Alright, people. Listen, I've had a shitty summer. Literally, though that part was more in the fall than the summer. But the summer sucked some pretty big sweaty balls, as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't MY big sweaty balls being sucked.
But, dammit, Winter is almost upon us, with its long nights, chilly days and randomly designated holidays commemorating the births of demigods--try as you might, you're not going to find a damned bit of blasphemy in those words. It's time for things to start looking up.
And, by golly, would you look at that? The Winter Solstice for 2011 is on December 22nd. Isn't that just the bees' knees? Because my birthday is also on the 22nd of December! What a co-inky-dink, no? My fake French accent is believable, no?
You know what they say, right? That Winter is Coming. They, of course, being the Starks (or what's left of them...oops, spoilers!) from Game of Thrones. Remember back about three posts when I translated the mottos of the houses in Game of Thrones into Latin? Well, Hibernum venit, fututrices! And with it approaches the anniversary of me sliding out of my mother's birth canal.
*visible shudder*
This is all coming together so well that I think--nay--I feel that I must get this shirt for my birthday:
I mean, I am a fan after all. And I really don't have enough black and/or charcoal gray t-shirts. Plus, my birthday is the winter solstice this year!!! The old gods of the North are trying to tell me something, and I believe that something is to con my friends into buying me a t-shirt.
Did you miss me yesterday? Yeah, I missed you, too. I had one of them meeting things that the corporate world is so fond of. It was alright. I got free lunch, I didn't have to work in the lab, and I giggled and tittered and tee-heed at my boss' picture from a recent skiing trip in which his goatee--coated over with snot-drippings and snow--caused him to bear an uncanny resemblance to Wilford Brimley and/or Diabeetus Cat. The only drawback was the chair I was sitting on made my ass hurt. A lot. Anyway, let's talk less of my boss' resemblance to old men with oatmeal fetishes and more about blowing the living hell out of some shit! Remember last week's post, in which a bunch of morons were blowing up a balloon and deafening themselves at the same time? Here's a link to take you back in time and refresh your memory, should you need it.
The comments section (spurred on by my own concrete lack of knowledge) brought about quite a number of guesses about what was in the balloon in order to cause it to detonate so grandly. I originally wavered between hydrogen and methane (both readily accessible); Scope thought it had to be something else, something incendiary; Hap thought that since it wasn't fully buoyant that it had to be something like methane.
This is where blogging life spills over into real life. My friend Joe--the third smartest person I've ever met, right behind Dr. John Nichols and Dr. Xavier Creary--knew exactly what was in the balloon. Apparently, when he was in undergrad, he had a professor who showed the kids how to make good homemade bombs. After Joe told me about this guy, I suddenly thought that maybe I would make a good teacher...except for that whole stare lingering too long over the comely lass in the front row with a short skirt. Wait, where the hell was I?
Oh, yes, last week's explosion. Apparently, if you combine hydrogen and oxygen in a stoichiometric mixture, you get a bang like that. It just flashes and "boom" and very little fire is given off from the explosion--it's gone in a flash. For instance, there's this; apparently, someone snuck a camera into Joe's professor's lectures:
Now, compare that to a "pure" hydrogen fire. There's plenty of sound and there's plenty of flame...which I've never understood because hydrogen itself burns with no visible flame, according to experts. Being as how I'm just a schlub, I'll take their word for it, but I've seen it burn this bright yellowish-orange flame. In fact, here's a pure hydrogen balloon going up.
Notice how that guy was all safety first, what with the gloves and the long pole to ignite the fire. Fuck safety glasses, he said. Tsk tsk. We'll have to write you up, Mister Hydrogen Balloon Man.
So, what's the difference? Apparently, the presence of oxygen is the key here. See, in the second balloon, the oxygen is pulled from the surrounding atmosphere. In the first, I assume that the hydrogen has been mixed with the correct amount of oxygen in order to undergo the accordant combustion or combination reaction (take your pick which you want, since--technically--this reaction falls into both).
