Sure The Doctor Danced with Rose,

... but Capt. Jack can do just fine on his own.


When I saw this posted over at Sci Fi Wire, the only thing I could think was, "This guy came across as too straight to be cast in the lead of Will & Grace???" Oh well, rather have him as Capt. Jack/The Face of Bo anytime.

New Releases to Get a Bit Stale?

Entertainment juggernaut Netflix has apparently been in talks with the major studios in the movie biz to get better prices on their DVD purchases (or so I read). Makes sense, and I can't imagine any one buyer right now in a better position to get their suppliers to capitulate. But here's the rub, the studios want Netflix to delay access (rental, streaming) for a month in return, an effort to help slumping sales.

More power to 'em both, I say. Especially if Netflix passes along the savings to their customers. I can wait another month for a new release...it may, may make it more likely that I'll purchase a movie--but probably not. I really don't see the downside here--if anything my desire to see the DVD when Netflix can release it will be a little greater.

There Ought To Be A Law...

No time for a real post today, between mourning the passing of Dollhouse and trying to dig myself out of a plot complication (namely, I have no idea what the core conflict of this 50K word beast needs to be and I'm almost 40% done), so instead, allow me to recommend the following post from Wire'd Geek Dad blog:
10 Geeky Laws That Should Exist, But Don’t, a list of things like Newton’s (a different one) laws of motion, Boyle’s Law, and Godwin’s Law that should be axioms by now. Numbers 1, 3, 8 and 9 are particularly good, and I just have to quote 7.
7. Starbucks’ and Peet’s Law: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. If the field of chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.

How Long 'Til This Hits Our Shores?

Someone posted this article to one of the email lists I'm on last week--the article's dated Oct. 29, so it's possible that sanity has returned, but I'm not betting on it.

From the Daily Mail:

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.

Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.

Watford Council was branded a 'disgrace' yesterday after excluding parents from two fenced-off adventure playgrounds unless they first undergo criminal record checks.

Basically, until proven innocent, parents are assumed to be perverts and are being prevented from playing with their kids. So who will monitor the kids (other than from behind the fences)? Government employees, of course.

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Insane. Utterly insane.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223528/Parents-banned-supervising-children-playgrounds--case-paedophiles.html#ixzz0WUoZQDVJ

Health Care Debacle

Lots of great articles on the Health Care mess over the last week or so--too many to cope with.

One I appreciated was "Tom Mullen's The Democrats Are Privatizing Wealth Redistribution"

The price of this corporate welfare, of course, is that any remaining vestiges of voluntary contracts between insurer and insured that health insurance still retained has been eliminated. Insurers are no longer allowed to determine rates demographically and based upon a real risk model. They are no longer allowed to offer diverse coverage packages to compete with one another for different customer groups. They now must offer low rates and uniform benefits to everyone as entitlements. Like individual welfare recipients, they have surrendered all of their liberty and property rights in return for other people's money. They are now just one more arm of the state bureaucracy.

The worst aspect of this great fraud is the implications it has for the liberty of every American. The closest parallel to this heretofore has been automobile insurance. Americans have been forced to buy auto insurance directly from an auto insurer in order to exercise the "privilege" of driving on the government's roads. This was of course enacted for the public good, to ensure that poor drivers could not bankrupt the innocent by demolishing their cars or saddling them with exorbitant hospital bills. However, as hostile to liberty as these laws are, they still leave the driver a choice. He can choose not to drive, however impractical or unrealistic that choice might be.

However, with this new bill, even that smattering of liberty is ripped away. Americans are now forced to purchase insurance from a government-protected and subsidized health insurance company merely because they are alive. Worse yet, they are not merely forced to make a single payment of tribute to satisfy their "individual responsibility." They must go on paying, year in and year out, for as long as they live. They cannot decline. They cannot conscientiously object. There is no escape from this tyranny save one: death. For those individuals that can demonstrate that they are completely incapable of paying, someone else will be forced to pay for them. No matter what, the government's corporation will be paid. Even life is no longer a right, but a privilege that the government extends to its subjects for a fee.

.

There's still time to stop this--call and write your Senators. Tell your friends and neighbors to do the same. Maybe even talk to all of the above about The Health Freedom Plan: H.R. 1495, H.R. 2629, and H.R. 3217

Coming Up with Something to Say

So, I've got my minimum (and a little change) words for NaNoWriMo done, and thankfully, I've been able to recover from a couple of off days towards the end of last week (it's sooo much easier to just churn out the minimum than to recover from a hole like I put myself into last year). So now it's time to turn to keeping my streak going for NaBloPoMo--or just pride. For reasons I can't comprehend, I feel much better about myself when I have something posted here daily. Even more so, if it's something more than a video link :)

Many days, I know exactly what I want to talk about--I'll read a story on a news site, or another blog that'll get me going. Or I'll see a TV show/movie/read a book that I really want to talk about. Or my kids will be involved with something.

But then there are days like today where I don't have anything at all. So what do I do? I check news sites and places like HotAir, Campaign for Liberty, TreasuredValley, and Huckleberries Online, actively seeking inspiration. This rarely works, sometimes it generates a post, but not often--less often one I'm crazy about.

Sometimes, I'll ask someone I'm chatting online with (if I'm chatting...which I'm doing far less of lately)--and frequently that helps a lot.

