Tue 16 Oct 2007

Tricksy Hour With Frankie

Posted by laup under Cat Lore, Meditations, Outbreak
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Okay, it’s Frankie time. It’s the night of February 14, three years ago. I’m going out to drop off the trash in the apartment complex compactor outside. It’s cold out, but that’s okay because it’s not a far walk so I’m only wearing a long sleeved shirt. I approach the complex and I spot a partially grown kitten. The kitten spots me, perks up, and immediately runs towards me as if she’s won the lottery. It’s almost as if she’s been waiting for me. I drop off the trash, play with her, and decide to come back with K and a handful of food. She looks awfully hungry.

Fast forward to now. Frankie healed the cut on her lip and instead of sleeping amongst the trash during a sudden snowstorm later that night, slept on my chest after purring herself to sleep. She’s got her shots, and the other cats have accepted her as a reality that isn’t going away. She got through her kitten phase, praise the maker, and gets lots of regular feedings, a warm set of feet (mine) to sleep on every night, and many toys. Pamper = To The Max.

K and I named her Frankie after the character Angelina Jolie plays in the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Frankie is adorable. If you don’t agree, please report to the nearest reactor and volunteer for shielding tests! There’s a whole story about my hatred of cats that I will relate at another time. All you need to know is that I’ve had my Road To Damascus moment and really dig feline critters now.

Frankie, unlike most cats I’ve known, loves to have a leash put on her and walk around the neighborhood like a canine critter. One of her many names is “Frankie-doggins”. She gets really upset if I don’t take her out for a walk during the day, or hunting for moths at night. Its kind of weird how well behaved, and mischievous she is at the same time. When I look in her eyes, there’s an intelligence that goes beyond what I see in the other two cats, Michael and Blink.

I don’t know what it is about the time period from about 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm, but Frankie does some kind of “super-activating” and gets really rambunctious. She’ll usually be asleep in the bedroom absorbing major Slack points. Then, all of a sudden, she activates. Only it’s not the usual activation of a cat going into patrol and beg mode. Nope, she initiates what K and I can only describe as “the Frankie Tricksy Hour”. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing at the moment it begins, for the next 25-35 minutes you are in the Tricksy Hour Zone, where madness reigns supreme!

That’s right, it’s an “hour”, even though technically only 25-35 minutes pass. You’re on Tricksy time, and it’s time to pay the piper. Frankie begins jumping onto counters and shelves and knocking things over. Not big things, little things. Pens. Keys. Magazines. Papers. She’ll look at you as if it wasn’t her, but the Not Me Goblin who did that. She’ll wait until you are looking away, and do it again. You get up and chastise her, and she meows at you like you’re being mean. You put her on the ground, and a few minutes later she leaps up and starts doing it again. Frankie will then change her tactics and come up to you to begin meow bombing. Unlike Michael’s shrill and incessant artillery barrage, however, Frankie’s meow bombs are sweet and heartrendingly cute. “Please? Oh please? Won’t you do whatever it is?” Nope, she can’t tell you what it is. Good luck finding out!

Emergency thrusters engage! Frankie’s tail goes poof, like a huge raccoon brillo pad, and she runs through our home in bursts of speed, then looks to see if anyone is watching her. Random meows ensue, then she’s off again, up and down the stairs. She looks out the windows and meows some more. What? Is there a giant cheeseburger out there or something? If, at this point, you don’t get what she’s going on about, then she repeats the cycle and goes back to knocking things over. Humans can be so dense sometimes!

Yup, she wants me to grab the leash and harness, and take her out on a walk. There’s meeses, and cheeseburgeroids, and probably an ani-mani-mal or two out there. She’s got to make her patrol because it’s the moment of super-psychic fluctuations in the space time continuum. Ugh, but K and I are busy doing chores, watching the Netflix Channel, or writing/playing games on the computer. It’s your choice. Take care of business, or suffer the Tricksy Hour until you are free. Frankie comes up and rubs her head against you and starts to purr. Who knew being lazy could be so much torture?

But that’s the price you pay for having a super-cat living in your home. Duty calls, and the safety and security of the free world depend on your help! No vacations when you’re the sidekick of an animal with super-powers. Who knew I was volunteering my home’s services as a Cat-cave with high tech gadgets and neat-o costumes? Yep, just call me Leash-boy. At your service, mighty Frankie! Golly gee wilikers! Let’s go foil those meeses but good! Frankie says, “Later leash-boy. First let me roll around in these pine needles and search for booby traps.” Sigh. The glory.

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Mon 15 Oct 2007

False Prophets Will Claimjump You If You Look Into Their Eyes

Posted by laup under Backwater, Meditations, Outbreak
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It seems like every high-chair tyrant operation has got to have a number of apologists, hucksters, and self-proclaimed experts on the payroll. The purpose of these people is to waste the public’s time by distracting, misleading and deceiving them, so the public won’t get wise to what’s really going on. This is a vital function, because high-chair tyrants are understandably insecure about their positions, and need to keep the “vulgar masses” from doing anything such as thinking for themselves. God forbid!

I know them under the collective title of false prophets, the supporters of the wicked leader, whose purpose is to lead you astray and convince you that whatever they are saying is of the utmost importance. All I can say is avoid them like a plague victim. There’s no sense in listening to them, attempting to reason with them, or otherwise changing their minds. It’s highly doubtful your part in the story is to turn them from the Dark Side, and only the bravest of minds should attempt to wrestle with them, and then only when it is the dramatically appropriate time. One look in their eyes, and you will magically turn into a Scotsman and run off to Scotland like in that Monty Python skit. Meanwhile, the alien blamanges will win Wimbleton and take over the Earth!

And it seems like everywhere I turn, there are false prophets. As Bob Dylan once said, “I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.” On the radio, on the TV, in the newspapers and magazines, you can’t escape the barrage. I’m at my folks watching some show that might as well be a Monty Python skit:

False Prophet 1: Hello, and welcome to Ethel the Frog. Tonight on Ethel the Frog, we discuss the topic of “Is There Enough Of It Around?” With me are two false prophets, one from the left and one from the right side of the business party to give us the official line. What do you think, False Prophet 2?

