(It’s been a heck of a long time since I posted – but it’s been a rough month or so for me. So there’s a lot of catching up to do – I’ll think I’ll break this up into a couple of posts by topic.)

The past month or so at work has been horrendously busy so much so that the days just blurred into a big annoying mess, but now, while still busy, it has calmed to a manageable busyness.

One of the downside of most of my friends being work related is that everyone else is busy too – so there’s been no getting together for lunch, dinner, etc. with folks - this means no real social outlook for me the past month, so my sole source of unwinding has been reading and watching videos. I really need to start cultivating some non-work friends who live locally, which smacks of lots of effort.

Fall allergies hit me really hard this year and the allergy meds are finally kicking in enough so I’m no longer coughing, sniffling and sneezing myself into sleeplessness, but the down side is they make me feel chronically tired. At least, my body is adjusting enough that I can start to do things again. And the odds are I can get off them again in a couple of weeks, which should help make my life a bit more normal.

My exercise and meditation just completely fell apart during all this and now I need to get started again. Partly the allergy bit and partly a serious of annoyances like how iTunes 9 decided it just crashes when trying to play the iTunes yoga shows I bought from the apple store! Still haven’t solved that problem. I’ve acquired some DVDs instead and once I familiarize myself with some of the routines I’ll start up again.

Sadly, I continue to lose the never-ending battle against my stuff. I’ve now had to abandon key principles of my piling of books and magazines where I have to double stack shelves representing different categories. Now the collection of 1970s science fiction and fantasy magazines I’ve been building (I now have 67% of them all!) is piled on shelves formally devoted to just manga – manga in the back and the magazines in the front. It was one thing to pile manga in front of manga, but now genre lines are being crossed and unholy mixing of media/entertainment/genre categories has begun.

I may see if I can carve space for another small bookcase on my sun seat and move the manga that is still being released there and just leave the completed series behind the sf&f magazine.

I'm also amused that I've got a couple of big DVD box sets on pre-order (Complete Farscape and complete It's Garry Shandling's Show) that I technically don't have shelf space for yet - but I'm sure I'll find a solution by then.

You know that bed takes up way too much room that could be devoted to more bookcases. I could just learn to sleep in a hammock strung between bookcases....

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Well, I have to admit beyond the the awful heat and humidity knocking me for a loop I've been quiet for a while because I've been digesting some disturbing news. I learned indirectly that someone I used to be friends with back when I was in college, but lost touch with over the years, had died recently. 

Admittedly we hadn't been friends for many years and hadn't spoken in all that time, but still it is sad and disturbing.

Even more disturbing is the fact that it is the second person I was friends with back then and lost touch with over the years that I know of who had died.

I think that sort of news triggers a bizarre cascade of nostalgia in folks as it filters out, because I'm suddenly starting to hear from folks I hadn't heard from in years. 

Overall, we are all young enough that such deaths are still kind of shocking to most of them.  I'm a little more seasoned since, because of various reasons, I grew up with a much more elderly family and extended family so I went to a lot of funerals when I was fairly young.  So frankly many, many years before my peers I'd not only gone through accepting such things as a part of life, but also have been an orphan for many years.   I'm literally the last left in my family (no siblings, no parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins less than distant second or third ones.)

So a lot of folks I knew back then are just starting to experience what I went through back then, and it's a shocking reminder of their own mortality perhaps for the first time in their lives. 

Yet another stage in growing older.

Well, I still plan to keep to my principles - studiously avoiding the the worst cliches:

• I will never play or watch golf
• Bingo is, not now, nor will never be an option
• Bermuda shorts shall never be part of my wardrobe
• The words: "in my day", "good old days" etc. shall never cross my lips
• Never will I consider meals I've eaten years ago to be a suitable topic of conversation
• I also carefully avoid all reunions - no HS or college ones ever

You can't help getting older but you've got to draw the line somewhere.


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Sadly the heat has sapped all energy from me. I've been on autopilot the past week or two as the current wave of heat and humidity proceeds to make me worthless and weak. It's quite sad.

