Continuing the QoS and Star Trek Rant...

Ok, to finish with a few thoughts:

What really bothers me about the new Star Trek movie is how airbrushed it is, as shown by this example. It's not dirty enough, and these boys look like they're about 19. Quinto doesn't look only 2 years younger than me. He's too smooth.

I've really been thinking how my love for Spock got me into that godawful marriage. I thought I found cool, beautiful, and brilliant, but I found hateful and abusive instead. However, this is certainly not to imply that I believe Spock to be abusive. That was just the emotional thing on the show that made him distant. The coolness was real, not manufactured. That, and my ex is a violent douchebag. And Spock/Leonard actually has a nice ass. Not so much the case with my ex...

Oh, and whatever SciFi Winona Ryder has ever been in has SUCKED. Fantasy she's good with. But she's wearing a kryptonite strap-on dildo for sci-fi, and this shit's gonna hurt.

We'll have to see.

OK, so the Bond movie... Bad ass! Daniel Craig is officially my favorite Bond! The Jack White/Alicia Keys song was ok, and rocking. The villain could have been stronger, but I thought the plot was excellent. I get the feeling they're gearing up for something pretty nuts for the next film. The film was action-packed, and I'm trying to remember when I've seen a better posse walk - especially since Bond has no posse! And I like the depth that this new Bond has. He's not a "fuck 'em all, and let M sort 'em out" kind of Bond. Yeah, he gets busy. He's Bond. But it wasn't flashy or gratuitous. It wasn't like Roger Moore who schkeezed on every skirt that passed.

I love Judi Dench as M even more now. She is made of iron. I wanna bet that plucky and awesome, and she's got a few years on me. I'd trade!

Just once, though, I'd love it if they got a Bond girl who wasn't a size 4 or smaller. Just once. Juice is where it's at, yo! Bring the jiggle!

On Daniel Craig, I am continually startled at how he moves with speed and grace AND strength. I'm not into blondes, but DAMN! Just Damn!

Go on and see it kiddies! :D

In which I rant about the new Star Trek trailer and gush over Quantum of Solace...

Ok, so it worked out where Gabriel and I got to see Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond film last night at midnight. I was pumped about the trailers, too, since the new trailers for both Watchmen and Star Trek were to be included also.

The trailer for Watchmen wasn't up. Goddammit. I'm reserving judgement on what I perceive to be an unnecessary sin of Hollywood, but I accept that it is unstoppable. So I want to see the trailer. Is that too much to ask, you AMC fuckers??? Word to the wise: if there is a highly anticipated movie, and the studios release that its trailer is to be put before a certain film, PUT IT THERE! Assholes. A lot of fans were expecting to see this trailer. I am perturbed that I did not get to.

New movie about Nazis... I was watching amazing Brit actor after amazing Brit actor crawl across the screen. My interest was piqued. And then Tom Cruise, er, cruised onscreen, and I got the feminine equivalent of dickshrivel. He's a wonderful actor, yes. Why he can't bother to have the same accent as anyone else in the film, I don't know. But he's gone too weird. I have a hard time watching him, and the campy-looking eye patch in the flick. It's called Valkyrie, by the way. It reminded me of other stuff that was fantastic once you scraped the turd off the top and ignored its existence.

There was a new Adam Sandler film that I won't be seeing.

But the new Star Trek trailer was first. It's a reboot of the Original Trek from the sixties. As someone who abhors the constant retconning in comics (where the writers decide to start over and pretend that a lot of history just doesn't exist so that they can skip the whole creativity part), I reject the idea.

J.J. Abrams touches something and it turns to gold, usually, so we'll see. If this flick ends up being successful, I imagine we'll be subjected to more of them with random new directors. I shudder at the thought of Michael Bay or Jonathan Frakes at the helm.

The writers have written for Alias (which I never watched), but also committed the sin of writing the new Transformers movie (which kinda blew goats, though that's not all the writers' faults), MI:III (moderately ok). Worse, most of that Hercules and Xena shit was their doing. GAH! Those were so campy and awful and inaccurate, I hardly have hope for Star Trek. The dudes who wrote The Island? Come on, that's hardly amazing enough cred for Trek!

So, the trailer shows Kirk as a kid, then teen in Iowa. Ok, not bad. Chris Pine looks ok as Kirk, although Kirk was never the attractor for me. I'd need to see the film and an old Trek episode next to each other to see. But he's got the posing, arrogance, and posturing right.

Not sure if I buy the kid from "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" as Sulu.

Didn't see hair or hide of Karl Urban as McCoy, at least not a devoted shot as such.

