fine whine

I’ve been reading lately in part because I enjoy reading and also because the library’s doing their summer reading club, whereby I stand the slight chance of winning things in a drawing. Entries are based on the number of books I read.

I recall the reading clubs of my youth, which netted me many a free McDonald’s hamburger or Pizza Hut personal pan pizza. Back then I would sometimes play one local library against the other, checking the same book from both and getting credit twice, and other times I’d claim I’d read books I hadn’t finished. Guilt aside, the only problem with the latter approach was when the librarian would quiz me on a random book, and occasionally I’d find myself fabricating a book based on the cover image and the rest of my imagination, or another book altogether. I wasn’t caught once.

Now, for the adult program, I don’t even need to summarize the books or give a report. All I need do to enter the drawing is to write the title, my name and numbers, and throw it in a box. What could be easier?

Now while I am tempted to enter books I’d read before the contest began, or books I have at home, I’ve been trying to be somewhat honest with this. Every entry records my library card number, and it is probably trivial for the librarians to check if I have, in fact, checked out a book I’ve claimed to read. In the spirit of total disclosure, though, I’ve begun checking out books after I’ve read them, though only one so far: Cory Doctorow’s Down and out in the Magic Kingdom. Then again, I read it after the contest began.

I read it online in minutes here and there, in a tiny browser window at the bottom of my screen. It was an easy enough read, and though heavily Disney-otaku-esque (it takes place in the park, after all) it was a fairly enjoyable book/HTML page. I read it in less than a day, and still got my work done. It was a light day.

Cory also offers his other books in free digital formats, and I’d attempted to start Eastern Standard Tribe but wasn’t able to focus on it that day and still get my work done.

It did not help that the latter book is not conventionally linear, but two parts of the same story that alternate chapters. In the end it all fits together, but it’s difficult to begin, particularly when I’m only able to read one or two lines at at time. Not to worry, I realized, as I had just reserved both novels from the library.

Well, since then I have read EST and it too was enjoyable enough. But that’s not what this is about.

In Down and out the concept of ‘deadheading’ is mentioned, a form of cryogenic sleep or some such preservation of living people over long periods of time. In that book people do it as a form of one-way time travel, waiting around until the timer stops or something interesting triggers them to thaw and rejoin the living and breathing.

Another book I’ve read, Iron sunset by Charles Stross, mentions ‘deadheading’ but in a sense more like its current (well, current as of Abagnale’s Catch me if you can) airline meaning–namely, a pilot who is a passenger–though only in the sense that it is for travel. Stross’s deadheads are passengers on interstellar liners who paid for the economy class and are deep-frozen or otherwise in stasis. The richer passengers get to experience the luxuries of the ship and so on and so forth.

I just found it odd that both authors used the same word. This is by far not the only time two writers have ‘coined’ the same thing, nor will it be the last. Like I said, it was just odd, particularly since I’d read the books so closely together.

Personally, I’d use the term ‘hiber-nauts’. Or, if you’re a burgeoning writer, you can. Without the quotes and the hyphen, if you’re bold enough. Just drop me a line, okay?

One of these days I might write a story about that sort of thing, and then, well, I’ll use it. Which will make me look like the copycat, if the hypothetical burgeoning writer used it first. Such is life.

I’ve been turning it on and off for a while now, but my new theme for the site is now up and running. It’s more colorful than my last couple attempts at page design, but it no longer has anything to do with ‘whine’ or ‘wine’ (no corkscrews here!) and I’m not sure if that matters or not.

Overall the everything is more or less done, though you may notice something odd here or there. Please let me know, either by leaving a comment or contacting me. I appreciate all feedback.

Speaking of commenting, you may notice little boxes next to the comments. Those are for Gravatars, which are a way to have some consistent identity across blogs and sites and anything that uses them. Those images coordinate with the email addresses used on comments (once again, note that I do not do anything with your email address, and will never sell it or give it out without your permission). I’ve made mine semi-random, but that’s the sort of thing that I can do between my mad coding skillz and skippy’s.

Mostly his.

Anyway, they’re free and easy to use and they brighten the place up a little bit. Go get one!

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

The word ‘blog’ can in fact be used as a noun or a verb. When used as a noun, it names something that receives, organizes, and publishes posts. The verb is the action of posting to the noun.

