In Review: Fairy Tale - A True Story

I did a little webbing during the movie, and it appears this movie is based on the Cottingly Fairies, which are partially detailed here. It was a cute movie, and a pretty good adaptation from the original story, as best as I understood it. The original story seems like it could be the basis for a great alternative history story from the perspective of the unrecanted girls.

A Haiku

Walmart and kudzu
tearing down local landmarks
both blights on the land.


Yes, it's very cheesy. But every time I see kudzu or a Walmart now in Georgia, I think of this haiku again. And since kudzu and Walmarts are just about the most prolific things there are, I think of it a lot.

Vocabulary Word of the Day: FECKLESS

1. feckless -- (not fit to assume responsibility)
2. feckless, inept -- (generally incompetent and ineffectual; "feckless attempts to repair the plumbing"; "inept handling of the account")

I'm full

I don't even know if I can stand up again for awhile. Kim made ham, peas, stuffing, cranberries, gravy, yams, and an onion dip, and I made mashed potatoes and biscuits. We have enough leftovers for 5 people, and I don't think I can eat another bite. And there's pie for later.

Something could be said here about a harvest festival holiday being turned into another celebration of consumerism, but that's a crass way to commemorate a day that everyone cherishes. So, happy Thanksgiving!

Some interesting things I read today in A Sideways Look at Time

p. 244 - "An Unamplified Monk"
This is the term Ms. Griffiths coined for a monk who wouldn't use any technology he couldn't (or didn't) make with his own hands. The idea is that he's a natural person, and not dependent on society. He doesn't ride in automobiles or ships or planes or eat Pizza Hut or use telephones. He walked everywhere, and because he walked, he had a profound sense of being there.

p. 245 - "In Hindu thought, trees were the ancient philosophers..."
I like this line as it is, but it also reminded me of something unrelated I've been thinking about for the last few months. Trees are like the people of the plant world. They define the landscape where they are. Forests are like cities, and copses like towns. Animals, like plants, have personality, but trees are the ones you can imagine faces on - the ones you might have for a friend. I can imagine trees murmuring their philosophies in ancient groves, speaking slowly and softly, unconcerned with the men strolling between them, soaking up their knowledge.

Currently :

: reading -

A Sideways Look at Time
by Jay Griffiths
(a philosophical, political, and often feminist view of time, and how we view time)


: listening -

EmotivE
by A Perfect Circle
(a bunch of covers of peacey songs - sort of - they change the tunes too, so you really have to listen to the words, while thinking 'Do I know this song?' - clever idea, but I don't know if it's a great CD)

Virgin Voices
by Various
(covers of Madonna songs, and a $2.99 cd from Big Lots!)

Clivilles & Cole's Greatest Remixes, Vol. 1
by Clivelles & Cole
(another $2.99 cd from Big Lots!)

Just so you know

Just so you know, if you like music - especially if you like listening to or hearing music - you'll probably enjoy The Corrs. Their latest CD is "Borrowed Heaven".

Movie Idea: Ghost (a remake) (or re-envisioning?)

Is it too early to do a remake of Ghost? I don't know what the current record is for remake following original ..err... make, but I think this one's due for a revisiting. That's not because the original isn't one fine piece of film. In fact, last night I stayed up until past 2am to watch the ending. And I've seen the ending about 25 times. In the last two years. I don't know why it works out that way, but Kim starts watching it, and I finish it. I'm not completely sure I've ever seen the beginning. I bet it's terrific, though.

In any case, besides having a timeless message and besides the fact that special effects have improved by a factor on the scale of the quantity of helium atoms in the sun, I think the scene where Sam Wheat possesses Oda Mae's body (yeah, I know the character's names) to make out with Molly one last time was just a little too weird in 1990, so they had to gloss over it. Nowadays, I think people could deal with it, and Whoopi Goldberg might even be nominated for an Oscar, or something. Or maybe that fad has already sailed.

What I was thinking last night was that it would be even more interesting if instead of Sam dying, Molly was the ghost. It would make the Oda Mae possession scene a little easier, and it would certainly be a change. There are a couple of problems with that change, though. Instead of Molly moping romantically because Sam got himself killed, Sam would probably slit his own wrists because he got Molly killed. Maybe Molly would have to fight the attacker instead, and then Sam could just angst a bit about about how manly he is, since his girlfriend took on their attacker. I think Jude Law would be good for the role. Of course, a few other things would have to change - Molly would be the banker, and the bastard sneaky murderous friend would have to be a woman, to make the triangle in the movie work properly. But that's no big deal.

