I decided to put together a spreadsheet that would finally collect together all of my various writing projects from over the years.
I left out anything that was little more than a sketch or idea. It had to have at least enough substance to count as unfinished to make the list. I also left out all of the treasure of my youth that were scrawled in crayon, written with a leaky fountain pen (they all leaked) or made via the incredible clatter of my portable Smith Corona typewriter, which looked very much like this one (yes, it was blue and it was awesome…at making a racket):
“I can’t hear you, I’m creating art!”
In the end I was somewhat surprised to have sixty stories listed, ranging from finished copies suitable for publication/framing/lining bird cages to others that were little more than a few rough scenes desperately clinging to life. Fittingly, one of these is a short story called “Writer’s Block”.
I’ll edit this post to go into a bit more detail about the genres and so on soon.
Because you can never have too many lists, here are ten random things I’d do if I won a multi-million dollar lottery jackpot, in no particular order:
Buy some nice shoes. I have been buying better shoes of late, especially for running, but I generally go cheap on clothes because I am dumb and like replacing my clothes a lot. With millions of dollars in my bank account I might get over this.
Buy a Cintiq graphics tablet. Since they start around $1000 and I have $10 worth of drawing talent this is the only way I could justify getting one.
Buy a new car. A red car. With a radio. I’d never drive it but it would be nice to have.
Buy a house. I would definitely use this. Nothing too big or fancy because that means more cleaning.
Take several trips to faraway places like Europe, the tropics or low Earth orbit.
Buy a fancy new computer, possibly with racing stripes.
Donate a not insignificant amount to charity, family and friends.
Help fund a worthwhile project. Since I don’t normally do this I’d also have to research a worthwhile project.
Buy a new bed. There is never a bad time to do this.
Devote copious amounts of time to writing, possibly coming up with better ideas for blog entries as a result.
If you have a look at this post from July 13th of last year you will see me list off my 14 least-favorite running conditions. I figure it’s time to update the list, so here we go. Changes are noted accordingly.
As before, the list is presented from least worst to just plain bad. The four options outside the top 10 aren’t really bad at all.
14. Overcast and light breeze. This is actually ideal conditions. It is usually never too cold or warm when the weather is like this.
13. Moderate wind. Moderate wind is fine. I have a cap that stays in place now.
12. Warm sun. Warm is no big thing. I’m talking about 20ºC or thereabouts.
11. Light rain. The only issue with light rain is that sometimes my iPod gets wet straight through my shorts’ pocket. If rain looks likely I put it in a plastic baggie.
10. Snow. I’ve only run once in light snow and it was fun. I’m thinking a foot of snow would probably be less so.
9. Cold rain. Cold rain means cold hands and if you wear gloves they need to be waterproof. Cold rain is never fun.
8. Hard rain. Getting soaked to the skin is kind of refreshing. Unfortunately if it’s raining hard, it’s almost always cold, too. Not so refreshing.
7. Extreme cold. I’ve run in sub-freezing conditions and been fine. I’m thinking Arctic tundra-type cold here.
6. Heavy wind. The resistance means you work a lot harder to achieve the same result and my cap has to be on tight enough to cut off circulation so it doesn’t fly away.
5. Hot sun. My body feels like a furnace and I’m left parched as all get-out. Dry mouth and lips are yucky. I’ve improved my stamina to where it has to be close to 30ºC to really affect me, though.
4. Hard rain and heavy wind. Likeliest weather to make me wonder to myself, ‘What was I thinking?’ when on the run.
3. Hot sun and heavy wind. Heat dries you out, the wind makes it harder to run and dries you out even more. Bleah. This combination is, however, very rare.
2. Hail. Getting pelted by little ice rocks is unpleasant! I’ve been caught in hail twice now and did not like it either time. Hail has moved from #7 to #2 on the list as a result.
