Author: jameswharris

True Blood

You’d think the public would have put a stake through the heart of vampire stories long ago but as long as creative new repackaging like the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer and HBO’s new series True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries come along, the undead will continue to haunt us.  I have to admit that I have a life-long prejudice against vampire stories.  Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula was a cliché when I was a kid, and the concept seemed tired even back in the 1950s.  I was arm-twisted into give the living dead another chance with Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, which I truly admired, and that taught me to be more open about vampire stories.

The world of literature is full of recycled plots, characters and concepts.  Who would have ever thought that millions of books could have been written around the concept of the private detective?  True Blood blends murder mystery with the occult.  I guess some ideas are primal and go back as far as the origins of consciousness.  Being killed by a bite to the throat may even be an ancestral memory from when we were animals.  And isn’t it interesting that Christian symbols are weapons against these evil creatures of the night?  Especially since both myths use blood as the conduit of resurrection.

I did not intend to get into another HBO series, but I just happened to be in front of the TV when the premier episode started and within seconds I was hooked.  Right from the beginning I was thinking, “Geez, this is great storytelling.”  We’re not talking Shakespeare here, but A-1 quality Weird Tales.  Just high octane lurid pulp fiction, told with humor and a sense of style. 

Vampires have come out of the crypt and are demanding their civil rights, and humans are all over them seeking kinky sex, historical knowledge and even their blood.  Vampire blood is rumored to have some of the same kind of properties that Chinese herbalists claim for rare animals on the endangered species list and its worth thousands on the black market.

True Blood is about the first vampire moving into the little Louisiana town of Bom Temps.  You can follow the news of these events at Bloodcopy.com, an interesting viral marketing tool for HBO.  Anna Paquin plays Sookie Stackhouse, a young telepathic waitress that is boy crazy for vampires and solves mysteries for The Southern Vampire Mystery book series.  I’m amused that Charlaine Harris shares my last name and birthday, we were even born in the same year, and she lives in this part of the country.  I don’t believe in astrology, but my reading taste seems to be in the same house as her writing.

The first episode of True Blood got me hooked, so I’m anxiously awaiting next Sunday night to see if I’ll keep wanting to watch it.  I had come this close, picture me holding two fingers in a near pinch, to giving up TV this summer.  I’m a TV addict.  Shows as entertaining as True Blood, Pushing Daisies, Big Bang Theory and Mad Men keep me coming back.  I constantly wonder why fiction is so addictive.  I know it’s all make-believe.  I know it’s all pixels on a screen.  I know television is created by the elite of the world to get rich off us couch potatoes.  But I’m mesmerized by good story telling.

I’ve got to admit the vampires are a silly concept.  I could be spending time reading about quantum physics or learning to program rich Internet applications, but instead I flop on the couch and watch Anna Paquin pretend to be telepathic and Stephen Moyer pretend to be a vampire.  Why is that so interesting?  If I knew maybe I could churn out my own vampire stories and become one of those elite people that look down on television watchers but get rich writing stories that get slobs like me addicted.

Jim

Electoral College

An old friend of mine called me today sassing me with jokes about my piece on Sarah Palin.  He’s afraid that too many men are going to use their below the belt brains to make their voting decision.  I carefully informed him that although I found Sarah very attractive physically, I wasn’t going to vote Republican.  He then told me my vote wasn’t going to count anyway.  He said because of the way the Electoral College works, my vote, along with all the other democratic votes, won’t be used because it’s winner take all in each state, and currently Tennessee is running almost 2-to-1 for McCain.  That won’t keep me from voting, but it sure is a downer bit of knowledge.

His state, Florida, is slightly for McCain, but can still go either way.  I wonder if I should move to Florida and register there quickly?  Or would it be better to move to Colorado where the democrats have a slight edge and help them solidify the lead.  (I have no idea what the voter registration rules are, though.)

To play with these fun numbers, I found www.electoral-vote.com for quick statistics on state by state polling.  I wish I knew more about these people to know if their statistics are accurate and if the creators of this web page are biased for either party.  Politics really creates some fantastic web activity, and it’s extremely hard to know what’s real and not real.  Snopes.com is a great place to check rumors of any kind, but during the election it has become a great political lie-detecting tool.

