"if mine's mines, what's yours?"

nanowrimo and new thesis chapters between them leave little time for blogging, but i did notice on one of my news feeds from england the other day that timothy bateson has died. while i realise that he was a well-respected and immensely skillful character actor with a really really really long resume with all sorts of roles in there, the first thing i thought was, "oh, binro died." and this is why:

this scene comes in about -- oh, three-quarters of the way through an episode of doctor who called the ribos operation which is the first episode in a 6-episode arc called the key to time which made up the entirety of one of tom baker season. the young man is named unstoffe; he's a conman, working with a partner named garron, and binro has been kind enough to hide him from searching guards.

the key to time arc is great doctor who, by the way; if you're looking for an intro to the original series, you could do way worse. tom baker is on top of his game; he has great companions in romanadvoratnalundar, played with great spirit by mary tamm, and k9; and the stories are just linked enough to make a decent over-arching story without being totally driven by a single element. and there's two of my favorite episodes of all time -- stones of blood and the power of kroll -- and an episode written by douglas adams, the pirate planet.

so in memory of timothy bateson and of an family friend who also died in the last week.

a sort of fly-by post...

taking a brief blogging break between writing blog post -- hah! -- for ebooks blog and working on the brandy-new context chapter for the thesis; i promised two highly intelligent professors that i could summarize approximately 200 years of irish history in something under 20-25 pages. hm. perhaps this was not a good idea? too late now!

but i have "in a nutshell" thoughts about a few recently watched/read things that i thought i'd toss up here for your amusement.

1. terry pratchett, unseen academicals. i posted a review of this earlier from the tor.com blog and i'm pleased to support pretty much everything that ms. jericho wrote. academicals is awesome. while i agree wholeheartedly with the idea that pratchett is, at his best, a whip-smart social commentator, i really don't think this is the best way to read his books. in fact, i think it might rank with the worst ways to read them -- right up there with trying to read them back-to-front or through a reversing mirror. going into a discworld novel looking for comment on earthly events is really not a good idea. the best discworld novels -- jingo, maskerade, the truth, thief of time -- are so clever and slick at making their points that, honestly, it's just better to take a deep breath, get some tea, and enjoy the lunacy. academicals is like that, too; the ending is great -- pratchett back in his proper form again after the somewhat leaden thud! and overly polemical monstrous regiment which is fun until you start to realise you've been hit over the head with the same damn joke 15 times and you're starting to get sore. my only piece of advice with academicals is keep your eye on nutt, glenda, and the patrician. keeping your eye on the patrician is always good advice, by the way. :)

2. iron man. i had a whole extra-ranty-goodness post all ready to go about the waste of space iron man turned out to be...and i just don't have the heart to go through with it. it wasn't that bad -- but it wasn't that good, either. i was thinking about it while walking to class the other day and i figure they could have done the film an immeasurable amount of good by doing a couple of simple things:

1. fire gwyneth paltrow. the woman is a black hole and not in a fun way. she comes on screen -- and the scene turns up its toes and dies because it knows nothing is going to happen. at all. ever.
2. give jeff bridges more to do. the man can be brilliant, but you need to give him something to work with
3. decide who your villain is.
4. oh, and please don't nick scenes directly from anime series (i'm thinking of vision of escaflowne here) 'cause, y'know, some of us have seen them.

3. the cave. i got this for halloween 'cause...well, i could. and it took me a minute to remember why on earth i thought it was a good idea -- it's because cole hauser is in it. and, on the whole, it wasn't a bad flick. predictable -- as all 'b' grade horror movies are -- but fun. the monster was -- okay. too obviously influenced by the alien in its first scenes but, on the whole, how is a creature designer going to step out from under that as a shadow? and the designer did go on to do the underworld films and those are really quite nice, so we'll forgive a momentary early slip. ;)

okay, back to describing the central importance of the rising of the united irishmen in 1798 to the later generations of irish republican nationalists. i'm considering setting up a macro to automatically fill in "Irish Republican nationalists" because, wow, am i tired of typing it!

