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October 6th, 2008
08:39 pm - One off=peak saver to Hope, please
(I'd write a proper entry, but I was in a meeting for seven hours today and my brain has ossified. Choo choo.)
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October 5th, 2008
06:27 pm
Look, sorry, I'd love to write a proper LiveJournal post, but I'm just way too popular today to spare the time.
It's a hard knock life, it really is.
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October 4th, 2008
07:55 pm
Apropos of yesterday:
Apropos of today:
I have spent the day drinking homebrew beer and would like to go to bed now.
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October 3rd, 2008
03:01 pm
Last week's Obama-McCain debate started well but ended flatly, with McCain struggling and then finding his groove wrinkle.
Today's Biden-Palin debate was the opposite. It started dully with both of them just reciting talking points and prepared mini-speeches rather than answering the questions, which was easy given the pathetically dumbed-down structure of a 'debate' that allowed bugger-all actual debating between the candidates. But around the half-hour mark Biden started addressing the questions more directly and shooting holes in Palin's statements, and she started to get obviously panicky and rely on aw-shucks timewasting to cover up for her lack of real knowledge. And she dropped the ball badly a few times, especially when she aligned herself with Cheney's stance on VP power instead of scrambling to distance herself from the reeking carcass of the current administration. That's gonna become Democrat attack ad footage, no mistake.
Oh, and now a message from Sarah Palin:
Maverick. Maverick. Maverick. Consummate maverick. Ronald Reagan. Two mavericks. Maverick maverick Malkovich maverick. Israel. Did I say 'maverick' already?
Christ almighty. There will be fools who picked 'maverick' as their trigger word in debate drinking games, and they'll be in emergency rooms right now vomiting up their ruptured livers. Kudos to Biden for finally calling her on it, and with any luck the Republicans will find a new catchphrase for the remaining 30-odd days now that Palin's overdosed the national consciousness with the M-word.
I doubt anyone's mind will be changed, and Palin avoided making a fool of herself as she did in the Couric interviews, but it's nonetheless a comfortably solid win by the Democrats that should fuel internet punditry until the second Presidential debate. Maybe that will be the one where McCain finally loses his shit. One can only hope.
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October 2nd, 2008
03:46 pm
As evidenced by Katie Couric, Sarah Palin is unable to name any Supreme Court Case other than Roe v. Wade.
The Rules: Post info about ONE Supreme Court decision, modern or historical your lj. (Any decision, as long as it's not Roe v. Wade.) For those who see this on your f-list, take the meme to your OWN lj to spread the fun.
I'm not an American citizen, but even I can field this one and name a famous case - Brown vs the Board of Education, the landmark case that contributed to the fall of segregation and the pernicious notion that blacks and whites were 'separate but equal'.
The 'Brown' in this case was Oliver Brown, an African-American welder who wasn't allowed to enrol his children in the nearby whites-only school but had to send them to a segregated school a mile away. He headed up a group of African-American parents, backed by the NAACP, who took their case to the Kansas District Court; they lost that case, but eventually took the case to the Supreme Court through appeals and won. The Court ruled that the 'separate but equal' concept was flawed and false, that African-Americans were in practice second-class citizens, and that segregation failed as the basis for a moral society. Okay, that's a vast oversimplification, but you get the gist.
The Brown case was also interesting because it relied on science - psychology, to be specific - to make its case. African-American psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted their famous 'doll experiments' with young black children, taught under the segregated system. They asked the children to play with two dolls - one black, one white - and observed their actions and attitudes towards the dolls and themselves. They found that the children preferred to play with the white dolls, that they saw the black dolls as 'bad' and the white dolls as 'good', and that when drawing with coloured pencils they tended to draw themselves and other black people as light-skinned, because that was a 'better' shade - that they had been trained and institutionalised by segregation to see white people as their superiors. Separate and unequal.
This is a photo of Kenneth Clark observing one of the children with the dolls, which I came across while working on a textbook some months ago. The expression on that boy's face is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. There are nights when it haunts me.
Brown vs the Board of Education didn't bring down segregation then and there, and it wasn't the only or even the most important Supreme Court ruling relating to segregation. But it's the most famous, and perhaps the most human, of the rulings that led to a fundamental improvement in American society, to bring it from something monstrous to something merely flawed. That, indeed, made it possible for Barack Obama to run for President against John McCain.
