But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for April, 2011

Skyline

Recap, not a review, because it is so eye-rapingly bad.

Starts off okay.  Glowy, alien plasma zooms down into L.A. and starts giving all the beautiful people the worst case of varicose veins ever.

Several hours earlier…
Generic blond, Elaine, and hubby, Jarrod, are on a plane to L.A.  Jarrod is kind of cute. Too bad his acting sucks balls. They’re going to L.A. because Jarrod has a sketchbook full of ugly graffiti that his producer friend really likes.  (Or something … Seriously, I have no idea.)

In L.A., they meet Jarrod’s friend Terry–Hey, it’s Turk, from Scrubs! He’s living large in a penthouse with his blond wife.  Elaine and Jarrod admire the “view,” which must be L.A. for “smog.”  Husband and I both observe that wife is a bitch and “We want her to get eaten first.”

Terry has a party. Elaine confesses to Jarrod that she is pregnant. Jarrod says, stupidly, “Late? For what?” Jerry screws his assistant in the bathroom. Oh, the angst.

My husband grumbles, “This is supposed to (more…)

The Spirit Thief

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron is terribly derivative.

And therein lies its charm.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a massive reading slump, slogging through my pile of library books, finding mild entertainment, but no real joy. But The Spirit Thief, with its unabashed “D&D gaming session put to paper” approach is an awful lot of fun.

The novel’s protagonist, by the author’s own admission, is a D&D character concept. Eli Monpress, the thief protagonist, is cut from the mold of many a TSR novel, as are his companions, Josef, the warrior, and Miranda, the wizard (spiritualist). The only non-archetype is Nico, the demonseed within (more…)

Of Aliens, Site Updates and Paper Books

The couple that’s in pain together …

So my beloved and I awoke this morning with the same kink our neck.  Neither one of us can turn our head to the left.

My husband, hearing that I had the same ailment, said, “I bet we were both kidnapped by aliens.”

“Kidnapped by aliens?” I said. “And all we got were stiff necks?  No sexual stuff?”

“No cheap thrills for us,” he said.

“I got kidnapped by aliens and all I got was a sore neck.”

And an excuse for lack of creativity on this blog.  I did, however, post Chapter Two of The Music of Chaos, and I made some minor changes to the site.  My plan is to post a few “*unpublishable” stories and some cut scenes from The Music of Chaos. I”ll get the new page(s) up sometime next week.

Speaking of The Music of Chaos, it looks a print version may be in the woyks. More details to come.

*Unpublishable meaning that they were fun to write, are fun to read, but don’t have much in the way of theme or anything that takes them beyond a backstory exercise.

Plastic Prince Marries Plastic Bride

The royal wedding and all things regarding the nuptials are a perfect substitute for Ambien.

Anyone who knows me, or who’s sniffed around this blog, shouldn’t be surprise by my utter disinterest in a multimillion dollar, faux, fairy tale wedding.

Yup. Faux.  As in “fake, fake …  fake, fake.” (Elaine Benes voice.)

But every girl dreams of meeting a (more…)

Deconstructing Stupid

Ah.  Just another day on the Internet.  Where I learn, once again, that my husband must be gay*, because the person that he married can’t possibly be a woman. (*Not, as they say on Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that.)

For your consideration, I bring you this, proof of my defective girl status:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

This charming little bit of misogyny and sexism, sadly, was scribed by a woman. The target of her ire, the HBO adaptation of G.R.R. Martin’s absolutely fabulous, A Game of Thrones.

Look, Cupcake, I get it. You don’t like the show. Fine. As someone who (more…)

Beware of the Guinea Hen

Because I never posted the finished version of this, here.

The guinea hen crossing sign.

For anyone bored enough to wonder, the basic process to create it is as follows:

Again, sketch a design.  Transfer the design to plate steel with a projector.  (Sometimes I draw designs right on the steel, but it usually works better to project it onto the steel.)

Next, I cut out the design with a plasma torch. I do this by hand, although it can be done with a computerized plasma torch.  (Which is like the offspring of a printer and a plasma torch.) I enjoy this part and so I’m no hurry to go with the high-tech approach.

