Exit, pursued by bear

The wizard of Alki Beach

2012-02-16T16:25:21Z

Unsinkable

2012-01-19T21:04:44Z

Yesterday’s fine blanketing of new-fallen snow is now, after hours of light freezing rain, today’s encasement in ice. I just finished chipping and shoveling a mountain of ice off our front steps.

Just as I was wearily leaning the shovel near the front door, an enormous passenger liner hove into view, moving at top speed. It struck my mountain of shoveled ice, capsized, and broke in two. The scream of wrenched metal! The shrieks and lamentations of tumbling bodies! Down, down it slid with eerie grace into the snow near where Kai peed on a bush just a few hours earlier. And yet the band played on. A pitiful few lifeboats, some only half full of wailing women and children, managed to break away and row down 41st Ave. toward the more traveled depths of Andover Street and possible rescue. The last thing I saw was Leonardo DiCaprio sinking into the lawn. I would have offered him a rope or the shovel handle or something, but just then, from the kitchen, I heard the kettle for the hot chocolate. I feel kind of bad about that, but, after all, needs must.

Now not only do I expect difficulty getting my car started tomorrow, I gotta hire somebody to clean up the lawn by hauling away all those deck chairs.

An Alaskan Malamute in Seattle (pt. 2)

2012-01-18T20:22:03Z

... Just in case it's different in the backyard...

... Nope, about the same...

... Definitely not ham.

An Alaskan Malamute in Seattle

2012-01-18T18:05:01Z

Not "snowpocalypse." Not "snowmaggedon." Both examples of lingua hysterica can be retired now....

... It's just snow....

... Still pretty damn cold, though.

...On the other hand...

...The neighborhood kids are out playing.

Why I love my neighborhood, no. 112

2012-01-17T03:18:45Z

Not new if you know me on FB, but...

Kai: "Stupid furless primates. You want to go back inside ALREADY?"

2012-01-16T20:40:41Z

Google-plotz

2012-01-13T20:35:05Z

Okay, that's it. Fed up now. Because Google "improved" its search algorithms by integrating Google+ "personal" crap into its results, I've deleted my Google+ account.

It's enough that Google's recent changes to Picasa Web Albums for a while screwed up the way I post images to my Google-driven "mostly movies" blog. But these latest undesired "enhancements" just foul up my Google searches with unasked-for social-network detritus that makes what once was an easy-like-breathing search effort into what is now something else I have to skim through a handkerchief to remove content I didn't ask for.

It's a cryin' shame. While most of my social networking is done via Facebook (privacy settings, yes, yes, I know), I liked Google+ not because it's easier or smarter (it's not), but because thus far my "circles" there were refreshingly free of the petty complaining and pity-fishing that seems to be a growing percentage of "social" content. Because that percentage is so high, its cumulative effect has been wearing on me like a cheese grater, exposing my own raw nerves underneath, thus making me less productive and less good company in my own right (hell, in my own head). So I'm making an effort to filter/reduce/avoid that percentage as much as possible in my own choices of online venues and interactions. (And yes, I acknowledge that I may be perceived to be complaining pettily myself here. I get that.) Google+ was by comparison relaxing and almost energizing in the lack of metronomic complaining and pity-fishing that scrolled before my eyes. So I'll miss that.

If Google ultimately retracts its recent changes due to public hue and cry, I may go back to Google+. But because after deleting that account I can already see big improvement in my mundane Google search results, I won't miss it very much.

Kablooey!

2012-01-05T23:29:09Z

So, as of today we can expect to see Peter Weller (RoboCop, Buckaroo Banzai), Noel Clark (Mickey on Doctor Who), and Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) in Star Trek 2. Cumberbatch will be the villain. With of course Simon Pegg again as Scotty. The internet just geeksploded.

(The only reason David Tennant hasn't also been cast is because io9.com pleaded with J.J. Abrams against it to avoid a catastrophic server meltdown.)

