The recent off-cycle elections

First point to make: everyone spins there losses as not being pertinent to the situation and everyone conversely spins their victories as great and meaningful. So a lot of the spin going on from on high and punditry in general is meaningless. Were the results of any particular result reversed, the sides would smoothly flip to saying the exact opposite.

Not too long ago prominent Republicans were telling us that “deficits do not matter.” Now they are a matter of life and death and when power switches hands again in Washington — and it will boys and girls it’s only a matter of when — then they will once again feel that deficits do not matter.

All that said I think the NY-23 district was an interesting race. The forces of Conservative Populism (A term I picked up from Nate Silver) chased the Republican candidate from the field and delivered the district to the democrats. So far the CP movement has delivered two seats to the Democratic party. (Sen. Arlen Specter and now NY-23) There are those who think this is a good thing. That the Republican Party needs to be more Conservative and there is an argument for that. It’s hard to win if you are trying to be the opposition-lite. However, in our two party, winner take all system, to win you need your base and you need the middles. Whoever does that wins. Making your base more extreme at the cost of the middle doesn’t strike me as a winning strategy. (This would matter less if we had proportional representation, then we’d have more parties and the parties could be more ideologically defined. That’s not our system so a drive for purity yields losses.)

I will not extrapolate these results into predictions for 2010 and hell no for 2012., There’s way too much time and way too many events between here and there.

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Odds and Ends

So I worked overtime tonight at my day-job and that sucked up some hours out of my day. That means I didn’t get as much writing done as I would have liked. Oh well, it will look good on my next paycheck,

I currently reading a non-fiction Book, ‘The Evolution Of God”. It;s really interesting and will likely influence aspect of Cawdor as I write it.

Loscon 2009 is coming up and I am started to get jazzed. I’ve had my membership for a year and rooms are now reserved,

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Sunday Night Movie: The Mist

the_mist_movie_poster So with a nod towards Halloween my Sunday Night movie this weekend was The Mist. The Mist is a monster movie based on the Stephen King novella os the same title. I had hear a number of good things about this film and it’s been sitting in my Netflix queue for sometime, so I decided that Halloween was the perfect time to give it a spin.

I was disappointed. This film did not work for me and frankly left me rather cold. It may be that I have grown out of my Stephen King phase or it could be that King has grown stale. Either way too many of the elements to the story felt like stock and formula elements rather than facet of a storyline.

The Mist is a story about a small New England town that is suddenly engulfed in a mysterious mist one day following a terrible storm. The protagonist of the film is David Drayton, played by Thomas Jane, a graphic artist with a loving wife and intelligent little boy. His life is complicated by his neighbor, Brent Norton (played by Andre Braugher) a big shot lawyer with whom Drayton has scuffled in court over property damages. The two, along with Drayton’s son, drive into town for supplies following the storm and are trapped in the local supermarket when the mist closes in around the town.

Quickly it become apparent that there is something in the mist and it is death to go out into it. There are a number of other people trapped in the supermarket and it’s clear that everyone here is part of the stock company of Stephen King characters. David Drayton himself is the smart, talented and usually liked artist. Brant Norton is the unlikeable lawyer/business man type, you have the not-too-bright and even less courageous mechanics in Jim and Myron, the likable and sweet high school girl who babysits for the locals, the shy boy, and the character no King story can possible be without, the Christian Zealot, here embodied by Mrs. Carmody, played by Marcia Gay Harden.

Mrs Carmody is truly a character I am tired of seeing. She is not a character as much as she is parody of a character. King’s dislike of christian characters is evident in  work and Mrs. Carmody is no exception. There was nothing interesting, new, or exciting with this set of characters captured in this plot.

The majority of the screentime is spent as a siege movie. The people trapped in the store struggling to over the the events tossed at them. This whole story is pretty much the opposite of a character driven piece. Here events happen, tentacles grab people, giant bugs fly into the store with deadly stingers, and people react to these events. Overall I will give this to the film, the main characters do NOT act like professional victims. They generally figure out the right approaches and right techniques to deal with the situation. However they are reactive and that in my book generally makes for more boring stories.

The film remained so-so right up until the resolution when it jumped the shark and turned into utter garbage. To explain why I feel that was will mean spoilers, so if you wanna know, follow me through the jump.

Continue reading →

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A Change in Comment Policy

I have decided to experiment with a more open comment policy. You will no longer be required to register before posting a comment on this blog. You be required to submit a user name and an email address, but membership in the blog is no longer a requirement.

