Things that explode!!!

I’ve belatedly decided that the visual theme for Byzantium’s Shores this year will be things exploding. This will manifest itself in my periodically replacing the masthead image with a new screengrab from some movie or other in which something explodes. Sometimes it’ll be an exploding spaceship, or maybe an exploding planet, or maybe something here on Earth getting blowed up real good. We’ll see how it goes.

(Ten quatloos, by the way, to the first reader who can identify the explosion in the new masthead!)

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On impolite thoughts and the posting thereof

Several readers have expressed dismay at the marked shift in tone that this post represents from the kind of thing I usually post here. I understand that concern, but in this case, I’d hope those offended would take into account the fact that it clearly takes a lot from the ilk of Mr. Limbaugh to get me to post something like this. Instead of “OMG, what an awful thing to say”, maybe the reaction should be, “OMG, what made him feel like saying that?”

Is this an apology? Well, no, not really. The complaint voiced in the several e-mails I received on this post was phrased almost identically in each case: “This isn’t what I come to Byzantium’s Shores for.” While I sympathize to a certain extent, it’s only to a certain extent, and I reserve the right, as always, to write this blog for reasons that may not match up at all times to the wishes of those who read it.

I write in this space to express thoughts that I feel like expressing. While I don’t express every thought in my head here, I can in no way guarantee that sometimes the thoughts I express here won’t be the uglier ones. If on very rare occasions I don’t live up to your expectations of me as a blogger, well, I think that’s more on you than it is on me. In the end, the only expectations that matter are that what I post here is a real and accurate depiction of something I think. If not, then the blog is a waste of everyone’s time — mine for writing it, and yours for reading it.

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Notice….

Effective as of this post, I am turning on comment moderation for this blog. This means that all comments will be held until I am able to review them for publication. I do check e-mail fairly frequently throughout my day, but there it is. I hope this isn’t too much of a pain in the arse, but many other blogs I read do it this way, with no wildly ill effects that I can see.

If anyone has a serious problem with this, well, you can always petition to get your money back.

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It’s Delurking Week!!!

I’m officially declaring this Delurking Week here at Byzantium’s Shores. If you read but never comment (or rarely comment), go ahead and drop a line right here! I’d love to know who’s out there. I’ll be keeping this post at the top of the page for most of the week, so lurkers of the world, chime in!

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Creativity: I has it

SamuraiFrog saw fit to bestow upon me a “Creative Blogger” award of some sort, regarding “Creative Blogging”. Hence the title. Wow, I can parse words! I is a reader!

Anyway, I tend to be awful about passing these kinds of things on, which I used to justify along the lines of “Crap, who has time for that?”, but which I’ve come to see a bit as “Hmmmm, it’s this kind of thing that used to make Blogistan really nifty, and maybe the passing of this kind of thing has helped make Blogistan a little less nifty.” I mean, Blogistan’s still cool and all, but it’s come in recent years to resemble a bit that favorite store of yours that was All Kinds of Awesome when it opened, but now that it’s been a few years, you still like to go in there, but maybe there’s a little more open floorspace where there used to be merchandise, and maybe there’s merchandise that doesn’t appeal to you so much since the store is trying to attract those young kids with all the money, and so on. Kind of like Old Navy. (Shut up. I loved Old Navy when it first showed up. They weren’t just Teeny Bopper heaven, they had stuff for people my size. And they had terrific overalls back in the day.)

Er…where was I? Oh yeah, the Creative Blogger award. I’m actually going to pass this one on, for once. You’re supposed to hand it off to seven bloggers, but before you do that, you’re supposed to reveal seven things about yourself. Of course, my problem with that last one is that after almost eight years of maintaining this blog, I’m almost out of stuff to “reveal” about myself, except for the stuff I have absolutely no intention of revealing. So I’m skipping that step.

But awarding to other bloggers? That, I can do!

:: Simple Tricks and Nonsense rocks because he and I are of pretty similar mind on an eerie degree of stuff, including our various pop culture remembrances. You gotta love a blogger who will put up a long post celebrating teevee shows like Tales of the Gold Monkey, that only lasted a single season twenty-eight years ago.

:: There are lots of comics-related blogs out there. Lots of ’em. Many are a lot of fun to read. Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep is one of my favorites. I love it when comics bloggers analyze entire issues of comics, sometimes panel by panel, illuminating the sheer goofiness of the whole thing.

:: Jayme Lynn Blaschke’s Gibberish is probably what my blog would read like if I were smarter. And into home-brewing. (And delusional enough to live in Texas.)

