The Indigestible

I don't recall when, exactly, I became aware that Wil Wheaton had an active blog presence. It would have been a few years ago, probably mentioned in passing in comments or a link-in somewhere else, pointing to a post he'd done. Likely it was on a nerdy subject of some sort, since I often consume nerdy blogs, and odds are good that's where the paths crossed initially.

Crossed paths sometimes have a way of converging, and over time I grew more aware of posts he'd made — again, by others' references. I know I downloaded chapter 9 of his Just a Geek as a PDF, because the file is still resident on my Mac, dated from 2004. Nevertheless, it was only a few months ago that I subbed to his RSS feed and started actively reading his posts and content.

In that time I found that I'd been missing something good. Wheaton, as many of us in the nerdverse are sometimes painfully aware, had a role in his teens as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Alas, that role tainted the minds of many over the years, people who for some reason couldn't seem to quite separate the living, breathing and vital personality from the created character he filled two decades ago.¹

I hadn't been overlooking his blog for that reason; mostly, it was because I'd put ST:TNG behind me quite some time ago, and didn't feel it was all that relevant to my life any longer. I wasn't bearing animosity against Crusher (or Wheaton); rather, I was just no longer following the series, nor a devoted Trekker to begin with. At least not with the rabid ferocity evinced by the protesters that fought long and hard to keep Enterprise in production — truly a spikeworthy show, if ever there was a meaningful representation of the species.

So my mistake lay, I suppose, along similar modes of thinking that led him to be savaged verbally for years at Trek cons. I associated him well enough with a long-out-of-production show that I didn't feel connected to anything he might be doing today.

I was wrong.
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A while back Apple went DRM free with iTunes, a move heralded far and wide by sundry and all. On the plus side, losing encryption while improving audio playback is a clear value-added bonus for we longtime users. I can actually put the music I purchased onto non-iPod devices now, such as my smartphone. This has empleasened me.

On the downside, though, as I noted before, you could only upgrade your library all at once, in a massive whack — which, in my case, was more than two Franklins.* Even though the per-album cost averages (for me) $3.00, I have a hell of a lot of iTunes content.

Sometime in the last couple of weeks they appear to have changed that policy. iTunes users can now upgrade their content on a per-album and per-song basis, rather than having to blow a wad on everything at once.

This is a much more sensible and feasible approach, and has allowed me (for one) to proceed with the upgrade and downloads.

It was a nice move, and handily did away with my one irritation with the upgrade policy.

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* Initially the cost was more like $140. As more upgradeable content has been added, though, the price has gone up.

For the NV100, Samsung is trying to illustrate how crisp its captures are by a possibly clever, and certainly noticeable, campaign. They've got images showing people captured in a split second, so fast that their bodies appear to be bisected:

The imagery is effective and startling, and certainly arrests your attention. But in the series of ads, they did something that is genuinely obtuse.
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Oh my.

Police say an upstate New York television executive who sought to improve the image of Muslims in the media beheaded his wife after she filed for divorce.

Yes. Really. I do not believe this is going to do much to reform the image of Muslims.

Who knows, though? Maybe he anesthetized her first or something, rather than just hacking her head off like the Islamo-perverts do in Iraq.

And, on the heels of the tale of Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old Brit father of a baby girl, we have Bristol Palin borrowing from Mommy's limelight to articulate* on being an unwed teenage mother as well:

"It's just, like, I'm not living for myself anymore. It's, like, for another person, so it's different," Bristol Palin told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren. "And just you're up all night. And it's not glamorous at all," she said. "Like, your whole priorities change after having a baby."

Yes, the foregoing rich broth of insight is an actual quote. The rest of her blather is every bit as tolerable. I was all like, OMG, I'm like pregnant? And like, Mom, she like, was all gaaah, and I was all like yeah I know, but like we decided to like, you know, go ahead with it.

The best option is abstinence, the teen said, but added that she didn't think that was "realistic."

She's right, of course. But then, it seems using contraception is equally unrealistic to her. I have the sad, sinking feeling that Levi Johnston (the father) is actually the brightest contributor to that particular genetic mashup.

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* This is an example of using what writers call irony.

in reply, borrowing from Song of Songs:

More delightful is your love than wine.
My lover belongs to me and I to him.
I sought him, whom my heart loves. I sought him but I did not find him.

And you have nestled in my heart forevermore. There's one you won't find written anywhere but on my heart.

