The Great Oven Quest
Travis and I have been casually talking about video games the last few days and the whole idea of building Choose Your Own Adventures. Yesterday, while trying to wrangle a new wall oven, I realized that all the time spent playing fantasy role-playing games as a kid wasn't wasted. There are some useful skills built up over those years that have application in one's daily life.
Quest: To find and install a wall oven in your home. Primary goal: Bake a pizza. Secondary goals: Purchase oven; retrieve oven; install oven.
1. Locate a suitable dealership. Negotiate oven price. Your purse has a limited number of semollians. In order to receive discount, oven must be picked up. Electrician will charge 100 semollians to install four wires after you put the damn thing in the wall. [Reaction roll vs. Charisma and Mercantile skill] Save 200 semollians.
2. Locate and negotiate the use of vehicle. [Reaction roll vs Persuasion skill] Driver is persuaded by the fact that my presence in his vehicle means he can use the car pool lane to get home Friday afternoon from work.
3. Since I'll be riding with him, I don't need my own car. I need to find some other way to get to work that morning and then get to the appliance shop. Utilize my map-reading and intelligence skills to determine best routes. This means I have to leave the house at 5.30 in the AM to walk six blocks to the bus stop.
I discover there aren't any streetlights on the block surrounding the local elementary school. Now, how silly is that? You would think the local populace would want the school to completely lit up at night. Note to self: don't take this route again. [Reaction roll vs Listen and Move Silently skills]
4. Half hour bus ride to the train station. Hour ride on the train to Seattle. Fifteen minutes in the van pool. This is all mundane and I do most of this every day. No reaction or skill rolls required.
5. Navigate Seattle Metro system to get myself from downtown to Southcenter. The 66 is late. The 66 is always late. [Reaction roll vs Fortitude to prevent panic that I'm going to miss my connection downtown] Favorable divine intervention presents the 66. I have eight minutes to make my downtown connection. It won't be the end of the world if I miss the connection because I've built some buffer time in my plan. This is a survival trait on the Seattle bus system. You need to give yourself enough time that you can catch the "next bus" and still make your destination because, at any given time, one of the buses you need to be on will be late. Multiple transfers only makes this process more hellish.
6. The delay on the 66 puts me at Stewart and Terry with only a minute to spare before the 150 leaves the Convention Center. [Reaction roll vs Agility and Endurance] I'm not going to be able to run the four blocks in time. Not with the pack I'm carrying.
I'll try beating the 150 to Westlake Center. I have to make a dash across traffic (okay, there was only one truck), navigate the escalators and dodge all the wandering sheep intent on being good consumers in order to reach the bus tunnel. [Reaction roll vs Agility]
7. An old man is questioning the driver about when he should pay his fare (even though the fare box plainly says "Ride Free Zone"). This delay allows me to jump the last three steps and make the 150 to Southcenter. [Reaction roll vs Dexterity and Acrobatic skill]
8. A guy sits down across from me with SARS mask on. His breath makes the Tivek fabric move in and out around his mouth like an exposed lung. (When I email Grammarhammer Amtower about this guy, he responds with: "What's your Saving Throw vs Breath Weapon?")
9. I insulate myself during the journey. Dr. Michael Bull observes in an article at Wired News that personal stereos give individuals "control of the journey, the timing of the journey and the space they are moving through." My control mechanism is Peter Brotzmann's monster free-jazz industrial guitar and drum remix of Eraldo Bernocchi, Toshinori Kondo and Bill Laswell's "Charged."
The same guy who had questions about fare paying when he got on has them again when he gets off at Southcenter. The SARS mask guy gets off as well. These are the random characters placed in the game to provide "color." You always end up dodging them and they always follow you and get in the way. Game designers do this just to remind you how little control you actually have over your environment.
10. Meet vehicle and driver at pre-arranged time and location. Retrieve oven and put it in the back of the truck. Drive home.
11. Attract the attention of the local constabulary when an abrupt lane change (complicated by the fact we can't really see with the rear view mirror in the truck because of the oven box) causes a bit of a ripple in traffic behind us. [Reaction roll vs Charisma and Reputation] "Yes, officer, I'll keep a better eye on my mirrors. Thanks for asking."
