I hate malls at Christmastime

It's been too long since I've worked in one. I'd forgotten the importance of keeping my head down and walking at as fast a clip as the crowds would let me manage. Because I'd forgotten that, every kiosk salesperson tried to sell me something. I managed to avoid (or outrun) most of them, but this amazingly life-like android saleswoman* cornered me and tried to sell some kind of home manicure thingy to me.

To me. Because home manicure thingies are just what a grown-up tomboy with (currently in need of cutting) short hair, no makeup, and a casual outfit that would be just as appropriate on a man would want. Sure. Maybe the android had been programmed with the idea that shining my nails would automatically sell me on becoming a proper woman. Maybe the android had been programmed to corner anyone who wasn't wearing nail-polish and I saved the burly construction worker behind me from the embarrassing fate of having his nails shined. I don't know, but you'd think that there would be better uses for life-like androids than kiosk sales at a mall.

I did manage to escape from the android, though, despite being unable to be mean to someone projecting niceness at me. Its actually a pity they programmed her to be so intense and unwilling to take no for an answer, because I think the home manicure thingy would appeal to my ex-roommate. I'm not about to recommend it to her now, though.


* Seriously. I have never before encountered anyone who so screamed "replicant." There was something programmed about all of her sales talk. It was too smooth, too much like ad copy, too...pre-recorded. She sounded like an info-mercial. It was bizarre.

Go forth and vote!

Tomorrow - Tuesday the 4th - is election day here in the United States. If you haven't already voted, take a few minutes this evening to prepare yourself for tomorrow. Find out if your state requires ID at the polls, find out what that ID is, and be sure and have it with you when you go to vote tomorrow. That information will be on your state website, or you can call the elections department. To the best of my knowledge, only Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, and South Dakota require photo ID (though some other states may want photo ID if this is the first time you've voted or if you've been voting mail-in). The other states that require ID generally have a broad list of possible IDs - for example, here in Colorado, not only are non-photo government IDs like pilot's licenses acceptable, but your utility statement works just fine.

If you believe you are being disenfranchised, call the political party of your choice or your candidate's campaign office. Chances are, they will want to help you get your vote in. If the voting machine tries to change your vote, get help and get the word out. I think we all want to see a nice, honest election.

So, go forth and vote.

Someone has to lose

The last time my parents visited, we got together with some in-town relatives to play cards. Improbably, our Rook game ended in an exact tie – both teams got exactly the score required to win. This resulted in the following:

Me: Wow, how often does that happen. Everybody won. ^_^
My grandfather: *starts dealing another hand*
Other in-town relatives: *various mutterings of having to find out who won*
Me: O.o?
My mom: *leans over to me* It’s not enough that someone wins, someone has to lose.
Me: … That explains a lot.

The world really does seem to be divided into those who need for someone to lose and those who don’t care if everyone wins. It shows up on MMO bulletin boards where people argue endlessly about whether everyone should be able to get/do/have everything with a bit of work or whether there should be some things that only an elite few can have (generally meaning that virtual dice rolls of a tiny chance are involved). More disturbingly, it shows up in politics, particularly when it comes to things like universal healthcare or anything else that can be seen as helping the disadvantaged.

It isn’t about competition, it isn’t about effort, it isn’t even about rewarding skill or ability; it’s…something else. To some people, it isn’t enough to have, earn, or gain something, it has to be something that other people don’t have. And the last thing those people want is to have to share or to help other people get, well, anything. It’s a mind set I can’t wrap my mind around.

Unfortunately, the concept that everyone can win, that there’s no reason to limit who can have access to things is just as foreign to them.

The problem with good-by-definition groups

The idea of an organization whose members are all, by mystical powers or by definition (or both), inherently good crops up here and there in sci-fi and fantasy, but that idea has never quite set right with me (even though it turns up in fiction I like). Perhaps the best known examples that I’m familiar with (and I’ve no doubt there are even more I’m not), are the Jedi in Star Wars and the Heralds of Valdemar in Mercedes Lackey’s Velgarth books. Though vastly different in many respects, both organizations fit the category of groups whose members you know are automatically good. And both drive me up the wall for that reason.

You see, while I enjoy Good vs Evil on the cosmic scale, when it comes to individual characters, I prefer something a bit more ambiguous and, dare I say it, realistic. And, in truth, the older I get, the more of a problem I have with Evil. I know, it sounds weird to find Good more believable than Evil, but look at it this way – it’s very plausible for someone to wish to be Good and try their hardest to do all the Right things and be a truly Good person, but it’s a lot harder (for me, at least) to swallow someone wishing to be Evil. As far as I can tell, looking at the real world, most people who have committed evil (or even Evil) acts were doing so for some kind of personal gain or because they thought they were doing Good.

Which leads us to the problem of good-by-definition groups. Or perhaps I should say the problems there of.

Now, the Jedi and the Heralds are somewhat different cases, even if they share the same, or most of the same, problems. The Jedi locate and train Force sensitive children to be light-side Force users who protect the galaxy (or at least the Republic) while swearing off personal attachments an, theoretically, anyway, emotional extremes and passions. Heralds are chosen by mystical Companions because they are good at heart and are trained to protect Valdemar while loving freely and generally otherwise having a normal (if likely to be messily short) lives. But the two organizations have pretty much the same job – mystically good guardians of their government and the people there in.

(I’m skipping other major problems with the Jedi, like, if being Force sensitive is hereditary, don’t you want Jedi to breed, not become celibate monks?)

