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Jumper (the movie)
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 03:54 pm
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Well, that was a waste of lifespan. I went in with minimal expectations and it still failed to meet them. I am impressed at how the producers replaced a serviceable coming of age/revenge/more coming of age story with one where people for no particularly good reason are trying to kill the protagonist.
Minor spoilers
( Read more... ) |
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All Powered up.
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
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As I've mentioned in the past, sometimes books just don't work for me. It's not that I don't like them, I just read a few chapters and it fails to engage me at any level. Most times, I can put it aside and come back to it later.
That was the case with Tim Powers' Expiration Date, the follow-on to Last Call (which I loved and read in practically one sitting.) I tried to read it, never got past the first two chapters, and put it aside. Well, after meeting Mr. Powers at Baycon, I resolved to try again, and as motivation, ordered Earthquake Weather, the final book in the series.
This time, the books clicked. I found Expiration Date to be very interesting, but Earthquake Weather? This book rocked. For many reasons.
( Minor spoilers for Earthquake Weather )
Next up... I'm not sure. I have several books to choose from. What Happened by Scott McClellan, River of Gods by Ian McDonald, The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton, or Building Harlequin's Moon by Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper.
I'm sure there are others wandering around my reading area, waiting to leap out and nibble my ankles.
Choices, choices, choices...Current Mood:  busy Current Music: Megadeth - Symphony Of Destruction |
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Pretty!
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 04:01 pm
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Secret Minds of Editors?
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 03:43 pm
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Ellen Datlow, Mort Castle, and I were interviewed by the online magazine Dark Scribe. It may be of interest to some people. Check it out, though it isn't quite a "roundtable" but really three distinct interviews using the same questions:
Genre Roundtable: Revealing the Secret Minds of Editors. |
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Showing the place
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 03:17 pm
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Always interesting what people ask about. One guy wanted to know:
if the bay windows were a southern exposure?
how much home heating oil will cost in December of this year?
whether I was taking my table? (The only good thing in the house)
whether I was taking my couch? (The weird orange bamboo thing with the flat pillows)
whether I was taking my bed? (ew)
whether the cable leading to the TV was the cable TV?
whether I was taking my computer printer?
if I had any "spare dishes and pots"?
Meanwhile, as ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) strangebint and kest look for a place in the Bay for me, the questions I ask are, "Is the place on the same block as a crackhouse?" and "Well, does it look like a bad crackhouse?" |
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Why don't you join the group? It's better than being a party poop. Obligato, pitzacatto Guy Lombardo
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 01:51 pm
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It's very hot and humid (48%, 83 degrees) today.
Know what my favorite thing to do on a day like today is?
Go to the gym or for a very long walk. Get completely overheated. Exhaust myself and get completely sweaty and disgusting to the point where my clothes and the gym towel are soaked with perspiration.
Then come home and take a cold shower while drinking a diet coke.
It's fucking fantastic.
~me
p.s. Here is more music for you, the song from the title/location/etc A Doodling Song by Peggy Lee.
p.p.s. I am writing this on the downstairs computer, I don't think I've ever posted from down here before. I only use this computer to watch dvds when I'm folding laundry. That means I'm sitting on a tractor seat on a spring, which is absolutely the best chair ever. BoingBoingWhee!Current Music: song 2 3 4 like it so much I'll doodle some more... Peggy lee - doodling song |
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DOCUMENTAL
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 06:41 pm
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DOCUMENTAL is an exhibition by four emerging photographers, including two good friends of mine, Irene Kaoru Malatesta and Sarah Sharp. Exhibition ends with a live gig, apparently. If you’re in NYC on the 11th, please do go and see them. Details in the link, obviously.
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) |
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sweeeeet little farm!
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 10:36 am
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Paul Pope
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 06:34 pm
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There is no nihilism in pushing the frontiers of comics, no budgets but our imaginations, no reason to stop trying.
PULPHOPE: KARIMBAH
(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) |
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Valley of the Kings
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
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Geeks and Gaming
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 11:12 am
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Sorry, I know this has been posted before, but for the life of me today, I cannot find it. Can someone please link the Madison gaming community for me? Thanks in advance for helping out a Madison geek....;) |
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Heavy Metal Sunday wants more cake
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 08:22 am
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Way too many birthdays this weekend. Today, for example, we have the amazing chaoswolf celebrating her 23rd! Hippo Birdies, kiddo!
So we here at HMS Command have been partying all weekend. Which requires party music, right?
Def Leppard is known mostly as a pop/rock band. What a lot of people forget is their roots are solidly in the NWOBHM movement of the late 70s and early eighties. Today, we proudly present Pour Some Sugar On Me. This video was the first one made after drummer Rick Allen's car crash in which he lost his left arm. Watching him play his custom kit (most of the work done by his left arm in the past he now does with his feet) is fun.
