Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Script

Went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie with Lisa tonight. I liked the first one a great deal, and it's one of Lisa's favorites of all time. Unfortunately, neither can be said for the new film. The script is utterly nonsensical and illogical. Whereas the first movie was pretty tight, building the verisimilitude so that undead pirate skeletons were a natural outgrowth of the world, this one just throws a whole bunch of weird shit up on the screen and hopes people are dazzled enough not to notice there's no rhyme or reason. There's maybe 45 minutes of plot in the movie, the rest being padded out by big, noisy action sequences that never frellin' end. Captain Jack Sparrow utterly stole the first movie, coming off as addled and out of it, yet still playing all the angles. In this one he's an outright coward in over his head without a clue. Did I mention that everything that actually worked in the movie was overdone until it didn't work anymore? By the third time the kraken appeared, I was thinking, "Oh, jeeze, no the giant squid again!" And I'm someone who's gonzo for giant squids.

For the love of Pete, I can't figure out why this train wreck of a film is blowing past Superman Returns at the box office. I've seen online where folks are calling this one the Matrix Reloaded of the Pirates movies. While I see that relationship, I don't think it's a good assessment of the film itself. Dead Man's Chest is actually Cutthroat Island with sea monsters. Yeah, it sucked that bad.

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Writing stuff

I know I've been quiet in regards to my writing, but I have indeed been busy. I've just had nothing that's postable. The transcription of the Peter Beagle interview was finished early in the week, and I've been working on the Helix rewrite since then, as well as spending time on the Armadillocon Writers Workshop, which is coming up in just under two weeks. So, yeah, I'm not slacking.

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Friday Night Videos

Introducing a new weekly feature here at the blog: Friday Night Videos! Being from a small, rural town in Texas, I never experienced the joys of MTV until I got to college--and then I bored of it fairly quickly as it started moving away from an all-video music format. But in high school, my sole connection with hip music pop culture was the network-broadcast Friday Night Videos. So join me on a nostalgia trip back through time as I revisit some of those fondly-remembered classics courtesy of YouTube. First up, one of the all-time best: The Talking Heads' "Nothing But Flowers."



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Sheena Easton

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The newest craze in exotic pets!

I've long held a firm belief that the tiny, primitive muntjac deer would become a runaway success in the exotic pet market if only some reputable breeders would recognize their value as such. I expressed this view recently during some online discussions of Slug Tribe, and quicker than you can say "That's crazy talk, man!" Mara Hincher wipped up the magazine cover above. Great stuff!

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Prickly mead

It's been well over a year since I last bottled any mead, and in the past few weeks I've been feeling a little itch to experiment. Not a lot, mind you, but that faint nagging curiosity to explore possibilities. The trip to Corpus Christi proved to be the tipping point. On the drive down there as well as the drive back--nearly three hours each way, not counting stops--we passed through countless miles of rural Texas countryside, and besides a million zillion butterflies the most striking thing I saw were the prickly pear cactus. They were thick along the sides of the road, growing healthily among the barbed wire fencing that is ubiquitous along Texas roads. And they were dripping with some of the biggest, fattest purple-maroon-black fruit I've ever seen.

Prickly pear fruit is edible. Called cactus pear or tunas, it's got nastly little tufts of tiny spines on the outer skin, but inside is a mass of tiny, dark seeds surrounded by a layer of fleshy pulp. And the whole thing's extremely juicy. Depending on the species or even individual plant, the fruit can be sticky sweet, mild, sour, tart, extremely acidic or anywhere amongst those extremes. The juice is a beautiful, clear burgundy red, and as the miles passed I started thinking more and more how interesting a batch of prickly pear honey mead melomel would be.



Last night after dinner, I invited the girls along for a cactus hunt. We hopped in the PT Cruiser armed with barbecue tongs and leather gloves, and headed off down country roads near our house. I quickly realized there weren't many cactus of any type around us. At least, not thick like those to the south or out west in the Hill Country, so I had to scrounge a bit more than planned. A few here off a scraggly cactus under a hackberry tree, a few more from a fence line a few miles down the road. And many cactus we passed had fruit that wasn't yet ripe. I was actually on my way home when I unexpectedly happened across a motherload--one big, fat cactus sitting on the edge of some farmland, covered in deep purple tunas. This one looked like all those I'd seen the previous weekend. I got more than a dozen big, ripe fruit from that one alone. Now I had close to 10 pounds of juicy fruit--more than enough for my grand scheme.



Back home, I selected one plump, well-ripened tuna and sliced it open. Juice ran out all over the place, but luckily I had it over the kitchen sink. I took a spoon and scooped out some seeds for Calista--the seeds were reminiscent in quantity and texture to passion fruit seeds, although they didn't have such plump arils--and then some of the surrounding pulp. Then everyone else tried some. This particular fruit had a flavor that was very mild, midway between a watermelon and bananna. There's very little sugar--there is a sweetness, but it is faint--but by the same token there is little acid, either. The fruit should contribute a light, delicate flavor to the mead I'm planning, as well as a gorgeous color. I expect it will be lightly sweet as well (semi-dry in wine parlance) and well-suited for casual drinking, or perhaps with fish and fruit.

Now I just need to come up with the cash to buy 15 pounds of honey to get things going. Until then, the fruit's in the deep freeze.

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A swarm of butterflies

On the drive down to Corpus Christi on Thursday, as well as the drive home Sunday, I was amazed by the swarms of butterflies flittering across the roads. At first I thought they might be leaves or debris being blown by wind, but I soon figured this wasn't the case. They were small butterflies, but what they lacked in size they made up for in numbers--dozens in a cluster, sometimes hundreds, and total volume reaching well into the tens of thousands every mile. They're also in New Braunfels and San Marcos now. I see them on my daily commute on I-35. They're roosting (do butterflies roost?) in the pecan trees on campus by the thousands. Then I discovered this article, and all was explained:

The prolonged drought, interrupted by a few days of heavy rains, has spawned an explosion of American snout butterflies across Central and South Texas, experts say.

"I'd probably say in the millions across the multicounty area is a fairly safe ballpark," said Texas Parks & Wildlife Department biologist Mike Quinn, who is hearing reports of butterfly swarms across the region.

The snouts — named for their flattened noses that help them resemble a dead leaf — started flittering en masse at least a week ago and have been spotted across the region, from Eagle Pass to Hondo, in Kerr County and San Antonio.

(snip)

Snout swarms aren't uncommon, Quinn said, but one of this scope is unusual. Its likely cause is a combination of the drought and the soaking rains that fell across the area in early July.

The drought probably destroyed many of the parasitic flies and wasps that kill the butterfly in the caterpillar stage.

The ensuing rain then prompted new growth on the area's spiny hackberry trees, providing a good environment for nesting snouts, and tasty leaves for the hungry caterpillars, he said.

So. Millions of butterflies. That's not something you see every day. Even though they're somewhat drab compared to species such as, say, Monarchs or Swallowtails, you've got to admit swarms of this size are pretty darn impressive.

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Direct marketing

Awesome:

"Dear. Mr. Carroll. Thank you for the book you put on my car when I was in Vienna. I read this book and hated it but it was very nice of you to give it to me."

Now I need to get me some Polish editions of Voices of Vision...

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