Link to the Weekend #3

Sorry haven't posted anything this week, have some ramblings to throw on paper, but work was a little bit hectic and didn't find the time. However, as Friday has struck us once again a creeping lack of motivation has crawled into and dominated the office. Everyone, including myself, is far more interested in pretending to be busy until we can go home then getting any legitimate work done.

If only they'd been gunned down these two could have been Darwin award nominees:

• Bank Robbers Call Ahead
  

More proof Facebook is trying to systematically destroy human civilization

• Facebook Scapegoats

New Swiss sci-fi movie called 'Cargo'. Caught the trailer of it and then lost it, luckily I found it here on a site that I can actually access from work. It looks pretty epic for a film shot with about half the budget of District 9 (which was awesome) or Paranormal Activities (which sucked).

• Cargo Trailer

And on a similiar line as 'Cargo', all the talk of Aliens and the new Predators movie eventually led me to this: a lovable childrens classic which I really wish I could have had as a kid :)

• Alien Vs. Pooh

And finally...

• The Most Badass Alphabet in existence

Your Link to the Weekend #2

A little sparse this week, but I took a couple days off in the middle of the week, so spent less time surfing shit and more time recovering from the copious consumption of green beer.

A complete chronology of all the swear words in The Sopranos.
http://victorsolomon.com/get-weird/sopranos-uncensored/

Nationalism and Anti-Americanism in Japan (J-Pop to J-racist)
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Matthew-Penney/3116

Square Root of Love
http://spikedmath.com/047.html

Post Secret – I honestly can’t believe that I never heard of this sooner.
http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

“McSweeney’s Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond” – This is an oldy, but a goody…something to fluff out the list.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/openletters/

I linked to it in a previous post, but thought I'd put it back up here. A new webseries called "I Hit it With My Axe" combines two of my favorite things: D&D and Porn.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/tag/i+hit+it+with+my+axe

I am the night...

The above may be one of the most awesomerest pictures in all of history.

So I was informed that the series Smallville was originally supposed to be called ‘Bruce Wayne’. The pitch was apparently to follow young master Wayne as he travels the world and learns the secrets and techniques he would someday use when he dons the cowl of the Dark Knight. I would have been ONE HUNDRED PERCENT behind this show. A lot more then the Superman concept that followed it, a hell of a lot more actually…’Meh’ was in fact my original reaction to hearing about Smallville.

I find the idea of watching the ultimate boy scout of the DC universe boring to say the least. However, a lot of people I know seem to really dig the show. So, despite my misgivings, I tried it out anyway. Low and behold, I was right.

It’s a gimmick, an advertisement where we are supposed to act awed and surprised when his powers are revealed one by one. Meeting his future allies and enemies isn’t any better either.

Featuring other comic heroes in Smallville actually serves to discredit them, it robs them of their stories. All of a sudden, their own interesting and diverse back stories are stripped away as they now all of a sudden revolve around Kent. It turns them from free agents with common ideals that will someday align to form the Justice League into followers who just went along with what Superman did. That second dynamic being totally retarded in my mind, not interesting or intriguing in the slightest.

Now, while I’m certain show execs would have very likely turned the Bruce Wayne show into something very similar, it had a lot more potential. I think it had a far greater chance of, if they did (and probably would), introduce other DC heroes: they would have had a much higher chance of maintaining that ‘free agents’ thing. Batman was never a great leader, though he did admittedly start to attract a lot of followers by the power of his ideals. Batman’s force of personality would have definitely influenced and maybe inspired the others, but other heroes wouldn’t have become ‘followers’ like it seems Smallville has turned them into.

Bruce Wayne also would have had the potential of being darker then Smallville can ever be. Superman is an unwavering moral compass. He sees the world in black and white the same way Ma & Pa Kettle brought him up to. Batman always walked in the gray, of all the heroes that stood to fall from grace, he has walked that Sherlock Holems / Moriarty line closer than anyone.

That chance of him turning into the very evil he fights would be great fodder for writers.

On a slightly more irreverent note: A daily dose of awesome. I came across this: a combination of two of the things I hold most dear. Porn and D&D.

A re-commitment to myself (forced on me by other people)

Officially cold-turkey off coffee as of – 0845 AM
Officially lapsed from my cold turkey coffee – 0856 AM
Officially back on the wagon and off coffee – 0857 AM
Officially back OFF the wagon and robbing a stage coach – 0859 AM
Officially, for serious you guys, off coffee as of – 0900 AM

So yeah…I’m off coffee, I’m off juice, I’m off soda (actually I’ve been off soda since 2005). I am only drinking water. I’m also working out three-four times a day and spending at least a half hour in the sauna.

Why? Well, in part because my job requires it…In part because I’m being compelled to against my will. In fact I’m planning on telling people it’s my own idea though. This last part is bullshit.

As of this morning I was told I have about five weeks to get in great shape, or at least make VAST strides in that direction. Why? Well, my job wants to send me to these Instructor Training courses, and to go there you have to maintain a certain appearance. That appearance evidently is not 6’0” and 265lbs. So I’m off to try to put off as much weight as I can in about five-six weeks. Even if I’m not shedding pounds I’d at least like to be putting on muscle. I think somewhere in the middle is a realistic goal.

This has been something I should have actually been dealing with a long time ago. When I first moved to San Diego last summer, between the fresh slate I had and the gorgeous weather I felt a great drive to try to kick my ass into shape. I was bicycling to and from work every day, I was going to Boxing classes, I was taking time to go to the gym almost every day. So what happened? Like any mercurial force like my drive, it was eventually subject to the tides of time, and was swept out as one by one my efforts were cracked.