And yet Sarah Palin couldn't think of it. I wonder why.
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October 1st, 2008
11:11 am
Today's plan: work (meetings) => dinner (dumplings) => karaoke (beer) => home (sleep).
I only pray that I can keep up the pace lest I burn out. Or fade away. Or something.
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September 30th, 2008
12:36 pm
Kenneth Branagh is apparently directing a big-budget Thor movie. Yes, as in the Marvel superhero.
Life is too fucking surreal sometimes.
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September 29th, 2008
09:11 pm - Don't show, don't tell, just get on with it
I read Mike Carey's first novel, The Devil You Know, over the weekend. Carey, of course, is best known as a comics writer, and a pretty good one - Lucifer struggled a bit at first but really took off after that, and what I've read of Crossing Midnight and his Hellblazer run has been intelligent and entertaining. (His Marvel superhero work is completely forgettable, but that's an environment that blands out all but the best.)
So I was looking forward to seeing what he'd do in prose. I just wish the payoff had matched the expectation.
Oh, the book's decent enough, I suppose - urban fantasy about a London exorcist, written in that blandly competent mock-Chestertonian voice British genre writers fall into. Nothing awful, but nothing amazing either, and given that I'm in a bit of a book drought right now I may track down the sequel.
But my disappointment comes from the way Carey reacts against the techniques he's learned as a comics writer, rather than learning from them. I could almost read his mind: "Right, now I get to describe everything exactly the way I want it to be, instead of having some artist do it differently! Yeah!" And so The Devil You Know is packed full of descriptions of people, places, sounds, blow-by-blow events; every character gets a long paragraph or two covering their face, build, voice, clothing and blah blah blah. 400 pages, and a good editor could pull that down to 300 just by skimming out all the phatic scene-setting and excess adjectives and, Christ, descriptions of what colour coats the characters wear.
The great strength of good comics writing is underwriting, or close to it - to write as little dialogue, exposition and third-person narrative as necessary (hell, a little less than necessary) while the artwork does the heavy lifting. Or, more precisely, while the reader does the heavy lifting of advancing the narrative in between the images, guided by the narrative voice of both writer and artist. It's a gift for the writer, that kind of environment, the chance to pick out just the words that matter and focus on them, unencumbered by the weight of excess verbiage like grammar and storytelling and (spit) description.
I'll be honest - description shits me to tears 9 times out of 10. Yes, the reader needs to visualise the scene and the people in it, but that's easy. You can conjure up an image with a sentence, with a single turn of phrase, with a metaphor - the two Raymonds (Chandler and Carver) did this all the time. Tell me a character has uncombed hair and drives a motorbike held together with dirt, or just that he's grimy like a unloved bedroom, and I have enough to visualise him and get a feel for his personality, and that happens much faster than if you describe every greasy cowlick and blob of mud on his red Kawasaki. It means no two readers will have the same image in their heads, but who the fuck cares? It's better that they have different images, because they'll bring their own internal understanding and semiotics to those images.
And to go off on a separate mini-rant, don't ever tell me what colour something is, unless it's vital for plot purposes. As soon as you tell me there's a car or a house or an elephant in the scene, there's a picture in my head, personalized and perfectly serviceable for hanging my imagination on. If you then tell me it's a green car, and the car in my head is blue, my imagination has been rejected, found faulty, and I've got to readjust my mind's eye to fit the demands of the writer when those demands don't actually matter. That's not fun; that's pointless effort that makes me constantly revise and second guess my imagination until I lose interest and read something where the author doesn't demand that I agree with him every single moment.
Ahem. I had a point there, but I got lost in my intellectual indignation. Let's move along to the conclusion.
Writing is stronger when it evokes, not when it declares - when it gives the reader just enough to kickstart their imagination and allows/motivates them to fill in the rest of the picture themselves. That increases the reader's involvement and engagement with their vision of the story, because it's something they created themselves; they own part of that, and in turn the author owns part of them.
I wish more writers understood that - and I wish more comic writers understood how to convey that understanding to their prose work.
--
And on a completely unrelated note, Infected Mushroom's Vicious Delicious is really goddamn good.
Current Music: INFECTED MUSHROOM - Artillery
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September 28th, 2008
08:09 pm
After two days of tagging and relabelling MP3s, I still haven't finished with the whole collection, and there's still about 5-6GB of stuff that won't fit into the Zen.
