Mythoi Plug, then Reinventing the Lisp Machine

I'm still working on setting up the Drupal environment for collaborative writing projects over at Mythoi.com. My next major hurdle is I want to set up a very powerful drupal-centric Wiki system. There is bits and pieces of the code that I need, but nothing that satisfies me just yet. With that said, I'm also trying to work on promotional and identity development for the project. I've started a rough draft of a manifesto and have sent emails to a couple of groups that have tangential interests in the area for comments and criticisms. So far the response has been encouraging.

I was randomly surfing and read a bit about a Microsoft Research project called "Singularity" to build a mostly managed (ie, C#) OS and kernel. All I can say is that it is about time. They even mention in the Channel 9 videa that this isn't so much a "new idea" as it is a "new approach"... Smalltalk and Lisp have both had "managed" OS implementations decades ago. In fact, I've never seen one, but what I read about Lisp machines is fascinating. I'm still wondering when hardware manufacturers are going to start thinking about hardware optimizing some of the things that the Lisp machines did, such as hardware Garbage Collection.

The Sea-Gull Analysis

The Sea-Gull by Anton Chekhov is play filled with the emotions and relationships between its characters. Being one of the foundational works of the realism style, very little of this is dealt with directly, but in the subtext of the play’s dialogue. The play is very much an ensemble work, but insofar as it has a main character that protagonist is Constantine Treplieff. Treplieff is a struggling experimental writer living with and sometimes caring for his uncle Peter Sorin on Sorin’s country estate. Treplieff’s mother, Irina Abkadina, is an aging actress, whose current beau is the mainstream writer Boris Trigorin. Ilia Shamraeff is the manager of Sorin’s farm, married to Paulina, and the father of Masha. Nina Zarietchnaya is the daughter of a rich landowner from nearby Sorin’s estate (and the play’s young ingénue). Eugene Dorn and Simon Medviedenko are the country doctor and schoolmaster, respectively. The final named character is Jacob, a simple farm worker.

The play’s opening act is set on the eve of a performance of one of Treplieff’s plays to be performed for the benefit of his family and friends (basically, all of the characters). It is revealed that Medviedenko dotes upon Masha and Masha has a crush upon Treplieff. Nina, upon whom Treplieff has a crush, escapes her overbearing father to perform in this play. Treplieff’s writing is highly symbolic (his plays contain no living characters, for instance Nina’s character is the “soul of the world”), which has left him with a lot of rejection. When his mother won’t take the performance seriously and angers ...

The Straczynski Questions

I noticed that in the "fluff" symbolic and introspective play I've been writing (think Meta-War as an actionless play, perhaps) I've been bandying about the Straczynski Questions, but not forthright answering them. The Questions, which can be very deep, are used in the Babylon 5 series and associated works as major symbolic devices. In commentary, Straczynski has said that he also uses the Questions in determining a character's objective and superobjective (using the terms associated with Stanislavski's System of Acting). These are (in order of symbolic usage (which should be obvious, and thus non spoiler)):

• Who are you?
• What do you want?
• Where are you going?
• In whom do you trust?
• For whom do you serve?

These questions continue to affect my own writing. Even if in this particularly play I am working on none of the questions is really given their due, other than perhaps indirectly in the over-symbolism.

Rumors Analysis

This analysis will be turned in tomorrow for bonus credit in my class.

I saw the Neil Simon comedy Rumors at the Shelby County Community Theater. This is the third production I’ve seen at SCT, so most of the actors are now somewhat familiar, particularly my 7th-8th grade teacher, David DeSpain. SCT is an unusual theater, constrained as it is in an oddly proportioned downtown Shelbyville building. The stage itself is a long and narrow rectangle with seats on a contiguous long side and short side. Basically, it is a partial thrust stage. The entire theater seems only slightly bigger than the MeX’s room. Therefore, the stage seems very intimate, with only a few rows of “stadium-style” seats and the seats start very near to the stage. This time, seated on the lowest row on the “short side” of the stage, I could have put my foot on the stage if I had had reason to.

The scene design was a rather well done “realistic” set up. Like the two previous performances I attended, the play was set in a single relatively modern “house”, which the SCT stage works well with. The house in this one was supposed to be a large house, so the feeling was supported well by making good use of the stage’s setup to scatter a large number of doors between the stage and backstage, each symbolizing a different room of the larger house. A short flight of steps and a loft in the back corner gave the illusion of multiple floors. My biggest complaint would be that use of cheap “flat doorsââ ...

Revenge of the Saga!

Moot! The useless war in which no side could truly win is in its final stages. "The Prophecy" is a few decades from "playing out as it was supposed to". Nothing, whatsoever, truly matters, but ooh! isn't it pretty.

I went to a matinee showing of it, today, against my original intent. I went because my friends were and it would be a bit of a "group hangout". At the end, as I feared I would, I wanted my money back. I almost fell asleep. I almost vomited.