But wait, this party ain't over yet! Metal is not known for subtlety, but this video? It doesn't even try.Current Mood:  bouncy Current Music: Warrant - Cherry Pie |
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Scenes from July 4: Run, flat boy, run
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 10:47 am
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1. First, I (mostly) ran the Peachtree Road Race on Friday. It’s easy!
( Read more... )
2. Not surprisingly, I had not much energy (and an off-and-on, probably-dehydration-related headache) for the rest of the afternoon, so Sweetness and I chilled out by watching The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird. I hadn’t seen it since it came out, and it’s still great. It’s just as well that we haven’t let Sweetness see it before now, because there’s a certain amount of bathroom humor (and minor swears like “hell”) and some pretty serious issues about killing, dying and souls.
3. For dinner, we opted for goudabonbon’s suggestion that we go to the special pig roast -- a benefit for the Save the Chattahoochee River fund -- at her favorite restaurant, Woodfire Grill. They were offering a $29-a-plate price-fixed menu (and even made a small, $15 version for Sweetness) and all the locally-brewed Sweetwater beer you could drink, suggesting a donation of $2. The trouble is that I don’t like Sweetwater, so it may as well have been "All the filthy Chattahoochee River water you can drink” for me. The food was really good. It was out of our usual budget range, but goudabonbon has gotten a bunch of freelance work lately, so she particularly deserved a treat.
4. We took Sweetness to see the Chamblee Fireworks, basically parking near the Pig N Chick parking lot and looking across Peachtree St. towards Keswick Park. It was actually the ideal way to do it, because Sweetness had never seen “live” fireworks before (that she remembers), and was a little afraid that they’d be loud, so they were at a safe distance. Plus, we were able to drive out of there very quickly. She really loved the fireworks, and I was impressed, too. It’s been about 5 years since I’ve seen any, and I think there have been some advances in fireworks technology – like firework “blossoms” that basically have two hemispheres in different colors, ex. purple on the left, orange on the right. (It would be cool to know the jargon.) |
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I have a sinus infection, I think...
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 09:02 am
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And right now, I need that like I need a hole in my head.
I spent most of last night freezing and roasting, with my stomach threatening to abandon ship at any moment. About three a.m., it finally did, and I felt much better and finally got some sleep. This morning, I woke up feeling like I'd had my sinuses forcibly injected with a 50 lb. sack of concrete and am sitting here sweating.
This has been one of the hardest moves I've ever done. I'm overwhelmed and sick, now.
Just kill me.
Yesterday, I was cleaning out one of the many weird little cubbies in the house, and got stabbed with something. I yanked my hand out and saw this fuzzy reddish-brown thing sticking out of my finger. I screamed when I realized it was a roach leg. I was in the corner telling my mom I wanted to go back to Iraq instead of packing and dealing with a damn dead roach.
Isn't this fun? |
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Sunday Afternoon Vanity
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 02:25 pm
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Just a little self portait of me dressed up again. :)
On a side note, if you like fantasywear, costumes and fetishwear (of course you do :)) me and my girly have a UK webshop selling just that click here to take a looksie |
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30 Days: Gun Culture
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 04:55 am
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I finished watching this, and was deeply impressed with the episode. They took a woman from Brockton, Mass. who was vehemently anti-gun and immersed her in the gun culture in Ohio. They had her live with a father and son who are gun collectors and enthusiasts She believed that only soldiers and police officers should be allowed access to them. She started out being so scared of firearms that she cried the first time she fired one. She attempted to persuade others to her view, but her (and the people she brought in) arguements were not logical, only based on emotion.
Part of her immersion was to work in a gun store. She learned that they do have to do background checks, even at a gun show. She met a man who had used a firearm to defend his family. She even learned to shoot a pistol and shotgun well. She ended up learning that firearms are not for her, but the the heavy regulation she had been advocating was not necessarily the way to go. All-in-all, I was very pleased with the way this show handled the issues.
Originally published at Tim's World. You can comment here or there.
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The Stage is Set
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 08:49 pm
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CATCHUP! Grunions, Hulks, Frenches, Bots, and Death.
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 12:17 am
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WOW! Has it really been almost a month since I posted? How lame!
BUT... here are all the posts I would've written had I not been spending all my time on, y'know, Serenity pages, freelance character designs, Comic-Con preparations (July 23-27 at the SLG booth, but I'm sure I'll post more on that later) and, of course, important LOST DVDs from Netflix:
1. GRUNION UN-RUN. Two weeks ago I made a point of trekking down to San Pedro's Cabrillo Beach in the middle of the night to join well over a thousand of my fellow humans in watching tiny, sardine-like fish called "grunions" squiggle out of the tide, half-bury themselves in the sand (if female), squirt big, steaming gobs of "milt" all over half-buried females (if male), then high-tail it back out to sea like dirty, dirty sailors, leaving nothing behind but great hordes of newly-fertilized orphan eggs. That's right, I went out to see a fish orgy. And I didn't even get to see the fish orgy, thanks to my darling, precious countrymen's inability to follow simple directions. Put it this way: If thousands of babbling primates went charging into your home brandishing flashlights, buckets, and pure stupidity, you probably wouldn't be able to stuff your loved one in a hole and dump semen on her, either.
