Let’s see. A few new things…

Paul’s buddy Pat was bored and wanted to see a movie Wednesday night, so he, Kyle and I went and saw the new Tomb Raider thingie. Good news: it’s better than the first one, in that there is actually characterization in this film. Actually, the Lara Croft character is depicted in a rather interesting and nearly three dimensional manner, and Angelina Jolie does quite a good job bringing her to considerably more vivid life than in the first film.

Bad news: it’s still not very good. Perhaps if they’d coupled the extraordinarily detailed and visually interesting set pieces from the first film with the more in depth characterization of this one, they’d have come up with a decent finished product. As it is, in this one, Lara (and her love interest partner/supporting cast member, whose name I can’t remember) seem much more real and interesting than any of the characters did in the first one… but the story and the sets are much more boring and perfunctory.

The major problem with the Tomb Raider franchise seems to be that it has nothing in particular to give it a unique ‘style’. Where Indiana Jones has that whole 1930s pulp hero cliffhanger ambiance, and James Bond movies have the absurd jet-set fantasy espionage deal with all the high tech, really ridiculous gimmicks and a new couple of gorgeous bimboes and ugly, hateful villains for Bond to bounce off of in each installment, poor Lara just has… well… nothing at all distinctive, except, well, Angelina Jolie’s amazing face and body… which are, without a doubt, quite amazing and well worth looking at, but not enough, in and of themselves, to really make a franchise work. Exactly what sort of gimmick or individual little flourishes one could give to Tomb Raider to make it stand out from a crowd of wannabe franchise characters I really don’t know, but it seems to need something more than it has.

Weirdly, the most fun I had during the movie was when I pretended at various random moments (especially towards the beginning, when she was wearing that skintight white bodysuit with the weapons belts) that I lived in a much better universe than this, one where I was watching Angelina Jolie play the title character in a Modesty Blaise movie. I’m aware that absolutely none of the less-than-a-dozen readers this blog has knows who the hell Modestly Blaise is, or cares, but, well, if you trace it back several Xerox generations, she’s doubtless the natal inspiration for the Lara Croft character, as well as most if not all of the other female action heroines in the modern media. And as a huge Modesty Blaise fan, I can say right here and now that Angelina Jolie playing Lara Croft makes an excellent Modesty… the look, the voice, the accent… it’s all perfect. Throw in Viggo Mortensen as Willie Garvin and… well. Wish I lived in that universe, is all…

THINK BUT THIS AND ALL IS MENDED

Let’s see, what else…?

Paul gave me a copy of the Deluxe DVD Edition of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL… er… Wednesday. It has two discs, the second of which is all special features you can pretty easily live without. But having HOLY GRAIL on DVD is very nice. I can give my videotape copy of it away to someone now, if anyone out there wants it.

I didn’t go to the Unemployment Eligibility Review Yesterday. Yeah, yeah, I know… you can try and sometimes fail, or you can not try and always fail. In this particular case, however, the more accurate statement is, I could have spent money on a cab getting up there and back, groveled and lied to some goddam bureaucrat about a job search I haven’t bothered with because there are no secretarial jobs in Zephyrhills and I don’t WANT to work at Wal-mart, and end up losing my benefits anyway, or, I could do what I did, save the money and stay home.

Had the local office been somewhere I could have walked to, or taken a less expensive cab ride to, I’d have gone to the meeting. Having to spend money just to humiliate myself and lose anyway, however, simply seemed silly.

I haven’t heard back yet from SMingus, whoever he or she is, at Accent. Nor have I heard a word about any further payments from the Thrilling Mysteries folks for their use of my novel, WARLORD OF ERBEROS.

What I have done recently is bought a lot of groceries for me and Paul, and played a lot of this STAR WARS game while Paul is at work.

Email has dropped off once again. I’m still making my way through CONQUISTADOR… I’m enjoying it, because S.M. Stirling always writes very entertainingly, however, I have to admit, this is far from his best, or even one of his better, books. I suppose this would make a good intro to Stirling for someone who has never read his stuff, since most of the themes and concepts explored in this book he’s dealt with at much greater length in other works… but for someone very familiar with his body of work, this really seems pretty much like a summer rerun.

Paul’s toothaches have been getting MUCH more severe. I think he’s finally getting it through his head that nobody WANTS to go to see a dentist, but sometimes, you HAVE to.

Much to my surprise, Paul not only asked to read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, he claims to be enjoying it. People will surprise you if you give them a chance.

Of course, Paul still wants to go see the movie, but I’m hoping by the time he’s done with the first LOEG story he’ll have enough information on the real deal to be able to look at the movie ads and instantly realize what a complete and utter travesty, not to mention a total waste of time, talent, and celluloid, the goddam thing is. But on the other hand, Paul really likes bad movies… I think he owns a copy of nearly everything Dan Ackroyd has ever been in… so chances are, he’s perfectly capable of equally enjoying both the brilliance of Alan Moore, and some witless rendering down of said brilliance into mindless pap by the Hollywood stupefaction machine.

LOW BUDGET BLUES

I had this cool idea. I was going to do this thing where I’d have cartoons of myself speaking all this text that you’re reading now in word balloons, uploaded as graphics on the blog, to make this blog look interesting and different. I thought it would make it look more comic bookesque, which, since I’m a geek would certainly be appropriate.

However, when I did the graphics, they came in at about 133K apiece, and that’s way too much. This page would take forever to load, and the text wasn’t all that easy to read, either. So… sorry. It’s just boring text for y’all.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.