Princess Bride Quote-Along at the Alamo Drafthouse

As soon as I heard about the Princess Bride Quote-Along at the Alamo Drafthouse (wow, local icon food/drink/movie place actually has a listing on Wikipedia, that's neat), I knew it was the perfect event for our wedding anniversary. What could be more fun that going to a movie theater with a bunch of other fans and shouting out the words to a classic movie? And what's more quotable than The Princess Bride?

It was more elaborate than I expected...they had goodie bags for us, with bells and whistles and bubbles and inflateable swords, and a little guidebook telling you how to use all the various props. I wasn't too into following their rules, but waving the props around was fun. I suppose this is the same vibe people get from the Rocky Horror Picture Show...which I never got into...but extended to other movies; the Drafthouse does quote-alongs for several different films.

Strange luck: several folks from my work were sitting behind us at the show. And this was after I'd just been to see The Dark Knight at a company-sponsored showing at the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum's iMax theatre. I love how small Austin can often feel. I'm forever running into people I know in odd places around town.

My post-it task list

I'm one of those people who carries a big notebook around full of tabs and task lists. I'm a Getting Things Done aficionado. It's a curse, it's a blessing. I'm used to the stares.

But I've been collecting a few more lately. I never really liked the big list part of Getting Things Done. I disliked how messy a list would get after I'd erased or crossed out a few items. And then I started working a daily short list into my system. There's a "pick 5 important things each day" concept that I wanted to try, and so I used a post-it note for that, each day.

And I was always sticking little notes on my list for transient to-do items, so that they wouldn't afflict my main list. ;)

Finally it occurred to me that I could put ALL of my tasks on post-it notes. So I replaced my tattered to-do pages with a two-page spread of card stock, and I've covered that with ... let's see... 13 post-it notes. This lets me do context-categories, too. I like it. It works for me.

But it makes a funny picture, and it gets me some new strange looks.

I've got a great idea for Risk that I haven't gotten to try out yet

It seems to me that Risk is a perfect wargame for playing on a corkboard or a magnet board. It wouldn't be too hard to make a paper Risk map and affix it to a corkboard, then buy a few cheap sets of colorful pushpins, in several shapes for each color. Then you'd have all the pieces you'd need to play risk, and you could put the corkboard aside or hang it on a wall when the game needed to go on hiatus.

Structured procrastination

I found this essay called "Structured Procrastination" the other day. I can't remember how I got there through the twists and turns of the net, but it made me laugh like no other.

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered...

It's very true and very wickedly twisted and I feel like I know myself better having read it.

Watch out for poison cats

My oldest daughter, at 8, has assembled a fine collection of Littlest Pet Shop creatures. When my brother-in-law was visiting recently, we used some of the houses and playsets from the line as props in our Warhammer 40,000 games. They were really just about a perfect size, with large windows. The only problem with them was that they were brightly colored and full of flowers and hearts. Not a skull or a chainsword to be found among them.

I think Warhammer overdoes the macho stuff sometimes, but that's part of its charm. Some of the figures are walking around wearing capes and armor, with chains hanging off of them, and skulls hanging from their belts. Spikes on every elbow and knee. Motorized chainsaw swords. The milieu behind Warhammer is dominated by an empire, but it's an empire whose uniforms were designed by bikers.

After a while, Chloe decided that she wanted to play Warhammer. And we noted that the Littlest Pet Shop toys are just about the right size for a large Warhammer figure. She began talking about wanting to play with us.

So we formed the idea of rating her toys as Warhammer figures and playing a game. She immediately decided that her several cat figures should be Poison Cats, with leaping moves and poison attacks. I think we're in trouble.

It's okay if she wins, though. If she wins a few games we might make a permanent wargamer out of her.

Also, I noted that if you filed the hearts and flowers off of one of the toy playsets and spray painted it, you'd have a quick and durable piece of handy Warhammer scenery. You could probably glue some skulls on. So I'm going to keep my eyes open for something like this at garage sales. I don't think my daughter will let me have hers.