Happy New Year ... and that's a wrap

2012-01-01T00:35:18Z

Bud sinks down happily on the couch, and Fran holds out the
deck to him.

                         FRAN
            Cut.

Bud cuts a card, but doesn't look at it.

                         BUD
            I love you, Miss Kubelik.

                         FRAN
                   (cutting a card)
            Seven --
                   (looking at Bud's card)
            -- queen.

She hands the deck to Bud.

                         BUD
            Did you hear what I said, Miss
            Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.

                         FRAN
                   (smiling)
            Shut up and deal!

Bud begins to deal, never taking his eyes off her. Fran
removes her coat, starts picking up her cards and arranging
them. Bud, a look of pure joy on his face, deals -- and
deals -- and keeps dealing.

And that's about it. Story-wise.

                                            FADE OUT.

Post-Krismas Kai

2011-12-27T03:43:23Z

Kai says...

"Hey, everyone's home! Let's go out, chase things, run on the beach! I'm a dog on the go! There's my ball!"

"What? You don't wanna? Damn primates. That's okay, I'll wait for you."

"No, really, you go on and do your monkey things. I'm ready when you are."

"Actually, this is a comfortable spot."

"Screw it. Wake me when there's ham."

'Tis the season for Sherlock

2011-12-19T16:51:00Z

At my "mostly movies" blog, Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL.

Like Peter Jackson's film versions of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, cinematic adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon are vulnerable to an extra lens of critical analysis. The legions of fans, aficionados, devotees, and armchair scholars of a book-to-film's original source material must, like skeptical clerics studying the Shroud of Turin, hold up every foot and frame of the filmmaker's work to the light of the hallowed author's words and pages. And we all know what the first four letters of the word analysis are. Is the film version faithful to its revered source? Does "faithful" mean dogmatic word-for-word translation from one medium to another, or are creative and practical allowances excusable?

Like Tolkien's fantasy epic, Doyle's beloved Victorian detective stories evoke an idealized time and place that never existed except between our ears, so any attempt to visualize them onscreen is inevitably judged through filters found, as Holmes authority Vincent Starrett put it, "in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895."

In any case, here are a few that I'm pleased to have on my DVD shelves....

markbourne @ 2011-11-28T18:13:00

2011-11-29T02:13:01Z

Elizabeth and I together never forget those three little words: "Jeeves and Wooster." Alternatively, "Fry and Laurie" work well too.

Carl Sagan, "The Demon-Haunted World", 1997, p. 25

2011-11-27T18:53:59Z

markbourne @ 2011-11-27T10:51:00

2011-11-27T18:51:38Z

"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!"

2011-09-07T01:01:09Z

I make it a rule to rarely post rants. Rants are to the internet what rain is to a tin roof, and by nature I'm not a ranty guy. Yet here's an exception to the rule.

God DAMN Orson Scott Card and the "God Hates Fags" jalopy he rode in on. Not merely as a Shakespeare enthusiast, but as a reasonably decent human being, I find what he's done to Hamlet in this novella to be vile from a half-dozen vectors. Fortunately I didn't care for his work even before he proved himself to be a bigoted spite spigot, and I have a big shelf of Shakespeare fiction to serve as a palliative.

Still, to quote a bloke, what a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.

Paging Hercule Poirot

2011-09-06T17:47:49Z

According to Google Analytics, since Aug. 29 someone (singular or plural, I don't know) from Leuven, Flemish Brabant, Belgium has returned to my site-archived Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine story "Mustard Seed" nearly 40 times, sometimes four of five times in a day, each time by Googling the phrase "thank you god for making me an instrument." My curiosity piqued, I've added a note to the story inviting them to drop me an email to say Hello.

Also, since early August there's been a dramatic upswing in people from all over Googling "Calvin and Hobbes" + astronomy/universe/stars/philosophy and thereby landing on my Astronomy page. Is there a C&H meme going around?

