July 31st 2002
I finally worked through all the avoidance and the e-mail checking and the computer game playing and opened a Word document and forced myself to write.
I wrote the first draft of a short story. It’s a short short story so I even finished the first draft. It’s just over 2 pages long.
Now I’m off to write more.
July 31st 2002
I’ve finished my scripts for the afternoon, at least, they’re mostly finished. I’ve read all of my friend’s blogs. I’ve even sent off a few e-mails. But there is no reply e-mail in my box.
I’m bored.
And no one loves me.
I think I’ll go get myself some comfort tea. It’s cold enough in the office that I can actually drink tea. Actually, it’s cold enough in the office that I need to drink tea to stay warm. The air conditioning service is working overtime. Brrr.
Just Finished Reading… The first two trade paperbacks of Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis. (This link is the first trade. The second is called “Lust for Life”). We’ve decided to do a graphic novel once a year in our book club, and this is what we’re doing this year. It’s an absolutely funny and disturbing look at a future metropolitan society. It’s very over-the-top and sarcastic, which I like about it. The main character, Spider Jerusalem, is a reluctant journalist, writing about everything that’s wrong with the Metropolis he lives in. It’s well written, the art is fantastic. Ellis creates a crazy society that reflects how North American society works through the eyes of someone who hates it and tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to change it. It’s a light read, but there’s a lot there to think about if you only sit down and take the time. I can’t wait to discuss this one.
Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. I read this story all in one go last night. It’s a kids story, and a creepy one at that. It’s got the imagery, dark places, frightening creatures, and some really, really creepy scenes, which is a great part of why I read Gaiman’s books. I’ve heard some bad things about the book; my only complaint would be that it’s too short. He doesn’t really give himself time to explore some of the characters he’s used, doesn’t give us enough time to walk around in the world he’s created. Well, that and many of the themes Gaiman uses in the book are things he’s used before — that’s not really much of a complaint, though, as he’s borrowing these themes from legends and fairy tales. They weren’t new when he started using them, either. Also, a little more time with the characters might correct the problem. All in all, though, it’s still a really good book and worth a look from anyone who likes Gaiman’s stuff.
July 30th 2002
Sometimes I come across the coolest stories at work. There’s a conference going on in montreal where scientists are talking about how the mind and the body interact. Turns out, scientists now think the heart sort of has a mind of its own. Not only does it pump blood, but it also contains memories. Memories! The example story we heard was of a woman who had a heart transplant. The heart she got was the heart of a murder victim. Because of this “heart-memory” she was able to help the police find the killer.
Whoa. Doesn’t that sound like something out of a science fiction novel?
I’m definitely going to be getting up early tomorrow morning to hear this piece. And you can too if you read this in time. It’ll be on at 7:40 am tomorrow, Eastern time, on CBC Radio in Montreal, which is 88.5fm for all you non-regular listeners. You can also listen to the station online through the website here. Just click on “Montreal” and the realplayer window should open up.
And then, I’m off to write some weird horror story about it.
Update: I stand corrected. Turns out the heart transplant murder victim thing was just an example they used in the introduction. It’s the plot of an upcoming Clint Eastwood movie. My producer wasn’t clear on this when I talked to him last night. Still, it’s a cool story — the heart apparently does do some of its own thinking.
July 29th 2002
Aaaah, I knew when we had the rain followed by hot days that we were in for another heat wave. Of course, it’s day one. Knowing that worse must come inevitably does not really improve my mood any. At least I’m working this week, so I get to spend some of my time in an air conditioned space.
One of our friends implied on the weekend that he was going to kill the first person that said “It’s too cold” when winter came. I don’t really see why. We do have days in the winter when it is too damn cold in Montreal. And days in the summer when it’s too hot. Just because you don’t like one doesn’t mean you have to like the other. It’s like saying you must like eating whole chili peppers as a meal because you don’t like bland food. There is a happy medium.
We’ve actually been hitting the happy medium for me a lot this summer. Crisp, cool, sunny days. Cool enough to wear jeans, but not too cold to wear shorts. You know, medium. But then, I’ve heard from many people that this summer has been far too cold.
We could, of course, solve this problem by inventing personal weather generators. They would hover above you and generate whatever weather you felt like experiencing that particular day. Sunny with cloudy periods? Light rain? Hot and dry? Hot and humid? Toe-freezingly cold?
I’d set my generator to sunshine with occasional fog on most days. Or maybe fog with occasional sunshine, 19 degree optimal temperature. There’s something magical about fog. It’s cool, slightly damp, and mysterious. It hides all kinds of lovely things. There are few things more wonderous than the fog rolling back to reveal the coastline of Nova Scotia, or the pounding of the ocean heard through the cloud.
What kind of weather would surround you?
July 27th 2002
Okay. From reading other blogs I’ve gotten into the habit of checking what google searches are linking to me. So far “Bleached Blondes” has been a big hit. I should talk about Heffner’s girlfriends more often.
Anyway. Today I got the strangest one yet. Who searches for these things?
