It's a little unnerving, how thin the layer that separates us from the nineteenth century...
Mar 07, 2007
Iteration 03/07/2007: Out go the Lights
The show Jericho has covered about three months so far (or maybe slightly less?) The showrunners have said that they intentionally left the radiation, fallout, and immediately attendent consequences (radiation sickness, nuked foodstuffs, and post-apocalyptic zombies) at a distance to concentrate on how people would cope if they suddenly found themselves without electricity, without communications, without quick/easy/plentiful transportation...they're dealing with day to day survival, but amped up considerably. Thus far they've done a fairly good job alluding to some of the less-obvious effects: they've mentioned someone in town making toothpaste, they showed one of the characters restocking the town store with foodstuffs from a train halted five miles out of town, they've had run-ins with mercenary bands...they aren't holding a church social out there. Still, there are plenty of things that haven't been addressed — and hopefully, they won't be. At least not graphically and / or extensively. (This is your brain on far too many distopian futuristic novels.)
- It's been more than two months without widespread running water, or even easily treated water. All water for eating and drinking will have to be boiled first...and long showers? Even short ones? Not happening on a daily basis, if you get what I mean. Things will be tolerable until high summer. High summer in Kansas is hot, but it's not always dry. Sadly enough, it's not easy to try and coax the humidity to turn into precipitation. People will just be muggy, hot, lethargic...and fragrant.
- Medicines are not easy to come by. The show has addressed this a bit, when Dad Green nearly died from an aggravated flu bug (and a lack of proper antibiotics.) Imagine if you have to have medicines to maintain basic health day to day: insulin for diabetes, anticonvulsants for epileptics, heart medications...those who don't die from the sudden cut-off will have to (re-)learn to live with the effects of their disorders.
- A cousin to lack of medicines is lack of medical practitioners. Jericho has one medical doctor and a few nurse practitioners. While others may have drifted into town and set up on the outskirts, there's so much medical knowledge and only so much that one human can know. The best they can hope for is diverse areas of specialization or special interest. But you just know that something's going to happen to someone, and the injury will be more serious because one of the medicos once heard something, or briefly read about something, but can't recall the full technique.)
- And more on the medical front: is there a dentist in the town? If anyone gets a cavity, the tooth may have to be pulled...using farrier's tools. And forget novacaine: they'll have to drink as much moonshine as can be gotten into their system. And something serious, like root canals? Yeah. Pain. Lots of it...and more risk of going septic from an infected oral wound. Again with the pain.
- We've seen the mercenary companies roving about, pretty much creating their own law. If the mercs come back through Jericho with the intent of taking over the town, they'll now know that the direct approach won't work...so they'll be more creative. And those were mercs who have unit discipline and a leader who appears to think long-term. If winter gets truly hard, and drifters are forced by desperation to try and find shelter more substantial than whatever barn or bridge they've been using, they won't worry about niceties like not raping a woman or not killing a kid...not if they're truly at the end of their rope. (And if survivalist-cells start to take shape, all bets are off. Law will pretty much revert back to 'possession is nine tenths'. One of the secondary characters seems to be adapting to this lifestyle a bit too easily — Dale was fairly quick to liberate that governor for the windmill.)
- This was hinted at, last episode: the relative cheapness of human life. Cash is worthless now. That means that even if people could get to their bank accounts, all that pretty colored paper wouldn't do squat for them. What's valuable now is what's intrinisically valuable: land, for growing food. Tools, for creatinn and building. Animal labor...or human labor. Anything that will tote the barge, lift the bale, or gather the food.
- This wouldn't necessarily happen for a year or so...but depending on how much radiation makes it into the food-supply chains, and how it affects fertility, women could suddenly become commodities. Or rather, a working uterus will become a commodity. The rest of the woman is just along to provide maintenance and a vessel. (Yes, fertile males could potentially become more valuable...but it's less easy to determine male parentage without a fiercely strong resemblance. Not nearly as many people will see any impregnation as will see a birth. Kind of hard to disguise which woman is in labor.)
- Jericho's in farm country, so unless there's a recurrence of the dust bowl, they'll have fewer food problems than a non-nuked major metro area. Once the store shelves are emptied, if people aren't growing their own food, they'll either starve, or have to get food from someone else's farm. Good grief...what's happening in places like Manhattan? Or Oakland? Sure, there's farm country a few hours' drive outside of those areas...but that's how many people trying to get the food from how much arable, actively farmed land? I predict a monstrous, horrific population drop, unless the disparate pseudo-governments can get things moving...and soon.