:: Lynn Sislo’s Violins and Starships has been a daily read of mine for…geez, I can’t even remember when she found me or vice versa. She’s curious about the world, smart, she likes SF, and she links all kinds of cool stuff.

:: Roger Green’s Ramblin’ with Roger is just that: a blog of rambling, and fine rambling it is, too. Lots of linkage and musing on life in this increasingly odd twenty-first century. And he posts every day!

:: Judith Heartsong has offered me a bunch of blogging awards over the years, more than a few of which I’ve failed to pass on, so here I return the favor. Her blog is almost entirely about being creative.

:: One of the most creative uses of a blog I’ve seen is my friend Robert Guttke’s blog devoted to Philip B. Dedrick, a teacher who made a deeply powerful impression upon him. Blogging-as-memorial is a wonderful thing. He’ll probably look askance at this type of award, but I do want to draw attention over there again.

Blogging and creativity should always walk together!

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I’m now a Twit.

Yeah, I’m using Twitter now. God help us all. If you want to follow me, the user name is “Jaquandor”, obviously. If you don’t want to follow me, then…do nothing. I have no idea how much I’ll use the bloody thing, but we’ll see. I’m the kind of person who can’t even say “Hello” in 140 characters or less, so….

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Sinking the teeth in….

Well, I didn’t really plan to drop out of sight completely during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but that’s pretty much what happened, isn’t it? Oh well. Nothing major, but The Wife was on vacation and we did other stuff that I’ll write about later. Regular blogging rhythm should resume quite soon, though. Yay!

Make sure to check out my “2009 Summation” posts, just below this one. I actually posted them on the first and second, respectively, but backdated them to 12-31-09, so they’d group in the archives with the December posts.

On to 2010!

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2009: What I said, and when I said it

Here is my yearly compilation of what I consider to be worthy stuff posted here over the last twelve months. Enjoy. Or not.

First, a couple of notes on various posting series from the year. I stalled a bit on Fixing the Prequels, about halfway through Attack of the Clones, but that series will continue quite soon. I also started a new “label” for posts that rely heavily on photographs to convey their content, called Photo Posts. Most of those will be individually linked below, but the label’s there for those interested. Also, I went through and personally rated each of the fifty “Statehood Quarters”. I also had a series of posts of photos of myself, responding to dramatic moments from Season 7 of 24, called, creatively enough, “Watching 24“. While I watched the entire season, I didn’t get through the entire season of posting reaction shots, mainly because the season really petered out in the back third of episodes. I’ll still be watching the impending Season 8, though, mainly because of my massive new crush on Annie Wersching.

Speaking of photos, I posted a lot of stuff to Flickr this year; here’s a mosaic of my favorites from the year (but I easily could have chosen more):

2009: a year of snow, festivals, gifts, trips, food, and overalls!

Click through for the “annotated” version, with links to the actual photos themselves.

Finally, there was Ask Me Anything! 2009. The 2010 version is coming up next month, yay!

January

Twenty Years of Shiny Discy Goodness
The “Five Questions Game” returns!
NFL 2008
Alas, Ricardo….
A moment long awaited
My mother-in-law passes
Flying: not a big fan
The Facebook “25 Things” meme that ate the world

February

Twenty Men I admire
Twenty women I admire
My favorite newspaper comic strip panel from 2009
On “comfort food”
The Proud Tower: an illustrative historical tale in this, the Era of the Constant Filibuster
Dollhouse, episode one (and I’ve never watched any of the subsequent episodes!)
The “Trilogy Meter”
Behold…the Philanthropist! (And yet, no one ever took up my call for an origin story….)
Commenting on a list of fantasy movies
A grim realization
On George RR Martin and productivity
The Wife’s birthday
What’s a pie in the face among friends?
Preparing to re-read all of Guy Gavriel Kay

March

Guy Gavriel Kay: where to start?
On Jack Bauer and “enhanced interrogations”
A quiz on faith
From the books: Robert and Clara Schumann
Chicken Wing Soup, version 1.0
I can’t help noticing that all the would-be John Galts didn’t go anywhere….
Thinking about Galactus
My Geek Life (a questionnaire)
From the books: Dungeon, Fire and Sword
The 11-in-1 screwdriver: The Excalibur of hand tools!
Chicken Wing Sour ver. 2.0
(The two Chicken Wing Soup posts are, by far, the most frequently-hit posts via search engine on this blog!)

