Insert Your Own Witty David Lynch Reference!

Will I end up having to do massive rewrites to this piece too? Hopefully not. Enjoy!

Previously. . .

We now return. . .

CUT TO:

INT, Juuban High School, Classroom

MAMORU sits in class, taking some rather crude handwritten notes (a result of his old injuries), while a teacher drones on at the front of the classroom. After a moment, his mobile phone starts buzzing. Confused, Mamoru pulls out the phone and examines it-- REI has left a text message.

REI'S MESSAGE

Meet me at the front door. Now!

CUT TO:

INT, Juuban High School, Hallway

MAMORU quietly sneaks out the classroom door and starts walking to the front, keeping an eye out for anyone who might spot him. Then, just as he comes to a junction in the hallway, he sees a school official come out a door further down the hall. Instinctively, he walks down the side hallway. As he walks down the side hall, he peeks over his shoulder to make sure he isn't being followed. He makes his way further down, and then notices something. . . odd, about this hallway. It seems somehow more upscale and modern than the hallway he was walking down earlier, with a massive glass door at its far end, from which Mamoru can just barely make out the outlines of parked cars and motorcycles, seemingly shrouded in darkness. Mamoru slows down apprehensively. After a moment, he hears a binging sound from behind him. Turning around, he sees an elevator in the distance- one that wasn't there before- just as its doors are closing. He's just able to make out a FEMALE FIGURE, whose back is turned to MAMORU. As Mamoru examines the elevator, a CAR suddenly smashes through the glass doorway at the end of the hall, barreling down the hallway at around ninety miles an hour. MAMORU is only just able to turn around before the car SMASHES into him, and we-

CUT TO:

EXT, Cliffside, MOONLIT NIGHT - Continuous

The car- and MAMORU- smash past a barricade and fall a hundred feet down a cliff side, smashing into the rocky seaside below.

CUT TO:

EXT, Seaside Rocks, NIGHT

MAMORU is alive, but pinned underneath a the car. He tries in vain to push the car off. The car then CATCHES FIRE, and Mamoru tries ever more desperately to set himself free. Then, just as it seems he is about to be engulfed in flames, the CAR LIFTS UP just enough for MAMORU to free himself and crawl away from the wreckage. Once MAMORU is far enough away from the heat of the flames, he looks back at the car. The interior is engulfed in flames- he can't make out who was inside, which is probably for the better. Just next to the car, barely illuminated by the flickering flames, he can just make out a vague female figure. The figure walks a bit closer to Mamoru- while we can't make out any of her features, we can tell that she is gigantic- easily twice as tall as six-foot MAMORU. The GIANT WOMAN walks closer to Mamoru- from the shot, the audience will only be able to see her bare legs. MAMORU stares at this GIANT WOMAN for a moment before her hand reaches down and hands him something-- a CORDLESS PHONE.

MAMORU takes the phone and puts it to his ear- the camera slowly tracks until MAMORU is in the foreground and the flaming car and GIANT WOMAN are in the background, out of focus.

MAMORU

Hello. . . Yes, this is he. . . .

(MAMORU reacts to whatever it is he hears on the other end with shock)

But. . . . No, I-I wasn't. . . . She never told me. . . . I mean, I. . . I knew, I had my. . . .

At this point, the unfocuessed image of the GIANT WOMAN appears to catch on fire.

MAMORU

I know she. . . . you think I don't know that?! You think I haven't tried to help?! What do you think I've been doing all this time? You don't have any idea-!

The GIANT WOMAN, still out of focus, is now fully alight, like an effigy. MAMORU then hears something at the other end of the phone that makes him go white.

MAMORU

What did you call me?

MAMORU then turns around to face the WOMAN- but she's gone. The WOMAN, the phone, the car, and the rocks- all gone. MAMORU is surrounded by pitch black. Then, he spots something hovering in front of him- a dully glowing, purple SHARD OF CRYSTAL, what looks like a piece of a much larger jewel. MAMORU admires it, as if he were looking for this his entire life, and has finally found it. MAMORU slowly reaches out for the shard, which grows brighter and brighter as his hand approaches. Brighter and brighter, until-

PRINCIPAL

Chiba-san!

CUT TO:

INT, Juuban High School Hallway

MAMORU snaps awake. He's standing in the middle of the hallway, his hand outstretched. He is surrounded by people, including some teachers, the school PRINCIPAL, and a couple of students, including MOTOKI, who's leaning against a wall, his nose bleeding.

PRINCIPAL

Chiba-san. . . Mamoru. Can you hear me?

MAMORU takes a look around, confused. He spots MOTOKI, cradling his bloody nose.

MAMORU

Motoki?

MOTOKI

(trying to calm Mamoru)

It's alright, Mamoru.

MAMORU

(afraid)

What's happening?

MOTOKI

You just had another fit, but you're alright now.

MAMORU

Another. . .

(looks at MOTOKI'S injury)

Did I-- ?

MOTOKI

It's okay.

MAMORU

Motoki, I'm--

MOTOKI

It's okay. It'll heal. I can show it off to the ladies. You've. . .

(hesitates)

You've done me a favor, buddy.

MAMORU looks on in horror as we-

CUT TO:

INT, Juuban High School, Office

MAMORU and the PRINCIPAL sit in the office. A RECEPTIONIST stands at the door.

RECEPTIONIST

We still haven't reached his guardian. We'll keep trying.

PRINCIPAL

Thank you.

