The Aerie

Happy New Year

Hey, Happy New Year to everybody.

Latest change to the website is that I have attempted to institute an anti-spam barrier to prevent spam comments and trackbacks. Now when you click on comment or trackback, the system ought to present a username/password challenge box instructing you to use the username "comment" with no password.

If you enter "comment" and click on the "Remember password" box, you hopefully won't even have to think about it ever again.

I put this in place in the hope that these robotic spamming programs are not written smart enough to figure out how to set a username. I'm hoping they're simple programs that find wide-open blog servers and simply ignore anything else. We'll see - if this doesn't work I'll have to do something more restrictive. I was certainly getting tired of deleting 200+ casino-trackback links every day!

Aside from website stuff, what's new? New Year's Eve our family friend Debbie came over and we watched the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition from end to end - 11:00 a.m. Saturday until 1:30 a.m. Sunday, with breaks for meals and to toot horns at midnight and stuff.

It was fun watching LOTR all the way through like that. There are all sorts of little themes that one can miss watching the movies separately, and of course without the Extended Editions.

For example, one scene that confused me in the original version of the film was the scene where Aragorn, having fallen over a cliff and floated to shore, is dreaming of his elf girlfriend, Liv Tyler. She floats over him and gives him a ghostly kiss, only to transform into a horse nuzzling his face.

I don't find Liv Tyler that unattractive, so I couldn't figure out why the horse was there, or why it carried Aragorn to safety.

But in the extended edition we learn that Aragorn is also a "horse whisperer," and having calmed this horse in the stables he had ordered it released into the wild. Apparently it had been through too many wars.

So THAT'S why the horse showed up to carry Aragorn away. Of course, they didn't explain why it was still wearing a bridle after being released.

It was also fun spotting the recycled actors.

What else? Finished a perfectly dreadful book, 'Cradle of Saturn' by James Hogan. I usually like Hogan quite a bit, but this book had the feel of a tossoff, something he partially wrote and couldn't be bothered to fully clean up for publication. For example, in a clumsy attempt to display a growing romantic relationship, the book said something like "They spoke for a while of casual things, and it was nice to be able to talk about anything, without worrying about work."

Well... don't tell us what they said, write the dialog! Let the reader experience the story! Sheesh.

But on the other hand as a writer, possibly you put in a paragraph like that with the intention of fleshing out later... only later never comes. When you're a big enough author, your unfinished works can be published and sell on the strength of your prior work.

There was more dreadfulness about it - the labored plot, the excruciatingly clumsy philosophical screeds disguised, ironically enough as dialog, etc. It doesn't bear tremendous exploration. It was all I could do to finish this book, and that's saying something. As my story indicates, I almost always finish a book that I start.

I'm now reading a really good book, Love in the Driest Season by the journalist Neely Tucker. I started reading it last night and ended up staying awake way too late, getting about halfway through.

My wife got it for me because I'm writing a novel based in South Africa and this is set in neighboring Zimbabwe. It is a moving and complelling story of two crazy international journalists who find themselves adopting a grievously ill baby in this southern African nation. But it also illuminates the terrible ways in which the world can go wrong. For Americans, who are used to taking our government and our nation for granted, I think it's good to be exposed to stories set in nations where the government is incompetent and corrupt. We don't think it can happen in America, but as today's Abramoff indictment will illustrate, it already does.

Finally I have been making my way through 'Halo II' on the kids' Xbox. It's an excellent game with high production values, and I find the experience very much like reading a science fiction novel. A science fiction novel where you have to shoot lots of creatures, but a novel nonetheless.

I've been spending too much time watching DVDs, reading books, and playing video games. The holiday season is over, and it's time to get back to work!

Posted by Albatross at January 3, 2006 2:15 PM | TrackBack