Let me speak for a moment while we’re on the subject about acceptable comments. I have no problem — in fact I like – diverse opinions. However, I will not tolerate troll-like behavior such as name calling, vicious insulting or other form of commenting that are offensive and crude. Such comments WILL be deleted we I see them and repeated posting of such comments will get that IP address banned form the blog.

For those who would cry that this is an infringement on free Speech, no it is not. You can pay the money, get you own blog, and post whatever you want. There are blogs I read that engage in exactly the sort of postings I do not want here. That’s fine and dandy, but here in this space, with my name attached to it, I will be lord-governor of the content.

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No Halloween Plans

I’m not planning to go to any parties or do anything special for this Halloween.  Just not feeling motivated for it this year.

The most we’re doing is tonight we’re going to break in a new Board Game — Last Night On Earth. A zombie survival game.

 

I’ll let you know how it is.

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Too tired

My eyes are blurry and I can’t think to save my life.

Nothing of importance to say tonight.

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Book Review Soulless

I have  just finished reading, Soulless, by Gail Carriger. (Full disclosure as regular readers here know, I personally know Ms. Carriger so take that for what it is worth in this review.)

Soulless is a difficult book to define by genre. It has elements of Romance, Steam-punk, historical fiction, and horror all thrown together in its both complex and straightforward plot. I am not normally drawn to paranormal fiction, particularly  what I call Rock-And Roll Vampires. I prefer my vampires to be curse monster, hellspawn that just cry out for a good staking, but I recognize that I am in the minority with that viewpoint. Romances also in general do not work for me and I have never read a steam-punk book. (The closest I have come before with steam-punk was the TV series The Wild Wild West.) So this book was not one I planned on reading.

However as I followed Gail’s blog about the selling and publication of the story I became more interested. So when the novel was released I purchased a copy for my sweetie-wife and I to read.

It was a fun and fast read. Gail has done a wonderful job at world building. I read the novel as I was doing the heavy lifting for my own new novel and because of that I think I watched her world building a little more closely than I might have otherwise. Gail has a neat solution to the problem often ignore in vampire fiction, namely, why aren’t we up to our armpits in vampire and werewolves? Frankly if it was so easy to sire new vampires and werewolves they would be worse than zombies in terms of overrunning the world. In addition to solving that problem, she made it part of her integral plotting. The work builds, generally seamlessly, on itself to create a world that is utterly believable, with characters that flow naturally from their environment and yet are unique and memorable (that is not an easy trick, my friends).

There’s enough romance to satisfy the ‘shippers out there, enough werewolves and vampires to make the supernatural fans happy, and action and adventure to carry the rest of us along on a thrilling ride that does not slow down. Let me tell you this woman knows how to pace a story.

The novel, however, is not without its flaws. There was a bit of cavalry action that was not as well established as it should have been. (At least for my tastes and that’s all any reviewer can really speak to.) Also there wasn’t enough of a cost paid by the heros at the end of the book as I would have liked. (But then again I am the person who thinks more of the Fellowship should have died during the War of The Ring than just poor Boromir.)

These are small flaws and I have thrown books written by far more established authors across the room for the sins of bad writing. There is no bad writing in Soulless and I will be buying the sequel Changeless next year.

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Sunday Night Movie OSS 117; Cairo Nest Of Spies

oss 117 Released in the USA in May 2008 this French film is a deadpan spoof of classic 60’s spy films. OSS 117 is the title and code name for the lead character, played perfectly by Jean Dujardin. (Picture here as his character us learning to Mambo with lovely co-star Berenice Bejo.)

OSS 117 is sent to Cairo after the agent already in place goes missing and is considered assassinated. His mission is to find out who killed Jack Jefferson, OSS 117’s best friend, discover the fate of a missing Soviet ship full of arms, investigate local islamic terrorists out to overthrow the government and protect the French interests in the region. You know, the typical stuff that James Bond does before breakfast.

Oss 117 thinks he’s Bond. This is the 50’s. He dresses in the height of fashion, he knows every woman wants to bed him and he utterly clueless to just how thick he really is.

Jean Durjandin plays Sean Connery but with just the right amount of overacting. He clearly studied Connery’s movements and mannerisms, then repeated them in a larger broader fashion for comedy. The satire works spot-on. He delivers puns and quips that no one thinks is funny save himself. He routinely misses vital clues while self absorbed with some tiny detail that matters to only him, such as ‘Has the car been washed recently?’

Even with the subtitles getting the way of some subtle verbal performances, this film was a real treat and one I am likely to pick-up and add to my collection.

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