Reports of my death…

… have been greatly exaggerated.  I’ve been in the deadline-hell of a massive sourcebook (big mistake) but it’s done and in editing and other people can fix it.

Which means I’m now doing NanoWrimo out of pure necessity–I’ve got a novel manuscript due December 1st, and I haven’t even started yet.

Forty days and forty nights.  It shall be done.

I need a break…

… from bullshit.  God that’d be nice.

*gasp*

Holy Zombie Jesus I’m so far behind.  OMGomgomgomg.

Just sayin’

After Long Hiatus…

… things I have learned.

1. True believers are the most terrifying thing on Earth.  I’m a big fan of faith, but when faith becomes dogma (or even doctrine) then y’all can have the short bus to yourself.
2. Despite protestations to the contrary, wasting a nice solid two-day weekend doing *nothing* more noteworthy than exercise does not make me feel better. I feel like I’ve wasted time.
3. Harold Ramis hasn’t learned *anything* in thirty years.  Same jokes, different century.
4. I want Tea Leoni for Christmas–or maybe Claire Danes.  Alicia Silverstone?
5. I need money. For art. I have an art habit.  Not drugs–I promise.
6. The next $100-$150 I get is going to a boat engine. To see if the fucker runs.
7. The $100-$150 after that is buying me the Deadwood complete series. Because it’s just freaking awesome. 
8. I miss my washer and dryer.  But I get new ones on Tuesday.

New House!

I no longer live in that shit-ass noisy apartment complex.  I now rent a wonderful house, with lots of room and space and I’m quite pleased.

I didn’t miss mowing, of course. But you can’t have everything.

urk

Something has to change soon.

Star Trek

Okay. I saw this movie.  Twice, so far.  And I’ll probably see it again.

I’m going to talk about the plot and give it away here. If you don’t want to know, just stop reading.  Right now.  I mean it.  Go away.  You’ve been warned.

I spent the last few months as the hype built hoping for one thing: that while it might be called Star Trek, and the theaters would undoubtedly be filled with costumed canonazis and Comic-Con alumni, it might still just be a good movie.

And it was.

But parts of it are retarded. All the rest of it is shiny and funny and fast-paced–it’s more than two hours long but it never feels long.  After two viewings I can tell you, as a movie fan who grew up with Star Trek and, while not a nazi about it, knows the canon, that it takes all the best parts of Star Trek (best=most likely to attract new and wider audience) and tells the rest to pound sand.

The actors do a fantastic job–this is very much a character movie.  Chris Pine plays the asshole quite well (and since that’s all Kirk really is, at heart, it works) and Zachary Quinto does a very good–and very conflicted–Spock.  John Cho brings his own take on Sulu, and Karl Urban just flat-out steals the movie as Leonard “Bones” McCoy.  Anton Yelchin does excellent work as Chekhov, and Zoe Saldana (zomg that girl is hawt!) brings new dimensions to Uhura*.

One of the standouts of the cast, however, has to be Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike, who was more of a bit character in the original series but who has a well-developed and well-acted mentor role in this film.  Eric Bana’s villian is convincingly villianous but remains one of the weakest parts of the film**.

As one expects with a summer skiffy flick, the effects are outstanding and the set designs and art choices are utterl beautiful.  In an aspect that not too many people have yet commented on (at least not positively, or completely) the sets have a very heavy steampunk influence (the engine room of starships, or instance, have a great resemblance to the cavernous engine rooms of turn-the-century ocean steamers.  It’s a noticeable–and welcome–contrast of the set designs for the rest of ship, which can be summed up as “pretty Apple store motif”.

The script is both excellent and trash.  The dialogue is snappy, humorous, and character-driven, but the plot is ridiculous.  It almost relies on anti-logic, since it laughs at anything approaching science and is somewhat contradictory in places.  We won’t mention “red matter” (or the rabbit’s foot or the Cloverfield monster) or point out the immensity of space (supernovas to threaten galaxies, eh?  Did no one do the “look, this golf ball is the earth, and this tennis ball sitting on the opposite coast is the sun” example for JJ Abrams?) or any rational explanation of black holes, you know, actually work.  Also how the villians do suitably retarded things to move the plot along, or why no one, in all the history of screen-depicted Trek, has ever just thought “let’s throw a rock” or anything to do with kinetic energy weapons.

