Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Minnesota vs. Everyone

A bit of silliness my mother e-mailed me:



Minnesota vs. ...Everyone

60 above zero:
Floridians turn on the heat.
People in Minnesota plant gardens.

50 above zero:
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Minnesota sunbathe.

40 above zero:
Italian & English cars won't start.
People in Minnesota drive with the windows down.

20 above zero:
Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats.
People in Minnesota throw on a flannel shirt.

15 above zero:
New York landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Minnesota have the last cookout before it gets cold.

Zero:
People in Miami all die.
Minnesotans close the windows.

10 below zero:
Californians fly away to Mexico.
People in Minnesota get out their winter coats.

25 below zero:
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Minnesota are selling cookies door to door.

40 below zero:
Washington DC runs out of hot air.
People in Minnesota let the dogs sleep indoors.

100 below zero:
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Minnesotans get upset because they can't start their Hummers.

460 below zero:
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.)
People in Minnesota start saying..."Cold 'nuff fer ya?"

500 below zero:
Hell freezes over.
Minnesota public schools will open 2 hours late.

The bit about driving with the car windows down made me laugh. I routinely do this when I'm alone in the car. As a matter of fact, I think my husband started plasticking the windows in the fall to keep me from opening all the windows in the house in the middle of January because I need the fresh air. Give it an hour to get that clean/cold smell all over the house, then shut the house back up and turn the heat back on. It's back to 68 degrees by the time he gets home from work, so what's the problem? Well, the boys do freak out a bit...

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Random Musings

Between Christmas and my birthday, I usually make a pretty good haul in bookstore gift certificates. It's my favorite shopping trip of the year (OK, I do it online, so perhaps it's my favorite shopping "moment").

This year I bought a monster stack of John Constantine: Hellblazer trade paperbacks. I already had a few, but I had bought and read them out of chronological order. The day after Christmas I bought every single TPB out which I didn't already have (plus some Ursula K. LeGuin novels I didn't have yet - it wasn't all comic books). Last week I assembled the whole Helblazer stack, old and new, and read them all from start to finish.

Wow. I love the stories, and he's a singularly cool character, but the cumulative effect of all that John Constantine was a bit of a downer. At least I have something else to be thankful for: I'm not a member of the working class holding on by my fingernails during the Thatcher administration.

I finished the last one yesterday afternoon, and as I've mentioned I was a bit glum. The Constantine effect was made worse by the shadow of the upcoming Timberwolves game against the Phoenix Suns. Now granted, the Suns spanked us last time in large part because Kevin Garnett and Ricky Davis were both suspended (for acting like toddlers, frankly). But the Suns were on a 17 game winning streak, and the Timberwolves were on a 6 game losing streak. We didn't stand a chance. Well, at least it's always fun to watch Steve Nash play, I told myself. There's always that. (He must be psychic, he can always find the open guy even if he can't actually see him.)

I should have had more faith in my boys. Kevin Garnett's 44 points and 11 rebounds.... well, that's while they call him the Ticket. But it wasn't just him. I couldn't believe how well Mark Madsen was playing. He tried the sort of spin in midair and shoot move that's KG's signature move, and he nailed it!

If only Rashad McCants had been able to play, it would have been the perfect game. He's been suiting up the last two games, but only because Justin Reed is in Mississippi and we need the bodies on the bench as a technicality. They keep saying one more week, just one more week and he'll play.

But I suppose this is more frustrating for McCants than for me.

Friday, January 26, 2007

I'm Mr. Spock, that's all there is to it.

I took a "What sci-fi/fantasy character are you?" quiz. I am Mr. Spock. I tried it again, and changed some of the answers I was either/or on. I was Mr. Spock again. I guess I really am a Vulcan.

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

I was hoping I could be Galadriel...

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

It's called juvenilia

This whole bookshelf thing has had a trickle-down effect in terms of reorganizing things around here. I've gone through every closet in the house and decided what to keep and what to toss. *yawn* At any rate, I was quite pleased to find two immense folders stuffed with things I'd written in my schooldays. I had thought it all long ago thrown away.

I have for sometime tortured my husband with fond rememberings of an assignment I once did for Humanities. The assignment was to write the "missing scene" from Hamlet. You could do anything (my friend Kim had the ghosts of Polonius and Ophelia talking in the graveyard, which was quite good).

Mine had Dr. Who. Which is odd, as I never watched much Dr. Who in my younger days (I used to think it was an appallingly small amount until I started watching the new episodes with my husband, who was bragging up the many episodes he had seen until it came to light that he didn't know what a Dalek was. How much Dr. Who could he have possibly seen and not know what a Dalek was? Less than me, I'm guessing). In my memory, this Hamlet scene of mine was a work of brilliance, playing Hamlet's depression against The Doctor's joie de vivre.

I kind of regret finding it now. It was much better in my memory. First off, this is the incarnation of The Doctor I chose to work with:


Not the choice I'd make now, I tell you. And it had none of the clever playing off of world views I was remembering. It mainly involved The Doctor showing up to mess with Hamlet's head. I'm not sure what exactly I was going for. (I got an A on the paper, though, since it was mostly being graded for things like punctuation and having a plot, and my teacher surely had no idea how badly out of character The Doctor was behaving).

