Pixel Scroll 12/3 The God Stalk De-Steams The Gnocchi

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(1) SPELLING BEE. Blake Hennon has the answers in “Is it Wookie or Wookiee? The Times’ definitive ‘Star Wars’ style guide” at the Los Angeles Times.

When most people think of “Star Wars” style, Princess Leia’s side-buns hairdo and white robe or Darth Vader’s fearsome black helmet and cape probably come to mind. For copy editors, it’s more likely how to punctuate a jumble of words such as Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope or whether to spell Chewbacca’s species as Wookie or Wookiee.

With the venerable space opera about to start bringing new stories to the big screen at the planned rate of one per year — and the upcoming fleet’s worth of Times stories that will cover all the developments and details of the on- and off-screen “Star Wars” saga — The Times’ copy desk decided it would help in editing to have an organized guide to facts, names and terms that might appear in our coverage.

I volunteered to put it together, and relied on the films; Lucasfilm’s publicly available databank; the Academy Awards’ database; images of officially licensed products; and Times precedence, stories, style rules and tendencies (which sometimes override other groups’ preferences). To answer the questions above: “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope”; Wookiee.

(2) MORE STYLE. In the same spirit, but by a different creator as far as I can tell —

(3) FAN SERVICE. Mark Hamill goes undercover as a stormtrooper (one word) on Hollywood Blvd. to raise awareness for the Omaze charity that’s giving away a chance to win two tickets to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere in exchange for a $10 donation. The contest ends in less than two days.

(4) FROM HEADCANON TO THE SCREEN. “7 fan theories so good they actually came true” at RadioTimes.

  1. The Doctor’s Tardis is supposed to have 6 pilots

Considering he’s a centuries-old genius and Time Lord, the Doctor always did seem to have a bit of trouble piloting his Tardis – but fans had a solution for why that could be (apart from it being an obsolete Type 40, of course).

Given the time machine’s central console was hexagonal (and all the controls therefore couldn’t be reached at any one time), could it be that the Tardis was intended for not one, but six pilots?

This fun idea circled around for a while and made some appearance Doctor Who spin-off media before it was finally embraced by the main series in 2008, with David Tennant’s Doctor enlisting all his friends to help pilot the time machine in series 4 finale Journey’s End.

(5) THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT. “It’s what’s on Mark Watney’s smartphone,” says Will R.

Through a new service (“IFTTT Blog – Houston, we have liftoff”) you can get things like a notification when the season changes on Mars.

(6) BE YOUR OWN ANT FARM. Becky Chambers remembers playing an ancient PC game: “Extended Memory: SimAnt”.

Despite the complexities, my task was clear: recruit as many followers as I could, then march into enemy territory. “Oh my god,” a distant voice in my head said. “This is a Zerg rush…with ants.” I do not know what this voice meant. As an ant, I am ignorant of such things.

(7) SUBCONTINENTAL COMICS. Henry Jenkins “In Search of Indian Comics (Part Three): I Mean, Really, Where Are They?”

So, here’s the bottom line: India has a new generation of gifted graphic storytellers, who are doing comics that speak in direct and powerful ways to the country’s politics, comics that experiment with new visual languages for comics, often drawn from the country’s rich and diverse folk traditions. These artists are slowly but surely producing work that people should be paying attention to. But, you can’t really find them in Indian bookstores when you go looking and they are not making their way into comics specialty shops in the United States. If you want to find India comics, you have to look online.

(8) KEG BUST. Andrew Porter says, “This almost (not really) makes up for HPL’s bust no longer being the World Fantasy Award….”  Lovecraft Reanimator Helles Lager from Narragansett Beer.

The History: HP Lovecraft’s ‘Herbert West—Reanimator’ and the 1985 film adaptation, Re-Animator, are horror fan favorites. In the story, Dr. West and his accomplice experiments with human reanimation by injecting fresh corpses with a serum meant to bring the dead back to life. We wanted to create a serum to resurrect one of our own; our beloved Bock beer.

