tight-knit fan community like we have around Diablo 3.
You'll be equally shocked to hear that diablofans never posted any news about the Ben Boos interview I conducted last week, in which he gave his thoughts on D3 from the perspective of a D2 designer. Even though that news item got wide circulation on general gaming sites. They probably never saw it. Or if they did, they must have decided it wasn't relevant to their fans. They wouldn't deprive their readers of interesting D3 content just because the source of the content was another fansite. After all, it wasn't like my interview with Ben was exactly the same thing as the Mike Huang news post, but 5x longer and more detailed. Oh wait...
And yes, we've still got like, 2 years before D3 is going to be released. Oh the fun we'll have! It's almost as if this sort of behavior reminds me of something... hmm... nah. It's all very, very different, now.
Since I'm too lazy busy with D3 stuff and a fiction project to blog properly, here's an movie of grown men falling down while wearing silly animal costumes. I laughed.
Less funny; Flagship Studios overspending, being forced to pawn their intellectual properties for additional loans, rushing game production, causing HGL to flop by releasing it in an unfinished state, beta-testing Mythos for over a year with no end in sight, running out of funds, and being foreclosed on by their Korean partners/owners. Coming just days after the triumphant announcement of Diablo III and the mega-money Activision/Blizzard merger, I'd say Blizzard Irvine's victory is pretty much complete.
I saw this on a video site and thought it was pretty funny. Who thought of this first?
If you think it looks fun, I advise you try it soon. It's only a matter of time until some little kid tears his arm off trying it, and lawsuits force elevator redesigns all across the world.
I got a sudden craving for bread/cheese/wine this lunch time, so I set off to Trader Joe's, belatedly realizing that they might not be open on the holiday. They were, happily, but apparently the bakery took a half day, since at 1pm they had exactly 2 loaves of bread in the entire store. Two of the same thing; a fairly mediocre, smallish, kinda-squishy cibatta, for $2.69. I got one, and it's not bad lightly toasted and properly garnished and accompanied by beverage, which leaves me able only to complain about the selection, price, and size, and firmness. Yes, I sound like a woman touring a male whorehouse.
The drive home from TJ's was odd, since there were very few cars on the road, but those that had made it out on the holiday seemed determined to make up for their scarcity by driving really, really slowly. I only live an exit away from the onramp out of downtown San Rafael, and that stretch of 101 is four lanes, uphill, for about 1.5 miles. I don't think I've ever before left the right lane, or maybe the #3, since those are just as fast as the others on that stretch, and it's such a short freeway jaunt. Today I had to get all the way over to #1 to pass a bolus of SUVs and Prii, all happily rolling rolling along @ oh... 50ish. It was probably wise of them; they might save a quarter on gas with such driving tactics, but some of us had mushroom brie and spicy hummus riding shotgun, with a delightful sauv blanc chilling at home, and there was no time to waste!
And yes, the semi-irony of me hurrying to eat a faux-European style picnic lunch, on the 4th of July, was not entirely left behind in the passing lane.
Incidentally, is anyone else actually LOLing these days when you see someone driving a Hummer? I don't mean snickering, or grinning in schadenfreude. I mean actually laughing out loud.
One benefit of working at home, not having much of a social life this summer with my (girl)friends out of town, and taking some time off of Kali, is that I've driven about 50 miles in the past month. The lowest grade of unleaded is at least $4.50 in this area, (the Chevron station nearest my apt was $4.69 this afternoon) but by this time next year we'll be used to it. (Assuming Bush doesn't launch one last debacle of a military adventure into Iran, and gas isn't $7.50/gallon by then.)
Humans enjoy routine. It's an evolutionary adaptation that allows us to become accustomed to our situation quite quickly, after a sometimes painful adjustment or adaptation period. It's only times of change that really catch our attention. Individuals are happy or depressed based partially on their life situation, but more on their inherent mood and emotional state. Millionaires aren't really any happier than poor people, on average. Winning or losing a lot of money creates major changes in that, but people with 10x the normal income aren't 10x happier. They're seldom any happier, since they just feel more pressure to keep more plates spinning. Gas doubling and tripling in price is short term painful, but if it stabilizes for a year or two people will get used to it, and forget the changes the price increases forced them to make.
About the only driving I do on a regular basis these days is to the gym, and since it's about a ten mile round trip that's almost all freeway, I hardly notice it. I am noticing my recent habit of spiking my (short) hair straight up, before I go to the gym. I'm not sure what that's about, but it seems to put me in the proper mood to sweat and strain. Sweat and strain that leads to... moobs!
A perhaps predictable result, given that I lift weights for an hour a pop, 3-4x a week, but I've never consistently done that before, and it... changes... a man. It's odd now when I walk past a mirror, since the glimpse of a reflection I catch looks different than I think I look. More top heavy. I'm not a 13 y/o girl, pulling on my tightest tops and turning side to side while puffing up my chest and chewing on my lower lip in contemplation, but I probably would if I had a GF to encourage that sort of behavior.
