Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all our beloved friends out there in the blogosphere and elsewhere. May your day be blessed, happy, love-filled and joyous.

God bless you all.

On Shaky Ground

I watched a movie today on FearNET called Unearthed. It’s about a small Arizona town cut off from the rest of the world when a tanker carrying the fuel for the only gas station has an accident and all the gas is burned. The town sheriff begins to determine something strange is going on when animals and people begin being mutilated.

The basic set-up isn’t complicated. The plot isn’t tough to figure out either. If you’ve seen Alien, Jaws, or pretty much any horror movie you know the premise. A small band of survivors isolated with a monster of tremendous power and frightening as all get-out.

The movie was pretty bad. I don’t need to tell you the sheriff is a drunk because of an incident a year before involving a little girl who died. The sheriff blames herself and drinks to forget or calm or insert-your-own-excuse here. Of course the

incident is played back in a series of ill-devised flashbacks of a couple seconds each. (Of course it was an accident and the sheriff wasn’t to blame. We learn this right before the end of the movie.)

What I will tell you is, I’m sick to death of this cinematographic trick of shaking the hell out of the camera during filming. Holding it by hand, deliberately rattling it, whatever they’re doing. I think it’s supposed to emulate the realistic feeling of being in the scene the way it did when Steven Spielberg used the device during the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, but all it does in these cases is make a bad movie worse. TV shows use it too and

I’m tired of it. JUST SHOOT THE SCENE, dammit! If you don’t want the audience to be able to see what the hell’s going on why make a movie at all?!

A lot of the movie is filmed in dim lighting too. Not a good choice. And the CGI looked like a couple of students from a local community college’s computer animation program did the work. The lighting didn’t match the environment, the monster was not believable (not to mention being pretty much a modification of the creature from Ridley Scott’s classic, the aforementioned Alien), and the characters? Well, let’s just say it’s not a good idea to use stereotypes as characters in fiction, either written or visual.

So I wasted a good hour and a half of my life watching this dog and all its fleas. I don’t recommend you do the same. *Sigh*

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

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Blog Experiment One

Do you know what you’re reading? You’re reading a post I made for my blog with Microsoft Office OneNote.

I’ve been hearing about this OneNote thing for a long time. Supposedly, it’s a real boon to students, who can take intuitive style notes and drop images, web links, all sorts of things like that right in, anywhere they want.

So, I can leave ALL this white space around what I’m working on and position stuff just so, all without having to worry about the program making me jump through any sort of properties hoops or any of that.

Really, it’s pretty cool.

Then again, you guys know me. I’m a software sleaze-ball. I’ll do ANY software if it’s cool enough, and this OneNote thing’s pretty cool. I can see applications for linear thinking, or for making templates and notes for new novel ideas, story outlines … almost anything a writer needs to do except, maybe, for the actual writing.

So, you know I’m a happy camper.

-JDT-

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It’s on the Upswing — Randomness

Image via Wikipedia

Well, the solstice is over and we’re on the way to having more daylight every day now. Soon we’ll be complaining about the heat and humidity again.

It’s been a surprise, as it normally is, to see how quickly 2009 went by. Just yesterday it was 2008 and there was all the bustle and excitement and disappointment of an election year. Then the holidays rolled around and here I am again at the holidays, and it feels like all I did was blink.

I have to go get my driver’s license renewed very soon here. I’m not looking forward to that. I’ve a lot of reasons for dreading it and all of ‘em are monetary in nature. Oh well, gotta do what I gotta do I guess.

I’ve spent the entirety of 2009 unemployed, living paycheck to paycheck with my unemployment benefits. That’s a blessing – it paid enough for us to survive, if not live. We’ve had some fun, but also some hard times. Right now is a hard time, and there’s no sign of it letting up. I keep hearing in the news about how things are improving in the economy and that simply doesn’t play out in my everyday life.

I had a full year and some where I could’ve been writing mostly full-time. I squandered it. At the same time, the stresses of job hunting and trying to figure out how to get by on a fraction of a regular salary hasn’t exactly been creative-juice flow medicine, you know? I can look back and regret what I didn’t do or look ahead and hope 2010 is better. I choose the latter, even though that’s not my nature. But everyday will be a little longer from here until June.

And that’s it. It’s all I’ve got right now, so I’m sorry this is so boring, but I really have nothing to add.

What about you? Plans for the holidays? Visits, visitors, staying at home?

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

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Another Rough Weekend

I had another round of rough critiques on my last #fridayflash piece this weekend. I don’t really mind, and I did set this one up as an exercise and asked for input, but sometimes people are just rude in their criticisms. I guess that’s fine, but I still find it unwarranted and distasteful. I certainly wouldn’t be so rude to anyone else. Then again, I guess I’m not a critic and I wonder how many people would disagree with how I’ve handled my input and feedback. Meh.

Still, most of the feedback I got was helpful and constructive, so as much as a blow to the ol’ ego as it is, I have to say I’m learning stuff. Last weekend it was cut adjectives; more of that this weekend but now I can add in sentence length. I think that’s what most critics meant – too many sentences of similar rhythm and pattern and length. Ah well. Live and learn, right?

I also found Saturday night on the Internet very quiet. I shouldn’t be surprised I suppose, but it seemed a lot of people didn’t hang out despite the huge snow storm in the northeast and being so close to Christmas. (Actually, maybe that latter bit is the reason after all.)

GREAT football game on Saturday night. I know my buds Sherri and Courtney Vail are happy campers today. My son is too; he couldn’t have been happier his new man-crush Tony Romo and the Cowboys upset the Saints. The game came down to the last six seconds and it was a thrill-ride. Great stuff if you’re into that sort of thing – and I am. Heh. And the Titans and Dolphins played a nail-biter that went into overtime. And how about the Steelers, coming back in the final seconds to win with NO TIME on the clock? Wow! Awesome. Quite a few games came down to the closing seconds before being decided as teams are battling for playoff spots. In fact, a whopping 24 teams were still in contention as of this weekend, so some excitement and desperation mixed for great games.

Nothing much else happening here. It was a quiet weekend, which I like, and so I’ve nothing to offer today. Not really. With Christmas so close at hand, I’m sure things will slow down here in the coming days. My posting will be day-to-day; I have stuff going on and I’m not sure how to organize it all yet. Stay tuned if you’re a mind to.

Hm. Let’s see … nope, I guess that covers it.

How was your weekend?

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.