Changes are coming to pixelscribbles

On May 1, Blogger will no longer support publishing to FTP, which is how I currently publish this blog. Sometime before then--hopefully this weekend--I will be migrating either to Blogger's hosted solution or to WordPress.

I've thought about shifting to a different platform for years. The reason I've stayed with FTP publishing for so long is that I felt comfortable and safe with two copies of my blog in existence: one in Blogger's database and one in static html files on my server. With this duplication of my content, essentially an automatic backup, I was confident that I'd never lose my posts. That made me reticent to change blog software.

Now that my hand is being forced, I'm leaning towards self-hosting. Frankly, I trust my webhost, pair, more than I trust Blogger's servers. This may be a misguided view, but in the eight or so years I've used both services, I've only ever had problems with Blogger.

The main uncertainty in my mind at this point is WordPress. I've seen so many WordPress blogs get hacked and wonderful content get destroyed, notably the several times it happened to Sushicam. If, after losing all my offline writing and photos in the fire, I lost all of this too, I would be completely decimated. I do not want to go through that feeling again. I want to continue to be able to travel back in time through my writing and remember what I used to think about and how I used to feel. This blog is really all I've got left of my life before August 2005. I can't lose it.

Obviously, I'm still thinking about what I want to do. But a decision will come soon, and then my blog will move. When that happens, the design will probably change.

I've also made a change to my photo posting recently. For awhile there I was emailing photos from my phone directly to this blog, to quickly and easily share what was going on. However, I was never really a fan of doing things this way. For starters, it saved the photos here on my server instead of on my photo site. For another, having a bunch of posts with nothing but one or two photos in them took up a lot of space and pushed text content--my thoughts, the real purpose of this blog--down the page.

So I've started using SmugShot again, the SmugMug application for iPhone. Now I simply send the photos I take directly to the proper album on my photo site. So far I've sent photos to February 2010 and March 2010.

When I switch my blog to whatever I switch it to, I plan to pull my latest SmugMug photos into the sidebar, so blog visitors will know I've uploaded new photos without having to scroll past them to get to my real content. I'm pretty happy with this solution and look forward to implementing it.

Once all these changes are in place, I plan to really get back into writing here. I miss it.

I have an idea

I think I will create a section of private webspace where I can write whatever I want. From that space I will select things to go public. Some things will never see the light of day. I think by doing this I can avoid most, if not all, of my writing fears, and just write anything and everything. Since it will be private, I'll even be able to write about projects I am working on or would like to work on without fear of some random internet person stealing my ideas.

I'll see about setting up the private area later this week.

I've changed

I've changed.

In five short years, I've changed.

Five years ago, I'd write about anything, with hardly any reservation. I wrote often. I didn't care what anyone thought. I voiced every opinion I had. I put it all down here on my blog with no fear and no sense of responsibility.

I'm in my 30s now. And I've changed.

I don't know if I'm more mature, or if I've lost something.

Now, there are so many things I want to say that I don't. Writing has always been my one true outlet...but I've become more aware of the power of words. With words, I can injure. And with words, I can inadvertently give away my own being.

Sometimes I want to write and don't because I don't have time.

Sometimes, I'm afraid to write.

But I miss it. I miss scattering my thoughts with abandon. And I know at least some of you miss following behind to pick them up again.

Whenever I resolve to write more, I mean it. It doesn't happen because I've changed.

I'm not sure how to change back. I'm not sure I even should.

More on The Great Santini

When I first finished The Great Santini, I mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of random violence towards the end. I now believe I know the purpose of that violence, but I'm not sure the purpose makes it any less random.

What's interesting to me is that the majority of the violence came from people who were not the titular abusive character.

I went into the book expecting first-hand depictions of horrific child abuse. I described the indirect mentions and tension fully anticipating that they were leading somewhere dreadful. But the book was not that facile or straightforward. Most of the abuse was in the past; it guided the present but didn't appear in it. It led the reader to the conclusion that if Bull's kids would have just done things his way, everything would have been fine, and he really wasn't that bad a guy after all.