It's a hard knock life.
...okay, I was going to write a more interesting LJ entry about overwriting and why description in prose is BAD, but my brain's not fully online. Later in the week, I promise.
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September 27th, 2008
03:19 pm - Much more interesting than the bloody Grand Final
I watched the Obama/McCain debate a few hours ago - well, mostly listened to it while tagging MP3s on my Zen, but close enough. It was a bit disappointing, on the whole - Obama started very strong and McCain stumbled badly a few times, but by the end McCain was on more familiar ground and sounding more confident. Sounding but not looking, mind you, given that he wouldn't once make eye contact with Obama or even address him directly; it was like he was so scared of Obama he couldn't even look at him.
Anyway, pretty much a tied performance, but that still puts Obama ahead; this was the debate on foreign policy and national security, McCain's main strength, and to merely come out even bodes pretty poorly for him in the latter two debates, especially once the economics questions come out.
In any case, there's no 'winner' or 'loser' in these debates, no objective yardstick they can apply to decide who's the bestest. For that, we have to wait for the VP debates, and for Sarah Palin's 20-gutterball streak against Joe Biden - because given how she's humiliatingly crashed-and-burned in softball interviews this week, an actual debate against an experienced politician is going to make her vomit her own brain out on camera.
Which is the kind of high political theatre I live for. That and taking a shot of bourbon every time McCain says 'Ronald Reagan' in the next two debates. I plan to be shithammered before the end of the opening remarks.
Current Music: CORDRAZINE - Your Kingdom Will Fall
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September 26th, 2008
12:16 pm
Once again I'm opting for a meme rather than real content, since this week has both been busy and largely uninteresting to the outside observer.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Post the text of a few sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
4. Write a brief paragraph explaining the text to your readers.
Necker's fatal indecision, December 1788 The debate raged from September until December 1788, when Necker finally made half a decision. He doubled the Third Estate, but he also tried to please the privileged estates by refusing voting by head. He weakly suggested that the Estates-General might decide what to do when it met and he hoped it would agree to deliberate in common. He had given each estate a hope of a successful outcome, but had also created a major issue that would have to be resolved. Observers in December 1788 were surprised by how much the political landscape had changed. The original political and constitutional debate was still there: all enlightened people were still opposed to despotism and to absolute royal power; they still believed in royal power moderated by a parliamentary body and they still believed in taxation with representation. To these were now added a social challenge. The wealthy members of the Third Estate had dominated the political discussion and the poorer members of the Third Estate had discovered new physical power on the streets of Paris. The attack upon the King’s absolute power had brought out many hidden resentments against the privileged position of the first two estates, and it must now have occurred to many members of the Third Estate that they were struggling with three enemies, not one.
Michael Adcock, Analysing the French Revolution, 2004
As the title implies, this is a text on the French Revolution, specifically a senior high-school textbook. Right now I'm going through PDFs of the first edition text and converting them into a single Word file (with a few edits along the way), so that the author can use it as the basis for the second edition manuscript. The thrilling life of a development editor, folks.
Just count yourself lucky I didn't do this next week, when I'll be up to my elbows in maths textbooks yet again.
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September 25th, 2008
06:31 pm - New Music Express
Y'all may recall a month or two back when I complained (as I so often do) about my flatmate's kitten destroying my trusty old Zen Nomad MP3 player. We'd had a good run, the Nomad and I, and I was sad to consign it to the Media Player's Graveyard to be picked over by scavengers looking for scrap copper. Those were the days, my friends. Those were the days. Usually composed of hours.
But life and the need for consumer electronics goes on, and today I picked up my new best buddy and sidekick, a 30GB Creative Zen Vision M:
 
It's a sexy little beast and no mistake, sleek and streamlined and half the weight of the old Nomad, despite having 10GB more memory and an FM radio to boot. Ah, I remember radio; it's what you listen to while driving over pedestrians in GTA IV. And it plays video too, although I have no plans to actually use that function anytime soon - but hey, you never know when you'll be on a long plane flight. (Actually I know exactly when I'll be on a long plane flight, but that's beside the point.)
Anyway, the Zen - and yes, half the joy in this is that I can walk about claiming that I carry Zen at my hip - is currently charging, and I'm looking forward to a busy weekend of installing all my MP3s and (best of all) sorting & labelling the files for easy access. Nothing soothes my salty black heart like organizing and alphabetizing, after all.
