If you are from California then you probably are aware of our current budgetary issues. Governor Brown did exactly what he said he was going to do: pass a “balanced” budget (there is plenty of debate on just how balanced it is, but it's certainly the closest we've come in a long, long time). Unfortunately he could only do this by deeply cutting a lot of things that effect all of us since he was not allowed to do much of anything to increase state revenue.
As a result of this “austere” budget, we are facing cuts to our police, fire departments, schools, courts, the DMV, schools, universities, etc are all facing severe budget cuts which mean, in the case of universities, increased fees, and in the case of pretty much everything else a cut in services and lay-offs. These changes are not something the public at large is finding pleasant, and the fact of the matter is that it's going to get a whole lot worse.
I'm not writing to talk about the budget cuts per say, nor about who I hold responsible (although if you want to know, I think the issue is that we need to increase revenue, so you can probably guess who I give the lion's share of the responsibility to); instead I want to talk about the public's reaction to this.
Everyday the news has stories now about people whinging about these cuts and tuition increases, at least they do when they can find space between talking about Jaycee Dugard, that Anthony woman (Guilty? Innocent? I don't care), and the recent royal visit. They show footage of protests at universities, upset members of the community who don't like fire station brown outs, or police cuts, and of course there's always teachers ready to yell for the cameras.
No protestors to show? Well, the news has a back-up plan when this happens. When there are no indignant members of the public to show, they simply focus on how much the heads of various agencies make. The head of one of the State Universities makes four-hundred thousand a year? Yeah, that's a lot, probably too much, but do you know what the effect of cutting his pay would be on the tuition of individual students? No, neither do I, but I know it's not going to be more than a few dollars, which is to say that it's only a drop in the bucket.
Now I'm not saying that drops in the bucket don't count, enough drops can eventually fill a bucket, but that if you, my fellow Californians, wish to complain, at least complain to the right people. Who are those people you ask? The legislators. You know, the folks who actually passed the budget. The folks who were not willing to compromise at all. The folks who had the opportunity to at least let us vote on continuing already existing taxes, but would not. The folks who are more interested in trying to make their political opponents look bad than they are in doing what is best for their constituents. The folks we voted for!
In the interest in full disclosure, I am a government employee, and my agency has been heavily hit by these cuts. Even our agency head (who is undoubtedly overpaid, but even if he worked for free it would not fill the budget hole) has said that layoffs are likely, so now we get to wait and see what comes of discussions between the agency and the union (both of whom still seem more interested in making the other look like the bad guy than anything else) to see if I, and a lot of my co-workers, get to keep our jobs.
Still, I'm not writing this to get your pity (although if you have an opening for a smartarse writer, let me know), I've just grown very tired of seeing the news completely miss the point about what the real problem is. It's not unions, it's not overpaid management (they are a problem, but at this point it's like complaining about a leaky faucet while the stove is on fire), and it's certainly not the workers. It's the people who control the money, so stop protesting against the wrong people, and let your elected officials know that you are not happy, and what you are willing to do about it. Are you happy with reduced police protection, longer lines at the DMV, the courts, and wherever else you may wait in line? Then let them know you're cool with it. Are you willing to pay a little more in taxes to continue receiving the services you're used to? Let them know that. It may not ultimately do any good, but at least you'll be bitching out the right people.
Of course this wouldn't be a ramble if I did not put something completely off-topic into it, and that usual off-topic thing is my writing. I am still in process of working on a second draft of the Typewriter Challenge story.
Yes, that would be the story I intended to finish the second draft of back in May, but I am not finished with the first half of the climax, so there's only about ten pages to go, then I just need to come up with a better title. I am happier about the final conflict in this version, as I totally had the scale of the scene off originally (and I was not about to retype four pages to fix it at that point). As for the title, it is currently called “That Type of Adventure”, but I really want to come up with something better.
Finally, for now anyway, it's state fair time here in California, and the weather was really nice for the start of it this year. I may or may not do a proper blog post about it later, but I do have a growing collection of pictures from it on both my Facebook and my Google+ if you are interested.
I guess that's about it for now. Remember to tell your friends to read “Mallville”, as it's still up there in all of its first draft gloryt, and until we talk again: don't trust the darkness.
Showing posts with label Rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rambling. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The Walking Dead 83 and 84 **SPOILERS**
It's been a while since my last ramble, and I'm sure you're totally interested to know what I've been up to, if not, feel free to skip ahead a bit to see some spoilery rambling about “The Walking Dead”.
I have actually been working on more rambling, there are a couple of half-finished rants that just kind of got away from me. Maybe I'll finish them, maybe not. Since this is really just about me writing every day, whether it's fiction or not, it doesn't totally matter if these ever actually get posted.
That's not to say I have not been writing fiction. While I haven't done any recent work on the Mallville re-write (sorry), I have finished my #TypewriterChallenge story. What was supposed to be a little ten page fantasy story ended up being a seventy-four page novelette. Oops.
I am actually quite happy with the first draft of it; it's probably a PG-13 rating (there's one F-bomb, but you can usually get away with one), and short of having the scale of the climax completely change halfway through the scene, it came out quite well. My goal is to get it completely re-written onto the computer by this time next week. What does this mean for you? Nothing really. I still have no idea who I can submit something like it to. It's far too long for any of the podcasts I would love to hear my name on, and I really don't know who else to submit it to.
I know, I know, that's what Google's for.
Of course there's always the Amazon route; might sell a copy or two, who knows?
Anyway, my writing situation is not what this ramble is about, so lets get on to the meat... if a ramble can be said to actually have meat.
It's no secret to anyone who pays any attention to me online that I love zombies; I wrote and posted an entire novel about them after all. It's also not much of a secret that I love “The Walking Dead”, and that goes for both the book and the TV show, but to give you an idea of how much I like TWD, let me elaborate.
When I was working on “Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse” I took a break from zombie fiction. There were a few exceptions here and there (I did watch “Diary of the Dead” and “Zombieland” during this time, and play a little “Left 4 Dead”, but those are infecteds, not really zombies), but for the most part I did not read zombie books or go out of my way to see zombie movies. The reason I did this was because I did not want to accidentally steal something from another work without realizing it, and because I did not want to see something I had written, or planned on writing, used by someone else (It annoyed me to no end when I watched “Dead & Breakfast” later on and discovered it took place in a town called Lovelock), which might discourage me from leaving it in the story.
There was one absolute exception to this undead fast however, and that was “The Walking Dead”. I've read a number of zombie based comics over the years including the fairly hit or miss “Zombie World”, the routinely awful on-again, off-again “Night of the Living Dead” (and it's weird little off-shoots and re-boots), and “Marvel Zombies” which has gone downhill sharply after the end of the “Army of Darkness” crossover, but TWD is easily the best. I usually read my comics in alphabetical order, but TWD always goes to the top of the stack, and I was not about to let myself get a year or two behind on it just because I was afraid of copying it (and to my credit, I don't think I did copy any of it)
So we're clear on one point now, and that's that I like TWD. I am however fairly unreliable about picking up my saver at the comic shop on a regular basis, so it may sometimes have two or three months worth of books in it, but as I said, TWD always goes right to the top of the stack.
Last Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, so, Osaka in tow (so we can get more of the free books), I went to A-1 bright and early Saturday morning and picked up my two and a half months of comics (I am grateful that they allow me to go so long between pick-ups). In it were issues 83 and 84 of TWD.
Before I continue, I want to make sure that you understand that I am going to be dropping some heavy ***spoilers*** for these two issues here, so if you are not current on this series, then go read them, and then come back and read this. Really, I think if I had known what was going to happen I would not have had the same reaction to it.
Osaka wanted to get a coffee (well, I get the coffee, she gets a chai or a vaguely coffee-flavoured sugarbomb), so we went over to It's A Grind, and I read TWD while she read her foody mystery.
Last week, or maybe it was the week before, The Geek Savants talked briefly about issue 83, but without giving much of anything away. Given Rick's final line in issue 82, I figured the surprise with the events of 83 were going to be about Rick doing something cold-blooded to save his son.
Further evidence of this to me is whhat happens when Rick and Carl try to make a run for it through the zombie horde with Jessie and her son, Ron, using the old smear-yourself-in-zombie-guts trick. Unfortunately Ron pisses himself in fear (and hey, who can blame him?), and this smell is seemingly enough to get the zeds' attention.
With Ron a goner, Rick tells Jessie to leave him (after all, he is technically someone else's kid to Rick), but of course she won't. Rick will gladly leave her to die too, but she's holding Carl's hand. Rick fixes this with a quick swing of his trusty hatchet. Cold, yeah? That's not the shocking bit though (although it is fun to note that Rick is now directly responsible for that entire family's death)
Douglas, too much of a coward to take his own life, starts taking potshots at the zombies with a handgun. You can't really call what he is doing aiming so much as just committing suicide by zombie while Rick yells for him to stop firing the gun (it attracts more zeds). It's when the shooting stops that the shocking bit occurs.
So I flip the page and am greeted by a two page spread of Carl's face... with a large chunk of it missing thanks to a shot from Douglas' gun. This is where my jaw drops, and I sit there for a minute just staring at these two pages.
It has been a while since Kirkman has managed to shock me with something in TWD. The last time was the colour back-up in issue 75 (you know, the bit with the superheroes and aliens), although that really doesn't count. The last time he shocked me in continuity was at the end of the Made to Suffer storyline where Lori and Judith (along with half the book's cast) die.
Kirkman's willingness to kill and maim his characters has always impressed me. He never seems to be afraid to do something to even the most central of characters (just look at Rick's stump), but I always thought that Carl was safe as long as the series wasn't ending. Of course Kirkman has stated before that no one is safe, and this is just him proving it once again.
Naturally I went right on and read 84, in which some of the sting of Carl's injury is dulled by the fact that he is apparently going to survive it, but you only get that confirmation after an awesome fight between Rick, Michonne, and the zombie horde (although they do get more help as the fight continues). Of course this battle ends in another nice, if not jaw-dropping, two page spread.
As usually happens whenever a TWD storyline ends in the deaths of a lot of characters (although not on the level of “Made to Suffer”), things start to be set up for the next story, but it is a little different this time. Normally the end of a storyline results in the remaining survivors running to find a new illusion of safety somewhere else, meeting new zombie fodder... er, survivors, and starting the whole cycle over again, but that's not what I read into this.
See, for once Rick has realized that if they really do work together, they can stand against the zeds. The plan sounds like it is going to revolve around getting things back to the way they were, but with a big difference. This time, instead of trying to pretend the world hasn't ended, Rick wants to train everyone to fight. This is a big change for the series; it seems like Rick really wants to make a stand and stake a claim this time.
Of course it will all end in tears, but if you've been reading this series for any length in time.
I'm not only keen to see how Rick tries to organize the community, especially after he very visibly tried to abandon all of them, and left Jessie and Ron to the roamers. I am also interested to see what is left of Carl. Will he still be himself, just with part of his face missing? Will he be a vegetable, little more than a mindless zombie himself? I don't know, but what I do know is that it will be interesting, heart-breaking, and read by me.
That's quite enough rambling for now; this is a lot longer than it should be.
Until you hear from me again, don't trust the darkness.
I have actually been working on more rambling, there are a couple of half-finished rants that just kind of got away from me. Maybe I'll finish them, maybe not. Since this is really just about me writing every day, whether it's fiction or not, it doesn't totally matter if these ever actually get posted.
That's not to say I have not been writing fiction. While I haven't done any recent work on the Mallville re-write (sorry), I have finished my #TypewriterChallenge story. What was supposed to be a little ten page fantasy story ended up being a seventy-four page novelette. Oops.
I am actually quite happy with the first draft of it; it's probably a PG-13 rating (there's one F-bomb, but you can usually get away with one), and short of having the scale of the climax completely change halfway through the scene, it came out quite well. My goal is to get it completely re-written onto the computer by this time next week. What does this mean for you? Nothing really. I still have no idea who I can submit something like it to. It's far too long for any of the podcasts I would love to hear my name on, and I really don't know who else to submit it to.
I know, I know, that's what Google's for.
Of course there's always the Amazon route; might sell a copy or two, who knows?
Anyway, my writing situation is not what this ramble is about, so lets get on to the meat... if a ramble can be said to actually have meat.
