Pixel Scroll 11/29 Scroll to my pixel, click inside and read by the light of the moon

(1) SITH PACK. Michael J. Martinez continues his Star Wars rewatch reviews in “Star Wars wayback machine: Revenge of the Sith”

It’s the final piece of the Star Wars prequel trilogy and — perhaps unsurprisingly — Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequels and, if I may be a touch heretical, on a par with Return of the Jedi. It very much echoes what made the original trilogy special, despite having many of the problems that plagued the other prequels.

(2) DIY STORMTROOPER. At io9 Andrew Liptak reports progress on making his own Stormtrooper armor in “So You Want To Join The Empire: Finishing Touches”. Some of the lingo is a bit specialized…

Greebles

I ended up trimming down the greeble on the abs plate – I didn’t trim it down enough the first time. The paint was also slightly off color after it dried, so I ended up picking up the correct shades,

(3) BARRIS FUNERAL. “I was wondering why there were so many cool cars in Glendale yesterday,” remarked John King Tarpinian. The answer: Batmobile designer George Barris was being laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Barris passed away November 5 at the age of 89 — click on the link to see Comic Book Resources photo of Barris’ casket, which features an airbrushed ’66 Batmobile on its side and specially-made fins on top, in honor of the creator’s work.

(4) DOCTOR STRANGE. Did they really want to work together? “Clea-ing The Air: Neil Gaiman And Guillermo del Toro Have Differing Memories Of Their Nixed ‘Doctor Strange’ Movie” at ScienceFiction.com.

What if… Neil Gaiman wrote a ‘Doctor Strange’ movie and Guillermo del Toro directed it?  Sadly, that’s one tale that will never be told, but could it have been?  Well, at least according to one of the creators involved, Gaiman, who tweeted a lament, expressing:

“I still wish Marvel had been interested in a [Guillermo del Toro] & me Dr Strange movie, because I wanted to write Clea so badly after 1602.”

(5) SEED BOMBAST. RedWombat cut loose with a mighty rant about the seed bombs entry in yesterday’s Scroll that is too good to be missed, so I am repeating it in today’s Scroll….

Part I: Okay. Seed Bombs. *clears throat*

Seed bombing is super-duper popular with “guerrilla gardeners,” with Girl Scout troops, civic-minded crafters, basically with all sorts of well-meaning folks who think that you can turn a vacant urban lot into Eden by throwing a ball of clay full of seeds over the fence and walking off with the warm glow that you have given nature a helping hand.

Except they don’t work.

There’s a couple factors at work here. #1, very rarely do people research the plants–like those wildflower meadow mixes in a can, they’re often dumping invasive weeds or short-lived annuals…because those are the only things that might survive under those conditions.

Which leads us to #2 — even assuming the seeds germinate (a big if, as we’ll see below) they will be packed in incredibly tight in the seed bomb, compete with each other for root space, the ones that die will rot intertwined with the others, etc. There’s a reason we thin seedlings. Your only survivors are going to be the hardy souls who can stand intense root competition, and frankly, those plants don’t need your help moving around…

…because #4, there is a massive seedbank in the soil already. Billions and billions! Japanese stilt grass seeds can survive up to seven years in dirt, waiting for the moment to strike. Wind, water, animals…there are seeds there already. If humanity vanished tomorrow, half our cities would be forests before the decade was out. So if nothing is growing in that vacant lot, the reason is probably…

#5 – Compacted soil is shit soil. I have been fighting for years with a hillside where the builders ran earthmoving equipment over it, and Nothing Grows. Not even weeds. Not even kudzu or stiltgrass or Japanese honeysuckle. It is hardpan. It is dead clay. Nature could fix it, but in a century or two. There are no worms, no microbes, no LIFE.

I’ve made great inroads, but not with plants. I had to fix SOIL. I tried seeds first, and what self-respecting seed would grow there? I dug in plants by hand, grimly. Most died. A few lived, but the toughest clay-busters nature can provide could not do more than occupy one small, hard-won clump.

I brought in dirt, compost, raked in leaves–not much, just an inch or two over the clay and that was enough. There are worms and microbes and the layer keeps the dead stuff moist and slowly it gets dug through and aerated by roots. It felt more like terraforming than gardening. A seed bomb on compacted soil is useless, unless you can find the very toughest pioneer species, the sort that are first to grow in abandoned quarries, and those don’t need help from guerrilla gardeners.

