dedalvs

Moving day is at hand!

So it's all sewn up now; the new place is all ours. We'll probably wait till the weekend after this upcoming one to move in. For the time being, though...

( Pictures? You bet! )

No, no. Let me get some Cup O' Noodles first. I'm'a need them for this...

Okay, the water's boiling. I'm ready.

I recently watched AMC's miniseries "remake" of the fantastic television show from the 60s The Prisoner, of which I'm a huge fan—as are many others (it's in Time Magazine's top 100 [unordered], it was voted the #7 cult television show of all time by TV Guide [huh. It's not in TV Guide's top 50, but Twin Peaks is... Wouldn't've called that one], the last episode was nominated for a Hugo award [it lost to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Don't know about that one...]). The entire series run was six hourlong episodes shown two a day for three days (this past Sunday, Monday and Tuesday). I watched all six, even though I knew after seeing the first minute of the first episode that the entire thing was garbage.

( But was it really garbage?! Read on, if you don't mind spoilers (for both series)! )

So, six mind-rotting hours later, I'm offended, but not defeated. I'm just glad Patrick McGoohan didn't live long enough to witness this soulless atrocity.

Barring any unforeseen catastrophes, allegram and I are home owners. We just put down our deposit on a condo in the nice part of Santa Ana (well, one of the nice parts; there are several). The nice thing is that our monthly payments, all told, will be lower, and we won't be throwing our money away on rent anymore. The uncertain part is we don't have our false cushion anymore (false in that we never had a cushion: just an inflatable life preserver with a slow leak). I feel pretty good about this, though. I may have to give up on things and get a money job (for awhile, at least), but it was bound to happen. Anyway, in case you were wondering why there haven't been many posts this month, this is why. Busy, busy, busy...

Ack! What a month! A short, tabular review:

• Novel got put on hold.


• Didn't write any book reviews or writing guide errors (but I have two big reviews to do!).


• Went to jury duty; didn't make the cut (quelle domage!).


• Got an idea for a children's book; haven't finished.

So if that's all I didn't do, what on Earth did I do?

It's been a busy, busy month for several reasons. Among other things, I helped out at the OCC GATE fall conference at UCI. The funny thing is, of all the conferences I've been to, helped plan and/or helped run, this was the smoothest I've ever seen. What a pleasant surprise! Well done from beginning to end.

allegram and I have also started hunting for a permanent place to live. Provided everything goes well, we're saying goodbye to apartments for good. Unfortunately, nothing has really gone well. We've spent a lot of time hunting and looking at places, and even put in a couple offers, but have had absolutely no luck (lots of places where the listing agent says they've gotten no offers, only to reveal after we've submitted our offer that they've gotten like forty). We have an offer in now, so our fingers are crossed. It's hard to really get excited about any of these places when it's more than likely we won't actually be living there...

I also set up a site for Erin's wedding planner business: ErinsEngagements.com. Take a look and let me know what you think!

But, of course, the largest enterprise I undertook over the course of the last month (two months, really) was I applied for a job posted by the LCS. Without going into details, the job was to create a language for an upcoming television show. The application process was exhausting (took most of my free time for the past two months), and there were a ton of excellent conlangers applying. At the beginning of this month, I was informed that I'd moved onto the final round, and this past Friday, I was informed that I'd won.

This is probably the most exciting news I've had in about...oh, a year and a half—and a welcome bit of good luck after a seemingly endless string of disappointments. I'm not sure just how well this is all going to pan out, but for the time being, it's enough to keep me afloat.

Until someone somewhere leaks the information, or I'm given the okay by the network, I signed a thing saying I wouldn't say anything about the series, so all I can say for now is that it's a major TV network, and the show is, at this point in time, guaranteed a pilot (and I'm guaranteed work for the pilot). If the pilot is picked up, the show will get a one season run, and I'm guaranteed work for the first season. Thereafter, I imagine it will depend on the show's popularity, the quality of my work, and the direction of the show. Still and all, very exciting!

In case you're wondering why this is the first anything about this has been mentioned on my blog (even though the job posting itself has been public for a couple months, and this application has been the only thing on my mind since August), it's largely because of me. I really gave this my all. I lost a lot of sleep and put a lot of hours into my application (which, essentially, was a full language [I put more effort into this language than I have many of my own languages]), and if I hadn't won out, I would've been pretty devastated—and the very last thing I would've wanted to deal with is all my wonderful, well-meaning friends and family whom I love dearly asking me, "So, did you get the job!" Ack! So pretty much only the people directly involved in the application process and allegram knew anything about this—and allegram didn't know very much (sorry! I was too paranoid!).

Nevertheless, it's come to a happy end, and I look forward to finally being able to spill my guts about it. This right here is only about 13% of my guts. We'll have to wait for the rest.

Just cleared the first jury call, so now I'm settling in for seven and a half hours of solid nothing. Hooray!

Interesting bit today, though. A court employee (staff, I'm guessing) gave a presentation today and did have a curious way of speaking. She did make sure to emphasize every tense element of every sentence. She did not use contractions. She was not the best speaker, but she did do her best. It did occur to me that, as this was her job, she probably does have to do this every single day, and so there may be a special reason she does emphasize every single T in the ol' binary branching tree. I did consider the fact that it may have to do with the fact that there are a lot of non-native English speakers who are selected for jury duty, but this did not prevent me from being slightly annoyed...

Huh. She just made another announcement, and did do the exact same thing... Looks like there's another random jury announcement. Here we go! Crossing my fingers that I still get to sit here and do nothing.

Going to help out at the OCC GATE Fall Conference at UCI. Have to be there by 6:30 a.m. Woke up at 5:00 a.m. FIVE A.M. I mean, honestly, who are they trying to kid with this "X:00 a.m. in the morning" stuff? Nothing good happens between three and seven in the morning—I know, I've been there!

Bluh.

How can I make this productive...? Oh, I know. I recently got the new albums from the following bands: Megadeth, Sonata Arctica, Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions and the Flaming Lips. Long story short: They're all stellar. Good year for music, 2009.

I had a very strange dream last night. Among other things, in this dream, I was chatting with friends, and I was musing on city nicknames ("The Big Apple," "Sin City," "LaLa Land", etc.), and I suddenly came up with the perfect nickname for San Diego: The Bad Yellow. All my friends in the dream thought this was brilliant and hilarious, and so did I.

I continued to think so even after I woke up. I had one of those instances where when you wake up, much of the dream still seems real. I'd forgotten the name I'd come up with, but remembered that I'd come up with a nickname for San Diego. After a little thought I remembered, "Oh, yeah. The Bad Yellow. That's perfect!"

About five minutes later, when I was really awake, I thought again about the name "The Bad Yellow", and realized (quite rightly) that it made absolutely no sense. Oh well.

Just in case you're interested, though, San Diego, both badyellow.com and thebadyellow.com are available! I've even got a slogan for you: "Come to San Diego, the Bad Yellow: If you find a worse yellow, you buy it!"

Mark your datebooks! Today, Thursday the eighth of October, was the first game of the United Football League!

"A new professional football league," you say? "Why haven't I heard about it?" Indeed. Why not? Everything about this league seemed to be a "secret" (at least, that's the impression I think they were trying to give. On our end, it just looked like they were doing everything by the seat of their pants. But I'm sure that wasn't the case...). The most marketable part of the league leading up to the first game, which caught everyone off-guard, was the coaches, and the fact that, if Michael Vick got out of jail, and if he wasn't allowed to play in the NFL, or if he were allowed but weren't signed, that the UFL wouldn't be opposed to signing him. (Of course, then Vick was reinstated by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and was subsequently signed by the Philadelphia Eagles, rendering all that speculation moot.)

Those who know me best, though, know that I was looking forward to this league for one reason and one reason only: the logos. Well, that and the uniforms, but the logos most importantly. A brand new league means a brand new set of teams, which means a whole new batch of logos to gawk at and/or admire! I love expansion teams and fledgling leagues like these! And while it's true that the league's logo left much to be desired, surely the team logos would be exciting, right?

( Right? )

And you know what that means!

That's right: It's time for the MLB Playoffs!

Speaking about October, though, I must say, I do like the air. It's rejuvenating. I, of course, long for summer, but an autumn day is something to be treasured. It always feels as if there's some sort of magic in the air.

And if there's anything at all in America that still has an element of magic and mystery to it, it's baseball. The word "curse" would carry no weight in America if it weren't for baseball. It's the only modern activity where the utterly bizarre is routine, and the only institution that harkens back to the late 1800's. Not even the Capitol holds much magic anymore. Unfortunately, all we've got is baseball.

And, man, what a way for the playoffs to start!

This year, the American League Central Division championship came down to the final day, and what a show! Thirteen innings, plays at the plate, a crazy double play, and the Minnesota Twins, the perennial underdogs, played their way into the playoffs, delaying their departure from the Metrodome which last saw a world championship in 1991.

The stage has been set! Now all that remains are the games themselves. Here's how it will all go down.

( My 2009 MLB Playoff Predictions. )

Note: I'll be editing this periodically to show how I'm doing. Correct predictions will be in blue; incorrect in red. If I predicted the series winner right but the number of games wrong, the text will be purple. I'll update series that are affected by previous incorrect predictions, but I'll leave my original predictions, which will be struck through.

Man, oh, man... So busy. And it may all be for naught...

• 3/5 of the way through the novel.


• I'm the co-author of something that appears in SpecGram this month (but I don't remember what I did for it...).


• Wrote a few blog posts.


• Actually added two book reviews to my reviews section (The Double and The Forest of a Thousand Daemons), though I owe at least two more (one of which is long overdue...).

So what else have I been doing? Well, I've been extremely busy. With what? Oh, nothing. I mean, it's something, but I'm not saying—and if things don't go well, I'll likely never say.

In the meantime, though, you can enjoy my upcoming post devoted to the Major League Baseball playoffs! Everyone likes baseball, right?

Right...?

And they did it wrong.

I was recently made aware of the Philosoraptor meme. And, indeed, it is hilarious, because that picture is priceless.

But one enterprising photoshopper took it too far! Not only did he make fun of the thing I like to make fun of, he did it wrong! How, you might ask? By pluralizing the second noun. That's absurd! That's like saying, "All your bases belong to us"!

Well, I'm hereby taking back my internet whipping phrase, and posting the correct version below.

( Philosoraptor wonders... )

Oops on the part of Reuters (via Yahoo! News):

Gay rights activists hoping to win back the right to marry in California submitted a ballot proposal on Thursday for the November 2010 election -- a date deep-pocketed advocates have said is too soon.

So it's not homosexuals that don't have the right to marry, it's gay rights activists? Or are they implying that no straight person could possibly support same sex marriage...?

So the big question (and I think conservatives know this, too) isn't whether same sex couples should marry: it's gonna happen. No, the question is when. Most civil rights groups that I've been keeping tabs on have come to the conclusion that the best time to go to the ballot again is 2012.

Then this happened.

Of course, they're going to need a million signatures to get the measure on the ballot, but they probably will. The question is, is there enough support (financial support, of course—the only kind of support that counts in this country) to back this effort? There's always going to be more than enough support for the other side (people get worked up into a frenzy when it comes to denying the rights of "the other" [or the closeted self]); we need a lot to be able to push back. If we can't get that effort, will yet another failure cause the monied half-hearted supporters to head for the hills for the next, what, ten, maybe twenty years...?

It drives me nuts, because to me this is such a simple, black and white issue. Somehow around election time, though (and only around election time), the crafty conservatives try to turn this into a gray issue (Liberal communist gay teachers are going to force your children to participate in gay marriages! If this passes, the state will be forced to recognize a marriage between a man and a cow! Two dudes marrying each other ruins the economy! This is just a way for gay deviants to dupe the elderly out of their children's inheritance! Child abductions rise by 328% when gay vampires are allowed to roam freely among the living!). It seems to be the only way they can win, but it keeps working...

Oh well. Slow but steady, I suppose.

And you know what that means!

That's right: It's time for the WNBA Playoffs! Indeed, it's that special time when the entire country comes together to completely not care about the race towards a sports championship. Consider that all the major sports (the NBA, the NFL—even the NHL) have their fan base. Sure, there are plenty of people who just don't care what happens in any given sport (and plenty are even proud of it. "I don't know who's playing for the World Series! Aren't I special?" It always amazes me how some will use their lack of knowledge to try to make themselves appear unique [as if we humans needed that. We're all unique. Being so is nothing special]), but there are always those who will come to the defense of a sport and try to convince the unconvincible (if that were a word, I'm pretty sure that's how it'd be spelled) that what happens in said sport matters.

With the WNBA, though, everyone seems to get together and enjoy shrugging at each other.

Well, not me, dagnabbit! With the economy the way it is, each WNBA season may be its last, so I'm going to do my part to catalogue its passing.

Below are my predictions for the 2009 WNBA playoffs. "Hey, wait a minute," you say. "The playoffs already started! Four games have gone by! Your predictions are tainted!" Perhaps, but not by much. While this post comes after the playoffs started, I made my predictions during the very first game (it was Atlanta at Detroit, and at the time it was a tight contest that anyone could have won). I say that's close enough.

( My 2009 WNBA Playoff Predictions. )

Note: I'll be editing this periodically to show how I'm doing. Correct predictions will be in blue; incorrect in red. If I predicted the series winner right but the number of games wrong, the text will be purple. I'll update series that are affected by previous incorrect predictions, but I'll leave my original predictions, which will be struck through.

So, if you're at all a fan of television, radio, print media or the internet, and you live somewhere in the West, you probably heard that The Beatles: Rock Band came out this past Wednesday, along with the rest of the Beatles' remastered albums. The Beatles were one of a handful of bands that had been left out of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games prior to this one (other notables: Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Van Halen [though cf. Guitar Hero: Van Halen (which, by the way, will be a disaster, since they're going to pretend that Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony never existed)]), and so it wasn't a surprise when everyone (myself included) went wild when the game was announced. The question, of course, was if the gameplay would stand up.

I've been lucky enough to play it twice, and have gotten a chance to play most of the songs (only a couple from Let It Be I haven't seen yet). As I expected, the game is incredible. All told, the Beatles are probably the best group ever, and this is the next best thing to playing the songs live.

One thing that was bound to occur, though, as I've played the gain most often as the vocalist, is that I've been forced to pay attention to lyrics whose content I've always just kind of assumed (how many others thought the first line of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was "I look at you all / See the love perverts sleeping"? Tell me that wasn't just me!). What really struck me playing the game was the song "Paperback Writer". Most are probably familiar with this song (or, if that doesn't ring a bell, how about "Paperbag Writer"? That's not what they're actually saying: It's "Paperback Writer". The common mistake, though, led to the Radiohead song "Paperbag Writer"), or, if not, you can listen to it here. Ooh! Or even better...

( My even better idea (and the rest of it). )

Oh well. It could be worse, I suppose. We could be John's first wife, Cynthia.

It's getting serious now. It's getting real...

• 2/5 of the way through the novel (perhaps 2.5/5, if you can mix decimals and fractions).


• Added nothing to anything. (Hey, here's fun: If I capitalize the word "Added" and begin a sentence with it, my web browser tells me I've misspelled. If I start out lower case, it says it's fine. If I change the case of the first word from lower to upper, it says it's fine. Only if I start out with a capital letter [and only at the beginning of the sentence] does it tell me it's misspelled. How odd...)


• Something I wrote up quick appears in this month's SpecGram. (I also wrote a funny response in the "Letters to the Editor" section. It shouldn't be hard to figure out which is mine.)

I guess that's not much, but nearly half the month was (or is it exactly half...?) spent visiting (first relatives visiting, then visiting relatives). The other half was eaten up by something I will probably never discuss (and it continues to eat).

Happily, though, I can report that I went to Shubert's (if I'm counting right) seven times! Not bad for a weeklong visit to Chico.

Now back to my mountain of work...

I saw Ozzy Osbourne today. Just incredible. I swear, that guy has two different selves: The one people make fun of on commercials and The Osbournes, and the one that's completely electric on stage. That's another one I can cross off my list. If only I can get a chance to see David Bowie...

A couple of days ago I had a strange dream. A number of things, of course, were happening (though at least my eyebrow didn't fall off [that happened during last night's dream]), but eventually I was in a position where I wanted to go to back to school night. I was in my parents' old house (it's always that one—the one before the remodel), and I really wanted to go, but unfortunately I had a task: I had to write "el zilcho" in Arabic. My parents were disappointed, but they understood, because, well, some things must be done.

It was terribly frustrating for a number of reasons. First, I had to write it perfectly, but there was no paper at hand. I was having to write on napkins, the backs of binders, a great big construction paper sign, and a notepad. There was a lot of writing on all of these, and it was hard to find space. Occasionally, I would get it write, and it was going just perfectly, and then...I'd come to the end of the page, and couldn't write the last character. Argh!

But the main trouble was the fact that I was confusing the Arabic script with a script of my own. Back when I created my first language, I was heavily influenced by Esperanto and Arabic—the latter because I was taking it at the time. The first thing I decided must be done (must be done) if I were to have my own language was it needed to have its own unique script. And, since I liked Arabic so much (still do), I decided to base my new script on Arabic. Some of the characters are borrowed wholesale; some are borrowed and repurposed; and others still are very similar to Arabic characters. As a result, the scripts look very similar, and write very similar. In a dream, where things are topsy-turvy anyway, it's no wonder that I would make mistakes, even though I would never do it in real life.

So here's what the problems were. If one wanted to write "el zilcho" in Arabic, the first problem would be that Arabic has no "ch" sound. However, the Arabic script has been used to write a number of languages other than Arabic, several of which have a "ch", and, since I was interested, I learned (way back—before college, even) that you write a "ch" like an Arabic Haa with three dots below it. I know this now, and knew it in the dream, so here's what "el zilcho" would look like in the Arabic script (this is my handwriting and an iPhone picture, so bear with me [oh, also, both scripts are written right to left]):

( The Legend of El Zilcho! )

It occurs to me that none of this would have been a problem at all if we had transporters à la Star Trek. If we did, then I could just teleport there and back and work on "el zilcho" later. In a world with transporters, we've got nothing but time! And yet we waste money on professional sports teams, new cars, shopping malls and television news programs... Y'all are lucky I'm not President of Earth. If I were, every red cent would be spent on the transporter development. After all, if we got it, it wouldn't matter what happened in the interim: World peace would be achieved as soon as transporters were made safe, cheap and widely available. Oh well. At least my dreams are vivid and terrible. Hopefully I won't lose any eyebrows tonight...

[Edit: Uh...oops! I just noticed that in my last picture—the one that's supposed to be perfect save that it runs off the edge—I made a mistake. Yet again, I mixed up my script with the Arabic. Instead of an alif, there should that little curl doohickey that represents the glottal stop. Man alive! Guess that means it's time to go to bed...]

There's this site called This Is Why You're Fat, and allegram found what I think is a good candidate at the recent OC Fair:



I have nothing else to say just yet, so I thought I'd share. (And, no, she didn't try it.)

From a recent town hall meeting disruption:

"There is no way, shape or form we need to have a national healthcare system. No! Nothing! None! It's got to stop now."

No way, shape or form? Really?

It's amazing to me how the Conservative Media Machine (CMM!) can get people riled up and angry about something they could actually use, and that the majority of us really want. I specifically held off on getting healthcare because I was waiting for Obama to get us national healthcare. It's like they really believe it's just a game...

I have a good excuse for this month. For the record:

• Completely finished section one of the ol' novel (got section two back from sima_q, too).


• Added some more to Writing Project A (but not enough!).


• Added no errors to my writing guide, but did add two big book reviews to my reviews page (and the biggest yet is coming soon!)


• Wrote like no blog posts (but did write one I'd been meaning to write for a long, long time).


• Something else of mine appeared in this month's issue of SpecGram.


• Wrote and illustrated one children's book.

The latter really took up just about all my time. What I should have done is started the book, like, a year ago, but that's never how it ends up working... My little sister's birthday party was on August 1st, which means I had to have it done (and hairsprayed, too [I hairspray the pages so they don't smudge (it totally works [I use Aquanet])]) by 10:00 a.m. August 1st. I started around July...18th? No, way, couldn't have been that late... Anyway, the writing was done, so what I did for like two weeks was I'd wake up, shower, go to the gym, come home and start working, and then go to sleep around three in the morning. I did a page a day. I'm neither the best nor the quickest artist, but I did what I could, and that's how long it took me.

So that's where that month went. And this month? My wife's sister is here—here, in Southern California! Here invading my space, rifling through my sock drawer, and screaming at my lamp. She's good at one thing, and one thing only: Messing with my bid'ness. In fact, she may even be reading what I'm writing right now... She's a clever one, that laura_mcpherson. But what she doesn't know is that while she's sleeping, I plan to put a mouse on her. A live one. Made of lightning. I call him Pikachu.

She says there's something wrong with me, so I'm writing it down here. Now what?! That's right.

She also points out that it's hot in this apartment, so I guess she's all right. Time for an Otter Pop.