So, the shared problems? Well, first off, rather like Evil, Good isn’t that simple. Unless the enemies of the Republic or of Valdemar are Evil, you would think a mystically Good organization would want to keep fighting to an absolute last resort, especially if they’re connected to or chosen by a cosmic Good. Granted, the enemies we’re shown in both sets of stories are generally Evil, but somehow neither quite addresses the conflict inherent in having the cosmically Good connected/chosen fighting for one particular country, however large. This smacks uncomfortably of the whole true race, God on our side kind of thing that we mostly don’t want to hear in the real world. Though a story that actually faced up to that and had their Good being, recognizably, our idea of evil could be pretty interesting. (And might well exist out there. I am known for preferring light fiction to the darker, deeper variety.)

There’s also the fact that having a Good organization either cuts out internal conflict or makes a bizarre hash of it. Star Wars: Episodes I-III are a good example of this. I can argue, convincingly, I think, that the Jedi are as responsible (or more responsible) for Anakin’s fall than Palpatine is. Did Lucas intend that message? If so, he didn’t make it quite clear enough, and if not, wow did he mess up. I can’t quite tell whether we’re supposed to view the Jedi as being mistaken in their ascetic world view or whether we’re supposed see Anakin’s refusal to follow it as the beginning of his fall. Now, partly this might be because we’re used to (or I’m used to) thinking of love and caring for others as a good thing, but I think part of the problem is that we’ve been told the Jedi are Good. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean infallible, but it certainly raises the question of what it means for them to be wrong about major issues.

The Heralds also have a problem (and, now that I think about it, there’s a certain similarity of situation here) in dealing with members who mess up due to emotional distress. In Magic’s Pawn, one young Herald goes kind of (very?) crazy after his twin brother is killed and ends up slaughtering the people responsible (and then some, if I remember right). His Companion repudiates him, making him no longer a Herald, and he kills himself. Um…the boy went mad, shouldn’t cosmic Good have stepped in there somewhere, preferably before the slaughter and helped him? Again, it isn’t that Good has to be infallible, it’s that Good’s mistakes (or the agent’s of Good’s mistakes) raise problematic questions. It doesn’t help that in the third book of that same series, Magic’s Price, the main character goes a bit crazy after being raped and tortured and kills the people responsible (and two more-or-less innocent bystanders) but his Companion helps him get sane again. Cosmic Good, you confuse me. (And, yes, I know the Companions are “human,” but still…where’s the consistency?)

Speaking of consistency, to return to Star Wars, Obi Wan, after defeating and maiming Anakin, leaves him to die of his wounds. Which seems to me to be pretty major Good failure there. (And possibly characterization failure.) There’s also the matter of the Jedi doing nothing to help the slaves on Tatooine, going so far as to not even help Anakin’s mother. If the Jedi are Good and slavery is at least evil, shouldn’t they do something? They’re barely presented as objecting.

Actually, some of these problems would still be problems if the organizations were merely centered on the idea of Good (or even good) and not cosmically backed up in any way. Their respective authors may have failed a smidge, there. But the problems wouldn’t seem as critical if the organizations were merely groups of people who wish to do good in organizations dedicated to doing good. Individuals and groups of individuals, trying to do their best, can and do screw up. But if they’re tied to the cosmic forces of Good in any strong way, there shouldn’t be major screw ups, especially not ones without explanation.

And I think the characters get short changed a little if they’re tied to Good. Not only is there the Chosen One problem (which I’ve ranted about before) but the world is more interesting if good and evil aren’t presented as Good and Evil, with appropriate baseball caps for everyone. Too much conflict, character growth, and complex plotting is tossed out when you hand out the baseball caps.

Perhaps I’ve just grown to want slightly deeper light fiction.

Feminist Fiction

I’ve finally realized why discussions of feminist fiction often leave me baffled. There are really two reasons, one more global and one more personal. You see, I hadn’t realized that there are actually three categories (broadly speaking) of feminist fiction: that which inspires, that which enlightens or educates, and that which is all about venting. I also hadn’t taken into account my tendency to interpret things in the darkest possible way.

It’s not surprising that a person who believes that the message of It’s a Wonderful Life is that good people should sacrifice their dreams for the benefit of others finds far fewer works of fiction inspiring than most people. It’s also not surprising that, given my tendency toward gloom, I’m not really into reading fiction to gain more insight into the horrors of the world. And as for venting, well that usually works best if one is in fairly strict agreement with the one venting, and not so well if one disagrees.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with fiction that does any of the above, and no requirement that fiction must be feminist. But it was always disconcerting to have someone tell me that a work of fiction was feminist, then go on to describe something that sounded practically anti-feminist to me. Of course tastes and interpretations vary, but there was also the problem of vocabulary.

Definition time.

Venting is a category that’s fairly self explanatory. In it go the works that complain, and presume you share the complaint. This would, I think, mostly be short fiction, though there might be longer works. It is, I’m afraid, a category I’ve been told about, not one I’ve read, so I’m hard pressed for a concrete example of what I mean. It addresses a problem all people (or, in the case of feminist venting, women) are assumed to have, or at least to commiserate with.

In the enlightening or educating category are works that address either speculative problems (as in The Handmaid’s Tale) or real life problems faced by, in the feminist case, women. They are written to prevent the future in their pages from happening, or to change the present injustices, or to make people aware of the past injustices.

A lot of fiction about women, regardless of genre, at least hovers at the edges of this category because the difficulties women face seem always to be addressed by them. It’s hard, for example, to think of a fantasy novel with a woman protagonist who doesn’t have to overcome being a woman and all that means to her faux-medieval culture. That inability to escape the confines of “womanhood” makes the works seem more educational than inspirational, at least to me.

The works I categorize as inspiring are those in which the protagonist is happy and successful – for certain values of successful. Their protagonists tackle their problems with energy and enthusiasm – you might even say they like their problems (whether they’d admit it or not). Adventure stories are, to me, the penultimate example of this. But adventure stories rarely have female leads, or, worse, when they do, the very thing that makes them inspiring is abandoned. But this, this is what I want when I say I want a feminist work of fiction. I want fiction with a woman protagonist who has fun, fiction that says, no, shouts from the rooftop, “You can do this!” And doesn’t have to add “even though you’re a woman.”

