On "Reversed Knees" in animals

Here's one thing that's always irritated me in fiction. Lots of people look at the posterior-pointing joint on the rear legs of many vertebrate animals (with the exception of fish and snakes) and think that it's a knee, except reversed.

The result? Whenever humans transform into animals, there's often a description of the knees "reversing" on themselves, forcing the human onto their fours.

With their legs like that, how do they run, I wonder? You need a reliable way to lift and push your leg off and against the ground, and the best way to do that is with a knee.

Take another look at this wolf. See here that there are two joints in the rear limb: a knee and then an ankle. Wolves, and most other quadruped animals, walk on the tips of their toes.

'Kay, technically the ankle is called a hock, but it is homologous the ankle, and isn't that far off in its structure, either. I call it the ankle in the same way I sometimes call the forelimbs "arms".

The real knee? It's far more medial. Most people miss it because the thigh is so short and tucked into the abdomen, so the animal's in a permanent squatting position. The reason why squatting is much more natural for them because they have short thighs and long feet, and their toes are better-suited for supporting weight.

So, in the case of an animal transformation? It's far more probable that the bones of the leg will lengthen and shrink rather than the knees actually reversing, turning into hocks, the tarsals and tibiae/fibulae merging, the femurs splitting into tibiae/fibulae, and two new femurs springing from the hip joints out of nowhere.

And that's just the skeleton. Think of how all the muscles in those regions would have to split or merge to convert themselves into other muscles, and how new muscles for the thigh will also have to spring out of the hip joints from nowhere along with the femurs.

That's a lot of unnecessary work for a shapeshifter to do!

Whenever you describe or draw an animal transformation, it only makes sense that homologous structure matches to homologous structure. Arms turn into wings, be they of a bat or a bird. The coccyx of a human becomes a tail. A part of the human gullet expands to become a bird's crop.

God help you if you're trying to transform into an invertebrate, however, as there are no homologous structures, except maybe in embryonic form. Good luck!

Bringing Beowulf's culture to life

Who were the Geats?

That's what they were called in our (old) tongue: Geatas. Pronounced (Gheah-tas), as only one syllable. In the other tongue (Old Norse), they were probably also called Gauts. Not much is really known about them. Perhaps they were conquered before a less vague historical period?

What we do know is that they were of the old Germanic culture and are akin to Anglo-Saxons, so they probably had their mead-halls, their scops (skalds in the other tongue), and they probably lived on the southern coast of Sweden close to Denmark. They were probably in close kinship with the Danes (or Spear-Danes, at least).

Our knowledge ends there.

Our knowledge ends there, but that's where I begins my theorization. I mean, we do believe in the theory of gravity, right? So let's start with the general time and location:

Based on more dateable events occurring in the story, Beowulf seems to take place in the early 6th century-- early 500's. The place? Southern Sweden. Judging by this map of the spreading infection influence of Christianity in the 6th century,, both Denmark and Southern Sweden were far from being Christianized, and supposedly the Christianization of those cultures did not begin until the 8th.

So Beowulf's Geats? Undoubtedly pagan. No monasteries, no church, no wimples, no nuns, no modest dress codes, no high social standards, no crusades, no bibles, nothing. Just Odin and Freya and friends, and a more freestyle standard of living.

Some people like to argue that Beowulf is at its heart a Christian poem. I disagree and attest that if it was a christian poem, it would have begun in the monastery, and not have as many of the Scandinavian/Norse/whatsit elements of sagas and other Germanic stories as it does, or the pagan funeral and worship practices which were forbidden by the church, and certainly not have the Hwaet at the beginning, which simply shows that Beowulf was originally an oral poem and did not start in the monastery, a possible translation of a similar oral poem that may have circulated in Geatland and Daneland, before finally being written down in the form it is now.

The whole thing with Grendel being Son of Cain or whatever? Christian addition. The part with Grendel being weak to the power of God? Christian. That part where they demonize the native religion and call it devil-worship? Undoubtedly a Christian addition. Granted, the poem's not overly christianized, it's just that if you look at it closely, all of the Christian bits can easily be replaced, so it must have begun pagan. So something else was there, and it's up to us to fill it in.

So anyway, back to Beowulf's Geats. We know their religion, it's just that we don't know what music they danced to, what kind of art they enjoyed, what stories they told, how they dressed, what their rights were as people under a king, whether they had slaves, or how the royalty lived. We don't even know exactly what people they were.

The solution? Mix & match. Cultures in that region and time period tended to be very similar: Anglo-Saxons, Jutes (possibly also Geats?), Danes, Swedes, even the later Vikings, and since we know almost nothing of the Geats anyway, we can use artistic liberties (within reason).

Which is exactly what I decided to do. Most of the research was put into Anglo-Saxons, but Vikings (despite the fact that they came later and were quite different) were also put in the mix, as well as a bit of the Swedish folk culture, as shown by Beowulf playing säckpipa in the drawing above. I also threw in a pinch of my personal taste because of "What little documentation on socks no you gotta wear socks" and also "Noooo I don't care if I can't find a lot of information on it he looks cute with thigh-length hair in a braid".

The result is something that I'm a little worried about shoving under the noses of seasoned historians and gurus on the subject, but wouldn't look out of place at a Pre-Roman Scandinavia Renaissance Faire if there was one.

Beowulf on Steorarume (Beowulf in Cyberspace)

Yes, you can translate "cyberspace" into Old English. After all, the word itself is a kenning of two words, though the part 'cyber' actually comes from a greek word 'kubernan' that means to steer. The translator took the direct analogue of this in Old English 'steor', the direct ancestor of our 'steer', so now it's literally "steer-room". Whatever works, I guess.

Also, on the subject of 'steer', the word 'starboard' does not come from "board on ship that faces the stars" as I originally thought. Rather, it was 'steorbord' as in 'steer-board', "board on which you steer". Funny how what it took me to realize this etymology was not a dictionary but actually learning how to steer in a canoe. (The paddler and I kept getting our lefts and rights confused so I had the paddler call 'starboard' and 'port' instead.)

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was this website, which is called "Beowulf on Steorarume". It's the home to what is probably the best translation of the Beowulf text I have ever seen, with the Old English alongside, just the way I like it. (And it's the only place where it's officially published, too!)

What makes this translation so good? The fact that it's both literal and understandable. Slade tries his best to preserve the syntax of the original text while trying to make it readable. Take a look, for example, at the first few lines, which are in old english:

Hwaet! We gardena || in gear dagum
Theodcyninga || thrym gefrunon
hu tha aethelingas || ellen fremedon.

Which literally means something like:

What! We of the spear-danes || in elder days
of people kings || power have heard
how the athelings || noble deeds have done

Due to the unusual, flexible syntax of the Anglo-Saxon tongue (heavily played with in this poem, the first line being a tricky example) as opposed to the more linear syntax of the modern English tongue, the meaning of the text is not fully retained. "We" (We and the scop) are not Spear-Danes (sadly enough) despite what literal translation of the first line may suggest (the noun case system that determined the context in which 'gardena' was used here is lost in modern English), we have merely heard of them.

Most translators approach this problem by rearranging the elements of the line into the modern syntax, which works fairly well and does not alter the meaning of the line (at least not by much), but sacrifices some of the rhythm and presentation.

Listen! We --of the Spear-Danes || in the days of yore,
of those clan-kings-- || heard of their glory.
how those nobles || performed courageous deeds.

Here in Benjamin Slade's translation, all of the elements retain their original order, with the out-of-place elements being separated from "we" by em-dashes. It's not completely perfect as the sentence sounds broken in Modern English while fluid in the Old English, but it's the closest step towards retaining the Anglo-Saxon poetic structure I have ever seen taken. Many rounds of applause!

The other thing that makes this publication so awesome is the annotations by the editor, which explain the kennings, etymological origins of names, cultural significance of various elements in the story, and pictures of the Sutton Hoo helm, of course (which by this point I'm kind of getting sick of seeing everywhere). I love seeing things like this instead of a (usually unsuccessful attempt) to translate or rework what was said into something the reader could hopefully understand, as it shows me that the translator is realistic about their own limitations, and that they truly care about the work, both translation and original.

The one downside, of course, is how poorly-formatted the page is. I would like to print out a complete text of Beowulf for my own purposes, but this would require endless hours of redoing Slade's terrible tables. The frame-based website is also astonishingly difficult to navigate (it's best to isolate the frame you're reading as the other frames can be distracting)

But none of that can beat the content of the page, of course. Just as with the original poorly-preserved, sparsely decorated, cheap manuscript that brought us Beowulf, the presentation of this translation does nothing to hinder its value.

A Reconstructed Childhood: Nursing Home Runaway

When I was in third grade, my class's teacher had this thing with taking us to a local elderly home around every holiday and having us do little gigs to amuse the elderly folks. I was a naïve little kid back then, so I had no opinion on what I was doing (although sometimes the budding skeptic in me would awaken and wonder, "These songs are silly. If they don't entertain me, how do they entertain the elderly?"), but now that I look back, I'm a little offended at the fact that my teacher thought we were a free source of entertainment because we were cute little children who would do whatever our teacher told us to do.

But that's besides the point. What stuck out to me most about this experience was hearing about what happened to one of the elderly a week after our first visit. My memory of what was actually told is very fuzzy and it's possible that what I imagined happened is completely different from what actually happened.

So it turned out one of the women left the nursing home. I distinctly imagined this as a rather rotund old lady rushing out of the nursing home in a black flowery dress, with half the nursing staff rushing after her, shouting at her to stop and go back. Despite her age, the old woman outran the staff, escaped the parking lot, and disappeared down a street.

It was an amusing little image, of course, but as I was at an age when the impossible was probable and strange was normal, I believed my imagination to the last word despite the incident's implausibility.

In my head, I was cheering for that lady. You go, girl! I thought, You show them!

"She did not have to be there anymore," said my teacher.

She never belonged there, I thought, never wanted to be there.

I cheered that old lady on as she charged down that side walk on her bare feet, panting, sweat beading on her red face. I applauded her as she turned round the bend and finally returned to her home, to her family, who for all this time had patiently been awaiting her return.

Let's read William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES: Intro

I have never read Lord of the Flies before, not even in school.

I was actually intending on reading this while I was out in the woods with Outward Bound (funnily enough), but I wasn't allowed to take the book with me since I won't have the time to read.

All I know about this story is that a bunch of schoolboys crash-land on a deserted island, and end up forming their own little disturbing society. There are no girls, and this severely upsets a friend of mine, who apparently would rather have a flat useless token girl who died on the plane than no girls at all.

I am imagining a utopia/dystopia-type story that explores the nature of a small, new, isolated society, and the effects an anarchistic lifestyle can have on it.

So here goes.

~*~

Ah, yes! What exactly is a Let's Read?

It's an idea I got from Let's Play videos on youtube, in which the makers of the videos play a videogame and reflect on it. It is the same deal here, except that I will be reflecting on the book as I finish each chapter.

FAQ (for teenagers, especially those living in my town)

Q: What are you talking about?
A: If you were listening (not that you were), you would know. If you don't understand something I'm saying, ask a more specific question.

Q: I don't get a word you're saying. This makes me better than you, right?
A: Absolutely not. Nobody's allowed to be better than me without my explicit permission. I also don't see the logic in how you can be better than me if I can understand you but you can't understand me.

Q: Wait, what?
A: If you were listening, you would have got that.

Q: Why do you cut your hair so short
A: Because that's how I like it. Why do you wear your hair the way you do?

Q: Is it okay for me quote something you said to somebody else as a way of making fun of you because what you said is funny to me because I don't want to take the extra effort to get it?
A: No, it is not okay. I am not the kid who said that Halo was a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything.

Q: Wait why did you call him Halo his name is Master Chief
A: If you were paying attention, you would have noticed that I was repeating someone else's words.

Q: I notice you are making rhythmic movements with your body while listening to music. What are you doing and why are you doing that?
A: I am dancing, asshole. What else do you do to music?

Q: Are you a lesbian?
A: No, I'm straight. But it's okay, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Q: Why don't you talk to people a lot?
A: Have you seen the way people talk to me? Hey, if you genuinely want to talk to me, that's awesome. All you have to do is be nice and stop trying to find ways to make me look like an idiot.

Q: You said something strange, amusing and intriguing about yourself. May my many friends and I all inquire you at once about it?
A: I'll be happy to answer questions about it as long as you all calm down and let me explain. Note that I am a normal human being and not an enigma, so treat me as such.

Q: You have asked me politely to please stop cracking my gum loudly. Is it okay if I continue doing it?
A: If you don't mind me doing violent things to you, go ahead.

Q: You exist. Can I throw stuff at you?
A: There is something inherently wrong with you.

EAT LESS FOOD

And now for some random advice:

EAT LESS FOOD.

It's something that the inflated American-Canadian food industry (which is topped by the same few monopolists over and over) doesn't want you to know is good for you since they can't profit off of that information.

(Did you know that cigarette companies also have a big hand in the food industry? One of the food industry biggies is actually Phillip Morris. This is because tobacco is becoming more and more of a niche industry, so all the smart companies knew to invest in the massive and highly profitable food industry which can never become niche.)

Ever noticed why food pyramid posters always say to "choose" certain types of food? That's because the food industry won't let the government & related committees use the simple "eat less of this" wording on the posters.

The simple truth is that eating less altogether, especially meat, is extremely beneficial to your health. You should only eat as much food as is necessary to sustain you and your kind of lifestyle. If you live an active lifestyle, obviously you need more food, but if you're not active, then you don't need as much food.

Oh, and don't worry about your weight, and especially not your BMI. Some people naturally have more fat tissue than others (your amount of fat cells rarely changes during your lifetime), so the real goal is to just don't let whatever fat tissue you have get engorged with lipids to the point where it's starting to get ridiculous. People also have varying amounts of muscle tissue which adds greatly to your weight since muscle is denser than fat.

How to not handle your gum like a douchebag

1. While chewing your gum, please do so discreetly.
   • This means not chewing with your mouth open. When one chews with his mouth open, others can clearly hear the chewing sounds being made, and clearly see the gum wad lolling around in the mouth, which is absolutely disgusting. Correct this habit.
   • Under no circumstances should you be popping, snapping, cracking or playing with your gum in the presence of others. It is extremely annoying. Anyone who cracks their gum repeatedly will be physically assaulted. That shit is LOUD and fucking disgusting.
   • A good rule of thumb is to imagine that your mean old teacher from elementary school who hated gum is present in the room and right next to you. Try to chew your gum in such a way that your teacher wouldn't notice.
2. After you have finished with your gum, please dispose of it in an environment-friendly manner.
   • Britain is forced to spend £150 million on removing gum from pavements, as chewing gum is non-biodegradable (it is rubber!) and will not be cleaned by normal means, and I'm sure the cost in the US is no different. You've seen the nasty little black and grey spots on the pavement--that is gum! That shit gets stuck to people's shoes, it soils the look of perfectly good pavement, and animals get hurt from trying to eat it (chewing gum is a human creation, it's only natural that animals don't understand it). Chewing gum is banned in Singapore for this very reason.
   • Underneath a counter top is also not an acceptable place to leave your gum. Don't think nobody notices.
   • In Six Flags New England, I once saw a little chicken wire-covered roof (also blocked off from the stairs I was on by fencing) that was completely covered in globs of ABC gum. I was almost about to be sick. Please don't throw gum somewhere just because you see other gum there! You only add to the problem!
   • Chewing gum does not decompose. If it gets stuck somewhere, it will be there forever until someone (hopefully the asshole who put it there) removes it.
   • Please dispose of your gum in an appropriate trash receptacle. If a trash receptacle is nowhere to be found, keep that shit in your mouth until you find one or swallow it. And no, it will NOT stay in your stomach for ten years or five years or even one, that is an old wives' tale. No, it will simply pass through your digestive system and out of your anus like anything else you swallow. The only difference is that it won't be broken down because it's not bio-degradable.

Easy process for formulating a thesis statement

While in the process of writing an essay for the summer reading assignment for high school (which starts on Monday), I decided to look up some useful articles on writing thesis statements, which is still something I struggle with.

My search landed me this excellent article by Dennis G. Jerz, who is an English professor at Seton Hill University, so this information is obviously intended for college students. This is all well and good for me, as despite being a high school student, I want to learn to write a college-level essay rather than a high school-level one.

According to the article, there are three parts to a thesis statement:

• The Topic: The main topic of your essay
• The Precise Opinion: The argument about the main topic of your essay that is presented throughout.
• The Reason Blueprint: The reasons supporting the argument about the main topic of your essay that is presented throughout, which are elaborated on in the body.

Now that I was aware of these three parts, I was now able to begin formulating my thesis statement. Here's where I decided to get a little creative and take my own approach.

~*~

This is the essay question for my summer reading assignment:

If you could be or if you admire any character in the book, whom would you choose? Explain. Support your answer with at least three specific examples from the story.

This question was not specifically chosen for the book, which I chose to be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but was a general question. As it was, it was a little vague and subjective to answer with a thesis statement, so I doctored it, as follows:

Out of all the characters in the book, which one is the most admirable? Explain and support the answer with at least three specific examples from the story.

Now, I was able to form a thesis statement. I decided to do it by tackling the three pieces in order. I thought of each part as adding on to the preceding step, as follows:

• Topic: R. Walton
• Opinion: R. Walton is the most admirable character
• Reasons: R. Walton is the most admirable character because he is willing to care for a dying man and record his story, he is not afraid to sacrifice his honor and his ambitions, and he puts other people before himself.

Initially, I tried to make Frankenstein my topic, but then I realized that my opinion was about R. Walton, the character, and not the novel itself. When I changed the topic to R. Walton, the process went much more smoothly. This is how I realize that each part merely adds on to the first.

Now, I had a rough thesis statement, all I needed to do now was fix it up a little so that it would make a little more sense to a reader:

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, R. Walton is the most admirable character in the story because he is willing to direct the most of his attention to the emotional support and care of a dying man, he is not afraid to sacrifice his honor and his ambitions, and he puts the safety and desires of other people before his own.

Now I'm ready to use this thesis statement to write an essay!

A Word on Children's Fiction

(Note: At the time I wrote this blog article, I was sitting underneath a tarp in the middle of North Carolina wilderness. I have not made changes to the article since, aside from minor proofreading. A little shabby, but still not bad for being in the wilderness for six days at the time.)

~*~

What makes a good children's fiction? Is it the simplicity? The safety? The charm? What separates an adult's fiction from a children's fiction?

In my view, a good children's fiction must be enjoyed by an adult just as much as a child. There isn't much that separates children's fiction from adult's fiction other than the arbitrary decision that one is "for adults" and the other is "for children".

One may say that a children's fiction must be about a child in order to be enjoyed by a child. As can be determined from Disney movies over the ages, this is not true. The majority of disney's movies happen to be about teenage (Belle, adult Simba, Aladdin, Ariel) or adult protagonists (Finding Nemo's Marvin, Hercules, Tarzan, even UP is about an old man). A children's fiction can be just as easily about adults as an adults fiction can be about children. One may say that the Disney movies may be about adults because adults are role models to children, but I don't think that's the case. I think children relate to characters like Aladdin and Tarzan because they have a nature often found in children: youth and charm. Contrasted with the nature of their respective antagonists, this is even more obvious, as the antagonist of Tarzan is a cruel man with no appreciation for nature and other people, and Jafar is a man overrun with greed and selfishness. (Funnily enough, these qualities are both negative side effects of growing up and into the world.) Children like to see the adults who are still in touch with their inner children beat the ones that aren't. (Hades in Hercules might be a special case, however, as he's still quite a childish and fun-loving guy. Maybe that's why he's a popular Disney antagonist.) The reason why adults love the same fiction is because they themselves are still in touch with their inner children.

The idea that children's fiction must be simple, pleasurable and devoid of a mature theme is utter crap. Good characters don't have to avoid dying or suffering. Children are more capable of handling death than adults may think, and if they are experiencing death in their life, seeing it in fiction helps them deal with it. See Mufasa's death in The Lion King, which is a tear jerker for any viewer. Although Mufasa does "come back" in the form of a spirit, this does not minimize the emotional effect. If a major, lovable character like Mufasa can die, then potentially so can any protagonist.

Death isn't the only mature theme that can be explored in children's fiction, however. What about death en masse? Survival? Sacrifice? Fear? The light novel series Animorphs is about all of these. Animorphs may not be the best-written series in the world, but it has many good parts. It circles around a parasitic alien invasion, and, instead of scratching the surface of this idea, delves deep into it. The protagonists are forced to hurt and kill innocent people who are controlled by the parasites, and they know it all to well. This is a popular children's series that has spanned over 50 volumes and multiple companion novels.

The trickiest perception of children's fiction to tackle is the sterilization of the world to make it suitable to portray to children. What do we do with things like sex? Swearing? Nudity? All of these are good and well in adult's fiction, but obviously avoided like the plague in children's fiction. Now due t the very nature of the stories told, most of it isn't even necessary. After all, why have a protagonist swear when it isn't even in his nature to swear? On the other hand, you have stories like Harry Potter (although the latter novels are very much written for teens) where there are characters who can and will swear but end up being censored anyway. (Until the latter novels, when Ron's mom, of all people, openly swears) One example is Ronald Weasely calling Professor Snape something foul enough for Hermione to scold him, but it isn't actually said what he called him. (Most likely 'wanker' or 'arsehole') It's possible this was done for humorous effect, but it wasn't quite played that way. Animorphs runs into this same issue with gore and violence. The prose will graze its edge and imply that someone's had was sliced off, but won't say it outright. This is where I personally run into an issue. If a child can already easily understand the implication that someone swore or lost his hand and perhaps may even be able to guess what swear it was, I don't see what harm there is in acknowledging the fact that the child already understands these things and allowing him to see what he already knows is there. (Unless it's deliberately done to tease or be funny, then it's acceptable.) Personally I think all the censorship issues is a result of culture more than anything else. The US (and most likely the UK too) has a very high culture of stamping "taboo" on the controversial, while many countries in Europe (namely Denmark) have a much lower culture of such. In Japan there is no such thing as censoring profanity at all. (Though there's no true profanity in Japanese just very rude words. This may be why children's shirts saying "Fuck off" exist in Japan, as the world doesn't have the same effect in Japanese as it does in English.) I think this taboo is a very self-feeding problem that can only be solved by learning to break the cycle. Does this mean that we SHOULD include taboo in kid's fiction? Not necessarily. I just think writers shouldn't be afraid to include taboo should the story ever call for it.

In the end, what really separates adult's fiction from children's fiction? Not a whole lot. One may be aimed towards adult and the other towards children, but there's nothing stopping an adult from enjoying children's fiction and very little (besides laws and policies based on ratings; I believe such laws shouldn't exist) stopping a child from enjoying adult's fiction. Who are we to decide who should read what and what should be read by who?

Bullet list

• bullet
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Shyamalan's Last Airbender: The good, the bad, and the ugly

So I went to see Shyamalan's Last Airbender in the theatres, and this was my reaction:

Now, for starters, because I heard that the movie was going to be directed by Shyamalan, I didn't have high expectations in the first place.

So I decided to go in and just try to enjoy the movie without trying to compare it to the show and lamenting about the exclusion of this and that, but it was so bad that I couldn't just get into enjoying it.

The Good:

- They did a good job animating Appa and Momo. They looked pretty much how I expected the animals to look in live action.

- They did a fairly good job with the costumes. Of course, Katara and "Soh"-ka were technically dead since their robes were wrapped the wrong way (anyone who's familiar with Japanese kimono should be able to get the joke.), but I spent much of the movie enjoying the costumes.

- They also did a good job with the sets. The Fire Nation ships looked great and the city of the North Water tribe was amazing. The inner sacred pool in the same city was also beautiful.

- The bending special effects were amazing. I loved the water effects, and I have to admit, the fire burning off of General Zhao's hand looked pretty cool.

- I also enjoyed the live action interpretation of the opening bending sequence.

- The best acting was done by "Ee"-roh, even though "Ee"-roh had a completely different personality from the actual Uncle Iroh, besides the five-second clip of him drinking tea. I'll not blame the change in personality on the actor, but on the director and the writer. It's obvious that Shawn Toub did the best he could with the resources he was given.

The Bad:

- Most of the camera work in this movie was unimaginative, especially in the Earth Nation village where all the camera did was stand back and swivel back and forth. The pan down the bridge in the North Water city was acceptable, though.

- Occasionally, the bending motions came across as kind of cheesy and poorly done. This could be the fault of multiple causes, such as poor acting on the actor's part, Shyamalan trying too hard to impress (when it comes to the motions for bending, I believe less is more and Shyamalan tried to do too much in places), or the unexpressive camera work. (While watching the fire benders do synchronized bending in an episode of Book 1 I watched later the same day, I noticed how uncheesy it looked because the camera did interesting things like switch to the benders' feet.) However, the synchronized bending done by "Oong" and Movie!Katara was acceptable, even if it was poorly synchronized and the motions between the two benders differed too greatly.

- As I've been poking fun at throughout this entire review, many of the names were pronounced wrong. I can't figure out how that could happen since Avatar is an American cartoon so the team did not have an excuse to pronounce the names wrong.

UPDATE: I just heard that the reason why Shyamalan used these pronunciations was because he wanted to use the actual pronunciations of the names as they would be in the regions that the nations of Avatar are based on. I still hold on the use of the original pronunciations used in the show, which I believe can be justified by the Avatar world having a dialect that is different from our own.

- I didn't quite like the change in Zuko's hairstyle or in the design of the airbender tattoos, but they didn't bother me particularly.

- While it didn't bother me all that much either, "Oong"'s Avatar state was kind of creepy and made me think of blind possessed choir boys.

- I noticed that the entire part of the plot where Aang hears about the comet has gone missing, which takes away his main motivation to get to the North Pole as quickly as he can. Are they saving this for later movies?

The Ugly:

- Oh, god, the total LACK in character development and characterization. Where is Aang's playful and childish nature? Where is Katara's idealism and passion? Where is Sokka's sarcasm and closed-mindedness? Where is Zuko's pride and sustained fury? GONE. All of it gone. Even the subplots that could have given the cast a little personality were gone. I mean, even the first ten minutes of the film, in contrast to the first five minutes of the first episode, put no effort into expressing Katara's and Sokka's personalities, or the relationship the two share. I mean, I even would have been happy to see Sokka being sexist, but even that was gone. I mean, even the Lady in the Water cast had more personality than this.

- When I came in to see the movie, I was looking forward most to see how well Dev Patel could pull off Zuko. See, since I was impressed with his acting in Slum Dog Millionaire, and I had started to get past the Aang Ain't White thing, I believed Dev could do it. Unfortunately, Shyamalan, like other bad directors have a nasty habit of doing, had crushed the good acting out of Dev and and his portrayal of Zuko turned out almost as bland as anyone else in the cast. There was a glory moment where Dev truly played Zuko properly (in the company of the Fire Nation, to what I think was Zhao's ear), but it did not reappear.

- The acting of Movie!Katara, "Soh"-ka and "Oong" was very bland and did very little to bring out what personality the characters had left.

- The story presentation was flat and very lacking in pacing and suspense. If I had not watched Avatar, I would not have been able to understand the plot as it was presented, or the story concepts since they were very rushed in their explanation. The characters seemed to rush into moving the plot with no explanation or motivation, like they were controlled by some outer authorial force. It was this, the bad acting, and the total lack of characterization that prevented me from being able to enjoy the movie.

~*~

So it was a horrible movie, and I have the feeling that Shyamalan and the writers did not actually watch the show but skimmed over a few scripts, but to quote Sokka: "But the effects were decent."

Not that I think that translating Avatar into a live action film series is impossible. I think it could be done, it's just that Shyamalan did it totally wrong. Next time, Shyamalan, let me handle things like this.

We have lost cabin pressure.

IN LOVING MEMORY
1999-2010

Yeah, I probably shouldn't be talking to the internet about this, but my cat died yesterday. I'm staying home today to find a way to cope with it.

Kitty was behaving fine the day before, and this morning, excited for his daily morning meal of canned food. It was only when I came home when I noticed something was wrong. My cat was sitting on the floor in the upstairs bathroom, and didn't seem to want to move around much. He meowed in unusual ways (either a call for my attention or a reaction to pain), did not respond to our typical communication cues, and his tail did not move (did not curl and uncurl the way it usually does). There was still some food on his nose from this morning. I had a gut feeling that something was very wrong, and checked the entire house for signs of something he may have eaten. (Nothing. He doesn't eat plants, and we didn't leave out any human food.) I had a gut feeling then that he wasn't going to be okay. I wondered if I should have called my mom.

The cat then moved on his own out of the bathroom and into my mom's bedroom. He walked very slowly, with his head and tail down, crouched, in a somewhat disoriented walk. He jumped onto the bed, and because he seemed to be breathing heavily, I called my mother. He jumped off the bed again and rested on the floor, his tail curled around itself in a way he usually doesn't. Because of the way he was moving I checked all of his limbs to see that they were okay. He put his head down on his arms (something he doesn't usually do) and seemed very exhausted.

I carried him in my arms very carefully downstairs so that he could be closer to food and water if he needed them. For the next few hours or so he sat either on the couch or in front of it, looking very ill. He responded slightly to only one communication cue, which was when I made to pet the side of his cheek (he usually lifts his head or leans into my hand because he understands my petting routine so well). I think his pupils were also unusually dilated for the light. (My other cat Charlie was in the living room, where there's a lot of light. Her pupils were a little smaller.) He also made very little effort to look at me.

Yeah, Charlie seemed to understand what was going on, probably better than I did at the time. A few times she came up to Kitty and would lick him on the head. (Licking is a way cats relieve stress and calm themselves. Cats will lick when they're stressed, and to comfort another cat. Kitty did not lick himself at all for the entire time he looked sick.)

He sat there on the couch for the next few hours, until my mom came home. We discussed the state of the cat a little, figured he had a stomachache from something he probably ate (my mom assured me that Charlie once behaved like this before and turned out fine) and that he'll feel better by tommorrow.

We went to the gym for at least an hour, and when he came back, he was still on the couch. He seemed to look a little better, because he lifted his tail closer to as he usually did, and then had to vomit. (Not like the usual furball. He coughed up a thin, reddish liquid which my mom thought looked like carrots. We checked around for signs of anything he could have eaten. Still, nothing.

My cat then moved into the kitchen (probably to get away from human contact), in a very slow, exhausted, disoriented walk in which he slipped on his feet, and slumped on the floor, looking very sick again. I decided it would be better that he laid on something soft, so I tried to carry him back to the couch.

My cat got out of my arms and went down the hall before I could get there, so I picked him up, and the same happened. He was breathing very healthy (I think he was panting, or gasping!), and then vomited. He fell on his side and gasped heavily, crying, and then he was moving very slowly, and then not at all. I was lying with the side of my head on the floor, looking him directly in the face, at that last moment.

About fifty percent of cats are born with a defect in the heart that causes an unexpected heart failure after at least five years of life. It's really difficult to diagnose because cats usually don't show symptoms until at least 3 months before death, and usually, once the cat starts showing symptoms, it's too late to do anything. It can't be prevented, or helped. Cats are also really good at hiding the symptoms from their humans (being intelligent creatures without the same dependency on others that dogs have), until they're too sick to be able to do so.

~*~

I don't know if you have ever watched a dying mammal up close before (including humans), but when you see them, you just know that they're dying. You just know that they won't make it out alive. It's like instinct. I was crying before he died.

So my mom and I probably sat in the hall next to his body for at least an hour. We put his body in a box, and decided we would call a pet funeral service the day after. Then we sat next to the box for at least another hour, talking a little, crying on and off. Charlie came around once or twice, rubbing her cheeks on the box (Cats mark territory by rubbing their cheeks on them, and Charlie does this with every single box she comes across), and looking very confused. I don't think the impact hit her until this morning, when she was meowing.

Now, all I can think about is poor Kitty. I was probably the human he was most close to. He sat on my bed the most, he would always sit in my lap when I was at the computer, and he would sit next to me when I played the piano. I would pick up his paws and pretend to make him play it. Whenever we watched a movie, he would sit in one of our laps or on the couch above our heads.

Oh yeah, he also used to have a hair fixation. Like, he would stand on the couch above you and lick your hair. He was really a sweet cat, with simple pleasures in life. He was really attached to us, and was scared of thunderstorms. He'd play with random scraps of plastic and paper that were lying on the floor. He was really timid, so the first time he sat in people's laps was always a big deal, because it was an expression of trust. When I came home, he would be lying on the couch, on someone's bed, and always seemed happy to see me. When he slept, he would curl up in a perfect little circle.

It's the first time I have ever lost anyone that was close to me.

You're the only conscious human in a world of sheep.

Self explanatory.

I think the root to this phenomenon is that there are not as many people who express their thoughts as there are people who think.

The solution? Express your thoughts. We humans are graced with the ability to express our intricate thoughts. We should put it to good use.

101 |=|235|-||35

wtf mate

So. You want to do some vector lineart on your uploaded sketch in photoshop. All you have to do is draw a vector line on your sketch, set a brush, hit 'stroke path' and you have a satisfying line, right?

WRONG.

Why? Because the resulting line is the same weight all the way through. Even if you use varying widths for different lines, your line doesn't add definition to what it is trying to describe.

Okay then, what about hitting the "simulate pressure" button, you say?

Still wrong. The simulate pressure does taper the ends of the line, but does not add any extra weight to the line where it should be there.

So what is the solution? To take the matter of the lines into your own hands. That is, to, instead of drawing vector lines, to draw vector shapes and fill them in. It takes a longer time to do, but it's more worth it in the end.

Okay, so here is the original sketch that I will be working with.

It's not a sketch that is actually well-suited to vector tracing because it's shaded, not to mention it's low resolution, but I will try anyway.

This is messier than how I usually do it due to the low resolution, but here's an example of what I mean. (with a 25% white filter over the sketch)

As you can see, the paths form the shape of the lines rather than the lines themselves. By doing this, I can completely control the shape of the line.

When you fill in the path, your path should look like this. Also, where subpaths overlap, be sure to be careful of what overlapping mode the path is in. By default it is "exclude overlapping path areas", here I have it set to "add to path area" so that the overlapping areas aren't excluded.

Here's how the lines will look filled in, and the path deleted or unselected. (with a white filter of 50%) Here, you can see that the lines define the shape of the eyebrows (a little too craggly than I wanted but ok), and the mouth. You can't do this with just stroking linear paths.

Not the best vector lineart I've done, but you get the idea.

And no, I'm not finishing it.

Let's Read Billy Budd - Preface, I

Wow, getting to a stable position in which I can write about the book and do homework on it at the same time was very difficult.

I skimmed Preface up to Chapter 11 first to get it done in the amount of time given to me (I am a slow reader) so I already have a general idea of what goes on in the story and what it's about. Then I decided to go back and read Preface to chapter 11 at my own pace to make sure I get the story in full.

I'm writing this Let's Read blindly because I managed to lose my copy of the book. In your hand one second, gone completely missing the next.

Update: I've finished reading the entire book in depth.

But I digress.

Preface.

It's a self-explanatory passage in which Melville analyses the events around the period in which the story takes place. That is, year 1797, during the French Revolution. Writing roughly around 1888, Melville understands the Revolution as a wrongdoer, as bloodshed, only based on a good idea. (Which is a fair assessment. During the revolution, about 16,594 prisoners were sentenced to death for counter-revolutionary activities, and perhaps as many as 40,000 were executed without a fair trial.)

Infused with the Revolutionary Spirit of the age (blame it on the Americans), it is kind of ironic that the Revolution should by damaged by yet another Revolution, the Great Mutiny: a successful overthrow of the abusive commanders and captains of the day, later a successful reform of the British Navy.

Billy Budd is about the events of the Great Mutiny, and how it affects the life of a good-natured, innocent man.

I

A much longer passage, introducing Billy Budd, and how he entered the British Navy's service.

The chapter begins by describing what in the day would have been an ideal sailor: that is, an extremely tanned, tall fellow surrounded by his many shipmates. Our Billy Budd is nothing like this Handsome (so far as they were concerned) Sailor, but he is otherwise remarkable for his skill and ability to keep peace.

Billy was originally crewmember of a merchant ship, and as the Navy used to do freely in those days, he was sort of randomly semi-officially drafted. As in, a lieutenant showed up on the ship, saw Billy, and decided to take him. Of course, Billy has no idea what's going on so he makes no qualms, described effectively in this excellent line:

"To the surprise of the ship's company, though much to the Lieutenant's satisfaction, Billy made no demur. But, indeed, any demur would have been as idle as the protest of a goldfinch popped into a cage." - Herman Melville, Billy Budd.

Come on, you just gotta love the goldfinch part, that is excellent. But again, I digress.

So the name of this new ship on which he is drafted is the HMS Indomitable. An interesting name for a ship. An even more interesting name for a ship is the Rights-of-Man, which is actually the name for the merchant's ship from which Billy was taken. Apparently the captain of this ship was a huge fan of Thomas Paine, so he named it after one of his essays.

The ship's captain protests the drafting of Billy, insisting that the kid's very presence keeps order, much "like a Catholic priest striking peace in an Irish shindy." (Since a shindy's supposed to be a sort of Irish dance, Billy sucks the fun out of everything? Don't Melville intended to suggest that. Maybe the captain just doesn't like the Irish.) Apparently he established order with one particularly rude sailor by punching him in the face after he gave Billy an inadequate cut of meat. Don't know how that works, but okay. An interesting note: Billy did much more damage with his punch than he intended. Poor kid doesn't know his own strength.

When Billy makes his good-natured farewell to the merchant ship, he says "And good-bye to you too, old Rights-of-Man." A very interesting farewell, as his boarding the Indomitable will literally mean goodbye to his rights as a man, though he may not know it.

What does an innocent young man do, after having unknowingly walked into a cage? Will he find a way out? Will he learn to recognize his own bars?

The Portrait

Used to be a real person.

Let's Read Billy Budd

Darn, I was hoping I would be able to do my first Let's Read on the Scarlet Letter, but unfortunately I got the idea a little too late. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a little too long to do a Let's Read on, and the thing I'm supposed to be reading right now is Herman Melville's Billy Budd, so why not.

First off, what is a Let's Read? Kinda like those videos on youtube where people play games and do commentary on the game, except here I'm doing commentary by the chapter.

~*~

Now, on to BIlly Budd: The full title is Billy Budd, Foretopman. It is an obscure unfinished novel by Herman Melville, which I assume takes places after the French Revolution. A "final" version of the novel was published based on studies of Melville's writing process, but I'm reading the original rough, not that one.

Personally I think BIlly Budd is one of the most boring titles I've ever heard. Then again, since I also hate the title "The Wind that Shakes the Barley", I might just have something against the letter B.

Visitor of religions

I had a brief conversation with a friend recently about participating in the observation of religions one doesn't follow. At the time we were sitting in an Indian restaurant, listening to Indian music and looking at Indian tapestries, and I asked her what she would do if she was given the opportunity to worship in a Hindu temple.

She said she wouldn't try to worship as she finds it disrespectful to pretend to worship a god you don't believe in. Me, I can't wrap the concept around my head. Then again, she is an atheist, so she doesn't really know how to believe in a god as she doesn't in the first place.

"Believing" in a god, at least for me, is not the same thing as believing in evolution or believing the earth is a sphere. I believe in the latter notions because there is overwhelming evidence that supports them, while there is no hard evidence at all for or against the physical existence of any god.

And in any case, does it really matter whether or not God physically exists? It seems to be that gods exist as ideas within the minds of people, not as actual people, and that is good enough for me. Since I don't attach any details to the concept of god, it can take different forms. I can worship YHWH, Allah, Shiva, or a pagan goddess and still be worshiping the same basic concept.

I guess this was the idea the prophet Mohammed was touching upon when he created Islam. As in Islam, God is less of a person and more of a concept, with no form except for the ideas in the Qur'an, or idols of any kind. Islam was based on the ideas of Judaism and Christianity, you know.

But does this mean that I am an actively religous person? No, not really, as religon is not what I live for. I just know how to believe in a god, any god.

The Objective Perspective.

Perhaps a clearer attempt at expressing the previous thought.

Humans, being emotional creatures who apply meaning where there are none, are limited in their perspectives. Humans sometimes get so wrapped up with passion inside their own thoughts that they can't see any other way. Humans, when they discuss, are just as quick to hide information against them as they are to exaggerate information in their favor. Not to mention that in the cock fight of ideas, an enraged human may launch an attack on the other trainer instead of his bird (also known as ad hominem. It's stupid. Don't do it.).

And yet, I won't have it any other way. After all, it's these weaknesses in respecting ideas that makes humans human. If anyone suggests that it is a human goal to see through the objective perspective, they are wrong. The objective perspective, while it should be respected and understood, is the opposite of being human. It would be like seeing the world through the eyes of a flea.

The Objective perspective is the perfect, passive, opinionless way of looking at an idea (or rather, a thing) which has not been flawed by the human way of understanding things. From a human perspective, a book is one method of sharing a story or idea, using paper. From an objective perspective, a book is several thin sheets of woodpulp with ink on it, nothing more.