Mood:  a-ok

I'll be out of town for a few days (and most likely no updates) 'till Friday, perhaps.

What to go out on for a few days? No major scientific breakthroughs to comment on, and the writing is the writing: it goes, and that's all, so I haven't much to say...

So why not just saturate the airwaves here with some Ragdoll Cat media?

Why not?

 My cat doesn't get fast food: that delicacy's reserved for my favorite mutt.  And after all: cats tolerate 'ya, but dogs love 'ya (and my mutt doesn't cost as much as a new spleen and set of lungs, thank you very much...)

Anyway, back in a couple, and enjoy the kitties until then...

if you're a cat person. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:26 AM ADT

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Mood:  cheeky

The White Mountains of California, near Owen's Valley and just shy of the town of Bishop, hold a place called the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in which some of the oldest creatures to ever live... well... live.

And it's the setting for a li'l horror short story I'm brewing up (can't imagine that it'll be done for Halloween, unless I get myself motivated...). It involves the mid-1800's timeframe, a rancher with a homestead way the f**k up near the treline (near where our Bristlecones live...) and a species of ancient demon unknown to man that spends most of its time sleeping (do you have to guess WHERE?)...

The local Piaute Indians explain to two white travelers (the protagonists) that the 'trouble' on the mountain is caused by a creature known only as Pasatopo’ne (yes, I really did research the Paiute language, and yes: that actually means something in Paiute...)

The horror aspect wouldn't so much involve shock as to the creature's location (I plan on titling the piece PINE...) or the bloodiness left in the monster's wake. The horror of the situation is best described by a quote that one of the Paiute Indians shares with the travelers:

"It is when they wake that they work at their mischief. They awaken for two purposes, and the first is to spill blood... but the second reason, oh the second reason is a far, far worse thing, still..." 

Hey, don't look at me weirdly, or anything: I actually like Bristlecone Pines, but they still creep the ever-loving hell out of me...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:40 AM ADT

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Mood:  a-ok

Facts are facts, and Neanderthals simply weren't meant to rule the planet.

But, apparently, they were meant to sport some very unusual dreds...

Huh. So they had redheads too, eh? Not only that, but they think the guys had almost every flavor of hair color seen today, as well (except maybe the pink mohawks you see on some girls in downtown San Fran...)

That means that you'll need a red wig if you want to go as one of our dead-end siblings for Halloween (and ABC's gonna need to diversify their cast, I believe...)

As for me, I don't plan on going to my local party as a caveman: I'm goin' as a certain individual by the name of Phineas Gage.

And, yes: I believe that I wll be 'spiking' the punch.

...sorry. 

Scientific Progress goes rushing out to its local Goodwill to buy a really cheap wig...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 7:01 PM ADT

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Mood:  chatty

This is kinda an old story, but I wanted to comment on it anyway:

Just about all the data from New Horizons' Jupiter flyby has been disseminated...

There's friggin' tons of high-detail shots of that lovely 'planet', and in more detail than we've ever seen before (the probe had some fun surfing along an ultra-active magneto-tail, too, I've read).

Funny planet, isn't it? Jupiter, I mean. I've never been comfortable thinking of it as a 'planet' in and of itself. For example: it's 2.5 times more massive than ALL THE OTHER PLANETS COMBINED, contains it's own 'mini Solar System' of moons, and posesses other abnormal properties that, considered in their entirety, make me wanna think of the big old guy as NOT a planet at all...

Personally, I think Jupiter should be classified as something very different... 

Whatever. It's really not 'fashionable' to call Jupiter a brown dwarf these days (and after the public lost Pluto to the planetary debate wars, well, who would wanna lose another one, huh?....) 

To hell with Jupiter for now. It's not even the main gist of my post, so there.

HERE'S the real topic of my post:

There it is in the distance: beautiful Europa.

Now, this baby deserves our full attention, I'd think. Sure, it's great that New Horizons is focusing on hittin' the Kuiper Belt and parts beyond, but why the obsession with Pluto, huh?

