My Post-Oscars Thoughts

The short version of my thoughts would be "grave disappointment, with a side of expected."  I knew before turning the show on that the Academy's bias against innovative filmmaking would persist.  Even the inclusion of special awards for animated pictures only highlights the fact that the Academy is completely unwilling to consider great works of animation as actual movies.  There were, of course, a handful of moments where justice was served, but in the end all I could think was:  "well, I saw that coming."

Now on to the individual awards:

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.7 is Live! (Your Nihilistic Delusional Fantasy of Doom!)

Remember that whole nonsense about the nihilism and the downfall of western civilization over at Big Hollywood?  Well, that's our topic this week on the show.  We may not be as articulate as other folks on the issue, but we at least try to have a little fun while deconstructing the anti-deconstructionist!

Feel free to check out the episode here, and thanks for listening/reading!

Dastroyanish: A New Boredom-Induced Fantasy Language

Things I do when I get bored:

• Play stupid flash games on the Interwebs
• Argue with people about literary conventions and subgenres, like New Weird or Scifi Strange
• Invent languages on the spot.

Thus comes Dastroyanish, a new fantasy language with a current vocabulary of about fifteen words.  The funny thing about the language is how it all started:  I misspelled a word in another language and decided to roll with it.  The word?  Hola.  Thus comes "hoal," which obviously means "hello" in Dastroyanish.  There is also "anto," which means, more or less, goodbye.

Other phrases:

Nan. Van er teuopo. (No. Not a typo.)
Puesa er verd da "Hello" is-Dastroyanish. (It is a word for "Hello" in Dastroyanish.)
Puesa er langor ist minen mun-fantika. (It is a language for my fantasy world.)
Denen eser urprisen. (Don't be surprised.)
Ot: Puesa er langor nomen "Dastroyanish." (Or: it is a language named Dastroyanish.)
Anto, Bilbo. (Goodbye, Bilbo.)
Puesare er masr-corios, ect Bilbo. (He is a curious man, that Bilbo.)
Dormis-varm. (Sleep well?)

Whether I keep up with it is up to speculation at this point. Thus far, I'm having fun.

Now the big question is this:  have you ever invented a language under unusual circumstances or conditions?  Let me know in the comments!

The other big question:  where the heck does Dastroyanish come from?  I have no idea.

Poll Results: If you had super powers, how would you use them?

The results are in and here's what you all had to say:

• 25% said they would use their powers for good.
• 66.7% said they would use their powers for neutral purposes.
• 8.3% said they would use their powers for evil.

Now the big question is this:  when one says they will use their powers for neutral purposes, what exactly do they mean?  Will they save the world only if they have to, but otherwise use their powers to improve the mundane aspects of regular life?  Will they selectively choose when to use their powers publicly so as to avoid the morally ambiguous situations life might present?

For me, I know I'd use my powers very selectively.  Why?  Because despite what the folks at Big Hollywood would like me to think, we don't live in a world in which the lines between good and evil are always absolute or clear.  I'd have to be very careful how I used my powers, whether in my personal life or in the service of humanity, because to fall victim to propaganda or dogmatism would do very little to actually rid the world of evil.  In fact, I might actually become a part of the problem.

That's how I rationalize it.  How about you?

New Poll: Which age of science fiction is your favorite?

Everyone has their favorite period in science fiction literature.  I want to know what your favorite.  There are five choices:

• the Pulps
• the Golden Age
• New Wave
• Cyberpunk
• Contemporary.

If you'd like to leave a longer response, feel free to do so on this post.

Happy voting!

Video Found: Predator, the Musical!

I love these fake musical versions of class Schwarzenegger movies!  Now we can bask in the glory of the Predator version.

