Quick Hits

Hello.

Well, I have a few postings here that could’ve been individual postings, but I am cutting back on giant posts, which after you read the first mini-post, you will understand why.


Blathering about Blue Cats

…

You know, I just reread my review of Avatar. It is overlong, unfocused, rambling, and just plain sloppy. In other words, pure ass. I tried to do too much with it, and the post suffered greatly. I have to now rethink my strategy of writing blog posts. Sometimes less is more. Now, if I can just remember that…


Riding off into the Sunset Lanes

They finally tore down Sunset lanes in Ballard, and though I haven’t visited there in over 15 years, I am still saddened by its passing.

Back in the early 90’s, when I lived in Ballard, my roommates and I had a little ritual involving it. Work mates and friends would gather at our place to watch Beverly Hills 90210, (well, except for me… I could never stand that show) having drinks to get us ready for what was to come after.

When the show was over, we would pile into our cars and head out to Sunset lanes to bowl for a couple hours. I would bowl a frame or two, but was more interested in the bar and the activities going on. You see, on Wednesdays, it was karaoke night, and there was this one guy there who always delivered. He was an older tall slender white man with black hair and bushy mustache. He always wore the same outfit: cowboy boots, black jeans a ruby red button up shirt, and a black cowboy hat. And when it came his turn to sing, he always picked the same song: Elvira. He was a horrible singer, but the effort and passion he put into it is something I will remember to the end of time. Fare thee well, songman…


The Brown note

There was a major election that came to a conclusion recently. It was Massachusetts’s special election for a senator to replace Kennedy. In a surprise upset, a Republican won it.

Now, if you ever listened to my rantings, you would know I am not a political party person. I find both major ones to be as corrupt as all get out. ‘For the people, of the people, by the people’ Lincoln famously said, NOT ‘For the Party, of the Party, by the party.’ And for the first time, I saw the people realize this. The Democratic Party ran as if it was already theirs, claiming it as ‘The Kennedy seat.’ The people thought differently. I am hoping more people got the message I got from it, and realize that you vote for the issues… NOT what letter is after their name. (However, living in Seattle, I HIGHLY doubt it will happen around here. As was once said ‘People in Seattle would vote for Koko the chimp if there was a ‘D’ after the name.’)


Alas, poor Coco, we hardly knew thee…

Conan O’Brien was robbed. ‘Nuff said…


Comicon Update

Tickets are bought, and hotel and travel will be taken care of within the next couple weeks. I decided to fly there and back, as since I will not be going alone, I had to take my friend into consideration. I will be going back down in the next couple years, so I will be doing more then.

In other news, I am thinking of dressing appropriately for the two days I am going… but who to dress up as? I have an inkling forming, but I shall see what happens, and go from there…


Blog postings update

I will be posting a few bigger posts within the next couple weeks. One will be relating to dreams, one about the big project I have been working on, (including pics), and the finally posting the third part of a trilogy I started in 2008…

Avatar

Hello.

I finally broke down and went to see the big event movie Avatar. I was hesitant, because I had been hearing through the grapevine that the story for the movie was less than stellar. Now, in general, this wouldn’t bother me too much, but with James Cameron, I have a higher set of standards. He is a man who helped revolutionized films in the ‘80s and ‘90s, both visually and story-wise. He transformed blockbusters from brainless fun to something smarter. He was also one of the first directors I realized had great capability utilizing special effects, using them to enhance and move along the story rather than just to wow you with what he can put in.

And now we have the vision driving him for decades. The question becomes was he up to the challenge? Would he give us another revelation, or would he give us a Jar Jar? After viewing, I think I have my answer. Warning, there be spoilers ahead...

Quite simply, Avatar has raised the bar on the visual medium. This was perhaps the first film I have ever seen where, even knowing it was mainly CGI, could not tell where reality ended and the illusion began. Pandora was a fully brought to life world, with an almost perfect realization of an alien ecosystem. (The one exception I will get back to later.) It was a world that honestly, I could believe see going to visit and explore. The lush jungles, the open skies, even the floating mountains looked like a documentary team was filming a Discovery Channel show. And this was made more amazing with the contrast of the human element also featured in the film.

If there was one thing I always liked about James Cameron, was his attention to detail on how technology would be used. His worlds of the future were believable, because it made sense. In this movie you could see that in spades. From big picture, like the long-distance spacecraft that looks like it was fully designed by NASA, powered armor I can ACTUALLY see working, and holographic monitors and displays that look like they could come out soon, to small things that made this reality fully realized. Photographs that were 3-D, the fact that military tech, while supplying more bang, are made kept as simple and old school as possible (remember, the M-16, a staple of the military, is almost 50 years old), to handheld computers looking like Steve Jobs designed them. On a side note, I actually got a big kick seeing that the mech armor was designed as if it was a person, using a rifle instead of having built onto it, showing great multi-purpose use thinking... and seeing it equipped with a giant combat knife just got me giddy.

