More Reasons to Become God

Part One

There's a photograph, of a particular woman, sitting on a cold beach in an oversized sweater (hugging her knees, I think), and she has this really lovely melancholy smile. 

The last time I went to look at it, someone had switched it with another.

I haven't had cause to feel that emotion myself in a very long time - which is good - but in no longer having access to that image, my life is made a little smaller, and a little stupider.

...

There's more to be said about curation, creation, balancing reliability with variety, infinite galleries, and sooner or later attaining access to the full archive, but whatever governs my brain on this is resisting, so it will wait.

timeless

I wore a swimsuit for 40 of 66 hours

And when I wasn't asleep or swimming, I was on my feet

Now I am returned

Doing nothing

Swimming (and paddle boarding) was better

What, besides sit in front of a screen or bar, do people DO between 6pm and 10pm?

Is it something I forgot, or have as yet failed to invent?

Cephalumps and Woozles

There was a time when I knew, then forgot, that the reason the titular story manifested Cthulhu as a gooey blob, with tendrils down its face, is because the phrase

"Ia Ia Cthulhu Ftagn"

can also be transliterated as 

"ah Ah CHOO" (blows nose brassily)

and this may have happened more than once.

Awareness of context, clarity of purpose, and clarity of thought rarely seem to coincide. 

Distractibility, chaotic records, and the survivorship fallacy I guess. Like pineapple and jolly ranchers, TV eats you back.

...

This is not a return to old hobbies and diversions. I have more complicated observations about progress, milestones and timelines, but I am unable to articulate them succinctly tonight.

Housecleaning

Planet Stuff:

• Planet Sizes and Tilts - (graphic) 
• orbital inclinations (graph, lost it)
• Orbital Distances - (charts)
• Solar Barycenter - (animation)
• Asteroid Belt - (animation)
• Colors of the Planets - (chart, inaccurate) 
• NASA Planetary Fact Sheet - (table)
• [July 4 Edit: Entire Universe in Log Scale /Edit]

Podcasts Removed and Stashed Here:

The Spacecraft We Could Have Had

A well constructed discussion of where the space program could be right now with current technology, if we'd made more optimal choices.

Courtesy of Ashley R Pollard.

Legacy Antitrust Decrees Ending?

[Unusual post today. I don't plan to make a habit of it. Orville post Thursday, BattleTech post next Sunday.]

Apparently, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division has filed to end the Paramount Consent Decrees (and other similar decrees across other industries).

It's disconcerting to see the body responsible for combating anti-competitive practices try to argue that anti-competitive practices will benefit consumers, or to say out one corner of their mouth that the Decrees no longer serve a purpose while admitting from the other corner that these tools could allow the studios to force some theaters out of business.

I'm reluctant to dispute their reasoning without knowing more about the body of antitrust law. Ultimately though they rest their argument on what the grand purpose of antitrust is, and... isn't innovation associated with ecosystems which favor lots of little guys over a handful of monoliths? Ditto, resilience? If lifting the Decrees does turn out to be a mistake, are there provisions to reinstate them, and protect the most vulnerable theaters until that happens?

I don't know. The Department may be right to let the pendulum try to swing somewhere new. I would be more comfortable with it if their press release had been able to cite similar historical examples from comparable industries, and if all the guilds weren't disagreeing with them.

Personal Update

I don't mean to be uncommunicative. A malfunction over the winter holidays has limited my productivity. In theory I'm better off now, but in practice it's a side grade which doesn't address the root problems.

I regret if anyone's been put out. 

Immediate upshots:

• I remain unlikely to record video in my current environs.
• Twitch remains unfeasible for me. 

I appreciate that YouTube allows double-speed playback but I wish it wouldn't keep bumping the quality up to where the video starts getting choppy. I notice the updated Terms of Service include an item about not using third party services to evade YouTube's controls - I assume that's directed at Facebook and the like, yet I can't help thinking how useful it would have been to have a service which allows playback at triple and quadruple speed.