Here's the video (after the fold):

"Colonizing Space" is a Dirty Phrase: Stop Using It

The term "colonize" is not neutral.  It's an impossibly negative term.  It immediately references an extensive socio-political, socio-economic, racialized, and vile process that still churns its wheels today.  Colonialism always was and always will be an exploitative model which privileges dominant socio-economic groups (I hesitate to say "Western" here, though it would be fair to suggest that colonialism benefits the West more than other colonialist groups).  We can thank colonialism for the massive growth of the slave trade in the Americas, the deliberate attempts to exterminate non-white groups across the globe, the irreparable destruction of native land, the theft and destruction of property, culture, language, etc. and so on.  The fact that its engines still

Haul of Books 2011: Stuff For Me v.01

Considering that I just got back from a conference in which books were involved, it seems like perfect timing to have a new edition of the Haul of Books.

So, without further delay, here is the image (after the fold):

The Eaton Conference: Day Three -- Idea Overload B

(You can read about Day One and Day Two here and here.)

Day Three

The third day of the Conference (technically the second and last day of the event, which only ran from Friday to Saturday) proved to be both intellectually exciting and terrifying.  We first attended a panel called "Neocolonialism, Global Capitalism, and Monstrous Subalterns," which included a presentation by Steven Shaviro on hyperbolic futures and a paper on River of Gods and Cyberabad Days (both interesting books I think you folks would enjoy reading).  After that, we attended a panel on Polish SF, which I have some familiarity with through an undergraduate cyberpunk course I took at UC Santa Cruz (we read Imaginary Magnitudes by Stanislaw Lem).  Both panels were interesting, though I suspect their early placement and my pending presentation impacted my note taking, as most of my notes for these panels are quite empty (I did find them interesting, but I didn't see a need to take too many notes).

The third panel we attended was actually mine.  Most of you know that I was pegged to present a

The Eaton Conference: Day Two -- Idea Overload A

As promised, here are my notes/thoughts about the Eaton Conference (part one).  Day Two should go up tomorrow or the day after.  Here goes:

Day One

The theme of the Eaton Conference this year (Global SF) proved to be an immensely informative one, not simply because I had the opportunity to be exposed to all kinds of non-Western literatures, but also because I have a fascination with SF from elsewhere, SF from diverse perspectives, and so on.  Eaton, as such, was a perfect venue for my intellectual curiosities.

The first panel we attended (my friend Loopdilou and I attended the same panels because we,

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.6 is live! (Torture Cinema Meets the Last Airbender)

Another painful episode is here!  The title says it all:  we spend a half hour ripping on The Last Airbender.  Feel free to listen and leave a comment with your own opinions.

As always, if you have any suggestions for bad SF/F movies we should watch, you can send us an email at skiffyandfanty[at]gmail[dot]com.

Thanks for listening.  Your regular programming shall resume shortly.

P.S.:  You'll notice that things have been quiet for about a week here.  There are good reasons for this:  1) I was at a conference last weekend; 2) I got sick as a dog when I returned; and 3) I had a very important language exam on Friday, which I might have failed in part because I was running a fever.  Don't worry.  Things will return to normal pretty soon.  Probably tonight or tomorrow.  Anywho!

The Good PhD News and the Lingering Eaton Bits

First, the good news:

I just found out that I got into the PhD program at the University of Florida.  Obviously I intend to stay and finish that whole schooling thing.  I expect to continue studying and writing about science fiction at the scholarly level, though my PhD dissertation seems to be opening up more broadly to what I am calling imaginative and antihistorical literature.  If anyone wants me to explain what those things are, feel free to leave a comment.

Second, a note about my Eaton Conference stuff:

I will be throwing up a few posts about my experiences at the conference this week at some point.  Some of that has already appeared in the most recent episodes of the Skiffy and Fanty Show (here and here), but I do want to provide a list of potential reading materials and what not, which I have done with previous conference-related editions.  The reason I'm not adding such things right now is because I left all of my notes in my checked-in luggage for the trip home.

So that's that.  Expect more from me soon!

The Eaton Conference: Day One -- American Airlines Sucks

Packing is (usually) easy enough, unless you forget something. I suppose you can guess where this is going: I forgot something. And not just any something. It’s the kind of something that isn’t exactly easy to replace, especially if you are traveling through Miami to Los Angeles.

What did I forget? My cell phone. I didn’t discover this until my friend had dropped me off at the airport and left, which is wonderfully ironic. It also turns out that the wireless Internet at the Gainesville airport was on the fritz, despite having been quite reliable in the past. Without any way to get back to my house in time, I was left with the daunting task of relaying my predicament to my other friend on the other end of the journey in Los Angeles.

This is the story of how Barnes & Noble and Facebook saved the day.

With no cell phone and no memory of the numbers of the various people I would have called in

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.5b -- The Eaton Edition (Day Two) is Live!

As promised, here is the second half of our discussion of our experiences at the Eaton Conference.  Next week will be all about Torture Cinema -- specifically, The Last Airbender.  It should be amusing.

Thanks for listening!

The Skiffy and Fanty Shoe #2.5a -- The Eaton Edition (Day One) is live!

I mentioned that we would be podcasting about our experiences at the Eaton Conference, and so we have.  Our experiences on Friday can currently be found here.  Day Two will go up tomorrow morning.

Thanks for listening.  Expect some blog posts from me in the next day or so.

The Eaton Conference: My Weekend Begins

In case you don't follow me on Twitter or don't know me personally, I thought I should let you all know that I will be in Riverside, California (near Los Angeles) for an academic conference this weekend (and won't return until Tuesday).  This isn't just any old conference though.  Eaton is a science fiction (and, I imagine, fantastic literature) conference where writers, academics, and those who flirt with both sides of the aisle come together to share research (which I will be doing in my scary mailman voice), chat (which I won't be doing, because I'm afraid of some of the authors who will be there, since I sort of idolize them), and otherwise discuss the wonderful thing that is SF, specfic, fantasy, and whatever other names you want to call such things.

What will I be presenting?  A paper entitled "The Interstellar Initiative:  Space and Identity in

Shooting Themselves in the Foot: A Brief Reconsideration of Traditional and Self-Publishing

Anyone who reads this blog, or has in the past, knows that I am hypercritical of self-publishing.  In some respects, the entire industry deserves it, since it is full of shady practices, shady "gurus," liars, scammers, and so on.  In a way, self-publishing is an industry that allows for such problems to grow and fester -- not because SPing is evil, wrong, or whatever detractors want to call it, but because it is decentralized (there is no standard, no vetting, no gate-keeping, and so forth).  Traditional publishers have always been a centralized authority on "artistic" matters, determining what should and shouldn't be put on shelves, rejecting anything deemed "unpublishable," and maintaining a kind of minimum standard of production (though there is some flexibility here).  For the most part, this opposition was a no-brainer for people like me, who appreciate quality work, low-risk consumption, and so on.

And then I read this (about cuts of editorial positions at traditional Canadian publishers):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #2.4 is Live (Newsies and Mary Anne Mohanraj)

A new episode is up, and it's full of happy things (because we haven't given you all enough happy, apparently). This week we talk about the new Batman movie, fascinating science news, upcoming movies, and much more (including an interview with Mary Anne Mohanraj of the Speculative Literature Foundation).

Tune in and enjoy!

Book Review: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

When my friend and I asked Lauren Beukes to describe Zoo City, she understandably remarked that the book is rather difficult to explain.  Zoo City isn't like a lot of books.  On the one hand it is a noir murder mystery with a semi-New Weird slant, but on the other it is a novel about refugees, the music industry, South Africa, guilt, revenge, drugs, prejudice, poverty, and so much more.  It is a gloriously complicated novel with equally complicated characters.  You might even call it a brilliant example of worldbuilding from outside of the traditional modern fantasy genre.

Zoo City is concerned with Zinzi December, a former convict who, like many others, must bear the

Video Found: Volkswagen Darth Vader Commercial

The single greatest car commercial ever made.  Period.

See for yourself:

Admit it:  this commercial is awesome.