Joe’s Least-Liked Movies of 2012
Posted in Uncategorized February 1st, 2013 by joedelta

My most-hated movie of the year, without question, was Parental Guidance.

To be fair, I didn’t sit through the whole thing.  I saw maybe forty minutes in the middle, while waiting for another, far superior, movie.  Which movie?  It doesn’t matter:  they’re all far superior.

I seem to remember a time that Billy Crystal was funny.  When Marisa Tomei was allowed to be in a good movie.  This is not that time.

The audience laughted at the so-called jokes, and every time that happened, I felt shame for my peers.

I could go on about how bad this movie made me feel, or give specific details about what was wrong, but I feel my brain melting.  Avoid.

Some other movies in 2012 that were pretty bad: Taken 2 (Moviegoers 0), Dark Shadows, Trouble With the Curve, The Campaign, and Chernoybl Diaries.

Joe’s Favorite Movies of 2012
Posted in Movies January 30th, 2013 by joedelta

Every year I summarize my favorite flicks of the year.  I haven’t seen every good movie, but I’ve seen most of the bigger ones.

This is more about giving me what I want from a film than being a “quality” movie.  While I recognize a movie like Lincoln might be educational, showcase great acting, and have literary merit, for me it was a lot of old white guys arguing in conference rooms.  At the end, they reach the shattering conclusion that slavery is bad.  Surprise!  Good movie, but not making my list.

My favorite of the year, surprisingly, was The Avengers. While I normally enjoy big budget Sillywood schlock, I rarely elevate it to “favorite of the year” status.  But hey, this one made me laugh aloud several times, had me on the edge of my seat several times, and let me have a hell of a good time for two hours without feeling embarrassed about it afterward.  Score!

The rest of my faves, in no particular order:

Django Unchained.  Quentin Tarentino makes movies that are more about schlocky American cinema than about any period in history.  Somehow his exuberant gore fails to offend, and his dialogue never fails to delight.

Silver Linings Playbook. Crazy people aren’t cute, except when they are.

Argo. Suspenseful, intriguing, fun.  I’ll let the liberties taken with the facts slide.

Looper.  This might seem to be a movie about time travel, but it’s really a movie about parenting.

End of Watch. I am deeply critical of our policing system in modern America, and in many ways our hero cops in End of Watch are perfect examples of what’s wrong with it.  Doesn’t stop me from winning me over.

Moonrise Kingdom. Two misfit kids run away from home and have surreal adventures.  Enchanting.

Wreck-It Ralph.  Not Pixar’s best work, but certainly worth watching.

Chronicle. Three high school kids with no imaginations get superpowers. An interesting take.

Tomorrow I’ll post about my most-hated 2012 movies…

Gateway Sexual Activity
Posted in Politics April 15th, 2012 by joedelta

Tennessee senators recently passed a bipartisan bill to restrict sex education in the state to, among other things, “Exclusively and emphatically promote sexual risk avoidance through abstinence, regardless of a student’s current or prior sexual experience.”

One particularly interesting part:

“Instruction of the family life education curriculum may not promote any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity.”

They don’t actually say what “gateway sexual activity” is, but it does guarantee that if parents think their kids learned it at school, they can sue for actual damages plus lawyer’s fees and court costs.  I’m not sure exactly what the actual damages for learning about gateway sexual activity are, but it’s nice that they can recoup them.

I also find it interesting that this law only applies to counties in which the teen pregnancy rate exceeds 19.5 per 1000 teens.  I guess others are doing their job.  As it turns out, only two counties have a higher rate than that (in 2003, anyway) — poor, largely black counties.

I think we’ve got way too many lawmakers if they have time to come up with idiotic poo like this.  If the goal is to make everyone even more paranoid about talking about sex, I guess this is a good bill.

Teen pregnancies have been on the decline in the US since about 1990, but they are by far the highest in the bible belt states that are the biggest promoters of this “abstinence only” education.  Sure, I think that means their plan is ill-advised and unrealistic, but maybe it means they just need to try to promote ignorance more intensely.

Spaceward Ho! for iPad
Posted in Games, Technology March 29th, 2012 by joedelta

There’s a version of Spaceward Ho! for iPad.  I wasn’t much involved in the development, but it’s a pretty faithful reproduction of version 5, and plenty fun.  And only $5.

Most folks I know who have released iPhone/iPad apps have made dozens of dollars.  I’m pretty sure that without marketing, that’s the expectation — and I hate marketing.  But I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Landscape Jones: Declaring Victory
Posted in Books, Personal November 30th, 2011 by joedelta

I’ve theoretically got 14 hours left, but I’m calling it.  I wrote 41,504 words in the last month.  About half of them probably qualify as vaguely novel-like.  A plot never emerged, though I did have a setting and several characters.

Turns out November is, in fact, quite a busy month for me.