How to know the amount of oxygen to mix in there? That's a good one. You need to balance you some equations. For instance, we know that what we have here is hydrogen reacting with oxygen. Hopefully, you also know that hydrogen and oxygen mix to form water. I'll also assume that you know that hydrogen and oxygen are both diatomic molecules. What, were you sleeping during chem class? So, we write the reaction like this:
H2 + O2 ---> H2O
Except, you'll notice, that on the left hand side of the arrow (which is used to show a reaction has taken place), you have 2 oxygens and on the right hand side, you have only one (remember, subscripts go with the element in front of them). Since matter cannot be destroyed nor created, we have what is called an unbalanced reaction. Therefore, we must put numbers out in front of our reactants (on the left hand side) and our products (on the right hand side) so that all the amounts of atoms match up. It should look something like this:
2H2 + O2 ---> 2H2O
So, essentially, what that tells us (other than the fact that you can't subscript on Blogger), is that you need twice as much hydrogen as you do oxygen in order to get the big ass bang that we saw last week and in the first video.
And who says science can't be fun? Oh, right. Everyone. And they'd be right.
And now...I'll let Chemgeek--a Real Professor of Chemistry--pick apart my post.
Not a lot of people read this on the weekends, so I thought I'd just throw up a grab bag of shit that I've accumulated recently, thinking "Hey, that would make a fun little post." But then I didn't get around to it because, remember people, my lack of ambition at overcoming entropy sometimes outweighs my desire to tickle your fancies. If you need help plotting the relationship between my love of your comments versus my inherent laziness, I suggest the Arrhenius equation.
Anyway, remember that book thing I'm trying to work on and publish and all that shit? Well, for one, I'm waiting a bit for the economy to not be so dour before plunging headlong into the submission pool once anon. Hopefully, with the president telling everyone NOT to believe the media hype (for once), things will slowly begin to tick up. Now, if we could get more institutions to not take bailout money, the stock markets would begin to slide back up and then some enterprising agent would be like "awesome, let's print this thing!"
So, as you remember, I'm working on a big fantasy story. Since I've basically crafted an entire world for my characters, I decided to work in the whole element of realism that follows along with history, political structures and religion. For the religion aspect, I based my deities on Norse and Germanic mythology, with a healthy dose of Celtic, for good measure. When I did that, I busted open my guide to the gods and read, cover to cover, the section on Norse mythology. Imagine, then, my sheer giddy glee when I stumbled across a web comic centered on the dysfunction surrounding the Norse gods. I've been delighting in this for weeks now; here's the link to Brat-Halla. It might help to read it and keep open the Encyclopedia Mythica, in case you're not familiar with who Hod, Heimdall, Syf, Tyr, Frigg and Baldur are (I assume you know who Thor, Odin and Loki are...oh, and the Valkyries).
Brat-Halla's cast of characters
Jidai posted this the other day, but I have to steal it and leave it here, in case you missed out on it. There are some excellent nuggets of geeky reference in this.
Saturday Morning Watchmen Cartoon:
If you're a football fan and you're not reading Kissing Suzy Kolber, you're doing yourself a disservice. For instance, here's their recent Watchmen parody as played out by NFL players. I'm not sure which I like more, Silk Steeler or BoobsAssTits.
More Watchmen shit. Here's the PvPparody of Watchmen, using classic comic strip characters. It might not be as funny as the first two links, but it's still quite clever. Pfangirl originally had the links up for me.
Okay, last Watchmen thing. No matter how brilliant this is, this comic is disturbingly funny. It makes a lot more sense if you've read the comic or at least seen the movie. Thanks to Theory of Everything for making this possible.
And in case you missed the twin celebrations yesterday...or thought I was making it all up...here's the histories behind Pi Day (it's 3-14, in case you couldn't figure it out) and Steak and Blow Job Day (kind of NSFW link). Now, where's Nej to tell me that she learns something every time she reads my blog?
I went and saw Watchmen last night. I went by myself and sat in a theatre with about sixty other folks. The good thing was that they were there to see the movie and--I'm going to guess--most of them either knew the story or at least knew what to except. There was no extraneous giggling about Dr. Manhattan's peezer, though there was laughing at the appropriate times when Rorschach was just being the complete badass he was supposed to be.
So, here's my review, but if you want to read reviews by people who do a much better job than me, check moog, Jon, Rider or Jidai. Pfangirlwill also have a review up soon has an excellent review up, as well.