Once the design is cut out, I use an angle grinder to remove the rough edges and industrial scale (black stuff on the surface of steel).  I hate this part. It takes forever. It’s messy and I always end up snorking up black boogers afterward.

Then, I do any welding and assembly. For this design, that means bending the steel rod that makes up the base and stake. Then welding on the letters and guinea hen.

More grinding–ugh!–to clean up welds.

Finally, I do finishes.  My favorite finish is polished steel with heat alteration.  But it’s a pain in the ass (requires loads of grinding).  Paint is actually easiest.  Apply a primer coat. Then color.  I did this design with spray paint, and dabbed the white dots on with a brush. I then finish with a clear coat. And it’s ready to go.

Shrek Forever After

Shrek Forever After. A lesson in how a franchise that started out well, can be undone by the forces of bland conformity.

The Shrek movies, all four now, follow the misadventures of an ogre (Mike Meyers) who meets and falls in love with a beautiful princess, Fiona (Cameron Diaz). Who, thanks to a curse, is also an ogre. It begins as a delightful spoof of the usual, “Oh, so pretty, little forest animals love her,” princess meets her true love, fairy tale.

And then, by Shrek Forever After, the little ogres come along. And there goes Fiona’s personality, devoured by the thing called Mommy.

This is where somebody, invariably (because this is the Internet) will get their knickers in a twist. Because I’m defaming motherhood and apple pie. (Well, okay, yes to the latter. Strawberry rhubarb is a superior pie.)

I’m not dissing parenthood. I am taking issue with (more…)

You Gorgeous, Golden-Eyed Bastard

As always, I’m late to the party.  Today is International Raistlin Majere Day!

Had I known, I would’ve donned my best red cloak for the morning dog walk with the greyhound.

And alas, this is Friday, my day off, so I can’t do this:

2. Laugh softly and menacingly throughout your performance review. When your supervisor brings up your problem with authority, whisper, “Bow only in reverence, never in subservience.”

Raistlin is the ultimate tortured hero. Mo’ betta than that whiny, sparkly, pretender, Edward Cullen.  Fans of a certain certain boring-ass, fantasy epic will no doubt call me vapid for loving the series, but many hours of my youth were spent reading and re-reading the Dragonlance series.  See, Raistlin was what Thomas the Unbelievably Boring could never be.  Likable.

(The last two sentence proving my point.  My hatred of a critically acclaimed book, is so totally about its fans.)

But Raistlin rocks.

You Liked It? Are You … A Crazy Person?

Over on Facebook, Smart B*tches Who Love Trashy Novels posed the question:

I have many readers who email rants about books they wanted to like but didn’t. Am pondering category of “book rants.” What do you think? Interested?

The response could be summed up as “Yes.”  If you haven’t hated a much loved and ballyhooed book, then either you don’t read or your opinion switch is stuck on “Pollyanna loves everything.”

When I look at my responses to novels (and movies), it’s obvious that my nastiest are leveled at bestsellers and critics’ darlings whose charm utterly escaped me.  (Like No Country for Old Men and Let the Right One In.  There are a few, miserable, lugubrious hours, I’ll never get back.)

But this kind of rant negative review really isn’t about the book (or its author). It’s about the reviewer’s relationship with the book’s fans.

Let’s wind the clock back, nearly two decades ago, when (more…)

Windmills? What Windmills?

I’m hardly one to call for civility and decency.  Snark is my primary means of communication.  But even I have mellowed with age.

As the story of this author kept spreading across the web, as people apparently couldn’t let it go, I started to feel sorry for her.  Yeah, me.  Pity. The cold, dry fig of my heart, started beating.

Perhaps it’s the anonymity of the media, but the Internet can accelerate people from zero to outrage in a microsecond. I see it all time, everywhere. Blogs. Forums. Newsgroups. Someone says the sky is blue.  Someone else takes umbrage to use of the word “blue,” screeching that blue is the color of Smurfs and Smurfs are filthy, blue, child molesters. And off we go…

I’ve seen people on newsgroups rant about (more…)