The real gem of it is, though, that despite all of that, it’s still a damn entertaining movie.  Even if you’re not a Trekkie (and thank god if you’re not) go see it, if you like flashy movies with shit blowing up and somewhat-witty banter.

* – okay, all over the blogosphere I’ve seen women complaining that Uhura is “just a guurrl” in this movie. All she seems to be there for is sexual tension, to make out with her boss, to pull the “I’m sleeping with you so I get what I want or else I tell your friends” card, and to strip down to her underwear at one point.  “Why couldn’t she do the hand-to-hand combat, or shoot the phasers, or anything important (in a 21st century, I-am-woman-hear-me-roar-seduce-and-be-just-as-manly-as-the-men sort of way).  All she does is be smart.  How sad is that!?

Ladies, with respect, pound sand.  I’m all for liberated women and breaking the glass ceiling and all that other shit I get blamed for while I’m working three jobs as a single dad.  In fact, you smart, independent, sassy, successful women are exactly who I’m attracted to. The stay-at-home, cooking-and-praising-Jesus types are a huge turn-off.  But, sometimes, in a movie, it’s just better to be, you know… girlie.

** – I like Eric Bana. I really do.  But his character in this movie is a RETARD.  So a random natural occurence destroys his homeworld and kills his pregnant wife.  And Spock just can’t get through traffic fast enough to save the planet (which is one of the truly stupid dialogue moments… during Spock’s infodump (here’s what all this bother is about, kids) he says “And then the unthinkable happened…” except that, well, you just said two sentences ago that you’d stop it from happening, so you obviously did think about it) so Nero gets all vengeful, accidentally falls through a time warp to kill Jim Kirk’s Dad, then hides out unnoticed for 25 years, then starts killing every planet of the Federation. Because, you know, Spock couldn’t stop the patently-impossible “supernova that will destroy the galaxy (because it’s like a tsunami, right?  Goes around the world–er, the galaxy–in an hour?)” so he has to kill Vulcan and Earth “to stop Romulus from being threatened by the Federation”–the same Federation who, incidentally, had the only plan to save Romulus from the totally random natural occurence that Nero now has a 128-year calendar for, even though it failed.  It’s not “fascinating.”  It’s retarded.

In which our hero looks in the mirror…

… suppresses the urge to vomit.

Holy shit. Is that me!?  Holy soggy midsection, Batman! I’ve got to get this shit under control.

I’m holding pretty steady on weight but I’m getting soft… which means the muscle I built up last year is falling away into fat, which thanks to Mom and Dad (hi, Mom and Dad, and your genes!) I carry solidly around my midsection.  Which is damn hard to work off.

Also? I need to get in shape because I haven’t been shopping in ages!  I need the new shiny.  NEW SHINY!  I have new shiny sexy clothes withdrawal. I need to get all sexy-fied to get into my sexy-fied clothes.  Because I’m shallow and I like getting attention and it makes me feel extra snobbish (if you can believe such a thing) when I know I look hawt.

And yes. I know how gay that sounded.

Bite me.  I don’t care.

In which our hero looks inside…

… and finds his soul a seething cauldron of contradictions.

Somwhere, right now, a psychologist is reading this post and rubbing his hands together with Scrooge McDuck dollar signs in his eyes.  I know it.  You know it.  Accept it.

Ah, shit. I had a long list of shit typed out.  Never mind.  I’m messed up. Doc, someday when I have excess cash we’ll sit down and hash it out.  I promise.

In which our hero realizes the depths of his despair…

… and is forced to admit…

… that he’s taken on too much work.  And it’s going to hurt like hell to get out from under it.

I pounced out 4,000 word today, original I-just-made-up-the-order words.  And I hurt from it, but I have to do AT LEAST the same tomorrow (if not more) and about five times that on Sunday.  And ten times that across the course of next week.  And at least three times that a week for the next three weeks.

And that’s just to get caught up!

I’ve been off, I admit it. It’s damn hard to concentrate when you lose four weeks to dentistry (okay, three weeks to oh-my-god-this-hurts-why-can’t-I-get-into-the-dentist-oh-yeah-I’m-fucking-uninsured-and-broke pain and then one week of shit-I-can’t-afford-the-good-painkillers recovery pain) and you’re suddenly WAY late on only the second deadline you’ve ever missed since you started writing professionally.  Add on top problems getting what’s owed you and missing another month becaue  a project that should have been done months before suddenly zombies to life and you get my point.