Wanted: Guest Posts

It’s that time of year again!

Not big enough.

That magical, special time when we celebrate the birth of *me* on August 26^th, when I’ll be the ancient, decrepit age of twenty seven. Anyway, as usual, and I mean as I’ve done for the past two years, I’m going to take a blogging vacation around that time, so if anyone has something to promote or an idea to share or feels like doing me a solid, please let me know. Also, two weeks after that is approaching my blogiversary, so I’m going to be totally lazy and do reposts for then. Yes, I’ll be celebrating my blog by not doing anything to it : ).

So again, if you feel like doing a guest post for me, shoot me an email. If you don’t…don’t do anything, I guess. But be safe when you’re celebrating my birthday. I know it’s the happiest day of the year, but don’t go overboard. 

It’s A Tornado…Of Sharks

Get it?!

I actually watched that stupid movie, mostly because my mother is a mean, sadistic person who forced me. Her excuse was “I can’t watch bad movies alone! I’d have no one to make ironic comments to!”

She used ironic like that, not me.

Anyway, here’s a rough play by play of the movie, filled with the actual observations we made while watching it.

The movie begins on a boat in the middle of, I assume, the Pacific Ocean, with a scene that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. An unscrupulous Asian business man is making some sort of shady deal with an unscrupulous captain. I have no idea what it’s about because apparently these actors haven’t heard of enunciating, but after a few minutes they start chasing each other around on a boat during a storm because that seems like a good idea. Unscrupulous Asian business man has unscrupulous captain cornered when a shark flies across the screen and takes a bite out of his leg. The storm gets worse and sharks start coming up on deck and eating people even though sharks are fish and would probably be flopping as they suffocated and not focused enough to swallow a guy whole, seriously that happens. Unscrupulous captain is the last to get killed. He just kind of stands around in the storm and, I don’t know, gets eaten piece by piece by sharks whipping by. Or something. I don’t know. It made no sense.

Anyway, the movie really begins after that, with the opening credits. Tara Reid is first because while she’s not the main character, she is the most recognizable name. Then a bunch of people no one’s ever heard of. Then…

Me: Oh, look, John Heard is in this movie.

My mom: He is?

Me: Aw. He used to be an actor. Sad.

My mom: Sad.

Then the movie’s at a beach. It’s California, but there are reports of hurricanes coming despite the fact that water temperatures and wind currents make that impossible. Anyway, there’s a guy on a jet ski hanging around, he’s like Australian or something, and a man and a woman on surfboards. When the woman on the surfboard is attacked, the jet ski guy does nothing. Sits there and watches, I guess. The other man on the surfboard, the actual main character, frantically swims over to rescue her and is way too late. When jet ski guy actually decides to go over, a shark flops up and starts gnawing on his leg.

My mom: Sharks don’t jump out of the water like that. They have to keep it flowing over their gills or they die.

Me: It was your idea to watch this movie.

Back to the movie. There’s a lot of yelling and people running out of the water. Some guy who is standing in water that only comes up to his calf is somehow nabbed by a giant shark. There’s a lot of yelling, blah blah blah. The scene switches to a bar owned by the main character, who is fawned over by his twenty year old waitress and given a generous amount of character shilling by jet ski guy. The main character’s name happens to be “Finn” because I hate the people who made this movie.

The hurricane that should not exist hits and wrecks the bar, and when it floods, a bunch of sharks come spilling in and eating more people and just a bunch of other stuff that makes no sense. The main character (I refuse to call him by name), the waitress (her too), jet ski guy (I think his name was Paz or something equally weird) and John Heard all run out together. The waitress clearly has a thing against sharks and tries to shoot them every chance she gets, although I never see anyone reload the rifle she uses. John Heard grabs a barstool and somehow manages to impale a shark with it.

A shark explodes after it gets shot.

Me: Apparently sharks are explosive.

My mom: Who knew?