The short review: I wanted to get up and walk out of the theatre...to buy a ticket to the very next screening. I really enjoyed it. For one, it was as true an adaptation of the comic as possible. There were a couple of things left out that I thought were important: Laurie's favorite toy, the snow globe, that she broke when she saw her mother and her mother's husband fighting (I realize that Doc Manhattan's glass palace played the same role) and Sally kissing the picture of the Comedian from the group photo of the Minutemen. I thought that, when she did that in the comic, it wrapped that subplot up nicely. Also, I thought that the movie made it too obvious as to who the antagonist was. That could have just been because I knew who was behind the diabolical plan and I picked up on the clues more readily.
I wish that there had been more to the story as to why the Keene Act was set in place. I thought that was touched on a little too quickly. Also, I wish that we could have explored Dr. Malcolm's reaction to Rorschach's story more so that it was more obvious that he understood why Rorschach became what he became. I realize that these additions would have taken up more time, and the movie was already nearly three hours long (not that I minded).
Of course, I also know that the Black Freighter story arc will be in the extended version when the DVD hits shelves later in the summer, so I'm not upset over that.
That's all the negative I could pull out of it. At first, I thought Dr. Manhattan's voice wasn't right, but then, given what he has developed into, I realized that having a soothing, placid voice was better than the cold, almost Vader-esque voice I always read in the book. Also, I liked Silk Spectre II in the movie much better than the book.
Needless to say, Rorschach and the Comedian were fucking unbelievably good. Everyone has talked about them, but I also really liked Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II. I thought Patrick Wilson didn't get enough accolades (in the reviews I've read) for balancing the impotence/vulnerability/cowardice of Dreiberg versus the crime fighter persona of Nite Owl.
As for the ending...it's different than it was in the book (which will, of course, make Alan Moore fly off the handle over how Hollywood has ruined his art...right after pocketing yet another check), and I have to say, the ending that Snyder orchestrated was...if not better, then more believable. It tied elements of the story together more cohesively as opposed to leaving things to chance like the ending in the book did. Plus, it didn't involve a gigantic vagina-squid in the middle of New York.
The fight scenes, I thought, were well-done, despite the fact that they jumped from real time to slow motion and back. It was a little easier to follow this way than, say, in Batman or a Wolverine fight scene where things are crowded, close and fast. Rorschach's origin story was tweaked a little, but that didn't bother me; it still fit in with the character.
And as for the criticism that I heard from people on the radio that the movie had too much talking and not enough action...what the fuck movie were you watching? Yeah, it slowed down a little bit after the initial fight scene, but so did Iron Man, and you fuckers weren't bitching about that. The only problem I saw in the pacing is where Nite Owl and Rorschach are about to figure out what's going on and then we jump back to Mars to see Laurie and Jon discussing the fate of the world and Laurie's past...which is exactly how it happened in the book. Nothing felt rushed or crammed together or hurried or clipped. In fact, the only way that I noticed the three hours were nearly up (aside from knowing where we were in the storyline) was that my Cherry Coke was nearly empty.
I would recommend seeing this if you are at all a fan of the genre. If you're not necessarily, but you still would like to see it, maybe wait for the DVD. I still recommend reading the book first, just so you can follow along a little easier. I don't think it's necessary, but it might enhance your enjoyment of the film.
To top the evening off last night, I came home to find my wife laying on the bed reading my copy of the Watchmen. Talk about instant chub...
So, I'm a little confused here. I mean, I can name all thirteen of the Dwarves that traveled with Bilbo, recite the inscription on the Ring of Power, recite the periodic table up to tin (I tend to switch antimony and tellurium), can draw the natural steroisomers of all the amino acids from memory, can recite the taxonomic divisions of life from top to bottom, and I can recite base e to 15 decimal places. That's not geeky? Do all of these "abilities" make me A) a nerd, B) a geek, or C) just devilishly handsome and strangely alluring? Hint: The answer is c.
I was afraid that, when I saw all the promotional posters with the Joker and the "Why so serious?" catchphrase, that we'd get a lot more of the same zany, madcap, crazy, where-does-he-get-all-those-beautiful-toys, Superfriends Joker.
However, as someone put it last night, Jack Nicholson was Jack Nicholson; Heath Ledger was the Joker.