It's brilliant. Because this is exactly how Ben Meecham was feeling.

The random violence and killings stripped Ben of his support systems. His best friends were either killed or jerked away from him. He had nothing when the final blow came, and he ended up filling the hole in his life with the one man he knew best. At the end of the book, in a twist on the archetypal "mentor dies, hero accepts his destiny" story, Ben started becoming Bull.

He started becoming the man he'd spent the entire book resisting, hiding from, and going along with to appease. He started becoming what he insisted he never would. And it happened because that was all he ever knew, and when that was gone--when Bull died--a part of Ben needed that presence, and the only way to get it was to bring it back himself.

If Ben had had Toomer around, or Sammy, when his father died, I imagine things would have gone differently. He would have had other men in his life to remind him of what he wanted to be. Mr. Dacus was a father figure, the father Ben could never have, but ultimately he approved of Bull, and Ben took that approval to heart.

And with Bull dead, without the constant reminders of fear and uncertainty to guide Ben, it would only be that much easier for Ben to forget what he had hated and embrace the love he wished he felt for his father when he was alive.

This story felt true because it was true, and I think that truth greatly added to the experience. There are flaws. I pointed out a perspective problem in my original post; I never found anything later to disprove my view that it wasn't intentional. And there was that feeling, again, that the violence in the latter half of the book came out of nowhere solely for the purpose of guiding Ben down a path towards his father.

But the prose was startlingly poignant, and the dialogue was sharp. I imagine that writing this novel was both cathartic and instructive for Pat Conroy, and I look forward to seeing how he pairs that experience with his natural gifts in later books.

The corpse of the premodern Japanese studies field

Frog in the Well posted about two classical Japanese studies symposiums, one this weekend and one coming up in May. They both sound fascinating! While I would love to go, that isn't the reason I'm posting. I just wanted to spotlight the opening paragraphs of the announcement post, which made me smile:

Premodernists, particularly those who focus on history, sometimes feel gloomy about the state of premodern Japanese studies in the U.S., where a number of large graduate programs have shrunk, disappeared, or fundamentally changed in emphasis in the past two decades. Some of us have even been known to eulogize the field, as if the heart of our collective endeavors had already stopped beating. Is the field more like a rotting corpse, or perhaps a mummified one? Have we been subject to cremation, leaving behind only bone fragments to be buried in an urn? Or was the corpse of the field left lying on the banks of the river, food for the crows and source of anxiety for locals, known as "wind burial"? (Thanks, PMJS!)

Two upcoming events prove that the rumors of the death of medieval Japanese studies were greatly exaggerated.

Love it.

The Great Santini

The other day I posted on Twitter, "It is absolutely GORGEOUS outside in Augusta, Georgia!" Stu responded that that tweet put him in the mood to reread his Pat Conroy novels. I'd never read any Conroy, so I asked Stu for suggestions, and on his advice started reading The Great Santini. This post contains my thoughts so far; I've just made it to Chapter 12.

(Since I'm reading on my iPhone's Kindle app, I can't reference page numbers, so I will quote the text where appropriate.)

The book's about a family dealing with an abusive father, a Marine fighter pilot named Bull Meecham who is known as "The Great Santini". The prose simmers with nervous tension as it draws slowly towards what you know is coming, what has been foreshadowed from the beginning. You don't see the abuse directly at first. You have to wait several chapters for it. Instead, you see almost-abuse. The story flirts with the line Bull Meecham will cross, and since you don't know where the line actually is, you never know when something bad might happen. It's very artfully done. It gives you the same feelings the children are dealing with.

The first horror is a fairly small one compared to the dreadful things Bull Meecham has been threatening. But that leads to some specific revelations that up the tension. It's certainly not over yet. I'm curious as to where it will go and what conclusions will be drawn.