Even the 3-D was done in a way that didn’t make me think it was trying to wow us with the ‘Ooh look!!! I am pointing things at you because it is 3-D!’ mentality that is prevalent in the medium. It was presented as if this was just the way are. Most of it was really subtle, (again, the photographs were great) and almost... mundane. Not that that is a bad thing. In fact, I liked it that way. I left the showing with my brain on fire from the possibilities of what Cameron has given to us all. This technology will change the medium.

But like utilizing midget porn, after the glow is gone, you realize there was something not right with what just happened. And there were some definite flaws and lost potential in Avatar. Now some of my complaints will seem petty, some a bit left field; but they distracted me from the experience, which is not a good thing. Let’s get one of the more obvious ones out of the way:

UNOBTAINIUM!?!?!

REALLY, Cameron? You couldn’t think of something slightly less subtle, like Maguffinnite, plotpointium, or even possibly symbolismite? Sorry, folks, that had to be the LAZIEST example of writing I have ever seen... and coming from Cameron, inexcusable. You are renowned for your realism, and you drop the ball with this.

Next is something that fully betrays my science geeky roots. Earlier, I mentioned that Pandora was an almost fully realized alien ecosystem. The one exception was the Na’vi themselves. Now before you get all crazy on me, I want you to think of this: on our planet, pretty much all life (not counting insectoid or invertebras here) are based on a quadruped formation. Dogs, elephants, emus, alligators, even humans have this common trait, two rear legs and two front legs adapted as necessary to the life form (wings, arms, fins, what have you.) It is apparent in all environments.

Now on the planet Pandora, life seems to have evolved to six-limbed (sextoped?) life forms. The giant armoured beasts, the predators, the banshees, even the weird lemur-like creatures feature a pair of rear legs and two sets of forelegs. The Na’vi are quadruped. Now I can see reasons why it was chosen to go this way. Financially, any shortcuts where they could help they would use. Maybe so we can associate with them looking similar to us. Or, if you want to go WAY out there, maybe Cameron was afraid that if he added a second set of arms to his 10 foot very slim species who resided on a planet with lesser gravity than earth, the Burroughs estate might realize what they were based on- albeit blue instead of green...

These complaints are relatively minor compared to the two biggest problems. I have said many times that I am willing to see a story I have seen countless times before if it is told in a new or interesting way. Take giant monsters destroying a city. I have grown up with Godzilla, but Cloverfield made the story fresh. Revenge thrillers? A dime a dozen, but when recreated as Memento... Unfortunately Cameron has confused storytelling with presentation.

The story is one you have probably seen numerous times in the past. Dances With Wolves, Ferngully, even Dune-if you are sci-fi inclined. I wouldn’t have any problem with this if there was some real innovation with the themes, but it seems Cameron was too busy with the visuals to fine-tune story. So we get a story by the numbers, nice and safe. Everything is telegraphed in advance, with no real surprises whatsoever. Even the Deus ex Machina is preordained and expected. And it is a shame, because the setting for his story presented some truly unique potential.

For example, one of the major set pieces involved the humans deciding to destroy the gigantic tree the Na’vi called home. You, the viewer, witness the destruction of it and its peoples up close and personal. The scene then cuts to the human command center, where everyone not involved in the mission is watching the same thing we are on the monitors and their reactions to it. And here is where it could have been tweaked for the better. One of the people watching is the head of the company. His face is showing awe, but not any real emotion. If Cameron would have had this actor emote one way or the other it would have greatly improved the scene. If the guy had shown satisfaction or smugness, he would have truly become a man to root against. (Yes, then most likely I would have bitched about how obvious it is, but at least you would have been able to enjoy him losing in the end.) If I had my druthers, Cameron should have gone the other way, and had the character, while watching the destruction, show realization at the fact that all that is happening is what HE caused, and the dawning horror at what he has unleashed. Cameron would have taken a weakly sketched stereotype and replaced it with a character who realizes he is WAY out of his league, and the veneer of leadership he had gets stripped away in that instant, shattering his world. In effect, it would have humanized him and made him a character who, while we may not have liked, we could feel an iota of pity... which would have let us connect to him. This is but one example of some little things that that could be done.