The four characters get into a car and the main character insists on picking up his family, although from what we’ve seen of his ex-wife Tara Reid, she’s kind of a bitch. The waitress is all shocked to hear that the main character has an ex and a kid, as though they were best friends instead of him being her boss. As they drive down the street, more streets flood and gigantic sharks are somehow able to swim down them and into the sewers. They stop in the middle of an unflooded street, but somehow the people ahead and behind them are attacked by sharks.

Me: How is that happening? How is that happening? There’s no water, but then there is water, it shouldn’t be deep enough for sharks…ow…ow.

My mom: What’s wrong?

Me: Brain…hurts…makes no sense…

John Heard and the rest of his career are eaten by a shark and the rest of the characters finally get back in the car and start moving again. They make it to Tara Reid’s house and she and the daughter she has with the main characters are total assholes. Tara Reid’s boyfriend comes in and flips out at the main character for his audacity of wanting to check on his kid. Before they can be thrown out, sharks start raining down on the house. It floods just enough so the sharks can come in and eat the boyfriend, but good news! The car is still dry so they can all escape. And then the house explodes with water.

Apparently, the daughter isn’t an only child. There’s a son, too, but he’s off at flight school in another part of Hollywood (where they live) and now they have to rescue him. They all get in the car and start driving away when they notice a clearly empty bus in the middle of a flooded street. The main character insists they stop to check to make sure no one’s in there and suddenly the bus is full of kids. They park on a bridge above the bus and rappel down and pull up the kids one by one, and then the bus driver. Once the kids are safe, the storm starts up again and knocks over the Hollywood sign which kills the bus driver, but none of the kids because they’re kids. The main characters then leave and the kids leave in a single ambulance that is in no way big enough for all of them. As the main characters are driving, more sharks start raining down and they all scream like big babies.

Me: Oh, come on. They’re outside the car. It’s not like the sharks can chew through the roof and get to them.

And then I’m stunned into silence as exactly that happens. Seriously, it was uncanny.

The car is now ruined, but they manage to find a store that is for some reason open during a hurricane. Then jet ski guy actually does something: he goes and steals a Humvee from a movie memorabilia lot because looting rules apply. They rush a police block for some reason and even though it’s a freaking Humvee and should in no way be able to out maneuver a half dozen police cars, they escape and finally manage to reach the flight school.

The son is there and still alive, although seconds after the main characters arrive his teacher is sucked into the sky. Now tornados are approaching and they have somehow alive sharks spinning around with them. They have to do something to get rid of the tornados because…they’ll destroy the city? I don’t know. I’m not clear on that. California can withstand earthquakes. Anyway, to stop the tornados, they decide to use the bombs the flight school has for some reason. The son’s six weeks of training means he can easily fly the helicopter into the storm, and in a blatant crime against physics, dropping bombs will dissipate the tornados. It’s at this point the waitress and the son are left alone together and she clearly stops crushing on her boss in order to crush on him. She also reveals why she hates sharks so much with a story that’s basically a retelling of Quint’s story from Jaws, but without the WWII angle. Or the good acting.

Waitress and son go up in a helicopter to drop the bombs into the tornados and the others grab chainsaws to use on the sharks. A bunch of people get eaten, including jet ski guy, but the main character manages to cut a shark right in half like he’s freaking Odin or something. Meanwhile, up in the skies, they only manage to destroy two of the three approaching tornados. Waitress falls out of the helicopter because she hasn’t heard of seat belts and she is immediately swallowed whole by a shark flying around up there instead of dying. Then the main character does some real fierce expressions (acting as hard as he can!) and drives the Humvee, rigged with more bombs, into the storm. Now the sharks are all falling from the sky and not splattering on the ground like they should but eating people. They then run over to a nursing home unsubtly pointed out earlier and save a bunch of old people. The main character pours gasoline in a pool and lights it on fire. Then it explodes.

Me: Come on! That’s not how chemistry works!

One final shark comes swooping down even though it should be dead from being out of the water and he runs at it with a chainsaw. Then it swallows him whole. And dies. And he cuts his way out of it. Then he reaches back in and pulls out waitress.

My mom: It’s the same shark?

Me: And she’s alive, so being swallowed by the shark didn’t kill her.

