Troubles

Work has been very demanding the past week or so and augurs to continue in the same vein for the next month. I've got big plans for some things I'd like to post, but I don't know that I'll get to things that require thought and composition any time soon.

Also, new baby, mother-in-law visiting and my mom arrives tomorrow with my dad joining her next week, so I'm sure I'll be taken up with family for a while too. I'll continue to check in and post odds and ends, but check back mid to late June for more serious stuff.

Editorial Change

My brother, much taken up by writing his fiction, has decided to retire from the field (blog) and leave it to me. I say this with regret, since I valued his contributions, but I understand how one can become jaded with the posting of one's thoughts on the internet. It happened to me with my first blog. Granted, it took about six years for me and about six months for him, but the principle holds, I think.

It is not impossible that he will post occasionally; he will be welcome if he chooses to do so and perhaps one day he'll start in again on a regular basis.

Places

This week's book challenge is to name your favourite story settings. A wealth of choices here. Let's move from the mundane to the fantastic, shall we? Splendid.

First off, I really enjoy the setting of Half-Magic and its sequel which is nothing more exotic than the Midwest in the 1920's. The small town feel is really well done and would practically be magical even with the talisman. Marvellous story, marvellous setting, marvellous characters, and a marvellous book.

Closely set in time is the world of PG Wodehouse. Most of his stories take place in Edwardian England that is intended to be fairly real. The world his characters inhabit, however, is fiction in more than simply the events. The world of Half-Magic is real with magic events happening to real children. The world of PG Wodehouse is Edenic with little realism. It shines and is bright and there are rarely any hints that the world of that time included people who were hungry, or that wars were fought and another war loomed around the corner. All is gaiety in London, quiet country houses, respectful servants and beautiful girls where the greatest peril is an unsuitable engagement or that an aunt may ask you to do something you find distasteful, like pinching a silver cow creamer from your host. For all that, it is all the real world, the parts that are unpleasant have simply been edited out.

Next, the Mediterranean world of the mid-19th century is made alluring in The Count of Monte Cristo. Though, yes, it is almost all taken up with the world of the wealthy and noble and very little of it deals with the lives of the majority, it still makes me wish to visit and see the south of France, sail to Italy and find intrigue in Paris. Though I find the Aubrey-Maturin novels endlessly enjoyable, I'm not sure I'd really want to experience the damp, crowded environs of a ship at sea for several years, but some of the time spent ashore in this similar period of history would be fun. Mostly mundane, again, but further removed in time.

The worlds of Narnia and Prydain, though peopled with fantastic creatures, magic and full of adventure seem to me still less exotic than the far future Earth conceived in John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy. He writes hard SF and scorns concepts that flaunt the laws of physics (no FTL space travel), but the things he imagines we will be able to do millennia from now boggle the mind in the way the best fantasy does.

Speaking of which, the world of Middle Earth is the best fantasy setting there is, mostly because it is so well-realised in so many ways. It is peopled with realistic characters despite their fantastic nature and the varied environs are alluring in their own ways. The timeless forests of Lothlorien, the endless plains of Rohan, the white city of Minas Tirith, the cosy town of Hobbiton, the wild empty moors of Arnor. Other works have similar scope, but none I have encountered has caused each part to seem so real.

Know your history

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to... make maps that are incorrect.

Following a chain of links around the interwebs I found this poster which purports to show the brewery locations in the original United States. The problem? They left off almost half of Virginia. As any student of history knows, West Virginia only became a separate state in 1863 when it seceded from Virginia (reports that the communication of this act to Richmond included the phrase "how do you like them apples?" are not fully substantiated) because Virginia seceded from the United States and the good folks of the Mountaineer state thought this was a bit thick. I mean to say, really.

Perhaps this was why the poster was on sale?

Blogger's ineptitude strikes again!

So they're retiring their Blogger in Draft blog because they now have a Google+ page. But the link, as of this posting, to that page in their announcement does not actually take you there. Well done, chaps. Well done.

Every man is a hero.

'I was not aware that you were a hero, Mr Jagiello.'
....
'Of course I am a hero,' he said, getting up and laughing very cheerfully. 'Every man is a hero of his own tale. Surely, Dr Maturin, every man must look on himself as wiser and more intelligent and more virtuous than the rest, so how could he see himself as a villain, or even as a minor character? And you must have noticed that heroes are never beaten. They may be undone for a while, but they always do themselves up again, and marry the virtuous young gentlewoman.'

'I have noticed it, indeed. There are some eminent exceptions, sure, but upon the whole I am convinced you are right. Perhaps it is that which makes your novel or tale a little tedious.'

~ The Surgeon's Mate, by Patrick O'Brian

Terms of Endearment

I'm not sure about this week's book challenge. It's listed as "Favorite words and phrases, or lines and literary allusions that would win your heart." It seems to have been interpreted by the others who are participating to mean "literary pick-up lines". That is to say, literary quotations one could use to win their hearts. Or something. I'd rather have taken it to mean some of my favourite lines and such, but that does not appear to have been the consensus view. (I'm with you fellers.)

