The moral of the story: call the Gungans for your underwater battle needs

Jonathan was reading one of those beginner-reader Star Wars books with Meg. The scenario was an underwater battle on Mon Calamari, and the plot... well, it pained him. We in our house do not suffer quietly. So I started liveblogging.

"If you're fighting underwater, USE BOMBS. Carolyn, they're using blasters and spears! Sometimes that's fine, for close quarters. But when you're not fighting hand-to-hand, you should break out the artillery and have fun. I'M JUST SAYING. ...I'm sorry kids, not only did you get flanked by 3 mph jellyfish, you're being surprised from above. By mining rigs. Have you heard of sonar? 'But it gets worse!' Really?"

"So apparently the big bad guy has these cyborg jellyfish. Electrified cyborg jellyfish. But the electrified cyborg jellyfish are too powerful, so they have to ask advice from Yoda and Mace Windu. These are the tactical golden boys behind such tactical maneuvers as, oh look, it's a giant plain filled with robots. Let's land and fight them with hand to hand combat, instead of, say, shooting them from space with our armada.

"So they come up with a plan. Let's call the Gungans! The Gungans are in fact an aquatic species, so this is actually good advice. And surprisingly the Gungans, unlike the elite Mon Calamari, actually have weapons that can make the jellyfish explode. And they use them. I am professionally chagrined."

"But apparently they can't fight as well as the Gungans, so I don't know what they're doing with their lives."

"'But Padme gets a crack in her helmet! Anakin tries to use the force to keep water from dribbling in.' Good luck, you're up against another force: PSI. 'But the electric eels keep jostling him and he loses concentration!'"

"Okay, there's TWO SPECIES on Mon Calamari. How did they not check the bite marks and say, "The king was killed by a shark. A giant shark." What, do they not do marine biology? So he throws a grenade at him that doesn't explode. ON PURPOSE. Wait, where did he get explosives? Did he borrow them from the Gungans? Did Jar-Jar teach you how to fight??"

"'But he couldn't have done it without Captain Ackbar,' -- who didn't do much -- 'the Jedi,' -- who also didn't do much -- 'and the Gungans' -- who did basically everything!"

Upon which Meg asked for something, possibly another book. "No, Daddy just finished reading you a book with more commentary--"
"Than text," I added helpfully.
"No," Jonathan said, "I was going to say more commentary than you get usually."

Our young apprentice

Tonight Jonathan's spoon was making lightsaber noises.

"Vmmmm..... vmmmmm....bzzt! vmmm.... vmmm... vrrrrmmmm."

Kate thought this was hilarious and started helping her spoon make lightsaber noises too.

"La! Laaa! Laa!" whack, whack, whack.

Jonathan told her, "Obi-Wan has taught you well. But he did not teach you everything. No, no, wait, that was Shi-Fu. Shi-Fu has taught you well!"

Star Wars, Kung Fu Panda. We know the greats.

Empire Strikes Back, part II

This edition of Movies with Meg is brought to you by the word "fossil." We don't really like it when good guys get frozen in carbonite, aka fossilized.

Sadly: "Why did they turn Han Solo into a fossil? Why did they turn Han Solo into a fossil?"

"Maybe they should turn Darth Vader into a fossil and leave him a fossil forever." Then, to Luke: "Kill him! Or turn him into a fossil!"

Jonathan: "I just think I'd have much more fun with Darth Vader's toys than he does."
Meg, with sudden interest: "I didn't know Darth Vader had toys."

The Empire Strikes Back, part 1

Last night we watched about the first half of ESB. Meg:

"What is Han Solo for?"

"This is the best movie in the whole world!"

And we didn't even get to the part where Han Solo gets turned into a fossil. :-)

She's entered a larger universe

Meg has watched Star Wars! We started with A New Hope (OBVIOUSLY). She said, as the Death Star exploded:

"That's why we don't use torpedoes."



Next up: Empire Strikes Back!

You don't know the power of the daddy

Meg: "NOOOOOO! My origami is DESTROYED!"
Jonathan: "You underestimate my powers, little one."