On the subject of GFs, ex-ones anyway, Malaya's been out of town for six weeks, so I've had no one to denounce me as a "himbo." My ego would be swollen from it, if not for the fact that every time I'm at the gym a third of the guys are much more muscular than me. They're much fatter in the midsection too though, which does something to salve my pride. I just wish they were as critical of their guts as they are prideful of their pecs. The number of guys who never do any cardio and spend all their gym time strutting around the weight pit in spandex shirts (sometimes entirely shirtless) that lovingly show off their one-packs (the IG suggested I call them "kegs") is getting out of hand. "It's a gym, not a bathhouse, Junior. And they wouldn't like you anyway."
Speaking of, and segueing into, gayness... I laughed my ass off at some of the signs these dykes were carrying in a pride march. And no, I'm not insulting anyone with that noun; the march was called the Boston Dyke March. They got a professionally-made sign and everything! That's not the funny sign, though. I liked these much more. (Link from Roy Edroso's great weekly column.)
There are a lot more amusing photos from the march on the site I linked to above, but be warned; it's an anti-gay site who posted those images to shock and horrify their uptight, right-wing, Christian readers. If you go wandering around and find something genuinely offensive, (far worse than women with no bras, short hair, no makeup, and humorously-obscene signage) don't come crying to me.
The thing that confuses me about that sort of site is why some straight men get so uptight about lesbians? I know it's tied to a conservative male need to control women, and a general sense of outrage and helplessness in the face of evolving societal mores (see previous comments about people being upset by change), but really, boys. Grow a pair. I'm not exactly overjoyed by the fact that the vast majority of women on earth don't want to have sex with me, but why does the fact that some of them prefer other women, rather than other men, make such a difference? Welcome to the 21st century, Christian white Americans. You'll find that everyone no longer looks/thinks/acts just like you, and that many of those different people are no longer willing to stay out of site, eat your shit, and like it.
That uplifting plea for tolerance and understanding offered, check back in about 3 hours to hear me cursing my drunken neighbors. Most of them are Hispanic, and as a full-blooded Cherokee, I have every right too... oh wait.
Anyway, I was just out front carrying my flourishing tomato orchard through the apt to the back patio, as I do every evening when the sun moves behind the building, and noticed that the street was packed with cars. More than I've ever seen parked out there before, and given that it's a holiday, I'm assumed that some parties were imminent. A conclusion that was reinforced by the sight of two young couples walking from a Buick towards my building, a case of cheap beer under the (scrawny, chicken-like) arm of one man.
That bodes ill for me, with about 8 hours of website work to do today, and none of it yet accomplished.
Also boding ill; the paltry 2 cherry and 1 medium early girl toms I picked today. I was getting 4-6 toms a day off of my crop last week, but suddenly the production has slowed, despite the plants being larger and leafier than ever before. There are innumerable green toms on display, but someone needs to turn the ripeness dial up a notch or two. Cooler, occasionally cloudy weather this week made that much difference?
On the other hand, maybe it's good that they slowed down, since I can hardly carry the damn things from front to back as I chase the sun as it is. The largest pots weigh about 80 pounds (36kg) when the dirt is damp, and carrying 9 of those back and forth twice a day is a fairly good squat and lift workout, given the odd angle I need to carry them at, due to how bulky and fragile are the weights in question.
That process has lately become even more complicated, thanks to the stakes I drove into the dirt of the largest plants. Two of the toms were extending their upper tendrils well above the top of the wire support cage, and needed additional support. Think about it; do you ever seen Pam Anderson without a bra? (Porn aside.)
That's not the problem. (Well it would be if I were Tommy Lee, but fortunately I'm far away and safe from that situation.) The problem is that the stakes are just tall enough that they bang into the top of my door frame, if I don't remember to squat down a few inches when passing through. And since I'm already moving slowly and awkwardly to maneuver the plants through the door without breaking any limbs or fruits off, I keep forgetting. This results in a thud, a sudden deceleration of the top of the tree, and me doing a faceplant into the fragrant tomato-y goodness of the midsection of my pride and joy in this cold, cruel, empty world.
Balancing this agricultural failing is the success of my cucumbers and peppers, both of which are growing in proverbially weedy style. I've not eaten any peppers yet; there are green ones large enough to sell in stores, but the plant claimed to be a red pepper producer, and since red peppers are just green ones that have been left to ripen and sweeten... patience, young Jedi. The cucs though, are excellent while still green, and I've eaten 8 or 10 of them in the past couple of weeks, all about as large as the ones you get in stores, and far tastier. Imagine if I had a yard to garden in? I'd be entirely off the grid, except for um... everything I eat besides a few summertime vegetables.
