A Nitrous Crouton

I didn’t mean to write my weekend round-up on Wednesday, but so it goes. I did indeed vanquish the ice age that was my freezer on Saturday, despite waking up with a soul-crushing sinus headache. After about five hours unplugged with the freezer door opened, the hoary coat covering the roof and walls of the freezer melted away. This left only the giant ice cube that comprised the lower half of the freezer. That is not an exaggeration; the sliding basket below the shelf couldn’t be removed because it was embedded in a giant block of ice that was frozen to the floor of the freezer. Making headway required leaving a hairdryer propped up on full blast for nearly an hour. Finally, the combination of the hot air and the heating of the metal framing allowed the basket to be lifted free. Mind you, this hadn’t melted all the ice, the basket still looked like it was ready to sit on a lab table next to a prehistoric cave man, but at least it was out of the freezer.

I’m happy to report that the exercise achieved its primary goal: making the fridge cool properly once again. Eventually I’ll retrieve the thawed basket from the patio and reintegrate it into the freezer. Eventually. Someday. Soon.

In other aspects of productivity, I did indeed finally crack open the Word file containing my aborted hardboiled sci-fi detective novel, which I pretty much agreed to write on a dare back in 2000. On Sunday I doubled the length, it is now roughly 3,000 words. I know the basic plot, I have no idea how I’m going to get there, reach 90,000 words or have it be any good at all, but at least I’m writing the silly thing.

Of course, I then had to spend the latter part of my Sunday evening finishing my reading of The Sparrow, which made me feel even more dirty and ashamed to be writing crappy pulp sci-fi. For all the books I read, it is still uncommon for one to resonate with me strongly on an emotional level. When it does happen, I can’t always identify just why a text hits so hard or makes such an impact. It’s a beautiful book, with deep human characters and rich with both joy and profound sadness. As a melancholic, I find the two so generally intertwined on anything other than say, surface pleasures that it was a rare book I had to read in chunks, because it just became too much. Mixed up with all of it was surprisingly thoughtful and intimate explorations of faith. If decades of crap like Left Behind and the Purpose Driven Toenail Clippers weren’t enough reason to torch the nearest Zondervan, the irony that the most haunting and genuine fusion of elements of Christian spirituality and science fiction come from an agnostic writing a book involving Jesuits published as mainstream secular fiction. I think the reason why the book affected me as much as it did, however, boiled down to the dynamics between the major characters, the authentically messy interactions and intimacy and blending and family that isn’t family and the pain and effect of loss. At a time in my life where I’m having to face a lot of issues involving my own family and choices I make in how to relate to people in the future, the themes of the book definitely hit me on a multitude of levels. That said, I give it a high recommendation regardless, either as science fiction or literature in general.

Now freshly arrived and in the queue: Judas Unchained, The Ghost Brigades, and A Feast for Crows.

These days, I rarely see movies in the theatres. In fact, I rarely bother watching movies on DVD. There are enough solid TV shows to occupy my limited viewing time and I just haven’t seen releases that make me want to break down and make the trek to Blockbuster or Hollywood. However, my friend Thomas, currently staying with me while doing an internship, had passes and wanted to see Ultraviolet. I had low expectations, and they were…met. It was both better and worse than I had anticipated. I hadn’t realized it was the same director from Equilibrium, which explained a lot. The problem is, if you’ve already seen Equilibrium, you’ve seen almost everything which is remotely cool about Ultraviolet, and if you thought the gun-kata was silly, it’s even more over the top now. That said, despite the horrendous script, frequently distractingly cheesy virtual city CGI, Clone Wars qualify dialog, it wasn’t painful-pain bad, I found it painful-entertaining bad. But then I wasn’t paying to see it. Verdict: 1.5/5. Worth seeing if it happens to be on cable and you have it on in the background while doing something productive. Otherwise, don’t bother. I’ve never cared for Mila’s looks (and she certainly can’t act), if you do then it’s probably a 2/5 rating. Needless to say, I’m crossing my fingers on V for Vendetta and A Scanner Darkly, but not getting my hopes up. The trailer I saw for Silent Hill, which ran before Ultraviolet, did probably sell me on seeing the movie, which isn’t something I had planned on.

I’m happily watching the evolution of the increasingly inaccurately named iTunes Music Store. They are now rolling out Multi-Pass and Season-Pass purchase options for tv shows. This is how I want my tv. I went right ahead and bought a multi-pass for The Daily Show and Colbert Report because A) that’s how I want to get my TV, B) I don’t have cable and C) They are damn funny shows. It’s just too bad this is developing a couple years too late for, oh, lets just say Firefly.

Reading impressions of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is severely testing my resolve not to blow lots of money on an Xbox 360 that I’ll never play. What makes it even worse is if I bought a 360, I’d have to buy some sort of HDTV. Mind you, the largest actual TV I own is all of 13”, you’d think I was downright un-American or something. Must. Exhibit. Self. Control.

In a conference call yesterday I identified our incoming party as "3-6 Mafia". I'm bad.