April

My so-called High School Life (a quiz-thing)
My first foray into the wonderful world of power-tool injuries
Thoughts on the end of ER
An appreciation for Genesis’s Invisible Touch
On being seat at bad tables in restaurants
The Teabaggers: seriousness in action!
A night at Panera Bread
A very odd passage from a very odd book

May

On the short Starfleet career of Lt. Saavik
Eight things (a quiz-thing)
Thirty Fantasy Movies (!)
On romances and teevee

June

Music and Children
Used Book Sales
A Book Quiz
Children and Music: more thoughts
International Talk Like Jayne Cobb Day!
Love and Hate (a quiz-thing)
First impressions of The Mentalist
People who annoy me when I’m driving
Twilight really sucks

July

On Steve McNair
Little Quinn’s finer moments
Trains: I like ’em
A Taste of Buffalo
Remembering Walter Cronkite
Earlier versions of WD-40
From the books: Carl Sagan on the legacy of the Apollo missions
No hard feelings, JP Losman
The Annotated Stars and Stripes Forever
The coming of TRON 2.0

August

Best movie marquee EVER
Michael Vick returns
Taking an author’s politics into account?
Favre: still an arse
On design and Star Wars
Reflecting on Magnum, PI
Further errors on design and Star Trek

September

A really yummy sandwich
In defense of the word “Moist”
Remembering Erich Kunzel
Colin Cowherd is a giant doodie-head
A brief detail from Star Trek IV
Previewing the 2009 football season
Finding things at the Library Book Sale
The darker side of sports fandom
On the liking of crap
Overalls: on the way back?
Ten Filmscores (a starting point)
Kicking the Patriots!

October

On the birth of my nephew Jaxon
On the passing of Gourmet Magazine
Ten Tools I use a lot
On “Nutraloaf”
Farewell, Soupy Sales!
Ten Captains
An Alphabetical quiz-thing
Thoughts on The Office

November

On the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street
Not watching the Bills anymore!
When the Berlin Wall fell
On Darth Belichick and fourth-down conversions
A pretty random quiz thing
Why the Bills continue to suck
On animated movies
My 50 movies from the Aughts
Things I’m thankful for
The “Dumbass Quiz”

December

Riding the Christmas Train
Sausage Baked Beans (a recipe)
Western New York in Winter
Pass the Bill!
A Walk in the Woods
An enormous Christmas quiz

Fiction from 2009

The Balance in the Blood, a serialized novelette
(posting began in 2008)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Only Begotten Son
Partita for the End of the World

Book-specific Posts

Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqualine Carey

Twilight sucks.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Rereading The Fionavar Tapestry

Bookhunter by Jason Shiga, The Arrival by Shaun Tan, the Flight anthologies

A few more thoughts on The Fionavar Tapestry

The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Tigana

The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi; Moon of Three Rings, Andre Norton; Space Viking, H. Beam Piper

Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, Christopher Moore

The Terror, Dan Simmons

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

A Song for Arbonne, Guy Gavriel Kay

The Player of Games, Iain Banks

The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch

Firefly in comics

Bone, Jeff Smith

The Zero Stone, Andre Norton; In Conquest Born, C.S. Friedman

Year of the Cock, by some guy (I hated this book a lot.)

Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Mark Richardson; The Ridiculous Race, by Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran; A Walk in the Woods and In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson

Pirate Curse by Kai Meyer; Starcross and Mothstorm by Philip Reeve; Westmark and The Kestrel by Lloyd Alexander

It, by Stephen King

Infrastructure, by Brian Hayes; The View from the Bridge, by Nicholas Meyer; Made from Scratch, by Jenna Woginrich

Water Baby by Ross Campbell; House, by Josh Simmons; Madame Xanadu, by Amy Reeder Hadley and Matt Wagner; Cairo, by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker

The Price of the Stars by Debra Doyle and James MacDonald; Pandora’s Star, by Peter F. Hamilton

Last Words: a Memoir, by George Carlin; The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, by John Ortved; Across the Face of the World, by Russell Kirkpatrick

Film-specific Posts

Far From Heaven

Once

Charlie Wilson’s War

Bull Durham

Atonement

Kingdom of Heaven

Random thoughts on Casablanca

The Indiana Jones films, with particular focus on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Cousins

Sabrina

Star Trek, first thoughts

Sunshine

Thoughts on The Godfather

Thank God It’s Friday

The Abyss

Fame and Alien

The Black Hole

More thoughts on Star Trek

Elizabethtown

3:10 to Yuma

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

On Pixar’s recent films: Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up

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