Blocks

"The attacking armies are wicked, Mom. That's why I'm keeping them out with this high high castle. Don't you like it? Don't you like the door at the top?" Meg

Then she went and got her catapult out to attack the castle with. "Mama, I can't find the ball. I'll shoot the dragon at it instead."


Meg has some catchphrases which we tend to hear a bit.

"I was wrong and you were right. E-I-E-I-O!" (Or, alternately, "I was right and you were wrong. E-I-E-I-O." I don't encourage this version, though.)

When someone sneezes, she says, "Zoontai!"

Me: "MEG! Oh wait, never mind, you're okay."
Meg, curiously: "What did you think I was doing?"

She also refers to the droid as "RD-2D."

Quote

Meg was protesting as Jonathan got her dressed, and I heard her yelling, "No, no! These aren't the socks I'm looking for!"

A fuller world

Currently I'm in the middle of Timothy Zahn's Allegiance, which is a Star Wars book. The more I read Zahn the better I like him. He is one of the few male sci-fi/fantasy authors I can think of who seem aware that their worlds are going to have culture, art, fashion, and non-scientific things going on, and then makes that relevant to the plot. In Allegiance Mara Jade is eighteen and still posing as a Countess as she moves through the elite Core society. I like how Zahn describes her court dress and shoulder sculpt and how she transforms it into weapons. It's so Mara Jade.

Also, there's nothing quite like finding a book by a favorite author which you thought you'd read, and then discovering you haven't. :-)

What is a young hyperdrive made of?

That's what you are
What you will always be
Made of my dreams
Close as my heart to me
Bright as a star
Of love's sweet mystery
Here in my arms
Where you should always be
(Egregious Beach Boys lyrics brought to you by this page)

The question is what a hyperdrive is made of and how it works. I'm speaking from within the Star Wars world and its physics, incidentally, assuming it's like ours only more convenient from a narrative perspective. There are two main scenes I can think of dealing with hyperdrives within the canonical SW. The first is in Empire Strikes Back when R2D2 was repairing the Falcon's and there were wires everywhere. The other is in Zahn ("Heir to the Empire," chapters 16-17) when Luke's X-wing gets caught by a tractor beam, jumps free by backfiring the accelerator compensator, but the maneuver fries his hyperdrive and breaks down half a lightyear out.  Luke discovers that the hyperdrive motivators superconducting shields are each full of hairline fractures, and the parts inside are worthless without a shield.

What do we know about hyperdrives? They carry ships from point to point in space and the trips have duration relative to the distance, so it's not like L'Engle's tessering. They have a motivator with a shield and parts inside. Apparently it does not have miles of superconducting wire - R2 has to scavenge wire from the sensor jammer. And above all, hyperdrives don't work in gravity wells.

One of the few things we know about gravity is that (as far as we can tell) it extends everywhere at the same time, which is faster than the speed of light. This bears a striking resemblance to that other phenomenon, hyperdrives which move ships faster than the speed of light. So assume, for the sake of discussion, that gravity occupies a half-way dimension, partly in realspace and partly in hyperspace. And assume that there exist exotic particles which resonate with gravity and the gravitic dimension and can be harnessed to "jump" matter such as, oh, spaceships, between hyperspace and realspace. It's not a question of making your boat engine go fast enough. It's a question of getting into the right river.

Imagine a fluorescent light. It's a tube full of particles. When you excite the particles, they change states from off (off) to on (glowing). Suppose a hyperdrive is like that. You've got a superconductor, and inside is a tube full of exotic gravity-friendly particles which shift states. The motivator must be the thing that energizes the particles. There would be other parts that tune its frequencies and organize the emissions into a go-that-way stream vs. a random stream. Those are technical terms.

Gravity jams, or dampens, or messes with the vibrations of the exotic particles. It doesn't matter what the gravity's source is, whether it comes from a black hole, a planet, or a tractor beam. And, theoretically, there could be a whole nebula of similar exotic particles which you don't want to jump through in hyperspace because they might start resonating with your hyperdrive and change your vector, or stop you cold, or perhaps send half the nebula with you to your final destination. Or your very final destination, depending.

What do you think of the theory?

Cello Wars

Must watch. It's Star Wars, only with dueling cellos. And lightsabers. And dancing. Chewbacca's in there too. "You will start cello lessons... now."