The Cabrillo Beach Aquarium was way cool, though. Before our ill-fated grunion-love excursion, they prepped with a short film about grunions presented in glorious, 60's-era, "teacher needs a smoke break" Technicolor. It was sort of the highlight of the evening. Well, that and the awesome octopus, moon jellies, shark eggs and monstrous demon lobsters.
2. THE INCREDIBLE HULK. The new Hulk movie was pretty good. Edward Norton, the vast shantytown chase, Tim Roth kicked into a tree and the notion of one day seeing Tim Blake Nelson don the big, green, hydroencephalytic head of The Leader... Good stuff. And it really felt like part of the same universe as Iron Man, tone-wise. The whole "house style" approach Marvel is taking with these new movies is kind of fun at the moment, but you can see how it might backfire down the line. I mean, one of the things I really loved about Ang Lee's version (which, I have to admit, I still prefer) was how odd the thing was. It seemed very Ang Lee, however compromised it might've been. But maybe that movie's fate is exactly why Marvel's decided to stay out of the "personal vision" business. Which is fair, but you have to wonder... would a guy like Christopher Nolan want to work in a "house style?" Would Sam Raimi? GDT?
(By the way, why are internet people always hatin' on the Hulk dogs so much? What's not cool about The Hulk having to fight giant monster canines? I LOVED the Hulk dogs! All the hate kind of freaks me out a little, too... I mean, forcing my characters to fight a massive, irradiated hell-poodle is EXACTLY the kind of thing I'd put in my comics... God, should I be worried?)
3. THE ANIMATION SHOW 4. Going to Mike Judge's (and until recently, funniest man alive Don Hertzfeldt's) animation festival always reminds me of going to the old Tournée of Animation with my Dad every year. Man, I was too young for a lot of those shorts... This year's batch is solid as always, although it's kind of weird how much animation is coming out of France these days. Sort of a cartoon renaissance going on over there, I guess. But anyway, if the show comes to your neck of the country this time around, you should definitely take a look. My favorites this time around were Key Lime Pie, Paintballing, John and Karen, and, of course, Usavich:
ON THE BIG SCREEN, FOLKS. The schedule is right HERE.
4. WALL-E. Wow, another absolute masterpiece from Pixar. The first, nearly wordless, essentially all-character half of Wall-E is right up there with the very best films I've ever seen. The rest of the movie is great, but maybe not quite great enough to knock Ratatouille off the top of my list. Wall-E is actually a pretty fantastic bit of science fiction, too... It reminded me of all those old "EVERYTHING'S SCREWED!" sci-fi movies from the 70's more than anything (Silent Running, Logan's Run, Zardoz... DEFINITELY Zardoz....). Amazing, beautiful stuff. And the people who animated Wall-E himself should get a Best Actor nomination, as far as I'm concerned.
(SPOILER MAYBE! What was with all the live action bits, though? If we were never supposed to see humans later in the movie, the live actionny parts would've been neat, but as it is... What, do centuries of physical neglect turn people into pudgy Incredibles or something? It's a very, very minor complaint, but still. WHA' HAPPEN, Fred Willard??)
5. GRIM DEATH. June was not a good time to be a famous person I love, as both Stan Winston and George Carlin died all sudden-like last month. As the co-creator of the Predator, Alien Queen, and T-800 (the holy three!), Stan Winston was probably the first behind-the-scenes movie hero I ever had. And George Carlin... well, George Carlin is the greatest stand-up there ever was.
The world is worse without them, but better for having had them in it. Strange that it works that way.
Talk to you again in (hopefully) less than a month! |
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Doctor Who, Season 4 Finale
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 04:47 pm
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A Melancholy Fourth
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Jul. 6th, 2008 @ 03:40 am
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I had a very introspective, mildly depressive Independence Day Weekend. That's not to say that alienne and her roommate didn't do a wonderful job of hosting a barbecue and evening of shooting off fireworks to celebrate my upcoming birthday, and I appreciate it, and I had a good time. I just wasn't really in the mood.
I noticed that this has been the biggest year since St. Louis County outlawed fireworks for illegal home displays in my neighborhood. No, really, the amount of illegal class-C ordinance that people in St. John fired off this year was absolutely unprecedented, easily three or more times as much stuff going off as in any of the previous seven years I've lived here. My first, bitterly satisfactory thought was that maybe they were doing what I was doing, namely celebrating the timely (if insufficiently unpleasant) death of one of the most bitter, vicious, hateful, murderous and destructive racist bigots in the history of American elective office, Jesse Helms. But that's probably wishful thinking on my part. My practical thought is that more people stayed home and spent $100 or $200 on fireworks because it was cheaper than the gas to drive to and from wherever they usually go for the Fourth, down to the lake or to some out of town relative's house or whatever. But along about 11pm on the 4th, a chill voice in the back of my head said in the sepulchral voice of a (faux) premonition, one so improbable that I hesitate to even write it down: "They're celebrating all-out because they, too, sense that this will have been The Last Fourth of July."
Other people have irrational fears of spiders, or of germs, or of knives. I have irrational fears about the end of the democracy. And I know that they're irrational fears. This nation has survived worse than George Bush and come back better than ever afterwards; cripes, if this country survived Calvin Coolidge, it can survive anything. I could give a hundred reasons to believe that my fear is irrational. The election will be held in November, George Bush will not win it, someone other than George Bush will be sworn in in 197 days, and no matter who wins, the country can begin to heal. I'm even reasonably optimistic that the margin will be so wide that even the Republicans can't steal it. But knowing all the reasons that my fear is irrational has not helped me shake this sense of impending doom, a dread so palpable I can only compare it to my early childhood years at the peak of the Cold War, when we came home after a week of duck-and-cover drills to set off fireworks wondering if we'd be able to spot Russian bombers through the fireworks smoke in time to make a futile dash for cover if we had to. This burning need to do something, anything, to somehow prepare for the day that the forces of tyranny move to end the democracy, to cancel all future elections, to cancel all future Fourths of July.
Crazy, huh? But having thought about it way too much this weekend, I think I know why I can't make this fear go entirely away. There is no doubt in my mind that the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were stolen. To quote the late George Carlin, "George W. Bush will always be Governor Bush, to me. Because that's the highest office to which he's ever been elected." But it takes more than a stolen election to rattle me, especially a stolen close election. After all, there's even less doubt that the 1960 election was stolen, that JFK was never actually elected President, either, that he was appointed president by Chicago mafiosi who had failed to notice how tightly his brother had converted over to the Reform (anti-mafia) Democrats. But here's the difference between 1960 and 2000, between 1960 and 2004: in nineteen sixty, there was outrage over it. And Bobby Kennedy wielded that outrage like a hammer to crack open the mafia in every city they ruled, to dig them out of their holes, and to crush them like itty bitty bugs. It took decades to finish the project. But still, to this day, people talk about the stolen election of 1960 and there's real anger, real outrage, at least among some of them.
Where's the outrage over Florida in 2000? Where's the outrage over Ohio in 2004? Why hasn't even one low-level person involved in any of the dozens of clearly documented voter suppression drives in both of those races been indicted? Remember, we don't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt to indict; why has no prosecutor even offered to look at the reams and reams of evidence that Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast have accumulated? The 2000 "white collar riot" occurred on national television, with the faces of the paid professional Republican staffers who were assaulting police and besieging an election board clearly visible on video; why hasn't even one of them been charged with something, anything? Politics? Well, d'uh, of course. But why are the voters okay with this? Look at your polls, man; it sure as heck isn't out of love for George Bush or the Republican Party. So if no prosecutor will indict, and the people hate the party that stole the elections, then why can people like Antonin Scalia, Karl Rove, Kathleen Harris, Ken Strickland, and so forth walk our streets without a security cordon six blocks wide?
Why aren't they afraid?
If they were afraid, I'd be less afraid. If the people who conspired to steal the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were showing even the slightest nervousness about possible consequences of their past treasons, it'd be easier for me to calm my irrational fear, the little voice in my head that says, "Brad, if that was what they did to change the outcome of a close election, one that they could easily steal? What will they do if it turns out not to be close enough to steal inconspicuously? What will they do when they're desperate? And with so much of our Army and National Guard overseas, and with so much new power granted to the Department of Homeland Security, and with the American people showing so little outrage over the last two stolen elections in a row, if they do try something truly monstrous, who's going to stop them?" I don't quote a lot of song lyrics, but I feel a powerful urge to quote songwriter Stephen Stills, "For What It's Worth:" "Paranoia strikes deep: / Into your life it will creep. / It starts when you're always afraid. / You step out of line, the man come, and take you away." Which friend of mine was it who said that the thing she hates the most about the Bush administration is how much they make her feel like a paranoid, or something like that? But it's not the Bush administration that's got me feeling so nervous, so depressed, so paranoid; it's the voters themselves. I always thought that they valued their freedom, their franchise, enough to be outraged when both were taken away from them, and I'm ever so deeply nervous that they don't look nearly angry enough.Current Mood:  depressed |
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