My mom: Look how big it is. And they were both in there, swallowed whole. The shark must be hollow inside.

Me: Yep. Plus he managed to chainsaw his way out of it.

My mom: Ow…brain…hurts…

Language of Confusion: Unit

Just a quick one today because man, is it hot. Too hot to think.

Unit is a clear example of the evolution of a word from one thing to something completely different. But it also has the rarity of almost making sense. See, when it showed up in the mid sixteenth century, it only meant a number of things regarded as an undivided group, i.e. a herd of sheep would be a unit, but the individual animals would not be. From there it evolved to a single part of a greater whole in the seventeenth century—so at that time, a member of the herd would be a unit—and then finally, it became a standard of measure in the eighteenth century. So it went from a whole, to a part, to a quantity of measure. Okay, I take back the part about it making sense.

Unit of course is related to unity, which showed up way earlier in the early fourteenth century. It comes from the Anglo-French unite and Old French…unite, descended from the classical Latin unitatem, sameness or agreement. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that unitatem comes from unus, the Latin word for one. For the record, yes, unite also comes from this family (duh!). It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the Latin unire, to unite, and also from unus.

There’s also a totally awesome digression I can (and will) go into: see, union is obviously related to unit, right? Well, it just so happens that in Late Latin it’s unionem, which is also a way to say, and I quote, “a single pearl or onion”. There are layers to an onion, but the whole is a unit, as it were, so unionem became a colloquialism for “a type of onion”. And that was kept in Old French, Anglo-French, and in English to the point where it became the official version of the word in both English and French (oignion).

TL;DR: ONION. IS. FROM. UNION.

That is entirely more awesome than it has any right to be.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Fordham University

Orbis Latinus

Dead Dystopia

While looking through my blog roll, I read a post that said dystopian, as a genre, is dead. There was some other stuff, too, but that’s obviously the part that concerns me as a writer of post-apocalyptic with shades of dystopian.

I have to admit, there has been an overabundance of works taking place in bright and shining worlds that achieve piece by exerting total control over the people. And of course there’s a rebellion, and an evil president, and a girl who accepts everything until she meets a certain boy (or sometimes vice versa).

These are just generalities. The actual books are varied and layered. And truly, you can’t go to a bookstore without tripping over a stack of dystopians. I just never thought this was a bad thing : P. But it does mean it’s a lot harder to stand out these days.

Is it the end? Far from it. A few years ago, it was contemporary YA I head that was dead, and only the freshest, best written were published. Then before that, it was Urban Fantasy that was gone, saturated with TWILIGHT knockoffs and girls with magic powers (or dating boys with magic powers). Both of these genres are still alive and kicking, so I’m thinking dystopian isn’t so much dead as it is in a recession. It’s still going to be hard to get noticed, but if you work hard, edit hard, and never give up, you still have as much a chance of getting published as anyone.

I think. And desperately hope.

Thoughts? 

Random Thoughts

---I think girls underwater is becoming the new girls in fancy dresses as the new YA cover thing. Although it will be a while before the latter is overtaken.

---Candidate for mother of the year: “A Southeast Texas woman faces a felony charge for allegedly delaying hospital treatment of her teenage son’s gunshot wound until she could research treatment options on the Internet”. Yeah. Gunshot wounds are the kind of thing you want to Google before getting them taken care of.

---“Polk School Bus Driver Staged Fight Between Students”. It might seem like I’ve been posting a lot of newspaper headlines in my Random Thoughts lately, but tell me, could you resist stuff like this?

---Speaking of which: “Texas teacher accused of duct taping student to chair”… a year after another teacher was accused of ordering kindergartners to hit a child. I’m not a mother. I have no desire to be one. Honestly, I’m not big on kids in general. But come on. How do people not get that you can’t treat children like that?!

---Yes, an interrobang is absolutely necessary.

---Actual quote from the teacher-duct tape article: “‘We are talking about human beings and they do make mistakes. Having said that that behavior is not excusable.’”

---There is “mistake”. Then there is “child abuse”. There’s a big difference.

