strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Dec 29 02: you didn’t ask
Let the record show: Saturday morning, not long after I’d staggered out of the bedroom and long before we left for the plane, Mom recapped stuff from the day’s headlines at me and before she had gotten any farther than “There’s this religious group from somewhere that says they’ve cloned somebody…” and I shouted “Oh my god! It’s the Raelians!”
Yes, I knew them when. I love the Raelians. They are, as most of you are probably by now aware, a fascinating bunch of weirdos. I’ve been periodically checking up on the Rael website for years. Their aliens-as-angels story for the origins of humanity; their let’s-build-an-embassy-for-our-alien-brethren plan; their better-living-through-science philosophy: I love it all. But my favorite part of Raelianism is this little footnote about how we’ll be a happier, more peaceful race when we get over our sexual hangups and get into free love, baby.
Not that it isn’t necessarily true. But! The thing is! This is the best part! It used to be that if you read far enough into the Rael website, you’d evenually find the pages about coming to their free Raelianism 101 workshops, and then if you went a ways beyond that you’d find the little advisory that if you were coming to a free workshop you should be in good health and oh also please have yourself tested for sexually transmissible diseases first.
Heh. Strangely, this advisory is no longer on the website. It vanished in a site overhaul a couple years back, when they upgraded to a slicker, more professional look.
Makes you wonder, though. Free love and sexless reproduction? An interesting pairing.
Finally: fifty points off to the Rael.org webmaster. Where the hell are the press releases regarding the clone? The site doesn’t mention it at all. Plus your Javascript is buggy and your links to your “about our seminars” videos are outdated. Shame on you.
Dec 25 02: fissionable material
What do you know. Renaissanceguy.com has become available. I’ve been thinking about peeling my work-related stuff away from this site, and “renaissance guy” is the line on my business card, so I think I’ll take the plunge. As with this site, hosting will be courtesy of the fabulous Tiger Technologies.
It feels deeply weird to be the owner of two different domain names. Couldn’t say why; perhaps because it suggests that I’m about to start up a porn empire, or possibly churn out spam messages by the billions. For the record, neither of these are true.
Grand Opening announcements will be made at the appropriate time.
road trip
Here we are in California again. We spent the first couple days with Paul’s younger brother Rob, doing an overnight drive-around-and-taste-wines trip. We drove up the Anderson Valley, visiting a number of small wineries, and stayed overnight in Boonville. Bought ourselves a lovely magnum of bubbly at Roederer. Useful wine fact: sparkling wines age better in magnums—magna?—than they do in the smaller traditional size. Much mellower, richer flavor. Those of you who show up on New Year’s will be able to sample.
The Anderson Valley takes your breath away, it’s so beautiful, and it was a perfect weekend for a drive. The roads wound up and down and around and around, past vineyards we’d never heard of and tiny towns that the twenty-first century has thus far forgotten about. Boonville, the closest thing to an urban center that the AV has to offer, may be small and sleepy but the little hotel has one bang-up kitchen. The AV was also the home of its own local dialect, Boontling, spoken in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Now it’s pretty much a curiosity for linguists, but it used to be a lively local way to talk about taboo subjects in public and to insult out-of-towners to their faces.
The Phillips brothers both snore.
The fog was burning off as we headed south for home on Monday morning, unveiling oaks hung with pale moss and, on the shadier side of the narrow valley, thick stands of redwood forest. Anybody with time to spend in Northern California and a car to drive in is hereby urged to hit the road.
brightly-colored paper
The buildup to Christmas always makes me insane. Have I bought enough yet? Are the gifts all personal and guaranteed to delight and have I left anybody out and can I stop now? Don’t get me wrong. I love to give the gifts, but the selection, the acquisition, the dealing with the crush of manic suburbanites with Coach handbags, reduces me to a whimpering mess in the parking lot.That being said, it’s over now, and the anxiety was wasted. As usual, it came in waves: dinner the night before with Dad, then back to Mom’s for the night, then open presents at Mom’s, then back to Dad’s for breakfast, then dinner at Mom’s…you get the idea. Vast quantities of wine, time to see aunts and uncles and step-siblings, good food…what’s not to like? My sweet sister Rebecca got a big pile of maternity clothes. Paul got sweaters from both of my parents. Becky gave me a Spongebob T-Shirt, which is without question the most aggressively happy article of clothing I’ve ever seen. I think I got a little manic when I put it on. Hard to imagine, but true. We’re all lying around like a bunch of blissed-out elephant seals now, surrounded by scraps of mylar curly ribbon.
Excellent.
happy happy
Oh, right. Rebecca; big pile of maternity clothes. I can talk about this now. I’m going to be an uncle, come June. Bring it on, I say. I’m going to be an Uncle on Wheels. Can’t wait.Dec 19 02: * * * *
Fabulous. Oh my god. It’s great. As the NY Times points out, it’s a film whose major objectives include keeping the trilogy from resolving too quickly. But what a way to keep us occupied: quoting the Times again, it’s “one of the most accomplished holding actions ever.” And wait ‘till you see Gollum. He’s perfect.
More than that I will not say, because I don’t want to spoil the surprises for those who are rushing out to see it this weekend. I’ll post a more detailed review after I see it again. Which will be soon. I assure you.
Dec 16 02: party; party; party; movie; party; dinner
It’s been a busy weekend. Three gatherings yesterday (the swim team, Todd Cooper’s 40th, Sari Pessah’s birthday), followed by a screening of Star Trek: Nemesis, OxyMoron’s holiday gathering, and dinner with Lynne-Paul-Erika.