Thanks to Sarah B., who sent it my way.

Not knit till now

There are tons of cute knitted projects around that I really, really want to try. There are ginormous knit blankets, cable-knit sweaters, and patterns of all varieties. Joann's even had a pattern card for fair-isle socks (!) in the yarn aisle. That's like, like, putting recipes in the meat row. I've done some crocheted projects this winter, but it's not the same, and I don't think I can get the look I'm going for with a crochet stitch.

I do not have knitting needles, never having knit, and I'm not going to rush out and buy a pair just like that. So my question to the all-knowing internet today was, "Can I knit using chopsticks as knitting needles?" The internet said yes, with reservations. I have moved one step towards a larger universe.

(P.S. Jonathan and I are re-watching Empire Strikes Back. Those movies are just full of quotes. It's as bad as Shakespeare.)

Dark side! Light side! Dark side! Light side!

These made me laugh. A lot.


Yoda recording for TomTom GPS Behind the Scenes

Darth Vader recording for TomTom GPS Behind the Scenes

Hat tip to Cake Wrecks.

Good advice, and Star Wars meets VBS

It made me giggle when I came across a post of 10 Things to Do if You Hate Your Kitchen. I would link it if I could remember where I found it, sorry. Normally these involves things like, "Paint every surface that holds still including the floor and ceiling" or, "Tile your backsplash in a chevron pattern with tiny glass mosaic tiles hand-pressed by nuns in Venice." This one started with, "Wash your cabinets. No, really!" I don't hate my kitchen, but I decided the cabinets could do with a wash anyway. So I did. And I was actually surprised by how fresh and new they all looked. I can definitely recommend it.

Then yesterday I was cleaning the bathroom and couldn't. get. the. brush. into. the. corners. That grout just holds the mold in. So nasty. And then, in a stroke of genius, I went at it with an old toothbrush. That's got to be the oldest housekeeping trick in the world, and would you believe it worked?

In other news, VBS starts on Sunday! That's Vacation Bible School, for those of you not up on church-speak. I volunteered to help with the skits, and get to direct. We have rehearsal every night. I'm just about over the moon happy. I missed drama so much. Essentially we're doing an eight-part play cycle on the life of Joseph (set in outer space) written by a church lady, and they're clever and very funny and also full of Star Wars references. I'm also enjoying getting to know some of the older kids and teens - since the Meg is a year and a half old next week, I pretty much know the toddlers and adults. I was so out of it, I didn't even realize one actress was the pastor's daughter. I wonder if that's ever happened to her before?

My life, in one short paragraph

Me: "Look! Anthropologie's got my table! --except theirs is boring colors and mine is awesome."
Jonathan: "That table over there?" ::points::
Me: "Yes, except it's over there now." ::points the other way::
Jonathan: "Ah, you moved it."
Me: "That's right. I move the table all the time. It's what I do in life. It's like Olivia - she gets up, moves the cat, brushes her teeth, combs her ears, moves the cat. And then she gets dressed and has to try on EVERYTHING!"

Yep. Anthropologie may be a taste-maker these days, but it's got nothing to the power of a board book read fifty times.

Also, my table is awesome. It's mustard yellow. I intended my living room to be red, but I looked around the other day and discovered it was mostly gold tones. Sometimes I surprise even myself.

Car stickers

Babble alerted me to the awesomest family car stickers ever. I'm with the blogger: those little stick figures with the kids' names are kind of creepy. But stormtroopers? With hair bows? The only thing that would be cooler would be if they were Mando helmets. And if you know what I'm talking about, you are a true fan.

Ohhh yeah.

Today was an "other," but it improved

Some days are just more inspiring than others. Today was an "other."

We got up and tried to go for a walk, but we got outside and it was too cold for me, so my next idea was to go out and about and do something indoors, probably a library. But Oh Noes! My bottle of Oxy-Clean has fallen off the dryer and graced the kitchen floor with fully half its contents!

So I set up a baby gate to keep Meg from stomping in the glistening temptation, and tidy up enough for me to get at the floor to (otherwise) sweep and mop it. By the time it was soapless and dried, it was lunchtime and too late to go Out and About. So we had quesadillas and cheese soup, which Meg ate cheerfully and then with equal gusto flung all over the newly clean floor.

By this time it was clear Someone needed a nap, so Jonathan put her down and headed off to class. I wrote a nice note in Meg's baptism book, you know, the one she's going to keep for posterity, and decided after it was done (in ink) that it was definitely sub-par, but it was too late to change it. Then I worked on work. Today I was researching a late nineties boy-band member with more appearances as "self" than you'd care to shake a stick at. In fact, woo boy, there was another credit since I'd worked on him over the weekend. I'm so grateful not to have gotten into the MTV-reality-show culture as a teenager. After two hours of this, I give up and make a cup of tea.

Grumbling at life, I carry a pair of boots upstairs and notice one of them is -- full? I laugh and dump out the contents on the bed: one sheep, one R2-D2 unit, and a farmer named Owen. And you know, somehow that made it all better. :-)


Owen, R2, and Sheep That Says Baa reunited with Beru and the gang in the shadow of the giant flowerpot.

VBS and Star Wars

We got to decorate for VBS again! I'd thought we wouldn't get to due to scheduling conflicts, but then stuff happened, so we had a surprise free afternoon which Jonathan and I spent making giant saguaro arms (Jonathan), cactus-scapes (me, mostly - one with cottontails, one without), teepee poles (Jonathan), three lizards (me), one snake (me), a pile of taken-down and neatly rolled quilt thingies (Jonathan), and a pile of deconstructed wooden pallets for picket fencing (Jonathan). I might have gotten more done, but Meg was having internal distress; or I might not have. I really got into my cactus-scapes and bunnies.

It was great to see Jen again, and there weren't even any bomb threats this year.

Around three we started having emotional meltdowns, so away we went home to an actually pretty lousy Star Wars book, Medieval Total War 1, lovely leftovers, a book of poetry, and two episodes of Eureka just put up on Hulu. Oh, yeah.

The Star Wars book to which I refer is part of the Legacy of the Force series. I think I've read all but one of them now, and they're really not that good (as part of Star Wars - in and of themselves, the Karen Traviss ones are really well done). Jonathan and I have discussed this at some length. The old Star Wars, the ones we like, have good guys and bad guys. Some times good guys fall, and sometimes bad guys get redeemed, and of course things get complicated, but basically good guys shouldn't do dark side stuff or they'll fall and become bad guys.* And, if you're a good guy, it's good to fight the bad guys. That's what you do. And, because you're in that kind of universe, you can and must fight the bad guys without falling to the dark side. This holds true even in the more abominably written earlier Star Wars books.

And then the prequels came out. It's not just that they had awful plots, dialogue, and acting, too much CG, etc., etc., - they were telling an essentially different story. The new story didn't have any good guys, per se. Everyone was corrupt or incompetent (except maybe Amidala and the droids). You can tell a story about power and politics and big government corruption, and it might even be a good story, but it's really not the same as a good guys versus bad guys story.

I think that the newer books are more like the prequels. More competently done, but still telling that muddled type of book, where the good guys do shadier and shadier things because the evil they're fighting is so monstrous they feel they must do anything to stop it. And the evil is that bad. But now the good guys are evil too. And what's left?

I speculate that the reason they sent the Star Wars story arc this way for a couple reasons. First, they're very sensibly pandering to readers' appetites for more and weirder battles, flying around, explosions, lightsaber fights, and general action. But second, it would be very hard to write stories about creating a serious galactic peace worth protecting. It would be especially so if you actually believe the philosophy in the prequels, especially the bit about there not being any good side.

I think, according to the original trilogy, the Empire was something essentially different from the Old Republic, a wicked thing created by ambitious wicked men, and not something so quiet and similar to the old regime no one even noticed like in the prequels. I dislike the Yuuzhan Vong intensely, and I don't like what it did to the characters (especially Jacen), and I don't like the way the Legacy series just devolves into brawling political factions with a secret service and no solid goodness to cling to anywhere. Everything just spins deeper and deeper into the general muddiness.

So there!


*Zahn and some of the other authors wrote some really amazing villains, like Thrawn and Pellaeon and Daala. But no matter how much we love them, they're still the villains and the good guys pretty much have to fight them. Work with me here.