"come on if you think you're hard enough."

a few days ago, anna sent me a link to this story by someone named john hawkins -- sorry, all i can think of is a cross between the boy from treasure island and ben from carnivale, i have no other context for this man and i don't really want one if this is his taste in movies -- who wrote "10 horror movies for conservatives to watch..."

i thought it was a joke. it is not.

my favorite bit? well, apart from the bit where he plumps for the recent movie adaptation of the mist because of the great ending -- gag me; the ending sucked; they should've gone with the short story ending -- my favorite bit has to be within the first couple of paragraphs:

Here's the problem: horror films aren't family friendly. They're gory, they're violent, and they're vulgar. Even setting that aside, there really aren't very many "conservative" movies overall and there are almost no truly "conservative" horror flicks.

this is just mindblowing. horror films aren't family friendly? say it ain't so, doc, say it ain't so! (i think my actual phrase when reading the article for the first time was a little...ahem...more vehement. but i'm trying to be family friendly. ;) )

gory? only when necessary, please, and make sure the blood looks real. violent? god, i hope so! vulgar? very often, yes. life is a vulgar sort of thing, sweetie; conservativity won't protect you from that, believe it or not. sooner or later that ol' violent, gory vulgarity is just going to break right through and then where will you be? well, searching for someone like me or one of my friends who knows the three best ways to kill a zombie, that's where.

and i realise that not everyone watches sleepy hollow or predator in order to relax after a hard day's whatever-it-is-you-do. that's fine. if you don't like it, don't watch it -- god knows there are enough movies out there that you should be able to find something that will tweak your particular interest! so if you find horror films innately objectionable -- why watch them? watch something else, for goodness' sake and leave the theatre to those of us who want to be here. personally, i can't deal with horror flicks in the style of the saw or hostel series -- so y'know what? i don't watch 'em. very easily solved problem!

the article is entirely worth reading just for hilarity value; the movies he picks are mostly 'ehh.' nothing non-hollywood; nothing non-mainstream; nothing that would really make you think in any meaningful way. it avoids -- with the possible exception of quarantine which i hear is a remake of a superior spanish film called rec which is currently sitting at position 6 in my netflix queue waiting for me to fall out of love with bones and the original the fog which i hear is awesome; i've only seen the remake which is funny -- all the great things horror and genre films in general have been doing over the past few years. which is a shame.

anna also found for me this post from a blog she reads called shakesville (which often makes me want to spit blood but also has some great pictures of cats) but whoever posted the comment on the hawkins piece did more detailed commentary than me while still keeping a close eye on the sheer 'what the fuck'-ery of the original piece.

as a random follow-up to something i posted awhile back, i noticed this review of freda warrington's elfland from the fantasy & sci-fi lovin' news & reviews blog. she has a much more positive take on the book than i did, so i thought i'd link it here for the sake of completeness.

coming later in the week: thoughts on unseen academicals, jonathan maberry's bad moon rising, layer cake, and (with any luck) iron man (yeah, yeah, yeah, i know i'm practically the last person on earth to see it.)

"who said anything about panicking? this is still just the culture shock!"

not a lot of time to put up something thoughtful today -- had a meeting with one of my professorial thesis pair yesterday and, in among a whole slew of other very nice and helpful comments, she dropped one bomb about a major restructuring of material that has me tizzying just a little right now. so i just emailed off a revised outline -- at this late date! -- to take into account my professor's excellent -- if daunting -- idea and am waiting to hear back. in the meantime, i have to do some last-minute "studying" for a test in my history of the book class which may or may not take place tomorrow, i'm not sure. we haven't had class for two weeks and our professor is not the best of electronic communicators. it's a good thing that my "term paper" for that class has a lower page limit of 7 and i'm writing about something silly -- the history of the necronomicon.

