Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Seven things to look forward to in the Big Bake
I might as well start getting psyched up for it, right?
1. Worst air pollution in the country (for particulates). What does not kill us makes us stronger. So if the Bake’s air doesn’t kill us, we are going to be amazing.
2. We’ll be only two hours away from Angeleno food. I’m looking forward to eating, once again, the best Chinese food in the world. Period. Chinese people fly from China just to eat this food. And no one makes Mexican food like the people of Los Angeles.
3. Old friends. Thank Facebook for that — I’m starting to hook up with a lot of people I haven’t heard from in 30 years or more. Lots of ’em still live in L.A. One writes an LA blog.
4. My sister lives down there, too.
She’s grown up since then.
5. A big house. Cheap real estate in Bakersfield, don’t ya know, and we’ll be buying into the low (or near-low) of a buyer’s market. I won’t surprised if we can have a whopping huge guest room, one of those “mother-in-law” thingies. Hint, hint. What, not obvious enough? COME VISIT!
6. Financial security. Yes, this is a long-term thing. I mean, I have to put in my time, right? I’m not gonna be instantly secure all at once, RIGHT? But at least now I’ll be on the road to a secure future. Not like in Crescent City, where we were treading water most every year.
7. Familiar turf. Being the only ENT for a particular population is comfortable territory for me. (Yes, there are other ENTs in Bakersfield, but I’ll pretty much be the only one for the Kize.) There are certain advantages and disadvantages to that situation, and while it’s a mixed bag, it’s something I know very well.
Yeah, I was kind of hoping for a Thirteen, but I’m fading fast. Seven down, six to go.
D.
Braided
This morning, I bought Braid online, and of course Jake’s the one who’s playing right now. Truly the mark of incipient old age: whether it’s chess or Braid or some tower game (Defense Grid the Awakening, to be exact), I’d rather watch my son play than get involved myself.
Braid is a Super Mario-style game with fiendishly clever puzzles all based upon the main character’s ability to manipulate time. His time-shifting abilities differ from one world to the next; for example, in the first world he only has a rewind function, while in a subsequent world, his motion (left versus right) controls time’s arrow. The result is that the exact same puzzle map in one world has a wildly different solution in the next.
There is a certain amount of arcade-style coordination-intensive keypunching which I dislike, but this seems to be unavoidable in scrollers like this (Oddworld, which I love dearly, has a similar flaw). I wish my puzzle games were puzzles and nothing more. Still, I prefer Braid to the Myst/Riven/Uru games, where you bang your head up against a wall trying to figure out how this lever makes that doowhizzle spin in order to make a gearbox door open, thus allowing you to let the light from Keyhole A hit Lens B just so, opening a door to Engine Room C . . . you get the idea.
Braid’s music is great, too. Unfortunately, you’ll be screwing with time so much (and thus, screwing with the soundtrack) that you’ll feel like a 1960s teenager searching for secret messages on Abbey Road.
The main character wants to find his girlfriend the Princess. Their relationship has hit the skids and has somehow wandered off into the realm of the hopeless. Hell, he can’t even find her (she’s been kidnapped by a monster, I think — don’t you hate it when that happens?) But he has learned from his mistakes, and now, wiser, he wants to go back in time to make things right.
This story is told in brief snatches between worlds (levels). The writing is alternately impressive and annoying, possibly the work of someone with a lot of raw but unpolished talent. Sometimes the author tries a little too hard.
I predict that when the little guy in the dress jacket finally finds his princess, no combination of time-shifting abilities will make things right again. Or at least, that’s how I would end things.
D.
Bakersfield!
I was going to write a “God help them, they know not what they do” post, but I think perhaps I should sign the contract first 🙂
D.
The need for speed
Picture it:
I’m catching the Red Eye from Portland back to San Francisco International, which means I have to be up at 4:30 to make my flight. Night before my trip, I’m in bed by 10, but the hours tick away as I lie awake, fretting about my now-history Portland interview. It’s 10:30. Six hours of sleep? I can function on six hours —
It’s 2:30. Yeah, I can function on two hours of sleep. Not well, but I can function.
Every half hour, something roars by the window. It’s the most massive street cleaner I’ve ever seen, the mega-Zamboni of street sweepers, and I find myself wondering why it has to clean the same street again and again.
Nice thing about the Red Eye, it gets its tail into the air on time, and before I know it I’m picking up my Toyota from long term parking. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, still too distracted over Portland.
All I can think about is getting home. Fast.
Post 2000
I thought that was kind of remarkable.
I keep hoping that when my life settles down, I’ll have time to reflect, to write, to entertain again.
I miss the old Balls and Walnuts.
D.
Cool critter of the week
We saw one of these at the California Academy of Sciences on Sunday:
I’ll quote someone else:
The males grab onto the females in piggyback fashion, hanging on in front of her hind legs. The frog pair rolls over while floating in the water, and the female lays three to five eggs while she is in the upside down position. The eggs catch on the male’s belly, then drop onto the female’s back as the pair completes the roll. Instead of the eggs sticking to vegetation or floating off into the water as they do with most frogs, the eggs stay on the mother’s back, where they become caught. Her skin swells up around the sides of each egg. In all, she may have about 50 eggs on her back, which remain there for the next three or four months. At that time, the eggs hatch right into froglets, which pop right out of her back.
We saw a female with eggs on her back in various stages of development. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense that they would be at different stages, unless her back traps the eggs before fertilization and they’re fertilized at different times? I dunno. One of the mysteries of life.
Oh, wait! Only 3 to 5 eggs per mating, up to fifty on her back . . . whoa, she’s been busy!
D.
Some folks can’t take criticism
In the new California Academy of Sciences Tropical Rain Forest Exhibit, Karen overheard a mom telling her kid that chameleons change color to blend with their surroundings.
We were all milling around the Chamaeleo pardalis display. Don’t know who this guy is trying to blend with, but his shirt must be fabulous.
Karen said, “No, they don’t,” and the woman looked as if she wanted to slap Karen silly. (I’m betting the wheelchair saved my wife’s skinny ass.) “I’m sorry?” she said.
I think Karen understood right away that she had somehow stepped in it. Apparently this is a woman you don’t correct. But Karen pressed on.
“It’s a common misconception. They’re not trying to blend, they’re communicating with one another — for mating purposes, or to say, ‘Get away.'”
IIRC the woman countered with, “Okay, whatever,” in her best fuck-you tone of voice, which led to Karen asserting dominance by saying, “No, no, I used to breed them!”
I got Karen out of there before they came to blows.
D.
A fundamental misunderstanding of time travel
From Cracked Dot Com: Worst Excuse Ever?
Okay, here’s a question for you: has anyone out there read Jonathan Stroud’s (he of the Bartimaeus Trilogy) new book Heroes of the Valley? Any good?
Am currently reading Michael Swanwick’s The Dog Said Bow Wow. Interesting. Interestingly bad. I love Swanwick’s novels — just got done with Dragons of Babel, which I recommend without reservation — but his short stories never fail to disappoint. Most of them were pubbed in Asimov’s, and it shows. They all have that same cheesiness which turned me off Asimov’s and F&SF years ago.
Only one story thus far has intrigued me (if only briefly) — The Bordello in Faerie, about a young man who discovers he likes being whored to the magical beings of Faerie. Wonderful premise, great follow-through, but then the whole thing fizzled. It felt like Swanwick had had a great idea but not a great story.
Read any good books lately?
D.