One thing that has struck me, though, is the somewhat uneven writing. At times Conroy's prose shines, leaves me in awe. From the last paragraph of Chapter 9:

Here in the night [Ben] thought that somehow the secret of this marsh-haunted land resided in the quivering flesh of oysters, the rich-flavored meat of crabs, the limp of the flower boy, and the eggs of the great turtles that navigated toward their birthing sands through waters bright with the moon.

But other times Conroy does a little too much "tell" and not nearly enough "show". There are even times when the perspective changes so abruptly that entire blocks of prose are cast in confusion, and I'm not sure that effect was intentional.

In Chapter 10, our third-person limited narrator brings us the basketball match between Bull and his son Ben through general descriptions of the action and glimpses into Ben's thoughts. The entire chapter could be said to come from Ben's perspective...save for an odd paragraph:

...Ben thought that he had a great equalizer working for him, called youth.

Ben was five feet ten inches tall and weighed 165 pounds; his father was six feet four inches tall and weighed 220 pounds. But Ben had been correct when he observed that Bull had thickened over the last years. He had become heavy in the thighs, stomach, and buttocks. The fast places had eroded. Rolls of fat encircled him and he wore the sweat suit to keep his new ballast unexposed. He was planning to lose weight anyway. There was nothing Bull Meecham hated worse than a fat Marine.

It took a long time for Bull to warm up and it gave Ben the chance to study his moves.

This sudden intrusion and just as sudden withdrawal of Bull's perspective is extremely jarring. This isn't the first time we see Bull's thoughts, but it is the most awkward so far. If the text had continued in Bull's perspective it would have been fine, but instead it snaps right back to Ben's.

I considered whether or not that paragraph was Ben's impression of his father's thoughts, but it doesn't really read that way--especially not the line "he was planning to lose weight anyway".

Chapter 9 begins with a description of a woman who has come to the Meecham house. We do not see her thoughts. As if watching a movie, we read about how she arrives at dawn and waits. Then we see Bull Meecham run out the back door, and before we know it we're in his mind.

The woman was sitting on the back steps when Bull Meecham hurried out the back door. He was on his way to the air station for additional briefings on the squadron he would soon command. Before he reached the first step, he stopped and regarded the dark Buddha blocking his passage. If there was a single group in America that Bull had difficulty with over the simplest forms of address, it was southern blacks. He had nothing at all to say to them so he generally retreated into his self-aggrandized mythology.

This paragraph should have stopped with the word "passage". The last two sentences give us information, but not knowledge. They sound like a description Conroy might use in a character profile to remind himself how Bull should act. As I wrote on Twitter, it seems apologist. "Here's why Bull's acting like himself."

We could understand these points about Bull by observing his actions. We don't need to have it all spelled out.

And where is this commentary about Bull coming from, anyway? Our narrator sometimes has Ben's observations, very rarely Bull's or another character's, and then sometimes, as now, a seemingly objective insight. The shifts are confusing and break the rhythm of the prose.

Just as we sometimes get too far into a character's head or receive a bit too much spoon-feeding, sometimes we also don't get enough description of the action of a scene. In Chapter 10, Bull says hurtful things to his children, but they don't seem much different from the things he typically says, so when all of a sudden the kids are crying, I'm surprised. I could have used a few more details to ease the transition. Not an explanation of why being teased for being short would upset Matt, but an inkling of his mental state before and during the teasing. Was his face flushed? Did he look earnest when he was begging to be allowed to play basketball? Sometimes you have to read a little too far between the lines, and other times there's nothing to read because it's all overexplained.

Conroy shines when he's presenting action and dialogue. One of the most powerful scenes, Ben's talk with his mother in Chapter 11, includes very little description at all. There's repetition of three themes--shoe tying and untying, cigarette lighting and smoking, and Bull's basketball practice outside--and then there's revelatory dialogue, evocative in its sarcastic directness. And that's all that's needed.

