Miscellany

(Because there were too many of these to just spam you with them on Twitter.)

• Something about this winter has me flashing back to Christmas season '06, and the events in my life are mirroring it a bit too: Good friends, a rocky romantic situation, Warhammer 40k and Jasper Fforde novels fresh in someone's mind. (In case you didn't think I was a nerd before.) This isn't entirely a bad thing, but it has me slightly melancholy, like maybe things were simpler back then. Because as everyone knows, things were always simpler back then.


• The moving process is all but complete. On Saturday I drop my keys off at the old house, and then I just have to wait to see how much of the deposit we get back (that we can't fight to get the whole deposit back is a portion of our deposit agreement that I was never privy to—you can guess how I feel about that). The new house is to the "Box a Day" phase, where if I unpack one box a day I will have things all put together by mid-November. Things I have learned: I own a great many notebooks, and need to re-organize my personal files. Hence, those books will be saved for last so I don't feel like I'm making more work for myself. Life is all about tricking your own brain.


• I appear to be sick. This is not how I wanted to be. Though I do have to say, watching the director's cut of Legend with a raging fever is a real experience.


• Speaking of the director's cut of Legend: watch the director's cut of Legend. Seriously, it is almost a completely different movie, and a much better one; I tried to watch the U.S. theatrical release and after 10 minutes my wrists ached from clenching my fists. I'll have to rant about my hatred of test audiences later.


• Lastly and most importantly: I started writing again last night. Naturally, it sucked, and I don't want to use any of what I wrote; but after a night's sleep the corrected, improved version came upon me in the shower, and now I'm taking my lunch break (which would ordinarily be spent getting exercise that the Internet recommends against while sick) to get that down on paper. Tonight I will do more writing, and unpack a box, and maybe, if there's time, spend some quality time with a DVD. The old rituals are starting to come together alongside their new and improved counterparts, and I cannot begin to say how much this excites me. Now if only my upstairs neighbor would stop morphing into an elephant every night...

Your Daily Genius

As a nerd and a budding transhumanist, I always find the stuff on TED fascinating to watch. These people are talking about the future, sometimes in very immediate ways, and watching these guys I can't help but feel a little better about the world when I close the browser.

Today, we have Rachel Armstrong, who would like us to know that she may have found a new way to design buildings. It's an interesting idea in and of itself...but just wait 'til you get to the part about Venice.



And if that wasn't enough, or if you're looking for something in the realm of arts and sciences, might I recommend an artist drawing cities from memory?

One Last Gasp

A news site* recently called GeoCities a "vintage Web hosting site". How can things that happened when I was old enough to think erections were hilarious be "vintage"?

The Internet has clearly warped our sense of space and time. We need new terminology, new ways to describe what is "old" and "new" in terms of the micro-time that the Internet uses to discuss these developments. I want a witty reference to Kurzweil, or some terrible play on "antediluvian" (though anything that came before Twitter can definitely be said to have come before the flood...).

*one I follow on Twitter, whose post has sadly been lost in the deluge

No, I Haven't Forgotten

If all goes according to plan, this will be the last in this recent glut of skip weeks for Not Providence. The moving is down to unpacking a box here, a box there, with the floor space mostly open and my house mostly together, which means I can focus on the things in life that matter. This includes both Not Providence and the Super-Sekrit Projekt Mark II, which I hope will see the light of day before New Year's.

Thanks for hanging in there and continuing to read—next week, God willing, Randall rides again.

Friday to Sunday: A Writer Gets Older

Nine days and it feels like my entire world is tilted wrong.

It all started on Friday the 16th when I, to go ahead and just stay vague, ran into some relationship troubles. It all seemed to be manageable, the usual places where the puzzle pieces don't automatically fit, and then we were moving forward with an eye toward smoothing it out. On Saturday, I moved, which was a lovely pile of crazy—too much to do, a personal space full of heavy boxes, furniture shifting and much snapping and swearing. Sunday was Where the Wild Things Are, which is lovely if not the same thing as the book, and tapas, which never stop being exciting. Both of these were lead-ins to my birthday, the cake and presents and all the good hugs and the people here just to see me. I needed to unpack, but no matter how much I focused there was a fat man sitting on chest, strumming the strings of my intuition and telling me I had something wrong.

On Wednesday, I was dumped.

My friends all rallied and the love-bombs began, just enough to help me but not enough to steal all my air; there was wine and sushi and a little bit of bitching and it all got handled. Then it was dinner with the family on Thursday, and the first of two sweet hats, and other gifts besides I have not fully had time to appreciate. Friday was dinner with the friends, which had a rocky start but was still delicious, and on Saturday I hosted my first birthday party ever in my new place, which was delightful and enjoyable and definitely a success thanks to a friend with a bag full of board games and another with an amazing hand in the kitchen; Sweet Hat Number Two was collected, bringing my Sweet Hat total to three, and I spent a wonderful night with wonderful people I love, watching them meet and talk and play and just be, and felt glad that even if I couldn't have a long conversation with each of them individually, I could at least have brought them here to this place and time.

Now it's Sunday, and the ex has come to pick up her things. We exchanged bins and books, pills and boxes, all the things we traded with each other when permanence was still a hypothesis; we had that long pink-eyed stare and the confused, cold goodbye, and the tacit understanding that we just closed the door on an era. I closed the door, sat down, and cried; and in crying ejected a ball from my stomach that I hadn't wholly realized was there. And then I sat up and got online, and realized that most basic truth: Now that all of this is over, I'm expected to go back to life as normal.

But it was all done while the day was young, and I have permission (granted by one of my best friends) to spend today relaxing and pampering myself as I see fit. There will be some boxes moved, and dishes washed; but today I get to sit down with a DVD in my player and just enjoy the feel of the space. Today I get to walk through Mountain View and know that I am loved. Today is my birthday present to myself.

27 was rough and full of failed attempts; here's hoping that the next bridge from October to October has a couple fewer missteps.

No.

There is still no update to Not Providence this week; the Movebeast is still firmly entrenched in between my shoulder blades, demanding my attention and my time. The bulk of the deconstructive work is done, but we are not quite to that delightful point where all that is left is the rebuilding effort; and as such, it is hard for me to get into my usual routines, writing among them.

And I don't mind saying, it's been difficult. Not writing, to wax cliche, is like not breathing, not sleeping, not coming up for air; like some basic, primal need inside me is not being met. It feels like my life is treading mud.

The entire disruption to my routine has been like this. I've been working, hauling, guiding, thinking, placing, a thousand other verbs, and none of them sound like "rest". I don't have a new routine fully worked out, and by definition sort of can't—most things involving the new house are things I have only done once, maybe twice, and plenty more things are not in place for me to have any kind of habit (like the fact that I will not, in fact, be navigating around a sideways length of bookshelf every time I walk through the middle of my living room). As I suspected, it has not been the easiest thing to deal with; I have arguably been at my worst the past week or so, and my loved ones have born the brunt of it, which is not really how I like to be.

But, there have to be bright sides. My loved ones still love me, after all, and I've been forgiven my screaming and my snaps. The main part of the move is over now. This weekend is the final push, the last load, and this week is the emptying of boxes. And come Friday there's my birthday to celebrate, even if I'm celebrating it with cleaning; and next week I just have to pick up little pieces, and then the saga of the Granada Street house will end.

And then, oh my readers; and then, how I will write.

Not Providence: As Promised

Part Twelve is Up, a little early due to madness in today's schedule. Enjoy; we'll be back here in a week or two.

Edit: Oh, and I just shook some gremlins out of the code. Don't know how those got there...

Providence!

I'll leave a quick note here for those of you who don't follow me on Twitter: I did it.

I have packing to do; I have moving to plan; I have things to deal with in real life; but more important than that, more powerful and more tensing than those, was the need to write. So I wrote.

Or edited, anyway. Part Twelve is now edited, and coded, and all set to go; and in the interests of keeping the math on my tardiness nice and even, I'll be putting it up tomorrow morning for your reading pleasure.

Unfortunately, Part Thirteen is not even fully written yet, so it is likely next week will be another skip week; but hey, this is why I said the break would be brief and inconstant. Right now I am focusing on how good it felt to pour some words over my poor febrile brain, and remembering that yes, this stuff is as important as breathing to me...it's just also ten times easier to give up.

Review: Paranormal Activity

Short version: HOMINA HOMINA HOMINA OH MY GOD STAIRS

Longer version: Sparse, diegetic style and meticulous attention to mood and pacing combine to scare the everloving bejeezus out of you. The single scariest movie I think I have ever seen, more haunting than Funny Games and with the same attention paid to the expectations of the genre.

Longest version (SPOILERS!)

Summary: The film presents a series of home-recorded video files taken by main characters Katie and Micah, a young upper-middle-class couple living in a nice San Diego home. Katie has apparently been plagued by strange paranormal experiences since her childhood, and Micah, ever the doting boyfriend, has decided to spend a ridiculous amount of money buying a camera with which to record these occult shenanigans (to what end is not always clear). So begins an uninterrupted festival of tension and terror that I am not sure I can truly do justice.

Paranormal Activity is one of a body of horror works that I wish I knew (or could safely invent) a fancy term for: films made by people who grew up with horror films, who know all the tricks of and expectations pertaining to the movies, and who use those expectations and that knowledge to manipulate their audience into an experience of real fright. Post-post-horror, if you will. The film's style owes a lot to The Blair Witch Project, obviously, but at the same time knocks it out of the water, focusing on a much more sparse, (mostly) subtle, believable story that is nevertheless just weird enough to be unsettling.

And unsettling it is, my friends. Terrifying, even. I and the rest of the theater spent most of the movie screaming; what periods of silence we had were punctuated by constant squeaks of "Oh God", and I several times slammed myself backwards into my seat while shouting—and I do not scream at movies as a rule. The film achieves its scares with minimal special effects and an amazing sense of pacing, starting small enough that I freaked myself out waiting for something to freak me out and then piling it on thicker and thicker as it went on. It doesn't try to explain itself; it doesn't pretend to make sense; it doesn't attempt to satisfy or resolve. It tells a story that is about two lives being wrecked by something no-one involved understands, and it tells that story in a way that makes it feel like it could happen to you. It renders an average environment terrifying, and creates the sense of something wholly outside acceptable reality with a minimum of special effects shenanigans for us overactive brains to deconstruct. Even beyond how scared I was, I have to praise the movie for using the found footage narrative framework with such acumen and style.

I will take this baby down off the pedestal and point out the clay foot, though: for all it is terrifying, Paranormal Activity is also a little conventional. Horror tropes stare the viewer right in the face, from Micah's overhyped male bravado to the deep need for somebody to read an explanation of the monster out of the book. Expectations are rewarded, though not always on the most comfortable schedule, and I think that does lessen the impact. At the same time, though, I can't think of a way to dodge those tropes that doesn't either leave the writer painted into a corner or look just as blatant in its avoidance and inversion as the use of those tropes was in the first place; and in truth, those old chestnuts are presented in such an inventive and generally believable manner that I don't think they do as much harm as they do when seen in lesser productions.

END SPOILERS

All in all, I'm giving this baby five out of five horrifying noises in the middle of the night. I recommend it to any horror movie fan, and I really do think their tagline about not seeing it alone is true; you'll want somebody to share this experience with you, and you almost certainly do not want to try to make the drive home alone. I, myself, am alone now for the first time since seeing the movie on Friday, and I'm having trouble with the idea of going to sleep. Some part of me is expecting the weird noises to start as soon as I hit Post. Good thing I haven't been fighting with my girlfriend...

(And of course a plane flies overhead right as I go to hit Post, creating a dull metallic moan that made my head snap up with enough speed to compact some vertebrae. Thanks, universe, that's exactly what I needed.)

The Gasping, Sucking Strain of Ritual

I'm a creature of ritual and habit. That's not really a secret. I function best when I have a schedule laid out ahead of me; I am in my best moods when certain parts of my day run exactly as they have before; and I love rituals and superstitions and strange little quirks of behavior that govern holidays, celebrations, social interactions. It's why I love talking to people. It's why I love the SCA (or have come to love it recently, anyway). It's why I love new relationships, with the learning each others' quirks and sharp edges and recipes for happiness. It's why the end of the year is so great, for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's why I get up every morning at the same time, why I can handle my problems if I can tell what time it is, why I sometimes set my calendar by the bagels in the lunchroom.

Moving is the opposite of routine.

Moving is an inherent disruption of ritual. It requires extra energy normally reserved for life's others ins and outs; it requires you to go without some things for some amount of time while they are tucked away in boxes; it requires planning and favor-asking and physical labor; and worst of all for me, it requires, for anywhere from 30 days and up, that I surrender the concept of home.

Home is at the center of my rituals. Home is a base of operations, a storage space, and an anchor. I cook my meals standing in certain directions, I hang or store my utensils using certain motions, I duck away in certain ways to avoid the high-pressure faucet wetting my clothes. I memorize the flow of things in my home and work by rote, pleased to just be able to sit there and feel the way things exist within my home.

When I am moving, I cannot do that. I experience everything with a sense of its limitations, measure my actions by what I can afford to pack now and pack later. I divvy the house up into nights of work and boxes, budget my time into making it as easy as I can. I buy food in a way that lets me afford a U-Haul. It makes me stressed, and tense, and occasionally even sick, confused when I even contemplate the fact that this phase must end.

And yet, moving has its own magic. It has the DVDs I watch while I pack, which seem, so far, to all be different takes on crime drama. (Two winters ago it was Bones; now it's Dexter. I can't imagine what it'll be the next time.) It has the joys of Box Tetris, the reexamination of my spatial footprint and the geometry of my belongings. It has the valuing and revaluing of the little things and the decision about what I must own. It has the cleansing feeling of hard labor, and the sense of a major accomplishment when the furniture's all brought in. And it has the shivering promise of a new routine, of the little joys when I figure it all out. Living is ritual, but moving is adventure.

What I'm saying in all this is that I am coming to terms with the move, and finding the ways it excites me. And that, if I can, I'll be doing some of my packing in a pirate hat.

(And yes, Not Providence will be back soon.)

Not Providence: Brief and Inconstant

Hello all, my fine readers, my friends.

It is time to risk missing an update.

The short version of events is that I need to move. Not immediately, but at the end of this month. This is not a big deal and I am not as stressed about it as I was when the situation was still wholly in flux, and even if I do not find an apartment that is to my satisfaction I have a valid fallback for the next month or two. But this does mean that today has been exceptionally stressful and draining, as I am a person who just does not cope well with not knowing where Home is, and that I have a lot to get done.

Tomorrow's update is ready from a creative sense, but not in a coding sense, and I may be unable to get it done in time for a 9am upload; so while I expect tomorrow's update to go up tomorrow, it may do so very late, and I would not be surprised if I have a missed week or three in the next two months as I try to get everything in my life sorted out.

Not Providence is in no way dead; the rest of Book Two is plotted out near to completion and Books Three and Four are skeletons hanging at the back of my mind, slowly growing meat. But there will be a brief, inconstant hiatus while the matter of the move is resolved. Once I know where Home is, you will know more.

I am very sorry to do this, but I am simply dealing with too much unavoidable stress to be piling the avoidable stress on top of it.

Randall will be back soon.

Concerning Polanski

I was going to try to avoid this topic. I was going to not be political this time. I was going to not get involved.
But I have heard both sides now. I have seen the arguing. I have seen the misinformation and the ranting and the opinions, and I have to weigh in on my own personal little corner of the Internet.

This post is about the arrest of Roman Polanski (link for those who have not heard about it). Therefore, this post is about someone who has confessed to drugging and raping a minor. If this makes you uncomfortable, I understand and you don't have to read; but from here on out, you've been warned. Also, I admit I am fallible; and if I have any of my facts (my facts, not my opinions) incorrect, please inform me—I believe in changing based on new data.

There. Now I'm going to say it: Of the two extreme sides, I agree with the people signing the petition.

I think that Polanski did exactly what he plead guilty to. I think he is, or was, a rapist. And I do not think that should be excused, nor should his fleeing the country when things went (illegally) sour.

But I think that the method by which the situation has been handled up to now is utterly unacceptable. If there is some red tape somewhere that has prevented an arrest until now, then alright, that's different; but this smacks of police turning a cultural event into a trap for a criminal, and not even a criminal who has, as far as we know (and I'd think we'd know) offended again.

It is not, for me, about this one case; it is about the precedent this case stands to set. It is about the precedent that the police can choose when and where to arrest a criminal; that they can engage in acts which I would argue border on entrapment to capture a criminal who has not since offended; that bureaucracy is more important than the wishes of the victim; and that a person's celebrity status can be allowed to influence a case both negatively and positively.

I absolutely think that Polanski should be punished for what he did—both the original crime and feeling the country. If he actually served his original, plea-bargained sentence (which I cannot quite tell if he did or not, the articles about it are obtuse on this point), then he should serve time for fleeing the country. However, in my ideal world I would call for a mistrial, have him tried somewhere other than Los Angeles County, and have him serve the sentence issued by that trial; not because I think he would be treated more harshly, but because the behavior of the original judge should not be allowed to stand.

Also, I have heard people speak of boycotting those who signed the petition to free Polanski: I respectfully disagree. I won't stop you, but it seems to me to smack of hypocrisy: People want Polanski's artistic career to be kept separate from the politics of his trial and arrest, but they want to bring their politics into their decisions about others' art? Then again, I avoid Century Theaters because their owner supported Proposition 8, so maybe there is argument to be made for my own hypocrisy...

That's what I have to say. Now let's see how big this fire gets.