Ender's Game

I went with Nole yesterday to see Ender's Game, a new film based on a classic science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. It is set in the distant future, at a time when an alien race of bugs is threatening to destroy the human race.

It reminded me a little bit of Starship Troopers, a film based on a classic science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein that is set in the distant future, at a time when an alien race of bugs is threatening to destroy the human race.

I think Ender's Game reminded me of Starship Troopers because both films are based on classic science fiction novels set in the distant future, at a time when an alien race of bugs is threatening to destroy the human race.

Both films also deal with the impact of war on youth, when young people are called to sacrifice themselves for the good of the human race, which is threatened with extinction by an alien race of bugs. In Ender's Game the young hero is played by Asa Butterfield (from Hugo), and in Starship Troopers the hero is played by Casper Van Dien (from Starship Troopers).

Apart from the future war and the bugs, the protagonists are quite different. Asa Butterfield is the weedy nerd hero Ender Wiggin, while Casper Van Dien, whose very name is like a series of punches to the face, plays the total jock Johnny Rico.

But the similarities return with the tough, overbearing military father figure, who in Ender's Game is played by a growly, scowly Harrison Ford, and in Starship Troopers by a scowly, scowly Michael Ironside.

The other main difference is that Starship Troopers is awesome because it features the tactical absurdity of massed infantry carrying shoulder-mounted nuclear missiles and gleefully satirical fascist overtones, whereas Ender's Game has neither of these things. It takes itself much more seriously, even though the main character never seems to be put in any real danger since all the space battles are fought by remotely controlled drones. Also, the story ends with a shoehorned twist that didn't make much sense.

So, yeah, Ender's Game was okay, I guess. But it mostly made me want to watch Starship Troopers again.

Dinosaur Ridge

This morning A took me to see Dinosaur Ridge, at one of the hogback outcrops west of Denver.

Allosaurus terrorising local traffic

It was a great place to see the geology in action – I could imagine how the Denver region was once at the bottom of a sea, and how over the years sedimentary layers built up to a depth of two miles thick (!!!!!), and then the whole continent rose until it was a mile above sea level, and then 70 million years ago the Rockies began to grow, buckling and pushing the two-mile-deep layers up to the surface. There was even an older version of the Rockies, 280 million years ago, which were eroded down to nothing before the present Rockies even appeared.

 

The scale of time and space involved makes my brain hurt. I’m used to dealing with centuries, or at best millenia. I can’t deal with this crap.

The hogback on the right has been pushed up at an angle, the plain on the left is a two-mile deep layer of sediment

What’s special about this outcrop is that it preserves amazing dinosaur fossils and footprints in ancient shores and stream beds. Obviously the layers were once horizontal, but they’ve been pushed up at an angle, so you can get a really clear view of the whole surface.

An ancient stream bed

Iguanadon footprints

Fossiled burrows of little river worm things

Even the ripples on the river bed have been fossilised!

Ancient sedimentary layers

The white layer is formed of crystals from volcanic ash over 100 million years ago

I think this is a dinosaur bone

It was a pleasant, sunny walk up the Dinosaur Trail, stopping at fossil displays while cyclists whizzed past. Back down to the friendly visitor centre, I got chatting with one of the gift shop attendants.

SHIT A DINOSAUR oh no wait it's only a model

She asked if I knew anything about geology, so I said I was an archaeologist by training. She got excited and called over one of her colleagues, who had just been on a two-month archaeological dig in Africa, so we had a chat about archaeology. I was also telling the lady how much I loved the Denver climate (dry heat! mountain trails! no stupid oceans and beaches!). She asked if I would like to live here. I said yes, but then added glumly that there wasn’t much call for medieval historians in Colorado.

Really, who would not want to live here?

Guess I should have been a paleontologist instead.

Encounter at the Ken-Caryl Manor House

Wow, it's been a while since I updated this blog. My life has been boring.

The other day T got home from work and suggested that we all go to check out a fancy early twentieth-century manor house outside Denver which is called, imaginatively, the Manor House. So we all hopped into the car and drove the 5 miles to check out the Coloradan version of a stately home.

It was actually less than 2 miles as the crow flies, but the Manor House is cut off from the outskirts of Denver by the 'hogbacks', a 30-mile curb of 600-foot ridges that form a sort of geological buffer between the plains and the Rockies.

