Friday, July 22. 2005Rage: A Wolf's Eye View
Growl roaw bark bark sniff wag.
Awoooooh! Ruff sniff sniff grrr *pant*. Wag, wag paw-ground bark, barkbark-bark woof roaw. Woof bark woof paw-ground roaw roaw wag woof snort woof bark woof roaw paw-ground snort. Woof woof roaw snort bark roaw roaw woof bark bark roaw snort bark paw-ground wag, paw-ground bark paw-ground woof snort snort wag bark roaw roaw bark woof woof wag. Woof, awooooh! Tuesday, July 19. 2005!@#$ you, J. K. Rowling!
So, I can't possibly be the only one who's noticed how terribly dull it's gotten around here ever since THBP came out...is that REALLY all you guys are thinking about these days?
Friday, July 15. 2005Free books!
You may or may not know who Cory Doctrow is. If you're a regular reader of /., you've probably heard his name come up from time to time. If, like myself, you're heavily involved in the relatively small community of people who are actively trying to change the way the world looks at books, he's one of our most active leaders.
Most relevant to this article is the fact that he's an author who willingly provides all of his books on the Internet for free download. Others have joined him, now, but it's still a pretty new idea. I really enjoyed his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, although there's a hint of a memory that says it may have had some mildly graphic material in it, so be warned. You can find his latest book, "Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town", here. Also, there's Accelerando, by Chuck Stross, who also write the acclaimed SciFi novel "Singularity Sky". And, as previously pointed out, there's always Autonomy, one of the more original SciFi books I've read in the past 15 years. I hope you all find something to enjoy in the above! Have a great weekend, and hope to see you all on Monday! Tuesday, July 12. 2005Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong
The Canadian publisher of the Harry Potter series has filed a court injunction barring anyone from leaking the plot of the latest book after a store accidentally sold copies ahead of the release date.
I cannot concieve of a legal foundation for this. You have 15 people who have paid for a book. Perhaps they got it before the time the publisher would have cared for them to have done so, but that's not ILLEGAL. In this case, I don't even think I can say it's immoral. But now we're talking about seeking legal injunctions from people talking on the street? Am I alone here? Doesn't anyone else see how a court granting such an injunction is a gross violation? Admittedly, we're talking about Canada, not the USA, but this strikes me as a wildly inappropriate action for a court, and just as inappropriate for a book distributor to have sought in the first place. This really, really, REALLY bothers me. But then, as Jared and I have been discussing this morning, I'm a conservatarian. Or maybe it's a libervative. How about you? Monday, July 11. 2005Thank you, Popcorn Bandits
I've been watching "House, M.D." all season, and for some reason found myself inexplicably drawn to the character of Dr. James Wilson, played by one "Robert Sean Leonard".
"What is it about this secondary character that I like so much?" I wondered. It all came together this afternoon whilst I read Danny's review of Dead Poet's Society. IT'S NEIL PERRY! You see, "Dead Poet's Society" was the first movie I ever watched where I realized there was more going on here than some moguls and actors trying to make a buck. People have stories they want to tell, and some of them choose to do so via the Silver Screen. In the character of Neil Perry, I finally looked deeper than the $3.50 admission price and saw another human being's pain bleeding through the screen. This movie completely changed my life, in both my attitude towards movies as previously discussed, and in my attitude towards poetry. Some of you may find this hard to believe given my history of posts thus far on the current incarnation of the Homestarmy blog, but until I saw DPS, I never cared for poetry. I thought it was a silly waste of time. After watching it, I even went so far as to start a Dead Poet's Society at Dixie Middle School. It never had more than 5 members, but it's how I got to know Susie Turner, and it's where I first learned to enjoy both reading and writing poetry. I recommend Danny's review to any of you who enjoyed this movie. I've seen this movie enough that I completely wore through 2 VHS copies, and now own it on DVD (in fact, it was the first DVD I ever purchased), but I still enjoyed reading what he had to say. Monday, July 11. 2005D&D Nights in the near future
This Monday night, Danny Lasko will probably be attending our campaign to see if he would be interested in taking over as full-time DM. Of course, it's also going to depend on the group dynamic (i.e., "What everyone else thinks"), but I'm not attached to being the DM in any fashion. I also think it's a good idea to have other people ready to step in and DM in case the current DM can't make it, and I see no reason we should have to sacrifice members of the party to have a DM.