I had heard, going in, that Ledger could be up for a posthumous Oscar and all that. Yeah, yeah, I thought. But, not only did he capture the Joker, he also captured the two levels of the Joker. There's the wise-cracking, smartass Joker, and then there's the nobody crosses me because I'm an insane criminal mastermind who will kill you if you try Joker. Ledger was able to play both parts perfectly.
The best thing was that he didn't dominate the screen and demand everyone's attention. Instead, he sort of slunk onto the screen and then performed, his character growing with each scene, going from an unknown entity to being the creature who held 30 million people in terror within Gotham City.
Here's another thing: there was actual tension built throughout the film. There was constantly a thought of "What next?" Yeah, I could see where things were going and all, but never at any point was I sitting back thinking, "Alright, here we go." There was drama, there was tension, and there were plenty of "Oh wow" moments. I'll just say that Christopher Nolan pulled a couple of excellent bait-and-switch moments.
I think this is the movie that Spider-Man 2 wanted to be. But where Peter Parker is always going to be a whiny little punk, Bruce Wayne is dark and contemplative. Christian Bale has pretty much become my favorite Batman, though I will admit his voice in Batman form is a little...off. I guess I was spoiled by Kevin Conroy in animated form for all those years. Still, when Bruce Wayne struggles with himself, it's believable and not pouty.
Aaron Eckhart did an excellent job as Harvy Dent. So as I don't ruin the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it, his performance throughout was spot on, playing the counterpoint to Christian Bale's Batman. The interaction between the two on and off the screen with one another was well-written and well-performed.
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Gary Oldman are also good in their roles, but I still love that Morgan Freeman watches over all of Wayne Enterprises and still delivers the best comedic line in the movie.
Still, in the end, everything comes down to the Joker and Batman, and the story and the performances do not let the viewer down. As I said before, Bale does an excellent job toeing the line between caped crusader and masked vigilante, both as Batman and Bruce Wayne. Ledger brings to life a terrifying, monstrous Joker and fulfills the hyperbole surrounding his final performance. It's difficult for a movie to live up to all the hype that surrounds it in this day and age, but The Dark Knight does so, delivering an excellent action movie that tickles the fanboy in all of us.
I'll also pop in, here at the end, that I really liked the Watchmen trailer that popped up right before the movie. Clearly, that is the Head of the Class of the previews, and I hope that the movie does not let down. Hopefully, like Batman, it delivers.
Remember when I was slapping the Arte y Pico award around the other day, and I saddled awarded What Does it Mean? Nothing! with it? And remember in my description how I said that Jidai's blog is a lot like what I want mine to be, if I didn't have so many anecdotes about Notre Dame, Leelee Sobieski and Winston-Salem, NC (or something to that effect)? Right, well, it's getting a whole lot more Jidai-esque around here.
The other day, Monsieur Jidai posted a lovely entry wherein he described his five favorite fictional universes. Not one to let a good idea go un-plagiarized, I stole his idea and ran with it. I did give him fair warning, so that makes it less like plagiarism and more like homage, right? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Right. Let's move on.
5) Osten Ard: Sure, I had been writing stories and such since I was in the third grade, but if there was any one place in all the different worlds crafted by different authors, Tad Williams' creation, Osten Ard, is the one that made me get serious about writing. Since then I've tried and tried again to craft a world based modestly on the model of Osten Ard: a realistic world in which realistic characters undertake semi-realistic endeavors surrounding magic and magical artifacts. The peoples of Osten Ard are easily identifiable as various archetypes from Europe (Scandinavians, Britons, and Roman Imperials), but the way in which Williams meshes his characters with the world has always made me hold Osten Ard and Tad himself in such high regard. While some may dismiss Memory, Sorrow and Thorn as being no Wheel of Time, this is the series/trilogy that I hold my own works against time and again when comparing to see if my books are "good enough". Granted, that's like holding up my kindergarten self-portrait to artwork of the Renaissance Masters and saying "Yeah, passable likeness", but still, this is how I view it all.
