| Birds of Spaced Invaders |
[12 Jul 2008|12:21am] |
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mood |
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 contemplative |
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music |
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DJ Carbunkle, Suffering Planet, OCRemix |
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I've been reading Gail Simone's run on the Birds of Prey series. I'm currently on the fourth volume, "The Battle Within", and I really like the way she writes. The librarians are getting familiar with my recurring habit - and it's always a little embarrassing, because its artwork is just a little cheesecake.
But once you get past that - and it isn't as though I'm arguing or anything, hell, I read Marilith - the series is extraordinarily fun. The visuals-vs-words contrast complements the mood, the characters are witty, the pacing is such that I'm enjoying the speechless panels more often than usual, and Simone has a knack for the splash pages.
If Black Canary is on the DC vs Mortal Kombat game, I know who I'll play. But if Oracle is on there, too, I might have to switch back and forth. How unusual would it be to have a woman in a wheelchair in a fighting game? Babs definitely has the badassery to pull it off.
And I love Lady Shiva.
Anyone else been reading any cheerful graphic novels lately?
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| Hordes of Twins on Subway / 4th Street Fantasy |
[08 Jul 2008|02:02pm] |
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mood |
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 crazy |
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music |
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Evanescence, Sweet Sacrifice |
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This is from the insanity of Improv Everywhere, of course. I love almost anything these people do.
Another instance of cheerful chaos!
There's six panels in this podcast list, and oh bog, they're interesting. I've only listened to a few thus far. Of the two, one was boring with the writing neep, but the other is fascinating. It's sort of a retrospective on Shadow Unit's first season and quite mind expanding.
4th Street Fantasy podcast!
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| The Command Line + Vernor Vinge |
[02 Jun 2008|12:08am] |
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mood |
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 mischievous |
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music |
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The podcast |
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Because of this podcast, I'm starting to be able to wrap my creativity around the idea of everything being a computer. The panel's on secure computing... and it wanders onto the bloody end of civilization. Among the notes from the panel... why not? It's online, but it's still a panel.
Ideas:
ways to counter microprocessors being different types, and deliberate variety
people installing backdoors at every level (mmmm, conspiracy)
people who don't want electronics at all, or work minus them for a while
As much as I complain about short stories, I might have to write some on this trippy madness. The books are in other places for now, but the ideas are twitching.
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| "She’s been screaming ten years, now..." |
[11 May 2008|11:19pm] |
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mood |
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 hyper |
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music |
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Across The Highlands, Kamelot |
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Once again I remember to look up short story zines. In this instance, I peeked over at Chiaroscuro because occasionally they do include some interesting things amid the adjective-overload stories.
And what do I find?
Small Monuments by An Owomoyela.
The subject title isn't even its first line, but it grabbed from me the start. I didn't even realise what it was about until halfway through, though it should have been obvious :), and that made it quite satisfying.
Eerie little story. And a glance at his Livejournal pointed me toward this webcomic for which I must say Hell Yes. Badassery a la Tianenmen Square.
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| Want Some LSD? |
[02 May 2008|10:12pm] |
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mood |
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weird |
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music |
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Jane Eyre (Charlotte Gainsborough / William Hurt) theme song |
] |
Apparently in January, a guy named M Dot Strange... well, actually, ... designed a bizarre eighty-nine minute movie called We Are The Strange.
Oh yes, we are indeed.
The guy connected sound effects from the arcades, NES animation, stop motion and badass looking CGI. It's extremely weird and fun when it isn't slow.
The trailer is here. I'm about twenty-three minutes into the movie, and it's a bit more well designed than it. The link to this movie is the whole bloody thing, though.
The Internet never ceases to amaze me with its free stuff.
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| Unread Book Meme |
[27 Apr 2008|03:19pm] |
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mood |
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thoughtful |
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music |
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Dreamfall music video |
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Apparently these are the books most often said to be "unread" on LibraryThing. Bear and Kelly did it, and well, it's a book meme. The Hugo one convinced me to start reading the Hugos that I hadn't yet - and look! This list includes some of them. Hmm.
Here we go:
As with the Hugo meme, bold for read, italics for started but not complete yet.
( Unread Book Meme )
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| Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder" |
[26 Apr 2008|02:25pm] |
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mood |
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mischievous |
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music |
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Nightwish channel on Pandora - thanks for pointing me toward it, Mike! |
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All right, Chandler's definitely higher up on my reading list now. The Simple Art of Murder, his essay on writing noir from 1959, describes a couple of the reasons why I've become extremely appreciative of hardboiled detectives.
I wouldn't have a clue if this essay coined the phrase "down these mean streets", but the second half of the essay holds most of the interest for me.
Pertinent quotes:
"...where no man can walk down a dark street in safety because law and order are things we talk about but refrain from practising; a world where you may witness a hold-up in broad daylight and see who did it, but you will fade quickly back into the crowd rather than tell anyone, because the hold-up men may have friends with long guns..."
"But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid."
Can I get a Hell Yeah?
