Joyous Guard 2.0

Blowing Crap Up

2009-06-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

So two weeks ago, I finally got a chance to blow some stuff up, which is something I've been waiting to do since I joined the Army. It was a lot of fun, and it was also very educational, because it was taught by a couple of engineers who dispelled a lot of myths about explosives that we'd been taught. In Basic Training, we were never allowed to handle fuses, either grenade-sim fuses or Claymore blasting caps because we were told that the static charge on our own skin could set them off. Here on this range, this myth was dispelled as they tossed us blasting caps, shoved them into fuses, yanked them out of fuses, etc.

The first thing we did was go to the ammo point and pick up this stuff:

That's half a stick of C4 and a length of C4 impregnated tubing known as detcord. C4 burns very, very fast and is thus primarily used as a cutting charge to cut through doors or walls. It still sends out a concussive shock wave, don't get me wrong, but it's principle use is breaking through stuff, not blowing stuff apart. The Army's principle blasting charge is Trinitrotoluene (TNT), which burns slower, which in turn produces a bigger shockwave. We didn't get to play with any of that, although we did get to handle it.

C4 is very stable. You can throw it around, you can even light it on fire and nothing will happen (we did both). But if you subject it to combined heat and pressure, it'll blow up nice. So we took that detcord and C4, tied them together and then tied them all into one long master line of shock cord, tubing that transfers a shockwave along its length, which is enough to set off the tiny amount of C4 in the detcord.

Our first explosives were really primitive. Basically we just wrapped the C4 and blew it up. I'm not going to show any pictures of finished explosive devices for security reasons, although really, it's not that hard to find out how to make far more sophisticated stuff than we did online. But once we'd blown up our blocks of C4, we got more detcord and made some different charges to cut through doors and walls. The one I worked on was the Water Impulse charge, which I first read about back in high school when I read Tom Clancy's nonfiction account of the Marine Corps (called, simply enough, Marine). Basically you rig an explosive that projects liquid into a metal door with enough force to blow it off its hinges. We used wooden doors, and really, all that does is blast a basketball-sized hole through the wood.

Finally, I got to detonate an M18A1 Claymore.

This was pretty fun, because you set up the mine, unscrew one of those little nubs up top, insert the blasting cap, hook up the wire, crawl back to the berm and detonate the device. It's pretty loud, and sends up a good column of dirt, but of course, its primary result is a spray of ball bearings in the direction the curved surface is facing, hopefully killing everyone in front of it.

And that was about it. It was a good day at the range.

Terrain Run

2009-04-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

So over at HHC IOBC, where all the Infantry Lieutenants sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their next class, the pressure's always on for good PT. We do a lot of running, but it's pretty easy to get bored, so our First Sergeant announced that this morning we'd be doing a trail run in patchless ACUs, Camelbak, boots, and gloves. So, we showed up and as soon as it got light, we set out at a double time toward the treeline.

Almost immediately it started raining and thundering, which kind of cast the whole enterprise under a dubious legality as far as safety goes, but we plunged on ahead. Or rather...strolled on ahead. Though it was supposedly a "Terrain run" it turned more into "Nature walk with the Army," as we slowly picked our way over muddy trails and under vines and rain absolutely soaked us to the bone.

This downpour turned our route into something treacherous and perhaps even a little dangerous as slopes became slides with a consistancy of treacle, a drain pipe turned into a roaring river, and hills that would be difficult to climb when dry turned into slick walls of mud. Over the course of a good hour I found myself hand over handing it along a rope over streams, swinging down one treacherous slope on a vine and then jumping from it to a second vine, feet slipping and sliding like crazy, arms windmilling. The drain pipe was extremely difficult to navigate as you basically had to grab onto trees and then launch yourself along the slope toward the next tree. I actually slipped and fell at that point and started sliding down toward the foaming water (which was pretty wild, but not dangerous in any way) but managed to snag an exposed root with my hand. There was also a point where I was navigating a downward slope and launched myself from a vine to a tree about as thick as my calf...which promptly broke as I hit it, sending both the tree and I tumbling down the hill. At yet another point, where we were on what amounted to an immense mudslide over the Upatoi we had to post Lieutenants at every tree and basically swing from outstretched hand to outstretched hand.

It was a little bizarre, but for much of the trail you needed momentum. Anything that killed your momentum was really bad, and many times, when you turned to help your buddy up, it was a good idea to spin and basically launch him on down the trail.

Probably the two most enjoyable obstacles were the ones that slowed us down the most. The first was a surprisingly steep waterfall. Again, not fatal, but this one might actually hurt you if you fell over it, given that it was about twenty-five feet high, with high limestone sides. An old tree had fallen across the stream right at the crest of the waterfall and we had to go across it on all fours, one guy at a time. The second obstacle was actually just funny to watch. A downward slope was so wet that it was practically featureless, with water running down it in a creek. We realized that walking down it was futile, so one after the other we sat down on it and slid down on our butts. It was a surprisingly long and fast trip, and I'm pretty sure seeing 110 Second Lieutenants, looking like Jamal in Slumdog Millionaire after he crawls out of the latrine, sliding down a slope on their rear ends, giggling madly, is the funniest thing I've seen all week.

Of course, the run back at the end wasn't so fun, when our uniforms were so heavy with water and mud. But even though we were soaked and muddy, and at first glance it might have seemed like something that would make you hate the Army, it was kind of a blast.

The Simple Joys of Shooting

2009-02-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

So this week was Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM), and it was pleasantly relaxed and pressure-free, as opposed to being the incredibly stressed and unpleasant trial of Basic Training. Not to mention I wasn't baking inside my ballistic armor this time around.

In Basic I shot the M16A4 using the iron sight apparatus integrated to the weapon. Here in BOLC I fired the more compact M4 using an M68 Close Combat Optic, a tiny scope that puts a nice little laser dot where your bullet is going to go. There's a lot of publicity about the M68 and how it doesn't matter how you look into the sight, that the dot is never going to move. This is not true. If you drastically move your face from side to side, that dot is going to move, and you're not going to be able to count on your bullet going where it needs to go. However, once you get your head in roughly the same spot on the stock, you can adjust your cheek for greater comfort and the dot will stay on target. So you have a bit more leeway with sight picture than you do with an iron sight, but there are limits.

Anyway, I maintained my standard of being a decent, if not a great shot, knocking down 33 out of my 40 targets. I'd like to improve my score, but unfortunately the only time you seem to ever shoot in the US Army is for approximately 3 days around qualification, so you never really have time to hone your skills. Maybe in IOBC I'll get more trigger time. The basics of shooting remain the same. You need to keep your face welded to the stock, and you need to watch both your breathing and your trigger pull. If your breathing is erratic, your bullet's going to go high or low. If you are yanking that trigger back, your bullet's going to veer right or left. A new trick I picked up this time around, thanks to one of the Staff Sergeants who coached us out on the range is to only let the trigger out until it clicks after every shot. This reduces the amount of pressure and pull you have to exert to fire again. I discovered that by simply breathing slowly and evenly, and by never letting the trigger go all the way out after a shot, I could comfortably knock down everything that came up during the two prone target iterations. Once we hit the kneeling stance, my accuracy dropped considerably. My practice with paper targets confirmed something else as well: I can almost always get rounds on the target, but I am pathetic at grouping my shots tightly. Now some of this could be that we were shooting on sunny days and I had my CCO dialed up about seven or eight clicks, as opposed to the recommended five, but it's still something I need to work on.

Then on the last night, we got to work with PVS-14 Night Operation Devices and PEQ-14 infrared lasers. These are really cool. If you've ever played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, recall the sequence where you have to go rescue the stuck Abrams tank and the part where you fight through the dark building. That wand of light attached to your M16 was a PEQ 14. These things are awesome. The beam of light is completely invisible to the naked eye, but when you drop the PVS-14 from the rhino mount over your eye, you can see it as a solid finger of light that extends from the barrel of your weapon to the target. And the NODS themselves are pretty neat, showing the night time world quite distinctly, although you've got to manually focus them, which is kind of annoying, and prevents you from ever acheiving normal depth of vision. But once you can align the focus of your PVS-14 and put your PEQ-14 laser on a target, if you've zeroed correctly, you will hit your target. It's just that accurate.

