I have opted, instead, to make you stronger.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-21T01:59:00

2007-12-21T07:00:39Z

The Healer leaned heavily on his walking stick and surveyed his handiwork. Eight on one side seemed aggressively unbalanced, so he transferred three to the other side of the door. Better balance, but without perfect symmetry. Satisfied, he entered the house.

It was not his usual house, with the silent man behind the counter. The Healer was uncomfortable returning to that place in his current state. His wife had given him directions to this place instead, as she had visited on more than one occasion and knew it would suit him. She understood him better than all others. She was most perceptive, and he revealed more of himself to her - there was no beginning to that circle.

Behind the counter in this place was a woman almost out of the childbearing years, a roll of flesh in her midsection roughly bisected by her apron string such that it bulged over and under, redness under her nose from rubbing, a pimple on her forehead from perspiration. Her hair was sensibly pulled away from her dry and cracked working hands by a kerchief, its once vivid colours dulled by sweat and grease. In stringy patches some of her hair had escaped captivity, and leaving aside the odd gray fleck the Healer presumed it would be called mousy brown, by those who supposed they knew more about mice than he did.

She was beautiful.

The only other person in the house was the Mage, of course, smiling his welcome to the Healer over a bottle of beer. The Healer returned the smile and walked slowly over, as his Brother greeted him:

"You made it."

"After a fashion."

The Mage made a gesture toward a wall calendar behind the counter. "And just in time."

"After a fashion." The Healer stopped walking and inhaled deeply, supporting himself on his staff.

The Mage nodded toward it. "Just one?" he asked with his sly, warm smile. "Can I read something in that?"

"I dropped one along the way."

"Of course."

"The others are outside."

"They'll be there for you when you need them."

"Assuming I remember how."

"You will."

"Optimism? From you?"

The Mage's smile grew warmer, more sly. "Hope." And he took another pull at his beer, his eyes ever on the Healer.

"What are you drinking?"

"Pragmatism."

"Ugh."

"Would you prefer Realism?"

"Hey - do I call *you* an asshole?"

The Mage chuckled. "It may not be our first choice, but it dulls the pain, just enough. Never so much that it dulls the senses."

The Mage looked at his drink as he polished it off, for which the Healer was grateful. It was the least unpleasant of the directions the Mage could have been looking after that statement. In particular, the Healer was glad the Mage had not looked directly at him, or worse, deliberately away. The Healer did not much like people looking him, at the ravages of his body, the way he had tried to hide from the pain with poisons that dulled his senses and ruined his physical self, while only making it possible for the pain to come back even stronger.

He held two fingers up to the hostess.

"Are you going to sit down?" the Mage asked him.

"As long as I'm here." He took the load off his legs. It was uncomfortable, but better than standing.

The opened bottles arrived. The Healer waved the proffered glass away with the best smile he could manage.

"What shall we drink to?"

The Healer held his bottle aloft. "To the Humanists."

"Just so."

And as their bottles clinked, they said, together, "There's damn few of us left!"

They drank at the same time, the Mage watching the Healer all the while. He took the time to experience his first taste, whereas the Mage was already over-familiar, and didn't need to.

The Healer shrugged. "I guess it's not as bad as I'd feared."

The Mage nodded once, slowly, and when his head came up his face had shifted slightly. It was his Song face. The Healer was fairly certain his was the same song.

"It's better than being alone."

baronscartop @ 2007-12-20T10:38:00

2007-12-20T16:00:18Z

The Great Canadian Self-Delusion is that Canadians are Good People.

But they're not.

Good people do Good things. Canadians believe in doing Good things, they want to do Good things...

but *most* Canadians, the visible and overwhelming majority of Canadians, will only do them if the cost to themselves is negligible.

Have a look at who wins elections in this country. They say "The environment is a key issue, and we *must* protect the environment!" ... but then that's it. No plan. No action. And then they go on to talk about Fiscal Responsibility, which is what they really care about. Because actions speak louder.

So Canadians vote for the people who let them believe good things are being done while reassuring them there will be no inconvenience.

And of course it doesn't just apply to voting. Candians shop at Wal-Mart, they buy SUVs, they own cell phones. But of course, they all have good reasons for these.

