But after spending hours on manipulating how something looks and working on visual characteristics, I’m starting to become aware. I’ll notice shapes more and lines and the way things fit together. I’ll look at colors and how they match or don’t match and wonder how certain colors blend together and which ones would work better.

It’s not a conscious attempt, but just something that happens now. When I used to read more often and read more than might be considered healthy, I used to render the world into words; character descriptions, flashes of narrative, ominous foreshadowing. I enjoy seeing how the things we do affect how we see the world. Our perceptions are colored by what we do as much as by how we think and it’s always interesting to see that play out.

-D-

When they announced they were re-booting the series back in 2009 with an all new cast playing Kirk, McCoy, Spock, et all, I was cautiously optimistic. After all, nothing they did could hurt the franchise worse than anything Rick Berman did. Star Trek came out and everybody loved it and it made a ton of money and, most impressively, it made Star Trek cool.

When the sequel was announced I was more than cautiously optimistic and bounced around like a loon waiting for it to come out. To the credit of the marketing team, the trailers they released showed almost nothing of the plot. I knew next to nothing about what to expect going in. Except explosions.

And lens flares.

Star Trek Into Darkness  picks up pretty much where the first left off, with Kirk (Chris Pine) the Captain of the Enterprise and still as reckless and brash as he was in the last movie. Spock (Zachary Quinto) still doesn’t get human emotions. Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is still dating Spock. And so on.

One of the reasons why the first movie was so successful with both old and new fans is that they jettisoned decades of cumbersome backstory in order to tell new stories wit established characters, which Into Darkness continues to do. Everyone still feels very familiar, but you don’t need to have seen Spectre of the Gun to understand the multiple layers of Chekhov’s character. The classic characters have been rebuilt on the same foundations, but with enough tweaks and modifications to keep them compelling and interesting.

In fact, the plot of this movie builds upon plots of some older episodes and reintroduces a few new/old characters as well as aspects of Starfleet like Section 31, more so than Star Trek. Into Darkness has a stronger villain, a more compelling plot and a tighter grasp of the characters that comes from everyone involved being more comfortable.

It’s a visually brilliant movie right from the beginning  where Kirk and McCoy (Karl Urban) run through a vivid red alien jungle chased by striking, white aliens while Spock rappels into an active volcano from a shuttle. And, if you couldn’t tell from that preceding sentence, the action is just as lively as it was in the first movie. There are ships exploding and fight scenes and disintegrations and cool warp effects. It’s a shiny, pretty movie and one that does the genre credit.

Also, spoilers: Benedict Cumberbatch is exactly who you think he is and he’s wonderful and I want to hug him and hold him and never let him go.

All in all, Star Trek Into Darkness is a funny, explosive and intense entry in the Trek series and J.J. Abrams once again proves that he was the right person for the job and it makes me want to see, more than ever, how he handles the Star Wars series.

I give it a Baker’s Dozen of bowl cuts and pointy ears.

-D-

Please bear with me.

-D-

It’s too easy to forget those places you see everyday or those places you used to go to; but once you show a newcomer those things that caused you to fall in love with your home on the first place, it becomes easy to see once again.

I’ve enjoyed traveling to our old haunts and remembering again everything that made Boston, Boston for Emily and me.

I feel a little sad that we’re already planning the day that we leave, but at least I can remember why I’ll be sad.

-D-

In every culture, there are heroes and tropes and easily identifiable figures. There are law makers and governments: figures that impose order. There are merchants and moneymakers. There are storytellers and stories to tell.

And as you go down the ladder, going into sub-cultures and sub-subcultures, you start to realize that this is true all the way down, that there are, in fact, turtles all the way down. I find it fascinating that, even in a rapidly expanding global subculture, there are still all these little hidden pockets that mirror the society at large and you can go your whole life and not know they’re there.

At times, since I’m still not fully embedded in this subculture, I feel like an observer, an intruder with a tape recorder, like Alan Lomax. There are leaders and tales of ancient history and eldars and songs and I’m there to witness it all. It’s very strange, like I’m straddling a line.

But now I think I’m making way too much of it and it’s time to move on.

-D-

My drive to do things on my own is minimal. Left to my own devices, I spend my time painting monsters and re-reading webcomic archives rather than pick up a useful skill or freelancing or whatever might make me a slightly better person.

Emily starting taking classes on a website called Coursera. The courses are free, unless you want a certificate saying that you’ve completed the course. It’s free, structured internet on a wide variety of courses from art to programming to writing to engineering and design. 

She seemed to be enjoying it, so I’ve signed up for two classes, History of Rock and Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. I can’t wait to learn things again and take quizzes and study and accumulate more knowledge. Because that’s the important thing: getting more and more knowledge about the things you enjoy so you can enjoy them more. 

I’m excited.

-D-

1. Emily and I went running this past week. Twice, even. While I can’t say it was easy, I will say that it was nowhere near as hard as I had been dreading. In fact, there were moments where I might even say that I had fun. While running. Part of that comes from the fact that I have been slowly figuring out the correct way to run. It turns out that if you don’t do something well and inefficiently, it’s not a lot of fun to do.

2. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have been writing fiction again, albeit in small amounts. What’s more exciting to me is that I’ve been thinking of new projects and ways to monetize my writing, which hasn’t happened in a while. My attitude is slowly shifting away from this prolonged laziness and shifting up into another gear. So we’re going from Park to Neutral now. Unfortunately, there are no hills near-by and this metaphor is going nowhere fast.

So I’m feeling accomplished.

Go me!

-D-

Which means, unfortunately, that I’ve had less time to spend over here. I used to write more than the quote I set for myself. You can see a few times last year when I wrote more than ten entries per month. This year, however, you would be hard-pressed to find a week where I’d written more than my required two entries.

I can’t say that I’m entirely bummed out that writing is getting in the way of writing. I’m just letting ya’ll know that I am writing, even if I’m not writing.

-D-

But I’m just going to reset the resolutions for next week.

Next week, running, writing and dinners.

-D-

And then the second explosion.

And then I noticed the sirens and more sirens and what sounded like gunfire.

While Emily listened to a police scanner, I walked around and made sure the doors were locked, crawled back to bed and went to sleep.

This morning, I woke up to find that the MBTA has shut down completely. The police are advising that the residents in my town, as well as in Cambridge and Watertown, to stay indoors. As I write this, there is more gunfire in the distance and a small army of soldiers, police officers and SUVs just went down my street at a run.

The two bombing suspects, apparently, killed a police officer at MIT, stole a car and then drove the car within a hair’s breadth of where I live before the police caught up with them. The sounds I heard last night; the explosions, gun fire and sirens, were the sounds of the police catching two of the most hated men in Boston.

One of them escaped. The other didn’t.

The manhunt is intense and all encompassing. There are rumors of evacuations. There are constant reminders to stay indoors. I have been answering texts and phone calls since I woke up this morning.

This is…surreal. This blog entry is not so much for you as it is for me. I wanted to nail down what exactly is happening so I don’t walk through today like a ghost, dazed and out of sync with the rest of the world. I need more concrete words and solid sentence structure and less vague feelings of unease and distress. And as melodramatic as that sounds, I feel like I’m a little entitled to melodrama considering the view out of my window this morning.

So here it is: They are going to catch this man. It’s a little dangerous outside, but Emily and I are safe and we are locked down.

Stay safe.

-D-