Screen shot 2011-11-30 at 10.29.09 AMMy plan was to be within spitting distance at the end, and then hand the reins to Mira to finish up.  So it’s really her that failed — though she did succeed in writing her own novel.
Landscape Jones, November 29
Posted in Books, Personal November 29th, 2011 by joedelta
Chapter 26
Pops told Leslie a story when she was five that stuck with her for some reason.
The Spoon That Moved
Once there was a spoon that could move. She could pop upright on the table, spin around, and bounce anywhere she wanted to go.
But she didn’t. Most of the time, she just hung out in the drawer with the other spoons, comfortably nested among them, laying perfectly still. She didn’t know if the other spoons could move or not. They never did, so she held still, too, so she wouldn’t stand out.
“I wouldn’t want everyone to think I’m a show-off,” she said to herself. But really that wasn’t what she was worried about at all. Really she just didn’t know what would happen if she danced around, or even wiggled in the pile, but she was afraid that the other spoons would quietly laugh at her, and forever ban her from joining the other spoons’ activities.
Not that they ever did anything. She knew that they couldn’t really ostracize her for moving without moving themselves, so really she had nothing to fear. Still, the thought of pressing against silent spoons front and back who really were apalled by her behavior was just too much. Better to just fit in with the others.
But she wished for something to happen. Her life was comfortable, but dull. Most of the time, she just lay in a dark drawer, covered by some other spoon, so she couldn’t even see anything, even if there were any light.
One time after a party she ended up at the bottom of the pile, where she wasn’t used for months. Every day, she’d see the light from the outside as the drawer opened, and feel the pressure on top of her lighten, as several of her siblings were removed. She longed to leave the drawer, to carry food to people’s mouths, to luxuriate in the hot bath in the sink afterward, and have herself scrubbed sparkly clean. She wanted desperately to squirm to the top of the pile, pushing the others aside, so that she would get the daily use, while they anxiously awaited their turn. But she knew they would hate her for that, so she waited her turn, for weeks and weeks, and eventually she was used again, and by chance moved nearer to the top of the pile after her washing, so she was happy.
She made up stories where she would rescue all the other spoons, and they would adore her for her ability to move. A person would be pulling the forks from the tray, one by one, and smashing them flat with a giant hammer. The spoons would all freeze in terror, knowing that they would be next. And when the time came for the first spoon to be crushed, they would all just lay there and watch. All except for the spoon that could move. She would jump up and knock the hammer out of the person’s hand, then quickly shove it into the garbage disposal. Before they could stop her, she would hit the switch over the sink, destroying the hammer and saving the day. She knew all the other spoons would love her then.
“What do you think happens?” Pop had asked.
Leslie wasn’t used to people asking her what happened, so at first she kept insisting that Pop finish the story.  He refused — it was her turn.  Eventually she said, questioningly, “So the spoon moves?”  She looked at him for confirmation.
“OK.  Then what happens?”
This sounded like it was OK, so she proceeded.  ”Um, she dances around in front of all the other spoons?”
“OK.  How do they feel about that?”
She thought about it.  ”They think it’s great!  They decide to make her queen, and put her on the top of the pile every day.”
Pop laughed.  ”Those are some pretty nice spoons.  I love you, Pumpkin.”  And he ruffled her hair and tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, leaving the light on in the corner the way she liked.
As she got older, she thought back to that story, and the different ways it could have ended.
Spoon decides to dance, and when people see her, they sell her to a freakshow where she is forced to perform 24 hours a day until she wears down to a miserable nub.
Spoon crawls to the middle of the kitchen floor, where she is mashed by Granny, who then falls, breaks her hip, and dies.  Spoon is compacted and sent to the dump.
Spoon moves, and finds that she likes it.  The other spoons (except a few liberal-minded ones) shun her, but she ignores them and eventually fulfills herself as a leader and revolutionary.
This was the ending she feared the most:  Spoon eventually tries to move, but finds that she really never could after all.  She’s just a spoon.
But what if Spoon moves, and when the others see her, they all start moving, too? Everybody was afraid to be the first, to stand out from the crowd.  Landscape found that idea disturbing.

Chapter 26

Pops told Leslie a story when she was five that stuck with her for some reason.

The Spoon That Moved

Once there was a spoon that could move. She could pop upright on the table, spin around, and bounce anywhere she wanted to go.

But she didn’t. Most of the time, she just hung out in the drawer with the other spoons, comfortably nested among them, laying perfectly still. She didn’t know if the other spoons could move or not. They never did, so she held still, too, so she wouldn’t stand out.

“I wouldn’t want everyone to think I’m a show-off,” she said to herself. But really that wasn’t what she was worried about at all. Really she just didn’t know what would happen if she danced around, or even wiggled in the pile, but she was afraid that the other spoons would quietly laugh at her, and forever ban her from joining the other spoons’ activities.

Not that they ever did anything. She knew that they couldn’t really ostracize her for moving without moving themselves, so really she had nothing to fear. Still, the thought of pressing against silent spoons front and back who really were apalled by her behavior was just too much. Better to just fit in with the others.

But she wished for something to happen. Her life was comfortable, but dull. Most of the time, she just lay in a dark drawer, covered by some other spoon, so she couldn’t even see anything, even if there were any light.

One time after a party she ended up at the bottom of the pile, where she wasn’t used for months. Every day, she’d see the light from the outside as the drawer opened, and feel the pressure on top of her lighten, as several of her siblings were removed. She longed to leave the drawer, to carry food to people’s mouths, to luxuriate in the hot bath in the sink afterward, and have herself scrubbed sparkly clean. She wanted desperately to squirm to the top of the pile, pushing the others aside, so that she would get the daily use, while they anxiously awaited their turn. But she knew they would hate her for that, so she waited her turn, for weeks and weeks, and eventually she was used again, and by chance moved nearer to the top of the pile after her washing, so she was happy.

She made up stories where she would rescue all the other spoons, and they would adore her for her ability to move. A person would be pulling the forks from the tray, one by one, and smashing them flat with a giant hammer. The spoons would all freeze in terror, knowing that they would be next. And when the time came for the first spoon to be crushed, they would all just lay there and watch. All except for the spoon that could move. She would jump up and knock the hammer out of the person’s hand, then quickly shove it into the garbage disposal. Before they could stop her, she would hit the switch over the sink, destroying the hammer and saving the day. She knew all the other spoons would love her then.

“What do you think happens?” Pop had asked.

Leslie wasn’t used to people asking her what happened, so at first she kept insisting that Pop finish the story.  He refused — it was her turn.  Eventually she said, questioningly, “So the spoon moves?”  She looked at him for confirmation.

“OK.  Then what happens?”

This sounded like it was OK, so she proceeded.  ”Um, she dances around in front of all the other spoons?”

“OK.  How do they feel about that?”

She thought about it.  ”They think it’s great!  They decide to make her queen, and put her on the top of the pile every day.”

Pop laughed.  ”Those are some pretty nice spoons.  I love you, Pumpkin.”  And he ruffled her hair and tucked her in and kissed her goodnight, leaving the light on in the corner the way she liked.

As she got older, she thought back to that story, and the different ways it could have ended.

Spoon decides to dance, and when people see her, they sell her to a freakshow where she is forced to perform 24 hours a day until she wears down to a miserable nub.

Spoon crawls to the middle of the kitchen floor, where she is mashed by Granny, who then falls, breaks her hip, and dies.  Spoon is compacted and sent to the dump.

Spoon moves, and finds that she likes it.  The other spoons (except a few liberal-minded ones) shun her, but she ignores them and eventually fulfills herself as a leader and revolutionary.

This was the ending she feared the most:  Spoon eventually tries to move, but finds that she really never could after all.  She’s just a spoon.

But what if Spoon moves, and when the others see her, they all start moving, too? Everybody was afraid to be the first, to stand out from the crowd.  Landscape found that idea disturbing.

NaNoWriMo Help
Posted in Books, Personal November 23rd, 2011 by joedelta

Ack!  OK, I’ve got 8 days left, and I’ve still got 25,000 words to write.  Time to call for reinforcements!

That’s you.

Anybody who’s been reading along, send me a chapter or two.  I’ll work it in.  Backstory, dream sequences, side plots, character descriptions, political rants, alternate history… I’m easy.  And desperate.

Everybody who comes to my house for Thanksgiving is going to be required to write 1000 words to get their turkey.  That’s fair, right?

Help!

I’ll also take plot ideas, questions, notes about crap I’ve left out or should develop further, and so forth.  Hit me!

