This site will be offline for a little while this afternoon; the server upon which it resides is going to be moving from one Mysterious Bunker Somewhere Near Las Vegas to a different MBSNLV.
I’m not sure how long the system will be down before it gets plugged back in and the new DNS info propagates through the Web-Tubes.
See you on the other side!
Moved!
The move is complete. You may carry on as you were.
Apparently there is a special event of some sort here in Cupertino on September 12. A big announcement. I work at Apple but let me tell you now — I have no idea whatsoever what the event is all about. If I cared enough, I suppose I could look back through history and see when iPhone announcements have been made in the past. But honestly I don’t care enough to check. I’ll find out the same way y’all will.
Do the bookies in Las Vegas do an over/under for use of the word “incredible” in an Apple show? They should. There’s a lot of incredible shit going down. And if it is an iPhone announcement, you know that it will be Apple’s “best iPhone ever.” WELL I SHOULD HOPE SO.
What I will be watching for is a look at the new subterranean theater. Like the rest of the new Apple campus, it was built with a “fuck the shareholders, let’s make it… um… incredible” ethic. As a shareholder, I’m on board. I like that the new facility cost bazillions of dollars extra because everything had to be just exactly right. It is an expression of what we aspire to as a company. Getting it exactly right. We don’t always succeed, but
To be honest, I also like that I will not be a guinea pig in the new building while they find out if all those computer simulations of natural air flow through the main building actually reflect reality. They took some risks on that building, to be sure.
No matter how special this event actually turns out to be, it will be the first Apple show in the new place. It will be the first in a theater designed from the ground up to be a place to announce products, including an area to allow the invited guests to interact with those products after the presentation. There really is nothing else like it, and I’m looking forward to catching a glimpse.
A long time ago I published a Chapter One here on this blog called Gravity. It was a little bit that I thought had legs. Eventually I devoted a NaNoWriMo to exploring the character, and today I read much of it. It has some pretty sweet moments, if I do say so myself.
A Jane Doe awakens in a hospital, and feels gravity for the first time. Everything is wrong, even though everything is empirically perfectly normal.
At the core is a battle between Liberty on one side, and Justice for All on the other (that’s how one side frames it, anyway). But it’s really a story of soldiers. Bitter rivals sharing a room, one crippled. Were she not crippled, Benji would have killed her and bragged about it later. But it was Jane’s own side that crippled her, that tore her down. They took her wings. And that is the only thing, the ONLY thing, Benji would never do. She was beautiful when she flew.
Though it would be irresponsible not to consider that Jane volunteered for this mission, confident that her own compass would never waver, even if her memory were erased.
Note: Benji and Jane never become a love interest. Seriously. You can discover respect without wanting to bone someone.
There is a certain class of Space Opera that has what I call “Buck Rodgers Cosmology.” In these stories it is never quite certain what a planet is. You see sentences like “It was still morning on [planet].” Or perhaps “It’s summer on [planet], so dress accordingly.”
And of course we’re all familiar with the “jungle planet”, the “tropical paradise planet”, and the “snow planet”, all of which are entire planets with only one climate zone, and that climate is easily recognized as one of the many on our own rock. So even though we live and interact with a shining counterexample our entire lives, we all too often are presented with a planet that apparently has no poles. Or perhaps it’s in a multi-star system that somehow warms all parts of the globe evenly.
I call it Buck Rodgers Cosmology because early Buck Rodgers adventures joyfully embraced a vague idea of planets that didn’t even seem to be related to stars.
Recently I read some not-very-good-but-for-some-reason-I-read-it-anyway-so-maybe-it-had-a-certain-charm Space Opera, and while the author seemed to have a certain grasp of stars, planets, and whatnot, it seemed that most of the time the planets managed to avoid any of the consequences of being spherical.
While I was reading this thing, I rolled my eyes and moved on. I wonder if the writer knowingly embraced Buck Rodgers Cosmology. I wonder if he made a conscious decision to make planets so easily characterized in order to make destinations more like those in Earth-bound adventure stories. One planet is Hawaii, another planet is Switzerland, and another is Arizona. In fact, these stories are actually set on Earth, an Earth in disguise, at a time when it takes many days to reach Hawaii, and where the inhabitants of Hawaii have blue skin. They’re not space stories at all.
In the end, I decided Buck Rodgers Cosmology was no less valid than the whole Faster-Than-Light-Without-Relativity conceit. It’s a storytelling device, and if the reader is willing to embrace it, then we can all get along.
