Apocalypse Out of Context

Apocalypse Out of Context
or
A Chatty Night on facebook, Slightly Edited.

• Reminds me of the last canine companion I had (before I turned to the feline side). Rico was an energetic liver spotted Dalmatian (browns spots as opposed to black). He loved popcorn and would never miss any kernels tossed to him. He also loved apples; give him an apple and he would play with it like a ball for maybe half an hour and then eat it. He also got all the apple cores in the house, but it didn't seem fair not giving him his own apple when he would have so much fun with it.
• Pro-life is more like Pro-Pre-Life.
• I have a hypothesis that no matter what the intent at the start, Corporate will inevitably succumb to the Dark Side and become irrevocably evil. (Based on Life Experience as well as reading and research.)
  
  
  
• I fracking hope I can recognize bullshit when it comes from me as well others. If not, I hope you will teach me, oh, Honored Sir Gerrold Guru of all that is True.
• On the off chance that the world may end tonight I am in the process of making sure that all the beer in Chez Francois is consumed, if only because it would be so embarrassing to explain in the Next Life Green Room if it were not.
  
  We do have chocolates with brandy in them. They are at risk for not surviving the non-apocalypse as well.
• Definition of treason - advocating violent insurrection against the government.
  
  And I think rational people would agree that, "second amendment remedies" - aka gun violence - constitute treason.
• Doin' the math: firing rate 650 rounds per minute is still over 10 rounds per second. That's a lot of lead flying about. (Unposted Addendum: 650 rounds per second is a fairly obvious typo; it wouldn’t take long for the barrel to melt down at that rate of fire.)
• Starting with a definition of human rights as property rights dooms his argument from the start. Starting with a false major premise, regardless of your minor premise will result in a false yet logical result (If there are accidents getting a true result I would love to see them.) Or to put it another way: Garbage in Garbage out.
• Being a glutton for punishment (as well as other things) I have married two redheads and in my long career as a serial husband the redheads I married were my best wives/lovers/companions. On top of that my favorite memories of a previous lady friend are of a wonderful strawberry blonde (which counts as a redhead in my book).
• Unsweet.
  In the south if you order iced tea, you get sweet. Elsewhere you get unsweet. Some places in the north, you get a funny look and the server points at the sugar on the table. They do not understand that traditionally southern sweet tea must have sugar added while the water is boiling since solubility is a function of temperature and the sugar is super-saturated to achieve the proper level of sweetness.  
• Off to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I wonder if they serve breakfast there.
• Tennessee, home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, still trying to impose teaching that early creation myths deserve equal time with evolution.
• After 37 years of being a water professional, I loved the reference to hauling his own water. However, since many people in my noble profession protect water resources by limiting point source pollution (by operating wastewater treatment facilities) or non-point source pollution (by controlling run-off from polluted areas) even taking buckets of water out of a river would mean he was depending on the government to protect him.
• I know that none of my friends believe that the world is ending, since they have not dropped by to give me their cash, guitars, sports cars, computers and other possessions that would be useless in the event of apocalypse.
  
  I also have seen no zombies today in spite of a visit to WalMart.

Apocalypse Afterword.

The News is that there is news today.

Somehow I always thought that the end of a calendar means nothing more but getting another calendar. And the coincidence that the last day was the winter solstice (Mayans were in the northern hemisphere, right?) So ending the calendar on the last day of the year would be so disconcerting. The world must be ending. Just like it has ended on so many New Year’s Days over the centuries.

Aside: Y2K. After January first 2000 I could only hear Marvin the Martian saying “Where’s the KABOOM? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM!” So of course I threw this together:

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Comment on Recursive

I didn't make 1000 words today. I sat down to write about not writing. I followed Humpty Dumpty's advice (from Lewis Carroll): "Start at the beginning, go through until you reach the end and then stop."

It was a one-time gag. I won't be able to do that again, at least not in the same way.

At least it's better than daily complaints about the relative state of my headache (although I did sneak that in).

