Strange Weather

I debated whether to write about the recent eclipse crossing North America*, figuring everyone’s jumping on that bandwagon. I will say that what I predicted would happen didn’t, much to my pleasant surprise.

“Prediction?” you ask. Yes, I predicted our chickie girls would be triggered by the dusky sky and retreat to their coop for the night.

Well, for one, the sky didn’t get all that dark where we are. It turned a surreal dark gray/blue, while sunlight still made the leaves on the trees bright. A lot like my favorite kind of sky, with the black storm clouds behind the trees with brilliant color, almost like a stained glass window.

What actually happened: they froze. Literally, like we were playing a game of “Red Light, Green Light” (or some called it “Statue”). And they did it for FIVE whole minutes. NOT hyperbole. And just after they reached that time threshold, they all took off for their daytime shelter (read: the dog house). One of the girls also starting making a weird little growl sound. A chicken “growling” is like no other sound they ever made. Bizarre.

But I said I wasn’t going to write about that. So much for that.

We’ve been getting strange weather–lots of wind, unbelievable wind in the last several weeks. And yesterday, we got a short deluge of hail. Luckily here it wasn’t big enough to do much damage to any of our plants. The girls got a kick out of it, though. The moment it passed they emerged from the shelter and started to feast on the tiny hail stones. A skyborne treat.

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Anyway, I’m still in the process of revising the sequel to Umbra (woohoo!) and it’s going along smoothly and steadily. (And, if you haven’t read the first one, check it out in the sidebar/below!). I hesitate to put an actual ETA on its completion, since every time I’ve ever done that when it wasn’t close to the date, something BIG and BAD in life happened. I’d rather not take my chances. I am truly hoping it will be ready before the end of the year, and you can keep checking back (or subscribe!) to find out when. In the meantime, there will be another Storytime BlogHop entry next week, on 24 APR 2024.

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*The number of news media “journalists” stating that the eclipse crossing a slender swath of North America was somehow a “world-altering” event made me laugh. Idiots.

Feelings in Hallways

Hallway – Ready for Feelings. Not.

I can’t tell you who coined the phrase but it’s apt in so much of the modern “entertainment” options. Even in so-called action films, instead of having the characters taking full advantage of the visual medium and engaging us with action, they stand around and talk. They have multi-million dollar budgets and stellar casts but somehow all the writers/directors can think to do is have them talking at each other. It’s even worse than some novels’ expository info dumps, because there you can at least skim the pages until the action starts. Comics and graphic novels, even those who are supposedly centered around “action” superheroes, prefer to have talking heads** instead of dynamic battles. (The only dynamics they seem to be interested in is who can they race-bend or gender flip.)

In these shows, the directors/writers believe that we want to watch two people talking at each other with their faces twitching and pointing their menacing eyes at each other. Great for comic effect or as an homage to the cheesy old films that used those kinds of camera close-ups*. I just watched a movie where they employed the awful, dreaded info dump to catch the viewer up on a place’s history, but at least it was funny because the guy never said a word and just kind of ignored the person doing the telling.

It’s maddening, but worst of all, it’s flat out boring.

It’s kind of up there with a lot of current movie/series writers having NO IDEA HOW to “show, don’t tell”. Instead of proving by a character’s actions that she’s smart and amazing, or having her prove it to herself through the story arc, they have another character tell her how awesome she is from the get-go. The writers completely circumvent the character’s story arc, and they’ve even twisted the stories that previously had the arc into modern tripe.

Ugh, I could go on. But I will spare you.

Instead, I’d like to propose a solution. It’s pretty easy, and I’ve already mentioned it, but in case you missed it:

SHOW DON’T TELL.

Don’t say “She’s a lush”. Show her being tossed out of the bar at 0200, staggering to stand up and forgetting which way home is.

Don’t say “he’s kind”. Show him offering to help a young mother when he sees her wrestling with a grocery cart and baby carriage.

Don’t say “The organization is greedy”. Show a fleet of wrecking balls and construction vehicles with their logo on it pulling into the neighborhood, lead by a limo with a guy in a slick suit climbing out and giving orders before he even bothers to address the worried residents of the tenement block.

Frankly, I think the stories fall flat because the current writers are so conflict-averse that they can’t even write it into a plot. Can anyone tell me what reason there is for a story to even exist if there’s no conflict and no plot? Anyone?

Addendum: I’ll be fair. The talking-head thing isn’t a new phenomenon. There are some older ones out there just as bad. I’d never really seen Lonesome Dove back in the 80s, so I took a chance to watch it when it came on recently. Standing around talking. I could only take about 30 minutes of it. The most amusing part were the young pigs looking for a biscuit breakfast, and who dutifully went away with empty bellies when told the food was for the humans. And Jeremiah Johnson? The bear fight scene, early in the movie, was the only tolerable part of the film. Proof that “visually stunning” does not make up for lack of coherent plot, or even a narrative.

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*Was it just me, or did you hear that cheesy “Wah-wah-wah” from the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns just now?

**Talking heads not Talking Heads. I like Talking Heads. (I would have provided a link, but the only sites seem to be disconnected, belonging to some camera aficionado or wiki, and I’d rather not.)

Short Note and Sumo

Making this one short and sweet. No pictures either. I’ve been pretty busy with the rounds I’m making for appts (not me, but a relative) and we are hoping and praying everything will happen as planned, on time, with the best possible outcome.

I need sleep!

My projects are still on time but I put the date out a little further than I had originally intended, to give me a thicker cushion. Just in case. Emergencies and all that. You’ll have to sign up to the free newsletter (see sidebar on desktop or below on mobile) to learn the actual date 😉. Or just keep your eyes peeled here in the near future.

And to add, we’re one week and change into the New Year’s Tournament of Grand Sumo. My faves are not doing so well (poor Ura finally got his first actual win!) but there’s a new kid on the block by the name of Onosato and wow is he a joy to watch. I’d love to see a massive upset and have a rookie win the Emperor’s Cup on his first go-round with the big boys.