billy bad breaks

Posted on By Wil

This post has nothing to do with its title, but after staring at this for 20 minutes trying to come up with one, I just grabbed the first song title I could find. Thanks, The Damned. Once again, you come through when I need you.

We've had a drought in Southern California for so long now, even a little rain is cause for our local news to go apeshit with STORMWATCH!!11!!1 coverage. This week, though, we've had serious storms that have produced tornadoes, mudslides, flooding, and all sorts of things that every other part of the country that actually has weather can just shrug off.

I've spent even more time than usual inside writing this week as a result of the cold and wet weather, and I've made some good progress on a few projects including a short work of fiction and Memories of the Future, Volume Two.

Working on Memories Volume 2 has been a lot of fun, even though there aren't as many atrocious episodes in the back half of the first season. The stronger episodes are more enjoyable to watch, of course, but it's the really lousy ones that are the most fun to recap and make fun of. (Too Short A Season was a fucking goldmine, but Coming Of Age was a real challenge because – even though it's all Wesley, all the time – it's really good.)

Anyway, while working on Arsenal of Freedom this week (which starts out strong and has some great character moments for Geordi, but doesn't quite fulfill its promise), I wrote some Picard/Beverly slashfic* as part of a joke. I suppose I could have taken some anti-nausea meds and gone searching for some existing work to copy and paste, but I thought it would be funnier if I actually wrote it myself. You'll have to wait for the release (or maybe even the relevant Futurecast) to experience it, but I thought some of you may want to know that I got all of 41 words before I made myself throw up in my mouth and had to stop.

I hope the sacrifices I make for comedy are appreciated, he said, in his best passive/aggressive grandmother tone.

Well, it's raining like crazy again and there's a clown in the storm drain, so I'd better get back to work. Skin of Evil isn't going to snark all over itself, you know.

* It has been brought to my attention that "slashfic" is the term used to describe fanfiction where two dudes get all teabaggy and swordfighty whatnot. I have always been under the impression that any fanfic involving sexytime was called "slash" or some derivative thereof, regardless of the genders or alien races involved. Upon discovering that I have been incorrect about the finer points of this particular world for my entire life … I'm really okay with that.

From the Vault: a design flaw in the otherwise perfect basket

Posted on By Wil

Last night, I stood in front of the open refrigerator and thought to myself, "You know what would go good with this vegetarian chili? That Oaked Arrogant Bastard!"

I reached for it, applying my -3 DEX modifier, like you do. A minute later sent the following text message to Anne:

"Hey, we're out of beer. Could you pick up some Oaked AB on the way home? Also, totally unrelated to this, where's the mop?"

While I waited for her reply, I was reminded of this post I wrote three years ago:

We have a new refrigerator. It's energy efficient, can hold an entire horse and a stick of butter, and is generally one of the more awesome "grown up" purchases Anne and I have made since we got married seven years ago.

In addition to the awesome Futurama magnets that adorn its doors, it comes with a nifty little basket thingy which slides in and out underneath one of the shelves, perfect for holding bottles and cans.

We here in Chez Wheaton don't drink much of anything that comes out of a can (the notable exception being Guinness) but I drink plenty of things that come out of a bottle, like Stone Pale Ale and Izze soda, for example.

A few months ago, I uncovered a design flaw in the otherwise perfect basket: the wires spread out a little (okay, a lot) more easily than you'd expect from something intended to hold bottles in their least entropic state. If you have a heavy bottle (like a wine bottle, for example) on the same rack as a lighter bottle (like a Newcastle, for instance) and you look at them funny, the heavy bottle will create enough pressure to spread the wires and launch the lighter bottle onto the floor, where it will explode.

This afternoon, while I was trying to pull out a bottle of Tejava (99 cents at Trader Joe's) to enjoy a cool glass of tea, a bottle of clementine Izzie soda looked up at me, shouted, "Hooray! I'm free!" It then launched itself onto the floor, where it landed in a sticky explosion of horrible, entropic freedom.

I was, of course, standing barefoot in the kitchen at the time, so I got to tip toe through a spreading slick of soda and shards of broken glass that were as pointy and deadly as they were invisible on the floor while I made my way to the paper towels.

