Brian & I just watched District 9!!! VERY cool movie! :D
It sort of reminds me of the original V miniseries in that, if you re-watch it as an adult, you find it's just straight-up a dramatization of the Nazi Party taking over Germany. As a kid, I never had a clue how political V was. I was just watching this cool show about alien invaders and resistance fighters. (You know, like the Rebels in Star Wars. I had no idea those patriots who tried to undermine the Nazis were known as "the Resistance", lol. I rarely paid attention in History class.)
So watching District 9, I got this sense that there was some real-life commentary going on (largely, probably, because this seemed too realistic to have merely sprung, uninspired, from the mind of any writer). I suspected that the fact that the alien ship comes to rest over Johannesburg, South Africa was significant, and from what little I know of African politics -- namely from reading books like Last Chance To See and watching films like Hotel Rwanda -- I suspected that a forced, "legal" population relocation might be somehow historical.
I had NO IDEA, however, about the District Six relocation beginning in 1968!!!
DUDE! Humans can do AMAZINGLY SUCKY things to each other!
I know, I know... Here's this white American getting the smallest glimpse of what has happened in part of Africa and going "People don't really behave like that!" I am, in many ways, the stereotypical American, blissfully oblivious to the horrors endured by much of the rest of the world.
And I am not proud of this fact.
But, in my defense... Well, not really in defense of my ignorance, but rather, to explain it... Our "news" media appears to do everything they possibly can to prevent us from knowing what's going on in the rest of the world. I think Eddie Izzard best illustrated this (quite humorously) when he was going into a bit about events happening elsewhere in the world and stopped himself, asking "Do you know about this-- Are you aware there's other countries? I'm just saying, you've got to flip through a fair few channels before you come across something [involving the rest of the world]".
Eddie was taking a friendly jab at us, and his audience erupted in applause. (I'm guessing cats who could appreciate an intelligent, English transvestite comedian in the late '90s has, themselves, noticed the lack of media coverage about what was happening in the rest of the world.)
But I'm not a political blogger, and this isn't about world politics. There are a lot better-informed dudes & dudettes out there that can speak much more intelligently than I can about real-world stuff.
I would, however, I'd like to give it up for the Sci-Fi writers!
I mean, you can go back to Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone episodes of the 1950s & 1960s which, viewed now, were amazingly bold in the way they spoke on racial prejudices of the time. Same with Gene Roddenbery with the original Star Trek in the 1960s.
Actually, off the top of my head, I can go back to Ishiro Honda in 1954, who sort of explored and helped to exorcise the experience of the horrors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with his Sci-Fi/Horror opus Gijira. An artist digested some truly horrific experiences, then created one of Japan's most lucrative exports!
More than that, we -- Americans -- were able to get a glimpse of the horror of nuclear holocaust from the eyes of the Japanese (well... you know... in it's heavily-edited-for-American-audiences version Godzilla (1956)) , the victims of our government's actions.
And we friggin' ate it up, lol!
And sense then, there have been scores of brilliant Sci-Fi writers who have found ways to take hard truths and difficult-to-swallow social truths and turn them into highly-entertaining (and, more importantly, thought-provoking) Sci-Fi stories!
Now, the snootier among you... Actually, I can't imagine anyone snooty wasting their time on my little blog, lol! I should imagine that my writing style and choice of topics (namely, what I've been up to lately) would immediately repulse anyone looking for pretension who accidentally stumbled onto this thing. :D
So, okay... Snooty folks might argue that human being should seek out the social horrors happening all around us and complain about them often and loudly. (And if I honestly believed our governments and their corporate rulers were listening to us and cared what we think, I would agree.) But I argue that we're not wired to seek out stuff that's going to depress us and enrage us, and that's probably for our ultimate best good. I mean, we NEED activists, don't get me wrong! But I don't think my mom (for instance) would, in any way at all, benefit by being aware of all -- or even most -- of the ugly stuff happening in the world. What could she do to change it? Would her mental or physical health be improved by worry over these things? And if not, should she be forced to pay the emotional toll for actions whose debtors sleep really, really soundly in expensive, comfortable beds?
However, if we don't know our history, we are doomed to repeat it.
I believe the human race needs to learn from the mistakes of its Past (and Present).
And one way of doing that is through Story.
Now, granted, my mom's not going to watch a movie like District 9, or even V, and her demographic has other genres of film/TV/novel to point out Mankind's shortcomings.
But what if, back in the 1980s, when I was in school, my History teacher had asked, "Okay, class, this week we're going to watch V. There will be a test on it, so no sleeping during the movie."
I don't care if there were a test on it, I would have gladly and enthusiastically watched the miniseries again!!! I would have thought this was the coolest teacher in the world!!! :D
Then imagine the following Monday. We discuss the movie for a few days, take the test, maybe get our tests back that Friday and he then tells us, "Next week we begin our discussion of the Holocaust, the actual historical event that inspired the miniseries we watched last week."
I would have been SO INTO that lesson!!!
At first, granted, I would have been disappointed to learn that aliens hadn't tried to colonize the Earth back in the 1940s. But you can bet your ass I would have remembered every detail of those lessons.
As it is, I remember staggeringly large numbers of horrible events that I wanted to forget as quickly as I was told them. And if memory serves, the coach who taught me about the Holocaust was actually quite an engaging and compelling teacher! (I remember being thoroughly bewildered by this Odessa, Texas football coach who was also amazingly intelligent and articulate, and who made the material in our text books actually sort of come alive! The other coach/teachers who stand out in memory were... well... underwhelming, academically.)
My point is that fiction -- entertaining, first, and thought-provoking on top of that -- can, and does, teach lessons to people who would normally run from a political conversation, much less a political publication!
I am one of those people.
Not proud of it, but just being honest.
If you try to start a political conversation with me, I'm leaping through the nearest escape hatch. "Political conversation" is really just folks complaining about how some things are and bitching about how some (they believe) things should be. I don't care if you're talking about Politics, religion, sports, filmmaking, literature, paranormal investigation or just whatever, political conversations are either two people bellyaching together or two people arguing with each other. You're damn skippy I'm gonna flee from that nonsense!
But if you've got something intelligent to observe about a current or past political situation, you put it in an essay or a non-fiction book.
And if you want to get your message out to the largest number of people, change the "bad guys" of your piece to extraterrestrial entities and make sure it's really well writen!
Folks like to learn things. It's what we're wired to do, I believe. I think that's our primary mission in this phsyical reality. We're constantly learning new stuff... But only the stuff that interests us. And stories -- the good ones, the ones we watch/read over and over -- cause us to expand our understanding of human existance and Truth. But it lures us in by entertaining us! :) We go for the special effects, or to have a laugh, or because we're looking for something easy to do after work or on the weekend. But we take away something to think about, some exercise for the mind, something we can debate with our friends, or just within ourselves.
And I don't think that's a bad thing.
That is to say, I don't believe that the fact that human nature is to want our spoonful of medicine coated with sugar is a "fault" or short-coming.
In fact, I really don't think I want to be around someone who actually seeks-out pain and unhappiness.
Blah.
Okay, I've gone on long enough, lol.
GOOD WRITERS RULE!!! :D
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Hammer Dracula...
One of the (slightly) more productive things I did this weekend was wacth 2 more of the Hammer Dracula flicks.
Very educational.
I had avoided all things Hammer when I was a kid, because I was more about a slick, expensive-looking visual style (I'm not proud of this, mind you, but what can I say? It was the '80s), and the Hammer Horror flicks just looked silly!
But a lot of my Horror heroes (writers, directors, actors & SFX Makeup cats) hailed the Hammer Horror flicks, so I figured I need to experience these for myself some day.
Plus, the only vampire flicks I like are the old '50s/'60s/'70s tradition, back when vampires were monsters, not whiny sex symbols. (Don't get me wrong, I love the Twilight series, but only because Stephenie Meyer's stories and characters are so awesome; I detest Anne Rice's so-called "vampire novels".) I mean, yeah, sexuality has always been an element of the vampire mythos since Stoker, and I'm a HUGE fan of sexuality! But Christopher Lee managed to be scarier because his victims were sexually mesmerized by him... These were still Horror movies!
So my first step in getting to know the Hammer Horror cannon was purchasing this great 4-in-1 DVD set called 4 Film Favorites: Draculas a few months back when I actually had a bit of money after the bills were paid. (It doesn't happen often, but when it does... Bliss!) The 4-pack includes:
Horror of Dracula (1958)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)
Dracula AD 1972 (1972)
Hammer only made 9 Dracula films -- the first sequel doesn't have Dracula in it and the last has a different actor playing Dracula -- so this seems like a decent sample platter of the series.
I watched the first one not long after I got the series, and it was kind of cool. It's your basic adaptation of the stage play version of Stoker's tale. And I found myself strangely drawn-in by the characters. Also, you get used to the feel of the sets/locations -- the atmosphere -- of this sort of "Hammer Dracula universe", if you will, and you kind of enjoy spending time there.
So this weekend I finally got around to watching the next two.
I missed Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, but not as much as I had assumed I would! Again, I enjoyed the world, and enjoyed the new excuses the writers dreamed up as an excuse to sick Dracula on new batches of characters. (I grew up with the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films, so I'm not particularly put-off by contrived excuses to extend a film franchise.) I thought the flicks were fun and sort of Halloween-y! Nowhere near the scholck of an Edward D. Wood, Jr. movie! I mean, I don't imagine teen-to-adult audiences in 2009 be frightened by these flicks, either, but they're not like watching something MST3K would riff on.
Well, except that last one...
I started watching Dracula AD 1972 and it's pretty "far out, man." It's one of those aggressively groovy '70s flicks. Like the Shaft movies, but not near as cool. Like, I suspect Dracula AD 1972 was cool for, like, the first week it was in theaters, but by the time it finished its theatrical run it was already no longer cool.
You know what I mean?
I didn't get to finish Dracula AD 1972 and I actually can't say that I'm not looking forward to it, either. The story was already starting to get interesting enough so that I didn't fear I was going to puke rainbow-colored sunflowers from all the Mod With-It-ness of the main characters.
One thing I find really interesting about all 4 of these flicks, though, is the way they treat Dracula almost as though he's a demon. I mean, like, "demon" in paranormal terms, like a non-corporeal in-human entity! It fascinates me strangely.
Hmm...
OH, WAIT! I'M AT WORK! Perhaps I should go do some, then!
Very educational.
I had avoided all things Hammer when I was a kid, because I was more about a slick, expensive-looking visual style (I'm not proud of this, mind you, but what can I say? It was the '80s), and the Hammer Horror flicks just looked silly!
But a lot of my Horror heroes (writers, directors, actors & SFX Makeup cats) hailed the Hammer Horror flicks, so I figured I need to experience these for myself some day.
Plus, the only vampire flicks I like are the old '50s/'60s/'70s tradition, back when vampires were monsters, not whiny sex symbols. (Don't get me wrong, I love the Twilight series, but only because Stephenie Meyer's stories and characters are so awesome; I detest Anne Rice's so-called "vampire novels".) I mean, yeah, sexuality has always been an element of the vampire mythos since Stoker, and I'm a HUGE fan of sexuality! But Christopher Lee managed to be scarier because his victims were sexually mesmerized by him... These were still Horror movies!
So my first step in getting to know the Hammer Horror cannon was purchasing this great 4-in-1 DVD set called 4 Film Favorites: Draculas a few months back when I actually had a bit of money after the bills were paid. (It doesn't happen often, but when it does... Bliss!) The 4-pack includes:
Horror of Dracula (1958)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)
Dracula AD 1972 (1972)
Hammer only made 9 Dracula films -- the first sequel doesn't have Dracula in it and the last has a different actor playing Dracula -- so this seems like a decent sample platter of the series.
I watched the first one not long after I got the series, and it was kind of cool. It's your basic adaptation of the stage play version of Stoker's tale. And I found myself strangely drawn-in by the characters. Also, you get used to the feel of the sets/locations -- the atmosphere -- of this sort of "Hammer Dracula universe", if you will, and you kind of enjoy spending time there.
So this weekend I finally got around to watching the next two.
I missed Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, but not as much as I had assumed I would! Again, I enjoyed the world, and enjoyed the new excuses the writers dreamed up as an excuse to sick Dracula on new batches of characters. (I grew up with the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films, so I'm not particularly put-off by contrived excuses to extend a film franchise.) I thought the flicks were fun and sort of Halloween-y! Nowhere near the scholck of an Edward D. Wood, Jr. movie! I mean, I don't imagine teen-to-adult audiences in 2009 be frightened by these flicks, either, but they're not like watching something MST3K would riff on.
Well, except that last one...
I started watching Dracula AD 1972 and it's pretty "far out, man." It's one of those aggressively groovy '70s flicks. Like the Shaft movies, but not near as cool. Like, I suspect Dracula AD 1972 was cool for, like, the first week it was in theaters, but by the time it finished its theatrical run it was already no longer cool.
You know what I mean?
I didn't get to finish Dracula AD 1972 and I actually can't say that I'm not looking forward to it, either. The story was already starting to get interesting enough so that I didn't fear I was going to puke rainbow-colored sunflowers from all the Mod With-It-ness of the main characters.
One thing I find really interesting about all 4 of these flicks, though, is the way they treat Dracula almost as though he's a demon. I mean, like, "demon" in paranormal terms, like a non-corporeal in-human entity! It fascinates me strangely.
Hmm...
OH, WAIT! I'M AT WORK! Perhaps I should go do some, then!
Friday, August 21, 2009
Delinquent Monkey Toes
If I were starting a rock band right this instant, that is what I would call us.
Five minutes from now, better judgment might assert itself. But for this very moment in Time, that's what our name would be.
Okay, so if I'm drinking Parrot Bay Mojitos, that should be exactly like drinking Mojitos on a tropical beach, right? I plop down my $8 for the brand name, and I get the very same experience, right?
If so, it's not quite as exotic as I would have expected.
But after a couple more Mojitos it will be. I just haven't had enough to really soak the experience in. ;P
I'm watching Halloween: The Extended Cut. (This cut combines Carpenter's original theatrical release with the additional scenes he shot (during the production of Halloween II, which he produced) to be included in the for-TV version of the film, which ran a little short with the nudity and graphic violence edited out. I like it because it adds a bit more to the story and characters. Nothing that was missing, per se, but I like the sort of "fullness" of it.)
After that, I plan to watch the original 1981 Halloween II. At work, we've been promoting the hell out of Zombie's sequel to his 2007 remake. The adds for the new one make me want to rewatch the original.
I don't know quite what to make of Rob Zombie as a filmmaker... House of 1000 Corpses was just plain boring. It looked kind of cool, but it wasn't scary or compelling or anything.
I mean, you listen to Zombie's music, and it's horror-pop genius, right? And you watch his videos, and you think :This guy has no limits to his talent!!!"
Then you watch his directorial debut...
Then he follows that up with The Devil's Rejects... You watch the trailer, and it LOOKS like a REAL Horror film! But then you read a couple of reviews -- which I just-about-never do, unless I'm just really not sure whether I want to see a flick (like, for instance, the writer/director really burned me with his last picture) -- and half the reviews love the movie and half hate it.
The people who loved it seemed to be turned on by a torture-porn element of the ending. Just ultra-violent filmmaking that shocked these paid-to-watch-movies bums and woke them up. These cats get to watch every movie that comes out, and they're bored of movie-going. It's a JOB to them! So what they have to say about the film-going experience simply bears NO relation to our experience in that we have to scrimp and save to see a movie that catches our attention, and they're dying to see the movies we would never pay money for!
So even the other half of the reviewers -- the ones that said the film looked great but had no heart or soul or story -- can't be trusted. because everyone knows that you look "smarter" putting someone else's hard work down than you do venerating it. Somehow (and I still haven't found the logic in this) if you praise a thing, you're naive, but if you insult it then you're some sort of expert.
Blah.
So then Zombie takes on Halloween.
I honestly really liked the remake! Zombie clearly has his visual style under control. The film looks like it was probably shot in the '70s, but it has all the sort of visual flair of a Rob Zombie music video. (That's not a slight, it's actual praise.) AND, Zombie did an amazing job with the script.
I saw 2 different versions of the film, too. I couldn't afford to see it at the theater, so I watched an online version (apparently a work print) with the bummer ending. Then when the unrated version came out on DVD, I bought it and watched the non-bummer ending. (From the promos I've seen of the second movie, it would have, necessarily, been MUCH different had Zombie kept the bummer ending!)
