Neil Fein's Blog

The Well-Tempered Plot Device
by Nick Lowe

Extract:

...One thinks irresistibly of Gandalf's famous words to Frodo when explaining the logic of The Lord of the Plot Devices: "I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker." Frodo, unfortunately, fails to respond with the obvious question, to which the answer is "by the author"...

...the first of DC's great plot generators is almost too famous to warrant discussion, except that the sheer artistry of the concept is rarely appreciated in full. I'd like you to think for a moment about red kryptonite...

...and so on.

Will move this to the reviews page if it works:

"What do you do with a BA in English?" sings Princeton, the lead in this quirky, singable, attitude-filled musical. Avenue Q may have started life as a parody of Sesame Street and similar Henson creations, but it's its own type of furry animal; romance, gay issues, and disappointment in a ground-down life all co-exist on the same stage as wonderful characters singing great songs. And, most importantly, making us believe these puppets feel and love and hate. Everything good I'd heard about this play is borne out in this wonderful show. It's a magic act where we know how the tricks are being done, and it's done so well we just don't care, will Princeton and Kate get back together? Will Rod get a clue? Will Trekkie Monster need a new keyboard?

Martha and I have been listening to the cast CD for the last few weeks in anticipation of seeing this; it's just as funny when you know the jokes already, which indicates plain ol' good delivery and acting. Puppetry and acting meld in this production, where the puppeteers are visible alongside their alter egos.

create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide


Found this linked to from the Complete Waste of Bandwidth. I still have a few states left to visit.

MASH: An Army Surgeon in Korea
by Otto F. Apel, MD and Pat Apel

On June 25, 1950, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- what we know as North Korea -- invaded the Republic of South Korea. Despite demands by the UN, the invasion continued and soon Seoul, the capitol of South Korea was overrun. 5 days after the invasion began, the President Truman pledged US troops to defend South Korea. The war was long and bloody; at one point, ROK and UN troops were pushed back all the way to Pusan, a port city at nearly the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula. Within a year, however, the front lines had stabilized more or less to around the 38th parallel, the original border between the North and South.

Perhaps the most significant advances made in this war were in emergency medical care. The concept of placing a surgical hospital was not completely new, but the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals themselves were a new execution of the concept, over and above the evacuation hospitals and mobile truck hospitals used in the Great War and WWII.

Dr. Apel and his son describe the war vividly and thoroughly, although they can on occasion become repetitive. For a concise and focused book (I read it in a few sittings), the reader can keep everything in mind; no need to repeat.

The standout points of the book are the opening description of the war and the history of combat medicine, putting the rest into perspective; Dr. Apel's first day at the MASH, when he performed 80 continuous hours of surgery before even meeting his fellow officers; and the chapter dealing with arterial transplant surgery, a standout of the techniques developed under fire in the Korean War.

The Apels have adopted a very journalistic tone for most of the book, reporting on events rather than commenting on them. It's only in the end that Dr. Apel allows himself to speculate on what is and what is not a "just war"; his opinion on later conflicts, while reserved, seems clear.

While the reality of combat medicine is nothing at all like the TV show or the movie, Dr. Apel surprisingly (to me, at least) found the TV show more accurate than the movie. As he was a consultant for the TV show, this can be taken with a grain of salt. Some incidents, such as parasitic worms in human intestine, or the true amount of blood in the operating tent, never made thair way to small or silver screens. And neither interpretation ever made clear the sheer difficulty of moving -- and its frequency, particularly in the first year of the way.

The authors do have a distressing tendency of telegraphing the endings of some of their stories, usually by grouping them in chapters of similar stories. Overall, however, this is a very good book. I found it easy to read, challenging and disturbing in its intentional lack of moral outrage. Highly recommended.

Set list:

She Told it To Me Twice
There's That Song
Eyes Up Front
Welcome Home

... Which wasn't the setlist order on the 3"x5" card I had on stage; for some odd reason, I started out playing She Told it To Me Twice, originally the third song on the list. I rearranged the songs in my head so they sounded nice next to each other. I recovered, but didn't feel up to doing Never Had a Brother, a difficult song to sing and play.

Set list:

She Told If To me Twice
Eyes Up Front
There's That Song
Welcome Home

Set list:

She Told If To me Twice
Eyes Up Front
There's That Song
Welcome Home

This just popped up in my inbox:

From: "Democratic Party" (address removed)
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 13:43:30 -0500
To: (address removed)
Subject: Take Action: George W. Bush's outrageous Hitler ad

Take Action: Bush Ad Puts Hitler Alongside John Kerry

It isn't often that we'd ask you to go to George W. Bush's campaign website. But every single American should go to georgewbush.com immediately and watch the disgusting ad the Bush/Cheney campaign has featured on the front page.

Titled "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party," the ad features Adolf Hitler alongside Democrats, including John Kerry. President Bush's campaign has relied on negative attacks against Kerry, but this is a new low.

We've always said the Bush campaign would do anything to win, but even we are shocked that they've sunk this low. It's bizarre. It's outrageous. And we're not going to stand for it.

If President Bush has any decency at all, he'll remove this hateful ad from his website immediately.

Sign the Petition
Take action today and sign our petition to Bush demanding that he repudiate this disgusting ad putting Hitler alongside Democrats and remove it from his website.

Tell a Friend
And please make sure to forward this urgent action alert on to your friends and tell them to join you in this fight!

Keep in mind, W himself has recently been compared to Hitler by Germany's government, the Russian press, and activists in the US itself. Looks like his people took the idea and ran with it.

I headed on over to the site, and the ad isn't linked from the front page; has it been pulled? I don't think Bush should be forced or coerced to pull this, but it certainly goes beyond the boundaries of good taste. Of course, good taste has very little to do with good ol' U.S. of A. politics.

Set list:

She Told If To me Twice
Eyes Up Front
There's That Song
Welcome Home

SpaceShipOne
Photo from Scaled Composites and Astronomy Picture of the Day

A Place So Foreign and Eight More
by Cory Doctorow

I read the story "0wnz0red" when I heard it was up for the Hugo award. The final story of this collection, there are several stories within it, such as "Craphound", "To Market, To Market: The Rebranding of Billy Bailey", "The Super Man and the Bugout", and others that are as good or better.

Much of his fiction, including both novels, is downloadable from his website, and he writes about why at length.

Cory Doctorow currently has two novels in print in the US; I'll likely be checking them out soon. This collection is an excellent way of sampling his writing, which has elements of cyberpunk, jus'-plain-folks writing, and sly 21st-century conceit. Recommended.

I just recently saw "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", the final episode of season 4. "No Surrender, No Retreat", the title for this season of Babylon 5, ties up a lot of loose ends, and sets the stage for the next, and final season. Stuff like the Shadow War, and the war with Earth, and the status of Mars, are all addressed. This show includes some of the best TV I've ever seen.

The growing problem with Psi Corps -- and telepathy in general -- is coming up in the next season, "Wheel of Fire".

If you're not familiar with Babylon 5, the Lurkers' Guide, the most comprehensive (and spoiler-free) guide to the series I've yet found, has an essay on the setting of the show.

Frannie's^[1] birthday party was great fun. We were at a Jewish-themed retreat in Accord, NY, up near the Catskill mountains. We pulled up in the car and saw Frannie by the pool; she suggested we take a swim before dinner. Shortly, we had checked in to "The House Of Love" (its name in Hebrew, as Daniel translated), and were shortly at the poolside in bathing suits. Frannie introduced us to a friend and client of hers, who was great fun to talk to. Ekiwah Adler Belendez is a young poet with a very slight accent (he's from Mexico), and I now have yet another of Frannie's clients on my to-read list.

I brought three books along but only read about 30 pages, and that was late at night.

The weekend was great fun. Frannie is a literary agent and political protestor, and her friends are similarly inclined. Martha called it a "hippie-crunchy" culture (I think she means hippie-granola) and the description is apt. There were lots of sing-alongs, as I was far from the only person with a guitar.

In-between conversations at Friday night's dinner, I got some writing done on the Yellow House song. At this dinner, we met, amongst many others, Kenneth Jackman, a friend of the birthday girl's and a photographer, he's remarkably easy to talk to; and Alison^[2] Rosa Clark, a massage therapist and a dancer. (She danced during a birthday skit slash speech slash roast performed on Saturday night.) Later on we met more family members that I can remember names; my name tag stated that "My name is Neil and I don't remember yours".

^[1] Or "Frances" as most seem to call her.

^[2] Spelled with one "L".

