Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: December 2005
Looking Backward
I’d hate to plot this on the same scale as the YesButNoButYes gang’s graph, but I’m happy with it, just the same.
I can’t remember why or how I started Shatter (AKA Balls and Walnuts). Who turned me on to Blogger? I’m far too much of a technological nincompoop to find something like that on my own.
Blogging gives me the illusion of writerly discipline. Look at me, I’m writing every day — sometimes two or three times a day! Perhaps I had hoped that discipline would carry over into my more serious literary pursuits, but it hasn’t. If I had channeled all of this effort into my manuscript, I would have finished it months ago.
But then I wouldn’t have met all of y’all.
My first real post (April 9) concerned my short story, “My Troll Lover”, which reminds me: damn, that’s a fine story. I really ought to buff it and send it out. Again.
The big traffic bump in May came courtesy of John Scalzi. What amazed me, though, was the way my June traffic didn’t fall back to April levels. Smart Bitches didn’t discover me until July, so I really can’t account for my June numbers.
The rest of the growth I attribute to regular posting, persistent schmoozing, and shameless Technorati blogwhoring (my bloggenitals were particularly sore in October). Don’t know if I can continue this growth rate, but you know something? I don’t care. I’m having fun, and I like my gang of readers.
Happy New Year, everyone.
D.
The Anti-Lewis
Pop quiz: what contemporary author called C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories “morally loathsome,” and in a 1998 essay for the Guardian, “The Dark Side of Narnia,” derided “the misognyny, the racism, the sado-masochistic relish for violence that permeates the whole cycle”?
Hint 1: the author was the subject of a Peter Hitchens essay entitled, “This Is the Most Dangerous Author in Britain.”
Hint 2: the author also said, “‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He’s interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.”
Give up? Go sit under a cold shower for ten minutes if you answered J.K. Rowling, because the author in question is Philip Pullman, author of (among other things) the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Laura Miller in The New Yorker (Dec. 26, 2005 & Jan. 2, 2006) has a wonderful piece on Pullman, which you can read online here. Miller provides a three-dimensional glimpse of Pullman and his work. Her article is one of the best literary focus pieces I’ve read in a very long time.
Okay, time to get to work on dinner.
D.
Best of the Best-ofs
Once again, Steve Gilliard says it better than I ever could.
Over at HuffPo, Seth Greenland gives us Dubya’s top 10 New Year’s Resolutions.
I’ve learned to make resolutions which are within the realm of possibility. Thus:
1. Lose five pounds.
2. Sign up at another gym (my favorite one closed) and, um, like, actually use the place.
3. Lose my temper with my son 25% less.
4. Finish editing TBC and send out queries.
5. Write my congressmen (yeah, they’re all guys) every time I think my head might explode.
And because I really really hate living in a warehouse . . .
6. Get flooring and countertops!
We’ll revisit this next year.
To all of my readers: you’re my friends. Well, not that nasty-assed guy who kept posting crap when I wrote about the neo-Nazi blonde singing duo, but the rest of you, yeah. I wish all the best for you and your families.
Happy New Year!
D.
Personal myth
Some kids have to share their moms with brothers and sisters. Since I’m the youngest by seven years, I had my mother all to myself. No sibling rivalry here.
Except for Chi Chi.
I can imagine a pre-Doug time when it was just my mom and Chi Chi. Knowing how my mom is with dogs, Chi Chi must have lived in a state of bliss. She would have garnered my mother’s full attention and love, and she wouldn’t have had a care in the world.
Then I came onto the scene, and Chi Chi’s life changed forever. How she must have hated me! Here was this squealing, pooping, puking creature; such a shameful sight, no self-respecting pup would ever put on a display like that. How could my mother tolerate it?
Growing up, Chi Chi fascinated me, all the more because she was untouchable. If I came within six feet of her, she would bare her teeth and growl. I wanted to make her happy, but even gifts of table scraps had no impact on her demeanor. She was a bitter, depressed, hateful old bitch who could not be pleased by anything I did or said. Only one person could thaw her — my mother, of course.
I did the only thing I could do. I begged my mother to pet Chi Chi and praise her. Mom would oblige, but she seemed to tire of it quickly. Nevertheless, for those brief moments in time, Chi Chi was happy, energetic, young again.