False Prophet 2: I think we should kill them all.

False Prophet 1: Amazing. False Prophet 3, your response?

False Prophet 3: Oh, I really don’t agree. I think we should kill them all only if it doesn’t cost too much. Remember, we’re in this to make money, not just crush people because we can.

False Prophet 2: That is just the kind of treasonous, leftist nonsense that is interfering with our God-given right to do whatever we want to…

False Prophet 3: I’m sorry, let me finish. Did I interrupt you? As I was saying, we should look at the cost analysis…

False Prophet 2: Great, there you go bringing money into it again. We have all the bullets we need. This is Atlantis, the greatest country in the world and if we want to kill them all, then that’s what we should do.

False Prophet 1: That’s a pretty tough position to refute. False Prophet 3, don’t you think you’re being too negative in your assessment of the situation, I mean, it looks like we have plenty of bullets to kill them all with. Maybe if we used bombs instead…

False Prophet 3: I’m not saying we shouldn’t push ahead with killing them all, but we need to realize that bullets and bombs cost money, and I don’t know about you, but I want to save some money for buying that yacht for my mistress.

False Prophet 2: You go ahead and do that; I don’t need your bullets.

False Prophet 3: I will, but don’t come knocking on my door because you didn’t take the time to shoot each one of those people between the eyes.

False Prophet 1: I’m sorry, that’s all the time we have. Tune in next time to Ethel the Frog, when we ask the burning question, “Drop a ten ton weight, or release the tiger?”

It’s enough to make me pull my hair out. Listening to this stuff lowers your intelligence significantly, yet I know people who eat this nonsense up as if it were mother’s milk. I tell you, one look in the eye of this horror, and it’s automatic lowering of the life experience. Which is kind of the point. Hard to raise shields or maneuver on reduced power. That’s why I disengage and avoid these temporal anomalies. I’ll just get angry and upset about something that doesn’t matter at all. The only way I know of to defeat a false prophet is to not be a member of their audience. “The only winning move is not to play.”

That’s a tough one, because the false prophet pushes emotional buttons. They want you to engage them, like the ancient sirens luring sailors to the hidden rocks that will bring shipwreck and misfortune. Steer clear! The real prophets are out there where they’ve always been: In the wilderness and on the outskirts, demonized and ridiculed by the false prophets into obscurity. I know, I know, who has time to go out in the boonies searching for wisdom? You have to pick the kids up from practice, buy the groceries for tonight’s dinner and make everything before your part time job later tonight at Dump Beach Mall. There’s no time to stay current with the real problems in the kingdom when you’re working that extra hour so your car payment won’t bounce. That’s the point, though. Most people are too busy to have the time to overcome the daily propaganda.

Well, start by trusting your instincts and learning to be skeptical. That’s all it takes. That runs interference with the propaganda channel, and you get a few points of Warp Power back that were being siphoned off by the energy field modulation. Put it into your sensor and communications arrays, and catch an occasional transmission from the boonies. You’ll get a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and that will help too.

Then start identifying the false prophets in your immediate life. Don’t stress the big icons out there; you can’t handle those ultra-sized dragons by yourself anyway. Tag those personal false prophets in your patrol zone with mental antibodies, and wait for the sludge-removal service to lessen their hold on you. When you get some more points back, put them into the array and keep the feedback loop going. Pay for a dodge maneuver if you can afford it now. That’s all personal stuff relative to your own problems. There’s no formula for every contingency.

What, you never heard of a sludge-removal service? You didn’t think you had allies in the kingdom, did you? The world isn’t static all the time, even though it may seem so. You aren’t alone. Yeah, you got to be responsible for your own Federation of Planets, but out there are the Elves and Dwarves, and other ancient friends of people removing themselves from the false prophet audience to get their lives back on course. Start small, and don’t give in. Don’t look those false prophets in the eye and make up your own mind. A change of mind is sometimes all it takes.

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Wed 10 Oct 2007

Menegerie Is All I Gots Somedays

Posted by laup under Gardening, Meditations, Music Quest, Outbreak, Playtime, The Book Mine
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The garden continues to wither away. Each time K and I come over, we have to pull some poor plant up by the roots and deliver it unto the compost pile. K has planted some lettuce for the autumn, so this year’s garden is not quite through yet. But the end is definitely in sight, I’m afraid. Today, we actually needed to buy tomatoes from the store. That’s how bad things have gotten. The potato harvest we took hold of in early August is nearly spent. I’m making a beef-vegetable stew right now that puts us one charge from empty. The herbs are looking lean and crummy now too. I have to do a harvest soon to save most of them for winter. The sage, lemon verbena and sweet basil need to be stored stat!

It’s a communal garden we labor in, so one of my garden neighbors comes over and asks me if I’ve had some tomatoes stolen. Yup, I says. A half dozen beefstake level goodies ready to be plucked the next day, and when I show up the next day, they gone. I tell the guy everybody wants their cut – the bugs take their cut, the birds and gophers take their cut, and now the hungry people take theirs. What can you do? I can’t complain though, I says. I got 2 or 3 bushels of bounty, and that’s not considering the non-tomato cut I got. The guy laughs and gives me four Juliets, tomatoes to keep for seeds, since we’re talking about getting seeds ready for next year. We talk shop a little, and he takes off. I feel like I got the level up, it’s cool.

I finally got the pictures developed from the demolition derby of Big Blue I mentioned earlier. As you can see, Big Blue has had all windows removed and chains run through the doors to keep them from bursting open. The front hood has a hole cut into it to allow the fire department ample access to put out any engine fires that may develop. I’m sniffing, as I know Big Blue looked so good for the debut, it’s a crying shame that the glory was denied my loyal automobile.