Turkey Day (cont'd)

Did you see there's a 13 Dead End Drive movie? Loved that game as a kid. Concealing which pawns each player owns is a neat idea, if a little transparent as an adult. I've heard the movie compared to the ol' Clue adaptation, and Chris Evans seems to think it's Robot Chicken.

Rest of this post is gonna mostly talk about YouTube.

Thoughts While Gaming on Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving, from my hole-chewer to yours

Housekeeping

This past spring I pruned a couple thousand dead or outdated bookmarks from my BattleTech folder. More to go; not yet halfway.  Not to worry! Still working on 3025 production numbers. Light 'Mechs are solved, heavy and assault are trickier. More on that in a week or two.

[Edit, Aug 1: checking my other folders for webrot and it looks like some haven't been cleaned in over a decade. Did you know Real Ultimate Power is still up?! /Edit]

My natural pace is to blog about three times per month. I'd rather post twice a week - BattleTech on Sundays and fantasy RPGs on Thursdays - but every time I try, I end up posting less. Que sera sera.

Would like to rebuild my "archive" widget so it shows more posts at a time. Should probably also shuffle my "labels" a bit, I'm sure some of them are redundant. Today is just housekeeping though - chopping links I don't use from the sidebars (and stashing them below the cut so I can find them again if I need to).

CUT

I wanted to write today

Them: "We've been invited to dinner. Want to go? It's about an hour's drive."
Me: "Uh, sure."
Them: "Okay, we'll go as soon as I've showered."
Me: "...but it's not even 1pm yet."
Them: "Three o'clock is a completely sensible time to eat dinner."
Me: "I don't think that adds up, and I don't think that's what the invitation is."
...later...
Me: "Is this sunscreen? Why are we putting on sunscreen?"
...seven hours of wandering shop to shop in a tourist trap later...
Them: "Isn't this fun? Aren't all of these things SO NEAT?"
Me, internally: "I don't care about any of these things and you know I don't enjoy this."
Me, externally: "The river is nice, and the crust on that meat pie was excellent."
Them: "Glad you came! It's fun to hang out on vacation."
Me: "...we've visited a bunch this month, the last no more than a week ago."
Them: "Yes, but this time I'm on vacation! I'm not thinking about work or whatever responsible things I should be doing with my day."
Me: thinks about responsible things I had planned to do with my day
Me: twitches

Happy Thanksgivristmasewyear!

Finally saw Shin Godzilla, Twin Peaks (The Return), and Ash vs Evil Dead Season 3.

I knew Godzilla would focus on government policy but I wasn't prepared for so much high-octane bureaucracy. Very tropey, reasonably fun, and the tension between personal initiative and collectivist values has interesting nuances, buuut I'm probably never going to rewatch this.

Twin Peaks was great fun. My only disappointment is that it ignores all the teases from How I Met Your Mother. I didn't feel like I missed much by being unfamiliar with the secondary movies and books, and I think I have fair idea of where Coop ended up.

The third season of Ash vs Evil Dead was as pleasant and comfy as the first two but I can kind of see why viewership fell. I don't know if Kelly actually gets less screentime than she did in prior seasons, but it feels like she gets sidelined, and Pablo's Brujo sequence feels too empty to be as long as it is but also not empty enough to be shorter. Happily, the finale is the strongest they've had since the movies.

Ha! Such a long, lovely walk, all for that last joke.

Just finished listening to the Potter & Daughter podcast, in which a father and small daughter talk through what the Harry Potter characters are thinking, chapter by chapter. I didn't really want or need Harry Potter cliff notes, but watching someone teach a child how to think was kind of interesting, and hearing a seven or eight year old speak with authoritative knowledge was kind of adorable.