So anyway, it was a fun week, and I got to spend it doing one of the things I joined the Army to do, namely shoot a bunch of guns and play with some cool toys.

Combatives

2009-02-21T18:15:00.001-08:00

So my second week of BOLC II is over now, and even though it was only four training days, it was dense. We had most of our Combat Lifesaver qualification classes, some weapons classes, and three days of Combatives training. It's this latter thing I want to talk about.

When you're a soldier, it kind of stands to reason that it's important to learn how to fight and kill an opponent with your bare hands. They always give us a brief before classes on how important it is to learn how to defend ourselves, although cases of unarmed combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are a lot less common than I would have expected (our last brief gave us a number like 17). But beyond the importance of technical proficiency in unarmed combat, it's important for soldiers to gain at least a minimal confidence in their ability to inflict damage without a weapon.

Now the Army has always taught some form of melee fighting. Originally there was bayonet training, although my bayonet training was exactly one hour long in Basic. Then there was a little bit of unarmed combat instruction in the nineties. Finally, in 1999 an Army Ranger invented the Modern Army Combatives (MAC) program, compiling moves and techniques from Western boxing, jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, etc. But it wasn't until about a year, two years ago, when the whole UFC/MMA craze hit that MAC really took off. Now...the Army is obssessed with Combatives. They want everyone to learn them and I have had some form of Combatives instruction in every class I've been in.

Now Level 1 Combatives (which I was certified in during Basic Training) is pretty simple. It's a series of about sixteen simple groundfighting maneuvers, strung together in a couple of drills and individual moves. Once you've learned, the culmination is the Clinch drill where you have to get a certain number of clinches against some guys with boxing gloves who are whaling on your face. In Basic we only had to get two clinches. I'm told that I'll have to recertify in IOBC with four.

But from a practical standpoint, combatives training is very painful. You kind of assume that going in, since you practice a lot, and you bout a couple of times were session, but you don't quite feel it until two days in. Then your back hurts from cranking guys up on their spines so you can break their guard, your neck hurts from being choked over and over, your joints are sore from being put in arm bars, etc, etc. It hurts.

But it's also fun. Ground fighting is intense, and it smokes the heck out of you, but it also requires a lot of coordination and full-body awareness. When somebody's trying to choke you out, you tend to focus on trying to get out of his arms, when maybe you should be trying to get your knees up onto his hips, so you can gain the dominant position. I always enjoy bouting, although after a couple of days, I'm just a little too sore to go at it 100% anymore.

Anyway, we're done with combatives for now, and while it was decent training, it was a little redundant and annoying, considering that I got this education in both Basic and OCS already. But it was fun at times, and considering its grim implications, and oddly sportive period of instruction.

Bye for now

2008-06-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well, version 2.0 of this blog never really took off. I have all the posts from the original, and I was posting two or three times a day. But for this iteration it was around 18 posts for the whole year. I'm sorry about that.

Now it is also time to say goodbye for the present. I'm heading off to Army Basic Training today, and given the Army's stance on blogging, I probably won't be writing anything regularly online for a little while. But keep an eye out, and I'll be back as soon as I can. Who knows? Maybe now that I have a job I'll have something interesting to talk about.

Whoa

2008-04-05T22:14:00.001-07:00

Many of my favorite authors sell the movie rights to their books and absolutely nothing happens, and for this reason I wasn't too excited when Barry Eisler sold the rights to his John Rain series. However, it appears the film is set to start filming next month with Gary Oldman as the only recognizable English-speaking actor. Here's the press release. This has me very excited, as the books are possibly my favorite ongoing series currently being produced, and if you aren't reading them you should be. As far as I can guess, Oldman will be playing the villain of the piece.

Also, for those of you back home following my blog (or the posts through Facebook), I'll be putting up a description of my Army application process over the next few days.

Adventures of the Auditory Kind

2008-02-28T14:57:00.000-08:00

So I took my (hopefully) healed foot for a test-drive today. No running, no jumping, nothing that would put undue stress on the bones. Instead I just walked up and down a rocky slope out behind the library and then briefly climbed a tree. Other than a brief twinge going downhill, it's doing fine. Now I just need to get that X-ray and make it official. My goal is to start running again in April, to try to get a little endurance back in time for summer.

In other news, every few years I venture onto the World Wide Web in search of downloadable episodes of Old Time Radio. For many years during Middle and High school I would stay up until 10:00 on Sundays listening to Theatre of the Mind on the radio, a show which resurrected classic dramas and comedies like the "Phil Harris Show" or "The Shadow." Of course, I eventually settled on certain shows that were my favorites ("Phil Harris," "The Shadow," "Gunsmoke," and of course, "Escape"), but there were plenty of gems among the other series as well. In all my online ramblings I have yet to come across downloads of Quiet, Please for "Whence came you" and "The Thing on the Forbal Board," both of which are terrifying classics. But I did find a few parts of "Day of the Triffids."

Anyway, my very favorite show of all time was Escape, starring either William Conrad or Paul Fries, depending upon episode and era. The theme of this show was that every week you'd hear a tale of mystery, horror and derring-do set in some far off region. I even managed to purchase the show's complete run on two DVDs, but I appear to have misplaced them. Or a friend still has them, I'm not sure (if you do, let me know).

The point of all this is that I recently, in my wanderings, happened upon a fairly new site that offers a few choice episodes of Escape. Here it is.

Now for this particular listing I very much recommend the episodes "The Orient Express," "Red Wine," and "A Shipment of Mute Fate." "The Orient Express" involves cloak-and-dagger escapades on the eponymous train, "Red Wine" involves the hunt for a murderer in some backwater jungle town, and "Mute Fate" is a somewhat stranger offering about a snake dealer attempting to transport a Bushmaster to the states. For those who are not familiar with these snakes, their scientific name is Lachesis muta, Lachesis being one of the fates, and "muta" obviously translating as "mute." Raymond Ditmars had an unusual encounter with a bushmaster in his private menagerie during this teen years, an account which can be found in the final chapter of James Oliver's excellent popularization of herpetology, Snakes: Fact and Fiction. For those with a more immediate drive to know, here's the Wikipedia article.

So anyway, check the shows out if they sound interesting, and I'll try to get back to maintaining a regular blog. At least, until I head off for the Army.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T17:29:00.000-08:00

Well, it's a good thing the dorms are mostly empty, as I've had two loud, impolite outbursts so far today. The first occurred around eleven o'clock in the morning when I got a little too into Mass Effect and unleashed a torrent of enraged, panicky profanity which probably made the guy across the hall look up in alarm. In my defense, I'd just like to say that the Mako Rover has the least intuitive and most suicide prone control scheme in the world. And when you combine that with around twelve bad guys armed with rocket launchers, your cool just kind of goes away, like ashes on the breeze.

And then, just now, I was in the restroom when my foot (which has been swollen and has been bothering me for several days), suddenly went snap and sent a nice burst of pain to my brain. I suspect I have a stress fracture in the third or fourth metatarsal (ironically, a very common injury among new military recruits), and I'm really hoping that was just crepitus, and not the bone snapping all the way through. It's strange though, because I can prod my foot and get a little bit of pain, but not fall-over-and-scream pain. So I really have no idea what's going on.

As for the rest of Thanksgiving, well, it's been a lot of Mass Effect, and also dinner at the President's house, which was fun. Campus is almost completely deserted, so things have a melancholy air. I mostly just stay in my room, reading, playing games, or watching TV. I've just started season 2 of The Unit which is light years beyond the quality of the first season. David Mamet + Special Forces + Serialized Television = Big Winner.

Pre-Thanksgiving

2007-11-17T20:53:00.000-08:00

So my esophagitis appears to have gotten better. Yay for actual food. I lost five pounds over the course of a week, but now I'm resolutely attempting to get it back, no fear.

Well, I've finally made contact with an Army recruiter and on Monday I'm going in to talk to him and hopefully start the application process. I think he may still think he has a bit of a sell ahead of him, which is funny considering that I have almost all of my steps along the way of this process figured out. It's going to take a few months to complete, but I'll keep all you readers apprised of where I am.

Thanksgiving break is coming fast upon us, and I hope we all know what that means. Yes, Mass Effect. The game I bought an Xbox for. My local Gamestop has it, but they can't give it to me until the 20th, so I just kind of sit here twiddling my thumbs and glancing over the minimal homework for next week, waiting.

Of course I'm also reading. I've been going to the library every week and picking up a few books to read. Over Halloween I read a few scary novels - I am Legend and The Ruins - both of which were fairly good, but mostly I've been sampling their science fiction. I read Startide Rising, which was quite inventive, but not quite as mind-blowing as I hoped, Prador Moon, which was pretty awesome for being a giant space-bug novel, and The Door into Summer which was pretty typical Heinlein, i.e. readable but not to my taste.

Currently though, I've been working through a truly brilliant SF novel, Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds. It's recent British SF, heavily flavored by the current heavy-hitters. There are traces of Richard K. Morgan's hard-boiled narration, Neal Asher's clever but deeply strange technology, and Peter F. Hamilton's mind-bending, epic plotting. The story concerns a mercenary on a system-wide quest for revenge (Reynolds's universe adheres to Einstein's physics, so it takes years to get from place to place). However, he's also been infected by a virus that gives him the memories of a revered and long-dead cult founder. The only twist is, these memories are telling him things found in no history book. And he's starting to doubt that he is who he thinks he is, or even that what he's avenging happened the way he remembers it happening.

It's baroque, well-paced, creative SF, and I definitely anticipate picking up more by Reynolds.

November

2007-11-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

You know, I think the last 18 months comprise a time in my life henceforth known as "The Time of Pain." In addition to injuring myself several times, I have contracted more forms of -itis than I knew existed. Hopefully it'll stop soon.

My latest fun discovery is Esophagitis, which basically means that if I try to eat anything solid or remotely spicy, it feels like little torturers are sliding down my throat, merrily brandishing acetylene torches and cackling with glee. Even softer food doesn't behave very well, and I have to chase everything liberally with water, water which I can almost hear hissing all the way down. It's not fun. The school nurse recommended I go on a treatment cycle of Prilosec, so I have, and so far it's difficult to tell if it's having any effect. I'm not waking up to as much pain as I was earlier in the week, but food's not getting any easier to eat. Plus, my research on the subject online indicates that A). this condition is not too serious, although it has some nasty descendants, and B). there are about a billion ways to treat it.

Basically my hope is that this is a form of karma. Every time I get sick, infected, or injured, it's just fate taking it's revenge for a future narrow escape from a Purple Heart or a body bag. At least that way I can maintain a positive outlook.

In other news, it's November, my favorite month. Thanksgiving (and the break that entails), is right around the corner. The sky tends to be blue most of the time, the air is nice, the leaves are changing color and dropping rapidly, and I have to run in long pants and a sweatshirt.

I'm also currently reading Beowulf for my Preceptorial. I've read the poem several times before, but I'm liking it even more this time, although I'm having difficulty tying it all together into one theme. I have however found a couple of interesting motifs which bear further scrutiny, particularly the ever present sea. Eventually we'll also get to Gawain and the Green Knight which is another one of my favorites, and a pretty different poem.

Robin Hood; or, Anachronisms within BBC Television

2007-10-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

You know, I've always been secretly peeved that I wasn't born in the Middle Ages. I'm not sure exactly when I realized this, but it was probably when I realized that I would never ever get to ride into battle on a horse, wearing my body weight in armor, and stab people with a sword. So last year, really. I kid, of course. Anyway, part and parcel with my fascination with the Middle Ages is my avid enjoyment of medieval legends, which ironically almost all came to be in their current form post 15th century. Of these, my favorite legend is probably the story of Robin Hood, following a 5th or 6th grade reading of Roger Lancelyn Green's retelling of the tales.

Yet despite the character's ubiquitous nature, it's hard to find many mature treatments of the subject. King Arthur has roughly 4.2 billion books and movies about him, and even Beowulf gets two movies in as many years, but Robin has to rely on an armada of children's books, two or three sketchy re-tellings that set him in non-Crusade time periods, and a handful of movies. My favorite of these is definitely Michael Curtiz's The Adventures of Robin Hood, which I was delighted to find in Meem Library just the other day. Upon watching it however, I noticed something that never struck me before. For a Matinee idol, Errol Flynn had a really squishy face. In the scenes where de Havilland is kissing him, it almost looks like she's squeezing a giant peach ball of Play-Doh.

Anyway, recently I tracked down a set of the BBC's 2006 re-imagining of the Robin Hood legend, and having been watching an episode or two every night. I'm enjoying it, but definitely in a popcorn-eating, campy sort of way. They attempted to make the story a little more hip and relevant for modern audiences, and as a result made something which frequently teeters and/or tumbles into the pit of abysmal silliness.

In this version, Robin returns from the Crusades as a sort of cross between Batman and a modern day democrat. He's disillusioned with the Holy War, periodically quotes the Koran, and refuses to kill anyone. As played by Jonas Armstrong he's kind of young, and kind of scrawny, and he wears his beard about as well as I wear mine (as in it looks like he's got some sort of hideous chin fungus). He's also probably the best part of the show, spouting off somewhat obvious one liners and grinning slyly at various law enforcement officials as he stalks through the woods in the 12th century equivalent of a hoodie. Oh, and he also shoots like Legolas and fights with the fakest looking falchion on film.

As for his band of merry men, which appears in one episode to number close to thirty, and in all others to number six, they're generally an affable if unremarkable bunch. Will Scarlet comes across as a scrawny British hayseed whose fighting moves are copied off Mel Gibson's from The Patriot, Little John is a big nonentity who sits around and broods into his beard, Much plays a lot like Pippin from The Lord of the Rings, and Alan a Dale doesn't really do anything other than look perpetually shocked. Oh, and there's a Turk. A female Turk to boot.

Arrayed against our heroes are the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne. The Sheriff is played by Keith Allen, who apparently has been studying Jeremy Irons. A good thing right? Except that apparently he's been studying the Irons era known as "The Time of Extreme Suckitude." He chews scenery like it's going to make his hair grow back, and spouts all kinds of anachronisms ranging from a curt "la-di-da" to downright hilarious phrases like "we must win the battle of hearts and minds" or "we will not let Robin use terror as a weapon."

His chief lackey, Guy of Gisborne, is played by Hugh Jackman's evil twin, Richard Armitage. Gisborne is very angry, broods all the time, and yet whenever he is actually confronted by the decidedly pacifist Robin Hood he tends to just sit and stare meditatively or perhaps brandish his sword from a safe distance, looking just a little ludicrous in his black vinyl onesie.

Which brings up another point. Both the Merry Men and the Sheriff are extraordinarily incompetent. Robin and his gang get captured in just about every episode, and then manage to escape. Or if they don't get captured, they have a friendly little standoff with the Sheriff and Gisborne, the former frantically hunting for more scenery to masticate and the latter maintaining a safe distance of half a mile.

And of course, the final point is Maid Marian. She was the very last element of the Robin Hood legend to be added, so it's only appropriate she be addressed last. As this is the "hip" version of the story, she's Robin's equal, an expert shot and swordsman who also runs around giving to the poor. She also manages to get caught less than Robin, although she accomplishes almost nothing. Lucy Griffiths does a decent enough job in what is essentially a token role (speaking of token, did I mention that the Sheriff's Master at Arms is black?), although I am somewhat mystified at how her hair manages to be perfectly coiffed all the time in a period of history famous for its lack of hygiene.

Finally, as you may have heard, this is a version of the Robin Hood story that is very political in nature. Of course, it's also set at the tail end of the 12th century so the creators really have to stretch to get in their jabs at the Bush administration but rest assured, they get one in every episode. And contrary to what you may have heard, it's definitely not very subtle. At one point Guy passionately declares, "This is a time of war, we can hold people without trial indefinitely." It's worth pointing out that 12th century trials were not really anything modern man would endorse. Then there's the "Robin is a terrorist" episode, and the episode which manages to both combine an anti-prejudice message with the Sheriff's proclamation that "Only those with something to hide fear me."

In short, I am somewhat puzzled that the country of Robin Hood should produce such a bizarre homage to one of their national heroes. It has superb production values, and is always entertaining, but is also as previously mentioned, very worthy of mockery. While very far from the best version of the story, it certainly provides enough medieval adventure to satisfy me until my precept starts in a week. But seriously: a hoodie? In 1193?

Invisible Target; or, How Benny Chan got his Groove Back

2007-10-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

Benny Chan has to his name what many consider to be one of the best Hong Kong romantic dramas of all time, 1990's A Moment of Romance. He followed those up with a series of commercial but enjoyable endeavors, culminating in 1998's Who am I?, probably the last good Jackie Chan vehicle (depending on who you ask. Those crazy folks over at LoveHKFilm stand by 1999's Gorgeous. Anyway, then Chan made Gen-X Cops, which while moderately entertaining, was also objectively crap. And after that, it was all downhill: hollow, un-involving films, the one bright spot being Divergence. And even that film was only saved by Daniel Wu's scene-stealing hitman.

However, this year Chan directed one of two movies I was really looking forward to: Invisible Target (the other, Wilson Yip's Flashpoint is now in my hands as well, and should be reviewed soon). Last night, as a treat for finishing Hegel, I sat down with a cup of hot cocoa (on a side note, when I opened the canister, the cocoa exploded all over me, literally coating me in brown dust, sort of like Inspector Tequila in the beginning of Hard Boiled) and watched it.

Let me start off by saying that Invisible Target is anything but an original film, which is amusingly enough, why it works. It's got all the tropes of mid-eighties to early nineties Hong Kong cinema: foreign gangsters, honorable henchmen, tough guys bonding through tag-team butt-kicking, and plenty of overwrought emotional acrobatics, just in case we forgot which country this movie was coming from. As far as I can tell, Invisible Target is almost Chan's love letter to his cinematic tradition.

The plot is really simple, and basically boils down to one long chase scene. There are bad guys, and then there are good cops who want to arrest the bad guys. For a little more motivation, the bad guys indirectly killed one cop's fiancee, humiliated cop number two, and may or may not be responsible for the disappearance of cop number three's brother (who was undercover...if you took a census of every cinematic gang from Hong Kong, 93% of them would be undercover cops).

Now to shore up an homage like this, Chan needs actors who are throwbacks to the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema, and here he partially succeeds. Nicholas Tse plays his role decently, but I've always felt that Tse basically coasts on his presence and good looks, and this movie doesn't really dissuade me. He explodes into rage a couple of times, sheds some tears, and performs some pretty impressive free running feats (an homage to either Casino Royale or classic Jackie Chan, you decide), but he doesn't really have to do much else.

Shawn Yu on the other hand continues to freak me out by perfectly channeling Chow Yun-Fat. He strikes me as probably the most talented young male thespian Hong Kong has right now, although I find it curious that he essentially falls back to default Chow in all his action roles. Of course, if you're going to fall back to a default, it's a good one to have. On a side note, Yu and Tse are still in excellent Martial Arts conditioning from Dragon Tiger Gate, so they really sell their fight scenes.

Finally, rounding out our trio is Jaycee Chan (who has started acting under his Dad's surname). He cheerfully flings himself into furniture and lets stunt men throw him around, while exhibiting an affable screen presence and negligible acting talent. In other words, he's turning into his old man (Jackie Chan, if you didn't know that). Of course, in the end that helps make the movie feel like classic HK cinema.

As for the rest of the actors, they turn in decent performances. Wu Jing is the bad guy again, though none of our heroes are Donnie Yen, and thus they all feel thoroughly outmatched in the fight scenes. He continues to impress with his liquid physicality (he moves as if he weighs nothing), and he even demonstrates some surprising acting weight toward the middle of the film, although this is undone by his mugging at the end of the movie. Andy On also surprises as his brother, turning in a performance that actually has some meat to it. That's quite a miracle, considering that despite his impressive physical abilities On usually displays the acting range of a cardboard box. Beyond these two we get a host of cameos and guest appearances by veterans like Mark Cheng, Sam Lee, Lam Suet, and a hilarious photograph-only cameo by Aaron Kwok (which really threw me for a loop. I kept expecting him to appear in some major plot twist).

The action is quite impressive on the whole. Starting with a credits sequence armored-car heist filmed in obligatory slow motion and packed with more flapping dusters than you can shake a stick at, the film continues to fill all the gaps with action scenes, using hyperactive martial arts battles and free-running sequences to keep the pace going and conveniently gloss over the weak script.

Which is unfortunately where the crew of this movie drop the ball a bit. The folks over at LoveHKFilm point out that everyone seems very pained, and this is definitely true. Everyone seems to be on the perpetual verge of either crying or killing everyone in the room, and nobody else is entirely sure why. The villains are upset about some sort of double cross that is inadequately explained, and the heroes are, in the grandest Hong Kong tradition, too righteous to chill. Of course, to be fair, half of Tsui Hark and John Woo's movies had weak scripts as well, but in the post-Johnnie To Hong Kong, I expect my scripts to be tight. And this one is definitely a little saggy around the edges. But in the end, I didn't care. It's an awesome throwback, and I hope Benny Chan can surpass it next year.

So, it'll probably be a little while before the Weinstein's get around to releasing this one (no doubt after renaming it something like Righteous Dragon Cops or something), but when they do, definitely pick it up if you like Hong Kong cinema. It's one of the more enjoyable non-To films I've seen come out of that region recently.

Monday

2007-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

I did some work for the Alumni Office a few weeks ago. At the time, I was told to come back in a week to pick up my paycheck. When I did, I was told to write down my hours and then come back in a week to pick up my paycheck. When I did that, the door was locked, so I gave it the weekend and came back this morning, still locked. I think maybe I'm being given the runaround.

So I'm all caught up on my home work with the sole exception of my laboratory calculations. Currently my results are off by 10 to the negative 22nd. Which is a pretty significant error, even by my fairly lax standards ("Eh, that number has five digits, and this number has five digits. It's good enough for me.").

Over the weekend I saw Eastern Promises, one of the movies I was most looking forward to this Fall/Winter movie season (for those keeping track, we still have The Kingdom, 30 Days of Night, and I am Legend left to go). It was pretty good, although it was more of a straight up thriller than a "message" movie. The knife fight toward the end was probably one of the best displays of brutally realistic violence I've seen in a movie. It was actually genuinely scary.

So, today being a Monday, there's not a whole lot to do. A tiny bit of homework, and two classes. We're almost done with Hegel (yay), and we're finally getting into some interesting Lab stuff. Of course, even with all that said, I'm still pretty much ready to be done.

Blackwater

2007-09-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting side-effect to studying the Blackwater case closely:

You realize that Iraq is a lot safer than you thought.

Also, on a side note, does anyone else find it curious how much bad press PSCs get these days? Most video games and a lot of movies paint the people involved as bloodthirsty psychos willing to do anything for money. I personally am somewhat opposed to outsourcing to PSCs, although for completely different reasons than one might expect. As for the majority of criticism aimed at companies like Blackwater or Triple Canopy, I feel that every critic should at least read Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton before saying anything. Because in general, people know a lot less about these companies than they think they do.