When I was five, my parents bought a male Chihuahua whom they named Chico (their names for pets have never strained the imagination). From Chico and Chi Chi I learned that sex involves a lot of yelping, and couples always end up back-to-back before it’s over. Anyway, Chi Chi became pregnant, gave birth at home, fell asleep on top of her puppies, and smothered them all. This did little to help her mood.
When I was twelve, she developed a cough. The vet called it a “heart cough,” which means something to me now, but bewildered me back then. I never had a very good grasp on sickness or death, and my apparent callousness landed me in trouble on more than one occasion — but that’s another story. Chi Chi became weak. She needed help getting off and on her pillow. We moved her pillow next to the back door so that she could be close to her food, water, and potty stomping-grounds.
She woke me up one night with her coughing. Sickness had mellowed her, and she had long since decided I wasn’t worth the energy it took to growl; she allowed me to help her off the pillow — that’s what I’m trying to say. All she wanted was a drink of water. Afterwards, I helped her back onto her pillow. In the morning, I checked her, and she was dead.
I would carry on about the burden of guilt we feel towards our pets, but Jurassic Pork covered that poignantly in recent weeks. I don’t think I can add much. What interests me more is the depth of grief I felt for Chi Chi. It sounds horrible, but her death touched me far more than the deaths of any of my grandparents. Nowadays, I think about my grandparents more often than I do Chi Chi, but at the time, Chi Chi’s death really got me where I lived. I had grown up with her.
Am I alone in creating a personal creation myth? I don’t know if my mother bought Chi Chi before or after I was born, but in my myth, I tell myself: It was before. She was lonely, but the dog didn’t cut it. So she discovered the wondrous magic of pinholes in condoms, and that’s how I came to be.
Little Dougie: because a dog wasn’t good enough.
My parents deny all of this, naturally, but I am unperturbed, and I will not listen to their objections. Myths lose power when subjected to close scrutiny.
D.
Breakfast links
I’m just making myself more depressed.
Media Matters has posted its Most Outrageous Statements of 2005. My favorite:
Focus on the Family founder and chairman James C. Dobson: Same-sex marriage would lead to “marriage between daddies and little girls … between a man and his donkey.”
What’s your favorite?
Heart-sickening-to-the-core: This Modern World discusses the latest torture memos (via Atrios); the General captures the rot at the apple’s core with a single image.
My favorite Guerilla Woman from Tennessee has reprinted in full today’s Op-Ed piece from Paul Krugman. Here’s the punchline:
A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.
A year ago, we didn’t know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn’t above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.
To my US readers: write your Representatives and Senators. Use those links at the top of my sidebar — it’s easy. And don’t let ’em set cookies.
After that nauseating dive into today’s news (and I haven’t even checked Kos yet), I need a little recharge. Here is a World of Warcraft Broadway show tune for y’all. The graphics stink, but the music rocks. And if that doesn’t do it for you, check out the latest photos from Antarctica.
Oh, my! Mel Gibson has a blog. Gabriele, I’m counting on you to correct his Latin.
Now, if you’ll all please excuse me while I go put a knife in my gut . . .
D.
2001, five years later
Five years, or thirty-seven, thirty-eight . . . who’s counting?
This morning, Karen watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on TV while I read through Miss Snark’s Crap-o-meter critiques of novel synopses. This juxtaposition led me to wonder how I would write a synopsis for the 2001 story.
Think about it. If you focus on the main story arc, your bullet summary will be: An alien artifact acts as a catalyst to human evolution. You would leave out the HAL 9000 subplot because it has nothing to do with the rest of the story. It doesn’t further the plot. It even lacks a thematic connection to the rest of the movie.
The trouble is, I like character-driven drama. HAL is the best character in the story, and the HAL subplot contains the movie’s most poignant moments. Yet if your bullet summary reads: A sentient computer develops a paranoid streak and becomes a homicidal maniac, what will the agent or publisher make of the remaining 3/4 of the story?
I’ve been conflicted about this movie ever since I saw it in the theatre as a seven-year-old. Afterwards, I remember feeling bored, bewildered, and perhaps a little stoned. I can still hear my mother yelling at my brother, “What’s wrong? What’s the matter with him? Why is he acting like that?”
Nothing wrong with me at all, except I had no idea what the ending meant, and when I read Arthur C. Clarke’s book the following year, I was convinced Clarke didn’t understand the ending, either.
Opinions about this movie vary wildly. Pauline Kael, who never met a Kubrick movie she didn’t execrate*, called 2001 “the biggest amateur movie of them all, complete even to the amateur-movie obligatory scene — the director’s little daughter (in curls) telling daddy what kind of present she wants.”