12. Arrive at home. Unpack the oven. Discover that the FUCKING THING WON'T FIT in the under counter space that I have.
That was yesterday afternoon. I'm going to make breakfast now and then drive back to Southcenter to start this whole process all over.
No quest experience points for me.
What in your MP3 player?
I haven't exactly maximized my use of the available space on my iRiver MP3 player. There are only 430 tracks stored on it right now. Which is still a far cry better than a stack of CDs in bag. So, for a snapshot of what's in my ears right now, here are the first fifteen random tracks I got on the way home last night. [The first track isn't random since I have to start the player somewhere before the random shuffle will kick in. I think. I haven't read all of the manual yet -- one of the ingrained habits of IT professionals.]
01. Tarmvred "Kryptoteknik"
02. Antimatter "God is Coming"
03. Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra "Spectrum"
04. Teledubgnosis "In Heaven, A Devil" (The Bug remix)
05. Suns Of Arqa Meet The Gayan Uttejak Orchestra "Arqa - Thumbri"
06. Muslimgauze "Arabskin"
07. Laika "Leaf by Leaf"
08. Peter Namlook & Steve Stoll "Cloud of Orion"
09. Larvae "Mecca"
10. Arovane "Tides"
11. Scanalyzer "Robotika"
12. Tarmvred "6"
13. Muslimgauze "Dimashq Frequency"
14. Enigma "Weightless"
15. Curve "Recovery"
Nicely random touch by the Universe to end the ride with Curve's "Recovery." This version is from the "Perish" single and is an ambient version of the stomper which appears on Come Clean. "And I maintain / In the slow lane." It's a good mantra to have rolling about your head some days.
Godzilla
We rented Godzilla vs. Megaguirus last night. Okay, okay. I snuck it into our Netflix queue and squealed with delight when it arrived. Melissa went off and re-arranged socks in the bottom drawer in Solomon's room or something. Anyway, this was to be the first opportunity for Solomon and I to bond over monster movies. Unfortunately, I seemed to have picked the worst Big G film of the bunch.
Now, some will argue that all of the Godzilla films are crap. My wife, for one, but she endulges me by keeping most of her comments to herself. When it gets too much for her, I just ask if she'd like to wait out in the car until the film is over. Which, not surprisingly, is only funny if you get the right tone to your voice.
So, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. Awful, awful, awful. And I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to monster flicks. Not only is the Godzilla suit an odd knock-off which is so uncomfortable that the guy in the suit can barely move, but the wire work with Megaguirus is, well, visible. I'm willing to suspend a lot of belief -- "Dude, there is no way a 30-ton butterfly can knock over a 40-ton reptile" -- but the rigidity of the monster models are just so hard to watch. It's hard to believe that modern effects could build a film this Corman-esque.
Godzilla's All Out Monster Attack is the other side of the coin. While a lot of it takes place at night, thereby obscuring some of the more obvious scale model bits, the added CGI is very nicely done. That one's a keeper (and actually I subjected my in-laws to it just the other night). It's a strange counterpoint to Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (these two are two-thirds of the Alternate Reality version of the Big G) which is so clearly on a different budget.
I'm going to have to track down a copy of Destroy All Monsters. Eight monsters trash the world's capitals before descending on Tokyo for a no-holds barred slug fest. Now that's the sort of monster film that I want my boy grow up on. I did, and I still have very fond memories of that film.
Stomp Tokyo is your one stop link to all things Godzilla.
Hooptedoodle
Elmore Leonard's Top Ten rules for writers which can be summed up with a quotation from John Steinbeck that he references: "I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story."
Dictionary.com suggests "hepatitides" as possibly being the word I meant when I asked for a formal definition of "hooptedoodle." When you get right down to it, dictionary.com might be close.
Hepatitides: Inflammation of the liver, caused by infectious or toxic agents and characterized by jaundice, fever, liver enlargement, and abdominal pain.