And even if you DID get the right seeds, it won’t matter because #6–seed bomb construction is desperately flawed. (Can’t speak to the one above, this is just the standard method.) The standard method is to pack seeds in damp clay, let them dry, and then throw them. Congratulations, you have killed a bunch of seeds!

The vast majority of seeds germinate when moist. A dry seed is a live seed, unless it gets wet, then it is a growing seed. If you dry it out immediately, you have killed that seed. You get one shot at germination if you’re a seed. No do-overs. Seeds can live in the pyramids and be viable, seeds can live in the fridge and be fine, seeds that get wet are done unless planted pronto. (Exceptions: those that require other, more specific triggers–fire, animal digestion, cold stratification, etc, and some few plant species adapted specifically to floodplains.)

Those paper cards with seeds in the paper, plant them, yay earth? Dead. Seeds are mixed with slurry pulp, get damp, dried out. Unless they pick the seeds very carefully, it’s just feel-good crap.

And now I have to go to breakfast, so part two: Why It Looks Like A Seed Bomb Worked will have to wait for a bit.

Part II: Ok, so Round Two!

“But RedWombat!” you say. “I made a seed bomb and stuff grew! Also there is no #3 in your rant!”

To which I say “shut up and let us troubleshoot your miracle.”

If you made a bomb and ran out the same day and flung it, the seeds didn’t dry out. If you threw it on soil that didn’t completely suck, that was not already overgrown with weeds, that was then gently watered by either moist ground or rainfall, if your seed bomb was not too densely packed or was a variety that tolerates close competition, then you may indeed have successfully grown a plant. If you picked your seeds carefully, there is even a chance that it’s not a corn poppy or some other short lived annual. This is basically why stuff sprouts under the birdfeeder.

Alternately, if you don’t specifically recognize the seeds you planted, then it was quite possibly stuff already in the soil bank and you’re taking credit for its hard work.

Now, nature is a mutha, and some seeds will survive terrible treatment through dumb luck or a tiny pocket of dryness or are a floodplain species or whatever. Or they land in the one tiny pocket of hard pan along the fence that’s loose because of the post-hole digger, and it rains at the right moment or whatever. But a seed would have ended up there ANYWAY. You could get the same effect dumping safflower over the fence, as above, except that the safflower has a far better chance of sprouting.

So, in conclusion, this is feel-good crap that lets nice but wrong people and smug Eco-bros feel like They’re Helping, when they aren’t, and there’s a dozen things you could do that DO help, but most of those are work and also don’t pay extra for the cards with seeds in them. If you’re going to green the world, there are very few quick fixes.

The end.

And there’s extra credit reading about working with hardpan soil in RedWombat’s third installment!

(6) RING MUSIC. Deborah J. Ross confesses “My Love Affair with the Music of The Lord of the Rings”.

When at long last it was my time to embark upon piano lessons, as a first-time older adult student, I grabbed a copy of the easy piano versions of The Lord of the Rings music. My goal was to play “Into the West.” I was one of those folks in the theater with tears down my cheeks as the song ended. But I was just starting out, I had zero self-confidence, and I wanted to make sure I had the skill to play it well. My teacher and I selected “In Dreams” (which is also the leitmotif for the hobbits) as one of my early pieces. Even in the easy version, it was a challenge. And it had words, words in a key within my limited vocal range.

Like others of my generation, I got caught in the folk scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and even taught myself a few chords on the guitar. Although I enjoyed singing in a group, I had become convinced I had a terrible voice. I remember being told as a child that I couldn’t sing. So of course, my voice was strained, thin, unreliable in pitch. With the piano to support my voice, however, along with lots of practice when no one else was in the house, not to mention having an encouraging teacher, I learned how to breathe more deeply and relax my throat. The higher notes became easier and more clear. I added other songs and vocal exercises, which helped my confidence. “Wow,” my teacher said after one class, “who knew you had such a voice?”

(7) Today In History

  • November 29, 1972Pong, a coin-operated video game, debuted.