It's no secret to anyone who pays any attention to me online that I love zombies; I wrote and posted an entire novel about them after all. It's also not much of a secret that I love “The Walking Dead”, and that goes for both the book and the TV show, but to give you an idea of how much I like TWD, let me elaborate.
When I was working on “Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse” I took a break from zombie fiction. There were a few exceptions here and there (I did watch “Diary of the Dead” and “Zombieland” during this time, and play a little “Left 4 Dead”, but those are infecteds, not really zombies), but for the most part I did not read zombie books or go out of my way to see zombie movies. The reason I did this was because I did not want to accidentally steal something from another work without realizing it, and because I did not want to see something I had written, or planned on writing, used by someone else (It annoyed me to no end when I watched “Dead & Breakfast” later on and discovered it took place in a town called Lovelock), which might discourage me from leaving it in the story.
There was one absolute exception to this undead fast however, and that was “The Walking Dead”. I've read a number of zombie based comics over the years including the fairly hit or miss “Zombie World”, the routinely awful on-again, off-again “Night of the Living Dead” (and it's weird little off-shoots and re-boots), and “Marvel Zombies” which has gone downhill sharply after the end of the “Army of Darkness” crossover, but TWD is easily the best. I usually read my comics in alphabetical order, but TWD always goes to the top of the stack, and I was not about to let myself get a year or two behind on it just because I was afraid of copying it (and to my credit, I don't think I did copy any of it)
So we're clear on one point now, and that's that I like TWD. I am however fairly unreliable about picking up my saver at the comic shop on a regular basis, so it may sometimes have two or three months worth of books in it, but as I said, TWD always goes right to the top of the stack.
Last Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, so, Osaka in tow (so we can get more of the free books), I went to A-1 bright and early Saturday morning and picked up my two and a half months of comics (I am grateful that they allow me to go so long between pick-ups). In it were issues 83 and 84 of TWD.
Before I continue, I want to make sure that you understand that I am going to be dropping some heavy ***spoilers*** for these two issues here, so if you are not current on this series, then go read them, and then come back and read this. Really, I think if I had known what was going to happen I would not have had the same reaction to it.
Osaka wanted to get a coffee (well, I get the coffee, she gets a chai or a vaguely coffee-flavoured sugarbomb), so we went over to It's A Grind, and I read TWD while she read her foody mystery.
Last week, or maybe it was the week before, The Geek Savants talked briefly about issue 83, but without giving much of anything away. Given Rick's final line in issue 82, I figured the surprise with the events of 83 were going to be about Rick doing something cold-blooded to save his son.
Further evidence of this to me is whhat happens when Rick and Carl try to make a run for it through the zombie horde with Jessie and her son, Ron, using the old smear-yourself-in-zombie-guts trick. Unfortunately Ron pisses himself in fear (and hey, who can blame him?), and this smell is seemingly enough to get the zeds' attention.
With Ron a goner, Rick tells Jessie to leave him (after all, he is technically someone else's kid to Rick), but of course she won't. Rick will gladly leave her to die too, but she's holding Carl's hand. Rick fixes this with a quick swing of his trusty hatchet. Cold, yeah? That's not the shocking bit though (although it is fun to note that Rick is now directly responsible for that entire family's death)
Douglas, too much of a coward to take his own life, starts taking potshots at the zombies with a handgun. You can't really call what he is doing aiming so much as just committing suicide by zombie while Rick yells for him to stop firing the gun (it attracts more zeds). It's when the shooting stops that the shocking bit occurs.
So I flip the page and am greeted by a two page spread of Carl's face... with a large chunk of it missing thanks to a shot from Douglas' gun. This is where my jaw drops, and I sit there for a minute just staring at these two pages.
It has been a while since Kirkman has managed to shock me with something in TWD. The last time was the colour back-up in issue 75 (you know, the bit with the superheroes and aliens), although that really doesn't count. The last time he shocked me in continuity was at the end of the Made to Suffer storyline where Lori and Judith (along with half the book's cast) die.
Kirkman's willingness to kill and maim his characters has always impressed me. He never seems to be afraid to do something to even the most central of characters (just look at Rick's stump), but I always thought that Carl was safe as long as the series wasn't ending. Of course Kirkman has stated before that no one is safe, and this is just him proving it once again.
Naturally I went right on and read 84, in which some of the sting of Carl's injury is dulled by the fact that he is apparently going to survive it, but you only get that confirmation after an awesome fight between Rick, Michonne, and the zombie horde (although they do get more help as the fight continues). Of course this battle ends in another nice, if not jaw-dropping, two page spread.
As usually happens whenever a TWD storyline ends in the deaths of a lot of characters (although not on the level of “Made to Suffer”), things start to be set up for the next story, but it is a little different this time. Normally the end of a storyline results in the remaining survivors running to find a new illusion of safety somewhere else, meeting new zombie fodder... er, survivors, and starting the whole cycle over again, but that's not what I read into this.
See, for once Rick has realized that if they really do work together, they can stand against the zeds. The plan sounds like it is going to revolve around getting things back to the way they were, but with a big difference. This time, instead of trying to pretend the world hasn't ended, Rick wants to train everyone to fight. This is a big change for the series; it seems like Rick really wants to make a stand and stake a claim this time.
Of course it will all end in tears, but if you've been reading this series for any length in time.
I'm not only keen to see how Rick tries to organize the community, especially after he very visibly tried to abandon all of them, and left Jessie and Ron to the roamers. I am also interested to see what is left of Carl. Will he still be himself, just with part of his face missing? Will he be a vegetable, little more than a mindless zombie himself? I don't know, but what I do know is that it will be interesting, heart-breaking, and read by me.
That's quite enough rambling for now; this is a lot longer than it should be.
Until you hear from me again, don't trust the darkness.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Headshot
If there's one thing you can count on from local television news, it's making mountains out of molehills. Sacramento seems really good at this, but I'm sure that it must happen everywhere, right? Please say I'm right.
The latest molehill is this video made by some local teens in Rocklin. It didn't make me laugh out loud, but I did find it amusing.
