Tag Archives: Weeds

February 14, 2015

Storytelling: The Betrayer

The punchline is that I was suddenly struck by how modern fiction seems to have conditioned me to expect an apparent White Hat to secretly be a Black Hat. The question I find myself asking now is whether fiction has actually changed (and if so why) or is it just me? The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to think modern fiction has changed.

If so, does that reflect a modern sensibility about people today? Does the rise of the modern anti-hero bring with it the idea of the betrayer? Do we expect so little of people anymore that our heroes need to be dirty and double-agents seem matter of course?

This all started with Diane Duane…

8 Comments | tags: anti-hero, Deep Wizardry, Diane Duane, Ghosts of Mars, High Wizardry, Judas, Manse Everard, Poul Anderson, So You Want to be a Wizard, Star Trek, Star Trek novels, story plots, storytelling, Time Patrol, Weeds, Young Wizards | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday

August 30, 2012

Hook Up the Cable

By Wyrd Smythe

TV Tuesday now takes a slight detour from the public airwaves and shows of our past to consider what’s been happening in the cable TV world. Some of the shows mentioned here deserve their own article, but in this post I’m going to fly over the landscape as quickly as I can manage (those who know me are laughing their ass off about now). If I don’t (at least try), this will be even longer than my usual lengthy longitude.

The problem is that the landscape has gotten huge! Even taking just the “premium” cable channels, such as HBO and Showtime, I find a large selection of shows to mention. In fact, HBO and Showtime each offer so many shows, either one alone offers much territory to explore. With that in mind, the flight won’t be stopping at any one destination very long. We have a very tight schedule today!

5 Comments | tags: Aaron Sorkin, cable shows, Game of Thrones, HBO, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, news, Nurse Jackie, television, The Big C, The Newsroom (TV series), Veep, Weeds | posted in TV, TV Tuesday

August 14, 2011

Sideband #34: The North Star

By Wyrd Smythe

I had a small dinner party last night so that some friends could come over for some ‘za and beer and catch up on the latest antics of Nancy Botwin and company on Weeds. Per the old saying, “A good time was had by all.” Or to put it less passively, “As usual, we had a blast! (And that Nancy… craaaaaaa-zy!!)”

However, in the course of conversation I realized not everyone knows about the magic behind our north star (Polaris by name) and found myself taking the virtual podium to explain. It’s one of those things that’s common knowledge to many, but may come as a complete surprise to others.

So for those of you not familiar with the navigational magic behind the north star, here’s the deal.

5 Comments | tags: astronomy, beer, big dipper, celestial navigation, dinner party, latitude, little dipper, Nancy Botwin, north star, pizza, polaris, stars, Weeds | posted in Basics, Science, Sideband