Animation, Alias and Assh... er, Jerks

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, be it family-oriented or materially satisfying! I never did develop a taste for eggnog, so I'll settle for some hot chocolate while I write up this week's blog:


Dec 22 - Star Wars is Toast

For those of you out there who always have that one impossible-to-buy-for person on your lists, I present the perfect gift: the Star Wars Toaster. Yes, your loved one or friend can greet the day with the image of Darth Vader seared into their bread of choice, feeling the power of the Dark Side flowing through them to give them the energy they need to face any challenge. You can complement this amazing piece of kitchen technology with the only logical choice of knives to slice your bread: the Jedi Ginsu Knife! Indeed, the Jedi Ginsu slices through almost anything, bread included, and stores easily in the smallest of kitchen drawers.

Considering that my menu of food choices keeps shrinking due to my recent plumbing problems, toast is still a good standby choice. Not to mention a cheap one too... and some people have raised it to an art form. Apart from the occasional grape jelly, I tend to go plain.

I hope most of you have forgotten about it, but in case you haven't.... the Star Wars Holiday Special is still out there, lurking... 1978's contribution to some of the worst TV schlock ever. So bad it's good, akin to some of those great B-movies
like Plan 9 From Outer Space or After the Fall of New York. Only this one has wookies... which are infinitely better than the ewoks, imho.

Dec 23 - Alias Flash

Though it's been a while, I've started re-watching the Alias TV series with Jennifer Garner. The layer plots, slick production values and eminent watch-ability of its cast have drawn me back, with a few sites such as Alias Season.com to fill in the blank spots when I don't quite catch all the plot points flying around.

I purchased another one of only a few XboxLive! games today, as I find most of their content rather lacking... but I have a soft spot for Bomberman. It is one of the original 'party games' the first of which caused a craze in Japan back in the early 90's, and I first played it on my venerable TurboGrafx-16, which was designed as a 5-player party machine itself - the two fit perfectly, and more than a few parties were enlivened by exploding bombs and trash-talking amongst friends.

On the topic of good games, go check out The Ten Most Addictive Flash Games Ever... see if you agree. There are so many sites out there nowadays with free flash games, that you could feasibly dispense with console games or PC games altogether... though you have to beware of some really awful games.

Dec 24 - Holiday Movies

I spent part of my day relaxing, as it is only one of two days off for the holidays.

In the early afternoon, I headed over to my parents place to spend the holiday with them. My sister was not able to make it, though that was itself a good thing given the horrible weather that had stranded thousands of people and canceled flights in B.C. Why not skip the travel insanity during the holidays, and use things like Skype instead, you might ask? Somehow I think that being with family during Christmas will always win over even just seeing family, though you'd cut out things like your uncle's halitosis and the vicious pinching fingers of well-meaning aunts seeking your cheeks like hawk talons... *ahem* Love my family, but I am glad in some ways that I am an adult now, at Christmas. Only some.

We watched Elf in the evening, which seems to be the new holiday movie of choice, though I am still partial to Scrooged along with A Christmas Story and Its A Wonderful Life. Wil Farrell playing Buddy the elf works perfectly with his talents as a lovable innocent adult in an unfamiliar world, and I was also impressed with the low-key performance of Zooey Deschanel, who also happens to have an incredible voice.

One thing I miss about Christmas eves of yesteryear is a roaring fire. I grew up in a house that had a large, wood-burning fireplace and I remember many a Christmas was spent in front of that fire, with the warmth from the crackling logs spreading throughout the room and the Christmas tree standing tall nearby... but not too close, as we usually had a real tree in those days, as fake ones were too darn expensive still. Today, most fireplaces I have seen are of the gas or even electric variety, relegating the old open hearth and wooden logs to homes that have easy access to wood supplies and folk who don't mind clearing away ash.

I think it's worth it; I especially enjoyed the time I spent living in Fonthill, in a home that had TWO wall-to-wall wood burning fireplaces, one on each floor.

Now that was cozy at Christmas!

Dec 25 - Earthquake, or digesting dinner?

Apparently there was a small earthquake at 12:11am far offshore, a 5.9 that was too small to be felt. Still, it is a reminder that I am living in an area that is exposed to such things, unlike Niagara which only has to worry about smog, thunderstorm-spawned tornadoes and bad winter weather. Who remembers the 1996 tornado that struck the drive-in theater in Thorold, which was scheduled to show Twister ? It made it to Letterman and Bob Saget, so apparently a few people took note. Not a bad film either.

I watched both Shrek the Halls and the not-so-seasonal Arthur and the Invisibles, which was the made-in-france super-expensive 3D animated film that didn't do so well over on this side of the pond, perhaps due to its rather lackluster and nonsensical story. Mind you, the animation itself was incredible, showing just how far the graphical movie arts have come since the days of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was disappointed, as the direction was Luc Besson, who made one of my favourite films, The Fifth Element... which starred Mila Jovovitch, who seems to have a penchant for making bad movies too. Guess that's why she and Besson married each other and soon called it quits.

