Monthly Archives: August 2010

A successful night

Tonight was the third meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Support Group. We have not had a large die-off yet and I think perhaps we may not. In fact we picked up two new members tonight. (One is currently writing a collection of Orcish poetry. He read a few and we all really enjoyed them.)

For the first time ever I read out-loud a piece of my own work. I have workshopped stuff before, but I have never stood and read. Yesh I stammered and barely got through it all. (I only read five pages — we have a time limit otherwise I would be there still.)

My work was well received and I was quite happy for that. I also got some really good feedback on where it was weak, and since this is the opening of the story that is important.

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The Wave appears to be building.

The aggregate of the generic party preference polls has the Republican Party leading the Democratic Party by over 5 points. (There a lot of buzz on the ‘net today from right leaning blog about the 10 point lead in the Gallop polls, but I trust aggregate polling much more than any single pollster.)

Given that there is not about two months to the election, there’s not a lot of time for thing to change, unless it is change for the worse for the Democratic hopes.)

I have no sat down and looked at the senate races in detail — that is close examination of the number race by race — so I will hew to my feeling that the Senatorial Hill is going to be a much tougher climb than the House, but certainly by no mean impossible.

If the trends lines continue my Right-leaning friends will certainly be celebrating come November, but winning is the easy part. Actually taking a hand to solve the very serious problems our country is in is much much harder.

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A functional Bathroom again

Well thanks to help from a friend of mine, we have restored our guest bathroom back to normal functionality after the water damage from the unit above ours.

I do not think there will a Sunday Night Movie tonight. The fresh paint fumes are splitting my head and it was all I could do to watch a movie with my sweetie-wife.

good night all

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A victory

Despite a serious headache, I managed to run my D&D game successfully tonight. NO combat, but the players now dee the final shape of the end of the campaign and we’ve started to discuss the next one.

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Has The Republican Party Learned?

I think it is likely that the Republicans will take control of the House this November. The senate is a much steeper hill to climb, but not out of reach. (Personally I think they’ll miss on the Senate, but I withhold final predictions until we are closer and there is more data.)

Regardless of the Senate, I think just from the House we might see some clues to if the republicans truly have becom serious about debt or if that is all just election year smoke and mirrors.

Defunding Obama’s projects and initiatives will be meaningless data. Simple partisianship will compel them that far. What will be telling is if they are willing to cut any program that they are the proponents for and has serious electoral consequences. (Such as Farm Subsidies.)

Color me pessimistic on the odds of this happening. I think that they, the Republicans, have not spent enough time in the wilderness. They’ll attack Democratic spending with vigor, but I think that their own cows will remain most holy and untouched.

I do not think the  ‘Tea Party’ will drive the Republican into serious thought about debt and spending.

I would be happy to be wrong. I think that all empires fade and this could be the twilight of our own. Unless we get serious about bringing our financial house in order, very dire consequences could befall our nation. Ones too painful and terrible to contemplate.

What signs would you read as proof the Republicans were serious about this issue?

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I also hate paint fumes

So, some weeks ago our condo suffered water-damage  after a large spill from the unit above ours. The last of the repairs is being completed on our guest bathroom and the paint fumes are horrid.

Just when the first round of paint fumes has died away and I had stopped getting headaches from them, they’ve gone and painted the trim on the door. No work tonight on ‘Cawdor’ as I am in too much pain for clear thinking.

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An Arthritis day

For some reason my arthritis is acting up today. It made my day job fairly rough and by the end of the day my fingers were smarting quite a bit.

I did manage more editing on Cawdor, but the project is taking longer in the 1.5 draft than I had expected. Still, I am happy with the product and should have a readable version ready before the end of September.

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DVD Review: The Lost Skeleton Returns Again!

A few years ago, before I had met my lovely sweetie-wife, I saw a charming movie at the local Art House theater. The movie was The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. A tongue in cheek send up of bad SF/monster movies of the late 50’s and early 70’s. the film gave us many memorable comedy bits including the famed Amish Terrarium. If you have not seen this movie you need to see it.

Yes, not every scene works as well as it could have. Some scenes drag on too long, but overall I enjoyed the movie.

This week the sequel hit the DVD shelves. It’s rare that I buy a DVD without having seen the movie, but I was willing to take that risk with a Lost Skeleton sequel.

The good news is I felt I got my money’s worth. This was charming and funny. It was clear that the cast enjoyed working with each other again. (those whose characters had died in the first film were playing the twins of those original characters.)

Unlike cheap SF films of the era they actually tried to  shoe-horn in character  growth as part of the comedy and it mostly worked.

What didn’t work was that this film by its very nature could not be as original at the first. Many of the jokes are extensions of gags and jokes used in the first film. Because of that they lose punch and comedy needs punch.

There is nothing in the film as original or as quote worth as the aforementioned ‘Amish Terrarium.’

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend buying this DVD unless it really strike your fancy. Best rent it first.

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Sunday Night Movie: Incubus (1965)

So yesterday my sweetie-wife and I watched a film called Incubus, from 1965.

Now this was a film I had heard about, but one I had never seen. It stars — as you can see from the screen cap — William Shatner just a few years before he began his five– no three — year voyage as Captain James Kirk.

As the title suggests, it is a horror film and a demonically based horror story. (Though much better than Shatner’s other foray into devil worship The Devil’s Rain.)

What made this film so utterly mysterious and difficult to see is two factors.

One, it was thought that all know prints had been lost and or destroyed. The film failed miserably at the box office and this was before there was a home-video market to rescue turkeys like Manic Cop 2.

Second this movie was and is the only film to be entirely in Esperanto a wholly artificial language invented in the late 19th century. Continue reading →

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