Landscape Jones, November 17
Posted in Books, Personal November 17th, 2011 by joedelta
Chapter 19
Landscape took her toothbrush into the girls’ toilet, where a couple of the residents were doing their morning rituals over the shared sinks.  Haven’s Farm had been designed by men, and nowhere was it more obvious than here.  The fluorescent lights were harsh and made everybody’s skin look ghastly.  There wasn’t anywhere near enough counter or shelf space for the potions and elixirs everyone collected.  And most of all, there weren’t enough shower stalls to handle the morning rush.
“Rush” might have been too strong a word.  Near as Landscape could tell, the average time the ladies of Haven’s Farm spent in the shower in the morning was something in excess of two weeks.
Water was precious in California’s Central Valley.  It was illegal to pump it from the ground or take it from any river.  There had even been an effort made some years ago by the water corporation to make catching rainwater illegal.  The farmer’s used water efficiently, with elaborate underwater computer-run drip systems optimizing water use.  Ironically, using it more efficiently meant less overflow going to everybody else, so it didn’t help as much with the problem as one might have expected.  Water was expensive, and many Californians made do with infrequent, short, cool showers.
Haven’s Farm was an exception.  There was a large reservoir on the roof that stored tk cubic meters of water and kept the pressure high throughout the property.  There were three separate wastewater recycling systems.  One for laundry and other wash water, known as “number three,” and two for other wastewater — numbers one and two.  Each system had a series of basins the water cycled through, each with its own carefully crafted ecology of algae and water plants removing impurities from the system.  Sensors tested every step of the process, and bots maintained the balance so that the water coming out the end was purer than that you could buy from the water company.  The used toilet was pumped back to the reservoir on the roof.  The reservoir was next to a large collection of black plastic and glass solar water heaters that used Sacramento’s sunlight to heat water to nearly boiling before pumping it to a large insulated tank.  In the winter, direct sunlight was scarce, so people kept their showers relatively quick, but in the spring, summer, and fall, it was plentiful, and hot water could be had without spending a single kiwi.
Landscape wished she had taken a shower before leaving the single — she wasn’t sure why she had been in such a hurry to leave.  She didn’t have to be out until noon. Maybe the thought of hanging out there knowing she’d soon be exposed to everyone’s judging eyes was just too painful.
She didn’t have to worry about that right now, of course — all five of the women’s showers were in use.  Steam was pouring in billowing clouds from three of them.  Apparently the other two felt that morning showers didn’t need to scald one into wakefulness.
She could postpone her shower until this afternoon, but her other morning duty was more pressing.  She hated using the public toilets.
She didn’t have a problem with the toilets exposing her; they were public in the sense that anybody could use them.  The stalls had doors that closed and locked and everything, without even spaces at the bottom you could look at the other defecators’ feet through.  That wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that these were tkbrandnames, fancy toilets, another elaborate extravagance Haven’s Farm delighted in.
These toilets used very little water to flush — their designer didn’t know that the owner would be such a recycling fanatic.  When one was done with one’s business, a button sprayed a spritz of pleasant-temperatured water at the dirty areas, cleaning them without use of any paper, and then a blast of hot air removed all moisture with a whirr.
There were also a bunch of health-check features.  The tkbrandname sampled the urine and stool in much the same way Portland General had.  There was a camera on the door that let the toilet computer identify each patron, so it could build a database tracking “the twenty-three most important chemicals in your body,” according to the ads.  The tests served as a reminder that her dad hadn’t bothered with such a fancy toilet, even though with his skills he probably could have built one for free with parts from the junkyard.  It would have detected his cancer months earlier, in plenty of time for it to be resectable.  Sometimes she felt like her brain was having some sort of nightmarish tennis match with those two hated words:  Metastasized.  Unresectable. Metastasized.  Unresectable. Metastasized.  Unresectable.
The twenty three most important chemicals weren’t all the toilet tracked.  It also tracked weight.
She hated the tktoiletbrand.
Chapter 19
Landscape took her toothbrush into the girls’ toilet, where a couple of the residents were doing their morning rituals over the shared sinks.  Haven’s Farm had been designed by men, and nowhere was it more obvious than here.  The fluorescent lights were harsh and made everybody’s skin look ghastly.  There wasn’t anywhere near enough counter or shelf space for the potions and elixirs everyone collected.  And most of all, there weren’t enough shower stalls to handle the morning rush.
“Rush” might have been too strong a word.  Near as Landscape could tell, the average time the ladies of Haven’s Farm spent in the shower in the morning was something in excess of two weeks.
Water was precious in California’s Central Valley.  It was illegal to pump it from the ground or take it from any river.  There had even been an effort made some years ago by the water corporation to make catching rainwater illegal.  The farmer’s used water efficiently, with elaborate underwater computer-run drip systems optimizing water use.  Ironically, using it more efficiently meant less overflow going to everybody else, so it didn’t help as much with the problem as one might have expected.  Water was expensive, and many Californians made do with infrequent, short, cool showers.
Haven’s Farm was an exception.  There was a large reservoir on the roof that stored tk cubic meters of water and kept the pressure high throughout the property.  There were three separate wastewater recycling systems.  One for laundry and other wash water, known as “number three,” and two for other wastewater — numbers one and two.  Each system had a series of basins the water cycled through, each with its own carefully crafted ecology of algae and water plants removing impurities from the system.  Sensors tested every step of the process, and bots maintained the balance so that the water coming out the end was purer than that you could buy from the water company.  The used toilet was pumped back to the reservoir on the roof.  The reservoir was next to a large collection of black plastic and glass solar water heaters that used Sacramento’s sunlight to heat water to nearly boiling before pumping it to a large insulated tank.  In the winter, direct sunlight was scarce, so people kept their showers relatively quick, but in the spring, summer, and fall, it was plentiful, and hot water could be had without spending a single kiwi.
Landscape wished she had taken a shower before leaving the single — she wasn’t sure why she had been in such a hurry to leave.  She didn’t have to be out until noon. Maybe the thought of hanging out there knowing she’d soon be exposed to everyone’s judging eyes was just too painful.
She didn’t have to worry about that right now, of course — all five of the women’s showers were in use.  Steam was pouring in billowing clouds from three of them.  Apparently the other two felt that morning showers didn’t need to scald one into wakefulness.
She could postpone her shower until this afternoon, but her other morning duty was more pressing.  She hated using the public toilets.
She didn’t have a problem with the toilets exposing her; they were public in the sense that anybody could use them.  The stalls had doors that closed and locked and everything, without even spaces at the bottom you could look at the other defecators’ feet through.  That wasn’t the problem.  The problem was that these were tkbrandnames, fancy toilets, another elaborate extravagance Haven’s Farm delighted in.
These toilets used very little water to flush — their designer didn’t know that the owner would be such a recycling fanatic.  When one was done with one’s business, a button sprayed a spritz of pleasant-temperatured water at the dirty areas, cleaning them without use of any paper, and then a blast of hot air removed all moisture with a whirr.
There were also a bunch of health-check features.  The tkbrandname sampled the urine and stool in much the same way Portland General had.  There was a camera on the door that let the toilet computer identify each patron, so it could build a database tracking “the twenty-three most important chemicals in your body,” according to the ads.  The tests served as a reminder that her dad hadn’t bothered with such a fancy toilet, even though with his skills he probably could have built one for free with parts from the junkyard.  It would have detected his cancer months earlier, in plenty of time for it to be resectable.  Sometimes she felt like her brain was having some sort of nightmarish tennis match with those two hated words:  Metastasized.  Unresectable. Metastasized.  Unresectable. Metastasized.  Unresectable.
