Stacy Keibler needs YOUR help.

Esquire magazine is running a March Madness bracket of the Sexiest Women Alive to decide who will come out on top. (Errr... so to speak...) Stacy Keibler, Baltimore girl, former Towson University student, former Ravens Cheerleader, former Nitro Girl, WWE Diva, Dancing with the Stars Phenom, and aspiring actress, is one of the contenders for the crown.

She's up against some stiff competition in her own bracket, including the Face of Women's MMA, Gina Carano. Outside her bracket, there are some serious heavyweights and likely upsets that have a few tricks up their sleeve. 63-year-old Helen Mirren is pasting Megan Fox -- talk about age and experience over youth and vigor! Meanwhile Olivia Munn of Cable network G4's Attack of the Show has racked up over a million votes in the first round! Apparently her geeky fanbase is enlisting the aid of internet bots to countinuously vote in her favor.

The website is at this LINK so go there and vote.

Vote Stacy Keibler -- and vote often!

"Engage!"

Johns Hopkins University physicist William Edelstein has some bad news for us geeks:

Faster Than Light Travel will kill you.

Edelstein's new study looked at what would happen on a hypothetical starship traveling at 99% of c, the speed of light. At such velocity, the stray hydrogen atoms drifting in deep space would smash into the starship at such speed and in such numbers that protons would be stripped away from the atoms and pass through the metal and the bodies of the crewmen inside. This would create a radiation exposure for those crewmen fatal to human beings. (For the truly geeky, the fatal dose is "6 sieverts" but the crewmen would be exposed to about "10,000 sieverts per second." I have no idea what that means, but the math looks pretty bad.)

I know, I know. The USS Enterprise has "shields" to protect it. Edelstein doubts that an electromagnetic shield could be built to block the subatomic particles in the radiation.

He seems like such a kill-joy, given that an engine capable of producing 99% of c velocities is also considered impossible. Why is he assuming we can have the engine, but no "shield?" Me, I would assume that such technology would require some mysterious, near magical, understanding and control over Unified Force.

Edelstein posits that such extreme radiation doses also would be fatal to all forms of life, thus, no little green men from Alpha Centauri, or reptoids, are visiting us currently.

So, is this the end of our dream of FTL Travel?

We still have wormholes to consider. Star Wars ships utilized "hyperspace" for FTL travel, and while it was never clearly defined, it was supposedly another dimension. WH40K gives us the Warp or Empyrean sea -- also an alternate dimension, though considerably more dangerous. What about folding space?

Ultimately, the problem with all forms of Hard-Sci Fi or realistic FTL travel is the resource expenditure. Even the best theories require an almost inconceivable amount of energy to effect the travel.

Superman Rebooted

It's apparently more than idle rumor that Christopher "Batman Franchise Messiah" Nolan has taken on the job of rebooting Superman next. In a recent interview, he said the idea came while he and his writing partner were stuck with a particularly thorny problem in developing the third Batman movie. ("Gee Chris, you had such a great idea about the Joker busting out of Arkham for the third movie... what do we do now?")

The interview also quotes Nolan as saying the studios felt he "knew the milieu" for comic book superheroes.

Wait a minute, here. Just because Nolan had an uncanny understanding of how to update Batman doesn't mean he's going "to get" Supes. Superman is an entirely different creature. For one, he's an Optimist. Now, some may say Batman is an Optimist in a pessimistic world, I could see that, but the pessimism of that world view pervades everything. You want to understand Superman? All you need to do is watch the last few minutes of Superman II (let me specify the original cut). That image of Superman returning the flag to the White House and apologizing to the President has it down pat in terms of tone.

Batman apologizes to no one if he got the job done.

Nolan also said that he doesn't plan to connect the two series. While it's a safe choice, I think that's a big mistake in some ways. Superman and Batman are Yin and Yang for superheroes. They can be used to define each other. Frank Miller understood this perfectly. Go back and read The Dark Knight Returns to see what I mean. Connecting the films needn't be cutesy or forced, and doing it as a throwaway would be wrong too. But there are ways to make the connection work for the storyteller.

On the Batman III front, rumor abounds that the Riddler will be the next villain. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. While some see the Riddler as a downscale Joker, there is the potential to really open up the Batman's "world's greatest detective" angle working against the Riddler. I hope they don't overstuff the film with villains.

And now for something really super...

History Channel does Musashi Biography

No, that's not a modern, suave Miyamoto Musashi, but Mark "Twinkle Toes" Dacascos, the host of the History Channel's most recent deification of Miyamoto Musashi, a program simply titled, Samurai.

I sat down to watch the program this afternoon. As usual when cramming that much history into a single television program, there's good and bad. The bad can be summed up by saying that there are a handful of sweeping historical mistakes of facts, and -- of course -- they continue the deification of Musashi as the epitome of what it meant to be a samurai. Really, he wasn't. He was a great swordsman, but he was always equal parts unlucky and unwilling to take up the true essence of the samurai's life: service. While he remains a renowned and towering figure among the Japanese within the arena of martial arts, other contemporaries are more highly regarded for upholding Bushido. The West's love affair with his story has more to do with his parallels with the archetypes of the questing knight or cool gunslinger.

Let me focus on the good: They tell the entire story of Musashi's life. Generally, the American treatment of Musashi concludes with his duel on Ganryu Island, an event so overclouded by mythology that historical debate about what happened is usually cast aside in favor of the legend. I've given up trying to sort out fact from fiction about the event because the sources in English are all but useless. But one extreme view is that it was total propaganda, and Musashi's opponent, Sasaki Kojiro, never existed!

Anyway, this biography made a sincere effort to follow Musashi after he stepped off the island and onto his time among the Hosokawa clan, writing the Go Rin no Sho, and eventual death. Along the entire journey, we are treated to some spectacular scenery of Japan as we follow Dacascos following Musashi. It was a gorgeous production. We are also treated to some terrible anime dramatizing Musashi's duels. However, the anime sequences do allow the production to do something unusual for a work like this: showcase the brutality of single combat in Feudal Japan. The sequence showing Musashi's first duel at the age of 13 is particularly unflinching. Far from gratuitous, we can sense Musashi's initial callousness, and growing unease as he faces these violent encounters.

Given Mark Dacascos' experience in martial arts, I would've liked to see more on display. He visits a kenjutsu dojo in Miyamoto village and trains there briefly, a la Human Weapon or Fight Quest. In a wrap-up montage, we are tantalized by a snippet of him thanking a Westerner in a white gi and saying "I barely survived..." What was this dojo that he visited? How vigorous was the training? Even if Dacascos came off looking "bad" -- maybe especially if he found a session difficult -- I would've liked to see that. We are also treated to a brief (maybe 30 second) segment on the myriad of weapons used by samurai. Interestingly, it appears the found a ninjutsu school to demonstrate the shuriken, jutte, and other exotic tools.

If you're interested in Musashi, it's worth watching for the travelogue. If you're more interested in the martial arts aspect, it's a disappointment.

I didn't know they were updating this one...

There are no new ideas in Hollywood it seems... Now they are remaking/rebooting/updating the Charles Bronson/Jan Michael Vincent movie, The Mechanic. Now we get Jason Statham as the grizzled assassin formerly played by Chuck Bronson.

I always found the original pretty slow. I do remember the fight scene I linked above. The opening is pretty legendary too.

But, somewhat perversely, my favorite Bronson movie is Red Sun! I wish all fights were as easy as movie fights.

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."

One of my great high school memories was the night I saw Predator. I had a free ticket, and a movie poster. I also had zero expectations. I walked into the movie cold.

I had no idea I was going to see one of the greatest B-movie homages ever made, and a worthy update to Beowulf and The Most Dangerous Game.

I sorta liked the sequel with Danny Glover. It had its moments, especially at the end, when you see the Alien xenomorph skull in the trophy case. And believe it or not, I was okay with the first Aliens vs. Predator movie. It wasn't as good as the Dark Horse comic books, but it was about what I expected. I didn't see Requiem, however...

So how excited am I to see Robert Rodriguez's take on Predators??? Very.

Here's the trailer.

Just for you mlk...

Bears more than a little resemblance to you, doesn't it?