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| Bujold Interview |
[20 Apr 2008|10:53pm] |
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mood |
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 surprised |
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music |
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Descent soundtrack |
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Wow. Is it weird that my thoughts reflect hers?
Pertinent quotes from the interview:
"Certainly there is hotter competition for audience time and attention, on which there is a hard limit of 24/7. There comes a point – for me, rather quickly – where a person simply can’t take in any more information, any faster, without a pause to digest it all."
and
"I do think all the new media creation tools distributed to mass hands is going to make new art forms possible, plus art coming up through non-traditional channels. On-line comics..."
So this means she has a problem very similar to my Internet And Information Addiction and notices the notoriety of webcomics? At the same time that I've been thinking that webcomics are, quite literally, the new pulp magazines?
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| Anime Detour 2008 Con Report |
[06 Apr 2008|11:14pm] |
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mood |
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 indescribable |
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I love reading con reports... so it seems appropriate that I should be writing one.
For most purposes, this was my first real anything convention. I went to SogenCon twice, but for various political reasons it was rather disorganized. Detour was much more interesting. The size alone shows the difference: SogenCon might have had 900 or less people. Three frelling thousand people went to Detour.
This might not seem too amazing to most of the people reading this, but it boggled the mind of this guy who lives in a small town next to a college and corporate town of 12K people. Dad said that it's the size of another local town...
So, yes. I haven't seen this much leather short of a shopping mall, this many chains probably ever, and the five women walking around in skin tight rubber, three of them dressed in Eva plugsuits, er, say no more.
I can't be too coherent, because it's my first Uber convention. But as for some of the highlights, I played the legendary Dodonpachi freaking finally, a Motoko Kusanagi cosplayer joined my twenty-people Ghost in the Shell panel, I chatted with a girl dressed as a Ragnarok Online alchemist, and I saw and slightly joined in my first rave.
When I wandered to the front of the rave, in the middle of the psychedelic lights and the electronic music in the bloody Twin Cities, I could understand why people become addicted to conventions and dances. It really does feel like you're standing in the center of the world with everything revolving around you. I hadn't felt that feeling since eighth grade.
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| RIP Robert Fagles, 74 |
[01 Apr 2008|10:55pm] |
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mood |
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weird |
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music |
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BGM Starcraft Terrans |
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Robert Fagles at 74.
Considering that I was in the Greek Mythology class a couple of semesters ago, that's not especially cheerful to read.
Perhaps I should go pick up that Odyssey again...
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| Aftermath of the Kelly Link Q&A |
[24 Mar 2008|03:47pm] |
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mood |
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reassured |
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music |
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Megumi Hayashibara, Sleepless Night |
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I saw Kelly Link as part of about ... maybe fifty, sixty people about ten minutes ago. The students who invited her must feel delighted that she brought along two other writers for the ride!
I can't remember their names of her companions, but the guy who's getting a book called Superheroes (hmm, what is that book about?) should get quite some notoriety if it's groovy. Between Soon I Will Be Invincible and, er, Heroes, that's a hell of a burgeoning genre. I wonder why?
For a geek who found the world beyond his hidey-hole in a comfortable small village about a year and a half ago, read dozens, maybe hundreds of writery journals in that period and shoots for an escape from this place right now, it's satisfying and reassuring to hear from someone who knows of Wiscon, the SFF community - and went to Clarion!
She also writes to a soundtrack, apparently. I know how that works. :D
(Reminder for myself; deleted as I read the articles.
Dream of the Singularity?
Creepy Museum Horror Inspiration?
Creepy Victorian Era Books
)
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| News of the Weir... Writing! |
[03 Feb 2008|02:44pm] |
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mood |
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 curious |
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music |
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Origa |
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Boggle at my wonder, for I have news reports which I must show you. If you want to see them, anyway.
The first on the agenda involves the writers' strike. There's one video at Youtube which shows a miniature documentary about the lives of writers. I haven't watched it yet; just showing it off.
The second involves a short film contest meant as promotion for the writers' strike, now the Annual United Hollywood Short Film Contest. Um, yes? The ShadowLine Superheroine contest hasn't said who won, yet, either, so I'm still a little twitchily anxious to see if I am one. :D
If you're curious about telcom amnesty in which the US dodged a bullet, or a database of voter records, which is very unsurprising, go look at Abyss Fury.
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| This Should Be a Minnesotan |
[29 Jan 2008|12:06pm] |
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mood |
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crazy |
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music |
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Some 60s thing in my heaad |
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Tantric master breaks ice record sounds like the Polar Bear Plunge, doesn't it?
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| Objects in the Mirror |
[15 Jan 2008|11:32pm] |
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mood |
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contemplative |
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music |
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Rammstein, Volkerball |
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I just bought The Secret History of Moscow on the concept and first chapter, uh, and, a little, on the Gaiman recommendation, and the author hops onto Fangs Fur Fey. Being in the middle of nowhere Minnesota, that feels really surreal. Of course, interesting things happen when I shouldn't be online in the first place.
