General

If you are what you read…

…then I’m a guy who jogs and likes to write.

Which would be pretty accurate.

I buy two magazines regularly: Runner’s World and Writer’s Digest. Maybe I just like magazines with apostrophes in the titles. I’ll admit having an incredibly hot guy on the cover of Runner’s World helped persuade me to take a look at the first issue I picked up but I’ve been buying it regularly since (the covers alternate male and female). It’s somewhat surprising how much can be written about an activity that consists entirely of just putting one foot ahead of the other and repeating.

Writer’s Digest is a magazine I’ve been buying on and off for many years but now that I’m writing more I can actually try employing some of their techniques and suggestions. Note: do not ever subscribe to their online newsletter. They spam your inbox like crazy trying to sell you seminars, books and probably Writer’s Digest widgets and toilet paper. I routinely archive without reading so I should probably unsubscribe at some point.

I will occasionally buy other writing or health magazines and the odd issue of Asimov’s of Fantasy & Science Fiction. What I don’t buy anymore are computer magazines (pretty much replaced by the web) and gaming magazines (also pretty much replaced by the web and most have died, besides). I lament several magazines I used to buy that went defunct a long time ago, notably The Twilight Zone magazine (which published excellent short fiction) and Marvel Illustrated, best described as “Heavy Metal without the breast obsession”. Okay, I sometimes also bought Heavy Metal because where else could you read stories where people rode astride giant penises like the sandworms of Arrakis? I also miss Omni. I wish there was still a good general interest science magazine around (no, Discover doesn’t quite do it). Mad magazine is one of the few I genuinely outgrew without even being conscious of it. They probably lost their gestalt when they began putting in real ads to pay the bills, anyway. That’s my cynical take and I’m stickin’ to tingit!

My dream (directed by Roland Emmerich)

There have been two recurring themes in dreams I’ve had since I was a wee one. The first was being chased by something — mummies, vampires, mean robots but most often vehicles and in true Killdozer style, the vehicles would always be driver-free. Two I recall vividly were a muscle car from the late 60s/early 70s that chased me down a neighbor’s driveway (I escaped by leaping onto the branch of a tree that hung over the end of the driveway), the other a giant-sized dump truck with the front bumper missing, which made it much scarier.

The chase dreams pretty much ended as an adult.

The other theme has been ferry disasters, which I’ve talked about before. Last night I had one of these dreams and as with most of them, it wasn’t really scary, just weird. I don’t recall who I was with but we were on the ferry and as usual, something goes wrong. This time it seemed like some kind of stability issue, which we noticed when the ferry began lurching to the side so severely as to nearly touch water to the passenger deck. Then, while still motoring along, the ship does not one but two complete barrel rolls. Yes, it capsizes twice. But it manages to right itself and we were apparently wearing our capsizing boots and were none the worse for the spinning. But now it was clear the ferry had to get to the terminal and dock ASAP.

The ferry starts racing along through the water and is kind of wobbly, pitching a bit from side to side. At some point I move to the front lounge for a better view ahead and we are entering a winding river-like area that doesn’t actually exist. Perhaps because of the ferry’s excessive speed, instead of attempting to navigate the serpentine path, the captain has the crew shovel more coal into the boiler and guns it toward a giant pile of smoothly-shaped rocks. Maybe it was a hill covered with rocks. Whatever it was, it was clear we were going to jump it.

The ferry hits the hill and scoots up it and out of the water, then flies off the top and soars like a wingless bird. For a few moments as the ship flies through the air we ponder what the landing will be like. But not to worry — the ferry lands upright and everyone’s okay. But not! Because the terminal is dead ahead and the ship is going way too fast! The engines are put into full reverse and the water churns furiously as we speed toward the dock. The ship slows, slows some more and then finally eases into the dock as if this was the end of a perfectly normal trip. Roll credits.

Jogging: now featuring random hate and incitement!