How on earth did I survive summers as a kid in Virginia? I remember looking forward to summer, but naturally I stayed safely under the protective umbrella of the air conditioner. And then the whole place was well cooled. Plus no school and no work - just lots of free time certainly didn't hurt my appreciation of summer back then.

I don't think I've lived in a place as an adult where the whole apartment or house was air conditioned - just everyone having an AC in their own room (if they had one.) So even if you get your room comfortable stepping out of it ends that cool delusion quickly.

On other notes, I'm about 1/3 of the way through the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya first novel. So far fun but nothing special, but perhaps the impact is lessened a bit since I saw the anime adaptation first. Of course, I'm only just starting the point in the plot where the novel/anime gets interesting - so I'm not writing it off yet. But I will give Little, Brown chops for producing a nice looking English language hardcover.

I've watched a bit of that anime UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie - and I can't say I'm seeing anything to recommend in it.  But I have to say having an episode with a cat-girl maid using a special ray to turn earth women into cat-girl girls to serve in her corp of cat-girl maids is almost brilliant.

On the other hand, I've become quite hooked on the anime series Shugo Chara - way too much magical girl fun.  I'm now tempted to check out the manga.  I've actually liked the anime versions of Peach Pit's works better than the manga ones so I 'm a bit hesitant.

I have volume 16 of Nodame Cantabile in my hot little hands - so when are they finally going to release the anime here?!?  Seriously, it is my most anticipated series.

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Now the hard part.

I'm back at work and striving to hold on to the planned changes in my life, which is a struggle. Naturally it will get worse as things become busier in the next month or so and resume their more normal frenetic pace.

I'm trying to balance myself and not worry about the fact that fumbling starts are going to happen to anything I try to change and are inevitable. It will take a while to change my habits and build new ones that serve me better. On the other hand, I could just do the usual and feel guilty and beat myself up.


Anime

Well, I roared through Kenichi, The Mightiest Disciple Season 1, part 1 - and loved it. Certainly not original but addictive fun. Basically, a comedy about a victimized kid, who learns to fight at a dojo filled with really crazy but incredibly strong martial artists. The kicker (pun intended) is that as he gets stronger to deal with bullies, stronger bullies start coming after him forcing him toward even more intense training to survive. Personally I think that the antics and bizarre training techniques of his sensei are the best part of the show. I'm not expecting any big or dramatic surprises in the show, just alternating bits of action and comedy. Sometimes that's just right. Now I'm waiting for part 2 to arrive in the mail and Funimation to license the second season and release it.

I also finished Familiar of Zero and had more mixed feelings about it. Set in a world of magic where nobility are magic wielder and peasants have no magic, it is the story of Louise the Zero (so called because her attempts at magic fail) who a second year student a school of magic so much so she is constantly mocked by the other students. When she attempts to summon a familiar, instead of get some special animal like everyone else she gets a human "peasant" from our world. And, of course, we learn there's more to Louise and her familiar than everyone, including the two of them, think. I actually like some of the characters and find some of the back stories quite touching. I find the rules of magic and its connection to our world interesting as well. Problem is too much low comedy undermines a lot of it including panty jokes galore (which in the interest of fairness I did laugh out loud at one of them and felt bad about it afterward), breast size jokes, a tsundere (violent girl) lead, etc. It's a shame because I like the other elements. Despite the negatives, which may be too much for some, I liked it enough I hope we get the second and third season released here.

So I'll call them inverses of each other in Kenichi I liked the comedy but not the more serious parts, while in FoZ I liked some of the serious aspects but not the comedy overall.

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So my vacation comes to an end today and I return to work tomorrow, but strangely enough I actually think I accomplished something significant internally. And because of it, I'm starting to try to change some things in my life to align better to what I'd actually like to do.

The short version was realizing how badly I match what I spend my time doing with what I actually enjoy doing.

Random example: I actually would enjoy reading a book by an author I like hugely more than reading endless poorly written and reasoned comments on discussion boards and on a lot of blogs.