The RECEPTIONIST bows and leaves.

PRINCIPAL

I've been told you had fits like this before.

MAMORU

(distant)

Yeah. . . in junior high. About a year or so after I came out of my coma.

(beat)

What happened? I mean, what was I doing?

PRINCIPAL

I didn't see all of it. From what I've been told, you. . . walked out of class. . . your teacher, and Motoki, spotted you and tried to speak to you, but you wouldn't respond, so Motoki came up and touched your shoulder. . . just to get your attention.

MAMORU

That's when I. . .

The PRINCIPAL nods.

PRINCIPAL

And not just him. You waved your arms around, slammed yourself against a locker, threw yourself against the floor. . . that, I saw. Unfortunately. Then it seemed like you were calming down, but then you started. . . babbling. "You think I don't know. . ." and "What do you think I've been doing. . ." and. . .

(sighs)

Then you stood up, reached out your hand. . . and woke up.

MAMORU is horrified.

PRINCIPAL

Mamoru. . . I can't risk something like this happening again. I'm going to talk to your guardian about suspending you- temporarily. You'll just be on medical leave.

(beat)

I'm also going to recommend that she consider placing you in a special facility--

MAMORU

What?

PRINCIPAL

Chiba-san-!

MAMORU

This happens once, and you're gonna throw me in a psych-!

PRINCIPAL

You've already gotten someone hurt! I can't take the-!

The RECEPTIONIST enters, carrying a CORDLESS PHONE.

RECEPTIONIST

Excuse me?

PRINCIPAL

Yes?

MAMORU

I can't believe this!

RECEPTIONIST

Chiba-san, it's for you.

The RECEPTIONIST holds the phone out for MAMORU. MAMORU stares at the phone. . . somehow, he knows what he's going to hear. Rather than pick up the phone, MAMORU stands up and runs out of the office.

PRINCIPAL

Chiba-san!

To be continued. . .

Valentine's Day-- 'Cause Nothing Says "Love" Quite Like A Holiday Named After a Catholic Priest Who Had His Head Cut Off.

On this, that highest of high fabricated giftcard non-holy days, let us remember that love is evolution's way of making sure Daddy sticks around just long enough to help raise the kids.



Cynicism on Valentine's Day. . . I'll bet no-one's ever thought of THAT before!

Let it never be said that nothing good can come from watching Caligula. . .

So, yeah, I'm suddenly into ballet.

Standoff of the Space Cowboys

This post is in response to a comment left by A.J. a few days ago:

Oh, and if you don't mind me asking what part of your Star Trek idea did the film incorporate? I think it's safe to assume it wasn't the part where they cover everything in lens flare.

The short answer: the creation of an alternate timeline, split off from the "canon" timeline, was something I was going to implement in my story.

The long answer. . .

The title of this post is the name that I was gonna give to my story. It's a silly name, loosely based on Gene Roddenberry's own nickname for Star Trek, "Wagon Train to the Stars". Nonetheless, in my mind the name stuck. The outline of the story is as follows:

A Federation Starship accidentally travels back in time to early 1960's Earth, crash-landing in the Caspian Sea. Their ship heavily damaged, and straddled between the Soviet Union and then US-allied Iran, things seem hopeless for the crew. Even if they could somehow manage to hide from the two biggest superpowers of the time, they won't last long without supplies.

However, they are quickly discovered and contacted by an oil tycoon hoping to mine the vast underground reserves of the Caspian Sea. The crew is offered protection and supplies in exchange for. . . well, they're not really sure, since the crashed ship is not all that terribly useful as an oil drilling platform. Neither is it terribly clear how an oil company, no matter how rich it is, can hide a bloody starship in the middle of the ocean from the Soviets and Americans. Still, the crew is hardly in a position to turn down his help. On top of all this, the crew has to clean up the messes they've made, like a photon torpedo landing on the border of two hostile nations, or crewmembers fleeing the ship.

Unfortunately, the ship's very presence in the twentieth century-- not to mention its contact with the oil company-- has opened up the possibility of historical alteration, destroying the timeline they know. However, the crew, initially, is in a position where they cannot be sure whether this is happening. The severe damage done to the ship's computer has almost completely erased its voluminous historical records. For instance, while some of the crew knew that an American president was going to be assassinated, no-one can be certain on what date it was supposed to happen. For all they know, the assassination that happened yesterday was supposed to happen tomorrow. As a result of this ambiguity, they cannot be certain whether their presense leads, in a hidden way, to the history they already know-- whether they were always part of history without even knowing it-- or whether history has actually changed.

The ship remains at the bottom of the Caspian Sea for five years. Up until this point, the crew has managed to adjust to their situation, and has seemed to contain any major historical changes. Unfortunately, the crew soon make what from their standpoint is a horrific discovery: a TV show called "Star Trek" that appears to be based upon their own future history.

AN ASIDE: Yes, yes, I went there. How cute of him, you all say. But aside from all the predicatable metafiction, I was always fascinated by the behind the scenes story of Star Trek. Indeed, it would be pretty interesting if they made a docu-drama TV series about the making of the show, with a title like "These Are the Voyages..." or some-such. It could serve as a sort of late-sixties companion piece to Mad Men (are you listening, AMC?).