I'm not one of these old farts who can't stand to see my childhood favorites remade. In fact, I usually love the remakes just as much, if not -- heresy of heresies -- more. Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a much scarier experience than Romero's original. (Though, sometimes, I'm just in the mood to watch the original. Couldn't tell you why, but sometimes I am.)
That being said...
Rob Zombie's Halloween, as skillfully crafted as it is, doesn't have the same feel as John Carpenter's. It's a different animal. And I think it may be that the two artists enjoy different things about the Horror genre.
Carpenter clearly grew up with H. P. Lovecraft, and enjoys the unseen horror of a universe too old and too vast for human imagination to comfortably encompass. You can clearly see the physical manifestation of this unseen horror in the on-screen horror, but the dialogue gives you glimpses of the root causes. In Carpenter's Halloween there is an eternal evil that has crept into the body of Michael Myers and consumed his soul.
There's a spirituality there.
A dark, disturbing spirituality, yeah, but a spirituality.
I get the impression that Zombie grew up enjoying the mere shock value of the Horror genre. The soulless physicality of it.
I've got a friend who is a movie makeup artist, specializing in special makeup effects. (He would remind you that he makes people pretty, too, and he does! But what people are more fascinated by -- myself included, I'm afraid -- is the gore affects he is capable of pulling off. Anyway, he can gleefully sift through a gallery of traumatic wounds, actual pictures of actual human bodies torn and ripped apart. And make jokes as he does it.
I'm not judging here, but I can't do that. To me, I don't see a mere physical apparatus distorted in interesting pa terns, but I feel wounds that must cause excruciating pain. My friend has to, like a doctor, remove himself from such sentimentality to do his job as well as he does.
But there are others who unsympathetically enjoy other people's pain for shock or amusement. They watch Whacked Out Sports and the nightly news, savoring the humiliation and brutal pain of others, making no connection between the plight of the poor souls on TV and their own past pains and humiliations.
And I can't escape this feeling that, perhaps, Zombie falls into this camp. His chronicle of Michael Myers' life seems to simply exploit the "Look how fucked-up this is!" aspect of the development of a serial killer. He took Michael Myers out of the realm of modern-day fable and placed him firmly in the realm of almost a tragic hero. "Isn't it awful that this poor kid had all these bad things happen to him that lead him to do these even more horrible things? Wow life sucks, huh?"
I mean, I guess this sounds a bit retarded coming from a guy who so enjoys the Horror genre. But I don't enjoy the mutilations and the graphic violence (even though I do appreciate the skill it takes to create the graphic violence, and the effect it can have on the story being told -- see Serenity for a masterful example of how Horror elements can add emotional impact and depth to a non-Horror story). I enjoy the Horror story because there's usually a spiritual depth hidden deep beneath the genre conventions.
Example: Saw (the first one, in particular) is an inspirational reminder for us to cherish what is right there in front of us. It's not torture-porn (and I hate it when film critics lump it in with the copycat crap that came after it), it's a warning. All the Dead movies are about LIVING, about waking up from our auto-pilot, middle-class stupor and noticing what's around us. (Plus, there's the Apocalyptic aspect to those films, and apocalyptic stories are always about rebuilding after the collapse, finding a new way of living after everyone else is dead.)
But Zombie's Halloween doesn't seem to be an exploration so much as exploitation. He read up on what serial killers are like growing up, then showed Myers doing/experiencing those same, textbook things. (I took Psychology in high school and I knew about abusive parents and torturing small animals. I didn't see anything particularly insightful, or even surprising, in Zombie's telling of Michael's youth.)
So now Zombie is making Laurie insane, too.
Yay.
Groovy.
What a visionary he is.
What an insightful glimpse into the human condition.
How much this wise, deep, sage-like man can teach us about how to live life well.
And Zombie assures us (thank God) that this movie will be very realistic and very violent.
Woo-hoo.
The real -- sorry, the original -- Laurie Strode was a sort of mythological proxy for the audience: She was (in all of Jamie Lee Curtis's turns as the character) a SURVIVOR. I mean, on a deep psychological level, that's why we watch Horror movies, right? The catharsis. We experience terror, and then we leave the theater having purged this low-level anxiety that hundreds of hours of news and commercials and infomercials and political rhetoric have created within us, free from fear and with a sense of being able to cope with whatever petty inconveniences might present themselves to us in the ordinary, everyday world.
The Boogey-man was defeated! WE walked away from the confrontation!
But from the advance press, it seems that Rob Zombie's estimation of the human spirit is that if enough bad stuff happens to us, we will snap like the fragile twigs we are and merely add to the horrors humanity sometimes faces.
If this is the case, he would be an excellent campaign manager for the Republican Party. Clearly, life is just too difficult for the everyman to manage, and we need Big Brother to tell us what to do and buy.
I'm getting a bit ridiculous, I realize.
But this speaks to my basic problem with Rob Zombie's filmmaking abilities: I don't trust him as a storyteller.
Rob Zombie recorded another album? I'M SO THERE!!!
Rob Zombie made another music video? LEMME SEE!!!
But when he makes a film -- particularly based on a franchise I already cherish -- I don't feel as confident.
It's the writing, more than anything else. Writing stories performs this kind of fundamental function in society. Yeah, yeah, a lofty sentiment from the film flunky wannabe writer. But for the reals! Stories have an invisible side that speaks to stuff deep within us, and works on subconscious levels we don't even know we have. And when jump in and start fumbling with our subconscious, uneasiness ensues.
I'm not talking anything as grandiose as civil unrest, here, or copycat murders or anything. Usually, the worst that happens is the hack film doesn't make as much money as the corporate number-crunchers anticipated. (The marketplace is kind of magical that way!)
But $8 bucks wasted is $8 bucks wasted, right?
Worse, 2 hours wasted is kind of a bummer.
And I TOTALLY realize that I'm completely geeking-out here. I laughed at the Trekkies who complained that this latest incarnation of Star Trek's Enterprise looked like a toothpaste add, and who bemoaned that J. J. Abrams was going to be the ruination of a long-lasting and noble franchise.
And most of them (not all of them; I know at least one who wasn't satisfied after having actually seen the movie) were proved utterly wrong.
And you know what? I sincerely hope I am proved wrong about Rob Zombie's sequel! It would give me the greatest pleasure to discover that Zombie has hidden depths previously unrevealed to us! AND, I will happily sing his praises and proclaim my wrong-ness, should Halloween II turn out to be a much better film than I'm anticipating!!! :D There are times when being wrong is a profound blessing! Like when you buy a bunch of stuff at Walmart, keeping a makeshift tally of what you're going to pay in your head as you go, and what you're charged is several dollars less than what you expected to pay!
I'm hoping that's how Zombie's sequel will turn out to be.
Because I adore the Halloween franchise, because I love that sort of dark alley of modern folklore it explores. If you're too hip for Grimm's Fairy Tales or formal education, it's okay to be a fan of Horror flicks, lol. But if a Horror film doesn't actually have anything useful to say, then you're really just watching people die.
And who wants to be that guy?
But don't get me wrong: I'm actually not complaining about what Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween is. My bellyaching and nay-saying is all about what I fear Halloween II might be. (Which is, I realize, a silly and fruitless enterprise, lol.) Both versions of Zombie's Halloween were really good! I mean, like, REALLY good! :D His unrated version of the remake sits... well... a few discs down from my Extended Cut of Carpenter's original on my Horror shelf, lol.
I guess I'm just "intellectualizing" about something that I really have no way -- at present -- of knowing ANYTHING about, lol.
I'm a Horror/Writer nerd and I've found me a soapbox to stand on, dammit!
Blah.
Okay, I should get back to watching Michael Myers terrorize the citizens of Haddonfield.
PEACE!!!
:D
P. S. You know what? Now that I've gone on and on about Zombie's Halloween, maybe I should rewatch it again and make sure I'm not just talking out of my ass...
Five minutes from now, better judgment might assert itself. But for this very moment in Time, that's what our name would be.
Okay, so if I'm drinking Parrot Bay Mojitos, that should be exactly like drinking Mojitos on a tropical beach, right? I plop down my $8 for the brand name, and I get the very same experience, right?
If so, it's not quite as exotic as I would have expected.
But after a couple more Mojitos it will be. I just haven't had enough to really soak the experience in. ;P
I'm watching Halloween: The Extended Cut. (This cut combines Carpenter's original theatrical release with the additional scenes he shot (during the production of Halloween II, which he produced) to be included in the for-TV version of the film, which ran a little short with the nudity and graphic violence edited out. I like it because it adds a bit more to the story and characters. Nothing that was missing, per se, but I like the sort of "fullness" of it.)
After that, I plan to watch the original 1981 Halloween II. At work, we've been promoting the hell out of Zombie's sequel to his 2007 remake. The adds for the new one make me want to rewatch the original.
I don't know quite what to make of Rob Zombie as a filmmaker... House of 1000 Corpses was just plain boring. It looked kind of cool, but it wasn't scary or compelling or anything.
I mean, you listen to Zombie's music, and it's horror-pop genius, right? And you watch his videos, and you think :This guy has no limits to his talent!!!"
Then you watch his directorial debut...
Then he follows that up with The Devil's Rejects... You watch the trailer, and it LOOKS like a REAL Horror film! But then you read a couple of reviews -- which I just-about-never do, unless I'm just really not sure whether I want to see a flick (like, for instance, the writer/director really burned me with his last picture) -- and half the reviews love the movie and half hate it.
The people who loved it seemed to be turned on by a torture-porn element of the ending. Just ultra-violent filmmaking that shocked these paid-to-watch-movies bums and woke them up. These cats get to watch every movie that comes out, and they're bored of movie-going. It's a JOB to them! So what they have to say about the film-going experience simply bears NO relation to our experience in that we have to scrimp and save to see a movie that catches our attention, and they're dying to see the movies we would never pay money for!
So even the other half of the reviewers -- the ones that said the film looked great but had no heart or soul or story -- can't be trusted. because everyone knows that you look "smarter" putting someone else's hard work down than you do venerating it. Somehow (and I still haven't found the logic in this) if you praise a thing, you're naive, but if you insult it then you're some sort of expert.
Blah.
So then Zombie takes on Halloween.
I honestly really liked the remake! Zombie clearly has his visual style under control. The film looks like it was probably shot in the '70s, but it has all the sort of visual flair of a Rob Zombie music video. (That's not a slight, it's actual praise.) AND, Zombie did an amazing job with the script.
I saw 2 different versions of the film, too. I couldn't afford to see it at the theater, so I watched an online version (apparently a work print) with the bummer ending. Then when the unrated version came out on DVD, I bought it and watched the non-bummer ending. (From the promos I've seen of the second movie, it would have, necessarily, been MUCH different had Zombie kept the bummer ending!)
I'm not one of these old farts who can't stand to see my childhood favorites remade. In fact, I usually love the remakes just as much, if not -- heresy of heresies -- more. Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a much scarier experience than Romero's original. (Though, sometimes, I'm just in the mood to watch the original. Couldn't tell you why, but sometimes I am.)
That being said...
Rob Zombie's Halloween, as skillfully crafted as it is, doesn't have the same feel as John Carpenter's. It's a different animal. And I think it may be that the two artists enjoy different things about the Horror genre.
Carpenter clearly grew up with H. P. Lovecraft, and enjoys the unseen horror of a universe too old and too vast for human imagination to comfortably encompass. You can clearly see the physical manifestation of this unseen horror in the on-screen horror, but the dialogue gives you glimpses of the root causes. In Carpenter's Halloween there is an eternal evil that has crept into the body of Michael Myers and consumed his soul.
There's a spirituality there.
A dark, disturbing spirituality, yeah, but a spirituality.
I get the impression that Zombie grew up enjoying the mere shock value of the Horror genre. The soulless physicality of it.
I've got a friend who is a movie makeup artist, specializing in special makeup effects. (He would remind you that he makes people pretty, too, and he does! But what people are more fascinated by -- myself included, I'm afraid -- is the gore affects he is capable of pulling off. Anyway, he can gleefully sift through a gallery of traumatic wounds, actual pictures of actual human bodies torn and ripped apart. And make jokes as he does it.
I'm not judging here, but I can't do that. To me, I don't see a mere physical apparatus distorted in interesting pa terns, but I feel wounds that must cause excruciating pain. My friend has to, like a doctor, remove himself from such sentimentality to do his job as well as he does.
But there are others who unsympathetically enjoy other people's pain for shock or amusement. They watch Whacked Out Sports and the nightly news, savoring the humiliation and brutal pain of others, making no connection between the plight of the poor souls on TV and their own past pains and humiliations.
And I can't escape this feeling that, perhaps, Zombie falls into this camp. His chronicle of Michael Myers' life seems to simply exploit the "Look how fucked-up this is!" aspect of the development of a serial killer. He took Michael Myers out of the realm of modern-day fable and placed him firmly in the realm of almost a tragic hero. "Isn't it awful that this poor kid had all these bad things happen to him that lead him to do these even more horrible things? Wow life sucks, huh?"
I mean, I guess this sounds a bit retarded coming from a guy who so enjoys the Horror genre. But I don't enjoy the mutilations and the graphic violence (even though I do appreciate the skill it takes to create the graphic violence, and the effect it can have on the story being told -- see Serenity for a masterful example of how Horror elements can add emotional impact and depth to a non-Horror story). I enjoy the Horror story because there's usually a spiritual depth hidden deep beneath the genre conventions.
Example: Saw (the first one, in particular) is an inspirational reminder for us to cherish what is right there in front of us. It's not torture-porn (and I hate it when film critics lump it in with the copycat crap that came after it), it's a warning. All the Dead movies are about LIVING, about waking up from our auto-pilot, middle-class stupor and noticing what's around us. (Plus, there's the Apocalyptic aspect to those films, and apocalyptic stories are always about rebuilding after the collapse, finding a new way of living after everyone else is dead.)
But Zombie's Halloween doesn't seem to be an exploration so much as exploitation. He read up on what serial killers are like growing up, then showed Myers doing/experiencing those same, textbook things. (I took Psychology in high school and I knew about abusive parents and torturing small animals. I didn't see anything particularly insightful, or even surprising, in Zombie's telling of Michael's youth.)
So now Zombie is making Laurie insane, too.
Yay.
Groovy.
What a visionary he is.
What an insightful glimpse into the human condition.
How much this wise, deep, sage-like man can teach us about how to live life well.
And Zombie assures us (thank God) that this movie will be very realistic and very violent.
Woo-hoo.
The real -- sorry, the original -- Laurie Strode was a sort of mythological proxy for the audience: She was (in all of Jamie Lee Curtis's turns as the character) a SURVIVOR. I mean, on a deep psychological level, that's why we watch Horror movies, right? The catharsis. We experience terror, and then we leave the theater having purged this low-level anxiety that hundreds of hours of news and commercials and infomercials and political rhetoric have created within us, free from fear and with a sense of being able to cope with whatever petty inconveniences might present themselves to us in the ordinary, everyday world.
The Boogey-man was defeated! WE walked away from the confrontation!
But from the advance press, it seems that Rob Zombie's estimation of the human spirit is that if enough bad stuff happens to us, we will snap like the fragile twigs we are and merely add to the horrors humanity sometimes faces.
If this is the case, he would be an excellent campaign manager for the Republican Party. Clearly, life is just too difficult for the everyman to manage, and we need Big Brother to tell us what to do and buy.
I'm getting a bit ridiculous, I realize.
But this speaks to my basic problem with Rob Zombie's filmmaking abilities: I don't trust him as a storyteller.
Rob Zombie recorded another album? I'M SO THERE!!!
Rob Zombie made another music video? LEMME SEE!!!
But when he makes a film -- particularly based on a franchise I already cherish -- I don't feel as confident.
It's the writing, more than anything else. Writing stories performs this kind of fundamental function in society. Yeah, yeah, a lofty sentiment from the film flunky wannabe writer. But for the reals! Stories have an invisible side that speaks to stuff deep within us, and works on subconscious levels we don't even know we have. And when jump in and start fumbling with our subconscious, uneasiness ensues.
I'm not talking anything as grandiose as civil unrest, here, or copycat murders or anything. Usually, the worst that happens is the hack film doesn't make as much money as the corporate number-crunchers anticipated. (The marketplace is kind of magical that way!)
But $8 bucks wasted is $8 bucks wasted, right?
Worse, 2 hours wasted is kind of a bummer.