And over at Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL, I posted about revisiting the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled ahead of revisiting Faust yet again in London later this month.

That's "Air Commodore" Bourne to you, mate!

2011-08-05T19:57:35Z

Next month, Elizabeth and I, in the company of shelly_rae, will be spending a week and a half in London, house-sitting for fjm. All rather sudden and unexpected, but welcome indeed. Elizabeth has been wanting to get me out on a Big Trip since just after the events of 2009, and I've been uncharacteristically balking (stuff, things), so this was an offer too good to refuse.

On our itinerary is catching the current production of Dr. Faustus at Shakespeare's Globe. Last night we secured our tickets well in advance. (Good thing too, as those tickets are moving like a bat out of Mephistopheles' front door.) In so doing, we registered a new account at the Globe's website. There we noticed the dropdown list of titles/honorifics you can choose to apply to your name. No big deal, lots of sites have such a list. Yes, they do. Nonetheless, this was their list:

Elizabeth is now, I believe, Countess of Seattle.

Yep, that's Arthur Darvill, Doctor Who's serially deceased "Rory Williams" as Mephistopheles. And may I say, Oh hell yeah.

Look me up. I'm on the Internet!

2011-06-08T22:12:46Z

As recorded by Google Analytics, here's a sample of search engine keywords that have led visitors to my website's pages over the past twelve months:

First, the egoboo:

At the top of the list (by frequency) are general permutations of my name:

mark bourne — with or without enclosing quotation marks
mark bourne books
mark bourne fantasy
mark bourne seattle
mark bourne website
mark bourne writer

...and so on. Surprising yet gratifying how many times this has occurred.

Sometimes my fiction or other work has been searched out specifically:

mark bourne action figures — My Realms of Fantasy story, or else a new line of toys I'm not getting royalties for.
mark bourne boss "alternate tyrants" — Alternate Tyrants was the Resnick/Greenberg anthology with my Al Capone story, "Boss." One of my favorites, actually, in a book that received zero promotion as far as I could tell.
mark bourne - brokedown — One of my F&SF stories.
mark bourne brokedown summary — Just read the fucking story, person from Budapest.
mark bourne mustard seed — Another F&SF story.
like no business i know mark bourne — My second Chicks in Chainmail story.
mark bourne xora — A character in my second Chicks in Chainmail story.
mark bourne the nature of the beast , the nature of the beast by mark bourne — An Aeon magazine story.
boss: an oral history of the rise and rise of president alphonse capone — That's the title of a fictitious Studs Terkel book within my Alternate Tyrants story "Boss." Odd that someone was looking for it specifically.
mark bourne what dreams are made on — My Full Spectrum 5 and university lit textbook antho story.
My Sherlock Holmes in Orbit story, "The Case of the Detective's Smile," is far and away the most popular published story I have on the site, with new pings almost daily. Search variations have included:
- detective's smile — Dozens of 'em.
- mark bourne the case of the detective's smile sherlock holmes in orbit
- the case of the detective's smile amazon
- the case of the detective's smile download
- the case of the detective's smile audiobook
- the case of the detective's smile mark bourne read online
mark bourne short story collection — Looking for the OOP Scorpius ebook or a print collection (alas)?
stories and mark bourne
mark bourne star trek — My ST planetarium show?
mark bourne ray bradbury — I directed a couple of his plays and corresponded with him back in the day.
what are mark bourne books about? — I’d like to know the answer this person came up with.
I've written over a half-million words for various venues on movies and such things (and have a "mostly movies" blog), so related searches on record are mark bourne film critic, mark bourne film.com, "mark bourne" dvd, and mark bourne films.
mark bourne dr. jekyll — I sure hope this referred to the appropriate movie write-up.

Additionally, star trek: orion rendezvous and star trek: federation science, both of which I was lead writer on, still get a surprising number of search hits.

