My God, It's Raining

So what’s been happening?  Regular skimmers of this blog (all 3 of you!) might have noticed I haven’t been posting updates of the work in progress.  In response to some feedback, it seems the people reading it prefer larger chunks than 2-3 k at a time.  Apparently it’s just easier.

So, what I’m going to do is re-work the work-in-progress page over the weekend and release drafts in the future in much larger slices.  Naturally this means there’s going to be a bigger gap, but hopefully not too much (as long as I get my finger out and write!).

I still haven’t thought of a title.  I need to work on that shit, seriously.

In other news, Lisa got a promotion.  sadly, it wasn’t the promotion she wanted (being a rotational role, and no, that’s not like a chicken in the supermarket) so she’s looking for something else.  In all likelihood, that means we’ll be moving at some point this year.

Other, other news?  DIRE WEEK for cinema releases.  Tormented looks like epic fail in the chase to capture the teen horror market, whatever the Hell that is, and Obsessed…well…it’s got Ali Larter in it, who isn’t exactly renowned for her acting prowess, her range being limited to screwing up her face and growling a lot.  Fighting?  No.  Angels and Demons? No.  Night at the Museum 2? Well, although Hank Azaria is funny in the trailers it’s just not enough to warrant laying out £12 on tickets to go see.  at least we’e got Juno to watch on DVD, so that’ll be good.

The Science of Orgasm, 17 mins talk, via Boingboing.net.

Lisa decided she wanted to play some HoMM 3 again, which resulted in the following response from the installer.  The game worked, however, and she came to bed at 3 AM after a monster session on the bloody thing.

An article from Liberal Conspiracy about the evidence-based policy for torture.

I tried to watch the video of Jesse Ventura on the View debating torture (more specifically, waterboarding) but I got about three-quarters of the way through before I was too angry to think properly.  Do we really need to even ask questions such as “why don’t we torture more people for information?” in this day and age?  Isn’t it appallingly obvious to one and all that torture is not only inhuman but also ineffective?

Seriously, the defence raised that “information” and “results” were produced by torture is a tremendous fallacy.  Of course information and results are obtainable by torture.  Not necessarily accurate information and the result may be the product of prior bias on the part of the interrogator, but you will get both in spades if you try hard enough.

Also, the concept that suspects held are “hardened to normal interrogation” is equally nonsensical, for the same reason outlined above.  Take someone “not hardened” (as it were), ask them a question with prior expectation of an answer.

Interrogator: What do you do for a living?  What is your job?

Suspect: I drive a taxi.

Whether he’s telling the truth or lying is entirely dependent on the outlook of the interrogator.  For an administration driven to produce fast “results” about how many terrorists they have detained, the answer is simple: torture him until the “right” answer is obtained.

Gah.  Even after writing all that, I’m still enormously angry, and it’s frustrating to think that these sort of talking points, that “torture is OK because it defends our freedoms, lol” are being aired over and over and there are people who will nod their heads in solemn agreement and churn out the reasons given above for justification without ever thinking about what torture is, and what it means.  I can’t imagine for a second that the View would be so eager to have the debate if the news story of the week was a US airman returning home from a stint as a captive missing all of his fingernails.  Maybe they should get John McCain on and Elizabeth Hasselbeck can explain to him why she thinks torture isn’t such a bad thing after all.

Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Addendum: here is a video of Christopher Hitchins experiencing the “enhanced interrogation” technique of waterboarding, and his comments surrounding it.  Be warned before viewing that this is a video of a man being subjected to torture, and should not be viewed by anyone not prepared to see such.  Link.

I managed to thoroughly exasperate Lisa the other night by getting up at 4 am to write down an idea that I had in that little bit of half-sleep where you normally lie on your face going SLEEP SLEEP JUST FUCKING SLEEP DAMN IT.  Looking at it in the cold light of day, it’s not that great.  In fact, it resembles the plot of a movie that I haven’t even seen but know the plot of.

So yeah, not my best creative moment ever.  First half of Chapter 9 tomorrow, I reckon, and over the weekend I’ll hopefully be well into the machinery of 10.  Spent a few days going over possible plots within the 3 chapter arc to follow, trying to work out which was better.

They are painting the hallways/doors/skirting boards/whatever and the whole building smells like my Dad’s shed, or indeed the family kitchen when Dad decided to move all of his disturbingly volatile mixtures into the spill-over also known as “the house”.  Who needs drugs when you can get high as a kite washing the dishes?

Meanwhile, Japanese magazine Famitsu is running a survey of “foreign otaku” in conjunction with OtakuUSA magazine.  I’ll be interested to see how Famitsu treats this one, but the most likely result will be a finger-pointing “haha look at the stupid weeaboos” article.  Questions like: “How did you realize you were an otaku? Just how otaku are you exactly? Can you give us some shocking examples?” kind of give it away, really.

Lisa and I went to an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet meal last night with some of her workmates.  On the upside, it was super tasty!  There was a great deal of meat and, as anyone who’s ever met me will agree, I’m a big fan of the meat.

Still, I overdid it a little.  I’m well aware that a restaurant like that makes money on the drinks, and having played Theme Park as a teenager, I understand that if you want people to drink more then you salt the living crap out of everything on the menu.  None of that stopped me from gorging myself to the point where I felt uncomfortable about standing up and walking and as a result I was up twice last night needing a drink.  A big drink.  I reckon I went through about two liters last night and I still felt groggy and dehydrated up until about an hour ago.

That’s about as interesting as it gets.  We had to rearrange the bedroom a bit the other week because the summer morning light has been exacerbating my morning headaches (yes, still getting headaches) and otherwise pretty much I’ve just been writing and thinking about how I’m going to earn some money.  Exciting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

We went to see Coraline, which was pretty good.  Workmanlike would be the word I’d use for the film itself – the story, direction, animation and voice acting are all generally good and effective, but nothing really leapt out at me (insert 3D joke here) as being exceptional.  Had I not been informed by Lisa that all the knitwear was both custom made and hand-knit for the production, I wouldn’t have paid as much attention to the level of crafting in the models and scenery that there was, but nevertheless I didn’t walk out the cinema feeling moved, or excited by the experience.

For yet another day the radio is banging on about MP’s expenses and the shock and horror of it all.  I’m still with Stephen Fry on this one – there are bigger things in the world to worry about and the mass media is hardly a body best suited to pointing fingers about things.  Measles is still on the rise following the scaremongering about MMR, and I’d rather people were being knocked on the head with the realisation that the knock-on effect of all those newspaper sales will be a rise in complication-related deaths such as encephalitis.

I’ve been a little busy/distracted of late, so things have been progressing slowly on the writing front.  Amends will be made, hopefully.  In the meantime, here’s the slightly dire attempt at building some characterisation in Belar’s retinue before they reach House Balthar and everyone starts clashing.  It weighs in at just over 3k words, and is probably overly long for what it is, but hopefully it will work.  Eventually.

Chapter 9 might have to be split in two.  Just to warn you.

Work in progress page is, as ever, here.

As if we actually needed proof.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045040.stm

So, in the interests of maintaining our geek credentials to the full,  Lisa and I went to see Star Trek on Sunday afternoon.

As a prelude, I’ve never been wholly convinced by the appeal of J.J. Abram’s work.  I didn’t like Alias, and I disagree completely with the driving force of implied meaning that propels Lost and was used to hype up Cloverfield. Alternate -reality games are all well and good (we all love bees, after all) but I’ve just never been caught up by the smoke-and-mirrors of them.

Usually the majority of effort has gone into the obfuscation itself, and the meaning behind it, when discovered by someone with more time/patience/OCD than I have, usually turns out to be flimsy or a total illusion.

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