Dick Cheney Eats Kittens

Someone in my apartment complex has that bumper sticker on their car. It's almost as good as the shirt that says:

Palin
Guns
Babies
Jesus

Which is, of course, brilliant because you can wear the shirt if you love her or hate her. The Cheney sticker is almost as good and sounds similar to the stuff IMAO comes up with regarding Cheney. What he actually titled his memoir was In My Time, which, while less punchy, probably helped with people continuing to take him seriously. On the whole, it was a pretty good book, though I'm not usually one to read political memoirs.

ST: The Famous Alien

This is the episode with the famous green alien that Kirk fights. You know, the one with the ridiculous rock-throwing imitation bit? No? Not sure what I'm talking about? This bit, here. Yeah, this one. It's called Arena. We'll see if the rest of it was as ridiculous as that bit, after the jump.

ST: Gettin' medieval

Possibly, anyway. This episode is known to its friends and relations as The Squire of Gothos and I have no idea yet what it's going to be about. But what I am reminded of by the word "squire" is this interchange from the under-appreciated Soderbergh film The Limey.

Enough palaver, onto the episode!

Happy Thanksgiving

A very happy Thanksgiving to anyone who happens to read this blog. And to my co-author and brother, C, I hope you have a sufficiency of pie on this day. I'll be feasting with a few family and friends and look forward to good times, good company and good food. I hope all of you can say the same.

A re-post of a Facebook "note" on social identity

I was pretty burnt out on news on PSU (and that without much consumption of it: I get news burnout pretty fast, especially with horrible things that don't affect my life or the lives of anyone I know), so it's pretty odd that I listened to an entire hour of PSU on NPR the other day. But the show was different from the typical investigative journalism focused on discovering and broadcasting the lurid details of something that titillates us by horrifying us. It was bookended by rebroadcasts of a PSU story from 2009. As someone who is baffled and intrigued by the profound depths of sports fanaticism, I was engrossed.

Wizard!

I finished the second, and final, book in Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight series a few days ago. Oddly enough, the first book was called The Knight and the second was called The Wizard.

I find that I had not yet mentioned the first book here on the blog yet even though I thought I had. So! Thoughts on both, two-for-one.

Other than thinking that the latter volume ended up being a bit rushed, particularly at the end, I enjoyed both books quite a lot. I read a little bit about why Wolfe wrote these books before I read them, so I had something of an understanding coming in what they would be like. He was disappointed about the lack of modern heroic fantasy. That is to say, where the protagonist is actually heroic rather than a dirty grey, conflicted character who doesn't see the world in terms of right and wrong. So he set out to write a story of a knight who was a heroic knight as of old.

Christmas photos

I'm off with the wife and children to have the family Christmas photos taken. Perhaps another post today if I survive the ordeal. If I don't, know I bravely went down ruing the eclipse of Thanksgiving by Christmas, but was o'erwhelmed by the rest of my family who would start Christmasy things on All Saints Day if I would but relent.

ST: Emotionalism

No sign of McCoy's love interest from the last episode. She was getting all possessive there at the end, but apparently McCoy is like Jay-Z, gonna love 'em and leave 'em. Ever wonder where he got that hook that's so freakin' catchy? Right here.

In this episode, 7 crew members get stranded in a shuttlecraft and because of some sort of ionic radiation the Enterprise can't find them. Who's in this crew? Well, we have 4 random extras and Spock, McCoy and Scotty. Yes, that's right, they sent the first officer, the chief doctor and the chief engineer off on a dangerous mission into space together. 'Cause that makes sense.

Okay, you know the drill. Jump, fun, etc.

The limitations of loyalty

An excellent post on First Things about how loyalty changes from a virtue to a vice if not kept under proper regulation. More accurately, I think one could say that it isn't truly a virtue, but an aid to other virtues. At any rate, I've thought similar things, but I've never been so articulate.

ST: Worst. Episode. Ever.

You think I'm joking? You remember that ST:TNG episode where Data is playing Sherlock Holmes in the holodeck with LaForge as his Watson? Where they ask the computer for an opponent who is smarter than Data? And the computer actually creates ex nihilo an entity that is smarter than Data? Why don't they just ask the computer to solve all their problems? Apparently it could do that.

Anyway, this episode is worse. The hard truth is after the jump.

What did people do before chairs?

Have you ever heard anyone ask "How did we ever get along without computers?" It's a humorous thought, but with every new technological advance, we seem more and more reliant on the latest technology, and we "can't imagine how we ever got by without [whatever is being discussed]." As it happens, I'm writing a fictional story, in a fictional setting, meant to evoke the ancient near east, Mediterranean, and Europe. But as I write something about chairs, it strikes me: "I don't think there were chairs!" Of course, some people had chairs. But something didn't feel right.
       So I went to Wikipedia, and according to them, chairs were not common anywhere until the 16th century! My gut, once again, had steered me aright. For millennia before that, chairs were the birthright of kings. Commoners got by with.... well, what had they gotten by with? That was perplexing. In fact, I'm still in the process of sorting out how the innkeepers in the ancient world (either in the real one or in mine) might have gotten by without chairs. Have your customers sit on the floor? Maybe there was no public area in inns in those days, and you rented a room and sat on the floor there. I'm now trying to wrap my mind around whether, economically, there would have been public (pub-like) areas for people to go, have an ale, and relax with a bunch of strangers around. If you know the answer, don't tell me.
       ...At least, not until later this evening.

There needs to be a different past tense for "cut"

It's just baffling reading some sentences and trying to figure out what the author means. Usually, this is due to poor grammar, clunky syntax: some imperfection that can be laid squarely at the feet of the author. However, sometimes, very rarely, the author does everything right, and the reader is nevertheless befuddled, due entirely to a failing of the English language itself. This is because "cutted" is not a word. Why not? I suppose someone thought he was being mighty clever. [Prepare for the jump into hyperblog...]

More thoughts on reading and writing

An argument is made for writers needing to read in quantity for their writing to be of quality. A guest post by an editor at Tor books, Jim Frenkel, at the LJ of L. Jagi Lamplighter.

(Linked by John C. Wright.)

Want to really be subversive?

Here. I've obtained a copy of the most expensive photograph in the world. It cost $4.3 million at auction and now I'm going to let you copy it and keep it for free. What's that? It's incredibly dull and boring? It looks like something taken by a pretentious first-year photography student? And how does one sell a photograph anyway?

What are you, a philistine? Don't you know art when you see it?

I just flew in from [city redacted]

And, boy, are my arms tired. Perhaps I'll post something of substance tomorrow.

Here's what I've been watching

[Update: aaaaaand the Hulu embedding still doesn't seem to work.]

http://www.hulu.com/watch/245484/nova-making-stuff-smaller

That and Avatar: the Last Airbender. Also, I'm starting to read more again, and not just rants on the internet. Real stuff. Not much to report, though, because I have yet to finish anything.

Ramblin' Man

I have to travel for work next week. Well, I don't have to in the sense that I will be unable to work unless I travel to my destination, but my employer thinks that it will be in some way beneficial for me to be there and it would be counter-productive to me personally to attempt to disabuse them of this notion.

I look forward to two aspects of this trip. I have never been to the city to which I travel and have only every passed through the state without really stopping to see anything. Despite the fact that I won't see much of it now (because of work), I enjoy being new places. Also, apparently there is some sort of local burger challenge. Perhaps I will return with a complimentary t-shirt or something.

Happy Birthday!

My co-author here marks another full year complete today. Many happy returns of the day, bro.