And I TOTALLY realize that I'm completely geeking-out here. I laughed at the Trekkies who complained that this latest incarnation of Star Trek's Enterprise looked like a toothpaste add, and who bemoaned that J. J. Abrams was going to be the ruination of a long-lasting and noble franchise.
And most of them (not all of them; I know at least one who wasn't satisfied after having actually seen the movie) were proved utterly wrong.
And you know what? I sincerely hope I am proved wrong about Rob Zombie's sequel! It would give me the greatest pleasure to discover that Zombie has hidden depths previously unrevealed to us! AND, I will happily sing his praises and proclaim my wrong-ness, should Halloween II turn out to be a much better film than I'm anticipating!!! :D There are times when being wrong is a profound blessing! Like when you buy a bunch of stuff at Walmart, keeping a makeshift tally of what you're going to pay in your head as you go, and what you're charged is several dollars less than what you expected to pay!
I'm hoping that's how Zombie's sequel will turn out to be.
Because I adore the Halloween franchise, because I love that sort of dark alley of modern folklore it explores. If you're too hip for Grimm's Fairy Tales or formal education, it's okay to be a fan of Horror flicks, lol. But if a Horror film doesn't actually have anything useful to say, then you're really just watching people die.
And who wants to be that guy?
But don't get me wrong: I'm actually not complaining about what Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween is. My bellyaching and nay-saying is all about what I fear Halloween II might be. (Which is, I realize, a silly and fruitless enterprise, lol.) Both versions of Zombie's Halloween were really good! I mean, like, REALLY good! :D His unrated version of the remake sits... well... a few discs down from my Extended Cut of Carpenter's original on my Horror shelf, lol.
I guess I'm just "intellectualizing" about something that I really have no way -- at present -- of knowing ANYTHING about, lol.
I'm a Horror/Writer nerd and I've found me a soapbox to stand on, dammit!
Blah.
Okay, I should get back to watching Michael Myers terrorize the citizens of Haddonfield.
PEACE!!!
:D
P. S. You know what? Now that I've gone on and on about Zombie's Halloween, maybe I should rewatch it again and make sure I'm not just talking out of my ass...
Thursday, August 13, 2009
MY NEW "FRIDAY"!!!
I think I might love my new shift!!!
I recently switched days with the other overnight guy here at the station so I can have weekends off for investigating, and this is my new "Friday"! I'm off for the next three days as of 6:00am!!!
AND...
Tonight both of us overnight schlubs are working, which means that the bulk of my shift is DONE!
Previously, I would come in on Thursdays, wait around until midnight or so for my shift to really get rolling -- because there wasn't much I could do until midnight -- and then I'd work my li'l buns off till my shift was over. And that was my "Monday". Because I was working in the back.
Now I'm in the front (if you don't work here, "in the back" and "in the front" has no meaning for you, but that's okay, it doesn't have to for you to follow what I'm saying), so come midnight the hardest part of my shift is behind me and I'm, more or less, relaxing and babysitting the station!
SAH-WEET, DUDE!!!
This, my first week working this new shift, has been challenging pretty much from the time I get in until the time I leave work. (I'm slipping into a new groove here.) But I just realized that this new groove means that right now, this moment here, I get to chill for most of the rest of my shift!!! :D
Things will pick up after 4:00am until around 5:30am, then the last half hour should be absolutely boring! :) (In the good way.)
GUESS WHAT!
It's after midnight now. My Gnomey Goddess agreed to be my girlfriend 3 years ago today!!! THREE YEARS!!! :D ♥ ♥ ♥
Can you believe any woman would put up with me for 3 years?!! I mean, I'm guessing living on different continents helps her out a great deal, so she's got that going for her. But she still has to put up with the ridiculous emails and phone calls and all that crap from me, lol.
Patience of a saint, that woman has, bless her! :)
Okay, I'm going to go see if I can text her with my new phone. (Her phone never received text messages from my old phone, but maybe this new one will work.)
Hope your Friday is smooth and easy, and I hope you have a MAGNIFICENT weekend!!!
I recently switched days with the other overnight guy here at the station so I can have weekends off for investigating, and this is my new "Friday"! I'm off for the next three days as of 6:00am!!!
AND...
Tonight both of us overnight schlubs are working, which means that the bulk of my shift is DONE!
Previously, I would come in on Thursdays, wait around until midnight or so for my shift to really get rolling -- because there wasn't much I could do until midnight -- and then I'd work my li'l buns off till my shift was over. And that was my "Monday". Because I was working in the back.
Now I'm in the front (if you don't work here, "in the back" and "in the front" has no meaning for you, but that's okay, it doesn't have to for you to follow what I'm saying), so come midnight the hardest part of my shift is behind me and I'm, more or less, relaxing and babysitting the station!
SAH-WEET, DUDE!!!
This, my first week working this new shift, has been challenging pretty much from the time I get in until the time I leave work. (I'm slipping into a new groove here.) But I just realized that this new groove means that right now, this moment here, I get to chill for most of the rest of my shift!!! :D
Things will pick up after 4:00am until around 5:30am, then the last half hour should be absolutely boring! :) (In the good way.)
GUESS WHAT!
It's after midnight now. My Gnomey Goddess agreed to be my girlfriend 3 years ago today!!! THREE YEARS!!! :D ♥ ♥ ♥
Can you believe any woman would put up with me for 3 years?!! I mean, I'm guessing living on different continents helps her out a great deal, so she's got that going for her. But she still has to put up with the ridiculous emails and phone calls and all that crap from me, lol.
Patience of a saint, that woman has, bless her! :)
Okay, I'm going to go see if I can text her with my new phone. (Her phone never received text messages from my old phone, but maybe this new one will work.)
Hope your Friday is smooth and easy, and I hope you have a MAGNIFICENT weekend!!!
Saturday, August 08, 2009
CASTLE
I friggin' LOVE this show!!!
:D
I just finished watching episodes 5 and 6 of Nathan Fillion's new show Castle and the show continues to rock!
So much so, in fact, that I've added a widget on the links part of my blog -- as I'm sure you noticed, lol.
Have 45 minutes to spare? Click on an episode and ENJOY!!! :D
:D
I just finished watching episodes 5 and 6 of Nathan Fillion's new show Castle and the show continues to rock!
So much so, in fact, that I've added a widget on the links part of my blog -- as I'm sure you noticed, lol.
Have 45 minutes to spare? Click on an episode and ENJOY!!! :D
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Just An Update...
Enjoying my weekend! :)
Over the last couple of days I've...
1. Watched Shaft (1971) and Shaft's Big Score (1972),
2. Read another chapter of Picture Yourself Developing Your Psychic Abilities by Tiffany Johnson,
3. Received Rosemary Ellen Guiley's Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits and Troy Taylor's The Ghost Hunters' Guidebook in the mail,
4. Conducted an experiment with Brian's new Ghost Box, and finally
5. Watched Push and Wolverine and the X-Men: Origins.
Oh yeah, and we ate Domino's Pizza a couple of days there, too! :D
I call this a very productive weekend so far, and I've still got another whole day!
I hope you're being as "productive" as I am! ;)
Over the last couple of days I've...
1. Watched Shaft (1971) and Shaft's Big Score (1972),
2. Read another chapter of Picture Yourself Developing Your Psychic Abilities by Tiffany Johnson,
3. Received Rosemary Ellen Guiley's Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits and Troy Taylor's The Ghost Hunters' Guidebook in the mail,
4. Conducted an experiment with Brian's new Ghost Box, and finally
5. Watched Push and Wolverine and the X-Men: Origins.
Oh yeah, and we ate Domino's Pizza a couple of days there, too! :D
I call this a very productive weekend so far, and I've still got another whole day!
I hope you're being as "productive" as I am! ;)
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Jumping Back To The Past... A Little...
I just had in interesting experience and thought I'd take a couple of minutes to share it...
It's a bit convoluted though, lol...
Okay, I'm at work listening to Chris Anderson's audiobook FREE: The Future of a Radical Price here at work. (The 3 links above are (1) to Anderson's very thought-provoking blog, (2) a free copy of the audiobook from Audible.com (you can also get it, for free, at iTunes) and (3) a copy of the book you can read online, for free.)
Mr. Anderson is explaining (in the book, that is) that in this new economy, reputation is a commodity in the web-based economy of Information. I'm not going to do this justice but, over-simplistically, Anderson is explaining that if someone Googles a subject, and one of your sites comes up in one of Google Search's top positions, that's because a relatively high number of people are looking at your site, therefor creating a kind of reputation value. (Think of your local news: If there's a particular weather person whose forecasts you trust, you make an effort to watch that person's weather segment because you value his/her reputation as a weather forecaster.) (I warned you I wasn't going to do Mr. Anderson justice, lol.)
Just out of curiosity, I Googled myself. (I'm all alone at work here, so I was Googling myself in relative privacy. I generally try to not Google myself in public; as, I'm sure, we all do.)
If you're curious, my reputation doesn't seem to carry a great deal of value.
BUT...
I stumbled upon this blog entry, which I thought raised some interesting questions...
To summarize, the entry consists of 3 paragraphs that introduce the concept of SecondLife in general, introduces me as a half-hearted case study specifically, and then makes the simplistic conclusion that participation in a virtual reality can't be healthy.
Now, it's not my intention to disrespect the author or disreguard her opinion. But judging from 2 of the 4 comments left by other people (the first one is her apoligizing for a faulty link, which I don't believe was her fault since I work at the TV station that posted the link, lol), AND including a similar opinion voiced by my friend Tommy, who introduced me to SecondLife back in 2006, I think there is some interesting academic territory left unexplored here.
This got my wheels turning because it's now 2 1/2 years after the blog entry was written and I have perspective that I couldn't have had when the entry went online. I can actually consider the issues mentioned with some degree of objectivity...
The biggest theme expressed here is the concern that too much time in a virtual world must certainly be unhealthy. My friend Tommy expressed this concern after his involvement in SL waned after a few months and Brian's and my interest was only growing.
To me, this seems an odd assumption to make. Why must involvement in a virtual world necessarily lead to abnormalities in one's perception of reality? (I could simply use the term "a schizophrenic break" but most people (mistakenly) believe schizophrenia is synonymous with the condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder. So instead of wasting your time explaining the difference, I'm wasting your time explaining why I didn't simply use the clinical term for the condition, lol.)
I can't see the throughline in that logic. Model trains are a time-consuming hobby that creates a virtual world, but I've never heard concerns that the men and women who spend the majority of their free time and money constructing these aesthetic marvels might have difficulty separating the virtual world from the real one. I've never read or heard an urban legend about members of a reenactment society confusing which century they are in and chasing folks down the street with their muskets or rapiers, lol.
So why would SL be so troubling?
First, I think it's a generational thing.
In the early '80s, Dungeons & Dragons came into the popular consciousness. It was the first, or one of the first, games to be described as a "Role Playing Game". (Nowadays the term RPG is common, but in the 1980s is was exotic and strange.) And I'm no sociologist, but I would guess that the term might have something to do with the urban legends that sprang up around a specific kid who went missing, and it was presumed to be because of the game. There was a made-fo-TV movie about it in 1982 starring a then-unkown Tom Hanks, so anyone who hadn't read/seen the erroneous news reports that created the urban legends were introduced to the "dangers" of role playing games when the movie aired.
I believe this created a pop perception that somehow role playing games held some secret power that could unbalance and otherwise reasonably balanced mental/emotional state.
I can -- again, thinking of this as a generational phenomenon -- understand how that perception could arrise considering what my generation grew up believing about hypnosis.
Hypnosis is, plainly and simply, a state of deep relaxation. It's not a dream state, as 1970/1980s TV shows and movies might have us believe, and it's not even a state of semi-consciousness. I'm talking about therapuetic (one might say "legitimate") hypnosis, the type of hypnosis that performed by certified therapists in the medical field and not the performance variety wherein people do things against their will or without their knowledge. No one can be hypnotized without their own willing participation. That is to say that the hypnotherapist can only guide you into a hypnotic state (the term itself sounds, to my generation, more mystical and amazing than it actually is) and it's up to you to become hypnotized, if you will.
Example: Have you ever driven half an hour to get somewhere, lost in thought or conversation or the radio, and when you arrive at your destination you suddenly wonder where the time went and how you got there so fast? You were hypnotized. You were in a hypnotic state, and you put yourself there without even realizing it, lol.
But we grew up with the stage magicians who did these wild things with hypnosis (Right before our very eyes! *gasp*) following some sort of preamble proclaiming the amazing things that hypnosis can accomplish. We grew up, in short, associating hypnosis with "magic".
So the thought that a game that requires its players to use their imagination for hours might unbalance us seems, in this context, almost logical. (Almost.) And yet when we were young, impressionable children we played some form of Make Believe all the time without loosing our grasp on reality.
How did we ever make it out of the '80s alive?!! ;P
Secondly, I think the term "virtual reality" itself developed -- for people of a certain age and older -- it's own "magical" perception.
Look at movies like Tron, Strange Days and The Lawn Mower Man... Before people really knew what computers were and what they could do, folks (mostly writers of fiction) theorized wildly about the possibilities of a world created inside computers that was indistinguishable from our own.
In fact, that's one of the things that fascinated (and still fascinates) me about SecondLife...
I grew up with these concepts, which were largely concerned with methods of deceiving the physical senses to achieve the illusion of the virtual reality. We -- Western Civilization, at least -- think of the world from the outside in. In other words, what is external to us (what we see, hear, smell, can tough, can taste) is real. What is internal (emotions, perceptions of self/others) is not real, it's subjective, and therefor subject to suspicion.
The surprising -- and most informative -- aspect of the SL experience turned out to be (a) how far-off the sci-fi writers were when a virtual world finally presented itself (not that they won't be proven prophetic sometime in the distant future, but it won't be in my lifetime, surely) and (b) how deeply impactful the internal, subjective experiences can be to the human experience.
If you go sky diving in SL, there's no way you're going to feel the thrill/fear/exhilaration of sky diving for real. But if the avatar of someone you respect says you're a sweet guy, you might actually walk with a little bit of a spring in your step the next day, lol.
And let's be clear, I was deep into SL, lol. If it were possible to get lost in that world, I probably would have been the person to suffer a schizophrenic break and forget which one was the real world, lol. Except, you know... I wasn't strung out on hallucinogens and hearing voices and stuff at the time. ;P (Actually, the kid the movie Mazes & Monsters was based on was abusing drugs, suicidally depressed and he still didn't thing he was living in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, lol.)
But the thing is, you really can't "get lost" in that world. Just like you can't be hypnotized and convinced you're a chicken, lol. It's simply not possible. The human mind doesn't work that way. Our grip on reality isn't that fragile.
However...
...and this is what interested me when I happened upon this blog entry from 2 years ago...
...the question of what "reality" is should be further explored by all of us, I think! :D
And SecondLife actually did help open me up to this concept, but only after years of studying the Tao Te Ching, buddhism and Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do...
A person's subjective reality really is their reality.
I'm a young and dumb teenager, I'm in a car full of my friends and my girlfriend, and the car runs out of gas. We're 2 or 3 blocks away from a gas station, so we get out and walk. My friends and I are laughing and enjoying the conversation when my girlfriend starts yelling at me. She's pissed off. How could I be so stupid as to not pay attention to the gas gage?! Why don't I care about her?! Are my friends more important to me than she is?!
Wha...?!
Now, at that age I just thought she was being a bitch and wondered why she had to ruin my night.
But now I can look back and understand where she was coming from, and even see what the hell she was talking about. My friends were having a good time, she was miserable, and I was, apparently, fine as long as my friends were fine. The woman I claimed to love was miserable: If I actually cared about her, why wasn't I sympathetic to her needs? In fact, I was laughing and having fun, and I wasn't even aware that she was unhappy until she voiced it!
I'm not proud of who I was as a teen.
But more informative was the perspective I gain when I remove myself from both sides of that particular conflict: Two people having the exact same external experience, and yet opposite internal experiences!
Empirically speaking, that shouldn't even be possible! You drop a rock, it falls. That's science. That's objective. Your car runs out of gas, you have to walk 2 or 3 blocks to refuel it...
Hmph...
Actually, the specific train of thought that made me want to revisit my adventures in SL has to do with being a rock star.
My Genius Friend Dave has met and known rock stars in his day, and did you know that not all of them are living the Rock Star life? Some of them complain about how little studio work pays. Some are complaining about the taxes. Some of them enjoy arguing with their kids and running errands with their spouses when they're not up on stage having groupies scream their name and throw thongs at them.