(8) Today’s Birthday Boy

We’re still not sold on Turkish Delight, but thank you for Puddleglum and Mr. Tumnus, Mr. Lewis!

(9) Today’s Birthday Girl

Today marks the birthday of an author who forever changed the way we feel about time travel, alternate dimensions, and dark and stormy nights. Madeleine L’Engle was born on November 29th in New York City and started writing almost right away. Her first story was composed at age 8, and she went on to pen a universe of novels, poems, and non-fiction throughout her amazing and inspirational career.

(10) STAMOS OR SCALZI. John Scalzi’s poll “Does Teenage John Scalzi Look Like Teenage John Stamos?” crowdsources the answer to a question that has plagued John since he was a high schooler with a rock idol haircut.

In comments, David P. provides disturbing evidence that young Scalzi looked more like Snot from American Dad.

I can only hope David P. isn’t out there researching my look-alike….

(11) STARFLEET. At Future War Stories, a blog devoted to explaining the world of military science fiction — “Future Military Profiles: STARFLEET”.

Considering its size and complexity, Starfleet has a relatively straightforward ranking system for non-commissioned and commissioned personnel. For commissioned officers at attend the academy, they achieve the rank of Jr. Ensign, then Ensign, and by the time they graduate, they are Jr. Lieutenants.For the bulk of their early years in service, a majority of officers will remain within the Lieutenants grades. Once achieving the rank of Commander, it is a short trip to the big chair (well…not if you are Riker).

(12) JESSICA JONES SPOILER WARNING. “The 13 Most Epic Marvel Easter Eggs in Netflix’s ‘Jessica Jones’” at Yahoo! TV. The first Easter egg should be okay to quote, it’s not very spoiler-y.

  1. “And Then There’s the Matter of Your Bill”: Right off the bat, you know showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and the Jessica Jones team are going to provide plenty for comic fans to geek out over. One of the first scenes of the series is a shot-for-shot recreation of Jessica’s introduction in Alias #1, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos.

(13) X-MEN SPOILER WARNING. From ScienceFiction.com, “James McAvoy Hints At How Professor X Loses His Hair In ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’”. If you don’t want to know, don’t read! If you do want to know, well, I’m not sure this is really going to help…

But in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, McAvoy’s appearance will bring him more in line with Stewart’s.  Back in May, the actor tweeted a picture of himself having his head shaved for the film, indicating that even though he is a younger Xavier, he will actually go bald to more closely resemble his comic book counterpart.

How does this come about?  Well, as is the norm, details about this super hero flick are being kept tightly under wraps.  But while promoting his new movie ‘Victor Frankenstein’, McAvoy appeared on ‘The Graham Norton Show’ and did spill a tease about his character’s follicle metamorphosis:

“He ends up going through something so horrible and physically painful that he literally half pulls his hair out/half it falls out. Maybe, or maybe not…I just shit myself because I know Fox Studios who own me might be angry with me for sharing that.”

(14) CHARLIE BROWN. Since it’s a big favorite of mine, I hesitate to think about the Bizarro Charlie Brown special contemplated by the original producers. From “It’s your 50th television anniversary (and your 50th TV Christmas), Charlie Brown”.

Imagine “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with a laugh track and with adult actors providing the children’s voices. Now imagine it without Vince Guaraldi’s jazzy music and without Linus quoting the Bible, telling Charlie Brown what “Christmas is all about.”

Hard to imagine, isn’t it? There goes the charm. There goes the magic. And, perhaps, there go all of the animated Peanuts specials that followed this first one, including “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

But if even some of the producers’ early suggestions and the network’s preferences had been followed, the version of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that first aired on Dec. 9, 1965, wouldn’t have become a cherished classic. And, good grief, it would have been an hour special, rather than a half-hour

[Thanks to Michael J. Martinez, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Iphinome .]

177 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/29 Scroll to my pixel, click inside and read by the light of the moon

  1. I can think of nothing scarier right now than Peter Jackson trying to get his hands into trying to adapt The Silmarillion.

  2. The good thing about guineas is, they introduce yet another prime factor. Want to divide a pound (old money) evenly between three people? They get six and eightpence each. Want to divide it evenly between seven people? Eh, well, make it a guinea and give them three bob apiece. Try doing that with yer fancy-shmancy base ten currency, matey.