That's the secret. As long as Canadians can fool themselves into thinking they are doing something Good, they will continue to behave as selfishly as they've always done.

This is of course true for most people across the globe.

Canadians, therefore, are just People.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-18T03:04:00

2007-12-18T08:04:12Z

The Cookie Fairy has been.

Thank you, Cookie Fairy!

We like the Cookie Fairy.

(no, plane trips do not count)

2007-12-18T07:12:41Z

Promise me this:

If you are going to

- pay to see in the cinema
- rent on DVD
- purchase on DVD
- buy on Pay-per-view

or in any way give financial support to next year's movie entitled

The Dark Knight

then I'll try to be patient about you being part of the problem if you'll agree to forbear - for FIVE years - from puling about Hollywood's lack of originality, unless you first acknowledge and genuinely repent of your actions.

Because otherwise you would be forcing me to tell you to shut your hypocritical yap.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-16T10:35:00

2007-12-16T15:35:07Z

One of the regular things that happens around here in the mornings is I wake up a half hour early and make the tea, then while she's still asleep I replace her evening's water glass on the nighttable with a cup of tea.

Does that make me the tea fairy?

baronscartop @ 2007-12-15T15:39:00

2007-12-15T20:41:57Z

I have just announced on the NaNoWriMo website that this year was my last.

(I'm repeating it here because of course the site performance is such that one can expect it to lose my post, or have it disappear by design.)

There are several reasons for the retirement, most of which are private. The basic reason is that I have learned most of what the project can teach me, and the time has come to travel elsewhere.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-14T01:26:00

2007-12-14T07:49:07Z

Aw, come on!

You know, there was a point in the middle of Jim Butcher's "Fool Moon" where I was actually enjoying it for a while. I was happy about that.

But the climax is awful.

It begins with young people, standing in the middle of the street, naked. After getting told off for this, they take off their robes, change into werewolves, and step out of the van.

No, you read that right. Naked people remove their clothes and while standing in the middle of the street they exit a vehicle. These are precisely the events described on one page.

In a book that was published. By a large publisher. This is not "somebody missed it", it is not incompetence nor even negligence. An error this obvious is Someone Didn't Give A Shit, somewhere down the line. Usually, in my professional experience, that someone is the person who sets the deadlines for the people who have to do the actual work, insuficient time for them to have the then-luxury of giving a shit. But even then, the writer and the editor should at least be catching things *this* glaring.

The worst thing about a cock-up of this magnitude is that it ruins the flow, it takes the reader out of the book, and casts a harsher light on subsequent stupidities - such as:

- OVERWRITING: "sent screaming pain searing through my body, making me crumple to the ground in agony." That's participle overdose before the comma. Also, if the pain is sufficient to make you crumple to the ground, we *know* you do so in agony. Duh.

- JUST PLAIN BAD WRITING: "Hope lurched in my chest like sudden thunder." Why stop there; why not tell us this sudden thunder happens on a dark and stormy night?

- MIMICKING STUPID THINGS FROM STUPID SOURCES: There's a badass criminal bodyguard who walks around with a pump-action shotgun. When he wants to show how badass he is, he pumps the shotgun. Frankly, I would *love* to go toe-to-toe with this guy, because this criminal bodyguard carries a firearm in which the ammunition is never chambered. I say "never" because this dumbass pump-for-emphasis happens *twice* in the novel. I know it looked really cool when you were 8 and you saw your first Shwarzenegger flick, but come on, use your head.

- WRITING IN THE WRONG MEDIUM: Get this: The situation worsens, the hero quips to end the chapter, and the next chapter begins with another hero quip. Do people really quip twice in a row like that? No, not ever. Not in things that are well-written, at least. But they do it in television all the time. It's practically convention: Quip to cliffhang - commercial - quip to remind viewers about the peril. And it is garbage, every time. (But it seems to have worked, because this novel series is now a television series. And it looks every bit as unintelligent as this scene, which is to say exactly as intelligent as television executives want their audiences to be.) In the first place, pick ONE quip. Be selective. You know, practice the Craft of Writing. You may have heard of that somewhere. Second, if you *must* try too hard to be cool, would it kill you to give one of the two quotes to another character, so the two lines in a row at least make some sort of sense?

- GLARING PLOT HOLE: For most of the novel, our hero has a bullet wound that makes his shoulder flare up with agony when he moves it. But when he turns himself into a werewolf, this injury has no bearing on his ability to fight another werewolf. Why not? Because then the hero would have *lost*. Somebody was hoping I'd be too stupid to notice this. I'm not the stupid one. This hole would have taken a lousy subordinate clause to patch up; there is no excuse for this.

- TROPIC "PLOT DEVELOPMENT": I was irked when our hero was captured and the villains outlined their machinations in front of him, the first time it happened. The second time, I was insulted. The *third* time, Mother Of God! - I wanted to choke the author with a copy of Before I Kill You Mister Bond.

- THEMATIC DEFICIENCY: Someone has no idea what approach to take with the female cop, so the author tries them all, with the results you would expect. Also the text betrays a laughable, White Wolf-esque understanding of human darkness. And it is awfully obliging of the bad guys to preserve our hero's sense of morality by killing each other so he doesn't have to.

- And finally one of my very favourites, CLIMAX-ONSET ANTAGONIST INCOMPETENCE: Werewolf comes upon our heroes all trapped and helpless. But there is one human meal above it and several below, so it takes this natural predator *three minutes* to decide which to eat first, giving our heroes enough time to escape. Three minutes. Earlier in the novel, this creature took out an entire floor of a police station in three minutes, and it had targets in front, in back, and to both sides, but didn't have any trouble picking a target then.

But you know what? In spite of all this, I'll read the next one. Or at least start it. Because it was okay for the most part, and mainly because I want to read something in this genre, and I don't have anything better.

I will say that it earned a belly laugh when a villain, tied up to be a snack with the good guys, sarcastically invited our hero to spend his last breaths saying I Told You So, even though this villain was acutely aware of that fact already.

Oh - and one has to respect that Butcher managed to use *four* different kinds of werewolves.

(Review)

This book is a 5 on 10. Prior to the Van Incident, I was leaning toward 6.5.

BETTER THAN: Supernatural. Which is damning with faint praise, because that show takes stupidity to new and hitherto unexplored realms. Also it only has one character in the first 9 episodes, and she's only in that ninth episode. The rest of them are Lifelike Cardboard Cutouts with Voice Synthesizers taped to them. The main character in "Fool Moon" is well-drawn, and one or two of the others are as well.

NOT AS GOOD AS: The first 4 Tanya Huff "Blood" books (I won't read the 5th), which have better plots and better characters, plus are significantly better-written.

NOT RECOMMENDED: If Wizard Versus Werewolves In An Urban Setting is not what you are in the mood to read, this will not make you more interested in the idea. Also, if you require above-average writing, there is considerable risk this book will bore or frustrate you.

RECOMMENDED: If all you want is Wizard Versus Werewolves In An Urban Setting and your standards aren't too high, you will probably find this book highly entertaining.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-10T12:37:00

2007-12-10T17:38:09Z

Dear Editor Of Jim Butcher Novels Person:

If Dresden is going to jump out of a car getting off the highway, then...

- roll to a stop
- "by the time" he comes to this stop, "struggle to remember" for "a moment" what's what
- drink eight ounces of liquid from a squeeze bottle
- stand up
- shake everything into position
- draw in a breath
- consider how much he loves autumn, and compose a poem to it
- turn to the right where the car he was in fades out of sight
- then turn left to see the car that was pursuing it

you might want to go back in the text and change the distance of this pursuing car to something longer than "two cars back".

Or, failing that, ask Butcher to make it explicit earlier in his text that cars in his universe are half a mile long.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-07T14:12:00

2007-12-07T19:13:23Z

SEQUENCE

is launching their second album

the eagerly-awaited Plague Solstice Part 2.

TUESDAY

at Cafe Chaos.

5:30 onward

People, they have their own beer.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-04T08:22:00

2007-12-04T13:22:22Z

This is the only consideration.

All others must yield to this:

I no longer have pimples on my ass.

May the weather stay like this.

baronscartop @ 2007-12-03T14:09:00

2007-12-03T19:10:20Z

My cuff's too wide
My sock's too low
The snow's too high
My leg is cold

And now my story is all told

baronscartop @ 2007-12-01T19:45:00

2007-12-02T00:46:54Z

Mackayhotep, this is for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk-Iruh7x1M

I was talking to The Wife about Avery Brooks doing Comic Evil, especially wrt the only good scene in TBH - YouTube just saved me five smackers on a rental.

baronscartop @ 2007-11-30T00:57:00

2007-11-30T05:57:34Z

I always flirt with death
I look cool but I don't care about it

Six.

I am The Exclamation, the inestimable t!, a phenomenon, and a Legend.

baronscartop @ 2007-11-29T12:10:00

2007-11-29T17:10:57Z

There is a God.

And his Wörd is Rock.

Time to feel old again

2007-11-28T04:41:43Z

This summer, while I wasn't paying attention

Appetite For Destruction

turned 20 years old.

"Oh, my... God... "

baronscartop @ 2007-11-27T17:07:00

2007-11-27T22:08:16Z

We were discussing a political cartoon, and had differing views. She said, "You didn't see the same one I did."

And she's right.

I am prepared to say literally.

Sex was (broadly) the issue of the cartoon. I am a boy; she is a girl. Between us, we have over 60 years of conditioning and baggage about this societally-loaded and too-often divisive topic.

She saw things I could not perceive. My perspective on things was not hers.

It was the same image, but we did not see the same cartoon.

morning reaction to L'Opera Dela Starvacion Felina

2007-11-23T13:39:57Z

Caaa-aaat...

It was in our vows.

- It was, like, our ONLY vow.

You're GOING to get fed!

baronscartop @ 2007-11-20T12:09:00

2007-11-20T17:10:19Z

Hey, cool!

You can get Blood without the Rhetoric and Love!

baronscartop @ 2007-11-19T17:14:00

2007-11-19T22:15:46Z

You get nothin' for nothin', expect it when
You're back seat drivin' and your hands ain't on the wheel
...
It's easy to go along with the crowd
And find later on that your say ain't allowed
Oh that's the way to find what you've been missin'

Today's card

The choice it is yours to do as you might
...
If you get it wrong, at least you can know
There's miles and miles to put it back together

Is the Chariot

Oh everybody breaks down sooner or later
Well put it to rights, well square up and mend
...
You weather every storm that's comin atcha

Brought to you by Judas Priest

And I'm heading out to the highway
I got nothin' to lose at all
I'm goin' to do it my way
Take a chance before I fall
A chance before I fall

Vroom, vroom.

baronscartop @ 2007-11-18T09:48:00

2007-11-18T14:49:24Z

The things we put up with for free service.

Like GoogleMail ads.

Today's ad: http://www.anastasia-international.com/?gclid=CIOz0bPR5o8CFQg1WAodVybkDA

What the hell in my email did they search to come up with this? My name - which I don't use?

I think I preferred the "news" headlines about sports "stars."

baronscartop @ 2007-11-16T13:22:00

2007-11-16T18:23:16Z

My job:

I get to write, on a bug report

"I have now created singular and plural pizza-specific slice units."

baronscartop @ 2007-11-16T08:43:00

2007-11-16T13:46:05Z

I've been thinking about Tarot a lot lately.

Specifically, working with one of my decks again.

And so a few days ago I took the Halloween out. I haven't opened it, but it's in plain view.

And then this morning I thought I might use the Thoth instead.

And then I didn't know which one to go with.

...

It seems the cards can point out what's wrong with you even when they're giggling at you from their pouches.

baronscartop @ 2007-11-15T17:13:00

2007-11-15T22:14:40Z

INCOMPATIBILITY WARNING:

This Version of Writer 2.0 does not support Editorial Chowderhead 5.0.

To execute the Editorial Chowderhead command, either install Writer 1.0 or apply the Burnout patch to Writer 2.0.

The command can be brute forced, but this is not recommended.

baronscartop @ 2007-11-15T08:40:00

2007-11-15T13:41:45Z

It is still "evar," right?

I do have such difficulty keeping track of which moronic aspiration to illiteracy is hilariously de rigueur this week.

Hey, Fearsclave, figure this guy's had crisis training?

2007-11-13T13:37:45Z

Man, stupid, blasts self:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004009272_weblugnut12m.html

Wakes up to discover that he is NOT a Hollywood action hero - firearms work differently in this universe.