MWB's World

(It’s been a heck of a long time since I posted – but it’s been a rough month or so for me. So there’s a lot of catching up to do – I’ll think I’ll break this up into a couple of posts by topic.)

The past month or so at work has been horrendously busy so much so that the days just blurred into a big annoying mess, but now, while still busy, it has calmed to a manageable busyness.

One of the downside of most of my friends being work related is that everyone else is busy too – so there’s been no getting together for lunch, dinner, etc. with folks - this means no real social outlook for me the past month, so my sole source of unwinding has been reading and watching videos. I really need to start cultivating some non-work friends who live locally, which smacks of lots of effort.

Fall allergies hit me really hard this year and the allergy meds are finally kicking in enough so I’m no longer coughing, sniffling and sneezing myself into sleeplessness, but the down side is they make me feel chronically tired. At least, my body is adjusting enough that I can start to do things again. And the odds are I can get off them again in a couple of weeks, which should help make my life a bit more normal.

My exercise and meditation just completely fell apart during all this and now I need to get started again. Partly the allergy bit and partly a serious of annoyances like how iTunes 9 decided it just crashes when trying to play the iTunes yoga shows I bought from the apple store! Still haven’t solved that problem. I’ve acquired some DVDs instead and once I familiarize myself with some of the routines I’ll start up again.

Sadly, I continue to lose the never-ending battle against my stuff. I’ve now had to abandon key principles of my piling of books and magazines where I have to double stack shelves representing different categories. Now the collection of 1970s science fiction and fantasy magazines I’ve been building (I now have 67% of them all!) is piled on shelves formally devoted to just manga – manga in the back and the magazines in the front. It was one thing to pile manga in front of manga, but now genre lines are being crossed and unholy mixing of media/entertainment/genre categories has begun.

I may see if I can carve space for another small bookcase on my sun seat and move the manga that is still being released there and just leave the completed series behind the sf&f magazine.

I'm also amused that I've got a couple of big DVD box sets on pre-order (Complete Farscape and complete It's Garry Shandling's Show) that I technically don't have shelf space for yet - but I'm sure I'll find a solution by then.

You know that bed takes up way too much room that could be devoted to more bookcases. I could just learn to sleep in a hammock strung between bookcases....

Sadly the heat has sapped all energy from me. I've been on autopilot the past week or two as the current wave of heat and humidity proceeds to make me worthless and weak. It's quite sad.

How on earth did I survive summers as a kid in Virginia? I remember looking forward to summer, but naturally I stayed safely under the protective umbrella of the air conditioner. And then the whole place was well cooled. Plus no school and no work - just lots of free time certainly didn't hurt my appreciation of summer back then.

I don't think I've lived in a place as an adult where the whole apartment or house was air conditioned - just everyone having an AC in their own room (if they had one.) So even if you get your room comfortable stepping out of it ends that cool delusion quickly.

On other notes, I'm about 1/3 of the way through the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya first novel. So far fun but nothing special, but perhaps the impact is lessened a bit since I saw the anime adaptation first. Of course, I'm only just starting the point in the plot where the novel/anime gets interesting - so I'm not writing it off yet. But I will give Little, Brown chops for producing a nice looking English language hardcover.

I've watched a bit of that anime UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie - and I can't say I'm seeing anything to recommend in it.  But I have to say having an episode with a cat-girl maid using a special ray to turn earth women into cat-girl girls to serve in her corp of cat-girl maids is almost brilliant.

On the other hand, I've become quite hooked on the anime series Shugo Chara - way too much magical girl fun.  I'm now tempted to check out the manga.  I've actually liked the anime versions of Peach Pit's works better than the manga ones so I 'm a bit hesitant.

I have volume 16 of Nodame Cantabile in my hot little hands - so when are they finally going to release the anime here?!?  Seriously, it is my most anticipated series.