Now that the saga is "complete" I'm ready to bury it. Do I need a silver bullet for the silver screen? At this point, once this movie has settled onto DVD shelves and out of current conversation, my intent is to never discuss or pay attention to anything Star Wars again.

To keep from wasting my time, I'm simply going to cut and paste from email responses now:

At this point, the film is as predictable as excrement from a dog. I laugh at spoiler warnings. It's like the spoiler warnings before the movie Titanic came out. Anakin becomes Vader, Palpatine is revealed as Sidious, Luke and Leia are born. If *ANY* of that comes as a surprise after 5 movies, someone needs a doctor.

Here's a real spoiler for the movie: It's really long and tiring.

Are you kidding me? The entire dialogue was cringingly vomit worthy. The only resonable dialogue was the cliched fight dialogue.

What's more, Lucas further shoved his foot in his mouth and proved that he really doesn't understand what Democracy is.

This film plays out entirely like a bad Aeschylus or Sophocles play... and we can't blame the poor use of language on a bad translation.

Thought ...

Star Trek Theme Songs

I've been thinking about this for some days now and haven't written it down, but someone told me that my recent posts (other than movies/book reviews) have seemed somewhat depressive, so I figured I'd give this short nostalgiac note about my year in Deep Space Ohio.

Anyway, of all the Star Trek Theme Songs, I have to say that the best is the Deep Space 9 theme song. Interestingly, when DS9 first started I thought the song was too slow, but I think is merely in contrast to the rest of the stuff on ADD-vision. DS9 theme's swelling chords are like a verdant landscape with a resplendent sunrise.

At King's Island, when I worked there, no matter what else was in the ambient song loop the first song was always the Deep Space 9 theme. I knew this because, so many mornings, being a Morning Person for my stand, I would walk into the park as the landscapers were just finishing up their work, the fountains were just being turned on, and the ambient music was just being started. That is a fond memory I cherish, of walking past the gorgeous fountains and greenery to the swells of the DS9 theme.

Book of the Moment: Wicked

I probably don't need to say much about this book, as it has gotten tons of publicity. It is an interesting book in which the "Wicked Witch of the West" is given a much more even handed treatment than she ever recieved from L. Frank Baum. Its neat to see some of the questions of good, evil and morality played with using well known fictional characters, and done in an intelligent manner with good dialogue (as opposed to one particular piece of tripe I could mention). As far as I can tell (and I'm a layman, I'll admit), there is plenty of Oz canon used in the book. The map used by the author is the standard canon map. Where I've found it deviates from canon are mostly due to either nitpicking concerns or necessary changes to allow for real shades of gray in the heavily allegorical Oz "good and evil" system.

I think this book is yet another good book that shows why it is important to have Free and/or Open Mythoi available for authors to play with in such ways. This book would never have been published if the Oz world were not public domain. The controllers of the Oz canon would most likely squash this book: it is emphatically more adult oriented, and it makes major changes to major characters.

Speaking of Free and Open Mythoi, I'm working on manifesto of sorts on the subject for Mythoi.com. I'm hoping that ...

More Movie Stuff

Some things I've been thinking about movies, in procrastinating my reading of Othello:

I watched The Hudsucker Proxy, again. I really like this movie. It is smart with a great Art Deco sense and a unique humor. What surprised me in this viewing was how many parallels exist between Brazil and The Hudsucker Proxy. Both films went over budget, Hudsucker's mail room is a great homage of Brazil, both films didn't do well in theaters, both apparently due to lackluster support from a publishing studio that just didn't "get it". I was surprised to learn that Sam Raimi has a co-writing credit, but that just further adds to Hudsucker's weird mystique. Hudsucker's DVD packaging is disappointing. First of all, Warner Brothers is the cheapest studio bar none when it comes to DVD packages. The whole "use as much cheap cardboard as we can get away with" packaging thing just irritates me. Browse through shelves and you can point out the WB DVDs. Then there is the fact that the only "special feature" is "Interactive Menus!". I would have loved to hear, at the very least, Joel Silver whine about how much he hated working with the Coens. (Silver removed all of his own credits other than his Production Company logo.) Particularly after hearing him spend a half hour kissing the Wachowskis' asses on the Matrix DVDs.

Death to Smoochy is just a classic. So funny and Danny DeVito really gave the movie a high class style. A couple days ago I added myself to the Lebowski Fest mailing list. I'm contemplating attending this year.

Sort of movie news, but Fox Television pulled a huge surprise and announced ahead of time that it was renewing Arrested Development for a third season. It credits the ...

Fences Analysis

Analysis of the play Fences staged at Actor's Theatre of Louisville. I saw the previous Thursday's performance. I received a 93 on this paper.

For the most part I thought the performance I attended went really smoothly, with all of the actors “on”. The largely geriatric audience seemed to pick up and keep up with action well, particularly well following the switch from humor to serious emotion at the start of the second act. There were some appropriate gasps as some of the emotional revelations (Troy’s cheating, Alberta’s death). The audience at the performance I went to seemed to have a particular support for Rose who received some loud cheers.

