Thursday, Jodi and I shot a pilot episode. We were the only two puppeteers on the shoot, and as often happens, the only people in the room with prior puppetry experience. The puppets were charming but, to my eye, built by a stage puppeteer rather than a film and television puppeteer. How could I tell? Small details, like visible specks of glue. Now, for stage, this doesn’t matter¹ but for film work you have to be prepared for extreme closeups.

These were rod puppets and the necks were extremely thin, long and sproingy. ² Our slightest tremor translated into a giant head wiggle. On top of that, the mouth trigger would actually pull the whole head down with it. None of this violated the forty feet and a galloping horse rule, but boy howdy did it look funny in a closeup. We weren’t doing lipsync so much as headsync.

AND one of the puppets broke moments after we got there. I had a total MacGyver moment and repaired the puppet with a paperclip, gaffers tape and superglue. ³

The guys we were working for were supernice and thankfully understood the challenges pretty darn quickly. On the whole, they seemed pleased. Hopefully I’ll be able to show you some of it down the line.

1. We have a saying, “forty feet on a galloping horse” which means that if you won’t notice it while galloping on horseback forty feet away you won’t notice it on the stage either [↩]
2. Yes, that’s a technical term. [↩]
3. No, I can’t describe the repair in more detail because to do so would require explaining what the characters were which would blow the secrecy around the pilot. [↩]

Comments? -- Link

Over the weekend I watched the South Korean movie Oldboy (finally--after three damaged DVDs from Netflix). Pretty harrowing and very effective. A man his kidnapped and kept prisoner for 15 years, with no idea as to who imprisoned him or why. When he gets out he's led through a cat and mouse game by his torturer.

Next up, Glengarry Glen Ross with a terrific ensemble cast: Jack Lemon, Alec Baldwin, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Jonathan Pryce. The lives of cutthroat real estate guys in Chicago selling investments in Arizona and Florida land and not caring who they destroy to get on top. I saw the 2005 revival on Broadway with Liev Schreiber, who won a Tony. Not a great play or movie but it's made by its cast every time.

The Seventh Victim produced by Val Lewton and directed by Mark Robson. Someone recommended it and it was pretty lame. Young woman leaves school when her only living relative (who is supporting her)--her older sister-disappears. Satanic cult, blah blah blah. Very choppy the last fifteen minutes. There was a short about Lewton afterwards (maybe that's why the whole thing was recommended) but I just didn't care.

First two hours of the first season of Deadwood. Initially, the cursing put me off (surprising since I my self curse quite a bit in everyday life) but I found it off-putting at first. Got used to it though and enjoyed the episodes.

I am still completing stuff for school and today I did some watercolors - no writing but watercolors - they turned out nifty too - I may try to scan and post them for you. I have another watercolor I need to do tomorrow and then some more painting (these are all art type painting - not house wall painting which also needs doing)

I received my Excel final test - he wants me to do it at home :))))))))))))) that is made of fabulous.

My Bio teacher - the one I've been complaining about - emailed me tonight with a study group set up for Monday. MONDAY - pfft - the bad part is they help so I will probably go - SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS

Enough is never enough.

But watercolor - Did I tell you I rather like watercolor and always have? - I want to someday be good at it.

:)

http://evileditor.blogspot.com/2008/05/book-chat-auction.html

The book for the September book chat will be decided in the Brenda Novak Juvenile Diabetes Auction. It's a one day auction to be held May 29th (eastern US time). If there are those who can't get the book or can't afford it, and who wish to take part, I'm hoping a few of those who do get the book will be willing to read it early and ship it to someone who needs a copy. We'll let the author have input into the day and time of the chat, assuming he/she wishes to be present.

This month's chat on Twilight will be presided over by Kiersten, who has read the book three times and is an expert on it. I'll be there, of course, to make sure things don't get out of hand. Let's set up a date and time, Kiersten.

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=read&group=sff.writing.writersofthefuture&artnum=4528

Carol V. wrote:

Joni wrote on the blog that she'll be calling finalists and semi-finalists this
weekend. That's surprising. I assumed Joni had a home, but apparently she
lives at the office. Ha.

Has anyone gotten a phone call yet (or heard of someone ELSE getting a phone
call)?

(Posted: Sat 17 May 2008 05:40:19p)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/292550630/ballad-of-a-tcp-rese.html

Nate sez, "An Ars editor (me) put the whole Comcast P2P filtering issue to music with 'Ballad of a TCP Reset Packet.' Thought y'all and the BB readers might enjoy."

I'm not an ordinary packet flowing through the tubes
I need to scrub them out to keep the neighborhood's connection lubed
I'm here to make you see a cable company morality
Obfuscation is alright but not uploads that take all night

Link (Thanks, Nate!)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/292508386/bruce-sterlings-visi.html

I just finished re-reading (for the nth time) Bruce Sterling's 1998 novel Distraction. I didn't mean to -- I picked it up in a used bookstore in Milwaukee on my way to a quick dinner in my hotel room, thinking I'd just read a few pages of this old friend and then leave it behind for the next guest to discover and enjoy. Now it's 18 hours later and I've read all 500-some pages of it, and, as ever, my mind is a-whirl with the incredible ideas, people and speculation in this remarkable, remarkable book.

Distraction is the story of an America on the skids: economy in tatters, dollar collapsed, unemployment spiked, population on the move in great, restless herds bound together with networks and bootleg phones. The action revolves around Oscar Valparaiso, a one-of-a-kind political operator who has just put his man -- a billionaire sustainable architecture freak -- into the Senate and is looking for some downtime. But a funny thing happens on the way to the R&R: Oscar and his "krewe" (the feudal entourage who trail after him, looking after his clothes, research, security, systems and so on) end up embroiled in a complex piece of political theater, a media war between the rogue governor of the drowned state of Louisiana, the Air Force, the newly elected president, and a weird, pork-barrel science park in its own glassed-in dome.

Every single chapter -- every one! -- has at least enough material for five great speculative short stories. From the net-gang hobos (and their remarkable, cellular-automata driven fleamarkets) to the weird economic boom in cognition research, to the idea of leisure unions and anti-work activist techno-triumphalists, this book fizzes with awesome ideas.

But that's only one of its three signal virtues. The other two are: the insight Sterling brings to the nature of politics and the political process in the age of networked economies and systems; and the vivid, larger-than-life characters who populate this book. They are, to a one, likable, frustrating, believable, admirable and enraging.

It's a powerful concoction, this book, and now, ten years after its initial publication, it's possible to asses just how prescient, how visionary, Sterling is. I love all of Bruce's books, but this one may just be my favorite. It's the kind of friend you end up staying up all night chatting with, even when all you plan on doing is saying a quick hello. Link

A man ordered by a judge to make sure his daughter studied has found himself in jail because she failed to earn a high school equivalency diploma.

She's 18 and doesn't live with him, for the record.

Guess the State!

Watching the Subway Series game with the daughter....Bobby Abreu hit a HR and Jeter hit a double off Santana to make it 6-4 Mets....she threw up! That's my girl!

I'm only an occasional crime reader. I don't gobble crime books up, but rather wait until something shows up on my radar. Partially due to my Grub Street class, which has many students interested in crime fiction this time around, and partially due to the brain-killing amount of bad fantasy I've been reading via Clarkesworld slush, I've picked up a bit more crime as of late.

Today, I bought two books — as a datum for the question, "Does blogging help a writer sell books?" I bought What Burns Within for no other reason than I find author Sandra Ruttan's crime fiction-themed blog entertaining. Then I saw the Hard Case Crime Bloch books were out, and even better they were collected in one volume as a double. I have a special weakness for doubles — I like doubles the way my autistic cousin Taki likes license plate numbers that add up to a prime (Whee! *handflaphandflap*) but I have a complaint. The covers are friggin' awful.

The Ruttan looks virtually self-published, with the stock image of a lick of flame that carries over artlessly to the spine over a dead black background, the Baby's First Font choices, and 1974-called-and-it-wants-its-texture-back embossments.



The Bloch books are just ruined. The usual retro look is in play, except that as this book has two front covers, the barcode was just plopped onto one of them. Not only does that annoy because it signals somewhat arbitrarily that Spiderweb is the B-title, it was useless. When I put the book down on the counter — Shooting Star side up, of course, because I could not bear to look at the other — the cashier opened the front cover and scanned the barcode on the interior flap anyway.



Don't let these horrible scars dissaude you from checking out the books though! Take pity on poor Ruttan and poor dead Bloch!

http://evileditor.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-beginning-501.html

We all witnessed the kidnappings. No one truly saw them take the children away, but we knew whom to blame. All our towns' children, ages ten to thirteen, vanished in a blink's time. No one had that power but the witches in the south. Those evil magicians manipulated the heavens rode down on us under cover of cloud.

Lightning struck our lands, and thunder crashed above us, shaking the earth. The clouds grew darker and heavier, but not one drop of water fell from them. We first watched in amazement. Never before had we witnessed a storm without rain. Then those despicable witches poured down from the clouds in effortless flight.

They returned our children to us, confirming our suspicions. We scooped up the returned and fled to our homes. Back to their clouds and to the south, the sorcerers left without a word. Celebrations consumed us until the food ran short and our rejoicing grew tiring. We returned to our homes once again and finally had a chance for a contented rest.

The next morning we woke to a horror. Our youngest had begun vanishing, fading away before our eyes. Laughter erupted from the skies, and clouds to the south roiled without rainfall. This time the sorcerers forced us to witness their thievery.



Constable Sprackett finished reading the statement. He chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. "Let's run through the facts one more time, shall we?" he said. "A mysterious gang, consisting of magicians, witches and sorcerers, descended from a -- let me see -- laughing sky, and took away all the children. Just like that?"

"Yes, constable."

"Are you sure about this? Witches and all?"

"Yes, constable."

"Sign at the bottom, Mrs. Todd; we'll be in touch." He brushed crumbs off the table and slid the papers across. "These are delicious pies by the way; what's in them?"


Opening: Xiexie.....Continuation: ril

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/habo-looking-for-ya-johnny-blue/

Bitchery reader Kathryn

I could use some Smart Bitch help trying to find a YA romance I read back when I was a teenager.  It was most likely published in the 1990’s or maybe late 1980’s.  The story involves cousins or a half-sisters (I can’t remember which) and for some reason one goes to live with the other’s family.  The one who is moving in is blonde and hawt and lets her boyfriend feel under her shirt, Sweet Valley-style.  The other cousin/sister is a shy brunette and fantasizes about some mysterious guy at her her school whom she secretly calls Johnny Blue or something like that.  Meanwhile, this sensitive football player named Greg secretly has a crush on Shy Girl, so blonde sister pretends to date him so he can get closer to Shy Girl. Why this is supposed to work, I have no idea. The story ends up with her going on a date with Greg, who turns out to be a dynamo kisser.  She also goes on a date with Johnny Blue, whom she ultimately rejects because he kisses like a cold fish.

I’m hoping the SB’s can help me with this one, because I’m drawing a complete blank!

Johnny Blue? BWAAHAHAHAH. 

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010240.html

Senator Kennedy (D-Mass) has apparently been flown to Boston due to stroke-like symptoms.

I've been meaning to write a post about Strokes and Head Injuries (sometime after the long-delayed Trauma And You, Part IV), and this isn't going to be it. It'll just be a few quick notes.

You have two basic causes for strokes. One is an occlusive stroke: A blood clot gets loose and blocks an artery in the brain. This is very similar to a heart attack, where a blood clot gets loose and blocks a coronary artery (or a pulmonary embolism, where a blood clot breaks loose and blocks one of the pulmonary arteries). The other is a hemorrhagic stroke, where a blood vessel bursts, causing bleeding into the brain, your classic apoplexy. This is similar (in some ways) to a ruptured aortic aneurysm.

When you have someone come down with signs and symptoms of stroke (and these vary depending on how big the stroke is and what part of the brain is affected), you have three hours from the time of onset of symptoms to the start of therapy if you're going to treat it with anything other than time.

So.

Here are the rock-bottom symptoms of stroke: Sudden onset weakness, particularly one-sided. Facial droop, particularly one-sided. Slurred speech, or aphasia, or suddenly using inappropriate words. Blurred vision, particularly one-sided. "The worst headache of my life."

What to do: Do not waste time. You don't have it. Note down the exact time the symptoms started. Call your friends from 9-1-1.

I'm sure you've seen those e-mails about How To Tell if Someone Is Having a Stroke. The three tests (arm drift, smile, repeat a phrase). That's called the Cincinnati Stroke Scale, and while it's a wonderful tool, and we use it ourselves, it isn't diagnostic (and lots of things that have stroke-like symptoms, that aren't strokes, are plenty serious all on their own).

What happens when the nice EMTs take the person away:

1) We give him oxygen, and establish an IV. We ask him (or you) all kinds of questions about his medical history, allergies, medications, and particularly what time it started. The clock is running.

2) Once at the ED, the emergency physician will order a no-contrast MRI, and at the same time run down the checklist for why not to give thrombolytics. This checklist is about three pages long ("Any recent surgeries? Any recent tooth extractions?") where any "yes" means the thrombolytic path is closed. The first item on the list is "Has it been more than three hours since the first symptoms?" If yes ... well. Make the patient comfortable and see how things go.

Now that MRI: The brain scan has to be normal. In the early stages of an occlusive stroke, there are no visible changes. Free blood in the brain shows up as a lighter area, and bleeding in the brain means we don't want to break up any clots. Dead tissue shows up as a darker area, and if the tissue has already died, well, no point in going on. Or you could see a tumor, and thrombolytics won't help with that.

3) If the MRI comes back normal, and the patient said "No" to all the questions on the checklist, then comes the big question: "This therapy could kill you. Do you want to go ahead with it?" Being put on thrombolytics is essentially the same as getting an instant case of hemophilia. If you can't answer the question because you can't talk (or can't hear or can't read), because of the stroke, better hope you have a Living Will that spells out what you want done, or have someone with a Power of Attorney for Healthcare standing by to answer for you.

4) If you say, "Yes" to going forward ... the first drops of thrombolytic have to hit your veins inside that three-hour window. That's why helicopters get involved. To get you to an MRI machine, to get you to a center where they have the guys who've done this more than once a year. Then, you have about a 70% chance of getting All Better.

Of course, if you have a hemorrhagic stroke, what you need is a neurosurgeon to tie off the bleeder and relieve pressure in your skull. Different ball game.

Then there are TIAs--Transient Ischemic Attacks. These are so-called "mini-strokes." The difference between them and a full-bore stroke is that the TIAs spontaneously resolve within twenty-four hours. Don't ignore them for that reason: They're a red flag that a major stroke will hit (60% chance) within twelve months.

So what I think is going on with Kennedy: The helicopter was to get him to a good MRI and a major hospital within that three-hour window. The fact that he's calling people on the phone and talking to them means that he's (probably) sitting somewhere watching thrombolytics drip into his veins, bored out of his gourd. Chance of recovery? About 70%.

For all of y'all: If you, or someone around you, have stroke-like symptoms, Don't Screw Around. Call 9-1-1.

As always, I am not a physician. I can neither diagnose nor prescribe. This post is presented for amusement purposes only, and is not medical advice for your particular situation or condition.

The Fix On-Line posted their review of Talebones #36 with many kind words about my "Rock House."  The opening line of the review is really cool: 

"'Rock House' by James Van Pelt, a story that might send shivers down even Poe’s spine, takes on a life of its own and invites the reader into an eerie, cave-like dwelling where old friends reunite to reminisce about books, life, and lost opportunities."

Also, I'd like to point out that two of my stories from last year were picked up for inclusion in Year's Best anthologies and are still eligible for Nebula consideration.  Both can be read on line.  "Of Late I Dreamt of Venus," which originally appeared in Visual Journeys and will soon be available in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction, 25th edition, will lose its eligibility at the end of the month.  It's four votes shy of making the preliminary ballot.  If you are a SFWA member, and read and liked the story, please consider adding to its nomination total.  It falls into the novelette category.

"How Music Begins," which was in the Sept. '07 Asimov's, and then picked up for the David Hartwell's Year's Best Science Fiction, 13th edition, is also a few votes short of making the preliminary ballot.  The link is a private one for SFWA members only, but I will be happy to e-mail the story to anyone who would like to read it.  Once again, if you are an eligible voter, please consider adding it to your nomination list.  It is in the short story category.

Despite the continuous fuss about how the Nebulas work (rolling eligibility, award relevance for readers, etc.), I very much like the fact that an award voted on by the SFWA members exist.  I encourage SFWA members to nominate whenever they see a story they think is noteworthy.  The whole nomination process is only a couple of mouse clicks away!  You can recommend a work that no one has nominated before at this link, or add a nomination to a previously nominated work by going to the Current Nebula Awards Report and clicking on the title of the work you would like to recognize.

Snarked from the Analog discussion board.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/292402075/list-of-psychotronic.html

In the comments for my post about The Hoodlum, Mr. Bali Hai said: "A while back, I dug through the IA and pulled out every cult film that had also made an appearance in Mike Weldon's Psychotronic Video guide. I came up with quite a long list."

I've been spending a lot of time digging around in the Internet Archive. In the course of my excavations, I uncovered a metric buttload of old cult filmage in the public domain, and in a fit of obsessive-compulsive mania, decided to make a list that included every film in the archive that also makes an appearance in Michael Weldon's essential guide to midnight movies, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.

Click on the Extended Entry to view them all linked in one place for your free downloading pleasure, or order your own DVD w/jewelbox from my favorite purveyor of Psychotronica, Sinister Cinema.

The Amazing Mr. X
The Amazing Transparent Man
The Ape
Assignment: Outer Space
Atom Age Vampire
The Atomic Brain
Attack of the Giant Leeches
Attack From Space
The Beast of Hollow Mountain
The Beatniks
Bloody Pit of Horror
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
Bride of the Gorilla
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Carnival of Souls
The Corpse Vanishes
Creature From the Haunted Sea
Daughter of Horror
The Day the Sky Exploded
Dead Men Walk
Dementia 13
Detour
The Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules
Doomed To Die
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

That's just A-D. For E-Z, with the links to the videos, visit Mr. Bali Hai's blog, Eye of the Goof. Link

When idly scratching one's belly during sleep, it is best not to get a fingernail snagged in a surgical staple.

That will wake one up, even through the drug fog.

Imagine a few dozen nails dragged across a blackboard at once. There ought to be a word for that sensation.

Any suggestions?