But if you're a rock star, how can you not feel like a Rock Star?
I believe it's all in the moments.
I think life is made up of moments, and what life we live is actually made up of the moments we identify with.
Example:
I remember my childhood as being full of freedom and non-stop fun. I can sometimes be heard to bemoan the loss of summer vacation and endless play time.
But those are false memories.
I mean, there certainly were moments -- entire days/weeks -- filled with unbridled play and incessant movie-watching! But if I think about my whole childhood, I remember that those times were the minority, not the majority. In fact, I probably spend more time now -- as an adult -- writing stories, researching and investigating the paranormal, watching movies, reading novels, laughing with my friends (in other words "playing") than I did when I didn't have to pay the bills and wash the dishes.
Seriously, if I had perfect memory and compared the time I spend "playing" now to the time I spent playing as a child, I'll bet I'm having tons more fun than I realize I am, lol!
But unconsciously, I often identify with the moments of commuting or buying money orders for rent or forcing myself to go to sleep because it's "bedtime" and call those my Adult Life, while unconsciously omitting being forced to go to bed at a certain time, doing homework, not being able to buy a toy because my allowance wasn't enough (well, that hasn't changed all that much, lol) and calling the memories summer vacation my Childhood.
But it doesn't have to be like that. I have the choice.
So what the hell is this "reality" thing, anyway?
;P
It's a bit convoluted though, lol...
Okay, I'm at work listening to Chris Anderson's audiobook FREE: The Future of a Radical Price here at work. (The 3 links above are (1) to Anderson's very thought-provoking blog, (2) a free copy of the audiobook from Audible.com (you can also get it, for free, at iTunes) and (3) a copy of the book you can read online, for free.)
Mr. Anderson is explaining (in the book, that is) that in this new economy, reputation is a commodity in the web-based economy of Information. I'm not going to do this justice but, over-simplistically, Anderson is explaining that if someone Googles a subject, and one of your sites comes up in one of Google Search's top positions, that's because a relatively high number of people are looking at your site, therefor creating a kind of reputation value. (Think of your local news: If there's a particular weather person whose forecasts you trust, you make an effort to watch that person's weather segment because you value his/her reputation as a weather forecaster.) (I warned you I wasn't going to do Mr. Anderson justice, lol.)
Just out of curiosity, I Googled myself. (I'm all alone at work here, so I was Googling myself in relative privacy. I generally try to not Google myself in public; as, I'm sure, we all do.)
If you're curious, my reputation doesn't seem to carry a great deal of value.
BUT...
I stumbled upon this blog entry, which I thought raised some interesting questions...
To summarize, the entry consists of 3 paragraphs that introduce the concept of SecondLife in general, introduces me as a half-hearted case study specifically, and then makes the simplistic conclusion that participation in a virtual reality can't be healthy.
Now, it's not my intention to disrespect the author or disreguard her opinion. But judging from 2 of the 4 comments left by other people (the first one is her apoligizing for a faulty link, which I don't believe was her fault since I work at the TV station that posted the link, lol), AND including a similar opinion voiced by my friend Tommy, who introduced me to SecondLife back in 2006, I think there is some interesting academic territory left unexplored here.
This got my wheels turning because it's now 2 1/2 years after the blog entry was written and I have perspective that I couldn't have had when the entry went online. I can actually consider the issues mentioned with some degree of objectivity...
The biggest theme expressed here is the concern that too much time in a virtual world must certainly be unhealthy. My friend Tommy expressed this concern after his involvement in SL waned after a few months and Brian's and my interest was only growing.
To me, this seems an odd assumption to make. Why must involvement in a virtual world necessarily lead to abnormalities in one's perception of reality? (I could simply use the term "a schizophrenic break" but most people (mistakenly) believe schizophrenia is synonymous with the condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder. So instead of wasting your time explaining the difference, I'm wasting your time explaining why I didn't simply use the clinical term for the condition, lol.)
I can't see the throughline in that logic. Model trains are a time-consuming hobby that creates a virtual world, but I've never heard concerns that the men and women who spend the majority of their free time and money constructing these aesthetic marvels might have difficulty separating the virtual world from the real one. I've never read or heard an urban legend about members of a reenactment society confusing which century they are in and chasing folks down the street with their muskets or rapiers, lol.
So why would SL be so troubling?
First, I think it's a generational thing.
In the early '80s, Dungeons & Dragons came into the popular consciousness. It was the first, or one of the first, games to be described as a "Role Playing Game". (Nowadays the term RPG is common, but in the 1980s is was exotic and strange.) And I'm no sociologist, but I would guess that the term might have something to do with the urban legends that sprang up around a specific kid who went missing, and it was presumed to be because of the game. There was a made-fo-TV movie about it in 1982 starring a then-unkown Tom Hanks, so anyone who hadn't read/seen the erroneous news reports that created the urban legends were introduced to the "dangers" of role playing games when the movie aired.
I believe this created a pop perception that somehow role playing games held some secret power that could unbalance and otherwise reasonably balanced mental/emotional state.
I can -- again, thinking of this as a generational phenomenon -- understand how that perception could arrise considering what my generation grew up believing about hypnosis.
Hypnosis is, plainly and simply, a state of deep relaxation. It's not a dream state, as 1970/1980s TV shows and movies might have us believe, and it's not even a state of semi-consciousness. I'm talking about therapuetic (one might say "legitimate") hypnosis, the type of hypnosis that performed by certified therapists in the medical field and not the performance variety wherein people do things against their will or without their knowledge. No one can be hypnotized without their own willing participation. That is to say that the hypnotherapist can only guide you into a hypnotic state (the term itself sounds, to my generation, more mystical and amazing than it actually is) and it's up to you to become hypnotized, if you will.
Example: Have you ever driven half an hour to get somewhere, lost in thought or conversation or the radio, and when you arrive at your destination you suddenly wonder where the time went and how you got there so fast? You were hypnotized. You were in a hypnotic state, and you put yourself there without even realizing it, lol.
But we grew up with the stage magicians who did these wild things with hypnosis (Right before our very eyes! *gasp*) following some sort of preamble proclaiming the amazing things that hypnosis can accomplish. We grew up, in short, associating hypnosis with "magic".
So the thought that a game that requires its players to use their imagination for hours might unbalance us seems, in this context, almost logical. (Almost.) And yet when we were young, impressionable children we played some form of Make Believe all the time without loosing our grasp on reality.
How did we ever make it out of the '80s alive?!! ;P
Secondly, I think the term "virtual reality" itself developed -- for people of a certain age and older -- it's own "magical" perception.
Look at movies like Tron, Strange Days and The Lawn Mower Man... Before people really knew what computers were and what they could do, folks (mostly writers of fiction) theorized wildly about the possibilities of a world created inside computers that was indistinguishable from our own.
In fact, that's one of the things that fascinated (and still fascinates) me about SecondLife...
I grew up with these concepts, which were largely concerned with methods of deceiving the physical senses to achieve the illusion of the virtual reality. We -- Western Civilization, at least -- think of the world from the outside in. In other words, what is external to us (what we see, hear, smell, can tough, can taste) is real. What is internal (emotions, perceptions of self/others) is not real, it's subjective, and therefor subject to suspicion.
The surprising -- and most informative -- aspect of the SL experience turned out to be (a) how far-off the sci-fi writers were when a virtual world finally presented itself (not that they won't be proven prophetic sometime in the distant future, but it won't be in my lifetime, surely) and (b) how deeply impactful the internal, subjective experiences can be to the human experience.
If you go sky diving in SL, there's no way you're going to feel the thrill/fear/exhilaration of sky diving for real. But if the avatar of someone you respect says you're a sweet guy, you might actually walk with a little bit of a spring in your step the next day, lol.
And let's be clear, I was deep into SL, lol. If it were possible to get lost in that world, I probably would have been the person to suffer a schizophrenic break and forget which one was the real world, lol. Except, you know... I wasn't strung out on hallucinogens and hearing voices and stuff at the time. ;P (Actually, the kid the movie Mazes & Monsters was based on was abusing drugs, suicidally depressed and he still didn't thing he was living in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, lol.)
But the thing is, you really can't "get lost" in that world. Just like you can't be hypnotized and convinced you're a chicken, lol. It's simply not possible. The human mind doesn't work that way. Our grip on reality isn't that fragile.
However...
...and this is what interested me when I happened upon this blog entry from 2 years ago...
...the question of what "reality" is should be further explored by all of us, I think! :D
And SecondLife actually did help open me up to this concept, but only after years of studying the Tao Te Ching, buddhism and Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do...
A person's subjective reality really is their reality.
I'm a young and dumb teenager, I'm in a car full of my friends and my girlfriend, and the car runs out of gas. We're 2 or 3 blocks away from a gas station, so we get out and walk. My friends and I are laughing and enjoying the conversation when my girlfriend starts yelling at me. She's pissed off. How could I be so stupid as to not pay attention to the gas gage?! Why don't I care about her?! Are my friends more important to me than she is?!
Wha...?!
Now, at that age I just thought she was being a bitch and wondered why she had to ruin my night.
But now I can look back and understand where she was coming from, and even see what the hell she was talking about. My friends were having a good time, she was miserable, and I was, apparently, fine as long as my friends were fine. The woman I claimed to love was miserable: If I actually cared about her, why wasn't I sympathetic to her needs? In fact, I was laughing and having fun, and I wasn't even aware that she was unhappy until she voiced it!
I'm not proud of who I was as a teen.
But more informative was the perspective I gain when I remove myself from both sides of that particular conflict: Two people having the exact same external experience, and yet opposite internal experiences!
Empirically speaking, that shouldn't even be possible! You drop a rock, it falls. That's science. That's objective. Your car runs out of gas, you have to walk 2 or 3 blocks to refuel it...
Hmph...
Actually, the specific train of thought that made me want to revisit my adventures in SL has to do with being a rock star.
My Genius Friend Dave has met and known rock stars in his day, and did you know that not all of them are living the Rock Star life? Some of them complain about how little studio work pays. Some are complaining about the taxes. Some of them enjoy arguing with their kids and running errands with their spouses when they're not up on stage having groupies scream their name and throw thongs at them.
But if you're a rock star, how can you not feel like a Rock Star?
I believe it's all in the moments.
I think life is made up of moments, and what life we live is actually made up of the moments we identify with.
Example:
I remember my childhood as being full of freedom and non-stop fun. I can sometimes be heard to bemoan the loss of summer vacation and endless play time.
But those are false memories.
I mean, there certainly were moments -- entire days/weeks -- filled with unbridled play and incessant movie-watching! But if I think about my whole childhood, I remember that those times were the minority, not the majority. In fact, I probably spend more time now -- as an adult -- writing stories, researching and investigating the paranormal, watching movies, reading novels, laughing with my friends (in other words "playing") than I did when I didn't have to pay the bills and wash the dishes.
Seriously, if I had perfect memory and compared the time I spend "playing" now to the time I spent playing as a child, I'll bet I'm having tons more fun than I realize I am, lol!
But unconsciously, I often identify with the moments of commuting or buying money orders for rent or forcing myself to go to sleep because it's "bedtime" and call those my Adult Life, while unconsciously omitting being forced to go to bed at a certain time, doing homework, not being able to buy a toy because my allowance wasn't enough (well, that hasn't changed all that much, lol) and calling the memories summer vacation my Childhood.
But it doesn't have to be like that. I have the choice.
So what the hell is this "reality" thing, anyway?
;P
Thursday, July 30, 2009
TSPI Meeting Tonight...
This wasn't my original plan, but I totally disconnected this weekend!
It was nice. :)
I just sort of turned off and tuned out all weekend long, lol.
Brian & I watched Knowing with Nicholas Cage, Dracula A.D. 1972, Shaft (the Samuel L. Jackson version) and drank too much, lol. ;P Brian bought us pizza, and I got to try out Domino's Brooklyn-style crust! AWESOME!!! :D
I sobered-up yesterday (Tuesday), but I slept most of the day, listening to paranormal podcasts when I was conscious.
Then I wake up today (Wednesday) to discover that we have a meeting tonight!!! :O
I woke up around 5:00pm and the meeting was at 7:00pm. And it's in this little cove in Round Rock... Near because it's in Round Round (and I'm a North Austinite), far because when I asked www.randmcnally.com where it was it went "ummm..., well..., hmph..." It gave me some directions... but... I finally had to call the host of our meeting to guide me into port, lol.
Texas Spirits, I have to say, is rockin'!!! We received A LOT of positive feedback about out recent Yorktown venture -- and we have a badass investigation of the Hanging Tree of Kyle coming up! -- and still our leaders, Paula and Stephanie, keep refining the formula, strengthening the recipe to make the absolute most out of all the resources we have (namely us, the members)! :)
So it was a really inspiring meeting! :)
And driving back, I realized I hadn't eaten since I had awakened, so I stopped for some Sonic on the way home.
DUDE!!!
Allow me to paint the picture:
It's a hot, Austin summer night...
I'm in my car, listening to last week's episode of Spooky Southcoast... (I have already listened to this week's, but somehow, I missed last week's episode.)
And I'm sitting in the open air, looking at trees and brush, chomping on a tasty-ass burger and tots!!!
Michael Jackson comes over the speakers, and I'm quite surprised to discover that his music is kind of timeless, in that it doesn't date iteslf, and therefor can be played nowadays without sounding "old"...
This was a moment of sheer bliss! :D
Like receiving an email from my Gnomey-Goddess... This was heaven! :D
Then I get home to Brian and we watch some Transformers (the Bay flick, not the animated '80s show, lol) and life is good! :)
From waking up and scrambling to get to a TSPI meeting until now, I SO LOVE MY LIFE!!! :D I am truly Blessed!
I hope that in the coming days, YOU feel Blessed, too!!!
:D
It was nice. :)
I just sort of turned off and tuned out all weekend long, lol.
Brian & I watched Knowing with Nicholas Cage, Dracula A.D. 1972, Shaft (the Samuel L. Jackson version) and drank too much, lol. ;P Brian bought us pizza, and I got to try out Domino's Brooklyn-style crust! AWESOME!!! :D
I sobered-up yesterday (Tuesday), but I slept most of the day, listening to paranormal podcasts when I was conscious.
Then I wake up today (Wednesday) to discover that we have a meeting tonight!!! :O
I woke up around 5:00pm and the meeting was at 7:00pm. And it's in this little cove in Round Rock... Near because it's in Round Round (and I'm a North Austinite), far because when I asked www.randmcnally.com where it was it went "ummm..., well..., hmph..." It gave me some directions... but... I finally had to call the host of our meeting to guide me into port, lol.
Texas Spirits, I have to say, is rockin'!!! We received A LOT of positive feedback about out recent Yorktown venture -- and we have a badass investigation of the Hanging Tree of Kyle coming up! -- and still our leaders, Paula and Stephanie, keep refining the formula, strengthening the recipe to make the absolute most out of all the resources we have (namely us, the members)! :)
So it was a really inspiring meeting! :)
And driving back, I realized I hadn't eaten since I had awakened, so I stopped for some Sonic on the way home.
DUDE!!!
Allow me to paint the picture:
It's a hot, Austin summer night...
I'm in my car, listening to last week's episode of Spooky Southcoast... (I have already listened to this week's, but somehow, I missed last week's episode.)
And I'm sitting in the open air, looking at trees and brush, chomping on a tasty-ass burger and tots!!!
Michael Jackson comes over the speakers, and I'm quite surprised to discover that his music is kind of timeless, in that it doesn't date iteslf, and therefor can be played nowadays without sounding "old"...
This was a moment of sheer bliss! :D
Like receiving an email from my Gnomey-Goddess... This was heaven! :D
Then I get home to Brian and we watch some Transformers (the Bay flick, not the animated '80s show, lol) and life is good! :)
From waking up and scrambling to get to a TSPI meeting until now, I SO LOVE MY LIFE!!! :D I am truly Blessed!
I hope that in the coming days, YOU feel Blessed, too!!!
:D
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Raping the Mind's Eye...
I think it's time we, Humanity (and, of course, Huwomanity, too), begin taking responsibility for the mental images we create with our language.
Many are the Family Dinner nights when Brian & Mom and I would be dining and then Mom and Brian start swapping verbal medical maladies and I have to protest, pointing out that I'm inserting food into my mouth as they speak, and I prefer the procedure remain an intake process -- as opposed to the ingestion reversing direction midway through the meal. When I complain in this way, they always treat me like I'm just trying to censor their invigorating dialogue or whatever, and I always (always) have to remind them that words create images in my mind's eye.
