Bullets!

Oct. 9th, 2011 02:45 am
bloodyrosemccoy: (Venus By Air)
[personal profile] bloodyrosemccoy
The regularly scheduled freak October blizzard came about two weeks early this year. The pumpkins are unimpressed, but that might be it for the tomatoes. And the cat has been absolutely letting us have it, grumbling and carrying on about the cold and the wet. I think she thinks it’s our doing.

And it never fails: I look out at the first snow of the year and get a surge of happy chemicals in the brain.* What’s with that? I swear I’ve got some kind of reverse-SAD or something.

---

Book club discussed Song of the Lioness! At least, I think that was a discussion. We’re not exactly a group of real conversationalists. I chatter on about books, then try to let others get a word in edgewise or engage them by asking questions, which usually gets mumbled responses, followed by awkward silence. So I fill the silence with more noise and t turns back into a monologue.

I like them, though. I just wish we could talk a little less awkwardly.

(I did get to traumatize them by telling them how the Narnia books ended. By request, of course.)

---

Latest fun topic of research for writing: pregnancy and childbirth. My Playtime Universe presented me with another story idea, but the timeline means that one of the characters will be very pregnant when it takes place. I figured that wouldn’t slow down her determination any (she's awesome like that) and it’ll actually make the story a lot more entertaining if I can swing it. I dunno, the idea of a pregnant hero in a swashbuckling pirate adventure amuses the hell out of me.

---

Also, still into Raygun Gothic for my latest project, and decided to finally watch Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I’ve wanted to see it, but the blinding sepia tone put me off. Now that I’m watching it, I still dislike the filter something fierce—I realize it was meant to echo the sci-fi serials, but prefer my old-timey future to be bright primary colors, deco pastels, and crazy halogen neons, a la Frank R Paul, and I have the feeling if they could have made them in color, the ’30s would have agreed with me. The special effects are updated to match what was in the people's heads; why not the colors, too?

Also, Jude Law really isn’t the Spaceman Spiff type.

But goddamn, the story is spot-on pulp sci-fi, damn fun and totally entertaining. I keep squeaking with happy when I see the giant robots marching, or the ridiculously implausible airplanes diving into the sea, or the big goofy monsters,**or the amphibious jet packs, or Giovanni Ribisi's gratuitous Actual Raygun. The vintage ads were a nice touch, too. And this marks the first time Gwyneth Paltrow worked for me, so hey—I can deal with sepia for that.

---

Smashed my pinkie with a book truck today. It hurts to type. So I’m gonna stop now. Off to play Zelda.

*Also an equally inexplicable overwheming urge to play Zelda games.

**Another improvement over the old serials: the critters can actually be in the shot with our heroes, and don't appear to be occupying some parallel dimension.

Date: 2011-10-20 06:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gwalla.livejournal.com
Man-eating...helicopters?

I dunno if they'll do Majora's Mask. I hope they do. The time limits make it almost tailor made for short-chunk portable gameplay. Similarly, I think Wind Waker would be great on 3DS, especially if they use the touchscreen in a similar way, like giving the wand and possibly the sail dedicated buttons so you don't have to swap item button assignments so damned often.

Date: 2011-10-20 06:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] padparadscha.livejournal.com
Okay, so Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, of which So You Want To Be A Wizard is the first, is COMPLETELY NUTS in the best possible way. It's also really hard to describe: in the first book, two kids, Nita and Kit, find library books telling them how to be wizards, try out a spell to get back the space pen bullies took from Nita, and accidentally wind up transporting the sentient portion of a white hole named Fred to Earth. Fred gets the hiccups and keeps "emitting" random things, like cars. To cure him of his hiccups they hook into a dimensional worldgate in Grand Central Station, which sucks them into an evil parallel New York where the one Evil Power in the universe(s) holds sway and apparently cars and helicopters make up the ecosystem, and then they steal a book to bargain with a dragon, and then the sun briefly goes out, and ... I lose track about there.

Sequels include something about turning into whales to fix plate tectonics, making friends with a silicon planet (yes, the planet), and a dog who can create universes from nothing. The dog fills these universes with squirrels.

The books are ridiculous, but the images are cool, and I get a huge kick out of the jargon the wizards use. And a companion book, set in the same universe, was the first urban fantasy I ever really read and enjoyed, so it's got a special place in my heart. (That one's about a group of CAT wizards. In New York. Fighting dinosaurs. That briefly eat Luciano Pavarotti. He gets better, though. Oh, and there's a bit of conlanging in that one.)

...

ANYWAY. I would very much like to have a Wind Waker 3DS, because switching back to that baton all the time is my least favorite part of the game. And I just love Majora's Mask ... in fact, I may go play it again when I'm done with my latest Epic Mickey round.

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