Individual bits of ‘blog’ are in fact called ‘entries’ or ‘posts’, not ‘blogs’. This is an important distinction, and it is all the more imperative that this is made clear before blogging is made mandatory.

Preliminary research indicates that ‘blog’ makes a poor adjective or other modifier.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.

“Webinar” Say it out loud a couple times. The word just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? First brought to my attention over a year ago, it hasn’t emerged from any casual conversation or other interaction with anybody until today, and then only indirectly.

Nevertheless I cringed. It’s not a real word, and it’s not enough of a sound-alike to pass as one. There is no easy way to get, logically or phonically, from “seminar” to “webinar”.

Anyway, this matters not, as not only is the word lacking in my approval but also in general meaning, as an email my coworker received today.

He’s the new guy but I suppose I won’t be able to call him that much longer. His position is senior to mine and it won’t be long before he runs out of questions to ask me.

Since he is still new to the organization, he is midway through his so-called ‘onboarding’ process. Today he received an email ordering him to participate in a webinar.

By ‘participate’, of course, I mean to say that he was supposed to open a PowerPoint presentation attached to the email and call in on a conference call to follow along.

Not one bit of this so-called webinar was being done with the Web. Not one bit! Of course, “phonecallandpowerpoint-inar” doesn’t sound any better, does it?

What comes below ‘meaningless’? I mean, after ‘buzzword’, of course?

“Weird.”

That’s Jessica’s one line description and indictment of many a movie I bring home. She issues it so much it’s basically lost any qualitative value to me. Waterworld was “weird”.

But so was Saw. How one word could be used to describe such different movies is beyond my comprehension of its definition.

For my part, Saw was interesting if not a bit disorienting, with its flashbacks (within flashbacks?) and numerous points of view. At no point was anyone (audience included) shown everything they’d need to see, or even would be able to see.

As an independent movie it’s a success, and will no doubt propel Lion’s Gate well forward in the slasher/straight-to-video category. As for me, I’d like to see Cary Elwes with less makeup and a much nicer disposition. Has he done anything in the way of a happy or positive character since he doffed the green tights?

So tonight, after ten years of waiting, I have finally seen Waterworld.

I’ve heard it dubbed “Fishtar”, but until I watch that Warren Beatty/Dustin Hoffman buddy road movie I can’t really judge it.

Then again the nickname is based less on the subject matter or quality of the film but instead a judgement based on the high budget versus low box-office. For a film that is so high budget, then, it is pretty bleak, with so much of the picture (other than the deep blue water) in drab browns and greys.

In this respect particularly I think the film is closer to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, but there are only so many directions to take the (always overly beige) post-apocalyptic idea. Admittedly the whole Earth covered in water twist is a new one, as the majority of bleak futures take place in massive deserts or parking decks, but that may be a matter of budgets over creativity.

After all, how many screenwriters and sat and sat and sat and bashed their heads against the walls, cursing, “Why can’t I come up with a different take on the future? Why why why?! (WHAM WHAM WHAM)”, before that one, possibly Peter Rader or David Twohy, or even someone else entirely, had that watershed moment of lucid brilliance, wondering, “Why not put it all out on the water? Why not why not why not?!”

Why not indeed? Perhaps, as has been pointed out many a time, because the melting of the ice caps wouldn’t nearly cover that much of the landmass, to leave all but the top of the tallest peaks underwater? Then again, fantastic (and incorrect) premises do not alone a movie sink.

So I was at Cedar Point today with Jessica (and supposedly lots of other coworkers across the many brands my company controls) and others, and had something of a good time.

According to the park’s site June isn’t one of their higher-traffic months, and the park didn’t seem altogether that full. Unless everybody was in line for the new MaxAir, there just weren’t as many people as I’ve seen there before. I vaguely recall standing in line for the Mean Streak for at least two hours when that opened, and this time I was able to get into the second seat of the front car in under four minutes, most of which was me walking or running through the long maze of railings which is now much much larger than necessary.

They could, I suppose, build a smaller ride inside the line space, if for no other reason (than using the space) than to get more people to trek all the way to that end of the park. Not that people need an excuse, since the Mean Streak is still an excellent coaster and worth the trip alone.

But that’s old news. Since that opened the park has seen at least three new coasters (the order’s a bit guzzy, sorry) and each better than the last, except for the painful Mantis.