Although if we get a game going with the poison cats, they'll fit right in with no repainting required.

_The Mount_ by Carol Emshwiller

I've heard the idea that young adult novels are a pocket of innovation amongst today's literature expressed in several venues recently, and seen it on the web, most recently on BoingBoing. But I'd already formed the habit of checking out the Young Adult books at our local library now and then. Recently I found a gem: The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller.

The hallmark of a great young adult book is that the perplexed adult reader ends up scratching her head, wondering "Why is this called a young adult book"? And the only answer, generally, is that it has a youngster as a protagonist.

I think it was my wife Tanya who pointed out that this automatically eliminates, for the most part, a lot of activities that parents don't want their kids reading about. If the kid protagonist acts like a kid, the book's probably okay for a kid to read. That means an author aiming at the Young Adult bookstore category doesn't necessarily have to pull punches or aim low.

The Mount doesn't do any of that. It's about a young man who grows up on an Earth dominated by aliens, where only vestiges of human society are left. It's sensitive to the compromises inherant in being someone valued by a social order that inherantly discriminates against your kind. And it comes up with better than ordinary solutions.

The book begins with Charley, the protagonist, as a prized young Mount. The aliens of the book, who are called Hoots, breed and raise humans to be ridden and shown off. Charley's trouble starts with how he has to figure out that he has a problem at all: he's an important Mount to an important master, and so he's treated well and told endlessly about how lucky he is.

There are graphic examples, though, of how badly things can go for an unlucky, or more likely recalcitrant, mount. So Charley is slowly able to figure out that the situation is unjust. How he reacts to that, while still caring for his "little master", make up the bulk of the book. And the fact that he never loses sight of his fondness for his "little master" is what makes the book stand out as a weird and wonderful work.

Here's another review I found online for this book.

You owe it to yourself

Every now and then, when I want a laugh, I read the back of a can of Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning. I keep it on the table and I use it all the time...as directed:

Tony Chachere's world-famous Original Creole Seasoning is an extraordinary blend of flavorful spices prized by cooks everywhere. You owe it to yourself to experience how much it actually enhances the flavor of meats, seafood, poultry, vegetables, eggs, soups, stews and salads, even barbecue and French fries -- There is no finer seasoning! Use it anytime or anywhere on any type of food.

I like to read it out loud sometimes, in stentorian and commanding tones.

I also like how it says "even barbecue and French fries" when those are really obvious targets f0r a seasoning composed mainly of red pepper, garlic powder, and salt. They don't mention how great it is on cantaloupe. Yes, cantaloupe.

Precoined words

I hope this word doesn't already exist, because I want to invent it. I want a word for the situation that exists when you go to make up a new word for something, and there's an obvious combination or construction, but that word already has a more specific meaning, so you can't use it.

Here's an example. Say that for some reason, modifying or decorating the roofs of cars became popular, and specialists started to offer their services for modding your car. Calling such a person a "cartopper" would make sense, if we didn't already have an object with that name.

Or there's the reality show type where someone shows their survival skills out in the wilderness. Such a person could be called a survivalist, if that term didn't already have other connotations.

So we could at least console ourselves by saying that the good term had been precoined, right?

Yeah, I know. It doesn't make me feel any better either. I'm gonna go get my car made into a convertible at the cartoppers' while I sulk about it.

A spray of tiny atomic bombs

I was reviewing my journal, where I sometimes make notes in a category of "Kids Say the Darndest Things"...and I found one that happened last summer. I had just returned from trip to San Francisco with my wife, and we brought my older daughter a silk outfit from Chinatown, complete with a parasol.

She put it on and proclaimed herself Parasol Girl, who can fire beams from her parasol, and when she spins it, it spits out a spray of tiny atomic bombs.

That's my girly-girl. This is, presumably, not a girl who is going to grow up having nightmares about giant bombs that are ticking over and preparing to blow up.