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Writing group meeting

Posted on by Patrick

So tonight I went to the sec­ond Group Voice meet­ing. Group Voice is a local writ­ers’ group, new­ly-formed. Last meet­ing, two weeks ago, we pret­ty much just intro­duced ourselves.

This time we all brought some­thing to read to the group — I brought the first cou­ple sec­tions of my cur­rent WiP, Once I was you — and we went around the room, each read­ing, and receiv­ing com­ments. It was quite a diverse group — we had a sto­ry from the POV of a fly, three short poems, a slice of fic­tion­al­ized auto­bi­og­ra­phy, some high fan­ta­sy, my SF bit, a humourous piece about what is sure­ly the best beard evar, and a bit of zom­bie lit (though he chose to call the vil­lains “were­wolves”, main­ly because the first-per­son pro­tag­o­nist felt that “zom­bies are over­done lately”).

I was impressed. There are some very good writ­ers in this town.

At the end of the meet­ing, we all took a piece of paper and wrote down a sto­ry prompt. I wrote Time-trav­el­ling Nazi sol­diers see the results of WWII. Then we all put our prompts into a buck­et, and drew out ran­dom ones. For the next meet­ing, in two weeks’ time, I have to write a sto­ry based on the fol­low­ing prompt:

Romance between a worm and a giraffe.

Can’t wait.

#

On a slight­ly more seri­ous note: This has real­ly got­ten me inter­est­ed in my project again. Once I was you will like­ly be a nov­el-length project; I have a lit­tle shy of 14,000 words writ­ten so far. I’m try­ing to come up with a thumb­nail of the sto­ry that does­n’t sound insane. So far I have: A wom­an’s ghost from the present day gets involved in a war, in 750,000,000 AD, against the enti­ties that made our Uni­verse, and are now done with it.

That’s not the whole sto­ry, of course. Most of the terms in there need a foot­note that sim­ply says “Sort of”. She’s sort of a ghost. It’s kind of a war. The con­flict is more or less against the Mak­ers. It’s more or less set in 750,000,000 AD. And so forth.

Inter­est­ed? I hope so, because once this post is done, I’ll be writ­ing more in the sto­ry. If you want to see a snip­pet, let me know. You know how to reach me.

(If you don’t — if you’re new here — feel free to leave a com­ment. That’s one way to reach me.)

Next time: Some pho­tos — hope­ful­ly not of knee-deep snow.

Kata weekend in Gimli

Posted on by Patrick

This past week­end went like this:

Fri­day: Work, then pack, then go see Moon.

Sat­ur­day: Get up at some unholy hour, before the sun even deigns to rise, go pick up my friend and fel­low judo­ka X, and then hit the road for Gim­li. The town’s named for Odin’s shin­ing hall, and it’s a three-hour dri­ve from my house. X snoozed in the car, and I alter­nat­ed between lis­ten­ing to 90s on 9 and Lithi­um on the satel­lite radio.

We arrived in Gim­li short­ly before the instruc­tor did, so that was good. We got checked in at the hotel, got changed into our heavy cot­ton pants and can­vas jack­ets, and went down to the sem­i­nar room, where they’d already laid out the judo mats. Quick stretch, and a bow-in, and then we cov­ered nage-no-kata for two hours.

Judo kata, for those not famil­iar with the idea, are essen­tial­ly chore­o­graphed, pre-arranged demon­stra­tions of a set of tech­niques. Nage-no-kata means “forms of throw­ing”, and it is a brief sur­vey of some of the tech­niques you would use to take a per­son from a stand­ing posi­tion and put them ever so gen­tly into a more hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion. There are five sets of three throws each, all demon­strat­ed using both the right- and the left-hand­ed tech­niques. First you demon­strate hand tech­niques, then a set of hip throws, foot tech­niques, and final­ly back and side sac­ri­fice throws. For my brown belt, and then for my first-degree black belt, I need­ed to know the first three sets. For my next belt, nidan, I will need to know the entire nage-no-kata. So this was a good learn­ing expe­ri­ence for me.

We broke for lunch at about noon. Lunch was deli­cious: a make-your-own sand­wich bar, with assort­ed raw veg­eta­bles and the like. The room where we ate, Meet­ing Room C, looks out over the beach on Lake Win­nipeg. If I recall cor­rect­ly, Lake Win­nipeg is only out­classed by the Great Lakes and Great Slave Lake for the title of largest lake on the con­ti­nent. This week­end it was pret­ty chop­py — high winds from the north drove waves onto shore. One of the instruc­tors, who comes to Gim­li fair­ly fre­quent­ly, remarked that there’s usu­al­ly about anoth­er hun­dred feet of beach in the summer.

After lunch we returned to the mats for katame-no-kata, the forms of grap­pling. Judo involves a fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant ground game, and this kata works through fif­teen of the things you can do on the ground: five types of hold-down, five stran­gles, and five joint locks. X and I had nev­er done katame-no-kata before, but we both took to it quite read­i­ly. One of the instruc­tors asked us how often we’d done this kata before. When I said “Nev­er,” his eyes got a lit­tle big, and he nod­ded. I took it as a compliment.

Katame-no-kata, which is required for your third-degree black belt, or san­dan, involves a lot — a lot — of kneel­ing. I was glad that, fore­warned, I had pur­chased knee pads. X, who did­n’t have knee pads, end­ed up going out and buy­ing some lin­i­ment. (Horse lin­i­ment, but that’s a sto­ry for anoth­er day.)

After a cou­ple hours of ground­work, we broke for the day. I went for a swim in the pool, then to sup­per — a roast-beef buf­fet, with all the trim­mings. Then X and I hit the hos­pi­tal­i­ty suite for a while, wait­ing for 10 PM, when the kids would get kicked out of the pool. From 10 till 11, we swam, or hung out in the hot tub, or (briefly) baked in the sauna.

Sun­day was more kata — we recon­vened at 10 AM, after a hearty break­fast, to go over nage-no-kata and katame-no-kata again. Every­one was mov­ing a lit­tle slow­er, stiff from the pre­vi­ous day’s work­out. Right around noon we fin­ished up, and helped load the mats into a truck.

Then we got a lit­tle lost, try­ing to find the high­way from Gim­li back down to Win­nipeg — I end­ed up going down #9, when I want­ed high­way #8 — and that cost us about twen­ty min­utes. Once we were back on track, X fell asleep. We had some lunch in Head­in­g­ley, then point­ed the car west and were back home in a cou­ple hours.

And that, ladies and gents, was that.

Next time: The Writ­ers’ Group meeting

Movie review: Moon

Posted on by Patrick

About an hour ago, the cred­its rolled on Moon. I went into the film know­ing very lit­tle: the only trail­er I’d seen fea­tured Sam Rock­well look­ing disheveled, and had Kevin Spacey as a HAL-style AI that com­mu­ni­cat­ed via a com­bi­na­tion of even, sooth­ing tones, and smi­ley faces.

I won’t post any spoil­ers here, but suf­fice to say that I quite liked the film. It had echoes of 2001: a space odyssey, Blade Run­ner, Gat­ta­ca, and Alien. All of those films are includ­ed in what I con­sid­er the canon of excel­lent sci­ence fic­tion, which should tell you some­thing about how thor­ough­ly I enjoyed Moon.

Sam Rock­well plays Sam Bell, com­ing into the tail end of his three-year solo stint as the human over­seer at a min­ing sta­tion on the moon’s far side. He keeps tabs on the unmanned rovers that comb the sur­face of the moon for He3, the fuel of the future.

Three years is a long time to be alone, and Sam’s look­ing for­ward to head­ing home to his lov­ing wife and young daugh­ter. He’s due — per­haps over­due — for a fur­lough. He might be going just a lit­tle tee­ny bit crazy. At the very least, he’s start­ed to see things, peo­ple, that can’t real­ly be there…

The movie explores lone­li­ness, ill­ness, loss and sor­row, anger, and evil. But every­thing’s done with a light touch. Some things are only hint­ed at, leav­ing the audi­ence to fill in the gaps, trust­ing that the audi­ence mem­bers are smart enough. Even the end­ing is sneaky: you have only a cou­ple sec­onds’ knowl­edge that the dénoue­ment has come, and then the cred­its are already rolling.

Moon is a refresh­ing SF film, one that encour­ages you to use your brain, to think around the cor­ners. It requires that you watch the film with your mind in gear, instead of in neu­tral. It’s a refresh­ing change.

Moon
…on IMDB
…on Rot­ten Tomatoes
…where I saw it

Next time (prob­a­bly): » Kata at the shore

13 hours late

Posted on by Patrick

13 things that are get­tin’ old

  1. Bald heads with full beards
  2. Rain in the sum­mer of aught-nine
  3. Dodge Cal­ibers
  4. Not win­ning the lottery
  5. Bina­ry log­ic out­side of computers
  6. Text-mes­sag­ing short­hand Eng­lish any­where but in a text message
  7. Cur­mud­geon­ly lists
  8. 3000 extra peo­ple in my way
  9. Quentin Taran­ti­no’s insis­tence on not editing
  10. Fire­fox updates
  11. Inter­net mes­sage boards
  12. Iron­ic quotemarks
  13. Microsoft Front­Page

Les Claypool @ Winnipeg

Posted on by Patrick

For about–let’s see, 2009–1990, car­ry the 1, uh–almost twen­ty years I’ve been a fan of Primus and of their mod­er­ate­ly mad, fre­net­ic, fan­tas­ti­cal­ly tal­ent­ed bassist/lead singer, Les Clay­pool. I’d always lament­ed the fact that any­time Primus or Les toured North Amer­i­ca, the clos­est they got was either Toron­to or Van­cou­ver, both of which were a lit­tle out of my price range.

So when I heard that Clay­pool was going to hit Win­nipeg on his new tour, my first ques­tion was, “Where do I get tick­ets?” (Answer: online.)

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Les Clay­pool @ Win­nipeg” →

5k

Posted on by Patrick

We did a 5 kilo­me­tre run today. We did it in 42 min­utes and 22 sec­onds. Nei­ther one of us stopped to walk, which was my per­son­al goal.

Woohoo!