I like staying home. I have a good friend who, if he’s stayed home for an hour or two, is overcome with a need to go out, see people, and do things. I can sympathize, but I almost never share the impulse. I’ve made my home a place I enjoy living in. That’s kind of the point of having a home, isn’t it? Why not enjoy it?

Which is why I spent all day yesterday at home (excluding a walk around town, which I’ll describe a little later). I had good reason, actually; I wanted to make a few things for my parents’ visit tonight. We’re establishing a tradition that they spend Halloween evening with me, since they live in a neighborhood with few kids these days, and it’s rather depressing to have a total of three kids stop by on Halloween. So, over to my place, where I get thirty.

Anyvay, they’ll be coming for dinner, so I wanted to have a few things on hand: caramel popcorn, a nice autumn treat; some bread for the cold cuts left over from the Pumpking Carving Party; and a batch of chocolate chip cookies just because I do that most weekends and the cookie jar was empty. After I stop by the grocery store tonight, I should have the following menu:

• Sandwiches made from fresh homemade bread, cold cuts of ham and turkey, and cheese
• Apple slices
• Caramel popcorn
• Chocolate cupcakes
• Chocolate chip cookies
• Apple cider

So I made the popcorn, bread, and cookies yesterday morning, all of which went smoothly enough. In the afternoon, I helped Saalon set up his new blog, then went for the aforementioned walk around town. I live in an area that has a bunch of old houses, many rundown. Perfect for Halloween. I wanted to get some good pictures, but my camera doesn’t do well in the dark, and I couldn’t hold the camera still. But I ended up with 38 photos.

Then home, where I watched several Japanese live-action TV dramas, and I think I’m getting addicted. Interesting acting, neat camera angles, tight writing, fascinating premises…and really bad video. Ah well. More on them later, once I’ve had the chance to ruminate on them for a while.

For now, it’s Halloween. Remember, you’re entitled to one good scare.

Meanwhile, Saalon is back, with a neat description of our hacker travails.

Halloween Comes Once a Year, It’s Almost Here, It’s Almost Here

After a day spent on chores and a productive Otherspace meeting that’s uninteresting to anyone outside it, I sat down tonight to re-watch John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Every time I watch this movie—as I do every October—I am more impressed than I was the last time I watched it. It’s not just scary.

See, I don’t like horror movies much. They’re usually too silly or stupid or over-the-top or pointlessly gruesome. Horror movies seem to suffer from one of two unfortunate extremes: they’re either too over-the-top and fantastic (e.g., the killer can leap two stories or fall from five stories and be fine) or they’re relentlessly true-to-life, which requires victims who can’t run faster than a trot.

Halloween falls into neither trap. The villain is just on the cusp of supernaturally evil; he’s surprisingly indestructible, yet real humans often survive the kinds of injuries that he sustains throughout the movie. A single-minded human could do all this.

And that’s what makes Halloween so dang scary. That guy could be right out on your street, and if he really wanted to he could kill you. He could break right through my sliding-glass door downstairs, detour into the kitchen, grab the butcher knife from the knife block, come upstairs, and how could I stop him? Throw books at him? Most of us couldn’t stop a determined, strong man from stabbing or throttling us.

But it’s not just the premise that works; it’s the execution. The movie presents relentlessly mundane scenes of girls chatting, trick-or-treaters wandering from house to house…and it all underscores that underlying horror that everyone is so vulnerable. A couple kids in costumes pass, and they’re isolated and alone on those big, empty streets. There are no crowds in this movie, and that helps embellish the movie’s feeling of isolation.

It’s rather remarkable that everything in this movie comes together to work so effectively. The script is quite tight, building dread and establishing characters. The music is simply perfect; minimalist but spooky. The cinematography is as effective as that in any great film. The acting is…okay, much of the acting is acceptable at best, but it’s helped by Jamie Lee Curtis’ vulnerable yet strong babysitter character.

And it all contributes to a film that manages to spook me out even hours after watching it.

Well, the Pumpkin Carving Party was a complete success. I’m already planning for next year’s, which I want to make even better.

It came on the heels of a bit of a disastrous day at the office, from a productivity perspective. I could not make myself fall asleep Thursday night, so I ended up sleeping through my alarm this morning and got to work late. I’d scheduled a one-on-one lunch with my boss today, so that ate up an hour. Plus, I had to leave work early to get ready for the party. Fortunately, I’m mostly caught up at work, so this had no direct impact on my work. I was able to slide through work today, doing somewhat less than usual.

I got home and made last-minute preparations. All the food was baked or otherwise prepared, but I still had to wash out a tub so we could bob for apples, and I had to assemble everything for transportation. This was a significant engineering challenge, as I had only one small pickup truck in which to hold:

• Two large pumpkins
• A medium-sized tub
• A plate of deviled eggs
• A plate of green Brain Jell-O
• Sixteen chocolate cupcakes
• A bag of caramel popcorn
• Six apples
• Fourteen assorted knives

Plus, on the way there, I had to pick up meats, cheeses, and bread rolls for the main meal. I fit it all by putting the tub in the back of the truck and the two pumpkins in that, and the deviled eggs and Brain Jell-O on the seat next to me. Everything else fit on the floor or behind the seat.