The twenty three most important chemicals weren’t all the toilet tracked.  It also tracked weight.
She hated the tktoiletbrand.
Landscape Jones, November 15
Posted in Books, Personal November 15th, 2011 by joedelta
Chapter 16
Landscape woke up the next morning to natural sunlight streaming onto her bed from the east-facing window in her upstairs single.  Well, not her single any more, since she had agreed to not even try to retain it.  Why did Chance not want her to have a single?
Even though Landscape had been in this exact room for two straight months, it had nothing in the way of personal touches that made it hers.  The closest thing was probably the window itself — Landscape had turned off the screen that shuttered it and swung it out of the way so she could look at the Farm’s real yard, instead of just being able to turn the view to anything she desired — including the camera above that window, so it yielded almost exactly the same view, at least in the daytime.  At night, of course, the camera’s night vision gave a lot more rich a view than the glass window did, if less “accurate.”
She laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling, squeezing her sheets in her balled fists, resisting a sudden urge to cry.
Where did that come from?
She got up and put on her clean white coveralls.  She gathered up yesterday’s dirty clothes, put her meager collection of possessions into her backpack, pulled the cardboard tube containing the Watterson out from under her bed, and went down the hall to the capsule room, turning at the door to wish a farewell to the plain white room.  Goodbye, my friend.
Why did the image of a dark-colored ball gown come into her head just now?  Whatever.
There were a half-dozen empty capsules in the girls’ room, so she got to choose low or high.  All the capsules at middle height were taken.  She put her possessions and painting into an empty drawer and considered the option.  Either was equally awkward for her, so she tended to make this sort of decision on how she thought her fat ass would look as she waddled her way into her bed.  Head height, or bending way, way over?  She sighed.  Down low is probably less obvious.
She flipped the label on the bottom capsule on the far end from the green “open” sign to the red “occupied,” and threw her sheet and pillow into the tube.
Well, there was nothing hard about moving.  It was being at the destination that sucked.
Chapter 17
Three months before Landscape came to live at the farm, her dad had looked healthier than he had in years.  He had been a big bear of a man, six feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds a couple of years before.  He was technically obese, but he walked miles every day, even before the decline, when Americans never walked more than a hundred meters unless it was crossing an oversized parking lot from an unfortunate spot availability.  He had a healthy shock of unruly silver-white hair that he kept cut short enough that on other people it couldn’t help but be neat and even, but on him was just a happy collection of cowlicks.  Everybody called him “Pops.”  Everyone except Leslie, who called him “Pop.”
Pops was a fixer.  The world was full of handy machines, from laundrybots to stations to the makers that printed all the plastic parts that kept all the other machines running.  These machines were great, and took care of the hundreds of jobs that people used to spend their lives doing, better and more efficiently than people could. And if there’s one thing machines can always be counted on for, it’s breaking down.
Before the decline, if a machine broke down, you just bought a new one and thew the old one away.  Why not?  Who cared how many kilowatt-hours it took to ship an appliance from rural China to Atlanta?  Energy was almost free.  Who cared how many kilowatt-hours it took to dig a hole to mine the tons of iron ore, or process them into steel for the frame, or to stamp all the parts?  Energy was almost free.
When energy started becoming harder to come by, people became less likely to replace their broken machines with new ones.  They wanted to repair them, but skilled repairmen were rare and valuable.  Worse, the parts were often proprietary and were so expensive that even a tiny part could cost more than the hours of labor it took to figure out what was broken, remove, and replace it.
3d printers changed a lot of that.  Annoyed customers posted the models for useful parts to the net, and a couple of court cases affirmed their right to repair their own stuff, and not be completely dependent on the original manufacturer to supply all the parts.  As the ability to make the parts spread on the net, so did the knowledge about how to diagnose and fix all sorts of problems.
Just because the knowledge was on the net did not mean that every owner of a machine could fix it, and that’s where Pops came in.  He was known around Portland as an affordable and dependable fixer who could make your broken machine go again.
“Before you were born, I’d been on call for emergencies, and I’d dash out to fix bots at all hours,” he told little Leslie.  ”I had to raise my fees again and again to keep a little free time for myself, but still I was working far too much.”  He always hugged her at this point in his story.  ”Once you came I stopped letting people tell me what to do and when.  I travel the streets, banging on doors. I help people who need help and don’t know where to turn.  It may not pay as well as some things, but some things are more important than a few extra kiwis.”  At this point he’d always look meaningfully at Leslie, so she knew that important thing was her.
She never minded that Pops would sometimes come home late, smelling like alcohol.  He always let her know if he wasn’t going to make it home at all.
When he started to lose weight, everybody complimented him on his healthy new glow.  His knees hurt less, and he found it easier to get up in the morning.  His energy level didn’t go up, but it was pretty high to start with, so that was no surprise.
In the dozen or so times over his life that he had dedicated himself to losing weight, he had been in a constant state of hunger.  Yes, the pounds came off, but it was hard for him to summon the energy for his long walks, and he was grouchy to his customers and friends.  Eventually he gave up.  He frequently told people, “I’d rather be a jolly fat man than a skinny son-of-a-bitch.”
Now Pops ate the same foods he always had, perhaps with a little less energy.  This time it was easy, effortless.  The pounds came off, but he was never ravenous.  He sometimes got full before cleaning his plate, which was always kind of a surprise.  He wondered if something had changed in his diet or activities to let him lose weight with so little effort.  He couldn’t think of anything, but he didn’t try too hard — gift horses and all that.
The occasional stomach ache was easy to ignore, and certainly not worth mentioning to anybody else.  The compliments at his slimmer physique made his self esteem even higher, and he spread his enthusiasm for life to everyone he met. Nobody mentioned that his rosy complexion had turned a little orange, or maybe they didn’t notice.
Leslie started to worry about him when he she heard him vomiting in the apartment’s tiny bathroom one night.  ”Are you OK?”
“Fine, fine,” he said.  ”Go back to bed.”
The next day he’d looked tired, and old, and his skin seemed kind of yellow.  ”You should stay home today,” she told him.
“Oh, I’m fine,” he told her.  But he stayed home nonetheless, vomiting another two times that day.  He knew he should eat, but he just didn’t feel like it.  ”I’ll run over to Portland General in the morning if I don’t feel better.”
In the morning he hadn’t felt like running.  Leslie had wanted to call an ambulance.  Pops said he could walk, but he compromised on a RedVan.  She went with him, and hung out and held his hand as they prodded and poked him and took blood and urine and stool samples, feeding them into the analyzers for the machines to diagnose.
At last they were invited into a tiny office to hear the results. The docs looking at the readouts looked grim.  ”The tests suggest that you may have pancreatic cancer,” they told Pops.
“That sounds bad,” he said with a grin.  ”How sure is it?”
“It’s not certain.  We’ll run some more tests to be sure.  With luck it’ll be a misdiagnosis.”
Leslie did her own research on the net that evening when they got home.  It was almost never a misdiagnosis.  The scans confirmed that it was Stage 4, and had metastasized and spread throughout his system.  They gave him drugs to deal with the nausea and jaundice.  They explained his options.  They could do surgery, but it wouldn’t help at all.  They could do chemo and radiation, and it might help.  A little.  For a while.  Pops said he’d think about it, and he went home, and he and Leslie did some quick research on the net.
The next day he talked to the docs again.  Again they started explaining his options.  Pops interrupted them, cutting to the chase.  ”I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
The younger doctor opened his mouth a couple of times as if he’d thought of something to say, but he finally closed it.  The older one looked him in the eye, judging Pops to be a man who didn’t deserve false hope.  ”Yes,” he said.
“Damn,” said Pops.
Leslie started to cry.