I can understand the theory behind the Electoral College, but I wonder why we can’t have direct voting, instead of using this ancient indirect method.  The Wikipedia article I linked to above is quite fascinating, and gives many pro and con points to the concept.  I can understand some of the pro Electoral College points in the abstract, but I just feel the one person one vote concept is more fair.  I doubt things will ever change, so keeping an eye on www.electoral-vote.com is probably the best way to take the political pulse each day.  If the Electoral College is the whole game, then stats following it are the ones to watch.

Jim

Why Can’t I Play Video Games?

Excitement is turning up all over for the new video game Spore and I’m thinking about buying it.  The trouble is I can’t play video games – at least not modern games.  I could play Space Invaders, PacMan and Galaga back in the arcade days, but for decades now whenever I try to play a popular video game I come to a screeching halt.  It’s like I have a mental block – I literarily have no idea what to do. I guess if I had grown up with video games I’d have a repertoire of gaming skills and it would be intuitive how to start each new game.

Spore seems like just the right kind of game for me since I love evolution and science fiction.  I downloaded and installed with minor difficulty the Spore Creature Creator Trial Edition.  My first stumbling block came when I couldn’t figure out how to launch the program.  It took me awhile to even discover I had a Games area on my Start Menu where the installer put it.  When I finally got the program running I knew enough to know I’m suppose to create a creature, but there are no guidelines as to why and what for.  Do I just add features randomly on a whim?

The same thing happened to me when I bought Civilization, Ages of Empire, Myst, and other trendy games.  They sound wonderful, but when I start them up, I wonder what do I shoot, and how do I avoid being hit.  That’s about all I know.  The last video game I was addicted to was Arkanoid.  Susan, my wife, age 55, plays video games for hours at a time and earns endless satisfaction from them, but then she’s always been adept at games and puzzles.

I can play cards to be social, and I know how to play chess, but my mind just clouds up with boredom when I do.  I find reading about chess far more entertaining than playing it.  Someone once suggested I lacked the gaming gene, and that may be true.  But I want to play.  Video games are the emerging art form of our times and it seems like a shame to miss out on them.  Unlike jazz or impressionistic paintings, the cost of experiencing the art of video games is hours of work and I’m just too lazy or impatient to pay the price.  I feel guilty about that.

I’m afraid if I don’t catch up to the video game world now, it will evolve past what I’ll ever be able to learn, if they haven’t already, and I’ll be shut out from this art form for the rest of my life.  Playing video games might be compared with playing the piano or the guitar, something I can’t do either.  However, guitar players can record their performances and I can enjoy them.  Wouldn’t it be neat if great video game performances could be recorded for people like me to experience?  I imagine watching video games would be a combination of watching a movie and a spectator sport.

Getting old means learning to live with limitations and it’s annoying to discover that I can’t do something nearly all first graders do with ease.  It’s already galling enough to know that my old body can’t handle the physical games I played in school.  I now understand why golf is so popular amongst oldsters.  Not being able to play video games, which require little physical effort, is more telling, since it suggests my mind is going, but it’s more damning than that, it means I’ve lost the will to play.  Now that does make me feel old.

The makers of Spore and other video games should offer free editions with training wheels for us late blooming boomers.  I can picture these games with lots of tutorials and practice sessions.  They need to start with 1 minute practice games, and then move up to 2 and 3 minute games.  Get us hooked and we’ll buy the full package.

Another thing video game makers could do is create video gaming teaching programs.  Analyze the most common features of video game play and create lessons on them.  Or build online gyms for video game training where novices can go and do circuit training to build up their skills.

And I need to build up my tolerance and patience levels.  I need to stop being so wussy and caving in after 45 seconds of frustration.  It’s why I didn’t stick with playing the guitar or any other activity that didn’t feel natural from the first moment.  I wonder if I adapted to playing video games if I could apply the same mental techniques to learning how to play the guitar and other pursuits I gave up on in the past?

Update 9/8/8: I guess I won’t be buying Spore after all. The fury over it’s DRM has convinced me to not bother. I’ll have to find an older game to start my video gaming training.

