Mood:  caffeinated

At long last, it appears that the 'tortue-porn' genre is going the way of bellbottoms and acid-tees.

Now, from what I've seen, this 'Captivity' stuff is possibly the dumbest thing to hit the big screen since 'Yippeeeeee! Skywalker' came a tromping to a theater near you. But still, I'm hoping that this puts another nail into the coffin of movies such as 'Hostel' and your 'Hills Have Eyes' banalities.

These AREN'T horror movies!

 Wanna see the face of real horror?

THEEEEEEERE'S JACK-Y!

Kick-ass HORROR films like the Shining often kept their body counts very, very low: that's the sign of a real talent for horror. If you scare the shit out of your audience with tension and good old-fashioned creepy atmosphere before anything even happens then you don't NEED the bevy of bound, gagged, naked, decapitated co-eds flailing around...

Honestly, Silent Hill taught us to fear the unknown much more than the known: the scariest parts of those games were the times when NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED, but one walked down through the darkness like a prisoner condemned. (I'm talking about the video game and NOT the terrible movie it was adapted into: ironically the producers eschewed all the great atmospheric trappings of the game to make a 'torture-porn-lite' movie.)

Honestly, I'd rather have American filmmakers keep ripping-off Japanese horror flicks if this kind of trash is the best they can do...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:51 PM ADT

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Mood:  lazy

Vegas vacation's winding to a close. I went for some light kayaking the other day on sunny Lake Mead. It was nice...

...the temperature hit 108 degrees by noon, and the surface water temperature was sitting just shy of 80 degrees when I was done.

Right now I'm a little busy applying my fifth tube of Aloe Vera to my shoulders.

But still: it's a 'dry heat'... ha-ha-ha... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:41 AM ADT

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Mood:  a-ok

Another giant squid has washed-up on our fair shores...

Was a time this occurrence was rare, to say the least, and now it seems that every other beer-addled, speedo-wearing pot-bellied beachgoer is finding his own lovely Giant Squid to take home as a souvenir.

(That's a little bit of an exaggeration, to be sure, but still...)

Eh: these little boys don't even come close to the Antarctic grandeur that is the hook-bearing Colossal Squid: the real maritime sea monster.

When I was very little I read about Venus's harsh atmosphere and its beautiful lava seas. I imagined that a very strange (and very large) pod of creatures might swim through that hellish land (perhaps remnants of better times on 'Earth's Twin Sister').

Wierd- isn't it- that the mega-large squids of our world bear such a similarity to my imagined Venusian critters? 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:51 PM ADT

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Mood:  special

Updates aren't exactly one-a-day lately, huh? Part of that's 'cause I've been vacationing in fabulous Las Vegas for the past several days (this also explains why I haven't yet polished up my latest chapter of TYPERS, 'Spiders and Sharks', but I am still working on it... somewhat...)

Speaking of 'working', isn't it amazing the work a little stream of water can do, given a couple billion years?

I took a little trip into the Grand Canyon today (...and not exactly on a burrow...) The scenery is fantastic: a good mix of extreme beauty coupled with a sense of quiet isolation. That's kinda the idea I have in mind for a region in the world of 'Typers' that I call the 'Dead Lands': the vast desert lands left broken and sterile after the humans' anti-BYDO nuclear strike of 2069.

My main character, Justin Storm, is gonna have something of an intellectual 'come to Jesus' moment in that region, where he meets some of the natives (the technologically-regressive 'Dead Landers'). Around the same time my main female character, Chenine Chovert, is gonna have a similar experience out in deep space, in a place called 'Hansha-Furste'.

Their experiences will affect and be affected by facets of each's personality: Justin's feelings of isolation and disconnectedness from the flesh-and-blood humans all around him mirrors the condition of the land around him, but at the same time he is taught that the desert also springs forth with abundant life...

The only question is: just what kind of fruit is born of that situation, and how bitter are the seeds?

(He also learns about an old tribal legend dealing with mysterious, angelic beings they call the 'NOVANJO'...)  

Eh: this talk is all academic, as the chapters are a ways away. They'll undergo three revisions in my head tonight alone...

But, still:  the desert sands hold untold beauty, just as they also hold incomparable ugliness.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:30 AM ADT

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Mood:  spacey

The Seven Wonders of the World has officially undergone revision.