This song is coming along slowly, but well. Each time I sit down at the music stand in my studio, a line or three seems to find its way into the spiral notebook I use for writing rough drafts. I really have no idea what this thing will be called; The Yellow House is as good a working title as any.

I packed the notes into the guitar case, and will try to work on it some more over the weekend that we'll spending be in Accord, NY. I brought the binder-o'-lead-sheets as well.

Just looked at the calendaron my wall here. Where it says I'll be playing an open mic on "Saturday, 24 June 2004" on the calendar page, substitute Saturday, 26 June 2004. ^[1]

On the flip side, we'll be going to a party in a spa this weekend, in a town called Accord, NY. It's right across the border from Connecticut in New York State; here's a map.

^[1] This has been corrected since I posted this. (NF 21 June 2004)

Spent most of Saturday on a wedding invitation for a friend. Buying the new version of Freehand for the Mac is paying off.

On Sunday, we went to a family party. We stopped at a library sale, and got back mid-afternoon and I finished up work on the invite. Martha spent the day reading paperbacks she'd just bought, and I spent the rest of the day in front of the TV.

Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" is a very good film. But I found out that, while reading subtitles, following the inflections of Swedish is difficult, more so that following Italian, Spanish, German, French, Hebrew or Russian. I'm not talking about understanding the language, but reading into an actor's performance. Perhaps Swedish is a peculiar language to English-speaking ears, I don't know. (There are plenty of words common to both languages, or at least similar.)

On Saturday night, I sat at my computer and free-associated for a song; I came up with two pages of text and some decent ideas, even if the topic drifted from what I'd intended. Amy's right, I'm avoiding writing about this.^[1]

I put some of it down on paper as lyrics.

When I woke up on Sunday, I read the crappy lyrics from the night before. There's a good idea there, I just need to distill it into listener-friendly form.

I had some coffee, read the paper, and recorded a new performance/arrangement demo for Hold Up the Wall. (I rewrote the words after recording the last one. I'll upload it as soon as I mix it down.) I like how the instruments are sitting with each other, but the song itself is finished.

Push keeps running through my head, or at least the music for it. It was originally written as part of the "Welcome Home" story, back when that was a story. I've been singing the song a lot to myself; right now, Push is music looking for a song.

^[1] No, I'm not naming the topic until I get some decent words down. I find talking about something directly can make the idea in my head go poof. This makes blogging^[2] about my writing a little difficult.

^[2]Just spell-checked this. Blogger's dictionary doesn't have the word blogging in it.

The Atrocity Archives
by Charles Stross

Neckties. We hates them, precious, don't we?
From Charlie Stross's web diary, 24 May 2004

While the latest book from Charles Stross is a spy thriller slash science-fiction slash horror thing, and it will indeed scare the crap out of you, it's really about modern office politics and business practices. If that doesn't sound sedate enough: The protagonist, one Bob Howard, is a hacker slash office-rebel without a clue about what his agency does, despite poking into data he shouldn't be near. He's a smart fella, but I couldn't decide if good ol' Bob likes his headspace somewhat in the fog, or is just a clueless guy.

Summary time. The world of The Atrocity Archives is one where magic works, MAGIC being code for mathematically-triggered communication with otherdimensional nasty, nasty aliens. We're talking terrorist-collaborating, human-possessing horrors. And Mr. Howard, our clueless genius, works for a UK secret agency specializing in just such phenomena, named "The Laundry". No, really.

Oh, yeah, Bob's manager just doesn't get that flextime is to be used.

This book sounds faintly ridiculous when summarized. The jacket copy doesn't do much of a good job either. But this not-quite-a-novel succeeds on many levels, and is in some ways superior to Singularity Sky, which was a damn fine novel. The Atrocity Archives is downright frightening, and the scariest parts are retconned glimpses into our own history. Yes, all you conspiracy-theorists will love this book, which is a kickass novella followed by a short story that ties up some threads from the main story, and asks some new questions. (Concrete cows? Um, never quite got that one.)

Stross's best long fiction so far. Please, read this book. And don't start it unless you can stay up all night.

I'm just coming off a very nice 4-day weekend, and haven't felt this relaxed in a long time.

We hosted Haboger on Friday, did very little on Saturday, went down to Redbank and saw Craig and Paula on Sunday, and went to a winery on Monday with Grazina.

In between all these activities, I did a lot of reading.

More long holiday weekends, please.