It is of course a spoof of “Call of Duty: Black Ops”, but what they are making a mountain out of it for is that it was recorded at their high school. Here's the story from News 10, a station that I watch because they usually don't go for this sort of crap:
What was that that Liz said? Yup, that's right, the “C” word; Columbine! And look, this story aired a week before the anniversary of said tragedy, although I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Lets see if they find some way of running something about this again tomorrow.
Anyway, thank you Liz for being the stereotypical out-of-touch adult. To be fair, I'm sure the reporter did not give you the context of the video they showed you (and I doubt they showed you all seven minutes of it), because they certainly misrepresented it in the story. I got the feeling like they were trying to represent this as something more than a funny video produced by creative teens who actually put down the controllers for a few hours and went and did something else... even if that something else was still video game related.
Of course it doesn't help me think that Channel 10 was not trying to deceive me as to what the video is about by repeatedly showing the headshot clips from 3:40 and 5:20 during the promos and intro to the story. I don't expect intellectual honesty from the media anymore, but I do... well, did, hold Channel 10 at a higher standard than the other local stations (Fox 40 and CBS 13, I'm looking at you here). Why was I still able to be disillusioned by News 10? Well, unlike some other stations they don't generally do news-free newscasts (I watched in amazement one time as another local station managed to do twenty minutes of broadcast without actually covering any news), and while they may get silly sometimes, and they may obsess, like every other station, about the fragging Kings, they seemed like they treated the news with a little respect.
I guess this explains why they stopped running the ads saying that they don't do sensationalism.
Come on, News 10, you're better than this. A Youtube video of students making a parody of a video game is never news, and asking the school if they new about it while it was being filmed is just stupid. If you notice in the vid, even the little slivers of it shown in the news story, they are not holding any weapons; their hands are empty, and all of the sound and visual effects are added later on computer. If you saw a kid in a sombrero running around while being video taped, would you automatically think “OMG, they're making a school shooting video!”? I certainly hope not.
Ugh, okay, that's enough for now. Until you hear from me again, don't trust the darkness.
I think I like that one.
The latest molehill is this video made by some local teens in Rocklin. It didn't make me laugh out loud, but I did find it amusing.
It is of course a spoof of “Call of Duty: Black Ops”, but what they are making a mountain out of it for is that it was recorded at their high school. Here's the story from News 10, a station that I watch because they usually don't go for this sort of crap:
What was that that Liz said? Yup, that's right, the “C” word; Columbine! And look, this story aired a week before the anniversary of said tragedy, although I'm sure that's just a coincidence. Lets see if they find some way of running something about this again tomorrow.
Anyway, thank you Liz for being the stereotypical out-of-touch adult. To be fair, I'm sure the reporter did not give you the context of the video they showed you (and I doubt they showed you all seven minutes of it), because they certainly misrepresented it in the story. I got the feeling like they were trying to represent this as something more than a funny video produced by creative teens who actually put down the controllers for a few hours and went and did something else... even if that something else was still video game related.
Of course it doesn't help me think that Channel 10 was not trying to deceive me as to what the video is about by repeatedly showing the headshot clips from 3:40 and 5:20 during the promos and intro to the story. I don't expect intellectual honesty from the media anymore, but I do... well, did, hold Channel 10 at a higher standard than the other local stations (Fox 40 and CBS 13, I'm looking at you here). Why was I still able to be disillusioned by News 10? Well, unlike some other stations they don't generally do news-free newscasts (I watched in amazement one time as another local station managed to do twenty minutes of broadcast without actually covering any news), and while they may get silly sometimes, and they may obsess, like every other station, about the fragging Kings, they seemed like they treated the news with a little respect.
I guess this explains why they stopped running the ads saying that they don't do sensationalism.
Come on, News 10, you're better than this. A Youtube video of students making a parody of a video game is never news, and asking the school if they new about it while it was being filmed is just stupid. If you notice in the vid, even the little slivers of it shown in the news story, they are not holding any weapons; their hands are empty, and all of the sound and visual effects are added later on computer. If you saw a kid in a sombrero running around while being video taped, would you automatically think “OMG, they're making a school shooting video!”? I certainly hope not.
Ugh, okay, that's enough for now. Until you hear from me again, don't trust the darkness.
I think I like that one.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Pick Three
A few weeks back, a listener asked the hosts of “The Weekly Geek” what their three favourite albums were. This is of course not a question a person can just answer off the top of their heads, and indeed may just be impossible to answer. Can you pick your three favourite albums of all time? I have trouble even picking my ten favourite winter movies.
What the hosts ended up doing were picking the three albums they would want to expose to a stranger to. This stuck in my rather cluttered mind, and has now come back with answers. The three albums I would suggest that you listen to are:
No More Kings (2007)
While there is a lot of great stuff on their second album, “And the Flying Boombox:”, No More Kings' first album is still my favourite. From the zombie-ness of “Zombie Me” to the love letter to “Knight Rider” that is “Michael (Jump In)”, their original album is just fun, and cheerful, and listening to it never fails to make me smile (the same can be said for “And the Flying Boombox” as well).
I originally discovered No More Kings through Pandora. I listen to Pandora a lot while I am writing, and it was while I was working on Mallville that I first heard them. The station I was listening to had artists like Jonathan Coulton, Bareknaked Ladies, Bowling for Soup, and Weezer as its basis, and as I was busily typing away I suddenly realized that the song playing was about the living dead; it was “Zombie Me”.
After hearing a couple more of their songs, “Michael (Jump In)” and I believe “The Grand Experiment” , I rushed out to Dimple Records and bought their album (new, not used). Aside from having a good sound, the lyrics of the songs appeal to my inner geek (as well as my outer geek) with references to everything from “The Smurfs” to “Ghistbusters 2” to “Peanuts” sprinkled throughout them.
Sadly there is no video for “Zombie Me”, but the video for “Sweep the Leg” is a truly awesome, if long, vid which brings me back to the Michael Jackson style of music video production. Check out the appearance by Mr. Belding from “Saved by the Bell” in the beginning
Apocalyptica: 7th Symphony (2010)
I know, I've already babbled about them a couple of days ago, but that was about their sixth album, which is good, but it's no “7th Symphony”. I do not have all of their albums, but of what I do have, this one is my favourite. From the awesome rock of “End of Me” (featuring Gavin Rossdale of Bush fame) and “Not Strong Enough” (featuring Brent Smith) to the instrumental piece “The Shadow of Venus” (which appears on the deluxe version) which is probably one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard, this album is fantastic from start to finish. Even the song “Bring Them to Light”, which is exactly the sort of screamy heavy metal that I don't like has grown on me.
