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I started playing Monster Hunter World. I know, I know, it originally come out in 2018, but I didn't have an Xbox One back then, and it's been just a little over a year since I got the one I have. (I had originally gotten Monster Hunter for the PlayStation 2, but I didn't stick with it, but anyway.) And, well... I'm having fun, so I guess that's all right. Also, while there's still the thing where you cook meat out in the open, it's nice to have a canteen where a bunch of anthropomorphic cats do the cooking for you...
remembering things
Apr. 18th, 2021 03:27 pm Thinking about stories I read as a kid in children's magazines. Most specifically, a series about a boy named William who, due to the circumstances of stories like this, acquires a fairy godmother. Now William is a present-day (well, early 80s) kid, and the fairy godmother doesn't have a wand or wings, and does not hail from the land of summer's twilight. Instead she's immensely tall, solidly built, and dressed like an aviatrix from the dawn of powered flight, complete with leather helmet and goggles. She's from Tibet (though the illustrator drew her as not looking very Asian at all). And her magic is a little iffy. These were stories meant to inform as well as amuse, and after the introductory story where the magic and suchlike is explained (and a promise from William to eat healthier), there's a pattern of the magic acting up, William meeting someone about his age from another country (perhaps by visiting the other country), and learning what life is like for a kid in that country. The first few stories featured a touch more magic, and a Tibetan boy whose English isn't very good but improves in each story. The boy has a pet dragon (featured in only one story) and has learned transmutation courtesy of the fairy godmother, which allows him to turn into a three-headed snake or a Yeti (which complicates things when a real Yeti shows up). The last story of William I read was set in New Zealand, where he meets a Maori boy with ta moko (drawn on with a Magic Marker) and they visit the glowworm caves. The magic was limited to William being taken to these countries (sometimes at inconvenient times). I also remember a bit where William actually telephoned the fairy godmother, not taking time zones into account (twelve noon at William's house is four in the morning in Tibet.).
And of course, I can't find anything online about these stories.
(no subject)
Mar. 3rd, 2021 08:57 pm more than anything i just want to stay home. write. draw. walk the dog.
my gut tells me to stay home unless i need to pick up groceries or medicine or something like that.
but somehow i am an essential employee. hours somewhat reduced, sure, but no one in accounting wants to stray too far from their desk. i don't have a desk. my "office" is a chair jammed in a corner alongside some filing cabinets in the copy room.
thirteen years and occasionally i'm still mistaken for a customer by one of the salesmen...
my gut tells me to stay home unless i need to pick up groceries or medicine or something like that.
but somehow i am an essential employee. hours somewhat reduced, sure, but no one in accounting wants to stray too far from their desk. i don't have a desk. my "office" is a chair jammed in a corner alongside some filing cabinets in the copy room.
thirteen years and occasionally i'm still mistaken for a customer by one of the salesmen...
take an eye for an eye
take me down with you
take it all away
i know it all comes back times three
that human, that demon, showed me
how it ends when you treat your friends like foes
so don’t come looking for me
I’ve got my walls up now
protect myself like a fortress
and I’m on my own now
no I can’t sleep baby
and waking up is just a dream
my sadness has lost its cause
and I’m suffocating
so don’t come looking for me
I’ve got no joy to lend
protect myself like a fortress
isolating, bridge withdrawing
isolated, I can’t take it
anhedonia
anhedonia
I’ll be your silent witness
I’ll be your border line
I’ll keep you safe and sacred
just keep your heart close to mine
anhedonia
anhedonia
anhedonia
anhedonia
Time was...
Aug. 27th, 2020 09:46 am Time was, if you were American and a fan of Doctor Who, the only way you could tune in was via your friendly neighborhood PBS station--if you were lucky! And it wasn't like you could watch early episodes like "The Dead Planet". The reason why Four is my favorite is because he was the first Doctor I (and possibly the rest of America) was introduced to. And for a time it was only Four's adventures you could watch. And not necessarily in proper broadcast order, either, but I wasn't old enough to notice such things at the time. (Also, being American, I didn't have the sense to duck behind the couch, but that could have also been due to most of the heavy furniture in living room and family room being set up with backs to the wall. No room to duck behind.) Sometimes you didn't get to see the Doctor at all for a couple years. And then he'd be back. And this was before the internet was a thing. I didn't see the Fifth Doctor until 1986, and a year later I saw the Sixth, and after moving to Virginia and having more PBS stations to watch, there was the Third. But Four was my favorite, and after Four, Seven.