There was, however, a devoted shot of Uhura getting undressed, white bra and all. Zoe Saldana is quite pretty, but way too thin to be Uhura. It's like they succumbed to current skinny-model trends in the retcon. Grrrr... She's a fine actress, but not what I was hoping for. I'm sure she'll do fine, it's just the stereotyping that if you're attractive, you must also be skinny. I hate that. But here's Nichelle Nichols as Uhura Statuesque and voluptuous. A little big for a film star today. You'll see what I mean when you see all of Zoe's ribs and abs when she's taking her shirt off. Covering her face, even. You know, Nichelle once told Dr. Martin Luther King that she wanted to leave the Trek show while it was filming. He told her she shouldn't, because what she was doing for African-Americans was important. The idea of a black female Lieutenant on a flagship for the entire world was an important one, especially since she couldn't have sat in the front of the bus at the time. Star Trek was pivotal in gradually turning racism on its ear. Pop culture laid the groundwork for fighting racism, and Gene Roddenberry (bless him!) saw the future as it should be: raceless. If they reduce Uhura to T&A in this film, I shall be disappointed, just because it ignores the character as a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. More than disappointed. Angered.

Oh, and the last bit: Spock. Oh, where to begin? I suppose you'd have to begin with me as a child to understand my point of view. Small girl, poor, in suburbarural Atlanta in a mixed-race tiny town. At home, white people doing white things. Family of firemen, truckers, dentists and artists. Music everywhere. Broke-down cars and banana pudding, farming at my grandparents' place, and at that damn Christian cult several times a week. And poor. Deciding to feed us or the dog poor. Turning on the oven for heat poor. Living in grandpa's old house poor. Library books, network tv on a tiny black and white set (in the late seventies, color had been out a WHILE), and my imagination as toys poor. I was happy, so I'm not complaining.

But when you compare that to the show, my mind was blown. I was around other races, so Uhura and Sulu were real to me. I had black friends and asian friends. I had white friends, full of bluster like Kirk, and full of earnest help like McCoy. But I'd never seen ANYTHING like Spock. Not just the ears and brows, but the soul, the aching clarity of the self. A man trapped between two worlds (I don't think I had any mixed-race classmates), brilliantly intelligent, strong, tall, secure. He was the first man I fell in love with. Not a sexual love, since I was too little to think that way yet, though he is certainly very attractive also. Not Leonard, either, since I didn't have the fortune to know him. But Spock, the character. I wanted a man like him.

Enter my doom. I once told my girlfriends in high school that my male ideal had a big nose. Tall, dark hair, preferably mussed, broad-shouldered, narrow waist. Brilliantly intelligent. They looked at me like I was nuts and gave me Tom Cruise movies to watch (remember the aforementioned feminine dickshrivel? There ya go). If I saw a man like that, I wanted. If he were distant, I wanted more. I totally missed the point that Spock is completely distant emotionally, and would never open up. Hoo, boy.

Every relationship got me closer to that ideal until my disaster of a marriage with the most "perfect" man: He was actually a cesspool of imperfections. That unavailable thing reeled me in like a goddamn trout. I didn't see the hell I was wrapping myself into. And hell it was. I was a tool. In the words of Nick Cave, "I feel like a vacuum cleaner - a complete sucker!" Glad to be out of that!

It took me forever to see my problem. It also took me forever to find out Leonard was Jewish. Apparently, a lot of Jewish men have big noses and dark, mussed hair. Oh. Funnily enough, I'm with a sexy man of Jewish descent. He's like a mix of Spock and Joe McIntyre from New Kids: Big nose, mussy hair, blue eyes, rosy cheeks. I'm in heaven.

So, you can see the loaded history for me with Spock. The boy had damn well better be right if he's going to play young Spock. And he looks like Leonard is the thing! But I don't know if that cool brilliance is there from the trailer. I am completely unconvinced that anyone can deliver that. The times were so poignant and the costs so much, that there is only one Spock.

I am unenthralled. I hope I'm wrong.

And I'm late for work! GAH! I'll pop back in for the Quantum of Solace bit later....

Newfangledness and lettuce.

Well, hi all!

This is a photo of my new lettuce and garlic bin! Pretty tasty looking, huh? I planted some lovely heirloom garlic cloves, then scattered seeds over the top. I have a mixed sweet greens & reds, Paris mesclun mix, an Asian mesclun that's good for stir-fries, and spicy micro greens. YUM! Yes, they're planted thickly. I figured I'd just thin right into my salad bowl, which is working great so far!