By some miracle, I didn't cut the everlivingshit out of my feet, and only got stuck a couple of times, and by the time Anne and Nolan got home, I was nearly done cleaning it up.

"What happened?" Anne said.

"There were . . . errors," I said.

She gave me a blank look. Before I could explain the inside joke to her, Nolan said, "What did you do?"

"I was trying to get some iced tea, and the Izze decided to make a break for it."

I held up a handful of dripping paper towels.

"It succeeded."

Nolan dropped to his knees and looked skyward. "Noooooooo!" He said, while shaking his fists at an imaginary Statue of Liberty.

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry. But there's more, so you can put them in there when I'm done."

Anne walked over to the pantry to get some replacement bottles.

"Would you like me to leave some of this here, as a warning to the new bottles?" I asked.

I got The Look.

I finished cleaning up.

moves by just like a paper boat

Posted on By Wil

It's been raining pretty steadily, very heavy at times, since yesterday afternoon. The weather service says we should expect this to continue for at least a week, but it could go on for up to two weeks.

I mention this because it hardly ever happens here, and if people weren't truly in danger from mudslides in the burn areas (including my parents, their entire neighborhood, and a lot of my friends) it would be incredibly amusing to watch the local media go apeshit on STORMWATCH!!1!1, upgrading 4 inches of water in a street to a torrential river of death and destruction.

Seriously. I am not making that up. I saw it on the news earlier this afternoon.

For about thirty minutes this morning, though, a bunch of kids from down the street didn't think of the rain as a destructive force, as much as a way to propel their paper boats downstream, while they "accidentally" stepped and jumped into the water.

While I watched them play, I remembered building and teaching my boys how to build little paper boats for days just like this one, stomping through puddles long after I was old enough to know better (like into my 20s), and dancing in the rain with my wife, just because she asked me to.

The storm seems to have slowed down for a minute in the time it's taken me to write this post. The sun is trying to push through the clouds, and if I look out the window, I can see patches of bright blue appearing to race across the sky toward the mountains. The water in the street has slowed to a trickle. It's the calm before the next storm, which is supposed to arrive within a couple of hours.

I think I'm going to go make a paper boat, so I'm ready to meet it when it gets here.

Helping Shawn Powers

Posted on By Wil

Shawn Powers, who edits Linux Journal and is a friend to geeks everywhere, lost his house to a fire today. Scalzi says:

Shawn Powers, a friend of Whatever and also a frequent commenter here, has had a very bad day: His house has burned up. The good news is Shawn, his wife and children are safe; unfortunately their pets were victims of the fire.

Friends and co-workers have set up a place for other friends and concerned folks to chip in to help Shawn and his family get through this really terrible moment in their lives: It’s here. If you have a bit to spare, I’d appreciate you thinking about sparing it. There are also more details about today’s events at the link.

Thanks, and feel free to spread the word.

This is me spreading the word. I've never met Shawn in person, but we've traded lengthy e-mails and he's a really good guy. There's a whole lot of you reading this, so if even a fraction of you throw some change – seriously, just a buck – in his direction, it'll all add up and really help out a lot. At the very least, please take a moment to spare a thought for Shawn and his family.

a decidedly unglamorous urban scene

Posted on By Wil

I was going south on Highland, stopped six or so cars behind the light on Hollywood, when I took this picture yesterday afternoon. 

IMG00572 

You can't see it, because it's just out of the frame on the left, but if you were to face north and go past that bar, you would an empty storefront that still has a crumbling sign and vague paint outline in the window that once identified it as a record store. I don't know what that giant construction project behind it is, but I suspect it'll be a hotel. Cross the street, and you're in a strip mall, where I saw a transvestite prostitute walking out of a 7-11, whacking a box of Marlboro Lights against the palm of one hand.

It's not a particularly special or unique scene; you could find something like this in any big American city, but I was inspired to take this picture by what you can't see. If you were behind the camera and looked over your right shoulder, all you would be able to see is the giant Hollywood and Highland complex, home of the Kodak theater.

Isn't that weird? Just a few hundred yards is all that separates this decidedly unglamorous, mundane urban scene from the home of the Academy Awards and American Idol. 

…not every facade in Hollywood is built on a studio backlot.