So why was I spending time doing the later (and many days more time!) than the former? Because it's way easy to flit from blog to blog or discussion board to discussion board and consume them mindlessly like so much candy corn.

So no more of that, switched most of my blog following to just skimming the RSS feeds and only reading the ones that actually interest me and limit the reading of discussion boards to every couple of weeks at most.

It's also part of the reason I decided to switch my main public blog to a less frequent schedule.  I'd rather put less my time doing posts that don't interest me as much as ones that take more effort but are more interesting to me.  It's way better to spend an hour or so over several days or a week doing a longer post I like than spending smaller chunks of time each day just to have a bunch of hey look at this video (even if I like that video.)

I've been toying with spending my time doing some longer term things that I've been interested in and have flirted with for years like write more seriously (working more seriously at it rather than writing something serious per se), play with art and learn to draw.  I've had a fairly substantial skeleton for a web comic floating in my head partially formed for years now.  It a matter of upping my drawing skills more and working on it.

Does anything I produce have to be professional?  I'm trying to detach mentally from that sort of thinking.  And think of writing and art for my own sake and as a way of expressing my own creativity.  And if it gets to the point I think it worth sharing, then why not.  Now that doesn't mean that I can't try to improve it regularly and build my skills.

I sometimes think we've become veal shoved into our little lives with a steady stream of junk media shoved down our throats and we just passively and unthinkingly consume the torrent of crap thrown at us.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with light entertainment, be it watching TV, viewing videos, reading, etc.  It's the amount of it and the balance in our lives that is bothering me.  Snacks, treats and dessert are great as long as you eat them as part of a balanced diet.  The light entertainment is fine as long as you balance it with other more substantial fare.  But here's the related point.

Just like most of America has become obese physically by eating too much and exercising too little, I'm starting to think we've become obese mentally by consuming too much (and too much empty calorie entertainment) while no longer creating anything.  That creating and expression is the exercise that balances just consuming.

In modern urban life you can live your life in a steady state of consumption without actually producing anything you value yourself.  I suspect that is part of the vague unhappiness that so many seem to have unvoiced in their lives.  They buy pre-made food, clothing, furniture, entertainment, etc.  forming a passive sort of bland consumer self.

I think the antidote to that is to start spending some of your time doing the opposite - creating and producing.  Be it dance, music, art, writing, sewing, cooking (for pleasure not just to eat), soap making, furniture making, etc.  It doesn't matter as long as it is something you enjoy doing and you do it.

Once again it's not about throwing yourself into extremes going from consuming all the time to only producing things yourself.  It's about fighting that tide of just laying back and consuming blindly.  It's about starting to do things yourself that you make yourself as way of expressing yourself.  And I'm making no claim there's a magic percentage of time that works for everyone.  Where the balance is and what feels best depends.

It's about breaking the cycle, even by a bit, of just living one's life by only working to have money, so you can buy things and passively consuming them without you being present and involved. 

That's what I've been thinking about on my vacation and am trying to change things in my life to go in that direction.

Just my own insane .02
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Vacation and Work

So I'm in the middle of my second and my final week of vacation and that creeping feeling of dread has appeared. Part of it is the normal anticipation that I feel during the end of vacations or toward the end of weekends. But it also is a bit different since I tried something new this time - I haven't checked my work e-mail or voice mail once during my vacation. Normally I'm compulsive enough to do it every couple of days. This time I tried to make it an actual vacation and not deal with work at all.

I guess that is a good thing? Not knowing what awaits me until I show up at work on Monday - creepy!

Comics fun

A while back I went on a buying spree gathered up complete runs of a bunch of old Crossgen Comics that I used to love back when they first came out including The First, Mystic, Crux and Negation. I also picked up the Solus mini-series and the incomplete Negation War mini-series. And I've been spending my vacation reading them.

The First - Hey I loved it so much. Barbara Kesel did a great job writing the series. Spoiled, scheming gods who are forced by events they have ignored to finally grow up from their perpetual adolescence and face the fact they aren't as important and powerful as they thought. But I have to nick some fanboy points for killing off pointlessly one of my favorite characters at the end.