And speaking of characters, we come to the final problem I had with the film, the one that coincides with the cookie-cutter script: the cookie cutter characters. It’s almost as if we are given archetypes of characters instead of real characters, no real thought went into them. You could tell who the main baddie was, who would fall in love, who the good soldier would be, and the distruster who ends up giving their life for the main character. Everything about them was set from the beginning, with no real growth or uniqueness that would let us connect with them... with one exception for me.

Sigourney Weaver’s character on the surface appears to be the stereotypical good guy scientist who fights for the natives, albeit for the wrong reasons. She cares for Pandora and its inhabitants, but more for the purely scientific possibilities than any real understanding. It’s shown that she has tried to educate the Na’vi to the ways of humans, but with the exception of teaching some key characters English, she fails. Watching her character, it hit me while watching that I actually cared about her, and when I understood why, it made sense. She is the Christian missionary trying to bring civilisation and enlightenment to the ‘savage’ cultures. Her character is a metaphor for every misguided attempt to do good without thinking of the consequences. She is a tragic figure that too late discovers this fact for herself, and it is this flaw, this glimpse of something deeper that allowed me to connect to her.

Now I may have been a bit harsh with my problems with this film, but even despite of this, I highly recommend this movie. I see it as a very good movie that could have been an all-time great film if a bit more attention had been spent on the script. Go enjoy it, this film is definitely worth the admission, but as a parting shot, ponder this:

Imagine if this level of visual excellence was put into the hands of someone with an excellent grasp of the importance of story... say Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, or Darren Aronofsky. Now THAT would be truly epic...

A fish called Herman

At my job there was fish named Herman. He resided in the station’s accountant office, officially hers, but he was beloved by all… especially me. When he got sick about a year ago, I became dedicated to saving him. A little hard work, some luck, and some supplies at Petco and Herman became a new fish. I became his caretaker. If anything went wrong, I would get grief from everyone that I wasn’t doing my duty well. I took it, because I could just watch Herman swim around and get a Zen-like calm.

To help combat the constant algae growing in his tank, I got him a companion: a yellow-shelled snail named Francesca Louise Garcia Rrrrrramone. She was a voracious cleaner (eater), but she was also very pushy, pushing Herman out of her way in pursuit of food. Finally Herman had enough, and got back at her the only way he could: he ate her antennae. Francesca, now injured and newly made skittish, stopped eating and ended up dying. So I then bought another one for Herman, smaller and a little more timid named Lily. Unfortunately, due to an error on my part, she died shortly after arrival.

I came to work on Friday and saw a sight that deeply saddened me. Herman was lifeless on the bottom of his tank. The accountant told me that he had passed on Wednesday, but she had kept him in there to show me that I failed to take care of him. She spent the entire day doing this, making me feel bad for what had happened. I don’t think she realized how deeply it hurt me doing this. Why, you ask? Well, let me tell you a story…

When I was younger my parents gave me a fish tank with assorted fish. I loved it, and it was my responsibility to take care of them all. The first time it didn’t end well at all, as when I was feeding them, I noticed that they didn’t smell too good. So being the responsible kid I was, decided to correct the problem the only way I knew how:

I dumped the entire contents of my father’s bottle of Brut I had gotten from my parent’s bathroom.

They smelled nice, and I went to bed satisfied I had done a good thing. The next morning… well, let’s just say I learned a valuable lesson. To this day I STILL get grief for that incident. So my parents decided to try again. I would just put in what my parents said to put in there, and everything went well.

A few months later, we all went fishing at a place known as Picnic Point. During the trip, I caught a crawfish, basically a small freshwater lobster. I wanted to keep it as a pet, so my parents relented and I took it home and placed it in the fish tank. I thought how great it would be, they could all play together, share the space and all would be well.

I wish I had watched more 'Animal Kingdom' when I was a kid…

Turns out Crawfish don’t eat fish food… but rather fish. In the course of a couple days, it devoured the population of the tank, and shortly after that my parent’s experiment with me and fish came to an end.

I am a person who tries his best to always take care of animals in my charge, and even those that are not. When I mess up and cause a situation fatal to an animal, I am mortified for what I have done. There was an incident involving a baby mouse I was trying to catch that went horribly wrong that my brother witnessed. He gave me grief for a while until he realized how bad I really felt about it. Which is like what is happening now. I really cared about Herman, and did as much as I could to keep him as happy as a fish could be. And to get made fun of for his death, being called a fish killer really brought me down. I didn’t voice this, though; as I most likely would have been treated like I was making a big deal over nothing.