So my vacation comes to an end today and I return to work tomorrow, but strangely enough I actually think I accomplished something significant internally. And because of it, I'm starting to try to change some things in my life to align better to what I'd actually like to do.

The short version was realizing how badly I match what I spend my time doing with what I actually enjoy doing.

Random example: I actually would enjoy reading a book by an author I like hugely more than reading endless poorly written and reasoned comments on discussion boards and on a lot of blogs.

So why was I spending time doing the later (and many days more time!) than the former? Because it's way easy to flit from blog to blog or discussion board to discussion board and consume them mindlessly like so much candy corn.

So no more of that, switched most of my blog following to just skimming the RSS feeds and only reading the ones that actually interest me and limit the reading of discussion boards to every couple of weeks at most.

It's also part of the reason I decided to switch my main public blog to a less frequent schedule.  I'd rather put less my time doing posts that don't interest me as much as ones that take more effort but are more interesting to me.  It's way better to spend an hour or so over several days or a week doing a longer post I like than spending smaller chunks of time each day just to have a bunch of hey look at this video (even if I like that video.)

I've been toying with spending my time doing some longer term things that I've been interested in and have flirted with for years like write more seriously (working more seriously at it rather than writing something serious per se), play with art and learn to draw.  I've had a fairly substantial skeleton for a web comic floating in my head partially formed for years now.  It a matter of upping my drawing skills more and working on it.

Does anything I produce have to be professional?  I'm trying to detach mentally from that sort of thinking.  And think of writing and art for my own sake and as a way of expressing my own creativity.  And if it gets to the point I think it worth sharing, then why not.  Now that doesn't mean that I can't try to improve it regularly and build my skills.

I sometimes think we've become veal shoved into our little lives with a steady stream of junk media shoved down our throats and we just passively and unthinkingly consume the torrent of crap thrown at us.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with light entertainment, be it watching TV, viewing videos, reading, etc.  It's the amount of it and the balance in our lives that is bothering me.  Snacks, treats and dessert are great as long as you eat them as part of a balanced diet.  The light entertainment is fine as long as you balance it with other more substantial fare.  But here's the related point.

Just like most of America has become obese physically by eating too much and exercising too little, I'm starting to think we've become obese mentally by consuming too much (and too much empty calorie entertainment) while no longer creating anything.  That creating and expression is the exercise that balances just consuming.

In modern urban life you can live your life in a steady state of consumption without actually producing anything you value yourself.  I suspect that is part of the vague unhappiness that so many seem to have unvoiced in their lives.  They buy pre-made food, clothing, furniture, entertainment, etc.  forming a passive sort of bland consumer self.

I think the antidote to that is to start spending some of your time doing the opposite - creating and producing.  Be it dance, music, art, writing, sewing, cooking (for pleasure not just to eat), soap making, furniture making, etc.  It doesn't matter as long as it is something you enjoy doing and you do it.

Once again it's not about throwing yourself into extremes going from consuming all the time to only producing things yourself.  It's about fighting that tide of just laying back and consuming blindly.  It's about starting to do things yourself that you make yourself as way of expressing yourself.  And I'm making no claim there's a magic percentage of time that works for everyone.  Where the balance is and what feels best depends.

It's about breaking the cycle, even by a bit, of just living one's life by only working to have money, so you can buy things and passively consuming them without you being present and involved. 

That's what I've been thinking about on my vacation and am trying to change things in my life to go in that direction.

Just my own insane .02

General nonsense:

Very brief post now and more maybe today, tomorrow, the next day...

Technically I'm on vacation this week and next but it is still not quite feeling restive. But it often takes me a while to start to relax. The next week should hopefully be a lot more vacation like.

Part of the problem is that I've been running a lot of errands that have been put off the past chunk of weeks because there has been so many thunderstorms and heavy rain whenever I got off work. But I'm almost caught up.

Breakfast of also rans

So I'm confused.

