I don't dress up very often for Hollow Bean. The last time, I think, I wore devil horns and a suit to work, and told everyone I was "Administration".
This year, I got dressed up as a superhero.
First, the secret identity shot:
Mild-mannered nerd J. Lloyd Dorkstick.
And now, may I present:
Captain Awesome.
Please note the long johns under the swimsuit, since Canadian superheroes don't wear tights.
Now you see why my wife laughed and laughed and laughed, until I put my pants back on.
…or, Pat wears a suit.
We held our annual judo tournament (or shiai, pronounced "shee-eye") on Saturday. We had about 60 competitors show up, in divisions from kids' all the way to seniors (senior being anyone older than 16). There were only nine referees, which meant that if you came to ref, you were working all day.
This is because judo has three officials on the mat for each match: the referee and two corner judges. We had two fighting areas running, each one needing a minimum of three people to officiate. We wound up with a team of five people on Mat I and four on Mat II (my mat). What this essentially meant, for me, was that I was on the mats for three out of every four bouts.
It was a successful day: the club made some money, we had a minimum of injured competitors (the worst injury, by far, was a broken arm), and afterwards we all went out for all-you-can-eat sushi.
I told you I wore a suit.
…where [something] is either awesome or disturbing.
Awesturbing?
Maybe there just aren't words yet for what this is. Maybe the cake-maker has transcended the capacity of the English language.
So in the midst of setting up a judo tournament, I took time to go to a writers' group meeting.
At the last meeting, two weeks ago, we gave each other story prompts. Mine was: "A romance between a worm and a giraffe". I was all, Thanks.
So here's what I ended up with:
Sorry? I didn't hear you.
….Well, I heard that you said something, but not what you said.
….
Your voice is a little soft, that's all I'm saying.
….
Fine.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, much better. Where are you?
You can't feel me?
No. Well, not right now. You know.
I'm in your ear, just inside the outer ear. Listen, you said yesterday that we need to talk. What's up, babe?
Well…
Spill it. Spit it out.
All right. Listen, you know, we've been, well, we've been…together for a long time now, and I'm just, well, I'm just wondering where you see this going. You know?
Eight days is a "long time"?
Don't dodge the question. My mother—
Yeah, I thought she might've—
Don't let's start. Can we start over?
Sure. We need to talk?
Yes. Where are we going, hon?
Well, I'm enjoying myself, I thought you were enjoying yourself too…
I am, I am. Oh believe me, I am.
Why do you need to put labels on things, then? Are we lovers? Are we goin' to the chapel, gonna get married? Why can't two grown creatures just, you know, enjoy themselves?
Well…
Babe, if you need to ask the question, do you want the answer? Think on that one.
That doesn't even make any sense.
Exactly. Noodle on that one for a while.
Whatever, listen, I just told my mother I'd ask. Because she's got this need to know. You know?
Are you happy?
I… Yes. Yes I am, love.
Then the hell with your mother's nosing. You and me, babe, we're all we need.
You're right. You know what? Screw her. Screw her meddling ways!
That's the spirit, babe. Anything else?
Well…
Thought that might not be all. What now? Your dad wants to know if I follow football?
No. This one's from me. I kind of, well… I want to know… With worms, it's so hard to tell sometimes…What? Tell what? Know what?
Well, are you… Are you male or female?
Hmmm. Tough question, I kind of got both goin' on, you know? Worms, like you say. Hard to define. Hard to pin down.
I know. But when you think about yourself, you know, do you think of yourself as male, or female?
What's it matter? This is your dad asking, isn't it?
No, no. I just… I just want to know if I'm… well. I want to know if I'm gay or straight.
Oh baby. You and your labels.
For next meeting, in another fortnight, I'm supposed to have a completed outline of my WiP, the novel Once I was you.
Next time: » Shiai!
…in more ways than one.
