The Borgus MarsCon Report
I had the first glass of wine I’ve had in years. Honestly, probably the best-tasting, to my preferences.
The dealer’s room had the Callahan’s Saloon softcover (“Lady Slings The Booze”) I’d been missing, and the next Miles Vorkosigan I needed. I also discovered that FanPro’s Shadowrun supplements are a lot more expensive than the old FASA stuff.
Stayed up till 3am Friday for a dot/Hack//Enemy demo. I won, but then the newbie is supposed to win demos, so they’ll get hooked on the game. I’m very cautious about getting hooked on collectible games.
Only ate one meal Friday. I thought I’d outgrown that kind of con behavior.
Rain and I gave Jesse Braxton her Xmas present – a set which included figure of Lucy Lawless, as Xena, in the style of “The Simpsons”. It went over very well.
Spaz-quested for 30 minutes Saturday trying to remember where the nearby Wal-Mart was. (We never found it.)
Learned to play “Button Men”. Discovered that the game has a few game-balance issues, but at least I ended up with a pair of Dork Tower Button Men (my entry requirements) and another pair of general fantasy ones (a fellowship prize for not throttling the little kid I played one round against).
Had a lousy dinner in the hotel restaurant. That place is just cursed, I swear.
Won two starter decks and a box of boosters for dot/Hack//Enemy in the auction. Now I can build a few decks at a bargain price, and play some before I decide if I’m really going to get involved in this.
Enjoyed another good Caprizzio show – the vibrating duck was good for a laugh, though it got a bit overused.
Managed to order pizza at 2:30 am, thereby avoiding going another 24 hours between meals.
Drove home earlier Sunday than I really wanted, but not early enough to miss the snow. We counted 6 or 7 wrecks on our side of 81 alone, and there we a couple juicy traffic-stoppers on the other side.
Overall, a good weekend – I hope more of the folks around here can make it next year.
Bowling for Chocobos
Dug out the sketchpad Wednesday night, and worked on that character some more.
There’s an Eddie Izzard joke where he drops into the role of the young Hitler in painting class, muttering to himself, “I can’t get this tree to look right… wait… dammit… fine! I’ll just have to kill everybody!”
That gives you an idea of how well the drawing was going.
Saturday night was a birthday party at the bowling alley for one of Rain’s work friends. I knew a bunch of people there from her work, including the one guy who begged off and just played Final Fantasy Tactics all evening. I bowled well… which is not to say I got a high score, but that I actually hit pins most of the time and got the rare spare and strike. Next time we go for ourselves, I think we’re putting the bumpers up. We had them for one game because of a youngster’s presence, and the score sheet’s a lot less embarrassing when there’s no gutter balls.
Back to the gym today, finally. (The holidays played hell with our gym schedule.) I was hoping the new mini iPod would be a lot cheaper, because it’d make an excellent gym companion, but no joy.
In the last week, I’ve read Diane Duane, Frank Herbert, Tom Clancy, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke, among others. That, and madwriter‘s posts have reawakened my writing urge. We’ll see if it goes anywhere… the nice thing about 15 years of abandoned projects is that I have a lot of source material to mine 🙂
New Heinlein novel!
New to us, anyway. Bibliarchaeologists have discovered a copy of a novel Robert Heinlein wrote even before “Lifeline” had been published; “For Us, the Living” had been deemed too racy for publication in the 1930’s, and the few people who had known of the novel believed all copies of the manuscript destroyed.
Since the manuscript’s rediscovery, Heinlein’s estate has approved publication. I can’t help but think that this is likely to be higher quality than the usual “we found an outline under the sofa and the author’s kid ghost-wrote it” that SF and fantasy sees all too often. (Even Anne McCaffrey, who ain’t dead yet, is going to do that this year.)
Now, as long as we can keep Paul Verhoeven from making a movie of it…
Booklist
Finished reading the next Miles Vorkosigan book, The Warrior’s Apprentice, last night. I’m truly impressed so far by this series’ balance of humor and pathos. The characters are fleshed out very well, and the plot managed to surprise me a few times. I’m going to be smarter with this series than I was with the Warlock In Spite Of Himself books, and draw out my reading of them. I read so many of the Warlock series at once that I overdosed, and I haven’t been able to pick up another in over a year.