Additionally, this weekend I will be picking my family up from So. Utah. As much as I enjoy D&D, I'll only have my family up here with me for 2 weeks, so I will not be playing on the 18th or the 25th. Sorry. :'( Friday, July 8. 2005From "Atlas Shrugged". . .
"Do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement.
"Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. "They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men you don't respect? "Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?" -- Dr. Robert Stadler, to Dagny Taggart in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Friday, July 8. 2005Welcome to the Midnight Nation
If you haven't read it, do so.
Use your email address as the username and your birthdate as the password, formatted like: "20-OCT-1976" (for October 20, 1976), or "13-APR-1981" (for April 13, 1981). Wednesday, July 6. 2005Saturday Read-alongs
One of my "things worth doing" is to get other people to experience things that I've previously enjoyed; to share the experiences that have made my life better.
In this vein, I'm considering a once-monthly "Saturday Read-along". The idea is to pick subject matter that you could burn through in a day, then to meet somewhere and take turns reading it aloud. Pete says he's in, if we can ever get him on a Saturday where he's not playing that "Devil Game". Anyone else? Tuesday, July 5. 2005
Things Worth Doing, part I: Why? Posted by Ancient of Days
in Gathering Darkness at
22:54
Comments (6) Trackbacks (0) Things Worth Doing, part I: Why?
Have you seen "Once More, With Feeling" (an episode of Buffy, somewhere in the 6th season)? Or maybe Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings"? Or perhaps you've read J. Michael Straczinsky's graphic novel "Midnight Nation"? Read Asimov's "The Gods Themselves", or Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game", or Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"? Each of the above, in some way, sits in my memory as a source of truth; an example of what I expect when I sit down to watch TV, or a movie; when I pick up a comic book, or a S/F novel; when I read a poem. Is that a bad thing? Writing this article, I find myself thinking about a lot of things: the nature of time; my arch-nemesis, "sleep"; the creative process; my thoughts and feelings regarding elitism; the concept of "intellectual property"; the value of entertainment in society. I'm probably not going to be able to tie all of that into a coherent article in one shot, but here's some things to think about. We have a limited number of hours alloted to us in which to do. . .well, EVERYTHING. OK, by this point, all of you should be familiar with my feelings on sleep. If you're not, well...PAY ATTENTION! Sleep is the enemy. More accurately, time is the enemy. There are so very very many things in life worth doing, that I find myself unable to even enjoy sleeping because I lie in the state between waking and dreaming, filled with frustration at the prospect that I'm simply wasting time. Curtis accused me of being "picky", and this is true. Given an infinite amount of time, I feel supremely confident that I would never actually grow "bored", because I want to know *everything*. I want to experience all that is worth experiencing, and there simply isn't time for it. Thus, anything that is of less-than-excellent quality that consumes my time is a source of bitterness and frustration to me, because those are minutes and hours I'll never "get back." Therefore, in an effort to expand my little Cult of Personality, I will be using this blog as a forum to spread my disease. I'm going to share some "Things Worth Doing", and maybe you'll all start seeing things a little more...hurriedly. :) Thursday, June 30. 2005
Last poem from me for a while, I promise Posted by Ancient of Days
in Poetry at
06:25
Comment (1) Trackbacks (0) Last poem from me for a while, I promise
This is another poem that "Confessions of a Mask" called to mind. I didn't refer to it initally because it's a very tenuous link, but I finally decided to go ahead. I really enjoyed this one when I came across it in High School.