During my book revisions, I’ve been studying numerous editing articles on the internets. I want my book to conform to grammatical standards of some kind. I don’t think I’ve found my writing “special sauce” formula, exactly, but I’m learning everything I can get my hands on and doing what I can to craft my book into a finished piece that I’m satisfied with. As a result, I’m taking out books at random from my shelves, and when I encounter them in public, to study the composition.

At the grocery store I picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I’m not a fan of the books, but I figured this would be a good example to pick up and examine. Late in the series, the author should have everything about their special sauce figured out.  All the things I read about not doing are there. Passive voice, check. Heavy reliance on –ing verbs and –ly adverbs, check. Excessive use of “was” to be verb tense, check. Crumbs! This book violates just about every standard of editorial checking you could think of. Now, I’m not saying I’m any better – my own writing has needed some tough work to beat into shape. But it just goes toward proving my point that your success as a writer has much to do with luck, and little to do with standards of writing, talent, or what you write.

And, on a final note, I’ve been compiling a wish list for music to get a listen on. I’m still short two Lustmord albums, there’s that Skids album by the lead singer of Big Country, before he was the lead singer of Big Country, I’m hankering to get a hold of The Ocean Blue’s Cerulean, Concrete Blonde’s Walking In London, The Verve’s A Storm In Heaven, and of course Sia’s new album, whatever it’s called. I’m gathering soundtrack for book number 2, which will be digging deep into the ground for rocks and minerals to play with.

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Tue 9 Oct 2007

Night of the Extremely Rude Bill Collectors

Posted by laup under Backwater, Meditations, Outbreak, Random Encounters
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I’m at the workstation, doing my duties to mine the paycheck, when I get a call from K. Some lawyer woman called about it being vitally important I get back to her. Wouldn’t say what it was about, but that I should call. K referred the woman to my dad, thinking it was for him, since he actually deals with lawyers as president of the cluster association. He calls me next, saying its for me, and here’s the number. I’m like, whoa, what could be so important that I’m getting a call from a lawyer? I’m pretty sure I haven’t done anything out of the ordinary, so what gives?

So I call the “lawyer” woman up, and try to get the scoop. It’s not a “lawyer” at all, it’s some “representative” of so-and-so-services with a vague sounding name, and they are trying to get a hold of my neighbor, who lives at the end of the townhouse line. The tricksy slime ball of a woman deflects all my inquiries about what this is in regards to and who she is, and if I have any information about Mr. Next-door-neighbor-whoever, that would be appreciated. I’m like, Miss-whoever-you-are, I just moved into the neighborhood a few months ago, I don’t know anybody in my neighborhood yet! She sighs and suggests that I’m to blame for the loss of “close-knit” neighborhoods these days, and if I would only post-it her phone number or visit this person with a knocka-knock-knock at their door, that would be my good deed for the day. I’m like; “sure”, having been blathered as to what the blazes is going on.

I get home, and I look up the address the woman mentioned. Oh, that townhouse. I know for a fact no “Joe Whats-his-name” living there; it’s a nice family of people who certainly don’t look like fugitives. I talk with K and I come to the conclusion that I’m not helping this “woman” do squat. If it’s a mutha-scratchin’ emergency, she can call the cops. Even if “seemingly nice family” are a bunch of evil deadbeats, or if “Joe Whats-his-name” really does live there, or the names they gave me are false aliases, why on earth did I agree to help these monstrous bill-collectors do their stupid job? I’m not lifting a finger to help them, and they can, in the words of the Fonz, sit on it.

It’s an elementary truism that if you deceive someone, and they find out, they become unfriendly.

So I do jack squat, and I watch said family adopt a series of weird “dodging” behaviors. Getting up early and driving off as a family unit and not coming back until late at night. That kind of thing. So I guess they do owe money. But my thoughts are along the lines of, “That’s none of my damn business”, and why is some accursed bill collector company dragging me into the picture? I look it up on the internets, and I learn that it’s a standard bill collection procedure to call neighbors and get them to shame the deadbeats into paying up. The idea is that your neighbors cost you more face than talking to some loser on the phone. I can’t believe these shenanigans are legal. It’s between the parties involved, and dragging me (and who knows how many other dweebs) into the equation is about as discourteous as you can get.

I get another call from the bill collectors. They want to know if so-and-so neighbor’s car is in the parking lot. I get mad, so I start wasting their time. “What’s a Toyota look like?” That kind of thing. I want blood; this crosses the line of my privacy as an adult citizen of legal responsibility. They clue in and hang up. They don’t call me again.

I met the family at the grocery store the other day. I rapped with them and had a good laugh. Look like a nice bunch of people to me. I didn’t mention squat about the bill collectors. They could be the most evil bunch of deadbeats on the planet, but I’m on their side. Calling me and misrepresenting themselves? I’m wise to that now. I’ll never help the undead callers again, and I know the language codes now. They could have been honest; instead they tried to trick me. I won’t forget, or forgive that. I soiled my armor I was so scared! Now we hates them forever precious.

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Tue 2 Oct 2007

A Swiftly Declining Planet

Posted by laup under Meditations, Outbreak, The Book Mine
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My aunt gave me a hardcover copy of A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle way back around 1979, give or take a year. The one with the amazing cover by Leo and Diane Dillon. It’s been sitting in my massive spellbook collection for all this time. In the last ten years, it’s slowly made it’s way into my prime collection of must-haves, and I’ve been meaning to read it for a while. I picked it up and placed it in my read-pile, which meant at last its time had come! Then, a few days later, Madeleine L’Engle passes on and I say to myself, “Dang if that isn’t some kind of synchronicity.” So now I have to create a sacred space around me with no distractions and really read the mother-scratcher!

Spoilers follow, so if you aren’t ready to know the big secrets, best to scroll down before I tell you what goes down in the book. I’ve never read any other book by ML, so I’m going on what I read in the book without reference to any of her other works.

The plot is as follows: A mad South American dictator is threatening to launch atomic missiles at the united states, and all prospects for peace look bleak. It’s looking like atomic armageddon is about to take place and no one can do anything. Who will save us? Enter a family of good old American scientists having a nice white thanksgiving (the pivotal Native Americans in the book have been wiped out or assimilated in the soon-to-be-revealed past). The only characters you really have to remember are Charles and his older sister Meg. Meg is pregnant with her husband’s child, who is away on some conference having to do with science. Meg’s father is some super duper scientist who advises The President on science matters. In fact the supreme executive calls the guy up just to let him know The End is about to come unless Superma … sorry, unless something can be done. He doesn’t ask for advice on science, he just, you know, calls to chat during a national crisis because Meg’s father is that awesome.

The crummy old Mother-In-Law, who turns out to be the good-hat-masquerading-as-the-bad-hat makes some ridiculous magical jibber-jabber out of the blue and Charles decides he’s going to head on out into the freezing rain/snow to go to some rock to “listen” to the earth or whatever. Everyone is cool with this, because, you know, they are rational scientists who understand that things like cold and wetness can be overcome by repetitive arguments based on a hunch. Meg and Charles can communicate with each other by means of a special form of extra-sensory-perception known as “kything”, and so we get two stories at once – what Meg sees and does, and what Charles sees and does. Talk about multiple personality viewpoints!

Charles meets a unicorn with wings called Gaudior, who takes him on a journey through time and space to learn what pivotal moment led to the current threat of atomic annihilation, and hopefully change it. The bulk of the story is Charles going from place to place through time to learn the major players of the drama that has created this potential catastrophe. The “bad guys” are a bunch of spirits called the Echthroi who try to jack Charles and Gaudior’s efforts, either by separating them, or trapping them in alternate realities called “Projections”. See, the United Federation of Planets, err, Unicorns are concerned because if the Earth’s surface is covered in atomic radiation then the entire universe will be destroyed because the human race, especially the white part of humanity, are so important that all of creation will fall if Poindexter Q. Antwerp doesn’t buy his SUV the next day.

Okay, you can tell I wasn’t very impressed by the book, and am pretty much putting it down. I expected better and found the book a real letdown. Either that, or my friend Liephus has taught me too much critical thinking for my own good. There were some good things in the book, and those aspects I did enjoy very much. The part where Charles visits the planet of the unicorns is probably the highlight for me. Unicorns consuming moonlight and starlight, and Charles rolling in the snow and eating icky icicles to heal were just downright awesome. That’s what I’m down with. I thought that the “kything” idea was neat. The way that was portrayed really made me buy it, that Meg and Charles had this rapport transcending time and space. Totally cool. And the conversations between Gaudior and Charles about how time and space work were all fascinating to me. I love that kind of wordplay, it messes with your mind in a good way.

But, I got to say there were a lot more things that really annoyed me and shot the story down to the point where I was extremely bored. The main source of conflict, the unambiguous mad dictator from South America threatening the spotless and pure United States just galls me. It’s presented as a one-sided, stereotypical conflict just to ramp up fear, rather than the complicated mess it would be in real life. It’s just a McGuffin to provide an impetus for the hero/heroine to act. I think it was a mistake. Any one of the horrible things that happened in the past would have been preferable, simply because human everyday conflict is much more immediate and recognizable than an impersonal and contrived “world conflict”. That scene where “Chuck” gets his head bashed in had ten times more pathos than “nuclear doom part #286”.

Another thing that gets my goat is the “travel back in time to prevent Hitler” trope that’s been done to death. Traveling back in time to change the past so the future turns out the way you want is morally wrong, no matter how you slice it. Yes, Charles is saving the “planet”, but who gave him the right to make that decision? Starfleet? The Masters of the Universe? It’s easy to think about the millions of people who won’t die because history was changed, but what about the millions of people whose life Charles just erased because they never got to exist? Do those people not get a say now? It’s inhuman monstrosity of the worst order. Charles changes history so that the South American country is offering peace instead of war. Nothing is said of the consequences of that act. We never find out if the United States is now the one threatening war or what happened to all those people whose lives have now been rendered meaningless by tampering with time. Disgusting.

Then there’s the beef I have with the unicorns. Gaudior is a poor example of intergalactic mercy. He’s dense, impatient, and not particularly cooperative. I didn’t feel too good knowing that the Universe Nations sent a unicorn that wasn’t a paragon of intelligence and acuity for so vital a mission. I expected more from an “official” out of galactic central. I don’t know what to make of the multiple mentions of Gaudior’s “dangerous teeth”. I took that as hints that Gaudior was evil. This is the best the good guys could cough up? Give me Klaatu from The Day The Earth Stood Still, any day, please.

The Echthroi are “bad”, but I don’t see how. All they “do” is try to stop Charles and Gaudior from changing history, which to me is a “good” thing. We only have Gaudior’s word that these spirits are evil. For all we know the unicorns are the bad guys using Charles as their proxy to change history into a destructive endgame. It’s a problem that gets on my nerves, and it ruined the book for me. At the end, I felt that same gut-wrenching dread I felt at the end of the movie Back To The Future. Marty has preserved the present, but instead of maintaining the balance he has ended up with a timeline that serves only his crass desires. He has more “work” to do.

There are many fables and folklores about traveling through time. The message is always the same: Do it at your own risk. You may end up in a Qix Death Spiral, with the “spark” following you to a dead end of oblivion, while life continues on in a mainline time stream towards greater consciousness. Total respect to ML and her work, but I take this book as further proof we, as an experiment of nature, are not ready to travel through time wisely.

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Mon 1 Oct 2007

Back From The Boonies

Posted by laup under Announcements, Outbreak
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It’s now October, my favorite time of the year.  K and I retreated to one of our hiding places for a few days to recover our strength and reconnect with our vital energies.  Even though we’ve more or less beaten the bugs back to the Stone Age, the toll of the struggle, along with work and chore duties had really gotten us both off track.  It took being out in the wilderness, with a nice warm fireplace and ani-mani-mals with unrestricted access codes to the outdoors all around, to get the jibber-jabber out of our sensor arrays.