Chapter 16

Landscape woke up the next morning to natural sunlight streaming onto her bed from the east-facing window in her upstairs single.  Well, not her single any more, since she had agreed to not even try to retain it.  Why did Chance not want her to have a single?

Even though Landscape had been in this exact room for two straight months, it had nothing in the way of personal touches that made it hers.  The closest thing was probably the window itself — Landscape had turned off the screen that shuttered it and swung it out of the way so she could look at the Farm’s real yard, instead of just being able to turn the view to anything she desired — including the camera above that window, so it yielded almost exactly the same view, at least in the daytime.  At night, of course, the camera’s night vision gave a lot more rich a view than the glass window did, if less “accurate.”

She laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling, squeezing her sheets in her balled fists, resisting a sudden urge to cry.

Where did that come from?

She got up and put on her clean white coveralls.  She gathered up yesterday’s dirty clothes, put her meager collection of possessions into her backpack, pulled the cardboard tube containing the Watterson out from under her bed, and went down the hall to the capsule room, turning at the door to wish a farewell to the plain white room.  Goodbye, my friend.

Why did the image of a dark-colored ball gown come into her head just now?  Whatever.

There were a half-dozen empty capsules in the girls’ room, so she got to choose low or high.  All the capsules at middle height were taken.  She put her possessions and painting into an empty drawer and considered the option.  Either was equally awkward for her, so she tended to make this sort of decision on how she thought her fat ass would look as she waddled her way into her bed.  Head height, or bending way, way over?  She sighed.  Down low is probably less obvious.

She flipped the label on the bottom capsule on the far end from the green “open” sign to the red “occupied,” and threw her sheet and pillow into the tube.

Well, there was nothing hard about moving.  It was being at the destination that sucked.

Chapter 17

Three months before Landscape came to live at the farm, her dad had looked healthier than he had in years.  He had been a big bear of a man, six feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds a couple of years before.  He was technically obese, but he walked miles every day, even before the decline, when Americans never walked more than a hundred meters unless it was crossing an oversized parking lot from an unfortunate spot availability.  He had a healthy shock of unruly silver-white hair that he kept cut short enough that on other people it couldn’t help but be neat and even, but on him was just a happy collection of cowlicks.  Everybody called him “Pops.”  Everyone except Leslie, who called him “Pop.”

Pops was a fixer.  The world was full of handy machines, from laundrybots to stations to the makers that printed all the plastic parts that kept all the other machines running.  These machines were great, and took care of the hundreds of jobs that people used to spend their lives doing, better and more efficiently than people could. And if there’s one thing machines can always be counted on for, it’s breaking down.

Before the decline, if a machine broke down, you just bought a new one and thew the old one away.  Why not?  Who cared how many kilowatt-hours it took to ship an appliance from rural China to Atlanta?  Energy was almost free.  Who cared how many kilowatt-hours it took to dig a hole to mine the tons of iron ore, or process them into steel for the frame, or to stamp all the parts?  Energy was almost free.

When energy started becoming harder to come by, people became less likely to replace their broken machines with new ones.  They wanted to repair them, but skilled repairmen were rare and valuable.  Worse, the parts were often proprietary and were so expensive that even a tiny part could cost more than the hours of labor it took to figure out what was broken, remove, and replace it.

3d printers changed a lot of that.  Annoyed customers posted the models for useful parts to the net, and a couple of court cases affirmed their right to repair their own stuff, and not be completely dependent on the original manufacturer to supply all the parts.  As the ability to make the parts spread on the net, so did the knowledge about how to diagnose and fix all sorts of problems.

Just because the knowledge was on the net did not mean that every owner of a machine could fix it, and that’s where Pops came in.  He was known around Portland as an affordable and dependable fixer who could make your broken machine go again.

“Before you were born, I’d been on call for emergencies, and I’d dash out to fix bots at all hours,” he told little Leslie.  ”I had to raise my fees again and again to keep a little free time for myself, but still I was working far too much.”  He always hugged her at this point in his story.  ”Once you came I stopped letting people tell me what to do and when.  I travel the streets, banging on doors. I help people who need help and don’t know where to turn.  It may not pay as well as some things, but some things are more important than a few extra kiwis.”  At this point he’d always look meaningfully at Leslie, so she knew that important thing was her.

She never minded that Pops would sometimes come home late, smelling like alcohol.  He always let her know if he wasn’t going to make it home at all.

When he started to lose weight, everybody complimented him on his healthy new glow.  His knees hurt less, and he found it easier to get up in the morning.  His energy level didn’t go up, but it was pretty high to start with, so that was no surprise.

In the dozen or so times over his life that he had dedicated himself to losing weight, he had been in a constant state of hunger.  Yes, the pounds came off, but it was hard for him to summon the energy for his long walks, and he was grouchy to his customers and friends.  Eventually he gave up.  He frequently told people, “I’d rather be a jolly fat man than a skinny son-of-a-bitch.”

Now Pops ate the same foods he always had, perhaps with a little less energy.  This time it was easy, effortless.  The pounds came off, but he was never ravenous.  He sometimes got full before cleaning his plate, which was always kind of a surprise.  He wondered if something had changed in his diet or activities to let him lose weight with so little effort.  He couldn’t think of anything, but he didn’t try too hard — gift horses and all that.

The occasional stomach ache was easy to ignore, and certainly not worth mentioning to anybody else.  The compliments at his slimmer physique made his self esteem even higher, and he spread his enthusiasm for life to everyone he met. Nobody mentioned that his rosy complexion had turned a little orange, or maybe they didn’t notice.

Leslie started to worry about him when he she heard him vomiting in the apartment’s tiny bathroom one night.  ”Are you OK?”

“Fine, fine,” he said.  ”Go back to bed.”

The next day he’d looked tired, and old, and his skin seemed kind of yellow.  ”You should stay home today,” she told him.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he told her.  But he stayed home nonetheless, vomiting another two times that day.  He knew he should eat, but he just didn’t feel like it.  ”I’ll run over to Portland General in the morning if I don’t feel better.”

In the morning he hadn’t felt like running.  Leslie had wanted to call an ambulance.  Pops said he could walk, but he compromised on a RedVan.  She went with him, and hung out and held his hand as they prodded and poked him and took blood and urine and stool samples, feeding them into the analyzers for the machines to diagnose.

At last they were invited into a tiny office to hear the results. The docs looking at the readouts looked grim.  ”The tests suggest that you may have pancreatic cancer,” they told Pops.