...now I just need to make sure the kitten doesn't get at it. He's already sniffing around...
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September 24th, 2008
09:20 pm
I'm not much of a TV watcher, but it was on in the background tonight and I caught the second episode of the new series Fringe.
And I have to say I have never seen a bigger pile of unmitigated shite in my life.
I mean, I'm not saying the episodes of Buffy and Angel we've been watching are intellectual gold, but at least they don't crap in my brain until ten IQ points bleed out my ears.
For the sake of your brain's fecal virginity, people, AVOID.
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September 23rd, 2008
September 22nd, 2008
06:45 pm - FINALLY
Rock Band Dated For Australia (Bonus Reasonable Pricing Included)
The future of Rock Band's release in Australia has long been up in the air. We've heard that it was coming late, that it wasn't coming at all, all kinds of things. Today, the wait/conjecture can finally be put to rest, with EA confirming that the game will indeed be seeing an official Australian release. And only a year after the American one! The game will be out on November 7, and - we're guessing because EA are now shipping Rock Band 2 elsewhere and have some leftover bundles lying around - it's going to be a lot cheaper than expected. While Europeans were kicked in the nuts, left with both outrageous pricing and quirky bundling options, Australia will be getting the all-in-one box for a "reasonable" AUD$250 (USD$208).
I guess we know what the Big Nerd Christmas Present will be this year. And possibly providing the soundtrack for NYE parties...
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September 21st, 2008
06:58 pm
Some people would say that a weekend spent watching Angel and playing Grand Theft Auto 4 was a weekend wasted.
Some people would also say Jesus and Elvis are hanging out with the Greys in a spaceship waiting for the Rapture.
As with all things, you have to make the final call yourself.
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September 20th, 2008
08:36 am
The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library's focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies - a cross-section of that library's holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.
Sorted Books Flickr Pool
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September 19th, 2008
06:38 pm
Instructions:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair - just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with the picture.
I swear I used to have more of a chin.
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September 18th, 2008
09:50 pm
Right, that's classes over for another term, and full steam ahead for two weeks of holidays, except that I still have to go work every day because being a grown up sucks sometimes.
More importantly, that's pretty much it for assessment for the rest of the year. I still have pieces due in, but none of them will actually take any kind of real effort - one's the second draft of an already-written story, the other two are old jobs and work I'm handing in for new assessment. Autopilot marks, the kind I like best.
This frees up my time for life, love, laughter and trying to scrape together the money & enthusiasm for organizing next year's school workload. Which may involve three full-year subjects and leave me totally rooted. Or I may just say fuckitall and take a year off. But that seems unlikely.
Bah. I'll burn that bridge when I'm halfway across it. That's worked well so far.
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September 17th, 2008
07:20 pm - Incoming (flowers on the razorwire)
So September is quietly chugging along, unsure as to whether it's spring or the last grey moultings of winter, and as usual it will be followed by October - but then something miraculous happens. Like a caterpillar that's lingered a good decade too long inside its graffiti-tagged cocoon, I will emerge blinked and slimy into the November light - not of Melbourne, but of the United States of America! America! from sea to shining sea.
Yes, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) emrhyck and I are jumping across the Big Pond for most of November, to drink in the endless grain and political fallout, and I figure it's about time I let my myriad American readers see my itinerary, albeit a vague version thereof because I didn't write down times.
November 1st - Los Angeles. Well, LAX, and only for an hour or two
November 1st-2nd - Denver
November 2nd-7th - Iowa City
November 7th-9th - NEW YORK NEW YORK IT'S A WONDERFUL TOWN
November 9th-17th - Iowa City again
November 17th-18th - Denver again
November 18th - LAX again, trying to get photographed with celebrities
As you can see, it's a whirlwind trip and one with a focus on the Midwest and its corn-flavoured glory. And when I'm not wandering around with my mouth open, getting mugged in Central Park or strip-searched at customs, I'll be ready and keen to meet Americans and regale them with tales of Australia's multitude of venomous animals and dearth of television channels.
If your schedules, geography and travel plans synch up with mine, give me a holler. I'm sure we can work something out.
Current Music: GNARLS BARKLEY - Charity Case
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