    (Do I sound like a curmudgeon? Probably. But old money was more fun, dammit. Where’s today’s proper equivalent of your dodecagonal thruppenny bit, eh? OK, it’s not often you need a dodecagon in a hurry, but better to have it and not need it….)

  3. For those of you following the MST3K Kickstarter campaign, Joel dropped a pretty big bombshell today–the last member of the cast is none other than Patton Oswalt, playing TV’s Son of TV’s Frank!

    At this point, they’re less than $30K from the next funding goal, so we’re almost certainly going to see no less than six episodes, I’m pretty excited.

  4. I’m not old enough to be nostalgic for pre-decimal currency, but I remember the decimal half-penny because it facilitated some small but tasty sweets. When it got withdrawn there was a funny period where various tiny sweets had to be priced at two for a penny before they got bulked up to be worth a full penny.

    As well as using guineas, horse racing perpetuates the “hand” as a unit for measuring horses height, and the furlong for distance.

  5. @ Stuart M

    I can think of nothing scarier right now than Peter Jackson trying to get his hands into trying to adapt The Silmarillion.

    You know, it wouldn’t bother me a bit–because I wouldn’t pay money to see the result.

    The first Hobbit film, we paid the extra money to see it in 3D in a first-run theater.

    The second Hobbit film, we saw it in a local second-run brewpub/theater for $3 or $4.

    The last Hobbit film, we waited until it showed up on HBO (which we were already paying for anyway) and watched it on TV.

    Anything Jackson did with The Silmarillion would need a lot of convincing for me to spend the time to watch it on TV at home. I really don’t think it could be worse than what he did to The Hobbit.

  6. Nothing scarier than Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Silmarillion? Try Uwe Boll’s adaptation of The Silmarillion.

  7. You know what? If they’re reviving Star Trek, they should really do it as three shows that occasionally cross over, a la Marvel.

    If you’re going to do multiple TREK shows at once, we really need STAR TREK: I MARRIED A HUMAN, a remake of the Burns & Allen Show focused on the early married life of Amanda and Sarek.

  8. An experienced actress (since she’d been performing on stage since the age of 10) yes, but not an adult.

    Did Portman ever play a character who seemed like her chronological age when she was a child actress? From The Professional on she was great at playing characters who had seen too much in their short years.

  9. Re DOCTOR STRANGE… that seems like a really thin excuse for an article. For all we know Gaiman had dinner with somebody at Marvel around that time during which the subject came up and somebody expressed some degree of enthusiasm.

    Or after Neil’s chat with del Toro, his agent called Marvel and no one ever got back to him.

    No one at any point seems to have said this was a formal anything. I had just been talking on Twitter about how I’d have liked to do something substantive with Clea if I was still doing substantive things at Marvel, because I see a lot of possibilities there, and Neil chimed in to say he’d wanted to write more Clea too, and it’d have been nice if Marvel had wanted to do this thing he and del Toro talked about.

    Nothing in there requires that anything much have actually happened.

    But on the Internet, “Hey, it would have been cool to do this thing” translated into “This project was a serious, under-way thing that almost happened.” Because nuance gets automatically stripped away immediately after something is posted.

  10. THe oddds of Peter Jackson being able to get the rights to film the Silmarillion are fairly low, I’d think.

    Christopher Tolkien (the executor of the Tolkien estate and the holder of copyright for The Silmarillion and the History of Middle-earth–Tolkien wasn’t happy with the copyright law restrictions!) hates Peter Jackson’s films as he said in this interview with a French newspaper (he apparently lives in France).

    Tolkien Society: will there be more films set in Middle-earth? Probably not any time soon

    Now at some point, Christopher will die, and it’s anybody’s guess which of Tolkien’s grandchildren will be named executor of the Estate.

    So, I”m not holding my breath.

    Why might Jackson have been reading the SILM (other than being a Tolkien fan)? One reason might be to doublecheck that he was using only Appendix material (which is Tolkien’s compromise with the fact that no publisher would publish his proposed version of the SILM with LOTR) that he did have rights to use in the film and not SILM material (the Tolkienist hired as consultant on TH was Janet Brennan Croft).