The best scenes with Bull don't go into his head at all, but simply describe his behavior: Chapters 1 and 6, in which he gets up to no good in his natural habitat, give us far more insight into the man than a discussion of his history, pride, and competitiveness ever could.

The problems seem to crop up during critical scenes involving Bull's abusive behavior--scenes between Bull and his children. I'm wondering if that's the reason for it.

It's known that this book is based on Conroy's own childhood experiences. This sort of thing has got to be difficult to write about, especially when it's happened to you. I've never been the victim of physical abuse, but I can relate in other ways. There's a guilt and a shame that are extremely hard to get past.

It's easier to deal with individual pieces of the puzzle than it is to attack the main problem all at once. That could explain why scenes involving Bull and Ben on their own are fantastic while scenes in which they interact are less so.

Were I Conroy's editor, I would suggest not writing or appearing to write from Bull's perspective at all. I'd treat all standard scenes as if I were an objective, non-omniscient observer, including scenes involving Bull. But I'd go into Ben's head. The book may be called The Great Santini, but it's about Ben. That was made obvious in Chapter 2. If Ben's in a scene, I want to see the scene through him--and not through anyone else.

Those are my observations so far. Of course, I'm not done. We'll have to see how my evaluation changes as I continue reading.

Ben Franklin's perversion

This is a dream I had just before waking up this morning, but I thought I'd write it as a narrative and give the characters names.

Cherry was mumbling something as we stepped into the room. She always seemed to say something when we did a time slip. I never could make it out. The first part sounded like random letters and numbers. The last part was definitely a phrase. It sounded like the last word was "day".

I could ask her about it later. The most important thing was the box.

The room was a comfortable study. Brass chair rail ringed the richly stained wood walls, ending at an expansive stone fireplace. On the right of the entryway was a cluster of small plants done up in red bows and Christmas lights. I made for the rolltop desk just beyond that. The object I was after sat innocently atop a mess of papers, as if it were being used as an oversized paperweight. I picked up the box gingerly and sat down on the floor near the fireplace to examine it.

It was about the size of a cigar box, but it was heavy and made of cherry wood and brass. The box was plain, unmarked save for some small brass tacking. I flipped open the lid and let it fall back and hang on the thin chains that secured it.

Cherry had been surveying the room, but now came to crouch beside me and peer over my shoulder.

"Tools and surgical implements," I pointed out, running my forefinger along the row of silver screwdrivers and scalpels. "But what are they for?"

"Seems weird to have them together like that," Cherry agreed. After a moment of staring into the velvet-lined case, she straightened and stepped further into Franklin's office. "Maybe there's something else here we can learn from."

As she started rummaging through a bookshelf, I decided to disassemble the carefully-arranged box to see if that would help. I'd started gathering up the tools when I noticed the odd way the velvet gathered at the edges of the box. "Hmm," I said aloud, cocking my head to one side and frowning. "I wonder..."

I picked up one of the flathead screwdriver tips and wedged it between the velvet and the box. A little leverage, and the fabric started to rise. It was apparently tacked to cardboard. "Look, this is a tray," I said excitedly. "It lifts out."

I felt Cherry step back in my direction, but I was intent on the box as I pulled the tray of tools up and out and set it aside.

"Whoa."

Jackpot.

"Here's a bag of transistors," I said. "There's some wiring. But what's this?"

I picked something out of the box that was about the size of a coin, with a yellow, rusty looking wedge jutting from a silver root. "A root?" I asked aloud. "This is..."

"A tooth," Cherry breathed.

We both knew the implications of what we'd found. But there was no time to discuss them. Our window was closing.

I quickly reassembled the box and set it back on the desk. Moments later, we felt time slip away...

I blinked and looked around. We had time-slipped, hadn't we? But we were back in the study.

Cherry looked at me curiously. "Why are we back here?"