The big problem is that it really wouldn't be romantic anymore. Romance movies, I've come to discover, rely upon a fairly ineffectual heroine. Oh, sure the heroine does plenty of things, but largely they backfire and get her into delightfully sticky predicaments that the hero must then extricate her from. That, or all of her actions and machinations are largely proven useless in the end when it is shown that the hero is not a jerk after all, but rather has been secretly working throughout the movie to rescue the heroine from the problem that she thought he'd caused in the first place (though in fact he hadn't). I think my sample of romance movies might be a little too small for those kind of gross generalizations (I think the Working Title movies (especially Bridget Jones' Diary), Pride and Prejudice, and Gone with the Wind (of which I've never actually seen more than 1/3) are my data. Regardless (or irregardless for you other rebels), it would be an incredible challenge to make the movie romantic. Maybe a romantic comedy, but then Ghost would lose too much of what made it good.

What I thought then, on an entirely different track, is that an interesting movie/comic book/general story idea could more or less start out the same, with an average couple, and the Molly character dying, and her solving her own murder with her life-endowed half's halting assistance. But why stop there? They'd be a great crime fighting duo. I mean, just think of the possibilities - fight scenes would be a trip, with the ghost poking into substantiality to distract a baddie long enough for her not-so-athletic lover to land a good punch. She could stick her head inside closed doors (no breaking and entering, just entering), and he could deal with the authorities and the victims and what not. Think Remington Steele meets The Frighteners. Yeah, that could be good. Of course, you have to throw in a few twists, too, like they need a medium to be able to communicate (like the Oda Mae character, or a steamy mirror), and maybe some kinda of curse, like she can't move on until he dies, and he can't die until she's reborn, or something like that. Something more clever than that, hopefully.

Movie Idea: Cleopatra

I was watching older movies for no particular reason this last week. I don't usually like older movies - I think I blew out my attention span from blowing up too many balloons or banging my head against walls or just by being me. That, or I've got a new movie sweet tooth and it's hard for me to sit through meat'n'potatoes after seeing so many explosions and fancy special effects and car chases and skimpy outfits and other adreniline-inducing desserts. But I still have a soft spot for the old Classical Period Pieces of the big budget days, especially both Cleopatras. (Both the black-and-white and Liz Taylor's version have something of their own to offer).

But I was thinking that the world could do with another Cleopatra movie. Especially one of those fancy temporally-displaced versions, Like Kenneth Brannaugh's Hamlet or Romeo + Juliet. In particular, I was thinking of something along the lines of Pride & Prejudice meets The Matrix Reloaded. The Romans mores fit quite well with the starched-shirt snobbery and the target-chested soldiery of the British Empire (not to mention their intersection of imperial dominance), and the black, skin-tight latex looks suits the exotic, unnatural sensuality of mysterious Egypt. Of course, black leather also goes well with gold and snake motifs. Moreover, it is a well-established fact that Egyptian women often went topless, and this fits well with the Matrix look, while nicely counterpoising the bodiced repression of the Victorians. (I think the world is ready for a movie with topless Egyptian women. So long as it doesn't air on TV during the superbowl). The image of a Cleo-Trinity grimacing while being wedged into a frilly, corseted Vicky-Roman dress to appear in Rome with Jules Caesar would make a good scene.

Of course, since we're mixing up time periods anyway, give Jules Caesar a pair of semi-automatic pistols, make Octavian a computer nerd, and give Mark and Cleo a sub-domme relationship (literally, in the BDSM sense) when he's under her influence in Egypt. And make Octavian jealous. Hmmm....

I could go on with a lot of ideas here, but I'm supposed to be helping Kim fix her world-famous lasagne.

Another movie idea when I come back...

(Actually posted 20 November.)

About the drive

Since several people had asked about it, I realized I hadn't really said very much about the drive from California to Georgia. So, here it is:

Kim and I spent the last night in California with Todd and Cindy. We were planning to leave very early the morning of November 2nd (we voted earlier by absentee ballot), but we'd overpacked the car just a bit too much, so we had to spend the first part of the morning sending a few things off through the post office.

We made it to Las Vegas by mid-afternoon, checked into the Monte Carlo (our room was very nice, and one of the least expensive on that side of the street, seeing as how we'd cleverly planned our trip during the week of Comdex). We took the monorail from Excalibur down the strip, then spent the rest of the evening moving between Casinos, trying to decide whether or not to watch a show (we didn't), and trying to win big on the small change slots. We didn't do that either, until the very end of the night, when Kim sat down at a nickel Monopoly machine and sent it into a crazy awen of music and bells and cut-scenes. She ended up winning back almost half of what we'd spent in Las Vegas altogether, including food and the room. We figured that was a good sign, and cashed out.