And the worst weather to run in is:
1. Dogs. See here. I’ve had a dog knock me down while running. The weather has never done this.
Here are the top-grossing movies domestically for 2011 (domestically refers to Canada and the U.S. As you’ll see, worldwide grosses paint a somewhat different picture):
1 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 $381,011,219
2 Transformers: Dark of the Moon $352,390,543
3 The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 $281,287,133
4 The Hangover Part II $254,464,305
5 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $241,071,802
6 Fast Five $209,837,675
7 Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol $209,278,301
8 Cars 2 $191,452,396
9 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows $186,842,737
10 Thor $181,030,624
This list can be summed up thusly: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT TOO MANY SEQUELS. EVER. Exactly one of the top 10 movies is not a sequel and it — Thor — is based on a licensed property and is in a genre (superhero films) that has had titles cranked out regularly over the past decade.
Let’s have a look at each film and figure out why they made buckets of money (apart from exorbitant ticket prices).
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. If you include ‘in 3D’ this becomes one of the longest movie titles ever but no one can keep an accurate count of how many Harry Potter movies there are (7? 8?) so it never got called Harry Potter 7 (or 8), typically being referred to as simply ‘the new Harry Potter’. The success of this is no surprise because it wraps up the saga and all of the HP movies have done well. Most of them have been looked kindly upon by critics, too, which never hurts.
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Regarded as better than #2 (the very definition of damning with faint praise) the third installment proves the least popular of the trilogy (when taking into account ticket sales and not inflated ticket prices) — not a good sign for Michael “BLOW IT UP” Bay but $352 million even in 2011 dollars isn’t chump change, so this series seems safe for awhile or until it’s run into the ground (with Bay directing, this will probably literally happen).
3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. Another popular series, the sparkly vampires continue to draw in its loyal audience with the penultimate film (at least until Twilight: The New Generation or something comes along). Like Harry Potter, they are squeezing out a few more bucks by splitting the last book into a two-part movie. While I can see this for HP, given that the first book was about 300 pages long and the last was about 10,000, it seems more of a money grab for Twilight. But hey, I have not read the books nor seen the movies, so who am I to judge? As a bonus, even the critics seem to be warming up to this saga of pasty white teenage/werewolf/undead love.
4. The Hangover Part II. Hey, another sequel. Weird! This one seems to have coasted a bit on the success of the first movie. A third is all but inevitable and probably won’t do as well. This will not stop a fourth or fifth from being made. This is the only live action comedy to make the top 10, proving again that for whatever reason people do not like to go to movies to laugh. Maybe the ticket prices put filmgoers more in the mind frame for tragedies.
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. In North America the wind seems to no longer be in the sails much for this, although overseas it’s still incredibly popular (over $802 million), so Johnny Depp can probably continue to wear eye makeup (and get paid for it) into the foreseeable future.
6. Fast Five. I am surprised at the resiliency of this series. The April release would suggest it was viewed as not cut out to be a summer movie yet it did boffo box office. People really like Vin Diesel and fast cars, it seems. Don’t blame me if Diesel uses this to leverage a new Chronicles of Riddick movie, I never saw it!
7. Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol. Another sequel, another surprise. After a tepid reaction to #3 people returned in greater numbers to watch Tom Cruise running again. He can probably crank out a few more before shifting into the inevitable character (‘I’m too old to be a leading man anymore’) parts.
8. Cars 2. The second worst-performing Pixar movie ever and after adjusting for inflation the worst. While you can’t really call a movie that makes close to $200 million a flop, it clearly underperformed. This is what happens when merchandising is a primary consideration and the audience can sense it. This won’t stop them from making Cars 3 before The Incredibles 2, though. There is no justice. This was the only animated film to crack the top 10, a bit unusual in itself.
9. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Exemplifying both ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and ‘more of the same’ the sequel to Sherlock Holmes managed to do almost as well as the first, which means it’s probably considered a failure of sorts. Expect more explosions or zombies or exploding zombies in the third one.