Wednesday, June 29. 2005You are on The Global Frequency
If you haven't heard me gibbering about "Global Frequency" yet, I've failed you. If you're a Matrix fan, I suggest you check it out. If you enjoyed Firefly, I would guess you might also enjoy this. I can't tell you where to find it. But find it. Something about this story calls to me. I hate these people for having this idea. It's so beautiful, so perfect. . .I wish it were mine. Also, "Autonomy: Freedom of Thought". It was still pretty raw the last draft I read, but it shows a lot of promise. Wednesday, June 29. 2005It seems Batman has begun(10:30:59) TML: Went to see Batman last night I had to stop and think about that for a minute. What *did* I think about this newest entry into the foray against "You can't make a good comic book into a good movie"? As I said to Curtis, I think part of the reason I didn't enjoy as much as some of you may have done is because the theatre we went to chose to show a trailer for Serenity before the movie started. This was a horrible, horrible mistake on their part, as I spent the first 15-20 minutes, and the last 45, of 'Batman Begins' thinking "I wish this were Serenity."
After I told Curtis what I thought, he pointed out:
Well, that's true, but it's a subject for another time. Suffice to say, I *am* picky. And I find myself less than fond of this film. Allow me to tell you what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy, without going into too much detail so that I don't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it yet. First of all, I can't think of a single role in the film that wasn't excellently portrayed. I was more than pleased with the performances of Mssr.'s Caine, Bale, and Murphy. Once again, Gary Oldman floored me with his versatility. . .nearly the equal of Sir Ian McKellen, that one is. Even Katie Holmes left me pleasantly surprised: for once, I wasn't immediately thinking "Oh, look. It's that girl from that 'Darvin's Creek' show." The Director had a top notch crew working for him, and it's obvious that he has some long term plans for this proptery. However, unless David Goyer (the writer) gets his head on straight, I'm afraid I'm going to have to personally stop him before he destroys The Flash and Ghost Rider. Because it is my personal opinion that he is almost solely to blame for the failures in this movie. There's a scene, right around the middle of the movie, where we see Batman looking down on Gotham from a perch high above the city. It comes just as the character of Batman has really become solid in the minds of the town, as well as in the mind of Bruce Wayne himself. Right at that point in the movie, I found myself getting excited. "Wow! They've done it! They've pulled it off!" Unfortunately, I came to realize there was more symbolism in this scene than I had initally thought, because it is my opinion that this is the high point of the film. It's all downhill from this point. I can't say anything more specific about what I didn't like without giving away plot points. However, I can say that I felt like a REALLY GOOD writer wrote the first half of this film, and then he got busy doing something else, because the rest of the plot feels very rushed, half-hearted, and even disjointed in places. Acting: 7 of 10 (some of the ancillary "bad guys" were more one dimensional than the part seemed to call for, but the stars were truly "stars" here) Directing: 8 of 10 (I'm excited to see what Nolan does next) Tech: 5 of 10 (some of the science was too "psuedo-" for my taste. . .if you can't make it work with real science, stop trying to "explain" it and rely on people's "willing suspension of disbelief" to carry the point) Writing/Story: 3 of 10 Overall: From a purely mathematical standpoint, this would be a 5.75. However, we're talking about a movie about one of the most consistently brilliant and compelling comic books of all time. There was *so much* good material to pull from! A poor story is absolutely inexcusable. The writer destroyed what could have been a brilliant film. I'm giving it a 4. Tuesday, June 28. 2005Some more poetry for you
I found this on Slate, and enjoyed it, so I thought I'd put together a quick analysis. Original here. NB: I wouldn't bother listening to him read. I didn't find him to be an especially talented poetry reader.
I'm interjecting my comments on lines that begin with two dashes (--).
I'm sure I missed some. Perhaps those of you with a bit more formal education can point them out. Tuesday, June 21. 2005Dreadfully sorryEveryone: I made a mistake. After an upgrade a month or two ago, I never set the pgsql database on joeysmith.com/thehomestarmy.com to backup because it wasn't being used for anything for such a long time. Over the weekend, there was a catastrophic drive failure on that box. I had a spare drive in the box, so I was able to get it back up and running, but I did lost the pgsql database. Which means I lost all the articles and the s9y configuration.
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