Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Keith Palmer's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 21st, 2009
9:31 pm	Identified Aerial Phenomenon I was driving back through the night from a shift at work today when, somewhat to the south and west, I seemed to notice an odd, orangish, vertically elongated light in the sky for just a moment. Wondering just what it was, I kept driving, and then I got to thinking how things had become embroidered about different "lights in the sky" so as to help produce interstellar spacecraft from them... and then clouds I hadn't noticed before kept shifting, and I realised the light had been the crescent moon. I don't know what I would have wound up wondering what else the light could have been had the clouds not kept moving, but it's good to have some certainty. (Comment on this)
Monday, November 16th, 2009
6:30 pm	Afternoon Launch Now that I'm on shift work, it so happened that I was able to watch the streaming video of space shuttle Atlantis launching in the afternoon before heading in for a night shift. (It's not the most ideal of circumstances, but it works.) This time around, there were no delays to the next day, although the onboard video did seem to go out for enough time to be noticeable before coming back. Before that, I did happen to notice how the announcer made a point of this spare parts-laden mission being the second-to-last flight for Atlantis, which catches my attention without the extra significance of it being the last. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
12:52 pm	MST3K 515: The Wild Wild World of Batwoman Once more filling in another one-episode gap in my list of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes commented on, I've headed back to the third episode to feature Mike as host. "The Wild Wild World of Batwoman" seems sort of hard to describe, but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining; it also leads off with the short "Cheating." ("Cheating! How to make it work for you at home and on the job.") ( 'Now is this Ingmar Bergman's first American film?' ) ( 'It's like a Warhol movie, but it's kind of weird.' ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
1:03 pm	Do You Go For a Logo? In the alumni newsletter sent out from my university, pieces started cropping up a few months ago about leaks of a new logo for the school, but also about people organising online to protest it. Now, another piece has come through that the plans for the new logo have come to an end. I don't quite know if this is an "all's well that ends well" situation, as the piece did mention the intended design elements being kept for use elsewhere, but perhaps I kept telling myself all along that getting worked up over small changes can get carried too far. On the other hand, I did find myself contemplating that the current logo so many rallied to the defence of had actually been introduced while I was at university as a mere revision to the previous shape of the shield and the font that went along with it, and it never looked quite right to me afterwards... (Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
3:51 pm	MST3K: Kitten With A Whip In the process of filling in one-episode gaps in my list of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes commented on, I've now managed to include posts on half the episodes in the show's run on cable. Not connected to that at all, I've crossed back from the eighth to the sixth season, and after spending an extended period in the "Sci-Fi Channel" era of the series something about the change seemed refreshing to me as things started off with Mike greasing up Crow so he could be folded up and shot down "the Umbilicus" on a (brief) expedition to Deep 13 (although Tom Servo thought that "was because we liked him so much!")... and that doesn't even begin to get to the episode "Kitten With A Whip" itself. ("Puppy with a nunchuck." "Dik-dik with brass knuckles." "Yak with a Kentucky long rifle." "Hamster who writes a strong letter to the Times.") ( 'Ooh, the hottest Garfield episode ever.' ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
5:58 pm	"Never make a lunch date with your 'evil overlord'" In a recent discussion I noticed about an "evil overlord" declared less than overwhelming, there was a comment that, with the impressive variety, the heroes should spend most of their time either fleeing from or captured by them, that an "evil overlord" is most memorable when distant and somewhat enigmatic. That seemed quite fair and "useful" to me, and yet there was also a comment tossed in how one example of a significant "confrontation at last" was "Luke going to Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back"... The conversation continuing from that seemed at once to turn in a direction my usual self-preserving caution made me draw back from, anticipating yet very unwilling to smack into seemingly familiar complaints about "the diminishing of Darth Vader since then" and even thinking ungrateful thoughts about how there just might seem to be some similarities between thinking Darth Vader just the usual mistreated "evil overlord" and obsessing over Boba Fett because his costume looks interesting... The simple and obvious rejoinder, though, seems to me to be "Darth Vader isn't 'the' evil overlord; the Emperor is..." It does seem to me that Palpatine remains quite enigmatic (and, perhaps, his two other apprentices as well); I could say "he does things because he can do them," but that's that. As well, I began to think back to a good point that matril once made. With that said, all the comments did seem to focus on The Empire Strikes Back itself, where Vader isn't reporting to anyone at least on a frequent basis. Even there, though, I found myself wondering if he offers not "power" to Luke but just the chance at it, and that aiming for his son among all the Rebels is a sort of "private" project... and then considering that if some of the adulation of The Empire Strikes Back is because "the good guys realise things are going to be tougher than they'd thought," then there might yet be something interesting about even its declared "evil overlord" having his own complications. Of course, if one thing's abundantly clear to me, it's that there are a good number of people who can't bear the thought of having to face "changes" to what they decided about Star Wars a long time ago. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
