Compare and Contrast

Thanks goes to my hubby for this very entertaining idea. What sort of latte would a Gnome drink, anyway?

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And Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson (aka, It Takes a Time-traveling, Space Station, Fantasy World Village to Fight Cancer)

Artists give to us all the time. A long time ago Spider Robinson gave me a love of quirky speculative fiction. Technically he gave me that for free because I bummed copies of OMNI magazine off my brother, so it was a gift in a way. To this day my husband knows that an easy gift option is to find out if Spider has published anything new because I'm always delighted to see anything from him. Do you see how this has been a one-way relationship between Spider and me? I've only had to buy one book out of my own pocket.

Well, now Spider needs something from me. And from you. His wife Jeanne has been suffering from cancer for some time. Rare, nasty cancer. I don't think I have to tell you that in America that means you can go from a fairly comfortable life to shaking a can for nickles down on the corner pretty quickly. Fortunately for Spider and Jeanne they are citizens of a really terrific community - SFF geeks. Scalzi is the one who tipped me off by sending me to the Blog Rally post. I did some research to make sure everything was on the up and up (don't trust everything you read on the internet, right?) and I've found that there are a myriad of ways to help.

Paypal donations to jeannedream@gmail.com

More details on her friends fundraising at http://wedreamforjeanne.blogspot.com/
Info from Jeanne herself at http://stardancemovie.blogspot.com/
All proceeds from this e-book go the Robinsons (if purchased by 12/31; additional funds can be added)

Go forth, do good things. And say hi to Spider and Jeanne for me.

Star Trek: Beautiful Misery

In celebration of Monday being Sci-Fi and Bureaucracy day we've opened up the Star Trek (2009) DVD that I got for Christmas. It reminds me that the new movie is so beautiful, so well cast, so spectacular, that it is almost, almost, almost possible to completely miss the fact that the writing is utter crap. When we saw it in the theater it wasn't until after we were outside that I realized the plot holes big enough to fly the Enterprise through. Further, they could have removed the whole thing that masquerades as "the main plot" (i.e., ditch Nero/Bana) and I would have been happier. Then we could've just followed our favorite characters around while they give each other a hard time and the biggest plot issue would have been the Kirk/Spock/Uhuru love triangle. It also would have saved me from the moment in the movie when they reveal The Red Matter and I asked myself, "Damn, is this product placement for Target branding?" Seriously, that was my first reaction. NOT the way to engage the emotions of your audience. Although it did make me crave some pretty, useless items for my home.

And the whole Sulu with a katana thing? I'm sure that George Takei rolled his eyes at that one, cool and modernistic a weapon as it may have been (wicked cool transformer katana!) it totally flew in the face of the non-stereotyping choice of a foil that George had fought for in the series. Yes, I caught the nod when 2009 Sulu says he studied fencing. But if they wanted something sturdier than a foil they should've gone with a sabre. In his own mind 1966 Sulu is more Musketeer than Samurai. It's his life, he has the right. Must we change him so much? Have we slid backwards on racial stereotyping since 1966? I often think we have.

But, all that aside, they did manage to capture a big part of what made Star Trek immortal: camaraderie and humor. Hopefully next time out they can also tap into the intelligence and social commentary aspects. Until then I will content myself with just not watching the parts I think are stupid. It's a shorter movie that way, but much more enjoyable. This unfortunately means that I have to skip the Spock Prime scenes, the Spock I love above all Spocks, but I can only hope that Leonard Nimoy will forgive me. I daresay that if I talked to him about it he would shrug and say, "Don't look at me, I didn't write the goddamn thing. If I had it would have made more sense."

Actually I Hate "Ender's Game"...

Did you see the Fiction Reader's Guide to Social Interaction? Once I knew the question (what's your favorite novel?) and the premise (that the question is difficult to answer because, *gasp*, you wouldn't answer it honestly!) I just scanned down through looking to see if my honest answer might be mentioned, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because I think it's the coolest book ever - and assumed it probably wouldn't be in there. Instead I found this section:

The choice of Frank Herbert’s Dune or Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy insinuates that you were too ashamed to admit your first choice, Ender’s Game, because it involves non-satirical spacecraft and is not yet vindicated by being “retro” or “classic.”

Errrrrgh!!! I HATE Ender's Game. As Dorothy Parker said, some books are not to be tossed aside lightly but hurled with great force. For me, Ender's Game was one of those books. Yes, I know opinions vary but that's mine. I don't want anyone assuming that I use The Hitchhiker's Guide as a beard for that book. Ever. So now I feel like if anyone asks about my favorite novel I will have to answer with, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... and, by the way, I really hated Ender's Game." An answer that, depending on the company, might get me into a fight. But some things are worth fighting over and for me books are almost always in that category.

Perhaps I need to clean my eyes with another reading of the Hitchhiker's trilogy. I've read the whole thing at least ten times starting when I was nine years old. Because when I say favorite I mean favorite.

*Revised 1/5/10 to be slightly, uh, less reactionary. Slightly.

All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

Sometimes it's easy to keep up with the coolness of the universe, and other times you realize you've completely missed some things. Graphic apps that show you what's on your Mac hard drive (and makes it look like an old quilt)? Awesome. Thank you, iJustine.

Finding Nimoy

After contemplating Leonard Nimoy's "I Am Spock" and "I Am Not Spock" came up with this logic problem (link to Twitpic) which I'll be using on the Cracked.com "Topic" page for Leonard Nimoy.

Guess They Want to Know What Soogle Means...

There are Googlebots crawling all over my blog today like the nanobots from SG-1. It's kind of freaky. Not sure if this means that my page ranking is going to go up or down. The Thoughts are still #2 in Colbert Fan Fiction after digg.com/television/Stephen_Colbert_Fan_Fiction.
I mean, come on. You can't fight Digg.

Spocks!

Combining my beloved Spock with whimsy? MUST HAVE! Thank you for the cuteness @iktizo. Order yours at her Etsy Shop.