It was a good day, spent relaxing in the company of my family and far from the worries of current events. My plumbing behaved itself, thanks perhaps in part to the enzyme supplements I am taking... I was worried that the turkey dinner would prove to be a problem, but apparently my holiday gift was to be able to enjoy it AND not see it again in any improper manner. Joy!

Finally, what would Christmas be without... zombies? The Twelve Days of Zombie Christmas will give you the answers you need - brains. Arrgh.

Dec 26 - Nien, it is 9 !

I heard about the latest Time Burton animated film over at i09.com which is a great place to peruse the many facets of SciFi goodness. They ran an eye-popping( ow! )article about the film, which is currently under development for a near-future release. The feature film is based off a short film by creator Shane Acker, which is a tale about a post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans, but not all life... you can see the feature film's trailer at his official website. His is an interesting story about the leap from short film to feature, definately worth the read in this recent interview.

On the track of creating fiction, sometimes you get stuck. For those times when the blank page is a black hole staring you in the face, there is 911: Writer's Block, where you can turn to for inspiration when all else fails. The site is part of WeBook.com, where writers can gather to create stories together. Sounds like a virtual group hug to me, but it looks intriguing enough to try.

Oh, and since it was Boxing Day, I headed out to make only one stop to pick up some inexpensive DVD's at London Drugs - more seasons of The Simpsons, Stargate: SG-1 and all three seasons of Arrested Development, a series that Rene put me onto some time ago and I have been looking for since... on the cheap, of course! I was in and gone in less than 10 minutes at 9am, the most civilized Boxing Day sale I have ever been to, especially compared to last year's zoo at Future Shop that I lined up at 5:30am for... never again. Considering the current economic downturn, I would not be surprised to see sales continue well into the new year as retailers struggle to stay afloat. Some higher-end ones have already gone under and more are sure to fall as consumers close their wallets and strive to save.

Which means gift cards are a bad idea, given that if a company goes under, any cards outstanding will not be honoured as they are considered part of debt. Good luck going to court for your $25.00 card!

Dec 27 - Weary Weekend

While waiting for many a film to arrive in the coming year, some folk get a little impatient... like this fellow, whose obvious ardour for all things Thundercat shows in his spectacular fan-made movie trailer, which skillyfully blends clips of actors from dozens of movies, adding special effects and overlays. It is quite convincing, along the lines of the fake Phantom Menace trailer from the late 1990's, of which I still have a copy floating around somewhere... surprisingly, it is nowhere to be found on YouTube!

Work today was steady but unremarkable, which is the way I like it - the fewer emotionally-twisted children masquerading as adults that I have to deal with, the better. Sometimes I wish I had the ability to move one of my eyes independandly of the other... I can only imagine how well that would work to defuse and confuse tense situations, when one eye keeps drifting off-center. Surely it would work better than an eye-twitch, that keeps getting worse as the person keeps being a jerk... hint, hint? Too bad that the rule holds that the worse a jerk the person is, the more oblivious they are to other people. just do not confuse the oblivious ones with the real serial jerks out there....

Dec 28 - Sunday Games

Unsurprisingly, I am going to mention... the sun. Since it was out and shining today, the snow piles melted considerably, leaving the streets far more navigable than they have been for the past week. It was nice to return home on relatively dry pavement, instead of picking one's way down hills mostly covered in ice. Victoria has quite a few hills to it, if you travel around the city a bit, which only adds to its charm, I think - the Niagara Escarpment is lovely, but can't hold a patch to the mountains here.

Feeling sheepish? Fatigue getting the better of your reflexes? Then test your reaction time with a little virtual sheep-herding... with a tranquilizer gun. Go on, you know it sounds like fun... or are you still feeling a little baaa-humbug from the holiday craze? *grin*

As most of you know, I am not a sports fan... nor is proficiency with a golf club high on my list. However, when I find a game called Medieval Golf online, my interest is perked... especially since you play it with arrows. Ah, to have time time to indulge that particular one of my hobbies... soon, I hope.


All for now... more news as I trip over it - see last week's blog for some major news of mine, the entry is highlighted in red.

Compliments, Crusade and Cable

There’s a sea change in weather happening this week… it started with the iron underbelly of clouds a slow-rolling ceiling above everything. Then so…

July 28 - Living next to the sea

The weather here has gone grey. From the shining sun to the dull pillowed fluff of lint found in a dryer, it's an odd shift. The rain here too, does not slam into the city as much as it drifts by, like a sprinkler waved over a patch of garden. No storms, no thunder, no pressure of black clouds crowded with unleashed waters eager to drown the land beneath. No, here Nature takes a gentle hand when the sun hides, moderate in that as in many other things in this city on the coast. The people seem to take the rain in stride as well, for few I see duck for umbrellas as the water falls. Which may explain the prevalent smell of ‘wet’ one notices inside on rainy days among people here in Victoria - odd, but there it is. Especially noticeable when the person next to you in line is wearing a wool coat...