Working and Stuff

2007-09-21T22:09:00.000-07:00

So this morning I went up to French class, and as I waited for the Freshman Chorus class to get out of our room (they actually have tiny classes now, as opposed to free-for-alls), I leaned against the FAB railing drinking Pepsi (Friday is my soda day, and boy do I use it). After a few moments I glanced across the four foot gap to the other balcony and found myself under inspection by four Least Chipmunks (Tamias minimus). They were active little things, crawling under the boards, and occasionally popping out to observe me with great suspicion.
So I guess the big news is that I got a job, through the help of one of my dorm mates. He put in a good word for me, which went way, way farther than the good words anyone else has put in for me for other jobs. It's a toy store down at the plaza, which is a 50-60 minute walk, so I went ahead, and on the hopes that I'll hold onto the job, I purchased a rather pricey commuter bike. After the initial awkwardness that comes with having not ridden a bike for close to six years, I remembered why I enjoyed it so much. And then I encountered Santa Fe traffic. It is absolutely terrifying to ride a bicycle in Santa Fe traffic. Cars fly past so close that the wind shakes your bike, and the bike lanes are full of pot holes and perilous storm drains. So I've hit upon a plan: I simply ride my bike right out in the right lane. If the car wants to get past that badly, the traffic is generally light enough that they can, but now that I'm actually in the lane, they tend to be way more careful about it. Although still, I think next time I might try taking some back streets so I can avoid the afternoon traffic on Alameda.
Finally we got out precept lists. My first choice went to the preceptorial on Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, because honestly I love medieval epics and we just don't read enough of them here. It sounds popular though, but I hope the powers that be remember that I got my second choice last year and I'm owed my first this year.
I'm also getting ready to re-read The Scarlet Letter so I can write my Senior Essay on it. My goal is to read it once a month for the rest of the semester so I can be hyper-familiar with it. I'm also almost done with Peter Hopkirk's Setting the East Ablaze, which is not quite as enjoyable as his other books, but is still excellent reading. Basically, the layman who wants a good account of the birth of modern Special Operations should read Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Hopkirk's The Great Game and Setting the East Ablaze. It's really quite enlightening.

Senior Year

2007-09-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

So tonight I tried to watch The Storm Riders again. I managed to get farther than I have before, but I just can't finish it, it's too darn boring. It could be the random, cobbled together feel of the story (including some brain-mushing plot contradictions - not holes, contradictions), the so-cheesy-it's-not-even-awesome CGI and costuming, or perhaps Aaron Kwok and Ekin Cheng proving together that bad acting can be a crime against humanity. If you ever have an opportunity to see this movie, don't take it. It's time for some good Hong Kong cinema. When're Flashpoint and Blood Brothers due again?

Anyway, I've started on my final year here at St. John's. I think things are finally starting to settle, or rather, they will once I get all the financial tangles cut away (I'm not in any monetary distress, I just have to figure out who gets what, and what gets prioritized). This year I actually got a repeat tutor, namely Mr. McCombs who some of you may remember was my Freshman lab tutor. He and Mr. Harrison comprise my Senior Seminar and they both seem really good. We're currently reading Hegel in 10 page chunks, and while it's difficult, I have a feeling it's pretty interesting.

As far as tutorials go, French is probably my favorite class. My tutor, Mr. Taylor, seems brilliant in an unorthodox way, and is generally just entertaining, even if he spends more time correcting my pronunciation than he spends correcting the rest of the class put together. We're translating Flaubert, who takes a long time to translate, but whose story seems pretty good.

Math is currently not too difficult, as we're still in the explanation phase of Einstein. Once the math appears, I'll probably change my tune. Of course, I'm also a huge SF buff, so the whole constant speed of light thing is of immense importance to me, as no FTL = no Millenium Falcon. Our primary text is an essay by Einstein called "The Principle of Relativity," which is a shame because his book Relativity for laypersons is so much easier to understand, and more entertaining to read.

Finally, Lab remains horrible. I'm not sure if it's the weekly lab reports I have to turn in, the endless calculations revolving around things I don't particularly care for, or the fact that I'm shifting gears from Mr. Bybee's tour through Junior Year, but I literally sit through each class counting the seconds until I can leave. It's not fault of the tutor's, as he seems pretty good, but I hate the class with a passion. Hopefully it will get more interesting.

Outside of class, I've just gotten a job, through the extremely helpful intervention of one of my dorm mates. I'll give it a few sessions and then tell you how it's going. I've also been getting up early in the morning to run (which reminds me, I need to set my alarm clock), and I think I'm going to start getting up earlier so I can segue straight into the gym afterward, and get both my running and my weight training out of the way before breakfast.

And that's really about it. My experience is that the school year usually calms down a little bit toward the beginning of October, and then you can sit back and enjoy life, but for now I'm still living at that "hit-the-ground-running" speed.

Spring Diving

2007-08-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

So today I got to do something I've been wanting to do all Summer, namely go snorkeling in some of the springs up near Chiefland. We had to get up early, which meant I dozed pretty much the whole way there. If there's something to do, I can get going on very little sleep, but if I'm just supposed to sit and/or listen I'll be out like a light after ten minutes (some of you may have noticed this phenomenon in my math class - although apparently none of you noticed my penguin hallucination). So anyway, I finally surfaced to hear a dispute between my father and the park ranger at the gate. It costs $4 to get into Manatee Springs, my Dad had $20, and the ranger had no change (except for two $5 bills that he refused to use, for who knows what reason). So we scraped together change from all the cup holders and got what amounted to a $1.05 discount.

Anyway, after a short walk down a boardwalk to look at the Suwanee river, we came back to the spring itself. I pulled on my snorkeling gear and laboriously descended into the water. I say "laboriously" because trying to walk with scuba fins on is not only comical, but requires extreme agility. Finally, once I hit the algae-covered steps I sat down. While necessary, sitting down in ice cold water is very unpleasant. My father and sister were standing right there, so I toned down my language and kept my outburst incoherent. However, once I actually launched into the water and struck out toward the center of the hole I warmed up a bit.

Manatee springs is about chest high, except for a large circular hole over the actual spring. I swam down to the bottom of the hole a few times, both to check out the fish (small sunfish, and also what I think was a tiny bass), and also just for the heck of it. My lungs have always been my weak spot so any chance I get I like to do a little free diving and strengthen them. As for wildlife, aside from the aforementioned fish, there was also a large school of mullet swimming around and a Brown Watersnake sunning in a tree by the side of the spring.

Once we were done we headed for Hart Springs which turned out to be a lot smaller than Manatee. The water was slightly below my waist except for one hole a little over six feet deep that funneled down into a large crevice in the rock. I swam down a couple of times and held onto the edge, peering down toward the bottom in the vain hope of spotting something interesting (catfish, treasure, Cthulhu, etc).

Then it was back home to deal with the animals. The girls have recently accepted a second ??? of squirrels. What would that be? Herd? Flock? Murder? Cloister? Fraternity? Anyway, the little guys haven't even opened their eyes yet, but they're quite ambulatory and will vigorously chew away on anything, using only the tiny nubs of their bottom incisors. They drink milk from syringes, and will continue to do so for quite a while. Those of you who read the old blog may remember the trying time I had feeding the significantly older squirrels from a syringe.

Speaking of animals, our dog has been behaving very oddly recently. She gets very itchy around her lower back and the base of her tail. There's almost no hair on her rear end anymore thanks to her constant chewing. Apparently though, she's discovered a new method for itching. She will find an object situated about two feet from the ground, wedge her hindquarters beneath it and wriggle around to scratch. Our old lab Jack (best dog to ever live - just thought I'd throw that out there) had a similar strategy where he'd sit against a corner and then wiggle about energetically. Anyway, Nixie will do this to anything, but her favorite object to convert into an impromptu back scratcher is a chair. Just now, as I was typing, listening to music, I became aware that my chair was shifting on its central axis slightly. Taking out an earbud, I glanced down and found the dog squirming away, whining enthusiastically. It was disturbing, and now I feel as if my chair has been sullied. Anyway, I shooed her from the room and all seems quiet...for now.

