News flash: Darrell steps in it:
http://whedonesque.com/?comments=7377I'd love to respond to the Call to Arms about boycotting Warp, but I'm afraid I've already been boycotting them for slightly over a decade.
There's pretty much no one in the Edmonton area who is particularly surprised to learn Darrell overpriced something, and thta he considers anyone who comes in the door to be just another shill, but it's certainly gratifying to see it made clear so very, very publicly.
James
Well, things are heating up for me with Blank Shield Press (website still woefully out of date), and my enthusiasm is ramping up to match. Life is good.
Death's Door is gone to print, and there will be 200 freshly printed copies at Gencon (no, I don't expect to sell them all).
Blood and Bronze has been revised, playtested, and revised again, and is waiting on playtest #3 this week. If that works, I intend to seriously look into my token options, as - it just occured to me yesterday - bringing bags of spraypainted pennies across the border is probably against the a law somewhere, which causes some complications for bringing about a dozen or so playtest versions of the game to Gencon.
The T-shirt I'm going to call around for tomorrow; I should be able to push it through in the 4 weeks we have left. I've also booked off the whole week before Gencon, so I'll have (more) time for last minute stuff this year.
Gettin' pumped... Gencon is less than 4 weeks away.
James
Well, now I know what a tracheal bruise feels like. How many people can say that, eh?
On Tuesday at kung fu while sparring with the instructor, we had one of those zig/zag/oops moments that results in accidental contact. Typically the agressor cuts the attack short, we break apart, everyone apologizes and we keep going.
This time, I stumbled back with my hand on my throat and people acquired looks of alarm. For, you see, I had just been karate chopped in the throat. (OK, we call it 'knife hand' but you all know what I'm talking about, right?) My first thought was "Ow." My second was "Oh good, I'm still breathing." I reasured everyone that I was OK, took a bit of a break to evaluate things and continued with the class. Before you destroy me with your incredulous look of death, the initial pain had faded, I could breathe, I could swallow, and while there was a little bit of lingering pain, everything felt OK.
By the end of that hour, though, it was getting kinda sore again, and I decided to cut my lesson short (I'm normally in for three hours on Tuesdays), head home to have a quick shower and reassure my wife, then pop to emergency and see if there was cause for alarm.
I did all that, although Raven suggested I go to the emergency response thingie in Sherwood Park instead of a 'real' emergency ward, which was a good idea, so I did. I took my book and my Blackberry and prepared to sit in an uncomfortable chair for several hours.
I did, and then was looked at by a comptetant doctor, evaluated and sent home. They took x-rays just in case it wasn't the muscle bruise it seemed to be. They also said that if it were to develop into a hematoma (rapidly swelling bruise, sortof) it probably would have done so already, but there was still a slight possibility within the first 5-6 hours of it occuring. So I was prescribed Ibuprofen & ice packs to reduce the swelling, and told to stay awake until somewhat after 2 AM and make sure someone was available to drive me to the emergency should it become warranted.
Oh. So I, well, did. I'd like to die in my sleep someday, but I was thinking more like 2050 than 2005. I watched Hackers, which was just as silly as I remember it, but still leaps and bounds better than First Knight.
Did you know that if you google for 'tracheal hematoma' lots and lots of results come up about dead people?
James
First Knight Sucksor, On the Moral Obligation of the Storyteller.We watched First Knight recently, and it, um, ain't a great piece of cinema. I can more-or-less forgive the bad acting; I've come to expect that from Gere, and Connery wasn't
bad per se, just not amazing, which probably has as much to do with writing as anything else. I don't recall seeing Julia Ormond in anything else, so I have no idea what her standard is, but hopefully it's a bit higher than this.
The silly mix of psuedo-historical bits I'll forgive out of hand - Nothing about the Arthur legends has been historical since Malory first set pen to paper, and probably since well before even that.
What I will NOT forgive is the shameless gutting of the actual story. Forgive me if I rant a bit - I'm channeling not just my mother's disgust at the taming of
Grimm, but also my brother Dan's rage about the poor treatment of folk ballads and my wife's disgust at the Disney version of
The Little Mermaid.
This movie has a happy ending. Where the hell did that come from? Lancelot and Guinnivere never get it on, they just get caught kissing, and Arthur on his deathbed (the next day, no less) forgives them both, tells Lancelot to take his sword and his kingdom and do boink my wife once for me, if you please. Presumably they live happily ever after. BLECH!
That's not the story of Lancelot, Arthur and Guinniver. Lancelot comes to Arthur's company first, becomes his friend and loyal knight FIRST, and then falls in love with Guinniver. The way the movie tells it, Lancelot only comes to court because he loves her, and in fact, SWEARS FALSELY when he is knighted. Where the hell is the conflict of loyalties there? Hmm. Be true to my vow that I made last week JUST so that I could stay near the girl, or throw it over for her. Hmm...
What SHOULD happen is for Lancelot to be Arthur's good friend and true knight, then fall in love with Guinniver, then weaken and fall, THEN get caught and punished. The kingdom falls apart as a consequence. That last bit is actually really really important.
The story, like everything that survives to become a story and not just news, is a thinly disguised moral yardstick. The original myth says "Don't fuck around and lie about it, because the shit will hit the fan, and nobody wins." First Knight says "Do whatever you want and to hell with consequences, things will work out in the end."
Grr..
James