Well, my knee is REALLY bothering me, so I’ll just take a day off to see that I don’t push it too hard. I have been hitting it pretty hard today; I think I deserve a day off. Screw that, I don’t want to go work out; I’ve got the next disc of ‘Rome’ to get through.

I have no one to blame but myself, and no one really is in a position to blame me because. Well, and now I’m going to possibly lose credibility by making this sound REALLY personal: It’s NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS. If I want to be fat and happy that’s my prerogative. Just like if I want to spend the entirety of my weekend drinking whiskey and having unprotected sex with other equally foolish, though consenting and of-age adults, that is also my choice. Not healthy or smart, and I may be paying for it (figuratively and literally) for potentially up to eighteen years or whenever the mistake that forms is kicked out of the house.

On the flip side of this, while it’s in my complete civil rights to say “No, fuck that!” and then walk out. I don’t really want to. I LIKE my job, and with the economy in the shitter like it is, it’s not like I have too many options. So, I’m off to run my ass off. Maybe do some Pilates too. We’ll have to see.

Link to the Weekend #1

Here are some cool things I came across this week as a bridge for you between the last boring, tedious, hellish hours of work and the glorious freedoms that the Weekends bestow upon us all. Hopefully this shit will help you kill time...it did for me!

A Star Wars take on a classic children's book:
http://www.dzignspace.com/goodnight/

MacBook Impossible:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/acrobatic_thieves_hit_nj_best.html

Does this remind anyone else of the Roach-drone spy thing from the Fifth Element?
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/March/Pages/BackpackWearingCockroaches.aspx

Woohoo! Join in on the plague of the 21st century! (turn off sound if your boss is nearby, you won't miss anything...just a bunch of growling. Did I mention this has zombies?)
http://www.class3outbreak.com/zombie-outbreak-simulator/

It's not gay if its Dinosaurs...(Documentary video)
http://tv.gawker.com/5484963/the-discovery-channel-answers-your-questions-about-dinosaur-sex

My thoughts on the genre

I like fantasy as a genre. Regardless of whether it is sword & sorcery, macabre horror, or whatever, I have always enjoyed jaunts into fantasy settings and hearing of the grand odysseys the characters therein are involved with. That being said, I am not a fan of most fantasy literature. Browsing through a local Barnes & Noble it occurred to me that the genre suffers a lot in the same way that Mystery suffers.

I don’t think editors & publishers pay as much attention to fantasy. Just as fantasy and science fiction are snuffed at in movie awards they are met with the same distain among their literary peers. Please note that I am excluding the awards that specifically tailor towards these genres, like the Hugo awards. As such, it seems like people turn a blind eye to a lot of stuff. A lot of shit gets published that maybe shouldn’t.

When someone comes up with the idea of space-cowboys time travelling to an alternate reality middle ages and chooses to write a sprawling ‘epic’ their publisher doesn’t seem to bother to raise an eyebrow. Instead of questioning the innumerous plot holes, almost none-existent character development, or atrocious grammar, it seems the publishers must just smile and nod, assuming that there is just some joke they aren’t getting.

It’s almost like the companies involved just take a shotgun approach to publishing. If they churn out fifty or sixty third-rate novels maybe one or two will turn out to be successful. Even for those that don’t do too well, if you fill the shelves as readers wonder through the isles aimlessly, maybe the cover art or title will be catchy enough to cause a few copies to be picked up. As a result, when looking for something new to read, we face an ocean of selection, most of which will turn out to be complete rubbish. So when trying to find a book worth reading you REALLY have to dig sometimes to find the stuff worth the time.

I don’t really follow them too closely, but Mystery novels look like they suffer from the same problem. Every other week someone seems to put on the shelves which is pretty plainly a knock-off of the Davinci Code (I hated it myself, but have to acknowledge its success). There is so much just thrown out there that it must take a lot of work to dig through and find something that breaks outside the normal formulas of serial killer with a weird sex fetish or grand conspiracy cover-ups.

It all almost puts me in mind of the trashy grocery-store romance novels sold everywhere as a female masturbatory aid for middle aged women. All of them with almost identical covers of buff hunk ‘X’ dipping back idyllic damsel ‘Y’ as she swoons. Such cookie-cutter titles as “The Greek Tycoon’s Mistress”, “The Oil Baron’s Lover”, “and The Boss’ Secretary Affair”.

What alternative is there? In a way, the system KIND of works, it’s almost like literary Darwinism. The random innovations found weak flounder and the successful ones rise and propagate more of their kind. It’s in a lot of ways how the fantasy genre started. From the occasional children’s story or allegory like Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan to the dime-store magazines in the twenties, the Pulp magazines that brought people’s attention around to CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Then next thing you know people are reading the thrilling adventures of the Grey Mouser.

It still doesn’t seem like a good enough system. If only it was taken more seriously as a genre, perhaps a closer eye would be paid to good story telling and the social commentary that makes it shine. Perhaps it’s all a bit much to ask at this point, so for now I think I’ll just resign myself to grumbling as I flip past the stories about glittery vampires in hopes of finding a gem in the rough.

Question of the Day: What are you reading now?

Want to know a secret?

I have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing.

Well, I have some idea. At least a HINT of an idea. An outline. I have a foggy notion.

This is something to compel me to write more, to draw more, to get some of my thoughts on in what in this day and age counts as 'paper'. In ages past these ramblings would be kept in a journal or diary. Something to be secreted away only to be revealed to close friends and the occasional snooping parent/sibling. Now, thanks to the glories of internet anonymity: I can throw them up here where they will be equally neglected.

So, here we go. Let's see if it has the desired effect of pressuring me into getting my ass in gear. Wish me luck! (Or don't, I really don't give a shit.)