(1) The Onion reports a major addition to the movie ratings scheme.
WASHINGTON—In an effort to provide moviegoers with the information they need to determine which films are appropriate for them to see, the Motion Picture Association of America announced Tuesday the addition of a new rating to alert audiences of movies that are not based on existing works.
According to MPAA officials, the new “O,” or “Original,” designation will inform viewers that a particular film contains characters with whom they are unfamiliar, previously unseen settings, and novel plots. The rating will also reportedly serve as a warning of the potentially disorienting effects associated with having to remember characters’ names for as many as two hours and the discomfort that can occur when one is forced to keep track of narrative arcs for an entire film.
The MPAA’s new O rating will appear on all movies containing explicitly original, unadapted, and unfamiliar material.
(2) In a day devoted to Back To The Future nostalgia, Bill Higgins would like to remind everyone that Ronald Reagan “smuggled a quote from the film into an important speech to Congress.” C-SPAN has the clip, from Reagan’s 1986 State of the Union address.
Reagan also liked the movie’s joke about him being president – according to the Wikipedia he ordered the projectionist of the theater to stop the reel, roll it back, and run it again.
(3) Here’s a link to BBC video of the Back To The Future day unveiling for a Belfast university’s electric-powered DeLorean project.
(4) And in (wind) breaking news — “Michael J. Fox arrested for insider sports betting”
Fox aroused suspicion after achieving a statistically-impossible, perfect record on the site under the username NoChicken.
Authorities found an unusually worn copy of a sports almanac which was just recently printed and which has markings cataloging winning bets Fox has placed since the late 80’s.
(5) Today’s Birthday Girls:
- Born October 21, 1929 — Ursula K. Le Guin celebrates her 86th birthday today.
- Born October 21, 1956 – Carrie Fisher, famous for portraying Princess Leia onscreen, and author of the bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge.
(6) New York Mets fan James H. Burns is flying high. He has some tales you’ve never heard before in “The Curious Case of Daniel Murphy” on the local CBS/New York website.
(7) Steven H Silver, on the other hand, is suffering and reminds people about his 2008 article for Challenger, ”I Call It Loyalty, Others Call It Futility”.
Several years ago, I spent two summers working at Wrigley Field. When most people say something like this, it means that they sold beer or peanuts during the games (which is what my brother-in-law did). I did something different.
On Sundays during the season, when the Cubs are playing on the road, Wrigley Field is open for tours for a minimal charitable donation (at the time $10, which goes to Cubs Care Charities). I spent two summers giving tours of the ballpark. The tours included the standard places open to the public, like the concourse under the stands, the stands, and the bleachers, but also non-public areas like the press box, the visitor and home team locker rooms, and the security office. Two of my more interesting memories were getting to watch a Cubs game on television from within the confines of the visitor’s locker room and escorting a woman out to the warning track in center field so she could scatter her husband’s ashes.
The tours, of course, included information and trivia about the Cubs’ history and the stadium’s history. The tour guides were pretty good on the whole and worked to debunk legends and stories about the field while presenting information in an interesting and memorable manner.
(8) Ken Marable says the 2016 Hugo recommendation seasons begins November 2 – at least on his blog, which is coincidentally named 2016 Hugo Recommendation Season: The Non-Slate: Just Fans Talking About What They Love. For the first week he’ll focus on the Best Semiprozine category.
(9) The Wall Street Journal’s “Dan Rather, Still Wrong After All These Years” opines —
The movie ‘Truth’ is as bogus as the original attempt to smear George W. Bush’s wartime service.
Seeing that brought to mind my article about Gary Farber in File 770 #144 [PDF file] where I mentioned Farber’s then-recent participation in outing that fraud:
Within hours of “60 Minutes” purported exposé of memos by George W. Bush’s old Air National Guard commander, people were blogging away with accusations that the documents were forged because the text could not have been produced on typewriter likely to have been in use at a Texas military office in 1971, if indeed it could have been produced by anything besides Microsoft Word. Gary’s analysis showed no one knows better than a fanzine fan about the capabilities of 1970s-era business typewriters.