- The EMP fried everything with a circuit board. Unless I'm wrong, that means that even if power were restored tomorrow, many things wouldn't work. Computers. CD players. Newer cars (they actually mentioned that one - yay, verisimilitude.) Phones (regular, not just cell.) Most radios, stereos, TVs...the nascent government will be trying to communicate, but no one will be able to receive the signals unless they've got older, solid-state electronics. (Some of that stuff still does exist...just not much of it. And if it breaks down, not many people will know how to repair it.) The new soi-disant governmemt will be reduced to manual methods of disseminating information until...geez, I don't know when. Until people start producing and distributing solid-state radios and TVs. (I'm going to take a huge guess and say that any standing inventory of contemporary electronics was also frotzed, and will now make excellent — and in some cases very stylish — doorstops.)
- Just about everyone will need to learn things such as candle-making, sewing, weaving, woodwork, subsistence farming, basic butchery, minimal animal husbandry, and — truly daunting, for some of us — cooking things from scratch. Without crock pots or bread machines (Don't smirk. I wasn't really a great participant in a swap I signed up for because the theme was 'cooking'...and I don't really cook. Needless to say, I won't be signing up for any more of those unless I can find out the theme in advance.) Sure, there can and will be some trade: if someone's got a good system for banging together soap, and someone else has a farm with lots of cows and pigs (sources of fat - a necessary ingredient for soap), they'll probably barter a bit. Likewise a skilled potter and someone who's sitting on, and willing to process, good quality clay. However, it won't make sense to have one or two people in a town who do nothing but cook for everyone, or repair all the clothing. People are going to have to learn how to do these things for themselves, at least to some extent. (Think: would you want to be living in a town when suddenly, the one person who knows how to make candles...dies or leaves? I didn't think so.)
- Ahhhh...coffee. No more coffee, after a while. Not even the crappy instant stuff, unless people are lucky enough to live in an area where coffee will actually grow. You can ferment just about anything to get some form of booze. Teas and coffees...a little more difficult. (Omigod, the withdrawal headaches there will be. In fact, that's probably what will happen in the metro areas: people won't be able to get their caffeine fix, they'll go nutso, and violence shall ensue. If they're even able to walk upright, that is. My own caffeine withdrawal headaches start out mild-ish, then get crippling.)
- There are definite signs that the rest of the world is fine, and may be able to help America get back on its feet. However, that will mean other long-term consequences. How will Americans react to suddenly being the nation in need, after decades of perceiving themselves to be the kings of the world? And how many nations will offer aid, but then later send us a bill that keeps the next several generations further in debt than ten Iraqi wars could get us? Say that the US gets help from other first-world nations within the next six months. They have to distribute everything, they have to reactivate the infrastructure, and people will have to replace lost houses and find work (to keep bringing in money to be able to keep replacing whatever else needs replacing...as well as normal day-to-day expenses like food.) What effect will that have on the national psyche? (Aside from the inevitable Hollywood blockbuster movies, fiction and non-fiction, lawsuits and countersuits, themed talk shows, and sudden interest in certain crafts courses.)
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Keywords: | Wednesday | memes | disaster |
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Scarily enough, some of these signs are actually needed. (I'll bet you feel really safe now, hm?)
Mar 01, 2007
- Onesome: No Bicycles — on the Freeway? Ya' think? Do you have a better 'sign of the times' for the gang? I'm thinking along the lines of "Coffee is Hot", if you catch my drift...
A few of those types of signs could be circumvented by having better technical writers. Plenty, though, are preventative measures...not against stupid human tricks, but against lawsuits. They're like wolfbane, but for settlements.
- Twosome: on the — flip side, how about a sign you think needs to be in place? ...maybe something like one that lights up and says, "Get out" after you pull the fire alarm in a building?
Every time I hear about these kind of signs or lawsuits (like the lawsuit that caused McDonald's to start printing “This coffee is hot” on their coffee cups) I see someone exhibit the boneheaded behavior that makes some of these signs necessary. (Notice that I said “some”. There's no denying that many of these bits of signage are nothing but CYA insurance.)
- Threesome: Freeway — friend or foe? Utility or necessary evil? Extra points if you have to use the Pennsylvania Turnpike or happen to live in Los Angeles!
I think freeways are necessary. People don't have to get permission to move into a city or urban area, so city planning isn't a clean or easy thing. When a population grows, it grows...and when a metro area has a certain draw job- and housing-wise, there's little that will stop the growth. It's aggravating that they're so prevalent...but I'm not too sure what can be done to stop it.
Keywords: | Thursday | memes | legal |
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The wonderful thing about lists is that, aside from being mildly related sequential items, there's not too much hard-and-fast definition in there.
Feb 28, 2007
HEY!! If you got directed here from Thursday 13 on or after March 14, go here instead.
It's my fault. I didn't clear out the form before submitting my comment for the week. Technology made me its cat toy yet again.
Thursday Thirteen 82:18: Chaos Theory
...also known as “a completely random list of thoughts whose primary qualification is that the number of the counting is thirteen.” (Fourteen is Right Out.)
- I'd almost swear that today is actually Monday. I've got a nagging headache that just won't go away.
- The mountains around the valley all have snow on the tops. It looks lovely...but I'm glad I don't have to drive over them.
- Especially since when I stopped to refill my tires' air, I discovered that the rear tire is nearly bald. I sense an expense in my future.
- I chose the name Iterations for the meme-portal because that's what these things are: variations on a theme. (That, and creating the header graphics gives me a chance to play with the fractal generator.)
- The output of the fractal generator looked a whole lot more interesting once I started zooming in (wa-a-ay in) on the rendered images.
- I wish I could sing better. I've toyed with finding a vocal teacher, but I don't know how they'd react if I just told them that I want to be able to sing without worrying if I'm going sharp or flat — purely for my own satisfaction, not because I yearn to try and break into the entertainment biz.
- I wish the Lisa Gerrard concert tickets would go on sale, already. I want to know if I'll be able to go to the show close to me, or if I'll be travelling a bit.
- One of the venues is in Los Angeles. Others include San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver.
- Since attending any of the concerts would mean staying overnight — even the one that's relatively near me — I don't want the expenses to go too high. Any way I can combine trips, run errands, visit friends, or figure out how to write off a portion of the trip as a business expense would be most welcome.
- The company who makes the billing software I use is having their annual event again this year. I'm debating on whether or not I should go: now that the new version is actually out and stable, I want to corral one of them and demand some assistance in configuring this. (And their documentation is hideous...so I really need some facetime with a developer.)
- It's too bad Lisa Gerrard isn't playing in that city around the time of the conference. :D
- I wonder if Jericho will be picked up for a second season, or if they'll stop after one year? The coming weeks apparently see Marines show up, and people start thinking about how things will be as order is restored — so possibly there are plans afoot to wrap this up relatively neatly, in a season or two, before stretching credibility ridiculously. (I'm only guessing. I'm fairly sure that, with some dedicated trawling, I could find out all kinds of information about the show. But in some ways, I'm having fun just watching and waiting for whatever happens.)
- I'm torn between watching it this evening, in ten minutes; or waiting until tomorrow night when it will be available through OnDemand (with five minutes of commercials, instead of 15.)
For folks looking for more reasons to write, or more content to read, check out Iterations. This first week will close Sunday (leaving it open extra-long), so stop by and add a link to your list.
Other Participants
Keywords: | travel | Thursday | memes | entertainment |
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One door closes, another opens
Feb 22, 2007
Change is the only universal constant.
Well, change and the bemoaning of same.
When the original Friday Five went on its first hiatus, I would check in every week to see when / if it was restarting. I didn't really have the time or the resources to run any kind of community of my own, though I knew how much work they were. When Blogger Insider ended, I really missed it. I hadn't participated too long. The originator declined other peoples' offers to take over the activity, and that community faded away. I had more resources and more drive to run a community, but the original author was fairly adamant about not giving out their mailing list, or allowing re-use of the name. There were people who tried to re-start the meme, but for one reason or another, it never really took hold.
Now that T13 is ending, I think I'll try starting up some kind of weekly writing activity. I have the resources, I know how to steer clear of potential problems, I have realistic expectations of spin-offs (they'll happen, and they may or may not be related to what I try.) But exactly what form shall it take? Hmm...
Thursday Thirteen ::17: Endless Possibilities
- Pair bloggers up, and have them interview each other (idea from Blogger Insider, circa 2001)
- Have participants list twelve items about last week, plus a photo or image that relates to the week's activities (idea from Baker's Dozen, circa 2002)
- Unrestrained creativity, no "theme" (because that seems to work sometimes, and not sometimes)
- Blog feature articles — actually, paragraphs (part review, part showcase)
- List of questions to answer each week (though seems a bit too stifling, and a little bit too much work to keep coming up with questions / themes every week) (idea from Friday Five, Thursday Threesome, many other memes)
- Welcome commercial sites, allow them, tolerate them, or surreptitiously try and push them out? And, of course, what defines 'commercial site'? This should be a fun community activity, not a place for people to come talk about their business and try and get more clients. (If that happens...yay. But, to paraphrase Pump up the Volume, "I can smell a hardsell like a fart in a car". And I really don't love them any more than anyone else does. For one, they very rarely make for entertaining reading material.)