Anyway, it's seeming more and more likely that history has indeed been changed and that the Federation, at least as it known by the crew, will never come to be. An ideological scism occurs, and the crew divides roughly into two camps: those who think that the original timeline must be restored, even if it means interference in the social and political structures of the day; and those who believe that this new history must be allowed to take its own course. The remainder of the series follows the conflict between these two camps.

That, more or less, was the idea of mine that was incorporated into the new film. There were all kinds of other aspects to this story, though. Most of them were only halfways thought through, and some might not have made it into the final version. Here are a few of those ideas, listed in no particular order:

- A powerful alien artifact stored within the hull of the ship-- this is actually what causes the time travel accident.

- A Klingon math genius who adopted the Vulcan way of life (can you tell it's fanfiction?) and is the only person who understands the artifact. She falls into a coma following the crash of the ship.

- An artificial insemination program that uses said Klingon's ova in combination with donated sperm to try and breed another math genius who can understand the artifact. This program does eventually create another genius, a young woman who is not only brilliant but also extremely volatile, due both to her Klingon genetics and her upbringing in a society that she doesn't really understand and that really doesn't understand her (she's not raised on the ship, but rather in contemporary human society).

- Remember the accused saboteur I mentioned earlier? As part of her plan to escape, she used nanobots and technobabble to change species, from alien to human. The process kills her within a few days.

- A human-Q hybrid, created to destroy the alien artifact (the artifact is like Kryptonite for "full-blooded" Q). As his powers are controlled by his human mind, he finds that many instances where his powers are used are either unconscious or occur in an almost rambling "stream of consciousness". The hybrid, very human in personality, is born in Venezuela and raised Catholic (SUBTLETY!).

- The whole series would be eighteen episodes long, and its structure would loosely be based on the James Joyce novel "Ulysees" ('Cause Bloomsday in Dublin is like a Star Trek convention-- that's my flimsy excuse and I'm sticking with it!)

That's about as far as I'll with this story for now. I know I keep promising a new Sailor Moon piece, and I'm working on it. It'll be up sometime.

So anyway. . .

Reasons Why I Should Write the Sailor Moon Movie #4: Ami Mizuno



Can't Japan make up it's mind?

In Part #3, I proposed to have four of the Sailor Senshi (Usagi, Ami, Rei, and Makoto) meet each other for the first time in afterschool detention. Out of curiosity, I decided to investigate, via Google, what detention is like is the Japanese middle school system. As it turns out, Google doesn't know. In fact, Google is not even sure whether or not there exists such a thing as detention in Japanese schools.

On the one hand, Google produces a couple of websites claiming that there is no equivalent to North American style detention in Japan (the rest of the sites it gives are about Japanese-American Internment during the Second World War). On the other hand, in the "video results" section, Google produces none other then episode 52 of Sailor Moon-- the one in which Usagi is thrown into afterschool detention!

Oh well. . . since the anime established the precedent of detention existing in Sailor Moon's Japan, I'm sticking with the idea for now. There are still few details that need to be worked out (such as Cait's question of how star student Ami would find herself in detention to begin with, or how Rei could end up in the same detention as the others when she attends an entirely different school!) but I'll worry about those later. The main point I wanted to make with the detention idea was how futile it would be for a movie to follow the same pattern of introducing the senshi that the other versions.

The other thing I wanted to discuss in the last post, but chose to put off due to my paper finally getting accepted, was how I would handle the characters of Ami, Rei, and Makoto. That's what I'll be doing in the next three parts. I was going to do it all in one, but I realized that would be way too much for one post. So instead, I'm going to give character sketches for each of the three senshi in separate posts.

As I said in the last post, my approach is going pretty revisionist. It's also going to be a little more political than what you would expect from an adaptation of Sailor Moon. Still, commentators have read into Sailor Moon a sort of subtle social commentary anyway, so hopefully the political elements won't be too jarring.

Before I begin, a note about casting. Apart from Abigail Breslin, and one other actress whose identity I wish to keep a secret for now, I don't really have a very solid idea about who I would want to play the roles of the senshi. However, I do know that I would want Ami, Rei, and Makoto to be Japanese, and to be close to the age of the characters they play.

So with that, let's begin!

Ami Mizuno

If there's one word to describe Ami Mizuno, it's smart. She earned this reputation by always achieving perfect marks in class, which is no small feat in a country as academically competitive as Japan. Because of her academic feats, everyone in Sailor Moon seems to imagine Ami as being possessed of a sort of transcendental genius, even going so far as to claim that she has a 300 IQ.

And yet, the real Ami falls far short of this kind of exaltation. Ami, as typically presented in previous incarnations of Sailor Moon, never comes off as more than a hard worker with brains. Her exceptional marks come not just as a result of intelligence, but extreme effort. Hours of studying out of class, in addition to attending cram school, have yielded scholarly success, but at the cost of anything even remotely resembling a full life. On the nerd scale, she's less Brainac 5 and more Willow Rosenberg.

Suppose, then, that Ami really was the genius everyone made her out to be. For your consideration:

Ami Mizuno is the daughter of a well known oncologist and a talented but struggling artist. A healthy, if somewhat timid, child, she shocked her parents when, at the age of two months, she spoke her first word, "mizu." Whether she was trying to say her family name or simply asking for a cup of water, it became clear after this that their daughter was profoundly gifted. By her first birthday, she could hold conversations with her parents; at age two, largely by self-instruction, she had mastered arithmetic, was able to read at the sixth grade level (meaning she could understand just over 1000 kanji) and could speak English; by age three, she was an expert in geometry and algebra, and had virtually memorized her mother's medical school textbooks. It was at this age that she decided to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a doctor. She set the goal of entering the prestigious University of Tokyo's medical school-- at age six no less! Given her progress up until then, it seemed like nothing could stop her. . . but something did.