---When Abercombie & Fitch’s CEO touts being exclusionary as part of their business strategy and refuses to make clothes for plus sized women you can’t really be surprised that they won’t make their stores accessible to disabled people.

---Seriously. Those guys are DICKS.

---“Senate defeats bills to keep student loans low”. Of course they did. It’s not like, say, passing a bill to keep airlines in business because everyone in congress flies a lot. I mean, this doesn’t even involve them.

---The preceding bullet points are evidence for the argument that we do not live in the best of all possible universes.

---I have got to stop checking my news feed.

---Actual newspaper headline: “And Xbox One to Rule Them”. I get the reference you’re making, but since the actual quote is “One Ring”, it’s kind of convoluted.

---“Michael Buble Being Stalked By A Velociraptor” is a real blog. And also evidence for the argument that we live in the best of all possible universes.

Language of Confusion: Kind

Kind, both a word for being nice and a word for type or ilk. Is there a reason for this disparity? What a foolish question. Of course there’s not.

Both kinds of kind come from an Old English word, nice kind from gecynd and type kind from the radically different gecynde. The words are obviously related—gecynd means type or nature and gecynde means natural or native. The gec part of the word disappeared sometime around the thirteenth century, so cynd (with a hard c) morphed into kind. The word kin is alsorelated, coming from the Old English cynn, family.

You can look further back into kind. Before it was gecynd, there was the Proto Germanic gakundjaz, family or race. That word comes from gecynde’s forbearer, gakundiz, native or natural. Gakundiz is a variation of yet another Proto German word, kunjam. It turns out that the ga- is a prefix that indicates the word is applied to a group. Traces of the word can still be found in other Germanic languages; the Dutch kunne (sex, as in gender) is descended from kind, as is the German word for children, kind (like kindergarten). Kunjam is also related to the Proto Indo European word gene, the word that gives us genus.

But that doesn’t tell us how kind went from meaning native or natural in Old English to nice in Modern. The truth is, it just changed definitions. It went from natural to natural feelings to well-disposed to compassionate, all before the fourteenth century. Just because.

TL;DR: Like I said, no reason.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

University of Texas at Arlington’s History and Development of the English Language

University ofTexas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

The Good, The Bad, And The Nonsensical

I was browsing around the blogosphere (holy crap, Word says blogosphere is a word) when I saw someone talking about the implausibility of something. It probably had to do with The Walking Dead. I mean, it usually does. Anyway, it got me thinking: how much must belief be suspended before something becomes unlikeable?

Obviously the threshold is different for different people, and sometimes one part of a movie/book/show can be enjoyed while the other isn’t, which is the only reasonable explanation for how the above mentioned The Walking Dead still exists. For example, sometimes in that show you see cool, gory zombies. But then the characters start talking and I get all screamy at the television.

It also depends on how well done something is. For example, I went to see the latest Die Hard movie (don’t ask me the title, I don’t remember) and as breathtaking as the twenty-minute car chase was, I regret the money spent on that turd bomb. Nothing that happened made sense. [WARNING: Spoilers ahoy. But only if you actually are worried about the plot of that Die Hard movie and really. Really. Are you? Didn’t think so] First of all, if you’re trying to break someone out of prison it might seem like a good idea to get arrested yourself by murdering someone, but, hello? You freaking murdered someone. It’s the kind of thing that causes a butt load of bad feelings between countries with already strained relations. So it’s kind of a stupid idea. There’s no way they’d let a CIA operative get a free pass for that. And the saddest part? That’s only one example of why that movie is a betrayal to American storytelling.

But while Die Hard 5 had nothing to redeem its leaps of common sense, several movies with equally unlikely situations are still good. The Hunger Games had a few iffy spots, but I still liked it—although there are plenty of people who didn’t. Again, The Walking Dead is another good example of something I can’t discern the appeal that gives it such a powerful following.

So there are good things, there are bad things, and there are things that some people like and some people hate. Ever been to Rotten Tomatoes? It’s basically that, but you can see how other people voted. They really need one of those for books.