I need to find a way to keep my socks from being blown clean off.

What I wrote in 2004:

They still ride in the lock of time, breathing with trillions of others across three wide dimensions and a fourth still unbroken in one direction, and they know they will die but will never die, for this is the feeling that has moved every man from the first human stirring of heart in the first chest in the first forgotten primordial wild. Before there were paintings on cave walls there was this. After words have died forever from the universe, this will remain.

Jektres. Renetta. His and Rena’s rejected fetus. Jek’s seed in him once and his in Jek. They are in this as well. With Link and Nik and Sholi, and everyone else that may be before them in their lives, and those around them now, fusing in bliss and flesh and thought. His mother and father. His uncle and his aunts and his other uncle. Everyone who has ever been complete in any other. Uncounted trillions and trillions of cells dividing and forming and shimmering and spreading. He and Link have joined the throbbing choir of life. Chloroplast taking in light. Sperm entering egg. Harmony and counterpoint, melody and syncopation. Song. Song. Song.

What I wrote tonight:
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Naturally I'm in love with her, and told her so on Valentine's Day.*

I mean, duh. She can quote from Holy Grail**, knows what a d20 is, likes Firefly and doesn't live in her parents' basement.

You just can't do better than that.

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* Awwwwwwww.

** Those of you thinking, "She's got huge tracts of…" You just watch it.

I'm working on starting a stupid meme, derived partly from Harvey Birdman: Ending different thoughts with "…in my pants."* A sort of combination of Bulwer-Lytton and adolescent humor, as in, "It was a dark and stormy night … in my pants." The only real rule is that it's got to be a recognizable literary reference.

I mentioned this at a gathering of nerdish and oddish types this weekend at a friend's house. Several in my pantses went around** such as "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou? In my pants?", "And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting … in my pants", and so on. But it was the friend that came up with the best of the lot: I think, therefore I am … in my pants.

Somehow the GF managed to tolerate (actually enjoy) most of it. That was nice, and a bit surprising. But The Moment arrived when, as we were sitting down to throw down some Magic — she actually joined in, but that's not it — and she needed a life counter.

She asked for a d20.

No, listen. She actually said, "I need a d20."

Those of you who are male and know what a d20 is know what that moment meant. The rest of you — you'll just never grasp it.

So my friend's eyes bug out, he looks like he's having a seizure, and I look over at him, nod and say, "…in my pants."

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* Derived from something set up at first by Black Vulcan, and a phrase that recurs in the series:

Harvey: Mr Vulcan, tell us about your superpower.
Black Vulcan: Pure electricity ... in my pants.
Harvey: Tell us, what would life be like without your powers?
Black Vulcan: Well, you know when the power goes out in your house? It would be like that ... but in your pants.

** In my pants.

And thus doth winter end. This is the same view as this morning. Amazing what a difference nine hours can make.

This is just plain weird.

Now many, many, many of you might look at this and think oh, winter, so what?

Well, this is what the landscape more normally looks like.
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Went to see Inkheart and Coraline this weekend with the GF, and thought it might be constructive to do a parallel review of them, because to my mind they have at least a few things in common. Also note that there may be spoilers, depending on how you view things, below the fold here.

For starters, I haven't read the novels either was derived from. This is a lacuna I intend to change, but it's significant because I have a feeling that Inkheart, in particular, suffered a little from my not having read the book.

The only truly decent transcription of fantasy to screen I've ever seen is, of course, Pete Jackson's LotR trilogy — and even with his six hours' screen time to play with, he still had to release extended, enhanced versions on DVD. If you actually want to watch the special editions of that film set in one go, be prepared for a 9 to 10 hour time investment.

Inkheart felt a bit thin in places, a bit rushed. I had the feeling many of the characters were more sketches than the fully-drawn identities Cornelia Funke likely created. The novel is relatively long, which is surely one reason. But the plot requires us to first become familiar with the concept of "silvertongues", and then to become at least partially immersed in a narrative within the narrative, the eponymous Inkheart. That's a lot of development and background we're not really able to see or become involved in, at least not in the two-hour runtime of the movie.
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I really do. I've been a fan for more than a quarter century.

Eeriest part. "Years ago, I was an angry young man..." Byrne's presentation, his face. Nice, effective. Eyes closed, then open, then closed again.

That video was made twenty years ago.

Christ, they all look so young.

What does that mean about me?