I'm assuming Mom's simply not that imaginative, and I think that perhaps Brian has some shark DNA or something -- once he begins the process of eating, keep your appendages well clear of the Mastication Zone.
But I think the basic problem is as simple as this: Folks don't realize that there are some things that, once the mind's eye sees, can't be unseen! There are combinations of words that simply should never be inflicted upon human consciousness.
For example:
You see what I mean? The mental images created by the combining of these words is such an aesthetic violation that the phrases themselves could be effectively substituted for profanity!
"You wanna butt-mug my anal debris project, you pubic ejecta? Fine! But the next time you try I'm gonna bear-fondle your nasal-spewtem face into next-pants-loving-week, you mouse teat monkey pustule!"
You see what I mean? Were I the recipient of such verbal violence I think I would be curled up in a fetal ball under a desk or something, smacking my head against a the nearest hard surface, trying to knock the visuals loose and regain normal cognitive function.
So please, join me in my crusade to protect us all from the mental anguish of conversational aberrations! Send your donations to:
Many are the Family Dinner nights when Brian & Mom and I would be dining and then Mom and Brian start swapping verbal medical maladies and I have to protest, pointing out that I'm inserting food into my mouth as they speak, and I prefer the procedure remain an intake process -- as opposed to the ingestion reversing direction midway through the meal. When I complain in this way, they always treat me like I'm just trying to censor their invigorating dialogue or whatever, and I always (always) have to remind them that words create images in my mind's eye.
I'm assuming Mom's simply not that imaginative, and I think that perhaps Brian has some shark DNA or something -- once he begins the process of eating, keep your appendages well clear of the Mastication Zone.
But I think the basic problem is as simple as this: Folks don't realize that there are some things that, once the mind's eye sees, can't be unseen! There are combinations of words that simply should never be inflicted upon human consciousness.
For example:
Monkey Pustule
Nasal Spewtem
Bear-Fondling
(Anything) Gastrointestinal
Butt-Mugging
Pubic Ejecta
Pit Fungus
Pants Love
Anal Debris
Mouse Teat
Nasal Spewtem
Bear-Fondling
(Anything) Gastrointestinal
Butt-Mugging
Pubic Ejecta
Pit Fungus
Pants Love
Anal Debris
Mouse Teat
You see what I mean? The mental images created by the combining of these words is such an aesthetic violation that the phrases themselves could be effectively substituted for profanity!
"You wanna butt-mug my anal debris project, you pubic ejecta? Fine! But the next time you try I'm gonna bear-fondle your nasal-spewtem face into next-pants-loving-week, you mouse teat monkey pustule!"
You see what I mean? Were I the recipient of such verbal violence I think I would be curled up in a fetal ball under a desk or something, smacking my head against a the nearest hard surface, trying to knock the visuals loose and regain normal cognitive function.
So please, join me in my crusade to protect us all from the mental anguish of conversational aberrations! Send your donations to:
Mental-Rape
Recovery Foundation
318008 Pew King Wy
Frognot, TX, 75424
Recovery Foundation
318008 Pew King Wy
Frognot, TX, 75424
Monday, July 20, 2009
THIS Is BRILLIANT!!!
Ever wonder exactly how a song gets recorded?
I've read enough that I have some idea, but it's AMAZING to actually watch it take shape! :D
Plus, this is a monumental song that's being recorded!
The Recording of Bury Me Alive - We Are The Fallen
When all is said and done, I'm really a filmmaker at heart. I've helped produce enough short films (and failed to produce enough screenplays/novels, lol) in the '90s to know that what I love about making movies is ALL of it! :D I enjoy writing, but I LOVE CO-writing! And I spent my teens acting, but what I LOVE is just ALL OF IT! I love polishing the script (or helping to polish it), casting, getting gear and props and whatnot together, blocking, shooting, wrap parties, editing, editing for sound, and screening. It's ALL great fun!
So to see how a song comes together is really, really cool! :D
I've read enough to have a pretty cool idea. But that's not the same as actually being able to watch it happen.
AND... If you don't know anything about We Are The Fallen, it is quite a privilege to be able to watch this particular song take shape! The band would probably curse me for saying this, but "Bury Me Alive" is going to be Evanescence's "Wake Me Up", I suspect. It's like Ben Moody recognized lightening striking a second time, and he realized that fans and future fans of his work might actually enjoy watching the clouds light up, the air ionizing and the electrical charges from the ground and the clouds joining to ignite the sky! :D
Isn't it astouding, though, to watch the pieces coming together to form this immaculate whole?!!
As I kid I watched -- and re-watched and re-watched and re-watched and re-watched -- the Making-Of features on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Arc just over and over and over, marveling at how hours of filming produced shots of Harrison Ford on the grill of the Nazi truck, hanging and starting to go under, then the stuntman goes under and pops out the back, then Ford drags behind the truck and pulls himself, hand-over-hand toward the truck, and so on, until Spielberg and Lucas have 115 minutes of Action/Adventure CLASSIC for us to watch!
I recently produced a 30-second audio joke -- which is in the wrong bitrate to be able to post for free, or else I would already have it up for you to listen to, lol -- that gave me that old shot of Creator's Pride. I wrote the short script, recorded the main dialogue, got Brian to fill out the rest of the dialogue (there are several different background voices with single lines in the piece) when he was available, recordered the handful of sound effects, then cut it all together into a tight, nigh-perfect (lol, I'm not worried about "modest" at the moment, lol) piece of audio humor. Like I said, the whole endeavor took maybe 2 days to produce and last a whopping half-a-minute, and after I had finished I wondered if, perhaps, I had an idea what it was like to produce a song.
Turns out, I do know what it's like to produce a song... and I also SO DON'T, lol. ;P
I mean, if some no-name musician had tons of demos to record and needed someone who could, technically, turn those demos into something that could be sold on iTunes, I could do that. But watching We Are The Fallen work, I'm guessing it would take me twice as long to achieve 3 quarters of the result, lol.
I frakkin' love watching creatives apply their craft! I'm a bit of a nerd that way! :D
I only discovered this amazing featurette because I follow Kris Williams' Twitter posts, bless her! :) If you're on Twitter, you should totally follow her! That's one badass chick! She looks like a model, she's as funny and smart as your best friend, and stick her in a haunted prison and she's running toward whatever is making all the men in the room run away, lol! (Although, she's a member of TAPS, so the men she hangs with don't really run from spooky stuff, lol.)
Wow...
...I didn't expect this entry to go on quite this long, lol. I just wanted to pop on and share this awesome video with you. It appears that my freedom from responsibility has made me a bit verbose, lol. ;)
Hope your weekend served you well, and your work week is filled with blessed surprises that make you laugh and smile!
:D
I've read enough that I have some idea, but it's AMAZING to actually watch it take shape! :D
Plus, this is a monumental song that's being recorded!
The Recording of Bury Me Alive - We Are The Fallen
When all is said and done, I'm really a filmmaker at heart. I've helped produce enough short films (and failed to produce enough screenplays/novels, lol) in the '90s to know that what I love about making movies is ALL of it! :D I enjoy writing, but I LOVE CO-writing! And I spent my teens acting, but what I LOVE is just ALL OF IT! I love polishing the script (or helping to polish it), casting, getting gear and props and whatnot together, blocking, shooting, wrap parties, editing, editing for sound, and screening. It's ALL great fun!
So to see how a song comes together is really, really cool! :D
I've read enough to have a pretty cool idea. But that's not the same as actually being able to watch it happen.
AND... If you don't know anything about We Are The Fallen, it is quite a privilege to be able to watch this particular song take shape! The band would probably curse me for saying this, but "Bury Me Alive" is going to be Evanescence's "Wake Me Up", I suspect. It's like Ben Moody recognized lightening striking a second time, and he realized that fans and future fans of his work might actually enjoy watching the clouds light up, the air ionizing and the electrical charges from the ground and the clouds joining to ignite the sky! :D
Isn't it astouding, though, to watch the pieces coming together to form this immaculate whole?!!
As I kid I watched -- and re-watched and re-watched and re-watched and re-watched -- the Making-Of features on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Arc just over and over and over, marveling at how hours of filming produced shots of Harrison Ford on the grill of the Nazi truck, hanging and starting to go under, then the stuntman goes under and pops out the back, then Ford drags behind the truck and pulls himself, hand-over-hand toward the truck, and so on, until Spielberg and Lucas have 115 minutes of Action/Adventure CLASSIC for us to watch!
I recently produced a 30-second audio joke -- which is in the wrong bitrate to be able to post for free, or else I would already have it up for you to listen to, lol -- that gave me that old shot of Creator's Pride. I wrote the short script, recorded the main dialogue, got Brian to fill out the rest of the dialogue (there are several different background voices with single lines in the piece) when he was available, recordered the handful of sound effects, then cut it all together into a tight, nigh-perfect (lol, I'm not worried about "modest" at the moment, lol) piece of audio humor. Like I said, the whole endeavor took maybe 2 days to produce and last a whopping half-a-minute, and after I had finished I wondered if, perhaps, I had an idea what it was like to produce a song.
Turns out, I do know what it's like to produce a song... and I also SO DON'T, lol. ;P
I mean, if some no-name musician had tons of demos to record and needed someone who could, technically, turn those demos into something that could be sold on iTunes, I could do that. But watching We Are The Fallen work, I'm guessing it would take me twice as long to achieve 3 quarters of the result, lol.
I frakkin' love watching creatives apply their craft! I'm a bit of a nerd that way! :D
I only discovered this amazing featurette because I follow Kris Williams' Twitter posts, bless her! :) If you're on Twitter, you should totally follow her! That's one badass chick! She looks like a model, she's as funny and smart as your best friend, and stick her in a haunted prison and she's running toward whatever is making all the men in the room run away, lol! (Although, she's a member of TAPS, so the men she hangs with don't really run from spooky stuff, lol.)
Wow...
...I didn't expect this entry to go on quite this long, lol. I just wanted to pop on and share this awesome video with you. It appears that my freedom from responsibility has made me a bit verbose, lol. ;)
Hope your weekend served you well, and your work week is filled with blessed surprises that make you laugh and smile!
:D
Hornblower and the Crisis
I am about to begin the 4th of C. S. Forester's 11 Horatio Hornblower novels! :D
I just finished Hornblower and the Crisis, a novel left unfinished due to Mr. Forester's 1966 passing.
Though I'm all about reading novel series in chronological order, this really serves as a proper close for the series as the unfinished novel is accompanied by 2 short stories, the last -- "The Last Encounter" -- providing a wonderfully charming close to Hornblower's long and eventful career!
Still, even knowing how it all "ends", I'm excited to get back to Captain Hornblower's adventures!
As I left, he was still Commander Hornblower, waiting for retiring Admiral Cornwallis's promotion to be posted, finally making Hornblower a proper captain. Now, I know he's going to be posted captain because (as I understand it) most of his adventures are as a captain. I also know he goes on to become a commodore and retires as an admiral (living at least to the age of 72)!
Still...
It's like watching the Harry Potter flicks... I've read all the books. (More than once, lol.) I know what's going to happen. But in the "parallel reality" of the movies, Voldemort isn't defeated (in the movies) until he is, lol.
Yes, I'm well aware how big a nerd I am, thank you very much. ;P
HEY! YOU WANNA READ THE RAVINGS OF A CRAZY PERSON?!
This comic strip rules the world! Scroll down to the Voldemort strips! You'll laugh your ass off!
I also recommend his ravings about how to create a comic strip! You don't have to have any intention of writing/drawing a comic strip to enjoy the madness of his genius! (Or is it the genius of his madness? So hard to tell, lol.)
Okay, back to work for me.
OOH! I begin this weekend with no responsibilities to look forward to!!! :D It appears (as of this writing at 2:28am on Monday, July 20, 2009 and subject to change in a moment's notice, lol) that I don't have ANYTHING that I have to do!!! I have a few DVDs from Netflix that need watching, I've got the entire Plante of the Apes series that also requires watching, and then, like, 7 more Hornblower novels to be read, as well as Tiffany Johnson's latest book.
So I have plenty to do... I just don't have anything I have to do! :D
YAY!
Okay, stop reading and go do something fun. Now.
;P
UPDATE: Just getting into Chapter 4 of Hornblower and the Atrapos to discover 2 astonishing things:
(1) Horatio Hornblower outlived Admiral Horatio Nelson, namesake and (I'm pretty sure) inspiration for the character! AND...
(2) Hornblower's "mission" is to organize Admiral Nelson's funeral!!!
This is astonishing, lol! What a surprise! I swear, C. S. Forester RULES!!! What a clever, clever author!!! I mean, the mind that wrote African Queen -- both the novel and the screenplay -- is obviously a keen one, but OMG! What an amazing "adventure" for our hero to undertake, lol!
I mean, just from a Character standpoint alone, to this point Hornblower is a man of action, not a gentleman from affluence, and he seems to always be perplexed by the affectations of gentility. He would rather face a mortar shell shell at his feet with an eighth of an inch of burning fuse about to blow him, his crew and his ship into molecules than attempt to hold conversation with some high-born snob.
So to place this budding young captain -- his entire career in front of him... if he doesn't botch this assignment -- in charge of what must have been one of the largest ceremonies in history (I may be exaggerating a bit due to my very limited knowledge of Admiral Nelson) is sheer insanity! It's like having the Hulk perform neuro-surgery! :P
Plus, what a clever bit of fictitious history... Hornblower was born on the day that the United States adopted our constitution, and now his first act as a post captain is to organize and stage the monumental funeral of one of Britain's legendary heroes! (So legendary, in fact, that he inspired the character, lol.)
THIS is what I call A PARTY! :D
...you know...
...literarily speaking, lol. ;)
I just finished Hornblower and the Crisis, a novel left unfinished due to Mr. Forester's 1966 passing.
Though I'm all about reading novel series in chronological order, this really serves as a proper close for the series as the unfinished novel is accompanied by 2 short stories, the last -- "The Last Encounter" -- providing a wonderfully charming close to Hornblower's long and eventful career!
Still, even knowing how it all "ends", I'm excited to get back to Captain Hornblower's adventures!
As I left, he was still Commander Hornblower, waiting for retiring Admiral Cornwallis's promotion to be posted, finally making Hornblower a proper captain. Now, I know he's going to be posted captain because (as I understand it) most of his adventures are as a captain. I also know he goes on to become a commodore and retires as an admiral (living at least to the age of 72)!
Still...
It's like watching the Harry Potter flicks... I've read all the books. (More than once, lol.) I know what's going to happen. But in the "parallel reality" of the movies, Voldemort isn't defeated (in the movies) until he is, lol.
Yes, I'm well aware how big a nerd I am, thank you very much. ;P
HEY! YOU WANNA READ THE RAVINGS OF A CRAZY PERSON?!
This comic strip rules the world! Scroll down to the Voldemort strips! You'll laugh your ass off!
I also recommend his ravings about how to create a comic strip! You don't have to have any intention of writing/drawing a comic strip to enjoy the madness of his genius! (Or is it the genius of his madness? So hard to tell, lol.)
Okay, back to work for me.
OOH! I begin this weekend with no responsibilities to look forward to!!! :D It appears (as of this writing at 2:28am on Monday, July 20, 2009 and subject to change in a moment's notice, lol) that I don't have ANYTHING that I have to do!!! I have a few DVDs from Netflix that need watching, I've got the entire Plante of the Apes series that also requires watching, and then, like, 7 more Hornblower novels to be read, as well as Tiffany Johnson's latest book.
So I have plenty to do... I just don't have anything I have to do! :D
YAY!
Okay, stop reading and go do something fun. Now.
;P
UPDATE: Just getting into Chapter 4 of Hornblower and the Atrapos to discover 2 astonishing things:
(1) Horatio Hornblower outlived Admiral Horatio Nelson, namesake and (I'm pretty sure) inspiration for the character! AND...
(2) Hornblower's "mission" is to organize Admiral Nelson's funeral!!!
This is astonishing, lol! What a surprise! I swear, C. S. Forester RULES!!! What a clever, clever author!!! I mean, the mind that wrote African Queen -- both the novel and the screenplay -- is obviously a keen one, but OMG! What an amazing "adventure" for our hero to undertake, lol!
I mean, just from a Character standpoint alone, to this point Hornblower is a man of action, not a gentleman from affluence, and he seems to always be perplexed by the affectations of gentility. He would rather face a mortar shell shell at his feet with an eighth of an inch of burning fuse about to blow him, his crew and his ship into molecules than attempt to hold conversation with some high-born snob.
So to place this budding young captain -- his entire career in front of him... if he doesn't botch this assignment -- in charge of what must have been one of the largest ceremonies in history (I may be exaggerating a bit due to my very limited knowledge of Admiral Nelson) is sheer insanity! It's like having the Hulk perform neuro-surgery! :P
Plus, what a clever bit of fictitious history... Hornblower was born on the day that the United States adopted our constitution, and now his first act as a post captain is to organize and stage the monumental funeral of one of Britain's legendary heroes! (So legendary, in fact, that he inspired the character, lol.)
THIS is what I call A PARTY! :D
...you know...
...literarily speaking, lol. ;)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
DONE REVIEWIN'!!!
I FINALLY FINISHED MY EVIDENCE REVIEW WITH MUCH OF THE LAST DAY OF MY WEEKEND LEFT TO SPARE! :D
AND -- more importantly -- I came up with some fascinating audio! :) I don't know if any of it will help the clients. First my peers need to review what I think I have, then they'll present any of it to the clients, etc.
Still, there were a couple of times where I'm listening, and quite frankly bored, and I got freaked out! :D
I got started late today.
I woke up to a WONDERFUL email from my Gnomey Goddess!!! Bless her! I've been emailing her my thoughts on songs and novels and movies and stuff, and she's a deep thinker, too, so she didn't tell me to take a pill and settle-the-fuck-down, lol. She and her mom have been at St. Albans -- a place I know nothing about right now, but will be learning about soon! :)
My girlfriend is SO AMAZING!!! I just can't describe her! She's just so cool! I SO don't deserve her, but I'm so thankful I have her and I am SO NOT EVER going to give her up!!! DUDE!!!
She is THE BEST way to start off anyone's day!!! :D ♥ ♥ ♥
*sigh*
Okay, back to what I was saying, lol...
Oh, "started late" is sort of relative... These past couple of weeks, my sleep schedule has flipped -- for no reason I can imagine. So I've been sleeping at night and awake during the day. So I woke up during the morning.
I GOT A NEW TSPI SHIRT!!!
I got a call from the guy who embroiders our shirts. We have Dickies and we have these polo-type shirts. When you join, you have to have to get the Dickies shirt first. That's the official official shirt. It looks nice, very official. VERY cool, really!
Cool as in "groovy" not cool as in "you can wear it during an Austin summer without sweating off 5 pounds."
This being an Austin summer, and me being tired of shedding pounds through the Dehydration Diet, I ordered one of the polo shirts as soon as I found myself with a little extra money.
The estimated time of arrival was Friday (which would be an awkward pick-up for me since I'm asleep during Business Hours) but I got a call this morning that i could pick up the shirt after 1:00pm.
So I did!
I can't wait until our next investigation. I look forward to NOT appearing beet-red and shiny in any photos I might show up in.
Since I was out-and-about, i decided to see if I could catch a showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! DUDE! OPENING DAY!!! How cool would THAT be?!!
This would only be my 2nd Potter flick to catch on the Big Screen! (The first 3 I saw when they came out on DVD, and Goblet of Fire kinda doesn't count because I saw it at the Lakeline and the audio was distractingly bad.)
So I bombed around the shopping center by me...
...and ran into Mike and Stephanie! :D They were shocked to see me out in the sunlight, and I was just shocked to happen into 2 of my favoritest people ever!!! :D (Stephanie is a badass babe who akes Texas Spirits hum like the string of a finely-tuned Stradivarius and Mike is a fellow Trekkie/sci-fi nerd! AWESOME folks!!!)
I also discovered a BADASS geek-toy store! I had no idea I had a Mecca of Sci-Fi/Comic Book collectible toys so near me!
I started looking for food too late to enjoy a Rockin' Tomato buffet -- :( -- so I settled for Churches Chicken. We advertise it continuously at the station, I enjoy fried chicken parts, so why not, right?
Churches Chicken's ad campaign is "I know what good is."
I don't think they should, legally, be allowed to use that as their their tagline.
They could honestly advertise "I know what scalding is."
I wouldn't actually call it good. I've had so much better, even when we're simply talking about (relatively) cheap fast-food chicken.
Anyway, I finished eating -- very slowly, but I still have burtn spots throughout my mouth -- and checked the theater to buy an early ticket for Potter...
...and every showing was sold out.
Well, it would have been cool.
But I took this as my cue to go home and continue reviewing evidence.
But before I did... I played some of my MySpace and Facebook games.
I've recently discovered a game that calls itself Ghost Hunter. But I don't know...
Okay, the first mission you do is search for spirits in your local church. Believe it or not, there's not just tons of paranormal activity that gets reported in churches. Usually, odd things in churches get reported as miracles.
But anyway, then you progress to your second mission: "You got a call to a local bar, owner says 2 ghosts are hunting his bar. He tells you about a murder of two people in the back office."
Um... I don't believe any paranormal organization has ever been called to investigate reports of ghosts hunting a location.
Brian points out that perhaps they game makers meant to write "haunting".
That would make more sense.
But the most perplexing aspect of this game is the section called the "Battlefield". Apparently, here you can battle fellow paranormal investigators!
WTF?!!
The "Battlefield" is divided into 2 sections: "Battlefield" and "Get Revenge"?!!
I don't believe the game creators really understand much about paranormal investigation.
I would be wary of any evidence they obtained through their methodologies.
Anyway...
Drinkin' time's awastin'! I've got 5 movies from Netflix that I'm dyin' to see, and I have to do my laundry before Hazmat clears out my closet!
HOPE YOU HUMP-DAY WAS EXCELLENT AND I HOPE THE REST OF YOUR WEEK AND YOUR WEEKENED IS BETTER!!!
:D
AND -- more importantly -- I came up with some fascinating audio! :) I don't know if any of it will help the clients. First my peers need to review what I think I have, then they'll present any of it to the clients, etc.
Still, there were a couple of times where I'm listening, and quite frankly bored, and I got freaked out! :D
I got started late today.
I woke up to a WONDERFUL email from my Gnomey Goddess!!! Bless her! I've been emailing her my thoughts on songs and novels and movies and stuff, and she's a deep thinker, too, so she didn't tell me to take a pill and settle-the-fuck-down, lol. She and her mom have been at St. Albans -- a place I know nothing about right now, but will be learning about soon! :)
My girlfriend is SO AMAZING!!! I just can't describe her! She's just so cool! I SO don't deserve her, but I'm so thankful I have her and I am SO NOT EVER going to give her up!!! DUDE!!!
She is THE BEST way to start off anyone's day!!! :D ♥ ♥ ♥
*sigh*
Okay, back to what I was saying, lol...
Oh, "started late" is sort of relative... These past couple of weeks, my sleep schedule has flipped -- for no reason I can imagine. So I've been sleeping at night and awake during the day. So I woke up during the morning.
I GOT A NEW TSPI SHIRT!!!
I got a call from the guy who embroiders our shirts. We have Dickies and we have these polo-type shirts. When you join, you have to have to get the Dickies shirt first. That's the official official shirt. It looks nice, very official. VERY cool, really!
Cool as in "groovy" not cool as in "you can wear it during an Austin summer without sweating off 5 pounds."
This being an Austin summer, and me being tired of shedding pounds through the Dehydration Diet, I ordered one of the polo shirts as soon as I found myself with a little extra money.
The estimated time of arrival was Friday (which would be an awkward pick-up for me since I'm asleep during Business Hours) but I got a call this morning that i could pick up the shirt after 1:00pm.
So I did!
I can't wait until our next investigation. I look forward to NOT appearing beet-red and shiny in any photos I might show up in.
Since I was out-and-about, i decided to see if I could catch a showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! DUDE! OPENING DAY!!! How cool would THAT be?!!
This would only be my 2nd Potter flick to catch on the Big Screen! (The first 3 I saw when they came out on DVD, and Goblet of Fire kinda doesn't count because I saw it at the Lakeline and the audio was distractingly bad.)
So I bombed around the shopping center by me...
...and ran into Mike and Stephanie! :D They were shocked to see me out in the sunlight, and I was just shocked to happen into 2 of my favoritest people ever!!! :D (Stephanie is a badass babe who akes Texas Spirits hum like the string of a finely-tuned Stradivarius and Mike is a fellow Trekkie/sci-fi nerd! AWESOME folks!!!)
I also discovered a BADASS geek-toy store! I had no idea I had a Mecca of Sci-Fi/Comic Book collectible toys so near me!
I started looking for food too late to enjoy a Rockin' Tomato buffet -- :( -- so I settled for Churches Chicken. We advertise it continuously at the station, I enjoy fried chicken parts, so why not, right?
Churches Chicken's ad campaign is "I know what good is."
I don't think they should, legally, be allowed to use that as their their tagline.
They could honestly advertise "I know what scalding is."
I wouldn't actually call it good. I've had so much better, even when we're simply talking about (relatively) cheap fast-food chicken.
Anyway, I finished eating -- very slowly, but I still have burtn spots throughout my mouth -- and checked the theater to buy an early ticket for Potter...
...and every showing was sold out.
Well, it would have been cool.
But I took this as my cue to go home and continue reviewing evidence.
But before I did... I played some of my MySpace and Facebook games.
I've recently discovered a game that calls itself Ghost Hunter. But I don't know...
Okay, the first mission you do is search for spirits in your local church. Believe it or not, there's not just tons of paranormal activity that gets reported in churches. Usually, odd things in churches get reported as miracles.
But anyway, then you progress to your second mission: "You got a call to a local bar, owner says 2 ghosts are hunting his bar. He tells you about a murder of two people in the back office."
Um... I don't believe any paranormal organization has ever been called to investigate reports of ghosts hunting a location.
Brian points out that perhaps they game makers meant to write "haunting".
That would make more sense.
But the most perplexing aspect of this game is the section called the "Battlefield". Apparently, here you can battle fellow paranormal investigators!
WTF?!!
The "Battlefield" is divided into 2 sections: "Battlefield" and "Get Revenge"?!!
I don't believe the game creators really understand much about paranormal investigation.
I would be wary of any evidence they obtained through their methodologies.
Anyway...
Drinkin' time's awastin'! I've got 5 movies from Netflix that I'm dyin' to see, and I have to do my laundry before Hazmat clears out my closet!
HOPE YOU HUMP-DAY WAS EXCELLENT AND I HOPE THE REST OF YOUR WEEK AND YOUR WEEKENED IS BETTER!!!
:D
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Saturday Night...
I'm enjoying a relaxed Saturday night shift.
Saturday is normally a relaxed shift, but this week has been more hectic than usual. Coming off an intense weekend, Thursday (normally a fairly hectic work day for me) proved just a hair more hairy than the norm. Then last night's shift was more challenging than usual. So now, with work settling back down to normal, my shift feels particularly refreshing.
On my way to work last night I picked up psychic Tiffany Johnson's latest book Picture Yourself Developing Your Psychic Abilities and read the first couple of chapters.
AWESOME!
I became a fan when I heard her on Spooky Southcoast, then heard her again on Beyond Reality Radio. She's not only one of the few psychics that TAPS will sing the praises of (being based in the scientific process, TAPS would rather debunk paranormal claims than call them paranormal, and they -- as an organization -- are exceedingly wary of anyone claiming to have information via sources than can't be scientifically verified), but she's disarmingly down-to-earth and "normal".
And she's hysterical, too!
Her attitude about being psychic is basically the opposite of most so-called psychics' 'tudes. She doesn't affect an accent of any sort, she'll make a joke about herself or her abilities before you even get the chance to, and she makes the whole topic of psychic-ness and the paranormal seem shockingly mundane, everyday, sort of ordinary.
So ordinary, in fact, that she firmly believes everyone has psychic abilities, and she's happy to tell us how to develop them.
Plus, I bought Chris Balzano's Picture Yourself Ghost Hunting when it went on sale, so owning a second Picture Yourself... book about the paranormal, written by another Friend Of Spooky Southcoast was appealing to me. :)
But the main reason I snatched Psychic Tiff's book last night was because Brian is the one who discovered it's out there and he's excited to read it. When I left for work this evening he was reading it. So I might not be returning to the book until after he's finished it.
Which is just as well because...
I'm finally reading C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels!!! :D
Like many people, in the late-1990s I fell in love with the character as played by Ioan Gruffud in the BBC/A&E TV movies. I had a curiosity about the character for decades because he was Gene Roddenberry's inspiration for Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek! And if you know the character, you can actually see the similarity, particularly in the classic TV series.
And back then, I bought a few of the novels with every intention of reading them...
...I just never got around to it, lol. I think I read about half of Commodore Hornblower, and enjoyed it, but then something took my attention away from it and I just never got back around to it.
But I scored audiobook versions of the entire series, and I've made my way through Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, and am about 3/4 through Lieutenant Hornblower.
AND I'M LOVING THEM!!! :D
Whenever there's a good movies series based on a series of novels, it usually goes 1 of 2 ways: The novels are far better than the movies because the movies couldn't come close to fitting the entire world into 2-hour chunks (like any film based on a Michael Crichton novel, or the Harry Potter flicks, for instance), or -- especially if the source material is half a century old or older -- the way the novels are written puts your ass to sleep every time you try to commit yourself to the dry, stilted, fuckin' BORING prose!
At least, that's been my experience...
But the Hornblower novels are a surprise. I can't honestly say that the novels are necessarily better than the films, or vice versa! It's like the original Dawn of the Dead as compared to the remake: I love them both! I own them both! I get in the mood for one or the other of them from time to time -- not like an either/or, but I will specifically be in the mood to watch Romero's version, or I'll specifically find myself in the mood to watch Snyder's version.
This isn't to take away from either format. But Forester's writing is surprisingly cinematic in that he doesn't get lost in his prose, and he never ever forgets to show, rather than tell. He was quite an amazing writer! He uses nautical jargon without any fear of losing you, but he also never loses you! You always can sense what he's talking about, even when the terms themselves are completely alien to you.
By contrast, I tried to read one of another popular author's sea-faring tales and I found the jargon distracting and the prose exceedingly stiff. It was as though the author wanted to make sure you, the reader, knew that he (the author) is smarter than you are. I won't mention the name of the author because, in all honesty, I haven't read another of his books since and my being put-off by his writing might have just been me at that time, and not had anything to do with his actual writing style.
But Forester writes in such a way that he just sort of carries you along with the characters, and even the brutality of shipboard life in the 1800s feels home-y and welcoming -- though Forester certainly doesn't confine you to a ship in the novels!
People talk about how Hemingway never wasted a word, and his his sparse, simple style of writing was so effective. I find the same to be true of Crichton's writing. I think you could say the same of Forester. He provides flavor and texture to his world and characters, but seems to know the exact balance of what gets the feeling or image across without spending a single syllable longer than necessary in any given place or moment.
Masterful! :D
Oh, and I'm reading the books in chronological order.
There is, apparently, a debate among literary Hornblower fans about how the series should be read. One camp is (I believe, quite logically) in favor of reading the books as they happened in the timeline of the world of the characters. The other camp is (I believe, quite pretentiously) in favor of reading the books in the order in which they were published (as Forester wrote them out of chronological order).
I think that if you're, like, studying Forester's progression as a writer, then the second camp has a point.
But if you're reading the books because you want to follow a super-cool character on his adventures at see... ;P
The same argument arises among fans of the Narnia books, as Lewis wrote those out of order, too.
I think the Order-of-Publication folks are just looking for an excuse to tell you about how smart they are, lol. Their "preference" (assuming it's not a complete affectation so they can separate themselves from people who merely read novels for enjoyment, rather than as some badge of intellectual prowess) gives them something to talk about at dinner parties, but I doubt it provides any particular enjoyment beyond that.
Although I read a very wise post on a thread about one of these series (I can't remember if it was about the Narnia books or the Hornblower books) -- the thread was debating the virtues of chronological order versus publication order -- wherein the poster pointed out that he, as a kid, picked up one book because it captured his interest. I believe it may have been a gift. He loved the book, and saw (maybe at a second-hand book store) another of the books in that series. He grabbed it and read it and loved it. He continued this way, reading the books in no particular order, just reading the next one he could get his hands on, until he had read the entire series.
