RIP – Ray Bradbury

On the day the world was watching the Transit of Venus, a great writer died. He is known for his many short-stories and for being one of the many fathers of modern science fiction. His dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 is part of the list that high school students read to inspire (or swear off forever). He’s written essays and books on the process of taking a huge novel and making it a movie script for Moby Dick (the original one, with Gregory Peck). His short stories inspired us and made it onto shows like The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He’s written sci-fi horror with “The Vedlt” and classic anthologies like The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. The movies based off his books have been as well-done as possible and terrifying, with one, Something Wicked This Way Comes, speaks about wishes gone wrong and a horrifying circus.

I’ve read a lot of Bradbury’s works, but by far not all of it. During one of two travels to the San Diego Comic Con, while waiting for someone to speak about a movie (I think it was the first Ghostrider, though it might’ve been Spiderman 3), I saw that he was in a panel of sci-fi writers that I couldn’t get into due to being full and requiring me to give up a seat I’d waited in life a few hours for, but we watched it from there and enjoyed the last few questions. News of if another Fahrenheit 451 has been going around forever, with the only member of the cast not changing being Sir Ben Kingsley. A comedic story of The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit was enjoyed when we rented it, mostly because it was based on a Ray Bradbury short-story, and mostly because Edward James Olmos was in it.

Bradbury’s stories range from bittersweet to happy, joyful to terrifying, and while only story I’ve read (and seen on The Ray Bradbury Theater show he hosted) dealt with Venus, seeing the writer who foresaw earbugs, multiple-screen homes, and many other sights of the future, good and bad go out with such a view is both sad and oddly appropriate.

The Transit of Venus saw the death of a great American writer and a great sci-fi writer as well, who will be missed for ages, and who’s influence may well reach until we do land on Mars.

It’s Been a Long Time – Life Hits You like That

So, finals went alright, and then with traveling home and back during Christmas, I ended up with a problem of a financial nature, and that, naturally, lead me to stop writing up my blogs in everything but a few – namely my fanfiction.

Updates are this:

1) I have longer then expected to finish up my degree, and less time on all my stuff, but I will pick up Tea ‘n History posts on Saturdays, starting next week.

2) I have a part-time job and am working on another for the summer. I get back to school in fall. You’ll hear more about that later

3) I have a Tumblr that’s of the same name here. I’m going to try and use it for photos, quotes, and other things, and it should be related to that week’s post.

Consumerism HO! – Black Friday, Small-Business Saturday, and Thanksgiving

A day late, but only because a friend is visiting (she put her stuff at fangirlintraining blog), and because I’m recovering from the food-coma that was Thanksgiving.

Since I could remember, the day after Thanksgiving marked the “panic button” for shopping, finals for schools, and generally a turn towards thicker and thicker jackets. Now termed “Black Friday”, due to violence and the amount of commercialism it’s gotten as well with the pre-Black Friday sales and such, it’s a day to head to the first major shopping mall or chain store you know and grab presents for your friends and family.

Hence the title. It’s consumerism at it’s best and worst, made only slightly more interesting by the fact that, while everyone else was crowding the stores, I was 45 minutes away, in a small town, drinking beer.

Because I wasn’t going to wait for Saturday to do that. Also we wanted to go places.

Black Friday is relatively new as far as terms for shopping and most of the history behind it is the rush for the new “big thing” your child wants, as well as the sales that go on in the days and weeks around it. As cyber-shopping became large, the other part of it, “Cyber Monday”, also opened up the idea of ordering and having something shipped, already wrapped, to your home. I participated in that once, and it was only slightly worth it, and mostly because I enjoy proving my dad wrong about the internet.

But what also came up, as the violence of corporate consumerism became “people trampled while attempting to get into a K-Mart” and other such things, was the next-day psuedoholiday of Small-Business Saturday. In truth, this one was mostly that small businesses would have similar sales, but often they had far more interesting things and you’d get the happy feel of keeping your money local.