And now there's no seeing the Doctor at all on any of the local PBS stations, and it feels wrong somehow. Granted, you mention Doctor Who to someone and they might know who you're talking about. (See also: my favorite TV show about a man trapped in space and forced to watch cheesy movies.) There's BBCAmerica. There's Pluto TV. And yet. And still.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey also
Aug. 21st, 2020 09:25 pm So the big thing (or, a big thing) in regards to time travel is that a would-be chrononaut MUST NOT CHANGE THE PAST. Because, as the Ghostbusters might say, It Would Be Bad. The notion is put forth that Time is mutable to the point of fragility, as Emmet Brown and Marty McFly found out. Some writers go with this, but some suggest instead that Time, however wibbly wobbly and timey wimey, is made of sterner... stuff. And my two favorite stories about dinosaur safari hunting, along with their differences in prose, treat Time differently.
The people behind Time Safari in "A Sound of Thunder" stress about how CAREFUL they are. Before the hunt even begins, they go back and find animals that they know for certain are going to not spread their genes, and tag them with a paintball. There's a floating metal sidewalk thing so no one's feet touch the earth. The hunters are kitted out in clean suits and respirators. And when the animal is dead, it's not like they can take the head back with them to go on the wall. They can get their picture taken with it, but that's about it. Oh, and they have to dig the bullets out of the carcass before they go back. There is a TON of expo and foreshadowing about this, about why they're so careful. For want of a nail, only instead of a nail it's some small, seemingly insignificant animal that was prey to something larger that winds up starving, until we get to a prehistoric man who starves because there's no megafauna to hunt. Of course, it all goes south and Eckels steps on the butterfly.
There's also a bit where Eckels asks his guides "since you went back earlier, did you run into us on the way back to the present?" And no, that didn't happen because "Time steps aside". So... yeah. Hmmm.
"A Gun for Dinosaur", like "A Sound of Thunder", says that time travel is expensive. Which is one reason why dinosaur safaris are A Thing; in the case of de Camp's story, the scientists who built the time machine (at Washington University in St. Louis) get some funding as a result. And it seems that safaris are a thing rich people do, anyway. "A Gun for Dinosaur" also puts paid to the notion that you can go anywhere (anywhen?) in the past. As it turns out, you can't go back to any eras with people. No going back to Mesopotamia, or the French Second Empire, or what have you. (A lot of archaeologists and anthropologists were disappointed by this news.) And for another, while you can visit the prehistoric eras, if you go back on a certain day, you can't go back to that same day, because Time won't allow it. Which means eventually all that prehistory would run out, but not for a while.
"A Gun for Dinosaur" is another account of a safari gone wrong. One hunter is trigger-happy and prone to ignoring good sound advice, and the other is hesitant and unable to handle a weapon with a caliber bigger than .375. Someone gets eaten. And then the trigger-happy guy (who wasn't eaten) decides to take revenge on his guides... by going back in time a few hours before the safari was to begin. But... Time didn't allow it. If it didn't happen before, it isn't going to happen. It gets really messy.
Because yes, for some reason I seem to be thinking about time travel. Map of the universe featuring all the holes in the fabric of space-time! Phone booths! Eloi and Morlocks! An artist painting a picture of an artist painting a picture of a landscape!
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey
Aug. 21st, 2020 09:24 pm Two of my favorite science fiction short stories feature time travel as a plot device. Both were, if memory serves, published the same year, and both are about safari hunters going after really big game. Not that there's a dearth of dinosaur safari stories. Most curious of all, I like them both equally.
First (maybe just because it's better known) is Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder". It was maybe the first of Bradbury's stories I ever read. And I don't think I need to say much about it. His descriptions of the doomed but still dangerous Tyrannosaurus rex, in life and in death. He could have stopped at "a great evil god" but he didn't. Granted, a real T. rex doesn't tower thirty feet, but still.
The other story is L. Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur". Whereas Bradbury delivers with his dazzling prose, de Camp (through his first person narrator, Australian safari guide Reginald Rivers) provides an earthy attention to detail as to what a safari to the Cretaceous involves, along with anecdotes about why the curator of The American Museum of Natural History still has nightmares where he smells decaying dinosaur...
Eternal, shiny, and chrome?
Nov. 25th, 2019 09:32 pmThis is of a more recent vintage, as can be seen and heard.
For years I didn’t know from what film or whatever that “I am the way of the future” line had been sampled. As it turns out, it was from an episode of Dragnet…
Not being in Canada, I missed out on this show, or if I did see it, it was long ago enough that I don't remember, but that seems unlikely. It was a little before my time, really. Professor Julius Sumner Miller did pop up on PBS stations every once in a while.