So, this will probably be the last blog post before I get to school. See some of you there, and the rest of you...see you around. Let's try to get together sometime before July, because after that my future gets real hazy.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

2007-08-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

So, with the new school year starting soon, and having spent most of the summer reading either military history, or assorted program books (War and Peace was much, much better than expected - but the Iliad is still tedious as heck, which is odd, considering how much I love the sequel), I decided to try and squeeze in a couple additional books of a more...ahem..."explosive" persuasion. That led me to John Scalzi's Old Man's War, which has been making some considerable waves in the SF&F community since its release in 2005.
The book belongs in the ever-popular genre of Military SF, books about tough soldiers blowing holes in giant space insects, slugs, rabbits, etc. Oddly enough, given my career aspirations, the genre doesn't do much for me, although the two seminal works, Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Haldeman's The Forever War, are among my favorite SF novels ever. Pleasantly enough, Scalzi has modeled himself on those two books, rather than on the oeuvre of, say, John Ringo or David Weber. He writes in first person, and spends more time on the way his character reacts to the world around him, than on carefully describing exactly which maser type the flagship of the armada is equipped with.
John Perry is the titular old man, being seventy-five years old at the start of the book. He is given the opportunity, as are all seventy-five-year-old humans, to join the Colonial Defense Forces. Once he does, he is declared legally dead on earth, and is carried away to training, knowing that he will never return to Earth.
Why would somebody agree to something like that? Simple. Seventy-five-year-old soldiers in seventy-five-year-old bodies are absolutely useless, so each soldier has their consciousness transferred into a genetically enhanced clone of themselves at twenty-two. They can see in the dark, their blood clots in under a second, and each brain is linked to the others in a massive computerized network allowing silent communication. What person, faced with old age, looming death, and four nightly bathroom breaks, could turn down the opportunity to be young again (and superhuman), even if it means standing between the human race and some of the nastiest creatures in the galaxy.
Aside from a few hiccups (apparently seventy-five-year-olds care far more about sex and food than any teenager ever), the first part of the book is better than the second, and reads quite quickly. Once Perry finishes training though, and heads out into the wide world to do battle with the alien races, the flaws start to come through.
For starters, this book is not really hard science fiction. Despite its lip service to basic physics, it's really just a pulp space romp dressed up in shiny new clothes. Granted, I love a good, scientifically vague space opera as much as the next SF geek, but it's a minor quibble worth pointing out, given that the book is attracting a lot of praise as a hard science fiction story. Secondly, the book lacks a clear arc, which is a complaint that can be leveled against Haldeman and Heinlein as well. Basically the first 100+ pages are about training, the next 100+ are full of star-hopping picaresque adventure, and then the climax is set up and resolved in the final 60 pages. It's not much of a problem, and definitely feels like a throwback to Asimov and Heinlein, but still, in these days of tightly plotted genre novels, any wandering feels a little annoying.
Finally John Perry himself is a little bland. In my experience, first-person narrators work best when they are deeply flawed or enigmatic individuals, and Mr. Perry is neither. In fact, his general wholesome blandness also feels like a throwback to the old school SF writers. The only real attempt at idiosyncrasy in his voice (aside from the wisecracks, which are really a requirement for a hero these days anyway), is his constant preoccupation with how good his dead wife's pies were. I personally took this at being Scalzi's way of making his hyper-fit supersoldier sound like a senior citizen, but it's possible it was just a shaky attempt at characterization.
All the qualification aside however, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for an enjoyable SF read. It's not redefining anything, but it's very entertaining, which is more than one can say of 70% of the spec fiction out there these days. Unlike some of the genre's other heavy hitters, it doesn't require any scientific aptitude and at a mere 313 pages, it's a pleasantly lean page-turner.

Pan's Labyrinth

2007-07-31T21:40:00.000-07:00

"People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live." - Andrzej Sapkowski "The Edge of the World"

Pan's Labyrinth is, I believe, the movie that will make Guillermo del Toro famous. After last year, people should recognize his name, whereas in many reviews of this film the reviewer says something along the lines of, "He directed that Hellboy movie."

But this movie should earn him his rightful place among the best directors working today. It cleverly blends his skill at crafting eye-popping spectacle (Blade II) with his darker, thematic sensibility (Cronos), all into a truly horrifying yet deeply moving fairy tale.

The plot falls back on one of del Toro's staples, the wide-eyed child in peril, as the story begins with a young girl named Ofelia coming out to the country with her pregnant mother to live with her stepfather, a Captain in the fascist army (played with malicious relish by Sergi Lopez). Once there, Ofelia encounters a fairy/stick insect which leads her to a ruined labyrinth and an old, moss-encrusted faun. The faun informs her that she is in fact the princess of the underworld, and that she must save the magical realm by performing three tasks.

Now here del Toro cleverly does exactly the opposite of what you might expect. Whereas the cliched approach would be to create a juxtaposition between a bright and cheery fairy-tale world with the real world, he instead chooses to let the fairy tale world horrifically imitate the real one. Creatures that hoard food to themselves and allow the things around them to die, and monsters that thrive on senseless slaughter mirror food rations and fascist soldiers in the real world. But while the adults around Ofelia have given up, telling her that "Life isn't like the fairy tales,"
the girl presses on for the better world she knows must exist.

Whereas a lot of films like to rub our nose in violence in a heavy-handed, bleak manner ("See! Human beings are the REAL monsters!"), del Toro pushes the wickedness of Captain Vidal and his goons to such cartoonish yet believable levels that we realize that real life villains can in fact be seen as fairy tale monsters. And likewise heroes may not appear in shining armor, and they may die horrible deaths, but in the end what they do is no less honorable or less important than what happens in the stories.

First, on a technical level this movie was absolutely superb. Excellent practical effects and makeup continue to be one of del Toro's low budget trademarks, and his longtime cinematography partner Guillermo Navarro continues to turn out amazing imagery. Likewise, the pacing is fine, with two particular chase scenes providing some of the most suspense I've felt watching movie in a while. And as far as acting goes, everybody was on the ball including Doug Jones who continues to weird everybody out with his expressive contortions, and bring life to a variety of make-up caked monsters.

Of course, del Toro also hits up all the usual points on his checklist: kids, insects, clockwork, slime, Catholic imagery, and fetuses. It's almost like a fun drinking game for his fans. He also continues to revel in graphic gore, so if you are easily disturbed, watch out.

But in the end, past all the technical brilliance, and visceral thrills, he has given us what is perhaps his most affecting personal story. All the creative monster-making and thematic imagery won't elevate a popcorn flick if there's no personal resonance at the end of the movie, but del Toro pulls through in the end with a powerful ending guaranteed to stick with you after the film is over. So if you've got a strong stomach, and like strong stories told with a lot of style definitely check this one out. And if you've never seen a movie by the hyper-enthusiastic Mexicano before, this is probably one of the better movies to start with. You'll be back for more.

Adventures in Plumbing

2007-07-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

I stopped in Borders today to pick up Scott Lynch's new book Red Seas under Red Skies, and wound up also getting Richard Morgan's Thirteen and Pan's Labyrinth. Watch for eventual reviews of all those things, although the movie will probably get up sooner than the books as I'll be consumed with War and Peace for the next few days. I'm pretty excited about the film as GdT is one of my very favorite directors, and it's the only movie of his I have yet to see.

But you didn't click this post to read about my reading material, as fascinating as it may be to the nerds among you. You clicked it because of the promise of plunger-equipped derring-do, so let's get to it.