My friend and I did go out and shop on Small-Business Saturday, and in truth it feels a bit nicer. People will go out and meet up with local businesses, which means usually you feel that sense of community.

Or it means you dislike JCPenny’s, either way it’s worth it. Still consumerism, but I’ve yet to hear of someone getting trampled while on their way to a co-op.

Thanksgiving is a very odd holiday, celebrating a group of people not starving because of bad luck (or having no skills in farming, hunting, or those other useful items while in the backwoods somewhere). Or you could celebrate Evacuation Day, like Sarah Vowell said, which probably also consists of eating yourself into a food-coma and shopping a lot.

Also pole-climbing.

Historically, this time is one of celebration of the harvest and a time to be with friends and family before remembering why you don’t invite certain family members over or talk to them the other 364 days of the year. It’s the start of the winter holidays and the drinking of apple cider, egg nog, and eating the rest of that damned turkey.

So happy holidays, be it Thanksgiving or Evacuation Day, and I hope you had fun running around the mall to work off the calories!

Mandatory Theme Month October: Zombies (vs. Plants and Anime)

Hello and welcome to Tea ‘n History, with your hostess, Felicia Angel.

Once again, time for the mandatory themed month of October, this time with the rise and subsequent ripping of all things zombie.

Well, not ripping so much…

If you want to go back to the current view of zombies that we have, you must go back to George A. Romero’s original “Night of the Living Dead”, released in 1968. In many ways, it became an odd commentary on human cooperation in the face of danger, and while remade (badly) more then a few times, it and the Romero-verse of zombies are often a go-to on how to make a GOOD zombie movie and have it focus on something or, at least, focus on how things might be and the commentary with it.

However, the recent years have seen zombies become a go-to “bad” guy for horror games, most of which started in Konami’s “Resident Evil” game and move on to the movies and into other games as well. If you want an excuse to kill of humans but don’t want it to be a war simulator or something like that, well…zombies!

The main change, depending on what you watch, is the reasoning for how zombies are created. Romero’s original film doesn’t give reasons, and many often give the reason as either an infection or leave it as an unknown. Because of that, there’s a lot to play with, but also a lot to rehash instead of finding a new excuse.

Over recent years, zombie movies and shows have taken off, mostly with the release of a television show-turned-movie “Zombieland” and the comic-turned-AMC-show “The Walking Dead”. Both do what they can with a genre that is, honestly, being worked to death but both do it well at exploiting a lot of the things that do come up, with “The Walking Dead” dealing with the human side and the new way of living, and with “Zombieland” taking a stab at the “rules” of surviving the Zombie Apocalypse that many have used to create books and surveys about. Like the movie “28 Days Later”, both are welcome enough that, even coming into a genre that had been done to death, did something new enough to gain attention and a great following.

The part of the title in parenthesis was two that I wanted to talk about, namely a game and an anime that have done alright and, while there are mixed results, which I don’t get tired of watching or playing.

The first, “Plants vs. Zombies”, is a game created by Popcap that has maybe the silliest story to go with – the zombie apocalypse has occurred for a variety of reasons, possibly because of an evil mastermind scientist (what other type are there?), and are attempting to get at you and your crazy neighbor, who had created sentient plants to protect your house, at which point you start planting and using a variety of them to protect your house from the zombie hoard.
No, don’t think about it.
The game itself is very simple and quick to play through if you have a day off and a few hours to kill. Replaying through gives you a variety of ways to protect your home and, therefore, your brains, and some of the other mini-games to play are often fun and takes on other Popcap games, such as Bejeweled. It’s fun to play and available for just about every type of console.

The next I wanted to talk about was an anime that was recently dubbed over and, before that, became a slightly big hit on the internet called “High School of the Dead”. With similar nods to Romero’s classic series, as well as a bit more fan-service then is really necessary at times, to the point of it being quite silly in an otherwise serious story, the anime takes place around our time, and at first starts out as a high school drama – a boy likes a girl who is having problems and is currently dating his best friend. He has a friend who also likes him, but is willing to just point out how much of an idiot he is for being a nice guy instead of more assertive.
At that point, while outside avoiding class, he sees the teachers approach a man at the gate, get bitten, and what happens afterwards. Then, it becomes a rush to get out of the school, as well as some of the problems that came up from some of the more adult or matured teens who have to take charge and find their way to safer points in the city.

