I got better...

Heya! Back from a bout of blogdeath. Hopefully I can do a little better moving forward here. I don't want to get bogged down in the whole "Sorry I haven't updated in a while" thing, but I did want to mention it for a very specific reason. In the last week and a half, about three of you have approached me, either directly or inderectly, and asked very non-pushily what was up with the blog. This surprised me, so I decided to buzz by and check the stat counter. It had gone up. fairly substantially. This means that people continue to stop by here, of their own volition, to check and see if I had anything to say. That made me feel good. So, I guess as long as you all show up, I should too. Thanks y'all.

So, it has been a while. A lot has been going on (and not, of course...I guess that is a pretty relative term.) Of course, I never have any idea what I am going to write about on this thing, so I guess the old tried and true "talk until you're bored" model will apply.

I bought a couple of mice about 6 months ago, needing animal companionship at a low rate of maintenance. I bought one white mouse (Yang) and one greyish/brownish mouse (Yin) from the rodent pet/snake feeder case at my local PetCo. They turned out to be pretty hands off pets, and while I didn't necessarily fall in love with them (they are mice, after all. It's not like they have the capacity for loyalty of a dog or the personality of a cat...), I did find that I enjoyed having them around. They are cute, fuzzy, and occasionally hang out on the couch with me, and they did begin to develop personalities which, oddly enough, fit their names pretty well. Yin is docile and passive, a little skittish, and cautiously inquisitive. Yang became incresingly aggressive, both with me and Yin. He also showed a growing fearlessness that often found him in places he shouldn't be and needing constant supervision. He and I went round a bit, but for the most part we just let each other do our own thing. He would let me pet him occasionally and I would put up with him chewing on the cage at 2:00 am. Then, two nights ago, I came home and grabbed a handful of food to toss in their cage. Yang was under the plastic igloo that serves as a home base for their little pack. He was hunched over and twisted into an odd shape. He didn't move. He twitched a couple of times and I covered him up to try and make him as comfortable as possible. I went to bed and woke up in the morning knowing Yin was curled up in the igloo with his dead buddy, sleeping like they did every night. I Tweeted about it a bit and was reminded of a great Rudyard Kipling poem by my friend Todd. So, on the way home from work, I grabbed a print out of the poem, stole some flowers from the scientologists on the corner, and laid it all in an empty ziplock bag box. I added the little corpse and took him out to his final resting place. Yin is now a lone mouse, unbalenced by the loss of his white half-brother. As for me, I am wracked with guilt over the untimely death of that shitheaded little mouse, thus proving that I have no business owning a pet right now. C'est la vie. I will eventually get another pet, but I think I am done with mice. Until then, I can only hope Yin enjoys the rest of his rodenty little life and I can quell the guilt pangs with the fact that I couldn't have killed Yang through sheer negligence, as the other one is perfectly fine. Small comfort for small wounds.

In less depressing news, can we please talk about this a little bit? Anyone around my age knows and loves this book. The production of this movie marks another instance of something I remember from my childhood becoming a massive pop culture event in its redistribution/readaptation. It is an odd phenomenon, and I think that while it is not at all exclusive to my generation, I do think that the scale of the thing begs a little analysis. Transformers, G.I Joe, the slew of Comic movies, a remake of Willie Wonka, books like The Polar Express and now WtWTA, all of these things speak to a sort of pop culture post modernism that is an aboslute hallmark of the past 10 - 15 years of entertainment, and which seems to be reaching a fevered pitch in the latter half of this decade. If you think that I am reading too much into this, then well and good. However, if you agree that this is a phenomenon that is at least dominant in our generation, I would really love you to leave a comment discussing it a bit. wh do you think this is so prevalent? Do you think it is a hinderance to the creative atmosphere to constantly "reimagine" previously created material, or is it just as viable creativly to adapt these things? If it is a negative thing, do you still get excited when you hear about a new project? Are they held to the same standards as other projects with original scripts? Let me know what you think. I would love to get a discussion going on this one.

I am going to the Chinese Theater tonight to see an advance screening. It looks delightfully cheesy. I hope it holds up to what I think it is going to be. I will let you know.

I am currently re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia and The Jungle Book. It has been well over 15 years since I have read either one of these things and I am really excited about it. I am only 2 chapters into Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, and probably 5 into The Jungle Book. I am just now getting into the non-Mowgli parts of the book and had completly forgotten how little a part he plays in the book in total. It is amazing how we grasp nto one part of a story, especially in a situation like this, where there are so many varied things to take away from the book. I wonder why Mowgli was picked by Disney to be focus on and why his story resonates so much more than other parts of the book, even though they are almost equally well known? At any rate, I am really happy to be re-reading them. Challenge for this week: Dust off an old favorite and try it on again.

It is baseball season again. If I ever get back on track with this thing, I may start a second baseball blog that I can hop on and vent my baseball excitement. I want take up the space here, cause I am not convinced that anyone who comes here wants to hear about my near obsessive following of the best baseball team ever. So If you want to know, ask me. Otherwise, I will be keeping my mouth shut. Mostly.

Project news is scarce. LFM is in limbo til Darrell gets out of video game developer hell. So, I keep writing and he keeps squeaking in work where he can. I think we are hoping for an Octoberish launch, but nothing firm yet. Still, exciting stuff. Ranchero is out in the ether of editor submissions and slush piles. So, nothing to report there.

I think that'll about do it for now. Thanks for showing up. I will be back again this week, likely Friday. Til then...