Let me try to make something clear...

EUROPA IS THE BEST CANDIDATE TO DATE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF NON-EARTH-BASED LIFE!

There's several reasons for this, the most important being a layer of good ol' dihydrogen monoxide (aq) lying right beneath the surface layers.  There's evidence for the presence of heat... the presence of water... the presence of a tenable magnetosphere...

*Sigh*... our main problem is that NASA seems to be incredibly hyperopic... 

I'm a member of the 'possible life on Europa club' (though the dues are killer...). Although I haven't fleshed out its backstory in TYPERS completely , I posit that a major Bydo-related event occurrs in Europa's vicinity and strips the planet of much of its rocky surface layers, exposing a patchwork of massive waterways called the 'Rock Candy Oceans', and if one's inclined to dive way the hell down into the depths, they can observe strange primitive critters who use crystal lattices to store genetic information (this ability would be a crucial plot point near the end of everything...)

I call these strange li'l exobiotes the 'Crystalline Entities', too (Nothing says flattery like copyright infringement, yeah?...)

Hang on a minute: Patrick Stewart is at my door for some reason... and he looks pissed... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:27 AM ADT

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Mood:  irritated

Can you really argue with this policy?

Bloody, f***king yes!

Alright, look: people need organs all the time, and being an organ donor is terrific and if your religious beliefs don't interfere then I most certainly reccommend it (it'll knock a few years off purgatory, if nothing else...)

Seriously: donation is beautiful.

But you cannot have a policy of ASSUMING that a decedent wants to have their corpse butchered as such. I've got lots of problems with the whole organ-donation network as it is (including many on the list of recipients...) although in the final analysis I'm fine with venting my spleen (and everything else) for the Greater Good.

But, I don't have the 'donation option' down on my license either. My wishes are known by all my immediate family and friends, but it's not official, as such (something about being wheeled into an OR after a bad accident and having some pencil pusher eyeing that symbol on my card with frothing lips really puts me off...)

Part of this debate also touches upon the old European secularist ideal of the New World Man (and his body) being a cog in the gears instead of an individual unto themselves.

Tell me this: after a bad traffic accident, does the paramedic have the right to assume that a mangled corpse's watch is up for grabs? After a plane crash, does the airline assume that the passengers' luggage that went on ahead of them is ripe for their coffers?

Well: what if they sent the watch and luggage off to charity? Is that any different? 

These might be poor examples, but there's something else very troubling to consider...

Take your average government-based, rationed health care system... The UK ain't exactly happy to provide all its citizens with the care they often need because, quite simply, this would bankrupt the already expensive government-managed healthcare coffers.

Now imagine doctors debating expensive procedures for otherwise healthy elderly patients and other 'dregs' on their system, while at the same time knowing that, unless these people have OFFICIAL WRITTEN DENIAL (with a government-supplied form that takes eight to ten weeks to process, no doubt...) then their current survival is denying someone else the use of their bodies... how selfish of them!

...what to do, huh?... what to do?... 

 If the EU doesn't already have an opt-out system (and I'd assume, actually, that organ 'donation' is likely mandatory in that Brave New World...) then at least Mr Lazarescu would've been allowed to hang around an OR instead of being shuttled around from hospital to hospital in his movie (he could make small talk with the surgeon standing beside him, sharpening his knives in anticipation...)

I'm kinda nasty today, aren't I?  Whatever my ideology, I'll close by appealing to everyone out there to be a donor ('cause someday your heart might give someone a new start...)

But that's YOUR CHOICE, and no government or third party has the right to assume that you've no problem with being flayed apart like a side of beef. Donors are true heroes, worthy of praise and thanks, but unwitting providers are discardable cogs, used as little more than a mere means to an end.

As for Scientific Progress? It goes dumpster-diving for discarded pig entrails (they're almost as good, right...?  ;)

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 7:42 PM ADT

Updated: Saturday, 20 October 2007 7:57 PM ADT

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Mood:  spacey

...okay, so pi and euler's number walk into a bar, sit at the barstools and start hootin' and hollerin'. Pi buys a round of drinks, then e buys, and so on and so forth.

