Assorted Nonsense

The following gallery of pictures is one of those typical forwards we all receive via email from well-meaning friends, relatives, and people we barely know who’ve somehow, mysteriously managed to get their hands on our email addresses.  I don’t mind them; most are saccharine nonsense, but every now and then you come across a gem.

This one’s a gem. Not because it’s particularly sublime, although it is rather amusing.  Not because it’s true, either, because several of the photos are obviously jokes as opposed to authentic examples of lousy parenting.

No, it’s a gem because one of the pictures features my sister Shawna’s offspring, who was stunned to have this example of her lousy parenting skills forwarded to her out of the blue one day.  Yet another reason why anything off the internet should be taken with a large grain of salt.

See if you can figure out which offspring is her:

The scions of the race were inurned in the sepulchres on the declivity.  Eating chocolate.  The horror!

…about the damned flood.

Life goes on.  A little wetter, a few less belongings, but life goes on.

I should use this space to comment on something important, instead of moaning about my own problems.  For instance,  that Obama guy has apparently picked a running mate.  Would the world be a better place if I shared my view on that?  Probably not.  I’m no political science major.  Although I am watching the Presidential election race with a certain detached curiousity.  A former Vietnam prisoner of war versus a black man.  At one time I thought Obama would be a shoe-in but now I’m not so sure.  McCain represents  the status quo and people like the status quo.  I don’t mean in terms of perpetuating Bush’s legacy… Bush and McCain never saw eye to eye anyway, from what I understand.  I just mean that McCain is a white man, he’s not as scary as some people might perceive Obama. 

Myself I’d vote for Obama.

I like change.

Yeah, I should have stuck to writing about the flood.

That’s our neighbour’s house up there… all the contents of their basement. Last week every second house around our block had piles like that, including us.

So now things are mostly cleaned up, but all our basements are completely bare. Carpets stripped out, two to four feet of drywall cut away from every wall. Lots of concrete. It’s like a wasteland down there.

I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned in case one of you fine folk ever have to go through something like this. Here goes:

1. Check your insurance. Make sure you’re covered for all types of floods (and fire, and everything else). If you need to put an extra rider on to cover something extra, like coverage for flooding from sewage water, DO IT! The peace of mind is worth the extra ten bucks a month. And yes, I agree that an extra rider shouldn’t be necessary, but alas it is.

2. Don’t step in the water. I did, and in retrospect it was foolish. I was well aware that there might be a current flowing through the water, but I wanted to save my precious belongings. Not worth risking my life. First, call the electric company and get them to turn off the power. Then call your insurance company, and let them get someone in there to clean up the mess.

My next door neighbour, a retired electrician, came downstairs and saw a foot of water in his basement. His reaction? He went back to bed. The next morning he went out and played a round of golf… and got a hole in one. It was the third hole in one he’d scored in his life. When he finally got around to cleaning up his belongings, he found a scorecard on which he’d recorded his first ever hole in one. True story.

3. In our case the water was storm water mixed with sewage. But apparently even just storm water can contain harmful bacteria. Either way you’ll want to stay out of the water and let the professionals handle the mess.

4. Don’t move anything upstairs in an effort to save it. We did that, and all we succeeded in doing was contaminating the upstairs.

5. Call the insurance company right away. We waited a couple of hours and by then we were at the bottom of the list, and had to wait until ten o’clock the following night before someone showed up to begin cleaning up the mess.

6. Pick a house at the top of a hill somewhere.

Sigh.

Or the water in your basement, as the case may be:

And just in case you were curious, this is how much of our damaged goods the kindly movers managed to cram into their truck:

All I can say is:
Make sure you’re insured, folks.
I think we are…
We’ll find out tomorrow for sure.

It was raining like the dickens and we were all sitting around reading upstairs in our living room. There was a knock on the door and it was our neighbour Lyn. “Have you checked your basement?”

Um… no. Why?

There was close to a foot of water everywhere. Guess I don’t need to tell you that… that picture up there is probably painting a few hundred words.

I’m told over thirty houses in Whitby were flooded last night. Over one hundred in Brooklin a couple of weeks before. I think a drought would be worse than all this rain, but… couldn’t we find a happy medium?

Of course, it will all make for a good story someday.

BEST NOVEL: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)

BEST NOVELLA: “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis (Asimov’s Dec. 2007, Subterranean Press) [See SF Signal review]

BEST NOVELETTE: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang (F&SF Sept. 2007) [See SF Signal review]

BEST SHORT STORY: “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s June 2007) [See SF Signal review]

BEST RELATED BOOK: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press) [See SF Signal review]

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, LONG FORM: Stardust Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn Based on the novel by Neil Gaiman Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Paramount Pictures)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION, SHORT FORM: Doctor Who “Blink” Written by Stephen Moffat Directed by Hettie Macdonald (BBC)

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR, SHORT FORM: Gordon Van Gelder

BEST PROFESSIONAL EDITOR, LONG FORM: David G. Hartwell

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST: Stephan Martiniere

BEST SEMIPROZINE: Locus

BEST FANZINE: File 770 edited by Mike Glyer

BEST FAN WRITER: John Scalzi

BEST FAN ARTIST: Brad Foster

JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER: Mary Robinette Kowal

There’s lots of things I oughta be doing.

