The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
In yesterday’s Sunday Burst of Weirdness, I linked an item about some people who built a half-size X-Wing starfighter.
They have now launched their ship. Jason Bennion has the goods, with two videos. All this needs is some John Williams music and a Wilhelm scream!
And here we go with some sentential goodness after a week off! To the links, Batman!
:: And although I’ve been laying the seeds for a while, it feels like Saturday night, a hockey fan was born. (Great story. For some reason, my daughter’s first instance of hating a sports team is, believe it or not, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Not entirely sure how that came to pass, but there it is! And congrats to the BfloBlog guys for two years in the saddle of blogging Buffalo hockey sports.)
Optimism.
It’s all in there. All of it. G to B flat.
:: And how can I see past the person they are not, to catch even a glimpse of something else?
:: Free individuals are under no obligation to recite pledges of allegiance of any kind.
:: One of several unfortunate elements of the global warming debate is that it’s my sense that the public generally overestimates the degree of sacrifice involved in heading off catastrophic climate change. (This is something that always bothers me about the global warming “debate” — either warming is denied to exist at all, or it’s admitted to exist but with the proviso that to do anything about it would return the entire world economy to the way things were in Little House on the Prairie.)
:: Whenever I suggest a book, and the kid says yes but the parent says no, it’s almost always because it’s not “serious” enough. Whenever a kid asks for a book, and the parent says no, the most common reason given (aside from cost) is that it’s not “what they should be reading” – as in, you should be reading something that isn’t called Captain Underpants and isn’t full of pictures. (Brand new blog to me, and I don’t even remember how I found it. Nevertheless, her URL and screenname reveal a love of a series of books that are favorites of mine, too. Cool!)
:: I’ve had a good birthday. Now I better go wash the whip cream out of my hair. (I hope she used non-dairy stuff, it washes out better…um…er…Happy birthday to one of my favorite bloggers! Moving on….)
:: I’ve just discovered that (counting a couple of in-press stories) I’ve got enough published short fiction to fill a collection. (A few weeks ago I was in Barnes&Noble and found a copy of Interzone, a mag I’d never seen before but heard of, and found within its pages one of Jayme’s stories. I’ll have to read it soon!)
:: We need more comics that open with a little girl being pushed off a balcony: (Heavens!)
:: Who ever heard of bell-bottom sweatpants? (Ummm…what?!)
All for this week, folks. Thanks for playing, and we’ll have some lovely consolation prizes for you out back. Yeah, out back. Way out back. Yeah, over there. In that alley. Yeah, keep goin’…that’s right….heh heh heh!
I’m writing this entry not from home, but from the wi-fi enabled cafe at another location of The Store. (My own Store does not currently have wi-fi, because the local telecom carriers don’t yet have a transmitter in close enough proximity to The Store for wi-fi to be possible.) I honestly don’t remember if I’ve ever posted to the blog from outside the friendly confines of Casa Jaquandor, so this may well be a first of epic proportions. I’m sitting here, drinking strawberry-infused iced tea, typing away as I generate the second draft of a short story I finished some time ago, and I’m happy as a clam.
(One day, someone’s going to have to do some actual scientific research as to the happiness of clams. How happy can they be, really?)
Oh, and I’ve got my cell phone on, too. In one fell swoop, I have planted my feet squarely in 2004! (I’m still lacking an iPod, obviously.)
OK, we’re finally back on track here at Byzantium’s Shores. Here’s some weirdness for you all!
(Several of these links were pointed out to me by readers, but I can’t remember who directed me to what, so feel free to take credit in comments, if you recognize something you sent me.)
:: Does your seventh grader have to dissect a frog and is getting all squicky over the procedure? No problem! Those clever Japanese have harnessed the power of genetic engineering to create a frog with see-through skin. Just don’t kiss the thing; the resulting Prince might well be…a bit creepy.
:: For some reason, apparently the Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze cops-and-surfers movie Point Break has become something of a cult favorite. I’ve never really understood why; it’s not a very good movie. But anyway, a theater troupe is now doing Point Break LIVE!. I kid you not:
Point Break LIVE!, the absurdist stage adaptation of the 1992 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze extreme-sports blockbuster, tells the story of former college football star Johnny Utah (Reeves in the film), as he pursues the surfing, bankrobbing, skydiving, bare-hand-fighting, adrenaline junkie cum Zen Master, Bodhi Sattva. The Brechtian blockbuster, which garnered a “Seattle P-I Best of Seattle 2004” award during its run in the Northwest, features armed robbery, big-wave surfing, car chases, explosions, and no less than two extended skydiving sequences. Best of all, you could be the next Johnny Utah… the starring role of Keanu will be selected at random from the audience each night, and will read their entire script off of cue-cards. This method manages to capture the rawness of a Keanu Reeves performance, even from those who generally think themselves incapable of acting.