Jim

For Connoisseurs of 4th Dimensional Travel

The Little Book by Selden Edwards is a new classic time travel novel for those who love contemplating traveling in the 4th dimension.  It’s right up there with my all-time favorite time travel adventures:

Now don’t jump over to Google and start reading reviews of The Little Book – too many reviewers have given way too much away, and I’ll work hard not to do that here.  This is a first novel for Selden Edwards and it took him thirty years to write.  I highly recommend buying the audio book edition narrated by Jeff Woodman to get the full affect of this dazzling yarn.  Listening will keep you from reading too fast and rushing through the story, and Woodman gives excellent voice and feelings to the characters.

The Little Book is about travel to Vienna in 1897, and if you are up on your history you might guess what famous historical personages make guest appearances.  After reading this novel I hunger to to read about Vienna and many of its famous citizens, and even research some of the books and people that I assume are products of Edwards imagination, but feel so real in the story.  I want to believe that Arnauld Esterhazy, the prep school history teacher, was at least based on someone real.

Like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Little Book is a love story, about a man, Wheeler from 1988 who falls for a 1897 lady, Weezie.  Unlike the Niffenegger book, Edwards style is less serious, if not zany, which leads to the major weakness of the novel.  The story is meant to be deadly serious and realistic, but sometimes the sparkling prose comes across too light, making it seem more like a fable or tall tale, giving the feeling that Edwards is highly amused as he manipulates us readers.

If I had written this book I would have had all the main characters narrate their stories in the first person, switching between each in a round robin style that conveyed the cyclic nature of time travel.

But I am nitpicking here.  Selden Edwards writes in a unique voice that is entertaining and full of fascinating details.  He constructs his characters so they go through numerous changes that surprised me the reader.  I especially loved the cross generational communications because Edwards really does make us feel that each generation has a different voice and mindset.  Jumping back to 1897 Vienna goes to explain how Freud changed our awareness of the inner landscape of our minds.  Characters before Freud need to be mentally different.

The Little Book is a little book and goes much too quickly.  I don’t like getting trapped in long books, but this one could have been two, three or even four times the length and I think I’d still hate for it to end.  Edwards stays close to the core plot and characters, whereas he could have meandered though 1897 more, and when you come to the end, you might be like me and wished the story was longer, giving all the details between 1897 and 1988.

I love geometric plots, and this one is supposed to be a Möbius strip, but in the end, Edwards cuts the loop leaving the plot linear.  I would have jumbled scenes so the narrator juggled the plot, like Niffenegger played with her storyline.  Edwards focuses on building literary characters rather than designing literary plots, but I think time travel seems to beg for twisty elements.

I don’t think The Little Book is a great novel, but it’s very entertaining, and adds to the evolution of time travel stories.  I’m pretty sure if you loved Time and Again or The Time Traveler’s Wife, you will probably love The Little Book.  Time travel novels tend to be short, so I’m wondering when someone will write the Lord of the Rings epic size time travel fantasy.  I know romantic novelists like Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series are epic in size, but I haven’t read it.  It appears less about time travel and more historical romance to me.  Not my cup of tea, although most good time travel stories involve romances.

There are plenty of science fiction series built around time travel, but they are mostly adventures.  The books in my list above play with time philosophically.   Books that explore changing the paths of events are less interesting now than books that use time travel to change the development of characters.  Few stories about time travel reflects the true inner impact that I think time traveling would have on a person.  I think Heinlein and Niffenegger went the furthest with this, but I expect new writers to go further.

Jim

Sarah Palin

Last night while watching Sarah Palin speak at the Republican convention I came the closest I ever have to wanting to vote conservative.  Sarah Palin is one of the most engaging plain-talking politicians I’ve ever heard.  What’s terribly amusing is she is a product of liberal evolution.  It’s been only a few years back that most conservatives believed that women belonged in the kitchen, and less than a century since they were allowed to vote.  It would be rather ironic if the conservatives elect the first woman Vice President and possible future President.