Of course, there are plenty of Mark Bournes in the world, especially in the UK, so the site has received hits from strangers probably disappointed to find the wrong one:

mark bourne architect in omaha
markbourne comic book artist — I wish that were me.
mark bourne medieval — not "...on your ass," alas.
mark bourne football — So not me.
mark bourne first christian church of merritt island — Ditto.
mark bourne looking for love — My favorite.

Now it gets amusing. Or just weird. Several of my pro published stories are archived at the site, and Google searches that land people on them can be … varied. Here are selected keyword sets that have led wayward netizens to various parts of my site. These are verbatim and unedited:

"and a beautiful diaphanous girl willing to be turned into a chimpanzee"
"and thence we came forth to see again the stars" dante means what?
"let me tell you bout momo, the missouri monster"
"the sign said" "harlan ellison"
a man who's licked his weight in wild caterpillers
a piece of something that drove a woman insane literature
action figure that look like a fly
action figures pamela anderson — also "pamela anderson action figure" on four separate occasions.
al capone still alive
alien seed in her belly
and my younger brother received pigeon shit in one of his eye when he looked up in the sky to see if it was an aircraft or something else
baboons fucking a human being
the beast of titan his snout sniffed the air
big bat like things that wrap their wings around people and liquefy them movie
bloody roosters of cantaloupe isle
bruce willis action figure doll
building instructions for star trek space docking station
bulging breechcloth
captain dichario, star trek — (The name of the main character in Star Trek: Orion Rendezvous. Named after writer and Rochester, NY pal Nick DiChario.)
cary grant swims from one backyard pool to another to get home
casablanca movie vs antigone by anouih — (There's a college freshman I don't envy.)
chritian groups og the 90'simage lord i've reached the mark once more
cosmic irony in the love song of j. alfred prufrock
cum sprite mistress elf
deadly figures and pamela anderson
des belles et une bete dog sex dvd
detached from brain .... soul adrift
did a human being think with his mind or his heart?
disturbed woman and a beast of nature — (This one appears twice, from separate origins and dates.)
does anyone remember that ghost story from in a dark, dark room? it’s the story about the little girl that had a ribbon tied around her neck, she had it throughout her whole life until she grew old and sick. when she laid upon her death bed, she asked her husband to untie the ribbon.. he did, and then her head fell off.
don't tell me the moon is shining in russian
dream hairy palms hairy wrists
eating whipped shit
everything about western literature
fat couple action figure
fat women action figures
fiction he like to spread eagle hairy women
floating giggling dirigible — (My Asimov's SFM story "Being Human" has just such a character.)
galactic wizard bus
gardner dozois mark twain invented television
gates mcfadden legs
gates mcfadden leg video
gates mcfadden long legs
giant man huge erection grew walked towards her screamed
going to museums is very educational
greek mythology believes that many millions of years ago men and women were adjoined. having 4 legs and 4 arms. believing that they had become too powerful, the gods decided to cut them in half. leaving them forever to search for their soul mate.
"he kissed her" "she slapped him" "script"
"her skull" "her brain" wires breasts cock
her wings made it difficult for her to get into the car
hollywood undead im sorry no nuther web.com
how is it like being human?
huckleberry finn link to cosmology
"i entered him" -butch -rooster -fair -competition -cat -dog -race
i got us an itinerary. afraid to fly girl, it's not that scary. i want to show you around the world. i only pick a few so that makes you a special girl. its somethin about the way you smile. those dimples in your cheeks just drive me wild
i have the cape, i make the fucking whoosh sound
i realize that i miss being human
i would like the joke about different parts of the body wanting to be boss of the body , but only the asshole can be the boss.
if it wasn't me but i really ferocious beast i would just take you and they would have to lock me up forever until i died and went to hell where i would finally learn my lesson and return as me who would never dream of doing that again. its good that i wouldnt.
is philip glass a cat person or a dog person?
jeff goldblum flirts
jeff goldblum intensely private person
jeff goldblum touch nose on subway
judy garland wore prosthetic in nostrils in wizard of oz
jungle fuck a monster beast
king kong blonde tied to poles
"king kong" hanging wrists "ann darrow"
king kong tears away fay wray's dress
kong ann torn dress
kubrick movies sex with many women, cuckoo clock, kubrick
laser show slugs story faerie — (Someone seeking my first "Chicks in Chainmail" story. I hope.)
lawyer action figure
mark proving god's love through the solar system
metal tight body move my tried sit up mouth device
movie about woman visit village and beast descending from hell
photo of chimp dressed in denham
pics of guy goes so fast then stops his eyeballs fall out
picture of silver slug slime left behind
pictures of women with wrists bound by manacles and chains. — (I'm not including similar search phrases that are more disturbing than this.)
rachel sunk back in her chair, clutching her throbbing head. she picked up the roses and inhaled deeply the sweet sent. but there was nothing sweet about this gesture.
retro sex movies 1922
roles and responsiblites of the bridge staff on a federation starship
sexy adult fantasy action figures
sexy posable pamila anderson toy action figure
shitty action figures
short stories on difficulties of being human
slugs laser show planetarium story — (And another search for that "Chicks in Chainmail" story. Again: I hope.)
small bald spot crawling on back, head, top spine
space chimps movie flesh devouring beast picture
spock visine whale
sun palace has earned mark bourne — (From Bangkok. Being here in Seattle, I'd like a sun palace, yes, please.)
tiny men being stepped on videos
warlock summons a demon and she turns him into a girl
wasn't jeff goldblum married a third time?
what are the chances of our visiting mercury on a field trip without using the magic school bus?
when da vinci saw saturn's rings — (DaVinci, Galileo, whatevs)
where in the bible does it say that satan is wrapped in diamonds
works of western literature, mark bourne
yell at me. leave and come back to me. musicians, painters, poets, sculptors, actors, writers, all they who like me misplace their love, who stuff it into mirrors, shatter them into half-truths, and paint the pieces and hand them out. i am compelled by a desire for them. aren't you? legless birds. we are all just too funny, too ugly, our coughs too thick to ever be tired of. bark. bark. bark at nothing.