Cricket Whistle

Spent too long examining the moral dimensions of a particular Star Trek character, so, no BattleTech this week. Instead, here's two ways to sound like a cricket:

1. You know that thing in the back of your throat, that you use to gargle, and to make the Predator clicking noise? You know how most people whistle by exhaling through pursed lips? Trill that thing while whistling. (This doesn't work very well if your throat is dry.)
2. If you can whistle by inhaling through pursed lips, do so with a little spit on your tongue. (My preferred method.)

It's a fun gag. Games occasionally have quiet pauses (a joke falls flat, or the group is hesitating indecisively) where a chirp can get a laugh.

"Direct Competition to Rogue One"

"As direct competition to Rogue One, we release, Light Up The Night!
We'll just see how well you do at the box office now, Mr. Disney..."

I love how their newsletter over-hypes things.

Also...

Rogue One

Am I jaded for finding Rogue One ham-handed and mediocre? Don't get me wrong, there's things to enjoy about it, but it feels like a rejected alternate to Episode VII, and like the script doctors only got 40% of the way through. 

It'll be successful, of course, because it follows the same plot formula all the other Star Wars movies do; but I would think that these side-story movies would be trying to break from that formula.

[Edit, Jan 7: I am not alone! A kind soul pointed me to a couple articles posted on tor.com. /Edit]

Light Up The Night

I never played Mega Man, but this song
(from a MegaMan inspired concept album / saga)
is great.

And now they're turning it into a sixteen-minute short film!
Which I'm not actually all that jazzed about, based on the trailer,
but it looks pretty well executed and I like their music so I'll give it a shot.

Godzilla Resurgence

I like things that are made of other things, so it's no surprise that I like Godzilla: Final Wars. But where that one's a comedy, to one-up Matthew Broderick's Godzilla, this one's a drama, to one-up Bryan Cranston's Godzilla.

AND OH MAN YOU GUYS

THAT TAIL

NOTHING SAYS GODZILLA LIKE THAT TAIL

Tiny googly eyes, needle-mouth and smoldering bellows chest 

will run from Oct 11 to Oct 18 in the US.

 

I wonder if the Fukushima disaster had / will have anything to do with it, and if / how the current push for stronger Japanese military will play into it.

Final "What Were You Doing Last Year" Post, I Swear

Lots (tons) of unexpected time for reading in those autumn months.

• War of the Worlds (1898) by H.G. Wells: The archetype for giant robot warfare, and rightly so. Quick and easy to read, this should be required reading for any fan of BattleTech. (I also watched the 1953 movie. It was alright, and the parallels to Cruise's version were neat.)
• The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells: I'm pretty sure that Willy Wonka's "oompa loompas" are, in fact, the "eloi" from Wells' book.  
• One Piece (1997-present): Joke-filled. Never fails to amuse. 
• Yotsuba&! (2003-current): A delightful manga about a small child being a small child. 
• Attack on Titan (2009-present): Super cliche story about humanity's last stronghold in a world overrun by monsters. Still manages to be fun.
• Deadman Wonderland (2007-2013): A fighting manga centered on super powered adolescents in a murder-themed theme park. Lots of cliches, but I'm enjoying it. 
• Vinland Saga (2005-present): A (seemingly) well-researched manga about Vikingdom. Features raiders and mercenaries in France, the conquest of England, and hints at an eventual move to Vinland. Half battles, half slice of life? The art and story remind me of Berserk.
• Uzumaki (1998-1999): A Lovecraftian saga of weird events in a small town. It starts as a series of loosely connected vignettes; I wish it had continued like that forever. 
• Sandman (1988-1996) by Neil Gaiman: A well-crafted plot, and mostly good art. I like how the plot of one issue is sometimes seen as background in another issue - usually subtly, though this is also done near the end as a major plot point. There's also an unfair tease at the end, and I'm not sure what exactly Gaiman intended with it.

my year in cinema

I've been meaning to watch Tucker & Dale vs Evil and Cabin in the Woods. I'm thinking it might be fun to try them back to back.

