I want a Devil Bat.

Well, just got back from another great Bad Movie Night at Cindy's place. It's amazing how enjoyable heckling can be when you're with the right people. As a side note, Bela Legosi is still an incredible actor, even if he did nothing but horrible movies. I'll admit to being somewhat creeped out, even when all he was doing was laughing about a giant bat he made, using SCIENCE! It takes a fair bit of talent to make a giant rubber bat seem even mildly frightening. (or maybe it was just the Romanian accent. I mean, this guy is the Platonic Dracula.

As a side note, I'm currently unsure of all who's reading this, but everyone who can possibly make it out is invited to New Years at either the house in Cut Knife or at the farm, whichever it happens to be. It shall be a night of bad film, black coffee, and grass Angels (if you don't know, don't ask) . Anyway, I know most of you live in the city, so Cut Knife is "too far", but the invite is still there. The more the merrier.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since I posted here....
Well, I'm now officially home, and slightly less stressed out. I forget how really enjoyable being around my family is... the bad puns, the teasing, the old arguments that have been gone over so many times they become stories.... I can't imagine what it must be like to grow up in a small family. I sometimes forget how much I've come to depend on being surrounded by caring, intelligent, trustworthy people.

In other news: I now am the proud owner of a violin case! Now I have a great way of toting my Tommy-gun... oh, and the store threw in this nifty violin at no extra charge! I know I'm near to functionally talentless when it comes to music, so all you damned musical people (which is all of you who read this save Kelly) please keep your snide comments to yourself. I know I'm probably not going to be any good with the damned thing, but I need something besides school, or I'm going to go insane.


Hmm, I can't think of much else worth wasting all your time with, so I leave you with the chorus to "If Venice is Sinking" by Spirit of the West (who happen to rock.)


"And if Venice is sinking
I'm going under
'Cause beauty's religion
And its Christened me with wonder"

(wow, this post ended up being a lot stranger and more candid than I expected it to. I guess my brain just wanted to do its own thing. Oh, and Merry Christmas all!)

My rage filled rant

Okay, the writers of Green Lantern are idiots. So there's this hero, who's given a power ring, with the power to create anything, as long as it's green. With me so far? Okay, now, after giving him this amazingly powerful tool, they realized that he was overpowered, so they gave him a weakness. Seems fair thus far, but what do think this weakness is? His fricking powers can't act on anything coloured yellow! that's right, you could beat this guy up with a bottle of dishsoap. I can just picture it now.....
People: "help help!!"
Green Lantern: "I am here! Who attacketh you?" (he really doesn't speak with a Shakespearean accent, but I just thought it was cool)
People: Its the evil menace of..... Big Bird!!!
GL: Screw this, I'm going for a beer.

How can you strike fear into the hearts of villains when half the cast of the muppet show could kick your ass? Golden age Green Lantern was even worse, because he was powerless against yellow and wood. That's correct: the cabinetry gang could kick the ass of one of the most powerful beings in existence.

Now, I'm sure they find clever ways around this in the comics, but it's still inherently stupid. Hell, if I was him, I'd just call Superman to take over crime fighting; that is, when Superman wasn't busy being turned into a giant ant.

(Ps: Caitlin and Bee: just try and out-geek this post.)

My new dream

When I get the money together, I know what I want to do: I shall become a lemur farmer. I shall 10000 head of miniature primates. I hope I won't have to grow them from seed, but if I do, well, I guess that's the price one must pay to live the dream. I shall develop pygmy lemurs, and attack lemurs, and speckled lemurs. Finally, when I am famous enough, Hollywood shall make a movie about me, called the Lemur-Whisperer, or possibly Kill-Die-Death 3, because that's the kind of thing they do in Hollywood. Hopefully, they'll cast Matt Damon to play me, but anyone would be good as long as it's not Keanu Reeves. Finally, I shall buy all of Australia for me and my herd of noble beasts to run free in.

In defense of the arts

I am a scientist. In university, this seems to automatically make me out to be an autocratic, self-absorbed jerk, entirely uninterested in people or differing view-points. Too often, I've heard people (even professors!) spit the words engineer and scientist as if it implied "White Middle Class Protestant Oppressor Who Wishes Destruction Upon The Humanities!!!!". Now, I have met scientists (and even more engineers) like this, but not all of us dream about the day when our universities have become giant technical collages.

