The Aerie
Well we're coming into the Home Stretch for Nanowrimo, and I'm not optimistic about my chances. I've written about 31,000 words so far, a little more than half of the 50,000 required, and I'd have to write 5000 words a day for the next for days to make the goal. But, who knows, I know other folks have done it. Maybe I can too.
In the midst of this I've been getting my November "Dad and Kid Days" accomplished. Am I procrastinating? Making excuses for failure? Or is it important to me? It's hard to judge my own motives.
My oldest son and I went to the Mall of America and had a nice time. Anyone who's been to the Mall knows that it's larger than a football stadium, with three levels. We walked around all three levels, with him talking almost the entire time. From a fourteen year old, this was exceptional. Never mind that he was talking almost exclusively about role-playing games and MechWarrior tactics - at least he was actually talking to me, and I could vaguely follow what he was saying. Such a gift!
We had dinner at a food court, and the food was dreadful. That's a word that's been coming to mind recently about a lot of things: dreadful. I've been experiencing a lot of dreadful things recently: I read Hal Clement's "Half Life," and found it perfectly dreadful. I really respect Clement's writing, but this one felt like a toss-off or a gedanken experiment abandoned halfway through. Basically a bunch of scientists explore Ganymede or Titan or someplace and look at a lot of ice and rock and patches of corrosive goo that might or might not be alive, the end. Dreadful.
Now I'm reading "Eldest," the latest novel by the prodigal author of "Eregon." Dreadful. Okay, not totally dreadful, but I really, really tire of fantasy novels that simply take for granted the conventions of Tolkeinesque elves, dwarves, dragons, and an idealized Medieval setting.
That's just cheap and lazy, like having half your book written for you before you start. Give me Hal Clement's wonderful "Mission of Gravity" anytime: an entire culture and adventure, built upwards from the laws of physics on a high-gravity planet, featuring likable characters who just so happen to be armored caterpillars. Give me Barker's "Tekumel," based at least on something other than whitewashed Western European mythology. Such books are like food-court Chinese food: bland, and dreadful. (You like the tie-back to the prior topic? That's one of those writer's-tricks.)
The redeeming thing about reading "Eldest" at the moment is studying how the author gets away with taking events that could be described in ten pages and drawing them out over several hundred. Inasmuch as I keep getting bogged down at the 2/3rds point in my novels, where the plot complexity and resolution leave me tangled in threads and unable to move forwards, it is interesting studying how another author fearlessly plods on, offering pages of eventless narrative, and somehow gets away with it. I'm having trouble writing a single evening's native dance, this guy manages to write twelve pages about a fellow having dinner.
Dinner at the food court was dreadful. I ordered two "spicy" entrees and fried rice from "Panda Express," and I had no hopes at all that it would be any good, and I was right. For some incomprehensible reason they kept the hot mustard packets and chopsticks behind the counter. Apparently they can be somehow combined into lethal weapons or something, so I had to request each individually from a surly youth, the mustard in anticipation of the dreadfulness of the food.
I was right, it was as bland as bland could be, even with the mustard. If someone told me afterwards that I'd eaten tofu lightly fried in lard I'd have believed it easily. There were a couple of those little black Asian peppers and I ate half of one just looking for some flavor - the result was a mouthful of bland fire. It burns without flavor, the culinary equivalent of phosphorescent light that shines without heat.
But dinner was the only dreadful thing about my evening with my son, though - it was a lot of fun to be with him, although we inevitably ended up at the Monster's Den playing Halo 2. I was dreadful at it, as usual. (Okay, two dreadful things.) There is no way a 43-year-old man can compete with a teenaged boy for reaction time. I would hide somewhere, and one of these kids would teleport into existence with their back to me. Before I could adjust my aim the tiny bit necessary to fire, these kids would whirl, spot me, and blow me away, dashing off before my body had hit the floor.