I don't remember which movies I had planned to see this year. Whichever they were, I'm sure they mostly weren't the ones I actually saw:

• Edge of Tomorrow (2014): SO MUCH FUN. (I didn't notice that the farmhouse was the one from Looper, but I did notice a curious lack of ballistic missiles.)
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2014): Watched this and this months before seeing the movie. From how it impressed my friends, I expected it to be more than it was. Still very fun. Animators obviously very proud of all those close-ups showing off Rocket's fur. The low aerial view of planet Xandar reminds me of a similar low aerial view (and similar ground view) used for Caprica in nuBSG, and the low aerial view of planet Morak reminds of a similar low aerial view of Crematoria, from Chronicles of Riddick. Speaking of which, Vin Diesel is once again cast as a man of few words and wooden expressions. Hey! I knew I recognized Nebula's actress! Didn't realize it was Amy Pond, though. Didn't realize the green Orion girl was Uhura, either.

that gum you like is coming back in style

I was hoping that snowlessness would last into January, but I am enjoying how my windows frost over into translucence every day. Time to start wearing sunglasses outdoors again I guess. Wonder if wearing blue-mirrored sunglasses all the time deprives me of vital blue light.

Anyways! I had a ton of forced idle time to kill the last few months. Spent some of it watching TV shows:

• Doctor Who Season Finale (2014): Unsatisfying. It tugged all the heartstrings it was trying to tug, but filling two whole episodes with crazy plotless wish-fulfillment just grates my nerves. I'm glad the Christmas episode extended the two-parter into a three-parter in exactly the way I expected it to, and the Christmas episode is pretty good overall; but, in my eyes, it's not good enough to redeem the two episodes preceding it. 
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D season finale (2014): Disappointed. Nice feint with the character death, but the end result is super formulaic. Not to mention the protagonist (who I hadn't previously viewed as a Mary Sue) gets spectacularly more Mary Sue-ish. Also a little bit irritated I couldn't see what happened to Flower Girl. 
• Farscape (1999-2003): Very good show. Y'know how most sci-fi shows have a single sci-fi gimmick per episode that they spend the episode exploring? Farscape puts two gimmicks into the background for each episode, develops the plot on top of that, and develops character relationships endemically to the plot. It also makes theme an undercurrent to the plot (in stark contrast to this season of Doctor Who, which does the opposite). My only complaint is that in the first season or two, it seems like the protagonist is never wrong, and he often outdoes other characters within their areas of expertise. (Fortunately they lampshade this later on.) Plus: Jim Henson's Creature Company.
• Once Upon a Time (season 3, 2013-2014): The Neverland season is sooo sloooow. I only got through it by watching at double speed. 
• Almost Human (2013-2014): Fun. Almost like a police procedural version of Blade Runner. My only complaint is that the Die Hard episode matched Die Hard too closely.
• The Americans (season 1, 2013): Felicity as a 1980's soviet spy/family drama. I enjoyed it, and am very glad it's getting a third season.

Looking for a New Sci-Fi Show

Rewatched the first season of Heroes, which was great fun, and I've finished watching Earth: Final Conflict. (Can't recommend it, but I will be mining it for Transformers/Resistance plots.) Also finished watching Fang of the Sun: Dougram (from which we get many BattleMechs and possibly some vehicles. It's pretty alright, as "real robot" war stories go). Finally read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

Looking for another new-to-me sci-fi to watch now.

Was actually wishing I had another Whedon show to watch, completely forgetting that Agents of Shield existed and is coming back in September. (Incidentally, I'm very happy how the Marvel Movie-verse has no mutants. It makes these people rarer, and lends the setting a more distinct flavor.)(On the topic of upcoming shows: I'm expecting the How I Met Your Father woman to end up marrying Barney; mostly though I'm hoping for more Twin Peaks tie-ins.)

I'm currently keeping up with Extant, and I like the Pretender-like layered conspiracy it has, but I'm looking for something I can marathon. Tried Alphas but the pilot was disappointing. Not sure what to try next.