The story I mentioned above also had big space battles that led to giant spaceships “listing to port” when they were badly damaged. I am far less forgiving of that phrase. The writer is drawing a parallel with modern sailing ships, but sinking boats list because of gravity. There’s too much water coming in on one side, and gravity tips the boat to that side. No gravity in space. No listing. No “port” even, though that could be defined in some sort of ridiculous three-dimensional fleet coordinate system.
I have read a great deal of space opera where opposing fleets of spaceships are all in the same plane.
The thing is, there’s another phrase for a stricken ship that’s more accurate and just as poignant. Stricken naval ships list, stricken spaceships tumble. It’s that simple. And tumbling makes rescue all the more difficult.
So I’ll give you the Buck Rodgers Cosmology, but I won’t give you stupid fleet mechanics. The former provides a storytelling shorthand, the latter is just wrong.
Let’s say I want to watch a video to learn how to cut curved sections into paving stones. This is a natural thing to turn to YouTube for, since watching people using the tools communicates more than text ever could. While viewing a video with a promising title, here is a bunch of stuff I could do without. All these comments can be generalized to improve ALL YouTube How-To content. Because almost all of it is terrible. The best ones spend only about 1/3 the time on topic.
So! Stuff I DON’T want:
Content – Information I simply don’t need
Editing – Annoyances standing between me and what I want to know
Quality – Sure would like to see what you’re doing there…
Credibility – Are you serious?
Every damn second of a video about cutting curves in pavers should be about exactly that. That’s not to say you can’t have relevant side information — safety, tips for marking the curves to cut — but ultimately it’s not a video about you saving money by not calling a contractor. It’s a video about cutting curves in pavers. (Or it’s a video about breaking down a chicken. Or whatever.) Remember what you are teaching, and make your video 1/3 the length of your original “cut”. (Most aren’t cut at all.)
Apparently Thursday is the day to start NFL preseason games. I’m at a bar writing unit tests for my new project, and I have these observations:
1) People care an awful lot about the outcomes of games in which guys on your team who will be cut before the season starts play against guys on the other team who will be cut before the season starts.
2) The perfect football moment. A guy made a good catch. To celebrate he spun the ball on the ground like a top. The refs then took a full minute to penalize him for delay of game.
3) I’ve mentioned before that were I coach, I’d not be playing to win at all; rather I’d be digging deep holes for the team to see how my players respond. It would be a giant gut-check the whole night, an undying series of do-or-die moments. It’s only fair to the guys on the bubble to have a chance to show who they really are when things get tough. That’s what preseason is for, right?
But football is on the TV’s here and that means summer is coming to an end. To be honest, I welcome the cooler weather, but it’s this time every year when I consider that I will only know a finite number of football seasons on this lovely-if-frustrating orb. The players are younger, the announcers are older, and another summer is coming to a close. I love summer; my emotions have not forgotten the magic of summer vacation.
In my heart, I’m still that kid; in my soul, I have gathered a lot of wisdom over the years. In my knee, there is a constant reminder that things are changing and will not change back.
And so football arrives again, my knee saying “see? I told you so.” Time does what time does. And the referees delay the game to penalize players for delaying the game.
I was looking for something cool and fizzy to sip on the patio this evening, and the Official Sweetie of Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas suggested a Gin and Tonic, with some fancy tonic already cold in the fridge. I’m not ordinarily a G&T kind of guy, but the idea fit conditions perfectly.
Then she said, “Ooo! You want a lime? I’ll go out and pick you a lime.”
Image stolen from cnn article linked below.
Trump broke his own record this month for playing golf. For Trump, the best outcome for his presidency is impeachment; he has no interest in governing and now his Russia boondoggles are starting to surface. Being president, he has already admitted, is way harder than he thought it would be. As the castle crumbles, he’s working on his putts.
If he’s impeached, he can blame Washington insiders for his failure. He can go home early and rant and rave about how the system was rigged against him. If instead the electorate votes overwhelmingly for “not Trump”, it’s a tougher lie to tell.
But here comes John Kelly. Kelly had hardly finished accepting the job when he burned rubber to Anthony Scaramucci’s office to give him the heave-ho. That was a message to the rest of the staff, and it was a message to you and me. Guys with so little self-control that they make insane, profanity-laced rants about their co-workers (the word “cocaine” whispers across my mind once again) will not be tolerated. Well, one of them will, but no others.
Kelly comes from Homeland Security, which means he hates freedom. Your freedom, my freedom. Homeland Security is designed to curtail freedom. But you know what? He’s better than Trump. He’s a grown-up. (He probably also isn’t pals with one of the greatest enemies of our state.) Also, he’s better than Pence — as far as I know so far. So if Trump hits the links and leaves Kelly in charge, that might actually be a good thing in the short term.