Eventually the bartender asks them both what exactly they're celebrating. Pi looks at the bartender with a shiteater grin and yells: "IT'S THURSDAY!!!" 

The bartender slowly backs away as the numbers get quashed, and when the manager comes along the bartender asks him what the hell is up with those two.

The manager looks at the inebreated digits, sighs and shakes his head:

"I dunno. I just don't know. They're always comin' in and partying for no reason at all. I guess I'll just never understand that kind of irrational exuberance..."

*Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp*...

I'm here all week, by the way; try the veal.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 4:15 PM ADT

Updated: Wednesday, 17 October 2007 4:38 PM ADT

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Mood:  bright

Inasmuch as I like to assign my writing projects a specific 'theme song' (and I do), I've come to find that the "Reign of Eden's" theme song is Fastball's 'The Way'.

I know you've all heard this one about a trillion times before... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:47 AM ADT

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Mood:  not sure

It's coming...

Let me say that I have EXTREMELY mixed feelings about this Pullman yarn; I read the books when I was younger (and have yet to even get to the third one, I confess... so I left off with the li'l male protagonist approached by Angels lookin' to kill their mean 'ol bastard of a God...)

But I did read the synopsis, so there.

So Philip Pullman, no surprise here, is a rabidly anti-Christian (and other religions I suppose, though the cross has a special place in his antipathic heart) and he sees himself as the children's version of atheist gadfly Christopher Hitchins. The mantra espoused in each of the 'His Dark Materials' books is simple: 'God's NOT in his heaven, and all is WRONG with the world' (for those that got my Tess of the d'Urbervilles reference, I thank you...)

Alright: simple enough. But there's also another problem: anti-religious, rabid and insipid hatred-spouter that he is (and he IS...) Philip Pullman is also an immensely talented writer and I count 'The Golden Compass' book as a fantastical and extremely satisfying adventure story despite the rank anti-Christian (and I'll say in particular anti-Catholic) spiel that is evident throughout. The man's prose FLOWS, for God's sake (and but for His sake...) and the story's absolutely gripping.

The whole 'daemon' thing? Lord, sheer brilliance...

'The Subtle Knife' was slightly less entertaining to me (enough so that I didn't go on, obviously) but I was rather affected by this storyline. So much so that, in fact, you can trace the name of my second TYPERS book, 'His Moral Antipathy', to a ripoff of his series title: 'His Dark Materials'.

They say that the anti-religious fervor will be toned down in the upcoming film, and I believe that. I'm not saying I'm in favor of the movie, and I'm not gonna picket it either. One problem some people note is that kiddies who see the flick will be tempted to start readin' the books and, thus, more li'l kids will be indoctrinated into the Church of the Anti-Christians.

Whatever. More salvation for me, I suppose. Pullman's anti-religious themes within the HDM books are actually most juvenile and weak: if C.S. Lewis made his readers think with some of the tropes in his 'Narnia' books then Pullman makes readers see how petty he really is as a debater: of COURSE God is a twitty prawn if you create a whole universe around the fact that he is and simply cast the opposing side as more evil and stupid twits (C.S. Lewis, you'll remember, at least had the Good Calormen soldier in 'The Last Battle'...)

The books're the cheapest of shots, and don't constitute satire as much as laughable parody. The subtext within them reads not as a clever analysis and critique of religion, but more as a window into the empty heart of one very, very, very talented man.

My Justin Storm is a religious, marginally, and that mirrors myself somewhat, but guess what? Instead of painting atheism and agnosticism as EVIL and DISGUSTING from the outset I'm bein' realistic: so far in my writing I've shown that religion is somewhat less than a healthy force in my main character's life at the moment. The fact that, ultimately, it becomes a MOST crucial plot point due to the fact that something theoretical is shown to probably exist isn't until later, and even then I'd never assault the opposing side so much as Pullman derisively chooses to do (my main female character is a rank atheist, for example, and I happen to adore her, so I've built myself a complicated platform from which I must proceed...)

