Campaign Essentials

With the 2008 election season in full swing, I will once again quote from Depeche Mode’s song “New Dress”. The following doesn’t go out to either election campaign. It goes out to America – keep it in mind as you watch the debates, and when you cast to vote in November:

You can’t change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world

What Can Squirrels Teach Us About Life?

I found this dead squirrel laying on the side of the trail today. She hadn’t been there when I passed by 20 minutes earlier, and the body was still warm. No major injuries, just a bloody nose (and a broken neck/cracked skull, I’m sure). She must just have fallen to an untimely death.

So what’s the morale of the story? No matter how proficient you are at something, and no matter how much you’re in your element – a potentially fatal slip is always just moments away! So keep checking yourself, and don’t get too confident!

I wonder what the mortality rate from falling to death is for the common gray squirrel…

BBelief 2008 – Racing Towards The Finish Line

Every level in progress reaches a point where it’s not much fun to work on anymore. It’s those dreaded last 10%, which usually consist of applying a lot of polish – and getting to all the work that the author just didn’t really want to do (but has to ). When you’re just doing the level for fun, it’s even easier to procrastinate on those areas – and eventually hit a roadblock. I hit that spot a week or two ago, and stopped working on the level for a while. For me, the breaking point was mountains.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 3)

On to part 3 of the Cyberfilms feature! This part adds two reviews that I left out from the last post, because that article was getting too long for my liking. If you haven’t done so already, I suggest reading part 1 and part 2 of the series first! You will get an introduction to the book and insight on the stories that have already been reviewed. As with the other posts, you should be aware that this article might contain spoilers for the featured stories! (Some pretty big ones for the The Forbidden review.)

Air Raid (John Varley)
1977
Score: A

Air Raid was adapted into the movie Millennium by the author. The movie was directed by Michael Anderson, and starred Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd and Daniel J. Travanti.

Ah, John Varley. I’m a big fan of his Gaea cycle, and was captivated by this short short story (12 pages) as well.

Air Raid is one of those ‘clever’ titles. The story isn’t about an air strike – there’s no approaching fighter planes, no howling sirens, no people scrambling for cover. No, Air Raid is about a group of human time travelers from the future, who come back to our time to steal the travelers of airplanes that are doomed to fatally crash. Does that make sense?

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 2)

Part 2 of my Cyberfilms story review features two well-known authors and a big movie adaptation. Read part 1 of the series for more information on the book and these reviews. I had originally planned to post four reviews, but when I realized how long each of them had become, I decided to split up the post. As before, be aware that story spoilers might be lurking ahead!

Sandkings (George R. R. Martin)
1979
Score: A

This story was turned into an Outer Limits episode of the same name, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, directed by Stuart Gillard and starring Beau Bridges, Helen Shaver and Dylan Bridges.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this story, but ended up really liking Sandkings! It starts off a bit wonky, with a Mos Eisley style alien bazaar that conjures up a pulp sci-fi universe that I usually can’t buy into. But Sandking’s strength lies in its characters, not the environment.

When millionaire Simon Kress returns from a long business trip, he discovers that most of his exotic pets have died because of a lack of food – the piranhas cannibalized each other, and his ‘shambler’ devoured the carrion hawk. Somewhat miffed, Kress sets out to find repacement pets at the local market. After a lengthy, unsatisfying search, Kress is finally introduced to a novel species: the ‘Sandkings’, a race of insect-like creatures that build castles, wage wars against each other, and even worship their owner.

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R.I.P. Cloud

I don’t know what’s been going on here recently, but our budgies are dropping like flies This time, it’s our albino female, Cloud. The deaths aren’t related – Squall was a male, Cloud a female and she fell victim to egg binding. I’m left wondering if we could have saved her if we’d done something earlier. But she was hiding in her nesting box most of the time…

Ah well, it’s the circle of life. She certainly gave us a lot of fun times.

Learning To Write

Longtime followers of my blog might have noticed an relative outburst of posts in recent months, and wondered what triggered this renewed interest in flooding the internet with Opinions That Might Not Matter. Part of my motivation is obvious: I’m hoping to write posts that you find interesting, and that encourage you to subscribe. But there’s another, more personal reason behind all of this flurry of activity: I’m trying to improve my writing skills. Because I’m not very good at it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy with the quality of my writing. I actually think that it’s pretty damn decent, considering that English isn’t my native language. But just because the writing is good, that doesn’t mean that I’m good at writing.

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Firewater – The Golden Hour

Jamie introduced me to Firewater a few years ago, when I first moved to the Bay Ara. The band is actually from the other side of the country (New York City), but Jamie has close ties with Tod A (the band’s songwriter and front man), and he gave me a bunch of the CDs and encouraged me to attend their ’04 live show at The Bottom Of The Hill. I liked the music, and thought that the concert was exceptionally good (better even than Gogol Bordello, another one of Jamie’s tips).

After that tour, the sporadic updates that I got on Tod started getting increasingly unusual. He had gotten divorced. He had become fed up with America after Bush’s reelection. He had sold all of his belongings and had embarked on a long journey to Asian and Middle-Eastern countries. He wanted to see the world and collect music. He even kept a travel blog about his experiences.

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“Evil Exhumed” by Warren Marshall

In his neverending quest to one-up me, Warren Marshall has released his Quake 1 Base level, Evil Exhumed. But Warren didn’t just create a huge level (that will remind you a bit of the archeological dig sections in Doom 3) and new textures. Oh noooooooo! He also programmed an entirely new level editor for the Mac to make this level. I cannot compete with this level of commitment! So head over to Warren’s page already and download the level!

As for BBelief2008, this is how I described my current status to Warren earlier today:

Need to finish mine…I’m somewhere at the 75% mark now, but that just means that I’m getting to all the areas that I didn’t wanna do before God I hate making mountains in Quake…

Rating “Cyberfilms”

Cyberfilms is one of those books that I bought on a whim. It might have been during a late-night Readers’ Books run with Victoria. The book might even have been in the bargin bin – the cover isn’t all that attractive, but the description sounded interesting enough. Cyberfilms is a collection of sci-fi stories that were adapted into movies. The cover boldly proclaims that “You’ve seen the movies – now read the stories they were based on!”, but that might be overstating it a bit. Of the 11 stories on the book, only three or four (depending on your accounting) became major motion pictures. The remaining eight were turned into B or made-for-TV movies.

But even with over half of this book’s stories turning into somewhat obscure sci-fi movies, I was surprised (if not to say ashamed) to find that I had only seen one of the actual movies: Total Recall. That’s quite a wake-up call: I never watched Candyman! Or Mimic. Not even Johnny Mnemonic… or Reaminator! I’m not sure what I was doing in my teenage years, when you were supposed to watch these campy horror classics. I wasn’t keeping up with the times, that’s for sure.

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