Give me the carrot !!

Ah, the year gets away from me.

February, and on the long side of the short month to boot.
Let's catch up with some things.
Of course, Valentine's Day was this month. It was fun. I got, suprise here folks, some books. Ah well, that's what I like. Since I've been writing some scifi, I've felt I should delve into some of the 'grand masters' -- and so, Asimov books. I read the Prelude to Foundation, and now am reading Foundation (both vday gifts). I also got Count Zero, by WmGibson which I'm sure I've read before, but it's been a good 10 plus years so I don't remember anything about it. K also got a book called Legends for me, which is a collection of novellas set in famous fantasy worlds by famous fantasy authors. You get, for instance, some Robert Jordan Wheel of Time thing, some King Dark Tower stuff, some McCaffrey (sp?) etc. Looks interesting enough. (btw: she got roses, chocolate strawberries, and a pink watch!!)
What else? What else?
Two animations:
Watched Corpse Bride and
W/Gr: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
of the two, the Wallace and Gromit wins hands down. Tim Burton has a way of promising fun and delivering none. CBride was 'kind of ok'. That's my official take. I'm surprised at how funny the W/Gromit can be.
The new HDTV we've got here is awesome. The olympics look good, though the curling has not aired in Hi Def; it's relegated to crappy cable signal on USA. Poop and poop. Lost looks good, but none of the other shows I watche (fox, wb, scifi) are availabe in real Hidef here, so they look like cable signals stretched to 40 inches. DVD's look pretty awesome, though.

We saw Narnia movie. I thought it was so-so.
I read the Bruce Sterling book The Artificial Kid, which was somewhat long in the tooth, but interesting. Sterling has a way with creating some cool stuff. Witness: the Kid himself runs around fighting folks, all the while his camera drones tape everything. He later edits this footage and releases it. There is a de-criminalized zone in which all this fighting and neat stuff happens. Somehow, after the initial rush of reading about these cool characters and settings, it turns into a political story. I've read a few Sterling books now, and while I admire his imagination, I don't jive with his politicized storytelling. It's none his strong suit. It's a little boring. Gibson wins in the storytelling department. Or Neal Stephenson.
You know, I also saw that Grizzly Man movie. Great stuff. Best discussed over a couple of beers.
If anyone besides Werner Herzog had made this documentary it would probably have been crap and crap. So says I. I'm glad he was able to show everything going on without dismissing any one idea. At the same time, I love when he breaks in to disagree with Timothy's worldview, stating that he thinks the universe tends toward chaos, murder and destruction.
Somehow he made it his movie, instead of a movie about this dumbass self destructive hipppy guy.
Next up for reading:
some Heinlein, more asimov, that Gibson book, some PKDICK short stories, maybe one of those fantasy novellas.
Also read PKDICK A Scanner Darkly recently. It's the one, you know, that they're making into a movie with Keanu Reeves. I know, I know, it's Richard Linklater, maker of marginally interesting films that aren't afraid to ssllooww down and discuss 'things', but come on . . . the book barely holds together sometimes itself. The best passages have Dick discussing love, sexual longing, drug use, and disintegration of identity, which I could see Linklater gloming onto. But will I be able to buy this sort of thing coming from the mouth of Reeves? Or, for that matter, his costar Winona Ryder? Dick was writing from experience, and you can feel him in passages here, something that, let's be honest, is somewhat rare for Dick. (I guess, until he goes kind of loopy at the end and he's writing about characters who have the same 'hallucinatory reality' that he does.) The ideas were a way for him to write about the drug community, which he'd been in and watched kill and maim friends and acquaintances, in a scifi setting.
Well, good luck Linklater. Try not to bore me.
Speaking of not being bored:
The level of quality on Battlestar Galactica has not dropped. Characters are being developed. Situations are heating up. Wow. Good stuff.
Comparatively, Lost has started to frustrate. You may be able to lead a mule around with a carrot all day, but I'm not a mule folks. Sooner or later you gots to give me the carrot.

mw