  11. The Silmarillion if ever made* as live-action would be better as episodic TV/cable series.

    *Not going to happen unless the Tolkien estate changes its mind. And even with the rights available, how would you go about trying to adapt that anyway? It’s such a mess. You might draw out specific strands & follow certain characters & their arcs for example, but the whole thing is such a disjointed (albeit glorious) mess as a narrative.

    There would be some terrific setpieces though:
    – Fingolfin wielding Ringil in single combat against Morgoth
    – The Fall of Nargothrond. Glaurung!
    – Ecthelion vs Gothmog in the Fall of Gondolin.
    – The War of Wrath!

  12. Medieval England had a gold coin called the noble which was worth six shillings and eightpence (one-third of a pound), and also used the mark (two-thirds of a pound) for accounting purposes. Financial records from the time often show sums ending in 6s 8d or 13s 4d.

  13. And of course two bob was a florin.

    Inconceivable!

    (and I saw Wallace Shawn on the Tube the other day, off to run rehearsals of his play at The National. I didn’t know he was a playwright, too.)

  14. Peter Jackson and The Silmarillion: he actually used much of it for the extra bits in The Hobbit.

    Now, if he was filming the early years of a certain Aylesbury prog rock band…

  15. I felt rather let down in that Galadriel did some serious fighting in the Lord of the Rings, and if they were going to add stuff in from the appendixes, as they did, then I would have liked to see her and Thranduil leading the attack on Dol Guldur, culminating in Galadriel throwing down its walls, laying it’s pits bare, and razing the fortress to the ground.

    It’s not much to ask, is it?

  16. But on the Internet, “Hey, it would have been cool to do this thing” translated into “This project was a serious, under-way thing that almost happened.” Because nuance gets automatically stripped away immediately after something is posted.

    CONFIRMED! By Kurt Busiek: The Gaiman/Del Toro Dr. Strange production was filmed and completed but will never be shown to the public; it’ll go into a vault right next to Del Toro’s completed & filmed Mountains of Madness.

  17. > “I would have liked to see her and Thranduil leading the attack on Dol Guldur, culminating in Galadriel throwing down its walls, laying it’s pits bare, and razing the fortress to the ground.”

    Wait, that WASN’T PART OF WHAT THEY ADDED? (I have not seen any of The Hobbit movies.)

    Then what the *&^*! was the POINT?

    I’d been assuming that was the only reason all the stuff from the appendices was added at all.

  18. Jackson doesn’t get elves at all.

    It’s better but not great with hobbits, and the whole old-fashionedness, the manners and the grim cleaving to your word and the grief at loss — the present is always less than the past — is lost completely.

    The Silmarillion itself could be done as five stories:
    — the silmarils, the fall of Feanor, the destruction the Two Trees, and the theft of the ships and the Flight of the Noldor (can end this one with the first rising of the moon!)
    — Narn i Hin Hurin, the Tale of the Children of Hurin (which starts with the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, as is where we get Hurin’s defiance of Morgoth, Glaurung the Golden, father of dragons, the death of Beleg, and the fall of Nargothrond. Plus the horrible depressing story of what happens to Túrin Turambar and Nienor the sorrowful.)
    — Beren and Luthien (Beren comes to Doriath and falls in love with Luthien; stealing the silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth, Luthien moving Mandos to pity, the death of Thingol, the departure of Melian and the sack of Doriath and the death of Dior Eluchil)
    — The Fall of Gondolin (Tuor and Idril, the flight to the mouths of Sirion after the destruction of Gondolin, the attack by the sons of Feanor to recover the silmaril, Earendil and Elwing, Elrond and Elros)
    — the War of Wrath; Morgoth is cast out the world, but Beleriand is drowned.

    All of this stuff is monumentally grim and operatic; you’d want someone with a good feel for Wagner, really. And you could do it justice in oh, thirty hours.

  19. Kyra

    It wasn’t, because it took place after the Hobbit, and during the final confrontation with Sauron and his allies; thus, the opportunity to demonstrate that Galadriel could serious kick butt, as written by Tolkien, was just ignored.