I went out to breakfast at one of my favorite breakfast places, but they were having a meltdown. There was a problem with the kitchen - stoves down, water not flowing, cats lying down with dogs - it was a little vague. But the food took nearly an hour to get to me despite it not being that crowded (others had exactly the same problem.)

To make up for it they didn't charge anyone for breakfast so everything was free.

But when my order arrived it wasn't what I ordered and it was actually pretty bad.

So win or not?

Anime

I'm roaring through Ranma. I'll be starting season four later today. Still mostly full, but starting to have less interesting characters floating about.

Need more Shampoo and Ukyo.

I'm just saying.

I went a bit ordering crazy late last night and ordered Karin the Complete Series, The Familiar of Zero and Kenichi, the Mightest Disciple Season One, Part One - any of which I may actually enjoy a lot or regret wasting my money on.

Hulu has put up episodes of Honey and Clover and Nana.  I liked the episodes of Honey and Clover more than I'm enjoying the manga nowadays, and enjoyed them enough to actually pre-order the first box set.  Nana on the other hand, I didn't make through the first episode.  Haichi (the annoying Nana) is way too annoying to watch in motion. In the manga, I generally skimmed by anything involving her - which sadly you can't do in the anime.

Science Fiction

Just finished the September 2009 Analog and only one story caught my eye, Evergreen by Shane Tourtellotte.  It had an intriguing premise of  parents freezing their children at certain ages, where they simply stop aging and stay that age all their lives.  It raised some good points about age, appearance, sexuality, maturity, etc. and did it will some reasonably well done characterizations.   I known I've read several of his stories in the past and enjoyed them.  Long overdue for a collection of his short stories.  I may pick up a bunch of his stories which are available individually on fictionwise.  The rest of issue, wasn't better than the Asimov's I talked about last week.


More later....

One of my first great influences in my never ending love for bad SF movies was Dr Madblood.

Dr Madblood was a schlock movie host that started up in the mid-1970s down in the Norfolk, Virginia area when I was a kid. The show ran on Saturday nights at 1 AM and I fondly remember staying up late (when my family thought I was asleep) and watching it.

Here's 30 years of the show in 30 seconds:


But the show wasn't just great for the corny jokes, sketches mocking the movies and the wonderfully terrible movies.

It was also great for how it appreciated the SF community and talked about it. Heck look at this great visit to The Ackermansion, Forest Ackerman's great home museum of SF (he will be sorely missed):


Man I want so much of that stuff.

Here's Doctor Madblood more recently at a Monsterfest (convention that started down there long after I left the area) Panel:



Here's the official web site - Doctor Madblood's Web Site and if you check out youtube they've put up a ton of old clips and outtakes.

So why am I writing about it now?

Because I noticed recently on their website that they have a documentary history of the show for sale on DVD which I ordered (heck all proceeds go to the Animal Rescue League so I also ordered me a t-shirt!), received yesterday and watched the whole thing last night.

Silly, stupid, corny, cringe-worthy and awesomely amazing!

Fond memories of mine to say the least.

Back when it was released on VHS I used to follow Ranma 1/2 but I never really made the transition to the DVD release. I did read the manga for a while too, but dropped that midway as well.

But thanks to some careful shopping and some great sales, I scooped up the thin packed season box sets, oavs and movies (less than $20 each) - so now I have the whole series. And I'm starting to watch it all. Right now I'm still solidly in the territory of stuff I saw and read before but I'm remembering how both the anime and manga suffer from the same problem in that there is a lot of junk in amongst some really funny stuff - but that's not what always bothers me.

As rule all the male leads in Rumiko Takahashi's series are pretty much idiots. And frankly deserve all the bad things that happen to them. But it drives me nuts how much more I prefer the women that are the romantic non-starters over the lead females the males go for.

Maison Ikkoku: You've got the ever cute and charming Kozue after you and you ignore her? Bad and wrong.

Ranma 1/2: I'll grant a certain cuteness to Akane, but with Shampoo and Ukyo around? No contest. Poor deluded Ranma clearly took too many blows to the head.