The next morning we left early for New Mexico, of course eating at McDonald's for breakfast. (I say "of course" because Kim and I were playing the Monopoly game there, too, and we had this idea that if we went to a lot of different McDonald's in a lot of different states, we might have a chance of getting a winning piece.) We stopped to take a few pictures of the Hoover Dam, and then made the first long drive of the trip, to Santa Fe. Along the way, we were going to stop at the Asteroid Crater in Arizona, but they wanted $14 apiece for a viewing. To look at a hole in the ground! I was very disappointed, to say the least. At least we had the brochure, so we got a helicopter view of the crater, even if it was a glossy press-kit photo. After a lesson in patience at Denny's where our server was more interested in grabbing a prize in the crane box, or sitting down for half an hour at another table, and spent 25 minutes picking out a slice of pie for Kim, we got some sleep.

The next day's drive was a lot shorter, and to Kim's dad's in Colorado Springs. We stopped not-quite-on-the-way at Littleton to visit my great Aunt Mary Jane and Uncle Bob, and they took us to eat buffalo burgers at Ted's, and on the way back we drove by Columbine. It was an impressive high school, building-wise. It almost looked more like a new business park, and it backed up to a rather large park. Then we turned back to Colorado Springs and spent the night with Kim's dad.

Since Kim's dad had to work the next morning, Kim and I went to the Garden of the Gods (which was sort of like a miniature national park). It's at a spot where the plains of the northern MidWest and the deserts of New Mexico butt up against the Rockies, and a slab of red sedimentary rock was pushed up sideways through the ground. It's fairly pretty, and I'll post pictures in a month or two when I set up my computer. We were planning on staying a second night with Kim's dad, but the long drive through Kansas scared us, and we left that evening and drove a hundred miles or so to stay in Colby, Kansas.

We really shouldn't have been so scared of Kansas, because it was beautiful. I had expected flat and uneventful, but from Kansas on, the drive was scenic - rolling hills, green grass, rivers, a huge sky, and rows, stands, copses, and even small forests of trees. But because we'd bit off a chunk of the Kansas drive, we made it into Missouri while it was still light, which was good, because I strayed from the directions and had to drive by my nose to get us back on track. We made it fine, but the trip was a little more ... scenic. We arrive at Kim's friends' house (Dave and Miki, and their daughter Moya), and stayed with them for three nights.

We had a good time there, but that's more Kim's story, so you can ask her if you'd like.

Tuesday the 9th, we left Kansas City, Missouri, for Nashville. Like Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee were beautiful. Nashville was confusing. That was a long drive, and it was dark by the time we got there. The city was doing a load of street and highway work around where our hotel was, so confusing directions we made nearly incomprehensible, and we almost missed our exits a dozen times. By this time, we were pretty deep into a bad cold (we think we got it in or just before Missouri), so we didn't get great sleep, but we got enough to put us our our way to Atlanta the next morning.

And that was it. We arrived Wednesday the 10th, Mom was waiting for us, and we've been settling into Atlanta and trying to get over the cold ever since. Pictures will be up eventually!

Movie Idea: D20

The main concept behind this movie is that it would be low-budgetable - i.e. the kind of movie a person could make were they to buy a simple little camera and find a few willing actors. The downside of this movie is, no matter how good the writing is, and I don't think it would be all that good, since I'm not that good at dialogue, it's quality would depend very heavily on the actors. Something along the lines of Swingers or Good Will Hunting. But, anyway:

Connor is your average curly-red-haired, slightly pudgy, slightly pasty, jolly-faced, bespectacled, 27-year-old everyman. He drives a third-hand car, works at a no-where job, and lives at home with his single mom - the caring, doting sort that works 25 hours of overtime every week as a nurse. It's hard to believe, but Connor's single.

The vast majority of his free-time is poured into Dungeons and Dragons, or rather, D20 (the open-licensed version). Every week, ritual as it is, his five friends come over to run through the latest adventure he's created. Steve and Tanya: the cliched macho nerds, a married couple with wolf motifs everywhere, they ride a Harley-esque Kawasaki, they are embarrassingly apt to perform gratuitous displays of affection. He plays the amoral rogue, and she the buffed-out Valkyrie Warrior. Kurt: an up-and-coming car salesman who doesn't like cars, he wears fancy clothes mismatched with worn-out jeans, he is amiable and trustworthy and gullable. He plays the Paladin/Cleric. Marc(us): the IT guy who works at the same company as Connor, kind of aloof and distracted, and apt to get into arguments about science or game rules. He plays the wizard, and keeps track of his spells on his Palm Pilot. Jones: A bit socially peculiar, he shows up and leaves at odd times, and listens more than talks, but everyone knows that he's reliable when you really need him. He plays the monk - the self-reliant character.

The story is told in four parts, the first three 30 minutes, the last 15 minutes. When the story opens, Connor is waiting to find out that his setting submission to Wizards of the Coast will be rejected, and he's working on modules for Neverwinter Nights. Establish the characters and make Connor and Jones out to be the likeable ones. We need a conflict here to start the story off right, to set up the third act, and to establish the fact that conflicts are resolved through dialogue, around the "Oval Table", between rounds of exciting D20 action.