"I don't know," I was saying, when suddenly we arrived. Or rather, the us who had been there before. We were standing by the fireplace; Us' abruptly appeared in the doorway.

"Roman!" Cherry hissed, grabbing my arm.

"Why are we here again?" I whispered frantically.

Me' came striding in, intent on the box. I gaped at him for a moment as he turned his back to us, giving me a rare view of the back of my own head. I considered idly that my auburn hair was getting a little shaggy, and boy was it ever curly in the back.

"Everything's the same," Me' informed Cherry', glancing around at her. "...wait. Where's the wallscreen?"

In my shock at reappearing where we'd just left I hadn't noticed. I glanced over my shoulder. "He's right," I told Cherry. When we'd first arrived there had been a flat panel screen above the fireplace. "It's gone."

Turning back towards our dopplegangers, I saw that Cherry' was looking at the Christmas decorations. I abruptly noticed they were different as well. This time there were no bows, and the plants were much smaller.

"What's going on?" both Cherrys said at once.

"Oh, wait, I forgot to say my stuff," Cherry' cried, and then she was rattling off a long list of nonsensical letters and numbers. I was hearing the code, the thing she was always muttering, clearly for the first time. Not that it made any sense. "And let the other guys be gay," she finished.

I blinked. "What the heck does that mean?"

"Oh," Cherry' said, "that's just so I don't fall in love with anyone while I'm traveling and neglect to do my duty."

I wheeled on Cherry, who had turned bright pink. "They shouldn't be able to see us, should they?"

"Why wouldn't we be able to see you?" asked Me' calmly, lifting the tray of tools from the box and examining the cyborg oddments beneath.

"Because," I spluttered, "Paradox Theory..."

They weren't us.

They looked like us. They were even wearing the same clothes. Cherry' had on that dress Cherry loves, the one that comes to just above the knee, with the marbled red and black pattern. And she was wearing Cherry's trademark knee-high leather boots, with the platforms and five-inch heels. And Me' was in the same suit I was wearing, tuxedo-style but dark purple, with copper buttons and a pocket watch chain visible upon one breast.

I had assumed because they looked like us, they sounded like us, and they were here just as we had been, that they were us. But...

"That's ridiculous," Me' responded. "Paradox Theory doesn't have anything to do with dimensional slips."

Thoughtdump

Twitter is performing database maintenance. How am I supposed to regale you with snippets of useless information about my day?

Oh, that's right, I have a blog.

I'm in that discontented mood that I seem to get a lot. Usually I need to make some sort of proactive life change, or at least come up with some plans to do so, in order to shake the mood. Unfortunately, one change I had wanted to make has been vetoed--I had hoped to set up a treadmill at my work station, but the higher-ups don't like the idea. I don't know if they thought I wanted to jog, and get all sweaty, or what. All I really wanted was to stay moving, at 1 mph or less, rather than sitting all day. I'm considering asking if I can just raise my desk so that I stand all day instead. We'll see.

I've been thinking a lot about my poor blog, and how I keep neglecting it. I think I want to give myself writing assignments and stick to a posting schedule, at least for awhile. I also want to get better about reading more.

A big problem is that I don't want to spend a lot of time sitting around--which of course is why I wanted a treadmill at work. So I am thinking about ways I can incorporate exercise into the typically stationary activities I do at home.

Sean's been wanting to move our computers into the second bedroom (which is what I wanted from the beginning, but whatever ;>), so I'm thinking about what I could do in there. Maybe a treadmill desk; maybe a desk that can be used with my bike on its stand; maybe something that can do both.

These days, when I get home I don't feel like doing anything productive. I'll get online and read a few things or watch TV until bedtime. I think having a regular desk instead of using the coffee table would help. You have to kind of settle in to really work on a computer, and leaning over from the couch or sitting on the floor kind of precludes that. So hopefully the move to the second bedroom will help too.