Because the show is set in Japan, some of the things that happen, as well as some of the aspects of moving for survival, are different then the Romero movies set in America. For starters, only one of the teens knows about guns, and while its put off as him being a gun “otaku”, he’s also the only one to have fired guns as well, making him important as well as necessary if they’re to learn about how to keep up a gun and shoot without wasting bullets. As well, not many people in Japan own guns, save the police, and some military or special forces people, so finding guns and bullets are decently hard to do, and most of the guns are retrieved from one of those who are either dead or not in the area at the time. Because of this fact, not many of those the teens encounter have projectile weapons – most have knives, clubs, or similar weapons.
The fighting style is also depending on the students. At least two are high-ranking students in their fighting clubs – spear and sword fighting – with two others being unable to really fight, one due to being a rather flaky adult (who does know how to drive, so that’s helpful, and is the nurse, which is also helpful) and the other because she’s able to plan rather then fight.
A few dislike the show because of the rather large amount of fan-service that is given by the female characters, but I honestly try to look past that and find a decent anime. The action is solid and while much is in the same line of the “physics is my bitch so there can be pantie shots” territory, there are points that can be scary or interesting points into how things might be. The teens are not all mature and many are together because they find it’s easier to work in a group then apart, while they’re also all worried about their families and trying to get to them as well as to safety. Episodes and hints in the story show a worldwide outbreak and how damaging it is. I honestly like it as another take on the outbreak and focusing on the Japanese way of doing it – the lack of guns as well as putting it in a suburban/urban setting, and on an island nation as well – and even with the rather silly fan-service shots and episodes, it still stands up as a decent zombie show.

Day Late

School and other events have hit me hard. Full update next week, after I get some sleep.

A Lesson in Reception

Today is more a personal retrospective based off what happened during a hike and how both wonderful and a bit annoying technology can be.

 

During a mushroom hike, one of our hikers got lost by taking a wrong turn. Before the hike, we’d gotten a few notes on what to do and, especially, to keep at least one of the other people in sight. If not, we had a shrill whistle to use as a call-back. This came up because at least once during previous hikes, others have gone missing – one forgot his hearing aid, and the other didn’t mention he was leaving in his own car.

The main reason for this missing person was mushroom hunting (and not the Cowboy Bebop type, I saw that fangirlintraining). In order to find most edible or even non-edible mushrooms, one has to be looking mostly at the ground or ground-level. If you spot one and wander off with only your eyes on the mushroom and not on your surroundings or where others are in relation to where you are. However, finding one mushroom usually leads to something similar to an epiphany at times, meaning you start finding more and more, and often they’re usually edible or the really good ones.

So during our time hiking back to a meet-up, the fellow hiker disappeared. When we realized this, the two who knew the area the best went in search and the rest of us went back down to wait near the car, and about two hours later, we all started looking for signal on our phones to call the police and get forest rangers out to our area.

This is where the idea of wonderful/annoying technology. Almost all of us had phones of similar or different providers. Only one, after much trying and finally having to stand on top of a stump, got through with a decent signal.

The good news was that we got our lost hiker back, him having gone a good few miles away and finally making it to the road as we were driving back, having left our two leaders to help the forest rangers. On our way back, we once again tried the phone and a walkie-talkie used to communicate while up in the forest due to the lack of a signal in that area. We didn’t get in touch with them until we were at the same area, sadly, but everyone was fine and happy that no one had been hurt or anything else.

I think this highlights the good and the bad of modern and older technologies. The older signals of “Marco!” and answering “Polo!”, as well as walkie-talkies and whistles, do help in locating one another when reception is…well, bad, if not non-existent. The whole day was eventful and a bit stressful, worrying about the poor guy, but everything ended well….
…even if it took all day to do it.