Same as the others, but I’m not posting the rules this time. If you care, you already know what the rules are.
My answers to Ed Gyles Jr.’s questions beneath the fold.
Continue reading Five Question Meme — Answers for Ed Gyles Jr.
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Who Wants to be a Superhero: Feedback
If you know anything at all about the Sci Fi Channel’s series, Who Wants to be a Superhero, you know that the prize for winning is a comic book featuring the winning character, and an appearance in a Sci Fi Channel original movie. Last year’s winner was the pretty nifty Feedback (pictured here), and I know that I wasn’t the only one looking forward to a Feedback movie. Of course, it was going to be a Sci Fi Channel original movie, so there was never any doubt that it would be an awful movie, but we were expecting something.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, the Sci Fi Channel aired Megasnake, about a giant snake that goes around and eats people; it was a plot that could have come straight from my Sci Fi Channel Original Movie Generator, and it was predictably awful. It was advertised, though, as featuring Feedback, so I was at least a little excited. "Yay!" I thought. "Here’s the Feedback movie! Feedback fights a giant snake!"
What happened? He got a two minute cameo toward the end of the movie. And he wasn’t even Feedback; he was Matthew Atherton playing Feedback, and instead of fighting a giant snake, he was giving a lecture on electrical safety to a crowd of children.
For this I sat through two hours of a horrid movie? (Well, only ninety minutes; to be honest, we remembered the movie was on about half an hour in, and didn’t stress missing anything; these movies are nothing if not predictable).
There are a lot of people who are annoyed about this. Feedback himself has expressed some disappointment that this was the movie appearance that had been promised to him and to his fans. The forums on the Sci Fi Channel’s website are aflame with annoyed fans (not to mention the people calling for the immediate cancellation of Flash Gordon). And there’s even an online petition dedicated to convincing the Sci Fi Channel to follow through with a bit more. I don’t personally believe that such a petition will do any good, but I don’t believe that the executives at the Sci Fi Channel actually pay any attention to what their viewers say.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with: that they just don’t listen. How else can you call yourself a "science fiction channel" and not be aware that you’re a laughing stock within the genre community?
Five Question Meme – Answers for Eternalnomad7
Rules of the Meme:
1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance,like a lyric to your current favorite song, or your favorite kind of sandwich, maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your blog or LiveJournal with the answers to the questions.
Optional:
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.
My answers to the questions I received from EternalNomad7 beneath the fold.
Continue reading Five Question Meme – Answers for Eternalnomad7
Who Wants to be a Superhero (Season 2) – Week 6 Reactions
I’m sorry I never got around to writing up about last week’s episode. That life thing, you know, it just gets in the way sometimes. Anyway, week six spoilers ahoy, so if you haven’t seen week 6, don’t read below the fold.
Continue reading Who Wants to be a Superhero (Season 2) – Week 6 Reactions
Five Question Meme – Answers for Outlaw
Rules of the Meme:
1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance,like a lyric to your current favorite song, or your favorite kind of sandwich, maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your blog or LiveJournal with the answers to the questions.
Optional:
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.
My answers to the questions I received from Outlaw beneath the fold.
Quote of the Day
Via Slacktivist:
I believe in the power of prayer. And part of what I believe in is that, through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control. Most of the issues that we’re debating here today are ones that we have the power to change. We don’t have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn’t going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma. We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we’ve got a sound emergency plan. And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that’s what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government. We’ve got to express those values through our government, not just through our religious institutions.
Senator Barack Obama
This was from a recent debate where one fellow emailed in a question about whether the candidates thought that the "power of prayer" could have prevented tragedies like the collapse of the Minnesota bridge. Obama, in my opinion, answered that question in the only sensible way possible: bridge collapses and mine cave-ins are not of God’s doing, nor are they necessarily of Man’s doing. It’s in our response to those disasters that defines us, and it’s our prayers and our faith that give us the strength to respond to those disasters.
I’ve been kind of lukewarm on Obama (he seems like an upright guy, but the fact that he wants to be President automatically makes him dangerously suspect in my book), but this makes me warm up to him just a little.
Five Question Meme – Answers for Satyr
Rules of the Meme:
1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance,like a lyric to your current favorite song, or your favorite kind of sandwich, maybe your favorite game. Any remark, meaningless or not.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your blog or LiveJournal with the answers to the questions.