- To forum, or not to forum? And if 'yes', how to set guidelines? A simple "use common sense, be polite" doesn't cut it on the internet, sadly. (And if nothing else, the PTB have to know when to lower the boom on someone, or when to close off a particular topic.)
And because I can't think of other actual, cogent points to make, books and TV I've been watching:
- Jericho. It's interesting; but I knew that it wasn't filmed in Kansas because I saw a hill. Kansas has no hills. (If you squint, you can see through from Cheney to Nebraska.) (I also cheated and watched eps 1-12 on On Demand. There were two ads per ep, all by a major US auto manufacturer. Hmmm...I wonder who's sponsoring the show?)
- Mort, by Terry Pratchett. Death actually gets a bit crankier in this one, so I didn't enjoy this as much as Reaper Man or Hogfather.
- Isaac Asimov's science fiction short story collections. Yay, Barnes and Noble discount books! I now own a copy of Flowers for Algernon!! (Though the paper quality, lo it sucketh.)
- Battlestar Galactica...though it's getting a bit too angsty for my tastes, and it seems to be confused about what it's doing. Never a good sign.
- The Prestige, which I picked up on DVD last night (the DVD was released Tuesday). It's a good movie: good characters, excellent performances, interesting twists, a (very) few unsettling ideas. Though one possible utter bit of desperation-filler-device - I have to watch again to be sure I didn't miss something.
Other Participants
Keywords: | Thursday | memes | Iterations |
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Which is odder: Death retiring, or Death as Father Christmas...?
Feb 07, 2007
I recently finished reading Terry Pratchett's Hogfather. Terry Pratchett writes satirical fiction, and has many devotees. I am not really one of them. I have read Eric, The Truth, Carpe Jugulum, Small Gods, Reaper Man, and Hogfather. A friend sent me the first four to borrow, because she could not believe that I had not read any Terry Pratchett as of 2004. When I read the first four books, I quickly figured out why: not only did none of the characters really click with me, I had read similar things in Piers Anthony and Tom Holt (both of whom wrote many satirical-fiction books, though Tom Holt's were lesser-known in the US and, actually, unavailable until recently.) I was caught by my friend's description of Death, though:
- endlessly fascinated with humans and with life
- picks up many eccentricities and tries to emulate them, with amusing results
- speaks in ALLCAPS
- rides a pale horse...named Binky
I purchased Reaper Man once for a cross-country air flight, and loved it. Death is forced into retirement because he has become unsuitable as a dispassionate, non-personified, soulless carrier-out of the measurer and collector of the souls of the living. So what happens when Death suddenly has to occupy himself? What hobbies might He try taking up? And more importantly, what happens if those who are to fill His shoes aren't quick on the uptake?
In Hogfather, someone has made off with the Hogfather (think Santa Claus) and Death took it upon himself to try and fill in. “Nightmare Before Christmas” is one comparison: Death is as appropriate a Father Christmas as Jack Skellington, but for slightly different reasons. It's amusing, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking (in a light and fluffy kind of way). Here are:
Thursday Thirteen 79:15: Selections from Hogfather
- page 12¹: It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labeled backward. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whiskey is topped off with eniru.
- page 27: Peachy was not someone you generally asked questions of, except the sort that go like: “If-if-if I give you all my money coul dyou possibly not break the other leg, thank you so much?”
- page 52: The Quirmian philosopher Ventre said, “Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true then you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?“ When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, “We're going to show you what we think of Mr. Clever Dick in these parts...”
- page 65: There was a metallic tzing as Susan withdrew the poker from the little brass stand it shared with the tongs and the coal shovel. She sighed. Normality was what you made it.
- page 76 (describing a little girl's enterprising venture vis a vis the Tooth Fairy): When she was eight she'd found a collection of animal skulls in the attic, relict of some former duke of an inquiring turn of mind. Her father had been preoccupied with affairs of state and she'd made twenty-seven dollars before being found out. The hippopotamus molar had, in hindsight, been a mistake.
- page 91: There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers.
- page 114: “A Verruca Gnome?”
- page 127: “So where's all the lights? Where's all the noise? Where's all the jolly little buggers in pointy hats and red and green suits, hitting wooden toys unconvincingly yet rhythmically with hammers?” “This is more like the temple of some old thunder god...”