I'm not sure there are such things for me. Being male, in our culture, I would be expected to do the picking up. Or perhaps I should say "wooing". (Bit nicer connotations, that.) I could reinterpret it to mean what sorts of literary allusions and quotations I would use to attempt to win a woman's heart. On the other hand, it's been a while since I've had to win a woman's heart; having been married for nearly a dozen years I've been focused on keeping rather than gaining, if you will. Still, some thoughts on the whole business after the jump.

Coming Soon

I'll have a post up on the book challenge before the week is out and I'm working on a couple other ideas as well, but it's been a busy week with work and a new baby and a mother-in-law visiting. More content soon. Really.

Thoughts on Lloyd Alexander

One of the muses at the other club is musing today about Lloyd Alexander and his works. It's all well and good; we here at this club are fans as well. But not such fans that we cannot criticize a little bit too. Here are a couple of posts from about a year ago in which I consider Alexander and his books.

Self-referential posts; hard to be more egotistical than that!

In the end, there can be only one.

Really, this week has been an exercise in bragging more than anything else. It's not like I actually needed to count any of those other authors to see if they were at the top, because even a casual glance at my shelves reveals the answer. He's the greatest master of prose in the 20th century, a man who makes his writing light and airy and yet it takes a lot of talent and work to make something look so easy. Not only that, but he was prolific as well, writing nigh unto 100 books. Which means I have about 25 more to collect. In first place, going away in a walk, is PG Wodehouse, of whose books I have 76 (including two copies of Frozen Assets/Biffen's Millions). After the jump are the books I own arranged in chronological order.

Really? You're counting those as books?

Yes. Yes, I am. The second place entry on my list of authors is one Stan Sakai. That sounds well until I tell you that most of the books are trade-paperback collections of comic books. That sounds bad until you've actually read some of his work and realize that, despite the talking, anthropomorphic animals, the stories have real depth. There is comedy, tragedy, and drama in these stories because they're well done tales of Japan in the feudal era and the characters just happen to have fur and whiskers on occasion.

I guess I could put it this way: I don't read comics, but I do read Usagi Yojimbo.

An incomplete collection

Number three on my list of authors by whom I own the most books is someone who is pretty much guaranteed to climb further up since I intend on eventually owning nearly all of the books he wrote and I'm not nearly there yet.

In a respectable, but impermanent third place is Rex Stout with 26. Every single one of the books I own by him is a Nero Wolfe mystery; though he did write a few others with other characters, Wolfe was far and away the most common main character.

I wouldn't say I'm obsessed; I'm just dedicated.

So the book challenge this week is the author of whose books I own the most. (Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.) This seems too easy. Am I supposed to just list a name? 'Cause that would be boring. I suppose I could talk about why I have so many books by a single author, but when you see who it is, the reason will be obvious. I guess I'll do a bit of a suspenseful countdown and list off a few others who were not quite the top dog.

So, forthwith, the top five authors on my shelves by number of books I own starting at the bottom and working up.

A son is born!

Yesterday morning, at about 0-dark-thirty, my wife gave birth to my first son. Now I have an heir, I just need to find something for him to inherit. Picture after the jump.

Naming Conventions

This week the book challenge is to list names from books you'd be willing to saddle your kids with. Or something like that. Unlike the lovely Muses from the other club, this is less of an academic exercise for me. Not only have I gone through the naming process twice for my own offspring (I won't go so far as to call them the "fruit of my loins", as my father-in-law is fond of doing in regards to his own children; though in most cases the KJV provides wonderful phrases), but, with my wife due to give birth to our third child before the month is out, we are in the midst of doing it in earnest for the third time.

So what names have we chosen/will we choose that come from our favourite books?

Indirect illustration of character

I am fond of the Aubrey-Maturin series of books more than any other series. The stories are good and the people are magnificent. Each is unique and well-drawn, but particularly the main characters that persist throughout all 20 books. Not only are they well done, but one is allowed to see them grow, change, develop and alter as time and events pass and occur.

And, with such a scope to work with, O'Brian is more easily able to show what they are like rather than merely telling. Not that he would have been unable or disinclined to do so even in a single book, but the opportunity afforded in 20 is greater by far.

There is a particular character with whom Maturnin interacts in the third book (the one I am reading now; I re-read the series every year) that I find particularly illuminating as to Maturin's inclinations and character and I find the whole thing very, very moving. I'm going to spoil a minor sub-plot in the third book, so if you're scrupulous about such things, don't read further.

A day late and a dollar short

So, I was supposed to get this posted by yesterday, but it didn't work out. (I was tired and those DVDs from Netflix weren't going to watch themselves!)

It's kind of ironic that the first week of the book challenge that I knew exactly what I was going to write about beforehand was also the first week that I failed to get it done during the week itself. Ah, but it is an unjust world, and virtue is only triumphant in theatrical performances. On to the question of best love story. Without a doubt in my mind (though The Princess Bride does run a good race) Anna Karenina wins going away.

Villain, not villein

The former being a scoundrel inclined to commit criminal acts, the latter being merely a serf. Though, the former did derive from the latter, to some degree since it was originally used for a base and vulgar person. And, as we all know, you can't trust those lower classes.

Anyway! On to villainy! This is the third entry (or second, depending on whether or not one really counts my first entry) in the book challenge thrown down by the kind folks at the other Egotist's Club. Clearly the most villainous villain to ever villainize (not my greatest neologism) is Vicious. The epitome of someone who will let no nefarious deed stand between him and his goals, Vicious is... Hum? What?... I'm only supposed to refer to book villains? And Vicious doesn't count because he's only part of the greatest anime ever? Well, bugger.

Okay, let's start again.

Blogger Interface

Blogger has finally forced everyone to "upgrade" to their new interface. I knew it was coming eventually, but I put it off as long as possible. I can't stand the new look. It's too austere and sterile. I'm not much of a minimalist in my style preferences and the new look is far too bare and sparse.

There are some new features that are nice and they've done a nice job of integrating their stats with the rest of the blog features, but I'm not terribly interested in those since I have no delusions about being able to build a large audience; even if I was interested and trying to do so. There's nothing really wrong with it in a large way, but all the little annoyances add up. Probably the biggest thing I don't like is how one can no longer open old posts to edit in a new window from the posts menu. But what can one do?

The Poor and the Wakeful

'I wonder, James, whether it is not too easy for a rich man to despise money - to mistake the real motives... To pay too much attention to mere words and -'

'Surely to God you would never call me rich?'

'I have ridden over your land.'

'It's three-quarters of it mountain, and one quarter bog; and even if they were to pay their rent for the rest it would only be a few hundred a year - barely a thousand.'

'My heart bleeds for you. I have never yet known a man admit that he was either rich or asleep: perhaps the poor man and the wakeful man have some great moral advantage. How does it arise?'

 ~Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

Lord Ruthwen's theme song

I'm not actually going to refer to Byron, but to the character who is compared to Lord Ruthwen by Alexandre Dumas: Edmond Dantés, the Count of Monte Cristo. The whole tone of the book is dark, brooding and vengeful. Though it has lighter moments and it reads quickly like a thriller, at every moment one is quite aware that the Count is merely biding his time, making his plans, drawing the noose tighter before striking. And the music that best exemplifies this, to my mind is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.



What a marvelous thing it must be, to be able to play this music. Oh, and I should note this is the second week's topic in the 10 week book theme being run by the delightful women over at The Egotist's Club.

Better than Poodle Springs

Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem was a somewhat frustrating book. I saw it described somewhere as Raymond Chandler characters in the world of Philip K. Dick. I'm not nearly so familiar with Dick's work as I am with Chandler's, but that seems about right to me.

It's an interesting conceit, but Lethem fails for subtle reasons. He captures pretty well the hard-boiled attitude and language (though the four-letter words aren't necessary and Chandler finds elegant was to do without them that add, rather than detract, from his writing) and melds it well with the dystopian sci-fi futurism. He also does a pretty good job of imitating a convoluted Chandler plot that twists and turns all over and still makes reasonable sense at the end.

Clever, allusive post title

You'll have to forgive me, my desktop computer died. I turned it off last night and it wouldn't turn on today. So now it's in pieces on the desk and I'm going to bum a power supply from a friend to see if it's worth trying to restore or if I need to rip out the hard drive and spend a few bucks for a new one. At least if I get a new one, I can spend less than last time and still make a significant upgrade.

Fictional women

In the spirit of participation in things blog-like and literary (Good Lord! The juxtaposition of those two words!) I've decided to join in the weekly revels initiated by the similarly named Egotist's Club. It is a ten-week series, but I'm afraid my participation will be limited to nine.

What price dignity?

I was originally not going to post this after having written it out longhand. But the topic came up again today, and, though I avoided the rancor of the previous discussion, it was clear that opinions had not changed. The originally conceived post after the jump.

When I am a Starship Captain: Part 1 of what may be a continuing series...

1. I will not be part of an advance landing party along with all the other chief officers.
2. When I do beam down to a strange planet, I'll take precautions against getting infected with strange diseases via the atmosphere.
3. If I run across strange objects, my first reaction will not be to walk up and touch them.
4. When something odd happens on a planet, I won't refuse to explain to the rest of my crew what's going on or neglect to tell the ship.
5. When all of the other officers of my ship take a position in opposition to my own, I'll at least consider the possibility that they may be right.
6. My response to people referring to regulations will not be to shout a denigration of those regulations.
7. I will not order my engineer to break the laws of physics.
8. I will allow other people to do dangerous things instead of insisting that I must do them all myself.

On being yourself

Of course, even when men feel completely free to behave as they choose, they usually end up behaving, if not like everybody else exactly, at least like a lot of other people. There is safety in numbers, and the desire for safety is not easily abolished; and in any case there are not so many different ways of behaving present in most people's imagination. The injunction or command to be yourself (as if you could be anyone else) ends up being the same as the command to be exactly as your neighbor.

~Theodore Dalrymple, The New Vichy Syndrome

Top Whatever Mystery Authors

Okay, so here we go. I could have made this list longer, included Ellery Queen, Doyle or maybe even Franklin W. Dixon, but I think I'll start here.

Number 5: Agatha Christie

Dame Christie was a very prolific author and she created several iconic characters. Everyone who knows anything about mystery stories knows about Poirot and Miss Marple. If you're a bit more familiar with mysteries, you might even know the names of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Inspector Japp, and Superintendent Battle.

What makes a good mystery story?

So! Mystery writers. I'll set out some criteria I might use when ranking mystery authors. I'll give an example in each case and we'll see where we are when I get to the end. If I haven't rambled on too long, then I'll tack on a list of my top whatever mystery authors. If it's a bit long, I'll save that for another post.

When evaluating mystery writers, I like to see a few different things. I don't like their work to seem too similar. Ellis Peters, when you read all the Brother Cadfael mysteries in the course of a month or two, leans too heavily on certain tropes and phrases. It's been a couple years since I read them, so if you put me to the test and demanded that I produce my bona fides I could not do it now. But I recall that was certainly my impression and it grew stronger the further in series I went.

Birthday Revels

It is my wife's birthday tomorrow. We will, of course, celebrate tomorrow with gifts and food and whatnot. But we were able to get someone to mind the children today, so today I will be taking my wife out to eat and we will most likely take in a movie.

Because my wife is awesome, she wanted to go, not to some fancy-pants restaurant where the appetizer costs enough to feed a family of 6 for a week, but to an burger joint. No, no, no, not one of those generic fast-food franchises, some place that takes a bit of pride in their cooking, but doesn't insist on you wearing a tie and speaking French to order.

Also! We intend to see the movie The Secret World of Arrietty if we can manage to find an appropriate showtime, since it's been in theaters a while. It is a Miyazaki film, so even if it's not great, it ought to still be one of the better films so far this year.

I promise, I will make the post about mystery authors. I just haven't had time to sit down and do it properly yet.

Antipodean mystery

If you've glanced over to the left you may have noticed that I've been reading a number of Ngaio Marsh mysteries of late. I'd been kinda itching to re-read a few of them that I'd only read once.

Marsh isn't the greatest mystery writer ever, but she's not the worst either. It just now occurs to me that I'd class her between Sayers (superior) and Christie (inferior) and that using that ranking also serves as an ordering of how many books each of them wrote. It doesn't hold entirely true, however, since I think Rex Stout was better than all three and he was rather prolific himself. Hum. Now I'm inclined to make a list of my favourite mystery writers ordered by how good their books are. Perhaps later.

For now, I'll just consider a couple of the Marsh books I recently read.

Why I don't use Wikipedia

Tycho of Penny Arcade wrote a post many moons ago, in conjunction with a comic illustrating his thesis, about why it is that Wikipedia is not the great thing it claims to be. This post and comic are relatively family-friendly (excepting the vulgar intensifier I redacted in the selection below), but if you're not familiar with their work, be warned. Tycho and his cohort Gabe are in no wise respectful of taboos.

The second response is:  the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect.  To which I reply:  that does not inspire confidence.  In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous.  What you’ve proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn’t exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant ****ing mob for my information.

Pensée for the day

All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre.

~Blaise Pascal

I can speak Russian, in Japanese

I'm not sure I really understood what was the point of Kurosawa's The Lower Depths. It was a well-made movie. The characters were well-drawn and distinguished clearly from each other. The movie was also clearly an adaptation from a play, but that isn't necessarily a strike against it. Even though all the action took place within two small buildings and the space between and around them that wasn't any part of why I didn't understand the movie. There are plenty of Shakespeare adaptations that don't cause this problem, and Rope is one of my favourite Hitchcock films. More details after the jump.

Theme song

I've thought for a long time that it would be cool to have a theme song. Life is not like the movies; we don't get to have musicians play awesome music for us when we walk into a room or do something awesome.

Also for a long time I thought that this song would be the song I'd choose for my theme song. You know, the one that plays when you're introduced or walk into a room. (The first 28 seconds are okay too, but it starts a bit slow and it might be too much to expect to have your theme song start half a minute before you even show up. I'm not quite that cool.)

As awesome as the theme from Yojimbo is, I've changed my mind. I think I'd rather have Duke Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder as my theme. Yeah. Smooth. Though, it just now occurs to me that this would be even more apropos for Veronica Lake.

I don't like public speaking.

Unfortunately, a number of people seem to think that I'm good enough at it that they want me to keep doing it. I spent this past weekend off at a camp for a youth rally/retreat/whatever with the teens from my church and some other churches in the area. My church's youth minister apparently thought it would be a good idea for me to talk about the progression of my spiritual life up to this point. Instructive for the kids or something. I survived, but I did have the shakes for a good 10 minutes afterward.

I was remiss not to read this sooner.

I finally finished Gene Wolfe's Short Sun series. I read the vast majority of it last year, but ended up having to return the final book to the library unread. Then, somehow, -inexplicably- I forgot to check it out again and finish it. So I've finally finished my Return to the Whorl. Gene Wolfe is not only the best SF writers around, but he's one of the best writers I've read in a long time, full stop.

If you haven't read any of his books before, this will certainly not be the one you want to start with. This is the concluding book in a trilogy that comes after another series (Long Sun) and relies heavily on the reader being familiar with characters that were introduced six books previously. Not only that, but he ties it in with his New Sun series which is either 3 or 5 books depending on how you count them. (Initially written as a series of four (short by today's standards) novels, these were later combined into a pair of longer novels and then he wrote another book that kinda is tacked on at the end.)

Not a Nullity

On the recommendation of John C. Wright I read The World of Null-A recently. It wasn't bad, I suppose. I guess I can kinda see how it would be like watching Citizen Kane. It was ground-breaking at the time, but now that everyone has stolen the techniques, it doesn't stand out like it did when it first appeared. I was kept intrigued by the way a bit of a mystery element was woven in and I enjoyed the plot that dealt with a man being manipulated to behave in a certain way that used even his own knowledge of the manipulation to successfully manipulate him. (Had to read that sentence twice to make sure it came out correctly.)

I'm not sure I'll read another book in the same world, but I am interested enough by the quality of the writing to look into Slan, which is another SF novel by AE Van Vogt. I'd only recommend this one to others who are looking to expand their reading in the area of classic SF.

Oh. My. Goodness.

A couple nights ago I watched a Kurosawa film I hadn't seen before and I was quite impressed. I don't want to spoil the ending, but The Bad Sleep Well was not at all what I was expecting. A very young Toshiro Mifune makes a play for revenge on the men who drove his father to his death. It has elements of Hamlet and (more strongly, I think) The Count of Monte Cristo, though it doesn't end up like either of them really.

The movie also features the amazing Takashi Shimura, though he is a bit under-used in a supporting role along with a lot of other famous Japanese actors (though, "famous" for Japanese actors from 50 or 60 years ago is a relative thing). The acting is uniformly good and the tension builds well to a brilliant and gut-wrenching ending.

Games!

My daughter decided she wanted to play Chutes and Ladders with me today. Which is fine, one doesn't have to feel too competitive about a game that is entirely based on luck. I mean, I always kind of feel that we might as well just flip a coin and be done with it, but it's not too onerous to take the time so she'll be happy.

This game of Chutes and Ladders, however, is branded by Disney and so all the pieces are princesses. Usually I choose Snow White since the choices are between her, Belle, Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and Cinderella. So then we... what's that? Why Snow White? Really? Clearly, she is the most attractive. Anyway... today I thought I'd take it in a little bit of a different direction.

Who is that dashing man? Jump for a closer look.

Such Gracious Condescension

It seems only just that we should take note of the similarly named Egotist's Club after they have deigned to not only notice our existence, but chosen to refrain from declaring us anathema. I'm glad they approve in large measure of what we do and say here and I think I can safely say the feeling is mutual. At least, if my slacker brother ever bothered to post, then it might be. Until then, semi-mutual? Quasi-mutual? Certainly not unmutual.

Classic Pulp Novels

I've been reading some of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs lately. They're certainly not great art or great books or even great writing, but they certainly are great stories. Tarzan and John Carter keep you turning the pages to see what's going to happen next. I'd read some of the Tarzan novels here and there before this, but I'd never tried the Barsoomian novels.

Masters of the Glove

I finished reading Wizardry a few days ago and it's not a D&D manual for aspiring Dungeon Masters. It is, in fact, a book in which a man tries to formulate a system for evaluating the defensive capabilities of baseball players. So it's just as obscure and only of interest to a small and similarly obsessed set of people. I'm not sure how good it is because I really ought to go back and work through the math a bit more, but it seems plausible on the face. He doesn't have too many revolutionary judgements, but that would seem to be a point in his favour. There are a few surprises though; some of the magnitude of differences is interesting as well as some of the judgements he makes about just how costly some of these players are in the field.

Two Movies

I've watched a couple new movies this week. Well, "new" in the sense that I had not seen them before, not that they were recently produced and released. The first one was the third installment of the Mummy series starring Brendan Fraser. The second was Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece The Seventh Seal. Talk about your dissimilar movies. Possible spoilers after the jump.

On the TeeVee

So I've stopped posting every time I watched a Star Trek episode. It was getting boring and a lot of the episodes in the first season are much of a piece. The only ones of any note in the last few were probably the one with Khan (and everybody knows about Khan) and the season-ending episode with the time-travel that was written by Harlan Ellison. (About whom a great deal of what I know comes from his minor spat with the boys at Penny Arcade. Caution: vulgarities abound at those links.)

It's A Lady Vanishes and My Fair Lady

But with more nudity!

I kid, I kid. There's no nudity at all in Night Train to Munich. It's not a bad little film, I guess, but the train doesn't figure as largely as the title seems to imply that it will. The original title, Gestapo, would have been better, but considering it was made in 1940 one can see how that might have been a bit touchy. Details after the jump!

Terry Pratchett no longer writes comedic fiction

He now writes mildly amusing morality plays. There is little that is more incongruous than an atheist who insists on telling other people how they ought to live. His latest work, Snuff, is no exception from the general rule that his more recent books contain less humour and more preaching than his early books did. He's spent a lot of time busily rehabilitating all the monsters and villains of his early books and making them tragically misunderstood and this time it's the goblins' turn. Spoileration to follow.

Dystopian Religious Fiction

I finally got around to reading A Canticle for Leibowitz after seeing it mentioned in various places over and over as the seminal dystopian future novel. It's a bit SF and a bit fantasy, I suppose. I was, on balance, surprised with how kindly Walter Miller treated religion in his book; specifically Catholicism.

I come, not to bury censorship, but to praise it.

I've long held that a little censorship now and then is cherished by the wisest men. (With apologies to Roald Dahl.)

Now hear this.

Wesley Smith over at Secondhand Smoke does yeoman service in the cause of life. He makes the excellent point in this post that one is more apt to penetrate the willful ignorance of the fact of human life in the womb by choosing an appealing tack rather than a repulsive one.

Some day, our distant descendants will look back at us and marvel that we could have ever have argued in seriousness that the babies in the womb were not human or alive or any of the other ridiculous notions some people present. It will be much like how we look back and marvel that anyone ever denied a black man's humanity to keep him in bondage.

Mmmmm... forbidden donut....

"You Americans and your due process. This is always so much easier in Mexico."

As long as I'm doing the whole photoblogging thing, I might as well post the reason that it's good to be friends with the clerks at your local French-style patisserie.

What's this, what's this?

 Did someone receive some snazzy new glassware at Yuletide?




















Why, yes. Yes, I did.

My eyes! The goggles! They do nothing!

As much as I deprecate the effort that Peter Jackson made with The Lord of the Rings and as poorly as I expect his version of The Hobbit to turn out, at least it can't be as bad as this.

Cold comfort, indeed.

New blog features

I've added a couple lists to the blog over on the left. The first is a running list of the books I've read this year (only 3 so far) and the other is the movies I've seen this year.

I'd suggest the mysteries only to someone who is quite interested in Edwardian England or, more specifically, mysteries set in that period. Ngaio Marsh's books would probably be of particular interest to folks who are fond of Dorothy Sayers. The early books are a bit weaker, and the lady doth protest too much about not copying Lord Peter Wimsey, but Rory Alleyn develops into his own character eventually.

Of the movies, the second movie was decidedly less good than the first. A Canterbury Tale is too maudlin generally and specifically suffers from a very weak ending. In the Mood for Love is a very good romance film set in Hong Kong in the 1960's. The main characters live next door to each other and discover independently that their respective spouses (I hate that word) are having an affair together. After they both realize that the other knows of the infidelity, they strike up a friendship and find a mutual attraction, but are determined not to betray as they have been betrayed.

On the whole, they are successful, but it's not a picture-perfect platonic, courtly romance from some medieval French poem. They're not perfect people and things don't turn out perfectly for anyone, really. I strongly suggest not watching the DVD deleted scenes. They were deleted for a reason and they would spoiled the film for me entirely if they had been left in.

Christmas is about family, not going to church!

Wait, what?

No, seriously, apparently that's where we are now. My mind boggles that people would decided that because Christmas falls on a Sunday, they shouldn't go to church. If that's where we are, not just as a culture, but as Christians, then we've really lost touch with the whole point. Even worse to me is the startling number of churches that cancelled services pre-emptively. I mean to say, really.

A certain subset of my in-laws even said this to me earlier today. Surprise was expressed that church where I attend was not cancelled and they commented that it makes sense to cancel church so you can spend time with your family. Not only is this misguided in a general way about what the meaning of Christmas is, but I think this also bespeaks a distance and lack of closeness between people who are supposed to be our family. The Bible speaks over and over about how our fellow Christians are our brothers, and to shun them because we're going to be with family in the strictly biological and legal sense seems short-sighted to me.

Link from FT.

The naïveté of libertarians

Some interesting thoughts on Ron Paul over at First Things, but the part that struck me particularly was the pointing out that libertarians take a remarkably Panglossian view of the individual outside of government and a rather Hobbesian view of the individual in government.

Non-pseudo-Nietzschean libertarians  have always struck me as somewhat Pollyannaish in their assumptions regarding the power—more precisely, the lack of power—of human sinfulness.  They see sinfulness in government, but somehow assume that the rest of us will be “good enough” with only the most minimal restraints.  What’s more, they seem to assume that a “merely individualist” public philosophy won’t have untoward consequences for our common lives together.

Slow December

I apologize for the dearth of content, but Christmas preparations have occupied my time and I've come down with a cold on top of it all. I hope everyone has gotten everything done on time.

In honour of the season, I have a link to a long article, but one that repays your attention, I think. John C. Wright considers the reason for the season, and I'm willing to bet that regardless of what you think that means, he doesn't exactly mean the same thing.

Peter Jackson strikes again!

Not content to ruin the story of The Lord of the Rings with his monstrous film adaptation, he has now set his sights on another cherished portion of my childhood and prepares to mangle Tintin almost out of all recognition.

Jackson, is there no depth you will not plumb, fiend?

ST: Halloween episode

Tonight's episode is The Return of the Archons, and, judging from the teaser appended to the end of the previous episode, it looks like the Halloween episode. More mysticism than science and investigations of strange doings on a weird planet. Okay, to start, Sulu and "O'Neill" are being chased through an old town set by Grim Reaper lookalikes. Sulu is touched and his mind altered and the extra runs off. So we're already off to a good mysterious start.

ST: Law and Order

Next up, Court Martial. It's like Law and Order and NCIS, but in space! I guess. I'm not sure about this episode either. Nifty, we open with several starships orbiting Earth? But they're on Starbase 11. Turns out the captain is going to have a court martial because one of his crewmen died. Spock turns up with the computer log and seems concerned. The dead man's kid then comes in and accuses him of hating her dad and murdering him and *shock* the computer log shows that Kirk jettisoned a pod (?) before the red alert. I was right, it will be Law and Order/NCIS... but in space!