 

Reanimator beer

(9) TOR PICKS 2015 BEST. “Tor.com Reviewers’ Choice: The Best Books of 2015” picked by Jared Shurin, Alyx Dellamonica, Liz Bourke, Nial Alexander, Mavesh Murad, Amal El-Mohtar, Alex Brown, Caitlyn Paxson, Stefan Raets, Theresa DeLucci, and The G. (Naomi Novik’s Uprooted is prominently mentioned by several contributors.)

Liz Bourke

…I know what my two absolute favourites of the year are, though. Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory (Tor) and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Mercy (Orbit) tie for first place in my heart. One is an adventure story in a steampunk-influenced city on the American Pacific coast in the late 19th-century, whose eponymous protagonist finds herself running headfirst into all kinds of peril—including international espionage plots—while falling in love with another young woman. The other is the capstone of a fantastic trilogy about power and personhood, and what you do with what’s done to you: it brings all its threads together, and ties them up in a conclusion that’s as perfect as it is unexpected. If you’re only going to read two novels published this year, my recommend is read them.

(10) T-SHIRT TNG. Have you been there, done that? Now own the t-shirt!

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

(11) HOLD MORE MEETINGS. At Open Culture,“Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with ‘Purposeful Stupidity’ (1944)”

Will R. demurs, “I have no comment on whether this applies to anything currently under discussion in the world of science fiction.”

(12) OBITUARY. SF Site News reports artist Jon Arfstrom died on December 2. Arfstrom is believed to have been the last of the classic Weird Tales cover artists to be alive.

(13) GEEK PARENT MUCH? The MarySue has you covered with “Baby’s First Con: A Geek Parent Survival Guide”

Lesson 3: Prepare Line Distractions

Lines and waiting are a fact of life with cons. This is easy when you’re child-free and have access to your phone/book/daydreams/whatever. But with a baby, wait times are an event in themselves. Most parents—and hopefully that includes you—have some tricks that can be parsed out over time to try and keep the baby occupied. A good idea is to prep for the con like you would for a long road trip: have new toys/books to spring forward, and use whatever tricks you have up your sleeve. For example, our daughter is fantastic when getting hand-fed small snacks (Cheerio’s, Yums, etc.). We made sure we had an inventory of these and used them as our first go-to when she started to get impatient, albeit at about half the speed we’d normally feed them. We also got lucky in that our baby recognized some of the characters we’ve introduced her to thanks to the cosplayers, so we could point out Batman and catch her interest for a few minutes.

(14) DON’T TELL BRAD TORGERSEN. Cracked.com lists “6 Depressing Realities Of Writing Young Adult Fiction”. First up: Oh noes! You can’t tell a YA book by its cover!

#6. Covers And Titles Are Often Shameless Lies

There’s an old saying about judging a book by its cover; we’re not sure how it goes, but it doesn’t matter because titles and covers both appear to be generated completely at random. At least, in the world of Young Adult novels. Jack named his latest book The Librarian. At the publishers’ request, it became Double Agent. A little editing later, and the title was Escape From Besmar. A little more, and that was subbed out in favor of the catchier Springheel. At one point, the title was Black Sheep. Then Three Bags Full. Then Three Bombs Full. Then, at last, they settled on a title that pleased everyone: Switchblade.

The book is currently available under the title The Cut Out….

(15) XENA. Lucy Lawless on the “Xena” revival, her new show and seizing life with both hands at Women in the World.

But with the apparent revival of Xena in the wings, fans and media want to know, will she return as the legendary character she brought to life two decades ago?

…So the question of Lucy Lawless’s age, 47, is central to the Xena reboot, raising obvious retorts: Harrison Ford, 73, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 68, and Bruce Campbell, 57, are all reprising action hero roles they played in their youth without any criticism or complaints being raised about their age.

Lawless won’t go on a rant about it. She shrugs it off, half kidding: “They’ll give the Xena role to a 27-year-old.’’

It’s been 20 years since Xena: Warrior Princess was launched and became the top-rated syndicated TV program in the United States and a highly popular franchise across 108 countries. The character of Xena emerges from a dark past to defend the oppressed, fighting gods, warlords and kings, and living outside the conventional definitions of masculine and feminine. The series ended after six years, in 2001, with the brutal death of Xena, her head cut off, her body turned to ashes. Outraged fans have since cried out for a resurrection and, obliging, NBC plans to reboot Xena and has tapped Rob Tapert to re-develop it.

Problem is, Lawless knows nothing about it. She was blindsided when the news about a Xena revival leaked. A woman with The Hollywood Reporter asked her about the reboot plans, but Lawless denied it. “I thought she was misinformed,’’ she says now. “It was I who was misinformed.’’

(16) GoT TEASER? The Game of Thrones Season 6 teaser. I can confidently say I didn’t understand it. But io9 seems to. Maybe you will, also.

(17) CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME. Cards Against Humanity went offline on Black Friday and offered customers the ability to buy nothing for $5. They got nearly $72.000… most of which they spent on themselves!

11,248 people gave us $5, and 1,199 people gave us more than $5 by filling out the form more than once. One enthusiastic fan gave us $100. In the end, we made a windfall profit of $71,145.

Cards Against Humanity is known for our charitable fundraising – since 2012 we’ve raised nearly $4 million for organizations we love like Worldbuilders, the Sunlight Foundation, the EFF, DonorsChoose.org, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Chicago Design Museum. We even started a $500,000 full-ride scholarship for women getting degrees in science.

There’s been a lot of speculation about how we would spend the money from Black Friday, and we’re happy to announce that this time, we kept it all. Here’s what we bought….

(18) ROLLING STONE. Star Wars fatigue is probably setting in already, but Rolling Stone has good interviews with several major cast members (plus a few spoilers, of course) in “’Star Wars’ Strikes Back: Behind the Scenes of the Biggest Movie of the Year”.

“The world is so horrible,” says Mark Hamill, Luke’s closest earthly representative, sitting in the shadow of swaying trees in his rather pleasant Malibu yard. At 64, Hamill is older than Alec Guinness was in the first Star Wars, and is in the process of regrowing a distinctly Obi-Wan-ish beard. “Between the Middle East and gun violence and global warming and racism, it’s just horrible. And people need this. It’s therapeutic.”

The “this” in question is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, out on December 18th and directed by geek hero J.J. Abrams, fresh from rebooting the Star Trek franchise.

(19) ANCIENT SPECIAL. And if you weren’t fatigued before, well, just watch the elusive Star Wars Christmas Special from that bygone era….

(20) MUSICAL INTERLUDE. I remember hearing the song on Doctor Demento but the video is news to me: The Firm – “Star Trekkin'”

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Hampus Eckerman, Will R., Mark-kitteh, James H. Burns, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

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178 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/3 The God Stalk De-Steams The Gnocchi”

  1. Somewhere between First and Fifth.

    (XENA) Wait, her husband didn’t tell her ANYTHING? Is he still sleeping on the couch?

  2. OMG, is that really the old Star Wars holiday special? I’m afraid to click on it…

  5. Stefan (Far Beyond Reality) on December 3, 2015 at 6:05 pm said:

    Hey lookit, my name’s on File 770! Does that mean I’m famous now?

    Not until you are 5th. In the meantime may the fourth be with you.

  6. That’s an absolutely brilliant scroll title!

    We never had any problems with our baby at cons. He was used to either being worn by one of his parents, or sleeping in his stroller, and being in line made no difference. By the age of 3, he had learned to always have some amusement source of his own available (either books or portable video games, or both), for the far-more-boring times when his parents want to stand around and talk with our friends.
    I also suspect that The Mary Sue goes to different kinds of cons than we do: other than registration lines at Worldcons, I rarely have to wait in any kind of line at cons, and by arriving the day before the official con opening, even waiting in registration lines is rare. Or perhaps Ms. Sue likes waiting in line for autographs, or to get into mass-audience events; me, I can’t be bothered.

  7. XENA

    In this case, don’t they have an out with Xena’s canon daughter?

    Although that would be pretty crappy that Lucy Lawless is only 47 (to Harrison Ford’s 73) if they don’t at least offer her the role.

  8. My experience with infants at conventions has not involved lines, but then I do not attend media conventions. I note that infants seem to be an automatic introduction, much like cute pets, to older, grandparently pros and fans, particularly if they can spontaneously do something charming. While the presence of infants may limit certain social activities, it also gives new perspectives on old interests. A supply of dry Cheerios is a boon, and just as any infant who willingly eats food from chopsticks will be unoficially adopted by everyone in Chinatown, any infant who masters counting backwards from ten to zero and making liftoff noises is wont to charm the most diverse old grognards.

  9. With the Torgerson reference, should we take bets on when we get a meltdown post on his blog? Or the influx of his super fans?

  11. JJ— I second that. I know that gnocchi is a food (possibly for gnomes), and I guess steam comes into it somewhere, but how that connects to Godstalk or what the whole sentence is referencing, I haven’t a clue.

  13. These go to 11! (Okay, I know it’s not five-worthy, but I’m a big Spinal Tap fan. I take so long to write my posts that I probably won’t even be 11th by the time I post it… Nope. I’m not. But I don’t have any quotes for 13th.)

    For a different sort of Star Wars fashion, I thought you might like this look at what fashion designers like Halston and Diane von Furstenberg did when inspired by characters from the new film. I love the fuzzy Chewbacca jackets, the black dress with the beaded hat and the Rey and Kylo Ren hoodies.

  14. In potential Hugo-related news, I have reviewed Lumberjanes: Friendship to the Max. As this and the previous volume Beware the Kitten Holy form a unified story line, I am inclined to view this as the second half of a single work, and nominate the two volumes together. I believe there is a one-volume edition that compiles both of these two books together as well, which I think would reinforce my thinking on this.

  15. Today’s title may be a narrower in-joke than the usual sort. I won’t spoil it for those still working on it, but if you’re completely stumped, try this Wikipedia link. (A linguistics background meant I recognized it instantly.)

    ETA: and Cally got there before me!

  16. Pshaw, in the Xenaverse, actors hop into other peoples’ bodies all the time. You can tell who it really is by the voiceover. They did that while Lucy was recovering from a fractured pelvis once, and Xena was possessing everyone within reach.

  19. NelC: We interrupt our program to break down a reference. The title is a takeoff on this phrase:

    The gostak distims the doshes

    This sentence originally comes from the seminal treatise on semiotics, “The Meaning of Meaning” (Ogden and Richards, 1923), where it was used to illustrate how some kinds of information can be derived from grammatical structures, even without knowing the referents of the words involved.
    That would be the end of the story if it were not for a science fiction author names Miles J. Breuer, who liked the sound of the sentence and made it into the central feature of his 1930 short story, “The Gostak and the Doshes”. In this story, the sentence is a political slogan that drives a nation to war, despite being completely meaningless.

    From there, it entered the fan community as a catchphrase and in-joke, as well as a source of ready-made nonsense words. Use of the sentence seems to have declined since its glory days in the 1930’s, but it has never completely disappeared. As with many obscure things, the internet is taking a key role in spreading gostak-awareness to the new generation.

  20. @Aaron

    I read the first Lumberjanes on your recommendation (and also because I was a Nimona fan) and really enjoyed it, so I guess I’ll go find the next set.

  22. (20) That’s a song for the ages! Recognise it and the music video well. Could always annoy a few people with it.

    Not a huge Xena fan but do find it annoying that it’s even a question that Lawless’ age comes into, especially when, as has been pointed out, it was never a factor with other actors who were male. Oh Hollywood.

  23. There is also a freeware text adventure game called “The Gostak”, by Carl Muckenhoupt. The narration is written in – and the player must use when playing – a version of English with the same articles, pronouns, prepositions, and forms of “to be”…but every noun and every other verb is encoded.

    You do get one other verb for free: HELP. Games written in Inform have standard help files. In the vast majority of games, players can safely ignore them. Here, they become an indispensable Rosetta stone!

    The annual IFComp has among its awards “The Golden Banana of Discord”, for the game with the largest standard deviation among its ratings. It should be no surprise that “The Gostak” took that one easily, in its year.

    Here’s the opening narration:
    Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.

    Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes discren them.

    But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you.

    The Gostak
    An Interofgan Halpock
    Copyright 2001 by Carl Muckenhoupt
    (For a jallon, louk JALLON.)
    Release 2 / Serial number 020305 / Inform v6.21 Library 6/10

    Delcot
    This is the delcot of tondam, where gitches frike and duscats glake. Across from a tophthed curple, a gomway deaves to kiloff and kirf, gombing a samilen to its hoff.

    Crenned in the loff lutt are five glauds.

    >

    (Okay, I misremembered: you don’t get HELP, you get JALLON.)

  25. SimAnt is ancient? Ouch. I remember playing plenty of computer games older than that. Sure, they aren’t *recent* games, but . . . .

    I did play SimAnt itself, but found the game became dull fairly quickly. Sadly, so was SimEarth, though I liked the concept, and they had a Venus terraforming option – also an interesting idea, but not implemented well. Then again, I never have cared much for any of the games with a title starting with “Sim” but obviously some people like them, so some might have liked these much more than me.

    It looks like both SimEarth and SimAnt can be downloaded from the internet archive if anyone , and there are Youtube videos if anyone wants to see what they look like (google the game titles for the links). Ah, just look at that screen resolution, and listen to the 1990/1991 era computer music.

  27. JJ— I second that. I know that gnocchi is a food (possibly for gnomes), and I guess steam comes into it somewhere, but how that connects to Godstalk or what the whole sentence is referencing, I haven’t a clue.

    Gnocchi are potato dumplings (as much as I can describe them) which are totally beloved of Italians who would betray their country and sell their daughters into slavery for them, and which I find taste like lumps of mash potato with some flour in (which they are) so I don’t see the enthusiasm. The only time I really loved a plate of gnocchi was a very unusual one with butter, sugar and cinnamon that I was never able to recreate for myself.

    They are boiled in salt water, not steamed, then drained and sauce added.

  29. You people with your young children (13). It must be a forest for the trees kind of thing.
    Want your youngun to be quite in line?
    Dramamine dammit!
    If you don’t have any of that handy, hanging that infant by its ankles until it passes out works almost as well. (Note: older toddlers may have to be swung around a bit until their heads impact a relatively solid object, but I only recommend that for screamers as social workers may pick up on the fact that the kid has an awful lot of concussions…)
    Better yet, lock them in a closet at home for some “quiet time” before you leave for the con.
    (Advice from one who’s greatest contribution to humanity was the decision to not reproduce. And ended up with 4 step grandchildren…one of whom will soon be attending conventions.)
    @13: OMFG! Not only did I witness most of those things at AT&T for 11 years – I was charged with implementing most of them!
    Might have had something to do with the fact that most of the upper mgt staff were ex-military, intelligence branch .

  30. Anna:

    Gnocchi […] and which I find taste like lumps of mash potato with some flour in (which they are) so I don’t see the enthusiasm.

    Oh thank goodness. Thanks to some very insistent Italians’ efforts, I’ve always felt slightly gauche for not getting the point of gnocchi. I even tried making my own.

    Also, I have thoroughly joined the Katsu fan-club. Thanks!

  31. Clicky. I knew the colourless green ideas sleep furiously version which is of course a horse of a completely different color.

  32. Susana on December 4, 2015 at 2:05 am said:
    Anna:
    Gnocchi […] and which I find taste like lumps of mash potato with some flour in (which they are) so I don’t see the enthusiasm.
    Oh thank goodness. Thanks to some very insistent Italians’ efforts, I’ve always felt slightly gauche for not getting the point of gnocchi. I even tried making my own.

    Making them is fun. You are supposed to press them on the back of a cheese grater to produce the pattern.

  34. I would love to see Lawless as an older Xena.
    Great actress, she was superb in the Spartacus tv series.

  35. Anna beat me to it. Gnocchi not Gnocci 🙂
    Now I want some Gnocchi. My mother made Gnocchi-like dumplings for her chicken soup, and I loved them to bits.

    RE: Simant: A weak, limited entry in the Sim series, I always thought.

    I rewatched Star Wars last night. Still annoyed by the Jabba inclusion, which really feels off, tonally when you compare him to the Jabba of ROTJ. Also poor poor Garven Dreis, the guy who did get a shot at the vent before Luke…but didn’t manage to make the torpedoes go in.

  36. For what it is worth, I enjoyed SimEarth. I found SimAnt meh and SimWolf utterly annoying.

  37. Gnocchi absorb flavours more than pasta do, so I prefer them when using a creamy or highly garlicky sauce. (A neighbour of mine makes a very fine gnocchi and pesto for our street parties.)

    As noted above, they’re also faster to cook than most pasta, and also easier for little hands to spear with a fork, which makes them a useful option for parents.

  38. In my family there was a pre-children vow that no fussy infant would be inflicted on others in public, that no matter the venue or circumstances or inconvenience, mild or otherwise, to the parents, loud or misbehaving young’uns would be whisked away until calmer.

    This vow was held to.

    The first random stranger in a restaurant who praised the kids’ behavior was viewed as something nice, but a little odd. Over the years it has happened often enough to become a family running joke.

  39. Anna:

    You are supposed to press them on the back of a cheese grater to produce the pattern.

    I didn’t know that until I actually went to make them, the ones I’d seen were mostly fork-ridged. That was the best part. The grater I had made very porcupine-like little shapes. But the results were just gnocchi (people who like those said they were good). I’d rather make orecchiette or malloreddus (these are adorable, if probably not canonical, with the grater bumps, and great for making the sauce stick), if I could find a reliable source of good pasta flour.

    Hypnotosov, you remind me I need new five-minute(ish) meals, daily cooking being something that leads me to getting stuck in a rut. Suggestions, anyone?

  44. Susana on December 4, 2015 at 3:22 am said:

    Hypnotosov, you remind me I need new five-minute(ish) meals, daily cooking being something that leads me to getting stuck in a rut. Suggestions, anyone?

    One of my current faves is Spinach wraps: cook fresh spinach in oil, sprinkle with garlic and set aside (this is the fancy part). Cook onion and mushrooms until brown, add the spinach and mozzarella, olives and sundried tomatoes and lower heat. Heat up some tortillas, toss the spinach mix in them.
    It’s great comfort food that has actual vegetables in it.

  45. “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is a slightly different concept. In fact, interestingly, they’re kind of opposites.

    “Colorless green ideas etc.” demonstrates a sentence which is grammatically correct but nonsensical. That is to say, you know every word in it, and it’s clearly a proper sentence, but it makes no sense. This is to show that syntax (grammar) is not the same as semantics (meaning).

    “The gostak distims the doshes” demonstrates a sentence which has unknown referents, but from which some meaning can still be derived from syntax. Even though you have no idea what a gostak is, you know it is a distimmer of doshes. Those doshes get distimmed by that gostak.

    In other words, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is meant to show that a basic degree of meaning CANNOT be derived solely from syntax. Whereas “The gostak distims the doshes” is meant to show that some degree of meaning CAN be derived solely from syntax.

  48. @Paul: It occurs to me that we’re all very, very lucky that the torpedos that “just impacted on the surface” didn’t actually mangle the upper portion of the exhaust shaft to the point that it wasn’t possible for future shots to actually go in.

  50. Anna Ferruglio Dal Dan wrote:

    Gnocchi are potato dumplings (as much as I can describe them) which are totally beloved of Italians who would betray their country and sell their daughters into slavery for them, and which I find taste like lumps of mash potato with some flour in (which they are) so I don’t see the enthusiasm. The only time I really loved a plate of gnocchi was a very unusual one with butter, sugar and cinnamon that I was never able to recreate for myself.

    They are boiled in salt water, not steamed, then drained and sauce added.

    Oh, I see, it should have been “The God Stalk Disdains The Gnocchi.” Obviously autocorrect is to blame.

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