I only hope that these visitors enjoyed whatever landing pages my site offered them, and that otherwise they found the sites (or psychiatric care) they needed.

SIFF — The Trip, Trollhunter

2011-05-25T21:49:15Z

At Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL:

The Trip -- Britcom angst with Steve Coogan.

Trollhunter -- Then Ole says to Sven, "I thought you said toll bridge."

SIFF — Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, Another Earth, LOVE

2011-05-22T19:57:55Z

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff

Another Earth

LOVE

Win, win, clang!

Now at Open the Pod Pay Doors, HAL.

"There is no Rapture. There is only Zuul!"

2011-05-21T16:22:38Z

SIFF — Paper Birds (Pájaros de Papel) + 2

2011-05-19T17:55:13Z

At Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL. here's a a full-on emotional, three-hanky crowd-pleaser that freely fires the big guns of sentiment. And I was okay with that.

Also, Shortbus (2006) — Think kink and For your consideration — "Hues of cobalt and magenta" edition.

SIFF — Perfect Sense

2011-05-18T21:41:59Z

One of the two films I saw at yesterday's SIFF press preview screenings. (The other, Paper Birds, I'll get to next.) I joined a nearly packed house. No surprise there — Ewan McGregor (feted this year at SIFF) and Eva Green! "Action/Adventure, Romance, SciFi and Beyond" exclaim SIFF's category tags! It's a slam-dunk!

Well, hmm.

At Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL.

poetry box

2011-05-16T02:07:33Z

Found while walking Kai on a hitherto unexplored street near our house.

SIFF — Natural Selection

2011-05-11T00:14:53Z

Robbie Pickering's Natural Selection — at Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal.