If there's a particular subject of interest, click one of the tags below and you'll get a list of relevant, irrelevant, and sometimes irreverent postings.

At the Music Box Theater. They're doing an all-day scifi marathon.

It would probably take divine intervention for me to miss a chance to see The Road Warrior (yeah, yeah purists, I know it's Mad Max 2 everywhere else, but it was The Road Warrior when I saw it in high school and so it remains) on the big screen.

And they're doing James Bond (all early Sean stuff) May 11-14. For that I think I'll just do From Russia With Love. Not that I have anything against the others, it's just that's pretty much my favorite.

In honor of William Shanter's 77th birthday, I decided to do a tribute to the women of Star Trek (the original series).


( Lots and lots of graphics )

I'll be on Late Night Jenga Jam tomorrow at 10:30 PM Eastern

This Thursday science fiction author and TTL Ally Eric Knight will be on the Late Night JengaJam to discuss all things book, fun, Halo and miscellaneous nonsense.

Call in live to the show to ask questions or just sit in on the discussion by calling Talkshoe at (724) 444-7444 then entering the Talkcast ID of 6478

http://jengajam.ning.com/

http://www.talkshoe.com/blog/index.php/help/ for information on joining the chat or phone conversation.

Hope a few of you join in! By the way, the show is opened with a really cool gal named OboeCrazy, with her "This Week in Geek" newscast.

Toshiba called it quits in the hi-def format war this week. Blu-ray wins.

The technologically superior format won for once. Color me shocked.

So now I've been through three major home-entertainment format wars. VHS vs. Beta (yes, I'm that old), Laserdisc vs. VHS (which was really more of a long-running skirmish) and now Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD. DVD vs. VHS was never really a format war, since the technology was so manifestly better, plus it was a lot cheaper for manufacturers to produce DVDs. I'm not sure DVD vs DIVX was much of a battle either, though I recall reading the arguments in my early internet days. Some may remember it as being more of a thang than I.

Does this mean you should run right out and get a Blu-ray player?

Nah. There are probably a few hiccups to work out in the technology (every Blu-ray title I've bought comes with an "update your firmware!" warning). The title selection isn't really there yet and they're still a little expensive, to my mind. Yes, I bought one, but I've always been an early adopter. I own only a dozen Blu-rays. They don't have enough backlist titles that really demand hi-def for me to buy many. When stuff like LOTR, Star Wars, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Gone With The Wind and Ben Hur hit Blu-ray, my collection will increase.

Besides, we're approaching (if we're not there already) the point where you'll want to just rent the movie to a drive. I've watched HD movies through my XBOX. The studios want it that way anyway, since it makes them nuts that when you buy a movie you pay the same price whether you watch it once or fifty times. They want you paying for each and every view. Which might be to your advantage anyway. I own lots of DVDs I've only watched once.

You might want to consider, if you have a substantial DVD collection and a hi-def monitor, getting an upconverting player (yes, HD TVs have upscaling technology, but quality varies quite a bit). I own the OPPO, as the technology is muchly the same as Denon at about half the price. Upconversion is greatly dependent on the quality of the source DVD; it can look fantastic or awful depending on the mastering job the manufacturer did with the DVD in the first place.

Can you tell the difference between an upconvert and a Blu-ray? Yes, but -- and it's a really big "but" (I cannot lie, whether the other brothers deny it or not is their business) -- it depends on how demanding you are as a video connoisseur, what kind of screen you have, where you sit, and so on (a handy site for setting up your home theater to THX standards can be found here). For all I know your couch is located where your eye can't even distinguish the difference between DVD and hi-def.

Geeky digression over.

If you're going to head out and check it out tonight...

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2008Feb21/TLE2008Feb21.html

So, I was perusing The Onion’s AV Club and saw their “The Knights Who Say Nerd: 20 Pop Culture Obsessions Even Geekier Than Monty Python” and it got me thinking…

Not about how lame The Onion’s list is – anyone who spends time on the con scene can swap out at least half those slots – but on being a nerd versus being a geek.

I think you can be both depending on circumstances. A lot of people are nerds or geeks about one thing or another, even if they wouldn’t apply the label to themselves. For example, the FOX Football Pregame Assholes are nerds, just about football. Except for Howie Long. He’s a bioengineered organism sent by aliens to determine if we’re worth invading, and what the potential casualties would be should an invasion be deemed worthwhile. If millions of people are stupid enough to watch him, we’re a soft target.

Let’s start with definitions. You’re a nerd about a particular subject if you know more about said subject than 99.8 percent of the population. Part of true nerdhood is showing off your knowledge by getting into bitter arguments over it, be it Kirk vs. Picard or computer OS choice or whether Bobby Knight should be deified and have samples of his DNA frozen for the benefit of future generations or let Mike Krzyzewski use him for skeet practice.

(I’m in the latter camp, but I admire Knight’s stance on clean recruitment and academic performance.)

Geekdom, to me, is a little more footloose and fancy free. Being a geek on a subject just means you have an enthusiasm for a subject and enough taste to allow you to distinguish the good from the bad. There’s a certain element of “Ooooo! Teh shiny!” in geekdom.

Of course, you’re welcome to differ. But this is my blog, so I’ve got the implicit right to half-assed opinions about whatever I choose for the day’s topic. For fully-assed opinions, consult a reference librarian. Really! They’re like Jedi Knights with LexisNexis (which sounds like a girl/girl porno, if you ask me) instead of lightsabers.

Anyway, here’s five things I’m a nerd about

1. George Orwell - Talking about Orwell would take up a whole post and then some, but I’ve read all his books, his collected essays, three biographies, and some of his collected letters, though I don’t much like reading letters because I feel it’s a bit of an invasion of privacy. I think I could go toe-to-toe with someone doing a Master’s Thesis on Orwell and hold up my end. He just strikes me as admirable, both as a writer and an individual. He certainly made all the right enemies in life (fascists, Nazis, apologists for Stalin) to the point of putting down his pen and picking up a rifle.


2. Russian/East European History I studied Russian in college so I could get a better handle on the history and literature. But Polish, Czech, and tangled Balkan histories interest me too, from the Goths vs. Romans on. I was very fortunate to study under W. Bruce Lincoln (a great writer of historical narratives and an expert on the Romanovs) and Albert Resis (wrote the article on Lenin for Encyclopedia Britannica) in college. Oh, I know a shitload of Polish swearwords too.


3. H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard - I sort of hesitate to put these under nerdom because I’m enough of a nerd to know that there are people out there who know way, way more than I do, but I’ve made an effort to at least acquire, and in Lovecraft’s case, read, all their published fiction, at least that’s commonly available (I’ve still got to get through a few more prizefighter stories and westerns by Howard). I’ve read bios on each and Novalyne Price Ellis ’s The One Who Walked Alone about her turbulent relationship with Howard (made into a really great movie called The Whole Wide World with Vincent D’Onofrio and Renée Zellweger – I’ve show this movie to literally dozens of people and every one of them has loved it). Anyway, I can talk about them for (as Leslie Nielsen might say) a loooooooong time.


4. Home Theater - I don’t think I’ve talked about this much on my blog but I’m always “developing” my home theater system. I’ve got a pretty nice one, a Sharp Aquos LCD, 7.1 surround, Sunfire subwoofer, and some good speakers and Blu-ray and DTS and all that. I’ve put it together in bits and pieces over the years. Usually I get top of the line stuff (without getting into the 10k range for receivers and that sort of thing, I’m talking more ordinary consumer stuff than audiophile equipment), I just wait for clearance sales and buy stuff that was top of the line two years ago. I’m always looking at CNET reviews for electronics and Chats can use Best Buy as a husband babysitter while she goes and does something interesting. You'll find me in "The Big Room." And I like picking fights with Sony Kool-Aid drinkers.


5. Shatner - Duh. I keep meaning to start my own Church of The Holy Shat, except I’m a little worried about Bill suing me. But it would be fun to do Sunday Church of Shatner services at cons, get together and “rap” with the “young people” and introduce them to Eternal Life in Syndication. There’s just so much that today’s youth need to hear. Shatner offers guidance on many of the complicated issues facing troubled teens today. And. I. Could. Do. Sermons. In. My. . Shatner. . Voice. Plus if you run your own church you get absolutely crazy tax deductions on, like, everything, and I want to be able to marry people with the semi-spooky TOS love scene music playing in the background.

And five things I’m a geek about

1. Postwar Men’s Entertainment - Again, if you’ve been following this blog you know that I’m into the Sweats and Grindhouse Sexploitation. I also have a collection of Playboy kitsch, though I really wish Hef would be more grandfatherly to the playmates and cut it out with the octogenarian swinger stuff. As Florence King put it, there’s a time to quit being the belle and take up the duties of the chaperone.


2. Tarot Decks - I’ve never had a Tarot reading in my life but I find the decks fascinating. I think the symbology yanks something out of the collective unconscious by the roots. That or I just saw Live and Let Die at an impressionable age, I’m not sure which.


3. Beautiful Books - Leather bound, gilt edged, thick, creamy paper. It’s rather erotic, isn’t it? You bookhounds know what I mean. I’m always salivating over the Easton Press catalog.


4. Small Arms - I’m a gun nut, but nothing like an expert. Therefore the geekery classification. Chats is always chiding me for picking up yet another gun book.


5. Freemasonry - It’s interesting how deeply woven Freemasonry is into English and American culture. I’ve got several of the major books, but I think my favorite is Born In Blood (its highly disputable thesis is thumbnailed in the movie National Treasure). Oh, and a Freemasonry Tarot Deck, like that’s a surprise. I suppose Dan Brown’s next novel is going to shit all over what is overwhelmingly an honorable tradition.

So, what are you a nerd about? How about some favorite geekdoms?

So I was looking up some of the voice talent for the Bioshock game on IMDB (it's really excellent, the best I've ever encountered in a game) and found quite the flame war going on about Bioshock supposedly slamming Objectivism. I considered it kind of a jokey toss-off in my earlier post but apparently people are fighting about it.

Objectivism in Bioshock, that is, not my post.

People will always find something to argue about, I guess. But it's a game where you can shoot insects out of your hand, which is getting into Monty Python "giant electric penguin with tentacles that sting people" territory. Not exactly Kant.

After playing through a good part of the game, I'll certify that Rapture's self-destruction had nothing to do with political/economic philosophy and everything to do with nutrition. I've played through five major locations now and my poor character has had nothing to eat but potato chips, cream-filled pastries, and "pep" bars -- washed down with vodka, gin, whiskey, wine, beer, and a thermos of coffee now and then. When your entire population is hung-over and constipated you've got to expect some amount of civil disorder. They're deep under the sea, so everyone's got year-round Seasonal Affective Disorder from lack of sunlight, and I bet that because of the close conditions all the women had their menstrual cycles sync up.

Even Plato's Republic will end up with blood on the walls under that kind of stress.

The signing yesterday out at Geneva went well. Kimberley and the store management put me right up front by the door, which was nice. I played Wal Mart greeter. And now for the important numbers:

Questions about bathroom location: 3
Questions about sale price stickering on Christmas books: 1

I did run out of Dragon Champions. As for the mountain of Dragon Outcasts, barely made a dent.

michaeldthomas showed up, which either means he's experienced enough about author signings to know that a lot of times the author is bored and needs someone to talk to, or he was just looking for something to do with Caitlyn for the afternoon. Met some nice new people. Also a smart pair of kids who read a lot: Noah and Jesse. Now that I think about it, Noah is probably old enough to resent being called a kid. Anyway, their parents are doing something right. They both asked a lot of good questions.

Then Chats and I ate at a surprisingly congenial Claddagh "Irish" Pub (the quotation marks there are mine because it's obviously a corporate chain, but the food was quite tasty and decor was pleasant and as authentic as you'll get on former Midwestern prairie). We watched the Packers turn the game around and then headed home. I played some Halo with bg_editor and quikthnkr but I kept losing my Xbox live connection. I guess too many people in Chicago got Xboxs this Christmas. Microsoft is giving away a free game download to make up for all the capacity problems.

Oh, here's a link to a cool genreiffic shirt shop. All your favorite SF corporations, plus some other locations like Amity Island and the Winchester from Shaun Of The Dead:

http://www.lastexittonowhere.com

Perfect for your geek on Valentine's day. Nothing says love, or at least basic pleasure model simulacra of love, like a Tyrell Corporation shirt. Little on the pricey side, but then they have to come from Old Blighty. They need Benthic Petroleum, Omega Sector, Con-Am 27, Village of Sandford, and of course Initech.

Well, the old desktop I used for internet stuff has been getting worse and worse. Recently the drive started making grinding noises. Never a good sign.

So it was time to take Old Graphite out behind the barn. . . I don't really want to donate a computer with a funky drive. If anyone wants the old machine minus the drive, it's perfectly useable XP workhorse and has a decent NVidia card (two DVI outs). Just buy a new drive and you're in business. I'd give the interior a good air-blasting though. The heat sink has a thick coating of grime.

So I replaced it with a clearance Acer that had a Western Digital 500 gig drive, 5600 dual Athalons and 3 gig of RAM (and boy does Vista like the RAM). Chats was getting sick of me shopping desktops all through the fall anyway (I was waiting for the after Xmas pricedrops) so now I can obsess on something else. I wanted to put in a decent video card so I had to swap out the power supply so I could feed the card. This is the first time I've done that serious a mod and it took me much of yesterday. My lowest Vista benchmark is 5.0, but that'll go up as soon as I pick up another gig of RAM.

I'm still going back and forth about putting in a sound card. I've got a working Creative one in the old machine, but I like the interface on the built in one with the new box.

Anyway, Vista's working great so far. I like the gadgets off to the right. I've got a the calendar, analog clock, stickies, and a slideshow that plays my collection of classic pulp and paperback covers.

I recreated a little bit this afternoon with an award-winning XBOX360 game quikthnkr was kind enough to send me to try out. Bioshock is a shooter and a lovely one. The weapons assortment and environment really set it off from even the better high-end shooters these days, like Resistance: Fall of Man or the Call of Duty type games.

I'll talk environment first. After a plane crash you're brought to an undersea world. It's like Ayn Rand and H.G. Wells got drunk and came up with an underwater art-deco utopia. Except by the time you arrive, utopia's fallen apart courtesy of Stephen King and James Cameron.

It's not quite steampunk -- more like radio-tubepunk. The red-carpeted environs look like they came from Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow. Really gorgeous, except everything's broken up by revolutionary chaos. I kept looking around with my eyeballs instead of paying attention to gameplay, which is some zombie fighting, some Poseidon Adventure/Titanic-type escapes from rising water, and some puzzle solving.

It's rated M. You even get to smoke cigarettes! Edgy, edgy, edgy!

Your weapons are a blend of genetic enhancements (you're always injecting yourself with stuff in the game to give you fun new lethal powers) and plain old guns and clubs. There's a strong survival horror element. I think the main character has a lot more backstory than I've uncovered so far. You don't have tattoos of chain links on your wrists for no reason in a game...

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be buying this and passing quikthnkr's copy on to someone else. Sadly, it won't be Howard. bg_editor is getting his wife and kids a Wii, the pussy.

It appears Penguin is also putting out Dragon Outcast as an eBook for Mobipocket (software that lets you read eBooks on your PC, Palm, PocketPC, Blackberry, and so on).

That's cool. I know several people, like my cousin at Microsoft, who prefer eBooks.

I've got that old psychological hurdle that everything appearing on a computer screen is WORK, whereas tactile little paper pages are PLEASURE so I don't know that I'll ever get truly into them, but I do love the way so much research stuff I need these days is in PDF. I can carry around huge amounts of data on a few discs or my laptop hard drive.

So, Huzzah!

According to michelf, Fox is working on a pilot for an Americanized version of Spaced.

Shhhh. My neighbors work too. Try a pillow, it really muffles the noise.

Anyway, there's only one thing to do at a time like this. Yep.

Write a poll.




Poll #1080183 Fox is going to Americanize Spaced
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

So, how badly will it suck?

Anyone going to light a spliff?

Oi! Oi! Then what about a sandwich of fun on ecstasy bread rave wrapped up in a big bag like disco fudge, you lucky people? I just wish sometimes I could control these FUCKING MOOD SWINGS!

And Mike Watt will be?

Okay, you've convinced me. What's going to make it suck, specifically?

Still, I'm so going to do this:

quikthnkr has got to quit sending me HALO links.

I keep not doing productive stuff for HALO 3 geekery. Sadly, mine aren't as good as that blog.

( cut for image size )

The London Times ranked the 40 Most Memorable Aliens.

I'd swap Carpenter's Thing for the Alien Xenomorph, ranking-wise. It's hard to beat the Alien. Also, they made a good point about the Blob. I realize there are any number of reasons to disqualify them, but the white blood cells in Fantastic Voyage always gave me the creeps.

Cthulhu came in second to Himself, who doesn't really qualify as an alien if you ask me. But good for Cthulhu. The list is rather Who-heavy. I also thought the aliens in The Arrival were a good deal more interesting than, say, Ewoks. But then the little rat creature from the cantina scene with eyes that allow you to see right through his head is more interesting than Ewoks.

AND WHERE ARE THE PODS? I WANT MY POD PEOPLE! Speaking of vegetable growth, I've always liked the mossy green "meteor shit" from the first Creepshow. And Mathilda may, spacevamp from Lifeforce, has one of the most memorable racks to ever grace celluloid.

And if they're talking memorable, what about The Creeping Terror. I'll never forget that carpet remnant pile, nosireebob. Or the daddy-longlegs spacebot from Johnny Quest.

Got enough done on Fall With Honor revisions to fire up the XBOX yesterday.

( Console gaming geekery. . . )

startrek.com press release:

10.05.2007
SPECIAL EVENT: Remastered "Menagerie" in Theatres!

On Tuesday, November 13, the two-part Star Trek Remastered version of "The Menagerie” will beam onto the big screen in a special engagement with selected theatres. The screening — a first for episodic Star Trek on this scale — will be seen in nearly 300 venues across the U.S. and Canada. This one-night-only event will also feature a special introduction by Eugene "Rod” Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, plus an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Remastered series.

"The Menagerie" will be presented in its digitally remastered, high-definition format and in Cinema Surround Sound. The screening is in part to promote the HD-DVD/DVD release the following week (Nov. 20) by CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment.

If you recall, the two-part "Menagerie" is the only episode to feature the casts of both the original pilot and the regular series, with Spock the only character to make the transition from from the pilot to the series. Much of the footage, of course, is taken from the rejected first pilot "The Cage." The story sees the Vulcan hell-bent on returning Captain Pike to Talos IV, the intention being that this is where his injured former commander can peacefully live out the rest of his days. Spock risks his career in Starfleet by hijacking the Enterprise and faces a court-martial for his actions. All this is eventually revealed to be an illusion, courtesy of the Talosians and their very strong telepathic hallucinations. Spock is then exonerated, Pike is returned and everything works out in the end. (Oops! Sorry to give it away!) "The Menagerie" was the 16th episode of Star Trek produced, and the 11th one to air.