What could be better!
:: Returning to the original roots of the Sunday Burst of Weirdness, a couple of Cthulhu links. Those of you who are flummoxed by the popularity of LOLCat photos might find LOLThulhu amusing — I sure did. And it seems axiomatic that any good Lovecraft fan should include these as any kind of proper table setting for a dinner party.
:: This was pointed out to me by a reader. I have absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to be.
:: Scotty sent me this (I only remember that he sent it because I still have the e-mail): a bunch of rocket hobbyists have constructed a flying scale model of an X-Wing fighter. And we’re not talking about some small, handheld model or something the size of a typical model airplane. Their model is 21 feet long, which, using the measurement of 12.5 meters for a real X-Wing, is roughly a half-size scale. The planned maiden flight of this ship is apparently scheduled for this week, so let’s be safe, folks, and make sure your thermal exhaust ports are properly shielded!
When driving and operating a dump truck, make sure that you’re not directly beneath a pair of ungrounded 34000-volt power cables before raising the truck’s bed. Failure to observe this rule can result in scene like this:
Fortunately, no one was hurt. Except for the truck, which has now gone to the great rock quarry in the sky.
About a month ago I mentioned a new children’s bookstore opening soon in Orchard Park, “B is for Books”. Well, the store is going to open this week! They’re doing a soft-open on October 9, with a grand opening bash to come on October 13. Check out their website, bis4books.com, for more information. These aren’t the best of times to be opening independent bookstores, but here’s hoping they make it — consider them, for instance, for your next big birthday party for your kid, if you’re sick of the whole Chuck E. Cheese scene. And support a local business while doing so!
UPDATE: I see that their website doesn’t include directions. For those unfamiliar with Orchard Park or with the Southtowns in general, take the 219 south to the Orchard Park exit, and take Route 20A (which becomes Quaker St. in Orchard Park). When you come to the intersection of 20A and 277/240 (Buffalo St), keep going straight, and Bis4Books will be on the left not more than a few hundred feet past the intersection. They have parking in the rear. And while you’re here, check out some of the other nifty little shops and eateries we have to offer in Orchard Park! We’ve got a great little town here, I’ll tell you what.
I really have to wonder if it’s coincidence that Funky Winkerbean and For Better or For Worse are each apparently about to shuffle their respective near-death characters off this mortal coil? Read both of today’s installments, with pithy gallows-humor comment, here.
UPDATE: I should note that I’ve found the Winkerbean storyline very deftly handled and very touching. I don’t really have much more to say about it than that.
Unidentified Earth 18 has at last been Identified: it’s the municipal elevator in Oregon City, Oregon. This elevator is operated by the city of Oregon City (near Portland) as a connector between parts of the central business district that are literally separated by a cliff. I remember riding it once with my parents, when we went to Oregon City for some reason.
The identifying commenter, Seamus (whom I know as Shawn — what gives?), wins all the Quatloos that would have been awarded to the people who have already identified Unidentified Earth 19. I guess that one was too easy.
You can see here one reason I’ve been incommunicado the last day or two. These two boxes of wonderment arrived via courier guy yesterday. What could be inside? Why, my new Dell Inspiron laptop! I’ll be making payments on this thing for the next couple of years, but it will hopefully jumpstart my productivity, since I’ll be able to do writing stuff at my desk other than longhand work. (Not that I’m abandoning longhand work, but our family computer is located in a spot that’s not conducive to heavy writerly concentration.)
My new machine has a Wi-Fi card, so I can take it to Borders or Starbucks or even other locations of The Store to go online. I’m not buying a wireless router for home because I figure one computer online at home is enough. It’s also got a 180 GB hard drive, lots of memory, and a decent video card. It’s pretty much got exactly what I need it to have for the jobs I need it to do — it’s not a gaming system, for instance. I’ve already installed OpenOffice and Firefox on it. Windows Vista will take a bit of getting used to, but so far, so good.
Wow, a cell phone two weeks ago, and now a laptop: I’m technological!
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!)
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
