Month: February 2016

My take on The Oscars 2016

My history with the Oscars goes something like this:

  • watched live, would make up “voting ballots” with a friend and put a lot of thought into who/what I thought might win and who/what I thought should win
  • watched live, dropped the whole ballot thing
  • watched live or if unable due to work/blimp accident/etc. would record and watch later
  • recorded to watch later
  • recorded and watched a few highlights
  • recorded then never watched
  • stopped recording

I can’t say why I lost interest, exactly, but I did. However, I do stay apprised of who and what gets nominated and then wins, so here’s my shallow, uninformed analysis of last night’s winners:

The We Can’t Give You Important Oscars So You Get All the Technical Awards: Mad Mad: Fury Road (won 6 Oscars, all for things like sound recording)

Important Movie We Can Give An Oscar To And Feel Good About: Spotlight (about investigative reporting on naughty priests)

The He’s Been Nominated Enough, Give Him An Oscar, Especially Since There’s No Decent Mimic Performances This Year Award: Leonardo DiCaprio

The We Can Give An Oscar to Pixar This Year Award: Inside Out (this wouldn’t have happened if The Good Dinosaur had been their only 2015 release)

We Love Directors Who Make Very Stylish Movies Award: Alejandro G. Inarritu for The Revenant (it would have won Best Picture, too, except Important always trumps Stylish, see above)

The Skyfall Effect Award: Giving the Best Song Oscar to the terrible “Writing’s on the Wall” because it’s from a Bond movie and Skyfall had an awesome song, so this one must be awesome, too, right?

The I Don’t Know These People Awards (impressively given to three of four acting nominees this year): Best Actress (Brie Larson) and Best Supporting Actress (Alicia Vikander), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Rylance)

The Better Give Him an Oscar Before It’s Too Late Award: Ennio Morricone (87), who won for his score for The Hateful Eight. He had five previous nominations, going back to 1979.

The What Did We Do Wrong Award: To the Oscar telecast itself, scoring its lowest viewership since 2008.

March 2016 writing plans

To be revisited on March 31 to see if I was being a big fat liar.

  • continue to write daily posts to this blog or at least write daily something (forum posts and grocery lists don’t count)
  • do at least one writing exercise per week or if I’m hot ‘n heavy on something bigger, do one every two weeks
  • complete one new short story (I actually have an idea for this, I just need a few more details sorted out before diving in)
  • start work on completing another story for Pairs of Shorts
  • dive back into Road Closed if I feel I’m ready (this will depend largely on everything above)

Now that I’ve written all of this out, I have to do it. It’s the law of the Internet or something.

Proposed statutory holiday for June

With the recent addition of Family Day in February, we’ve got statutory holidays in pretty much every month:

  • January: New Year’s Day
  • February: Family Day
  • March: Easter
  • April: um, sometimes Easter is here instead of March
  • May: Victoria Day
  • June: ???
  • July: Canada Day
  • August: BC Day
  • September: Labor Day
  • October: Thanksgiving
  • November: Remembrance Day
  • December: Christmas

What we need is a new holiday for June to help smooth over the gap between Victoria Day and Canada Day. Let’s take a look at how the holidays currently break down:

  • Honoring the country/province/monarchy: 3
  • Being grateful for what we have/what others have sacrificed: 2
  • Religious: 2
  • Honoring workers: 1
  • What the hell, let’s just slap a holiday in here: 1
  • Honoring family: 1

The clear favorite is a holiday honoring some kind of government. This is perhaps not surprising since it’s the government that gets to make the holidays. We already have holidays for the country, province and the Queen. That means we’d probably have to go macro (the world) or micro (the city). City Day probably wouldn’t fly so let’s go with World Day. It sounds grand, almost important. We can say it’s all about remembering how we’re all in this together.

But if that doesn’t fly, we need a backup. Adding more religious holidays would be too controversial, even if Christmas is just a bunch of gift-giving and crass commercialism, and just as many people associate Easter with a magical bunny that delivers candy eggs as they do the resurrection of the son of God. So religion is out.

Family and workers have holidays so it’s highly unlikely another could be squeezed in. Honoring/remembering is also covered adequately with Thanksgiving and Remembrance Day. This really only leaves the “What the hell, let’s slap a holiday in here” category, currently represented by New Year’s Day (come on, what makes the first day of the calendar so important it requires an official holiday? As discussed in the previous post, our calendar doesn’t even work properly).

