Animation, Art, and Other Shiny Things
[This is the first of a series on my move from cable tv to online content]
Part 1 – The Idea
I’ve had cable television longer than I’ve had cable internet, though not by a huge margin. There were a few years thrown in there that I had to choose between the two and went with the intertubes. I was playing alot of an online game, bringing home videos from the library, and watching what I could find on the internet. About exhausted PBS’s site during that time.
Well, it’s getting time to do that again, not because I have to make a choice again, but because I’m tired of paying for alot of stuff I don’t use. It’s not like I’m averse to the concept of getting what you pay for, I own a Cadillac for gawd’s sake, and I certainly am getting a decent enough deal from my local cable tv provider; hundreds of channels on twenty-four hours a day, premium movie channels, on-demand content, dvr. That’s alotta stuff.
Like a lot of folks, though, I come home, flop on the couch or in my computer chair (with a good view of the tv), and proceed to browse to find something even vaguely interesting to watch or let babble in the background while life goes on around it. There’s perhaps a handful of tv shows we like to tune into over the week, other shows that we’ll watch if we browse across them, and the occasional movie if it’s particularly good (or suitably bad, as our tastes go) or we’re just in the mood.
Lots of dvr’ed stuff goes unwatched. The on-demand content is marginal and smallish. I bet I only watch a dozen channels – tops.
I pay about 130 bucks for the privilege.
That’s going to change…
Hard boiled detectives aren’t only found in the pulps and, by necessity or chance, can be found on many a planet in the science fiction galaxy or fantasy universe. The uniform changes slightly from gumshoe to gumshoe, but the quick patter, ability to take a punch, and cynical streak of unbendable morality is consistent, even if it is hundreds of years in the future or hundreds of light-years into the beyond.
The first detective I met in the pages of a science fiction book was probably R. Daneel Olivaw in The Caves of Steel. He isn’t quite cut from the shamus twill of the paperbacks – he’s just a self-aware robot trying to help solve a crime amidst and despite anti-robot sentiments – but he introduced me to the idea that a SF detective novel could be written.
It’s been said that mystery and science fiction genres couldn’t be blended because you would naturally have situations or weapons that the reader had no reference to. The locked room mystery would be solved in 2 pages by the introduction of the Variable-Depth Instant-On Micro-Singularity Generator, for example. Pretty much the same for fantasy, though that would probably entail the old Triggered Heart Crush Spell of the Ancient Djooneormihntz. Anyways, they can be melded, and well. I’ve met many private eyes in my sci-fi reading career and here are a few of my favorites. Read more of this post
The perception of ancient China and Chinese art is inexorably entwined with the Ming dynasty. While Ming rule was only a fraction of Chinese history, in the western mind it’s been given free run in film and literature.
Ming Dragon Vase Yung-lo period 1403-1424
In the 13th century Kublai Khan let the Song dynasty know, rather rudely, that the Great Wall just wasn’t doing its job, which was, of course, to keep Mongols like himself out. Unfortunately for the Khan clan, this was about the same time as the Mongol empire was starting to fracture and, for a variety of reasons, was only able to rule China for less than 100 years until a Han peasant monk decided he’d had enough and led an overthrow and established the Ming dynasty.
A couple weeks ago I started a post draft on rhetoric intending to link the use of loaded words with the current political dialogue.
Well, I’m still working on it, but there’s been a spot of difficulty.
This weekend I made a push to complete a part of it for final posting. Last week I’d found the post running to a good three pages and the basic idea of the first two bore some more expansion. A couple pages of expansion later it turned out I had several different aspects of rhetoric and the human behavior it involved.
It is now 7 separate posts averaging a half page apiece with the primary draft down to a svelte pair of pages ripe for re-expansion…
Drifting off to sleep last night I considered why a simple exploration of spin shattered into so many pieces of thought. Granted, rhetoric is a discipline studied for thousands of years by the best minds human civilization could offer, but no one would count me among that number, nor do I have any formal training or education in logic or rhetoric. (not like that isn’t obvious…)
Perhaps it’s just how I write.
I like to plan things out. Gather information, decide on a plan, and execute it. Buying my last 2 cars took about a month each, the tv two months. Took 3 months or so to plan summer camp.
Dentistry wasn’t much different – a month of sifting through online stuffs before settling on Doctor T. The execution, however, has been another thing entirely.
Alotta years ignoring, and incidentally (pun not intended) deadening, the pain made for a scene of devastation. In workman like fashion, Doc T has dived in done what he can for the bottom bunch. Fillings, root canals, and an extraction later, I hope he’s done with the bottom at least…
Next Monday, a mere 2 days away, he promises to begin on the uppers with a vengeance by pulling two of them. One per side. I assume that this will be to immediately scare the rest into submission. I would have thought they were already, having watched the bottom in progress, but he’s the Doctor. Read more of this post
As of this moment somewhere north of 85 Million gallons of oil has been leaked into the gulf. Depending on whose numbers you take on either spill this is from 3 to 15 times the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez.
Over the course of several disasters, natural and otherwise, nothing is being learned. Or rather, an amount is being learned, but that learning is not being applied. Prior deficiencies have not been rectified, prior mistakes are being repeated.
There is a certain proximity the Gulf spill has to the political arena, unfortunately, apart and aside of the business interests involved. There is also a political aspect that is fully meshed with business and finance. (and I could fill this and many more posts about it’s huge impact on disaster response over time. don’t tempt me, I might still, but it’s alotta work.) These stymie the application of common sense to current response or future preparedness. Read more of this post
The Precision of Equus - Barbara Rush
My job these days is getting new media and books into the library system and ready for circulation. Despite the repetitive aspect of physically stickering and RFIDing the individual item (A title often comes in 6 to 200 item batches) doing the final proof-read of the catalogue entry is an interestingly complex task.
Book and media cataloguing starts with the Library of Congress and follows the AACR2 rules published in 1978. This set of criteria defines the information used to catalogue an item in a standard way across all libraries. This is a wonderful thing because you can go to any library and the same book will be described in about the same manner. This is particularly important when looking for a specific edition or format of a title.
Consider Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Published in the early 14th century it consists of 3 books, really; Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Most folk are familiar only with the Inferno portion as it deals with his tour of Hades with Virgil and any exploration of hell promises all sorts of creepy settings and naked tortured souls. Standard Hollywood copy, but it stills sells. The great thing about Inferno, however, is that it’s really old and not merely written in poetic form, but it’s Italian poetry! So basically you can read a horror story and feel all literary while doing so. Unless, of course, you get a translation that ties your cerebellum in knots. (not that that’s hardly difficult to do, but I digress…) Read more of this post
The winners of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest “Where www means Wretched Writers Welcome.” Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was the genius who gave us the opener “It was a dark and stormy night…”
This years winners do not disappoint.
The Winner:
For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.
Molly Ringle
Seattle, WA
My favorite, however, is the runner-up. It looks and sounds like something I would write.
Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, “There goes the most noble among men” — in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur.
Tom Wallace
Columbia, SC
I swear I’m going to enter this contest one of these days. I can be a contendah!
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The Ruffled Crow 