3:39 pm	From the Bookshelf: Classic Star Wars: Far, Far Away As it turns out, it wasn't long at all after getting the sixth Dark Horse volume reprinting the old Marvel Star Wars comics that I got the seventh and final volume. I had mentioned before that the previous volume ended on a cliffhanger, but I do have to admit I had got the issue that resolved it years ago; on the other hand, there might have been a motivation beyond "getting it all over with" in that I hadn't got a lot of the other issues back then. Out of the twelve issues in this volume (one the double-length hundredth issue), I had only got five (although I did also pick up the last issue of all from a back issue bin some years later); I suppose by that point there was a different comic I was interested in getting, the Transformers comic, and having been able to start from its second issue I was more motivated to get it every month. ( 'The Final Chapter in Marvel's continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker...' ) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
5:46 pm	Flying in a Straight Line Although at work this morning, I managed to see on the one news site we're permitted to view that the Ares I-X rocket had launched late in its window (that's not the site we get to see), and after getting back from work I was able to see some interesting video of that too. I suppose a day's delay in launching gave me more time to think about this particular post, and yet I did keep wondering if it was all bravado before the fact, if those prophecies of doom would happen after all... however, the rocket didn't seem to pinwheel through the sky and didn't seem to fall apart in powered flight. Of course, it may yet be declared that this flight "doesn't count" because the rocket used a space shuttle booster without the extra segment of fuel. (It was sort of impressive to see how much just one of those boosters seemed able to lift, though.) As well, what with the recent review of space plans seeming to let everyone confirm the suppositions they had before the fact, I can still imagine some different design, apparently flawless for the reason that it's "unofficial," replacing the tall, thin rocket that did fly. ( Video after the cut ) (Comment on this)
Monday, October 26th, 2009
6:48 pm	Robotech Remembrances: Mospeada Completing a nostalgic project I set myself to at the start of the year, I've rewatched the third anime series that got turned into a part of Robotech. "Robotech: The New Generation" does sometimes seem to me to be among fans, for lack of a better word, the "connoisseur's segment": it doesn't have anywhere near the baggage both before and after the fact that Macross provides, and its reputation is much better than that of "Robotech: Masters." Even so, it was possible that the odd interest I had in starting Southern Cross wasn't quite there when moving on to Genesis Climber Mospeada, whether through thoughts that this third series was more "episodic," whatever that meant, that it's a little less dubious to pretend that Southern Cross's character designs match up with Macross's than with Mospeada's, or just because Southern Cross's "declared flaws" somehow gave me something to react against in an interesting way the way general approval doesn't... ( Pretty much from the moment I started watching the first episode again, though... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
12:47 pm	MST3K 814: Riding With Death Still trying to fill in one-episode gaps in my list of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes commented on, I've moved on to the eighth season. As it turns out, there's a link between "Riding With Death" ("And believe me, death does not pony up for gas.") and the last episode I commented on in that both feature William Sylvester. (However, I suppose I've opened up another "gap," if not an one-episode one for now, in that he was in a third movie featured on the series numbered in between these two...) Beyond that, I also find myself thinking about how I've looked at particular episodes with Mike in them and thought them "responses" to previous episodes (or whole genres) covered in the Joel episodes, and how "Riding With Death" ("Remember, when riding with death be sure to buckle up.") just might have a subtler connection than the ones I've thought of before. In this case, the connection is to "movies" consisting of two episodes of a TV series stuck together, in a fashion made famous by Sandy Frank and "Master Ninja"... ( 'Boy, I sure hope it never stops being the seventies, or we're all in trouble.' ) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
6:03 pm	Big Rollout It didn't seem like that long ago that I posted about spotting a picture of a "boilerplate" Orion capsule and the feeling of it being in the "real world." (In looking for it, I realised that it indeed wasn't as long ago as I had been wondering...) Now, a much larger piece of new hardware has also been rolled out, in the form of the Ares I-X test rocket. Of course, it still seems to be an open question as to whether plans are going to change before there's a chance to even learn if this test rocket, whatever it does, will be an accurate prediction of how the larger booster stage to go in the "real" one works... but it does look quite impressive. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