And that really is the problem I find with a lot of fiction intended to be feminist. The protagonist always has womanhood shackled to her ankle as a hindrance. They’re successful despite being a woman, they’re successful after they overcome their gender, they make it in a man’s world. I know that can be inspiring and I know that, to an extent, it’s realistic, but I can’t help feeling like it turns being a woman into, well, an albatross around the protagonist’s neck.

Maybe I’m overlooking how much other women do feel that way. Maybe that’s why it’s such a theme of feminist fiction. Maybe I’m not meant to lump being a woman in with the construct of a woman’s place in society when I read those books. Or maybe the authors lump the two together more than they intend. Maybe the simple fact that women in fiction tend to be women more than the men in fiction are men puts off my own gender fuzziness. I don’t know. I’d love to hear from people who feel differently about the enlightening category, or who find works like Alias, The Deed of Paksenarrion, or The Mists of Avalon to be inspiring. I want to understand the other point of view, even while I long to read something as inspiring as the Vorkosigan saga…but about a woman.

Weight loss ads are getting on my nerves

I've never been fond of weight loss ads, for a whole slew of reasons, but lately they've begun to make me feel rather stabby. I could accept the ads when they were mostly for weight loss programs, and stuck to the formula of "Want to lose weight? Join us." Those ads tend to feature both men and women and are fairly inoffensive. But now we have ads for weight loss pills and for weight loss surgeries. At least a failed program wouldn't (so far as I know) have a negative impact on your body, but pills have side effects and surgery...is not something one should just jump into. There's the little matter of it potentially killing you, for one thing.

There are the Alli ads that feature thin women and tell you in voice over that you have to...wait for it...change your diet and exercise. But with this marvelous pill, you'll lose weight faster than you would by just changing your diet and exercising. Because this pill stops you from absorbing some of the fat you eat, which means that if you eat too much fat in a meal you may experience "treatment effects" - "oily spotting, loose stools, and more frequent stools that may be hard to control." Well, that should teach people women to cut back on the fat, all right. Why women? Because the ads and the site almost exclusively feature images of women, many of whom are not overweight. Men either don't need to worry about their weight or can lose weight without taking a poo pill.

I'd say more about the many mail order weight loss pill ads, but I couldn't find any of them on line and I can't remember the names of the pills. But, again, they mainly feature women and they tend to say things about "unsightly body fat" and imply that pretty much everyone needs their product. I wish I could find them, because they are far more immediately disgusting than the other ads.

Then there's the Lapband ad that has overweight people listing what they would do "if they lost the weight," which might be accurate to how some overweight people feel, but seems both misleading and offensive. Losing weight won't necessarily mean you have fewer health problems, and it won't necessarily help with type 2 diabetes (not to mention at least some people can control that with diet) or cure your aching back, feet, or knees. And, unless you were very overweight, it won't make visiting an out of state relative any easier. And, in a culture that teaches women to hate their bodies, it's unlikely to make you feel better about shopping for clothes.

But the ad isn't the only thing that makes me feel stabby about Lapband. Read the first year dietary instructions. So, basically, you lose weight because you eat less and exercise. AAAARRRRRRGH!!!! Then why do you need to clamp something on your stomach that results in a longer list of things to be careful eating than they recommend for people with an ileostomy?! I mean, fuck, we're just supposed to be careful of fibrous stuff and popcorn, but lapbanded people, you better watch out for "dry meat, shrimp, untoasted or doughy bread, rice, peanut butter, fibrous vegetables like corn, asparagus, and celery, nuts, greasy or fried food, [and] membrane[s] of citrus fruits." Just how tiny do they make the opening? I mean, really.

Underlying all these anoyances are the reasons why I've never been fond of weight loss ads. Weight is not, in and of itself, a measure of health. A person can be thin and unhealthy and a person can be fat and healthy. That isn't the current fadish belief, but it's true. If you eat well, get exercise, and are happy, you will probably be healthy, regardless of your weight. If you eat crap, never exercise, and are miserable, you probably won't be healthy, again, regardless of your weight. (In fact, eating crap and not exercising might have something to do with being miserable.)

And, of course, there's the annoying fact that weight loss ads tend to be aimed more at women than men. Because women just have to be thin, you know. *stabby*

A note to bicyclists

Either (as you're supposed to) ride in the street and follow traffic laws, or (wrong, but sometimes understandable) ride on the sidewalk and act like a pedestrian. Do not mix the two; it confuses people. But, above all else, do not ride in the street and disregard all traffic laws, including those pertaining to stop lights. It gives drivers premature gray hair and may give you a premature death.

Damn it, authors, stop dying!

I just discovered that Robert Asprin died May 22. I've lost count of how many sci-fi/fantasy authors have died in the past twelve or so months, but it's way too freaking many. Granted, they weren't all authors I read, but some of them were, and, who knows, I might have gotten to the others eventually. Bah. Rats. And words to that effect. Especially since Robert Asprin was one of the authors I read...some of the time.

He wrote some very funny fantasy - the first few books of his Myth series were great - but, like most humor writers, his work was a bit up and down (or in and out of my range of humor, as the case may be). Still, when he was good, he was really good, and that kept me trying his books, even when they didn't always live up to his best. And he was way too young to just die in his sleep. I mean, what the hell, he's younger than my parents! (Okay, only by a couple years, but still. And, bizarrely, he apparently went to the same university they did, albeit briefly. O_o)

I think there are only a handful of authors I like who are still alive. I'd really appreciate it if they stayed that way.

Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull today. The spoiler free review is this: it was better than I was afraid it was going to be, worse than I hoped it would be, moderately entertaining, and completely falls apart if you make the mistake of thinking about it afterwards.