In the long term, the harder Trump falls the longer it will take for the WWE Party to recover. It’s enticing, but this is my country we’re talking about. It would be nice if someone rational were in charge.
So if I have my facts straight, on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week The New York Times talked to our President-like Product* and asked him if, hypothetically, Mueller’s investigation of the Republican collusion with Russia were to be expanded to include Trump’s finances, would that be crossing a line?
Trump responded, with his usual thoughtless bravado, that such an expansion would indeed be crossing a line. Totally unacceptable.
Then on Thursday, it became known that Mueller has in fact extended his inquiry to include Trump’s finances. Whups!
There are a a handful of important takeaways here:
1) The NYT almost certainly already knew the investigation was expanding.
2) Trump did not know.
3) NYT was not above baiting Trump to say something he would regret later.
4) Trump is easily manipulated.
5) Trump can’t spot a trap question to save his life.
6) That same guy talks to Putin, who is no slouch at interrogation.
Number four above is the one that scares me most.
But let’s not lose perspective on the actual news. People with the power to arrest criminals are looking at Trump’s tax returns. No matter which side of the aisle you sit on, that has to be a good thing. If you believe he has nothing to hide, you will naturally embrace this chance to see him exonerated while keeping his finances private. If you think he’s up to his eyeballs in foreign entanglements, well, now’s the time to find out.
This is a good thing, as long as you believe in truth.
____
* I promised, after the election, to suck it up and no longer use disparaging names for our then-president-elect. Today I was unable to live up to my own standard, so I’m calling myself out to save you the trouble.
It occurred to me today, as I spent less than sixty seconds ordering a pizza, paying for it, and arranging to have it delivered to my home, that kids these days will never appreciate how rough it was back in the day. They’ll never know the difficulty of calling for pizza on the telephone, talking to someone who is in a loud environment and just wants to get the transaction done quickly, who may or may not get your order written down correctly.
THEN you have to give your address (even if you’ve ordered from them before), and all your payment information (even if it’s the same as last time). THEN you had to pay for the pie and tip the driver when it arrives at your door.
Man, what a hassle.
A quiet place, relatively safe. Physical wounds can be tended to, but perhaps those are not the only injuries our little band of heroes has suffered. It is, at last, a moment to pause, and to decide how to act rather than merely react. Which begs the question “Just what is it we want to accomplish?”
I like this episode for a few reasons. The last sentence is the biggest of those. A big moment for Katherine.
Anyway, enjoy Episode 36: People Like Us.
Behind the scenes, I didn’t get as many actual words written as I had hoped to while in Kansas. The reasons for that are complex, but with the help of the Repeat Offenders I came to a couple of significant decisions, story-wise. One of those changes is particularly scary (for me), and will be challenging to get right. To be honest, it paralyzed me for a bit. I have taken on a new tactic as I make my way to the big change: Try not to think about it too much.
We say “happy” before the oddest of holidays. “Happy Memorial Day?” I’m supposed to be happy thinking of the deaths of literally millions of heroes. So yeah, “happy” here is ironic.
Before I go any farther, let me just say “Comcast sucks.”
If you’re a Comcast customer, it’s entirely possible that at this time next year, you won’t be able to read my blog. Their robots will have trawled across this post and decided that, based on the phrase in the previous paragraph, that they would prefer not to deliver the words I write to you.
And if the current administration gets its way, that will be perfectly legal.
Let’s say your Internet provider is a staunch supporter of whoever the current dipshit is living in the White House. They could block dissenting views about that dipshit from ever reaching you. They could stop you from expressing your views about the dipshit.
That’s… a problem. Your best friend in the fight for freedom is The Electronic Frontier Foundation. If they haven’t been blocked by your Internet provider, go visit and learn what you, a simple Internet user can do… and what you have to lose.
“We shall always be.” It’s a compelling slogan, a good chorus to a song, as long as you don’t think too hard about “Who is we?” and “Be what?” Elena, perhaps, answers those questions differently than the rest of the group.
Behind the scenes, this chapter is special in a couple of ways: It’s long overdue, and it has been published from the steps of a residence hall in Lawrence, Kansas. I arrived this afternoon and for the next two weeks I will be devoting myself entirely to the written word. I plan to write two more episodes (along with other stuff), but I’ll probably not publish them both while I’m here.
It’s kind of funny; I have a lot of stuff going on, but when I sit down to write this story it flows. Just gotta do that more. I like the four people in this group, and I vow to devote myself to reinforcing their individuality. As a tease: who ever heard of an even-numbered party of heroes?