As far as anipals go, we saw lots of deer (use gentleness to heal those who need healing), a large hunting spider in our cabin (weaving the patterns of your life to catch opportunity), and even a bear made a brief appearance (use introspection to connect with your deepest layers of truth).  I’m sensing a pattern here.

The kitties were less than thrilled at eating out of timed relay dispensers and water dishes going for the long play.  They’re used to instant room service, you see.  But all was forgotten the moment we came back.  Nothing gets the kitties back on an even keel like a pair of devoted heating pads that deliver the goods when you need it.  Life is good for the little ragamuffins.

I also came back with a moleskinne full of thoughts, reflections, and some really far-out dreams.  I jotted down some topics for development and eventual posting here, and I ruminated over some revisions in the book that are still yet to come.  Oh yeah, that.  I’m 60% through the revisions, and I’ve been going over some candidate passages I’ll post here to satisfy your curiosity, perhaps even a full page, woo and hoo!

I’m excited.  This time of year, everything just becomes so interesting to me.  The weather starts to get milder, the psychology of people is in a transitive state, and the darker recesses of my brain stem start churning with ideas.  I definitely feel my Celtic roots responding to the wrap up of what has been a very tumultuous year.

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Wed 26 Sep 2007

Here Be Anipals

Posted by laup under Meditations, Outbreak, Random Encounters, Weirdie
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It’s early in the morning. I haven’t brought main power online yet, and the work patrol has yet to start. The coffee activator is only just manufacturing the reactor propellant that will kick-start my weary bones. Oh, crud! Trash day! That sound of machinery on the slow-monster march is the sanitation engineers tractor-beaming the week’s rubbish and conspicuous consumption for donation to the landfills for our future descendants to raid. I manage to do an emergency beam-out, flip flops in place of my shoes of doom, so maneuvers are at half impulse power. With seconds to spare, trash pick-up accomplished. I gather my handful of experience points and get back to business.

I’m closing the front door, when I see a fox casually walk out of the greenery across the street and head right for the place everyone puts their garbage. He sniffs the spot where the garbage was a minute ago, and I realize this scavenger does this as a regular circuit. The fox is just running late today, like me. The fox realizes someone is watching and looks up, spotting me. That fox kicks in the thrusters and walks on to the next waypoint, disappearing into the greenery ahead.

Now, I admit, I’m not exactly living in a concrete jungle here. The neighborhood is edged with trees and growth, so it’s perfectly feasible that animals can migrate from safe zone to safe zone, as long as they can navigate the occasional street crossing and don’t mind moving through the human neutral zone. But still, I’m a little surprised to see there’s a local fox. What else is moving about? Your pets roam at their own risk, sheesh!

So I’m on the couch, reading, with an afternoon view of my back porch. K and I have a number of cacti, moonflowers, cardinal creepers, wild mint, mosses, and ferns growing on the porch. More civilization training, you understand. All of a sudden, I see a hummingbird make a refueling run at what must be like a fully stocked, free gas station of flowers. I barely have time to let K know (she had never seen one before), when another hummingbird joins in the pit stop. Now that’s a first for me now, I’ve never seen more than one hummingbird, so it’s double bonus!

The two hummingbirds helicopter around from flower to flower until they’ve gone through each blossom, and then they head over to the neighbor’s yard. There are only some mundane houseplants without flowers, and I can almost hear them say “Rip-off!” They hit the warp drive and zoom out of sight. I tabulate up some experience points for keeping the hummingbird starbase open with my relentless watering and fertilizer efforts. Yeah, it’s all good.

Nighttime. I’m in the kitchen preparing a snack when I notice that it smells like skunk. Frankie freaks out and rushes up to the window. She meows the red alert and looks down at the bushes under our kitchen window. I stare in confusion for a moment, and then it dawns on me. Well, it must be skunk! I open the front door and whoosh! There’s some serious skunk smell coming from the bushes, and I hear a weird chirping noise. Whoa! Evasive maneuvers babykins! Door slams shut, and Frankie runs around like it’s a full-fledged invasion!

K asks me what that smell is and when I tell her she has to see for herself. Yo ho ho and a bottle of scum! Keep in mind the smell is so strong, you can smell it through a closed window! Must be a crack in the wall or something, phew! K thinks it’s hilarious. Luckily, the smell gradually fades and by morning only a lingering pee-yew smell remains. But every now and then I catch a whiff, so I know that culprit is in the neighborhood. I suppose the little rascal was just welcoming us to the neighborhood!

So I look up my tried and true copy of Medicine Cards, and according to this interpretation of Native American traditions, fox stands for camouflage (learn to observe from hiding), hummingbird stands for joy (embrace beauty and happiness), and skunk stands for reputation (project self-respect). Good lessons to keep in mind in this day and age!

It also occurs to me that the animals are all around us as we speak. The anipals and their daily rounds intersect with ours all the time, and we may not know it! Listen to what the anipals may be telling you. You can never have too many friends, either of the two-legged, four-legged, eight-legged, or winged variety. In the so-called “rational” territories, they need contact with us to stay whole, and we need their guidance to skirt the jackbots. They don’t need domestication (we have pets, special elite corps of human-contact volunteers for that), they need taming, which as you all know, means “to establish ties with”.

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Sun 23 Sep 2007

More Menegerie For Total Reading Pleasure

Posted by laup under Comic Books, Gardening, Meditations, Movie Madness, Outbreak
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I think the “cold” war has been won. The germs are giving up the ghost to the combined pesto-pasta and tomato slice beatdown with a dram of fresh squeezed orange juice. Both K and I appear to be improving rapidly, and are getting main power back. We spent the weekend catching up on life patrol and the maintenance of our Slack pool.

She bought herself some new jeans, as her current selection was getting beyond threadbare and the ability for the astronautics fields via sewing to repair. I spotted for some Halloween goodies, as I think this will be a Celtic New Year where I have the motivation to actually dress up. I’m going to be Bloody Gore Face! Aieee! We also got ourselves a new futon, as the previous one had decided it just didn’t have the will to go on anymore. To recap, clothes, decorations and a good night’s sleep vitaly important to well-being. I see my Sims bars going up now. All about the tyranny of objects drill sergeant!