June is the month in which summer begins, so maybe we could do Summer Day. Except that’s kind of lame. No one would buy that.

Maybe it could be a celebration of some group everyone likes or even loves. Like babies. Baby Day. Except that comes a bit close to Family Day, so probably a no-go. Most people like doctors. Doctor Day. It even has some nice alliteration. On the other hand, a lot of people view doctors as overpaid rich folk that also happen to cure sickness and save lives, so there may not be enough of a groundswell to support Doctor Day.

We need something that all Canadians love and cherish. Framing it that way, the choice is obvious: Hockey Day.

But Hockey Day in June makes no sense, even if the Stanley Cup Playoffs absurdly drag into that month.

Canadians also generally love maple syrup, poutine, moose, beavers, snow and being nice, at least as far as most Americans think (those who realize Canada is not actually part of the US, that is). Unfortunately, these are all too weak to put forth as official holidays.

Well, I give up. I say we just declare some Monday or Friday in June as statutory holiday and it can be whatever anyone wants it to be. We’ll call it National Holiday Day. There, done.

Happy Leap Day 2016

Every four years we get a bonus day at the end of February because our calendar sucks and this is the best we can do to make it work.

Since this has no real impact on anyone or anything other than serving as a reminder that there’s some kind of Olympics that year (the summer games in Rio this year, a place currently best known for the Zika virus and some of the world’s most polluted water–have fun, athletes!) it seems like a reasonable solution. And it lets people born on the 29th pretend to age in quasi-dog years. “I got my driver’s license when I was four years old, that’s right.”

And it also lets me pad my post count.

So Happy Leap Day, everyone. Leap away.

Deadpool, false alarms and free movies

I saw Deadpool last night. I knew just enough about the character and movie to properly calibrate my expectations (vulgar, gory over-the-top violence, irreverent) and was pleased to find the movie was, in its own vulgar, gory and irreverent way, quite charming and at times pretty funny. Ryan Reynolds obviously has affection for the character/material and had a great time making the film–and it shows. As a bonus, you get to see him nude. As a special bonus, you even get to see his naughty bits. As penance for this, you see them after he has been transformed into a hideously ugly mutant.

About a quarter of the way through the movie a pair of small white lights began flashing, one on either side of the movie screen. It seemed like an alarm of some kind. Presumably they don’t have real alarms (the kind that pierce ear drums) to prevent that whole “yelling fire’ in a theater effect. I ignored it for a bit and then Nic finally said we should check it out so we went to the lobby and immediately got word that it was a fire alarm, but a false one. We returned to our seats and the lights kept flashing, which was more annoying now that we knew there was no inferno imminent.

A few minutes later a pair of employees came in and one gamely tried talking over the movie’s audio (Deadpool is not a film that employs subtlety in its audio–or any other part) and we got the gist: an apology for the alarm and an offer for a full refund or free pass.

After they left the film suddenly froze. It’s a digital projector so I’m wondering if the hard drive crashed. Would we get to see the world’s largest BSOD? No, it turned out they were setting the movie back to just before the disruption. I actually caught a piece of dialogue I had missed the first time.

When the movie ended we filed past someone who did indeed give us a pair of free passes (good until December 31, 2017, so good for the release of Episode VIII). We’ll likely use them for Zootopia, one of those anthropomorphic Disney moves that looks way better in the previews than it has any right to.

Overall, the disruption was relatively minor, didn’t detract from the experience (Deadpool is pretty much the perfect movie to experience a false fire alarm in) and we got a free movie out of it. I rate the evening 6 out of 7 Ryan Reynold’s fourth wall-breaking comments.

Run 411: Stink and bikes

Run 411
Average pace: 5:53/km
Location: Burnaby Lake CW
Distance: 5.35 km
Time: 31:30
Weather: Overcast
Temp: 11ºC
Wind: moderate with occasional strong gusts
BPM: 168
Stride: n/a
Weight: 169 pounds
Total distance to date: 3335
Device used: Apple Watch and iPhone 6

For my third weekly run I changed things up a little by running clockwise and running a wee bit farther, as the 5K marker is about 300 m further along the trail when approaching from this direction. The forecast threatened thundershowers but fortunately the rain held off entirely, though it was occasionally quite gusty. Despite being quite warmer than the last run, the wind was sharp enough to produce a chill on the walk to the lake.

The Speedgoats again bled color into my socks so grr on that. On the plus side, my left foot held up better. I tried to pace myself on the first km again and pretty much failed, with a pace of 5:21/km, much faster than the rest of my run. I’m not sure how much extra energy it would give me for the remaining four km, anyway.

I generally felt more energetic, which is nice with a lowly once-per-week pace and look forward to seeing even more rapid improvements when I resume running multiple times per week.

My pace was improved again, from 5:56/km to 5:53/km. Not much but I’ll take it.

A family of three were riding bikes, including the inevitable kid-wobbling-like-he’s-going-to-fall-over, one of my favorite things to encounter on the trail. Another guy was riding solo and he looked a bit sheepish when I shot him The Look as I jogged by. Here’s a good way to avoid feeling sheepish: DON’T RIDE YOUR BIKES AT THE LAKE.

The trail was a bit puddle-filled in places but only required a bit of minor dodging and the next sign of spring (after the early budding of trees) was in the air. And the air stunk. Specifically, the skunk cabbage is beginning its annual bloom and this earliest stage is among the stinkiest. Fortunately the stink was confined to a stretch adjacent to one of the boardwalks.

Overall, a satisfactory effort. I’m still undecided on wearing the TomTom but may do so next time.

These are a few of my favorite (post) things

I’ve finally added a few more posts to the little “Posts I Like” thing over to the right (or at the bottom if you’re on a mobile device). These are posts that I find amusing/terrifying or somehow worth noting. Of note is the brief, tragic “Learning to Swim” saga.

Enjoy!

Book review: Talking to Crazy

Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your LifeTalking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life by Mark Goulston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another of my “on sale, looks interesting” reads, Talking to Crazy focuses on dealing with irrational (“crazy”) people, running a range from annoying co-workers to potential mass murderers. Yes, there is a chapter on dealing with people who may be thinking of getting a gun and doing some people huntin’.

Talking to Crazy is not a book for people who like lots of data, studies and stats to back up the claims and advice on offer. Goulston has many years of experience as a psychiatrist and draws on anecdotes from that experience to illustrate the strategies he lays out. He also admits that mental health can be at times a lot trickier to diagnose and treat than physical ailments and frequently cautions that some of his advise should be used with caution or not used at all without the assistance of a mental health professional.

Most of the strategies revolve around empathy–listening to the irrational person, letting them know you understand they are upset, not judging, not offering solutions (at least not immediately). Much of this is common sense but Goulston provides detailed steps and often explicit phrases or wordings to use.

The book turns increasingly darker as it moves from dealing with people you may not need to interact with (his advice on those is: don’t) to co-workers and then family. He covers how to handle those with genuine mental disorders like schizophrenia (mostly by sensibly letting mental health care workers do the heavy lifting) and ends with strategies on handling people who may be thinking of suicide (yikes) or those who may be primed to follow in the steps of the many mass murderers of late. Here he chillingly warns parents of potential killers that if they are worried about saying something lest they become a target that they are already targets before they say a single word.

It’s hard to refute the advice given, as so much of it is both common sense and comes from a solid core of providing empathy and withholding judgment. In essence, Goulston is saying that the best way to deal with irrational people is to keep yourself in check, so you don’t join in on the accusations, fear and anger. He emphasizes this by spending a section of the book with a series of exercises that force the reader to reflect and self-assess, to look for their own weaknesses and learn to manage or overcome them.

Much of the advice will be difficult for people to act on. Goulston comes across as outgoing and forthright. The timid will find it challenging to say most of the things he thinks is necessary to defuse irrational people and begin the process of turning their behavior toward the positive. But just rehearsing the steps alone may help bolster someone’s confidence and push them that much closer to trying.

Talking to Crazy is written in a highly accessible style and the heavy use of anecdotes gives the book the feel of a conversation, rather than a checklist of things to do. I fortunately don’t have to deal with anyone I’d flat-out call irrational, so I’m unlikely to use the advice anytime soon. The advice is solid and presented well, though. I would have preferred more data to back up the strategies but this is a more of a nitpick. Talking to Crazy is not a data-driven book and the advice remains useful and at times thought-provoking all the same.

View all my reviews

Writing prompt: Building a better cliché

From Writer’s Digest weekly writing prompts, here’s my take on the following (I cheated and did more than ten):

Write 10 sentences using a different cliché in each. Now, rewrite the sentence to eliminate the cliché and find a more clever and creative way to convey its meaning.

The early bird gets the worm.
Being proactive and planning ahead will yield fruitful results and worms.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Don’t be greedy, just be happy with that damn bird you already have.

A stitch in time saves nine.
Being able to sew efficiently will leave you with more time to ponder inscrutable sayings.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Elimination of a social life will reduce the likelihood of indulging in unhealthy habits, promote sleep regularity and leave you more sharp-witted and lonely.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Referring to a rose as a “prickly green and red stink stick” will not change its alluring aroma and will also cause people to give you a wide berth.

All’s fair in love and war.
Killing is good.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Maybe your horse has a water allergy.

Slow and steady wins the race.
The answer your boss gives when you ask for a promotion.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Make sure your list of kinky habits lines up with your dating site matches before replying.

A watched pot never boils.
You’re never having that cup of coffee.

What’s going down?
I am curious as to the current status of the Canadian dollar.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Wear a toga and have slaves.

It occurs to me that I am not only suggesting sarcastic writing prompts, I am now writing them, too. In my defense I am doing this exercise on lunch, am pressed for time and tapping into sarcasm is like opening the floodgate of a dam, behind which is a massive lake of sarcasm.

The big review of books: 2015 Edition

In 2015 I read 36 books and one short story. Actually, I read a lot of short stories but only one that was purchased standalone (“In the Tall Grass”).

I once again saved a tree by reading 100% digitally, primarily via a Kobo H20 ereader, an iPad mini (which unceremoniously died midway through the year) and my iPad Air (which did not unceremoniously die but is used primarily for reading in bed, as it’s a bit too big for me to enjoy carrying around for book reading). The iPad reading was done via the Marvin ereader app. Kobo and Amazon’s Kindle apps are both seriously lacking in features vs. their ereader counterparts, possibly to drive sales of said ereaders.

I reviewed the majority of books on Goodreads and the reviews break down as follows on their one to four star scale (Goodreads does not allow half stars):

Five stars: 1
Four stars: 15
Three stars: 8
Two stars: 2
One star: 1

For the most part I enjoyed the books I read last year, with 23 of 27 reviewed netting at least three stars. Even the pair of two-star novels (Swan Song and The Gate at Lake Drive) both had their strengths and I don’t regret reading them.

The five-star was a re-read, Stephen King’s On Writing. As I wrote in my review, it’s the seamless fusion of writing primer and memoir that lifts this book from being very good to great.

The one-star review is for The Store, Bentley Little’s semi-satirical take on a Walmart-like store chain that takes over small towns for nefarious and profitable purposes. I’d never read Little before and have no idea how representative The Store is of his style, but it left me unwilling to investigate any of his numerous other The _____ books. The utter banality and formulaic writing made this the most eye-rolling read of 2015 (Swan Song would be the runner-up, see my review for a few examples).

I’ve settled into a bit of a pattern with my book-reading over the past few years, with my selections falling into these groups:

  • a couple of Stephen King novels, typically a mix of a current title and an older one or two I haven’t read. I read five this year, so I went a bit King-crazy. I have no regrets. I say that even having read Dreamcatcher.
  • a couple of science fiction, fantasy or horror classics dating back to the 19th or early-to-mid 20th centuries. Only two this year: Lord of the Flies and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
  • a smattering of current novels or books spanning my usual interests: science fiction, horror, weird stuff (UFOs, etc.). This was the bulk of my reading.
  • books by established authors that were on sale. These are usually old or lesser-known titles, like Arthur C. Clarke’s (excellent) The City and the Stars, an outrageously ambitious first novel.
  • a handful of books by new authors (or at least new to me) that were on sale, typically published by small presses or self-published. I’m always hoping that I’ll find a new author to follow but usually end up either disappointed or ambivalent. The best of these was probably Sarah Lotz’s The Three.
  • a few re-reads. I re-read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency again and did not regret it.

And now here are a few of my 2015 Reading Awards:

Favorite book of 2015: Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)
Favorite re-read of 2015: On Writing (Stephen King)
Most depressing book of 2015: Idiot America (Charles P. Pierce)
Best Stephen King book I read in 2015 (not counting On Writing): From a Buick 8 (yes, you heard me–the story is simple but is strangely charming)
Most disappointing classic: Swan Song (Robert McCammon). I don’t understand why this book is rated so highly. It’s not bad, it’s just very average. I would say I’m a picky reader but I love enough junk to know that’s not true.
The “Well, that was…interesting” Award: Given the Circumstances (Brad Vance). I figured it was time to read a gay romance. For the first half of the book the two main characters dance around each other (they are massive/studly NFL and MLB players, of course) then when they finally have sex it’s rendered in enough detail to qualify as a medical dissertation. It felt weird (that’s what he said). It was essentially story story story EXPLICIT HARDCORE SEX story story EXPLICIT HARDCORE SEX story story EXPLICIT HARDCORE SEX story fin. Maybe all romances are written this way and I never knew because I’d never read any. Now I know and well, it was interesting.

I miss having a bike (a little)

As happens from time to time, I was thinking. In this instance I was thinking about how I used to have a bicycle and in a small way I yearn to have one again.

On the plus side, a bike lets you get exercise without beating up your shins and feet like running does.

On the negative side, bikes require a lot more maintenance than running shoes and despite being a lot larger, are more prone to being stolen (as my last bike–and several before it–was).

On the plus side again, you can cover a lot more ground on a bike, zipping and gliding along.

Negatively, you can crash at high speed or get hit by a bus. I hardly ever crash when jogging. It’s really only happened once (stupid dog).

On a bike you ought to wear a helmet and no one ever describes helmets as “hugely sexy-looking and comfortable.” I wear a jaunty cap when I run and it adds a dash of flair, unless it rains, then it looks like some limp white blob died on my head.

Mainly, though, if I got a bicycle, I’d become one of them–the people I loathe at Burnaby Lake. Which people? These people:

Cyclists gonna cycle
No text description needed.

Five minutes of Fred thinking about death

The article on Wikipedia defines free writing thusly:

Free writing is a prewriting technique in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar, or topic. It produces raw, often unusable material, but helps writers overcome blocks of apathy and self-criticism.

I’ve never been entirely sold on this technique, though I appreciate its goal to stimulate any sort of writing, which is presumably better than not writing when your goal is to write. I don’t mind having unusable material. I’ve certainly written plenty of stuff that was either cut or buried out round back. It’s not like you can do it wrong. Kittens have never been killed due to free writing, not to my knowledge, anyway. Where’s the harm in giving it a whirl?

And so here’s five minutes of free writing.

Fred always wondered what happened when you died. He figured it couldn’t be good because no one ever came back to say stuff like, “This Heaven place is awesome!” On the other hand, maybe post-living was so awesome that everyone who died was having too much fun to come back and rub it in the face of the living. Or maybe you evolved to a higher plane and ended up with a superiority complex and couldn’t be bothered to speak to lowly organic forms of life.

“Oh, yes, I knew them when I was mere flesh and blood, but there’s no way I could ever communicate with them again. We exist at profoundly different levels. I see the ever-expanding cosmos, they see Walmart flyers and what a great deal ketchup is this week. We have no common frame of reference.”

Fred thought some more. His Uncle Joe died at age 62. A bit young–shy of retirement age–but he couldn’t really picture Joe as evolving to a higher form. The guy could barely dress himself without putting his pants on backward. How could he become one with the cosmic firmament? He wouldn’t even know what cosmic firmament was. “Sounds candy ass to me,” he’d say.

And what if you killed yourself? Would you just snuff out in a ball of negative energy? Would you evolve sideways into something not-quite-cosmic? Fred couldn’t get past the idea that killing yourself was cowardly.

And stop. There it is, five minutes and 241 words of Fred contemplating death, raw and unpolished, just like Fred himself, whoever he is.

(I fixed the typos because typos bug me. Actually, it’s not the typos so much as the angry red squiggly lines underneath them.)

I just checked the CBC site. So far no word of kitten deaths as a result of this exercise. I consider this a win. Now I shall absorb the fruits of my labor to write something magical and exciting.

Tomorrow.