World War Z

I think it's very appropriate that, while I was reading World War Z by Max Brooks, the Centers for Disease Control released their How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse report. If you have little to no interest in zombies, and are already tuning out because of the topic for today's blog, I highly suggest you keep reading, because World War Z is not your average zombie invasion story.

Incidental Confrontations

When I was young and impressionable, someone in my family watched at least a few episodes of The X-Files. I can't remember who it would have been; neither of my parents, as far as I understand, were huge fans, and I don't remember if my brothers watched TV much. But at least at some point during my youth, I was exposed to one of the decade's greatest and most popular efforts in modern, out-of-the-box, conspiracy science fiction.

I've always considered myself a fan of weird, strange, or abnormal stories. Maybe I have those few moments of The X-Files to thank for that. When I think of The X-Files, however, I can only think about how that show made me so totally, irrationally, terrified of aliens.

Godwin's Law

 "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

Mike Godwin made this humorous, but true, observation back in 1990. In layman's terms, Godwin's Law suggests that in any conversation over the internet, on any topic, if given enough time, someone will eventually make a comparison to the Nazis or Hitler. As someone who's been using the internet most of her life, and who's watched people communicate on and off-line, I can attest that this is true.

Who hasn't had an argument or even a simple conversation with someone before, and found either themselves or the other party making a reference to Hitler that seemed like a bit of a stretch? Of course any conversation or argument that starts off about the Holocaust will approach a reference to Nazis pretty quickly, but Godwin is attempting to point out here that people tend to bring up Hitler, a cultural 'worst case scenario', much more often then we should.

Because Godwin specifically mentions the internet in his wording, the internet has adopted Godwin's law as a sort of canonical inside joke. People who are familiar with the law will call it out as soon as someone mentions Hitler, claiming that the person who made the reference has 'lost' the debate, and the conversation is over. The law really should apply to all forms of communication, but it is most often mentioned on internet chat groups.

I wanted to make sure everyone else knew about this. Mike Godwin formed this 'law' hoping to get more people to think seriously about the Holocaust, and not just use it as a historic 'yardstick' to measure evil to. Though it is lesser know, Godwin's Law is considered to be a logical fallacy, or bad reasoning, that many people fall victim to. In the future, when considering what comparisons to make in an argument, make sure you think beyond just the knee-jerk reaction.

There are More Things in Heaven and Earth...

On Saturday, a copy of Hamlet came in the mail from our local Netflix distributing warehouse. I'm in charge of maintaining our Netflix queue, so even though I had been wanting to see this particular version, released in 2009 by the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, I had to wait until after my parents had gotten what they'd added to the queue earlier. I planned to watch it that day, but decided to see if my parents wanted to watch it as well, so we didn't end up sitting down to it until 8:00, and I was the only one who didn't nod off at one point. This version was filmed off stage, but the actors performed the piece on-stage for a live audience as well.

My family owns a copy of Hamlet, which I read last summer because I figured it was probably something I should be familiar with. Except for that reading I did on my own, I had little experience with Hamlet; I've never seen it acted before, and I had a vague idea about a scene with a mother and son and a ghost. So one of the reasons I decided to add this to our queue was to be better acquainted with the story.

I'm not going lie, though. The real major reason I wanted to watch this version of Hamlet was because I knew David Tennant was playing the title role. I (along with most of the world, I bet) am only familiar with Tennant as the ever-popular Tenth Doctor, the role he held for four years on Doctor Who, and I wanted to see what else he could do as an actor. By renting this movie, I figured I could hit two birds with one stone.

David Tennant as Hamlet in the Gravedigger scene, with the skull of Yorick.

Even if Tennant wasn't playing Hamlet, however, I think this was a superb version to decide to watch. It was done in a modern style, with modern dress and sets that didn't detract from the Shakespearean theme at all, I thought, and if anything seemed to drive the emotion deeper. The camera-work was particularly interesting; they used some security camera feed to highlight the invisibility of the ghost, and there were limited camera angles, making each scene look almost on-stage but without giving the impression of a limited view. The whole movie had a stylized taste to it that drew me, at least, into the story.

I was impressed, however, by Tennant's talent, as shown off in this version of Hamlet. He is able to appear in genuine pain, and express that pain across to the audience in a way that almost makes the dialogue and soliloquy unnecessary. I recognized that ability from certain episodes of Doctor Who, but it was powerful to see interpreted in Hamlet. (I also noticed that the director made good use of Tennant's ability to act completely mental on-camera, as seen in every episode of Doctor Who, and when Hamlet starts acting crazy.)

A month or so ago, I watched a version of Macbeth that I only later realized was also done by the Royal Shakespeare Company as well. Both Macbeth and Hamlet starred Patrick Stewart in a major role (Macbeth and Hamlet's Uncle Claudius), and they were both done in a Modernized style. Both, I felt, were emotionally powerful, and if this is the quality of work the Royal Shakespeare Company puts out, I can understand why they're still world-renown as a standard in theater production. Since I can't actually see their stage performances, I'll be looking forward to more filmed productions in the future.

Weekdays

The MacCallum Theater is hosting a musical this weekend called Anything Goes, preformed by the students at the local college. My brother is working as their stage manager, so we decided to go on tonight; we'd originally been planning to go yesterday, opening night, but my dad wouldn't have been able to make it. Since Thursday was unexpectedly open, my mom decided that she and I would go see Thor (I'll probably write a review for that later). I realized that morning, as we were making plans, that seeing Thor was extremely appropriate, seeing at is was, after all, the day of the week named after that particular god of thunder

The Norse god that particular comic book hero is based on.

My oldest brother, when I was younger and he still living with us, would always call Wednesday "Woden's Day" and Thursday "Thor's Day," explaining that those days were originally called that. I always thought that sounded silly, but as I got older I got in the habit of saying "Woden's Day" and "Thor's Day" to myself as well.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I finished this book last weekend, but I've been waiting to post this review until I had a bit more time to chew on it. Cormac McCarthy is an American Novelist and playwright who's become pretty well known after writing Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and No Country for Old Men. The Road is his latest work, a post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son traveling through an ashen, burnt-out world, trying to survive. It's very powerful, strikingly written, and at the end, I really felt like I had missed something major.

My experiences reading this wonderful novel are a prime example of 'the right time, the right place'. Immediately before reading The Road, I had been emotionally drained by another story, which was also pretty grim (tho' it had a cathartic ending. I'll wait to review that until later). I already had quite a few books on my 'to-read' shelf, however, and had promised myself to read The Road next, so even though I didn't want to start another dark story so soon afterward, I made myself do it.

TV Pilot Season

Over the next couple of weeks, TV executives will be whittling hundreds of potential show pilots down to the few hours of new material that'll be premiering next fall. The task is a bit daunting, seeing as every TV producer and his brother will try their hardest, annually, to air a new television program.

I don't want to give the impression that I care too much, because honestly, I don't really plan on watching any of the new pilots next fall. Who has time to watch all those new shows? Even if only there are only three interesting new shows starting in the fall, that'll be three hours every week that I have to devote to sitting down in front of the television and investing in a set of characters. I have school, homework, and [hopefully, by then] a job to think about.

However, TV Pilot Season is exciting. It's new hope for all the people who make their money on this extremely popular medium of story-telling (I don't really count game shows or reality shows as quality TV in the least). Plus, any show that airs a full season and then gets canceled is fodder for my free time in the summer or later years (I'm already planning to watch The Cape and Running Wilde this summer). So it is important to me that good shows get aired, and not repetitive cop dramas or spin-offs.

Face Stealer

I can't actually find much information about this anywhere, so I'm going to assume that I'm one of a very small group of closet Inadvertent Imitators, specifically when it comes to fictional characters. Of course there are thousands of people who dress up as their favorite characters for cosplay conventions and the like, and may even adopt their favorite character's tenant or sayings, but what I'm talking about is accidental. It only happens when I spend a good deal of time around a certain character (be it a TV show, a movie series, or whatever).

A good example is Doctor Who. I started watching the revived seasons just this past summer in hopes of catching up to the new season. That meant I was speeding through the show, watching anywhere from one to six episodes a day if I had nothing else to do, and hardly taking breaks in between to watch other shows or movies. For four days (The time it took me to speed through the first two seasons), I watched nothing but Doctor Who in my free time. By then, I was thinking in an almost pure British accent. It was almost startling to talk and find myself speaking proper American. I had to force myself to not pretend to be British in my head, and I decided to take a week break to watch Dollhouse to get my head back in order.

This doesn't only happen to me with accents, though. After a week of watching Dollhouse, I found myself walking around the house like one of the characters in their Tabula Rasa state (blankly). After speeding through Firefly, I sauntered like the main protagonist and forced myself not to use their Chinese (though I allow myself the say "shiny" whenever appropriate). I remember coming home from seeing Cyrano de Bergerac and having mom chide me for trying to talk just like he does, though I hadn't realized I'd been doing it.

I think this stems from the childhood act of playing as characters in stories. As if, as an adult, I haven't broken this habit, but instead evolved it to fit my new lifestyle. I'm not sure about this, though; I honestly don't remember pretending, as a child, to be my favorite characters. The only reason I would have adopted the habit growing older would be to help my writing. I know that, while reading a book, I'll copy character's expressions as described in order to help me 'see' the character better. It's easier to imagine a character's grimace if I practice it on myself.

I've found one other blogger who mentioned doing this, so I know I'm not the only one. But it's definitely a goo biological reminder not to get too focused on a single story. As great as a certain TV show might be, once I start inadvertently imitating the characters, I know I've been watching too much.

It's Magic!

I've long been fascinated with science, even if I haven't shown much interest in intense study in the field(s). Being a layman, I'm particularly interested in fields of new study, such as microbiology, astronomy, and Quantum Mechanics. Scientists are breaking grounds in these areas of study that could only have been speculated about some time ago. In my opinion, Scientific discovery is like magic.

Magic, for thousands of years, has been a supernatural power, a fictional or mythical art of special people doing impossible things. But a lot of the things described in old legends are now possible. We can open doors and 'magic tomes' by speaking to them, we can watch moving pictures in our local newspapers, we can create and hold fires in the palms of our hands - we can even fill a room with light just by clapping.

I think I remember those commercials mentioning magic explicitly.

Golden Week

In Japan, around this time of year, four major national holidays fall within a seven-day period of time known as Golden Week. The entire week, if my research is correct, became in itself a holiday and break time.

I have to confess - whenever I type "Golden" I accidentally add an extra 'e' and inadvertently spell out "Goldeen," the pokemon.

Weekends permitting (Which they kind of aren't, this year), Golden week starts on April 29th with Showa day. April 29th was originally Emperor Showa's birthday, from December 25th, 1926, to his death in 1989. After his death, the holiday was changed to 'Greenery Day', a Japanese Earth Day, in honor of the previous emperor's love of nature. I'm not too familiar with Japanese politics, so I'm not sure how he was viewed as a person, though I know he was emperor during the second world war, and that he met with many foreign leaders, including the Queen and President Gerald Ford.

Greenery Day was then moved to May 4th sometime around 2005-2007 (I guess the law was passed in 2005, but didn't take affect until 2007). April 29th became Showa Day, a day of remembrance.

May 3rd has been Constitution Memorial Day since the Japanese Constitution was established in 1947. I'm not sure why it's "Constitution Memorial" and not just "Constitution" day (the 'memorial' makes it sounds like they're remembering an old constitution'), but perhaps that's just a nuance of the Japanese language.

Children's Day is celebrated by hanging Carp-shaped wind socks for each child.

 May 5th is Boys Day, or in recent years Children's Day. It's a very old holiday, going back to around 600 A.D., and traditionally meant to celebrate the family's boys and bless them with strength and courage and what-not. Girls Day, more often know as the Doll Festival, was celebrated March 3rd, on the other hand. In recent years, Boys Day has grown to include Girls as well, and is now a family Children's holiday.

Because the Japanese are smart and wise, any day that falls between two holidays is also declared a holiday. May 4th, in that case, right between Constitution Memorial Day and Children's Day, was also a vacation day. With the emperor's birthday just earlier in the week, the ingenious Japanese Board of People who Decide Things decided to make the whole week a celebration. Now May 4th is a real holiday, Greenery day, and there are four official holidays for Golden Week.

Golden Week, from what I understand, has always been a bit celebration, so I hope the Japanese people are still able to celebrate this year, even with the recent tragedies. Our hearts are with you!