Jimcleave's Journal

09:39 am - Trek II The Wrath of Post

Oh heck, I slept on it, and I suppose I'm feeling a little more charitable toward the thing. I mean, I always grumped that Picard's future was too sterile, so I don't know why I'm defending it. And I think we (that is, us silly fans who give a hoot about such minutia, not the creators who give no such hoots) have to assume the original universe is "still there" for the characters, somewhere, or else Spock's behavior doesn't add up. The novel franchise will do a crossover between the two universes eventually, I'm certain, regardless of whether the movie/TV franchise ever addresses the question.

I'm a writer, and awkward reboots give me hives, that's all. I'll admit that this has potential to get made into a perfectly good TV show or movie series or whatever they want to do with it.

12:35 am - Crisis On Infinite Star Treks

Just saw the Trek movie.

Eh.

I'm surprised that my brother Peter liked it better than I did, as I would say he's a much more dyed-in-the-wool Trekker than me. He thought it was terrific, and I went out to see it tonight on his recommendation.

Spoilers ahead.

I suppose it's best to assume that the original Trek universe is "still there," somewhere out in the multiverse. Otherwise, Spock seems awfully darned cavalier about having almost singlehandedly erased 150-odd years of history, rendered meaningless all the accomplishments of everyone he ever knew, genocided his own people, and killed his mom.

If we assume the former, then sure, I can buy that Spock is cool enough to accept being stranded in an alternate timeline for the remainder of his twilight years. Why not? But if we assume the latter, then well... even Spock should show a little emotion at such a catastrophe.

And shouldn't he be trying really hard to fix this mess, like Starfleet folks usually do when history gets screwed up? It wouldn't be hard. Use his knowledge of 24th century technology to build a nice big bomb, slingshot around the sun to go back in time, and blow up Nero's ship when it first appears. Easy. Then the only thing that's changed is that Kirk's parents get to see a mysterious big spaceship suddenly appear and then explode.

Oh well. I mean, it's not as if the movie's creators gave any of this a second thought. They've forever liberated themselves from having to answer silly questions from the pimple-faced irate nerds who pay their salaries, and that's all that matters to them. Heck, I've never denied being a nerd, and even I'm embarrassed that I give a spit about the condition of Paramount's cash cow. The old episodes are still there, and that's what matters.

I'm curious to see how the Trekky community will react.

Since Tuvok will never be born, I suppose that means Voyager didn't happen. Nice that some good came of this.

Couldn't they have come up with a better sounding piece of technobabble than "red matter"? And why waste time drilling? Isn't the planet just as dead if you create the black hole on its surface?

Nero would have made a more memorable villain if all his bald, tattooed flunkies didn't look almost exactly like him.

Romulan mining ships sure are heavily armored suckers.

Why was the Enterprise built on the ground instead of in orbit?

Why does Scotty have a nameless pet alien midget?

Shouldn't Chrissie Chapel be the one smooching Spock?

Chekhov's a genius?

Gahhhh...

And a closing word from the webcomic Melonpool...

04:04 pm - Caffeine! I need... Gah!

I am making one of my periodic attempts to cut my caffeine intake. Don't know how long I will last. I was amazed at how bad a caffeine withdrawal headache I had the first day. Today, I just feel terribly lethargic. Blehhhhh....

Btw, I've been meaning to update in here more often. So... Well, I haven't got time now. But soon.

04:21 pm - Novel & stuff

Well, I think I've mentioned in here before that I am writing a novel (it began life as a submission for the Anvil Press 3-Day Novel Contest over a year ago, but it's grown beyond what was in that quicky version). It feels nearly done, but I haven't quite got it where I want it. I have an author friend who is prepared to look at it, but he has said he doesn't want to see it until it's more or less complete, and I can't fault him for that. I will certainly put it through more revision after he has looked at it, anyway. But right now, it's just kind of frustrating trying to get over the very last hump of getting it presentable. There are several spots in the story I'm still not satisfied with, and I keep fiddling with them. Plus I'd like to go through the whole thing and make the prose all flow a little more smoothly.

Everyone I have shown the rough draft to seems to like it, so that is encouraging.

It's very jarring having to flip between the novel and doing the two comic strips every week, because the tone of the two stories is very different. I'm not happy with the artwork in today's strip, because I didn't take the time to shade it (when I shade I just use plain black shadows on the back of objects and varied line weight, rather than gray tones), and I've tried to make a point to do that lately. And my backgrounds today don't look toony, they just look lazy.

The novel is taking away time that i should be spending job hunting. I'm still at the bookstore, but I'm not getting enough hours these days, and there are plenty of other reasons I should get out of there.

My secondary hard drive crashed last week. I'm supposed to hear back from the data salvage people tomorrow. Bleah. I'm glad the novel wasn't on there. I've got it backed up in a couple of places. My car had to go into the shop, too. Between those two things, getting stood up for a date the weekend before last, and my asthma acting up (maybe because of smoke from the annual California landscape catching fire, which is nowhere near me but the smoke reaches out here)... last week pretty much sucked. And as I try to finish up this book narrative, which is a love story at base, I'm just having a hard time getting into the right sentimental mindset again. Feh.

Then I'll see if I can get the thing published. Hopefully my author friend can help. And assuming I get past that hurdle, I'll see if anybody buys it. I've been informed that nobody really makes any significant money on their first book (seriously, I won't quote the pay rates I've heard, but it is pathetic). But you can't have a second book without having had a first one. And besides, I feel so artistically stymied that making money off this isn't really the main point. I hope people read it and like it. I really do.

But I gotta get it finished.

The title is Alien In a Small Town.

02:03 pm - Conservative Radio Host Makes Fool of Self. Yay.

Bob Grant apparently ranted on his radio show about the fact that Obama delivered a speech in front of a flag that looks like a US flag with a big letter O in place of the stars. Grant claimed this was Omaba's symbol, and that he had modified the US flag, and this meant he intends to become a dictator.

The O flag is the Ohio state flag. O is for Ohio.

Here! Read this. It's sad and fun:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200810160022?f=h_clips

09:41 pm - Writer's Block: Eat Your Vegetables

07:11 pm - Bollywood makes everything better

Okay, I just spent some time talking to lemonherb on the phone, and I feel a little better. And I just remembered that the little discount theater near my house is showing some Bollywood costume epic tonight that looked like it might be fun, so I'm going to go see that.

05:18 pm - Why do people do this?

Hi. I just got stood up for a date. I later managed to get ahold of her on the phone, and she told me a transparent lie to get out of it. I'm more or less okay with it, because people are shits. But I'm left with a question. It is not a rhetorical question. I want an answer, not merely for my own practical future use, but for my use as a writer, because it's an aspect of human psychology I have never understood, and I think that limits me as a writer.

Why do people do things like this? I was going to be a sexist and say "women," but egalitarian that I am, I have to assume that if I were a woman or homosexual man who was dating men, I would encounter the same phenomenon, because, as I said, people are shits, not just women.

This is something I would never do. Something it would never even enter my head to do. But it has happened to me repeatedly over the years, so clearly I am different from the mass of humanity in this respect, or at the very least, from the mass of women.

My best guess—which may be wrong—is that it comes down to cowardice. The person decides, after having committed to it, to break the date, but is afraid to go through the embarrassment of rejecting the person, and so lets the other person embarrass him or herself by showing up at the agreed location and waste time waiting.

Its being cowardice is a more satisfactory answer than the one I long held, that it was reluctance to hurt the other person by rejecting him/her. Since being stood up is, itself, self-evidently more cruel than the rejection would have been, I could never see the logic of that sort of misguided altruism. But I now believe altruism has nothing to do with it. It is simple cowardice, pure selfishness. In fact, I suspect it is such a common practice that in some circles it is actually considered perversely "more polite" than an honest rejection would be.

I'm afraid I am sexist enough to believe that this particular brand of cowardice is more common among women than it is among men; but as I said, I've never had occasion to ask a man out, so I couldn't know.

Is there more to it than that? Am I missing something?

Oh well. Damn her very much, I suppose. Now I have to see if I can reign my emotions well enough to get something else done with my day.

I suppose I could tell her off, if the opportunity presents itself. Not sure that that would accomplish much. The only two reasons for doing it would be to actually teach her not to do this to people, which would probably be a wasted effort, or to attempt to elevate myself from a position of weakness after having been embarrassed, which aside from being petty would also probably be counterproductive. Still might do it.

God I hate being 33 and alone. I used to think that was the problem, that it was obvious to women that I wanted it too much (and by "it," no, I don't mean sex. Christ we're a sorry society). I'm reasonably certain I didn't give that impression here. Probably just the size of my ass then. Doesn't explain why she agreed to go out in the first place. Ah well.

The fact that I've learned to cope by suppressing my emotions and putting forward this half-sarcastic face as if I don't care has got to be bad for me, but I really don't see any other way to cope. Except to write in here, I suppose. Nobody should have to go through the bullcrap of finding a mate, but adults really should be spared the indignity. Humiliation is what the teen years are for.

Anyway, if anybody (for I'm sure some of you reading this have done it to people; it's such a common practice that I suspect I'm unique in even taking notice of it, let alone taking moral rather than mere personal offense at it) can offer any insights into why people are this particular brand of shit, I would like to know. Thanks.

03:29 pm - Interests Meme

Well, everybody seems to be doing this meme. Here y'go:

(No idea who the catgirl in the second row is, though).

( My Interests Collage! )

03:23 pm - Even more clarification! Stand forth and be clarificated...

After my last two entires, I just want to be clear: I'm not trying to dissuade people from commenting here anonymously if they want to, or from saying hi. I'm cool with that, and I like meeting people. I wouldn't maintain an LJ "interest list" if I didn't.

I just don't want to have to convert this into a "professional blog" with all the baggage that goes with that label, and I want to be free to natter on about things that would be of no interest to people outside my circle of friends. That's all.

02:38 pm - Addendum dum dum dum dum...

Actually, it looks like I don't have to friends-lock every mention of my webcomic on here, because Manage Accounts does have an option for minimizing your LJ's searchability on most search engines. But, I don't think that would prevent engines from noticing the links I had posted on my user info page, so I got rid of them.

03:02 am - On the purpose of blogs

I've had a growing concern lately that random Google-users, looking for information about my w.ebcom ic, would happen upon this blog and assume it is a "professional" blog, meant as my soapbox to the masses and to people who are familiar with my professional work. Um... No, it pretty much isn't that. I started this blog several years before I ever began the we bcom.ic, and its simple purpose was to help me keep in touch with my friends, most of whom now live far away.

So, lately, being a fairly private person (and what business has a private person got keeping a blog anyway?), I've been a tad self-conscious lately about writing anything too emotionally substantive on here. Granted, I could easily friends-lock all such entries, but that assumes that all of the aforementioned friends I wanted to keep in touch with have LiveJournal accounts, and in fact many of them don't.

So... I have removed or friends-locked all the direct references to the webbc omic or my real name on this blog, to prevent it from popping up so easily on Google. I even changed my icon. His name is Alonzo, and he's an Alamosaurus. I invented him in college, too.

Lastly, if you, reading this, ARE a fan of my other work who found my blog on Google prior to this... Hi there! I'm not trying to shoo you away, honest. You can hang out here if you want. This is just my way of reclaiming a bit of internet anonymity.

05:19 pm - Wow, that ad on the right is terrible.

Unlike most LiveJournal users, I was not that upset when LJ said they planned to put ads on users' blogs, because I assumed they would be relatively unobtrusive. Instead my blog now has this huge thing hanging off its right side like a goiter. I should have complained about the proposal when I had the chance.

Well, in fairness, right at the moment that ad is a cute girl modeling a t-shirt. She does not look like a goiter. But the ad itself still manages to do so. Feh.

11:04 pm - Why is it snowing in Beijing...?

Several months ago, I replaced my worn out broken old TV antenna with a brand new one, which turned out to work really badly. NBC is particularly suckulous. So, after two weeks of trying to figure out what the heck the Olympians are doing through all that static, I have ordered a new one which the reviewers on Amazon say is good. We shall see.

04:25 pm - Alanis Morisette

Irony! I just scrolled down and saw that I had a post in here where I wished I could have a summer vacation! Ha! Hm.

04:01 pm - Fun with jobs

Greetings internet and all my friends and acquaintances therein.

It's really long overdue that I posted an entry in here, but a lot has been going on in the past two or three months, and... I don't know if it's that I couldn't find the time to write in here, or if I just couldn't muster the energy, or if I honestly didn't know what to write. Well, all three.

I got, and then lost, a full-time job with a start-up video game company. I was hired as an animator, and yet was never given any actual animation to do. They had me doing a typing assignment for over a month, and I was becoming increasingly concerned that I was being given so little of substance to do. It finally turned out that I had been hired with the understanding that they would be getting projects from an outside contractor. The contractor(s) then backed out, and my employers suddenly had nothing for me to do. I was given an extra two weeks pay, for which I was certainly appreciative, and laid off.

I had retained a minimal part-time position at my bookstore to keep my health and dental insurance. So I am not, technically, unemployed. But my full-time position had been filled almost instantly after I dropped back to part-time. Even my current rate of pay is lower, for the few hours I now get to work, and a very big percentage of that small check goes to my health insurance, since that was the original reason I kept the part-time position at all.

So I contacted nearby Borders stores, and was told that a reasonably close one was hiring full-time, and the manager told me I would probably get the job. So I was modestly optimistic for two weeks until she changed her mind this past Saturday.

During that modestly optimistic two weeks, I tried to get some work done on my novel. I'm happy with what I wrote, but it isn't done. And now I'm going to have to focus my energies on finding work, instead.

Fortunately (so to speak), I have recently inherited some money. When my step-grandmother Mary passed away last autumn, she left me some money. I was also surprised to recently learn from my parents that they and my brother and I will all be receiving some money that my grandfather left to Mary, which was intended to pass to us after she died. So, I have money in the bank and am not destitute. That is a very good thing. And yet, the fact that I will likely have to go dipping into that inheritance money simply to meet necessities for a while, instead of saving it up or spending part of it on something more significant, is very unfortunate.

My college film teacher always said that when you are unemployed, finding a job must be your full-time job. He was right, and I dread the job-hunting process in this economy, but there's nothing else for it. Granted, perhaps I can finally hunt for an art or animation job more effectively, now that I don't have the scut dayjob taking time away from that pursuit, but you'll pardon me if I am by now very cynical about those prospects, and figure that I am more likely to wind up with something really boring just to meet my rent; assuming I can get that in the Bush economy (I realize that destroying the economy is far less important than having killed hundreds of thousands of people, but I have to admit I'm miffed at him for destroying the economy, too).

Lessee, what else has been going on? I am now a published artist on a nationally published American manga. If you buy a copy of Goofyfoot Gurl #5, the cover illustration is my work. You will probably have to order it, if you do buy it. This is, of course, fantastic news. I also colored a bunch of pages for volume #6, which made me even happier.

The bad news is that volume #6 is not going to be printed, because the publishing company has gone out of business. Nor will there be any future print runs of #5 (so I made a point of buying three copies). But, I'm still published, which is very good. I am told that eventually, the entire series including volume #6 may be posted on the web as a webcomic. I hope so.

(If you go to Amazon.com, the cover image they have posted is an early rough draft by another artist which was not used in the final product. If you look at the "customer image" which I submitted, it is the final cover which I drew and colored, and which I scanned from my own copy of the book. I have emailed Amazon to ask them to correct the error, but I don't know that they will. Since the publishing company is defunct, the error is not likely to be fixed at that end.)

Lastly, I had a very pointless altercation by email with a person about whom I once cared very much. Clearly I still do care, or this wouldn't hurt. I am trying (not entirely successfully) not to be angry about it. But it is one additional burden I did not need with all these other things going on.

05:43 pm - Elbow!

Ow. I wanted to get a lot of stuff done today (my day off), but I slept on my right arm wrong or something and woke up with the elbow really sore, so I've been kind of useless all day. Now I have to get the webcomic ready for tomorrow morning, and I don't really feel like drawing. Feh. I'll go find a bottle of ibuprofin (I spell that right? Eh, who cares.)

I'm also idly considering taking maybe... oh, a week off from netsurfing, because I really am wasting too much time on it. I'd still check my email and update Bob, I just wouldn't go wandering through the net wondering "I wonder when shoelaces were invented?" or "You're wrong! Galactus can't beat the Living Tribunal!" It's addictive and time consuming.

In particular, I've been spending too much time on Marvel Comics's message boards lately. I started because I wanted to follow the controversy around Joe Quesada's recent decision to claim Peter Parker and Mary Jane were never married, and retcon away 20 years of continuity through a badly written plot device. Roughly 75% of the readership is up in arms about it, and I predict Marvel will have to undo it. But then I wander over to the "Vs. Forum" which is all geeks (like myself) nattering about which characters can beat each other in a fight. Fin Fang Foom Vs. Godzilla and such. It's harmless fun but, if done to excess, a very silly waste of time. Sigh.

I have stuff I need to get done.

I attended my friend Vaughn's engagement party on Saturday. That was a lot of fun. I recently heard from my friend Brad Linaweaver, who moved to Florida some months back, and he said he'll be in L.A. for a visit/business trip in a couple of weeks. I have a Flash project I'm doing for someone which I wanted to have done by this coming Sunday. and that would have involved me being a lot more productive today than I was. Sigh.

Tired of the danged day job. I keep telling myself that if I can just get these couple of Flash projects out of the way, then I can concentrate on finding a better job.

Well, I've got a half-finished picture of Molly the Peanut-Butter Monster here, and she isn't going to draw herself. Not even if I draw a giant pencil in her hand.

Excelsior, all.

05:36 pm - Charlotte's Web

Huh. I just learned that E.B. White hated the 1970's cartoon version of Charlotte's Web. That's kind of surprising. It's one of favorite animated films, and although it's been many years since I read the book, I remember thinking it was one of the most faithful film adaptations of a book I've seen (I read the book after seeing the movie, but I remember being impressed at how identical the stories were). I wonder what his problem with it was, and what he would have changed.

I just rewatched the movie recently. The animation isn't Disney, but c'mon, nobody but Disney was Disney in those days. I don't think even Studio Ghibli existed yet, not that anyone in the U.S. would probably have been aware of them at that point anyway (Hayao Miyazaki's studio in Japan. They did Nausicaa, Totoro, Mononoke, etc.). It's still beautiful, and far and away the most technically and artistically impressive thing Hanna-Barbera ever did. (Well, I know that H.B. did a version of Heidi around the same time that was probably of comparable quality, but I've never seen it.)

I read that White loathed Wilbur's "I can talk!" song, and I'll grant it is the weakest song in the film, but that's not much of a criticism. All the songs are good, and good Lord, some of them are heart-breakingly beautiful. Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte singing Wilbur a lullaby as she dies. I dare you not to cry. Sheesh.

I haven't seen the live action / CG remake that came out about a year ago. I'd like to, and I think I'll probably like it when I do see it, but I can't imagine it'll ever replace the first film for me. "Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself." Yup.

Actually, I like Robert J. Sawyer's comment: "I'll never understand why they remake good movies. Why doesn't somebody go back and remake bad ones, correcting the mistakes? I'd love to see a decent version of Dune or V. I. Warshawski--or The Phantom Menace..."

12:49 am - Time & Hobbits

I really need a long vacation from my day job. I'm not likely to be able to take one, but I need it.

I've been watching Fellowship of the Ring a lot lately. As I type this, they're just getting to Bilbo's party. Ha ha, that little girl with the big eyes they got to play one of the hobbit kids is just too cute to be believed. I suppose she must be... about nine or ten by now, since the movie came out in 2002. Ah, the passage of time. I remember reading a comic book once where the villain Chronos the Time Thief was described as a man so obsessed with time that he could listen to the ticking of a clock the way a pyromaniac would watch a fire. I'm not that bad, but the image stuck with me. It does fascinate me that, whether due to psychology or neurology, every year passes faster than the one before. A day is so short now, and they'll just get shorter. I've always had an overdeveloped sense of this.

What I need is a summer vacation. When I was in school, I always maintained that all I wanted was a job, so that I'd be doing meaningful, paid labor instead of the idiot drudgery that most of school consisted of. And I do prefer my current circumstances to my public school days—or, it's more accurate to say I prefer my job to a workday spent at public school (College is another matter. I miss college intensely. Even the classes, oddly enough.). Oddly, what sucks these days is my off-hours, and for that I do blame my dayjob, because I must fill those off-hours with the "meaningful" labor that unfortunately is not synonymous with my "paid" labor. And all too often, I don't get the "meaningful" labor done, but I sit staring at it, too tired physically and emotionally to get it done, and not even getting outside to enjoy myself either. Feh.

If I had... yeah, about three months of free time that I didn't have to fit round the edges of my dayjob... Could I really get my affairs satisfactorily in order? I don't know. I'd like to try. Finish my novel (heaven help me, yes, I'm writing a novel). Finish that silly 20-page comic. Make the modifications to my webcomic site that I want done. Maybe even find a job I can respect that would pay a wage I could respect. At any event, I'd get a rest.

At least I do get the comic updated consistently.

Okay, Frodo and Sam are in Farmer Maggot's fields now, and Merry & Pippin have just bashed into them.

It is an excellent film, of course. But one little nitpick I have with it is that it would have been kind of nice if Saruman were fleshed out a bit better. I mean, he's supposed to be a corrupted former good guy. Just when and how did he go from "reason to madness?" I'm not saying they should make up flashback scenes or anything, just that it would have been nice to see just an inkling of inner conflict in the guy. (I really didn't mean "inkling" as a pun. Sorree.) Like maybe a hint of sadness at the line, "So you have chosen... death!" I guess he's just a plain evil jerk, and that's that. Well okay.

My other nitpick is that all that latex and hair on John Rhys-Davies's face doesn't really allow him much range of facial expression. I was going to say that some more close-ups on his eyes might have helped that, but I see now that he actually gets a fair number of close-ups. Oh well.

All the actors' performances are great.

Liv Tyler's face is amazingly beautiful.

Aragorn's stubble remains the same length through the entire trilogy, doesn't it?

All the image compositing they did to manage the size differences among the cast is incredible.

At Gandalf's line, "I think there's more to this hobbit than meets the eye," I keep having this disturbing image of Frodo turning into a truck.

03:20 am - Marvel now sucks.

For anybody out there who reads comics...

You know something? I think I'm done with Marvel for a while.

Captain America's dead (for now.)
Bucky's no longer dead.
The Hulk's in suspended animation.
Iron Man's a fascist.
Reed Richards is an amoral pragmatist.
The Scarlet Witch is Parallax.
Spider-Woman's a skank.
Machine Man is an arrogant jerk.
Corsair is dead.
Asgard is destroyed.
Spider-Man is Faust.

In other words, they've corrupted or incapacitated almost their entire core cast, and even spoiled my handful of favorite minor characters (Spider-Woman, Machine Man, and the Starjammers). I scarcely even noticed it happening until they ruined Spider-Man a month ago, but it's now clear to me: Marvel sucks. They completely suck.

Well, "Nova" is readable.

Meanwhile, over at DC, Superman is better than it's been in decades.