Over at IMDB, a Finnish fellow writes, “One has to be ready for it, or it cannot be understood. In fact I don’t think it can be understood at all, at least not all of it at once. It is a philosophical journey to the infinite and beyond, a masterpiece of it’s genre . . .”
You won’t find many reviews which are in-between. The film ranks #87 in IMDB’s top 250. Read through the 1000+ reader comments if you like. Most are gushingly positive**.
Well, folks, I fall in between. Yes, the movie is beautiful, right down to the non-whooshing*** spacecraft and HAL’s glowing soul. The spacecraft special effects are so damned gorgeous, I’m willing to forgive Kubrick the LSD trip at the end. I’ll even forgive him the Star Child.
Yes, HAL’s story carries as much dramatic heft now as it did in 1968. Yes, it is ambitious and brave and noble to try to make a movie about enlightenment (Karen’s theory re: the ending).
But, holy cow, the story does not hang together. Without HAL, we have majesty and mystery, but precious little drama. Without the monolith, we have a fine space opera, but one which lacks a beginning or an ending. With HAL and the monolith, we have the cinematic equivalent of a grafted cactus.
Samuel R. Delany, a writer for whom I have great respect, tried to pull it all together in this essay, but I don’t think he’s successful. Another Golden Age SF writer, Lester Del Rey, slammed the film in his 1968 review.
What did Kubrick have to say about 2001? The man hated explaining his movies. I suspect the best we’ll get is his endorsement of 15-year-old Margaret Stackhouse’s notes on the film:
“Margaret Stackhouse’s speculations on the film are perhaps the most intelligent that I’ve read anywhere, and I am, of course, including all the reviews and the articles that have appeared on the film and the many hundreds of letters that I have received. What a first-rate intelligence!”
I’ve read Stackhouse’s notes, and you know what? I still don’t think Kubrick is telling a coherent story.
There. Glad I got that off my chest. In HAL’s words, “I feel much better now, I really do.”
D.
*Sorry for the two-bit word, but if you read Kael’s review, you’ll see that the words hate and detest are far too mild.
**If you’re interested in reading a more scholarly appraisal of the critical reaction to 2001, read this superb essay at 2001: A Space Odyssey Internet Resource Archive. This excellent website also has an excellent compendium of other resources on the web.
***In space, no one can hear you whoosh.
PS: Craving more Kubrick? Here’s another cool link.
Who says they’re cold-blooded?
In the February 2006 issue of Reptiles*, Jim Pether, owner/manager of a reptile park in the Canary Islands, shares his experiences breeding Komodo dragons (Komodos: A Breeding Project With Teeth).
His initial attempts were nearly disastrous:
“Then, one day when I was not at the park, a visitor ran and told my wife Christine that one dragon was attacking another. She ran down to find the male chewing the female’s leg off and bravely (or stupidly, depending on your view) jumped in and began beating him over the head with a broom.”
She manages to rescue the female by luring the male away with a dead rat. The vet saved the female’s leg. Not willing to press his luck, Pether sent the female to the Rotterdam Zoo.
He had one more female to try out.
“Nervous at first, the female ran away and hid in her burrow . . .”
Word gets around.
“but after a few days got used to the male’s presence. They were soon basking together.”
On to the action.
“Actual mating began when the male started tongue flicking the female’s cloacal area, presumably to test if she was ovulating and releasing pheromones. The male then raked her back with his long claws and tongue flicked her body. He then positioned his body parallel to hers and tongue-flicked her neck. Using a rear leg, he lifted her tail to mate with her.”
Was it good for you, too?
D.
*Available at pet stores near you!
No one-liners in today’s Dowd Op-Ed
Full text of today’s Maureen Dowd NYT Op-Ed, Vice Axes That 70s Show, is up at The Peking Duck (thanks, PD!)
She hasn’t given us much new material, I’m afraid; only one interesting bit of recent history:
As attorney general, John Ashcroft clamped down on the Freedom of Information Act. For two years, the Pentagon has been sitting on a request from The Times’s Jeff Gerth to cough up a secret 500-page document prepared by Halliburton on what to do with Iraq’s oil industry – a plan it wrote several months before the invasion of Iraq, and before it got a no-bid contract to implement the plan (and overbill the U.S.)
. . . and one bit of ancient history:
Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it?