I oughta be flossing more.  Eating less.  Exercising more.  Sitting around less.  I oughta be putting on more sunscreen, driving slower, working harder, writing more, watching TV less.  If I had any brains at all I’d be reading better books, writing better fiction.  Getting my kids outside to play more, taking them to more fun things.  I should call my folks more, and my sisters, and my friends.  I should be making more money, wearing better clothes, cracking more jokes, thinking more, cleaning up after myself better.  I should pet my cats more often, donate more to charity, volunteer more.  I should be making more music.  Complimenting my wife more, taking her out more, holding her more. 

Yeah I should do all that stuff.  But I don’t and probably never will.  Probably there are lots of guys out there who do manage to do all that stuff; who look great, make a lot of money, and are tons of fun to be with.  But let’s face it: they’re all assholes, and I’d never want to be like them.  

Of all the things I ought to be doing that I’m not, there are really only a handful of things I’d really like to be doing, if only I could muster the damned will.

One of them is sporting a set of six pack abs.

Oh yeah baby.

Now, I’m not a complete loser, and I’ve been doing a lot of push-ups this past year.  Sometimes I manage two or three a day.  I was at the beach this summer, and I was looking forward to it.  I thought, I’ve been doing a lot of push-ups and damned if I don’t look pretty good for my age; I have never been more ready for the dunes. 

Sadly, what I think I look like and the hideous reality of my actual bod are not quite the same thing.   So there I was at the beach and I take off my shirt and some damned fool snaps a picture.  These days of course with new-fangled digital camera jobbies you can see the results right away and I made the awful, ego-crushing mistake of looking at the picture. 

Let’s just say my transverse abdominal could use some work. 

Not a problem.  The heck with everything else.  Kids, wife and teeth can wait, but six pack abs?  Here we come!  Hey, if Dara Torres can do it, so can I (he wrote, conveniently ignoring the vast gulf between a human with actual strength of character and one without…) 

I bet she doesn’t floss.

Somebody said The Dark Knight just may be one of the top ten movies ever made.  So I made sure I saw it on the Big Screen, expecting to be blown away.

If you haven’t seen it already, let me do you a favour by lowering your expectations somewhat.

It is a good movie.  A very good movie.  And I use the word “very” knowing full well that it is the whore of the English language, as my old English teacher Mr. Arsenault used to say.  But is The Dark Knight one of the ten best movies ever made?

No.  It may be one of the ten best comic book adaptations ever made.  Maybe even one of the top three.  ’Cause Spiderman Two was better.  And Batman Returns was pretty darned good too.

Now a part of this might just be my own personality.  I’m a big fan of humour myself.  Not Batman the Television series kind of humour, just humour.  Anything funny.  It doesn’t have to be all funny, but a few chuckles never hurt anything.  And to be fair there are two or three subtle chuckles in The Dark Knight.  Intelligent chuckles too, that not everyone watching got, I don’t think.  I appreciated those chuckles.  I could have used a few more.

Here’s the thing: in my view critics are all over this movie because it’s a serious movie.  It’s without a doubt the most serious comic book adapation ever made (at least until The Watchmen comes out).  They’re calling it a dark movie.  But it really isn’t so much dark as it is SERIOUS in big bold blinking letters.  And that’s why the critics love it, because it’s so stinking serious.  Covering some seriously serious themes, such as, how do you beat the bad guys when they don’t play by the same rules as you do?  And it’s fine all this seriousness, it’s fairly intelligent and not goofy and definitely way closer to the spirit of the original Batman.

But in my view the seriousness, the earnestness of the movie also tanks it a little bit.  Who likes to hang out with someone who’s so friggin’ serious all the time?  Even Heath Ledger’s much vaunted Joker is pretty serious.  A little more wit from the man wouldn’t have hurt, and would have added to the entertainment value.  ‘Cause the movie wasn’t quite as entertaining as it could have been.  It was thought provoking, and interesting, but entertaining?  Silence of the Lambs wasn’t all that entertaining either, come to think of it; it was a movie (and a performance) I appreciated more than enjoyed.  I’m not sure you can be both grim and entertaining.

The curious thing about The Dark Knight is that it was so adult and so serious and yet so full of plot holes at the same time.  Now, I’m not that much of a stickler for plot holes; I kind of subscribe to Hitchcock’s notion that if the ride is exhilarating enough the odd plot hole shouldn’t bother you.  And The Dark Knight certainly had its share of exhilarating moments.  But in a movie so ostensibly adult and serious I had trouble getting past the following question: (Spoiler alert) How the heck did the Joker place all those bombs everywhere without anybody spotting them?  How did he manage to walk away from Gotham General without some sharpshooter or even beat cop plugging him in the chest?

Yes, I know it’s a comic book adaptation and HItchcock would decry me for a “plausible.”  Sorry, Hitch.

I did enjoy the movie.  But I wish I’d seen it with my expectations properly managed.

You’re welcome.