Hooptedoodle: inflammation of the story, caused by infectious or toxic writing and characterized by severe anacoluthon, embolalian engorgement, uncontrollable circumlocution, and runaway annomination.
Oscar Watch
Sofia Coppola was on David Letterman a few nights back, making the rounds for Lost in Translation and she said that she wrote the role of Bob Harris with Bill Murray -- and only Murray -- in mind. We watched Lost in Translation over the weekend and it is clear that the role was tailor-made for Murray's style of on-screen pathos. However, now I'm not as convinced about my decision to put my money down on him for Best Actor. Lost in Translation is a lovely film, but remains with me isn't Murray but rather Coppola's impression of Tokyo.
It's a film that I wish I had seen on the big screen which isn't a sentiment I usually feel towards character driven pieces. But the constant presence of Tokyo and how its alienness touched and infected the characters was something which wasn't as overwhelming as it should have been on the home screen. The irony doesn't escape me that the only reason I find the cityscape of Tokyo fascinating and beautiful is because I don't understand the language and that if I was cognizant that everything was an advertisement, I wouldn't be nearly as enamoured of the lights (pictures of Times Square in New York City always make me flinch with despair for the rampant commercialism which invades every pore of your body).
So, yeah, my affection for Murray stems from his work in Rushmore and The Royal Tennanbaums. His work in Lost in Translation was excellent and suited the mood of the film, but I think he was curtailed by the basic fact that the movie focused on lost souls who have found themselves in the endless light cycle of a foreign land. There is a difference between characters who are adrift and characters who find their earnest love unrequited and, frankly, the latter always tugs at your heart more.
Which puts Johnny Depp back in the lead for Pirates of the Caribbean. He'll never win, but man, even still, I hope he does.
Lost in Translation is also up for Best Original Screenplay. I find it interesting that the only category where the film might have a shot at taking home a trophy is the one category all the advertisements pushing the film on TV don't mention. I think the film is a mood piece and that a lot of what made it onto film stock was relatively unscripted. Coppola lingers on shots that are mood pieces, scenes which would appear on the page as "Sally looks out the window at the city." One line scene descriptions which are translated to slow panning shots which move around the characters as they cocoon against the florid landscape. These are directorial decisions and aren't necessarily ones that would occur on the page. The fact that Coppola wrote the screenplay herself means that what she wanted as a writer was more readily possible as she directed it, but I wonder if the film would have been half as good if it had been directed by someone else. Which lends more strength to the argument for rewarding her for Best Director instead of Best Original Screenplay.
Finding Nemo is a clear winner for Best Animated Film and I wouldn't mind it winning in the Best Original Screenplay category as well. We saw that again recently and the marvelous wit of the dialogue shouldn't go unrecognized.
Yesterday's Word
The word of the day yesterday was triskaidekaphobia. Not that I'm superstitious, but after a portable heater becoming recalcitrant, our son turning into a fuss monster, and our oven crapping out, I'm kinda feeling Churchy Lafemme's "Friday the 13th comes on a Friday this year!" pain.
And, naturally, this morning Fuss Boy is pretending that all fussiness was a figmenet of our imaginations last night and the heater is working again. The oven is still flashing "F-1" every time I turn I pop that the curcuit back on but, for the most part, we made it through yesterday okay.
It continues to amaze me how disposable appliances have become. VCRs and what-not have become so inexpensive that it costs more to fix one that to buy a new one. I'm wrestling with the same scenario with the oven. It cost me nearly $400 last time to get the circuit board replaced. It'll be at least that and probably more since I'm guessing the problem is more than a faulty circuit board. Suddenly, it's cheaper to just buy a new one.
le Carré Quote
I just started reading John le Carré's Absolute Friends, a book which is apparently going to be his commentary on the situation in the Middle East. He offers the first oblique remark about recent events not seven pages in.
"The block is what these days is called an ethnic village: Kurds, Yemenis and Turks live packed together in it. Other children are already assembled here, some with mothers or fathers. It would be reasonable for Mundy to consign Mustafa to their care, but he prefers to ride with him to the school and shake his hand at the gates, sometimes formally kissing him on both cheeks. In the twilight time before Mundy appeared in his life, Mustafa suffered humiliation and fear. He needs rebuilding."
