Well…
So the washer broke today. I figured it was going to happen eventually. The landlord, for whatever reason, has never replaced this thing and it was on the verge of breaking anyway. The washer itself works, but the door was wonky, needing to be kick hard to get it to shut. Then the other day it needed to be sledge hammered in to shut properly and now today, after giving it one good kick, the door came right off, the hinges broken. Will the landlord replace it? Not likely. Even if I told him he needs to. Somehow I think he has a responsibility to considering how many people rent here and also considering there isn’t a laundromat within 5 miles of here (which requires at least two transit rides to get to). Needless to say, I’m a little pissed off. I’m on my last pair of clean pants…and I have to do the laundry. I officially hate this house. Yes, hate. I don’t know how one person can be so disorganized. It’s mind boggling. So, if you have a room for rent, let me know. I may be moving pretty quick here, considering the conditions, what I’m paying for rent and utilities, and the company being kept here. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Browsing the Aisles: My Fatal Flaw
…or why I, for some strange reason, almost never buy fantasy titles at the bookstore (unless I’m going there specifically to do that). Going to the bookstore is one of my favorite things to do. In fact, I almost never want to go shopping unless I know I’m going to get to go to a bookstore or two in the process. Book shopping is far more entertaining that shopping for anything else and I imagine everyone but my girlfriend hates to shop for books with me because I am a purely calculated book shopper, and, as a result, I take forever to get done. Most of my friends are done after fifteen minutes, but I’ll be there for another forty-five, or maybe even an hour. But I’ve noticed something about how I shop for books: I almost always buy science fiction over anything else.Now, I know that I personally am an SF nut. I love SF in all its forms (for the most part) and eat it up like candy. But I also love fantasy. Some folks seem to think that I dislike fantasy because I tend to be heavy handed on the subject of cliches and fantasy tropes. Granted,fantasy tends to be highly unoriginal more often than not, but a good writer can make me fall in love with the characters regardless. I’ve read many books that weren’t exactly doing anything new, but that were so entertaining it didn’t matter. The problem for me, however, is that fantasy is really hard to sell to me in the book store. Every time I go I look at the covers and read the backs and see the same thing being repeated over and over. Now, of course, most of those books probably are adding new things to the genre (or at least some of them), but how the hell am I supposed to know when everything looks and, from the summary, sounds the same?SF almost never does this for me. Granted, some of the covers do look similar, but when I pick up a book and read the back there are always new and fascinating ideas being presented. The more I pick up, the more I find that I want, and sooner or later I have three or more SF titles in hand and no fantasy titles (with exception to the occasional YA title, because I love YA for some reason). I know this is not a good thing, especially since I do love fantasy and enjoy it very much, but I can’t help it. For me, it feels like SF doesn’t have to work hard, but fantasy does. SF has the ideas right there out in the open: space ships and interesting aliens, space battles, technology, etc. Certainly, these are cliches, but you can do so much with such things and present new ideas within the summary. But the fantasy stuff is either a dragon or the typical fantasy-looking guys standing someplace that looks relatively generic. Don’t get me wrong, such covers are beautiful, but when you see the same thing over and over it’s hard to really differentiate. Then the story is almost always something about some guy who is a nobody who now must become somebody to save the world from something evil that was locked up or thought destroyed from a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away…wait, okay so that last bit was wrong. Point is, the themes in the summaries all sound the same to me and if you can’t entertain me past that point, I won’t even look inside (it goes back on the shelf). Is there some magical trick to finding the good fantasy in a wall of stuff that looks the same (not considering here, of course, those few titles that try to break out of this mold)?Does anyone else have a similar problem when browsing? Setting aside authors you already read, do you find that finding new and fascinating fantasy titles is relatively easy for you?
