RIP – Restraint

07/14/1978 – 03/02/2006

March 3, 2010 – 3:02 am

You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me waiting for spring and summer
You will find me waiting for the fall
You will find me waiting for the apples to ripen
You will find me waiting for them to fall
You will find me by the banks of all four rivers
You will find me at the spring of conciousness
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain

Posted in Writing | Also tagged suicide | Comments (0)

If I am not me, then who the hell am I?

December 18, 2009 – 9:27 am

A moment to remember screenwriting legend Dan O’Bannon, who left us yesterday:

Dan O’Bannon, one of the scriptwriters behind such seminal SF flicks as Alien and Total Recall, has passed away in Los Angeles following a bout of ill-health, at the age of 63.

O’Bannon was a lifelong SF enthusiast, and got his first experience of filmmaking when he worked as writer, editor and special effects producer on John Carpenter’s brilliant, cynical debut Dark Star. O’Bannon and Carpenter had studied together at USC prior to the film’s 1974 release.

He went on to do special effects work on the first Star Wars film and was involved in the early stages of comic writer Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unsuccessful attempt to bring Dune to the big screen in the mid-‘70s. But it was when he began to concentrate on writing over production and effects that his career really took off. O’Bannon is credited with writing the original screenplay for Alien (alongside Ronald Shusett), and his influence on that film extended to bringing into the fold a certain Swiss artist called H.R. Geiger, who had also been involved in the failed Dune project.

O’Bannon’s other hits included the gloriously OTT Schwarzenegger vehicle Total Recall, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by the O’Bannon-Shusett partnership. He was also involved in a number of cult classics, including Lifeforce, Heavy Metal, and Screamers, while his Moebius-illustrated comic The Long Tomorrow was the inspiration for the art style of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

O’Bannon changed the face of science-fiction (and horror, inventing ‘fast’ zombies in his 1986 directorial debut Return Of The Living Dead), and I’ve been hoping for years that he’d make a return to the big screen (possibly with the perpetually-delayed Silvaticus 3015) to show all these modern ’sci-fi’ writers what’s what.

A public memorial for Mr. O’Bannon will be held sometime in the next few weeks at my apartment in the form of a movie marathon. Interested parties please reply within.

Posted in Geekdom | Also tagged braaains, movies, robots, sci-fi | Comments (0)

Proposed topic for tonight’s dinner

September 13, 2009 – 4:58 pm

Norman Borlaug, “the plant scientist who did more than anyone else in the 20th century to teach the world to feed itself,” has died at age 95. On the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico, Borlaug “developed a “miracle wheat” that tripled grain output and moved the country to self-sufficiency. Dr. Borlaug then took his high-yield, disease-resistant wheat to Pakistan and India, averting the mass famine and starvation that had been widely predicted.”

Yet, despite his achievement, and being one of only five people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, Borlaug was hardly a household name: a 1997 Atlantic profile described him as the “forgotten benefactor of humanity.”

(Post by NotMyselfRightNow, via MeFi.)

Posted in Politics, SCIENCE! | Comments (1)

Shakespearian hero, drowner, drinker, last link to Camelot

August 28, 2009 – 4:41 am

Reading the coverage of Ted Kennedy’s death over the last couple of days, I was struck by two things: how much more human Mulroney’s comments are than the terrible statement given by Harper (especially compared to how Harper eulogized Reagan), and how much the surviving male Kennedys look like JFK.