(Go to Part 1) Firesign Theater The best way to describe Firesign Theater is Monty Python for the ears (although Monty Python did make some audio performance albums). My history with Firesign Theater revolves mostly around one album. Or really one side of an album — “Nick Danger, Third Eye”. For a long time, this was the only thing from Firesign Theater I listened to, because it was the only one I could understand. The style is fast-paced, surreal, and filled with in-jokes about old-time radio dramas (there’s a line where the character’s in snow and someone says to him “come in out of the corn starch”. SFX guys used…
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Where Do I Put All This Junk?
So yesterday, I finished cleaning out my office. We bought a new file cabinet, so I could delete and rearrange all the folders, taking them out of the two tiny boxes we were using. This also freed up space, so the first thing I thought of to do with that space is move my writing hard copies into them, and remove at least some of the cardboard boxes. But the problem was there still wasn’t enough space, and the reason is because I also keep all my printed revisions. Basically I keep anything that had to do with the story. This includes notes, pre-writing, reference materials, and all past revisions.…
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Things and Stuff
Oh not much to say today. My new thing is looking at random pages on video game Wikis. Right now, I’ve got Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Zelda, and Mega Man. I just wish there were more pix and details, because I love trivia and I love video games. I have to write a complaint letter to my cable company (not really ‘have to’, but I gotta do something). I don’t anticipate it yielding a lot of results, but really, I’d like to know. What can you do to punish a bad company? Especially one that’s got a monopoly like a cable company does. All the alternatives are…
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My Wife is a Rockbiterist
Last night I had an interesting literary discussion with my wife (squee! I love literary discussions) about why she likes certain kinds of fantasy and not others. This is important because it means knowning your audience. What it boils down to is that she likes Willow and Lord of the Rings, but not The Never-Ending Story, Alice in Wonderland, or the Wizard of Oz. Why? Well, she considers them too trippy, too irrational and illogical, and there’s nothing where she can set her feet on the ground. She doesn’t like the surreality of it. Well what’s the difference in the surreality of an elfin traveller with a great swordsman, and…
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Types of Audience
There seem to be two types of audience when dealing with fiction that may not necessarily be to their liking or “fit” with their interpretation. One staunchly resists it, refusing to accept or just plain getting angry. The other tries to consolidate what happened into the universe, offering conjectures and theories, none of which have much basis in the story and are mostly based on circular reasoning (only true if you’re thinking it’s true as you’re reading it). I count myself in this latter category, and is probably a reason why I like fan fiction so much.For example, in Buffy the vampire slayer, there’s a lot of controversy over how…