A complete list of theaters for this viewing can be found here.

Now, to plead with Chats to go as an Orion Slave Girl.

BTW: 40 years ago today one of my favorite episodes, Mirror, Mirror, was first broadcast. To celebrate, Chats& I watched the remastered HD version via the XBOX. Pretty awesome. Though Chats is refusing to answer to her new title as "The Captain's Concubine" which is not so awesome.

A mystery object arrived today:

( Take a guess )

So Entertainment Weekly listed the Top 25 sf movies and TV for the past 25 years.

If you want to wade through the reasoning, you can find the list here. You have to do a lot of clicking.

Remember, anything before 1982 is disqualified, so there goes 81's Escape From New York. Here they are, in order:


25. V: The Miniseries
24. Galaxy Quest
23. Dr. Who
22. Quantum Leap
21. Futurama
20. Star Wars Clone Wars Animated Series
19. Starship Troopers
18. Heroes
17. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
16. Total Recall
15. Firefly/Serenity
14. Children of Men
13. Terminator/Terminator 2
12. Back To The Future
11. Lost
10. The Thing (1982)
9. Aliens
8. Star Trek: The Next Generation
7. E.T.
6. Brazil
5. Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan
4. The X Files
3. Blade Runner
2. Battlestar Galactica (2003)
1. The Matrix

So, Starship Troopers is better than the witty Galaxy Quest, which elegantly walks the tightrope between making fun of fandom and paying homage to it? The Matrix is better than Blade Runner? Back to the Future, one of the most perfect screenplays ever written, is better than ten rankings behind the self-contradicting, stupidly premised Matrix? I'd run Aliens up a few notches, mostly because it serves as the Grecian Urn for infinite SciFi channel imitations.

I don't want to quibble too much (I was too delighted that anyone remembered V, and I was happy to see the reviewer's favorite episode of TNG matches mine, Yesterday's Enterprise) but the list is missing a few of my favorites.

Here's how I'd tweak their list into the EEK-version, title-swapping wise (I'm removing zombie apocalypse and vampire films from SF since I don't want to get into a genre categorization argument, otherwise Shaun of the Dead would be in the top ten and Near Dark in the top twenty -- and Mathilda May's breasts in Lifeforce would find their way onto this list even if I have to dump Lost to do so):

Starship Troppers, I loved the book but the movie disappointed. Where's the flippin' powered armor? You're gone. I'll take my jingoism in the form of John Milius's Red Dawn. WOLVERINES!

Sorry Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you're getting replaced by Mars Attacks. I know it was a box office dog, but I'd rather watch the latter. I about die every time Rod Steiger's general starts yelling about politicians and Natalie Portman opens the door to her White House bedroom and tells him to keep it down, people are trying to sleep.

Yank out the joyless, over-violent Total Recall and put in the much more fun Fifth Element. Do you think today's flight attendants fantasize about having "sleep regulators"? I know I do, especially for the little shits behind me who kick my chair.

I'll swap out Brazil for Twelve Monkeys while I'm at it. What can I say, I like Bruce Willis.

I'm trying to find room for the TV Miniseries version of King's The Stand. I think I'd dump Quantum Leap. But I was considering replacing that with Sliders...what's a fanboy to do?

Chuck The Matrix and put in The Road Warrior (yes, Mad Max 2 came out in Australia in 1981, but it was a 1982 film for me). I know Mel is persona non grata in Hollywood, but it's still one of the best movies ever made. The bleak outback setting, the terse script, the incredible art direction and that final truck chase still holds its own in our days of CGI. Plus it's an infinitely more plausible storyline in sf terms. And I'd much rather listen to the Lord Humungus, the Aya-tollah of Rock-and-rollah, than Keanu.