Today’s jog was 30 minutes. It was overcast and about 8ºC, so pretty mild comparatively. I ended up taking the gloves off for the last few laps. This means my hands were getting warm, not that I was running down and trying to punch out another jogger. The highlight was nearly twisting my ankle dodging around one of the mud pit-like corners. That would have made for a truly awesome third run back.

Someone with spray paint and an apparent loathing for authority had been busy at the adjacent playground, as you can say in the image below I captured with my iPod camera:

kc_park

(You can click for a larger version if you like. The text reads “Kill Cops”.)

A charming piece of work to greet the pre-schoolers as they climb up to the slide into anarchy! More anarchy symbols were festooned across the rest of the equipment by whatever blithering idiot did this.

I was also going to post a pic of my dirty running shoes but frankly they just don’t look dirty enough. The forecast for the week suggests drier and colder weather to come so I seem to have lucked out so far as the rain goes on my return to jogging.

When dreams go meta

Last night I had a long, involved dream that played out like a movie. There were even “shots” where the camera seemed to be tracking. From what I can recall, the story was set in some unnamed present day country that was apparently in the midst of a revolution (possible source: the coup in Honduras this past summer). Much of the city that the dream took place in was abandoned or in ruins but there did seem to be some semblance of life. I remember one part where a blind alley or tunnel opened into a plaza and there were a few men with weapons waiting for people to come through to shoot them. The people being shot were civilians, as far as I could tell.

I have an image of a woman and some children running along a street and being brought down by automatic weapon fire. Since I wasn’t in the dream I had no reaction to this, the events just kept playing out. The final part of the dream featured several men who may have been part of a resistance group. They were moving through an abandoned building that looked like it was once a hospital. It was bare of all furnishings and was dark, save for a pale blue light that washed through every room. This seemed to key in to an earlier part of the dream and I understood they were sneaking their way through to avoid being seen or captured. They went down some stairs and finally came to windows that were brightly lit by the sun. They exited onto a small street that was somehow cut off from the oppressive forces and the people here were relaxed, even happy.

The meta part of this dream came in an unrelated dream afterward. I was with friends and one was apparently using some kind of “hair solution” to grow back the hair on his head and was a bit embarrassed by the discussion, though he did in fact have a pretty good head of hair. I suddenly remembered the previous dream while in this dream and started telling my friends about it, just as I have written it out here. They weren’t particularly interested, so I stopped. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. It was odd.

CBC News: your source for inane comments from the public

Yeah, I’ve talked about this before. Like the weather, it’s a perennial subject. Today the CBC website has a story about an investigation into a rough sailing for the Northern Adventure as it weathered a vicious storm after leaving Prince Rupert, eventually having to return. Here is the first reader comment posted by someone named “justaviewer”. Note that comments are pre-moderated, which means they get screened first by CBC staff before going up:

Send Obama out there to calm the waters – after all he can walk on them can’t he?

This has pretty much become a meme on the CBC site. Find news story, make completely unrelated comment attacking personal pet issue/person. The reader who posts next is wise to this, though and calls out the practice:

And let people start blaming Gordon Campbell, Steven Harper, and the 2010 Olympics for all of this… now!

You posters on the BC CBC Message Boards are really starting to sound like a broken record. Doesn’t it get annoying repeating the same thing over and over again?

Doesn’t it get annoying repeating the same thing over and over again?

Doesn’t it get annoying repeating the same thing over and over again?

Doesn’t it get annoying repeating the same thing over and over again?

Posted by “Dude Man”. Despite the call-out, the third comment, by “lobjob”  is:

I am sure Adrian Dix will find the storm was caused by HST panic, an NDP generated condition.

I hate being cynical concerning the intelligence and thoughtfulness of the average guy but these people, I tells ya, they test me!

Damn snow (November 2009 edition)

Yes, it’s the time of year where every other post is a complaint about the weather. We are on track for a wetter than normal November and in truth it doesn’t really bother me much. However, seeing this on the mountains makes my toes scrunch up in horror.

damn_snow_nov09

Damn snow.