And in other things, I submitted a couple of entries for the ShadowLine Superheroine Contest. I think my queries are pretty interesting, and even if I don't win I might delve into the characters anyway.
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| Weird Observation |
[09 Jan 2008|05:05pm] |
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mood |
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surprised |
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music |
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The opener to the news |
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The winner of Jeopardy resembled Caprice Quevillion... and Natalia Tena, whose personalities don't seem to be that much different.
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| ~Words of December 2007 |
[08 Jan 2008|08:09pm] |
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mood |
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weird |
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music |
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Rammstein CD for Christmas |
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Like the majority of words of this semester, most of my words were critiquing stories that certainly read like people hadn't given them much thought at all. I like to think mine did work better than theirs, even if I didn't like to write them. The class universally adored the aiming-at-Gaimanesque story for the description, so I think I definitely learned something with it.
This year in general has been freaking weird. On one side, I discovered Gaiman, Shakespeare, Project Project Gutenberg and rediscovered the sheer depth of history after 1500 and Project freaking Gutenberg. On the other, I've discovered so many creative types online that I'm starting to think of the Internet as my own miniature convention every day. Making Light, way more interesting than RPGNet, is my new time devouring information addiction.
I haven't had this busy of a year since I devoured all four seasons of Angel and the fifth one at the same time. :D
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| Benazir Bhutto, RIP |
[27 Dec 2007|11:01pm] |
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mood |
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 nervous |
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music |
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Descent |
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I'm a bit late to reporting the news, but I'm not sure what to say, other than my Paranoid side feeling distraught.
Bhutto's death isn't good, and it's going to have reverberations. Perhaps the problem is that the reverberations won't be as strong as they might have been...
Give her a moment of silence, for her, and for some part of Pakistan. She knew what she had to do, and knew that she might die for it. The question now, is, as Dad said, how long until Musharraf gets the uniform back on?
And on debg's journal, they reflect my opinions: Oh Hell
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| Oh sure, I was getting tired of urban fantasy... |
[23 Dec 2007|06:34pm] |
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mood |
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contemplative |
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music |
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BGM of Starcraft Terrans |
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Then I find this. Hmm, (woot), foreign accents.
With a round of searching for reviews of the book, I discovered the first chapter of Ekaterina Sedia's The Secret History of Moscow.
Gaiman has said nifty things about it, the protagonist is a schizophrenic and it seems it's mostly... an... analysis? thinky? of the subconscious of Moscow. And it's a weird dreamlike urban fantasy. With 'disappearances'. Hell yes.
Strangely, it also seems rather magical realist, which is way out of my usual. I think I can feel my neurons stretching recently; that's a very satisfying feeling; I think it started with American Gods this summer, heh.
I'll probably look for The Secret History of Moscow after Christmas. If I don't find it then, I'll interlibrary loan it. (At the same time as I grab Altered Carbon, when I hopefully have most of the things I've currently reading finished. Boggle.)
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| ~Written Words of November 2007 |
[17 Dec 2007|11:20pm] |
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mood |
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 excited |
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music |
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Lunar II |
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Hours: 33.3
Primary Project: 5575
Entirety of Written Work: 13567
Nichts: 9
Well, that amount of words gives me a little above 25 days at 500 words, a lot of college work that, one way or the other, isn't going to amount to much, and a lot less than a Nano. I got to a deeply gloomy place earlier this month, as the Traveler might remember from a conversation.
It's deeply disheartening for me to be trapped in two classes with people who are working beneath the same weaknesses I acknowledged and have been directly fighting for two years. If I say much else, I'll be repeating the things my family has been hearing since the start of this semester.
On the cheery side of the spectrum, most of the time I would have
been writing, I've been reading The Italian Renaissance as research for my Mad Renaissance Science book. It's thanks to Scott Lynch, to an extent. The Lies of Locke Lamora irritated me in some ways, but it seemed too damn fun not to try a book like that.
Upon reading The Italian Renaissance, I realised I have a Lot to learn. Which is good, but I have to find something to write in the meantime. All of my plans are pretty epic, but I'm nothing if not ambitious.
Some paranoia, too. A small town in Minnesota might install six surveillance cameras. Along with the fact that this is disturbing, it's also [i]the same type of place where I live[/i]. That chills me and I'll be watching that story carefully.
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| The Light Side of the Parisian Underground |
[07 Dec 2007|09:46pm] |
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mood |
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mischievous |
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A group of four people crept in underneath a centuries-old clock in Paris and got it working. It took them about two years, but hey!
Restoration of a Clock
Score another point for the benevolent anarchists! Okay, admittedly, these people don't sound very anarchic, but I love the reaction to the government officials at the intrusion into the clocktower. Actions like this are what make life worth living, to me; the fact that some people just want to help... and get all sneaky about it.
It's especially amusing that they only told the officials because they wanted to get the clock working. And there's this:
"Opening a lock is the easiest thing for a clockmaker." Badass.
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