Alexx's Journal

kestrell: The great thing about the movie 300 is that if you were teaching a class about Stereotypes in Media, that's pretty much all you would need.
londo: No, no, you'd also need The Breakfast Club.
K: OK, yes, you're right.
issendai: You could do it as a double-feature!
K: Wait, now I want to write the crossover fanfic! Molly Ringwald, the "princess", could end up in Xerxes' harem...

I am plagiarizing this link from osewalrus :)

Be sure and read down to the "key", where he details how much of this article was, itself, "plagiarized". I love self-describing metatexts :)

So, David Gerrold is the guest of honor at this year's Boskone. They're doing a bunch of "Tribble" themed programming. Gerrold is one of those unfortunates who remains most famous for their first professional publication, no matter what they do afterwards (and he has done a lot in the ~40 years since then). I hope he has come to terms with it.

I just read a new (ish, 2005?) novella from him in Dozois' annual Best SF anthology, "In the Quake Zone". I quite enjoyed it. Noir detectives, queer themes, and time travel, all blended into a fascinating mixture. In the end, it reminded me of Spider Robinson, only back when SR still had more talent than self-indulgence. If I run into Gerrold at the con, I'm glad I'll be able to tell him I liked something he did recently.

I like the Boston Metro. Yesterday, their tech section had as its biggest headline:
BOSTON BEWARE
Other gadgets with lights that won't destroy your city

Saw an ad in a magazine today for the forthcoming Lord of the Rings: Online game. The main image was of a vast crowd of gamers, encompassed by a giant One Ring. I took a few minutes to survey the distribution of these people, which I presume to be representative of what the advertisers think their players will be.

Majority white male, no surprise. Maybe 20-25% women. Interestingly, many of the women were all in one clump, as if huddled together for protection. A significant number of Asian faces.

At first, I thought that there were *no* black faces. But then I spotted a lone black female, quite near the front, as befits a token.

Kind of reminded me of a moment at Arisia. During a panel discussion, the point was raised of, "If fandom is so 'welcoming' and 'inclusive', how come there are so very few black people here?"

Are there fewer black fantasy gamers, also? Or is LotR unpopular with them? I've heard academic discussions of "Tolkien's racism", but never met anyone who took it personally. But then again, I don't know very many black people, do I?

I was talking with kestrell the other day about how wrist watches have largely become obsolete. Practically everyone has a cell phone and/or PDA which they can tell time with. The only real use for wrist watches now is as fashion. Or, I suppose, because you're so used to the idea of wearing one that you do it out of habit.

I was walking past a jewelry store recently, and glanced in the window. They were advertising a new line of Seiko watches. The brand name? "Citizen fossil".

kestrell and I have caught up on Veronica Mars. Cool show. Last year, I heard a bunch of people say that it was "like Buffy, only not supernatural". That's somewhat fair, the more so now that they have two recurring characters played by Buffy alumnae (and even a cameo appearance by Joss Whedon). But there's another interesting comparison that I haven't heard anyone else make:

Veronica Mars is Twin Peaks, only with the surrealism turned down a lot.

In a small community, a popular young girl gets brutally killed, leading to a murder investigation. In the course of the investigation, we find out that the girl was popular with more people than we previously knew, sleeping with several unlikely partners. The investigation ends up hauling lots of skeletons out of their closets, revealing scandals at every level of the society, in a tightly-knit web of soap opera.

And VM hasn't turned the surreal element *off*, just way down. Dreams of dead characters are fairly common, and there have been waking visions as well. Not to mention the plain old surrealism that comes from actual life in any high school, much less one as stratified as Neptune's.

Of course, it's not perfect. The first episodes of each season so far tried to jam *way* too much exposition into their running time. The episode dealing with video gamers (a subject of which I have some experience) contained numerous howlers. Coincidence plays a frequent role in the plot. But it's got good dialogue, servicable acting, interesting plots, and a good long-term arc. Unlike Twin Peaks, they actually have some clue as to how to pace a long-term plot. (On second thought, now that we're caught up and will only get new installments once a week or so, I may end up revising that opinion. I certainly thought a lot less of Lost in that mode, and Kes and I have gone back to saving up a big pile of Lost episodes before watching them.)

One of the interesting consequences of downloading these off the net is that I noticed a file floating around "Episode 2.09 - Alternate Ending". After seeing the episode itself, we naturally had to check out this alternate version. ( Spoilers behind cut )Well, *that* would have taken things in a rather different direction!

Yesterday was pleasant, if low-key. rufinia and russkay both came over. We watched the Season 3 Buffy finale, which features a government building being destroyed by explosives, Then got some Chinese food and, at Rufinia's request, watched the first episode of Babylon 5. Not 100% on-theme, but did feature explosions and conspiracies, at least :-)

Seeing that B5 ep right after one of the finest Buffy episodes was actually kinda disappointing. It's really rather a clumsy piece of work, with lots of dead air and hokey line deliveries. After thinking about it some, I have to blame the director, Richard Compton. Hmmm... [googles] Yup, he's he same guy that made such a hash of the first version of the pilot movie. Good actors can overcome poor direction (Londo was a delight from the beginning), but much of the cast is not up to that level, sadly. Either they must have gotten better directors later, or I'm going to be very disappointed when I finally get around to re-watching the show...

After that, we trooped over to the Buttery for the bonfire, arriving just as it was starting to catch. They didn't actually have a Guy, but they did have a Jack-o-Lantern at the summit, which was eerily underlit by the flames. It wasn't particularly *stable*, however, and made several attempts to roll off and attack kestrell (all unsuccessful, thankfully). Eventually it got wedged in sufficiently to stop that. Pumpkins don't actually burn, as it turns out, though they will char and blacken.

There were beuatiful showers of sparks, rising up into the heavens. Well, *we* thought they were beautiful. Someone in the neighborhood thought they were *dangerous*, and actually called the fire department. So two fire trucks pulled up outside, and about a half-dozen firemen came wandering into the backyard. Marian, old radical that she is, set the proper tone immediately, by offering them pumpkin pie :-) They still insisted that the fire be put out, but were reasonably friendly about the whole thing. Strangely, they had never heard of Guy Fawkes' Day. I know most Americans haven't, but you'd think that firemen would know about that sort of thing.

kestrell was fading by then, so we came home. She went to bed, and I played some more Katamari. No explosions, but I did get to roll up the Houses of Parliament :-) I've now gotten up past 2200 meters on the biggest map, but there's clearly further to be gone. For instance, I still haven't managed to roll up either the largets volcano or The King Of All Cosmos. They shall be mine...

Today's Metro has an article about the IRA disarmament. Accompanying photo is captioned "A FATHER AND SON pass the Irish News newspaper offices in Belfast, Northern Ireland yesterday. It was announced that the IRA had decommissioned all their weapons." The headline in the window of the newspaper office reads "IRA WEAPONS GONE". The father and son in the photo are walking away from the camera, but the son (maybe 7-8 years old) is looking back over his shoulder with a worried expression. Here's the kicker: the son is brandishing a highly realistic toy rifle.

I am now convinced that someone in Metro editorial with responsibility for photos has a very wry sense of humor indeed.