Unfortunately, the dreaded cabbage moth has visited. It's a pretty little white butterfly. It lays zillions of eggs on your greens. The eggs hatch and hungry little monster-pillars come out and munchmunchmunch. I've resorted to the BT again. *sigh*

Here's a shot of the intro to my garden:



Yeah, I know. It looks white trash-tastic. But it works. Here's the second half:




I've cleaned up since this photo, and put in another lettuce and garlic bin (with the wilting lettuce needed to be transplanted from the earlier photo). I've also destroyed both the grow-outs of the Purple Haze tester. I'm about half a second away from doing the same on the Power's Heirloom, since it has not once set fruit.

The black prince and black plum are producing nicely. Hopefully, they will ripen before any frost. Unfortunately, those don't taste as great as I'd like them to. The first black prince (picked and eaten in a lovely salad November 2nd) actually tasted kind of lame. It thought about tasting like a tomato, honestly, but I'd already swallowed by then. However, it was far better than the atrocious excuse for a tomato that was on a sandwich I bought today. If I'm paying $6.95 for a tomato-basil-mozzerella panini, shouldn't the tomato be amazing? I mean, it's only 33% of the sandwich ingredients. At an expensive bakery, no less. Actually, the basil was tough and lackluster, too. I need a panini press...

What I'm finding is that I'm excited by the thought of a tomato. That is, until I get a tomato that I didn't grow, or I didn't get from a market myself. Food service tomatoes are SHIT. No wonder I spent my early life thinking I hated tomatoes! I *do* hate tomatoes, at least the readily available ones! A real, flavorful, juicy heirloom tomato? Now that's where it's at! Some restaurants have the tomato thing took care of: P.F. Chang's, Claim Jumper, Twist in Atlanta... but they are few and far between. We need more tomato lovers!!!

Which brings me to this: I have begun a new blog. A Southerner's Guide to (surviving) Los Angeles. In it, I will detail the search for Southernness in the greater L.A. area. Good food and recipes and locales, hoo-ah! Come on over!

On the Finishing of my Novel...

So last night, I finished writing my novel. I was approximately 2.5 days late in doing so, but I did it! I'm SO happy with it! Borders does not serve champagne. I celebrated with a root beer float instead.

Tuesday and the Moon :Tuesday's fiancee is missing!! When she tries to find him, she ends up on another planet between the Earth and the Moon, and discovers that he's not all he said he was.

I'll start to talk more about the experience soon. I am starting a rewrite class, so a full beta reader version should be ready at the end of December.

I worry that I don't really feel any different. I'm still me, but I just accomplished this massive goal. Given my current worries, I feel this huge pressure to make writing profitable, but the money is only there for a lucky few. Since when have I ever been that lucky? I learned a long time ago that luck isn't my strong suit. Hard work is.

I write because I have to. It is in me to write these tales. They want to come out! There are 36 more in the wings. Hopefully, somebody likes one of them.

The joy has been dampened, however. Today, my fish is dying, my new cat is missing, and one of my turtles is dead (RIP, dear Herakleitus). All this happened since I finished, so there has been little time for joy. That, and the fact that I need a lot of money fast. I really hope things turn around soon. I also hope that both my grandfathers get better.

Life. So full of joys and miseries. I'm getting a whole lotta both right now.

How I skipped September and the Two Hundred Dollar tomatoes I ought to have skipped.

Yeesh. Bit of a gap since last post, sorry. Life happened!

I now have a new car. I've already had a collision in the new car. I've already had to take the same car to the shop for non-collision issues. I've come well along on Tuesday and the Moon. I've had my debit information stolen and my checking acccount cleaned out. I've rescued a cat that i now want to keep. I've had an interesting few weeks.

So, yeah.

The tomatoes... yeah, they're nuts. I started building homemade sub-irrigated planters that are like the EarthBox brand, only better and cheaper. The idea is to water once or twice a week, and the plants take what they need. It's lower impact, There's some directions for making your own here and here. Making your own is cheaper than buying the real thing, not that I'm knocking Earthboxes at all! Great product! But I am broke as phuc, and what I've grown this year would have cost me $500 just for the boxes (they're $50 each), and that's not half what I'd like to grow. Plus, Earthboxes are shallow, and I grow indeterminate tomatoes. They need DEEP dirt, so making my own was the only way to go. I can make the equivalent of 2 Earthboxes in growing space for less than $8, so what's the poor waitress going to choose? $100 or $8?

So anyway, I've been trying like hell to grow. I should photograph the cemetery of dead smaller pots that just couldn't stay watered in the California heat, or else suffered from damping off. I started some twelve varieties. The first installments of the saga can be found here and here.