I read this in wake of G.W.'s declaration over the weekend that he is a "war president." When did we become so proud of being destroyers?
Redesign
I think I'm just about done with the redesign; this is version 4 if you're counting. I need to fix the code on some of the pictures in the photo archive and, since that requires touching each image file, it'll be a bit of time until those are done and if you dig into the historical pictures, things will look a little funny for a bit yet. There is tweaking to be done in order to streamline some of the wires and pipes under the hood, but for the most part, I'm pretty pleased with how things turned out. There are still a few tables since I couldn't quite get my head wrapped around how to accomplish what I wanted to do without resorting to a thousand [div] tags and that seemed to be the wrong way to accomplish things (the reason why Apple's Safari browser will only fill the background of a [div] to the edge of the containing text and not to the edge of the actual tag space is still a mystery).
Part of what spawned this was so that I could use the Music section more readily as a promotional tool as I go freelance in the music world. I wanted something that could stand on its own if I needed it to be a source for review material for labels and artists. I'll be continuing to add material to that section as a historical archive, bringing together the disparate places where my work has been published, as well as giving a home to reviews of material that never got a good shake the first time around (or, more realistically, that I never got a chance to hear when it was new).
On the freelance front, I've landed a spot on the rotation at Igloo, an online magazine specializing in electronic music with loose ties to the Digital::Nimbus show at KUCI and s://kimo's fabulous mail order service. Igloo has run two reviews of mine already. It also looks like I'll be contributing to Recycle Your Ears, the magazine arm of Nicolas Chevreux's Ad Noiseam label. Nicolas is finishing up a very nice redesign as well and, once that becomes active, I'll be dropping in over there too.
This redesign has been my basic distraction from writing and, now that I'm done, I'm out of excuses again. I took back most of the books I had checked out of the library; there just isn't the time to both read and write now, though John Le Carre's Absolute Friends is waiting for me at my favorite branch. I've not read any of his work for a number of years and, while he always entertains, there has been a certain British dryness to his work that hasn't exactly drawn me back. But I hear that Absolute Friends is very topical these days, containing a rather scathing inditement of our government's behavior in the Middle East which -- "fictional account" aside -- I'm curious to read. Ian Rankin's new Inspector Rebus novel is in the queue as well. Rankin started flirting with the nature of Rebus' mortality in Ressurection Men and I wonder if he's starting to grow tired of Rebus as a character. That's the trouble with genre work and a series character: at some point, even the writer gets tired of running their character through the wringer and it does become just a matter of going through the motions. Still, Rankin is consistent enough that he warrants a look-see when a new novel hits the shelves.
So, yeah, writing. SYMBOLIC is running again. I just copied entry 66 here the other day and Opi8 is several entries ahead (and, yes, you should read it there because we like to see the traffic). I've even wrote 500 words last week that I don't absolutely loath. Of course, they're just set-up so I could completely end up getting rid of them anyway, but it's 500 words at least. If I can manage to keep my eyes open on the train rides, I'll be able to get a full chapter completed.
Which is as good a goal as any right now. Baby steps.
Heavy fog in Tukwila again this morning. Unreal world outside the train car. Drifting off to Hagedorn's Home Grown.
In-between
Listening to Laika's Wherever I Am I Am What is Missing this morning, lost in Margaret Fiedler's voice and the dense body of instrumentation and electronics which swirl around her. We've got fog on the road today, low grey sky keeping the color from the heart of things. It threatens to rain, but hasn't yet. This feels like the cusp of tomorrow, that threshold on which one can hover for days and years if one so desires.
Until this train stops, I am neither here nor there. I am not who I set out to be. I am not who I was. I am caught in-between, listening to sounds which no one else can here.