12:54 pm	MST3K 909: Gorgo My efforts to fill in one-episode gaps in my list of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes commented on continues. Moving to the ninth season, I've selected a British movie (although, having already commented on two more-or-less British movies from this season, I now have one left in between to also watch...) "Gorgo" ("The vice president's unimaginative campaign slogan!") just happens to have that extra touch of absurdity of being a British version of movies better known from Japan involving giant monsters wading through major city centres. Given when the episode was made, I somehow keep thinking of the American version of "Godzilla" made right around then as well; however, it's not commented on in the episode. In any case, it's easy enough to imagine that the "riffing" on "Gorgo" is funnier for not attacking something made recently. ( 'McRoar! O'Growl!' ) ( 'Look, can I just eat Manchester?' ) ( 'Pacifist or not, Gandhi's got to be chuckling about now.' ) (Comment on this)
Friday, October 16th, 2009
5:44 pm	A Clone Wars Reference and Beyond With "Battlestar Galactica" over, and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" over, and "Doctor Who" in between series (and I managed to miss that program's latest special altogether), the thought that "needed" to watch something "live-action" and "fictional" on TV (other than old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes) started to nag at me again. (However, in remembering that mood now I'm thinking that if I can park myself in front of a TV set for an hour or more, I should put even more effort into blocking out good lengths of time to read through books of all sorts...) Reading the preview pages of the newspaper, I decided to try a new series called "Flashforward," which begins with everyone on Earth blacking out for just over two minutes; beyond the assorted crashes that result from this, everyone has seen visions of what they'll be doing months in the future. By the end of the first episode, as the characters start trying to sort out what to do about the future, I was interested enough to keep watching. In yesterday's episode, there was a small moment when a character (probably not a "major" one, at least at the moment) goes to the empty house of his wife to get some things for his son in the hospital. In the son's room, there's a "Clone Wars" bedspread, and that caught my attention in a pleased sort of way... although I happened to think beyond that reference, and started remembering. It's quite possible that "Flashforward" hasn't impressed itself on my consciousness quite as much as the three shows I mentioned at the beginning did, and while I can wonder if all three of them succeeded that way by tapping into awarenesses I'd already had, I had heard of the science fiction novel (by Robert J. Sawyer) the series is based on. However, in the newsmagazine article that gave me that awareness a few years back, there was a little comment that, being set "a few years into the future" instead of "right now" the way the program is, there was a reference in the book to "George Lucas still working on Star Wars." Put that way, it's perfectly prescient. Unfortunately, with my general bruised and isolated defensiveness about Star Wars at that time, I could imagine the reference in the book being presented in a fine pitch of casual contempt, and I never got around to reading the book, just one more of a vast number of things I wound up steering clear of through the conviction that they would make contemptuous references to Star Wars and that would just depress me... (However, just today I read in the paper that the series is shaping up rather differently than the book did: in the book, people saw decades into the future, and the perspective was of scientists rather than FBI agents and hospital doctors, no doubt letting those who read it conclude the show is more "conventional...") (Comment on this)
Monday, October 5th, 2009
6:41 pm	From the Bookshelf: The Complete Peanuts 1973-1974 The latest volume of The Complete Peanuts arrived by mail order again, and I took my usual time reading through it. I may have been familiar enough with the strips in it; the comics from 1974 were the first to be rerun, possibly because things had "settled down" with Marcie as Peppermint Patty's foil, Sally conversing with the thinking school building, and Snoopy playing tennis, heading out as the "Beagle Scout," and typing out corny jokes on top of his doghouse (and getting rejection slips for his trouble). The year after that, though, the strips for 1973 were rerun, and so on for a peculiar while... ( 'Thrillsville '74!' ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
9:19 am	MST3K 1010: It Lives By Night It's been a while since I commented on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, but with a collection of different pastimes now wrapped up I can get back to trying to get my list of episodes past the halfway point. To figure out what to watch, I looked at the list itself for gaps between episode numbers. The first gap I'm filling in is "It Lives By Night" ("Well, it shouldn't drink so much coffee!"), and at first I wondered about my previous reactions to this late entry in the tenth and final season... but once more, viewing straight through seems to have a cumulative effect. ( 'A human! He'll entangle my feet with his hair!' ) (Comment on this)
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
6:48 pm	2009: My Third Quarter in Anime With another three months gone by, once again I'm looking back at the anime I managed to watch in them. Despite lamentations over threadbare releases on message boards I follow and still more series piling up on my shelves as I seem to get closer to and yet never quite complete picking up every back-catalog title I have at least some slight interest in, my interest seems to hold steady. ( Finishing things off and starting others again ) ( A narrow escape? But another 'official stream' adventure, too ) ( Two resumptions and one interesting surprise ) ( Fansub follies, and the replacement player ) ( Rounding things out theatrically ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 27th, 2009