Part two of the story has Connor's Neverwinter Nights modules meeting with popularity; they're rated very highly for their story and characterization. While online in a chat room, he runs across someone using the name of the heroine from his modules as their screen name. He strikes up a conversation, which picks up over the course of several days, and he finds out that his correspondant is, in fact, a pleasant person, female (one can never be sure electronically), and when she learns (several days in) that Connor is the author of the module she liked so much, she is very interested in him. She invites him up north to visit her in college.

Part three is the misadventure of Connor's trip up to visit Vicki (he takes the train, but gets off at the wrong stop and thinks Vicki has forgotten to meet him). When they finally sort it out and meet up, they hit it off wonderfully. Of course, Connor is surprised and delighted to learn that Vicki is British and charming. As exciting as this is for him, he is also a bit jealous and threatened by her natural poise, as it emphasizes his own perceived oafishness. All the same, in the two days he's there, their relationship blossoms into something that might be something. That is, until he's checking his email from her dormroom computer, and the minor conflict from the first part springs back up and threatens to cut the relationship short. (Perhaps he's trying to get a job with a role-playing game or writing company, but it's on the other side of the country.)

Part four is the solution to the problem, where everyone learns a lesson and grows as a character (at least, Vicki, Connor, Marc, and Kurt do). The problem is wrapped up, and everyone lives happily ever for two weeks.

Obviously the story is poorly developed and suffers heavily from its dependence upon good dialogue, acting, and directing - none of which I have any reason to expect. But that's what I have so far.

Coera-Ohida

The Coera-Ohida Timeline (as it currently stands):

1. Theogenesis (Essays)
How Mehr, the lonely Spirit, created the Pentiad.
How Baod the Jealous warred against the others.
How Patar-Ori, the redemption, created Coera from the heart of Baod.
...and other stories.

2. Pol and Enthess, and other Myths (one story in seven parts)
How Pol learned to be a man, and Enthess learned he was worthy of love.

3. Rythander (The story of Dafyd, son of Eva)
Rythander: Godswordsman
How Dafyd learns of his parentage and is confirmed.
Rythander: Brothers
How Dafyd is established as the right hand of the Glory-Wolf Returned, and war is declared.
Rythander: Death
How Dafyd brings war on the plains, and loses his mentor.
Palin's Breath
How Dafyd's childhood friend brings news of the loss.
Rythander: Rebirth
How Dafyd is married, enslaved, set free, and reunited.
Rythander: Son and Heir
How Dafyd leads the world to victory.
Rythander: Another Death
How Dafyd loses another, and is incited to a slaughter.
Rythander: Relations
A Prologue

4. Riel (The Story of Riel, son of Eva)
How Riel is thrown into it, and learns he is not alone. How he learns he is alone. How is success is a failure.
How Riel receives training. How he finds religion. How finds peace in turmoil.
How Riel gets revenge. How he finally succeeds. How he learns to let go.

5. Heaven Descended
How the world as we know it is brought to an End, and created anew.

6. Space Trilogy
A Diamond in Snow
How Man creates life.
Room at the Top
How Man exploits life for his own end, and saves it.
Monks in Space
How Man learns life can save itself, thank you very much.

7. Quincy (The Story of Quincy, son of Eva)
How Quincy is enslaved, and learns of the trouble back home.
How Quincy betrays his home in order to save it.

A Job Offer?

Well, I haven't received a job offer yet, actually.

I went to their offices today for an interview, and I wasn't terribly excited by it, but neither was I excited by Store of Knowledge or Vans, and both of those turned out to be great places to work. So we'll see what they offer.

In Georgia

So, here it is, the 11th of November, and Kim and I have been in Georgia for one night! We're staying with my mom and Wood in Kennesaw, but once Kim and I both have jobs lined up, we'll start looking for an apartment or house to rent.

The trip went pretty well, all things considered. I didn't have internet access along the way, so I didn't post as we were going, but I don't know if I would have had time for it anyway: I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org) and I think I've only written 20 words so far! Yikes! I don't know if I should just abandon it so I can concentrate on employment. We'll see.

Phone numbers and email addresses remain the same for now.

Once I have my real computer set up (in a month or two), I'll post some photos over at http://shiptrooper.deviantart.com

It has begun!

Jill and Gavin presented me with the NationalNovelWritingMonthChallenge, and I think I'm going to take a stab at it. I may even post it here, to anyone who reads this page's dismay (so, maybe two people's dismay, and one of them is me!)

I guess I should be writing instead of blogging, especially given the fact that I'm MOVING TO ATLANTA this month as well. So, bye!