A friend mentioned yesterday that someone he knows has lost weight by making small changes, like not sitting down when he watches TV. I have used the Free Step on the Wii Fit while watching TV before, so I think I'll try to keep doing that. (Unfortunately it maxes out at 30 minutes, at which point I have to change input back to the Wii and turn it off or start it over.)

I'm hoping I can get to the point where some sort of activity is built into everything I do...and I'm hoping that that will give me the energy to do even more things. I'm always talking about being tired of being in a rut, but I never seem to actually try to get out of it. Part of it is a lack of motivation, part of it is not having the right tools, and part of it is just not being sure of what I want to do. I can at least solve that last problem by thinking about it, by going ahead and trying different things and seeing what sticks.

Another thing I really want to do is find and stick to a good calendar/project organization system. I want to be able to track what I'm doing and what I need to do, to pat myself on the back and keep myself on track. I want to accomplish things that take longer than a day.

Here's hoping I can figure something out about all this.

NaNoWriMo?

The other day Hai asked me if I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year.

"Hadn't even thought about it," I responded.

Hai's first response was an emoticon: =O

Then, "Don't you do it every year?" he asked.

"No," I responded. "I think I tried once or twice."

It was twice. The first time, in 2004, I actually did pretty well, writing at least one scene every day for the first third of the month. Then the story sort of fizzled out and died. I couldn't figure out where to go next, so I gave up. The second time was right after the fire in 2005. While the idea I had was actually pretty interesting, and I still think about it now and then, I was too emotionally drained from losing everything and trying to deal with living with the in-laws to write.

I was cavalier about the topic with Hai, partly because I was busy at the time we were talking, but also because it hurts to think about how writing has been gradually disappearing from my life. Ever since I left school, then the AMRN, I've had less and less drive to write creatively. No deadlines, no one to read and review. No expectations. And now even my blog has dried up--Twitter allows me to be lazy and not craft long pieces anymore.

I've talked about giving up writing before, but the truth is I don't really want to. It would be a waste. I don't want to be the personification of lost opportunity. There are so many things I'm good at, but I don't work nearly hard enough to hone any of my skills. It both feeds and is fed by my lack of direction: I can't pick one, so I don't do any of them.

It has to stop. I need a kick in the pants.

Maybe NaNoWriMo would be a good start.

I've been thinking about a story involving my two favorite AMRN characters, Celia Mazarin and Natalie "Byron" Ryan. Originally I'd planned to make it a webcomic, but I've always written in story form. If I could just finish the story, I could always reimagine it as a comic later.

NaNoWriMo begins one week from today.

I think I'll do it.

Kyou Kara Maou 90

Plenty of spoilers in this post. You've been warned.

We're well into the sword-stealing plot now. Yuuri and his retainers (minus Gwendal, Gunter, and Murata) are in Caloria for a celebration for the defeat of Soushu. They run into Alford, who has a unique sword in his possession along with the holy sword. Janus (I'll just go with that spelling for now) shows up with a huge monster and demands they hand those swords and Morgif over...or he'll start destroying Caloria!

Yuuri makes what to him is an easy choice: hand over the swords. He makes this decision not only for himself, but for Al, who reluctantly agrees. After the swords are taken--just like that!--the monster and Janus disappear; they had simply been an illusion.

"It couldn't be helped," Al says. "You didn't make the wrong choice, Yuuri."

But I'm not sure if I agree with that sentiment!

You can always argue that hindsight is 20/20, and it really does seem like the most noble thing to do to try and save the people of Caloria. But you have to remember that this isn't just a matter of giving up their personal swords. The three swords the White Ravens wanted aren't just any swords. Al's has holy power, Morgif obviously has demon power, and the third, rusty sword has some as-yet-unexplained effect on people with maryoku (and probably other powers). You have to weigh the dangers. Is it more dangerous to let a monster rampage a city-state, or to let an amoral group have three ridiculously powerful magical items?