4) Star Wars: The Star Wars universe is sort of a double-edged sword. One one side, you have a fantastic universe littered with countless interesting worlds, characters, creatures, technologies and concepts; on the other side, you've got a creator who cares more about designs and computer technology than character development and dialogue. Fortunately, there's a myriad of authors, artists and comic book writers who are willing to pick up the slack. Here is a universe with 3000 years of history to tinker with (and you still wonder..."what happened before?" and "what comes next?"). While parts of the Star Wars universe not directly under George's control are supposed to get Lucas' stamp of approval, the other various medias in which the Star Wars Universe has been depicted were given carte blanche to work, and it shows. Perhaps greatest among these are the novels by Timothy Zahn. If you're a fan of Star Wars and you haven't yet read the Thrawn trilogy, you definitely need to. Yeah, they're big and yeah, they don't have pictures, but the books themselves are very well-written and help give a peek inside the mind of an evil genius warlord.
3) The View Askewniverse: This holds perhaps the most unbelievable place in all the universes: A strange land called New Jersey. While most of the stories are, indeed, Jersey-centric (I don't know if Zak and Miri is also), this doesn't detract from the overall vibe of the universe Kevin Smith has crafted. Sure, most of the characters are modeled on real people Smith either has known or--better yet--cast in his movies, but the characters themselves are almost parodies of themselves. You'll never find more incredible--or believable--douchebags on the screen, but at the same time there are moments so flowing with tenderness and emotion it makes you want to get a love mop and clean that shit up. Not only that, but I have to love any universe where saying "fuck" is perfectly acceptable, phrases like "Bunch of savages in this town" crop up over and over, and Selma Hayek rips her shirt off and thrusts her breasts into the camera. Mercy. Where was I? Oh, fuck it, who cares. Snootch to the booch, my bitches.
2) Middle Earth: As much as I love Osten Ard and publically fellate Tad Williams whenever I get the chance, Tad would be just another guy writing just another book if it wasn't for J.R.R. Tolkien's creation of Middle Earth, because he not only helped define a genre, he effing created it. Since then, there have been thousands of Tolkien clones and then, even when someone tries to break the Tolkien-mold, they get raked over the coals. Case in point, J.K. Rowling's House Elves did not fit the Tolkien High Elf description (instead, they were more like traditional elves from fairy tale literature), and she was gutted, roasted and served with a lemon wedge for it by the "fantasy purists". While I, too, struggle with breaking the Tolkien-mold, I realize that without him, I'd just be another hack struggling to put together a book and hoping like hell that one of Oprah's assistants picked it up and said, "not bad." *shudders at the thought* Whereas Lucas' Star Wars Universe is outfitted with characters that are often underdeveloped, Tolkien's characters are fully rounded--sometimes too much so. The man clearly loved his world, enough so that he continually scrawled new stories and "backfill" on napkins at bars, in the margins of papers he was reading, and probably on the unused rolls whilst sitting on the john. All of these have been summarily cobbled together and published in various forms, thanks to son Christopher's work, the most recent of which was titled "The Children of Húrin". Again, like the Thrawn novels for Star Wars, if you're a Tolkien fan, you should read Húrin.
1) My Universe: I've never shied away from the fact that I'm a total homer when it comes to Notre Dame or Indiana, so why the hell should I back down from my own creation? Does it compare to the other universes I've listed? That's for others to decide. Unfortunately, I don't have a name for my world; if you really want one, I'll call it the Jenksatorium. Happy? Good. As it compares to some of the other universes I've listed, I can promise you the reader that I've toiled over it almost obsessively, thinking up the backstories and writing and rewriting the characters until it makes sense that they are doing what they're doing. Once the characters were set, then the story began to unfold. Now, I'm mired in at least four books with many more in sight along with a second series of stories that I'm just as eager to write, but I have to get my priorities set and finish the first set of stories first (the second set of stories totally ruins the first set, if I were to write them at the same time). Speaking of priorities, let me get back to finishing this game of Civ III. What? No, you didn't see that. I meant to say "get back to finishing this chapter in book III". Right. Honorable mentions: Springfield from the Simpsons, Ivalice et. al. from the Final Fantasy games, the X-Universe from Marvel Comics, and Upside Down Alaska from Robin Hobb's books, and the Wizarding World from Harry Potter.
But, dammit, Winter is almost upon us, with its long nights, chilly days and randomly designated holidays commemorating the births of demigods--try as you might, you're not going to find a damned bit of blasphemy in those words. It's time for things to start looking up.