SPOILERS BELOW




Oh, man, was this movie a mess. The first thirty minutes or so were unnecessary and problematic, there was little to no character development, and the aliens, oy, the aliens. I’m sure there are plot holes and glitches in the other three Indy movies, but this movie is so hole riddled that it practically self destructs. Then there’s the matter of Harrison Ford playing Indy as though he’s permanently pissed off. And the pointless seeming characters, which include both Indy’s frienemy and, sadly, his son. The movie was entertaining, yes, but in a way that evaporates after you watch it.

While there were a couple of funny moments in the first half hour or so, the movie would probably have been better off starting with Mutt approaching Indy with Marion’s letter. If they wanted to start with a bang, they could have started with an opening mini-adventure the way Raiders and Last Crusade did, but the entire bit with the Soviets, Area 51, and Indy being a suspected Commie was a mistake. I can think of no reason for Indy to have been asked to consult on a UFO crash – he’s an archaeologist, not an astrophysicist, an aerospace engineer, or an air crash investigator. What could they have wanted him to consult on? It was just a (flimsy) explanation for the Soviets kidnapping him and his frienemy (who unfortunately shares my nickname -_-), despite the fact that the Soviets could have been brought in by Mutt and his letter, which was supposedly a Soviet ruse to lure Indy into the chase, anyway. (After the opening bit, that makes my head hurt.) Worse, having Indy be a suspected Commie and lose his job (essentially), creates a plot thread that isn’t resolved sensibly. Why would the suspicion have just magically gone away after his adventure? Furthermore, how did his administrator friend get his job back? He resigned.

The earlier movies didn’t hit us over the head with their time period, but, oh, dear god, this one did. Another reason why we would be better off without the first half hour or so. And better off without Indy’s son Mutt, who really served no purpose but to deliver a letter and get Indy and Marion back together…because. Because what, I don’t know, there wasn’t enough character development for their sudden discovery of true love to make sense. It was as if Indy finding out he fathered a child with Marion suddenly caused him to realize that he’d always loved her. And what happens if it turns out he also fathered one with Willy? Or some other woman from an adventure that we haven’t seen?

If there had been more relationship building between Indy and Mutt (more like there was between Indy and Henry Sr. in Last Crusade), then Mutt’s character wouldn’t have felt so extraneous. Unfortunately, the plot was too busy dashing from nearly dialogue-less action sequence to nearly dialogue-less action sequence. (Is it just me, or was there a lot more dialogue in the action scenes in the previous movies? I must re-watch them and find out.) And, of course, if there had been actual relationship building between Indy and Marion, the rekindling of their love would have made sense. Instead, we have mah character development iz paisted on, yay.

Oh, and the same problem applies to Mr. Frienemy, a former secret agent turned greedy s.o.b., who sidelines in archaeology. Bwuh? Seriously, what the hell was he supposed to be? He’d been at a dig in Mexico with Indy, so he was presumably an archaeologist, yes? But there was no other indication that he was, so, maybe not. He’d been a spy with Indy. But now was willing to sell out his country and friend for money. Which makes no sense. Or was he supposed to always have been selling secrets to the top bidder rather than having been spying for king and country during the war. I don’t know, but he could have been deleted from the movie. And should have. Hell, Natasha Irina was supposed to be psychic, so she didn’t need to follow his trail of glowing lipsticks. She could have “known” where they were. Or been an archaeologist herself.

And we can’t forget the aliens. Oy, the aliens. As I feared, the aliens plot kept giving me “Didn’t I see this on Stargate SG1?” moments, but even if they hadn’t, the plot holes were nearly enough to make my brain explode like poor Irina’s. Which is a good place to start with the plot holes and wait, what?s. Why did the aliens, who apparently brought knowledge to the South Americans (and/or all humanity), fry Irina’s brain when she asked to know everything? Were they supposed to be good? Evil? Chaotic neutral? Is this an anti-curiosity message? What? If she’d asked for power over everyone, or something more clearly in keeping with her earlier stated goals, it would have made sense, but she didn’t, and I was left going “Wait, what?”

On a similar note, if the aliens were anthropologists or collectors, why didn’t they take their collection of artifacts with them when they left? Why have them stored outside the ship and destroy them, and the valley and all life in it when they left? (And we’re back to good, evil, chaotic neutral, what the hell?) Were they just that pissed over losing one of their heads? (How the hell did they lose that skull in the first place? Only aliens could get into that room (or people carrying alien skulls) and there was no obvious other exit.) Was it just time to go? I don’t get it. And what was supposed to have been up with the Roswell crash? Was that another “hive mind” (which seemed more like a case of Multiple Man to me), looking for the one in South America? Or what?

I really, really don’t remember having this many questions about the other Indy movies. Like I said, there might have been a plot hole or glitch here or there, but the movies weren’t Swiss cheese. This movie, however, was.

It also had any number of “wait, what?” moments that I didn’t mention, from Indy surviving a nuclear blast in a refrigerator to giant ants eating people (just like the scarabs in The Mummy, I might add). And, of course, Indy being in a bad mood through most of the movie. I seem to remember him having fun once in a while in the others, or being amazed, or…any number of other emotions that aren’t “serious,” “cross,” or “pissed.” This rather limited range seemed even stranger when paired with Marion’s permanent chipper grin. Okay, so she’s pleased that she’s got the love of her life back, and likes adventuring…so what’s wrong with him? Or, alternatively, shouldn’t she be a smidge worried about surviving the adventure?

Eh, like I said, I enjoyed the movie all right. I just don't see myself seeing it again or buying it. It just had too many problems and not enough extra good bits to balance out the problems. Or I'm just getting picky in my old age.

Why, Hollywood, why?