I found it intriguing that the amount of cheering drastically increased in the second act. From what I gathered from the murmur and trickle of audience conversation at intermission and at the end of the play, it appeared that much of that night’s audience was more captured by the emotion of the second half than the light-hearted entertainment of the first.

I heard some in class from previous performances discussing how their audiences didn’t follow the switch as swiftly and treated even some of the serious moments as if they were supposed to be completely comedic.

My largest complaints with the performance were related to the set design. The thrust-like design of the Pamela Brown Theater has some very harsh angles to it that really dominated the set design. These angles, where they came across in the fence and porch designs helped to add a “shoddy” feel to them, but also made them harsher to look at.

I thought that the fence and porch designs were ...

I'm on a pretty strict regiment of drugs to keep my mind... limber

This week was wild. I have only one class, but it is exhausting. Each class is three hours. Each class is one week of instruction in a normal semester. I found that I sort of liked this focused "one class at a time" thing. It's just that it leaves the mind useless for much else. Not that I have time for much else, this week it has been class, nap, beer, homework (a lot of reading for the class), usually in that order.

I re-realized this week that I keep wishing for a Posse all my own (in searching for someone or somepeople to see a play with or to go bowling with). I've always felt like some poor follower. I've always felt like people think its my job to figure out what's going on tonight and where. I rarely get a "Hey, Max, here's what is kicking, you want to come?". So many nights I only know that some people have descended on this house when they turn on music way too loud. Why is it too hard to let me know ahead of time? Even just a brief knock might be appreciated. I never get a "Hey, Max, what are you planning for tonight and can I come?". Furthermore, I ain't in any relationship with someone that I could easily coerce to doing things with me. That isn't to say there aren't people I can't call ahead of time and might get to go, but sometimes I want someone there guaranteed to go at the last minute wherever I might go. Basically, I guess, I'm just tired of doing the things I want to do alone.

By the way, today's title is brought to you by "The ...

Movie Week

So I've had a week of semi-Freedom this week and all I could think to do with the time, even now being old enough to drink in a bar if I had the inclination, was to watch films. Part of this was thanks to a Birthday gift of eight new DVDs for my weird collection. Some thoughts on the films:

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction I watched back to back the first night (last Friday, I believe). It was interesting how things changed from one to the next, and how things remained similar. The beauty of Tarantino's films is that the dialogue is always both fun and enjoyable as well as well written and occaisionally thought provoking. This is obvious in both films. However, it is amazing how much Tarantino's cinematography improved between the two. I particularly loved Pulp Fiction for its geeky homage to 1930s pulp comics, and the movie even gives off an air that the segments in it really are just a few issues of a much larger released comic serial. I'm really interested in watching Sin City now after having watched Pulp Fiction in full. Sin City, from what I've heard, is a graphic comic itself in homage to the 30s comics via Pulp Fiction. It all goes to show how much culture really does build on itself.

The next night (Tuesday, I think) was Blazing Saddles, a Mel Brooks classic, of course. I followed that up with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Baron Munchausen comes from the Terry Gilliam collection I'm working on building. So far, Baron Munchausen has been the most "fun" of his directed films to watch. Not that they all haven't had their moments of fun, Gilliam's sense of humor (in addition to his ...

In response to my last beer-soaked brainstorm and semi-poetic post...

All of this really is interesting to me, because I've long debated it myself, and it is good to hear Laura try to articulate her own doubts. I feel that even though I'm doing Engineering, and have had my ass handed to me on a silver platter by the mathematics, that there is still enough creativity in what I do that I can enjoy myself. The entire reason I don't have a job this summer is because I realised I was no longer going to "settle" for a job that didn't offer me creative outlets... if I can't find something even mildly creative (insofar as at least giving me design control, if not entirely a creative environment), then I'd rather not do anything. UPS about killed me. I felt oppressed and drowning in a sea of both futulity and mindless uncreativity. The environment there was almost completely "anti-creative"; creating new things and ...

The Alcoholic's Accursed Alibi and Acquittal

I realize how genetically granted I am that I succumb to the succulent seductress of the bespoken bottle so often in life. How do you explain, engrossingly and in detail, to everyone you meet that you often perceive yourself to be merely half a man, a mere homo observus, until that first tasty drip has touched the tip of your tongue. Dreary dry days test the patience in ways that the wet, wild, wonderful ones test the wisdom. Is it better to be the flagrant and uproarious fool than the distant and sober dabbler in the arts of having humble and habile humanity?

Problematic, perhaps, that the soul of my own discourse can often simultaneously be the very same sadness of my divorce from human affairs. How ironic is the superposition of the substance, in how it can so simply sink the soul into suffering. The angers answer to no one and the sadnesses silence the fool. But even then, as my tears tred the passages of my problems, I feel more aware and awake than before my thirst had been thusly saked.

I am doomed to return once more to the brink, and I think I shall forever be torn between the drink and the sink. So, here's to me, unhuman since birth, clink.