What a Drag

I confronted Jay about my "issue" at a college party in 1994. After all, that's what dumb young guys do, they have a few drinks, and then go looking for trouble with other dumb young guys -- even if they do outweigh you with muscle.

Anyway, I said my piece. Jay reached out and committed assault and battery. Ok, he laid his right hand on the left side of my chest. But it was still an invasion of my personal space involving a touching of my body in a threatening manner. I was nervous, but held my ground.

As you might guess, I have no memory of what was said between us. I have no memory of how the incident ended, except that it didn't end in violence. That was fortunate for us both. I didn't need a trip to the hospital. He didn't need the vengeance that a couple of my other friends would've wrought. They had their own issues with Jay and were looking for a good excuse to turn him into a red pastey substance; something I had no doubts they were capable of doing.

But I do remember that feeling of helplessness while his hand rested on me. I'd done a few years of karate in my adolescence; and I'd stuck with the college's karate class a month or two before deciding it was a bother to get up so early on a Saturday morning. But I had no idea how to get Jay's hand off me. Or what to do if he closed that gap. I did know that if he was close enough to touch me like that, he could hit me.

I graduated in May of '94. I looked around at some options in my area and I signed up at a Bujinkan school. Yeah, yeah, I should've gone old school and joined the Judo school that was much closer. But remember, I was young and dumb, and throwing stars seemed really cool at the time. Over the years, I learned any number of ways to deal with lapel grabs. The harshest critics might scoff at wrist locks and other standing grappling manuevers, but they have their place. And any one of them probably would've served me just fine in an ego fight with Jay.

This year, I resolved to improve my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu game. My personal training had been moving more and more in that direction anyway. So I find myself with a white belt wrapped around my waist. In one recent class, we were practicing the arm drag, a pretty standard wrestling technique I should've picked up in high school. From a loose clinch, your near hand sweeps away the opponent's wrist, while the far hand reaches behind the opponent's triceps on the same arm. You pull him toward you as you step past him so that you end up behind him with your arms around his waist. From there, you can trip or sweep the opponent to the ground.

The instructor ordered everyone in one line to rotate partners, on and on, until I found myself across from Mark. Mark's a sweetheart of a guy and very funny. But as he stood there and reached out to put his hand on my chest, he looked just like Jay did 16 or so years ago. And that's when I realized that this -- THIS! -- was what I really wanted to be able to do that night: sweep away Jay's hand, smash him to the ground, and then choke the life out of him!!!

Maybe not literally... but you get my point. It was a delayed catharsis, but it was a release just the same.

Phoenix Games blog

An old friend of mine has undertaken a interesting blog project. His website, Phoenix Games, seeks to post at least one reminiscence per day related to video games.

Victor Paul Alvarez is a traditionally trained journalist employed as the Editor for several small town newspapers in Rhode Island. His passion is pop culture and video games in particular. Victor believes video games are poised to become the next big shift in narrative -- much like prose overtook verse, and the novel became the dominant literary form. He's got an interesting viewpoint worth pondering...

Anyway, he has been cranking out video game reviews like crazy the past few years in order to make a name for himself in the field, and in an attempt to find the correct voice for literary critique of the form. Not so easy. How do you criticize a media that is still in the process of defining itself?

The Phoenix Games blog is an attempt to find the connections between the games and the real lives of people. Some of the posts are straight up reviews of old, classic games; but others are tied to fond memories. What makes a game great??? The same kinds of things that make a movie great, or a car great, in the minds of the consumer. It isn't necessarily the quality of the game itself, but the role it played in the person's life. While it looks like most of the posts are still by Victor himself, he's enlisted others to provide guest posts. It's tough to write one article a day about any topic, no matter how passionate you are about the subject.

I'm told the blog has some good buzz in the video game community. Possibly that's because the main critical style in vogue these days is the "ripper" in which every possible flaw is exposed and subject to dissection. Generally, these posts aren't snarky, but seek to emphasize the positive about the game.

I've linked the blog in my Blog Roll on the left hand of the page. Even if you're not an avid gamer, I hope you'll check out his blog and sample some of the posts.

