My condensed review of the new products shown at CES this year.

meh.

Quote

"It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide"- Magersfontein Lugg

NaNoWriMo

It's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo to its friends) again and I'm jumping on the bandwagon again this year. It has only been a few days, but I'm keeping up. If you don't know, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days- that's 1,667 words per day. There is a strategy involved, to make it easier, which you can find in the book "No Plot? No Problem!" by Chris Baty (the founder of National Novel Writing Month).

By the way, I've done this before, successfully- and by that I mean that I got the word count, but the novel I wrote is utter crap. Just a few days into the latest novel and I can say without hesitation that the new one is crap too. However, I will also say that this one is less crappy then the earlier one. Maybe in ten years, or ten more novels, I'll be writing the greatest novel ever, but I doubt it.

Anyway, the process is fun and I think I'm learning a lot. If you've got access to my Twitter feed (which should be somewhere on this blog page), you can keep up with my current word count this month.

the anti-"jump the shark"

There really needs to be a phrase that's the opposite of "jump the shark".

"Jump the shark", if you don't know, is when something happens that causes you to realize things are never going to be as good as they used to. The opposite would be when be when something happens on a series that makes the series dramatically better.

When Michael Emerson joined Lost, it crystalized and clarified the drama, he gave the show something it needed. At that point, Lost stopped being a rambling drama that didn't seem to be going anywhere. Suddenly, the "Others" stopped being strange weirdos and started being interesting. The "Others" even started dressing better.

In the seventh episode of Fringe, they introduced David Robert Jones (played by Jared Harris). Up until this point, they were vague about something called "The Pattern". It really felt as if the writers didn't have any more idea what was happening then the viewers. The enemy had a face. The writers weren't wandering aimlessly from incident to incident, they had a focal point, a direction. The episodes became markedly better written. The characters were actually striving for something.

The reason that I'm bringing all this up is this- I've just watched the first season of "Lie to me" and I really like the show, but I really think that they need to have a Michael Emerson or David Robert Jones. I really like "Lie to me", but Tim Roth's Dr. Cal Lightman hasn't really found a match- the Joker to his Batman. Somebody to battle through the show's future seasons. I just hope that they don't do a "House" like thing and make his enemy a bureaucrat that battles over petty crud- "Fringe" tried that with Michael Gaston's Sanford Harris and it was utter crap. Nobody ever wants the enemy to be red tape or bureaucracy - unless it's a comedy.

Do you really want it?

I was rolling the question "Do you really want it?" around in my head this morning. There wasn't anything that I really wanted at the time, that wasn't the point. I was thinking about how wonderful spoken English is. Every time that I rolled the question around, I emphasized a different word- and that changed the context completely.

Let me show you what I mean (the capitalized letters represent the word that is accented):

"DO you really want it?" - I question if you want it.

"Do YOU really want it?" - I think that you are acting on the behalf of somebody else.

"Do you REALLY want it?" - I don't think you want it enough to do what it takes.

"Do you really WANT it?" - It isn't something that you should want- like a monkey's paw.

"Do you really want IT?" - I think you really want something else, you just aren't saying what.

Yeah, I know, there are thousands more interpretations that can be inferred - context would help, but that's not my point. My point is that spoken language can be pretty cool.

Porn 'Stache

I had a horrible slip when trimming my beard this morning- in the end I had to trim around the screw up. Now I'm trying to decide whether I want to cut everything off or just start growing the beard out again. Heck, I may even keep the mustache...but I doubt my dearly beloved will agree with that (she hasn't seen it yet).

From Some Psychotic Ramblings

Tomatoes: Fruit or Vegetable

The culinary world says, "Fruit!"

The U.S. Tariff codes say, "Vegetable!"

The botanical elite say, "Ovary."

Tomayto, Tomahto - I don't care, I just grows 'em and eats 'em.

Here's a picture of yesterday's crop from my backyard

From Some Psychotic Ramblings