ST: I have no concept of time

This episode is Tomorrow is Yesterday, and in fact I have no concept of time. No, what I mean to say is I have no idea what this one is about. So off we go, into the unknown together then. Ah, we open with a "modern" US Air Force plan taxiing for take-off. I've seen clips of this before in special features. Apparently our heroes have gone back in time somehow and have to deal with us backward 20th century folk. Just to start with, the Enterprise is about the most unconvincing model ever when they put it in the "blue sky".

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.

ST: Pointy eared monsters

Interesting. This episode seems to start with some sort of religious ceremony being set up. Not sure if it's church, a marriage or a funeral, but something's up and it's going to be broadcast all over the ship.

Ah. A marriage. The classic tune. Two random extras getting hitched by the captain. They wear their regular uniforms; the bride's only nod to the occasion is a small corsage. The marriage is interrupted by a "condition red" as an outpost reports attack by an unknown ship. Spoileration and happy-exciting-fun-times after the jump.

ST: Shakespeare

First up tonight: The Conscience of a King. A reference to Hamlet, of course. The episode opens on the Scottish play, however, instead of Hamlet. Neptune's ocean? Apparently, this episode is about a war criminal and whether or not he is still alive and can be brought to justice. Unfortunately, his name is Kodos. Yep, just like one of the silly aliens from The Simpsons. More ridiculousness after the jump!

A slice of neo-noir

I watched Layer Cake a while back and it's taken a few days for me to decide what I really thought about it. I'll get some of the basic things people like to know out of the way now.

It was somewhat violent. There was certainly a great deal of violence in the film, but a lot was implied and it didn't seem to me that the director ever went out of his way to try and make an impression with some gory twist or over-the-top moment. A great deal of it adhered to the dictum, most famously associated with Hitchcock, that what you let the audience imagine will be far more effective than anything you actually show them.

The language was profane. This was a British film, after all, and they have become a lot more coarse culturally than the US is. There are enough crudities to choke a moderately-sized horse.

There wasn't much sex. There are few brief scenes shown where the camera pans past things without lingering that are rather explicit. I found that I was able to fast forward through things with ease. There is one scene in a hotel room (you'll know what it is when you get there) where it is important to know what is said at the conclusion of it, but if you can still get audio at 2x speed the way I can, you can probably make it through without offending your eyes overmuch.

Okay, more detailed thoughts and some minor spoilers after the jump.

Are you tired of Gene Wolfe yet?

Because I'm not, and you're going to have to put with some more posts about him and his work. I finished reading On Blue's Waters the other day while walking back home from the bus stop. Wolfe really knows how to get a hook into the reader and drag him along with the story. This tale picks up a couple decades on from where Exodus from the Long Sun ended. The protagonist of this tale is the writer of the previous account. He writes this one in the first person about himself and his adventures in the past interspersed with accounts of what is happening to him at the time of his writing. It's an interesting device and allows for two plotlines to be set up in parallel and keep the reader intensely interested in both.

ST: And now, the exciting conclusion

On to part two, finishing up what started in the last post. I think, overall, this was a good choice for the series. It allowed for the development of the characters as much as for interesting stories and plots.

The "last time, on Star Trek" is not clips of the previous episodes as much as just a summary of what happened by Kirk for his official log. A solid choice as well, I think. Finishing after the jump.

ST: A Very Special Two-Part Episode

These are a couple episodes that I've seen before: Menagerie Parts I and II. We get our first glimpse of a starbase in this episode (Starbase 11) and meet the previous commander of the Enterprise, Captain Pike. He's been horribly disfigured and disabled in an accident while heroically saving the lives of others and we find that Spock served with him for years prior to Kirk taking command of the Enterprise. Which makes one wonder why they didn't just promote Spock to be captain. But we'll leave that aside.

Essentially, if I recall correctly, these episodes boiled down to a way to use the footage from the pilot so it didn't go to waste. The actor prior to Shatner was the captain in the pilot didn't end up being the regular captain, for whatever reason, and this was a way to include him, use the old footage in a flashback and make a two-part episode that turns a lot of our expectations on their heads. Fun times after the jump.

Arguing about water

Also from that same post that provided the previous link, is this rant by someone who wants you to know that H2O is not water. Here, I'll let him say it.

It is a straightforward fact, corrections to it are endlessly ignored, but it is simply false to say that water is H2O unless we are speaking very, very loosely.
...
A glass of water, pure as water can be, is better understood as containing H2O, OH–, H3O+ and other related but less common ions, and even this is a vast oversimplification (if we could get truly pure water, which we cannot). Our current best understanding of the electron transfers that give water the properties we observe is a statistical average of ever changing interactions so complex as to be quite literally unthinkable. Indeed, the problem is “not that we are unsure which (distribution of types of) microstructure is the correct one. The point is that there is no one correct microstructure, because the microstructure depends as much on the context and functions just as another nominal essence would” (van Brakel, 2000b, 80–81).