So the ones that I thought would live did not. I have five survivors: Black plum, black prince, power's heirloom (which was a freebie. I didn't even order the damn seeds.), the San Marzano from the nursery, and one testing out of a Purple Haze to see where the hybrid falls. Not one has actually produced a usable fruit. Only 3 have set fruit at all!

The costoluto genovese and 2nd jaune flamme did not survive transplant. (the first jaune flamme was light years ahead of the other seedlings until transplant when it promptly gave me the middle finger and didn't grow an inch. It was then destroyed in the caterpillarpocalypse.) The Dona, hawaiian currant replacement, and 2nd san marzano did not survive the 2nd heat wave.

Then, the caterpillars hit. I didn't know that the little black sandy specks everywhere were caterpillar poo. They decimated everything. My first 3 tomatoes had caterpillars in them as well as splits. They were useless. So I waged Caterpillar Armageddon right after they dropped the caterpillarpocalypse on me. I did what the web told me which was cut the 'pillars with scissors if I found them. The ensuing green goo-splosion has put me off avocadoes indefinitely. I much prefer a weekly dose of BT, which is a bacteria that kills them, but not other bugs, birds, cats, etc. I didn't have time to order the flies that destroy the caterpillars. Desperate measures were needed. i took care of them, and then, BAM! Blossom end rot on the San Marzano. Goddammit...

As it stands right now, if my 2 likeliest tomatoes actually make it, then they will have cost $200 each. Not tomato plants. Actual tomatoes. Those fuckers better taste good. I hope to put them in the 90-day novel potluck later in the month, which gives them about 4 weeks to mature. I am hopeful. They'd make pretty caprese salads.

I'm not alone. most other California gardeners have reported weird-as-hell growing issues. Pollinators coming too early,

Other casualties: 4 dead eggplants, 2 clinging to life with no fruit. One habanero of six survives and is just beginning to bear. All other peppers (some 40 of them!) dead. Three shrimpy jalapeno peppers less than one inch long got produced before that plant keeled over. Garlic? What garlic? New thyme plant is dead, have bought another. Not one parsley, cilantro, oregano, sage, or marjoram made it. Only thyme and rosemary from nurseries did make it, all my from seed ones died. All six okra bit the dust. All turnips and carrots went buh-bye. No calendulas survived. Hell, even the Borage is dying without flowers.

I hope to make planters every couple of weeks over the course of the winter to add to the 5 I have, plus 2 of the 5-gallon bucket variety. This way, I won't have to muck about with trying to maintain all the little pots. Instead, I'll get them in the self-waterers ASAP. I'll start 'em, sprout 'em, transplant 'emm young, and thin 'em later if necessary. Getting the plants in regular watering and protected from the heat is the hard part here. 80% of my tomato survivors were from seed, and over 95% of my plant costs were in tomato plants that didn't make it. I won't do that again, but I'll use my certificate for my 2 free plants next year. The plant pickup location is near the L.A. location of Penzey's Spices, so I'll consolidate and hit Little India on my way back. Make a day of it outside of damn tomatoes. I might buy 2 more just for the hell of it, but I don't believe that the plants were tempered for my area. We'll see. But I'll definitely combat my late start.

What I did right: BASIL. That shit goes nuts in self-watering planters! the photo is of my recent prevent-the-bolt cutbacks, because when basils go to seed, they lose flavor. I have several varieties that are doing extremely well, and I have cut them back multiple times. I will make my caprese salads for the potluck, and then let some go to seed. I'll try to catch seed for the first time ever! I am loving the purple basils (dark opal, purple ruffles, and purple petra) and having fun making basil vinegars, oils, and pestos. I made an amazing Thai pesto by mixing garlic and equal parts thai basil, cilantro, and mint. I used olive oil, but next time I'll use some sesame oil. White pepper instead of black. YUM! I'll skip the African blue basil next time, though. It is thick and fuzzy. Not a great texture. It's also a hybrid, so I can't save seed.

So, next is garlic and lettuces. Another shot at turnips and carrots. Keep the 'maters going until they keel over. Keep the basils going until they poop out or until the temperatures drop (IF they drop, that is).

I sleep now.

McCain's people are really starting to piss me off...

Just read this on BoingBoing...

This douche thinks it's OK to slam DnD players by stating that:

" It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others."

Then, this popped up from an earlier comment by a McCain staffer:

"If the shareholders of The New York Times ever wonder why the paper's ad revenue is plummeting and its share price tanking, they need look no further than the hysterical reaction of the paper's editors to any slight, real or imagined, against their preferred candidate," said McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb.