New Item listed in my Blog Roll

I just added the blog for White Shadow Dojo. Even after a quick reading of their posts it was clear to me that they'd be worth following. I like how they respect both old and new approaches to martial arts training. Give them a read and see what you think.

What makes this clip so wrong is also what makes it SOOOOOOO right!

You may go to hell for enjoying this as much as I did. You've been warned.

Kick-Ass:coming to a theater near you in April -- and poisoning minds forever after.

The Mighty Thor fights crime for real in Scotland

This happened earlier this year, but it's way too good not to pass along now:

A burglar in Scotland was shocked to discover that the home he was ransacking actually belonged to the Norse God of Thunder, Thor!

Or, at least, it belonged to 39-year-old body builder Torvald Alexander, who was returning home from a "fancy-dress party" (that's Brit-speak for costume bash) in his divine attire of red cape, breastplate, and horned helmet!

Thor charged at the burglar (somewhat safer to do in the UK, where guns are harder to come by) and the scared thief jumped out the window. Presumably this was to avoid capture and internment on a slab of rock while a serpent drips stinging venom into his eyes... (Look it up, I'm not doing all your work for you...)


I know. You're thinking, "Holy Crap! That sure would scare me to death if I looked up and saw the Odinsson!" And well, you might if the Thunderer looked like one of the two incarnations above... But this is Torvald's actual costume... Note geek chic decor in the background.

However, I'm sure I can one up this next Halloween. I mean really, dude, where's your Hammer? (Or do you think that's why they only photographed him from the waist-up?)

SF operating in Afghanistan

Wired's Danger Room blog ran a snarky semi-editorial about a Fox News piece concerning Special Forces doing aerial patrols and seemingly random searches of vehicles in Afghanistan. Apparently the wunderkinds at Danger Room objected to the fact that no useful information regarding the military strategy or tactics was released. It was all cool video of the SF Operators with their super-M4's jumping out of Black Hawks and searching Afghan civilians.

Hello? Why would you expect the Operators to give up the real inside story on an ongoing operation?

Why can't you -- like me -- just go "Cool! They're wearing MultiCam!"

It easy to be cynical about the small "piece of the elephant" you see in this video. I admit that the piece is feel-good fluff, but what do you reasonably expect? But there's a snippet near the end of this companion piece that reminds you why these guys (in their MultiCam) are out there in the first place. And no, the Special Forces aren't all there harassing locals by doing elaborate traffic stops... That's some classic counter-insurgency work.

Signs, signs.

A group of "someones" has apparently stolen the infamous ironwork sign from the gate of the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp.

The sign lied: "Work will set you free."

This just boggles my mind. Why would anyone do this? Apparently, the screws were undone from one side of the sign and it was ripped from the moorings on the other. Due to the size and weight of the sign, it's obviously the work of a group of conspirators.

Who would want this? Neo-Nazis? What good does it do them? Holocaust survivors are probably unlikely. Art collectors? What does this fetch on the art black market? And isn't it a little big and obvious to hide even in a private art collection?

I actually felt a little sick reading about this. It is an afront to everyone of goodwill, not just Holocaust survivors or Jews in general. This is a piece of humanity's cultural heritage -- admittedly, it's a dark piece, but it reminds us all how low our species can sink. I don't go around thinking about Auschwitz or the Holocaust every moment of every day, but it's part of my back brain; and it informs my opinions about grave matters. I recognize the importance of keeping these reminders around for future generations to ponder -- so it will become part of their back brains and inform how they think and act. Hopefully for the better.

Coincidentally, the sign greeting visitors to my hometown was stolen a few months back right off of main street. I wouldn't necessarily equate the two in terms of gravitas, but as I drove by the temporary sign this evening (It reads "Our Town Wants Our Sign Back!"), I thought the two incidents had an eerie similarity in some respects: The thefts are both senseless. Neither sign could possibly mean as much to the individuals who took them as they do to the public at large. Both involved planning and logistics unlikely to have occurred quickly over beer and drawn up on cocktail napkins. Both make you scratch your head and ask, "Why?"

So, from my little corner of the interTubes, let me raise my voice and say this to the douchebags who took the Auschwitz sign, "Humanity wants Our Sign Back!"

As long as we're rebooting movies...

