Yet Another Property Update

Reading my blog, it may seem like I've had one thing on my mind - property - but really, there are long, slow, languid periods in between.

I was supposed to close today. Close, as in hand over money in exchange for stock, a proprietary lease, and a set of keys.

Instead, the seller's bank couldn't locate the certificates, so we're postponing.

I would recommend that anyone yearning to buy property see Waiting for Godot, in order to prepare for the pointless yet emotional journey that awaits them.

Property Update

The good news is that I passed the co-op board interview. Three months later than I expected, I finally sat in front of the board and was told, basically, that I was already accepted. We went through the rules, and I asked some clarifying questions, but basically, that was that.

So, I'm feeling pretty good about the apartment again. Going there in the evening, I got a reminder of one reason I picked it - walking downhill looking straight out over the Hudson. The apartment itself doesn't have so fab a view, but it's a nice route home.

The next challenge is closing. This would be a lot less complicated if I were already done with school ad had my loans consolidated. As it is, my various student loans are in different piles, and the left hand of bureaucracy doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing.

All the same, I have high hopes for moving in the spring.

Fox in London

For some reason, the memory of seeing a fox in London comes to mind.

It sounds like such an image, an analogy, a metaphor: a fox in London. Yet, it was so simple. I was visiting a friend who moved there for work, and on the morning of my departure, as I trundled out my suitcase, across the street I saw a flash of red, and realized the strange squirrel-dog was, in fact, a fox. It was like a Genesis album come to life.

Update: apparently I'm not alone.

Rewatching my Childhood

It's tempting to devote an entire post, perhaps a compilation, to the topic of watching cartoons from my childhood.

Recently, over the holiday break, my sister-in-law pulled up the opening episodes of She-ra, a distaff spinoff of the He-Man series. Key take-away? the first two episodes feature absolutely no She-Ra heroics. Instead, she has been mind-wiped, or something, by the bad guys and is actually an officer in the bad guy army. The plot of the first three episodes are based on the face that He-Man has to leave his own universe to set things right. Not exactly a girl-power start.

A few months ago, I watched the movie version of Space Battleship Yamato, better known in the US as the serialized Starblazers. The basic plot is this: Aliens from a planet nearly 150,000 light-years away are bombarding the Earth with radioactive comets, and the planet will be incapable of sustaining life within a year's time.

Stop. Right. There. My seven-year old brain at the time - because this was the kind of child I was - wondered how the hell these aliens could even aim meteors from a planet so far away that they only wold have seen proto-human chimpanzees at that distance. Answer? They were directing bombardment from Pluto.

Anyway, some chick from planet near the bad guy planet sends her sister with plans for "wave motion" technology, which allows for 1) faster-than-light travel, and 2) some kind of energy cannon the length of the ship. What do the Earthlings do? They build this advanced alien technology into a World War II battlecruiser. That's right. They find a Japanese battleship in the desert - used to be the ocean - and turn it into a spaceship. For crying out loud, they picked a battle cruiser from the side that lost the war.

Anyway, hilarity and hijinks ensue. They travel to the alien planet that supplied the handy technology, pick up some Arm&Hammer radiation cleaner, destroy the fascist dictatorship running the evil empire, and return home. Periodically, they fire the Wave Motion Gun, which was the only reason to watch the show.

Finally, a few words about Robotech. I hardly got to see this series when it was on, but it was the Cadillac standard of serial animation when I was a kid. It was actually based on three difference Japanese series, sewn into one epic 85-episode narrative. That' approaching Lost-level story arcing, if Lost were actually based on Survivor, Alias, and half the intellectual property of Sid and Marty Kroft . . .which it kind of was. Anyway, it runs like this:

The first section lands a giant alien space fortress on Earth, which the humans promptly adapt to their own uses just as its original owners (rather, the repo men employed by the owners) arrive to pick it up. Our hero joins the air force and goes from noob to wing commander in the space of about three years. He alternately data a singer/actress and a fellow officer who's a bit older than him. Eventually, the Earth is all but destroyed by a final attack by the aliens. They are defeated by the human's alien space fortress flying into the middle of the enemy fleet while blaring an epic 80s power ballad about giant robots fighting for their planet, or something.

The next segment picks up a few years later focused on a teenage girl who is in charge of a tank platoon, apparently on the basis that her parents were war heroes - who, it should be said, abandoned their daughter to go into deep space looking for more aliens to kill. Over the course of the series, she falls in love with an enemy spy, her best friend falls in love with an alien musician, and in the meantime the aliens attack using giant robots riding on flying sleds. Also, everyone rides futuristic motorcycles without helmets.

In the final series, elements from the space force that left Earth return to liberate it from some sort of alien hive-mind that lives in crab-shaped battle armor. Everyone rides motorcycles that transform into flying battle armor. They fly and fight in ungainly fighter planes that transform into robots. The best part is that one of their best fighters is a glam-rock transvestite - not in a female impersonator sort of way either. I mean, his entire music career is as a woman, and this serves several early plot points. I attribute this state of affairs to later ideas I developed about gender, as well as my fixation with David Bowie.

Columbine

Listening to an audiobook edition of David Cullen's Columbine, it's clear that in the world of school shootings, what happened at Columbine was an order of magnitude or two higher than what is typically reported.

These two kids were so prepared, it isn't like someone bringing a gun to school. The bombs, the tactics, the accumulation of firepower.

It's awful what happened.

At Last

The last day of the year, and I am still in Wisconsin. The blizzard in NYC has prevented my return by almost a full week. No complaints on the part of the niece or nephew.

We've gotten the whole family playing Modern Warfare multiplayer. My sister-in-law and niece aren't real good at it, but they got some moves in. Let go of the trigger, pumpkin, aunt Julie needs to run across the field to the farmhouse.

We've watched all three X-men movies, some Disney Princess movies (including The Princess and the Frog - excellent). My brother and I took my niece to Tron. She just wanted to be included, and avoided a long round trip to the Dells to drop off her brother with his birth father. She was game for it, noting only that the movie was "loud".

Doctor Who Christmas Special? Charming.

My sister-in-law loves her Kindle. Also, she makes amazing snickerdoodle cookies.

Starbucks Via is a lifesaver. Not because my brother makes bad coffee, but because it allows me to make a single service instead of a whole pot.

I managed to get some reading done for my January 2 class. That's Sunday, for those of you keeping track at home. Also? I finished a 2.5 page paper for the same class, due by 5 PM Saturday.

Also managed to re-arrange grocery delivery for Sunday evening. Originally was scheduled for the Tuesday after I got back.

So, the plan is: go to a New Year's Eve party at Steakfire, crash out, then up early on New Year's Day to head in to MKE for the flight out. Fingers crossed that the weather holds and I make it out.

Multiplayer

So, I've been playing lot of Xbox online against other players. Lately, it's been Halo (Reach, and before that, Halo 3), but what I'm about to say goes for all the other games I've played online against others. These are first person shooters.

First, there are all kinds of players. Some of the best I've played with are guys who sound like truck stop good ol' boys. Sometimes I play with kids. Sometimes, with guys who are actually in the military. It's very rare that I encounter another woman, but that has happened, and I totally respect young women today who play these games, kick ass, and have no shame in playing a boy sport.

I am a woman. I have a female avatar - though to be fair, it's hard to denote gender in 26th-century battle armor. One guy complained that it freaked him out to hear a girl's death rattle when he assassinated me in combat. Others have blithely noted that my helmet looks gay. I don't know what to make of that, do they mean effeminate, or butch? FWIW it's the Air Assault helmet with some kind of extra communications bump above the visor.

In Halo, there are all kinds of games; my favorites are crazy kind and headhunter. Crazy king is king of the hill, only the hill is an arbitrary circle that changes locations randomly. In headhunter, every time someone dies, they drop a skull, and all the skulls they were carrying. You win by dropping skulls in a goal zone similar to crazy king, in that it changes locations.