To be fair, the person who should have spoken up--Flynn--did not. I can't imagine Conrad or Josak recommending against saving people, even though Josak seemed to have the whole deal figured out from the beginning. Wolfram's the logical one to do it, but Yuuri rarely listens to Wolfram's advice even if he had said something. The person who speaks for Caloria should have protested on behalf of her people. That she didn't either means she didn't understand the enormity of the situation, or she's still "following" Yuuri, even though he told her he doesn't want to be followed.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if Flynn has ever gone against what Yuuri said since the box incident.

It would be hard for a leader to argue for the possible destruction of her country and deaths of some of her people. But I feel that if she'd looked at the situation objectively, she would see that this decision could have repercussions not just in Caloria, but across the entire world.

Someone should have been there to point that out. But no one was. Murata was either back at Shinou's temple or on Earth. Gwendal was at the castle. And no one else stepped up.

I guess what's strange to me about this is that everyone just did what Yuuri said without protesting much at all. In the past, they'd challenge him, make sure he was looking at all sides of the issue. He'd usually go ahead and make the exact same decision, but at least I felt comfortable that he knew what he was doing. Not so in this episode.

Another thing that seemed to be curiously lacking was the strategy behind the scenes. Typically when Yuuri makes decisions with big consequences, his retainers have a plan to bail him out. Maybe this plan exists and it'll be revealed in the next episode. I sure didn't see a hint of it in this one. "Let's go get our swords back" isn't much of a strategy.

Here's hoping there's a purpose to all this. I've been feeling somewhat weird about the general conceits of the show all throughout the third season. It seems to me like Yuuri's standard decision-making is being demonstrated time and time again to be flawed. I don't know if that's on purpose, and if Yuuri is going to grow, or what.

On the one hand, I don't want Yuuri to lose his drive to protect. But on the other, I wish he would temper that with a little more common sense. Now that he's been in this world awhile, he can start making judgments based on his knowledge of its rules, rather than Earth's. It should get to a point where he can start thinking of the consequences, instead of having them pointed out to him by someone else.

* * *

Random shot of Sara from the end of the episode! What can I say, I like him.

Hard

From Marie's blog:

I tend to think it'll be a while before we move on from this whole fascination with stolen-identity and exposing-ourselves-in-ways-that-make-us-think-we-are-being-authentic. It's just too tempting, too easy to follow the facile path and to engage yourself in a meaningful, and private endeavor is, well, hard.

Ouch.

How about this copy?

Was a group of Muslim women clutching briefcases and text messaging during films were spotted making a terrorist attack "dry run" in a theater?

-the RSS summary for this Snopes article

and

The 65-pound dog survived a six story leap from a Tampa airport parking garage and lived.

-the first paragraph of this AP article

Nice.

(It happens to all of us...especially during breaking news!)

Bodycount

I borrowed the four-issue TMNT Bodycount series from a guy at work a few weeks ago, and just got around to reading it today.

Was there a point to this?

It seems like creators think they have to legitimize things they enjoyed when they were younger by making them "dark". Why do they feel this is necessary?

Then again, I guess the turtles started out "dark". But this is "dark" for the sake of "dark". There's no reason for it other than to make the turtles more badass, to distance them from the cartoon.

The only character development we got was in book 4 when Raphael sees Casey get shot and suddenly doesn't think guns are quite so cool. But even then he doesn't really seem to be in character--he starts crying immediately, for example. I don't think Raph is all talk; I don't think he's the type to bawl like that. Regardless of the fact that he's a teenager.

The series is supposed to be funny, in a macabre way, and it's full of homages to Hong Kong action flicks, but ultimately there was nothing there that moved me. Did I expect more out of it than I should have?

Final thought: for a story about a ninja turtle, Raph didn't get as much face-time as I would have expected. But I guess that's a good thing, because the artist sure made everybody ugly.