You know what would be cool? If someone took all the technical "know-how" from Lord of the Rings and the visual design and sensibility of 300 and remade Clash of the Titans! Wouldn't that be awesome?

Oh wait... They are doing that.

Okay, okay... So what if they take one of the most iconic and best-loved scenes from Fantasia and try to mix it with the modern angle of Harry Potter, with maybe a dash of the fantasy hipster favorite Harry Dresden novels... You'd get The Sorceror's Apprectice. Oh, boy...

Expedition Everest

I won't bore you with blow-by-blow details about my trip to visit the Mouse House in Orlando, Florida.

But I do want to say a few words about Expedition Everest, the roller coaster in Disney's Animal Kingdom.

I'm not a big roller coaster fan. Meaning that I don't like Big roller coasters. But I was really intrigued by some of the things I'd heard about this one -- including that the Yeti stalks the coaster. Did somebody say, "Yeti?" I am so there. I mean, it's not like I'm likely to go to the real Himalayas anytime soon to catch a glimpse of the real Yeti in the flesh? Given how I managed to miss Nessie in two trips to Loch Ness, I figure my chances of coming home with a scientific discovery are pretty slim anyhow.

This was an impressive bit of Disney Imagineering. The queue takes you through an extremely detailed mock-up of a mountain outfitter's office first. You almost expect Karen Allen to walk in and challenge you to a drinking contest. Then you wind your way through a faux Buddhist temple -- complete with distressed prayer flags, statues and devotionals to the guardian spirit of the mountain: Mr. Yeti himself. The fake Buddhist temple was -- sadly -- more impressive than the real Buddhist temple I frequent! The final building in the queue is the outfitter warehouse/Yeti museum.

Yes, a Yeti museum. And the most impressive thing about the Yeti museum is that it seemed to be a REAL museum to the Yeti phenomenon! They had pictures, books, and artifacts I recognized as real, or replicas of existing items. We could devolve into a semantic argument about "real" when it comes to the Yeti, but what I'm saying is: it was very hard to tell what they were making up out of whole cloth, and what they borrowed from the existing lore.

As for the ride itself... The coaster has no loops or inversions. At 200 feet, this fake Everest is the tallest mountain in Florida. The ride does move backwards. the tracks switch, which is a little disorienting. It plummets through some very dark passages. It also has a pretty spectacular ascent (through another meticulously re-created, faux monastery ruin), and an outside drop that left me with my stomach upside down. The ride did not disappoint.

Do you see the Yeti? Well, let me give you a first-person view of the ride, and then a broader overview from several perspectives. The second video may load a little slow, but provides some better views of the different areas with accompanying James Bond music. Neither film substitutes the g-forces.

Oh, and if anyone knows where I can procure one of those fake bronze statues of the Dancing Yeti Mandala -- let me know. They weren't in the gift shop and I want one.

Modern Warfare

Let me tell you something. I'm old enough to remember when the kid across the street got Pong in his house. That was some serious cool. I had Pac-Man fever. Atari games? No way; I was all over Activision.

The guy across the dorm hall from me was techno-geeky enough that he had both Nintendo and Playstation. The 1.0 versions -- or damn close to it. I spent many an hour in his room playing games. but that was also about the same time I got uninterested in video-gaming.

The controls got too complicated. They added buttons. Now the contollers have more buttons then players have fingers. Why? Added interactivity, of course. But all the "push left twice, while simultaneously mashing A, then C, and finally B three times" in order to pull off a super-special finishing move was just too much for my mind to transmit to my fingers. So I eventually quit playing.

But have you seen Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? It's a vertible thing of beauty. Get the prestige edition and you get working NVGs! (What's an NVG? watch the video...)

I'm serious thinking about going out and getting an xBox... Fortunately for my wallet, I don't have the money right now for the system and the game. I might be able to afford going to the mall to salivate over the box.

While we're on this topic, let me say I'm looking forward to the Matt Damon movie Green Zone. The trailers look pretty good, and it's been awhile since I got a decent techno-thriller movie. I need a Bourne fix, and this looks pretty close.

Glory Days... well, they pass you by

My 20th high school reunion is next year! And I've been thinking about it on and off for awhile. Hell, I might even go.



I wonder what happened to everyone. Some classmates I'm still in touch with, or have had other reasons to check in on over the years. I think we all know that guy who peaked in high school and hasn't achieved any greatness since.



I was reminded of this recently when I learned they recently released a 20th Anniversary special edition of Say Anything, the teen romance film starring John Cusack and Ione Skye. The release of this special edition DVD was practically timed with the release of John Cusack's big budget John Emmerich disaster porn epic, 2012,



Talk about peaking in high school... jeez.

BTW -- THIS appears to be the original 1980's era music video of the infamous boombox song. No, I don't understand it either. That Peter Gabriel is one weird dude...

Last Week... on V

Last Tuesday saw the re-arrival of V, the remake of an 80's sci-fi show that was vaguely about WWII as prosecuted by evil Nazi space lizards and casting the United States in the role of Occupied France. Apparently no body thought of Red Dawn, or how gun-toting middle America might react to an invasion by oppressive aliens from anywhere...

Honestly, I missed the new version (something about knowing the space aliens are lying from the beginning ruins it for me), but I know they've made a few changes to the human side of the story. I might also point out that Morena Baccarin (above) is smoking hot as the eeeeeee-vil alien leader, Anna -- but I digress.

One of those changes is that a Catholic priest is one of the principal human characters. Apparently he doesn't trust the "Visitors." I have to admit, I enjoy mixing my science fiction with religion. Often, there's no consideration for this basic human impulse in a high-tech science fiction background. When it's treated right, putting the two together can be very interesting -- say in the post-apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, or the subtle background of Firefly. And although I got a huge charge out of the ending of the new and improved Battlestar Galactica, I appreciate how it went way over the top for many viewers with a sudden literal Deus Ex Machina; an example of poor execution of religious elements in sci-fi. In some ways, the Mormon elements of the original Battlestar were better...

A basic question inherent in the current V scenario is obviously, "How does the proof of extraterrestrial life affect a priest's faith?" Does he hate them solely from a reactionary world-view? I don't know, maybe I'll watch to find out.

But I read, with great interest, an article that appeared in last Sunday's Washington Post entitled, "When ET phones the Pope." It seems that Vatican recently convened a conference of astrobiologists, legit scientists who examine the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.

Believe it or not, this isn't a new question for the Church. Giordano Bruno, a 16th Century Italian monk, theorized that other planets existed, and that intelligent life likely existed on them.

That much of his theory seems to be okay with the modern Church. Fr. Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer, was quoted in the article as saying that the possibility of "brother extraterrestrials" poses no problem for Catholic theology.

Really? Well. Why not?

Possibly for the inverse of the reason Giordano Bruno was executed back in the 16th Century. The second part of Bruno's theory was that Jesus Christ was incarnated on each of these planet supporting intelligent life and replayed his Passion appropriately. However the Church leaders considered the first part of the theory at the time, the idea of "multiple incarnations" was -- and still is -- too much.

Christ died -- once -- for our sins.

So, what the Catholic Church is really saying is that it has no problem with extraterrestrials so long as they accept that Jesus Christ was incarnated as a Homo Sapien and died for the sins of all sentient beings everywhere. I'm sure that some perfectly logical aliens will accept this...

...Assuming that aliens we meet follow human logic.

Who's to say that intelligent extraterrestrial life wouldn't have their own vivid religious life? Maybe they'll come to proselytize us! Consider that humanity has many instances of first contact between cultures, and in the most recent cases, the more technologically powerful culture tends to bludgeon the less technological culture into submission and erode the traditional cultural values. So what would really happen if mile-wide saucers appeared in the skies tomorrow? Would we convert the lizard creatures to follow the "Book," or would their ways slowly usurp our own?

While scientists point to the constants of math and physics as a common language between humanity and any alien space brothers, there is no guarantee that a universal constant exists for emotions or faith, both seemingly necessary for the religious experience. What if a devotion to cold logic is twisted in the extraterrestrial such that they regard humanity's religious enthusiasm as a flaw in the species?

Or a threat? I mean, no one could possibly look at the way religion has influenced the course of human history and see a threat -- could they?

