CA Supreme Court: “Gay Marriage Ban Stands”

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The California Supreme Court has upheld the initiative banning same-sex marriages in that state.

Which is shameful for the state, but that’s what the people have chosen. Personally, I believe CA needs to seriously reform its initiative process, which was instituted to make Sacramento politicians more responsive way back in 1911. At this point, though, the initiative process has driven the state to fiscal disaster and stripped citizens of their equal rights.

Someone needs to step up and change the status quo, and for the change to be most effective and successful, it should be someone outside the judiciary. An initiative to end initiatives?

Dorktosterone, Part 2

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DEADLIEST WARRIOR.

Isn’t it enough for me to say “Viking vs. Samurai”? Isn’t that enough?

Maybe not, because this show is the epitome of dorktosterone. The hosts bring in guys who talk in deadly earnestness about the superiority of their patron warriors’ weapons and technique, which they demonstrate on some conveniently immobile targets.

Then the hosts “whoa!” over the chopped and punctured mannequins, and everyone talks about splattered brains.

And they pick the winner by running hundreds of computer simulations! Say no more! I’m convinced!

To make thinks even more delicious, an upcoming episode is billed at “IRA vs. Taliban.” Stay classy, Spike TV!

Dorktosterone, Part 1

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Just a couple weeks ago, MTV broadcast the sixth and final episode of season one for BULLY BEATDOWN (watch full episodes at this link), a new reality TV show that had me gaping at my tube.

Here’s the quick description: Jason “Mayhem” Miller, an MMA fighter who hosts the show, meets with young men who say a bully is kicking them around. These aren’t high schoolers, they’re grownup adults in their early twenties. Mayhem and victims together confront the bully in a public place, where the host waves $10,000 under their nose, telling them it’ll all be theirs, if their willing to go two rounds with a professional fighter in their own weight class.

Of course, if they get their ass beat, the money goes to their victims. And the bullies agree.

I’ve only seen four episodes, and they’ve all followed a very set structure. Mayhem in car introducing show. “Audition” video of the victims asking Mayhem for help. Mayhem meets victims. Mayhem and victim make offer to bully. Bully shows up at the fight gym to show what skills he has. Fight day: Bully preps for the fight with the trainer, who prompts him to say something nasty about the victims, and the bullies stupidly oblige (“A lot of my victims deserve to be bullied”). Victim meets the pro for that fight. Then, they get in the ring and the bully takes a nasty beating in front of a booing crowd, and everyone revels in it.

Afterwards, the bully promises to change his ways.

And really, without that final scene, which is almost certainly total bullshit in whatever passes for the real story behind these guys’ lives, but without that scene this show doesn’t even make sense.

“Vince” is a guy who answered a Craig’s List ad for an apartment vacancy and then beat up his roommate instead of paying rent. “Eriq” made copies of his ex-girlfriend’s car keys, then wrecked it, and he beats up anybody she starts to date.

What these guys really need is jail time, because they’re not just assholes. They’re criminals. And sure, the show wraps up with the bully humbled, often apologizing, but I’d be really curious to see if it took.

Still, watching these guys get the puke beat out of them is a fine, fine thing.

“KIRK, a Captain, in the service of Starfleet”

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Wm. Shakespeare writes STAR TREK (“Amok Time”).

Sun!

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It is gorgeous and sunny right now. I’m sitting by the huge window at the library, thinking about the next step in Man Bites World.

When I came back to it a week ago, I jumped to about the 6K word mark, hit enter a bunch of times, and started writing a sequence that I’d been putting off but that really needed to be early early early. I wanted to keep it down to about twenty five hundred words, but it’s actually a little more than double that, because I can never seem to judge how much space and detail each plot beat needs. Hopefully, that will improve.

Still, the sequence has a great deal of suck in it. I know what’s wrong, but not specifically how to fix it. I’ll make a couple quick notes to myself, jump to the end of the draft, (which is now nearly 40K words) and push on from there.

Which means I won’t hit my new word goal for today. Ah well. I’ve reviewed the rest of the draft, changing things to accommodate the new section, so maybe that counts. Or maybe I should do a few hundred more words.

In other news, my buddy received his copy of Child of Fire yesterday, and so far he likes it. I’ll be calling him in a couple hours to coordinate travel plans for San Diego Comic-Con.

The organic open air farmer’s market started their season today. There are many more lunch and snack stands this year, and much less produce. Huh. I’ll still swing by later for fresh Basil and tomatoes.

Actually, I’ve just decided I don’t care about making my goal. It’s freaking gorgeous outside. I’m going for a nice, long walk.

Talk about terrible titles…

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David Hines recently recommended a book called Meditations on Violence: a Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, and of course I snapped it up.

I’ve barely started it, but one of the early points the author makes is that too many people are willing to discount their own personal experience because it does not jibe with what a self-appointed expert tells them. One of the author’s fellow prison guards, a man who had a great deal of practical experience in fighting, did exactly this during a class of martial arts techniques.

My first reaction was: People don’t really do this, do th– And then I thought about Absolute Write.

The AW forums have see a regular traffic of newbie writers asking permission to do the most basic things. “Can I have an protagonist do unlikable things?” “Can I have an unhappy ending?” “Can I write this book in third-person present tense?” “Can I write a love story where the couple breaks up at the end?”

Frankly, that stuff drove me crazy. I wanted to say “Pick up a book! Read it! Does it work? Can you make it work? Why are you asking permission?”

And it would turn out that some person on some message board somewhere said books need happy endings, or maybe an agent wrote a blog post expressing their personal dislike of present tense. And none of that should dictate what a person can or should do.

Of course, the hard part in all of this is examining my own assumptions.

As an aside: today is the first day all week that I hit my daily word count goal. Yeesh. Tomorrow will be better, I hope.

Links to amuse and amaze!

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  1. Very few people in this world have ever thought to themselves I wonder what tops the bestselling list at Amazon.com’s “Apparel” section? To those few people, I say: Wonder no more! (I have to say, the comments on that product are hilarious. I laughed myself dizzy at work today.
  2. Divorced Brit refurbishes his apartment to look like the set of Star Trek: Voyager. Honestly, it has to be seen to be believed. Don’t skim by this link without a peek. This guy’s apartment in crazy-amazing, and to top it all off he drove himself into bankruptcy with a company called 24th Century Interior Design–apparently, he believed Trekkies from all over would hire him to do this to their homes.  Still… fucking Voyager???
  3. Best and Worst tattoos ever! I’m honestly amazed to see Centaur Patrick Swayze in a Chippendale shirt, with the double helix rainbow. I shouldn’t be, but I am.
  4. Six Creepy Abandoned Places! No explanation needed.
  5. Don’t practice your backflip in the kitchen!
  6. More Photobombers! These aren’t as funny as the ones I posted last year, but damn, that humping dog is an all new level of “Oh John Ringo No.”

Have a great day, everyone.

Quote of the Day

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Actually, two quotes:

“I would also point out that CO2, carbon dioxide, is not a pollutant in any normal definition of the term. … I am creating it as I talk to you. It’s in your Coca-Cola, you’re Dr. Pepper, your Perrier water. It is necessary for human life. It is odorless, colorless, tasteless, does not cause cancer, does not cause asthma.”

“If you think greenhouse gases are bad, life couldn’t exist without greenhouse gases. … So, there is a, there is a climate theory — and it’s a theory, it’s not a fact, it’s never been proven — that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the upper atmosphere somehow interact to trap more heat than the atmosphere would otherwise.”

— Representative Joe Barton (R-TX)

“a holocaust of prose”

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seen via Justine Larbalestier:

The Worst Review Ever, a blog where writers, actors, musicians, etc, can submit the worst review they’ve ever received. Personally, I think some of these are extraordinarily cruel (Hello, “a candy-coated turd”), but I’ve been known to hate on a book or two in my time.

I do disagree with Justine Larbalestier when she says its “awesome” that people react so intensely to her books. When I have a powerful negative response to a book, it’s not because of its engaging qualities, any more than Charles Manson should feel warm and snuggly inside because he’s evoked strong feelings from me.

Hey, authors, have anything you want to send?

Lightning-powered!

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We had a thunderstorm last night, which is pretty rare for Seattle. We get lots of rain clouds, but little in the way of fireworks. Still, it’s cool to look at.

Which brings back a question I wonder about now and again: Why don’t we use lightning for our utilities?

Obviously, we couldn’t run everything on lightning power, but it seems to me that, with the right kind of capacitor, the energy from lightning strikes could be used to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use.

I imagine the real kink in this plan is “right kind of capacitor.” Is someone working on this? I can’t imagine there’s no one, but I haven’t seen anything about it.