Welcome to Microfiction Monday, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.
After several unfortunate incidents, the Dragonlords established a series of sobriety checkpoints along the borderlands.
“A photo that makes you angry or sad,” is today’s prompt. As with yesterday’s prompt, it seems to be asking about not so much the content as the photo itself. So it would not be correct to post an photo of the BP oil flood, or a photo of conservative zealots waving banners of homophobic sentiments, or a photo of my rude neighbors. All those things make me angry and sad in varying proportions.
Instead, here’s a photo that I took with a cheap camera.
This camera was a cheap toy camera of the sort that one might now give to an eight year old as a stocking stuffer. It took color pictures at 800x600px, and could store something like fifty images in its onboard memory. This was powered by a single AAA battery, which would last up to fifteen minutes, if you were lucky. If you weren’t lucky, all your images would evaporate before you could get back to your PC to download them.
So, obviously, once I got a cell phone with an integrated camera, the toy camera went to the back of the junk drawer. It would have stayed there forever, but I stumbled across an article on building $10 infrared goggles. After a bit more research, I discovered that it would be possible to attach this filter to the toy camera by unscrewing its infrared-blocking lens, inserting the $10 filter, and screwing in an infrared-transparent lens. And voila! I had a digital camera with, if not true near-infrared, then a built-in infrared effect. The daytime sky was dark, and the grass was snow-white.
Unfortunately, the short battery lifetime continued to be a nuisance, and in a fit of frustration, I chucked the hacked toy camera into some bushes… belatedly remembering that the lens screwed in to the toy camera belonged to a different camera. I eventually had to pay about $20 to get a new lens.
And that’s why this photo makes me angry.
Day seven of the thirty post challenge bids me to share “a photo that makes you happy.”
What’s that supposed to mean? I mean, I know what happy means. Well… let’s just make sure, shall we?
Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. A variety of philosophical, religious, psychological and biological approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources. — Wikipedia
Hmm, tall order, especially since the way that the challenge is phrased means that the photo itself must make me happy. It does not say to share “a photo of something that makes you happy.” Therefore, I can not simply post a picture of a huge pile of chocolate and call it a day.
Well, it just so happens that I recently took a photo that I am happy with. It’s a photo of a light fixture. The light fixture does not make me happy. I’d say I’m rather indifferent toward it. However, I’m happy with the resulting photo, especially since it was taken with a rather unimpressive phone camera.
“Day six,” it says, “Whatever tickles your fancy.” Today, I fancy a bit of a giggle.
Day five bids me to share my favorite quote. I am partial to the following.
“Choose any two from fast, cheap, or good.”
The only problem is that this is really more of a saying than an attributable quote, even though it’s really quite true. If you need something fast and good, then don’t skip on the cost, and bring in professionals if needed. If you need something cheap and good, it’ll probably take a while. And anything that is both fast and cheap can’t possibly be very good.
But if I must quote somebody, I’ll quote a character that had many quoteworthy lines, G’Kar from Babylon 5. I can clearly remember him saying this:
“There are things in the universe which will never be adequately explained, or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth.”
A truth I was just confronted with is that I’ve been misremembering this quote all these years. It is in fact a confusion of two completely different scenes. In the first scene. G’Kar has been asked about a mysterious alien ship that appeared in orbit above an ancient and ruined world. He points to an ant, and says:
I have just picked it up on the tip of my glove. If I put it down again and it asks another ant, “What was that?”, how would it explain? There are things in the universe billions of years older than either of our races. They are vast, timeless. And if they are aware of us at all, it is as little more than ants…and we have as much chance of communicating with them as an ant has with us. We know. We’ve tried. And we’ve learned we can either stay out from underfoot, or be stepped on.
And the other half of the frankenquote is on the origin of Swedish Meatballs. G’Kar welcomes Narn starship captain Na’Kal aboard the space station with a Narn-style meal:
Na’Kal: Breen! You’ve managed to import breen from Homeworld! How?
G’Kar: It isn’t actually breen.
Na’Kal: The smell… the taste!
G’Kar: It’s an Earth food. They are called Swedish Meatballs. It’s a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish Meatballs. I suspect it’s one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth.
Ah, Babylon 5. To fans, it was revolutionary. A space opera with not just continuity, but a story arc, and not just an improvised arc, but an arc that was plotted out since day one. The writing was overseen by the show’s creator and so the characters remained consistent (but not static), and also there were very few (if any) cases of writers painting themselves into corners and resorting to storytelling tricks to free themselves.
As for the special effects, while they may now look cheap by today’s standards, the computer-generated models had many advantages over the miniatures traditionally used. They did not have to be painstakingly fabricated, painted, and decorated with hundreds of tiny light bulbs or fiber-optic cables. More importantly, a group of computer-generated models could move in multiple directions, unlike physical models, which had to move in parallel.