I muscled my way through rush-hour traffic to arrive only a few minutes late at a friend’s house. I was thrilled to discover he’d invited a few friends to join us (I’d made it clear this party was open to friends of friends), so we ended up with thirteen people. A good number for a party.

And all of these extra friends needed to shoot a short film for school, too. They remembered that I have actual film experience (thanks to Saalon‘s Dreaming by Strobelight), so I gladly helped out behind the camera. We assembled a fun, silly little interpretation of one of the Canterbury Tales, I think. I had tons of fun. I even showed them how to edit the film using their VCR, a skill I learned from my fellow AMV creators. Very cool. I didn’t get home until 1:30 in the morning.

Can’t wait to do it again next year. Even though we never did bob for apples.

My Mom just left after a wonderful evening. Don’t have time to describe my day in detail, but briefly: I’ve read some fascinating, thought-provoking books, and applied them today, which has been enlightening. My Mom worked on lining my curtains while I baked cupcakes and made deviled eggs for the party tomorrow. We then watched The Twins Effect, a Hong Kong vampire romantic comedy action flick. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, note the new survey I’ve added to the middle of the page. I tossed it together today at work in some spare time, and it seems to work fine. Surveys may not stay around for more than a day or two, so if you want to vote, vote early.

Also note that you can add an option to the survey. When you do, you automatically vote once for that option. Why am I doing this? To offer you a voice. I’d like my website to be a bit more of a dialogue than it’s been in the past, and this is a way to let you provide your own answers to the questions I plan to ask you.

So, please, if a survey’s options don’t satisfy you, add your own. HTML is automatically stripped, and you can’t post links at all (I want to prevent forum spam from the get-go).

I’ve also shuffled the contents of the middle column a bit, moving the latest photograph further down the column, so the recent books stay near the top.

I hate nights like this, but I love nights like this.

Get home late, thought that’s because I stayed at work late talking to my boss. Cool guy. I scheduled to take him out to lunch on Friday, so I can get to know him better.

Anyvay. Got home late. I needed to do some laundry, and sweep the downstairs. And with the Pumpkin Carving Party coming up in two days, I needed to make Brain Jell-O, and while I was at it, I might as well hard-cook some eggs for some protein in the mornings. And I need to draw character designs for my upcoming comic. And call back an Otherspace employee. And get some groceries, and fill up the truck with gas.

So. Put clothes in the washing machine. Mix up and pour Jell-O. Hard-cook eggs. Put laundry in dryer. Go out, get gas, and buy necessary groceries. Sweep downstairs. Call back Otherspace employee. Two hours have elapsed, and I’ve done most of the things on my list.

I hate nights where I’m going like a whirlwind, but it does give me a wonderful sense of accomplishment. And I do usually accomplish an astonishing number of things.

Tomorrow night should be busy, too; my Mom’s coming over to fix up my curtains and cushions, after she made me some which don’t fit at all in any way. Very nice of her to do this, though. While she’s here, I’ll be making devilled eggs and cupcakes. And, hopefully, squeezing in some writing and drawing so I can post another bit of the VR story on Friday, and finish up these character designs by Monday.

I hate nights like this, but I love nights like this.

Well. A tiring day, but a good one.

Spent much of the workday on little things, setting up various software environments and helping people with small problems. A good way to spend eight hours, really.

Then I came home and began preparing for the Pumpkin-Carving Party on Friday. I’m preparing food in advance each day, and today I made another batch of caramel popcorn. Thanks to Chris’ recipe (thanks, Chris!) I made it in no time at all, mainly by omitting the baking step. It was just as good as the baked kind I made a few days ago. Thanks, Chris!

Then I worked a bit on character designs for my upcoming online comic. I’ve established hairstyles for all four characters, so now “all” I need to do is draw all of them from the front, the side, and three-quarters perspectives. I want to do that by the end of the month, so I don’t have much time.

Then I helped Saalon troubleshoot his blog. It still doesn’t work, but now I’ve downloaded all his data and will be converting it to plain text so we can create a fresh blog and re-upload the data. We should be able to finish that within the next few days.

All this activity helped pull me out of the funk I’ve been in for the past couple of days. It’s been minor, but persistent, and probably a combination of the steady rain driven here by Hurricane Wilma and a sudden phone call from Bank of America about my Visa card, on which I owe quite a bit of money. I have a handle on it, but it still had me depressed.

Interesting, isn’t it, how I was pulled out of my depression by concrete projects with firm deadlines? Work isn’t such a bad word after all….

To Brennen, regarding #48: I’d love to be a participant in that discussion amongst your friends, but conclusions? Come now, I think you know better than that. Even if we all did reach any conclusions, I’d be immediately suspicious of them.

I think the fact that we all can take the same data and arrive at different conclusions is one of the unique benefits of being human.