Rant About Book Covers
I know, don’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can’t help it. Sometimes publishers choose a cover that makes you wonder what they were thinking. Such is the case with Charles Stross’ new book, Saturn’s Children. I was not at all happy about the U.S. release cover after I saw a picture of it online somewhere, but I’m even more upset having now seen the U.K. version. Our friends across the pond get this:And we get this:Excuse me? What the hell? Why can’t we have the cool scifi cover with the spaceship and flashy colors? The biggest problem for me is that the U.K. cover looks like they actually put serious effort into it, considering it for what it is: a science fiction novel by one of the field’s most popular writers. The U.S. cover looks like some crappy, second-rate book I’d expect to see published on Lulu: that stale, computer drawn, fake looking female figure with the big breasts that defy gravity and otherwise look completely fake. I don’t know what Saturn’s Children is about, but either way, if I didn’t know who Charles Stross was, I wouldn’t touch the U.S. version of the book with a two hundred foot pole. The cover is ugly and I think Mr. Stross is undeserving of this sort of treatment.The way I see it, the cover of a book says a lot about the book itself. We’re not supposed to judge, I know, but at the same time we have to realize that people are going to judge a book by its cover. That’s why it’s such a problem to sell a book in the stores (like Borders). Most books end up spine out rather than cover out, and as such are less likely to get snatched up and examined by the ravenous book consumer.One of the things that I do when I’m in the store and walk around the new fiction area and look at the covers. I pay attention to the image, the author, the title, and anything else on the cover that might be of importance. If I don’t recognize the name, the cover is what has to sell me enough to pick up the book. There are too many books in the store for me to pick up every single one and give the same amount of attention to (by reading the back, for example). The job of the publisher is to attract my attention.Likewise, the publishers need to be aware of their intended audience. Luckily Stross’ new book will likely sell just fine with either cover, since his name is well known anyway, but if Stross were a new author with a cover like that, I can see it having issues. Stross’ audience are hard SF readers (and near future readers). As such, the publisher has to market to that audience, unless this new book is a significant change from his usual, in which case they have to figure out what works for that audience. If you have an epic fantasy book, you need a cover that fits it. Don’t put flying bunnies on it unless it’s a book about flying bunnies (and probably humorous). A science fiction book needs something that not only tells us about what’s inside the book, but also targets us, the scifi reader, with imagery that screams “scifi”. Computer animated figures don’t scream “scifi”. That screams “cheap”. Many people don’t realize this (or maybe they do), but there are entire website devoted to selling pre-drawn figures like the one on the cover above. All of them are obvious and while I respect the talent it takes to be able to get to that level of artistic talent, the art itself is not “great stuff”. It’s amateur. Video games produce better looking characters these days.The quickest way to get me to not touch your book is have a horrible cover. And the quickest way to get me to think your cover is horrible is to have something that looks like it was drawn on a computer. The trick about computer art is that it has to mask the fact that it is from a computer (unless, for some reason, you need a cover that looks like it came from a computer). Yes, you can do great things with a computer, but it takes practice and talent. It looks amateur to put obviously computer-based art on a book cover when you could just as easily find a piece of hand-drawn art for the same price. Even crappy hand-drawn art looks better than the computer drawn figure. Yes, I’m saying it. I’ve seen my fair share of poorly drawn book covers, done with real art, by hand. Ten times out of ten, it’s better than any of those annoying computer figurines you see on some covers. A good bit of advice for publishers, particularly the small presses (and I’m not pointing out anyone in particular here, but this is mostly aimed at those of you who do a lot of e-books), is this: it’s better to take a piece of handdrawn (painted, etc.) art that doesn’t look all that great than to take a silky and shiny computer-based drawing of a figure that looks just like every other computer-based figure that has been drawn. Seriously.
From the Movies to the Piano
Consider this to be a “random YouTube dump of videos featuring piano versions of movie themes”. The title of this post seems to work better, though. Every once in a while I go on YouTube and randomly search for a movie title and the word piano, and sometimes I get a hit and find a piano version that is simply stunning. Below is an example: Children of Dune–Summon the Worms Now, I never saw Children of Dune, and never will. The first movie that Scifi released was so boring I fell asleep. But apparently this particular movie received one hell of a soundtrack treatment. I’ve been listening to the OST, done by Brian Tyler, and it is a terrific soundtrack. Not the greatest (what do you expect, it’s for TV), but probably one of the best I’ve heard for a TV project (mostly because it uses real instruments, for the most part, whereas the vast majority of TV stuff uses synths that are obviously synths). This piano rework of one of the themes from CoD is actually really good. It’s not perfect, there are certainly flaws, but it really highlights the best part of the theme well I think. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
My Trip: Part Three (The Last Bits and Tearful Goodbyes)