    I am striving to avoid bitterness about this, and fortunately I shall have something to really concentrate on tomorrow; the Guildhall Red Cross Christmas market, which makes spending lots of money for presents for me and everybody else downright dutiful. All of the money on stuff from the Worshipful Companies goes straight to the charity, which means zero guilt for me, and I get to buy gorgeous stuff at a discount

    So, early to bed, early to rise, makes Stevie a happy punter, once the caffeine sets in, heading for the market. Life is good…

  20. The extended version of the third Hobbit movie did have some additional footage of Galadriel, Elrond and Sauron rescuing Gandalf from Dol Guldur (with an assist from Radagast, whom I continue to believe must’ve crossed over from Discworld) and fighting Ringwraiths and, just at the end, Sauron himself.

    For some reason, when Galadriel invokes her power, she goes all green in the face like she did during her “Dark Queen” speech in Fellowship. That I could’ve done without; especially because that lighting makes her face look just … weird.

  21. Simon Bisson on November 30, 2015 at 3:00 pm said:
    Peter Jackson and The Silmarillion: he actually used much of it for the extra bits in The Hobbit.
    Now, if he was filming the early years of a certain Aylesbury prog rock band…

    I remember them most for their biggest hit “Kayleigh” about a mechanic with madskills and a sunny disposition who went on adventures in space with a bunch of ragtag fugitives, on a lonely quest—for a shining planet known as Earth.

    No, wait…

    @Graydon,
    That leaves out the “Ainulindalë”, which I could see working as an orchestral piece, and “Akallabêth” which is a whole other epic saga on its own. The rest are essentially DVD featurettes/extras.

  22. I had forgotten the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers; £5 for everything you can stuff into a plastic bag. For the benefit for people who don’t enjoy the craft arts, and therefore don’t know the prices, this is a seriously good deal.

    I’m trying not to drool, so fortunately the Worshipful Company of Launderers will be selling preloved towels etc; every luxury hotel has a strict rotation, long before anyone could think the stuff is looking a little tired it will be banished and new stuff brought in to replace it. The company sells it really cheaply at the Market…

  23. @Soon Lee —
    “The Silmarillion itself” was meant to indicate specifically “Quenta Silmarillion”, the stories specifically about the First Age and the War of the Jewels, rather than everything in the book published as “The Silmarillion”. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

    In a lot of ways, you could make a better TV mini-series out of Akalabeth; the fall of Numenor is much less developed and gives you more freedom of action and the actual important bits are all at the end, with the exception of Aldarion and Erendis, which could probably be omitted from a visual adaptation.

  24. @Stevie:

    Sighhhhh. The only craft market I’ve been invited to is in a super posh area and promises (I peeked at its artists’ prospectus) hordes of the areas most “upscale buyers”. It looks pretty but breathtakingly expensive.

    And none of it goes to charity anyway.

  25. Did Portman ever play a character who seemed like her chronological age when she was a child actress? From The Professional on she was great at playing characters who had seen too much in their short years.

    My impression was that The Professional was her first professional role, and I’m not sure Luc Besson was really looking for someone quite that young. So the unsettling performance that resulted was what got her typecast.

  26. All of this stuff is monumentally grim and operatic; you’d want someone with a good feel for Wagner, really. And you could do it justice in oh, thirty hours.

    Don’t give HBO any ideas.

  27. Kurt Busiek on November 30, 2015 at 2:15 pm said:

    If you’re going to do multiple TREK shows at once, we really need STAR TREK: I MARRIED A HUMAN, a remake of the Burns & Allen Show focused on the early married life of Amanda and Sarek.

    I would watch the hell out of this show. Make it so.

    (Watching ST as an adult, I’m struck by how many Vulcans are xenophobic assholes. In particular the Vulcan supremacist Captain in that godawful DS9 baseball episode…)

  28. Iron Fist: My main introduction to the character was in the fantastic Brubaker/ Fraction “The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven” * (, which based on some of the Easter Eggs from Daredevil Season 1, is roundabout where they’re basing things off. Couple of points: AFAIK, Iron Fist has generally been an unspecified martial artist – it’s Shang Chi, the Master of Kung Fu, who is tied to a specific art (as well as being Fu Manchu’s son!). Secondly, I really do think it would be better if either a) Rand is played by an Asian-American (IMO, it’s the American part that’s important to the character’s history) or b), Kun Lun is made less of a mystical Asian city, ie more melting pot-ish…

    Star Wars: Nothing to add re: the general Eurgh-ness of the prequels, but I ever so strongly recommend the current Star Wars comics that Marvel is putting out, especially, especially the Darth vader one (Star Wars: Darth Vader and Star Wars: Vader Down). It reallllly does a good job of showing what a force (pun semi-intended) he was**

    * – seriously – go read it. Iron Fist displays the deadly move known as the “Brooklyn Head-butt”

    ** – In a recent issue, the Rebel Alliance finds Vader in his lone TIE. Sends out 3 squadrons against him. After he takes almost all of them out and crashes on a nearby planet, the Alliance decides to send an entire brigade, with air support against him. It Does Not Go Well. The way it’s written and drawn is just amazing.

  29. I”ve been sidelined all day with car trouble and away from internet access. Now I’m back and getting to work.

    I hope somebody made some news…

  30. @Mike
    Here is the News. Someone has broken out Satellite Two.
    Here is the News. Look very carefully, it may be you, you, you…

  31. Mike, if you’re desperate for material I recently blogged a review of Jessica Jones and a consideration of whether Fermi’s Objection (née the Fermi Paradox) means the Singularity ain’t gonna happen either.

  32. I tried to do my own Star Wars rewatch ‘n blog over Thanksgiving, and discovered after enduring the entire prequel trilogy that my 10+ year old DVDs of the original trilogy refuse to play on my laptop (after tantalizing me with everything up to the garbage compactor scene).

    If I hadn’t been in such a foul mood from watching the prequel trilogy I probably would’ve just bought them again.

  33. What I find odd is recipes that are in metric—X grams of flour, Y grams of sugar, Z milliliters of water or milk—and then drop into customary units and ask for a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

    On the other hand, it saves guessing whether a recipe from England that asks for a pint of milk wants a U.S. or an imperial pint. We all use the same size grams and liters, and AFAIK there are no special imperial half teaspoons.

  34. Vicki, are teaspoons and tablespoons not defined in your locale? Tablespoons are 15ml in NZ, 20ml in Australia, so here in kiwiland it is important to check each cookbook’s definitions. Recipes tend to state quantities in multiples of the implement used to measure them, if practical.

  35. I was looking at a British recipe book that was quite proud of itself for having both metric and customary measurements, which was all well and good till it kept saying to add “a wine glass” of something.

    Uh? Not much of a standard there; I’ve got wine glasses of all shapes and sizes and the volume’s different in every single one! Small or large? Red or white? Still or sparkling? Pick a volume in ANY system, as long as it’s defined!

  36. Cally: Yes, Martha’s my sister. Actually, I’m visiting her at the moment. Shall I tell her you said hi? She’s hasn’t been writing SFF prose for a while; she’s been writing one-act plays.

    Oh, cool — a Hugo nominee and a Hogu nominee in the same family!

    She won’t know me from Adam, but yes, say “hi” from someone who is on a quest to read all of the Hugo and Nebula nominees/winners. My library has Nebulas 26, but sadly not any of the other books containing her works. I don’t suppose there’s any hope of an Arbitrary e-book? (a used one off Amazon presents some logistical difficulties for me, but it could be done)

  37. lurkertype: I was looking at a British recipe book that was quite proud of itself for having both metric and customary measurements, which was all well and good till it kept saying to add “a wine glass” of something… Uh? Not much of a standard there; I’ve got wine glasses of all shapes and sizes and the volume’s different in every single one! Small or large? Red or white? Still or sparkling? Pick a volume in ANY system, as long as it’s defined!

    I’m pretty sure what they mean there is that the cook should have a nice glass of wine whilst preparing the dish.

  38. Watching ST as an adult, I’m struck by how many Vulcans are xenophobic assholes.

    Diane Duane wrote something close to that into ‘Spock’s World’.

  39. I”ve been sidelined all day with car trouble and away from internet access.

    What an incredible thrill!
    (Been there, done that. I still remember the morning I was going up the street to put gas in the car, before heading to work, and the timing chain broke. Shot the entire day, right there, and it was the first day with new managers at work. Long before cell phones, too, so all the phone calls were a problem.)

  40. JJ: Well, it’s not like that really needs to be in a recipe, everyone knows that. But they were saying to add a wine glass full of liquid (I think water?) to the dish. Now why you’d measure water with a wine glass is another conundrum.

  41. Late as always so most has already been covered but to respond to direct replies:

    @Jack Lint

    Nothing scarier than Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Silmarillion? Try Uwe Boll’s adaptation of The Silmarillion.

    Please, some of us struggle to sleep as it is!

    @John Lorentz

    Anything Jackson did with The Silmarillion would need a lot of convincing for me to spend the time to watch it on TV at home. I really don’t think it could be worse than what he did to The Hobbit.

    I saw the first movie and lost all interest in seeing the others in any form. The reviews coming out did nothing to sway me otherwise. Which is a shame, because curious as to how CumberSmaug went. I don’t want the Tolkien Estate to let him get his paws on it (/the Silmarillion) because I have no faith in him sincerely trying to make a faithful adaption as he did with the LOTR trilogy, regardless of what you thought of those movies themselves. However yes, I get your point that it probably wont affect those already disillusioned toward him now.

    Just trying to choose a story from it is a task in itself, I mean do you just focus on Beren and Luthien vs Morgoth? Fall of Gondolin? Elves becoming raging kinslayers? Eärendil and the Silmaril (via Coleridge)? Or do you go further back and the Fantasia-esque creation of Ea? Numenorean’s history and corruption by Sauron?

    And that’s just what I remember, think others gave a better summary.

  42. A “standard” serving of wine is four fluid ounces or half a cup, so that… might?… be a “wine glass.” Or maybe you’re supposed to use a bigger glass, add it a little at a time, and then drink the rest of it once the dish looks right. I do something like that when I make hamburgers with beer in them and always get good results, though maybe the kids might argue that I just get tipsy enough to think I’ve gotten good results.

  43. JJ asked me to repost this when it was Tuesday December 1 in the right timezone, and that happened just over half an hour ago: it’s now midnight:37. (I’ve also posted something similar over at Scalzi’s blog. He was kind enough to say I could even though it’s not his charitable giving day thread yet, because of the time-limited nature of the matching fund. So here it is:

    You may remember me mentioning that I volunteer at a food pantry. The Elmhurst Yorkfield Food Pantry is currently building a new, purpose-built food pantry to replace the terrible, tiny, not-very-accessible but better-than-nothing old cottage basement we used to operate out of. The new building is mostly built (hurray for getting rid of the Terrifying Stairs that shattered a volunteer’s leg!), but can still use money for fittings, operating costs, and being able to buy food for pennies on the dollar from the Northern Illinois Food Bank. The pantry allows patrons to “shop” for groceries by choosing their own from the shelves, rather than, like many pantries, just handing out bags of food and hoping nobody is allergic or hates peas or whatever.

    If you have any available money in your charity budget, on-line contributions given at http:/eyfp.org/how-to-donate/ on #Giving Tuesday, December 1, will provide individuals a one-day opportunity to receive a match of $1 for each $2 of donation. The match is made possible by Thing 1-2-3 Foundation which is sponsoring EYFP’s #Giving Tuesday campaign.

    Thank you.

    (Note: the pictures on their website are of the old, cramped, cottage basement. We’re all really looking forward to moving into the new building, which will even have a little waiting room so clients can wait for their turn to “shop” out of the rain and snow!)

  44. John Lorentz: Anything Jackson did with The Silmarillion would need a lot of convincing for me to spend the time to watch it on TV at home. I really don’t think it could be worse than what he did to The Hobbit.

    Stuart M: I saw the first movie and lost all interest in seeing the others in any form

    I started to watch the first movie on an international flight, fairly soon after it was released. So it’s been a while and I can’t be more specific, but I remember rolling my eyes repeatedly and thinking that Jackson had designed the film specifically to appeal to 12-year-old boys.

    When it got to the scene where they were singing and throwing crockery which went on and on and on (and if this gives any clue about how horrible it was, YouTube tells me the song is only 1.5 minutes long, unless for some reason that scene was longer in the version I was watching), I said “Screw this, there is a list of numerous films in the catalog I want to see, and this is clearly not one of them”.

  45. final nanowrimo count 68915 words. I’d hoped to make it an even 69000 before midnight my time, but it was not to be.

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