but just so i don't get out of practice with this whole blogging thing, i found this very funny set of photos someone took to answer the eternal question: "just what do stormtroopers do on their days off?" not target practice apparently although that might be helpful; "only imperial stormtroopers are so precise," my left foot. and some more thoughts on movies from cinematical.com, this time about what makes for a great villain. i'm not sure the "coffee cup" test works for a lot of my favorite villains -- i don't remember the predator eating anything ever -- but i like the general idea.

then there's this very awesome set of bookmarks from secondhand books from the age of uncertainty blog.

to end on another book-related note, here's arachne jericho's review from tor.com of the new terry pratchett, unseen academicals. im pleased that she seems to think it's lighter than his last few -- monstrous regiment, thud!, and company. thud! i only really got through because i love sam vimes; sort of the same way i got through night watch, except i thought that one was more successful.

"that's someone else's blood!"

i do have thoughts to post about the neha meeting on saturday and anna's and my trip to vermont in general, but i want to wait to put them up until i get my roll of film developed and see if any of the photos i took are worth scanning and using as illustrations. over all, the trip was very pleasant and the conference most enjoyable. no sign of anyone letting ego/professional disappointment win over common sense/politeness.

coming home the other day, i took advantage of a somewhat delayed t-ride to finish david wellington's 99 coffins, the (unavoidable) sequel to 13 bullets. i say "unavoidable" more as a commentary on the apparent impossibility of anyone writing genre fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, dark fantasy, steampunk, etc.) to write a single book. standalones are verboten apparently. who knew? some series aren't so series-like, admittedly: china mieville's books (apart from king rat, un lun dun, and the city & the city) share a common world and mention many of the same landmarks -- new crobuzon and its geographic environs -- but often aren't continuous in the same way that, say, george r.r. martin's or terry goodkind's are. not all series are evil, of course; there are lots i like, but i also have to say i've grown to value an author who writes a good book and is satisfied to leave it alone. borrow characters if you must; re-use place if you have to; but don't just "continue the story so brilliantly begun in..." forever and ever and ever. when i was a kid i thought sequels were just the best thing ever; now i'm not so sure.

anyway, 99 coffins is a good sequel. :) wellington's writing has gotten steadily better since his debut with monster island which was a slightly awkward zombie thriller; good, solid writing but strangely...stiff at points -- still absolutely worth reading, though. 99 coffins is a steady step-up from 13 bullets -- the main character, laura caxton, is forced back into her vampire-hunter-role when, really, she'd rather be with her new girlfriend and her new job. this time, the entire town of gettysburg is in danger from the threatened revivification of 99 vampires, found buried in skeletal form in what had been thought to be a forgotten confederate powder store. not so much with the powder, it appears, but all sorts of vampire-y goodness!

it's interesting to consider wellington's vampires -- pale, cold, red-eyed, often pointy-eared, inhumanly strong, with a tendency to become next-to-bulletproof just after eating, and with lots and lots and lots of teeth -- with an article recently published in esquire by stephen marche which claims that the popularity of vampires in recent literature can be explained by sex: "Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men."

a ridiculous proposition, of course, on multiple levels -- and the article really just gets better from there -- but particularly funny if you've just finished reading coffins or, indeed, bullets. one of the climatic scenes in bullets (skip this sentence if you don't like spoilers) involves caxton's former lover, now vampire, coming to try and convince caxton to let herself be turned vampire so that they can be together as undead killers for all eternity. somehow, though, the pervasive stink of blood and rot, together with the rows of sharks-teeth, manage to put caxton off the idea. amazing, that. and while there is sex in wellington's books, i'd say you're pretty safe in thinking that anyone who thought one of his vampires was a good choice for a night-time cuddle would be better off in a padded room than walking the streets. sex is mostly dangerous in this particular world, as it is in many horror novels; one of the vampires in bullets, for example, has apparently fixated on caxton as a potential victim because she's gay and he has carried over an obsession with lesbians and lesbian sex from his human existence.

anyway -- read marche's article if you want a good snicker, but read 99 coffins 'cause it's really, really good. the pacing suffers a bit in the middle -- there's some time spent wandering around when you're not quite sure where you're going to end up -- but the last third is a spectacular action sequence and a great cliffhanger for the next book. caxton steps up as a worthy heroine and a fairly able vampire-hunter.

and as a last thought, this list from entertainment weekly, normally the provider of fairly entertaining lists, of the 20 all-time coolest heroes in pop culture. the only one which really gives me pause is mad max; i can't look at mel gibson anymore without wincing.

random items

as you read this, i will (most likely) be at a new england historical association session in burlington, vt. i'm not presenting at this conference so my ego is safe; i just get to sit back, relax, and enjoy what everyone else has to say. and then cross my fingers and hope that the restaurants i remember as being good are still good so that anna and i don't have to wander around too much looking for somewhere to eat!

this is, of course, assuming that we get there at all -- i keep getting weather update alerts (from my mother, mostly) telling me about all the horrible things that are due to happen in the next 24-36 hours.

anyway, there are a few things i've got starred on my greader list that i wanted to put up here in case anyone else found them interesting, too.

hillary clinton was in belfast this past week. i haven't had time to go looking for any irish coverage of her talks, but there is some coverage from the guardian here. i've never been wildly impressed by hillary clinton, honestly; if a clinton had to continue to be involved in the government on an international level, i would've voted for her husband, but no-one asked me. in this case, i think her talk -- at least the excerpts i've seen -- sounded more condescending than friendly or helpful: "okay, kids, if you all learn to play together real nice, we'll give you some candy!" in this case, the candy being international investment by american corporations in northern ireland. just in case you can't get your own banks to fail on time, let the americans show you how to do it!

as a sidelight, there was also a report this morning of another car bomb in belfast. i doubt it has anything to do with clinton's visit, but there it is.

also this week was an "anniversary" of an attempt by the ira to bomb the grand hotel in brighton 25 years ago -- at the time, a political conference was being held there. if i remember rightly, the actual aim of the bomb was to kill margaret thatcher. no comment but anyway, they missed thatcher, killed four other people. the article here discusses the odd relationship that has built up between the ira bomber, patrick magee, and the daughter of one of the men killed as well as loosely commenting on the aftermath of the bombing itself. what gets me is the last sentence or two:

After all Patrick Magee couldn't bring himself to say sorry for the suffering he caused either.

"Pat, I find that quite hard," said Berry. She emerges as the bigger person.

my only thought on reading this the first time -- and i've read it several times since and i think it will find a home in the conclusion to my thesis -- was, 'well, no, of course he won't apologise. what did you expect?' if you're waiting for a hearts-and-flowers-style apology from a still-living ira paramilitary, complete with bended knee and hand on heart, i'd suggest you're going to be waiting a long damned time.

and this i saw this morning and couldn't quite believe: apparently a judge in louisiana totally missed the odd supreme court case or two in his legal training, like, say, "loving v. virginina." small details!

on a less political note, apparently vampires and zombies also reflect a "sexual divide" in mainstream culture. (and, while we're at it, does anyone want to have a stab at explaining what "post-scifi" might mean?)well, damn. apparently i don't like 28 days later and resident evil after all -- i actually like twilight. who knew! and i haven't even read/seen it. i've tried to put together a more reasonable comment on this article but i just can't. it makes me boggle -- i probably would have put this guy's book on the list to read had i not read this first. but, y'know, i have david wellington's 99 coffins on hand and, really, anyone who wants to snog one of his vampires needs their head examining. (and don't forget wellington's ongoing 30 [free] stories in 30 days at dailylit.com!)

if you're looking for a reason to make a list, i found this via imdb.com: what movies have you "rolled the dice" to see?

for those of you waiting with bated breath for the appearance of this ebooks blog i keep talking about, paper not included will be starting up sometime in the next few weeks; we're busily trying to work out stylesheet and other such-like formal issues on the discussion board.

i got sucked in by the "new books" shelves at the coolidge corner library the other day, so instead of walking out with two books which had been the plan (robert w. chambers's the king in yellow and patrick messert's literature of the occult which is less exciting than it sounds), i walked out with four, including dark places and prospero lost which has gorgeous cover art -- as well as a highly complimentary blurb from kage baker. i'm also looking forward to finishing wellington's 99 coffins this weekend and to the arrival of jonathan maberry's bad moon rising at the library so i can finish that series. more 5-cent book reviews in a few weeks!

and, as a final note, i offer this video clip (only the first 8 minutes of a longer show, sadly) from a charity "children in need" concert -- you've always wanted to see david tennant work a crowd, haven't you?

Doctor Who - A Celebration
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blog action day 2009 post

so this is my post in support of blog action day 2009.

i've spent some time over the past day or so flipping through the "suggested post topics" over on the blog action day site. quite honestly, i really don't know enough about many of them to put together some kind of coherent post that wouldn't simply be me skimming from about 25 other things that are better researched and written to put together something of my own that isn't half as good. while i realise this is essentially what much of humanities research is (the "skimming from other people" bit, not the "not being half as good" bit), i'm reluctant to do that much speed research and then pass it off as something deep and meaningful! honestly, i think the wires would show a bit.

so instead of doing that, i decided to do this instead.

i grew up in central maine -- where exactly isn't particularly important since no-one ever knows where my home town is anyway. if you know where augusta is and you know where bangor is (stephen king lives there? see, now you know where it is!), i lived somewhere in between. mainers love to talk about the weather. actually, i can enlarge that statement: new englanders love to talk about the weather. i've only ever lived in new england and california and californians didn't have the same deep and abiding desire to discuss the details of what was plainly going on outside their windows that new englanders do. i don't understand it; i just state it.

growing up, i heard lots of stories about "the snow we used to get when i was a kid...," "the nor'easters when i was in school---," and "...uphill both ways in a blizzard" and so on. neither of my parents were mainers -- my mom is from new england, but my father is from england -- so they had to be told all the horror stories of blizzards of way back when and ice storms of year such-and-such and floods of so-and-so. i remember a couple of the more recent ones: the flood of 1989, for example, and the ice storm of '98. (anyone can see the aftermath of the flood of '89 without bothering to come to maine, by the way; just watch the miniseries empire falls -- the restaurant outside of which paul newman is repairing his car has a sign on the wall which reads "i survived the flood of '89." it did, too, despite being perched on the riverbank well below flood level!)

that aside, i listened to the stories of the awful blizzards and snow and ice and cold of previous years with the general sort of "yeah, right" attitude these kind of stories usually attract. i only realised there might be something to them when i was in college, commuting regularly between southern vermont and central maine, and it seemed to me that snow was coming later and later. when i moved back to new england from california it seemed even more obvious. and there were fewer what you might call "serious" storms. and the pine trees were starting to show more yellow and brown than they used to. and spruce trees in my parent's woodlot weren't looking as perky as they used to. and the ski areas started making snow earlier and earlier -- and then making more and more of it as the season went on when there should have been more than enough regular fall and pack to keep the slopes going.

yes, we still get snow and plenty of it, even in boston. yes, weather patterns that bring lighter winters and heavier winters have been going for centuries. (students in a class i helped student-teach a year or so ago were really taken with the idea that there had been a "little ice age" in the 14th/15th century.) and, no, none of what i've adduced above is hard scientific data; i can only say it's what i've observed, but even i can recognize a trend when i see it. winter cold comes later; goes earlier; yes, it's sharp and chilly from the end of september through april -- but it's chilly not cold. perhaps what i've seen are only personal observations of freak years -- but there have been a lot of freak years lately. from what i've seen of projections of climate change, some of what is happening has already gone too far to be turned back; what happens from here, however, is up to us -- as the dominant species on the planet, it has been for a long time and we haven't done anything to control our own actions. it may be time to reconsider this as a way of doing things.

edit: i haven't had a chance to check out the action at the main blog action day page -- linked up there at the top -- but i can vouch for the quality of these two posts: the waki librarian and the future feminist librarian activist, a.k.a diana and anna, in that order. :)