8:41 pm	From the Bookshelf: Classic Star Wars: Wookiee World It's been quite a while since I last got one of the Dark Horse Comics volumes reprinting the old Marvel Star Wars comics. I can wonder now if that had something to do with having reached the point where the comics were now following Return of the Jedi, and I'm aware that back when I first started looking up information online on all of the Star Wars comics I had missed when they had first come out, I saw a number of at once casual and negative comments that Marvel's series had become less and less impressive with time... Instead of deciding that I would judge for myself, though, I think my getting the latest volume had more to do with deciding that I needed to add one more volume to some other books I was ordering online to reach the free shipping threshold, remembering the five reprint volumes on one of my bookshelves, and thinking "Why not?" ( 'The greatest space fantasy of all!' ) (Comment on this)
Friday, September 25th, 2009
8:23 pm	A Belated Anniversary, and one not so much I was very aware that as May approached so did the tenth anniversary of The Phantom Menance, but when the 19th arrived I was off at sea on my vacation. I had contemplated tossing the DVD into my suitcase, but it seemed just too crowded in the end, to say nothing of my perpetual thought that if I'm going to watch one Star Wars movie I might as well get around to watching the other five, not playing favourites... (I suppose I do have to admit now that trying to "rip" the DVD to my portable computer's not quite full hard drive never occurred to me at the time.) I was able to see the commemorative posts of others as they were made, but in seeing them without a commemorative viewing of my own there was a trace of melancholy, remembering how my own positive first reaction seemed somehow very alone and how I wound up for long, arid years not quite ready to watch any of the Star Wars movies for fear that I might at last flip out the way it seemed everyone else had, my reactions to too many other things also coloured in troubling ways by the random sidelong swipes discussions about them seemed too often to make... Eventually, I was lucky to discover some other positive people, and at last I worked up the courage to return to the Star Wars movies, the experience somehow distinctive and energising. Eventually, too, I had what seemed the time to make that belated "ten years later" viewing, and decided that I could put the whole weekend into seeing all six movies. I had done that before, not going quite so far as to try and see them all in one day; still, having a good break in between each movie doesn't seem that bad to me. However, it just so happened that once again I seem to have experienced something new in the process... ( Just what that was is within... ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
9:20 am	From the (Library) Bookshelf: In the Land of Invented Languages I suppose it was seeing "Klingon" mentioned on the cover that made me take a second look at Arika Okrent's "In the Land of Invented Languages" after first spotting it passing by a part of the library shelves I don't often focus on. After I had begun reading through it, I found there were other interesting things about the book. As with other "bring a small, esoteric subject to a large audience" books I've read, it has a cheerful, chatty, personal viewpoint, in this case on the varied history of trying to invent languages from scratch. After unearthing a language from the 17th century that started by breaking the known universe itself into a hierarchy, the languages focused on all seem to have communities, the better to personalise them, some seemingly familiar like Esperanto and others a bit more obscure like Lojban. The book suggests that a community to join may be more appealing than a tool to use, which seems one of those illuminating things to me. Along the way, I realised I'd heard of a few of the more obscure points before, such as a "female language" in a science fiction novel I got assigned in university. I had thought that the sexist dystopia in the novel had been laid on kind of thick, but now I can see how it was a tool for advancing the language, presented as a way to overcome in secret. The book also mentions the "General Semantics" of Alfred Korzybski when discussing how the mid-twentieth century saw language as shaping particular realities, and I believe some science fiction from the 1940s or so picked up on the idea in a familiar "one popular theory will explain and solve everything!" way. Beyond the personal reactions, of course, the book was enjoyable, and did in the end get around to Klingon and its community (managing to mention JRR Tolkien's invented languages around the same time). It made me think a bit about "world-building" and the corresponding criticisms about how the worlds built so often seem smaller in scope than the real one. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
8:27 pm	DVD Thoughts: 2010 (The Year We Make Contact) A while back, I picked up a bargain-bin DVD of the movie 2010. As it sat around for all the time since then, the thought began building up in me that I ought to watch the movie before the calendar rolled over to the actual year, and I've opened it at last. This was with the thought, though, that the "sequel to 2001" doesn't seem remembered much these days, dismissed when it is with the casual comment that unlike the original, it's a "conventional" movie. It may be that the reason I bought the movie in the first place (beyond that it was cheap) was just that I was at a young and impressionable age when it came out, as with many other movies of the 1980s my first impressions of it arriving "second-hand"... and yet, I'm not sure how many other movies from the 1980s I would pick up. ( A part of that 'second-hand' experience, though... ) (Comment on this)