Month: September 2007

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Holding Pattern Delta!

I’m not sure what “Holding Pattern Delta” involves, but it sounds cool, so that’s what I’m going with!

Anyhow, regular life this week still has lots of stuff in the hopper, what with The Wife’s vacation, family stuff, and various other activities planned, so posting here will still be sporadic for probably a week or so. I’ll try to have some Sentential Links and a Burst of Weirdness at some point, but they may not appear on their standard days.

By way of a progress report of sorts, in conjunction with my recent birthday (last week, for you lazy stragglers!), The Wife and I took a one-night trip into the Fingerlakes region (a few photos of which are available on my Flickr stream, accessible through the “Flickr Badge” thing in the sidebar). We took a scenic drive during which we did not enter a single four-lane, limited exchange highway, either the NYS Thruway or any other such expressway, which is really still the best way to see places. There was birthday cake and birthday pie, there was an Apple Festival in Ithaca (holy used bookstores, Batman!), one of the best toystores I’ve ever seen (don’t tell The Daughter! One of her Christmas presents is in our closet!), and other nice things done. And today we’re going to Pumpkinville…and I’m planning another round of tie-dying this week…and in between all that, I’m escaping to the planet Barsoom to adventure alongside Captain John Carter.

So anyway, keep checking in!

(Oh by the way, nobody still has made any guesses on Unidentified Earth 18, so I’ll keep narrowing it down. It’s in Oregon, folks. Come on! Somebody’s gotta know what that thing is!)

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Here I go, again on my own….

Actually, I’m not sure what that post title has to do with anything, but it’s what leaped to mind, so there it is. Some notes:

:: Exactly fourteen years ago today, I turned twenty-two years old. Good times, those were! I remember it as though it was…fourteen years ago.

:: Happy Birthday George Gershwin, wherever you are! S’wonderful, s’marvelous, she should care for me….

:: Things may look a little weird around here for a while. I’ve exceeded the bandwidth limit on where I keep my graphics, and I don’t have time to try to fix it until later.

:: Only one guess thus far at last week’s Unidentified Earth, so apparently a hint is in order? Pictured therein is the only municipally operated one of these in the United States.

:: Here’s an article about the twenty greatest spaceship captains. It’s pretty good, up until the final five, when it gets the rankings horribly, awfully wrong.

:: EW, a magazine I wrote off years ago because I finally couldn’t take the insufferably smug tone of its critics, has a fairly non-smug selection of the Top ten episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They’re all superb episodes, and their Number One episode is also my Number One episode, which is nice. (Both these links from SFSignal.)

:: The women of SWILL have created a calendar which they are selling in order to raise money for Living Beyond Breast Cancer. Buy one here.

:: October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. More info here. Consider lighting a candle that night at 7:00 pm.

On a meta-blogging note, posting will be light for the next few days, and possibly even a week. The Wife starts a much-needed vacation tomorrow, and I’ll be taking a couple of days off from work in order to spend time with her and with The Daughter and do stuff that doesn’t involve a keyboard but may involve large amounts of Cool-whip. Behave, folks!

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Sentential Links #112

One hundred twelve. That’s the number of times so far this NFL season that, collectively, the Buffalo Bills medical staff has uttered the words, “Oh, shit.”

Anyway, onto the links:

:: I swear, I’ve eaten half my family’s dinner like this. And I had to force myself to stop before eating it all.

:: Village rule number one: You can’t employ a play on words that any Republican might be able to use as an excuse to run to the fainting couch and have a good old-fashioned cry. Democrats must be as bland and technocratic as humanly possible in their political rhetoric. If they can put their audience to sleep within the first five minutes, so much the better. But that doesn’t mean Republicans and the media can’t have loads of nasty “pun” at the expense of Democrats.

:: We don’t need to think in terms of mending our holes. We can simply go on (or stay firm in our place on the earth?) with the holes. And maybe they can even help us through troubled waters.

:: This is, once again, Rudy the wind-up doll. He’s got a small supply of stock phrases (9/11, lower taxes, crime fighter) and he just hauls out whichever one seems handiest for the moment. Actual knowledge of anything necessary to be president? None.

