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I’ve been thinking about The Dark Knight for three solid weeks, now. This really has got to stop. I’ve got me a new job, a serial novel to finish writing, a monthly magazine to develop and release and publicize, and some grinding to accomplish in Age of Conan–my ranger and conqueror won’t get leveled up by themselves. The problem is, I’ve got something like 6k words written, and I still don’t have an elegant way to approach the things on my mind and in my head. Unfortunately, my experience has been that the only way to rid myself of them is to write them out. Therefore, since I don’t know how to approach this, but I clearly have to do something to work these things out, I’m going to take a stab at writing about these things in a couple of chunks. This is the first one.

In this summer’s biggest blockbuster, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David Goyer have a great deal to say about the will and the character of their vigilante hero.

For one thing, this is no mere superhero movie–it is an epic crime drama of the sort I have never seen before. For another, when they started filming The Dark Knight, it turned out they weren’t done crafting Batman’s origin story. However, by the time the final credits run, they will have finally completed creating the legend we think of as Batman. Read the rest of this entry »

So I updated to 2.6 and immediately got the blank screen of death.

WordPress, I surely do love you, but you’re really testing my loyalty. I got infected through no action of my own, I spent months trying to find out what was up, and I finally had to spend two days off work at home doing nothing but pore through other people’s trevails and solutions before I managed to reclaim my blog and my sanity.

I thought this update might be easier. Snort. The support posts were less than helpful and after spending another afternoon dinking around with it, I’m done. I went back to something that worked. Let me know when it’s all working and the formerly bulletproof 5 minute update has reclaimed its lost luster.

One of my favorite bits from Joe Versus The Volcano was the fictional fatal disease, a ‘brain cloud,’ that prompted him to leave life as a cubicle drone and go live his life for six months before jumping into a volcano to something-something. My memory after that is a little flaky, something about Meg Ryan in three different roles, Orange soda, and a really brilliant set of luggage.

Well, here comes the science. Apparently, there is a thing scientists are looking at now that deals with brain fatigue.

What types of actions exhaust executive function and affect subsequent decision-making? Until recently, researchers focused on activities that involved the exertion of self-control or the regulation of attention. For instance, it’s long been recognized that strenuous cognitive tasks—such as taking the SAT—can make it harder to focus later on. But recent results suggests that these taxing mental activities may be much broader in scope-and may even involve the very common activity of making choices itself.

I’ve struggled with something like this for most of my life. Now that I know about the whole Attention-deficit thing, I thought that was it, but this looks different. Fascinating post on executive function and decision making.

I loved Acts I and II of the Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog, and if you haven’t seen them yet, see them quick, because after Sunday, you’ll have to buy them on iTunes or wait until the DVD comes out. I and II were quirky fun full of memorable tunes and great, campy lines.

The clues were all there. Billy Buddy (aka Dr. Horrible) had two competing desires. Joss took it one way, but that was unsatisfying to me because he’d spent so much time building the character of Penny and the budding relationship between Billy and Penny. They’ve breached the conversation hurdle in Act I and nearly kiss in Act II. They were all set to fall in love, and love would have filled the space that Dr. Horrible thought the Evil League of Evil was going to occupy. She was looking for something, and he was looking for something, but in the process of chasing something out of reach, they were finding something real.

And then Joss did what Joss does. He doesn’t believe love should ever be requited (although it can apparently be consummated). He has a history of killing off key characters, and at the end of this, all I can see is pure, unadulterated nihilism.

Well, balls. The clues were all there to have an alternate ending. I haven’t worked this all out yet, but it goes roughly like this:

Act III - Do the first two musical numbers.

We see DrH takes a stun raygun and covers Stun with a piece of tape with the word “Death”. (This is key.) Granted, we see him working out the formula for the death ray, but when has his stuff ever worked the way it was supposed to before?

If this was just a toy gun, how did he intend to ‘kill’ Captain Hammer with it? Maybe never intended to. This could have worked if his revelation at the end of Act II was not how to /kill/ Captain Hammer, but how to use his dim wit and his self-serving ego against himself.

And all Joss would have needed to do was leave Penny on the stage. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2nd Anniversary of Ray Gun Revival magazine is complete. We begin our third year of publication with Issue #45!

75 pages

The Overlords’ Lair: A 2nd Anniversary Retrospective, With Treats

To Save A Shuttle by Andy Heizeler
The fate of billions rests in hands of criminals, but to save the galaxy, first they have to save a shuttle

Fitter by Richard S. Levine
What answers might be found beyond the turbulent zone of our solar system?

Tenari by Michael Merriam
A pirate captain encounters a ship full of children drifting in space, as well as an enemy from her past.

“RGR Reviews: The Balcony Fool Reviews WALL•E” by Paul Christian Glenn
After a full year of advance marketing, Pixar’s new film WALL•E has finally arrived in theatres.

Featured artist Eduardo Lopez Mustaros, Mexico

Calamity’s Child, Chapter Three: Suicide Straight - part two by M. Keaton
Ivan and Red Dog find more than they bargain for when they investigate a wrecked ship.

Wishbone Pass, A Jack Brand Story by John M. Whalen
A bounty hunter teams up with Jack Brand, but both find something they weren’t looking for.

Jasper Squad, Episode Ten: The Lieutenant’s Gambit by Paul Christian Glenn
While the captain tries to discover why the Galactic Patrol Force is after them, Melendez goes after an old enemy.

Deuces Wild, Season Two, Chapter Five, Coffee Break by L. S. King
While Tristan runs from his past, Slap makes a surprising discovery.

The Adventures of the Sky Pirate, Chapter 24, Representation by Johne Cook
The crew of Alacrity must decide if they have the fortitude to move forward without their ship or their legendary captain.

Memory Wipe, Chapter 22, Zartsi’s Sword by Sean T. M. Stiennon
Takeda nears his enemy’s home, while Esheera and Zartzi gain support. But is it in time?

This Wordpress blog, like many others, was hacked recently. It was a total pain to track down what was wrong, and for those who feel less confident in Wordpress as a result, I totally understand. However, I had faith in the community to figure it out and post their results, and that faith was ultimately rewarded.

I have to confess, however, that I was this close to shutting it all down, wiping the slate clean, and starting over with Movable Type.

It appears all I did wrong was not upgrade to 2.5.1 soon enough. After reading the links below, I found the WP-stats virus had created the wp-content/1 folder which was full of nasty links. I deleted that. I also changed my admin password and searched my posts for hidden links.

Thanks to Loriendil for troubleshooting assistance, and to all of these pages for help to get my blog back up and running:

A New Morning

bontb

Tips, Tricks, Tools & Techniques

This post is about Cymrugirl’s dagger (a regular on the christianwriters.com forums), but first it is about waiting for the tow truck on a Sunday morning as the snow fell.

Instead of going to church, I found myself sipping coffee in a little greasy spoon place in the town in Southern Wisconsin where I live. My daughter’s car died that morning, and I had gone over to take care of getting it to the shop while her boyfriend took her on to work.

It was cold and snowing lightly, but that’s what AAA is for, and that’s what dads do.

Welcome to 2008 with Ray Gun Revival magazine! RGR Issue #37, is now here!

30 pages

Pirates of the Rogue Asteroid by James Hartley
Flash Fiction
Squadron Captain Cassidy and his crew pursue pirates preying on space commerce.

Ever Dark, An Aston West tale by T. M. Hunter
Serial Fiction
A solitary captain of a tramp freighter gets more than he bargained for when he finds an abandoned freight ship.

Featured artist larkin2

The Pasadena Rule by Ben Schumacher
Serial Fiction
Jack has jumped down to the planet’s surface to try to save Katya.

Deuces Wild, Season Two, Chapter One by L. S. King
Serial Fiction
An owner, a captain, and a woman spurned.

It appeared that SFWA President Michael Capobianco and the SFWA were finally heading in the right direction. After the SFWA v. Scribd debacle over Labor Day weekend, Capobianco disbanded the creaky, out-of-touch SFWA ePiracy Committee and brought in a who’s-who of smart, progressive sci-fi thinkers to recommend changes.

So much for change. Cory Doctorow was right, tonight Charlie Stross reveals the complete and utter failure to change things up, even if John Scalzi isn’t as convinced that things as bad as all that.

This recommendation was simple: that at all costs, Andrew Burt must be kept the hell away from the copyright committee. In view of his earlier activities, his appointment to it would automatically destroy any credibility the new body would have — not to mention sending out a clear signal that SFWA is a dysfunctional organization, institutionally incapable of learning from bad experiences.

Guess what’s happened?

Yup. I am not privy to his thinking, but our dear president and executive have voted to reinstate the old piracy committee, with Andrew Burt to chair it, under the new name of the SFWA copyright committee.

To say that this is a fuckwitted decision is an understatement. Under Dr Burt, the new copyright committee will almost inevitably devolve into a reincarnation of the old piracy committee. If I thought it’d do any good I’d be resigning in protest right now; only the expense of a life membership purchased a couple of years ago is restraining me right now. Clearly the current executive of SFWA is making damaging decisions and ignoring input from committees it appointed, and and in view of this I call on SFWA president Mike Capobianco and the rest of the SFWA executive — including Andrew Burt — to resign immediately. Meanwhile, I’d like to call on all other SFWA members who don’t want to see their organization commit public relations suicide to make their voices heard.