It constantly amazes me how the academic world can get this polarized. Why are the sciences trying to strip-mine resources from the humanities? I am all for increased science research money: we desperately need more basic research, now more than ever. However, gutting the humanities and social sciences to feed said research is just shooting ourselves in the foot. Science thrives on cross-fertilization of ideas. Some of the best ideas in biology have come from economics, and some of the most interesting theories in evolution are being proposed by philosophers. More importantly, the arts can provide an outside perspective on the methods and assumptions made in the scientific process. Hell, if anything, it's the arts that don't need the sciences (although I still maintain that both philosophy and history could be improved immeasurably if those fields took more interest in some of the new research coming from the sciences). Realistically, the natural and social sciences, as well as the arts, gain only when we stand together, both against imbeciles within, and those outside, who want to suborn knowledge to fit a political or ideological agenda.

Crazy ain't bad

I've had an interesting realization: all my biggest heroes are (at least to some degree) what conventional society would call crazy. Lets look at the litany:

Nicola Tesla: basically invented the modern era, at least electronics-wise. He wouldn't eat spherical food, and became obsessed with the number 3.

Howard Hughes: Aviator, film maker, financier. He built the Spruce Goose, a gigantic plane, built entirely out of wood. He suffered from a deep fear of germs, and bought Las Vegas from the Mafia, for a place to stay.

Emperor Joshua Norton the 1st: Lost his fortune on rice, so he declared himself emperor of the United States. He walked around San Francisco in full military uniform, selling currency he made for food and cash. He was a close friend of Mark Twain's, and corresponded with Queen Victoria. He was either the craziest or the most sane person I've ever heard of...

Isaac Asimov: One of the greatest writers of the 2oth century. Mayhaps not as crazy as some of the others here, but you can't tell me that someone who writes 400 books can be entirely balanced.

Gabriel Dumont: One of the leaders of the North West Rebellion. Not crazy per se, but he followed Louis Riel, who definitely counted as strange.

John A. McDonald: The Father of Confederation, and our first Prime minister. Drank more than any one person could possibly imagine, and dreamt of a national railway when it seemed as likely as building an elevator to the moon would today.

Hell, the only sane people on my list are Darwin, Robertson Davies, and Tommy Douglas, and even they wouldn't qualify as normal....

Really, this is all very gratifying. I love seeing people who don't fit in the mold make the rest of the world fit around them. Being outside the norm isn't a horrible thing, it just means you face somewhat different struggles and problems than the rest of the world. And if you gave me a choice between suffering from the struggles of a dreamer or a norm, well, there's no doubt which one I'd pick...

I'm really starting to get annoyed with the North American film industry. Why is it that Hollywood seems to be physically incapable of producing a good adult animated movie? Even with excellent sales for movies from anime directors such as Hayao Miyazaki (Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoki, Spirited Away), the industry hasn't even started developing an interest. When a mainstream animated movie comes out, its invariably either a small release, like the Iron Giant, or a CGI showcase, like the uninspiring "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within". I wish one studio would break form and produce a animation using their best directors, writers, and actors, rather than some second-stringers and a team of CGI geeks. (Note: Pixar does not count for this, because they still haven't made a mature movie. Sure, adults can enjoy all the films, but the themes and issues dealt with just aren't that complex. )

I really enjoy watching animated films, simply because they have far more potential for truly exploring the wondrous and strange. If "Watership Down" was filmed live-action, or even in CGI, it would have been just another unnoticiable talking animal film, rather than a fascinating morality tale. I can only imagine what the Star Wars prequels would have looked like if they were animated, rather than drenched in tacky, overdone CGI. And I can only dream what an animated Ringworld would look like. However, until we remove the stigma of 'children's entertainment' from animation, I guess I'll be left sponging off the Anime import industry for my fix.

Hurray for strange holidays!

Happy Day of the Ninja one and all! Well, actually, apparently that was Sunday, but I for one will celebrate it today (honestly, since ninjas are sneaky anyways, they probably secretly celebrate it today as well.) So take the time to thank your local neighbourhood ninja, or just order takeout from Ninja Burger. And remember, if you see a ninja, it's not polite to say anything. I mean, if they get pointed out, there is the whole sepaku thing they have to do, and killing oneself honourably on the Day of the Ninja just isn't fun.

I have no willpower....

Man, do I enjoy bargain bins..... Managed to just about double my movie collection for less than $30 at VHQ. Originally, I just saw The Gods Must Be Crazy for 95 c.... then I saw Pushing Tin, then MST3K the movie, then Mars Attacks.... and it just went downhill from there. I think I've found something to do for the next few days until finals.

Meanwhile, in an undisclosed location... For anyone who hasn't see Found Magazine yet, it's really worth a look. It's amazing how much significance other people's trash can have. It's also great fun trying to invent stories around the items. Right now this one and this one are my favorites.

Thirdly: I wish I had $100 to spare. I had thought that all of the Captain Tractor Hoserista Box Sets had sold out, but apparently there's still some hanging around. Well, I guess I know what I'm saving up for now.

Ps: Okay, I just saw this five minutes ago, and the idea is just too awsome not to show the world: The Monty Python Musical, being made right now. This almost restores my faith in humanity.

Simple fun

For all of you who love puns, rhymes, and word association, or those who just think playing with the English language is fun, here's Lexical Freenet. For example, did you know that Attila the Hun and Oscar Wilde are only 4 links away from each other? And that pigs can fly, if only they become experimental test pilots or radioactive? I can blow hours on this site.

In other news: for anyone even vaguely contemplating watching Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life, don't. It's about three times less interesting than the first one, which wasn't exactly stellar to begin with. The plot was nonsense, the characters uninteresting, and it had like 1 tomb and 2 action scenes! What's the point of making a block-buster action film with no action? In addition, the villain was useless to the point of being laughable. An evil biologist (of course. Why can't we get an evil quantum physicist, or an evil lit major?) is trying to discover the anti-life (What? What?! What the hell were these writers thinking?) hidden in the Cradle of Life, to kill most of the world's population. While it does seem like an admirable goal, this meat-head goes about it in the worst way possible. Why would you threaten someone with a disease, when its just as easy or easier to just shoot them? When you have the hero in your grasp, why don't you kill her? Why would you hide a biohazard lab in the middle of a mall, with two imbecilic security guards watching over it? Argh.

So, if you want to see a really, really bad film, go watch this. Otherwise, avoid it like the plague.

(ps: blogger is really, really getting annoying. The random loss of posts, the posting when I'm not even done the message.... someone needs to learn how to code.)

This is becoming strange.... I really have nothing interesting to post here, but I still feel obligated to put something up.... It's like my blog has become another friend, who gets lonely if I don't talk to it. So, to help make my blog feel better....

It's a rare science fiction author who can balance science and characters to make a believable world. Too often, you get authors like Robert J. Sawyer, who ends up writing the same character in every book, or Anne McCaffrey, who writes amazingly, but really doesn't have more than a passing relationship with actual science.

Hard science fiction has gained a reputation for being unreadable. Largely, this is because for a long time, it was unfashionable in the sf (not sci-fi. Sci-fi is what Hollywood makes) community to really concentrate on getting the science aspect right. The so called 'new wave' authors got into it because sf was what was selling, and a great deal of them didn't have a science background.

Now, however, this is starting to change. There's a whole generation of authors who have been raised on well written sf, and have a strong back ground in science. Authors like Greg Bear, Tad Williams, Kim Stanley Robinson are really making hard science fiction popular again. We're going through a golden age for the genre, and it couldn't come at a better time. Already, technology is changing so quickly that no one individual can keep track of it, let alone understand how it could affect them. Hard sf explores this, in ways that no other thing can. It lets us explore the idea of what it means to be human in a changing world. Perhaps more importantly, it can teach people what actually is involved in science, and it removes the mystique behind science. A basic understanding of science is going to be absolutely vital for anyone in the next century, and people who can explain it effectively are going to be in huge demand.

Well, this post really rambled a great deal, without actually saying anything. Ah well, not like my posts make a great deal of sense anyways....

blegh.

Well, finished failing my lab final now. I'm begining to take an irrational dislike to Thursdays.