Oscar Watch
You know, I have absolutely no opinion about Best Supporting Actress. None. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero. I wish that I did, and I'm pretty sure Renée Zellweger will win, but when I reach into the bucket for some interest, I come up with an empty hand. Zellweger won the Golden Globe for her role in Cold Mountain and I've not heard "boo" in the buzz department for any of the others in this category, so I'm thinking this will be a perfunctory award at the beginning of the telecast. Not to disparage Ms. Zellweger or any of the others nominated; I'm just not moved to care.
What does annoy me to no end is that Return of the King wasn't nominated for Best Cinematography. I can understand the rationale -- a lot of the visuals were computer generated -- but I think it is time that the Academy started to be aware that building an immersive environment isn't just about capturing magic hour on film.
And Finding Nemo is a shoo-in for Best Animated Film. It should be in the Best Picture category, but I suppose I should be pleased that the Academy is even deigning to recognize animated work. Pixar and Disney have recently been unable to reach an accord for future collaborations -- Disney didn't care for Pixar's desire to retain ownership of their films -- and I hope that a win here will really drive home the point that Disney needs to learn how to play better with others (especially in the recognition of ownership rights) if they want to stay in the game.
The Surreal Life
As I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store tonight, the woman in front of me dropped something from her pocket as she paid for her groceries. I bent to retrieve the object -- a worn matchbook -- and realized she had also dropped a plastic mustache.
She laughed it off. "Ha, ha. This is what happens when you don't empty out your pockets after Christmas." But, by the time I got home, the whole experience had taken a different turn in my head. In the future, when asked where writers get their ideas, I can say: "In the checkout line at the supermarket."
Hidden Messages
The Cryptographever examines text and discovers hidden messages, almost as if every message contains coded sequences. I ran the first paragraph of the last entry through it and got back the following:
"egg is broken"
Who knew?
Once, When 20GB Was All You Needed
I bought myself an iRiver MP3 player, the 20GB iHP-120. After I read that Apple's mini iPod isn't really that mini, I went back to the drawing board. The new iPods (the colored ones) are a marketing ploy to suck up that portion of the marketplace which is on the fence about buying an iPod. They're not that much smaller (about 3/4 of the size), much smaller hard drive capacity, and only 50 bucks cheaper. Can you say status symbol? I like Apple and how they make their products, but I just have a hard time justifying the up-scale price points they insist on.
eP editor man Craig Young pointed me towards iRiver and their series of hard drive MP3 players. What sold me finally on the iHP-120 is the Line In jack. Not only is it a fully functional USB-style external plug and play hard drive, it can record. Like all that vinyl I've got sitting on the shelf that I never listen to.
I've rediscovered a 12" from 1998: "The Spy Who Dubbed Me (Parts 1-4)" by OST. It was released on Related and my copy is labeled as a promo, and OST are the initials of Oliver Stanley Templeton. I have no idea what else this guy has done, but this record is a four-part symphony to spy films, slathered with fat basslines, bright horn stabs, thick reverb and shaken down by a solid dose of '70s sex funk. It is glorious and will probably become the piece of music I listen to every day on the way home to dust off the grit from work and ease me into, well, the rest of my life. I just wish I could find more info on the guy who put this record together. Last time I did the Internet crawl for him (which, admittedly, was years ago when I first got this record), I came up with zero. I think the label was even out of business already.
Hmmm. Must crawl the web again.
But, yeah, love my MP3 player. I wish the buttons on the remote weren't quite so mickey mouse and that it supported smart playlists like iTunes and the iPod do, but these are small quibbles. I'm not quite sure why I scoffed for so long about these. Probably because my last experience with an MP3 player was back in the day when 64MB was the upper limit to their capacities, and having a player that couldn't really carry more than a CD's worth of material didn't make a whole lot of sense. You run into the same basic problem that a mini-disc player has: highly portable, but you've got to carry a dozen cartridges to have a decent selection of music with you. Not the case with 20GB of storage in the iHP-120.
Which is silly. Who needed 20GB for anything before mp3s? When I upgraded my desktop computer at home last year, I splurged and got a 120GB hard drive, thinking that I'd never fill it. But I am discovering that the pack rat urge extends to electronic data storage as well.