I like team games. I do alright on my own, but team game even up the odds a bit. On a good day, I'll encounter people who know how to play as a team. most of the time it's just a bunch of individuals out for themselves. Team play is the best because when you coordinate action, you can achieve real results. In capture the flag, for example, one guy carries the flag while the others cover. If the flagman goes down, someone else picks it up and everyone else continues to cover.

Lately I've been playing some other variants. I like Team Sniper, though I don't do particularly well. The key of course is to hide and countersnipe the enemy. This is difficult in bright, blazing red battle armor. I tend to hide in caves and aim at ledges, but occasionally I will hop on an ATV and blaze across the field, hoping to draw enemy fire and kill them when I return from the grave.

Another game is called Juggernaut. In this game, one play has a powerful warhammer and can take a lot of damage. The other plays try to take down this Juggernaut. When that happens, someone else becomes the juggernaut. Winner is the player who lasts the longest as Juggernaut. I'm two for three.

In yet another game, the goal is to hold on to a ball. When you hold the ball, you cannot run or shoot, but you can kill another player with a single punch. I have a film where I won; Basically, I took possession and hid in what appears to be a locker room. Every time someone came around the corner, I punched them. It's pretty funny to watch.

I worry about my language sometimes. I can get really involved, in a way I don't with anything else. Have you seen guys at sports bars? I can get like that when I'm neck and neck for the lead. But I don't trash talk, and I don't say mean things about other players. I just curse and grumble. There are people online who say much worse things, who casually call people niggers and fags and . . .I usually bail and find other people to play with when the round is over. Plus, don't feel too bad about my language.

That said, it's weird to have kids around. I used to work in a school, and it's hard to have that adult-child distance when they're not right in front of me, and also when I'm inherently engaging in an adolescent pasttime. Plus, they kick my ass.

It is good, though, to find a group to groove with. No matter what, I much prefer to play with people who talk. It's nice to say "I saw that!". it's nice to have the back and forth and cheering on and consolation. Some games, no one talks. It's creepy.

So that's my online playing experience.

Tron Legacy

I recently saw Tron Legacy. I had to: I am a computer geek; I saw the first movie when I was a kid, and again at some point as a young adult on cable. Some observations.

I would require sufficient disaster recovery measures before I allowed myself to be zapped into a computer. It's a good thing no one ever switched off whatever system the Grid is running on. Twenty-one years of uptime? Amazing.

No reasonable person goes to a Tron movie expecting a focus on character development. It's about the world - the cycles, ships, and political system. It's like Alice in wonderland: more of a fanciful reflection of our own world than a study in psychological realism.

Encom is apparently the Atari/Oracle of the Tron world, and Kevin Flynn is Steve Jobs . . .if he had never come back from NeXT.

Brilliant cameo (I won't spoil) in the boardroom.

Favorite catchphrases: " . . .fights for the users", "greetings, programs", "You're messing with my Zen thing, man!".

This is one of two movies featuring Jeff Bridges that are out, and which I want to see.

The ending presents some implications that were not fully present in the first film.

Programs should not be elevated to posses user rights.

There is not enough Recognizer action. I'll take a Recognizer over the light cycles any day of the week.

Best supporting actor - the guy who played CLU's lackey. He's from True Blood, I think.

I really don't get the Tron hate in some reviews - even geek reviews. It is not a bad film. Boy misses father, chases him down the rabbit hole, fights the red - well, yellow - queen, and escapes. the visuals are stunning, on par with the breakthrough (for the time) of the original. the Young Jeff Bridges effect worked for me.

Also? Michael Sheen is hilarious. OTT, but hilarious all the same.

So programs, stop hating on Tron. it's a fun romp, and updated take on a memento from childhood. For me, it reminded me of why I got into and have stayed in technology. It's cool. It's shiny and fast-paced and addictive. Also, strange men in high towers have the ability to grant or deny you access to valuable resources.

End of Line.