Before leaving the Mall we stopped at the Barnes and Noble. I sat and read a book on the benches next to the magazine section while the boy went and checked whether an old gift card that he had found had any money on it. While I was reading a fellow with a magazine came and sat down on the other end of the bench. At one point he sneezed, and glancing over I saw him sneeze a second time - directly onto the pages of the Newsweek he was holding. Then he nonchalantly continued reading the now biohazardous article, and when he was done he returned it to the shelf.
Dreadful. (three)
Last night was Youngest Son's turn. I had seen advertisements for the "Jump to Japan" exhibit of Anime at the Children's Museum in St. Paul, and I had wanted to take him to that, but he was very reluctant. He was afraid he'd be too old for the museum, and he turned out to be right. The display wasn't exactly dreadful, but it was depressing for a number of reasons.
First, it was expensive - $9 apiece for museum admission. Second the show was very small, just a few displays in a 400 or 500 square foot space. Several displays were simply too young for an 11-year-old boy. A fur-covered hamster-bus in front of a large diorama of "life size" anime characters took up about a quarter of the space.
A small, tattered "library" of Manga -- a genre infamous for violence and sometimes even sex -- contained carefully innocuous booklets of almost no interest to anyone. One portrayed the adventures of two guys who apparently made sushi for a living: endless scenes of people in suits, two guys in aprons and paper hats serving platters, and excited, angry guys in suits who apparently didn't like the sushi (it was all in Japanese). Manga is not worthy of its name if it features a pair of fellows in paper hats and aprons on the cover. (Irate fans of "Incredible Sushi Duo" or whatever this Japanese Manga might be called are advised to send complaints to I@dontcare.com)
The most interesting display was a computer hooked to a camera pointing at small stages where one could use wooden figures to create animated scenes, frame by frame. It was pretty easy to make a smooth, stop-motion movie of several seconds duration.
Afterwards we went to Blockbuster, where the boy rented some Anime, and then to the Chatterbox Pub for dinner. My wife recommended it because one could rent old Atari and Nintendo video games and play while eating dinner. Unfortunately, these games held little interest for a boy raised on Halo 2, but he did play a bit of Mario Brothers 3 and we had a good time.
Then it was off to... the Monster's Den, where we played cooperative Halo 2 (as opposed to the previous evening's player-versus-player Halo 2). This suited me, as I stink badly at both but in cooperative mode my son could help haul me through the video story. Boy, if you haven't played these video games, they are quite sophisticated, with beautiful graphics and elaborate, cinematic storylines punctuating long periods of shooting things. I found my niche as a sniper: the boy would hurtle headlong into swarms of evil aliens and undead - I'd hang back with my telescopic sight and pick off the monsters from a safe distance. Much less frustrating than being repeatedly stomped down by young whippersnappers the night before.
(I'm sitting at the Urban Bean cafe right now, and some nitwit has just started a cell phone conversation. I'm thirty feet away from him and when he said "Hello!" I nearly jumped out of my skin, because he bellowed it so loudly. He has apparently gone to the wrong place, and in so doing confused a local friend sufficiently to send that fellow way out of town to a different wrong location, and so he is announcing his imbicility to the entire cafe. I'm resisting the urge to hurl my coffee mug at him.)
Well, my daughter has decided to postpone Dad and Daughter's Day in the interests of homework, so today is devoted solely to Nanowrimo or, as you can see, the procrastination thereof. And now, having written about 1500 words that won't count toward's today's total, I guess I'd better get back to it.
(Oh geeze, the friend of the cell-phone-boor has arrived, and he's still bellowing in his cell-phone-voice to this fellow sitting across the table from him. So I get to listen to their gossip... oh, this fellow is his Narco-Anonymous sponsor! They're reviewing his Twelve Steps! And his HIV diagnosis! At a bellow!)
(Where's my coffee mug?)
Posted by Albatross at November 27, 2005 11:48 AM | TrackBack