“That sounds bad,” he said with a grin.  ”How sure is it?”

“It’s not certain.  We’ll run some more tests to be sure.  With luck it’ll be a misdiagnosis.”

Leslie did her own research on the net that evening when they got home.  It was almost never a misdiagnosis.  The scans confirmed that it was Stage 4, and had metastasized and spread throughout his system.  They gave him drugs to deal with the nausea and jaundice.  They explained his options.  They could do surgery, but it wouldn’t help at all.  They could do chemo and radiation, and it might help.  A little.  For a while.  Pops said he’d think about it, and he went home, and he and Leslie did some quick research on the net.

The next day he talked to the docs again.  Again they started explaining his options.  Pops interrupted them, cutting to the chase.  ”I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

The younger doctor opened his mouth a couple of times as if he’d thought of something to say, but he finally closed it.  The older one looked him in the eye, judging Pops to be a man who didn’t deserve false hope.  ”Yes,” he said.

“Damn,” said Pops.

Leslie started to cry.

Landscape Jones, November 14
Posted in Books, Personal November 14th, 2011 by joedelta
Chapter 14
Landscape went to her station in the Field to get in a few hours of Pink Castle before bed.  The Aussie Posse played in the morning their time, so with the time difference it was best to hook up with them late in California.
She put a cup of water into the station’s cup-holder.  Her dad had always told her to keep a glass of water at hand when working, on the theory that it prevented repetitive stress injuries.  All she knew for sure is that she had to get up to pee pretty often, and maybe that was the trick.  Whatever.
When she logged on, she saw that the Aussies weren’t on yet, but there was a bluebird twittering around her ponycorn’s head with a message.  She swiped the screen to grab it, and the scroll unfurled.  It was from a chocolate shortbread named “Pookie’s Sister.”
“Hey!  You don’t know me, but I also live in Sacramento.  My name is Mira, and I was wondering if you’d like to hang out some time in the city.  My parents have been bugging me to get off my station and get some sunshine.”  There was a friend request checkbox.
Landscape didn’t know how Pookie’s Sister had figured out she lived in Sacramento.  She did a quick background check, and saw that Mira appeared to be a young California teen with purple hair and a history in Pink Castle that went back several years.  Landscape shrugged to herself and approved Pookie’s Sister as a level 2 friend — low enough that very little information would leak if it turned out to be some sort of ruse from a scumbag or a spammer.
Landscape galloped Chuckles around the meadow waiting for the Posse to arrive, eating colorful flowers and building a bouquet.  Most Pink Castle characters — even a pastry like Pookie’s Sister — had hands, and the bouquet was visible to others as it was being built.  Most horse characters couldn’t build things at all, but Chuckles had bought the ability to craft with almost anything she could eat.  Amusingly, the completed crafted item came out Chuckles’s back end before floating into her saddle bags.  Landscape was pretty good at designing bouquets, and there was a decent auction market for flower arrangements of special beauty.
She suspected that the price at auction wouldn’t be as high for her flowers if the buyer had known they came out of a ponycorn’s ass.
Over the next few minutes Desanka, Tiarni, and Zali showed up.  Chatting with each other and Landscape as they did their little preparatory rituals for the day’s adventuring.
“Where’s Macala?”  Landscape hadn’t seen their second-in-command in a few days.
Desanka’s Lepre-Con shrugged.  ”She’s got some account troubles, apparently.”
Landscape wondered what that meant.  ”That sucks.”
Landscape played Pink Castle for the next four hours with the Aussie Posse, having a lovely time with her friends, then said goodbye and signed off, returning to her single for the last time before the auction the next day.
Chapter 15
Landscape was waiting by the front door, staring at the screen that showed the security cameras around the Farm.  The street out front was empty, and she was wondering whether Thlayli was going to show up.  Landscape was wearing an elaborate purple gown, and she was just hoping that Thlayli would either show up to take her away or call to let her know she wasn’t coming, so she could stop standing around in this ridiculous costume, drawing attention from all the residents of the Farm.
Would he ever show?  He said he would be here at 7.  She’d come down to wait at five minutes until 7, but she’d been waiting for at least a half hour, and had heard nothing yet.  She looked at the clock on the security display, which for some reason was one of those old-fashioned round clocks with hands, but she had trouble reading it — the hands were all the same length, and pointing in peculiar directions.
Finally there was movement on the screen.  A long, black limousine with dark windows silently pulled up in front of Haven’s Farm’s wrought iron gate.  She waited to see who would get out — kind of a fancy car for Thlayli, right? — but nothing happened.
She gave up on waiting.  She glanced around the Field to make sure nobody had seen her, and a small crowd was standing by the stairs, looking in her direction and chuckling to each other.  She blushed.  Why was she wearing this outlandish dress?  Where did it even come from?
She pressed the code to open the front door and slipped out, unsure whether to wave at the people by the stairs.  It hissed and latched closed behind her, and she made her way to the gate, stopping to pick flowers in the meadow out front that she’d somehow forgotten.
The gates swung open as she approached, and closed behind her as she began the long walk across the sidewalk to the waiting automobile.
Suddenly she stopped short, as a pair of scooters skidded to a half between her and the car.  Their drivers were dressed in all black, with shiny black helmets with silver face visors.  They hopped off their bikes and blocked her way, each drawing a katana with a practiced motion.  She had a large bundle of flowers in her left hand, but her right hand formed the gesture of a spell of protection.  The magic’s green glow encompassed her, making her feel safe from the threatening bikers.
Behind them, two of the limousine’s doors opened, and Thlayli stepped out, resplendent in his shiny armor.  Matching long swords were in each hand, glowing magenta and crackling with power.  The bikers turned and attacked, but Thlayli deflected their blows and dispatched them each in turn, the bikers falling silently after being struck down.