My point is... we should pay more attention to HP Lovecraft's idea of cosmic horror: when we finally meet the alien, we must contend with the utter "alien-ness" of it. Given that we have such a hard time understanding each other here and now, maybe we aren't ready for that yet.

Just some thoughts...

Hoist the Colors!

The truth is... I've been busy. I've been busy with a million things. We had a huge Summer blow-out party in September. If you're just hearing about it now -- you weren't invited. My daughter turned five and started kindergarten (real school, sniff) that same week. She's been testing that new pair of wings and that keeps a guy pretty busy.

At that party, i handed a copy of my old Beowulf movie script -- which predates the animated Zemeckis/Gaiman movie -- to my friend and fellow blogger, Dan Dorman (see his blog in the list on the left). This got me thinking about returning to fiction writing. Although no words have been put to paper yet, I did start reading a better class of fiction. If you don't see the connection between reading good fiction and writing, you just don't understand the writing process.

Talking to Dan got me in the movie review mood, so that one reason why the life-support I've thrown this blog has been movie news. Movies are safe topics. I haven't had much else to say -- and I promised myself I wouldn't write anything overtly political -- which is the other "easy" blog topic.

I took the family to the Renaissance Festival one weekend. That's always fun.

Why no martial arts posts? The easy answer is that I've been getting my fix by posting on a major martial arts web forum. But I've been wrestling with my martial arts practice over the past few months. I have lots of ideas, but I'm not sure they are well-formed enough to carry a full essay in this space. But I have been training.

By default, and not for my lack of trying to avoid it, I've been mostly responsible for taking a new Bujinkan shodan through his curriculum. This consists of the kata in the final portion of the Tenchijin no Maki. I know there are some out there who are already rolling their eyes about kata training; but this is the curriculum. I've actually found it very enlightening for me and it's been crucial in my re-evaluation of my own practice. I've even... considered teaching on a consistent, regular basis! But my wife will kill me if I do this and don't get paid.

In my own training, I've sought out some cross-training opportunities to improve some specific weak points. There's been a lot of Tae Kwon Do in recent weeks. Bujinkan kicking is rudimentary at best. I won't say a heel stomp kick is useless, but I'm looking to expand the arsenal and improve my kicking mechanics. TKD is one of the premiere kicking arts. It helps that my training partner also enjoys sparring using Kyokushin bare-knuckle rules rather than Olympic TKD rules. I've had some very interesting exchanges. I'd like to be doing more BJJ or try out Judo, but the opportunities haven't been there in the same way. I'm sure their time will come.

As often happens, certain themes emerge in my activities, and for the past six months, the theme has been: Vikings. I decided to start painting my next Warhammer 40K army and chose Space Wolves -- essentially Space Vikings with some werewolf imagery thrown in for good measure. I'm not quite halfway through painting my initial army list. Here are some samples of my work:

An HQ choice; a Rune Priest with plasma pistol.

Another HQ choice: Ulrik the Slayer, a Wolf Priest character.

Part of my first Grey Hunter squad, including a Wolf Guard (second from left with a power sword).

A detail of two converted Grey Hunters.

A full shot of what's complete so far. 28 models, 2 HQ (Rune Priest and Wolf Priest), a pack of Blood Claws, a pack of Grey Hunters, 1 model from the Long Fangs Pack I'm currently painting, and a pack of 5 Fenrisian wolves.

Geeked out yet? I think they're looking pretty good and I'm enjoying the converting and painting opportunities.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot about Vikings to get in the mood and understand the mindset while painting. I recently finished a fantastic translation of Norse mythology. I'm re-reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods and I'm eyeing up the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf (which is not, strictly speaking, about Vikings). Heck, I've even gone so far as to pull plans off the Internet for building a Viking shield from scratch and I'm seriously considering making one.

So... Yeah, I've been busy. And it's going to be busier still with the Holidays coming. I got talked into spending Thanksgiving with my wife's family in Disney World. I've been learning to speak "Mouse" and hide my wallet. There's always something... I'll try to add some new content over the next few months, but...

Look, the bottom line is: if you want good, meaningful blog posts; you have to let the bloggers live their lives and have some material to blog about. I'll be seeing you around.