:: I’m on record here on this blog as saying that I’m okay, at least in principle, with updated versions of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Logan’s Run. I love the original versions of these, but revisiting them doesn’t bother me. However, the thought of a new Day the Earth Stood Still turns my stomach. So how do I reconcile these opposing viewpoints?

:: Save the vowels!

:: That’s the recipe for building an environment that fosters moral behavior. It doesn’t involve gods or even belief in gods. It is completely independent of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, or atheism. It works — religion is irrelevant to morality. The surest way to create moral individuals is to build a stable society where desirable behaviors are rewarded, and the hoop-jumping frivolities of religion are not a requirement to accomplish that.

:: What I’ve depicted isn’t really what northern Manitoba looks like, really…but I didn’t want that, anyway. What I wanted was what Canadians see when they close their eyes and think of Canada. (Interesting interview with a comics creator I’d been previously unaware of.)

:: Driving around in recent weeks, it’s been common to see people standing with their backs to the side of the road, poised in odd positions. Stretched. Squatting. Contorted in some game of imaginary Twister… all in pursuit of the most amazing blackberries imaginable.

:: When I started the Silk Road Project, I began to understand the geographical and musical connections between all these incredible cultures — all these ‘other’ classical musics, the Persian classical music and Indian classical music and mugam in Afghanistan and so on. I got a sense that at one time these connections were much closer and over time that certain things got split off and developed independently, in the way that the French spoken in Louisiana and Quebec broke off from the original. (Alex Ross interviews Yo Yo Ma on his blog. This is required reading, folks. Yo Yo Ma is so much more than the best cellist going today.)

All for this week. We’ll be back next week, as always!

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Stupid Patriots 38, Bills 7

You know, I find football fans to be an amazing lot. Before the season started, I’d hear lots of fans on sports radio shows and in regular life saying things like, “Geez, with this schedule, we’ll be lucky to be 6-10” and “Wow, they’re gonna open up 0-4” and stuff like that. Now that the Bills actually are 0-3, suddenly we’re all shocked — shocked! — that the team is struggling mightily. Of course, that’s probably a function of how the team is struggling mightily; most fans expected a team that would lose games by scores like 28-20, 38-24, 45-27, and the like. No one expected a team that would, after three games, have two offensive TDs on the year.

JP Losman’s effectiveness was questioned strenuously by fans after both the first two games; I was unimpressed by him, although I didn’t call for a pulling of his plug, and I feel slightly vindicated by what happened today. Losman was injured on the very first series and came out of the game after the third play, leading to rookie (third-round pick this year) Trent Edwards, who had a couple of good drives in pre-season which was somehow enough to sell a lot of people on the idea that he’s bursting with intangibles. Which isn’t to say that he isn’t bursting with intangibles; I just think that one doesn’t want to estimate a rookie quarterback’s intangibles based on a fourth-quarter drive against the Detriot Lions in a pre-season game. But that’s just me.

I’m also weary of hearing youth and injuries cited as reasons this team struggles. I think it goes to drafting and coaching. The greenest players each year, the ones who are really marginal NFL talents at their positions, always manage to make NFL rosters by virtue of special teams play, and the Bills’ special teams units are always well-prepared and they almost always execute well on the fundamentals. Today, a perfect downing-of-the-ball on a punt was executed by a rookie (Josh Wendling, a fifth-round pick this year), and in making that play he looked like he’d been doing it for years. That’s coaching. Funny how Bobby April manages to get so much more out of the same general batch of inexperienced youngsters than any of the other coordinators and coaches on the Bills’ staff, isn’t it?

Anyway, let’s move onto more pithy replies:

Woo-hoo!

:: The Bills have a very good punter.

:: The Bills had one very good drive.

:: Bill Belichick challenged two calls within five minutes in the second quarter; both went against him. I remember when those calls would probably have gone his way. I wonder if there’s some quiet bit of punishment for the whole Belicheat thing going on.

:: I got the floor vacuumed in our apartment! Woo-hoo!

Meh.

:: The announcers for this game weren’t very good. They made odd points, like “Dick Jauron’s had success wherever he’s been”, and “The StuPats have been good because they’ve had continuity at coach and quarterback, where the Bills haven’t.” I’ve heard that latter point a lot lately, not just in reference to New England, but to teams like Indy and Pittsburgh. The point seems to me exactly backwards: success doesn’t come as a result of continuity in the coaching staff and the roster; rather, continuity comes as a result of success. Does anyone think the Bills would have had any better a recent history if we were on Year Seven of the Gregg Williams/Rob Johnson era? Or Year Four of the Mike Mularkey/Drew Bledsoe era? Winning comes first, then continuity.

:: Chris Kelsay did a better job tackling. The defense continues to play really hard. They don’t make big stops or big plays, but they can’t be said to be lacking in the area of effort.

:: Marshawn Lynch. Not “Meh” for his effort, just “Meh” that he’s so potentially good on so ugly a team.

D'oh!

:: Longtime readers know I harp on this every year, but it wouldn’t be a Bills post of mine if I didn’t complain about the Bills’ constant lack of command at the line of scrimmage. Screw the quarterback situation; this team’s focus has to be getting better at the line of scrimmage.

:: Well, this game sure can’t be blamed on JP Losman. Trent Edwards completed fifty percent of his passes for under 100 yards, no TDs, and an interception. I’m not knocking Edwards, but this team is fundamentally bad in the trenches.

:: Maybe the Bills should just eliminate all their tight ends and sign some new linemen, since the TEs are useless here anyway.

:: Maybe it’s just my rabid hatred of the StuPats talking, but there’s no way Wilfork wasn’t gunning for Losman’s exposed knee on that play.

:: More injuries. What did the Bills do to so alienate the football gods? Now, rookie linebacker Paul Posluszny has a broken arm and will be out for quite a while. JP Losman will probably miss some time. About the only thing that can be hoped now is that some youngsters who would otherwise have never seen the field somehow turn out to be diamonds in the rough.

Well, that’s about it. Next up: the New York Jets, at home. The Bills usually play the Jets tough. But then again, once Aaron Schobel, Chris Kelsay and Donte Whitner all get hurt next week on the same play, the Bills will be fielding seven guys on defense.

Sigh.

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Ahhh, the memories of Marvel Team-Up!

Michael May’s Adventureblog provides this fun meme-thing:

First, select ten fictional characters (from any medium) by whichever method you like best.

1. Diarmuid dan Ailell (from The Fionavar Tapestry)
2. Obi-Wan Kenobi
3. James Bond (the Lazenby, Dalton, or Daniel Craig incarnations)
4. Wonder Woman
5. Captain Malcolm Reynolds
6. Jehane bet Ishak (from The Lions of Al-Rassan)
7. Agent Dana Scully
8. Hermione Grainger
9. Lady Eowyn (from The Lord of the Rings)
10. Han Solo

Divide the list up by even and odd.

OK. Team One: Diarmuid Dan Ailell, James Bond, Mal Reynolds, Agent Scully, Lady Eowyn.

Team Two: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Wonder Woman, Jehane bet Ishak, Hermione Grainger, Han Solo.

Which group of five would make a better Five Man Band (like a Power Rangers team)? Who would you slot in each position: Leader, Lancer (second-in-command), Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick?

Hmmmm! I’m guessing Team Two.

Leader: Obi Wan Kenobi
Lancer: Wonder Woman
Big Guy: Han Solo
Smart Guy (girl, in this case): Hermione Grainger
The Chick: Jehane bet Ishak

Just for the sake of completeness, here’s how Team One would break out:

Leader: Mal Reynolds
Lancer: James Bond
Big Guy: Diarmuid Dan Ailell
Smart Guy (also a woman in this case): Agent Scully
The Chick: Lady Eowyn.

The roles in Team One would be a lot more fluid, I suspect; while Diarmuid is often portrayed as a fun-loving rogue, whenever the chips are down in those books, the guy rises to the occasion and provides some serious leadership. Bond also tends to be a loner a lot of the time, so he’d probably switch in and out of the lancer role, maybe even taking three roles at times (Big Guy and Smart Guy). Lady Eowyn’s also got some strength and leadership skills, and of course Agent Scully is no pushover either. Team Chemistry would be a problem here, I think; a lot of strong-willed people would end up butting heads.

If you think the team would be improved by swapping one character between the even and odd groups, which ones would you switch?

I don’t think I’d switch anyone. Team Two seems pretty strong, in my mind, and any trade into Team One wouldn’t reduce the problems noted above. So no trades; these are the teams.

Gender-swap 2, 8 & 10. Which character would have the most change in their story arc? Which the least? Would any of these characters have to have a complete personality change to be believable as the opposite sex?

OK: Obi Wan Kenobi becomes a woman, Hermione Grainger becomes a man, and Han Solo becomes a woman. Hmmmmm.

I suspect that Obi Wan could have been made a woman with almost no trouble at all. Hermione probably wouldn’t have been believable in the slightest as a boy/man; since the whole dynamic of the Potterverse is set by the trio of heroes being two boys and a girl, I don’t think three boys would work at all, so there would have to be a girl, which in turn would lead to Ron being a woman. Or something like that.

And Han Solo as a woman? That would make his (her) relationship with Leia fairly interesting, would it not? However, aside from that love triangle, I’m not sure this would really impact the story in a very large way. Nothing in Star Wars makes a female analogue of Han Solo unthinkable.

Compare the matchups of 1 & 8 and 5 & 9. (Ignore canon sexual preferences for the moment.) Which couple would be more compatible?

1 and 8: Diarmuid dan Ailell and Hermione Grainger? The Hermione of the actual Potter books wouldn’t even be a blip on Diarmuid’s radar, since he’s a fairly sexual adult and she’s just a kid, finding her way. Now, an adult Hermione might well catch his eye, as he is clearly attracted to strong-willed, brave, and intelligent women.

5 and 9: Captain Mal Reynolds and Lady Eowyn? Eowyn’s all about duty and her country, while Mal’s all about freedom. I can’t see them being compatible at all.

Which couple would be more plausible to people from either principal’s home culture?

Definitely Diarmuid/Hermione. They both come from worlds of magic and myth. A space traveler in Edoras? Not happening. On a genre mash-up basis, that couple’s a total non-starter.

Your team is 3, 4 & 9. The mission consists of a social challenge, a mental challenge and a physical challenge. Which team member do you assign to each challenge?

Bond, Wonder Woman, and Lady Eowyn. Well, obviously Wonder Woman gets the physical challenge, just because she’s got some super strength. (Which isn’t to say that’s the only kind of task she’d be good for. We’re limiting to just the focus of this question.)

Bond would get the mental challenge, I think. In the best of all Bond stories, he has to do a lot of figuring stuff out.

Which leaves the “social challenge” to Lady Eowyn. Now, I’m not entirely sure what a “social challenge” actually is, but her role in the books is at least partially social, a leadership role, so that’s what she would get here. I think.

7 becomes 1’s boss for a week in some plausible fashion. How’s their working relationship?

Agent Scully as Diarmuid dan Ailell’s boss? That’s an odd picture, I must say! Scully would find their working relationship frustrating, I suspect, although his sardonic nature might well mirror her partner Agent Mulder’s, albeit with more overt humor and wit. For his part, Diarmuid would do what he’s told, since underneath his sardonic exterior beats the heart of a man who takes duty very seriously. In fact, not only would Diar do his duty, but he’d have killed anyone who refused or balked at doing theirs!

2 finds him/her/itself inserted into 6’s continuity. As far as anyone other than 2 or 6 is concerned, they’ve always been there. What role would 2 be presumed to have had in 6’s story, and could they fit in without going wonky?

So we’d have Obi Wan Kenobi in The Lions of Al-Rassan? Well, if he actually had a lightsaber, he’d stand out like Manute Bol in the land of the Munchkins. However, there is certainly room in that mythos for a band of monastic knights a la the Jedi — especially if we expand Jehane’s “continuity” to include the other novels set in that same physical world, The Sarantine Mosaic and The Last Light of the Sun.

3 and 5 get three wishes. The catch is that they have to agree on all three wishes before they get the benefits of any of them. What three wishes would they make?

James Bond and Mal Reynolds? Agreeing on wishes? Again, this one’s tough because of the genre mashup — spy thriller meets space opera/western. So what would they wish for together? Crikey, that’s hard. Personally, I’d expect that they’d sit down and play three games of cards, one wish going to the winner of each game.

1 and 2 are brainwashed by a one-time artifact that works even on people immune to mind control to attack and kill 4. They keep their normal personality, skills and competence level, except any Code vs. Killing has been turned off. Can 4 survive? How?

Diarmuid and Obi Wan have to go after Wonder Woman. If they could somehow part her from her Lasso of Truth, they just might be able to pull it off. Diarmuid would have to accept this as a suicide mission, and Obi Wan’s powers would be severely tested. However, if Wonder Woman has the Lasso with her, Diar and Obi Wan are screwed. If she ropes them with the Lasso of Truth, that might cause the effect of the brainwashing to wear off!

6, 7, 9 & 10 must help an orphanage full of small and depressed children have a merry Christmas. Who does what, knowing that at the very least the kids will be expecting a visit from Santa?

Jehane, Agent Scully, Lady Eowyn, and Han Solo? I guess the ladies would do the shopping and set-up, and then they’d force Han to put on the Santa costume.

3 and 8 are challenged to circumnavigate the Earth in eighty days or less, using only forms of transportation invented before 1900. Can they do it, or will they be fatally distracted by sidequests or their own personality conflicts?

James Bond and Hermione Grainger? Yeah, they’d probably do it; I’m sure Hermione’s read books on the operation of hot-air balloons and sailing vessels, and James Bond can operate any vehicle at all. As for personality conflicts, I suspect they’d get along fine, unless again we’re talking about adult Hermione, who might then find herself in bed with Mr. Bond.

And I guess that’s it! Fun quiz. No tagging.

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Sunday Burst of Weirdness

Hey all, sorry for the recent lack of posting. Nothing disastrous going on, I’ve just been busy and not feeling too much like blogging.

Anyway, some weirdness and funny stuff:

:: Our local PBS station often airs movies on the weekend evenings. Since most movies won’t fill a two-hour timeslot exactly, the station is usually left with some remaining airtime to fill before the next hour or half-hour, and they generally fill this time with short films or other kinds of short programming. Such is how I first encountered, some time ago, a British parody of cooking shows called Posh Nosh. Only nine episodes were made, and each one is about nine minutes long. Here’s the list, with links to the episodes I’ve managed to find online:

Fish and Chips
Birthday Parties
Paella
Beautiful Food
Bread and Butter Pudding
Leftovers
Sauces
Comfort Food
Grilled Sole

Enjoy! I love this little show, with its subtle wordplay and nifty comedic chemistry between the two leads.

:: Some guy followed every rule in the Bible for a year. I don’t really see the point, but there it is. (And by the way: it’s Gandhi, not Ghandi. It’s disheartening to see that mistake in a professional news magazine.)

:: Aieee!

An error in paperwork sent a man in Venezuela, who was knocked unconscious in a road accident, for an autopsy.

The confusion occurred after ambulance workers reached the scene of the accident, between a lorry and a car.

Officials completed a form requesting an autopsy rather than one requesting treatment for injuries, and the man was sent to the morgue.

Venezuela’s highways police confirmed that the two hospital forms look almost identical and can be easily confused.

(via)

:: Given previous rants about cell-phone users that I’ve posted on this blog, I suppose it will therefore seem like quite the Burst of Weirdness that…I now have a cell phone. It doesn’t play MP3s or videos, it doesn’t make a mean cup of coffee, and it doesn’t wash my car, pick a lovely bouquet of wildflowers and baby’s breath, keep my plants watered, or cook a nice dish of Clams Casino. It does, though, make calls and take pictures of stuff.

Here’s something I wonder about cell phones: had Star Trek not depicted its communicators as such, would “flip” phones ever have been invented?

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Stupid is a force of nature

Oh, my God.

And looking at Sherri Shepherd’s website, I find this quote:

To those of you who prayed… let me tell you … PRAYERS WORK! Because it is a miracle of God that I am now a co-host on The View.

What an appalling sentiment. What a cheap, lazy, and boring view of God she must have. This kind of crap makes me want to vomit. What kind of nauseatingly simpleton must God be under this view, to use His omnipotent powers to pick the host of a damn teevee show?!

(via)

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