This is partly a general movie rant and partly a rant about the new Indiana Jones movie. Now, I haven’t seen the Indy movie, and, after spending some time on line reading reviews, I’m not sure if I will, but unless a hell of a lot of reviewers are lying…it has issues. But first, the general movie rant, so that those who don’t wish to read Indy spoilers can more easily avoid them.

I’ve seen several movies in the past few years that I felt like I’d seen before – while watching them for the first time in the theater. I don’t just mean that they hit all the clichés of the genre, I mean I literally sat in the theater trying to figure out what various scenes were from. Not only is that bad on it’s own, but I like adventure movies, and one shouldn’t have time for that kind of thought while watching an adventure movie. But I did.

I’m still convinced that the entire climax of the first Pirates of the Caribbean is from… something. I can’t for the life of me think what, but either I somehow saw it before I saw it, or there’s some movie from the 70’s or 80’s that also features a climax with a cursed treasure and zombies…or something close enough for me to sit there thinking “I’ve seen this. I’m sure I have.” It wasn’t just that I predicted what the heroes could do, it was that I could almost, almost conjure up images from the movie that first had that scene.

Or I’m crazy, always possible.

The National Treasure movies have it even worse. The scene with the ice bound shipwreck, the theft of the Declaration of Independence, and the climax of the second movie (and other scenes from both movies I can’t quite think of right now), I swear are right out of episodes of MacGyver. Whether or not they really are, that feeling gave the movies a very made-for-TV feel to me.

And those are movies I enjoyed. I know there were any number of other movies I’ve seen recently that also suffered from “Haven’t I seen this before?” syndrome, but they were so unmemorable that I don’t remember them. Which is even more disappointing. I mean, really, is it too much to ask for a good adventure movie that doesn’t leave me thinking I’ve seen it before?

What does “Haven’t I seen this before?” syndrome have to do with the new Indiana Jones movie?

Now we enter spoilery territory…





After what happened with the Star Wars prequels, I had a bad feeling about the new Indiana Jones movie before I knew anything about it, so I was probably predisposed to see problems. Then I heard rumors that a character was Indy’s son, and I muttered to myself about why it’s never a daughter, and found myself thinking that now, instead of National Treasure being reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones is going to be reminiscent of National Treasure. Then I saw the trailer and went “Uh, didn’t they do this on Stargate SG1?” and my bad feeling grew.

So I went looking for reviews and spoilers. And my bad feeling blossomed to planetary size. Crystal skulls and aliens? They did do this on Stargate SG1 on an episode called Crystal Skull, no less. *headdesk*

Yes, I know crystal skulls are real objects, people think they may have something to do with aliens (or hoaxers), but, come on, why would you pick a MacGuffin that was bound to remind the audience of a television show? Why? Hell, despite it being the goal of the second National Treasure movie, the seven cities of gold would be a better MacGuffin. Just have Cibola, Quivira, and whatnot somewhere sensible and people will forget about the silliness under Mount Rushmore. (Oh gods, it just occurred to me that Indy said something about a city of gold in the trailer… )

Can’t we have some bloody originality? Hell, somehow Clive Cussler keeps me reading his outrageous Dirk Pitt books, and I loved the TV show Relic Hunter, so it’s not the clichés of the genre, it’s really not. It’s that sinking “Haven’t I seen this before?”


(And if anyone knows how to spoiler tag on Blogger...share the knowledge, please?)

Am I supposed to visit the Twilight Zone?

A program on the supernatural I watched tonight got me to thinking about the, ah, difficult to explain experiences I’ve had. Now, I neither believe nor disbelieve in the supernatural, but the supernatural seems to believe in me. Sure, I have a vivid imagination, and that could explain some of my experiences, and, yes, some could be chalked up to coincidence, but still… I've had some kind of odd experienes, and I thought I’d share them with the internet, because, hey, why not?

Mac’s Inexplicable Experiences

1) I seem to be able to predict/know about tornadoes that are a potential threat to my location. I can think of several times as a child (verified by my parents) that I woke up to warn them of tornadoes before the sirens went off, or just knew that a thunderstorm was going to produce tornadoes…and it did. I even warned my grandparents of a funnel cloud that barely missed their house one summer when we were visiting. All of which could be good observational ability on my part (I did grow up in southwest Iowa.), or coincidence. But one incident, when I was fourteen, crosses the border into really damn strange.

In the afternoon of July 17, 1988, I looked out the window of our house at a clear blue sky, and knew there was going to be a tornado. I was so certain that I told my parents, who had just laid down for a nap, and so calm that I then went to play the piano. (Having grown up in southwest Iowa and believing in being prepared, I always kept a backpack of irreplaceable things, a flashlight, and a radio packed during tornado season.)

It took less than half an hour for a storm to form out of the southwest…and for the weather alert to go off, warning us of a tornado warning for Pottawattamie county and the Omaha/Council Bluffs metro area. We scurried down to the basement with my backpack of stuff, and watched the storm on our basement television until the power went out. I then gave my parents reports from my headset radio until the all clear sounded. We emerged from the basement to find a trail of destruction through our neighborhood that passed right beside our house. The twisted damage to trees and the fact that the trees that did break off or were uprooted didn’t fall in the same direction made it pretty clear that a funnel cloud had passed over, not quite touching down. (And the city suffered a good deal of damage.)

But how did I know there was going to be a tornado? Was there something about the clear blue sky that tipped me off? Was it an amazing coincidence? Or what? Hell if I know. From my point of view, I just…knew.

2a) When I was eight, we moved into a house that was either haunted, or settling in a very unusual way. Something seemed to pace in the attic. Creak, creak, creak, across the ceiling of my room, out over the other upstairs bedroom, and back again. The year that we lived there, I slept in the living room, downstairs, away from the creepy creaking. Sure, it was probably just the house settling, as old houses do, but I’ve never encountered a house that settled in such a regular, repetitive pattern before or since. And I hope I never do.

2b) Much higher on the psychic/ghost/Twilight Zone scale was an experience I had apartment hunting in Prescott, Arizona. I was living in a cheap motel and trying to find a permanent residence before my money ran out (ah, but I was a brave and/or dim almost 20 year old). I met the property manager of one small apartment complex at the complex and followed her into the apartment. And instantly wanted to leave. I had the most overwhelming sense of dread and horror; I felt that either someone had been horribly murdered there or someone would be. I played it cool and gave the place a cursory look, following the property manager, just in case there was a dismembered corpse somewhere. There wasn’t, and I politely declined the apartment, and got the hell out of there.

I did try to find out if anything had happened there, but short of asking the Prescott police or reading every newspaper from the time the complex opened to the (then) present, I was out of luck. And I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to know. To this day, I have no idea what prompted that weird feeling. It wasn’t a panic attack – I’ve had those, and this was nothing like one. And if the apartment reminded me of something, well, that’s not much of an improvement. I’d rather I picked up psychic energy of a murder there than think that there could be something to the whole repressed memory business. And, even with my active imagination, I have trouble believing a feeling that strong could be prompted by something reminding me of, say, a work of fiction.


And, of course, there have been any number of odd experiences that weren’t disturbing, but still seem a bit off. Like the time in grade school when a friend and I wandered in the undeveloped wooded area near her house, for far longer than seems possible given the size of the area. Oh, sure, that sounds like just subjective time at work, but on a map, the wooded area is tiny. And the two of us were never able to figure out exactly where we went that day, no matter how many times we wandered that area. It was just one of those things that makes you go “huh?” And it was just one of many times that I’ve had experiences that I haven’t been able to recreate – as though the world subtly changed between the experience and my attempt to recreate it.

Maybe I just have an overactive imagination and a quirky memory, or maybe there’s more to the world than we’ve figured out how to quantify. Either way, I’m taking cover whenever I get the feeling there’s a tornado, and I’m not living anywhere that gives me the creeps – whether because of creaks or vivid bad feelings.

Ah, advertising, how I hate thee

Then again, if I continue my practice of avoiding all products and companies with offensive, drug use prompted, or moronic (or all of the above) commercials, I will soon have a very simple and healthy lifestyle. So there is an upside to my periodically staring at the television with a look of mixed horror and disbelief.

This week's loser is Burger King Oh, yeah, those ads really make me want to eat there. Who doesn't want to go to a fast food restaurant with moronic and/or insanely aggressive customers? What were they thinking? This is actually worse than the addictive air freshener ads thanks to the violent streak this burger apparently causes, and I really didn't think there would be ads that implied worse product affects than those. And yet, Burger King found a way. Go Burger King. Or, better yet, never go to Burger King.

In other news, I love my 70 year old apartment building, but even half foot thick walls aren't enough when the next door neighbors decide to throw a loud party. *sigh* Good thing I'm not planning on going to bed any time soon. -_-

Agh! My state is burning down. (again)

How did I not know this was happening today? O_o Okay, so Ordway isn't very close, nor Carbondale, but Fort Carson is quite close. As in, just south of town close. As in, what do you mean the smoke plume was visible from downtown Colorado Springs? I didn't notice it. How did I not notice it? My apartment faces south. Okay, the other half of my apartment building blocks my view, but still...smoke plume. And it isn't as though I spent the whole day inside. Did my exploding shower throw me off that much?

And this does not bode at all well for fire season. If we're burning down in April, what is summer going to be like. Great. So much for seeing much of my parents this year.

Good gad, though. All three of these wildfires sound bad. The entire town of Ordway evacuated? Okay, it's not a big town, but still - yikes. Two dead. Town evacuated. 7,100 acres burning. Not good. The Carbondale fire is a lot smaller, but it doesn't sound like they're having a lot of luck getting it out. And there are a lot of little communities and such in the area, so that's not good either. And the Fort Carson fire is unpleasantly close to home. One person dead and the news is really unclear about whether they're making progress with it. Great.

At times like this, and only at times like this, I miss Iowa. Iowa does not burn down every few years. It just has the occasional tornado. Then again, it doesn't have mountains and isn't Colorado. *sigh*

Denvention (Worldcon)

It's not until August, but I'm already beginning to think I'm out of my mind for going. I mean, it's Worldcon! The sci-fi convention! And I'm going by myself. And I'm going because I want to meet my favorite (living) sci-fi author. Never mind that if I do meet her, I'll probably say something brilliant like "Blurbleglupflurbian."

But, at the same time...it's Worldcon! The sci-fi convention! Lois McMaster Bujold is guest of honor! They're holding it in my state! So the tickets and the hotel (and getting there by public transportation on acount of not wanting to mess with a car in downtown Denver) cost an arm and a leg, so what? It'll be awesomely amazingly cool!

When I stop hiding under my bed at the thought of going to Worldcon by myself. Never mind wandering around downtown Denver by myself.

Yeah, I'm winning the of two minds award over this. Bouncing between "Eeek!" and "Woohoo!" for the next fourish months probably isn't entirely healthy. Ah well. Wooooorrrrrrlllldcooooon!!!!!

I was bored (and suffering from temporary stupidity, apparently) so I watched the movie I Spy. Now, I've never seen the 60s television show the movie was (loosely) based on (I don't like Bill Cosby because of his attitude toward children...long story.), but my parents watched it, so I know a little about it. And what I know about the television show is what irked me about the movie. You see, the television show was more enlightened, racially speaking, than the movie - at least in premise.

In the show, Cosby's character was the experienced spy - his cover was as trainer to Culp's less experience spy, who was posing as a tennis star. In the movie, Eddie Murphy is a boxer, and not any kind of spy, who is supposed to provide cover to Owen Willson's spy. Gee, great, from experienced spy to boxer, that's really a step forward. Not.