Mystic - I liked it a lot. The story of a young party girl who suddenly finds herself the most powerful being of all in a world of extremely powerful magic users - but frankly some of the story arcs within the series were weak, but the whole world of conflicting schools of magic was really intriguing. I'd love to have seen more of that rather than some of the digressions into some of the minor less interesting arcs. Toward the end it developed an uneven tone descending into slapstick in the midst of events that should have been serious - which served to undermine a lot of my interest.

Crux - At moments I loved it, The story concerns ancient Atlanteans who were supposed to be in stasis a short time while their brethren ascended to a higher plane and then emerge to guide the primitive humans until they are ready to ascend as well - instead they awaken tens of thousands years later to an abandoned world which humanity had left and to find themselves under constant attack from the mysterious Negation. That basic premise I found great, but then there were elements where they tried to tie it to the broader events in the Crossgen Universe that really weakened the story for me. It just felt like there were great threads that would have been better to follow as stories but weren't developed because of it being such an anchor title to the whole broader Crossgen story. It is interesting to see how many elements would be replayed in the Stargate franchise (Atlantis, ascended beings, etc.)

More to come...


Science Fiction & Fantasy

I've been kind of stuck at reading the Year's Best SF 9 - the first few stories really did not catch my interest. So I'm thinking I'm setting aside that and I might just leap into reading all the issues I've been collecting of SF & F from the 1970s. I don't have them all, but I've got enough for what should be some really fun reading. And then I'll see if I'm right about how things have changed since then.

I just finished the September 2009 Asimov's Science Fiction and still a mixed bag but there were some bright notes:

• Away From Here by Lisa Goldstein was quite good - dealing with a family run hotel and the pull of a band of strange magical folk who visit infrequently but have a haunting pull over the family. Not actually SF per se and it would have fit better in a fantasy magazine IMO.
• Camera Obscured by Ferrett Steinmetz was a cute but kind of predictable commentary the mega-ranking and observing world of internet content/reality viewing.
• Soul Mates by Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn on the other hand was just an outstanding story about a friendship between a human and robotic AI which touches on a lot of issues about what it is to be alive. I'd be surprised, and disappointed if it doesn't do well in awards the coming year.
• In Their Garden by Brenda Cooper. Interesting start of a post-apocalyptic story that ends with a forward look, but didn't quite deliver for me. I never got quite hooked and it ended a bit too inconclusively to balance that feeling IMO.
• The Day Before the Day Before by Steve Rasnic Tem suffered from the same problem. A time travel story that never quite connected before ending inconclusively.
• Tear-Down by Benjamin Crowell is reminiscence of the Resnick and Robyn story with its theme about a automatic house whose AI is facing shutdown but without the emotional resonance and depth of that story. It wasn't bad, but suffered in contrast. If I were the author I would have been a bit annoyed to be in the same issue as the first story.
• Her Heart's Desire by Jerry Oltion - Fantasy story with magic wish shop and a semi-twist toward the end. Cute and all, but the execution felt off to me. I think I might have liked it better if it had been a bit longer and told more in a pure fantasy story or fable style. Then it would have fit well in F&SF. As it is and being here, it felt more like a throwaway.
• Broken Windchimes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I have to admit I ended skimming the story once I figured out the ending early on in it. It felt very similar to a couple of stories that ran in Asimov's last year where aliens have odd perceptions of things compared to humans and the lead character puts that together based on their own experience. I'm going to have to look up the two stories that I'm thinking of to explain that better. It didn't thrill me over all.

I do think my complaint about two of stories of never quite connecting and them ending inconclusively is a big problem I see in a lot of stories that past chunk of years.

Anime

I'm in the beginning of season 5 of Ranma and its still kind of fun, but I've slowed down a lot.  I only tend to watch when I can't decide what to watch.