I found a new blog

Damon Cline writes a blog called Scuttlebiz about area businesses and the economy and such for the Augusta Chronicle. He usually focuses on one story and then ends the post with a few nuggets. This cracked me up:

I'll bet my left index finger (you can't have the right; it's my trigger finger) that Loco's Grill and Pub, the casual dining chain that closed last week after two years in operation, will be converted into Augusta's 213th Mexican restaurant. Mexican is the new Chinese.

Maybe you have to be a local to realize that this is hilarious because it's true? When Mom visited I took her to Acapulco's, the restaurant that replaced Fazoli's on Washington Road. They had a few microwaved Italian and "American" options, and were otherwise very much a Mexican restaurant, down to the free chips and salsa.

Damon's sharp and funny and seems to know his Augusta. Blogrolled!

(Edit: Apparently Acapulco's has closed, after about a two month run. Heh.)

Daily Show writers on strike

See what I did there?

Anyway, here's a movie!

Via WWDN.

Why does everyone love Lana?

Okay, so she has some "exotic" looks (for much of the US, anyway), but she's not particularly bright, whenever she's said "leave it to me" she's ended up failing, she passes out all the time, she makes decisions based on pride...no matter how much she wants to claim that she's not a prize or a trophy, that's really all she is. Her personality sucks, and she'll completely turn her back on her friends rather than admit she could be wrong, and it's okay because everyone inexplicably loves her anyway.

Also, she lives in Kansas and somehow doesn't know the proper way to react to a tornado? :>

Also, she'll choose to be with someone on the rebound, and then marry them within a year. What's the rush, toots? Afraid you'll be an old maid if you aren't married before 20?

I also hate it when she tries to be a badass, because she totally sucks at it. It's like she's trying to grow up, but instead of just, you know, maturing, she decides to play all these games. But in the end, her games are pointless, and she's still the scared wide-eyed little girl who gets victimized every week.

I don't know if all of this is supposed to prove that she's inferior to Lois, but if it is, producers, you can stop now. It's been proven, time and again, since season 1.

Can you let her be a real character now? After all, there's got to be some reason Pete ends up marrying her. (Man, I bet dinners at the White House with President Lex are awkward...)

Sclaundres

It always takes me awhile to get through one of Geoffrey Chaucer's posts, because, you know, I don't speak Old English, generally. So when I saw he had a new post up I refrained from reading it, saving it until I had the time to really hunker down.

Today, however, I accidentally loaded the post. As I was going for Bloglines' "keep as new" button, I glanced down to what seemed from the fact that it was all uppercase to be a particularly emotional sentence...and I saw:

STOP YOUR SCLAUNDRES OF BRITNEY!

Yes. Yes! Chaucer, I love you.

(And I admit it: I love Chris Crocker, too. That video has brought such delight to my life. After all she's been through!)

Childhoods

It sounds like there's a lot more to this story. I'm looking forward to seeing what V posts tomorrow.

Never mind

So I got involved writing a critique of a poem Jered wrote (actually I gave him the poem as a "homework assignment"), and now the sun's like way up and I'm sure it's hot as hell out there. I think what I'm going to do is just stay in, work on lunches and dinner, maybe watch some anime, and try to go over to the Y on my lunch break. ;P

Tonight's going to be interesting; I'm supposed to do some work for my regular job at around 11:30pm. This will happen every Friday for the rest of the football season. Originally it wasn't going to be me doing it, but I'm a control freak and ended up volunteering, since it involves using my work computer.

Normally, of course, I would be asleep at that time. So we'll see how this goes!

One of the best paragraphs ever

Dropping something may have saved Joy Horton's life. The 73-year-old woman was preparing some food in her western New York home on Monday morning when she dropped a spoon on the floor of her kitchen. When she bent down, her house exploded.

If you're curious about why this happened, you'll be disappointed, as they're still looking into it. But here's the rest of the story anyway.