Goldfarb compared the editors to a blogger "sitting at home in his mother's basement and ranting into the ether between games of Dungeons & Dragons."

Ok, two words. FUCK YOU!

I know, those words are neither polite nor ladylike. I don't give a fuck.

His staffers are poking fun at things older than I am (DnD first published in 1974, making it about a year older than me), and are not quite relevant. Plus, the former and current DnD people are where they can knock you off your high horse. Those who wrote games and stories for DnD and the like are New York Times bestselling authors many times over. They are in charge of newspapers and publishing houses. Their words, blogs, and opinions are read by hundreds of thousands of people every day, and you want to piss them off? How about DnD players like Marilyn Manson or Vin Diesel? They influence a wide swath of the voting youth, and you just pissed them off. Oh, and they don't live in basements either, assholes! Their rebuttals could be more than just a swift kick in the nuts.

Don't get me started on all the people who are close to DnD, but don't actually play. Just think, over 100,000 people attended San Diego Comic Con. That's just the people who could get tickets and go. More wanted to. That's the same demographic as the DnD group. Well done, idiots. You just insulted over 100,000 voting Americans. How intelligent. Add comics fans, sci-fi fans, fantasy readers, and the more current forms of gaming zeal (Warcraft, Everquest, etc.), and you just lost.

The more I read of McCain's peeps, the more I'm reminded of the cronies who used to hang around the jocks and beat up nerds on command. Problem for you is that we realize now that we outnumber you. And you need our votes, douchebags! Don't piss us off!

The Anti-Obama buttons on the Pieces of Flair application on Facebook really annoy me too. Like McCain 1) knows what facebook is, 2) knows what pieces of flair are and why it's funny, and 3) knows how to make those himself if he wanted to.

McCain is one year younger than my grandfather. My grandfather was a dentist and did well. He ALSO had a farm. He grew his own food. He stuck with his wife, and she with him, DESPITE illnesses, and they've been together almost 60 years. And you know what? They use computers and write their own damn opinions. At 80 and 81 years of age, my grandparents are more worldly and qualified to run the country than McCain. They know about war, loss, strife, illness, planning ahead, budgeting, the importance of family, keeping up with the times, and not being wasteful. I'd rather vote for my grandfather and his stringy comb-over than McCain any day because I know my grandfather would be a caring, fair, and honest man in office.

I don't have so much faith in McCain.

I hope to god, hell, buddha, whatever, that McCain loses. You hear that staffers? Not that Obama wins, but that McCain LOSES. You're leaving me no choice with which way to vote. You don't live in the here and now. The choices you make now will negatively affect me in the years to come. You'll make the wrong choices, backward ones. McCain will be dead and we'll be stuck in his world. I'm not cool with that.

If he's still stuck in the war, then he has a serious problem. I have Vietnam Vets in my family. They, too, have serious problems. They don't think right. I fully expect McCain is not right in the head. If the best thing you ever did in your life was to stay alive in a rough patch some 35-40 years ago, shouldn't you be striving to beat that? Aside from the presidency. If all you can do is crow about how your guy suffered 35 YEARS ago, what the hell is he doing now? C'mon McCain, what have you done for me lately? Oh, you've gotten rich and ignored equality? I got a present for you. It's a middle finger and a treatise on how the Vietnam war was caused by anti-democratic AMERICANS. (Hell no, those gooks can't choose a Communist leader! Fuck their election! Let's kill!). That war was an unnecessary and sad waste of life.

Also, If you can't operate a computer, then you don't understand 90% of the current work force and business operations. That means you're out of touch with reality. That means that you don't understand your people, and that you won't make the right choices for them, bottom line.

But last, the fact that the posts on the McCain blog are closed to comments says much. Why are you hiding, little wussies? Scared of us meanie bloggers?

So, John, I'm sorry. No Presidency for you!

Oh, all right. I'll give you a chance.

Roll a perfect 100 on a 5d20. Then, I'll give you Governor Bush's office.

And so it begins...

So, we're starting to actually write this week somewhat. We were outlining, and now we're writing. Tuesday and the Moon has become steampunk. Yay! Or, Gah! At any rate, I write. One day, you read!

We're not supposed to talk about this too much, so I'll change the subject.

I have one almost-ripe tomato. YAY! I can't seem to get the others to pollinate worth a damn. The homemade self-watering containers are working very well, but I need to make more. The plants that were tiny are now BIG. They need more space.

Oh, and I'm sick of being broke, but when is that news?

Send me love and good thoughts!