The plumbing in my house is horrible. And not horrible the way all you people think I mean. I mean horrible in that you try to unscrew a bolt and wind up yanking the whole pipe out. It might as well be built of poster board. Well recently our kitchen sink started leaking continually, and the water pressure dropped off to an astounding degree. It took about ten minutes to fill up the sink for dishes as night. So finally, on Saturday my Dad and I took the sink apart and peering down into it, I could see that the aperture for hot water had been hideously corroded.

We went to the hardware store, picked up some supplies including a new sink, Teflon tape and washers. Then, while my Dad tried to fix a similar leak in the bathroom, I crawled under the sink and set to work attaching the new plumbing. The most immediate problem was one of size. I'm not an especially small guy, so not only did I have to squeeze my shoulders in under the sink, but I had to curl my torso absurdly to get at the water connections. However, I eventually managed to get the sink's copper tubing (threads well wrapped in Teflon tape) connected to our house's plumbing. Voila! No leak, water pressure restored, and a brand new, shiny sink. I credit all the lawn hydration experience from my Los Miradores job.

Unfortunately the shower is packed with outdated plumbing, so the best my father could do was install some rubber washers and hope for the best. With all that done, we settled back for relaxation.

Except the toilet stopped working. This happens from time to time (talk to me about the evils of Charmin!), so out came the plunger and we set to work. After a couple of energetic plunges, the water drained out of the toilet, but upon flushing, it just filled back up again. Throughout the day we continued plunging, but that didn't work, and eventually we fell back on one of the nastier tools in the home improver's arsenal: the closet augur.

This is basically a sharp metal coil attached to a flexible spring which you shove down your toilet to remove any obstructions. Whereas plunging allows you to abstract plumbing (I'm just pumping water down there to flush the pipes out!), using the augur does not (I'm trying to remove...something...from the pipes). My mind kept going to especially morbid areas (if you've ever read Harlan Ellison's "Croatoan" you know what I'm talking about), but in the end the augur didn't do anything either.

So bright and early the next morning a plumber was dispatched. As it turned out, the problem was that roots had grown into our pipes, which makes sense given that the sewer intake is on the other side of the yard from the house, past an oak tree, three pine trees, and a mulberry tree. I'm not quite sure how a tree goes about thrusting its roots into a sewer pipe, but as long as the problem's fixed I'm happy. Until the roots grow back, that is. Hopefully by then I'll be out of the house.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Before I get to the review, have you seen the Beowulf trailer. No really, have you seen it? The CGI looks AMAZING, and the characters do all genuinely look like their real-life counterparts. Check it out, and enjoy, despite the liberties Neil Gaiman appears to have taken in his script.

Anyway, on to Harry Potter. This review contains MODERATE SPOILERS. I won't tell you who died, but I'll be giving away some of the locations the story takes place and things like that. I started reading the books when I was 13, so I was a bit older than a lot of fans, but I became hooked along with everybody else, and have spent the last eight years of my life eagerly awaiting the next installment. Of course, my family is the same way, so since Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, whenever a new book comes out we read the book aloud, alternating between readers as throats become sore. This is how we read this last installment, and it was pleasant to experience the end of the saga as a family.

So how did the book hold up? Well, in my opinion it was fairly good. Not one of my favorites, but definitely not down there with Order of the Phoenix, which I really disliked. As an end to the story, it was wholly satisfactory, with plenty of emotional resolution and closure. But as an individual book, though on the whole I enjoyed it, it possessed a few flaws.

The first of these was pacing. As usual, Rowling was excellent at character moments, and she also surprised me by pulling off some very good blockbuster style action scenes, after the somewhat lackluster Ministry Raid in Order of the Phoenix. That impressed me, because writing action is hard to do (take it from someone who's tried...a lot). I was especially impressed by the scenes at Godric's Hollow and Gringotts bank, as they were quite energetic while still possessing unique atmosphere (a sort of quirky fantasy in the latter case, and downright creepiness in the former).

However, as the kids are not at Hogwarts for the majority of the book, at times lulls in the pacing become quite obvious. In previous books, when Rowling needed a couple of weeks to elapse, she'd give us a chapter about Quidditch, or a harrowing Potions class or something to entertain us. Here, she can't really do anything other than comment that time has passed, which makes the story feel a bit more sluggish than usual.

The second quibble I have is slightly larger, and rests on the conclusion of the book. A lot of Rowling's surprises in all of her books have hinged on the details of her magical world. She's consistent for the most part, but I do occasionally feel as if her revelations are less of the "Whoa! Didn't see THAT coming!" type, and more of the "Huh. I guess that's cool." type. The same goes for this book, in which the final showdown ends less than spectacularly. Granted, I find the ending perfectly satisfactory, I was just hoping for some sort of huge revelatory finale.

Finally, simply because you have to say something about it, this book has a hell of a body count. A fair number of my predictions as to who would die came true, but some of them came out of left field. The one slightly over halfway through the book was especially difficult to take, as the character was one for whom I had a special fondness. Though no actual tears were shed, it was probably the closest any book has gotten to producing them since Gates of Fire and Men of Bronze (Men of Bronze?!?). But anyhow, Rowling axes a lot of characters, but toward the end they come so fast and thick, and the reader is so impatient to see what happens next that they don't really sink in. And one character who dies closer to the end has a final line which is not completely understandable until you read the following chapter, so keep an eye out for that.

On the whole though, despite the flaws and all the emotional damage the book is likely to produce in small children, it's a worthy close to the story of Harry Potter. Rowling manages not only to crank out some impressive action scenes, but also some incredibly atmospheric and beautiful chapters, especially "The Silver Doe," "The Forest Again," and "King's Cross." Those three right there contained what I believe to be some of her best writing in the series (and the last had one of the most disturbing images I think she's come up with). However, as far as plotting and storytelling go, the whole thing was definitely satisfactory, and wrapped the story up in fine style.

Also, as a final note, unlike NinjaGeek, I didn't have a problem with the epilogue. Sure, the tone was different from the rest of the book, and it felt a little sappy-sweet, but really, that's the point of all fairy tales. Heroes in stories are fighting for the same reason heroes in real life fight, because they want the world to be a safe place in which to live happily ever after with those they love. And in the stories, the heroes that survive should be allowed to do just that, because real heroes so seldom get to.

Cold-blooded Cruiser

2007-07-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

Ironically enough, I had plans last night. I so rarely do. Anyway, these plans were foiled so I jumped at the chance to go Snake Cruising with my Dad and Sister.

For those not in the know, Snake Cruising was one of my favorite hobbies back in Middle School, which was also the period when I had close to twenty assorted reptiles and amphibians (and two tanks of insects) living in my bedroom. The idea is that snakes are most active at dusk, so you drive out with the headlights on and cruise back country roads at around twenty miles per hour.

Now I was driving this time, which is definitely not the ideal position for snake cruising. First, because the driver's door in our car is broken, and can only be opened by rolling down the window and using the outside handle. Second, when a snake was spotted, I was typically busy putting the car in park, checking the rear view mirror for other cars, and doing driver things, while my Dad and Sister were hopping out with the camera, flashlight and snake stick (which, again for those not in the know, is a metal pole with the last six or so inches bent perpendicular to assist with capturing aggressive reptiles).

Anyway we got our first snake out around Lochloosa forest. I didn't actually see it. I'm just driving along, hunched over the steering wheel and suddenly my Dad starts energetically encouraging me to stop. I did so, and he told me that I had just driven over a snake.

We got out of the car, and I crawled down onto my stomach to look underneath. My sister got down beside me and instantly got all excited, "There it is! Wow!"

I'm looking at a stick, and wondering what the fuss is all about, and then I shifted the angle of my flashlight and realized I was looking at an Peninsula Ribbonsnake (Thamnophis sauritus sackenii). I reached under and pulled it out, and we got a few pictures, and then I put it in the grass on the other side of the road. That was our first snake of the evening, and the only one that I got to actually handle.

Our next find was actually an Amphibian, a Barking Tree Frog (Hyla gratiosa). When these guys call, they really do sound like a barking dog. They're also one of the more attractive species of North American tree frogs as the cover image for this report shows.