Urusei Yatsura: Come on - like you need anyone but Lum.

I'm just saying...

Sadly, I'm struggling to get into a more productive groove. At the very least to blog more regularly and with greater focus both here and at my other public blog.

I managed to define some discrete workable space to resume yoga so I can start to exercise again. And I do intend to start that soon. So that should help with getting back into shape and re-building my energy levels and motivation a bit.

Of course, I'm finding that between my too many hours spent at the keyboard at work and at home that my hands are getting an all too familiar pain. But since I know the problem after the awful experience last year, I'm promptly breaking out the wrist supports. Because clearly I'm slacking off on watching my hands positioning and I need the forceful reminder they represent. I should also replace my home chair which isn't as supportive height wise for my keyboard as it used to be.

It's those annoying little things that can derail you so easily if you don't watch it.

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I've also started trying to define a more solid period of just rest each week starting Friday night until Sunday morning. The idea is that I shouldn't try or feel I need to do anything. Just read, watch videos, listen to music and relax in general.

I'm not quite there yet, but I continue to work at. Currently, the idea is to expand it to no on-line stuff. No reading blogs, discussion groups, news, etc.

It's a variation of something I used to do years ago during the time between Christmas and New Year's. Where I work we have that time off and often my roommates would be gone. I used to try to set that period aside to be free of news, serious books magazines, etc.

I want to adapt it into a weekly thing, but I really have to go in stages since it kind of hard to cut off everything at once. I do think it will be worth it in the long run.

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I've been playing with some of the smart list features in iTunes player. Currently I have a folder called Random 25, with a collection of smart lists each one set to offer 25 random genre selections working their way up by play count.

For example one list would be 25 random Blues songs whose play count equals 1. When I've gone through all the Blues songs who have only be played once, I set it to the one with play counts of 2.

I've done that for all musical genres (except classical because I don't want random movements of different pieces.) Then I just listen to the genre I want.

It's kind of nice because I sometimes get in what I call an indecision loop, where I can decided what I want to listen too, watch, read, eat, etc. next. Usually whatever I finally chose is fine because I rarely own anything I don't like - but I can spend more time than is productive just "deciding."

- to be continued -

So I was picking up the last two episodes of the Brave and the Bold cartoon via iTunes (which is surprisingly fun), but since that was only about $4 and that seemed like a tiny amount to charge I started looking to see if there was anything else I wanted to grab.

Before I know it, caught between some selective nostalgia for a song or two I vaguely remember not actively hating as a tween and steeply cheap pricing for greatest hits albums - I had added in Bobby Sherman's greatest hits and well as Kiss' greatest hits (one of the apparently 19 millions greatest hits albums they have.)

You know, I wasn't exactly a fan of either during their heydays. Yes, I do like to pick up greatest hits collections of artists that I wasn't necessarily a fan of but didn't actively dislike the odd song or two I knew by them. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised and end up getting some of their actual albums, like Roberta Flack whose early albums are substantially better and way more interesting musically than the singles that were released and I was aware of back then.

I don't actual regret it though, but I take it as further proof that my brain is wired differently from others.

Time for some more randomness...

Facing the inevitable - I was having lunch with a friend last Friday and I came to a realization or perhaps just admitted something I probably knew but was in denial about. I was commiserating with her about how there are things I want to spend time doing such as writing, learning to draw, and start to exercise since I stopped years ago and have let myself get quite out of shape. But that while I technically could make the time, actually finding the energy and motivation after a long day or week at work was nearly impossible. I recalled that not too many years ago this wasn't the same problem. It was then it finally hit me.

I'd hit a critical point in getting older. The time when exercise, even just occasional, was optional was past. Sure it used to be that I could have a busy week and still have energy and motivation to pursue some of my own projects irregardless of whether I was exercising or not. But now, if I want to have energy and motivation to actually pursue those things, I have to make time to exercise reguarly.

