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4/6/2013-ACTING-Premiere of "Battledogs" on SyFy Channel Tonight at 9 PM (EST)
-Tonight at 9 PM on the SyFy Channel is the premiere of the TV Movie "Battledogs." (formerly known as "Wards Island.") Produced by Chris Olen Ray and directed by Alexander Yellen. This movie stars Arianna Richards (the little girl from "Jurassic Park"), Ernie Hudson ("Ghostbusters"), Dennis Haysbert ("24"), Kate Vernon ("Battlestar Galactica"), Craig Sheffer ("Hellraiser:Inferno", "CSI"), Wes Studi ("Last of the Mohicans"), Bill Duke ("Predator") and Debbie Rochon ("Tromeo & Juliet").
Our house has it set to record! We'll be at work, but will watch it later in the evening! Look forward to seeing you Wayne!
It’s indecision… a little laziness… and a lot of BS
The most frustrating thing about everyone I know, including myself, is the total bullshit that we all convince ourselves of to ensure our path of nonsense. By nonsense, I mean non- sense, as in the making of zero logic. If something wants to be done, too many of us seem to find the path of most useless frustration, continuing to follow its meandering direction to nowhere. It’s so obvious when someone elses mess is observed. How easily other people’s missteps are corrected, yet our own are blindly overlooked as if the exact same problems just solved in others aren’t grossly re-enacted in the mirror. There really is something wrong with the human logic center… like maybe there isn’t one.
Alright, in this generalization I strongly cite my own issues with accomplishment as the main focus of this rant. My procrastination meter has been on full for the past ten years or so. Instead of finishing anything, I’ve continually added to the list, working on each thing here and there until the possibility of finishing something became impossible. Well, only impossible to my creative ability to stick with the same rotating excuses.
Will this rant enable me? Granting the ability to finally latch onto the many zen-like positivity memes spread throughout the devices I use to spawn random acts of creativity? Or will it simply get filed away as another failed attempt to get my ass in gear? Only time shall tell. Shouldn’t “time be the simplest thing”? Another thing on the list to finish, though I have been given new tasks that have helped me re-evaluate the re-evaluation of my re-evaluated to-do list.
When Inspiration Strikes
It’s funny where and when inspiration will strike. I recently started watching Once Upon A Time, whose deep roots in fairy tales made me curious. For a stint, I had considered becoming a mythologist, wanting to travel to Romania to trace the origin of the Vampire myth. Finding the interpretations of the fairy tales used in this T.V. series excellent, I was inspired to continue my own stories, as well as finding some insight into why I might be such an addict when I find great stories, whether it be books, games, movies, or television.
When I find a television series I really like, it’s usually via Netflix or Amazon Prime, so I’m offered the ability to watch the entirety of it in marathon style, which I normally indulge, much to the awe of those near me. With books, I often do the same; I find a book that seizes my attention, and tend not to put it down until it’s finished. Luckily, I read faster than most, but this has still led to many a sleepless night. Why do I do this? Some have suggested I’m not actually enjoying these things I consume in this manner, but I disagree, though I’ll admit, I often say I need to just finish so I can get back to “real life,” as I know my attention will be distracted by these things until they’re finished. Apparently, I wrap these stories around me as a cloak from the world. I began writing when I ran out of these stories to distract my mind. Creating my own worlds became the same distraction. This new obsession with Once Upon A Time sparked these thoughts on my own psych issues, while also prompting me to pull out the laptop.
Guilt now often creeps into these lapses of obsessive indulgence, because while enjoying others’ creativity, I’m not creating my own, and as I’ve recently decided to produce actual finished projects, these lapses greatly impede on this progress. Most of the way through watching the season-and-a-half of Once Upon A Time, I dove into a new story that has been rattling around in my head for a few years. Wanting to finish one project fully, I’ve refused to start something new, but this day, I just wanted to get some things down.
My greatest friend writes while watching annoying sitcom T.V. These shows make me crazy in a way that I can’t focus on anything else. 
Pandora is my background when I’m sitting down to write, and I tend to write better when I’m out of the house, away from the many distractions I have there. Diners are my favorite writing places, with a local pub my newest retreat, that I don’t frequent nearly enough. My output vastly increases when I’m writing outside of my apartment, but I found myself getting things done with this newest obsession in the background.
At this point, I’m simply happy to have found another great story to follow, as well as excited to have had my muse stimulated. We’ll see where this leads…
- What inspiration has crept up on you?
Coffin X, A Novel: A Review
Coffin X: A Novel, by A. Kale was a great story idea. Unfortunately, the style chosen to portray the story just didn’t work. Flipping between characters from chapter to chapter, each written in first person definitely developed curiosity for the story, but grew tedious quickly. Changing the perspective of the entire book would have created a much more enjoyable story.
I will admit, I only read the first 20%, then skipped to the last 10%. Usually, I’ll simply put a book aside if it’s such a chore to read, but this one I wanted to see the conclusion, even if I didn’t care how it got there. Like I said, the book holds a great idea.
I missed a slew of character introductions in the pages I missed, all culminating in a final confrontation with Death, ultimately the main character.
A book about Death, especially in this clever doppelganger story, should be, at worst, readable through its flaws, simply because of the curiosities in the character. A. Rove was too clever for his own good on this one. Maybe a reboot?
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Cynthi Marie, Another Geek Twister
I’ve been asked to be a contributor at The Twisted Geeks. As most of the posts will be related to SSP, most will simply get re-blogged from there to here. Please, follow along at The Twisted Geeks to get it first, as well as gaining more geeky goodness!
Reason and Force: A Letter From a Marine
This doesn’t have much to do with the film or print industry, but it impressed me enough that I thought it needed sharing. This letter (that I stole from a friends FB page), has eloquently spoken on the matter…
Human being’s only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or forcing me to do your bidding. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it. In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunken guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society because a firearm makes it easier for an armed mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are unarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat — it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a monopoly on force.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… And that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.”
By Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret.)
Great Stories
Some stories are just GREAT STORIES. Themes transcend time and position and place and age… Boy meets Girl stories are great for many people. Then there’s good guy gets bad guy stories, or good intentions turned to catastrophe by circumstance. These themes are finite, used over and over again without growing old (on a personal basis, of course. Some themes aren’t as appreciated by some as others). This idea is part of why I enjoyed Frozen Prospects so much, my most recent fantasy novel read. The story was just great, regardless of the characters names and the environment they were put in by the creator.
This great story/theme idea was a lot of why I enjoyed The Arrow, which I just finished watching on the CW website. This character definitely goes into the great 
story category for me. (If you missed it, it aired Wednesday, 10/10/12. Click The Arrow here to watch it yourself. I never seem able to catch anything on T.V. when it actually airs, so thank you technology for internet streaming and DVR, etc…). Being a Smallville watcher for many seasons, I was familiar with this character, and excited to hear about him getting his own show. Thank you Twisted Geeks for making me aware of this! My intentions here are not to review the episode. I liked it very much, but more importantly, it made me think on this theme,umm- theme…
The parallels between Oliver and Bruce, rich boys who lose family so turn to fighting crime, seem so obvious as to be laughable. The stories aren’t exactly the same; Bruce works on a more vengeful type line than Oliver’s apparent make-right-the-wrongs-of-ones-father, but the premises still run the same course. As obvious as I think these similarities are, in this case I didn’t mind, which is curious, as I’ve been known to bash Harry Potter a little because of it’s Lord of the Rings rip offs. Maybe it’s because Ms. Rowling comes across as considering herself genius for her thoughtful storytelling that does it. Since I don’t know the creator of Arrow, or their stand on their storytelling ability, this isn’t hanging over it. No story is truly original, so to use this criteria to judge anything will definitely leave one extremely disappointed. As said earlier, themes are finite, so will invariably be re-used often…
…So then, what is it about some themes that make them GREAT STORIES to some, while others hate them? Maybe not hate, but 
can’t get past the first time they’ve ever seen/heard/read that theme, like this Harry Potter example? Maybe I like The Lord of the Rings so much, I can’t deal with a similar story that isn’t as epic? Or maybe I don’t like this theme enough to hear it rendered again?
Batman is my favorite superhero because he’s a guy who sacrifices his life to get out there and do what we all wish we could do. Anakin Skywalker is another favorite because his evilness is so subjective. John Connor and Paul Atreides are slaves to their fate. Any characters that run these same themes are great in my book. Sure, there can be blatant rip offs, like Lucas‘ direct copies of Frank Herbert‘s, and other sci-fi writers’, themes. Granted, timing, and marketing, and so many other things, play a huge part in what people know, whether or not it was the first, or the best, or whatever. Most people have at least heard of Star Wars over having seen/read/know of Dune, or the other sci-fi books written in the 60′s & 70′s that Star Wars grabbed material from. I digress…
I’m sure there are many who don’t like Batman, who hated this first episode of The Arrow, and who only think of Anakin Skywalker as the whiny adolescent we all wanted to slap more than once. For me, the theory behind him is what makes me like him. Just like the theory behind Oliver, aka Arrow, is what makes me like him, and will bring me back to this show next week (I may even remember to watch it as it’s on). Assuming some character progression along the way (no one likes a stagnant character, part of why Smallville got annoying to me, and Anita Blake needs to just get over it), Arrow may become a favorite as well.
- WHAT THEME TENDS TO DRAW YOU IN?
- WHOSE YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTER?
Frozen Prospects; by: Dean Murray
Frozen Prospects, by Dean Murray made me very happy. It was just a great story. I also felt an akinness to the author when I read his about the author and found multiple similarities: 
Dean started reading seriously in the second grade due to a competition and has spent most of the subsequent three decades lost in other people’s worlds. After reading several local libraries more or less dry of sci-fi and fantasy, he started spending more time wandering around worlds of his own creation to avoid the boredom of the ‘real’ world. Things worsened, or improved depending on your point of view, when he first started experimenting with writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days Dean has a wonderful wife and two lovely daughters to keep him rather more grounded, but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen tends to drag him back to his computer on a fairly regular basis.
Dean Murray crafted a wonderful environment in Frozen Prospects, established without boring the reader to death with direct information in long-winded descriptions. I flowed right through this book, wishing it were longer when I reached the end (though Part 2 is already in the works, I understand). The first chapter of the second book was available in the version I read.
A cold, snow-filled world requires the people to live in caves, many kept warm by the magic gems the secretive Guadel create over decades for this purpose. Va’del, an orphan, and outcast, in his home village, is asked to come to the capital city to learn to become one of these notorious Guadel. There is little choice but to agree to travel through the cold world to this far away city, where this secretive group live and train.
Va’del was a character both believable, and likable, his potential making him someone to reckon with, while his background creates an air of unknown around him. When he meets Jain, I found myself genuinely happy for the character, and wishful that real people might allow their compassion to rule their worlds more often.
The ending was a bit fast. I would have liked to have had the final battle extended a bit more, though in reality, the way it’s written is very- well, realistic (from the perspective of the author’s universe, etc). Even so, I wanted to see Va’del kick some more butt before the end, just to rub all the snotty elitists noses in it.
I feel the YA genre has taken over this type of fantasy, making this book an even greater find! This is how I remember fantasy to be. Not over the top with the flashy; not beaten down by teen angst, but driven by character and story. Thank you Mr. Murray for this!
I was also brought to ponder the idea (again) of what makes a good story while reading this. This book, by Dean Murray, while very good, still reads a little elementary at times. It was a thing I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but did notice every once in awhile. Maybe the flow of the sentence structuring? Maybe the use of particular words? Definitely not enough to take away from anything, but enough that I noticed this… somethingness about the language. Or maybe I’m some kind of weird word snob… either way, great book that I give 4 out of 5 stars to!
The Kindle edition of this book is currently… FREE! Get it here