My apologies for the lateness of this post. I have pictures left to put up and the last chunk of the story to tell. School just killed me and I forgot to get this up. So here it is. Last time I talked about the first two castles I’ve ever seen up close (Conisborough and Peveril) and the Blue John Caverns. That was quite an experience indeed. Now I’m going to talk about some of the other fun things I got to do. Below you’ll see a long distance shot of Chatsworth House, which is probably the biggest non-corporate building I’ve ever been in. Attached to said house are the Chatsworth Gardens, a place of…well, we’ll get to that later.Chatsworth is like an orgy of amazing architecture, sculpture, paintings, and interior design. It’s an amazing place, as you can see:Probably the most memorable part of Chatsworth House is this:No, that is not a door inside of a door. It’s a painting. The put a door there, and painted another door with a violin on it inside of the frame, and when you see it in real life, it looks real. I was amazed by it and still am. Brilliantly done.Once you go through the house, you go out into the gardens, which have been built up over the years into this collage of…well, I don’t know what you call it. It’s amazing all the things they have in there. There’s a hedge maze, foundations, waterfalls, streams, and even this really cool waterfall staircase. And apparently pheasant just wander around there, but we’ll get to that later. Here are some images of the gardens:Here is the maze in the middle of the gardens. This was so cool. I’ve never been in a hedge maze before. There’s a cute story that goes along with it and it’s mushy, so deal with it. Lindsey and I were walking through and she would intentionally take us down the wrong way so we could playfully kiss in the corners (with the funny moment beforehand of us going, “Oh no, another dead end” *insert kiss*). Yes it was cute. Yes it was amazing. And yes Lindsey is a good kisser. Okay, vomit-ish moment over.Another really bizarre thing is this tree. It’s made of metal and they spray water through it or over it or something and it just sprinkles everywhere. It’s really amazing. Lindsey dragged me in a circle around it, which was fun. By the way, you can spend hours in these gardens. We didn’t see everything, but we got to see most of it. The place is enormous!And of course, probably one of the more famous bits of the gardens: the waterfall staircase. The stairs go all the way to the top and you’re allowed to walk on them. We didn’t walk on them on purpose, because it was far too cold for that sort of thing, but we did walk all the way down from the top, which was fun.The last castle (and the last significant place we went to) was Skipton Castle, which is one of the best preserved castles in England. I have to admit that it wasn’t as impressive as the other two, but maybe it was because it was so well preserved and seemed more like a living space than a defensive place. Granted, it is beautiful and certainly a fantastic place. I greatly enjoyed going there and expect if I go to England again (actually, when I go there again, because I intend to see more that amazing country) I will see many more castles and interesting sights. Thankfully, England isn’t a very large country, which makes seeing the sights a little easier than trying to see everything in the U.S. Anyway, here be the picturesThis is the old church at Skipton. It’s mostly in ruin, but look at it! It’s so old and amazing.The tree below is a Yew tree that was supposedly planted there by Lady Anne almost 400 years ago. That would make this a very old tree indeed.In the picture below you can see a clear view of Lindsey reading a information thing (whatever you call those). Isn’t she cute?Here is a random picture up a chimney:And what group of castle pictures would complete without a picture of a medieval toilet?And, of course, another picture of Lindsey reading in a castle and otherwise being beautiful, cute, and lovable:If you look at this picture you’ll notice there are two walls. Why? Well because the original wall, which is all beaten up, was blown down at some point (I think) during a three year siege on Skipton. They rebuilt the wall later, which is very obvious I think.The strange thing is, this stairway leads into the “dungeon”, but I didn’t take any pictures of the dungeon. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. It’s okay, though, the dungeon was just one room with nothing in it and it apparently gave Lindsey and her mum the willies. I didn’t feel too comfortable either.I absolutely love this picture. There were these arrow slits in the walls, and some of them were shaped as cross. We were there at just the right time to have the sun coming in, so it looks like the cross is glowing!Inside the church that was pictured earlier:After Skipton Castle we wandered around in town. Lindsey and I went to a couple bookstores and generally had a lot of fun together before eating lunch. Afterwards, we met up with her mum again and went to the canal. There were sound houseboats there that were for sale, which I didn’t get a picture of, and a cute duck who I named Terrance. I’ve never seen a duck with a blue bill, which is why I took the picture.Also, since i said I would talk about the pheasant, here is a picture of the one we saw. His name is Ted. I don’t know why, that’s just what I called him, if memory serves me
Overheard Drunken Musings
Just a random bit of information that came to me: apparently the neighbor who went on a drunken rampage a few nights ago has been charged with at least three counts of assault, assault on the elderly (whatever you might call that charge), disorderly conduct, and I’m sure some other things I don’t know about. I guess when the landlord got hurt it wasn’t an accident, but a deliberate assault to keep the old man from calling the police. I’m fairly certain that the drunken neighbor didn’t realize what he was doing; he was so drunk his words were mostly incomprehensible and if there were sentences in his speech I certainly couldn’t find places to put periods.Now to what the title of this is about: I overheard the landlord discussing on the phone, whilst being a little slurred from consuming a little Brandy (I have to admit, at least his drinking has class, and he’s actually a fun drunk, cause he’s kind of nuts in the first place), that the drunken neighbor may be serving a year and a half in jail. I don’t know if this is true, and I don’t know if I necessarily agree with such a long punishment. Said neighbor is actually a good guy, but obviously mixed up and in need of help either from his failing lifestyle (the guy is at least 40 and he does not hold down a regular job) or his drinking (apparently he has a DUI on his record, or more than one, and has lost his driver’s license because of it), though most likely from both aspects. If we had the State programs to give him help I would agree with giving him help, since he clearly needs it. But since we don’t have those programs, jail time is all we have to offer. Should he go to jail? Yes, of course. He went freaking crazy and was far too drunk for any sensible person to be. He assaulted three people on purpose and hurt another man by accident. Jail time is necessary and I imagine now that he is sobered up he is realizing to some extent how much he has screwed up.So, that’s the random bit of news for the day. One and a half years of jail time. Maybe things were worse that I was told?