Thank Gods I’m link 22 and not link 1. I feel slightly less disturbed.
July 27th 2002
So I went to my first-ever tabletop roleplaying evening last night. I didn’t play, but I observed much. It was an evening of the Star Wars RPG, and my friend Marc runs it. This is the same friend who has offered to GM for our Dungeons and Dragons game, so it was nice to see him in action.
Man, this guy spends a lot of time planning his games! Down to the scrolling title you see at the beginning of every Star Wars movie (he read his out loud, to the theme song) and he has a planned soundtrack playing in the background during important bits! Too cool, and it really set the mood for a lot of the roleplaying that went on.
In the course of the conversation, we found out that Marc has a blog now. He berated Arin and me for obviously not reading his comments on our blogs, since apparently he has put the link in when he’s left messages on our blogs. Oh well. Now I’ll make it much easier for you. You can take a look at “Marc’s Remarks” here. I’ll add it to the sidebar in just a few moments.
I’m also adding another blog, called “Every little thing I do is magic”. I stumbled across it while making random blog links, and no, I don’t know this person. Have no idea what she’s about other than what she posts on her blog. I am enjoying reading her blog tremendously, which is more than I can say for a lot of other blogs I’ve checked out.
I have more posts kicking around in my brain, but this’ll do for the moment. I’m off to update the template with my new links.
July 26th 2002
It’s been a bad week for me, creatively speaking. I’ve made a commitment to myself, and with Arin, to write a certain number of pages, and for a certain number of hours every week. Have I written this week at all? Sadly, no.
It’s amazing how much procrastination I can do in a day. It’s also quite surprising to me how quickly the hours pass, procrastination or no.
I worked today. I had 4 scripts to write up before the end of the day. I do pretty well writing scripts, but I have to trick myself into filling them in. “I’ll just write the last two lines of the introduction — that’s easy. It’s just the name of the interviewee and what they do.” Then, “I’ll just write the questions, I sort of know how I want them to go. Now I’ll fill in the background information, since I know what we’ll be asking…all the way to writing the intro, and by the time I’ve written the rest I generally have an idea of how it’s going to go.
However, I can also procrastinate while doing this. “hmm…I’ll just fill this in and…come to think of it, why are there 10 water bottles on my desk? Someone else left these here weeks ago. I can’t work in this clutter. I’m taking these bottles to the recycling right now.”
You see how it goes. Even though I know the sooner I get these things done the better, because they need to be done, and because I have a lot of other stuff to do and I’ll be late leaving if I don’t start now.
Imagine, then, how much harder it is for me to sit myself down in front of a computer on my days off and write. I can’t trick myself, because there are no “easy lines” that I can just fill in. Also, there’s no incentive for me to finish anything, other than the satisfaction of having it done, and as you can imagine that doesn’t exactly work as a motivator. There is no producer, or editor cracking a metaphorical whip. It’s just me, and my computer.
“I’ll make some tea. Tea is always nice while I’m writing.”
“Ugh, forgot to clean the kitty litter. Better do that while I’m thinking of it.”
“This desk is a mess. I can’t work under these conditions! Better clean it off.”
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to look up some car rental rates online for our vacation. I’ll do that first.”
You get the idea. And then before you know it it’s 5:00 and hey, the Simpsons are on, and then I have to cook supper, and well, I’ll just write after supper. Of course, then the Husband starts playing his computer games, which is fine, and I don’t want to interrupt, so I pick up a book and read, which I like to do anyway.
Understand, I know this is bad for me. I know exactly what I’m doing. But I do it anyway, because I’m addicted. Addicted to procrastination.
For a while there I had myself in a pretty good habit. I was working my way through a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, which is a sort of 12-step program for creative types. It requires that you do 3 pages of journalling when you get up in the morning. Just free thought, anything that comes to mind, you get it down. You don’t even read it or really think about it. It’s a great way of just getting yourself to write, getting all the crap that’s floating around in your head out there on the page. But then you miss a day or two of journalling and the good intentions are right out the window and I’m back to not writing at all. Again.
What I really need is a good swift kick in the ass. But the only person that can do that is me, and I can’t seem to do it.
The best possible start? Stop whining about it. So you won’t hear any more from me on this particular topic. I will, however, let you know what I am creating. Once I start, that is.
In the meantime, how did this apartment get so dusty?
July 23rd 2002
The following post contains spoilers for the latest Star Wars movie, Attack of the Clones. If you have not seen this movie, and you intend to, this post will give some things away. You have been fairly warned.
I just want to get something off my chest. In speaking with many people about the latest Star Wars movie, I have heard the following many, many times.
“Wasn’t it great how they made Jar Jar evil because he’s responsible for Emperor Palpatine getting so much power?” To those of you that think this is so, I would like to explain how a democratic senate like the one pictured in the movies works. In fact, in a larger sense, you need to understand what the concept of democracy means. To wit, democracy boils down to the following thing:
Everybody gets one vote.
Now, in small groups, a democratic means of voting is pretty easy. But on a country-wide scale, for example, democracy is a hard thing to come by, since we’d all be too busy voting to actually go out and do anything. So we elect representatives, MPs and MNAs/MLAs/MPPs in Canada. In the movie, the role seems to be filled by the Senators, who are appointed or elected by their individual planets to make decisions for their homeworld.
Next comes what they vote on. This means proposals, and these proposals can be anything in the jurisdiction of their particular group. So the Canadian government, for example, makes decisions about what kinds of trade treaties have and who we trade with, how much to tax, where our tax money goes. Provincial governments regulate things like the driving laws, health care, and education. The Senate depicted in Star Wars would make decisions about relations between the planets that are members of the empire.
Who makes these proposals? It can be anyone who is a member of the governing group. In my union, anyone who is a union member can get up and propose things at our meeting, as long as we’re at a point in the meeting where it’s appropriate to do so. They can pretty much propose anything, even absolutely stupid things. In the Canadian government, MPs can propose things, though there are some restrictions on which ones and when they can make proposals, presumably to keep the weird proposals from fringe groups to a minimum. In the Star Wars movies, individual Senators can make proposals to the Senate. (This is not overtly stated, but it’s obvious, because Amidala does in the first movie, and Jar Jar in the second.).
Now, once these proposals are put forward, there’s generally a period of discussion where people can get up, ask questions, or state the pros and cons of any given issue.
A silly example: “The Prime Minister has suggested that we all paint our cars yellow, because he likes yellow. I think this is a silly idea. Besides, I don’t like yellow. I prefer blue.”
Once these questions and comments are done, everyone votes on whether or not the proposal is a good idea. To put it another way, the representatives vote on whether what was proposed should be done or not. Remember what I said earlier about everyone getting one vote? This is where that bit comes in. And if the majority of representatives decide that the proposal is a good idea, they vote for it and it gets done. And if the majority of representatives think it’s a bad idea, then they don’t vote for it and it doesn’t get done.
So what have we learned so far? Just this:
1. Democracy is based on a concept of one vote per person.
2. The people voting are (usually) either elected or appointed representatives of a larger group of people.
3. The representatives vote on proposals that are within their jurisdiction as a group.
4. Representatives can put forward a proposal to be voted on by the group.
5. The people in the group decide whether or not they want the proposal to happen by voting on it. If the majority votes yes, it happens. If the majority votes no, it doesn’t.
With me so far?
All right. Now let’s go back to Star Wars and Jar Jar. Given the following:
1. Jar Jar is the representative for his planet in the senate.
2. Jar Jar is one representative, and thus has one vote.
3. Jar Jar makes a proposal to be voted on by the group, that Senator Palpatine should get all kinds of extra powers, given that this is a time of crisis, etc. etc.
Now, what happens next? Does the Emperor magically get the powers? No. Given that this is a democratic system, there must have been a period of discussion where everyone who had an opinion to share stood up and told the group what they thought.
Then the senate would have voted. After, and only after, a majority “yes” vote would Senator Palpatine get these extra powers. He does get them. This means more than half of the people in that senate voted to give Palpatine the extra powers. This means that more than half of the people in the senate thought it was a good idea to give Palpatine extra powers.
Meaning that Jar Jar, even though he made the original proposal, has no real responsibility for the final vote, other than his one vote in favour.
Yes, he proposed the whole thing. Yes, he was manipulated into it by Palpatine, but no, he is not ultimately responsible for what happens. The senate could have, at any given point, said “this is a really stupid idea” and not voted for it. They didn’t.
Ultimately, this has nothing to do with the movie. I’ve made my feelings on the movie clear in other posts. I don’t care about the stupid movie. What I do care about is that in making a statement like “Jar Jar is responsible”, people show a bewildering lack of understanding of the way democracy works. Since these people have all been Canadians, they’ve therefore showed a lack of understanding of their own government.
Is it any wonder I’m bothered by this?
July 23rd 2002
The oddest thing is happening in my apartment right this second.
The front of my apartment has a very nice breeze blowing through the windows. It’s really nice and cool in the front rooms.
The back of my apartment, on the other hand, is still warm and humid. The windows opening in the back have absolutely no breeze blowing through them. Walking from the front to the back of my apartment is like walking into another climate.
I have put a fan in the middle of the apartment to (hopefully) correct this problem.
July 23rd 2002
Up until yesterday, and post heat-wave I was enjoying this summer’s weather in Montreal. It was cool in the nights, and sometimes cool in the days. If it was hot, it wasn’t humid, and if it was really hot it cooled down at night so I could air out the apartment.
Then, yesterday. The temperature went up above 30. Above 40 with the humiditiy calculated in. My apartment was still slightly cooler than outside though, so I was happy.
Overnight, the heat broke. It’s now cloudy and cool outside. I like cloudy and cool. Unfortunately, my apartment is well-insulated and still thinks it’s yesterday, so it is humid and hot inside. I have the windows open, and I really hope it airs out soon. I don’t like spending cool days in a hot living space.
Plus, I’m desperately in need of my morning coffee, and it’s hard to drink hot coffee when it’s so hot inside.