So on Saturday I came back to work and I asked the weekend accountant if he could take care of Herman. I didn’t really feel like I was the one who should do it. I will take the tank, remove its contents and then sterilize it. Maybe she will get another fish, but I won’t help this time. It’s her choice, she will have to deal with it. Instead, I will focus on my beta, Crow. Hopefully I will do a better job with him. So far he seems to like the care I give him…

My four steadfast rules for getting into a relationship

Hello.

Certain… situations at my job and life as of late have convinced me that I should write this post. If you have been forced to talk to me long enough, you know I have four rules when it comes to getting into a relationship. I have created these because I have broken them all once before I made them, and things ended up really bad. With one exception, none of these rules have ever been altered, since they work perfectly well as they are. So without further ado, let me introduce them to you.

Rule #1: Do not try to go out with someone you work with

This one should be obvious to everyone… but it is one of the easiest to forget. I can see the appeal of hooking up with someone you work with: you already know each other pretty well, you have something similar in common, you can see each other every day… but those things that work for you can backfire VERY badly. What say you do decide to date a fellow employee, and the relationship goes bad… like fighting constantly bad? And this person who you broke up with is someone you have to see almost every day you are at work? You can see this does not end well… mmmaybe you can ride out the storm and get back to some civility, but more likely it won’t. And heaven forbid your ex doesn’t become more vengeful and uses Human Resources against you… it can go from merely uncomfortable to looking for a new job and lawsuits against you bad.

Rule #2: Do not try to go out with someone in a relationship

Again, another one that should be BLATANTLY obvious, but is often ignored. This one has so many things wrong with it; I barely know where to begin. Do I mention the angry significant other when the relationship is discovered? Or the reaction from the family members of the two in the original relationship? The inevitable spectacle that occurs… which only gets worse if the two involved have mutual friends, ending up in battle lines being drawn? But as bad as these are, there is the biggest reason to not even consider this: If someone was willing to throw away a relationship with someone else for you, what is to stop them from repeating this with someone else on YOU? Do you really need to have your life be a recreation of the Jerry Springer Show? If you do, then have at it… you are beyond any help.

Rule #3: Do not try to go out with ex’s of your friends

Yeah, I can understand the appeal of going with this. You already know them and there may be mutual attraction, but do you REALLY want to potentially ruin a friendship over this? This rule had some debate as to an expiration date on it, such as your friend getting into a new relationship, getting married, or even a time limit… but I would rather play it safe than sorry on this one. It also speaks of kind of laziness to it: are you willing to be satisfied with sloppy seconds… to be like a hyena, going for what’s left of the corpse of the relationship? Also, the potential for personal damage is magnified even greater for this one, since your other friends will be reacting to this situation as well. All in all not a cool thing to do…

Rule #4: Do not try to go out with someone outside your 10 year window

This is the one rule I have altered from its original version. Originally the rule was:

Do not try to go out with someone under 21.

This was originally created when I was in my 20’s and made perfect sense back then. Being able to go with my friends to a bar and leaving someone I was seeing at home seems appealing at first, but they would get all mad that I DARED go out without them and then tried to booty call after the fact. So this rule was created, and it did well… until I hit the 30’s. Then I realized it needed to change to what it is now.

The reason I have changed the rule to be like this is that while sure, I really like oogling at the young pretty things (mainly college age, as I see them a LOT at work) mentally we are on two totally different planes of existence. My goals, dreams, beliefs, what have you are not the same as they were for me 10-20 years ago. And 20 year olds in general don’t have the same goals as me. If I were to do this, sacrifices would be made, and while all relationships usually involve sacrifices, these ones are unnecessary… especially for the reward. I would not force someone younger than me to my plane, and I wouldn’t do that for them. So I stick to my 10 year window, which generally means 5 years younger to 5 years older. That way, we are in similar states of our lives. One day I will expand on this rule, because it has further use outside of potential sexual relationships.

So these are the main rules I follow when trying to start a relationship. There are other rules I try to follow when in one, but those are possibly for a later time. If you followed my suggestions here, it will make things far smoother for you in the long run. Or you can do what I did, and eventually make your own rules based on your mistakes. Just thought I would try to make it easier for ya…




Post Script:

Remember that even if you do follow these rules, they do not guarantee a successful relationship… they just make the attempts a little less stressful. If I knew how to have a really successful relationship, I wouldn’t currently have an engagement ring stored in a safe…

Today I had fun...

Just kidding.

Most people think retail is a terrible place to work during the holiday season… but there is one business that dreads it even more:

The transportation industry… which is MY occupation.

So I have to put a lot of things on hold while I go through all the rigmarole to survive in more or less one piece. Hopefully I shall resume some sort of schedule here soon enough…