Conservatives may not like change, but they are adapting quite well with Sarah Palin.  They have been quick to accept the idea that she should be treated like a man and be freed of maternal slavery so she can put in the long hours needed be a political leader.  It’s either that, or not allow any candidate, male or female, with dependent children to work in the White House.  Hell, it hasn’t been that many years since I’ve heard conservatives talk about how women can’t be President because of hormones.  I’m proud of you Republicans for evolving in your liberal thinking.  Now, if you could only get over your hang-ups over gays and lesbians.

I really liked John McCain’s comments tonight about Obama and how we’re all Americans.  I get so sick of Republicans acting like liberals aren’t patriotic, and believe we don’t love this country as much as they do.  Republicans have this really offensive behavior of thinking that anyone that doesn’t agree with their philosophy is a traitor to the U.S.A.  I think that attitude is un-American because it erodes free thinking and encourages ugly group-think.  I believe the McCain-Palin ticket has tried to back off from acting like that.  I think McCain knows it’s offensive, but I don’t know about Palin yet, with her pit-bull with lipstick demeanor.

While listening to Sarah Palin I had to keep reminding myself why I don’t vote Republican.  The thing is I have lots of conservative beliefs myself, but Republicans have such a smug holier-than-thou attitude towards everything that I don’t think I’d fit in with my Hamlet like indecisiveness of seeing a thousand gray shades in every issue.  Besides, they really hate atheistic evolutionists like me.

Of course I also have problems with Democratic ideals too.  I’m comfortable in the political middle and feel both parties are extremists.  I’m for free trade and globalism, lower taxes, smaller government, but I’m also for helping the poor, some entitlements, and a minimal level of universal health care.  I love both business and the environment.  I think abortion should be legal but wished no one would ever get one.  I think capital punishment can be an ethical solution but doubt if we have the discernment to see the true distinctions in what’s involved.  I think war is often necessary, that it’s important to keep a prepared military, that the Iraq War might be the biggest mistake our country ever made, but since we broke it we should pay for it.  I wished the Republicans would admit that Iraq was a huge mistake and I wished the Democrats would admit that sticking with the surge and going the distance is the right thing to do.

Politics is so far from black and white that I can’t believe people get so polarized.  I disagree with many of Sarah Palin political stances, but I think she might make a good leader.  I think her small town salt-of-the-earth good-people philosophy is fine as long as she doesn’t press personal and religious beliefs into law for everyone.

I have an odd view about Republicans and Democrats in relation to religion.  I think Republicans are really Old Testament thinkers, and Democrats are followers of the New Testament.  The Old Testament is about God, the Law and the Chosen people.  The New Testament is all about compassion for the poor, sharing the wealth of the fish and loaves, understanding criminals and prostitutes, and so on.  The Old Testament is about being powerful, prospering, forming a strong nation to please God, and most of all, law and order.  The New Testament is about uplifting the meek and helpless, understanding your neighbors, and walking in other people’s shoes, breaking out of the old ways and forging a compassionate philosophy.

I can understand all that Old Testament thinking – it’s how mankind got its act together to create civilization.  The New Testament is the origin of liberal thought.  It’s the beginning of the shift from believing that the nation is of ultimate importance, to the shift in valuing the importance of the individual.  All people in this world, except the most extreme fundamentalists have been affected by liberal thought.  The trouble with the most extreme liberals is they threaten the stability of the nation.  For example, would universal healthcare damage the economy?  Would gay marriage threaten the social fabric?

In other words, I can understand why conservatives are threatened by liberals.  But to my conservative friends, has women in the military, boardrooms, legislative houses and maybe the White House hurt us?  Is education about how not to get pregnant or acquire a STD so scary, especially when children are bombarded with pro-sex television, movies, books, songs, and advertisement from the time they are tiny?  Sex education in the schools of any kind is completely anti-sex compared to pop culture.  And do you not realize that teaching creationism or intelligent design is defective thinking similar to astrology, Tarot cards and palm reading – something the Enlightenment passed by hundreds of years ago?

If the Republicans get more liberal, more into the New Testament, more concerned about the environment, maybe I’ll consider voting for them.  Sarah Palin, I think you are beautiful, charming, full of grit and sand, honest, and worthy of the job, but also still too Old Testament scary for me.

Jim