I first discovered this group while listening to a political podcast that was using some of the tracks from “Plays Metallica by Four Cellos” and “Inquisition Symphony” as transitional music between segments. Hearing Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters” played beautifully on the cello got my attention to the point that I had to go to that show's web site and see who this group was.
I love music done in unusual styles, at that point I had already had an album of Metallica music done on classical piano (Scott D. Davis' “Pianotarium”), and could not pass up a chance to get some more Metallica done in the wrong style, so when I happened to see “Inquisition Symphony” while looking for something to use a coupon on at Borders, I snatched it up.
If you listen to their early work, where there is just the cellos and almost all the songs are covers, and then compare it to their last two albums where it is all original music and they have added a drummer and vocals, you can really hear how this group has matured from simply making metal beautiful to making it epically so.
The video I've chosen to provide as a demonstration is “Broken Pieces” which features Lacey Sturm of Flyleaf.
Flyleaf: Memento Mori (2009)
“Memento Mori” is Flyleaf's second album, and while the band's Christian background shows A LOT more strongly on this album (on the first album, someone who knew nothing about the group could easily not realize that this is Christian Music), they do not consider themselves a Christian group. I'm not sure why they feel the need to distance themselves from their faith (especially since the we're-not-a-Christian-group argument seems a little harder to defend given the lyrics on this album), but I don't really care because I love their sound.
I find listening to this album to be very uplifting, now whether that's due to the spirituality behind the lyrics or now, I cannot really say. I really like the tracks “In the Dark”, “Beautiful Bride”, and “Swept Away”, but my absolute favourite on the album is “Arise”.
“Arise” is the song I was heard in my head when thinking about how to end “Mallville”, and I consider it to be a sort of unofficial closing theme to the story. It is probably no surprise that this is my favourite of all of Flyleaf's songs, only possibly edged out by the awesome remix of it by Ben Moody on the “Remember to Live” EP that came out last year.
I discovered Flyleaf because Dimple Records was pushing their original EP at the register back when it came out in 2007. The clerk pushed it as being similar to Evanescence, saying that “she screams while she sings”. The idea of screamy singing did not really appeal to me, but it was also only two bucks, and I'm always happy to try something new, especially if it's cheap. I loved all of the songs on the EP, and bought the original full album twice (the second time because it was re-released with acoustic versions of some of the songs).
There is no video for “Arise”, or In the Dark”, or “Swept Away”, and the video for “Beautiful Bride”, like most of their Memento Mori videos is extremely WTF-y, so I have chosen the video for “Again”. The video is still WTF-y, but not to the point that it may distract you from the music like some of the others might.
So there you have it; the three albums I would most recommend you give a chance. Are they my all time favourites? Would I still choose these three albums five years from now? Ten? Not necessarily. I could never narrow down my CD collection to a mere 3 that are the best; heck, these three weren't even easy picks (with the exception of “7th Symphony”). Even once decided on picking a No More Kings album, it took a lot of thought to not choose “And The Flying Boombox”, and for a while there the third album was going to be the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” soundtrack (which is every bit as awesome as the film... for the most part)
This tends to guarantee that I get no feedback, but I”m going to ask anyway. What would your three be?
Alright, that's enough babbling for now. Until next time, remember that the first cut is not always the deepest; in fact it's usually shallow and hesitant since it takes a few stabs to really build up your confidence in what you are doing.
No, that's just creepy, and way too long.
What the hosts ended up doing were picking the three albums they would want to expose to a stranger to. This stuck in my rather cluttered mind, and has now come back with answers. The three albums I would suggest that you listen to are:
No More Kings (2007)
While there is a lot of great stuff on their second album, “And the Flying Boombox:”, No More Kings' first album is still my favourite. From the zombie-ness of “Zombie Me” to the love letter to “Knight Rider” that is “Michael (Jump In)”, their original album is just fun, and cheerful, and listening to it never fails to make me smile (the same can be said for “And the Flying Boombox” as well).
I originally discovered No More Kings through Pandora. I listen to Pandora a lot while I am writing, and it was while I was working on Mallville that I first heard them. The station I was listening to had artists like Jonathan Coulton, Bareknaked Ladies, Bowling for Soup, and Weezer as its basis, and as I was busily typing away I suddenly realized that the song playing was about the living dead; it was “Zombie Me”.
After hearing a couple more of their songs, “Michael (Jump In)” and I believe “The Grand Experiment” , I rushed out to Dimple Records and bought their album (new, not used). Aside from having a good sound, the lyrics of the songs appeal to my inner geek (as well as my outer geek) with references to everything from “The Smurfs” to “Ghistbusters 2” to “Peanuts” sprinkled throughout them.
Sadly there is no video for “Zombie Me”, but the video for “Sweep the Leg” is a truly awesome, if long, vid which brings me back to the Michael Jackson style of music video production. Check out the appearance by Mr. Belding from “Saved by the Bell” in the beginning
Apocalyptica: 7th Symphony (2010)
I know, I've already babbled about them a couple of days ago, but that was about their sixth album, which is good, but it's no “7th Symphony”. I do not have all of their albums, but of what I do have, this one is my favourite. From the awesome rock of “End of Me” (featuring Gavin Rossdale of Bush fame) and “Not Strong Enough” (featuring Brent Smith) to the instrumental piece “The Shadow of Venus” (which appears on the deluxe version) which is probably one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard, this album is fantastic from start to finish. Even the song “Bring Them to Light”, which is exactly the sort of screamy heavy metal that I don't like has grown on me.
I first discovered this group while listening to a political podcast that was using some of the tracks from “Plays Metallica by Four Cellos” and “Inquisition Symphony” as transitional music between segments. Hearing Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters” played beautifully on the cello got my attention to the point that I had to go to that show's web site and see who this group was.
I love music done in unusual styles, at that point I had already had an album of Metallica music done on classical piano (Scott D. Davis' “Pianotarium”), and could not pass up a chance to get some more Metallica done in the wrong style, so when I happened to see “Inquisition Symphony” while looking for something to use a coupon on at Borders, I snatched it up.
If you listen to their early work, where there is just the cellos and almost all the songs are covers, and then compare it to their last two albums where it is all original music and they have added a drummer and vocals, you can really hear how this group has matured from simply making metal beautiful to making it epically so.
The video I've chosen to provide as a demonstration is “Broken Pieces” which features Lacey Sturm of Flyleaf.
Flyleaf: Memento Mori (2009)
“Memento Mori” is Flyleaf's second album, and while the band's Christian background shows A LOT more strongly on this album (on the first album, someone who knew nothing about the group could easily not realize that this is Christian Music), they do not consider themselves a Christian group. I'm not sure why they feel the need to distance themselves from their faith (especially since the we're-not-a-Christian-group argument seems a little harder to defend given the lyrics on this album), but I don't really care because I love their sound.
I find listening to this album to be very uplifting, now whether that's due to the spirituality behind the lyrics or now, I cannot really say. I really like the tracks “In the Dark”, “Beautiful Bride”, and “Swept Away”, but my absolute favourite on the album is “Arise”.
“Arise” is the song I was heard in my head when thinking about how to end “Mallville”, and I consider it to be a sort of unofficial closing theme to the story. It is probably no surprise that this is my favourite of all of Flyleaf's songs, only possibly edged out by the awesome remix of it by Ben Moody on the “Remember to Live” EP that came out last year.
I discovered Flyleaf because Dimple Records was pushing their original EP at the register back when it came out in 2007. The clerk pushed it as being similar to Evanescence, saying that “she screams while she sings”. The idea of screamy singing did not really appeal to me, but it was also only two bucks, and I'm always happy to try something new, especially if it's cheap. I loved all of the songs on the EP, and bought the original full album twice (the second time because it was re-released with acoustic versions of some of the songs).
There is no video for “Arise”, or In the Dark”, or “Swept Away”, and the video for “Beautiful Bride”, like most of their Memento Mori videos is extremely WTF-y, so I have chosen the video for “Again”. The video is still WTF-y, but not to the point that it may distract you from the music like some of the others might.
So there you have it; the three albums I would most recommend you give a chance. Are they my all time favourites? Would I still choose these three albums five years from now? Ten? Not necessarily. I could never narrow down my CD collection to a mere 3 that are the best; heck, these three weren't even easy picks (with the exception of “7th Symphony”). Even once decided on picking a No More Kings album, it took a lot of thought to not choose “And The Flying Boombox”, and for a while there the third album was going to be the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” soundtrack (which is every bit as awesome as the film... for the most part)
This tends to guarantee that I get no feedback, but I”m going to ask anyway. What would your three be?
Alright, that's enough babbling for now. Until next time, remember that the first cut is not always the deepest; in fact it's usually shallow and hesitant since it takes a few stabs to really build up your confidence in what you are doing.
No, that's just creepy, and way too long.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Zombie-Come-Lately
I have been a fan of zombies since I first saw the music video for Michael Jackson's “Thriller” as a child. I remember that we watched it, along with the making of it, in school; it was probably in first grade. From that point on I have always loved the living dead as my favourite movie monsters.
Zombie movies tended to be a little hard to find over the years. Of course there was the Romero series of films, and the Return of the Living Dead” series (which are inferior to Romero's films, in my opinion), and that was pretty much it for a long time unless you wanted something really odd or schlocky. Then suddenly zombies exploded in popularity. “The Walking Dead”, “Zombie Survival Guide”,“World War Z”, “28 Days Later”, a sort-of remake of “Dawn of the Dead” (which is fairly meh in my book), “Left 4 Dead”, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, etc. I was in absolute zed heaven.
The resurgence of zombies along with inspiration from a number of podcasts finally got me to write a book (well, it turned out to be two books) that I had been tossing around in my head for years: “Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse”. I had finally achieved a long time goal, and had more zombie fiction available to me than I can actually read/watch/play. Of course it also brought out a bunch of bandwagon-jumping fans, or zombie-come-latelys.
One thing I would like to make perfectly clear about Mallville. I did not write it because zombies were becoming popular again; I had the original idea for it back in 2004 or 2005, and started writing and posting it to challenge myself to get back into writing. I didn't realize how popular zombies were becoming again until I was already posting it. So while it may look like I am one of the zombie-come-latelys, I do not consider myself such.
Of course when something gets too popular, there naturally has to be a backlash against it. We've seen this recently with vampires thanks largely to the “Twilight” series, but, and this is just my opinion, sparkly vampires deserve it both for being pretty lame and for the rabid fangirls that think it's romantic for a man to break into their bedroom and spy on them while they sleep. I don't think zombies deserve this kind of backlash.
Zombies seem to be attacked based either on their sheer popularity, or based on the fact that the Internet treats them as if they were a meme, and has run them into the ground a bit. I have been disheartened to see people that I respect expressing their dislike of both the living dead genre, and fans of it; in particular fans who only jumped onto the zombie bandwagon. I understand why some people are getting burnt out on the genre: once I saw both a Lake Wobegon zombie story and one that takes place at a Star Trek convention I knew things were going a bit far. Of course Marvel Comics did not help things any by not stopping “Marvel Zombies” after the “Army of Darkness” crossover, and instead running the series into the fragging ground.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with people disliking zombie fiction; everyone has their own likes and dislikes. What I do have a problem with is acting like all fans of zombie fiction are teenage basement-dwellers who glom onto anything that is popular on certain Internet message boards. I have liked zeds since the 80's, and when they finally burn out this time around, and all of the zombie-come-latelys have moved on to the next meme, I will still be here; a fan of the living dead.
Hopefully by the time zombies roll around to the top of pop culture next time around, I'll have the Mallville books completely re-written and ready to pitch to someone looking to cash in on the craze. It shouldn't be too hard when polished up; hell, the first draft version that I posted online is already better than “Twilight”.
Okay, that's enough babbling for today. Until next time, watch the shadows.
Hmm, better, but still not quite right.