On that note, I’m back to Steven Brust, after giving him a vacation, and have started on the Book of Athyra (I may or may not be spelling that right). I think I’ll be all caught up on Vlad Taltos before I am with Miles Vorkosigan. That’s okay, though. I’ve still got those loaned Mercedes Lackeys to read, and yubbie tells me that there’s another Neal Stephenson coming soon.
Funny, I have a bunch of new Macintosh games as well as several half-finished PlayStation 2 games in the queue, but you still can’t beat books for portability and ease of use.
Thoughts on a Tuesday morn
My head killeth me. I’ve had a cough for days, and though all the other symptoms of my New Year’s cold are gone, the nagging cough burns in my chest and sets my skull pounding. Concentration today is an interesting challenge.
I think vond and kittenchan should come back to the USA, but that has nothing to do with what’s good for them; I just like having them around 🙂
I’m beginning to understand the attachment Amiga users have to their unsupported, out-of-date machines. I was given an old unused Apple Newton for Xmas, and I’ve become quite fond of it. Not only do I finally have a digital address and date book, but the other day I passed an afternoon with it reading Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”, writing a journal entry or two, and playing a version of the old mainframe Star Trek game. Sure, it doesn’t slide invisibly into my hip pocket, but I don’t lose it at the bottom of a bookbag either 🙂
raininva has done an incredible job with the apartment this last week, the living room is unrecognizably nice. We’ve already got two discrete gaming areas worked out. Looks like we’ll be up and running this Friday night – MechWarrior for sure, possibly Settlers of Catan, Chez Geek, Illuminati, or selected PlayStation 2 games as well. If you’d like to come by, we’d love to see you – drop us a note so we’ll be able to estimate a number of warm bodies.
And a special thank you to healerkou – this week, you did something that made me a little happier about a personal project. Too bad I can’t ask you to sign up, but it’s a bit of a drive from your digs to southwest Virginia. BTW, is the last syllable of your screenname pronounced “coo” or “kau”?
Telling no real story
Well, we watched our first NetFlix last night – we both sat through Storytelling, and Rain watched Ghost World. I actually was a big fan of Daniel Clowes’ “Lloyd Llewellyn” comic, but i just couldn’t deal with the “quirky teenager” movie after watching the “I couldn’t think of anything, but I had to spend this money before they pulled my grant” movie.
Sometimes, I read a book or watch a movie, and I finish it with the horrible feeling that, somewhere, the author or filmmaker is laughing hysterically at having tricked me into wasting part of my life. That’s different from, say, the Battlefield: Earth feeling where I end up feeling very sorry for the filmmaker, actors, crew, and backers of the film. Not this time! The creator of Storytelling should be smacked around.
Oh, well. I picked out a couple movies I wanted to see, Amelie and the new anime Metropolis. Haven’t found many more yet, but there’s time.
Borgus Reviews of Literature
Finally caught up on my reading this weeked… finished re-reading “The Barsoom Project”, read “Idoru” and “Snow Crash”, and checked out some half-remembered passages in “1984”.
“Barsoom Project” is one of my favorite books – it’s set at a Disneyish corporation that runs incredibly realistic Live-Action Role Playing games in a pair of titanic Star Trek-style holodecks. (Paid for by the movie they’ll edit out of the footage, the home game cassettes, and the novels and tie-ins.) It’s three stories at once – you want to find out how the LARP will work out, who commited the act of industrial espionage that drove one of the last group of players insane, and what the game controllers will do when that player inexplicably pops up again in this run-through of the LARP.
“Idoru” is the sixth William Gibson book I’ve read, and the third in a row that I just didn’t like. In “Difference Engine”, “Virtual Light”, and “Idoru”, he writes of helpless characters who mostly stand around open-mouthed as the book happens around them. It’s kind of dull, and uninteresting… you finish the book thinking, “what was that about, and why would I care?” It’s a darn shame, ’cause “Neuromancer” was so good.
“Snow Crash”, on the other hand, more than made up for that. Excellent humor, interesting characters who matter greatly to the plot, intelligent writing, and intriguing speculation about the fragmentation of human language. I just told a friend that the story “begins with a guy who delivers pizza for the Mafia, and ends with a futuristic Ted Turner’s attempts to enslave the population of the world”. If this is the quality of the author’s work, then I am absolutely picking up “Cryptonomicon” as my friends have been advising me.