However, some people don't seem to do well with 'complicated' arguments. It's all just black and white to them. Good and bad, smart and dumb...

Gods, and devils... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:31 AM ADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

Can we please make these twits at the energy drink companies admit that this whole "Taurine-infusion" crap is just a moronic conspiracy to make their products sound cool?

Taurine is an essential amino acid in animals like cat (in that they can't make it on their own) but humans are able to synthesize it just fine, thank you very much. Now, beverages like Red Bull (who's name is taken from Taurine's history and nomenclatural (that's a word, isn't it?...) association with bulls) contain upwards of 300 percent of your body's own daily allotment of the stuff.

So why would your body need to triple its available reserves of an AA that it is able to produce, but only makes sparingly?

It doesn't...

The energy drink twits need to come clean and admit that there's only ONE INGREDIENT in their beverages that's a meaningful contributor to mood elevation and fatigue reduction (I'd like to see Red Bull come out with a drink sporting 1000 mg caffeine in place of 1000 mg Taurine).

Now, they can come back at me and claim that Taurine plays a minor role in reducing muscle fatigue. That WOULD mean that someone involved in strenuous workout MIGHT benefit from the junk, but you wouldn't want to do that with these trash energy drinks anyway because the caffeine co-mingling (that's a word, isn't it?...) in the drinks is a diuretic and those energy drinks all make one pee like a racehorse. It doesn't matter HOW stimulated your muscles are if you're as dehydrated as a fish out of water.

This Taurine-infusion argument is as specious as the old wive's tale about carrots helping you to see better in the dark: sure, Beta-carotene is converted into Vitamin A by the liver, and Vitamin A is necessary for proper eye function, but the body makes no more of it than what it needs because EXCESS Vitamin A tends to shear one's liver apart at the seams (if you DO consume way too much Beta-carotene in your diet for a long time the unused molecule piles up in fatty tissue deposits, especially the skin, and something most wonderously strange begins to happen to you...)

...'Red Bull'... 'Monster'... 'Rockstar'... you can have 'em, for all I care (Rockstar should stick to cosponsoring all those trashy 'Girls Gone Wild' videos... at least those things are more honest about their content...)

As for me: there's really only one 'energy drink' I can't go without. I'm having one right now, matter of fact, and if a regular energy drink puts your average schmo in Seventh Heaven, then I'm in an even Seventher Heaven (that's a word, isn't it?...): 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 10:17 AM ADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

The old debate about modern man's pesky habit of surviving outside the Earth's means continues...

Hey, this much is true: the human population SHOULD be much lower than it is, but thanks to post-indistrial society we've got a nast habit of overextending our lifespans and reproducing at alarmingly successful rates (again, things like pesky neonatal wards and advanced medical care have put infant mortality numbers in the toilet throughout the civilized world.)

The short answer to the question at hand (in my honest opinion) is that humans are unique in that we can personally determine our own carrying capacity number: if we're total slobs that number should be a little under a billion, and if we become more 'self-actualized' as a species psychologically and environmentally the number's probably closer to several hundred billion (and I am not joking about that...)

The story caught my eye because it features quotes from the VHEMT whackos. Like PETA (who I denounced previously), these guys are your garden-variety secularist/anti-human wankers who find the idea of the human animal reprehensible, and an abomination in itself (don't wanna put words into their mouths, but it is true).

More tie ins with my current work-in-progress, coincidentally. One of the main villians in the book, a general named Asha Brie, leads up the sinister group Logo's most advanced military unit: Adamant Squad.

For one thing I really like the word 'Adamant' (if you've read my Typers drafts, you'd understand my cheeky wordplay, too...) but for another I include groups like VHEMT in my all-time haters list, and they're the kind of wankers I want to call out in this forthcoming book. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:26 PM ADT

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