Of posts not written

It turns out writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days really cuts into the time you normally devote to going on about various inanities in your blog.

On the plus side, I am near 32,000 words as we hit the halfway mark, about 7,000 words ahead of the pace and I think the science in my story is probably more accurate than the science in 2012 (more on the in the next post). And mine is a horror story.

1980: The Year of Living Garishly

1980 is when the movie musical Xanadu came out. This was only a few years after Grease — which was a huge hit, so naturally musicals came into vogue again and not surprisingly most were crap. Xanada featured Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly (!) and the music of ELO. Sure it was high concept nonsense but I was 16 and didn’t know better. I recall coming away from the movie having rather enjoyed it.

Tonight, for reasons unclear to me I visited YouTube and checked out a number of songs from the movie and yikes, it’s terrible! Yes, the ELO songs are still great but they stand on their own quite nicely. In fact, it’s better if you close your eyes and skip the whole looking-at-the-video part of them. This is a musical that makes Grease look like a masterpiece and that one wanted you to buy Stockard Channing as a teenager.

Horribly dated, horribly shot, campy, kitschy but only somewhat self-aware of it, I get the feeling the actors had fun shooting this and Gene was content to pad the inheritance for his kids but if you can watch this with anything less than your jaw hanging open, unable to articulate how horrible it is, you’re a better person than me!

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may still be worse, though.

Here’s the clip for All Over the World. Out of context I haven’t the foggiest what exactly was going on here. I think they’re picking out clothes for something. You know how that goes.

The fun of Halloween

Tonight I saw the Halloween-appropriate Paranormal Activity. Shot in a cinéma vérité style, this low budget effort featured a good cast and nicely ratcheted up the stakes as said activities became more and more invasive. I have to admit I’m a sucker for the pseudo-documentary style of film-making and I think this one did a solid job of portraying the demon-afflicted couple in a (mostly) believable* manner. Less satisfying were the people occasionally talking (nervously?) amongst themselves in the audience and a number who constantly got up from their seats, perhaps feeling some nausea from the occasionally tipsy camera work. The guy to my left spent most of his time literally on the edge of his seat leaning forward and then glibly said at the end, “I want the last hour and forty minutes of my time back.” You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Fraidy Cat!

* okay, there were several not-so-believable bits. SPOILERS FOLLOW. LOOK AWAY TO AVOID! Micah and Katie document the manifestations in their home using a big-ass video camera and the film shows them regularly reviewing the footage via a laptop “hooked up by Firewire” as Micah states several times. At one point the couple leaves the house with a Ouija board on the coffee table, with the camera recording it. The planchette busies itself scooting across the board and then bursts into flames. This was not enough to make them think perhaps staying in the house might not be a wise idea. On the final day, Katie insist on staying and says everything will be fine, then goes to sleep with a, I daresay, devilish smile on her face. Apparently Micah never reviewed this clip because I’d get the freak away at that point. But maybe that’s just me.

After the movie we strolled down Davie Street and being the clever lad I am , I quipped about Halloween on Davie — could you tell the difference? There were a surprisingly large number of people in costume, ranging from ultra-basic (cat ears) to elaborately made-up vampires, zombies and overweight cowboys. And fireworks. Lots of fireworks that even as I write this are still exploding somewhere a few houses over. People seem very intent on getting their money’s worth this year. Interestingly, Nic said this kind of tomfoolery isn’t indulged in back east. Maybe they just eat pumpkin poutine instead.

“The Danger of Halloween”

As originally seen in The Huffington Post.

Kimberly Daniels believes that Halloween is a very naughty sort of occasion. Some choice quotes from her piece on the subject:

During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure.

Those mini-Snickers you plan on handing out to the wee ones? Not only will they rot their teeth but also their soul!

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

And finally:

There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have. Then declare with me: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

I think Ms Daniels would not approve of the decorations out in front of the house. I’ll have a few more added to the Halloween gallery tomorrow, including the pumpkins in all their candlelight glory. Everything is courtesy of the demented mind of Tim, of course.