Hogbacks west of Denver, courtesy of Google Earth

Anyway, because of this totally cool rock formation (which is made more cool by being packed with dinosaur fossils), we had to drive a couple of miles south to cut between two of the hogbacks. A few minutes later we were there.

The Manor House was built in 1914 by self-made man John Schaffer, born in Baltimore in 1853, who made his fortune in the best tradition of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs, i.e. in railroads, grain shipping and newspapers. I tried to find something more about him on Google, but, amazingly, he doesn't seem to exist on the internet beyond the Manor House homepage. This is disappointing because I wanted to find a photo of him. I imagine he would feel at home with these guys though:

I think this was the cover art for their first album

After making his fortune, Schaffer bought a massive block of 3,500 acres in the strip between the hogbacks and the Rockies, and used it for a ranch that he named for his two sons, Ken and Caryl. On a prominent bluff in the centre of Ken-Caryl Ranch he built his own personal Xanadu, the Manor House.

 

Xanadu

 The Manor House

Okay, so he was no Charles Foster Kane. But it was a nice southern plantation-style mansion. The best thing about it is the flagpole, which used to have a light on the top. Schaffer chose the site so he'd had a direct line of sight between two hogbacks to downtown Denver. When he was holding a party, he'd turn on the light as a sign for his friends to come. All very Great Gatsby.

Unfortunately we didn't get the chance to see much of the mansion. After parking and walking round the front to take a couple of snaps, a chunky-looking guy approached us across the lawn.

"You folks with the wedding party?" he asked.

"No," said T.

The guy shrugged. "Private property, sorry. Gonna have to ask you to leave."

T was giving up that easily. "But aren't you open 5 to 10?"

"Monday to Wednesday," he said.

T looked at him quizzically. "But isn't it Monday today?"

He paused to think. "Except today. We're closed for the wedding." He gave us a how-can-some-people-be-so-goddam-stupid look. "We put up signs, sent out an e-mail blast yesterday."

By "signs" he meant the wooden arrows we'd seen on the drive leading up to the mansion, one of which said Wedding, the other I Do's. We were tempted to point out that maybe if he wanted people to realise that the whole property was closed for a wedding, he should put out signs that actually said that. None of us was sure what he meant by "e-mail blast", either. To whom? Did he e-mail literally everyone on the planet?

Anyway, we clearly we're going to get inside the fabled Manor House, so we ambled back to the car and went home.

Never mind.

Broken dog

I came home for Christmas to discover that my dad has taken to sleeping with an air pistol, knife and hockey stick next to his bed. Either the neighbourhood has seen a recent surge in violent crime, or this is just something that happens when one gets older.

I also came home to find a broken pet. Kim the Dog had a serious stroke a couple of weeks ago. She was taken to the vet, who said she was in impressive health for a 14-year-old collie, all things considered, and gave her some tablets.

She’s been making a fairly good recovery, although that’s not saying much since she was in pretty rough shape before the stroke. For the last few months she’s had a hard time walking about, and her back legs have almost given out entirely, so she has to be lifted in and out of the back door step to do her business. She hates being picked up for any reason, which means lots of growling.

Now, because of the stroke, she’s also lost her sense of balance. She shuffles about with her head cocked at an oddly endearing angle, half blind and three quarters deaf, constantly panting as though exhausted, and is forever bumping into things and falling over.

It’s kind of funny. Sad too, of course. Collies are especially active dogs with limitless energy. They live to run around chasing sheep (or sticks, or children, whatever is available). If they can’t do that, their very existence must be a bewilderment to themselves.

On the other hand, this morning I saw Kim the Dog sleeping in the hallway, having a dog dream. All dog dreams involve chasing. Her tired old legs were pumping away, she was panting as though still a young dog running through a field somewhere.

 Kim the Dog

Then I realised that dog brains probably can’t distinguish between dreams and reality, so as far as Kim the Dog was concerned, she actually was running through a field, just like she used to do, chasing down a stick or frisbee. It’s quite a nice thought that even in her old age, her dog brain still spends a lot of time experiencing life as fit and healthy as a puppy.

 Kim the Dog's brain

Cork and Kerry

 

I was in Cork last weekend for the first time, attending a conference on medieval things. I lived in Ireland for most of 2003 and 2004, so it’s always nice to go back, especially to a part of the country I’ve not visited before.

Most of what I knew about Cork came from the excellent Ken Loach movie The Wind That Shakes The Barley, which is set during the Irish War of Independence, so my knowledge was a bit out of date.

Another cheerful Ken Loach film

Anyway, conferences rarely leave much time for sightseeing, but as I walked through the city I was glad to see that my ethnic group was represented with its own ‘Sasanach’ market.

We also had a conference excursion to the Iveragh peninsula in County Kerry. It has some stunning coastal scenery and lots of quiet, slightly shabby villages full of the sort of family-run shops that I suppose were found everywhere once upon a time, but now exist only in these out-of-the-way corners of western Europe. In Cahersiveen we drove past one little shop which had two windows: the first was filled with toys and games for children, the second with funeral wreaths and decorated plaques for the dead. There’s something reassuring about a local shop which caters to your needs from cradle to grave.

But then Kerry has always been behind the times even by Irish standards. Our tour guide told us the story of the Fenian uprising of February 1867, when pockets of resistance fighters all over Ireland were supposed to rise up against the British in a coordinated rebellion.

The February rebellion was called off, but unfortunately the news didn’t reached Kerry in time. The small band of Cahersiveen rebels rose up according to plan, killed a few British police, and began to march to link up with their comrades in the east. Only then did they find out that they were completely alone.

That must have been awkward. It sounds rather like turning up to someone’s house in elaborate fancy dress, only to discover that the party has been cancelled and nobody told you. And then you get arrested and transported to Australia for life.

The British built this massive barracks to subdue the restless people of Cahersiveen. All 800 of them.

After this, the most important thing to happen in Kerry took place in 2001, when the public toilets in the coastal village of Portmagee came runner-up in the all-Ireland Best Public Toilets competition, as a weather-beaten sign proudly commemorates. Obviously I went into the toilets, literally ready to wee myself in excitement.

It was dark and dingy. There were no seats on the toilets. There was no soap in the soap dispenser, and the taps hardly worked. I walked back out into the cold Atlantic wind, taking care not to slip on the sad little puddles of water which lay across the tiled floor.

Standards had clearly dropped since 2001. Maybe, I thought, the disappointment of only coming runner-up had been too much. First the failed uprising of 1867, and now this. How much tragedy could one county endure?

There is nothing lush or bucolic about County Kerry; it’s a tough landscape of mountains and craggy coasts that lie naked to the battering western ocean. The soil isn’t good for much except scattered grazing and the most meagre cereal cultivation. If the ground isn’t rocky, it’s boggy.

Not that this matters, because this is the sort of place that takes pride in its history of adversity and struggle. Its inhospitable climate is what attracted some of the earliest Christian monks in Europe to build hermitages on tiny coastal islands, places at the edge of the known world, suited only to gannets and crabs. The tougher it was to survive, the better.

Those monks were crazy. Nowadays people are still attracted to Kerry’s stark beauty, but, being less crazy, they build modern houses with central heating and insulation and French windows looking out over the sea.

And hopefully decent toilets.

Necessary advice to all Poets and Dreamers

"You ask if your poetry is any good. You ask me. You have asked others before me. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you get annoyed when certain editors decline your efforts. Now (since you have permitted me to give you advice), I beg you to give all that up. You see what is on the outside, and that, above all else, you must not do. Nobody can advise or help you, nobody.

There is only one solution. Enter into yourself. Explore the reason why you write; see if its roots reach down into the deepest place of your heart, ask yourself if you would die if you were forbidden to write. And above all: ask yourself, in the quietest hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself to find a deep answer. And if the answer is affirmative, when you can answer this serious question with a clear and simple ‘I must,’ then build your life around this necessity; your whole life, down to its meanest and most apathetic hour, must be a sign and certificate of this impulse."

Rainer Maria Rilke

(thanks to hc) 

New wallet

About twenty years ago my best friend gave me a Nintendo wallet as a birthday present which has served me well ever since. For some reason my sister disagreed, so for my birthday this year I got a new one.

I'm actually pretty impressed that she was able to find one so similar. But did it really need replacing? I'm not so sure, the old one still looks fine to me.

Constantine: Hearts and Minds

Finished!

Constantine: Hearts and Minds

Constantine: Hearts and Minds