I did find something that holds up better, if only because I don't remember it as being a staggering work of genius in the first place. It was also for Humanities (all the cool assignments were for Humanities). Exactly what I was assigned to do I can't quite recall, but it was a play I remember performing before the class. I played Holmes; it was almost certainly Kim in the role of Watson. Here, for your delight or torture, it is:

THE SOLVING OF A CRIME - or - DR. JOHN WATSON BECOMES AN EASTERN THINKER

Set: The scene takes place on a path that leads up to a river in the distance.

NARRATOR: In another parallel dimension, a man very much like our ficitional character Sherlock Holmes existed. However his companion, Dr. John Watson, was a little bit different. The two of them are on their first case together when our story begins.

(enter Holmes and Watson)

HOLMES: Observe, Watson, as I gather the clues that shall solve this case. (Holmes produces a tape measure and begins to measure footprints).

WATSON: I say, Holmes, what are you doing?

HOLMES: I'm measuring the distance between these footprints. I shall be able to mathematically derive the height of the suspect. It is always my first step in cases with footprints available.

WATSON: But Holmes, don't you realize how subjective measuring is? It's a marvel you ever solve a case at all with such methods (scoffingly).

HOLMES: I am the world's finest detective! My methods are impeccable! I've successfully solved every case I've ever had. I assure you, my height predictions are flawless, whatever you may say about my measuring.

WATSON: Don't you realize how much human judgement is involved in measuring even the simplest of distances? Look, can we agree that human judgement always has a margin of error?

HOLMES: Mine being phenomenonally small, of course.

WATSON: But existent all the same?

HOLMES: I suppose so.

WATSON: I know you're a bit of a mathematician. Can we also agree that two points never lie in the exact same spot in space?

HOLMES: That's a commonly known fact.

WATSON: So the object of measuring is to get the points on your tape measure to be as near as possible to lying consecutive to the edges of the footprints?

HOLMES: Of course. I see what you're saying. I have to judge between the marks on my tape and the points between which I'm measuring. It's impossible for them to occupy the same space, and therefore it is impossible to achieve an accurate measurement of the length between. However, this is irrelevant to the case at hand. The culprit is six foot one, plus or minur a half of an inch for your uncertainty factor, Watson. You'll note the wild patterns in the dirt here where the body first hit the ground. He was struggling and therefore was alive at this point.

WATSON: Alive? What do you mean, alive?

HOLMES: Are you daft? I mean he was alive, as in not dead. Sheesh!

WATSON: How do you know he was alive?

HOLMES (barely containing his annoyance): I just showed you. I think we can agree dead bodies don't generally put up much of a fight.

WATSON: My dear boy, I'm merely trying to tell you that you cannot decide if something is living or not because your decision would be too heavily based on your preconceived notions of what is living, which are most certainly wrong.

HOLMES: How do you know they are wrong?

WATSON: I don't. I only want to say that you should base your judgements on what you've experienced, not what has been inferred to you from teachers and other sources.

HOLMES: I was right; you are daft. Are you sure you're a doctor?

WATSON: Let me give you an example of the problems of language. How do you define life?

HOLMES: The qualities by which a plant or animal differes from stones or water or dirt. At least, according to Webster.

WATSON: How do you know this stone is not living? Maybe life to a stone is lying very quietly wherever they happen to fall.

HOLMES (cynically): Let me guess, their life's ambition is to be a paperweight?

WATSON: Possibly.

HOLMES: All living matter is contracted from carbon compounds.

WATSON: So coal is living? And diamonds?

HOLMES: No, coal and diamonds were once living, or so I've been told by countless geologists.

WATSON: This brings us back to the same point I made earlier. All of your famed decisions are based on your preconceived views of how things are. You yourself have stated many times that you owe most of your success to the repeating of patterns. You've read nearly every criminal record there is. This isn't your experience; it's someone else's. Therefore, your view is already going to be as biased as that of the records you've read, and then you add your own bias.

HOLMES: You are a singularly irritating man. As far as my biased views are concerned, this man was living at this point, okay?

WATSON: If you say so, although I must insist you quit bragging about your methods when they are so far off base.

HOLMES: Humph.

(they walk a little further down the trail.)

HOLMES: All right, here he quit struggling. He's dead now. The body must have been dumped in the river up ahead. If we can find the body, we'll be able to ascertain the cause of death.

WATSON: How?

HOLMES: Through the marvels of modern science. You claim to be a doctor; surely you know.

WATSON: "Modern science" is hardly what I'd call marvelous. It has many set backs.

HOLMES: Such as?

WATSON: It's much too left-brained to be accurate. Not everything can be explained by equations or fit into neat mathematical relationships. Some things just are.

HOLMES: Such as?

WATSON: Life.

HOLMES: Not that again.

WATSON: Where I was brought up, I was taught not to quantify and label everything I saw. If only I accepted it and let its essence flow through me, I would understand it. I can't explain it, but I Know it.

