It's a process

Recently I've been reading Solar, drawn away from my other book "The Illearth War" by it's easy flow. Each scene is like a bunch of reflection and introspection. New information slides in randomly to tie together a portrait of Michael Beard at each stage of his life. It doesn't give you the whole story, just the need to know bits. The next turn has been strange, but I'll explain where the book was heading around half way.

This book is one of the most courageous I've read. Michael Beard is bordering on a rational, socially acceptable psychopath. He treats most people like tools and shamelessly puts up fronts to the public, seemingly unaware or dismissive of his own flaws. The book is written in a way that takes his past into account on all occasions. Each thought is an amalgamation of himself, and yet he still makes decisions so localized in time. He bases every action on the immediate circumstance and then does his awkward way of regretting it later. His 'regrets' don't affect him on an emotional level. They are just there, he's unable to change it but enough of his life is working that he doesn't have to.
The courageous part is that he totally acknowledges that he's cold and inhuman in his uncommon careless attitude to his wife or lover (he chews through many). That's not something that I've ever considered writing about (mainly because I'm not a cold person) but it's easy to think in those terms the only barrier is how socially unacceptable the content is. If anyone like Beard exists, then they keep it a closely guarded secret or else they would probably find people like his most recent wife, Melissa, reaching out to them.

That's the next stage of the book, where it turns. He truly does appear to be changing, learning what it's like to be a father and being considerate of other people. I still have a long way to go to finish the book but it feels like a requiem nevertheless. I'm interested to know how it finishes. That's the weird part. I'm not excited to read it, but have to because of the nature of the book. It must flow from page to page and so I must not leave a significant gap in-between sessions. This book has a soul, no wonder so many people are reading it.

My Kick-Ass day

Couple of nights ago I had one of those semi-break-down moments after a weird day where I started raging about nothing (a lost game of go) early, and then had to live through the aftershocks. Strangely enough during that time I was able to effortlessly speed read. I need to keep that in mind next time I have a stack of books waiting (oh wait, I always have that).

I went and saw Kick-Ass at the movies on Thursday. It was fucking awesome! The casual violence is so drastically different from most movies and tv shows. It's definitely on the forefront of that shift in values. The storyline itself was imbued with moralistic considerations and emotional motivations, even so it was dumbed down for a movie-going audience. I'd love to get my hands on the comics! I was amazed at how well the story flowed, all the elements linking quite naturally together (with a little bit of assumption in the use of media broadcast as an effective messenger to the other main players in the story, along with the weird role his gf plays).

Anyway, I had an awesome day hanging out with Albert at the mall. We had so much to talk about, neither of us have very strong opinions so we just flowed from one topic to the next. It was very free-flowing and relieving. I wish I had more friends like him. :)

Screnzy

Look! I have Frenzy juice xD Now I have all the bubbles I need to write amazing script.

Mariana and Impressionism

I like making up words. I need to be in the zone for it to work though. And even then I have a limit of about 6 - 8 good new words before all the creative energy fueling the process runs a different channel. One of the best things about Script Frenzy is that I get to make up words all the time. The place that I've set my script is around 2000 m deep, under the ocean, so it a lot of speculative thinking is involved in the world building and new words help explain much that is difficult. That's right I've chosen the most memorable place the Mariana Trench. I'll have to change them to something else later for the sake of popularization but for now just leave them and hopefully come up with a few more. For example I dislike most of the standard names that I have chosen for my characters. They shouldn't have common names imo. I need to invent some new ones, especially for the really scary deep sea creatures. But mostly my new names encompass all those scientific processes that don't read well on screen. I still like bioluminescent so I'm keeping that one but there are a lot of different things such as the bacteria the chemosynthesis coral and the weird creatures.
Actually I had to make most of these names up because I hadn't yet done my research. I spent a lot of last night reading about the Mariana Trench ecology and it was a blast. It's so much fun to learn about something that crazy. All is factored into my ever expanding useless information catalog but this time I'm going to use it for the purposes of good and not simply curing boredom.

Yesterday we went to Canberra. They are showing an exhibition of art from Musee D'Orsay in Paris, a lot of impressionists. The artworks were stunning and inspiring. I couldn't help but pay so much attention to detail that I may have lost sight of the real benefits of viewing. Nevertheless I intend to download decently large images of the paintings and display them on my desktop (or possibly get them printed etc.).
Many of the paintings were very psychological. They played coherent tricks with the mind to create the effect. I appreciate that.