Another paragraph in my article praised Gary for a quality still missing from most political discourse today:
Amygdala shows how disagreement can be handled without loathing, and that evidence is more important than orthodoxy, two notions practically extinguished from the rest of the Internet in 2004. I’ve always been more conservative than a lot of fannish friends and favorite sf writers, finding the contrast informative and fascinating. Yet in 2004, I had to drop off two fannish e-mail lists to escape the constant spew of venomous political nonsense, and tell two individuals to quit sending me their mass-copied clippings. So not sharing too many of Gary’s political views, one of the pleasures I find in reading Amygdala is how his provocative viewpoints are expressed in a way that values the reader’s humanity regardless of agreement.
(10) Bob Milne reviews Larry Correias’s new Son of the Black Sword at Speculative Herald.
Larry Correia is an author best known for his guns-and-monsters, no-holds barred, testosterone-soaked urban fantasy sagas, Monster Hunter International and the Grimnoir Chronicles. For those who were curious as to how he’d make the transition from guns to swords, Son of the Black Sword is pretty much everything you’d expect, with his macho sense of almost superhuman bravado slipping well into a pulpy heroic fantasy world.
(11) What a wonderful alternate universe it could be…
https://twitter.com/ann_leckie/status/656881220060585985
(12) Mayim Biyalik on “My Sort-Of Acting Method”.
I’m not a real actor. Well, actually, I guess that’s not fair – what I mean is I’m not a trained actor. Many actors you love and see on TV and in movies studied acting for real. Like, some of them even have degrees in acting and stuff. I call those people “real actors.”
I have never studied acting in a class or in school or in college. I don’t know Stanislavsky from Uta Hagen or method acting from acting that isn’t method. It’s all Greek to me. But I do have a method of my own, from my almost 30 years being employed as an actor, and trained actors I know tell me my ‘method’ actually is a sort of method. So there you have it.
The scene I had with Jim Parsons in this past week’s episode of “The Big Bang Theory” (Season 9, Episode 5, “The Perspiration Implementation”) was a very emotional one. I cried the first time we rehearsed it and each time we showed it to our writers and producers. (Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it.)
(13) “You too can learn to farm on Mars” promises the article.
“Congratulations! You are leaving Earth forever,” the case study begins. “You are selected to be part of a mining colony of 100 people located on the planet Mars. Before you head to Mars, however, you need to figure out how to feed yourself and your colleagues once you are there.”
The task is similar to that of Watney, who has to grow food in an artificial habitat after he is separated from his mission crew in a Martian windstorm. “Mars will come to fear my botany powers,” he boasts.
“Farming In Space? Developing a Sustainable Food Supply on Mars” can be found here. Teaching notes and the answer key are password protected and require a paid subscription to access.
(14) NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars photographed Earth on January 31 using the left-eye camera on its science mast. See a video of Curiosity’s Earth-from-Mars images here.
(15) Makes yourself clean and shiny before lining up to see the new Star Wars movie with the help of these Darth Vader and R2-D2 showerheads.
What are the major differences between the Vader and R2 model? Aside from the price, the lowest setting on the Darth Vader showerhead makes water run from the mask’s eye sockets, allowing you to bathe in Sith Lord remorse. This model also provides a handle, leaving less of your bathing up to the Force.
Darth Vader has a handle, but I don’t know that I would want to aim Darth’s tears at any vulnerable body parts….
(16) Last night Camestros Felapton staked out his spot in comments with this video is about fours waking.
[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, Bill Higgins, Will R., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]
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Very droll, but I don’t think I could bear looking at that Darth Vader showerhead in the shower.
I’m sitting here watching the Cubs go down in flames. Bottom of the eighth, down 1 to 8.
Yup. That’s the Cubs I’ve known all my life.
In the immortal words, thirty years ago, of Cubs game announcer Jack Brickhouse, “any team can have a bad century.”
ObSF content: Back the the Future II was fiction.
<sigh>
Isn’t this about the time people start scrambling to be the fifth poster? Where is everybody?
ETA: Oh hi, Cassy B, I didn’t see you there.
(Taps fingers impatiently)
@Meredith, ok, ok, just to make you happy since you’ve had a bad day. Fifth!
(Now we’re at the top of the ninth; Mets 8, Cubs 3. <sigh> )
Are there any perennial losing sports teams in England? The sort of team that, if they won a major event, it would be a sign of the coming apocalypse?
Thank goodness that’s taken care of.
Also:
One Ink Nineteen. Or something.
At Worldcon after the Space Opera panel I was getting One Ink Cartel’s signature, and I asked her a question that had been in the back of my mind since the first book: whether the last name of the multiple-personality Aanander Mianaai was a play on Me-and-I. She said no, it [the homonym] had never even occurred to her until someone else had mentioned it to her. I still have to wonder whether it wasn’t a subconscious choice.
Or maybe it’s just a Sekrit Klue about the One Ink Cartel.
Clicky.
It’s 4700 A.D. and I need some sleep.
Darth Vander?
R2-DS?
Have you been typing in the shower again, Mike?
OS X El Capitan downloading onto the blogging machine. Trying not to go on web 🙂
re: no. 15–The R2D2 showerhead is far less creepy. (Same site, just scroll down past Vader’s.)
Is there some way of posting a photo from Photobucket in comments?
“Best semiprozine” is another one of those categories that seems very ripe for abuse. There are very few people (I think) in any sort of position to compare one to another, so a fairly small slate-team could easily make sure their favorite made the list.
I suppose the flip side is that it might be a rather unsatisfying category to take over. Last year the puppies didn’t bother to list more than one (Orson Scott’s, naturally).
So I am single… if I get a Darth Vadar shower head, should I still try to get shower sex when I bring a woman home? Or should I thoroughly avoid the shower until the next morning? I have a hunch I would be sleeping alone if a woman saw that. Still tempting to buy it… but note to self take it down before you bring someone over.
About the Cubs… when I found out they made the playoffs I did the smart thing, I prepped food and survival goods. We all know if the cubs win the World Series its a sign of the coming of the anti-christ. The Cubs cannot win a world series. The Clippers fans need something to look down on.
Morris Keesan: Those were a couple of silly typos — thanks for catching them.
@Cassy B
Awww 🙂
That would be the England national football (soccer) team.
Guess: So I am single… if I get a Darth Vadar shower head, should I still try to get shower sex when I bring a woman home? Or should I thoroughly avoid the shower until the next morning? I have a hunch I would be sleeping alone if a woman saw that.
If a Darth Vader shower head scares a woman off, she’s not the right kind of woman. </SFFism>
@Greg Hullender:
My hope is that by giving each category equal attention, some of the “down ticket” ones can get more interest come nomination time. Unlike many others, there is actually a pretty clear (and somewhat manageable) list of eligible publications at semiprozine.org (compare to all potential short stories, or all potential novels, even, and it’s actually nice to have a clear list!).
However, that really only works if people take the time to post what they think of their favorite semiprozines! No real need to compare them at all yet. Just read one or a few and post a review somewhere of what you liked about it/them. 🙂 If we get enough people doing that, then we can each get some sense of what might work for us individually and what won’t. THEN we can get to comparing and nominating. Right now, it’s all just talking about what we like and, most importantly, why.
And thanks, Mike, for the inclusion in the Pixel Scroll! Only been participating in the Hugos for a few years, but after seeing how important the nomination process is and how hard it is to know what good works are out there in some of the less popular categories, I’m hoping to build the “Recommendation Season” into a thing to encourage people to talk about what they like. If it’s about the works, let’s talk about the works! 🙂
(So, please in the next couple weeks, it’d be awesome if people took a look at some semiprozines – again conveniently listed at semiprozine.org, no relation to my site – and then that first week of November talk about what you liked – in blog posts, on review sites, wherever. It’d be great to get a wave of fans all talking about that category during that week. Thanks!!)
On Back to the Future Day, I find this bit from the #144 Editorial to be more than a little prescient:
[Trufen.net] proved not be the web-based version of the list I was seeking… but something much more wonderful than that – a fan news website that pursues fresh stories every day. It’s captured my enthusiasm and I’ve become a contributor as well…
How rare it is to find a site with a clean visual transition, that doesn’t erupt with a rainbow cacophony of tiny graphics as soon as the link is clicked. Also impressive is [the editor’s] dedication to the work of writing fresh news. Such discipline is characteristic of bloggers, yet surprisingly few sf/fanews websites proactively search out events and information instead of waiting for press releases…
A good newzine editor thinks up questions and pursues the answers, he doesn’t just fish on the surface. Fans want news delivered with a storyteller’s touch, and with a sensitivity to connections and historical significance. Each editor does that in a personal way – the reason multiple fannish newzines can thrive at the same time and have overlapping audiences.
Trufen.net, sadly, is no more – but I could say those words about File770 today, and they would be just as true.
File770 Editorial: As is also the problem with efanzines, it’s rare that articles on Trufen generate much response, and then the response is more likely to be about something other than the content of the article.
*snort*
Wait, what! Is File770 ending? It’s only 978 AD. We should still have centuries left!
JJ: “Trufen.net, sadly, is no more – but I could say those words about File770 today, and they would be just as true.”
Soon Lee: Wait, what! Is File770 ending? It’s only 978 AD. We should still have centuries left!
The words I quoted above that statement are true about File770 – not the part about being “no more”.
Sheesh. Everybody’s a f*cking critic.
So, can anyone conjure up a copy of the “I Trust Gary Farber” post?
::tick::
“Makes yourself clean?” I think the concept of showering with Vader tears really hurt Mike’s brain. The R2 one is much cuter.
Marty arrived on Oct. 21, 2015 to save us from the bad timeline, and Oct. 21, 2015 the Cubs are losing. Another way in which that movie was predictive.
Here in 6109, I’m still chuffed that a regular Filer now goes by the nickname I’ve always thought of him as. Congrats, Mark-kitteh.
I’ve been looking and I can find no fiction published by Natasha Pulley before The Watchmaker. Anyone know anything different?
Campbell anyone?
BTW she has another novel in the works, set in the same world.
Interview w/Pulley
(13) It’s Pootatoes, obviously.
(15) May the froth be with you?
(8) Linked from that article is The Semiprozine Directory, with a warning it might be out of date. Just looking through the list I can see I’ve read a fair number of things from Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Gate, GigaNotoSaurus, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Uncanny, plus at least some things from Shimmer, Crossed Genres Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. So I guess I’ve got quite a few things to Have Opinions About.
Here in 8715, the future has already come back.
Isn’t this about the time people start scrambling to be the fifth poster? Where is everybody?
We are all fifth.
Ack! Wrong thread. I haven’t even read this scroll yet.
Good morning, all!
@lurkertype
If I ever add something to my username, it’ll be a grave disappointment to someone.
@Susana
A likely story! We can spot a cunning ticky plot a mile off here in 2340 🙂
@Cassy B
Perennial losing teams in England? Depending on the sport, England itself.
A while ago, a very small football club became the byline for “obscure team no-one has ever heard of” because of a TV ad with the lines “Accrington Stanley, who are they?” and “Exactly.”
And to go back to Back in the U.S.S.A, spoken of here some months before, the story Abdication Street features the 1972 European Cup final between Zenit St Petersberg and Accrington Stanley, as Charles, Duke of Cornwall, falls in love with Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter.
English sport (and pretty much anywhere outside North America) doesn’t do the concept of franchise teams, so any perennial losers will find themselves relegated (dropped to the minor leagues?) until they hit the right level.
Teams hardly ever move city either. Wimbledon FC moved to Milton Keynes, becoming MK Dons, but dropped a couple of divisions as support and so gate receipts dropped.
Guys, a really decent person needs help
https://www.gofundme.com/fundsforrochita
If you need more incentive, it would also be a poke in the eye to this selfish shit, full of empathy for her victims as always
https://twitter.com/benjanun_s/status/657065922188808192
I find your lack of soap disturbing.
I have altered the area of my scrubbing. Pray I do not alter it further.
Obi Wan never told you what happened to your loofah.
Impressive. Most Impressive. Obi Wan has taught you well. You have controlled the slippery bottle. Now release your shampoo. Only this brand can destroy dandruff.
@Mark: Well, it could have been a cunning ticky plot, if’ I had actually ticked.
Here in 4126, we still haven’t fixed absent-mindedness.
I wittered about Matt Wallace’s new novella yesterday, so it’s probably ironic that he wrote a blog post about how people wittering about books is the best publicity!
@Nick Pheas
Genius!
junego: I’ve been looking and I can find no fiction published by Natasha Pulley before The Watchmaker. Anyone know anything different?
According to isfdb, this is her first spec fic publication. isfdb’s not 100%, but it does pretty well; usually, if anything’s missing, it’s the most recent entry.
Several bios on the internet, including her publisher’s, state that TWoFS is her first novel.
She’s got an interesting essay here on why it’s harder for fantasy than it is for science fiction to do sufficient worldbuilding in a short fiction piece.
@Ann Somerville – Oh my God. What was it a wise and thoughtful and objective person said about her back at the time that whole thing broke? That it was highly unlikely RH would continue to be a ‘poisonous asshole’ after all that exposure? Such keen foresight! Seems appropriate to mention it on the day after Back To The Future Day.
Best wishes to Ms Loenen-Ruiz.
Nigel, that person is full of shit about a lot of things, and especially on that subject.
Soon Lee, it occurs to me that my response here needed a winky-face. Sorry about that, I wasn’t pissed off (unless it was at my own failure to word things clearly).
Is it just me, or do the horrid staring eyes on that showerhead actually make it scarier than the real Vader?
@Steve Wright – it won’t be scary when the hiss of water starts to sound like breathing and hot watery fingers close around your neck.
I’ve been mostly lurking for months, and it’s a Darth Vader shower head that starts me commenting again?
Soap, I am your lather.
@Nigel
Clearly the temptation of the Dark Side was too much for you.
Here in the year 6836, one of the few things we remember from the days of Sad and Rabid Puppies is that October 22nd is John C Wright’s birthday.
Although I’m an ex-pat NYer, I was and am always a Giants/Yankees fan, not a Jets/Mets fan. I wouldn’t have minded the Cubs getting to the World Series at all. If the Botox (Red Sox) can have their curse broken, so can the Cubs…
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO my eyes!
I’m going to wash that padawan right out of my hair.
(How am I remembering all this stuff?)
@Ann Somerville:
Toxic doesn’t even begin to cover it. Suddenly, I’m feeling all kindly and forgiving towards the puppies.
JJ:
Thanks! That is interesting, even if every single thing in it is wrong.
This is my counter-argument: Le Guin.
In 6379 (I’m so happy the time machine is finally working for me) we’re celebrating a pan-galactic holiday in Le Guin’s honor.
Shampoo leads to lather
Lather leads to rinse
Rinse leads to repeat
Here in 7799 John C Wright is credited with the first manned flight, which may be the result of a mix-up.
Also God Stalk
There is no rinse, only repeat.
Avoid getting shampoo in your Jedis.
Also,
The Day the Scroll Stood Still.