Long range patrol even brought back some fascinating tidbits from the internets for me to mull over. The uncommonly cool Designated Sidekick is doing a survey on what people want from their comics. I took the survey (it’s a long one), and have to say it was informative just considering the questions. I want sex and violence in my comics, and the mask is a must-have, but I’m more interested in believability and consistency than what superheroes are wearing or that the leaders of a team always have a certain quality. I think it’s ultimately neat that such questions are even being examined now, by someone, rather than relying on the good old staples. The bronze, silver and gold ages of comics are over. Now it’s time to get busy!

Some aliens on other planets are just plain disturbing to my sensibilities, but good grief, bless them for keeping the universe alive! I’d just gotten done talking about Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man, and that movie’s musical oddness. Well my science officer told me over in the Occasional Superheroine galaxy, there was a sensor reading of Christopher Lee sings. From an 80’s movie called The Return of Captain Invincible. Dear, sweet baby yeh-seus, I gained some Insanity points. Oh, can’t wait to see this one in its entirety. Christopher Lee certainly has lived a fascinating life!

Meanwhile, back at the bat-garden, the tomatoes continue to go down. The marinara sauce is on back order now, so it’s smooth sailing. But I don’t think we’ll be getting too many more tomatoes out of the deal. Maybe the last wave in the next two weeks, but then that’s it. The herbs are all going to flower, and it’s gotten harder to harvest them regularly. farming isn’t just growing and harvesting, it’s also preserving and storing them properly. The Jalapeno plant refuses to give up, however, and this brave little plant is putting forth a nice juicy array of peppers that are all turning red now. Wow, love to ya, little plant. You go!

We did the fertilizer thing, did some weeding, though the pesky weeds have free run of the place. Too many orcs for this tag team to take on. We’re going to have to call in the garden weasel or something. A huge wolf spider jumped out of its burrow, deciding that the watering was not to its liking and ran for the storm shelter. Sheesh, talk about what big fangs you have! Which brought me to thinking about how K and I have been battling a lot of spiders lately.

A host of them have been running loose in large numbers on the bottom floor. Even the cats, who do cave cricket patrol, leave them alone. I’ve had to squash these intruders, because I resent having my body turned into an emergency liquid nutrient supply when the lesser insects get overwhelmed. And man, reddish translucent scary spiders (Gnaphosids?), brown nasty hairy biters (Sac Spiders?), and even a few large rapid-moving wolf-like spiders (Wandering Spiders?). What, did I just enter a sequel to The Giant Spider Invasion?

Love that movie. Great late night show for a kid to watch and get scared out of his wits! Special guest stars are Alan Hale Jr., also known as “The Skipper” from Gilligan’s Island, and Leslie Parrish, also known as the inspiration for Richard Bach’s soulmate novel The Bridge Across Forever and the crewmember who decides to go with Khan in the Star Trek episode where Ricardo Monteban tries to kill Kirk with his “genetic super-soldier” army. Both Alan and Leslie are outstanding avatars of cultural development in The Giant Spider Invasion.

I will note that the main female character, a scientist played by Barbara Hale, survives in the movie. I attribute this to her having a pair of pants on at all times. The women who run around without any pants on do not fare so well, as you can see in the trailer. Remember, being a sexy woman in a movie nearly always equals death, injury or unconsciousness! Well, at least there’s a cheesy giant spider wrecking havoc in downtown that looks suspiciously like a modified VW bug. You get your culture points where you can get ’em!

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Thu 20 Sep 2007

Let’s See What’s On The Slab

Posted by laup under Comic Books, Gameplay, Meditations, Movie Madness, Music Quest, Outbreak
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I’ve been revisiting some of my favorite goodies in the Slack menagerie, and I figured I might pass them along to some of you looking for Scooby clues to your own personal mystery. I’m something of an explorer junkie, and I get a thrill out of finding new and exciting things that delight me. I have a certain rarefied taste for the weird, the exotic, the forgotten, and the “snake fingers”. Or at least I tell myself I do!

There’s an artist named Eric Shanower, who is doing a comic book adaptation of the Trojan War, called Age of Bronze. When he completes a story arc, it gets published in a graphic novel (I’m sorry, “trade paperback”) form by Image Comics. Two of the seven volumes, A Thousand Ships and Sacrifice are out now, and the third volume is coming out by the end of this year. I’m getting the shakes just thinking about it.

The writing and the artwork are nothing short of stunning. Eric has studied his subject well, and he manages to make the culture and the historical events come alive in a way I’ve never quite seen before. Every character comes across so you know who they are, and what part they are playing. The clothes, the weapons, the intrigues and customs are so fascinating, I can’t pull away. I highly recommend anyone who loves ancient cultures, epic stories, or human drama pick this up. The realism and the believability are very high. The sex and violence are handled very well, played out as matter-of-fact experiences suitable to the era. There are no cheap thrills here.

Two things really move me about the series. One is the way in which the “gods” are handled. When it comes to the supernatural, dreams become messages from the Gods, centaurs and nymphs are a particular type of people studying a certain kind of craft, and storms become visible manifestations of a deity’s divine disfavor. It’s all in their heads, but the psychic influence is very real. The characters in the story come in all shapes and sizes of “belief”, but they all accept the supernatural as a given explanation for anything beyond their immediate psychological experience. It reminds me of the closeness of aboriginal peoples to the unconscious, and yet these are all characters who are setting down one of the foundations of western culture. It’s fascinating.

The other thing that moves me is the way in which the story makes the Trojan War accessible and interesting. I just haven’t had an interest in reading about the Trojan War, even though it’s something that is set down as a classic of “literature”, simply because nothing hooked me about it. But this stuff is awesome. Eric’s writing manages to juggle dozens of names, kingdoms, and events and keep them down-to-earth and understandable. You want to know about these people, because you become invested in their stories, from the problems of King Agamemnon, to the destiny of Achilles and the hubris of Paris, it’s captivating in a way that makes history (such as we know of it) fun and exciting.

In case you haven’t guessed, I’m a “gamer”. I have a lot of hours of the roleplaying game culture under my belt, some of it productive, some of it not so much. Right now, there’s an independent movement in the roleplaying game community, and it’s producing some of the best gameplay and theory I’ve ever seen. While the big models lose money and produce increasingly meaningless drivel, creator-owned and developed games are hitting the market from left field in a way that is exciting and amazing.

One of the games from this fertile field is Lumpley’s Dogs In The Vineyard. You play the watchdogs of God in a wild west that never was. Essentially, you are traveling witch hunters who deliver the mail, lend a hand in the community, and purge the faithful of their demons and sin. The background is some of the most awesome stuff I’ve ever read in a roleplaying game. The rules are pretty simple; you have a character sheet of “traits” that measure how much narrative control you have over conflicts. When there’s a conflict, everyone rolls dice and describes how they bring their traits into the fray. The dice are used like cards in a series of “raises” and “sees”, until somebody runs out of luck and has to give. The game can be played in four hours and tossed aside, or played for long-term character development.

The gamemaster is a just another “player”, and the group has to collaboratively create the game’s story as it moves along. There’s no “prep”, really. You make up characters, the gamemaster makes up a few proto-NPCs and a basic town structure, and everything gets created as the play moves along. Players are expected to be effective and win, and the gamemaster is not allowed to have an outcome in mind. The challenge is in coming up with conflicts that escalate out of control so that when the players get to decide the outcome, they have to decide if it’s worth the cost.

What I like about this game is how the focus is all about the moral decisions of the players. People do the unexpected, and the story can change at a moment’s notice. At the end of it I’m exhausted and exhilarated. You can play with timing and effects so that the conflicts work out in amazing ways, giving the group a lot of freedom to decide on outcomes that make sense and are cool. You don’t sit there and expect the gamemaster to entertain you, or lead you along a story they’ve already written with a few “yes” and “no” answers along the way. I haven’t felt this hopeful and delighted about gaming since 1987. It’s an explosion of creative energy.

There was a remake of The Wicker Man, starring Nicholas Cage, which probably has to be one of the funniest crummy movies I’ve seen in a while. It made me go back and watch the original starring Christopher Lee (You know, the dude that played Saruman in that horrible Two Towers gorefest) and Britt Ekland (Who played the “Bond girl” Mary Goodnight from The Man With The Golden Gun, which also, maybe not-so-coincidentally starred Christopher Lee). I also cracked out the CD and listened to the music from the film. Crumbs, its all evidence supporting Gore Vidal’s contention that good movies only get made by accident in the “entertainment industry”. Or maybe it was an accident that this movie slipped through the cracks in the mid-seventies and was made at all. The story of how the movie survived is worth reading about.

If you haven’t seen it, an English policeman comes to an isolated island off the coast to investigate the disappearance of a young girl named Rowan Morrison. Lord Summerisle (played by Christopher Lee), the local aristocrat, runs the island. The town’s source of wealth is a yearly harvest of apples. The policeman finds that nobody knows who the girl is, and that everyone practices a form of paganism based on the old traditions of their ancestors. The policeman is a deeply devout Christian, so he soon comes into conflict with the island inhabitants. Despite the uncooperative nature of the townsfolk and Lord Summerisle, the policeman learns that last year’s harvest failed and in a few days the missing girl will be sacrificed to restore the fertility of the apple orchards!

There’s a sinister aspect to the townsfolk, and yet they are all very musically inclined. Many people who watch this horror classic are stunned to encounter the musical numbers of this film, and the context in which they are presented. The musicians who worked on the soundtrack were pure talent, and have crafted some memorable numbers. From “The Landlord’s Daughter” sung by the men in the pub to honor the gifts of Venus, to the tense fear of “Chop Chop” as the townsfolk place their heads one by one in a circle of intertwined swords, hoping the Hobby Horse doesn’t choose their head. You will certainly laugh at the fiddle work of the “Maypole”. The pagan version of sex-education is, well, original I suppose.

The reason to check it out is because there’s nothing else like it. The movie stands on it’s own as a unique work of art never to be repeated. It really is one of the best horror movies ever made, with the theme of personal and group ignorance at the end haunting you in a way that won’t let you sleep at night. The town and it’s inhabitants have to be seen to be believed, and Christopher Lee gives what is probably, and rightly so if it is, the best performance of his entire career as Lord Summerisle. Brrr.

In any musical genre there’s the dross mixed in with the gold. I have a hard time finding a dark ambient artist that tops the spectral atmospheres and cavernous sensations of Lustmord. The entire catalog of this artist is showing up on Soleilmoon, and I’ve been snapping them up as I get the bonus warp power from my engineer.

I came across some scattered MP3s that friends had on their memory sticks and I was like, “whoa”. My tastes are really weird and unpredictable, and part of that combination involves music that I can space out to, relax with, and go into deep imaginations with. So when I heard the landscapes of a couple of tracks off of Stalker and Where the Black Stars Hang, I had to see for myself if the rest was any good.

Well, save for Metavoid, I have yet to be disappointed. The aural landscapes Lustmord paints are dark, threatening, and deep. It’s like going into the depths of Loch Ness and touching the slimy back of something alive, encountering the monolith of 2001: A Space Odessey, or traveling through the secret tunnels of the Great Pyramid and witnessing a rite never seen by outsiders. You can’t help but walk away from these soundscapes and feel stunned. Gotta love it! I’ve still got a few left to snatch up, and am looking forward to further journeys into the unknowable that Lustmord makes possible.

But don’t take my word for it, scare these goodies up in your online search and see what other people have to say. It’s all about the lucky coincidence. These veins of mithril found me, maybe they’ll find you!

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Mon 17 Sep 2007

The Alliance and The Shadows Work At The Same Bank

Posted by laup under Meditations, Outbreak, Tell-a-vision
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Today is K’s birthday. Happy Birthday, K! Yesterday, K’s father and brother came by to pay tribute, and she raked in the goods. One of those goods was Season 2 of Babylon 5, which I ended up watching six episodes of while convalescing on the couch. Garden tomatoes and yummy sweet-basil pesto pasta with grapefruit juice to wash it down. Die cold germs, die!

If you haven’t ever watched the show, in a nutshell Babylon 5 (or B5 for short) is a science fiction show based around a space station, built in “neutral space” as a diplomatic meeting point for the star-faring “races” of the galaxy. The five major military powers, of which the human race is a member, and the numerous minor military powers, known as the “league of non-aligned worlds” (or pawns of the other imperialistic powers in diplomatic-speak) scheme and plot with or against one another in a series of intrigues and, occasionally, settle their differences with violent means. The show has an ensemble cast, made up of the usual assortment of military and governmental main characters, with a host of supporting characters drawn from the civilian side for variety. The main plot revolves around the reappearance of an old military power (called “the shadows”, also known as the generic “bad invaders”) and its attempts to dominate and subjugate everybody else.

Watching the show, I can’t help but analyze its particulars in light of where I’m at these days. K got Season 1 for Christmas, so we watched that right in the midst of the beginning of the year in a different mindset then we are in now. Crumbs, this year’s been pretty intense stuff, what with the move and both our work transformations. I’ll have to go back and watch the season again and see what my brain currents think of it now.

What struck me about Season 2, and the show in general, is what a mixed bag it is for me now. A lot of things still hold up for me, and a lot of the episodes are wonderful escapism. I never get tired of the attempt at a moral center, as ham-fisted as it sometimes. The dialogue moves me despite being obvious exposition-train (choo-choo!) in places. The special effects are at times poor, but I don’t care. They do what they’re supposed to do. There’s a lot the show gets right, and so I don’t mind the flaws so much. It delivers.

But two things bugged me, and I’m musing over how those things fit in with the rest of the show.

The first thing is the diversity meter. At times, the show gives me a variety of points of view and a good mix of characters from different backgrounds. But there are moments where I find myself looking at a disguised version of the all-white power bloc known as “the homo sapiens club”. You have all sorts of exotic and interesting aliens in outer space, but the majority of the action centers around the “human” team and their challenges. That’s when the diversity meter starts making a warbling noise and I go, “Now what’s all this then?”

That “human” team in B5 is the station general crew, and it’s a reasonably diverse bunch of characters. There’s the chief medical officer, Dr. Stephen Franklin, a black “foundationist” (a particular belief system in the B5 world) with a strong will. You have the chief of security, Michael Garibaldi, an ex-catholic and recovering alcoholic from an Italian background. There’s second-in-command Susan Ivanova, a strong female character from a Jewish and Russian background. And the commander of the station, John Sheridan, your generic hero white guy. It’s a reasonable mix of people with different points of view, both with strengths and weaknesses. Totally good to go.

The “human” team doesn’t exclude the aliens by any means, and as the series progresses the cooperation between humans and aliens increases (in response to the outside, overwhelming threat posed by “the shadows”). The aliens have their own impressive story lines and are necessary to the success of the “team”. But I can’t help but feel there’s something to the decision to make the “human” team the core of the series’ point-of-view. At the end, it’s clear that the aliens are all on the decline and it’s the humans who are going to be the dominant decision-makers in the future, now that the “bad” Earth government has been disposed of. The Minbari are going to throw their chips in with the humans, the Narn and Centauri are spent, the uppity Drazi have been foiled, and the Vorlons and “shadows” are out of the picture. That leaves the humans as the dominant military power, I’m sorry, “rangers”, watching over everyone with a blue gemstone brooch instead of a Nightwatch armband.

The second thing is a trait that’s starting to get on my nerves in science fiction shows, what I call the “authority privilege”. That’s where the majority of the important decision-making and story development is reserved for military and governmental characters. Civilians get a supporting role or a guest-star appearance as a plot enabler if they even show up at all. It’s okay, though, because these authorities are “the good people”, or they are “the effective people”. But I have to say, I found the secondary or supporting characters more interesting precisely because they were lower on the totem pole. They were more limited, and thus more “humanized”.

B5 is cool in that there are at least some characters that represent working class, ordinary people with no positions of authority. There’s even an episode devoted exclusively to a pair of maintenance guys and their everyday schedule keeping the station running. The show doesn’t shy away from real issues – the dockworker strike, the Mars independence rebellion, and the ongoing portrayal of the destitute downbelow of the station tackle a lot of things worth thinking about. I may be unfair to single out B5 in this post as a culprit, especially since other shows like the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica are much worse offenders, but it’s where I decided to meditate on the issue as it relates to my enjoyment of shows in general.

I realize it’s hard to have people like plumbers or checkout counter clerks have any kind of influence on a story involving interplanetary wars and imperial intrigue. There’s no way any “average person” is going to be able to command the resources of say, Head of Security, or Narn Ambassador. The fighter pilot Warren Keffer or security guard Zack Allan are probably as low on the scale as you could get and still have a viable connection to the main storyline. The fact that B5 did it at all is a good thing, but I’d like to see more. It can be done, and it should be done more. A true ensemble would have a majority of average people and a minority of power brokers, I think.

What I’d like shows in general, and SF shows in particular, to do is move away from a “the only people who get to matter are the elites and their butlers” syndrome. Yeah, I can easily envision class hierarchy existing way into the future. Even Star Trek was a pyramid system, for all the professions that they had “eliminated aggression, crime and want” (probably by subjugating everyone to “da uniform with a comlink” model of good citizenship). Just like I’m tired of seeing “whitey” get to be the guys who get the best rayguns and make all the cool decisions most of the time, I’m tired of seeing “the master” get to assign seats and make people walk the plank without any visible input or relationship to the people they supposedly are assuming the horrible burden of “real showers and ungrateful complaints” for.

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