Here’s Vidler’s in East Aurora, NY, after dark. We’d just come out of Firefly Cupcakes, which is right next door. Note the giant statue-golem of Mr. Vidler, looming over all!
Is Gonzaga Porkins, then?
March Madness explained by invoking Star Wars:
Of course, the fact that a geek like this has to ask why Luke has a grenade on Hoth with which he blows up an Imperial Walker is disappointing. Come on, pay at least some attention to the movie.
(via)
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Sentential Links
Whaddaya mean, you’re not gonna click these links? Everybody likes links! All the cool kids are clicking them!
:: I’m absolutely spellbound watching creatures eat their lunch.
Which, most of the time, consists of other creatures. (I used to read composer Alex Shapiro’s blog all the time, and then I lapsed for a long time. Not sure why, because her blog is captivating. And I also finally got around to buying her album, as an MP3 download from Amazon. I’d like to report on the entire album, but as I write this, I’m on my third consecutive listen to the second track, “Bioplasm”, which is eleven minutes long. Anyhow, her music and her blog chronicle the lifecycles of her Puget Sound island.)
:: So when you get stuck just know, there is no Dr. House for writing. At times we’re all Frank Burns.
:: I was thinking of the different places my family traveled on Spring Break. I remember a few.
He shook his head.
“Humph. You wish! We’re not over the Civil War.”
More next week, huzzah!
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A Brief Writing Update
Work on Princesses In SPACE!!! Into Darkness (not the actual title) continues, but I’m not enamored of my record in terms of daily output. I’ve taken to allowing my Self-Motivation Circuit to leave messages on my daily output spreadsheet, and thus far, the SMC is not impressed.
No, the SMC does not think I’m doing a bang-up job. Two zero-word days in two weeks, and not only am I missing my current quote (1000 words a day) a majority of the time, but I’m not even hitting my previous quota (500 words a day) a non-trivial amount of the time! This is, as they say, Not Inspiring.
However, notice that I did have a bit of a bounce-back yesterday! The SMC would go lighter on me now, right?
Sigh.
Back to work.
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A life, with kittehs
Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: This is probably one of those things that everybody’s seen but me already, but as it is in fact new to me, here’s the Tarantula Song.
:: Buddha laughs at your paltry efforts to conquer the world through technology.
(Stolen from Tumblr)
:: Want to know how to make the Star Wars blaster sound effect? Sure you do!
More next week!
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A brief observation
Those of us who were occasionally bullied in grade school (for me it was during my younger years, much less so in my older ones, and even then I didn’t get bullied a whole lot, but it did happen) might remember scenarios in which the bigger kid is picking on the smaller, and doing stuff like cornering him someplace alone, and refusing to let him pass, and maybe punching him a bit in the stomach or shoulder. Maybe it gets worse, like dumping the kid’s books while he’s in the bathroom. Whatever it is — it’s the canonical style of bullying, what people my age tend to think of when they hear the word.
Remember what the bully always said on those rare occasions when a teacher or other adult just happened to show up, coming ’round the corner at just the right time? “I was just kidding around with him!”
“I was just playin’!”
“I wasn’t gonna hurt him or anything, we were just playin’!”
“I was just joking with him!”
That’s what I think of whenever some comedian says something really awful, gets called on it, and then starts in with the “I was just telling a joke!” defense.
I think that an uncomfortably large amount of comedy these days springs from the same mental space from which bullying comes. And that, no matter what the comedians might wish, is their problem, not mine.
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A writer’s manifesto
On fandom and groups and such
Lynn is nonplussed by the existence of Bronies:
I cannot understand adult My Little Pony fandom, especially adult male Pony fandom, known as “bronies”. I can sort of understand adult female Pony fandom but guys being interested in the activities of cute, pastel colored ponies… well, frankly, it’s just a wee bit creepy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You can be as creepy as you want as long as you’re not hurting anyone. Viva la diversity!
But I suppose I’m stuck on the old-fashioned, out-dated 60’s notion of “real manhood.” Neither John Wayne nor Captain Kirk would have ever been caught playing with cute pastel Ponies. And, come to think of it, neither would have Captain Picard.
For those not keeping score, ‘Bronies’ are male fans of My Little Pony. For those who still aren’t keeping score, yes, you read that right. My Little Pony. The little colorful ponies who are generally seen as the equine analog of the Care Bears.
Lynn’s view is not unusual. I’ve come to know Lynn pretty well after years of online interaction, so I’m pretty confident that when she says she finds it a ‘wee bit creepy’, that’s pretty much what she means: “OK, I’m not gonna lie, that’s kinda weird. But whatever floats your boat.” She’s nowhere near as irritated by Brony existence as some other people I’ve seen online. A recall a while back when I went on one of my rare visits to the FSM message boards and found someone there going off on an extended rant about how Bronies are literally pedophiles.
My reaction to learning the existence of Bronies was twofold: “Huh, OK, whatever” and “Why would anyone of adult age be a fan of those?” Well, apparently the Brony ‘phenomenon’ is centered mainly on the current incarnation of the Ponies on teevee, via the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Having never once seen an episode of this, I had to look up the following on Wikipedia:
The show has been critically praised for its humor and moral outlook. Despite the target demographic of young girls, Friendship Is Magic has, in addition, gained a large following of older viewers, predominately teenagers and adults, largely male, who call themselves “bronies”. Reasons for this unintended appreciation include Faust and her team’s creative writing and characterization, the expressive Flash-based animation style, themes that older audiences can appreciate, and a reciprocal relationship between Hasbro, the creators, and the fans. Elements of the show have become part of the remix culture and have formed the basis for a variety of Internet memes. As a result in part of this unexpected cross-demographic audience interest, the series has become a major commercial success, becoming the most highly rated original production in the Hub’s broadcast history.