10. Thor. Wait, this isn’t a sequel. How did this get here? Thor is, of course, based on the Marvel comic character and under the direction of Kenneth Branagh (!) it proved a solid hit. But before they can stamp out Thor 2, Thor 3 and Thor 4: I Adore there’s The Avengers movie this summer. I find it hard to imagine a sequel to this but on the other hand, do we really want them to remake The Incredible Hulk again?
As we near the end of the year I am indulging my penchant for lists. Here is Box Office Mojo’s 2011 Worldwide Grosses. It’s interesting to see how little North America played in the success of some of these films (eg. Kung Fu Panda 2 made over 75% of its take overseas). More interesting (or less interesting, perhaps) is how sequels have taken over:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 No surprise on this one as all the HP movies have done well and this one wrapped things up. Spoiler: Everyone dies.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon The third Transformers movie provides some evidence that there may be a deity as it did not finish #1.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Who knew Johnny Depp with eyeshadow could result in multiple billion dollar grosses?
Kung Fu Panda 2 It was only a so-so hit in the U.S. but people everyone outside of North America love them some fat cartoon pandas.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 Vampires, sparkling, teen melodrama and yes, a sequel.
Fast Five The fifth Fast and Furious movie. This thing has legs. Or wheels. Or something. Will Vin Diesel use this as leverage to get another Riddick movie made? You know he wants to!
The Hangover Part II A movie that didn’t need a sequel gets one, sequel is huge hit. This is why we can’t have nice things (or original movies).
The Smurfs Wait a minute, this isn’t a sequel! But it is licensed, so it’s almost the same thing. It made over $500 million. Why? WHY?!
Cars 2 Uninspired sequel to another movie that didn’t need one. This time Pixar got a pat on the bum for being naughty, as it was their lowest-grossing movie to date. A sequel to anything but Cars would have been nice.
Rio This isn’t a sequel. How did it get here? It’s anthropomorphic cartoon animals so it’s almost like a sequel to one of the thousand or so movies that can be described thusly.
Extrapolating, I am predicting that by 2015 all movies will be sequels and no new stories will be told. I look forward to Cars 7: Out of Gas in 2022.
The current issue of The Georgia Straight has a story on the Top Albums of 2011. Almost without exception I am not only unfamiliar with the albums, I’ve never even heard of the performers. Looking through each critic’s selection (nine critics, ten albums each), here are the artists I actually recognize:
Tom Waits
Jay-Z and Kanye West
Paul Simon
Foo Fighters
George Thorogood & the Destroyers
The Jeff Healey Band
Wilco
Tori Amos
Björk
PJ Harvey
I have never owned an album from any of these people. Actually, looking over the list I’m surprised that there were that many names I recognized. Still, with 90 picks, I only recognize 10 artists, cementing my place as musically out of touch. Hey, I bought an Animal Collective album last year, that has to count for something, right?
This is cribbed from a couple of posts I made in this Quarter to Three thread but I may expand my picks further here.
Best Game that Works With a Gamepad But They Actually Mean an Xbox 360 Controller and Good Luck with Emulation and All the Voodoo Required to Get It Working With Your Logitech RumblePad and Oh Yeah Even With no Gamepad Connected it Flashes ‘Press Start’ on the Main Screen: Renegade Ops. Bonus: the keyboard/mouse controls are awful, too.
Best Alpha Game Investment This Year: Minecraft
The Why Do I keep Playing This Stupid Game, Anyway? Award: Bejeweled 2, which I play nearly every night on my iPhone when I go to bed.
I Never Knew I Could Get so Sucked Into a Portable Game Award (not counting Bejeweled 2): Dungeon Raid
Best MMORPG I Downloaded the Trial for But Never Actually Played: RIFT
Favorite Class in a Beta Test of Diablo III Before They Wiped All of My Characters *Again*: Monk. Huge electric kick to the face!