Thlayli bowed toward the limousine’s open doors.  ”Quickly,” he urged.  ”Here come more.”  She saw the headlights rounding the corner down the street as more bikes turned to approach them.  She slipped effortlessly into the car, pulling her long purple train in after her so it wouldn’t be slammed in the car’s doors.
Thlayli sat in the seat facing her, sheathing his sword and removing his hat gallantly.  ”We’ll be fine now.”  The car was smoothly accelerating away from the bikes, and she could turn her attention to her date at last.
“My hero,” she said with a smile.
Thlayli took her hand and kissed it. “Always,” he said.
She knew it was going to be a good date.
Chapter 14
Landscape went to her station in the Field to get in a few hours of Pink Castle before bed.  The Aussie Posse played in the morning their time, so with the time difference it was best to hook up with them late in California.
She put a cup of water into the station’s cup-holder.  Her dad had always told her to keep a glass of water at hand when working, on the theory that it prevented repetitive stress injuries.  All she knew for sure is that she had to get up to pee pretty often, and maybe that was the trick.  Whatever.
When she logged on, she saw that the Aussies weren’t on yet, but there was a bluebird twittering around her ponycorn’s head with a message.  She swiped the screen to grab it, and the scroll unfurled.  It was from a chocolate shortbread named “Pookie’s Sister.”
“Hey!  You don’t know me, but I also live in Sacramento.  My name is Mira, and I was wondering if you’d like to hang out some time in the city.  My parents have been bugging me to get off my station and get some sunshine.”  There was a friend request checkbox.
Landscape didn’t know how Pookie’s Sister had figured out she lived in Sacramento.  She did a quick background check, and saw that Mira appeared to be a young California teen with purple hair and a history in Pink Castle that went back several years.  Landscape shrugged to herself and approved Pookie’s Sister as a level 2 friend — low enough that very little information would leak if it turned out to be some sort of ruse from a scumbag or a spammer.
Landscape galloped Chuckles around the meadow waiting for the Posse to arrive, eating colorful flowers and building a bouquet.  Most Pink Castle characters — even a pastry like Pookie’s Sister — had hands, and the bouquet was visible to others as it was being built.  Most horse characters couldn’t build things at all, but Chuckles had bought the ability to craft with almost anything she could eat.  Amusingly, the completed crafted item came out Chuckles’s back end before floating into her saddle bags.  Landscape was pretty good at designing bouquets, and there was a decent auction market for flower arrangements of special beauty.
She suspected that the price at auction wouldn’t be as high for her flowers if the buyer had known they came out of a ponycorn’s ass.
Over the next few minutes Desanka, Tiarni, and Zali showed up.  Chatting with each other and Landscape as they did their little preparatory rituals for the day’s adventuring.
“Where’s Macala?”  Landscape hadn’t seen their second-in-command in a few days.
Desanka’s Lepre-Con shrugged.  ”She’s got some account troubles, apparently.”
Landscape wondered what that meant.  ”That sucks.”
Landscape played Pink Castle for the next four hours with the Aussie Posse, having a lovely time with her friends, then said goodbye and signed off, returning to her single for the last time before the auction the next day.
Chapter 15
Landscape was waiting by the front door, staring at the screen that showed the security cameras around the Farm.  The street out front was empty, and she was wondering whether Thlayli was going to show up.  Landscape was wearing an elaborate purple gown, and she was just hoping that Thlayli would either show up to take her away or call to let her know she wasn’t coming, so she could stop standing around in this ridiculous costume, drawing attention from all the residents of the Farm.
Would he ever show?  He said he would be here at 7.  She’d come down to wait at five minutes until 7, but she’d been waiting for at least a half hour, and had heard nothing yet.  She looked at the clock on the security display, which for some reason was one of those old-fashioned round clocks with hands, but she had trouble reading it — the hands were all the same length, and pointing in peculiar directions.
Finally there was movement on the screen.  A long, black limousine with dark windows silently pulled up in front of Haven’s Farm’s wrought iron gate.  She waited to see who would get out — kind of a fancy car for Thlayli, right? — but nothing happened.
She gave up on waiting.  She glanced around the Field to make sure nobody had seen her, and a small crowd was standing by the stairs, looking in her direction and chuckling to each other.  She blushed.  Why was she wearing this outlandish dress?  Where did it even come from?
She pressed the code to open the front door and slipped out, unsure whether to wave at the people by the stairs.  It hissed and latched closed behind her, and she made her way to the gate, stopping to pick flowers in the meadow out front that she’d somehow forgotten.
The gates swung open as she approached, and closed behind her as she began the long walk across the sidewalk to the waiting automobile.
Suddenly she stopped short, as a pair of scooters skidded to a half between her and the car.  Their drivers were dressed in all black, with shiny black helmets with silver face visors.  They hopped off their bikes and blocked her way, each drawing a katana with a practiced motion.  She had a large bundle of flowers in her left hand, but her right hand formed the gesture of a spell of protection.  The magic’s green glow encompassed her, making her feel safe from the threatening bikers.
Behind them, two of the limousine’s doors opened, and Thlayli stepped out, resplendent in his shiny armor.  Matching long swords were in each hand, glowing magenta and crackling with power.  The bikers turned and attacked, but Thlayli deflected their blows and dispatched them each in turn, the bikers falling silently after being struck down.
Thlayli bowed toward the limousine’s open doors.  ”Quickly,” he urged.  ”Here come more.”  She saw the headlights rounding the corner down the street as more bikes turned to approach them.  She slipped effortlessly into the car, pulling her long purple train in after her so it wouldn’t be slammed in the car’s doors.
Thlayli sat in the seat facing her, sheathing his sword and removing his hat gallantly.  ”We’ll be fine now.”  The car was smoothly accelerating away from the bikes, and she could turn her attention to her date at last.
“My hero,” she said with a smile.
Thlayli took her hand and kissed it. “Always,” he said.
She knew it was going to be a good date.