But my new love is Best Student Council, which I scooped up as cheap box set.  All girl school, there the Student Council has power and authority and wackiness happens constantly.  Yes, it has stereotypical anime/harem characters and lackluster character designs but it still makes me laugh and smile.  I'm intrigued by how it borrows so many of the character types from harem comedies without being a harem comedy (no male characters or centralized romance triangles) and avoiding all the often annoying fan service. 

I'm halfway through and I'm ranking it up there with my favorite anime school comedies just behind School Rumble and Azumanga Daioh.

Later...

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General nonsense:

Very brief post now and more maybe today, tomorrow, the next day...

Technically I'm on vacation this week and next but it is still not quite feeling restive. But it often takes me a while to start to relax. The next week should hopefully be a lot more vacation like.

Part of the problem is that I've been running a lot of errands that have been put off the past chunk of weeks because there has been so many thunderstorms and heavy rain whenever I got off work. But I'm almost caught up.

Breakfast of also rans

So I'm confused.

I went out to breakfast at one of my favorite breakfast places, but they were having a meltdown. There was a problem with the kitchen - stoves down, water not flowing, cats lying down with dogs - it was a little vague. But the food took nearly an hour to get to me despite it not being that crowded (others had exactly the same problem.)

To make up for it they didn't charge anyone for breakfast so everything was free.

But when my order arrived it wasn't what I ordered and it was actually pretty bad.

So win or not?

Anime

I'm roaring through Ranma. I'll be starting season four later today. Still mostly full, but starting to have less interesting characters floating about.

Need more Shampoo and Ukyo.

I'm just saying.

I went a bit ordering crazy late last night and ordered Karin the Complete Series, The Familiar of Zero and Kenichi, the Mightest Disciple Season One, Part One - any of which I may actually enjoy a lot or regret wasting my money on.

Hulu has put up episodes of Honey and Clover and Nana.  I liked the episodes of Honey and Clover more than I'm enjoying the manga nowadays, and enjoyed them enough to actually pre-order the first box set.  Nana on the other hand, I didn't make through the first episode.  Haichi (the annoying Nana) is way too annoying to watch in motion. In the manga, I generally skimmed by anything involving her - which sadly you can't do in the anime.

Science Fiction

Just finished the September 2009 Analog and only one story caught my eye, Evergreen by Shane Tourtellotte.  It had an intriguing premise of  parents freezing their children at certain ages, where they simply stop aging and stay that age all their lives.  It raised some good points about age, appearance, sexuality, maturity, etc. and did it will some reasonably well done characterizations.   I known I've read several of his stories in the past and enjoyed them.  Long overdue for a collection of his short stories.  I may pick up a bunch of his stories which are available individually on fictionwise.  The rest of issue, wasn't better than the Asimov's I talked about last week.


More later....


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Well, I'm really pleased that Hulu has posted the entire series The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982-83).

Here's Episode 1: Esteban, Child of the Sun (about 26 minutes long)


Some of the 1970s/early 1980s character design can be a bit painful and bland by modern animation standards, but overall a good start to the show for me.

It's a setup episode where we are introduced to the basic scenario of Spanish explorers searching in the New World for legendary golden cities. But it is also the tale of Esteban a mysterious child raised by local monks in Spain who has the strange ability to make the sun come out (dispelling clouds and storms.) An adventurer Mendoza, who has ties to Esteban (I won't spoil the background story introduced in the episode), convinces Esteban to join their journey to the New World. And Esteban meets a girl (Incan) - but more on that in future episodes I suspect.

The development may be slow for some, since it really just begins to introduce some of the characters and premises but given the show was mapped out to tell a complete story in 39 episodes, I think the pace works better for the committed viewer.

Perfect? Not so much. But definitely enough interest on my part between the nostalgia value (I vaguely remember seeing episodes of the show, but not the whole thing) and the hints about what is to come that I'll keep watching. From what I remember and read about it the show is a mix of historical fiction, adventure and science fiction.

And I see elements that would be played out in the later series Nadia: Secret of Blue Water which was also 39 episodes long.