I don't hear the sea here, and I rarely smell it. Since Victoria is not exposed to the full front of the ocean, there are no crashing waves blasting their sound across the shore. Perhaps I might find that soothing at night, but then again I have read stories about how the fury of the waves often pounded onto Dallas Rd here in years past, before breakwaters were built offshore to calm the waters somewhat. The complex workings of Nature can be beautiful, but you still have to watch your fingers; she bites too - this webcam may catch a storm or high winds, if you're lucky.

July 29 - Fionavar

I started re-reading an old fantasy series tonight, the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. The first book, The Summer Tree, was just as I recalled, full of moments that draw the reader completely into the world the author paints. Some very moving moments in there, beautifully written. I have not read it all these long years, since my high school days in fact, when Prisoners of Gravity did a few interviews with Guy Gavriel Kay. Heck, they interviewed pretty much every decent SF and Fantasy writer there was at the time - over 600! But back to Finoavar... with the drift of years and experiences in between, I can say that I enjoyed the book even more.

July 30 - Blogging and Crusade

Blogger has been annoying me of late, causing my blogs to become much more work than needful. It has been losing( and adding )keystrokes to my work, causing paragraphs to run together or links to be lost, doubling the time I usually y take to create these entries, which is not inconsiderable at all. I'm going to have to write these in a separate text editor, copy it all over and then add the links to the blog, in the hopes that it will save properly - damned annoying for something that was working perfectly up until a few weeks ago. I have suspicions that 'invisible' characters are sneaking in from the blog entries I create on my PDA; if so, I may try to alter the way I create those as well. This week, I am trying to edit it in both Opera and Firefox, as switching between the two seems to 'fix' the formatting problem somehow... grrr.

Watching the B5 spinoff series Crusade has been a treat these last few weeks. I've been watching it in an episode order that JMS preferred, as opposed to the broadcast order it originally aired with - the SciFi channel link above was the only network to air it the way JMS wanted, and I have to say it's flowing a lot more smoothly story-wise than when I recall it on air the first time.

It's a damned shame, a crime almost, that the series was canceled. It is obvious that the cast & crew had a fantastic chemistry and that the show was poised to go places SciFi on TV had yet to dare venture into, much as B5 had done before them. To think that the Network system still revolves on suits with calculators for brains, who wouldn't know( and wouldn't care about )a good story if it bit them on their collective behinds. If there is one thing, and one thing only, that I hope the 'net will do, it is this: to allow creative artists to break free of the chains that corporations and other controlling bodies put on what we see and hear. To allow anyone with an idea and a good story to TELL it, as best they are able, to an audience that would otherwise never have known about it at all. It always amazes me what passionate, driven people with a vision can do with the smallest of budgets, in this day of desktop CGI and YouTube.

July 31 - A Compliment!

I continued reading the Book II of the Fionavar series, The Wandering Fire, in the early morning. The depictions of heroic characters and deeds, the language and all the many tropes of true Fantasy are present in Kay's work. As I read, I found myself lost to the words on the page; the grey skies and leaden feel of the ordinary day here vanished into the flow of the tale, and all too soon the hours had blurred back into time to leave for work in the early afternoon.

The rain today too, elicited comment by both myself and my co-worker. Across the road is a line of dark-leafed trees, with purple leaves. This afternoon, as the rain fell, my co-worker exclaimed "Is that smoke? Can't be, in the rain..." It was the rain itself, as it turns out: the drifts of droplets appeared like a fog or smoke against the dark trees. I had noticed this a few times myself, and wondered that my eyes were playing tricks - now I knew I was not the only one who had seen the rain that way. Smoke, in seeming, blurring the view gently.

Something else tonight: a compliment at work, and a good one at that. A nice customer, who sends money transfers abroad, came in and exclaimed in delight "Oh good, I was hoping it was you working!" She said she really appreciates the fact that I have been "very efficient and fast" while serving her the last few times, without making her feel rushed or in other ways compromised as a person. Not that anyone here is rude, mind you, but she wanted to point that out. In the course of the conversation, it turns out she is a doctor, born in Kenya and will be working for the UN in Africa soon, where she has not been since she was in her 20's. It was enlightening to talk about world culture with her, and so reminded me that some few of those who walk in the door are truly nice and interesting, intelligent people. Goes to show you can get in a mental rut at any job, despite trying to keep an open mind towards people to try and explain their many odd and frankly rude behaviours towards total strangers. Which is hard to take, when you're naturally empathetic and have to fight the urge to solve other people's problems... yeah.