Wah this coffee is strong!

Tchaikovsky's Pathetique

Today I was treated to a concert. My dad bought tickets for Stef and her parents visiting from Germany, but they went home early. So I snatched at the chance and am now enlightened by Tchaikovsky. This was the first time that I've been able to judge a piece as not to my liking and have an idea why I didn't like it.

I caught the train with Stef. The performance was at the Opera House, beautiful shining thing on a day like today. I was more drawn to the impressive Harbour Bridge, metal giant. Things took on an intensity today, like everything was a snapshot. We waited for dad and Dennis on the steps to the Opera House. The woman serving at the cafe said "I hope you enjoy the performance." as I took my coffee. It was an intuitive step to get coffee. I didn't want to ruin my attention during the music, but it may have been a good move. The pieces themselves were all fragmented into short stages. I think I spent the entire time concentrating on individual sounds and could scarcely make out a structure to the pieces. They scarcely had any.
The first was Beethoven's Creatures of Prometheus. It's a short piece, only 5 minutes long. Following that was Schumann, which I didn't like. And the main performance was Tchaikovsky's Pathetique. Somewhat disturbing at times, I liked some of the little tricks for individual instruments and occasionally when the trumpets would purposefully clash with the violins while the bass cellos danced to their own tunes. They were like forceful messages that had nothing to do with melody.
I hope I can find some classical music that I love, because that was an experience not to be partaken of often lest I go insane.

calm days

I left my bedroom window open last night. It's not something that I can usually do because my room opens out immediately onto street level with only hedges blocking people from seeing inside. I thoroughly enjoyed the night air, sounds of birds waking me up this morning. I can't believe I've missed out on it for so long. Stupid modern living. We were not meant to be enclosed in these sorts of shelters! Even clothes are an impedance when you're trying to cool down (though very much welcome at other times).

So I have had a very nice sleep and woken up refreshed, with the only the faint memory of a dream.

Yesterday I played very slow go. It was nice reading out the steps more completely. The time scheme is still difficult - not unlimited - but the people that I was playing against are all really fast players anyway. I anticipated this and made the games unranked, so I could resign when needed.

A side effect of this is that I also scored a phenomenal 1504g in Big Brain Academy. New Record!!! He gave me the new rank (although I was still spinning over 'Leonardo Da Vinci') of 'Film Director' O.O How does he know?!? I'm merely leaning towards my artistic side, I think it is bringing out good things :)

I tried watching Matrix Reloaded yesterday. I had some stuff to do so I could only get the preludes of the story. I'm convinced now that Agent Smith is actually the hero. When you watch it again you should think about it.

Now I'm going back to dad's house for the first time in ages. I have to bring all my clothes there. The most exciting part of it is that I'm going to a concert with Dad, Stef and likely one other on Thursday. More updates to come!

memory loss in action

Feelin' useless. I spent the entire weekend at home. It's not so bad, I've been reading through tutorials about image composition (mainly paintings, but it confers to digital art, photography, sketching, etc.) and playing go of course. I've slowed down my development, the next big leap to 2k is avoiding my gaze. I don't trust that it will be a constant progression into the more advanced go players. Whatever happens will happen instantly!

This is a collection of emotions that should cancel each other but aren't. I'm extra creative and useless. Methinks I'm trying too hard. I should play some blitz games in go and gather my resolve to shut down peripherals for a while.

I baked some very nice cake last Thursday. It was a banana cake, and I didn't get the chance to make icing before my lil' sis and I couldn't resist digging in. I always prefer to do the icing before it's cut. Otherwise it mixes with all the crumbs from the gaping hole and tastes differently (the texture draws your attention to the little crumbs instead of the cake itself).

I was inspired by "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga. I don't want to include any spoilers until I actually write a review, but it's a book about slavery and mental cages. It has powerful messages and yet seems so simple. The storyteller truly believes the doctrine he shouts. It'd be good to read what Aravind Adiga actually thinks of his own work.

Mum rented a bunch of mediocre dvds, I'm going to watch them, and I have expectations above what I know to be realistic (statistically speaking :P)