Recursive

Charles sat at his desk, fingers on the keyboard, staring at the blank page in the word processing program. Nothing came to him. He leaned back in his chair, scowling while he looked at the monitor. He looked around the room. No help. Maybe check my email, he thought, knowing that he had checked it ten or fifteen minutes ago.

He started to open a browser, thinking about checking Facebook, then pulled his hand away. If I do that, next thing you know I’ll be on YouTube watching videos for hours. He pulled the chair forward, sat up straighter and faced the screen. Faced the music.

Then he thought, Yeah, music. Maybe that will help. Of course then deciding what to listen to would stop work. Yeah, like I’m getting anything done now. He put on something soothing, resisting the temptation to check out the podcasts already downloaded but not watched or listened to yet.

Then back to being poised at the keyboard. He started to think about chores needing to be done. He needed to trim the bushes. There were pictures still waiting to be hung.

He was trying to start a new short story. All those characters in his head that clamored for attention when he was driving or in the grocery store stayed silent. All those plot threads unraveling without characters to be in conflict.

Maybe if I start with a name, he thought. So, he began: Abe, Bobby (a different sort than Bob), Charley (no, too close to his own name), Don (not The Don). He continued through the alphabet. Nothing sparked any ideas. Wait. What about Sparks? Nah, too retro SF.   

Zed. Zed’s dead, he thought. Zoe. A female lead? Some male writers can pull that off. Not me.

The self-doubt echoed about the room. He got up and went to get something for the headache which was getting worse with the stress. It was cool in the office, so he stopped to put on a sweater.

Sitting back down at his desk, he thought about the computer. Some writers do first drafts on yellow legal pads, in pencil. He chuckled. At least then I’d have an excuse for all this pencil sharpening. For ten minutes or so. Except that I don’t have any classic number two wood pencils. Only auto pencils with half millimeter lead.

His thoughts continued. Some guys still use old typewriters. I wonder if they use carbon paper or just photocopy the pages. He frowned. This line of thought is getting me nowhere. Then he returned to the same line of thought. Maybe, I could dictate it. The computer has a program to record my voice.

He smiled wryly. “I know what you’re doing,” he said aloud to himself. “Just get to work -- NOW.” His voice sounded desperate to him.

Fingers back to the home keys on the keyboard. He began typing: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

He stopped. Next thing you know I’ll be talking to Floyd the bartender and hallucinating whiskey. He wasn’t sure whether Jack Torrance drank whiskey in The Shining. Or whisky either. He typed “whiskey” and whisky” to see if the spell check dictionary recognized both. It did.

He sighed. All he wanted was to be able to create a thousand words a day. Four pages (double-spaced, of course). He knew that the more he wrote the better his writing would become.

So why can’t I just start something.

He cleared the page and typed: “It was a dark and stormy night.” That’s it. Burn the clichés out of me. “A shot rang out. The maid screamed. A pirate ship appeared on the horizon.” God bless Charles Schultz and God bless Snoopy.

Then he started typing what he was thinking. 

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Thoughts on Star Wars prequel trilogy

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Oh, for the sake of the Force. It’s not far, far away. It’s not even far away. It’s our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And it’s not very long ago -- the mere blink of an eye in geological terms, never mind Galactic terms. It is the unfashionable western arm of the Milky Way galaxy[1].

I recently watched Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Jedi again. That and the recent purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney made me start to think (always dangerous). This is an opinion piece. In fandom it takes very little to create controversy or get fankids upset, so please remember this is mere speculation. Don’t Panic.[2]

It came to me that if it were possible to re-do the prequel trilogy, not in the minor way that George Lucas did with the original saga with pointless digital character and/or just silly inserts (Han shot first. Otherwise is out of character and he would have been dead as a result. Who in their right mind would think a thug like Greedo could miss at that range?), but with substantial things. If that were to happen, there are some things I would like to see. These improvements do not include any redone digital effects.

Anyway what follows is my idea for a quasi-reboot of the Trilogy.

Eliminate The Phantom Menace[3], after distilling important plot points down to about fifteen minutes or so. Drop the nonsense about a fourteen year old princess falling in eternal love[4] with a nine year old slave. Drop Jar-Jar (off a very high cliff, please). His main plot function was to provide an unmotivated Senate motion (in Episode III) to shelve the ideas of freedom and democracy. You think Darth Sidious couldn’t use a Sith mind trick[5] to get another puppet to make that motion?

Episode II (new Episode I) could still be called Attack of the Clones. The opening of the movie would be the distillation of The Phantom Menace as described in the previous paragraph. The rest of the movie would include a tightened up version of Attack of the Clones, maybe an hour and a half. The rest would be the first part of Revenge of the Sith. I would hope that more could be made of the threat of the clones turning on the good guys (in episode III) at the flick of a switch/press of a button. I also would like to see and more detailed and better motivation for Anikin’s descent into the Dark Side. There should be concern expressed by Obi Wan and Yoda of his beheading of the unarmed/disarmed Count Dooku. He should resist more instead of just being a whiny nine-year-old (in behavior) who ultimately says something along the lines of: “OK, boss. If I can save Padmé, I’ll just nip off and slaughter some sweet little cute Jedi younglings[6] to make my descent permanent.” He doesn’t say “Couldn’t I just try the Dark Side long enough to save Padmé?” He doesn’t think about how Padmé would react. How do you think a pregnant woman – or any woman, for that matter – would react to the slaughter of children? I think one ending for Episode two (as re-envisioned) would be the reveal of Palpatine as Darth Sidious and Anikin reporting this to Mace Windu. Anyone in the audience that did not know this had never seen any of the other films, but still would not find it a surprise. This would provide a good amount of dramatic tension leading to Episode Three and also give more room (in III) to explore the tragedy of the descent of Anikin to the Dark Side.

The new version of Revenge of the Sith would start with the brutal murder of Mace Windu by Palpatine. Instead of this pushing Anikin toward the Dark Side, it should increase his anguish over his struggle. If he trusted Palpatine/Sidious, would he have reported his treachery to Master Windu? Would he have argued or even fought Windu over the plan to arrest Palpatine? The whole motivation thing is very muddled here. Apparently you just can’t force persuade someone to turn to the Dark Side but have to allow them to make the decision internally or it won’t take. It should end similarly but perhaps a touch of “What have I done?” and resignation to his fate on the part of Darth Vader. It is important to link to Return of the Jedi by showing the “spark of good” still in him.

I know some people like Hayden Christensen’s performance. I am not among them. I am not alone: Roger Ebert, who had praised all of the other Star Wars films, gave Attack of the Clones only two out of four stars, noting, "[As] someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was amazed, at the end of Episode II, to realize that I had not heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue." About Anakin and Padme's relationship, Ebert stated, "There is not a romantic word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliché." (My thought – they started out as cliché.) Leonard Maltin, who also liked all of the previous installments, gave only two stars out of four to Episode II. Maltin gave the reason for his dissatisfaction as an "overlong story" adding, "Wooden characterizations and dialogue don't help."

I suggest that what went wrong is that the story is so plot driven that character fell by the wayside. Characterization is critical here; a tragic tale of a descent into evil needs to be character driven to succeed. Episode III was better received that I or II. I thought it flirted with greatness but was not committed to it so ended up as still less than any episode of the middle saga. The failure to make more of Anikin’s internal struggle is what I found lacking in the first trilogy.

[1] Oops. Wrong universe.

[2]. See footnote 1.

[3] What does that title mean, anyway?

[4] Excuse me. I think I mean "Twue Wuv"
      (another fictional universe heard from.)

[5] Kind of like a Jedi mind trick but ee-vil.

[6] Now there’s a stupid word. Is “children” hard to pronounce?

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By William C. Francis

Claiming Fair Use for Graphics

11/18/2012.

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That said, I would like to add an off-topic afterword. ALERT: Bad pun ahead. Could we call the whole 6 episode saga Farewell to Arms?

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