Not a bad list, really. For movie fans, it's a real treat to see the Treasury at Petra  make the list (famously introduced to the world by one Dr. Indiana Jones.)

The list does, however, smack of an anti-continental bias in favor of Latin America. Being Christian myself, I'm pleased that Christ the Redeemer made it into the list, but is ANYBODY convinced that a fairly tall statue on a mountaintop is any match for Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza?

All Glory and Honor to God... but it's really not.

And the Christ statue's been around for a little over 150 years. The Great Pyramid has been around for FOUR-THOUSAND YEARS, and will likely still stand long after the Christ statue falls from the heights of Corcovado (it's simple logistics...) I'd be inclined to even rate the comparatively-diminuitive Sphinx as more deserving of a spot: it should have 'nosed' out the others.

Sorry. 

Any list of the world's greatest wonders that neglects Ancient Egypt is not quite right in the head... Eh, I should be pleased the the world-media is actually showing something of a PRO-Christian bias in the news for once in their current lifetime. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:55 PM ADT

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Mood:  energetic

Art is now officially imitating life: we're going to Ceres!

I've had a soft spot for that little 'king of the pebbles' for a long time now. The poor baby would've been a mighty terrestrial planet if it wasn't for Jupiter's mean ol' gravitational influence keeping all the pieces apart (so go the theories, anyway...)

Unlike the frosty ol' Kuiper Belt Objects and the lonely Scattered Disc Objects, Ceres stood a damn good chance of growing up big and healthy, but instead it is what it is...

Also of Note:  Some Chenine-y decentness born of boredom:

And a backgrounded version that probably needs lighting fix and contrast tone-down (But luckily I don't care). The background here is a hue-altered picture of Mandel's Angel Nebula:

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:05 PM ADT

Updated: Friday, 6 July 2007 4:12 PM ADT

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Mood:  quizzical

-- Here he comes: box-office disaster! It's a flop upon wheels!--

This is a bad, bad, BAD idea...

Look, it should go without saying that adapting animated programs into live-action shows is a no-go; it's almost as bad as the trash we get from Video Game Adaptations (but this is coming from a guy who's writing a novel series based on a shoot 'em up, so whatever...)

It's bad enough that they're going down this path with Neon Genesis Evangelion, but SPEED RACER? C'mon.  And the androgynous, creepy Wachowski boys are helming it!??

You remember them, right? They made that one really good movie, and then phoned in those other two extremely bad ones?

If American producers are short on ideas (and they are) why don't they stick to ripping off British TV shows and leave the god-damned anime alone; there are REASONS these stories are told in animated format in the first place, knuckleheads. The day American film studios finally 'get' the fact that animation IS a valid art form the Earth'll probably be a dead wasteland void of any intelligent life (just like Hollywood, except much hotter. Haha...)

*Sigh* 

I just wonder how long it'll be before we see this preview:

"AND STARRING HALEY JOEL OSMENT as Shinji Ikari!"...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:38 PM ADT

Updated: Thursday, 5 July 2007 1:45 PM ADT

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Mood:  mischievious

More proof that Pluto sucks...

Honestly, I've never understood all those 'Keep Pluto a Planet' wankers that wanna lump this rogue potato into the lofty family of proper planets. It can't even compare to normal-sized MOONS, for god's sake. 

Here's a to-scale image, along with Pluto's thoughts on the matter:

And don't you tell me 'oh, but Pluto has moons, too!' Charon is about as big around as your fist, if you happen to be a three-fingered midgit...

 Now that that's settled, let's hear some more about this 'Eris' planetoid; it sounds like THAT might be more of a candidate for planet.

In short: Pluto Sucks. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 5:04 PM ADT

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Mood:  a-ok

Now we can all enjoy a little slice of Springfield.

I bet they got the idea to do this when they discovered that over half of all 7-Eleven store clerks were already named 'Apu'...

Kidding! kidding...

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 6:32 PM ADT

Updated: Monday, 2 July 2007 6:33 PM ADT

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Mood:  caffeinated

How much mileage can I get out of the same decent rendering of my main villain? A bit, as it turns out. In my next chapter he's gonna be caught on candid camera during a bit of a horrific slaughter on a dwarf planet called 'Ceres'...

Contrary to popular thought, the BYDO don't have an actual 'taste' for human blood.

That's just Antithesis's thing... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 10:40 PM ADT

Updated: Sunday, 1 July 2007 10:45 PM ADT

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