Forward Go
Earpollution has gone on "indefinite hiatus." We main players have all got enough other irons in the fire that we've had to make some choices about how we spend our time. I've got Solomon and the book to keep me busy, Craig Young has some photography projects and work with Pitchshifter's frontman J.S. Clayden to keep him off the streets and Eric J. Iannelli is trying to put together a literary magazine called Sybarite. Busy lads, all, and it has come time for us to recognize that we can't do everything all the time. Some of us are in our mid-thirties, after all.
It's been a good run, these last six years writing for Earpollution and I can't say that I'm going to miss some of the grind of reviewing records. I've got a wall full of CDs and a new iRiver MP3 player, and I'm looking forward to spending some time rediscovering the music that I already own. That isn't to say that the bug has left my system. I've finished the redesign of the music section of the site to act more appropriately as a portfolio of my work as a reviewer and to continue as an avenue for me to write about the interesting and eclectic music that I stumble upon. I'm going freelance, baby.
Symbolic has come back too. I just put up the first entry about dream machines yesterday at Opi8.com and, while I'll probably continue to eventually mirror them here for my own archival needs, I'm going to shunt folk there for the first week or so. The plan is to keep working through aspects of the novel and other discussions about symbolism as I continue on this interminable process of writing the BOOK OF LIES. While that title is just the working title, it's also a reference to the mystery text which haunts the novel and, in some ways, it strikes me as ironically appropriate that talk of the BOOK OF LIES may ultimately result in a phantom text which is never found (or written). It's a fanciful thought which makes me laugh, but not one that I want written on my tombstone: "Here lies Mark Teppo. He never finished the BOOK OF LIES." Time willing, this book will be done this year. Of course, I said that last year too...
I go back to work today. The Sounder train has been temporarily moved back to its old platform and I felt like I was stepping backward in time as I trudged up the old path beside the train tracks in the rain. I'm back in my old seat on the south side of the train. Some familiar faces, but a number of new ones as well. I wonder which of these folks had annexed my regular spot while I have been gone and are quietly wondering who I am to be sitting in their spot.
Crikey. I wonder if my desk is there at work...
Melissa and Solomon were up briefly this morning with me and I got to nuzzle my wide-eyed boy shortly before I left. I wonder if he'll miss me today; I wonder if his wee brain is developed enough to realize I'm gone. He's still at a stage where things outside of his vision don't exist and so every time he sees me now, it is like I've been recreated. But I wonder if he understands the passage of time enough to realize that I'm gone longer than normal.
[np: Enigma, Voyageur]
Oscar Watch: Best Supporting Actor
The real tragedy of this category is that Sean Astin wasn't nominated for The Return of the King. It's the continued ghetto-ization of fantasy and science fiction that the AMPAS can't recognize the work done in these genres (okay, Sigourney Weaver's Best Actress win for Aliens notwithstanding). The very definition of a "supporting actor" is Astin's work as Sam Gamgee in The Return of the King. Grr. It makes me want to climb a tree and fling my poo at people.
That said, my sentimental favorite of those who were nominated is Ken Watanabe for The Last Samurai. I, like director Edward Zwick, have a soft spot for samurai movies and Watanabe does an exemplary job as the ronin, Katsumoto, whom the world has passed by.
[I used that phrase -- "whom the world has passed by" -- in reference to Bill Murray's characterizations as well. I lifted it from Stephen King's Gunslinger books, though there he says "the world has moved on." It would appear that I have a weakness for characters who are out of step with the rest of the world, their nobility and character no longer in keeping with the current vogue. Some day Solomon may have cause to say this about me, probably when I demonstrate an inability to program his generation's electronic equipment.]
Anyway, Katsumoto's energy and pathos fills the screen and makes Tom Cruise look as small as he is. Watanabe appears to be eight feet tall and clearly embodies the samurai spirit which, frankly, the world is a slightly darker place to have lost.
Like I said, sentimental favorite. My betting money is on either Alec Baldwin or Tim Robbins, though I'd guess that Robbins' win at the Golden Globes and the anguish he throws up on screen in Mystic River will beat out Baldwin's clinically violent casino owner.