Corvus Elrod invited me onto a panel discussion on Murder, Sex, & Drugs at PAX. I'm looking forward (with a smidge of anxiety) to contributing meaningfully to the discussion. Also in my PAX-related news department is that due to the vagaries of air travel using point systems I've ended up with a couple extra nights in Bellevue beyond PAX. I'm trying to figure out the most productive use of the extra time, and would entertain any additional suggestions on people to meet in the Seattle/Bellevue area Wednesday night (Sept 2nd) or Thursday. (There would also be Sunday after PAX or Monday (Labor Day).) I've seen much of the touristy stuff in the area, so I do mean "people to meet", and to be completely frank my best case at this point is to find people that might be potentially interested in hiring me.
Plus, there is all the usual amount of work that I'm putting into getting my projects into interesting arrangements for PAX. The panel will be a great marketing opportunity should I have useful things to market...
Last week was a vacation week. My family and I spent a few days on a houseboat on Kentucky's beautiful (man-made) Lake Cumberland. I wrote several blog posts in the calm lake water and I may or may not dredge them out of placid etherealness into actual blog posts. In case anyone wants to make a request for my thoughts, here's the highlights of my lazy recreation:
- I wrote about what I think should be done for Jurassic Park 4: I think it is past time to return to Isla Nublar (most of what I love is the theme park aspects to the first film), and have two simple concepts. I can explain them in greater depth, but I'll try to stick to the overview.
- "Something has survived" in the Ghost Theme Park; where Isla Sorna is all falling apart, jungle takeover, it is easy to see Isla Nublar as almost too-shiny and mostly untouched from its near-completion (with the obvious exception of the Visitor's Center). You could see InGen giving expensive ride tours on the old theme park equipment after the events of JP2/3, even if most of the rides are "here you would have seen dinosaur x, but it died". (JP2/3 imply that Isla Nublar is much less interesting than Isla Sorna because most of the dinosaurs failed to reproduce or overcome the lysine deficiency.)
- My favorite idea is to simply jump to an alternate timeline. I'd love to see a movie where John Hammond had hired a more scrupulous software contract firm and the park failure event happened much later in the parks history, potentially after the creation of other parks (you could even use the Jurassic Parks moniker to title/differentiate the film, and follow the trend that Rodriquez is pushing for Predators and is shamelessly stolen from Aliens). Imagine the rampage of the first film multiplied with hundreds or thousands of park visitors. I had even started writing the first few scenes in my head.
- I got to meandering again around my "quantum storytelling" rabbit hole. I realized that I don't think I've given a formal introduction to the topic on my blog, and then I got to wondering how I might best introduce the topic without drowning the introduction in the cthulian depths that sometimes give me nightmares and lead me to worrying about potentially losing my sanity... I think that I did come away from the vacation with a few ideas on how to present an initial shallow dive into the topic, and perhaps I'll try to pursue them in the near future.