HOLMES: You mean to tell me you know the meaning of life, but you can't tell anyone about it?

WATSON: Precisely, Holmes.

HOLMES: Well, there's no need to go on with this, then.

NARRATOR: And so you see in this dimension, Sherlock Holmes gave up his life of crime-solving. He and Watson moved out of 221B Baker Street to the Mystic East and spen the rest of their lives never speaking, but understanding.

No, I can't remember what I was reading at the time, but it probably had "Tao" in it. The Tao of Physics or The Tao of Pooh or The Dancing Wu Li Masters (OK, there's no Tao in that title, but it's about Tao). I do recall really enjoying saying the line "You're a singularly irritating man."

(Aside to my fellow writers - can you appreciate how hard it was to copy-type that without trying to fix it?)

Saturday, January 13, 2007

The post with all the pics of the bookcases - because you demanded it

Well, some of you did anyway. The bookcases are set up and the books are in place, but we can't use the word "done" just yet; the shelves need frontpieces to match the face frame, and the whole thing needs to be sanded and finished at some point when we don't have plastic on the windows. Still, I'm very happy with how they look:


Also, there will be doors on the bottom row to make cabinets, so we won't be looking at the puzzles and games and Playstation wires. Yes, the TV is huge, but the books still dominate. At least I figured out how to turn off the blue circle around the ON button so the TV isn't glowing at me all day.

The bookshelves which were formerly in the living room are now done in my office:


This is where I keep all those Heinlein, Clarke, and Niven books I fully intend to read sometime soon. It's also where I store Christmas presents for people I haven't seen since my birthday (*hint, hint*). I moved the tall bookcase from my bedroom down to the office as well since it matched the others and allowed me to have two whole walls of books in the house, so this is what my reading nook in my bedroom looks like now:



That bookshelf next to the rocking chair is my Backspacer bookshelf. The keen eye can pick out the Ally Carters, Mark Bastables, MJ Pearsons, Lynn Sinclairs, and a Jackie Kessler (I have some other Backspacer books as well; that's off the top of my head).

Now, part of our extensive pre-marital negotiations was a break-down of the big jobs we both like to do. Quin got furniture assembly (good thing too, now that we're out of the semidisposable stage of our furniture buying), I got electronics. So here's what I've been doing all week.

The keen eye will see that the computer desk in the living room is now on the other side of the piano; this was so I could hook the computer up to the stereo. Good-bye, 5-disc changer; hello, iTunes! Plus the new TV hooks up to the computer as well, so we can browse record covers from the couch (or anywhere in the room since we have a wireless keyboard and mouse). Every CD in our collection is now on there (even the stuff I can't stand like Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary). 7604 songs, it would take 20.7 days to listen to it all. Of course I can't complain about the folk music too much; to Quin's chagrin, even if he unchecks the songs so they won't play he can't make the album covers go away, and by virtue of staring with an apostrophe, this band is always on top:


I'm not sure how much we'll actually use this "see what's on the computer using the TV" feature. A hi-def plasma TV is very much overkill for your average YouTube video, but it is perfect for those episodes of Veronica Mars (season 3) I downloaded so I could be all caught up when the new episodes start up again next week. But I'm sure the most common function will surely become:



Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I'm so ashamed


I mentioned some months ago my intention to see the M. Night Shyamalan movie Lady in the Water at the first opportunity because the reviews were so scathingly bad, I just had to see it for myself. Quin, who just doesn't know how to enjoy bad movies, was out of town Sunday night so I took the opportunity to pop in the movie, kick back, and prepare to enjoy the badness.
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Only...
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I kept waiting for the badness, but somewhere in there I got swept in and forgot it was supposed to suck. I just really liked it.
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Now, everything Roger Ebert said in his review is completely true. The "rules" are over explained, and it bothered me that the Korean woman who spoke no English was the authority on things called "narfs" and "scrunts". I don't speak Korean but I've heard it spoken, and those don't sound like Korean words to me. (I think it would have added an interesting twist if the Korean woman was telling a bedtime story she thought was American or European and none of the other people knew what she was talking about - a sourceless story that was foreign to everybody. But that's just me). The storyline involving the critic as the arrogant person who contributes nothing was really heavy-handed and makes M. Night seem like a bitter writer getting back at his "enemies".
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But...
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I can't help it, I liked it. I blame the actors. Paul Giamatti was charming, and the other inhabitants of the apartment compex made a distinctive, interesting bunch. M. Night casting himself as the writer felt more logical than egotistical (I think it's true of most writers; we secretly hope to inspire someone else to greatness).
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Now this isn't a recommendation. I'm not surprised most people hate this movie. As I see it, there are two kinds of fairy tale movies these days: movies like Shrek or Ever After that put modern attitudes into fairy tale times, and movies like this one or The Lake House that put fairy tale attitudes into modern times. The latter tend not to succeed as well as the first category, I think because they require you to suspend all disbelief to enjoy them. No one is going to explain how the time travel works or where the Blue Lands are. You either buy it or you don't.
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Me, I have no disbelief to suspend. This is probably not a good thing. But what can I tell you? I love a fairy tale.

Monday, January 01, 2007