Raising a prodigious child is an exceptional challenge, and Ami's parents could rarely agree on the right approach to take: Ami's mother always pushed her into new activities, never allowing her mental development and education to slow; Ami's slightly hippy-ish father, however, never imposed the kinds of demands on her mother did, instead preferring to let Ami find her own way and, occasionally, encouraging Ami to immerse herself in the particular joys of childhood. Neither approach on it's own was perfect for Ami, but taken together they worked well for her. Unfortunately, her parents didn't realize this. As Ami reached the age of five, their arguments over which direction Ami's development should take became ever more heated. These disagreements, along with other factors, ultimately led to the unravelling of their marriage. Divorce is a painful process for a child even when handled ideally by the parents-- and typically, it's not even handled close to ideally. Indeed, it can reveal a pretty ugly side to human nature. In the warped reality that is divorce, parents will often use children as a way of hurting their ex-partners, and will play petty mind games with their children, who they unconsciously see not so much as human beings than as the ultimate trophies to won. Ami's parents did all of this, and the fact that she was smart enough to see through it all only made it hurt all the more. After the divorce, custody of Ami was granted to her mother, as is almost always the case in Japan.

Ami was never quite the same after her parents broke up. She tried to take the entrance exams for university, but failed spectacularly. Though she still displayed great intelligence, she was unable to retain what she learned at quite the same level that she did before. Ami's mother nonetheless had high expectations of her. Ami entered junior high at the age of eight (or so) and she felt a pressure to be academically superior. She achieved top marks, but only through hours if study and attendance at cram school. Her remaining free time was spent on swimming (something she had enjoyed since she was a toddler) and on taking care of herself when her mother was absent, which was often the case. Her academic success, combined with her youth, intimidated some students, and others misinterpreted her timidity (which was exacerbated by her parent's painful divorce) for arrogance. Thus, she is quite lonely by the time she meets Usagi in detention. . .

Yes, I would write Ami Mizuno as a child, roughly 8-10 years old by the time the movie takes place. In some respects, the character of Ami is quite fearful (fear, after all, is the emotion associated with the planet Mercury in the Chinese elemental system, upon which the senshi were partly based), and being a pre-adolescent in junior high would emphasize this characteristic. Plus, it would serve as a sort of subtle allusion to Chibiusa.

There's way more to discuss, but that'll have to wait until another post. Next time: Rei!

My Calling Has at Last Found Me.

What did I think life was?

What was that I, in my naiveté, once called my dreams?

Physics? Teaching in Japan? Mastery of Tae Kwon Do? Writing the Sailor Moon live action movie starring Abigail Breslin in the lead role?

What a fool I was. Fortunately, a good, wise soul has shown me the way.

From this day fourth, I shall not rest or waver until I, Jeremy K., have become. . . THE BURGER KING TM!

So. . . yeah. I went to Burger King for lunch, and as I'm entering the restaurant, I hear slovenly cries from behind about someone, who I later realized was me, being "pretty keen!"

Entering the line to order, I am approached by the fellow I heard earlier. Clearly drunk out of his gord, he tells me "Aw man, it's the Burger King!"

I realized ignoring him might be a bad idea, so I turned briefly to him and said "Yup."

"Naw, naw, really, I'm-- I'm serious, your the Burger King."

"Cool."

"Naw, man, I like saw you from behind, and-- I was like. . . 'man, it's the Burger King!'"

"Uh huh."

"No, man, you should. . . you should. . . really, like, consider it, man. You like. . "

The man slapped his hands together back to palm.

"Like, fifty grand, man. Fifty grand or that job. I'm serious! You should--"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm ready to order!"

The man then allegedly slapped another customer (I'm not really sure about this, as I tried my damnedest to avoid eye contact with him), which prompted the manager to ask him to leave, upon threat of RCMP intervention.

This was the latest, and greatest, in a long line of misadventures at Prince George's shitty, shitty. . . shitty Burger King. But, it's our city's only source of Whoppers, so what are you gonna do? Besides go to Fatburger, that is?

Gordon Ramsay Can Cook a Mean Lobster Spaghetti. . .

. . . but can he cook LIFE ITSELF?

Via Pharyngula, famous chef Julia Child cooks up a primordial soup.



Mmm mmm good.

A Bonus:

The Must See Movie of the Summer!

Movies have not been good to me this summer. The last movie I saw in a theatre was Terminator: Salvation, which I liked but everyone else hated. The last movie I saw before that was Star Trek, which I hated but everyone else loved. So while I've been questioning my own taste in movies, as well as the tastes of those around me, I've been avoiding trips to the cinema. (My thesis also had more than a little to do with that, but that's another story).

I thought I was through with summer movies. . . until I saw the trailer posted below. I knew that there was a movie about to be released by the producers of Independence Day based on the 2012 disater myth, but I had no interest in seeing it, mainly because, well, it's a disaster movie from the producers of Independence Day. But having seen this trailer, I'm now convinced that it may just worth seeing after all. . .



P.S. Seriously, though, I am looking forward to District 9. I just hope they don't fuck up the story and ideas with excessive, pointless action.

This is the World in Which We Live.

Star Trek -- 95%

Terminator: Salvation -- 34%

My Sunday Morning

After a fairly late night of work, I went to bed. I was hoping to sleep in this Sunday morning, but at about six-thirty in the morning, I felt the slight pangs of a headache. After some brief effort to sleep through it, I eventually decided to get up. By eight o'clock, I was off to town.

I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity for a drive. I've frequently enjoyed travelling the back roads of Prince George. The peace and solitude of the countryside helped me clear my mind. I had already travelled north and east of Prince George far too often, so I decided to venture where I had never gine before-- south, down highway 97 toward Quesnel.

I found myself travelling down Red Rock Road West, some twenty to thirty kilometers south of Prince George. The nieghborhood of Red Rock consisted of a long gravel road, with a few houses and, to my surprise, a closed-down elementary school dotted along its sides. The road promised some intriguing exploration, but unfortunately my journey was to be cut short.

I am one prone to travel down side roads. When I saw a red pick up truck pull out of a junction on my right, I followed my foolish exploratory instincts and turned in. Alas, within fifty meters I saw the sign indicating a dead-end, along with a looped arrow which, to me, indicated a turn-around up ahead. Following the road over a small crest I found not a turn-around but a ranch. Dissapointed, and just a little frustrated, I turned the car around and headed back out, only to find the red pick-up barrelling along toward me. Ah, I thought, the man of the manor! He must have mistaken my simple and admittedly rather childish excursion as a visit of greater portent. A trivial, if embarrassing, misunderstanding.

And yet, a dread fell upon me at the thought this man, who knew of me through only the most awkward of contexts, being forced by his own routine to follow me out of Red Rock and into Prince George. I thus decided to turn to the right and continue further down the road, certain that the man in the red truck would break left toward town.

Yet, he did not turn left, but instead followed me to the right. My hands, in fear, clasped tighter to the wheel, and an anxious warmth flushed upward over my face. I wondered, did he sense in my confused detour not merely purpose, but malice? My thoughts raced, first to denial-- surely, he did not think me some burglar, scoping his house like a common vagrant? Yet even a surplus of experience, forged by the fires of common sense into a veritable blade of inference capable of piercing the heavist curtains of doubt, cannot truly hope to penetrate that mysterious force which shrouds the thoughts of men. And when confronted with such an overwhelming incomprehensible vastness, ones own thoughts, like the shodow's of Plato's Cavern, take on a life all their own. My heart raced as the pick-up followed ever closer, my eyes darting rapidly between the road ahead and the persuer behind. My thoughts, like the snowflakes of a winter's storm which first dart about in the wind before crystallizing into the frigid white terrain, converged into a single idea, a single word: escape.

On my left, as though summoned by my fears, another road appeared. Without hesitation, I bent left. The pick-up followed. There could be no doubt now. He was following me. And yet even as I resigned myself to the terrible reality of this misunderstanding I saw the pick-up dart to the right, toward the Red Rock Volunteer Fire Brigade headquarters. And then, a further relief: the Highway! I turned north onto the highway and accelerated; though relieved at the pick-up's departure, I soon noticed its driver deliberating with a pair of uniformed men, no doubt members of the fire brigade. In more rational times, the scene would have suggested the jovial camaraderie of old friends, perhaps even equals, brothers in that fellowship of volunteer fire brigadiers. Yet my thoughts, still trapped in Hollows of Plato, continued to rage on.

"That's the one!" said, no doubt, the pick up driver. "I have his license plate number! Alert the dispatchers! Rally the cruisers! We must not allow him elusion!"

And at that moment, indeed, in my sights appeared the form of a partol car, its side branded by the words "Red Rock Community Patrol," its sparkling electric lights of crimson and azure luminous even in the brightness of this fateful sabbath morn. I pulled to the side, and yet even as the police officer emerged from his vehicle, eliminating all doubt of his intended target, I was overcome not by fear but relief. I had tired of the chase. Now, at the very least, I was allowed an audience for my account of the preceding events, and with it, the chance for redemption. I rolled down my window.

"Sir, were you aware that this is a construction zone?"

I was not. I had no way of knowing that I'd pulled out of Red Rock into a construction zone. But, nonetheless, I was speeding, and I got a ticket for it. The police officer was pretty decent about my fine. He could have been much crueller than he was.

This was the first time I've ever gotten a speeding ticket. My spotless record, ruined!

By the way, the events described above unfolded in the span of about a minute and a half. Still, this story, in all its purple glory, has to be better than Star Trek.

My Win-sense is Tingling. . .

Fireman dresses as Spider-Man to rescue boy.



Seriously.

BANGKOK - A Thai firefighter dressed as Spider-Man to rescue an autistic boy who climbed onto a third-floor balcony and dangled his legs over the side because he was nervous on his first day of school.

Firefighter Somchai Yoosabai was called in after the 11-year-old boy's teachers and mother failed to coax him off the ledge on Monday, he said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

"He was nervous about the first day at school, and he was asking for his mother," Somchai said. "He cried and refused to let any of us get close to him."

Overhearing a conversation between the boy's mother and his teachers about his love for comics and superheroes, Somchai rushed back to the fire station to change into a Spider-Man costume before swinging into action.

"I told him Spider-Man is here to save you. No monster will hurt you now," Somchai said. "Then I told him to walk slowly toward me. I was very nervous that he might have slipped if he got too excited and ran."

Somchai, who keeps costume of Spider-Man and a Japanese superhero Ultraman to liven up fire drills at schools, said the teary-eyed boy broke into a smile and started walking into his arms.

Win.

I'm Starting to Notice a Theme. . .

Two nuclear-powered submarines from Britain and France, both carrying nuclear missiles, collided deep under the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, authorities are now acknowledging.

It's Like. . . Some Sort of . . . Star War. . .

If you could believe such a absurd thing!

Seriously, though. . . remember when the U.S. and China got into a pissing match over who was better at blowing up their own satellites with missiles? It seems like Russia has gotten into the act as well. Their approach, however, is a bit more direct. . .

From MSNBC:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Russian and U.S. experts say the first-ever collision between two satellites has created clouds of debris that could threaten other unmanned spacecraft.

...

The smashup occured over Siberia when a derelict Russian military communications satellite crossed paths with a U.S. Iridium satellite.

The two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.

NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) over Siberia on Tuesday.

Americans? Chinese? Pussies. Leave it to the Russians have the sheer frozen balls to destroy a foreign satellite. . . with their own decommissioned satellite!

But those ex-Bolshevist bastards aren't content with taking out just one satellite:

Other Russian and U.S. officials warn that satellites in nearby orbits could be damaged.

...

The U.S. Strategic Command's Space Surveillance Network detected the two debris clouds created by Tuesday's collision. Julie Ziegenhorn, a spokeswoman for the Strategic Command, told msnbc.com that the collision left behind an estimated 600 pieces of debris, but she emphasized that the Pentagon's orbital watchdog had to do "still more characterization" of the collision's potential effect.

NASA's [Mark] Matney said the count would likely be in the thousands if pieces of debris down to the scale of microns — about the size of a grain of sand — are included.

...

Nicholas Johnson, an orbital debris expert at the Houston space center, said the risk of damage from Tuesday’s collision is [relatively high] for the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observing satellites, which are in higher orbit [than the International Space Station] and nearer the debris field.

The satellite-- the victim satellite-- was owned by telecommunications company Iridium Holdings LLC. According to the article, one of the company's biggest clients is the US Department of Defence.

Coincidence? What do you mean yes? Are you blind? As we speak, the Russians are already planning to allow satellites they decommissioned during the Cold War to follow their original orbits and eventually collide with satellites launched years later that they could never have anticipated! It's all part of the Soviet grand plan launched years ago: to destory the enemies the Soviet Union my means of the remnant's of the Soviet Union's own downfall! And to think, you people are still fooled by that little puppet show in Berlin.

Or. . . maybe Iridium just fucked up. Though the article never specifies whether he's talking about this particular collision or any collision of satellites, Mark Matney was quoted as saying “We knew this was going to happen eventually.”

UPDATE: Cool video. It freezes up for the first second or so, but if you click a couple of seconds ahead, it works fine.

Lab

I'm in my Phys 111 lab. It's 7:50 pm and I'm not leaving until around 9:30. It's hard going. I mangled my introduction to the lab because I was tired and didn't prepare and basically just didn't give a shit. As a result, I think a couple of students laughed at me, and frankly, I can't blame them. On top of that, I'm also marking labs for Christine, the senior lab instructor. She's telling me that I have to "get mean," which means, in part, that I'll have to be even more vigilant in identifying mistakes than I already am, which means even more work. Either that, or I'll just have to take off more points for the same mistakes, which is easier, but not neccessarily fair to the students.

Labs. My "fuck that guy" of the evening.

(This does not bode well for me if I'm selected by JET to teach English in Japan. Come to think of it, that would have been an interesting blog topic. Way better than bitching about the shitty commercials done by my make-believe Japanese girlfriend.)

Miyuu Afterwards, or, YOU USED TO BE SAILOR MOON, GODDAMMIT!!!

Click here. You'll find a video. Don't worry, it won't take too much of your time.

Did you notice the tiny woman on the left about ten seconds in? You know, the one showing off the latest in Japanese corporate homogenization, performing a modeling task one or two small steps above that of your typical Sears mannequin?

Look at it again, if you missed it.

You'd never guess that woman used to be Sailor Moon. You know, one of the most popular Japanese heros of all time.

And now she's pitching suits.

Okay, okay, you're thinking "It's not that bad." (Or "Christ, here he goes with Miyuu Fucking Sawai again. Get a girlfriend, you fucking loser.") It's certainly not the lowest to which Miyuu Sawai has ever stooped. I already showed you the PGSM toy commercials, but even that's not so bad, she was the star of her own TV show at the time.

But the next thing I'm going to show you. . . there's just no excuse.

Just in case it doesn't show, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7ZRoeYJKY

This commercial, first aired in 2007, did indeed star the one and only Homer Simpson. . . in Miyuu Sawai's mouth. The saddest thing is that as weird as this commercial is, it doesn't even have the benefit of being that unique, Japanese sort of weird. It's a bland, commercialist, acultural, boring kind of weird.

But it's not even the corporate aspect that bugs me. I mean, there are plenty of successful actors who do commercials. Like this one:

Denny Crane.

Sure, the Commodore Vic-20 has "a real computer keyboard," but that's not what made it "The Wonder Computer of the 1980s" TM.

No, it was William Shatner. By mere whim, Shatner took some hunk of ugly plastic with a five kilobyte memory and declared that for the remainder of an entire decade, no other computer shall surpass it Wonder-ness. He made the Vic-20.

And that's the difference. The Vic-20 commercial was really an advertisement not of a computer, but of the awesomeness that is Shatner. It's really his way of saying "I made it."

On the other hand, Sawai's commercials seem like a retreat back to anonymity. In both cases she's secondary to the product. The suit commercial's focus is on the spokeswoman, who in turn is directing the viewer's attention not to Sawai but to her clothes. The donut commercial features an extreme close-up of Sawai's visage, and even then, even then, she's upstaged by a freakin' cartoon. IN HER OWN MOUTH!

The weird thing is, before a couple of days ago, I thought I had made peace with donut commercial. The year 2008 was relatively good for Sawai. She landed a small roll in the film Shaolin Girl, a Japanese pseudo-sequel to Shaolin Soccer. She also co-hosted an educational series for NHK called "French TV" (at least I think that's how it translates), which as its name suggests is focused on teaching French to Japanese speakers. I would have loved to have found some clips from the show, but so far I've not had any luck.

On top of this, she did a few TV guest roles. My favourite out of all of these-- and the one for which it was easiest to get clips-- was her appearance as a bicycle delivery girl on the series Tomika Hero Rescue Force, a show that manages to make PGSM look subtle and restrained by comparison.

The episode was uploaded in three parts; I've put up the second part below. The best scene starts at about seven minutes in.

For whatever reason, that scene always reminds me this classic movie moment:

While some people-- those lacking vision-- would call that bike leap scene moronic, you can't deny that it's a huge step up from smuggling an amorphous pirated copy of The Simpson's Movie inside one's mouth. And you can't deny that that clothing ad was a step down. Unless you're talking in terms of good taste, in which case, why are you reading this blog?

I don't know quite how to close this entry in any logical way, so I'll just conclude with another reference to Yor: The Hunter from the Future.

On "equivocation". . .

A couple of weeks ago Naomi sent me a link to WWII era Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Great stuff. They even do the "What's Opera Doc?" parody of Wagner's Die Walküre, a decade before "What's Opera Doc?"

My enjoyment was tempered, however, upon reading one of the comments left in response to the video. First, I'll point out an earlier comment:

All U people that think that Hitler is good are the most horrible people in the planet.He killed mora than 1000 jews and homosexuals.You people wouldnt like him too kill all the people of your religon so Shut the f**k up kwgitho

Bad grammar and incorrect statistics aside, I do agree with the sentiment. Fuck Hitler, and fuck his modern-day admirers.

The comment that irritated me so much was in response to the one above:

He killed millions of Jews and thousands of Christians. Let's not equivocate the small percentile of homosexuals, which is a lifestyle preference, and though unfortunate, pales against the tragedy and degree of the Nazi's religious persecution.

That said, I miss Looney Tunes.

Hoooo-boy.

Where do I begin?

Am I to take it that if there were only a few thousand Jews murdered by the Nazi's, then the Nazi's would somehow be less evil? Supposing that Hitler was utterly incompetent and allowed millions of Jews of escape from Europe-- does inability to perform evil acts make you less evil? Is the act of genocide somehow more tolerable if your killing off a small population rather than a large one? Would wiping out every Muslim or Catholic be more atrocious than wiping out every Jew just because there are a billion Muslims and Catholics and only millions of Jews?

Of course not.

As for that "lifestlye choice" comment (a common argument made by fundamentalist homophobes), many Nazis had a somewhat different view. From Wikipedia:

Nazi leaders such as Himmler viewed homosexuals as a separate people and ensured that Nazi doctors experimented on them in an effort to locate the hereditary weakness many party members believed caused homosexuality.

I was going to point out the absurdity of dismissing homosexuality as a "lifestyle choice" while crying bloody murder over religious persecution-- as though religion isn't a lifestyle choice-- but in this particular instance, I knew it didn't apply. To the Nazis, the Jews were inherently degenerate-- conversion or apostacy solved nothing.

Anti-gay bigotry: An official member of my lifetime "Fuck Thats".

This Man. . .

. . . is where Stratocasters go to die.

Courtesy of Pharyngula. No, really. Thanks.

Guess Where I'm Writing From!

Give up?

My Lab!

Yay!

Details.

I'm currently in room 8-229 of UNBC, and I'm teaching the second experiment out of eight in the Physics 101 lab curriculum. I began writing at approximately 12:30, and won't be out of here until just before 2:30.

What am I teaching? Standing waves in a tube. Basically, we just put a speaker at the end of a long tube, connect it to a function generator to control the frequency and amplitude, and run a microphone down the tube in order to determine (a) the resonance frequencies at which standing waves form, and (b) the nodes and anti-nodes of said waves. Measuring the speed of sound fits in there as well. None of this really matters. The important thing is that you can make cool videogame and old-timey radio sounds with the speaker/function generator apparatus.

Two students just came up to me to get their data tables signed. It's a new anti-plagiarism measure. I told them that they have to re-write their data in pen before I would sign it. They were not happy, and I don't blame them.

It's cool that Christine set up a computer right at the desk. If she didn't, this blog entry would never be. I also checked my UNBC email before writing this entry, which reminded me why I so so so so so so so hate to use UNBC email.

12:40.

If someone raised their hand right now I wouldn't even know it. That's a cool feeling.

More students came to get their forms signed. Here comes one now! Alright!