Oh, and thanks for your recommendation of The Stainless Steel Rat some time ago; I read the first novel about a week ago and ”Slippery Jim” DiGriz charmed me off my feet. A fabulous book, and a great example of the kind of SF I’d like to revive: wildly fun adventure.

Ask not about Friday! Friday was a black hole into which my time descended, and did not return. I did nothing, and didn’t even really have fun doing it.

Ghost Stories

Oh! I did watch the first episode of Ghost Stories, a bland and predictable anime that the American licensor completely rewrote and redubbed into a grown-up spastic comedy. Hilarious. Not so much Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo, an anime adaptation that’s just too weird and experimental to be engrossing. ‘Twas an interesting visual experiment, but I had no desire to watch more.

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo

Today was better, though it started off worse. I’ve had the hankering lately to try my hand at making caramel popcorn from scratch, so this morning after getting up, I printed off four internet recipes and started in. The caramel was pretty simple, really: melt a stick of butter with ¹/4 cup corn syrup and a cup of brown sugar until boiling, then let it boil for three minutes, then add ¹/4 teaspoon baking powder and a teaspoon of vanilla. Unfortunately, I had prepared all this in a medium-sized pan, and when the baking powder goes in, the mixture poofs up. Out of the pan. Onto the burner.

Okay, so long story short, I started a fire.

It was a small flame, though; I just moved the pan to one side and let the caramel burn over, and the fire went out as I was opening windows and the sliding glass door nearby. Well. Would I let that stop me? No sir. I let the caramel in the pan blacken and cool, then poured it into the trash and started again, this time on a lower heat (so it wouldn’t be as liable to burn) and in a large pot. This time, no problems, and after adding the baking powder easily poured the bubbling caramel on the popcorn and peanuts. After mixing that all up, I spread it out on baking sheets and baked it for about fifty minutes at 250°. Every ten mininutes I opened the oven and stirred the mixture, to really get the caramel coated on everything.

Turned out quite tasty, though it could use a teaspoon of salt. Oh well; that’ll be good for next time.

As that cooled, I fired up Navi and worked on my yount adult novel. I’ve always had a tough time sticking to longer projects, so with this novel, I’m trying a new approach: I’m writing increasingly detailed outlines. The first outline was a list of eleven plot points. Today, I finished the second outline, which is about 4,500 words describing the main action of the novel—who does what, the broad mood I want to set in each scene, etc. With that done, I can now go on to a much more detailed outline describing exact character movements, rough dialogue, etc. I hope to finish that by the end of November, so I can complete the first draft by the end of March. Here’s hoping.

Well. A scheduling error caused me to sleep in this morning, which made me an hour late for work. Fortunately, this wasn’t a problem in terms of the work itself; it just meant I had to stay late to make up for it. Also fortunately, I had two major projects to accomplish today, and together they took exactly eight hours to complete. I walked out of the office building with a spring in my step, knowing I had done at least my full share of work that day.

…and came home exhausted. It was partly the psychological effect of coming home later than usual; it just felt like the day was long, despite my working no longer than a normal day. So I watched The Halloween Tree and episode two of Densha Otoko. If you’re not interested in odd animated Halloween specials or Japanese dramas, feel free to move on.

The Halloween Tree could have, should have been brilliant. It’s got beautiful, detailed, atmospheric backgrounds. It’s got snappy direction. The voice actors are solid and easy on the ears. The character designs are generic but at least not ugly (the girl, in particular, looks quite cute).

If only it wasn’t animated by Hanna-Barbera. There are plenty of cels; it has a very good budget by Hanna-Barbera standards. But…for instance, when four kids are being blown by a fierce wind, their bodies undulate up and down like flags. Real bodies don’t move like that. The characters feel like they have no weight to them; they’re just floating on the backgrounds, being pulled along by the animators’ whims. I’d prefer if they moved oddly like characters move in anime; in this, they move like…well, like Hanna-Barbera figures.

If you’re going to make a cartoon scripted by Ray Bradbury, and even get him to narrate, can’t you at least have it well-animated?

Anyvay. Densha Otoko continues to kick my awesome. The nerd…

…has just asked the girl…

…out to dinner. And gone shopping. And he really looks nice. I can’t believe it, but I’m really rooting for the guy. This is great stuff. You can download the episodes via BitTorrent.

Wow. I am exhausted.

Just got back from a Chinese dance presentation at the Kennedy Center. It was fabulous—a combination of modern dance and martial arts, kind of. The second half was rather slow, as it was just people contorting their bodies to the sounds of bells (bells without melody, too), but the first half was a dynamic set of dances, some energetic, some mysterious, some tragic. Great stuff.

But I woke up a little after midnight this morning and was awake for three hours. At least I got quite a bit of Otherspace work done as a result, updating the website and checking on a few miscellaneous things.

But so yeah, as if the late night weren’t enough, I’m operating on too little sleep. My bed lays next to me, beckoning me, and I think I’m going to throw myself into its welcoming arms now.

The Chinese are cool.