I think it's fair to say then, that water is H2O unless you're speaking very, very pedantically. To me, this is like those folks (though I did enjoy the topical pop culture reference at the end of the video) who get so worked up over the concept of "Π" and insist that we should use "Τ" instead. They'll tell you Π is wrong, but really they just find it less conducive to the way they think. Which is fine, but not the same thing by a long chalk.

NFL or Kenya?

Which would you rather have? Turns out, they're both worth about the same. At least by some measures.
(Via First Things.)

Mobile assumptions

As I signed into Google to post on the blog, a screen came up after I typed my password that encouraged me to enter my mobile phone number so that if I became locked out and forgot my password, my cell could be used in some way to get me logged back in. I do not, in fact, have a cell phone. I find it interesting that they have become so ubiquitous in only 30 years or so that the common assumption is that everyone has one. What other technological inventions have similar rates of adoption, I wonder? MP3 players, perhaps?

Fill-um

Okay, did the books, now for the movies and I'll be all caught up. Then I can procrastinate again with a clear conscience.

Playing catch-up

Every time I fall behind in posting about the books and movies I enjoy, I tend to continue procrastinating because the job of work catching up keeps becoming more daunting the more time passes. So I'm going to get that out of the way now. If you don't care, don't jump.

I have of late--

but wherefore I know not-- lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.

~Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

End the occupation: bring the muppets home

The text here may or may not be worth your literacy, but I thought the pictures were worth your time, if you haven't already seen them.

http://www.tauntr.com/blog/occupy-sesame-street-gets-violent

ST: Condition Alert

Tonight's exciting episode is The Corbomite Maneuver. I thought about titling this post "The Made-Up Words" episode, but before I got logged in all the way the Enterprise encountered an interstellar Rubik's Cube that someone had already helpfully solved and gone to "Condition Alert". Apparently they don't have the red and yellow alerts that I remember from TNG. I'll try to remember when those first appear. Now! On to the silliness!

Literacy that isn't

I've been reading a lot of Gene Wolfe lately. In one of his essays (or perhaps it was a transcribed speech) Wolfe talks about the dangers of modern illiteracy. He views the standard understanding of illiteracy as an unwelcome eventuation; that people should learn to read he assumes as a good thing. (I am not so sanguine.) But he notes that he fears even more that people are learning to read and then refusing to do so. They have the knowledge but refuse to use it.

I think that's an interesting point of view. I don't agree that not learning to read and write at all is a bad thing, so it is easy for me to agree that learning to do so and failing to use those skills is worse, but I'm not sure I had considered that previous to this. At least, not in such words. He takes the view that it is more dangerous to give people the ability to read great literature and have them not do so than to have them be unable to do so at all. And I'm not sure he's not right. Too many people are able to read great works of literature, but scorn to do so. It's not that they just don't have time or interest, but that they actively despise doing so and make a virtue of the fact that they spend their time watching Dancing with the Stars or Jersey Shore instead. This active contempt for the finer parts of our civilisation is more of a threat to it than having a multitude that would like to be able to do so and is unable. At least then the great works are valued even if they cannot be fully appreciated.

Sporty things

An interesting question raised at Baseball Reference about a play in the Cards-Phillies game. It's things like this that are the most fun because they are out of the ordinary and provide fodder for discussion. I like it when players are alert enough to try for an extra base and even more when fielders are alert to their attempts to do so. People talk a lot about home runs, but I think the run down is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. They tend to last a lot longer too.

Also! Linked from the sister site Pro Football Reference, if you scroll down here there is a discussion of the fact that the Patriots have the greatest offense in football history over a four-game span so far this year. They're only 3-1, however, because their defense is so bad that the second-greatest offense in football history could be made by combining the stats of their opponents over those same four games. I think that's awesome.

100 posts?

We scoff at that milestone. Thus we take no note of passing it by. (Does this still count as paralipsis?)

The beginning of the end for "you and me"

A lot of grammarians are shocked to hear people nowadays say something like "The president is giving a speech, and it is important for you and I to listen," or "It's like he's talking to you and I!" or "Between you and I, this speech is not his best." People have forgotten that the word "me" can be used after the words "you and" - and it seems like we had just gotten people to stop using "you and me" in the subjective case! So where did this come from? House of Pain's 1992 hit song will now play in your head to give you instructions on how to find out.

ST: Pointy pointy

Final episode on this disc is Dagger of the Mind. We start out with an convict escaping from a penal colony and getting loose on the Enterprise. No time is wasted, he clocks a red-shirted crewman in less than 5 minutes. Another couple minutes, another redshirt down and he's got a phaser. Plot twists after we move to hyperspace.

ST: Tom Cruise's kid

This episode is Miri, which I could have sworn was Tom Cruise's kid's name. Oh, looked it up, it's Suri. So, close. Anyway, this episode is one of those "parallel world" episodes, only they didn't bother with another universe, they just happened to find another planet out there that looked just like Earth Prime. And there was a distress signal, so they beam on down. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Rand and two expendables (in red shirts!). Yada, yada, yada, jump.

ST: Nursery Rhyme Edition

Tonight's episode is What Are Little Girls Made Of? My guess is that it won't be sugar and spice and everything nice. We start out in a promising fashion. Once again the Enterprise is looking for a lost scientist who has made startling discoveries but seems to have been lost for years. Spoilers, blah, blah, jump.