Finally, after looking at the portions of “1984” where George Orwell (as Emmanuel Goldstein) describes the method by which the Party came to power and maintains it, I have arrived at the uneasy conclusion that the world is still traveling smoothly in that direction, just a lot of years behind schedule. However, I can’t think of a dang thing I can do about it, so I’m not going to stay up nights worrying about it.
Oh yeah, and I finally beat a sub-boss in the fifth act of Diablo 2 that has been giving me serious trouble on “Nightmare” difficulty. So that’s good.
Notes from a weekend
Rain and I finally joined a gym. I think that the benefits of the place, for me, are 1) an air-conditioned, level track to do laps on and 2) a whirlpool jacuzzis to relax in afterwards. I might look into some of the classes too, but thanks to my Borg parts I need to avoid unnaturally repetitive motion and shocks to my hip. So a lot of the exercise equipment is out, and I probably won’t be doing jump-rope or step aerobics. 🙂 That’s okay; the only things I’m really looking for right now are more stamina for walking / hiking and a smaller waistband.
Went ahead and got “Return to Castle Wolfenstein” this weekend. Pretty game… would probably look better if I had the processor and video card that the game lists as “minimum requirements”. That’s okay, proper frame-rate is for the weak and helpless *grin*
Got a lot done on a “Star Wars” opening for Sean and Leisa’s wedding video this weekend. I think they’ll plotz when they see it. Hopefully, I can finish it tonight so we can get back to the actual editing, though I’ve already captured all the footage to hard drive, so a major chunk is already done. Thank you, meiran, for forcing us to finally get that big HD. 🙂
I always expect my list of digital media (games, CDs, DVDs) I’m saving for to be huge… but this weekend I compiled my list of books I’ve been meaning to get. It’s ugly, over a hundred dollars, and that’s just for the top six books… the posthumous Douglas Adams, an illustrated book on gnomes that I loved as a kid, a book on Cold War espionage equipment, and more. Great Ghu, I love to read.
The earliest appointment I can make to get my car inspected is Wednesday at 4:00 pm. The good news is, I’ll be off work by that time. The bad news is, I hope I don’t get pulled over for a expired May sticker today or tomorrow…
Editorial
Got a newsletter from starwars.com which mentioned some of the visual (and one audio) Easter Eggs in Episode 2. What interests me is that despite the fact that Lucas has expressed a basic lack of interest in the “Expanded Universe”, one of the secret items is a freighter which has only ever appeared in the EU. (Talon Karrde’s freighter Wild Karrde is visible for an eyeblink in one scene).
I wish Lucas understood that the Star Wars universe isn’t his personal property any more, and it’s his own fault. Any time a storyteller does as good a job as he did with the first trilogy, people will take it to their hearts and run with it. Just ask Lewis Carroll, or Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. SW is Lucas’ legal property, sure., and it wouldn’t exist without him, but it resides in more places now than just his head.
Would Star Trek be on its fifth incarnation if the show was still under Gene Roddenberry’s inflexible hand? I don’t believe so.
Ah well… even with his blessing removed, the fans and pros will still continue their own Star Wars… and in this creative age, some of it will be as good or better than Lucas’ “vision”.
And I just heard that “Jedi Knight II” will be ported to the Mac and will run on my machine. Soon, I’ll be wielding a lightsaber just like Mace Windu. Okay, Anakin Skywalker. Would you believe Han Solo in Episode V?
20,000 Yards Through The Biosphere
I’ve been reading Kevin Anderson’s “Captain Nemo”, a ‘biography’ of the man as seen through the eyes of his childhood friend Jules Verne. It’s a good read, but so far, I wouldn’t put it on my “best books I’ve read” list – honestly, actual Jules Verne books have usually been better.
In that spirit, I’ve been looking around Roanoke for a copy of “From the Earth to the Moon And A Trip Around It”. Barnes and Noble had the first half, which is the one that most Verne fans know, but no one has the combined books. I’ve found all the copies I could want of “20,000 Leagues”, but I already have that one.
Walked into Givens Books for the first time in years. I need to go there more often: they had a stack of old paperbacks begging to be culled through, and I just didn’t have time yesterday. Maybe they even have one of the Randall Garrett “Lord D’Arcy” books I’ve been looking for for years! You have to love a bookstore that’s several musty rooms of shelves with haphazardly stacked books filling every inch of free space, and several prowling cats on mouse patrol. That just rocks.