Whew.
notes on Nemesis
Loved the Trek movie. My memory of Wrath of Khan is vague enough that I can’t say whether or not Trek X is just a remake of Trek II. All I can tell you is that I thought it was really fun. There was lots to like: Scenes on Romulus, with quasi-Imperial-Rome architecture and Groovy Prosthetic Foreheads! A scene-chewing young villain with pouty lips and vaguely ridiculous irridescent body armor! Ron Perlman unrecognizeable under a latex head! Troi actually being useful to the furtherance of the plot! Fabulous ship design! Things blowing up!Downsides? Well, it was not a good movie for the intrepid Crusher Clan. Dr. Beverly gets, like, one big scene—and if you’re paying attention you’ll notice that it contained a Major Scientific Error and she had to re-record her dialogue in ADR. Wesley’s cameo, in which he got to explain what he’d been up to since he nipped off to Dimension X some years back, ended up on the cutting-room floor. Guess we’ll have to wait for the DVD for that one. Oh, and Brent Spiner has a musical number.
Still, it has what is without question the best Scene of Starships Shooting at Each Other I’ve ever seen. I was literally at the edge of my seat. My review? Fun fun fun. It will doubtless pale in comparison to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which we’re seeing on Wednesday. But for now, it’ll do just fine.
story, not allegory
Incidentally, did anybody see Viggo “Aragorn” Mortensen on Charlie Rose the other night? Neither did I. But apparently he wore a “No Blood for Oil” t-shirt that he made himself, and spent much of the interview talking about how upset he was that people were calling LOTR:T2T a compelling piece of pro-war propaganda. And that Tolkien would feel the same. The Times has an article that discusses this further; not a great article, but interesting nonetheless. You may need to register with the site to read it (there’s no charge).Ah, Viggo. Come over to our house and we can talk politics all you like.
Dec 14 02: am I blue?
This morning I finally gave into the idea that perhaps the Games were over. I took off the sparkly blue toenail polish.
Alas.
the concert
Was great. If there is ever a review to link to I’ll provide it. Those of you who failed to make the trip from downtown or England or wherever to see it, you missed out.Dec 12 02: throw up the sash
Well, its 5:11pm Eastern time, which I believe means that I have set a new record for Time Until Bathrobe is Exchanged for Clothing. Spent today putting the finishing touches on my swim team’s photo gallery—which means that tomorrow I think I will get my own up and running. I am so proud.
Those of you itching for Australia photos can start by looking there. Yes, there is a shot of Nikki.
stop typing and shave, already
The reason I have to get up and go is because I have rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert. The Juilliard Choral Union will be performing Vivaldi’s Gloria and Handel’s Coronation Anthems. I am making my debut as a countertenor in the Vivaldi—it’s a small group and the director wanted a ‘countertenor sound’ out of the altos. So I’m singing with them. Should be fun, althouh thinking like an alto as opposed to like a tenor is really tough. One’s place in the chord structure is different; alto lines zig where tenor lines would zag, so my singer’s autopilot is totally useless here. The Handel will be spectacular. I no longer hate Handel unconditionally, although I maintain that it’s unbelievably boring to learn his music. The same sentence over and over for five minutes, followed by the next sentence for five minutes, ad nauseum.Anyway, if anybody’s going to be in NYC tomorrow night, the concert is at Lincoln Center (Alice Tully Hall) and it’s free. Doors open at 7:30 for an 8:00 show.
Dec 11 02: media rare
Yes, I am geeky enough to be counting the days until we go see the new Trek movie. (Which will be on Sunday noonish.) I realize that it could be less than milestone cinema, but I betcha it’ll be fun, and it’s not like it can be any worse than the one Shatner directed where Kirk et al. fight God at the center of the universe. That would be number four, widely accepted to be the low point of the franchise.
I was going to say that nothing could have been worse than that one, but then somebody sent me a link to this review of Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda. Shatner must be so relieved.
Dec 10 02: flurries
A few days a go we had the first snowfall of winter in New York. It fell all day; it piled up on windowsills and cornices and trash cans and scaffolds and the top of the sign at Fat Sal’s Pizza around the corner. The whole city was quiet. I stayed at home—because as you may recall I have noplace else to go—and read a book and watched it come down outside the bedroom window. At the end of the day the railings on the fire escape supported snowdrifts in cross-section: several inches deep and an inch across.
By now it has all turned to grey slush, of course. But it was nice while it lasted. Life inside the apartment has fought to quicken the pace as well. I’ve been wildly productive in the last 48 hours, working on the Never-Ending E-Commerce Project and on Mom & Tony’s Website. And more excitingly, I’ve found a suitable Photo Gallery CGI for this site and for the swim team’s. I’ve got it configured to the point where it works; now I just need to get it to look like the sites that use it. Oh, plus I need to figure out how to make Photoshop do batch file conversions. How hard can it be, right?
Right. At this point, it has become an Unsolved Puzzle, and as such I’ll be bonkers until I get the answer I need. It’ll be up soon.
In the mean time, I can’t recommend highly enough that you read about Moscow Below. Especially to those who have read Neil Gaiman’s fabulous Neverwhere—but this is for real, which makes it even better. Article courtesy of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, of all things, but don’t let that stop you. Deeply, deeply cool.