If you asked me though, our next herpetological find was the best. Just as we were nearing the main road, the headlights picked up a small Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus) Unfortunately I had to pull over for a car to pass, so we only got a look at it from a distance as my Dad carried it off the road with the snake stick. For some reason, I like the Cottonmouth. Perhaps it's because it's the only venomous reptile I've had frequent contact with. Or perhaps because it's one of only two or three snake species which I can identify from a distance. Whatever the reason, I like 'em.

After this there was short lull in which my primary concern was not running over the bajillion toads that were hopping back and forth across the road. Then, once we hit the asphalt again we'd only been driving for a short while when I saw something flash past in the left lane. I hit the breaks, and my Dad went back to check, returning with a nice specimen of the Florida Watersnake (Nerodia fasciata pictiventris).

After this there was a lull until we were passing through Windsor. Here the headlights picked up a snake which appeared a bright yellow-white. This is unusual because most Floridian snakes look brown under headlights. It wasn't a particularly hard call, but I'd like to point out that I predicted "Cornsnake" as my Dad got out of the car. And I was right (when am I not, eh?). It was a small, attractive specimen of the Cornsnake (Elaphe guttata).

And that was about the end of our adventure. We got one more small Banded Water Snake, and I spotted a large Barred Owl (Strix varia) on some phone wires. So we got home pretty late, and I had to read pretty intensively to get through the day's allotment of Lawrence.

Cold Hell

2007-07-18T18:42:00.000-07:00

Given that the only job I've had this summer was a short, well-paying, and ultimately strange stint as a night watchmen for the visually impaired and age-handicapped, my days have settled into an all too predictable routine, which always ends in a soul-crushing, spine-tingling adventure into the bowels of the refrigerator.

The day typically begins with me awaking on my bedroom floor when either the dog runs in and bites my face, or my sister runs in and tells me that I need to get up. Once all the morning necessities (breakfast, shower, washing the dishes, de-gnoming the garden) are out of the way, I settle in and read. Indeed,with an occasionally movie break (Apocalypto was awesome, and so was Children of Men), I spend most of my time reading. Granted, some of it is light reading (Andrzej Sapkowski finally managed to get one of his books translated into English...and Soon I will be Invincible was an enjoyable geek overload), but a lot of it centers around war, and the million variations of war mankind has come up with.

So invariably I'll be plodding around, scribbling puny attempts at cross-references into the margins of my books, and suddenly I'll stumble across a passage which will make me very self-conscious about my own physical condition. Whether it's Lawrence describing in unpleasant detail exactly what it's like to run through the desert barefoot carrying a gun and lots of explosives, or simply going over the Ranger School requirements, it occurs to me that I'm sitting here reading, instead of running full throttle through the cyprus swamps wearing full plate mail.

Down goes the book, and I wander out into the living room, at which point I will be ambushed by either my mother or my sister. If it's the former, I will probably spend the next twenty minutes making lunch for my whole family. If it's the latter, I'm about to have a teenage girl come flying through the air and kick me into a wall. And on rare occasions, I get attacked by the squirrel. I don't stick around to see what happens then.

Anyway, once that gauntlet is run, it's time to exercise. I have a variety of workouts that I alternate between, depending on how motivated I am, or how much time I have. But the end result of these workouts is always the same: a run to the refrigerator.

If you thought everything that came before was frightening, you have seen nothing yet. I'm always astonished when friends tell me to get something out of their refrigerator, because I go, open the refrigerator and there it is. At my house, the refrigerator doubles as food storage, food museum and general perishable item retention.

So down I go on the hard, concrete floor of the kitchen to root around. After about two minutes I’ve assembled a few edible items but I’m still checking, in the vain hope that a huge Italian banquet miraculously appeared behind the milk. And then I stumble across something. If I’m lucky it’s just some sort of obscure grain which my mother bought from some equally obscure store. If I’m not lucky, it’s a dead bird my father’s planning to run up to the museum on one of his lunch breaks, or perhaps even the macaroni and cheese I had for lunch on my 8^th birthday. Don’t laugh. It’s just the sort of thing that might hide back there.

Occasionally something even scarier lurks within. Take the time I took the eggs out, planning to cook up a vegetable and cheese omelet. Lo and behold, beneath the eggs there was this pool of brown viscous fluid that smelled like a dead candy bar. I peered warily into the guts of the refrigerator and found myself regarding the semi-liquid remains of a bell pepper, doubtless victim of some horrible crime and shoved aside, undetected until now.

Of course, I would not tolerate this if my mother was less of a cook, but she’s such a good chef that I’m willing to put up with stumbling across her sauerkraut and chickpea concoctions in my midnight foraging among the carrots. But it doesn’t mean that going into the refrigerator is not a traumatic experience, because it is. Thus, while I may complain about Aramark, being used to Mom’s tasty homemade recipes, there is also, paradoxically, nothing the school cafeteria can present to me worse than what I have already found in our refrigerator.

Let me leave you with this piece of trivia I learned about eleven years ago, the first time I cleaned the refrigerator. When a toddler leaves a sippy cup full of milk in the refrigerator for close to a year, the contents take on an appearance remarkably similar to human excrement. It’s true. Take it from one who’s lived that nightmare, so you don’t have to.

Summer Cleaning

2007-07-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

So given that this is my last full summer at home, I've been doing a little cleaning. I have no illusions. Most of my cleaning is not for my sake, but for the parents, so they'll have some place to stick all those boxes of books that can't seem to find a home. And of course, this means almost all my stuff must be thrown away, so what's left will fit in my closet. That's a disadvantage to joining the Army, "home" consists of a bunk bed(at best) in some godforsaken hellhole somewhere, so all my stuff is staying at the house.

Moving toward that end, I spent yesterday cleaning my closet which has apparently not been opened since middle school. I didn't remember just how into GI Joes I apparently was when small, but I think I had more of those guys than there are people in Zimbabwe. I also had a lot more rocks, fossils, animal skulls and seashells than I remembered. Most of these got tossed, but some I held onto, like the Mesohippus fossils and some of those South Pacific cowries.

In addition I bought one of those big 208 CD wallets for my DVD collection, so I could package the cases away and make more room. Unfortunately I came just two pages shy of filling that thing. I blame HKFlix and their absurdly cheap imports. But now, with fewer movies on my shelf, I can finally get some of my books out of their orderly piles on the floor.

Which I've been sleeping on, by the way. Some time in high school I got too big for my bed, as in everything below my knees hangs off the end. Further, my bed has been slowly coming apart so that the thing screeches hideously every time I roll over, and the springs squeak silently with the rhythm of my heartbeat (and crazy as it sounds, I am not making this up). So now, in the evenings, I throw a sleeping bag on the floor, point a fan at it, and go to sleep on that (it's way too hot to be inside it). This has led to some alarming situations, such as the time the dog came rushing in at three in the morning and woke me up by energetically biting my face.

On the whole, I think this summer is just another incentive to get a good job, and get the heck away from home.

Just kidding, I guess

2007-06-23T19:26:00.001-07:00

So it's been less than a month since I pulled the plug on this thing and I already want back on the bandwagon. I'm worse at retiring than Stephen King. However, there will be a few changes.

1). Posts will be less frequent. I'm only going to post when I feel like it, and I'll probably only post lengthier pieces. About one post a week.

2). I'm keeping the backlog. It's all stashed on my hard drive, and it's not getting put back up. So in the unlikely event I had any posts you especially liked, leave me a comment and I'll get it to you. Doubt that anyone cared that much, as I don't even have any posts that stick in my memory, and I wrote the darn things.

3). Mockery returns. For a while there, when I realized Johnnies were reading my blog, I tried to tone things down. Not any more. Suffice to say, nothing is meant maliciously.

So if anybody's still reading following the premature cancellation of the blog, thank you, and enjoy the writing.