I have mixed feelings about the credit sequence it kind of annoys me (not a big fan or that style of live action and animation), but I suspect it will grow on me due to repeat viewings.

BTW, the DVD set of the complete series is available at Amazon.

Next episode Crossing the Atlantic.

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One of my first great influences in my never ending love for bad SF movies was Dr Madblood.

Dr Madblood was a schlock movie host that started up in the mid-1970s down in the Norfolk, Virginia area when I was a kid. The show ran on Saturday nights at 1 AM and I fondly remember staying up late (when my family thought I was asleep) and watching it.

Here's 30 years of the show in 30 seconds:


But the show wasn't just great for the corny jokes, sketches mocking the movies and the wonderfully terrible movies.

It was also great for how it appreciated the SF community and talked about it. Heck look at this great visit to The Ackermansion, Forest Ackerman's great home museum of SF (he will be sorely missed):


Man I want so much of that stuff.

Here's Doctor Madblood more recently at a Monsterfest (convention that started down there long after I left the area) Panel:



Here's the official web site - Doctor Madblood's Web Site and if you check out youtube they've put up a ton of old clips and outtakes.

So why am I writing about it now?

Because I noticed recently on their website that they have a documentary history of the show for sale on DVD which I ordered (heck all proceeds go to the Animal Rescue League so I also ordered me a t-shirt!), received yesterday and watched the whole thing last night.

Silly, stupid, corny, cringe-worthy and awesomely amazing!

Fond memories of mine to say the least.

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I'm vaguely, but probably only temporarily, pleased at the progress in my plan to acquire Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines from my tween/teen days of fandom in the 70s.

I now have nearly 200 of them!

Of course, now it slow down because I can't just buy cheap big lots since I have enough issues that I have to look for specific ones to fill in my collection. But that alone is a neat milestone.

Of course I've have to double shelve things to fit them in my bookcases. Such is life with no space.

I've gotten really sidetracked in my reading lately, after going on the urban fantasy kick I went on recently. Most of it was such silly fun I was just reading it exclusively.

I just finished the August 2009 Asimov's and there were only a couple of stories I found memorable. Two Boys by Steven Popkes was a lot of fun, but it's hard to go wrong with tales of Neanderthals trying to cope with the modern world.  And California Burning by Michael Blumlein has some promise that almost played out well for me but I was hoping for more in the end.  Other than that, I just went through the motions reading it.   Next is the September 2009 Analog.  Lately, while far from perfect, Analog has been paying off better for me.

Beyond that I'm doing my usual nonsense of reading too many things at once including:

• The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith.  Good overview of the past 50 years of African history.
• Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku.  Always fun super-science, astro-physics, etc.
• Year's Best SF 9 edited by David G. Hartwell.  Nothing striking so far, but I'm only 1/3 through it.
• The Turmoil by Newton Booth Tarkington. It hits some great moments, then bog down in longer sections that are somewhat predictable and not exciting.
• She by H. Rider Haggard.  Too early to say much, but it is one of the books that started the whole framework for "lost world" novels.

Other stuff...

I had started a well intentioned and noble plan of of briefly doing some yoga and meditating each night, which has fallen apart with two week of starting it.  Well, I'll be on vacation the next couple of weeks.  So time to start that again. 

The constant weather changes has undermined my sleep so much that it has not helped me at all with that - or with much of anything else.

There was an ugly round of layoffs where I work just the other week.  I survived but almost 10% of the staff didn't.  I can't say the atmosphere it created has done much to improve any of my co-workers moods nor mine.  But I should be grateful for steady employment. 

I'd be more grateful to be independently wealthy, but sadly I seem not to have selected that checkbox when ordering my life.

I think I'm skipping the new Harry Potter movie.  I'll just wait for the DVD.  Of course I still haven't watched the DVD for the last one.  I suspect once it is all done, I'll watch them all the way through.  I do tend to do that a lot.  It does make it strange for me to get all enthusiastic for things I just finished watching, often years after everyone else.

But I babble - two hours of sleep will do that. 



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