The No Kid Reviews The Oatmeal Man

Allow me to echo my YouTube comment here: This is why kids aren’t allowed to see our little nugget of a film. Not because there’s sex or violence or John Karyus, but because they’ll give you an honest answer afterward.

Before video, vlogs were called blogs

Watch out: Clive's wallpaper is going to knock up your desktop.

The Oatmeal Man Facebook page doesn’t have a new vlog this week, so I’m going to try something different, something called a “blog.” It’s basically a vlog without video. Kids used to do them all the time in the early days of the Internet. You know, the AOL days. No, I don’t know what AOL stands for, either.

As I said, this week’s The Oatmeal Man video blog is nonexistent. Why? I’ll tell you why: Director Sean is off with his crew preparing to shoot an extra scene for the movie. Why? I’ll tell you why again: During our most recent Oates sleepover / clothing-optional critiquing party, it was suggested that the current “festival cut” we have, while darned good-looking, is actually two distinct movies vying for domination. One is a buddy film about Clive and his friends; the other is a high-fiber horror flick that kicks in about halfway through. While the film works this way, Sean thinks (and I agree) that we can do better. The consensus is that we need to pick one angle over another and then run with it. We have, and that’s what Sean is working on. I’d go into further detail were it not for the leg-breaking clause in my contract.

In the meantime, Clive’s desktop wallpaper has been posted (click above for full-sized version). But that’s not really news unless you’re into pictures of foul-mouthed, cigarette-smoking dudes who like to watch porn while scarfing dollar cheeseburgers.

I know I say this every blog entry, but it’s true: we’re getting there. Sometimes seeing the same film every other day can desensitize you to the whole thing. Even so, I always find myself pleasantly surprised each time through. Like when it comes to ADR. I never knew filmmakers still did that, and I thought we were kind of cheating when Sean started bringing the actors and actresses in for voice work. Hearing the result, though, I can’t imagine that any good movie team out there doesn’t do at least a little ADR.

Interesting tidbit: John Karyus (who plays Eddie) is the only one who hasn’t done any ADR—but you’d never know it from the sound of him.

Enunciation is what separates the men from the boys.

[SuperMegaNet 3.10] The Allopathic Idiot

Theo – Despite Mom’s being a certified homeopath, my family does have a standard, run-of-the-mill GP we go to for all things mundane. His name’s Doctor Kim, apparently, and I have to read his name tag because I only ever visit his office for my yearly school checkup. Even then, Kim’s staff handles the proceedings.

To that end, he looks surprised to see me—though he smiles and shakes my hand as he enters the examination room.

“Ah, my friends the vegetarians,” he says. “Good afternoon.”

My parents take turns shaking Kim’s hand before sitting off to the side.

I pray to God I don’t have to undress for some reason.

Mom clears her throat uncomfortably. She’d been crying a lot in the car on the way over. “Thanks for seeing us on such short notice, Doctor Kim.”

“Not a problem.” Kim steps in front of me, glances down at his clipboard. His thinning hair is slicked back over a smooth, shiny pate. “So, Theo, you’re having a little, er, eye trouble?”

“I’m blind,” I reply, my voice catching in my throat.

“Blind?” Kim looks at me, peers at my eyes. “What can you see? Anything? Colors? Shapes?”

“Well, right now I can see, but only because I have my contacts in.”

Kim looks confused. He looks like he thinks I look confused.

I glance over at my parents.

Dad nods. “Go on. Show him.”

I hate this. I feel like the dog-faced boy being asked to turn a trick. But it’s necessary if I’m to be fixed up and sent on my merry way. I pop out the left lens, then the right. I blink in darkness afterward. I can’t see Kim, of course, but I imagine he’s doing the same thing I imagined my parents doing when I first showed them my hamster eyes: staring with his mouth wide open.

It’s a good, long moment before I hear him clear his throat. He must be shining a pen light into my eyes, because I can see blurry halos dancing in the darkness. “How did this happen?”

“I used some Old Eyes drops,” I say, slowly, reluctantly. “Well, not at first. I used New Eyes, then Old Eyes a few days later because I wanted to get rid of the New Eyes—”

“No, no, no, no…” Kim says, cutting me off. I hear him getting up, quickly walking over to the door, which he closes and locks. He goes to the other side of the room; it sounds like he’s fiddling with the window. “I’m sure it’s something completely different. Irritation, conjunctivitis, maybe a little glaucoma…”

I pop my contacts back in. The darkness lingers. For a moment I think I’ve been too rough with the lenses—but then I realize that Kim has closed the shades, turned off the lights.

He motions for me and my parents to join him in a huddle near the sink. Holding his pen light above our heads, he whispers, “Look, before we go any further, you need to understand that this practice does not condone the use of nanotech…”

Dad starts to say something—

—Kim continues uninterrupted, locked into pre-programmed disclaimer mode. “…nor do we provide information on where said tech can be obtained—”

“Doctor Kim,” Mom says, sternly, insistently. She grabs his head between her hands. “You’re babbling.”

Kim relaxes—a little. “I apologize for being so…blunt, but we can’t be talking about this here. All of us could get into a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t understand,” Dad says.

“Nanotech is very touchy business. Right up there with stem cells. I mean, that doping business at the Olympics, those politicians caught placing fabricated DNA at crime scenes…need I go on?”

“My son is not doping up, nor is he seeding any crime scenes with DNA or whatever. He’s had an adverse reaction to some eye drops, and he needs your help.”

Kim starts squirming. “I want to help. Really. But for liability reasons, I don’t deal with nano, period. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“But you haven’t even looked at him yet!” Mom exclaims.

“It’s not a question of diagnosis. I simply can’t treat him.”

Mom narrows her eyes. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Both,” Kim says. “If we’re talking complications from the use of New Eyes drops, then Theo’s condition has likely been caused by a caliber of technology that’s only available on the black market. What do you want me to do, dress in a trench coat and hat and go prowling around the seediest alleys in Chinatown?”

“If need be!” Mom growls, shifting her hands to Kim’s neck—

Dad stops her. “Easy now, hon. Let’s keep cool about this.”

“And just how do you expect me to do that with our son blinded and this allopathic idiot refusing to lift a finger because he’s more concerned over bureaucracy and red tape than he is with treating his patients?”

“Mrs. Smole—Anya, if I lose my practice I can’t treat anyone at all. Surely you’d agree that an ‘allopathic,’ as you call it, practice is better than no practice at all?”

My mom starts in again, something about having a backbone. I step back from the group, watching Kim quiver in his white coat, watching Mom seethe quietly while Dad holds her back. This isn’t at all how I imagined things would turn out. Asian doctors are supposed to be smart, intuitive; they’re supposed to have an herb or salve that can cure anything—they’re supposed to know kung fu! (Don’t even harp on me for being racist—I’m half Chinese, remember?) Here I thought Doctor Kim would be the answer to all my problems, my medicine man, my guiding light. Instead he’s just a flake, a cardboard cutout representative of Western medicine’s fucked up attitude towards nanotechnology.

“So, who am I supposed to turn to?” I ask. “Symantec? McAfee?”

Mom, Dad, and Kim stop arguing. They look at me. Kim uses the interruption as an out, wrestles free from Mom’s grip, goes over to the window and opens the blinds. Then he heads for the door, opens it, flicks on the light.

Standing in the threshold, he says, “I wouldn’t know, Theo. This is business for hackers, not an ‘allopathic idiot,’ as I’ve so thoughtfully been branded. Good day.”

He turns and leaves.

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Bring to boil, stir occasionally

It never fails: You can have a computer sitting quietly in the corner, doing nothing, and it will purr right along for months on end. But the instant you actually need to use the effing thing, blue screens start popping up, hard drives start choking, keyboards start losing their keys like the needles on that old Christmas tree my family refuses to throw out. I’m actually writing this blog with quill and parchment, which seem to be the only things that work around here…though the quill may have bird flu. Fuck.

Technical glitches aside, there is progress being made as far as the movie is concerned. The “pre-festival cut” is now done, on DVD, in the mail, making grotesque gurgling noises in the back of some poor postman’s delivery truck. That means we’re another step closer to Premiere Day…whenever and wherever that is. In the meantime, Sean and I have been taking notes, and while there’s certainly room for improvement down the line, things are looking pretty darned smooth. All the ADR shit is done as of last week, and it’s really added a layer of depth to the proceedings, a hearty dollop of personality to the characters. And I have to say, the effects used in the opening grabber sequence look damned pimpin’. It totally doesn’t look like we shot it where we did and with what ridiculous resources we didn’t have.

What comes next is pretty boring to anyone outside the Pulsar Pictures cult. Submissions are being prepared, paperwork is being filed, voodoo dolls are being prepped as we figure out where the film will be seen, how it will be distributed, and so forth. The good news: There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes footage floating around. Hopefully enough to make it look like we’re busier than we actually are.

On that note, I’ve posted an impromptu interview we did of Moira Dennis (who plays Lisa) last month, during the filming of The Oatmeal Man’s final scene. Go watch it. And tell your friends.

[SuperMegaNet 3.9] How to Ruin Your Mom’s Morning

Interesting tidbit: The first draft of this episode had a typo at the end, resulting in Theo’s heart-wrenching confession: “I’m blond, Mom.”

* * *

Theo – I’m surprisingly calm as I make my way downstairs. No rivulets of sweat trickling down my face, no heart hammering in my chest, no clammy palms tingling in anticipation. Just the sounds of the morning, the smell of incense wafting from Mom’s studio. It must be the lack of sleep—I’m simply too deprived of the energy needed to worry myself into a fit. Or maybe it’s the silent mantra I started repeating as soon as I left my room, the words of wisdom inspired by that dude in the secure proxy: My dick’s in my pants and not on the floor…my dick’s in my pants and not on the floor… It actually makes me feel better. (You should try it to see what I mean—well, if you’re a guy, that is.)

I pause at the entrance to my mom’s studio, peering inside. She’s doing acupuncture work on a pair of middle-aged men. When she sees me, she smiles and holds up her hand, gives me a done-in-five-minutes gesture.

I sit on the narrow sofa in the hall and wait, listening to her work. Every so often I hear a sizzling noise followed by a surprised gasp—followed by Mom’s patient reminder to “keep relaxed.”

Homeopathy is such a funny thing. People hate their doctors sticking needles in them, but they’ll pay good money for Mom to do the same thing—with flaming needles. It seems to work, though. Clients come from all over, sometimes scheduling appointments months in advance. Part of me (the dumb part, no doubt) wonders if maybe there’s some organic treatment, some special balm or tea that Mom can give me that’ll flush the nanobots right out of my eyes. You never know.

The five minutes pass quickly enough, at which point Mom steps out into the hall. She sits beside me, wraps me in her arms. She kisses the top of my head. “Good morning, hon.”

I clear my throat. “Good morning, Mom.”

“Sleep well?”

She always asks me that, and I always tell her the same thing, even though it’s never true. “Yeah, I slept just fine.” For that lone hour or two. “How come you didn’t wake me at eight, like usual?”

“You’re twelve now. And a freshman in high school. You don’t need me hounding after you anymore.” She smiles. “Besides, it’s Saturday.”

I nod, staring at the floor and fidgeting.

“What’s wrong, hon?” she asks after a moment.

I say, “I got this, um, chat program for school. It was supposed to be for an assignment. I had to learn five things about my classmates, and they had to learn five things about me. But the program isn’t just for chatting. It lets you upload and download to and from other people’s homes.”

Mom nods as if she understands—but she doesn’t. I can tell. She thinks I’m talking about uploading and downloading files.

“I…I met someone,” I continue, still fidgeting, still staring at the floor. “His name’s Beta. He’s living on a laptop in my bedroom because his real body got deleted during a server crash. He gave me New Eyes to impress this girl, but I didn’t want to keep them because I knew I’d get in trouble, so I asked him for Old Eyes to restore my original sight, but the Old Eyes didn’t work right. Instead of getting rid of the nanobots from the New Eyes, they just clogged up my vitreous, and…” I trail off, realizing I’m probably not making any sense.

Mom’s still smiling, still mostly oblivious, though it looks like she might be starting to understand that something’s wrong. “Theo…I don’t understand. What are you telling me?”

I barely get the words out before the first tears start trickling down my cheek: “I’m blind, Mom.”

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The Month Novellas Took Over the World

June is Novella Month, according to the folks over at the Emerging Writers Network. What the heck is a novella, you ask? Jen Michalski puts it this way: “A novella is like the 13-inch single from your favorite band.” Only it’s more like a ~10,000–70,000 word story from your favorite author. Longer than a short story, shorter than a novel is about what a novella amounts to. Something you can read while sitting in the car waiting for the kids to finish soccer practice.

As an example, here’s a free PDF download of “Babe,” readable on any computer or device that, well, reads PDFs.

So you know what you’re getting into, here’s the obligatory blurb:

In a time of medical marvels and social revolutions, Demis Matheson regrets living his life as an unfortified, aged Fogy—until he meets a Babe named Chronos, who tests his notions of youth and beauty.

And yes, of course there’s sex and violence involved. Pointless otherwise.

The BP Cleanup Effort Simplified

Via Gizmodo, this June 4, 2010 edition of Penny Arcade explains in simple, easy-to-understand terms just what’s going on with the BP cleanup effort.

In a related post, photos of the spill’s environmental effects are starting to surface:

Trivia: BP handled the visual effects in Creepshow 2

I think I’ll stay home and play Yahtzee this summer.

XKCD #749: Study

One of those five missing tabs is in my pocket.

Realms of Fantasy Preparing to Leave the Realm of Paper…again?

Realms of Fantasy magazine is (again) in danger of going under, according to a recent editorial by Douglas Cohen. The nitty gritty:

As some of you are aware either because you received the notice or because you read about it in various corners of the web, a subscription notice recently went out for RoF. In it, our publisher wrote that he wanted to make our subscriber base aware that, as things currently stand, subscription renewals have been insufficient to support the magazine.

The key phrase here is, “as things currently stand.” Like, if RoF pretends it’s still 10+ years ago and e-books are still a joke. Short stories and novellas are, as several readers have pointed out, perfectly suited for digital distribution. This is a great opportunity for plucky magazine publishers to jump on a market that’s growing in a time of shrinking newsstands, dwindling shelf-space. Print media is expensive, and the format is, in many ways, constricting, especially on a budget—and not only for publishers, but for readers, too. Many of us no longer have the space we used to in which to store our treasured volumes. We’ve had to cut the fat, selling or giving away what won’t fit. It would be a shame if we slowed or stopped our book spending simply because we have to choose between a year’s subscription to RoF and alarm clock space on our nightstands.

To that end, RoF, making readers aware of your situation and trying to boost subscriptions is a good first step, but don’t stop there. Get those issues accessible on the newsstands and on the Kindle, the nook, the iPad, etc. And for Spock’s sake, start reviewing e-books (relax, you don’t have to review mine). It wouldn’t kill you.

Pioneer the digital frontier.

(Hmf. It seems I’m closing my blogs with song lyrics now. New low.)

Facebook is Not the Internet

Wil Wheaton thinks you should delete your Facebook account:

I think that Facebook is evil, guys. I believe that Facebook is making gazillions of dollars by exploiting its users, and Facebook doesn’t give a shit about how its users feel about that.

Hey, that very well may be. In case it wasn’t perfectly obvious, kiddies, when you first signed up: Facebook is a business, the user base (you) is the product, and the advertisers are the true users. Facebook sells its product to advertisers. It’s the same with any other social networking site. That’s why I’m stingy with my personal information. You should be, too. Sooner or later, someone is going to buy or sell your e-mail address, your phone number, your screen name(s), your friend list. It’s not a matter of if but when. Kudos if you’re cool with that (and you may very well be). Otherwise, be smart. Don’t post shit about yourself that you wouldn’t be comfortable handing over to a random stranger on the street. Teenage girls: no when-and-where status updates.

I got suckered into the social networking thing back before MySpace hit middle age. None of my friends used e-mail anymore. To keep in touch with them I had to get a MySpace (and, later on, a Facebook). That’s still the case today, so, yeah, social networking sites are a necessary evil. Flaky privacy policies not withstanding, I don’t mind them that much except for two major bummers: the “You Have 0 Friends” paradigm—and apps. Apps are pure evil. If someone interacts with you via an app, you have to install that app in order to reciprocate. Pretty soon you’ve got two-dozen app icons littering your page. It looks like an icon truck crashed on the expressway, injuring dozens and spilling icons everywhere.

Then there’s the “You Have 0 Friends” thing. When you sign up with Facebook to keep in touch with a few friends or relatives, you’re actually obliging yourself to keep in touch with their friends, their friends’ friends as well. People see you on their friends’ friend lists, and they start sending you messages asking why you haven’t added them, too. So, you add your friends’ friends, and this gets you into that gray area where friends of friends’ friends start hitting you up. If you add one, you have to add them all. Otherwise the Ones Who Were Not Added will start complaining that you’re a selective biatch who’s too good to add certain people (namely Trekkies, even though you might swear that’s not true). But once you add these people, you never hear from them again—making you wonder why they asked to be added in the first place.

What an effing mess. You started out looking to create a nice little profile page, but you’ve ended up with a wall covered in the Facebook equivalent of graffiti.

Facebook may have replaced e-mail as the standard for a large portion of Internet users, but the two are not synonymous. With e-mail you’re communicating one on one and, possibly, getting shit done. With Facebook you’re…playing FarmVille. Personally, I don’t hate Facebook. I just wish Mark Zuckerberg would change the name to FarmBook and be done with it.