Zombie movies tended to be a little hard to find over the years. Of course there was the Romero series of films, and the Return of the Living Dead” series (which are inferior to Romero's films, in my opinion), and that was pretty much it for a long time unless you wanted something really odd or schlocky. Then suddenly zombies exploded in popularity. “The Walking Dead”, “Zombie Survival Guide”,“World War Z”, “28 Days Later”, a sort-of remake of “Dawn of the Dead” (which is fairly meh in my book), “Left 4 Dead”, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, etc. I was in absolute zed heaven.
The resurgence of zombies along with inspiration from a number of podcasts finally got me to write a book (well, it turned out to be two books) that I had been tossing around in my head for years: “Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse”. I had finally achieved a long time goal, and had more zombie fiction available to me than I can actually read/watch/play. Of course it also brought out a bunch of bandwagon-jumping fans, or zombie-come-latelys.
One thing I would like to make perfectly clear about Mallville. I did not write it because zombies were becoming popular again; I had the original idea for it back in 2004 or 2005, and started writing and posting it to challenge myself to get back into writing. I didn't realize how popular zombies were becoming again until I was already posting it. So while it may look like I am one of the zombie-come-latelys, I do not consider myself such.
Of course when something gets too popular, there naturally has to be a backlash against it. We've seen this recently with vampires thanks largely to the “Twilight” series, but, and this is just my opinion, sparkly vampires deserve it both for being pretty lame and for the rabid fangirls that think it's romantic for a man to break into their bedroom and spy on them while they sleep. I don't think zombies deserve this kind of backlash.
Zombies seem to be attacked based either on their sheer popularity, or based on the fact that the Internet treats them as if they were a meme, and has run them into the ground a bit. I have been disheartened to see people that I respect expressing their dislike of both the living dead genre, and fans of it; in particular fans who only jumped onto the zombie bandwagon. I understand why some people are getting burnt out on the genre: once I saw both a Lake Wobegon zombie story and one that takes place at a Star Trek convention I knew things were going a bit far. Of course Marvel Comics did not help things any by not stopping “Marvel Zombies” after the “Army of Darkness” crossover, and instead running the series into the fragging ground.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with people disliking zombie fiction; everyone has their own likes and dislikes. What I do have a problem with is acting like all fans of zombie fiction are teenage basement-dwellers who glom onto anything that is popular on certain Internet message boards. I have liked zeds since the 80's, and when they finally burn out this time around, and all of the zombie-come-latelys have moved on to the next meme, I will still be here; a fan of the living dead.
Hopefully by the time zombies roll around to the top of pop culture next time around, I'll have the Mallville books completely re-written and ready to pitch to someone looking to cash in on the craze. It shouldn't be too hard when polished up; hell, the first draft version that I posted online is already better than “Twilight”.
Okay, that's enough babbling for today. Until next time, watch the shadows.
Hmm, better, but still not quite right.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Worlds Collide
So my little rambling yesterday about the five minutes I spent watching some televangelist got something that most of my posts never get: confirmation that someone is actually reading them. This confirmation was in the form of a comment from someone named “Kat”. Now I'm not sure if this is the Kat that I know in real life or not, but either way, “Hello, Kat!” **waves**. Of course the thing that really surprises me about getting a comment on a post like that is that I never publicized its being posted; not on my Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr, so unless Kat follows my blog normally, she must have just stumbled onto it, which is interesting.
So I've decided to try and liven things up around here by posting something other than movie reviews and the very rare Early Morning Amusement video. Sure, I'll likely grow bored of this when I finish my Typewriter Challenge story (which is going nicely) and start on something new or go back to the Mallville re-write, but for now, lets ramble a bit.
I picked up a new Apocalyptica album over the weekend, and by new I mean new to me, not a new release. The album I got was “Worlds Collide”,which came out back in 2007. I've listened to it a couple of times, while nothing has instantly grabbed me like some of the songs on “7th Symphony” did there are a couple that are growing on me.
The first is “I Don't Care” featuring Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace:
And the other is “I'm Not Jesus” featuring Corey Taylor from Slipknot:
I would like to point out here that I am not a fan Slipknot or Three Days Grace; in fact my metal tastes generally begin and end with Megadeth and Metallica from my teenage years, but Apocalyptica manage to so perfectly make heavy metal beautiful in a way that even surpasses my love of Scott D. Davis' classical piano renditions of Metallica songs.
If you're not familiar with what Apocalyptica is, well the videos above are probably a bit of a hint, but let me explain a bit more. They originally started out as four graduates of the Sibelius Academy in Finland (this is a big deal, this is one of the biggest music schools in Europe, and it is over one hundred years old) who discovered that you could play Metallica songs on the cello, and make them sound awesome. Indeed their first album, “Plays Metallica by Four Cellos” is nothing but covers of Metallica songs. They have gone on since then to add a drummer and vocal artists to turn what could have been a mere novelty group in a seriously beautiful hard rock experience.
I suppose I should point out that I love cover songs done in different styles, which is what attracted me to Apocalyptica in the first place, but their newer, original music is really some of the best rock I have ever heard; especially songs like “Broken Pieces” which features Lacey Mosely from one of my other favourite bands: “Flyleaf”.
Alright, that's enough rambling for today, but seriously, if you have never heard of Apocalyptica, give those videos up there a watch (or more importantly, a listen), and see what you think, and until the next time I get the urge to ramble....
I need a signature line. Mur Lafferty has “Be mighty”, Steve Eley had “Have fun”, I need something.
Keep and eye out for zombies...?
No, I don't think so.
So I've decided to try and liven things up around here by posting something other than movie reviews and the very rare Early Morning Amusement video. Sure, I'll likely grow bored of this when I finish my Typewriter Challenge story (which is going nicely) and start on something new or go back to the Mallville re-write, but for now, lets ramble a bit.
I picked up a new Apocalyptica album over the weekend, and by new I mean new to me, not a new release. The album I got was “Worlds Collide”,which came out back in 2007. I've listened to it a couple of times, while nothing has instantly grabbed me like some of the songs on “7th Symphony” did there are a couple that are growing on me.