We all know we're getting older, but those annoying consequences always bite you in the butt - don't they?

Time to break out the yoga mat to reclaim my lost flexibility and fit time in to take long walks to start rebuilding that lost stamina.

So sad...the whole having to do things you don't want to do to be able to do things you do - just smacks of adulthood!

Irrational affection - I'm about halfway through watching the show Northern Exposure via netflix and I totally love it. I'm sorry to say I completely missed watching it when it was originally on. That said it is causing a creeping irrational romanticizing of small towns. But I'll just add that to the pile of media caused affection for places. Like my parallel and quite irrational belief that living in Ireland or France would be peachy thanks to other tv shows, books, music and film. That said, the show is amazingly fun and addictive. I'll probably end up buying the DVDs at some point.

Thank you Baen Books, I think - Between tending to read more on my Kindle and Baen Books being the hands downs best purveyor of SF & F in eBook format (selection, price, etc.) I've been on an absolute urban fantasy tear. Right now I'm loving three series:

• Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston - one of two books where Doc Savage style meets 1930s pulp detectives and supernatural beings. The second book is eagerly anticipated in my queue.
  
• Tinker by Wen Spencer - loved the first and I've just started the second. There better be more coming in the future. Okay not technically urban fantasy since Pittsburgh shifts between 20th century earth and an elfworld (read it to find out) - but I'll count it.
  
• One Foot in the Grave by Wm. Mark Simmons - closest to straightforward urban fantasy with a sense of humor. First of four books with the rest awaiting me my queue.
  

Sure they won't change my life, but I'm enjoying them. Of course the question is once I blow through the paltry few left, what will be next?

This post has no real theme, enlightened wisdom or probing points – so be warned that it is nothing but a bunch of assorted things.

I've gotten kind of hooked on a fun little mystery series from the early 1960s called Burke's Law, about millionaire playboy Captain of the Los Angeles PD Homicide Division. It's filled guest star oddball suspects and with the sort of witty noir style bantering that is so incredibly lacking in the generally annoying “gritty” and “serious” detective shows that litter the airways nowadays. Great change the world stuff, not so much. But a fun way to spend an hour, absolutely. I'm 2/3 the way through the first season (all available on DVD) and I'm still having a blast.

In amongst the many other books I'm currently reading, nine or so right now, I'm in the midst of re-reading Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books yet again. There's a bizarre war in my head that I used to have that I enjoy these books way more than I sometimes feel comfortable about. Intellectually I can list out a lot of reasons against them, but more importantly I always enjoy them way to much to worry about that.

I've been on the most bizarre acquisition kick for a while now. Bit by bit, I've been scooping up science fiction and fantasy magazines from the 1970s. The 1970s was really the era I started reading both and the magazines that came out then were really where I cut my teeth. Once I hit a critical mass (which I'm approaching) I'm going to start reading them. I'm not positive which issues I had back then, but I'm really curious how I'll think of the stories, articles, reviews and letters now versus when I read them as a teen.

Admittedly, I still have four volumes to go, but so far I'm really enjoying anime series "The Third, the Girl with the Blue Eye." It may yet disappoint me, but right now I'm loving each episode and watching them slowly unfold the story and world it creates. I'm very pleased with how they are gradually exploring the scenario of the show and developing the plot. I'm regretting that I waited so long to start following the show.

Over at SF Signal there are gently mocking Harlan Ellison saying he using the tools of science fiction, but isn't a science fiction writer. But frankly, while I see their POV – I'm not sure that he is so terribly far off either. Given that , while yes he has published in genre magazines, he's worked a huge amount writing outside the genre, doing mysteries, TV, movies, criticism and more – it's kind of myopic to define him solely by what SF fans know him for. I really don't have a problem saying he's a writer who has written a lot of science fiction.

Am I the only one who thinks the word fluffinutter sounds way more dirty than it actually is?