He suggested that the order in which the series is first read is completely unimportant to the reader who is just discovering this amazing world! These aren't chap books. Each novel is brilliant and is its own story. The joy is in the reading, not in the order of the reading.
That poster is wiser than I am. Because I will still argue with a Order-Of-Publication freak (even though to do so is just as pretentious as I'm accusing him/her of being). But I SO agree with that cat: Any Narnia or Hornblower book that is read is going to be a joy to the reader, so it's just cool that that person gets to experience that joy! :)
But really... whats' really important to me... is the fact that I'M getting to enjoy the series now. ;P
It's a really cool Summer kind of series, somehow. I guess maybe because being at sea -- surrounded by water -- is appealing to me during these super-hot Austin Summer days? Also, Summertime reminds me of when I was a kid and had the summers off from school, and so my days were filled with imaginary Adventure! And the Hornblower stories are classic adventure stories! Like Zorro or Robin Hood or King Arthur, I think the Hornblower stories are sort of the archetypal examples of their genre or niche (or whatever you would call it). They're sort of definitive sea adventures.
Whatever the reason, I'm really, really enjoying being in this world, and I'm SO EXCITED that after I finish this novel I still have 9 MORE NOVELS TO GO!!! :D
Oops! Okay, I should probably return my attention to work now, lol.
HAVE ADVENTURE!
:D
Saturday is normally a relaxed shift, but this week has been more hectic than usual. Coming off an intense weekend, Thursday (normally a fairly hectic work day for me) proved just a hair more hairy than the norm. Then last night's shift was more challenging than usual. So now, with work settling back down to normal, my shift feels particularly refreshing.
On my way to work last night I picked up psychic Tiffany Johnson's latest book Picture Yourself Developing Your Psychic Abilities and read the first couple of chapters.
AWESOME!
I became a fan when I heard her on Spooky Southcoast, then heard her again on Beyond Reality Radio. She's not only one of the few psychics that TAPS will sing the praises of (being based in the scientific process, TAPS would rather debunk paranormal claims than call them paranormal, and they -- as an organization -- are exceedingly wary of anyone claiming to have information via sources than can't be scientifically verified), but she's disarmingly down-to-earth and "normal".
And she's hysterical, too!
Her attitude about being psychic is basically the opposite of most so-called psychics' 'tudes. She doesn't affect an accent of any sort, she'll make a joke about herself or her abilities before you even get the chance to, and she makes the whole topic of psychic-ness and the paranormal seem shockingly mundane, everyday, sort of ordinary.
So ordinary, in fact, that she firmly believes everyone has psychic abilities, and she's happy to tell us how to develop them.
Plus, I bought Chris Balzano's Picture Yourself Ghost Hunting when it went on sale, so owning a second Picture Yourself... book about the paranormal, written by another Friend Of Spooky Southcoast was appealing to me. :)
But the main reason I snatched Psychic Tiff's book last night was because Brian is the one who discovered it's out there and he's excited to read it. When I left for work this evening he was reading it. So I might not be returning to the book until after he's finished it.
Which is just as well because...
I'm finally reading C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels!!! :D
Like many people, in the late-1990s I fell in love with the character as played by Ioan Gruffud in the BBC/A&E TV movies. I had a curiosity about the character for decades because he was Gene Roddenberry's inspiration for Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek! And if you know the character, you can actually see the similarity, particularly in the classic TV series.
And back then, I bought a few of the novels with every intention of reading them...
...I just never got around to it, lol. I think I read about half of Commodore Hornblower, and enjoyed it, but then something took my attention away from it and I just never got back around to it.
But I scored audiobook versions of the entire series, and I've made my way through Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, and am about 3/4 through Lieutenant Hornblower.
AND I'M LOVING THEM!!! :D
Whenever there's a good movies series based on a series of novels, it usually goes 1 of 2 ways: The novels are far better than the movies because the movies couldn't come close to fitting the entire world into 2-hour chunks (like any film based on a Michael Crichton novel, or the Harry Potter flicks, for instance), or -- especially if the source material is half a century old or older -- the way the novels are written puts your ass to sleep every time you try to commit yourself to the dry, stilted, fuckin' BORING prose!
At least, that's been my experience...
But the Hornblower novels are a surprise. I can't honestly say that the novels are necessarily better than the films, or vice versa! It's like the original Dawn of the Dead as compared to the remake: I love them both! I own them both! I get in the mood for one or the other of them from time to time -- not like an either/or, but I will specifically be in the mood to watch Romero's version, or I'll specifically find myself in the mood to watch Snyder's version.
This isn't to take away from either format. But Forester's writing is surprisingly cinematic in that he doesn't get lost in his prose, and he never ever forgets to show, rather than tell. He was quite an amazing writer! He uses nautical jargon without any fear of losing you, but he also never loses you! You always can sense what he's talking about, even when the terms themselves are completely alien to you.
By contrast, I tried to read one of another popular author's sea-faring tales and I found the jargon distracting and the prose exceedingly stiff. It was as though the author wanted to make sure you, the reader, knew that he (the author) is smarter than you are. I won't mention the name of the author because, in all honesty, I haven't read another of his books since and my being put-off by his writing might have just been me at that time, and not had anything to do with his actual writing style.
But Forester writes in such a way that he just sort of carries you along with the characters, and even the brutality of shipboard life in the 1800s feels home-y and welcoming -- though Forester certainly doesn't confine you to a ship in the novels!
People talk about how Hemingway never wasted a word, and his his sparse, simple style of writing was so effective. I find the same to be true of Crichton's writing. I think you could say the same of Forester. He provides flavor and texture to his world and characters, but seems to know the exact balance of what gets the feeling or image across without spending a single syllable longer than necessary in any given place or moment.
Masterful! :D
Oh, and I'm reading the books in chronological order.
There is, apparently, a debate among literary Hornblower fans about how the series should be read. One camp is (I believe, quite logically) in favor of reading the books as they happened in the timeline of the world of the characters. The other camp is (I believe, quite pretentiously) in favor of reading the books in the order in which they were published (as Forester wrote them out of chronological order).
I think that if you're, like, studying Forester's progression as a writer, then the second camp has a point.
But if you're reading the books because you want to follow a super-cool character on his adventures at see... ;P
The same argument arises among fans of the Narnia books, as Lewis wrote those out of order, too.
I think the Order-of-Publication folks are just looking for an excuse to tell you about how smart they are, lol. Their "preference" (assuming it's not a complete affectation so they can separate themselves from people who merely read novels for enjoyment, rather than as some badge of intellectual prowess) gives them something to talk about at dinner parties, but I doubt it provides any particular enjoyment beyond that.
Although I read a very wise post on a thread about one of these series (I can't remember if it was about the Narnia books or the Hornblower books) -- the thread was debating the virtues of chronological order versus publication order -- wherein the poster pointed out that he, as a kid, picked up one book because it captured his interest. I believe it may have been a gift. He loved the book, and saw (maybe at a second-hand book store) another of the books in that series. He grabbed it and read it and loved it. He continued this way, reading the books in no particular order, just reading the next one he could get his hands on, until he had read the entire series.
He suggested that the order in which the series is first read is completely unimportant to the reader who is just discovering this amazing world! These aren't chap books. Each novel is brilliant and is its own story. The joy is in the reading, not in the order of the reading.
That poster is wiser than I am. Because I will still argue with a Order-Of-Publication freak (even though to do so is just as pretentious as I'm accusing him/her of being). But I SO agree with that cat: Any Narnia or Hornblower book that is read is going to be a joy to the reader, so it's just cool that that person gets to experience that joy! :)
But really... whats' really important to me... is the fact that I'M getting to enjoy the series now. ;P
It's a really cool Summer kind of series, somehow. I guess maybe because being at sea -- surrounded by water -- is appealing to me during these super-hot Austin Summer days? Also, Summertime reminds me of when I was a kid and had the summers off from school, and so my days were filled with imaginary Adventure! And the Hornblower stories are classic adventure stories! Like Zorro or Robin Hood or King Arthur, I think the Hornblower stories are sort of the archetypal examples of their genre or niche (or whatever you would call it). They're sort of definitive sea adventures.
Whatever the reason, I'm really, really enjoying being in this world, and I'm SO EXCITED that after I finish this novel I still have 9 MORE NOVELS TO GO!!! :D
Oops! Okay, I should probably return my attention to work now, lol.
HAVE ADVENTURE!
:D
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
I Should Be Reviewing Video...
Okay, so I knew going into this weekend (my "weekend" not the weekend) that I had hours and hours of footage to listen to/watch, and I was excited about it.
But then Monday came, and I slept most of it.
But since I worked and extra half-shift Sunday, I figured sleeping most of the day Monday was probably just my body healing itself after a little extra exertion, no big.
I still had Tuesday and today to review through the hours and hours of footage.
Then life got in the way.
Now, the irony here is that before yesterday I would have bet you real money that I didn't have a life! Who frickin' knew?!
I was able to get through a single 5-hour 13-minute recording, which yielded a single male's voice in a room filled with only women, and a single exhale that was heard at the time of recording and which no one in the room performed. (Is "performed" the right word? "Which no one in the room did" just sounds hillbilly, but "performed" sounds weird, too, right?)
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that 5 hours of audio only yielded an EVP and a VP (there's no such term as "Voice Phenomena", but when a device records a sound that was audible at the time of recording, it's really not an EVP). I'm EXCITED that I got 2 hits out of only 5 hours worth of audio! You can record for YEARS in, say, your own house and NEVER get an inexplicable sound! It's the nature of the job to record hours worth of footage and get, if anything at all, very little "evidence" of the unexplained.
So no complaints there! :D
However...
Okay, so after sleeping all day Monday, I woke up early -- like, Normal People Hours early -- yesterday. And my car was... well... let's just say "past the its inspection date," okay? And it was badly in need of an oild change, as well.
Now, between Brian and me, Brian is the one that's good about maintaining our cars. he has no problem taking them in and getting what needs to be done to them done. And he volunteered to get my car fixed up so it could pass a badly-needed inspection. He was going to let me stay home and continue reviewing audio, bless him!
But... he felt wierd about driving it to get the oil changed.
See, his car was a month behind on its inspection and he got a ticket. He pretty much drive to work and home, and one night he was on his way to the grocery store (the one that's close enough we sometimes walk to it when the weather isn't too hot) and got a frickin' ticket!
So he didn't really want to be the one to drive my car to get the oil changed.
I don't blame him.
So I took a break -- what would it be, 45 minutes total? -- to get the oild changed.
This was actually kind of cool because I recently aquired an audiobook version of Jaws (I've owned the paperback forever but just never gotten around to reading it, and I love the chance to read the original books that inspired badass films, and usually do so before I see the film version whenever possible) that I was enjoying. So this break would allow me to swicth out my RCA VR5220-A with my iPod, and do some listening strictly for leisure! :)
I did get to listen to some 100 pages or so of Jaws, but there's more. (The story turns quite positive before I get to the annoying part...)
If some people are luckier than others, then I am blessed to report that my luck often seems to be supernaturally good! :D I feel comfortable saying that because I know so many people whose annecdotes start out "My day was going just fine, until..." My annecdotes, more times than I deserve, often start out, "My day was already going great, but then...!"
So here's what happened with my car...
Last year, when I had it inspected, the inspector told me that 3 of my tires were worn thin, almost to the point where she couldn't pass the car. Also, my parking break needed to be tightened (or something) and just barely passed, too. Since then, 2 majoy hail storms swept through North Austin, and one of them not only ding-ed up my car severely, but it also put a hole in my left-front blinker cover.
And 2 of my tired have gone flat. (Undoubtedly, 2 of the 3 that the car inspector warned me about.)
So, going in, Brian and I guessed that I would need to parking break tightened (or whatever), to replace the blinker cover and to replace at least one of the tires before it would pass. We also figured we would need to get the car inspected twice: The first time would tell us what work needed to be done so it would pass the second inspection.
Brian went online and found a blinker cover for a decent price. He feels confident replacing it himself, so that'll save us a lot of money. (Well, "a lot of money" to us. To someone else, it might be lunch money, lol.)
The place I took my car to get the oil changed also does state inspections. They offered. I wasn't prepared for this. I took them out to the car and showed them the damaged blinker cover (intentionally failing to mention the tire and the parking breaks), and they said that the blinker cover was damaged in a place that shouldn't affect the car passing.
Whoa! Was this really happening? :D
I follow my instincts. They usually let me know about some things that are going to happen before they happen. Like, for instance, Brian's extreme warriness to drive my car to get the oil changed: I suspect that that was his instincts warning him that there was a cop out there with Brian's name just waiting to be written onto another ticket. If I get that sort of nagging "Don't do it" vibe, I heed it!
And now I was getting another kind of vibe! My gut was telling me that I might have stumbled into the perfect set of circumstances for my car to finally pass inspection this year! :D
I mean, Worst-Case Scenario: They fail it and (as Brian & I had originally planned) let me know what all needed to be done so that it could pass. And this was probably exactly what would happen.
But...
That's not what my intuition was telling me! :D My intuition was saying that I was about to get a new inspection sticker!!!
But ot pay for the inspection, and to buy 2 new license plate bulbs -- the guy who worked on my car very concientiously showed me the bulbs: one was burnt out and the other had a broken filament -- I needed more money, so I called Brian and asked him to bring me some. (Bless him! I know too many people who don't get along with their siblings, but I SO LUCKED-OUT with Brian!!! Excellent brother, excellent roommate and best friend!)
Waiting for Brian and listening to Jaws, it seemed like no time had passed before he was there with the extra money, the car's oil was changed and the car was inspected.
IT PASSED!!! :D
And the whole deal cost about $50 less than I thought it was going to!!! :D
Okay, I'm gonna get all New Age-y and airy-fairy here, but looking at the scenario in retrospect, I wonder if things didn't turn out supernaturally well! I mean, Brian felt really wierd about driving my car for an oil change -- like, maybe, his intuition was telling him not to -- and then, possibly because I'm the one that took it in if you believe in that type of thing, things turned out well better than I could have hoped! :)
So, cool! Mission accomplished, break over, back to work. Right?
Now, if you were bored by the previous story, you would shoot your computer by the mundane events of the next several hours, lol. But suffice it to say that "life" kept interrupting me, keeping me from the audio recorder, until around 7:30pm. This whole adventured started around 4:30pm.
And, like I said, I would have bet real money that I didn't have a life, lol!
OH! Another positive: When I woke up, I had received and email from my Gnomey-Goddess... She's a Young Leader for the Brownies, and Monday night she took her troop out "pond dipping" (which she made sure to inform me was nothing like skinny dipping) and searching for "mini beasts"!
Okay, how cool is that?!! :D My girlfriend is teaching young girls about forraging in the wild and stuff!!! :D She had told me that before, but I had forgotten it until she mentioned it yesterday. (I asked her if she has a uniform she wears, but she hasn't responded, yet.) So when Z-Day comes and the zombie take over the world, she'll know what berries we can eat and stuff! :D
My Baby's an action hero! :D My girlfriend is Lara Croft!!!
Okay, so, I finished reviewing the audio for the one recorder sometime after midnight, and I was wiped out. I slept, woke up around 9:00am, did some grocery shopping, ate a couple of frozen pizzas, then went back to sleep.
I'm awake again. Hopefully all night long, since I have to go back to work tomorrow, lol.
And I have at least one long stretch of video that I must -- WILL -- review tonight.
But I felt a strong need to blog about my weekend... probably as a subconscious procrastination maneuver, lol.
I hope your week is productive so far, and I hope you chance upon and amazing bit of unexpected good luck!
:D
But then Monday came, and I slept most of it.
But since I worked and extra half-shift Sunday, I figured sleeping most of the day Monday was probably just my body healing itself after a little extra exertion, no big.
I still had Tuesday and today to review through the hours and hours of footage.
Then life got in the way.
Now, the irony here is that before yesterday I would have bet you real money that I didn't have a life! Who frickin' knew?!
I was able to get through a single 5-hour 13-minute recording, which yielded a single male's voice in a room filled with only women, and a single exhale that was heard at the time of recording and which no one in the room performed. (Is "performed" the right word? "Which no one in the room did" just sounds hillbilly, but "performed" sounds weird, too, right?)
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that 5 hours of audio only yielded an EVP and a VP (there's no such term as "Voice Phenomena", but when a device records a sound that was audible at the time of recording, it's really not an EVP). I'm EXCITED that I got 2 hits out of only 5 hours worth of audio! You can record for YEARS in, say, your own house and NEVER get an inexplicable sound! It's the nature of the job to record hours worth of footage and get, if anything at all, very little "evidence" of the unexplained.
So no complaints there! :D
However...
Okay, so after sleeping all day Monday, I woke up early -- like, Normal People Hours early -- yesterday. And my car was... well... let's just say "past the its inspection date," okay? And it was badly in need of an oild change, as well.
Now, between Brian and me, Brian is the one that's good about maintaining our cars. he has no problem taking them in and getting what needs to be done to them done. And he volunteered to get my car fixed up so it could pass a badly-needed inspection. He was going to let me stay home and continue reviewing audio, bless him!
But... he felt wierd about driving it to get the oil changed.
See, his car was a month behind on its inspection and he got a ticket. He pretty much drive to work and home, and one night he was on his way to the grocery store (the one that's close enough we sometimes walk to it when the weather isn't too hot) and got a frickin' ticket!
So he didn't really want to be the one to drive my car to get the oil changed.
I don't blame him.
So I took a break -- what would it be, 45 minutes total? -- to get the oild changed.
This was actually kind of cool because I recently aquired an audiobook version of Jaws (I've owned the paperback forever but just never gotten around to reading it, and I love the chance to read the original books that inspired badass films, and usually do so before I see the film version whenever possible) that I was enjoying. So this break would allow me to swicth out my RCA VR5220-A with my iPod, and do some listening strictly for leisure! :)
I did get to listen to some 100 pages or so of Jaws, but there's more. (The story turns quite positive before I get to the annoying part...)
If some people are luckier than others, then I am blessed to report that my luck often seems to be supernaturally good! :D I feel comfortable saying that because I know so many people whose annecdotes start out "My day was going just fine, until..." My annecdotes, more times than I deserve, often start out, "My day was already going great, but then...!"
So here's what happened with my car...
Last year, when I had it inspected, the inspector told me that 3 of my tires were worn thin, almost to the point where she couldn't pass the car. Also, my parking break needed to be tightened (or something) and just barely passed, too. Since then, 2 majoy hail storms swept through North Austin, and one of them not only ding-ed up my car severely, but it also put a hole in my left-front blinker cover.
And 2 of my tired have gone flat. (Undoubtedly, 2 of the 3 that the car inspector warned me about.)
So, going in, Brian and I guessed that I would need to parking break tightened (or whatever), to replace the blinker cover and to replace at least one of the tires before it would pass. We also figured we would need to get the car inspected twice: The first time would tell us what work needed to be done so it would pass the second inspection.
Brian went online and found a blinker cover for a decent price. He feels confident replacing it himself, so that'll save us a lot of money. (Well, "a lot of money" to us. To someone else, it might be lunch money, lol.)
The place I took my car to get the oil changed also does state inspections. They offered. I wasn't prepared for this. I took them out to the car and showed them the damaged blinker cover (intentionally failing to mention the tire and the parking breaks), and they said that the blinker cover was damaged in a place that shouldn't affect the car passing.
Whoa! Was this really happening? :D
I follow my instincts. They usually let me know about some things that are going to happen before they happen. Like, for instance, Brian's extreme warriness to drive my car to get the oil changed: I suspect that that was his instincts warning him that there was a cop out there with Brian's name just waiting to be written onto another ticket. If I get that sort of nagging "Don't do it" vibe, I heed it!
And now I was getting another kind of vibe! My gut was telling me that I might have stumbled into the perfect set of circumstances for my car to finally pass inspection this year! :D
I mean, Worst-Case Scenario: They fail it and (as Brian & I had originally planned) let me know what all needed to be done so that it could pass. And this was probably exactly what would happen.
But...
That's not what my intuition was telling me! :D My intuition was saying that I was about to get a new inspection sticker!!!
But ot pay for the inspection, and to buy 2 new license plate bulbs -- the guy who worked on my car very concientiously showed me the bulbs: one was burnt out and the other had a broken filament -- I needed more money, so I called Brian and asked him to bring me some. (Bless him! I know too many people who don't get along with their siblings, but I SO LUCKED-OUT with Brian!!! Excellent brother, excellent roommate and best friend!)
Waiting for Brian and listening to Jaws, it seemed like no time had passed before he was there with the extra money, the car's oil was changed and the car was inspected.
IT PASSED!!! :D
And the whole deal cost about $50 less than I thought it was going to!!! :D
Okay, I'm gonna get all New Age-y and airy-fairy here, but looking at the scenario in retrospect, I wonder if things didn't turn out supernaturally well! I mean, Brian felt really wierd about driving my car for an oil change -- like, maybe, his intuition was telling him not to -- and then, possibly because I'm the one that took it in if you believe in that type of thing, things turned out well better than I could have hoped! :)
So, cool! Mission accomplished, break over, back to work. Right?
Now, if you were bored by the previous story, you would shoot your computer by the mundane events of the next several hours, lol. But suffice it to say that "life" kept interrupting me, keeping me from the audio recorder, until around 7:30pm. This whole adventured started around 4:30pm.
And, like I said, I would have bet real money that I didn't have a life, lol!
OH! Another positive: When I woke up, I had received and email from my Gnomey-Goddess... She's a Young Leader for the Brownies, and Monday night she took her troop out "pond dipping" (which she made sure to inform me was nothing like skinny dipping) and searching for "mini beasts"!
Okay, how cool is that?!! :D My girlfriend is teaching young girls about forraging in the wild and stuff!!! :D She had told me that before, but I had forgotten it until she mentioned it yesterday. (I asked her if she has a uniform she wears, but she hasn't responded, yet.) So when Z-Day comes and the zombie take over the world, she'll know what berries we can eat and stuff! :D
My Baby's an action hero! :D My girlfriend is Lara Croft!!!
Okay, so, I finished reviewing the audio for the one recorder sometime after midnight, and I was wiped out. I slept, woke up around 9:00am, did some grocery shopping, ate a couple of frozen pizzas, then went back to sleep.
I'm awake again. Hopefully all night long, since I have to go back to work tomorrow, lol.
And I have at least one long stretch of video that I must -- WILL -- review tonight.
But I felt a strong need to blog about my weekend... probably as a subconscious procrastination maneuver, lol.
I hope your week is productive so far, and I hope you chance upon and amazing bit of unexpected good luck!
:D
Sunday, July 05, 2009
So Guess What...
I'm gettin' me some OVERTIME, baby!!! :D
Now, I usually don't seek out OT because I can ALWAYS occupy my non-working hours (with different, non-paid types of work, largely, lol), and, technically, I didn't seek this extra half-shift out, either.
But I've gotta say that I welcome it! I can SOOOOO use the money!
AND...
...it turns out that -- this being a holiday weekend -- this extra 4 hours this morning is pretty much baby-sitting! Cake! Chillin' at the workplace, exerting very little effort and still getting the job done! :D
Now, I will be crashing pretty hard the moment I get home and be rushing back off to work the moment I wake up, lol, but when the paycheck comes, I will be very happy!
Still hoping you're enjoying your holiday weekend! I got to go up onto the roof of the station last night and watch some fireworks! I think the trees have grow taller since the last time I did that because I could really just see the tops of the larger explosions. But it was cool to get to see some fireworks from work! :)
Okay, peace out and continue enjoying your weekend! :D
Now, I usually don't seek out OT because I can ALWAYS occupy my non-working hours (with different, non-paid types of work, largely, lol), and, technically, I didn't seek this extra half-shift out, either.
But I've gotta say that I welcome it! I can SOOOOO use the money!
AND...
...it turns out that -- this being a holiday weekend -- this extra 4 hours this morning is pretty much baby-sitting! Cake! Chillin' at the workplace, exerting very little effort and still getting the job done! :D
Now, I will be crashing pretty hard the moment I get home and be rushing back off to work the moment I wake up, lol, but when the paycheck comes, I will be very happy!
Still hoping you're enjoying your holiday weekend! I got to go up onto the roof of the station last night and watch some fireworks! I think the trees have grow taller since the last time I did that because I could really just see the tops of the larger explosions. But it was cool to get to see some fireworks from work! :)
Okay, peace out and continue enjoying your weekend! :D
Saturday, July 04, 2009
I'm Back!!! :D
Back from tonight's investigation and I just finished backing up my audio files on my computer.
I was rockin' 2 RCAs and a Sony... RCA audio recorders have digital outputs, so you can simply plug your recorder into a USB port, fire up the program that comes with the recorder and transfer your files in a matter of seconds. (Well, I buy the "lower end" recoders from Walmart, and the recorder's file format is .VOC which, apparently, is compatible with NO program still in use exept for the operating system of the recorder, lol. Unless you shell out for an audio program that can convert and manipulate virtually every format, even formats created and used exclusively in the '90s, lol. So I actually have to convert the files to .WAV, but that still doesn't take too long.) However, the Sony audio recorder I own doesn't connect directly to a computer, so I have to manually re-record the file into Audacity, real-time.
But I only had one EVP session on the Sony that lasted about 35 minutes, so it wasn't too painful.
I discovered the drawback on my first client investigation, when I foolishly used the Sony recorder to cover one area of the home for an entire investigation. (I like to have at least 1 recorder sit somewhere for the whole night because it sometimes can corroborate or debunk things heard on other recorders, plus it provides a timeline for the investigation because digital audio recorders record the time/date a recording was begun.) I was forced to manually re-record the file in real-time -- the length of the investigation.
That was a long night.
So now I only use the RCAs for investigation-long recordings, and use the Sony for individual (i.e. not 4-7 hour long) sessions.
And I'm sure this information is simply riviting to you, isn't it, lol. ;P
Still, I'm excited because instead of putting off transfering the files until tomorrow -- or, more realistically, Monday, when my weekend starts -- IT'S DONE! :D So I can devote my weekend exclusively to reviewing the footage, rather than transfering/backing up files THEN reviewing footage! :)
And I've got my weekend cut out for me, too! In addition to tonight's investigation I have one camera of footage from last week's investigation. But the good news is that I'm told the investigation ran long. Why is that good news? It ran long because there was so much activity! :D Better odds that I might see a ghost! Or, you know, something moving inexplicably! :D
So I'm excited!
But now it's time for some hotdogs and fries!!! It's my lunch/dinner. My linner. My lunner?
It's my second-meal-of-the-day. :)
Back to work tomorrow, but it should be a breeze.
Hope you're enjoying your 4th of July Weekend!!! Go make pretty sky-fire for me, would ya?
:D
I was rockin' 2 RCAs and a Sony... RCA audio recorders have digital outputs, so you can simply plug your recorder into a USB port, fire up the program that comes with the recorder and transfer your files in a matter of seconds. (Well, I buy the "lower end" recoders from Walmart, and the recorder's file format is .VOC which, apparently, is compatible with NO program still in use exept for the operating system of the recorder, lol. Unless you shell out for an audio program that can convert and manipulate virtually every format, even formats created and used exclusively in the '90s, lol. So I actually have to convert the files to .WAV, but that still doesn't take too long.) However, the Sony audio recorder I own doesn't connect directly to a computer, so I have to manually re-record the file into Audacity, real-time.
But I only had one EVP session on the Sony that lasted about 35 minutes, so it wasn't too painful.
I discovered the drawback on my first client investigation, when I foolishly used the Sony recorder to cover one area of the home for an entire investigation. (I like to have at least 1 recorder sit somewhere for the whole night because it sometimes can corroborate or debunk things heard on other recorders, plus it provides a timeline for the investigation because digital audio recorders record the time/date a recording was begun.) I was forced to manually re-record the file in real-time -- the length of the investigation.
That was a long night.
So now I only use the RCAs for investigation-long recordings, and use the Sony for individual (i.e. not 4-7 hour long) sessions.
And I'm sure this information is simply riviting to you, isn't it, lol. ;P
Still, I'm excited because instead of putting off transfering the files until tomorrow -- or, more realistically, Monday, when my weekend starts -- IT'S DONE! :D So I can devote my weekend exclusively to reviewing the footage, rather than transfering/backing up files THEN reviewing footage! :)
And I've got my weekend cut out for me, too! In addition to tonight's investigation I have one camera of footage from last week's investigation. But the good news is that I'm told the investigation ran long. Why is that good news? It ran long because there was so much activity! :D Better odds that I might see a ghost! Or, you know, something moving inexplicably! :D
So I'm excited!
But now it's time for some hotdogs and fries!!! It's my lunch/dinner. My linner. My lunner?
It's my second-meal-of-the-day. :)
Back to work tomorrow, but it should be a breeze.
Hope you're enjoying your 4th of July Weekend!!! Go make pretty sky-fire for me, would ya?
:D
Friday, July 03, 2009
How Insane Is This...
I've got an investigation tonight at 9:00pm, I set my alarm to go off at 6:00pm, but I woke up around 3:44pm and couldn't get back to sleep.
Okay.
So I killed time on the PC, as per usual... You know, check email, then play my MySpace/Facebook Pirate and Street Racer games...
All fine and good.
I made myself some Fish & Chips for breakfast.
Tasty and good.
Then it's 6:00pm, I still have 2 1/2 hours before I need to leave for the investigation.
Okay, fine.
So I chill to some Dido.
Groovy.
I get a call from a teammate (tonight's team leader, Sheryl) and we talk shop for a few minutes.
FINALLY... It's 7:00pm. I can shower and get ready, and take my time, and then it should be time to leave.
...or not.
So now it's 8:00pm, I'm completely ready to go, and I still have HALF AN HOUR to kill!
Eager? Sure.
But see, usually I'm running around 5-to-15 minutes late for just about everything. I'm not used to this "being ahead of schedule" thing!
I know how to kill HOURS of time, but I don't know how to kill minutes, lol. I can get lost in Old Time Radio or audiobooks or books or movies, but I'm not particularly skilled at killing a few minutes here and a few minutes there.
And I'm also not used to having to be precisely on time. (Or, as some might call it, behaving professionally, lol.) I'm usually a few minutes late or a few minutes early. But we're meeting at the client's home, so I don't want to show up half an hour early and wait awkwardly for the others to show up while the clients peer out their window, wondering if they should call the police on that car sitting outside their house.
What to do?
I sat down to write this blog entry, hoping to kill some time, but it doesn't seem to be working... It was 7:52pm when I started, and it's only 8:03pm as I type this sentence here. :(
Hmph.
I can't start a PS2 game because time would disappear far too quickly, then, lol.
Um...
Well, I can't really continue this blog entry, because I am well out of things to talk about. Any further discussion would be eternal reitterations of the same point.
So...
I'm going away now.
Hey, I hope anyone reading this has a SPECTACULAR 4th of July Weekend!!! :D
Okay.
So I killed time on the PC, as per usual... You know, check email, then play my MySpace/Facebook Pirate and Street Racer games...
All fine and good.
I made myself some Fish & Chips for breakfast.
Tasty and good.
Then it's 6:00pm, I still have 2 1/2 hours before I need to leave for the investigation.
Okay, fine.
So I chill to some Dido.
Groovy.
I get a call from a teammate (tonight's team leader, Sheryl) and we talk shop for a few minutes.
FINALLY... It's 7:00pm. I can shower and get ready, and take my time, and then it should be time to leave.
...or not.
So now it's 8:00pm, I'm completely ready to go, and I still have HALF AN HOUR to kill!
Eager? Sure.
But see, usually I'm running around 5-to-15 minutes late for just about everything. I'm not used to this "being ahead of schedule" thing!
I know how to kill HOURS of time, but I don't know how to kill minutes, lol. I can get lost in Old Time Radio or audiobooks or books or movies, but I'm not particularly skilled at killing a few minutes here and a few minutes there.
And I'm also not used to having to be precisely on time. (Or, as some might call it, behaving professionally, lol.) I'm usually a few minutes late or a few minutes early. But we're meeting at the client's home, so I don't want to show up half an hour early and wait awkwardly for the others to show up while the clients peer out their window, wondering if they should call the police on that car sitting outside their house.
What to do?
I sat down to write this blog entry, hoping to kill some time, but it doesn't seem to be working... It was 7:52pm when I started, and it's only 8:03pm as I type this sentence here. :(
Hmph.
I can't start a PS2 game because time would disappear far too quickly, then, lol.
Um...
Well, I can't really continue this blog entry, because I am well out of things to talk about. Any further discussion would be eternal reitterations of the same point.
So...
I'm going away now.
Hey, I hope anyone reading this has a SPECTACULAR 4th of July Weekend!!! :D
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