The first is “I Don't Care” featuring Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace:
And the other is “I'm Not Jesus” featuring Corey Taylor from Slipknot:
I would like to point out here that I am not a fan Slipknot or Three Days Grace; in fact my metal tastes generally begin and end with Megadeth and Metallica from my teenage years, but Apocalyptica manage to so perfectly make heavy metal beautiful in a way that even surpasses my love of Scott D. Davis' classical piano renditions of Metallica songs.
If you're not familiar with what Apocalyptica is, well the videos above are probably a bit of a hint, but let me explain a bit more. They originally started out as four graduates of the Sibelius Academy in Finland (this is a big deal, this is one of the biggest music schools in Europe, and it is over one hundred years old) who discovered that you could play Metallica songs on the cello, and make them sound awesome. Indeed their first album, “Plays Metallica by Four Cellos” is nothing but covers of Metallica songs. They have gone on since then to add a drummer and vocal artists to turn what could have been a mere novelty group in a seriously beautiful hard rock experience.
I suppose I should point out that I love cover songs done in different styles, which is what attracted me to Apocalyptica in the first place, but their newer, original music is really some of the best rock I have ever heard; especially songs like “Broken Pieces” which features Lacey Mosely from one of my other favourite bands: “Flyleaf”.
Alright, that's enough rambling for today, but seriously, if you have never heard of Apocalyptica, give those videos up there a watch (or more importantly, a listen), and see what you think, and until the next time I get the urge to ramble....
I need a signature line. Mur Lafferty has “Be mighty”, Steve Eley had “Have fun”, I need something.
Keep and eye out for zombies...?
No, I don't think so.
Monday, April 11, 2011
False Wonders
I regularly go to sleep with the television on, and one of the neatest things about owning a DVR is that you never know what will be on the screen when you wake up. When I went to sleep Saturday night, the TV was on Cartoon Network, I wake up later on, and it's “Doctor Who” on BBCA. I go back to sleep, and when I wake up, it's switched over to some televangelist, so I sit and listen to what he has to say for a minute.
The TV preacher is talking about the second coming (I believe he was referring to Thessalonians, if you're interested), and about how the Anti-Christ (or “The Lawless One”, which is mostly what the speaker called him) might try to trick us into believing that he was the second coming of Christ with false wonders and counterfeit miracles.
What I took from this was that we should look at anyone claiming to be the son of God with a skeptical eye, which is certainly good advice to take with anyone who claims to speak for God, but it raises certain problems for me. The main problem is that how am I supposed to know the real messiah from the the fake one? If the fake messiah can perform the same fantastic miracles as the real one, and they both claim to be the son of God, how do I know one from the other? I don't recall the preacher having an answer for that, not before I got up to go to the bathroom anyway.
Of course my mind can't stop there, I went into conspiracy theory mode, and looked at the idea harder. If the devil can trick us into believing in a fake messiah, could he not also trick us into doubting the real one? If you're playing a long con that literally lasts for two or three millennium wouldn't it be easier to just create the idea of a fake messiah than to actually bother creating a fake one? I mean, how hard would it be for Satan to get the idea of a fake Christ inserted into the bible as it is edits, interpreted, translated, re-edited, re-translated, etc of the ages?
I've always been a believer that it is both easier and more effective to make your opponent think you've done/will do something horrible to them than it is to actually do that thing; for instance, it is much easier to make someone think that you poured sugar in their gas tank by leaving an empty bag of sugar on the ground next to their car along with some spilled sugar than it is to actually try and funnel sugar into the tank. Your victim's reaction will be the same, and if you get caught you at least won't have to worry about having to actually fix anything.
By the above argument, wouldn't it just be easier to make the mortals doubt the real messiah than it would be to make your own? If you can just discredit your opponent before they ever make an appearance, wouldn't that work just as well? Especially now when a loud (if not necessarily large) portion of Christians have a fairly skewed idea of what Jesus would want people to do? I don't know what you believe, but I think some people expect him to show up supporting tax cuts for the rich, tax hikes for the poor, and using his right to bear arms (because he would have to be American, doncha know) to mow down homosexuals and women's healthy clinic employees. I somehow don't see Jesus doing that myself.
Is it bad that my mind works this way?
The TV preacher is talking about the second coming (I believe he was referring to Thessalonians, if you're interested), and about how the Anti-Christ (or “The Lawless One”, which is mostly what the speaker called him) might try to trick us into believing that he was the second coming of Christ with false wonders and counterfeit miracles.
What I took from this was that we should look at anyone claiming to be the son of God with a skeptical eye, which is certainly good advice to take with anyone who claims to speak for God, but it raises certain problems for me. The main problem is that how am I supposed to know the real messiah from the the fake one? If the fake messiah can perform the same fantastic miracles as the real one, and they both claim to be the son of God, how do I know one from the other? I don't recall the preacher having an answer for that, not before I got up to go to the bathroom anyway.
Of course my mind can't stop there, I went into conspiracy theory mode, and looked at the idea harder. If the devil can trick us into believing in a fake messiah, could he not also trick us into doubting the real one? If you're playing a long con that literally lasts for two or three millennium wouldn't it be easier to just create the idea of a fake messiah than to actually bother creating a fake one? I mean, how hard would it be for Satan to get the idea of a fake Christ inserted into the bible as it is edits, interpreted, translated, re-edited, re-translated, etc of the ages?
I've always been a believer that it is both easier and more effective to make your opponent think you've done/will do something horrible to them than it is to actually do that thing; for instance, it is much easier to make someone think that you poured sugar in their gas tank by leaving an empty bag of sugar on the ground next to their car along with some spilled sugar than it is to actually try and funnel sugar into the tank. Your victim's reaction will be the same, and if you get caught you at least won't have to worry about having to actually fix anything.
By the above argument, wouldn't it just be easier to make the mortals doubt the real messiah than it would be to make your own? If you can just discredit your opponent before they ever make an appearance, wouldn't that work just as well? Especially now when a loud (if not necessarily large) portion of Christians have a fairly skewed idea of what Jesus would want people to do? I don't know what you believe, but I think some people expect him to show up supporting tax cuts for the rich, tax hikes for the poor, and using his right to bear arms (because he would have to be American, doncha know) to mow down homosexuals and women's healthy clinic employees. I somehow don't see Jesus doing that myself.
Is it bad that my mind works this way?
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