The makeup used on aliens such as the Narn and the Drazi looked really great, unlike other contemporary shows, which often called a rumpled browline a sufficiently alien appearance. It wasn’t until Farscape that I’d seen better alien makeup on a TV series. (And rarely since Farscape, though Doctor Who has occasionally had its moments.)
Welcome to Microfiction Monday, where an image paints 140 characters, or even fewer.
“The Brothers scanned the ancient tomes for the information they knew would help Buffy defeat the latest Vampire menace.”
Day Four’s prompt is, “What is your favorite book?” Finally, an easy one!
My favorite book is none other than The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. Yes, it’s not what you’d call Hard SF, but perhaps a social commentary on the late Seventies and early Eighties. But theme and topic are not why I am a fan of this book. No, what I find most enjoyable is the storytelling style combined with a particular sort of humor, both absurdist and satirical.
The book has been adapted to film (which wasn’t bad) and television (which I’ve never seen). It was originally adapted from a radio serial, to which I once had the pleasure of listening. If you’re a fan of the book, you’ll probably also enjoy the original radio serial. According to Wikipedia, there have also been new radio installments released in the past few years, so out of curiosity I’ll probably eventually check those out, myself.
Today, I am meant to name my favorite television show. I assume that we are limiting ourselves to currently running shows. Otherwise this post will be a heaving sea of phrases such as “unfairly canceled,” “but in its day the show was…,” and of course, “I remember it being much cooler.”
But if we are to talk about currently running shows, then I will have to say that at this point there is only one show that I consistently look forward to each week (and have looked forward to the season opening of the show since January) and you may well guess what it is without my telling you.
Yes, Doctor Who. It may be nothing but Science Fiction themed escapism, but fortunately, that’s exactly what I want to see. The new season is qualitatively different from the previous, though. The filming style, the pace and style of storytelling, and of course the personality of the Doctor have all changed. But, in my opinion, it’s still far from being the grim and supposedly character focused drama that is so in vogue to make these days. And yet, it somehow manages to avoid becoming a Monster of the Week show where Status Quo is God. Of course, I’m only four or five episodes in. All that could still change. We’ll see…
Today, I am meant to share my favorite movie. I’d have thought that this question would be a bit easier to answer than yesterday’s. If nothing else, I could log in to Netflix and ask them what they think my favorite movie is. And as it happens, doing so narrows things down a bit, as I’ve only granted a full five-star rating to 14 of 245 movies rated. That’s what, five percent? So it’s about what you’d expect to see on a true bell-curve distribution. (Assuming, of course, that I wasn’t semi-consciously creating a bell-curve distribution.)
But of those fourteen, I can’t bring myself to pick just one as the pinnacle of cinematic evolution. I like each in its own way. I mean, how can you compare District 9 to Shaun of the Dead? That’s rather like comparing two different species of roundish, warm-hued fruits that grow on trees. How do you compare Moon to Office Space, Young Frankenstein to V for Vendetta, or WALL-E to The Iron Giant? Okay, the last two are close enough in theme and genre that I actually could choose between them… but… I’d really prefer not to have to.
At least Netflix can tell me what my least favorite movie was.
Battlefield Earth.
The blog challenge opens by dragging out that hoary old question, “What’s your favorite song?” To me, this question is to be dreaded almost as much as its shriveled, senile, and incontinent parent, “So, what kind of music do you like?”
These questions are invariably the first volleys of any awkward getting-to-know-you conversation. Certainly, knowing what sort of music one listens to can allow the asker to make sweeping generalizations about an individual. You like Lady Gaga? Jimmy Buffet? Anthrax? Mozart? Now I’ve got you pegged.
Unfortunately, being the type of person to make things difficult, my answer is usually, “Oh, I’m musically eclectic.” Which leaves the asker confused, discouraged, and/or under the impression that he/she/it is obligated to enquire further. To which I reply, “Music is like any other art. I may not know it, but I know what I like.”
If, by this point, the interviewer hasn’t already changed the subject, the question then becomes a frustrated demand for an example. And I almost inevitably draw a blank or mention the last thing I remember listening to. This is sometimes obscure enough that the asker has no idea what I’m talking about. Other times, I may not remember the title or the band, and try to explain it— It’s by that chick with the hair and goes boop boop beedle doot— and once again, the asker has no idea what I’m talking about.
And you wonder why I’m just sitting here posting aimlessly to the Internet?
Ahem. Anyway, I think I’ll answer today’s question by way of the video attached below. It’s something I’ve posted before. I have no idea who this song is by or what it’s called. But, I can tell you that it got stuck in my head right before I took my last real vacation. So while it may not summarize and represent every facet of my musical taste, it summons fond memories. Oh, and it has robots.
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