As I stood in line, on the few occasions it took me more than half an hour to do so, I was people-watching. Since I work in fashion these days I seem to pay a little closer attention to what people wear, and I saw a lot of Abercrombie shirts and an equal number of sarcastic, licensed, and/or ironic tees on everybody from a little girl wearing “Pimptastic” to a middle-aged guy wearing a red shirt solely labeled “Duff”.

The ones that stood out, hoever, weren’t the Christian parodies of the Orange County Chopper shirts or the countless variations on the “your mom” theme, but the AC/DC shirts.

I saw at least five kids, tweens and teens wearing black AC/DC shirts. I realize the band is still out there and kicking it with the best of them, but still it gives me pause to see the kids wearing the shirts. After all, I saw not one shirt for Britney or the Backstreet Boys or Maroon 5 or whoever they’re supposed to be loving these days.

And then there was my Darth Vader shirt which was appropriately timely, though I bought it many years ago. I didn’t see any other Star Wars shirts at all, which I suppose could be a sign of the popularity of the latest film or maybe just the general merchandising burnout the public is experiencing.

After all, once they’ve bought their Darth Taters and Vader Sprinklers and Sith baseball jerseys, who has the money for a simple t-shirt?

It’s been a long week for me at work. Monday and Tuesday I stayed well past the 5:30 mark, and even today when I was intending to leave at noon I wasn’t free of my shackles desk until after three.

I drove downtown to meet Jessica at the Columbus Arts Festival, an event that draws us every year to the shores of the mighty Olentangy even though our wallets (and often aesthetic sensibilities) prevent us from walking away with any objets d’art.

This is not to say that we did not see interesting things. Many a booth had something new and unique on display, and then many a booth had stuff that didn’t interest us or was bland or nearly commercial.

I find it very difficult to get excited over geometric abstract art (in the Mondrian mold and so forth) in that such paintings seem to appear en masse in the halls and above the beds of hotels and nowhere else, though I suppose sometimes humans (artists, even) are responsible for their creation.

Likewise the booths upon booths of handmade jewelry, largely a bunch of bent metal with the occasional gemstone or bit of enamel thrown on to justify the triple digit price tag. Minus the bent metal this applies also to all of the brightly-hued, busily-designed shirts and muu-muus and other clothes and loungewear.

The wooden toys are often neat though there is very little innovation between booths (and years), which I take to be some indication of the timelessness of the whole thing. Or the fact that everybody works out of the same project books instead of designing something new; take your pick.

One school of paintings I hadn’t noticed in years past, and I have a pretty good situation-specific memory for such things, was the pictures of windows and doors. A typical such painting would depict a blandly neutral wall around a window. Presumably what matters isn’t the hardwood floor or sparse decoration inside the room portrayed, but the view outside the window (or door) that shows this house or whatever to be situated overlooking Lake Tahoe or some other breathtaking/beautiful/relaxing vista. The whole painting doesn’t show the nice landscape, just a little window inside it.

At least three different artist were showing such art. It’s gotta be a trend.

I have a number of theories about this:

• The painter is lazy, wanting to paint a nice landscape but not at full size. Building a room (well, a wall with a window) around a small picture means the size of the ‘real’ painting doesn’t increase even though the frame does. It’s like a matte, just part of the picture. Painting blank walls must be easier than mountains and forests and lakes, anyway.
• Art buyers want something a little different from the usual painting of mountains or forests or lakes. This is a sound theory, I think, at least until these things really catch on, in which case the rebels will need to find another way to differentiate their collections.
• The current popularity of interior ‘makeover’ and redecoration television shows has prompted an overall interest in the great indoors, the likes of which was until recently relegated to the pages of Better Homes & Gardens.
• The current popularity of interior spaces is not due to television shows specifically about them but television in general, as well as video games and online computer use, sedentary activities all. America is becoming a lazier, fatter nation and people anymore just cannot relate to the outdoors except in postcard-sized form. To show another set of walls just reinforces the comfort zone, buffeting the viewer from the troublesome (and less comfortable for lounging) outdoors.

Of course that last entry, if taken to its furthest conclusion, would lead to realistic paintings of the McDonald’s drive-thru window and perhaps the Krispy Kreme counter, and maybe even for the more-seasoned traveler, the buffets of Branson Missouri.