Oy. When are the leaders of our country going to get their heads out of their oil wells?
D.
Technorati tag: dowd
Synopsisysessss . . .
Most of you know about this already, but just in case you haven’t heard, Miss Snark is doing her synopsis crap-o-meter extravaganza this week. Check it out.
Wish I could have participated, but life here has not been very orderly.
D.
Serenity and the Dungeons & Dragons guide to character development
We watched Serenity last night. As usual, Jake walked in well after the movie had started and wanted to know what was happening. I found myself falling back on Dungeons & Dragons alignment terminology to explain the characters and their actions:
“That’s the captain of the Serenity and his crew. They’re all unlawful neutrals. That guy there? He’s an assassin for the Empire, or whatever they’re called. He’s lawful evil. If this movie runs true to form, before the movie is over the unlawful neutrals will be forced by circumstances to become unlawful goods . . .”
Or that’s what I would have said, if it weren’t for Jake saying, “Huh? What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Which is a shame, really, because the Dungeons & Dragons alignment scheme provides a fast and accurate means of typing a character. Moreover, for writers, it’s a convenient way to get a quick understanding of a newly created character.
For those of you not wise in the ways of D&D, here’s how it works. Alignment involves two variables, each of which have three possible values. A character can be lawful (law-abiding), neutral (self-serving), or chaotic (or ‘unlawful,’ actively seeking to overturn the social order). A character can also be good, neutral, or evil. By combining these parameters, you have nine possible character types.
Quick quiz: Han Solo is . . . ?
Getting old and paunchy, yes, but he’s also unlawful neutral at the beginning of Star Wars. Just like the crew of the Serenity, Han is forced by circumstances and a freeze-drier to become unlawful good.
Luke Skywalker is . . . ?
Unlawful good, but he’s really weak on the “unlawful” part. In a marginally not-bad Empire, you just know the little priss would be lawful good. The only reason Luke is unlawful is the fact that the law — the Empire — is so damned eeevil.
Back to character creation. This website provides a 36-question quiz to help you determine your character’s alignment. I took it with one of my main characters in mind, and came up with “Neutral,” which is just about how I think of him. Tui cares more about an abstract (the Truth, capital T and all) than his own family. He’s not evil, but neither is he good.
I haven’t tried taking the quiz with my rogue, Boron, in mind, but he’d better turn out unlawful neutral, or I don’t know my Boron.
Why is this a worthwhile exercise? Because two of the things that make a novel fun are characters who change, and characters in conflict. If you want your characters to change, you need to make sure the change isn’t too drastic.
When I analyze my NiP, most of the changes are plausibly close. Like Han Solo, Boron must become unlawful good. Tui stays doggedly neutral, but it takes him a mammoth effort to do so.
Tui’s wife Sul is my biggest problem child. In the rough draft, she was lawful evil all the way. When I wrote the novel, though, I became more and more fond of her. My villain became a tragic heroine. I asked her to change from lawful evil to unlawful good.
Well, as Maureen and my wife will tell you (Jona has been more forgiving), this proved to be too great a leap. I had major motivation problems. Sul’s transformation feels artificial, forced.
I was asking too much of her.
Now that I’m editing, I’m toning the evil way down, mostly by making Sul’s initial alliance with evil seem far more innocent and plausible. The reader should think, “Yes, in those circumstances, I might make a deal with the devil, too,” particularly since the “devil” seems eminently reasonable (although scary, just the same). Sul is, after all, a powerful female willing to fight beak-and-talon for her family’s best interest. Sul wouldn’t go to a male authority figure with her problems; no, she’d go to the most politically powerful female in the land.
Thus, instead of “lawful evil becomes unlawful good,” Sul’s transformation will be “lawful good to unlawful good” — which is a much more believable change.
How about conflict? As Star Wars and Serenity demonstrate, Lawful Evil vs. Unlawful Good is an entertaining pair-off. I think audiences today like a little ambiguity in their heroes and villains, and that’s what LE vs. UG provides. If you want Unlawful Evil vs. Lawful Good, you’ll have to mine the videostore shelves for some old Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne movies. (And not all of Wayne’s characters were Lawful Good — not by a long shot.)
As for Serenity, I guessed right. The captain has a change of heart, becomes Unlawful Good, and defeats the Lawful Evil forces of the star system. There, I ruined it for you. The movie had one other surprise — Hello Kitty videos are evil — but you knew that already.
D.