Optional:
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.
My answers to the questions I received from Satyr beneath the fold.
Writerly Update, Ruminations on the Muse
I added 1,221 words to The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster, which I think is a respectable output for a non-NaNoWriMo day. The trouble I’m having with things right now is that the narrative is demanding that some of my characters be given more scenes, and I’m perfectly happy to oblige; however, this doesn’t really fit in with the structure I’ve developed for the novel, what with its four different viewpoint characters and a pretty balanced distribution of POV scenes.
In her blog, Ray Solberg wrote about mugging her muse to get some work done, and that made me think about muses in general. Every now and then I like to ask my writer friends about their muses. So, if you have a muse, what is your muse like? Is she like a fairy, all graceful and delicate like a delicate nymph of old, prone to bouts of hyperproductive bouts of inspiration interspersed with bouts of bulimia? Or something less poetic?
My own muse hasn’t changed. He’s still a big, smelly troll who lives in the basement, wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that’s way too small so that his belly hangs out, sprawled on the couch in front of the television, munching down Doritos and beer. He belches a lot. He farts. He scratches his butt and picks at his ears. I don’t know him to have ever brushed his teeth.
He has changed. Used to be, his T shirts were a rotation of band shirts — Styx, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, and the like. Now it’s a selection of geek-themed shirts like you’d get at Think Geek, even if he wouldn’t know a SQL query from a keyboard. When I go into the basement to beg for an idea, he’s as likely to throw a wad of day old pizza at me as he is an actual, usable idea. He shouts out ideas and thoughts and profanities like Father Jack in Father Ted. I avoid my muse as much as possible.
His name, by the way, is Berthold. The "th" is pronounced like a hard "t". Bertold. Don’t ask me way.
What’s your muse like, if you have one?
Another Brave Soldier Fallen
Now, I know that the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is a cause of joy to all patriotic Americans who love their country, but I admit I’m a little sad. It’s not just that it’s inevitable that Bush will replace him with someone who’s just as committed to putting politics over law (ideally someone who has already fouled up one Federal agency and has been rejected by the Republican Senate twice on grounds of incompetency), or that Gonzales’s departure probably won’t help bring the rest of the administration to justice.
No, it’s that the man was such a master of comedy, bringing an almost dada-esque level of absurdity to an administration that has gotten so weird that parodying it is, frankly, impossible (it’s like trying to spoof Monty Python; you just can’t parody parody). Who can forget classic exchanges like this:
GONZALES: I clarified that question with the reporters.
SENATOR: So what, exactly, did you tell the reporters?
GONZALES: I didn’t talk to the reporters.
SENATOR: Okay. So what did your spokesperson tell the reporters?
GONZALES: I don’t know.
Only Gonzales could deliver that kind of dialog with the proud smirk that said, "I’m untouchable and you know it, so bite on that, losers!" I think that what Congress failed to understand was that Gonzales was an underappreciated master of absurd whimsy.
Perhaps the government’s loss will be the Improv’s gain. I’d bet that Gonzales will show up on Whose Line Is It, Anyway?
Of course, Fred Clarke over at Slacktivist raises some interesting questions as well. Like the so-called "Liar’s Paradox": If Alberto Gonzales says he retires, can we believe him? Or, can Alberto Gonzales make a rock so big that even he can’t pretend it isn’t there?
ARGH!
It seems that every single geek oriented podcast I listen to as well as every single geek oriented blog I read is all a-twitter over Dragon*Con. For days my Twitter feed has been full of people posting messages about how they’re packing for Dragon*Con, setting up book signings for Dragon*Con, arranging panels for Dragon*Con, or just planning on all the parties they’re going to go to at Dragon*Con. It’s like they’re rubbing my face in the fact that the housing market in Sacramento tanked approximately three hours after we bought our new house, and now no one wants to buy our old one, so we can’t afford to go this year. And this year’s chock-full of great guests, including Feedback and Major Victory! Dammit. Stupid economy and its burst bubbles.
Well, to all those who are going, I hope you have a splendid time, and that you die in a fire.
(Oh, and 2,035 words added to The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster over the past three days. Over 50% of them were original to this draft, too!)