These labs really are exhausting. I only really "work" for half an hour during the actual period, in which I give the pre-lab lecture. This is actually the worst part of it. I've gotten a bit better at these lectures, in that I don't feel quite as horrible doing it as I used to, yet I still get the distinct impression that my students consider me a horrible horrible tool. And their right.

They're right.

Sorry.

A couple of students have left. Fine by me, as long as they got all their data. I figure if they really want to crap out and leave early, that's fine. If it turns out to be a mistake for them to leave, they'll pay for it in their marks. If not, why be a douche and make them stay?

12:45.

I missed a seminar being given today by Dr. Shegelski, my grad supervisor. He was talking about research in molecular tunneling in which I was involved. "Involved" meaning that I was standing in the same general place that awesome research by Jeff and Hal was being done and getting paid for it all the same.

I missed it because I had to come here and do stupid prep for the stupid lab. That's the other exhausting thing about these labs. I usually come into the lab room about an hour and a half in advance to make sure that I'm really truly prepped for the experiment at hand. And even then, my preparation is still often grossly incomplete.

They're really piling on to me now. I just signed four data tables, and two are on the way.

12:55. I'm glad I had deluxe breakfast at A&W. There are many reasons for this, one involving the drive in teller girl at McDonalds. Ask my mom about that sometime.

Two students seem to be absolutely captivated by a poster of spectra for various elements. Leni just left. She thought I didn't know her, just because I acted like I didn't know her. I get nervous in these labs! Sue me.

I'm just realizing how abstract my blog labels are becoming. For this post, I've already attached labels like "Just Another Fist," "No One Can Hear You Scream,"-- two more data tables signed-- and "There Can Be Only One." Maybe I'll make up another tag of two. I'll have to give it some thought though. There's abstract and then there's just dumb.

1:03. I have no labs next week. For that, I'll attach the "Circular Celebrations" label.

I came to the lab rooms earlier in the week. The rooms that I teach in are on the second floor of the Teaching Lab building, with big windows that face toward the east. The mountains are blocked by haze today, as they often are, but when I came earlier in the week, on one of those days when it turned to biting cold, the sky was so clear that I could see the Rockys fifty or a hundred kilometers away. There weren't any students when I came in that time. If there were, I would have begun the lecture by just showing them the view, letting them soak it in for a minute or two, because they would likely never see that kind of view again.

Created new label-- "The View From Where I Am."

I've got the stupid live action Sailor Moon theme stuck in my head. I thought it might be a good idea for one of the hosts of a late night show going without writers, like Conan O'Brien or Colbert, to digitally insert themselves into episodes of the series, reciting actual dialogue from the show in really pathetic Japanese. Just imagine Conan as Mamoru-- I don't care if you don't know what I'm talking about!-- in a really big ugly Beatles wig hair cut that seems to be all the rage in Japan. Hilarious. And the best part: it's all legit! (it's Writers Guild of AMERICA. Suck it, union lawyers!)

If I started playing an episode of Sailor Moon right now, would anyone in the lab watch? Probably not.

Added label "Miyuu Sawai."



And with that, I bid you adieu.

UPDATE: Added label "Wow".

The Greatest Political Ad Your Sorry Asses Will EVAR See!

. . . which isn't saying much, I'll admit. Still, this ad from Republican Mike Huckabee beats Hillary Clinton's pathetic Sopranos parody by a long shot.

Chuck Norris' endorsements of Democratic presidential candidates cure cancer. Too bad he's. . . oh, never mind!

People Listen to Me. . .

Last Thursday (November 15th, 2007) I responded to a post by ScienceBlogger Jonah Lehrer about "science criticism":

*Why don't we have science critics? We have music critics and literary critics and dance critics and architecture critics...Wouldn't it be great to also have knowledgeable people point out the flaws and achievements of the latest scientific papers? And yes, I did write an article on this idea a few years ago in Seed, although it seems to have been lost by Google.

To which I responded rather hastily:

We do. It's called peer review.

Imagine my horror when, the next day, I find that Mr. Lehrer has devoted a whole bloody post to my comment:

In response to my call for science critics, a position analogous to a music critic or art critic except that they review the latest science papers, a commenter wrote the following:

"Why don't we have science critics?"
We do. It's called peer review.

My response is that peer review is necessary but not sufficient. (I've discussed the limitations of the peer review process before.) As every scientist knows, lots of crap gets published in journals. (In fact, it's possible that most published research findings are false. ) The job of a science critic, like all critics, would consist of two separate parts: 1) criticize what deserves criticism and 2) praise what deserves praise. Here's what I wrote about science critics way back in the spring of 2004 in Seed:

I believe we need to treat science like culture. We should interrogate and question our science no less than we judge our art. What we need are figures outside of the scientific process to remind us that science is a process, that the data might mean this, or that. What we need are critics of science.
Why does the phrase "critics of science" sound so strange? Why can't our newspapers have, right next to the review of the philharmonic, a thousand opinionated words about molecular biology? Just as there are souls who know Bach better than Bach himself and yet choose to sit in the audience, to listen to the orchestra from the plush velvet chair, so we need figures who know science inside and out and yet choose to site on the sidelines. Modern science is a specialized body of knowledge; an archipelago of disciplines, with each island dominated by its own codes and coasts. Our critics would have to master that island biogeography. In other words, our science critics would have to really know what they were talking about.

Karl Popper, an eminent defender of science, argued for just such a figure: "It is imperative that we give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it is beyond our reach. There is no authority beyond the reach of criticism."

I know, kids. . . I'm scared too.