And then there are days I just ramble and come up with a post that reminds me of that Monty Python album (one of my favorites, actually--good assortment of skits, liked the flow, a friend had it in high school and we listened to it about 35 million times.)

Thought for the Lord's Day - #48

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to the cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eye-strings break in death
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See Thee on Thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
- Augustus M. Toplady

NaNoWriMo 2009 Word Counts

The computer guys at NaNoWriMo have conquered the opening week bugs (and I can only imagine how many there are) and have got the fun stuff like web badges (see far right and down below the Facebook badge) and word count widgets up.

So now you can track our progress and harangue us when we need it :)

The Police Blotter Shakespeare

One of the best uses of my time recently has been following Roger Ebert's twitter feed (except when he gets political)...he posts the best links, I don't know how he gets anything done. One of the latest gems is "The Police Blotter Shakespeare" by Burke Hilsabeck, what would The Bard's (or whoever's) plays look like if they were on a police report?

Great fodder for procrastination.

The Category "Dramedy" Eschewed

If I was a smarter person, this is the kind of thing I'd like to write. Even if I differ on specifics, Myles McNutt's blog post "Screw Dramedy: How We Distinguish Between Comic and Dramatic Television" is thoughtful, thought provoking, and entertaining.

A Couple of Class Acts

Finally, after an unimaginably long drought (well, to Yankee fans) the New York Yankees have once again won the World Series. There's really nothing I can add to all the blogs/news stories about The Core Four and their "one for the thumb", CC, Mariano (how can he still be doing what he's doing?), Tex...so on and so on. But I had to say a couple of things about a couple of real class acts both on and off the field.

I was really torn last night between my desire to watch Game 6, especially if it turned out to be the last game, and my need to get some sleep before work. It would've been an easier choice if Pettitte hadn't been doing such a great job (and honestly, I think Pedro was doing pretty good, too. He'd have been doing great if he'd had his fastball). But it wasn't until Matsui hit that two-run single in the third that I felt confident enough in the Yankee's fate to drift off. One of the last things I remember hearing was Tim McCarver correcting Joe Buck's recap of the score "Yankees 4, Phillies 1" with "Matsui 4, Phillies 1." And if it hadn't been for Tex's RBI, it'd have ended up being Matusi 6, Phillies 1.

Godzilla's been a consistent, dependable player since he came to the States, and it's great to watch him get the recognition he deserves--especially after such a performance. The fact that this was very likely his last year with the team (man, I hope not--and have been hoping not all season), made the whole thing all the more bittersweet.


And then there's the NYPD's (and formerly Baltimore PD's) Det. John Munch Yankee Manager Joe Girardi (third Yankee to win a championship with the Yankees as both a player and a manager), who followed his team's win with dose of Good Samaritanship, stopping to help someone who'd had a car accident.

According to Lohud.com:

The crash happened at 2:25 a.m. today in the eastbound lanes along a long blind curve where the Cross County meets the Hutchinson River Parkway near the New Rochelle Road exit, police said.

Police were conducting a nearby sobriety checkpoint on the parkway. In fact, about 15 minutes earlier, Girardi had passed through the checkpoint.

Cristiano, who was working the checkpoint, congratulated him on his first win as a manager and waved him through. He hadn't been the only Yankee to pass by the checkpoint. Pitcher Andy Pettitte, who lives in Harrison, also passed through earlier.

"He came through with a smile," Cristiano said.

Cristiano, a self-described huge Yankees fan, said she hadn't expected to see either one of them again. But, then, a 911 call came through about a car accident a short distance away, and he cops suspended the checkpoint to respond to the crash. As she came upon the accident scene, in an area where the parkway's two lanes turn into three and cars speed by the curve that takes them to the Hutch, Cristiano spotted Girardi.

"He was jumping up and down, trying to flag me down," she said. "You don't expect him standing by a car accident, trying to help."

Cristiano said that, by the time she arrived, Henry was able to get out of the crashed vehicle and declined to be taken to the hospital.

Girardi, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, then told them he "had to get going."

Cristiano and Henry both thanked him and watched as he ran across traffic again to reach his car.

"The driver didn't know it was him until after I told her," Cristiano said.

Sh*tty First Drafts

I don't know what it is, but most of the books/essays/talks about writing that I've found most helpful to me are by people whose prose I really don't care for in the slightest. An excellent example of this is Anne Lamott, her Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life is helping me a lot yet again. Here's a sample:

Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do--you can either type or kill yourself." We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not coming pouring out like ticker tape most of the time. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning--sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really sh*tty first drafts.

The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, "Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?," you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you you might go--but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.

NaNoWriMo is all about sh*tty first drafts, in fact, it's what's really helped me get to the point that I can produce them.

I'm so glad I have that freedom. Yesterday's output was truly dreadful--one chapter of nothing but exposition, a lot of telling, practically no showing. It was so bad that Dan Brown would take a look at it and say, "Dude." And it's going to be torturous to go back and edit it come December. However, it really enabled me to work out most of the rationale and mechanics of the science and technology that form the basis of my novel. My vague idea is a lot more concrete now. Sure it's an ugly, misshapen, pile of concrete that no one (not even a Modern Art Museum) would want to display--but it's something I can build on.

How's that for a mixed metaphor? Clearly I haven't rewritten anything in this post (aside from fixing a typo or seven in the Lamott quotation)...just another in a series of sh*tty first drafts.

Break Out the Yoplait...

Michael, Fi and Sam (plus Chuck Finley) are coming back: