Monthly Archives: May 2007

May132007

The Little Guys Let Me Down

I prefer to deal with locally owned, mom-and-pop establishments whenever I can. It’s a matter of principle for me (the principle being that I think large national corporations are, by nature, more interested in serving their shareholders than their customers). I buy books at Sam Weller’s, groceries at Harmons, and I get my morning caffeine fix from either The Coffee Garden or the Salt Lake Roasting Company. And when I finally decided several years ago to get myself some home Internet access, well, naturally, I went with a hometown service provider, a little outfit called ArosNet.

For five years, I had absolutely no complaint with Aros. My access was generally reliable, the folks in the accounting office were pleasant to deal with when I made my payments, and the one time I had to contact tech support, they bent over backwards to resolve my problem. I felt good writing out my checks, knowing that my money was going into the pockets of my neighbors instead of to some corporate overlord five states away. I imagined that I’d probably be writing checks to Aros for a very long time to come.

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May112007

Bill Panzer: That Guy in the Elevator

Believe it or not, the primary focus of my fanboy energies throughout most of the 1990s was not the Star Wars saga. Really. I know it’s hard to accept, but it really wasn’t. It wasn’t even Star Trek, despite all the various TV spin-offs running at that time. No, for the better part of the final decade of the 20th Century, I was seriously preoccupied by a fictional universe called Highlander.

Highlander is tough to explain to the uninitiated. It has a fairly bizarre premise to begin with, and its cause isn’t helped by the fact that all the different properties that fall under the Highlander brand tend to contradict each other, or at the very least don’t share the same continuity. I’m not going to go into all that in this entry — I’ll explore that topic some other time — but what you need to know (if you don’t already) is that the entire franchise originated with a 1986 movie and was revisited in a television series by the same name that ran from 1992 through 1998.

When Highlander: The Series ceased production in ’98, The Girlfriend and I were sufficiently wrapped up in the whole scene that we flew to LA to attend a big farewell convention dedicated to the show. It was an exciting event — the entire regular cast was in attendance, as well as a lot of the more prominent guest stars, and, of course, fans from all over the country.

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May112007

Vonnegut Reactions

Just in case anyone is keeping track, I finished Slaughterhouse-Five the other night. It was the first time I’ve ever read it, and the more I think about it, the more I think I liked it. I’m not prepared to say much about it yet — I’m afraid my brain’s literary-analysis lobe has atrophied quite a bit since I finished college and embarked on a steady diet of non-fiction and lowbrow genre crap — but I plan to write more after I ponder it for awhile. In the meantime, however, I recommend this classic American novel for those who, like me, missed reading it in school.

I’ve now moved on to a collection of Vonnegut’s short fiction called Welcome to the Monkey House. As with Slaughterhouse, I’m enjoying it. Some of it, anyway; I find short-story collections are, by their very nature, pretty hit-and-miss, with some stories doing more for me than others. There are enough hits happening, however, that I think I’m becoming a definite admirer of Kurt Vonnegut. But there is one thing about him that I’m not getting. All the cover blurbs on these ’70s-vintage paperbacks of mine rave about how funny he is, and I’m afraid I just don’t see it. Humor is, of course, highly subjective and, I believe, often dependent on historical context — in other words, I’m suggesting that maybe this stuff was knee-slapping in the era of Vietnam and Watergate but no longer carries the same punch. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I’m not laughing much at Vonnegut’s writing. I find his words truthful, elegant, frequently powerful, often clever, but not funny. He does have a way with an image, though. Consider this line from his story “Who Am I This Time?”:

…his eyes (were) still on her. Those eyes burned up clothes faster than she could put them on.

Oh, yeah, I like that. It’s got a little noir flavor there, which makes sense in the story’s context, it perfectly converys the man’s expression, and it’s a line that stays with you after you read it. Very nice.

But I still didn’t laugh.

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May082007

Demonstrations of Futuristic Weapons

So, you remember a year or so back when a cruise ship repelled pirates using a new-fangled sound-based weapon? An entry today at the blog Danger Room features a report from someone who’s actually been hit with the Long-Range Acoustic Device, a.k.a. “sonic blaster,” as well as a a video of one in operation. There’s not much to see in the video, but you can hear what the weapon sounds like. Oddly enough (or perhaps not, given my geekly inclinations), the weapon reminds me of the distinctive sound made by the giant, radioactive ants in the classic “big-bug” movie Them!; who knows, maybe that is the sound effect being played through the blaster, which is essentially just a souped-up loudspeaker.

Danger Room also recently posted a witness account and video of another “less-lethal” weapon being demonstrated, a “pain ray” that makes you feel as if your skin is boiling. That can be found here.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about these weapons. I suppose it’s a good thing that we are developing options that don’t require genuinely injuring the target, but there’s something very discomforting about these things. Something creepy. Maybe I’m just having trouble getting used to the idea that the science fiction I grew up on is becoming everyday life…

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May072007

0.00002% Say My Site Rocks!

Hm… according to this, Simple Tricks and Nonsense is ranked 2,393,955 out of however many sites there are out there in the vast, vast InterWeb. Not too bad, I suppose. Hey, I beat Greenberg, so that’s something. (Just kidding, Brian…)
I’m thinking I may have to get a commemorative t-shirt to mark this occasion. How geeky would that be?

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May052007

Wally Schirra

“Hero” is a word that’s lost much of its meaning in recent years due to overuse and misuse. All too often, in my not-so-humble opinion, it’s a label that gets applied to people who don’t deserve it. The general public tends to confuse heroism with mere celebrity, while those who would influence the public aren’t above trying to create artificial heroes when it suits their purposes or advances a cause.

But there are still genuine heroes in the world, even if we sometimes have to look backwards to see them. One of them died this week: Wally Schirra, age 84, of natural causes. Not a very heroic death, that, but everyone dies and most people do it in rather mundane fashions. What matters is what you do while you’re alive. And he did some amazing things.

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May042007

Riding an Operational Maglev Train

Telstar Logistics, the blog that got me thinking about maglevs the other day, has posted an account of what it’s like to actually ride one, specifically the three-year-old Shanghai Maglev that connects the city to Pudong Airport:

…It was very shaky, despite the magnetic levitation. The train was going so fast that it is constantly bobbing horizontally as it seriously banks from side to side. The rolling/weaving makes it hard to walk around when it reaches top speed; indeed they don’t want you to even stand up then. The tracks parallel the highway so cars look like they are going backwards. The entire train rides lasts less than 8 minutes. On the way in to Shanghai it took us 1.5 hours to travel the same distance in a taxi late at night.

I’m surprised (and, truth be told, disappointed) that the ride is so rough. I would’ve thought that it would be smoother than an ordinary train because of the levitation effect, but then, I suppose at those kinds of speeds it would be difficult (if not impossible) to avoid some kind of buffeting and turbulence from the airflow. Perhaps this is an engineering thing that could be solved, as opposed to a limitation of maglev technology? Anyone?

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May032007

Name That Sci-Fi Film!

Well, that last one was depressing, wasn’t it? Sorry about that… how about a game to try and break out of the funk?
John at SF Signal put this little exercise together:

I went to IMDB and looked up 15 movies. Listed below are four official “Plot Keywords” for each movie.

 

Your job: Name these movies!

  1. Stripper Dancing With Snake / Owl / Broken Finger / Killer Robot
  2. Future / Visceral / Claustrophobic / Impregnation
  3. Messiah / Wuxia Fiction / Young Boy / War
  4. Skin Care / Future Noir / Paraplegic / Perfection
  5. Saving The World Mission / Extraterrestrial / Space Travel / Alien Space Craft
  6. Advertising / Attempted Murder / Clairvoyant / Eye Surgery
  7. Very Little Dialogue / Surrealism / Astronaut / Talking Computer
  8. Prophecy / Cat / Subway / Cyberspace
  9. Sunglases / Tabloid / Cat / Spoof
  10. Cryogenics / Post Apocalyptic / Horseback Riding / Beach
  11. Human Versus Computer / Gladiator / Frisbee / Video Game
  12. Revenge / Spacecraft / Sandstorm / Midlife Crisis
  13. Evolution / Prejudice / Wheelchair / New York City
  14. End Of Civilization / Bikini / Big Ben / Inventor
  15. Robot / Scientist / UFO / Washington Monument

Give it a try, kids, then check yourself against my answers after the break.

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