- page 141: Ridcully lifted the god's head. There was a groan. “Looks a bit under the weather,” he said. “He's the God of Hangovers.” said Susan.
- page 152: Nobby gave up, and sat mute. Whatever was going to happen next would happen, and there was not a thing he could do about it...Right now, the light at the end of his mental tunnel showed only more tunnel.
- page 163: I expect a doll is always acceptable. Or a soft toy of some description. The sack seems to know. What have we got for her, Albert? Ho. Ho. Ho. Something small dropped into His hand. “This,” said Albert. Oh. There was a moment of horrible silence as they both stared at the life-timer.
- page 166: “Just want to make sure that I've got this clear,” said the oh god in a reasonable tone. “You think your grandfather is Death and you think he's acting strange?”
- page 180: What do you call that warm feeling you get inside? “Heartburn!” Albert snapped. Do I detect a note of unseasonal grumpiness? said Death. No sugar piggywiggy for you, Albert.
¹At first I thought to take a paragraph from page 13, page 26, page 39, and so on; but there wasn't anything amusing on page 13 itself. Nor on page 26. So...a slight change in plans.
Other T13 Participants
Keywords: | Thursday | satire | memes | excerpt | books |
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Weekly highlights. Because, dangit, I'm fresh out of intelligent, creative, original ideas just now. (But it still beats summer reruns.)
Jan 03, 2007
Thursday Thirteen 74::10: My Week In...er...Review
Having just finished Holidailies, and experiencing some back-to-the-gig blues as well, I'm going to be a bit lazy and less interesting than usual. But look! A new header graphic for the taking!! This one's another picture from Astronomy Pic of the Day: the Witches' Broom Nebula (known to the astronomy posse as NGC 6960.) The picture is gorgeous — it will also make a nice desktop wallpaper — and I wanted to try and capture some of the peacock's-tail glory in the header graphic.
- I have been listening to one song by MIDIval Punditz on infinite repeat since...oh, last Friday.
- This is my first year participating in Holidailies, and two of my posts were selected as “Best of Holidailies”, which really surprised and pleased me. (Problem is, I've written all my good stuff! What will I do next year!! ...kidding, kidding. I kid.) I was tickled when someone else's entry that I'd previously read and really enjoyed...ended up being chosen as another Best of Holidailies post.
- I enjoyed Holidailies very much; but the portal wouldn't allow me to add my final entry which summarized my year and my experience with Holidailies (including the interesting new reads I've found). So you get to enjoy it instead.
- I've been spending far too much time over at the Cat Macros LJ community. How I avoided this visual crack for this long, I'll never know.
- My cats are spectacularly unimpressed at my “ñomñom” face. As long as the food appears in its appointed place at the appointed times, I can make the “ñomñom” face at them as much as I want. Failure to comply, however, means trouble.
- Things are so deadly slow at this gig that I've been learning new CSS tricks and creating new site skins.
- And visiting Cat Macros.
- I found a very interesting article which concluded, among other things, that 2 out of 5 bosses are liars.
- When I forwarded the link to several of my former co-workers at Old Gig, one of them replied, “It's like they were a fly on the wall.” That person was right. (And this individual was a nice person, a good and incredibly conscientious co-worker, but a dreadful boss.)
- While I did most of my laundry over the New Year's weekend, I left two loads: some of the whites, and the reds. I wanted to save some of the fun for this week.
- Actually, everyone in my complex had all their laundry from the preceeding two weeks to do, and of course everyone waited until Sunday night. There was even one resident who was on the warpath, using up most of the 10 washers simultaneously and then dumping peoples' loads of clothes from the dryers so that they could get all of their laundry cycled through at once.
- Since I found Word Plus One while doing Holidailies, I've been kicking around the idea of running a flash-fiction meme. I should probably investigate it a bit more, though: I haven't ever taken a formal writing course, and while I can come up with vignettes seemingly out of thin air, I don't know that they qualify as “flash fiction” (which requires a protagonist, conflict, obstacle, resolution).
- I posted some thoughts about T13 comment / visiting etiquette over on the forums. Visit, register, add your thoughts...and post some header graphics :D
Links to other T13 posts
- CraZedMoM
- West of Mars
- Writing Aspirations
- Fond of Snape
- simple pleasures
- Ramblings by Alyndabear
- scribbit
- Observations from Missy's Window
- One Woman Army
- Unseal my Lips
- Chez le laquet
- Journey of Cross and Quill
- Blossoming Heart Capture
- Philly Transplant
- Notes in the Key of Life
Related entry: Looking forward, looking back
Keywords: | writing | work | Thursday | music | memes |
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