Inside of a Dog, It's Too Dark to Read

Please help the Professors and their fandom celebrate the release of their first novel in the Girl Genius universe!

If you've read Girl Genius and want to help out, just order the book today, as we're trying to break to the #1 position for today. Just today, although more would be nice.

If you've not read it, and haven't decided what to do with that holiday gift certificate you got -- give it a try! It's fast-paced science fantasy ('gaslamp fantasy', steampunk's better-behaved sibling) with engaging characters and an intriguing plot.

You can even meet the Professors at one of their book-signing appearances (weather permitting), if you're Seattle-local. You lucky ducks, you.

Please take a look. I don't think you'll regret the time spent.

I'm not going to get fancy on this one. ;)

Who would imagine I needed to go to a Chinese grocery for an Italian/Tyrolean sweet biscuit? Loacker is an Italian company with a headquarters tucked into the foot of the Alps, the South Tyrol area. One of their tasty products is their Quadratini 'bite-sized wafer cookie'. The Quadratini come in an amazing variety of flavours: Napolitaner (Hazelnut), Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, Vanilla, Almond, Lemon, Coconut, Blackcurrant, Apple, Tiramisù and Cappuccino.

I got the Apple, and they were delicious! The creme was not too sweet, and they use real apple-juice powder for the flavouring. The State of Florida paid US$3.25 for a 220g bag (9 cookies to a serving, 7 servings per bag) at the Chinese grocery, which had apparently all the flavours in stock. Well worth looking for, next time you're out and in a likely area.

Gwynne was wonderful enough to treat me to Iron Man and Diet Pepsi, except the guy I bagged for at the Winn-Dixie (Guillermo) beat her to the Diet Pepsi part. Yes, a complete stranger paid for my soda/caffeine addiction just because I bagged his groceries.

Anyway, that was after the complete rush I got from the movie. This is just as good as my Flist have been saying, WTCKH! This is also some of the most glorious movie tech I have ever, ever seen as I honestly would only be guessing 99% of the time which parts are greenscreen, which are pure CGI, which are stunt doubled.

The relationships are beautifully enacted here, such a light hand on all of them.

It's interesting and so fitting that the credits point out this was filmed entirely in the U.S... especially since I recently found out to my great surprise and certain amazement from some real photos of Afghanistan field ops that the country looks shockingly like the area right around Edwards AFB. They're perfect doubles for each other, right down to light levels, I think.

I am quite in love with Tony's workroom. The interactive hologram projector, the colloquial-response waldo-robots... I feel bad for the cars, though. (I wanna see a Junkyard War between Tony Stark and Ted Kord, now that we have Ted back. GLEE!)

Two words: Jeff. Bridges. 'To smile, and smile, and be a villain.'

Two things I found distractingly unlikeable: Tony's bad fake moustache in some scenes, although I don't know why it would have taken Downey that long to grow the real thing; and Pepper's gawdawfully crippling stilleto strappy things for her to break her ankles with during the whole climax. C'mon, she ain't that short, is she?

Although that looks a lot like Zeljko Ivanek in one of his usual roles, that's actually Jennifer Gray's husband Clark Gregg playing S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson. And IMDb says that Downey's an Iron Man fanboy to start with - gawd, it's like Clooney getting to wear the cape and cowl. I love it when Our Kind get to make it where we all want to be... because then we get to ride with them.

One last thing... no rumours about Downey screwing his life up from this production, right? Can we dare hope we won't have another premature funeral now? Will Iron Man do for Downey what it did for Stark...?

THANK YOU, GWYNNE!

Excerpted from Zealot Benmergui, Baron BardHaven's journal, which reproduces the commentary from The Guardian:

...the film has opened, and the verdict is...

..that the film is a total abomination. It appears they sucked out everything interesting about the plot and made it into yet another disposable teen age adventure film.

Sigh.

...Ah, but caveat emptor! The makers have taken considerable liberties with their source material - not only changing the nationality of the hero and his family (to American), and the title throughout the rest of the world (to The Seeker), but also excising virtually the entire back story of the town and its inhabitants, and turning the original narrative - fairly gripping, you might recall - into little more than a find-the-treasures video game. Thus, after a thousand years of inactivity, The Dark is marshalling his power (why now? we’re never told). In order to save the world, our hero, Ludwig, must locate six “signs” - all of which happen, conveniently, to be located within a few miles of his own home. No mention of their connection to the elements. No trace of the Lady, or the Walker.

These changes would be bad enough. But more seriously, Walden have assiduously removed every trace of the pagan (ie, non-Judeo-Christian) elements that were crucial to the original plot, all that fine old Celtic/Arthurian folklore - the Sleepers, Herne the Hunter, the Old Magic - presumably because they ran counter to the
“family values approach to positive messages” which the film’s makers seek to impart....

I thanked the Baron for saving me $10+ and the time it would take to drive, park, be horrified and disgusted, and return home a broken Dog.

(Ludwig?? Is more 'American' than 'Will'?!?)

Geekish reading, at least. MEGAFAUNA — First Victims of the Human-Caused Extinction by Baz Edmeades, complete book on-line (HTML/PDF)

...and that kinda goes with this animated presentation, 'Journey of Mankind: The Peopling of the World'. There are links off that page, my AngloCeltic siblings, so you can find out what male-line genetic part of Britain you're descended from (read this summation in the New York Times article, 'A United Kingdom? Maybe'). The female-line tests from the same company aren't British-Isles-specific.

Lastly, a photo-tour of a New Egg shipping warehouse (ooo, nifty tech); and an 8-page story by Bruce Sterling, We See Things Differently. (Take a look at the RevolutionSF FAQ, too.)

I failed kaseido.

I didn't know - because I didn't ask - that he hadn't read The War for the Oaks, and therefore he didn't read it until just very recently.

I don't want to make this mistake again.

YOU MUST READ THE WAR FOR THE OAKS A.S.A.P.

Trust me, you will be the better for it. C'mon, the male lead is cuter than Prince.

And if you're really truly fanatically converted, I just noticed Powell's also has Emma Bull's unproduced screenplay as well. Wow! Didn't know they had that, y'know, out.

ANNNND Will Shetterly's homemade 11-minute WftO trailer can be downloaded in MOV format (Quicktime, 28Mb) from here.

G'wan, go meet the other Black Dog.

Through voting for Girl Genius, I found No Need for Bushido; and from reading NN4B, I found Alpha Shade.

• First, No Need for Bushido comes off like, I kid you not, a kinder and gentler version of Samurai Champloo. It's not quite so much with the anachronisms, and the language *coughMUGENcough* is cleaner, but the coincidences are amusing -- and entirely coincidences! It's kinda like that Tim Hunter/Harry Potter thing. But again, we have a young woman of gentle heritage, an outcast samurai, and a socially unacceptable and nearly unbeatable ronin wandering around being really hungry. NN4B adds an eccentric Chinese monk to the mix, and a whoooole lot more ninja. The artist is a complete Japanese history geekboy, so the designs are clean and, where appropriate, accurate. His style might best be described from my PoV as a cross between that of kriscynical's and ironychan's (that's just for a visual - as far as I know, none of these artists are 'related'). The comic's been running weekly for about a year. I was both surprised and disappointed when I ran out of strips. There were points when I was actually laughing out loud, from the absurdity of some of the characters' situations if not the snarky dialogue.
  


• Advertising on NN4B is Alpha Shade, which got my attention just for the one little piece of art in the ad. They've got both a fancy Flash 8 version, with a nifty zoom feature and elegant navigation controls, or a lower-bandwidth-friendly HTML page. The art is almost shockingly beautiful and detailled, reminding me for some odd reason of the Pinis' Elfquest style, only with more our-world realism. It's also depicting, in the first chapter, a brutally honest battlefield with roughly WWI tech -- except for the bits that aren't, I won't spoil those. The story is quite mysterious so far, and since the site has no substantial FAQ which might include hints, my curiosity is gnawing at me. There's suggestions of dimensional travel and a Buffy-like character challenge, but the reader just doesn't have enough to go on yet to start drawing much in the way of conclusions. Aside from no cast list/summation, etc., the site also neglects to tell us what the update schedule at least pretends to be, although there is a large progress bar on the Flash side of the site. It's currently sitting at 5% storyboarded for page 138, and one of the brother creators is a real live railroad engineer (read: AFK a lot) so it's anybody's guess when it'll be posted. It'll be worth the wait, though. This one also surprised me when I hit the wall.

Kids are Depressing, Study of Parents Finds (excerpts)

Not only do parents have significantly higher levels of depression than adults who do not have children, the problem gets worse when the kids move out.

Some parents are more depressed than others, however. Parents of adult children, whether they live at home or not, and parents who do not have custody of their minor children have more symptoms of depression than those with young children all in the nest, regardless of whether they are biological children, step children or adopted.

Simon also found that married parents are less depressed than the unmarried. But, surprisingly, the effects of parenthood on depression were the same for men and women.

See? Puppies aren't supposed to leave home. They stay to keep you all cheered up.

Not a lot, but enough for distraction:

Dig a hole to China! (from blueeyedtigress at the Girl Genius Y!group)

and

Best Dollhouse EVER!
Photos of Best Dollhouse EVER! -- originally linked by cawti

and

from livii,

Pugilistic Plants page 137, "Whomping Willow" (small size, animated); you can also see it in larger form, with the animations cut out onto the bottom of the page...

.
It's a pain having one half of a fairly-newly-made couple inside one's head. Those two take hours making love, and... OK, I think that just crossed into T.M.I. But they do take a lot of time, one way or another, away from Other People who are tapping their feet and making my skull echo as they grow more impatient waiting for their turns.

Anyway, bless her black eyepatch, Moey's got Canis Mutatem updated at the Sugar Quill; there's only one chapter left for one path, and two for the other, so it'll be 'finished' soon. Then I, too, can claim I met the SQ Fifth Book Challenge! [insert triumphant soundtrack here]

My severe car vibration problem was not, blessed-be, the axle again, but a tire, amazingly enough. I paid about... three hours for it.

I keep wanting to get back to drawing my Remus pin-up, but haven't had the time and correct headspace to pick up a pencil. I did a rough for posing and all, and got author approval on the sketch of the other character in this scene, but... haven't got any farther than that. I can see it pretty clearly in my head, so it won't be a problem for the most part... just need time.

Anyway: for those who have not yet caught the Ghibli Virus (*grin*), I would like to tell you about 'Kiki's Delivery Service'.

( My commentary )

Ghod, Remus and Sunny are gonna gang up on me one of these days if I keep not-posting like this....