Aug 1 - Lazy Summer Days

Ah, August... my favourite month of the year. This is the time for relaxation and reflection in gentle ways, a time to enjoy the weather and treat each day as a small vacation in and of itself. In years past, August was the time to relax from the frenetic pace of July, when the excitement of finishing school was over and the fact that the summer was half done had sunk in. Early days and late nights were the norm, as you tried to maximize the time you had left and enjoy every beautiful moment, be it with friends, family or just taking in the simple wonders of the day in a hammock on the back porch.

Things change over time, summers begin to blend into the rest of the year as school becomes a thing of the past, recalled sometimes with distaste but the moments and memories that stood out becoming brighter of themselves the further one draws away from them over the years. Working all year long, with a few scattered weeks here and there for vacation, makes those long memories of summer all the more vibrant for the feeling of freedom that they embodied: to run in the summer sun with friends and know that the next day would be more of the same joy. Now, far from friends and those same, somewhat smaller places that I ran those too many years ago, I find myself feeling nostalgic. Not sad, but sorry all the same that I will never know again those lazy summer days, free of cares beyond finding lunch after breakfast, and being home in time for dinner. All the hours in between were mine, to share and spin bright threads of memory that would reach out to me here today, shining with the innocent joy of youth, energy and shared friendship.

A bearable day, overall, and when I finished work in the late afternoon I found myself profoundly grateful to have a weekend off. It was a rough week, in some ways, with a lot of tossing and turning and very little solid sleep – lots of things on my mind, of late.

I also canceled the cable today – it was a surprisingly easy thing to do. Now I have to spend some time getting all the shows I’ve kept on the PVR off the thing, and then give it to my parents – teaching them to use the interactive TV Guide should be amusing but ultimately prove fruitful for their use. For myself, as I have mentioned before, I will have my many DVD movies and TV boxed sets to watch, as well as the vast bounty of the internet at my fingertips. The key will be to find the time, in between my other projects; time to relax can so easily turn into time wasted, as I know from much experience. Cutting out the temptation of the TV tuner forces one to focus on the now, as much as moving out here to BC has cut down on the daily distractions. Here, at the end of the day, when the day job is finished with and the dishes done, there is only me and the work. Anything I do not accomplish can be laid squarely on my own head, for though I may be tired, the work does not care. It simply waits to be done, sooner… or later.

Aug 2 - Finishing Fionavar

I finished reading the last book of The Fionavar Tapestry today. Entitled The Darkest Road, it is beautifully-crafted example of the writer's art. There is symmetry and balance throughout the work, things that are very hard to pull off as a writer unless you plan them beforehand long in advance of setting pen to page. Have a look at the link above; there are numerous discussions and examinations of GGK’s work that provide some illuminating insight into the themes he explores in his work.

Something of note I caught: on the last page of the last book, there is printed the phrase "the wheel of time." Since the Fionavar trilogy was published a few years before Robert Jordan's massive Wheel of Time epic( may he rest in peace )I find that little coincidence rather amusing, since I would eventually read that series as well, courtesy of Matt( thanks dude! ). One little note from Robert Jordan though: like JMS and B5, he said in this interview back in 2002 that he knew the last scene of the last book before he began his series – amazing, given the scope of his writing, with hundreds of characters!

Aug 3 - Shattering Slips

Did a few things today, most of them productive... except for the glass I dropped in the kitchen, which exploded all over the place. It's been so long since I broke a glass, I'd forgotten how they like to spread shrapnel everywhere - and me in my bare feet. After checking to make sure my legs were shard-free, I climbed OVER the kitchen counter and began the cleanup process... it ended up taking an hour, all told, to find every little nasty bit. One trick I recalled from years back was to use a powerful flashlight to catch glints from the sneaky shards that embed themselves in things like floormats and slide under the edges of counters or fridges. Good thing my vac is powerful enough to pull every last one of those hidden ones right out again.

Productive; I mentioned that, right? Well, I typed up two stories and juggled around some website concepts, which took me well into the afternoon - even with a short Civ break( I won! ). In the early evening, I went to visit my parents for dinner, and afterwards we headed up to the ninth floor to listen to the concert that was taking place across the harbour at the Parliament Buildings. Or at least we tried to; the prevailing wind and the shrieking of the gulls settling in for the night on nearby buildings meant we could hear very little besides the general murmur of the orchestra. It was disappointing, and I left well before sundown to come back home... where ironically, I COULD hear the performance, if I listened hard enough. Oh well; we'll know for next year.

This week began grey, and finished sunny - VERY sunny. The forecast is for a week of nothing but sunshine, with low to mid-twenties. How can you beat that, with no smog and no humidity? *grin*