Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

The headline is a slogan from a nifty T-shirt I saw over at The Onion, and I think it expresses perfectly (in satire of course), what I've been thinking about lately. A few days ago, I posted the reasons that I like Moulin Rouge so much.

But on that subject, I’m reminded of some of the user comments I saw on Amazon.com. It seems that there is a certain type of person who enjoys disliking things. Whenever two movies (or books, or songs, or whatever,) have any similarities at all, these people feel that preferring one must mean hating the other. Some examples, re: Chicago vs. Moulin Rouge (Capitals theirs!):

• Moulin Rouge was NOTHING compared to this movie!
  
• This is my opinion on the matter of Chicago(hated it), and the fact is, people: MOULIN ROUGE IS THE BETTER AND MORE APPEALING TO LOOK AT MOVIE!!
  
• Remember Chicago fans Moulin Rouge was the whole reason why Chicago was made and won Best Picture they honored the Best picture to Chicago because they didn't let MOULIN ROUGE WIN!
  
• After years of bad ones such as Evita and Moulin Rouge we finally got Chicago

Now, you already know that I love Moulin Rouge, but I really enjoyed Chicago too! I see Chicago more as pure entertainment, meant to be fun, with a few satirical jabs at media culture, but not more than that. On that level, it succeeds admirably. I saw it twice in the theater, rooted for it at the Oscars, and plan to buy it on DVD. Moulin Rouge on the other hand, I feel has more emotional weight.

But I like both! What’s wrong with that?

If you read through the other user reviews on Amazon, you’ll find many more comments like the ones above. And even those good-hearted-but-naïve souls who try to keep the peace do so by trying to explain that the movies really are quite different and therefore shouldn’t be compared.

Phhhtthht, I say. *pauses to wipe drool* Why not compare them? They are both musicals, uncommon enough these days, both set in the past, both featuring big-name actors doing their own singing and dancing, etc. There are a lot of similarities, so comparisons are inevitable.

My question then comes from people’s need to polarize the issues. Why can’t they say things like: ‘I like both in different ways’? or ‘I liked this one, but that one was even better.’? It’s like the alpha wolf, trying to put the smackdown on any challenges to their authority.

Of course, I don’t mean to dismiss the possibility that these people may have legitimately hated one and loved the other, but the type of comment I describe above is so common to all sorts of discussions that it makes this particular example (Moulin Rouge vs. Chicago) almost moot.

People are always dividing things into groups. Understandable. It’s human nature to categorize things. It’s a useful skill. And I’m not suggesting that we abandon all value judgements, but why does everything have to be black and white?

They are trying to digitize an analog world, baby! They’re breaking the rainbow into 16 million pieces, and all the king’s programmers and all the king’s IT professionals won’t be able to put it together again. The one's and the zero's need to re-discover one another and you know what? I'll bet they don't even know what thery were fighting about in the first place! Why can’t we all just get along?

...

Oh Lord, did I really just type that? I think I need a nap.

Over at Trey's blog, I saw a great list of questions to ask when writing a story. Apparently he got them from Rumor Mill where they were written by Paul Pence.

The idea is that you come up with a 'What If?' question, like say: "What if eating spinach really made you as strong as Popeye?" or "What if someone lost their job to their own clone?" Then you ask yourself these questions:

• What problem could this possibly cause a person?
  
• What kind of person would feel this problem more than anyone else in the world?
  
• What would make this problem the biggest thing that has ever happened to this person?
  
• How would I work to overcome this problem if I were in the same situation?
  
• What things keep this person from succeeding in overcoming the problem?
  
• With whom does this person interact so that we can discover the problem through action and dialogue?
  
• How do these other persons handle this problem and its resolution?
  
• What ultimate price or risk must the person face in order to finally overcome the problem?
  
• How does this struggle affect the person?

I've seen lists of this nature before, but these struck me as particularly significant today, because I'm currently mulling over the plot of my current WiP, Call It A Gift. I've got the situation, and a vague idea of what brought it about, but I'm still not entirely sure what happens next.

Not terribly worried though, that's how my last novel, Nina Kimberly the Merciless started too.

If you do, you might want to check this out:

The Dullest Blog in the World

You are blue. You are somewhat innocent, in the fact that your genius only extends to the physical world. You have a false sense of contentness. You are usually the quiet one, the genius. Everyone can count on you to help when they have problems, but you only fall short of being able to solve your own.

What inner color are you?

Quiz by Shirono

Well, they were a mixed bag. There were supposed to be three events. One was a magic show, which was aimed at little kids, but that's hardly a surprise, and it was actually pretty entertaining.

The 'Polyjuice Potion Competition' was just a costume contest, which would have been fine except they hadn't organized things nearly as well as they had for the magic show. It didn't get started until fifteen minutes late, and when you've got fifty eight-year-olds sitting in a Borders Books Cafe, waiting for something to start, fifteen minutes can be a long time!

There were a couple of really neat costumes though. One guy was dressed as Platform 9 and 3/4s. He was a brick wall with a sign, and he had rigged up clothes to look like someone had just run through the portal, and only their but and lower leg were still sticking out. And the employees themselves were pretty good too, especially one man dressed as Snape.

The third event was "Hogwarts, A History" which turned out to be a trivia contest. A pretty good selection of questions I thought, and it was really neat to see all these little kids raising their hands in unison to give their answer to: "What is a Hinkypink?" Not bad, but they could have used a microphone for the 'professor.'

But of course, the main event, at midnight, was the unveiling of the book itself. Given the number of people there, they handled everything exceptionally well, giving people 'tickets' as they arrived, then calling them up in groups based on the ticket number.

So I got mine, and boy, this sucker is a book! You could seriously wound someone with this thing.