So apparently it’s a kid’s show that has been crafted in such a way as to have appeal to older age groups. This is, I suppose, not at all unlike other successful cartoon franchises of long-standing — Looney Tunes, for example, or Tom and Jerry. Again, I’ve never seen any of this, so I can’t personally vouch for it. But I do have a good friend who also happens to be quite the MLP fan, and she strongly recommended that I watch some of Friendship is Magic, describing the show’s sense of humor as ‘delightfully twisted’. I have to admit that I am curious about this, and also that the main reason I haven’t is the same reason I haven’t got around to watching Farscape or the rest of Battlestar Galactica or [insert thing I haven’t seen yet]. I just haven’t got round to it.
I don’t rule out the possibility of me actually liking MLP: Friendship is Magic, either. As kid-stuff goes, I am a huge fan of the show Arthur. Now there‘s a fun show with a ‘delightfully twisted’ sense of humor.
The whole ‘Brony’ thing interests me, though, as a larger part of fandom. I consider myself a fan of lots of stuff, and readers here can probably attest to a lot of it. Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, Quentin Tarantino, The Lord of the Rings, Guy Gavriel Kay…yes, I have my fandoms. And yet, I don’t really associate with any other fans of such things, at least not in areas such as online forums which are intended for interaction of fans. I exercise my fandom here, on this blog. And through that, I do meet other folks, and interact with them; but doing so in this way, rather than on dedicated sites, seems to me to allow for a wider connection with fans of things that I like. And it also heightens the likelihood that they are not fans of other stuff that I like, which is fine…but on dedicated sites and such, it can be a bit of a shock.
Back when I actively posted on the FSM boards, and Usenet before them, the conversations pretty much stuck to film music. This led to the phenomenon of discovering that someone with whom I had previously thought I was simpatico with on all things is actually almost completely different from me on everything. Talking passionately about the music of John Williams with someone, only to find out that they are a deeply conservative Republican? In Blogistan, this does not come as a shock at all. But on a dedicated site, it can be a jolt.
I ultimately don’t participate in those kinds of forums because of issues like this. Not because I’m trying to avoid people who aren’t exactly like me, but because when the conversation is that limited to a single topic, no matter how strong the passion can show and how deep the conversation on that topic, you almost never get a good feel for the other person beyond that particular fandom. This was one of the things that drew me to blogging in the first place, way back when: Usenet was just less and less satisfying. If I wanted to talk film music, there was that group. If I wanted to talk books, I had to go to another group — and the denizens of that group weren’t the same as the first. It was this compartmentalizing of fandom that I found so irritating: that I had to remember to which group I was talking about what. As soon as I discovered that I could set up my own spot where I could talk about what I wanted when I wanted, no matter if anyone was listening or not, that was that.
There’s also the fact that people may like the same stuff you do, but in different ways. Fact is, there probably are Bronies who are drawn to it for less than savory reasons. I remember years ago when I discovered other fans of pies in the face AND overalls online — in separate communities — and then realized that they’re fetish communities, with all the gradations that go with such things (meaning, some of which were hard-core). Again, fine if that’s your thing, but not for me, thank you very much. I quickly realized that I had little to no basis on which to interact with those folks, and that was that.
Fandom is an odd thing. It’s personal, but it also makes us crave connections, doesn’t it? So I suppose ultimately the question becomes, what kind of connections do we want. Speaking solely for myself, I don’t want connections that are based on a single shared passion for one particular thing. But, as in all things, that’s just me.
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Film Quote Friday: “Amistad”
I’ve only seen this movie once, and I liked it, but not really enough to watch it again. At the time I remember finding it well-made, well-acted, and all, but a bit on the slow-moving side and generally not too involving. But at the end of the film, when the court case in the story (regarding the status of a group of Africans, on their way to being sold into slavery, who rise up while still on the slave ship from Africa) reaches the Supreme Court, we get to hear a long speech by former President John Quincy Adams (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins), that I’ve watched, in itself, many times on YouTube. It’s a terrific speech, and like all great speeches, the most emotionally resonant part comes at the end.
The other night I was talking with my friend, Cinque [the slave, played by Djimon Honsou]. He was over at my place, and we were out in the greenhouse together. And he was explaining to me how when a member of the Mende — that’s his people — how when a member of the Mende encounters a situation where there appears no hope at all, he invokes his ancestors. It’s a tradition. See, the Mende believe that if one can summon the spirits of one’s ancestors, then they have never left, and the wisdom and strength they fathered and inspired will come to his aid.
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams: We’ve long resisted asking you for guidance. Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so, so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we’ve feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But, we’ve come to understand, finally, that this is not so. We understand now, we’ve been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding that who we are is who we were.
“Who we are is who we were.” That’s very true, isn’t it? Like it or not, for good or ill, we are in many ways the sum of the experiences of our forebears. And so will our children be, of us.
Here’s the entire speech:
