forioscribe

I'm gonna be honest with you, I started up again with "Seven Soldiers" only because I liked Sky-High Helligan a lot and knew that she reappeared in the series, glad I did. Grant Morrison is the suck at beginnings, and his endings are mostly confounding and over-extended and try to resolve too much (the Buddy Baker meets his writer ending to "Animal Man" and Crazy Jane trapped in the "hell" of our real world in "Doom Patrol" aside), but man does the guy do middles like nobody's business, and that's the tricky part in comic books, real life never ending stories.

There's some great stuff here. The ugly weird kid at school who turns out not to be a misunderstood loner but a vile evil unlikeable scumbag jerk and villain. Cameron Stewart's Bettie Page inspired Zantanna. Superhero porn sites featuring 70 year old witches who still look like teenagers (I'm sure the FBI is just WAITING for someone to attempt that excuse here). The Newsboy Army, a cautionary tale of what would actually happen to a kid superhero group (including the tragic tale of Millions, the world's richest dog). And, of course, yes Grant Morrison's fave New God Metron, portrayed as a severely disabled homeless man.

For the record, Morrison gets a lot of flack from the comic world because he's said he did a magic ritual and talked to Metron, a ficitonal character. He's made it very clear that this dialogue was not between him and an actual Metron, but more of a mental dialogue between him and the forces that Metron stood for, or, to be a little less fanciful, a conversation between "Grant Morrison" and the "Metron" part of his superconsciousness.

The dude's not crazy or anything.

************

More thoughts on "Rachel Getting Married."

I always saw the stepmother Carol as the moral center of the movie, if it has one, and I still think she is, but I've come to realize it's not because she's an inherently special type of human, but simply because she's part of the family and clearly loves her husband and her stepdaughters, but she's removed from the central trauma specifically and the intense impossible and unknowable internal family conflicts enough that she's priveleged to a certain distance and perspective that is impossible for the rest of the family.

I also love that we feel like we know these characters, but, just like in real life, we have only the faintest clue of what things will be like for the major characters the next day, let alone the rest of their lives. It's depressing how many movies end with way too much closure, with every forseeable character's life, even if its fifty or sixty years, pretty much either explicitly written out or sufficiently hinted at.

I do have a guess about the best man character, Kym's fellow traveler AA-wise and wedding party fling, and what happens to him. I say he maybe keeps up with a Kym for a bit, but the thing pretty much fizzles out like most of these types of connections do, years later, he has a major relapse (pretty much inevitable) and he sort of starts to return to Kym, out-of-the-blue drunk dials and e-mails, etc, starting to look back at this point of time where he was the wiser, more together of the two, and kinda romanticizing this period even as he realizes this behavior is self-destructive and this moment has passed for good...

The kittens are sleeping on the chaise. Last night they just inspected it and rejected it for their familiar chair, but tonight they've apparently decided it's worth trying out as a bed. It's a lot roomier than the chair. Once they find that out I suspect they'll make it their usual sleeping place at night.

There was some wind today, and the afternoon sky sported great swaths of cirrus clouds. Sunset turned them orange and pink, which was a nice change from the recent dull and cloudless sunsets. I hope the clouds hang around for the moon. The breeze, alas, has departed, so there's no sound of rustling foliage to accompany the cricket songs.

Yesterday's head yanking left my left shoulder sore. It feels like its about to pop out of joint whenever I lift anything or reach too far. That's going to be very annoying if it continues.

A developing El Niño brings the possibility of a stormy winter for California in 2010. The water will be welcome. Any undue cold will not. The 1991-92 and 1997-98 events brought loads of snow and persistent cold to the area. I guess I'll have to wait and see what comes of it.

I'm still not caught up on sleep. The house next door got painted today, which led to some disruption. May tomorrow be placid. Then maybe I'll sleep as well as those kittens do.

Detail:

I'm still working every day at my union job. We are setting up this big trade show called Semicon West which is the big annual to do about the semiconductor industry. This year it is a much smaller affair because of the recession. But, about 1/4 of the show has broken off and is concurrently setting up in the newest West Hall, and is all about solar technology, and today I hear that Los Angeles has decided to entirely do away with it's coal produced energy by 2020. People, it looks like the era of alternative energy is finally moving forward.

Here are two more of those railroad images of industrial workers in factories that few of you seem to like very much. Well, I don't blame you. I like 'em though.

Engine mechanic.

Machine shop.




The company has been working me pretty steadily since I came back to work. I overheard I was on the top ten call back list for work this weekend. Everybody wants that overtime and double time work, and I am sort of amazed that they want me rather than some of the other more regular guys or the young crazies... and I'm even blasé about it because I got an order from Suzy the ship painter for more panels. I hope management keeps on smoking what ever it is they're on - it'll mean nice big checks this month for me.

i just noticed the room was swimming. and i thought so that's what it's like, when the room is swimming. and swimming with the room, i got up and walked to the door. and the floor was under me, and the floor was under me, the floor was under me more often than it was not. the floor was under me, except when it was not. then the floor was not under me, but the room was swimming, so i swam with the room, and all was still, that kind of still where everything is moving very fast and all at the exact same speed: so that motion is merely a rumor, an idea tossed on the lips of bored school girls.

oh, she said, seeming to understand, i see.

“Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method […] Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.” (Walter Benjamin, 1931)

It is 11:29 PM late Friday night in the flow. I should go to bed, but I am wired.

Josiah got in to Holland around 9:30 PM. Carol picked him up at the Holland train station.

I really have nothing new to report. Existence keeps flowing along. Today I did not do much. This evening I did not watch television. I did not read or write either. I think I ate a lot of food this evening.

Well I will close to go to bed and read something. I should read tonight "Consciousness And Society".

Across from me on the B Line, my home away from home that isn't really so much away from home it just takes an incredibly long time to get back to it, but whatever, and I look across to see a girl 'round my age, which is rare here it's usually nineteen year old girls who seriously look like babies to me now, and noticed that she was dressed in that sort of Anne Potts in "Ghostbusters" / Audrey in "Little Shop of Horrors" fashion from the eighties, retro glasses, purposely phony wiglike hair, with a new wave edge...

Then I realized that this in fact was never an actual fashion except in my concepts of what the heck was fashion when I was a kid, and in fact I had never seen a girl dressed like that.

I don't know, first Lydia from "Beetlejuice" and now this, I'm starting to get a bit weirded out. All I know is that if I see someone who looks like Delirium from "Brief Lives" next and it isn't Tori fucking Amos, I'm definitely going to have them start adjusting my medication.

So I've seen a couple posters for District 9 at the movie theater and thought that maybe it was going to be something along the lines of a Men in Black-style comedy... or something animated, even. Who knows. And Peter Jackson's name was attached to it...

I've seen a couple of the trailers now... I don't think it's a comedy... if there's any humor in it, I dare say it's of a bleak sort...

It looks to be a satire about aliens on earth... huge spaceships and whatnot...

But after looking at the website and the trailers and whatnot... I have a sinking feeling it's not really about aliens at all... as in, the strange insectoid thing (which looks like a monster from Kamen Rider) whose eyes are pixilated to conceal its identity as it croaks "We just want to go home" is not an extraterrestrial being... and the spaceships are just a front...?

The film comes from one Neill Blomkamp, a South African filmmaker who did animation and commercial work and short films up 'til now (the film is set in South Africa), and was tapped to do the Halo movie... District 9 seems to be an expansion of an early short of his called Alive in Joburg...

Title: The Deep That We Shall Never See (1/1)
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Author: rm and kalichan
Rating/Warning: R for language. ( warning has spoiler ).
Summary: A missing moment.
Spoilers: Children of Earth, Day 4
Wordcount: ~1000

(Read more...)

Apparently the_silent_army has gone to get a life.

Sorry, didn't think it was mean enough for a deletion. Otherwise, be sure to check out his/her journal for several captivating text walls about anime video games that AREN'T VIDEO GAMES ABOUT ANIME BECAUSE THEY ARE SO TRANSCENDENT AS TO HAVE ACTUALLY BECOME ANIME OMG



Also, what does the_silent_army mean, "look harder"? Like a Magic Eye poster? Magic Text Wall?

Home to watch S3.5 now.

Kali and I have fic coming at you tonight.