Blandest MMO Test That Still Has me Slightly Interested: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Lifetime Achievement Award for Worst-Looking Human Males in Any MMO or Possibly Any Game Ever: World of Warcraft
The You’re a Big Fat Liar Because You Promised Not to Add More Games to Your Backlog in 2011 and Did It Anyway Award: Me
Fuzziest Warm Feeling for Supporting An Indie Dev and the Game was Pretty Good, Too Award: Dungeons of Dredmor, made by the local Gaslamp Games.
Indie Game With the Name Most Likely to be Misspelled Award: Dungeons of Dredmor (not Dredmore/Dreadmore)
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times…
Here’s a brief overview of 2008 in handy list form. I love lists. I bought something like 50 of those Book of Lists books.
Personal
I was told in April I was pre-diabetic and had to lose weight, exercise more and change my diet
I bought a bike in July and ride it to work every day (when it isn’t snowing all the damn time)
I stopped eating junk food and fast food; in June I weighed 187.5 pounds. I now weight 151 pounds.
I wrote and completed more fiction than I have in many years (five complete short stories plus assorted fragments)
I got new glasses. Hooray for no more scratched lenses!
The World
Stephen Harper decided we needed yet another election and he needed one of them fancy majority governments. We got the election, he did not get his majority. He then turned around and gave the opposition parties a big “screw you!”, prompting them to form a coalition that the Bloc said it would support for 18 months. Harper then went to the governor-general and said, “Hey, I’d really like to stay in power. Can I suspend Parliament for two months, even though we are in the middle of the worst economic situation the world has faced in 80 years?” The governor-general gave him the OK, so we are awaiting the budget on January 27th with the proverbial bated breath.
Stephane Dion resigned early as Liberal leader, becoming the only Liberal leader to never go on to be Prime Minster. He was replaced in a quick ‘n dirty leadership “review” by a unibrow named Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff has spent most of the last 20 years living outside of Canada. This surprisingly may work to his benefit.
Two byelections in BC result in two NDP wins. No surprise, the governing party almost always loses. The BC Liberals install their carbon tax and everyone pretty much agrees they hate it. Gordon Campbell looks more and more like a cranky old high school teacher.
In the U.S. John McCain goes off the rails and incessantly negative in his campaign for president, choosing an airhead governor as his running mate. Sarah Palin proves to be a gold mine (or perhaps more appropriately, a gushing oil well) for comedians as she keeps saying the darndest things. Barack Obama runs a very slick, well-organized campaign and cruises to a fairly easy win, becoming America’s first black president.
The year ends with Bush getting shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist. So much for boquets of flowers. Bush nimbly ducks the shoes, earning respect in a way no one could have predicted.
Ice shelves continue to collapse. Global warming, a new ice age — clearly Mother Nature has something up her sleeve and I have a feeling we ain’t gonna like it
No space shuttles blew up
Vancouver gets about 10 feet of snow, I roughly estimate
Entertainment
I score 1 out of 10 on an MSNBC entertainment quiz. I guess I’m a bit out of the loop now.
Heath Ledger is really good as The Joker in The Dark Knight. For once the hype matches the reality. Shame about his accidental overdose.
iTunes is going DRM-free which is great. Most new songs will now be $1.29 instead of 99 cents. This is not so great. Catalogue songs will be as low as 69 cents, though, so in the end I declare all of this Good.
I can’t think of anything else noteworthy. I’m actually blanking on what movie won Best Picture this year.
My 27″ Sony Wega is officially obsolete. This gigantic CRT is like a huge paperweight I can’t get rid of. I never watch TV.
Sports
The Canucks roar out of the gate until Luongo pulls his groin. Nearly two months later, they have played a little under .500 hockey, but have 98-year old Mats Sundin in the line-up now to shore up offense. Things should improve when Luongo returns. Whenever that is.
I’ll add more as I reflect back on the momentous year that was 2008. Maybe!