When I was in University, there was a girl I knew that had a book called 10,000 Dreams Interpreted*. She pointed one out to me, and it became my favourite dream ever:
To see a horse in human flesh, descending on a hammock through the air, and as it nears your house is metamorphosed into a man, and he approaches your door and throws something at you which seems to be rubber but turns into great bees, denotes miscarriage of hopes and useless endeavors to regain lost valuables. To see animals in human flesh, signifies great advancement to the dreamer, and new friends will be made by modest wearing of well-earned honors. If the human flesh appears diseased or freckled, the miscarriage of well-laid plans is denoted.
— source
Little did I know — until today — that that book was first published in 1901, and that dream's been haunting peoples' minds ever since then.
____
* Or something to that effect. Come on, this was 15+ years ago. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering where I put the cordless phone ten minutes ago.**
** Until it rings.
Every time your heart beats, a ghost peels away from you. Invisible, weightless, this perfect copy of the state of your mind ascends, rising into the dark of the eternal night, bound for the distant edge of spacetime and the unimaginable conflict that will inevitably arise there, someday, between entropy and hope.
How's that for a hook? Make you want to read more?
Well, it's the opening for my current work-in-progress, a long project (probably novel-length) titled Once I was you. It deals with the eventual fate of the human race, and the fates of several other civilizations far more ancient, too.
Interested? I am.
About two and a half weeks ago:
Yesterday:
Love it.
So tonight I went to the second Group Voice meeting. Group Voice is a local writers' group, newly-formed. Last meeting, two weeks ago, we pretty much just introduced ourselves.
This time we all brought something to read to the group — I brought the first couple sections of my current WiP, Once I was you — and we went around the room, each reading, and receiving comments. It was quite a diverse group — we had a story from the POV of a fly, three short poems, a slice of fictionalized autobiography, some high fantasy, my SF bit, a humourous piece about what is surely the best beard evar, and a bit of zombie lit (though he chose to call the villains "werewolves", mainly because the first-person protagonist felt that "zombies are overdone lately").
I was impressed. There are some very good writers in this town.
At the end of the meeting, we all took a piece of paper and wrote down a story prompt. I wrote Time-travelling Nazi soldiers see the results of WWII. Then we all put our prompts into a bucket, and drew out random ones. For the next meeting, in two weeks' time, I have to write a story based on the following prompt:
Romance between a worm and a giraffe.
Can't wait.
#
On a slightly more serious note: This has really gotten me interested in my project again. Once I was you will likely be a novel-length project; I have a little shy of 14,000 words written so far. I'm trying to come up with a thumbnail of the story that doesn't sound insane. So far I have: A woman's ghost from the present day gets involved in a war, in 750,000,000 AD, against the entities that made our Universe, and are now done with it.
That's not the whole story, of course. Most of the terms in there need a footnote that simply says "Sort of". She's sort of a ghost. It's kind of a war. The conflict is more or less against the Makers. It's more or less set in 750,000,000 AD. And so forth.
Interested? I hope so, because once this post is done, I'll be writing more in the story. If you want to see a snippet, let me know. You know how to reach me.
(If you don't — if you're new here — feel free to leave a comment. That's one way to reach me.)
Next time: Some photos — hopefully not of knee-deep snow.
This past weekend went like this:
Friday: Work, then pack, then go see Moon.
Saturday: Get up at some unholy hour, before the sun even deigns to rise, go pick up my friend and fellow judoka X, and then hit the road for Gimli. The town's named for Odin's shining hall, and it's a three-hour drive from my house. X snoozed in the car, and I alternated between listening to 90s on 9 and Lithium on the satellite radio.
We arrived in Gimli shortly before the instructor did, so that was good. We got checked in at the hotel, got changed into our heavy cotton pants and canvas jackets, and went down to the seminar room, where they'd already laid out the judo mats. Quick stretch, and a bow-in, and then we covered nage-no-kata for two hours.
Judo kata, for those not familiar with the idea, are essentially choreographed, pre-arranged demonstrations of a set of techniques. Nage-no-kata means "forms of throwing", and it is a brief survey of some of the techniques you would use to take a person from a standing position and put them ever so gently into a more horizontal position. There are five sets of three throws each, all demonstrated using both the right- and the left-handed techniques. First you demonstrate hand techniques, then a set of hip throws, foot techniques, and finally back and side sacrifice throws. For my brown belt, and then for my first-degree black belt, I needed to know the first three sets. For my next belt, nidan, I will need to know the entire nage-no-kata. So this was a good learning experience for me.
We broke for lunch at about noon. Lunch was delicious: a make-your-own sandwich bar, with assorted raw vegetables and the like. The room where we ate, Meeting Room C, looks out over the beach on Lake Winnipeg. If I recall correctly, Lake Winnipeg is only outclassed by the Great Lakes and Great Slave Lake for the title of largest lake on the continent. This weekend it was pretty choppy — high winds from the north drove waves onto shore. One of the instructors, who comes to Gimli fairly frequently, remarked that there's usually about another hundred feet of beach in the summer.
After lunch we returned to the mats for katame-no-kata, the forms of grappling. Judo involves a fairly significant ground game, and this kata works through fifteen of the things you can do on the ground: five types of hold-down, five strangles, and five joint locks. X and I had never down katame-no-kata before, but we both took to it quite readily. One of the instructors asked us how often we'd done this kata before. When I said "Never," his eyes got a little big, and he nodded. I took it as a compliment.
Katame-no-kata, which is required for your third-degree black belt, or sandan, involves a lot — a lot — of kneeling. I was glad that, forewarned, I had purchased knee pads. X, who didn't have knee pads, ended up going out and buying some liniment. (Horse liniment, but that's a story for another day.)
After a couple hours of groundwork, we broke for the day. I went for a swim in the pool, then to supper — a roast-beef buffet, with all the trimmings. Then X and I hit the hospitality suite for a while, waiting for 10 PM, when the kids would get kicked out of the pool. From 10 till 11, we swam, or hung out in the hot tub, or (briefly) baked in the sauna.
Sunday was more kata — we reconvened at 10 AM, after a hearty breakfast, to go over nage-no-kata and katame-no-kata again. Everyone was moving a little slower, stiff from the previous day's workout. Right around noon we finished up, and helped load the mats into a truck.
Then we got a little lost, trying to find the highway from Gimli back down to Winnipeg — I ended up going down #9, when I wanted highway #8 — and that cost us about twenty minutes. Once we were back on track, X fell asleep. We had some lunch in Headingley, then pointed the car west and were back home in a couple hours.
And that, ladies and gents, was that.
Next time: The Writers' Group meeting
About an hour ago, the credits rolled on Moon. I went into the film knowing very little: the only trailer I'd seen featured Sam Rockwell looking disheveled, and had Kevin Spacey as a HAL-style AI that communicated via a combination of even, soothing tones, and smiley faces.
I won't post any spoilers here, but suffice to say that I quite liked the film. It had echoes of 2001: a space odyssey, Blade Runner, Gattaca, and Alien. All of those films are included in what I consider the canon of excellent science fiction, which should tell you something about how thoroughly I enjoyed Moon.
Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, coming into the tail end of his three-year solo stint as the human overseer at a mining station on the moon's far side. He keeps tabs on the unmanned rovers that comb the surface of the moon for He3, the fuel of the future.
Three years is a long time to be alone, and Sam's looking forward to heading home to his loving wife and young daughter. He's due — perhaps overdue — for a furlough. He might be going just a little teeny bit crazy. At the very least, he's started to see things, people, that aren't really there…
The movie explores loneliness, illness, loss and sorrow, anger, and evil. But everything's done with a light touch. Some things are only hinted at, leaving the audience to fill in the gaps, trusting that the audience members are smart enough. Even the ending is sneaky: you have only a couple seconds' knowledge that the dénouement has come, and then the credits are already rolling.
Moon is a refreshing SF film, one that encourages you to use your brain, to think around the corners. It requires that you watch the film with your mind in gear, instead of in neutral. It's a refreshing change.
Moon
…on IMDB
…on Rotten Tomatoes
…where I saw it
Next time (probably): » Kata at the shore