Now, the movie was also boringly predictible, but it was the changes in the characters that left a bad taste in my mouth. -_-

Blog Against Torture

It’s sad that in the twenty-first century, in the supposedly civilized world, I’m blogging against torture. Sad because this shouldn’t be necessary. We should have gotten it through our collective skulls that it doesn’t work, and even if it did, it would be wrong because it presumes facts not in evidence and because, well, damn it, it’s wrong. And yet, here I am. Or rather, here we are, since this affects everyone.

It doesn’t work. That is to say, information obtained under torture is highly suspect. This should practically be common sense. If someone was mock-drowning you, or stripping you naked and implying that they were going to rape you, or keeping you awake for days on end, or causing you physical pain, or otherwise torturing you, wouldn’t you say just about anything to get them to stop? Maybe not right away, but eventually. Be honest. You would. I would. Anyone would. Mind you, I said “anything,” I didn’t say “the truth.”

People have confessed to strange and bizarre (and quite untrue) things under torture or even highly threatening police interrogations because they thought it was what their tormenters wanted to hear. They thought it would end the situation. Look at history, at the witch hunts, at the confessions of the Templars, look at the various people who’ve been exonerated after confessing to crimes. It doesn’t work.

But pretend for a moment that does. Would it be okay to use it then?

No, because it presumes facts not in evidence. Torture (supposing it worked) only makes sense if you have the right people in your torture chamber. And there is no way to know that for sure. None. You might think you have the right people, but you could be quite wrong. Even if you sort of have the right person, say a terrorist you just caught in a terrorist meeting room filled with bomb making materials and all that good evidence stuff, that terrorist still might not have the information you want. And that’s assuming you didn’t accidentally capture the pizza delivery guy by mistake.

That famous scenario that proponents of torture throw around? The one with the terrorist who knows the location of the bomb that threatens your family? It’s a fantasy. It’s the fantasy that the entire torture debate rests on. This is why people want to use torture – they believe this scenario is possible. And, of course, they believe torturing this theoretical terrorist who you somehow know is exactly the person to tell you where the bomb is or how to defuse it or whatever is going to result in their honest confession. The problem is, torture doesn’t work, and you never actually know for certain that you have the right person and they have the information you want. You would have to have telepathy to know that, and if you did, why the hell would you bother with torture when you could just take the information from their mind while you were at it? So the famous scenario goes poof.

Then, of course, there’s still the moral issue. This is something of a personal thing, as morals always are, but I say that torture is just plain wrong. We are supposed to be the good guys, yes? (Yes, of course, the real world is not black and white, good and evil, whatever our current administration may think, but we do, nonetheless consider ourselves the good guys.) Why would we then commit an act that most people consider evil? Even if torture worked and we had the right people, wouldn’t we have lost in winning? Honestly, what is torture if not individually aimed terrorism? Aren’t we becoming the very thing we’re supposedly waging a war on?

Of course, here in reality where torture doesn’t work and we can’t know for certain that they people we’re torturing are even terrorists, torture reaches an even greater level of immorality. It becomes the infliction of harm on people for no certain end and possibly the infliction of harm on those who are innocent of any wrongdoing. How can that not be wrong? We cannot abandon our morals for vengeance and we cannot abandon our morals if doing so could result in us harming innocent people. Torture is forbidden by the Geneva Convention for a reason, folks. Let’s try abiding by that, shall we?

I wish I could combine the two MMOs I play

And not because it would save me $15 dollars every month (which would also be nice). There are aspects of both games that I really, really like, and aspects that I dislike, but a game with the best of both would be the most awesome MMO ever. Well, in my opinion, anyway.

I play City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft. CoH/V wins for character customization, but WoW wins for world design and crafting/professions. Game play is a tough call, since both games have rather a lot of kill X missions (or, in WoW loot X missions, which amount to the same thing), though both games also give you some missions that don't necessarily involve fighting and both occasional give you talk to so-and-so missions (though WoW gives you far more of those - I sometimes think half the world's populous must be engaged in grade school style feuds). Over all, though, I think CoH/V characters are slightly higher powered compared to their enemies, which means it's much easier to take on multiple foes without face-planting, but, at the same time, it has more of a death penalty than WoW (which is mainly a corpse run). If given a choice, though, I'd take CoH/V's slightly higher power and WoW's death penalty - mainly because I solo a lot and would rather not have to out-level missions or find help. (That would go in the category of why really shy people shouldn't play MMOs.) But the game play isn't the issue - I wouldn't play either game if I didn't enjoy it - it's the color, the extras, the stuff that turns people into addicts that the two games need to learn from each other on.

In CoH/V, you design your character's looks in pretty damn good detail. You not only pick their face (and adjust it with facial feature sliders if you so choose), their build, and, of course, their gender, but design their costume as well. You can create a superhero (or villain) who looks like you, or who looks like your idea of an alien from some other dimension. You also have a space to write a brief biography or description of your character, which other players can read. You even have a fair amount of choice when it comes to your powers - sure there are "classes," each of which gives you access to a different list of powersets, but with each class having primary and secondary powersets to choose from, you end up with a lot of variety. You also can add other powers (travel powers, for example) as you level up, and the powers in your powerset aren't dependent on one another, so you can skip one's you aren't interested in without effecting your later choices. This means that you end up with a character that seems very much like your own creation. Yes, there are limits, and, of course, players long to create things the game won't allow, but my CoH/V characters feel like my characters in a way that my WoW characters do not.

WoW feels a bit more like fantasy Barbie. I dress up the dolls and play with them, but they aren't mine. I still role play them (in my head - I'm far too shy to do so with other people), but not to the degree that I do my CoH/V characters. Fantasy Barbie (or GI Joe or other pre-made story doll) is still fun, but it's a far cry from having computer equivalents to pen and paper RPG characters. And, yes, I know there are people who role play in WoW and who do create back-stories and all of that for their characters. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that the game doesn't make that kind of thing as easy as CoH/V does.

On the other hand, WoW offers a beautiful, varied world to explore. Oh, sure, it's a cartoony world, but that doesn't keep it from being a very, very pretty world (at least to me). Sure, the zones in CoH/V are different, too, but only a few of them aren't simply different takes on "city." The names of the games pretty much sum up the difference here - World of Warcraft, City of Heroes/Villains. And, at least for me, a world is automatically more interesting to explore than a mere city. WoW also did a better job with its crafting and professions, probably because they weren't tacked onto the game the way they have been in CoH/V. If I'm going to engage in crafting, I would rather run around picking different flowers, mining veins, skinning the wildlife I kill, or disenchanting items I have no use for than hoping what I need drops at random. (Yes, yes, there's some random dropping of items for crafting in WoW, but in CoH/V it's all random. Not fun.) WoW also did a better job with their crafting by naming everything you craft - not having non-rare crafted items simply be "crafted item." Sure, the basic crafted enhancements in CoH/V are better than the dropped enhancements, but I'm not going to replace neat looking and neat named items with boring looking "invention damage" or whatever. It ruins the flavor and look of the enhancement screen. (Yeah, I'm picky. :P)

While I long for a game that really does have the best of both worlds, I guess I'll have to just keep playing the games I have, even if I long for World of Heroes/Villains (or something).

The Fates Are Against Me

My parents have been trying to visit for over a month now, only to be thwarted every time. Work issues, snow, inconvenient illnesses, and now their Jeep's radiator blew up. -_- Damn it. I look forward to seeing them all week, only to have Friday bring some disaster that prevents them from visiting. And, of course, because I think I have plans for the weekend, I don't make any with friends. It's not that a weekend at home with books, the internet, and my cat is terrible, mind, but it's getting old. What gods do I need to appease? Do I need to make an offering to the travel fairies? What?

And no, I can't go visit them. My car needs work before it can make it over the mountains to the other side of the state. Actually, it needs work, period. *sigh*

Well, now I feel really whiny.

Sad News for Gamers

Gary Gygax died today. I never played the original D&D, although a friend did give me his old original books (I've forgotten why), but I've certainly played 2nd and 3rd edition, and any number of other role playing games that probably wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for D&D. As a gamer geek, I am sad. Sure, D&D in it's many incarnations has been criticized for being too complicated (THAC0 anyone), too aimed at teenage boys, and responsible for too many bad fantasy books that sound suspiciously like novelizations of D&D sessions, but it was the original role playing game and I have a fondness for it. So, thank you, Gary, wherever you are, for giving us sci-fi/fantasy fans yet another fun geeky hobby for our weekends. One with really awesome dice. Perhaps I'll see if I can find those old books and see if my gaming group can figure out how to run an original D&D game in tribute.

Ah, prejudice...how far we haven't come.

I have something of an addiction to old books, which is why I bought an obscure mystery novel from 1929 a couple days ago. I'd never heard of the authors or the book before (and googling them didn't make much difference), but I have old book addiction so I bought it and read it. Card 13 was an all right story, but suffered rather from blatant sexism and racism, which may explain why it and its authors have vanished into the ether. The love interest gives up all thought of career when she falls in love with the main character. The murder is pinned on a dead Chinese immigrant to save the (also dead) murderer's family from scandal. All Chinese people are involved in Chinese Gangs. People casually use ethnic slurs. People from India are mysterious and mystical. Basically, the book had a bad case of "we haz prejudice, yay."

And yet, when I thought about it, I realized that the book was also a great example of "the more things change, the more they stay the same." The main character actually came off far less ethnically prejudiced than his world - he didn't seem entirely comfortable with the framing of the dead immigrant (who the book portrayed as more a victim of circumstances) and he was the only character who treated the Indian as a person, not just a mystical odd bit. Disturbingly, I think the book could be re-written slightly (drop the ethnic slurs and re-phrase a line here or there) and no one would notice. Women in books still give up their desire for a career when they find love, Chinese immigrants still tend to be portrayed as members of Chinese Mafia groups (and/or have super martial arts skills just 'cause), and the mystical Indian stereotype is also still alive and well.

In a way, the blatant prejudice in this old book is easier to deal with than the more subtle prejudices in modern books, precisely because it is so blatant. You can't miss it. You can't not acknowledge that it's there. You have to address it. Subtle prejudice can slip under the radar and color one's thoughts in ways one is less aware of. Oh, I'm not saying that anyone should start slathering their prejudices all over the printed page or that we should bring back ethnic slurs or anything like that. Those are all bad, bad things. But so are the subtle prejudices that haven't gone anywhere. Or rather, I'm afraid the prejudices haven't gotten more subtle over the years - what's gotten more subtle are the words used to transmit those prejudices. Honestly, the book did a better job of pointing out what's so bad about using stereotypes than any modern book (that I can think of) could. Not that the book meant to, of course.

I know I have prejudices, I think everyone does, but I don't want to spread them. Hell, I try very hard to squelch them in myself when I do stumble across them. After reading Card 13, I'll be trying even harder. And, considering stereotypes (which are damn hard to kill), I think I'll add an ethnic stereotype test to my gender stereotype test. "Would I write this character this way if they were of a different ethnicity?" (To go with "Would I write this character this way if they were of a different gender?")

It's still funny that it took an old book's blatant prejudices for me to see just how bad stereotypes are. Not that I ever thought they were good, mind you, but there are different levels of bad. And the damned things haven't improved in 80 years! 80 years!