Magic Kingdom Tuesday

Tuesday, May 15.

After battling my West Coast circadian rhythms, I managed to haul myself out of bed just before 7AM.  At one point during my wake-up routine, I starting singing "Tale as old as song / song as old as rhyme / Beauty and the Mime", which meant that I got to fast forward the movie in my head an imagine villagers storming a dark castle chanting, "Kill the Mine! / Kill the Mime!" And giggling. (Mark thinks this is not funny and just plain weird.)

We drove from the condo, took a short ferry ride, and managed to get to The Magic Kingdom just after it opened at 9AM.  The Magic Kingdom is one of my favorite parks because of the iconic Disney Castle in the center, through which one can see a carousel. OK, and there are monorails.

 We rode the Small World ride; I like how they managed to do so much without computers or special digital effects.  And I like the squealing can-can dancers.  I especially like how they do the suns. But I wonder how much of the strength of the Small World ride works because it's the ride that we as children remember.

We did the Peter Pan ride. We managed to go twice, and I saw a lot more the second time through. I appreciated the use of black backsides of clouds and creative sail placement to hide the fact that there were other sailboat gondolas zigzagging much closer to ours that we probably realized in a space much smaller than it seemed.

We did the Splash Mountain ride, and I was really grateful for the Fast Pass option as walked by the folks in the really long line.

The Haunted House was fun... although, I sort of liked it more seven years ago. Maybe I was reliving the ride forty years ago when I was on the ride seven years ago. This time, maybe I was in a different head space, or maybe the sound was different. I think they've toned the ride down in terms of things popping out of boxes and the visual ghost effects have improved. Maybe this time around I really wanted to just stop and look at the details of the set. I think the best part of the Haunted House was the interactive graveyard--if you touched different instruments on a musical headstone different instruments would play. I also liked the headstone bookshelf.

We visited The Hall of the Presidents. I remembered someone telling me long ago that when Abraham Lincoln stands up out of his chair, it's a chilling moment. They were right.

---

Keeping in mind Nina's advice to look around for writing ideas, the only thing that kept repeating was Difficult Parenting Moments. The Magic Kingdom attracts many families with small children, and sometimes the kids get tired, the parents get frustrated, and around noon the blood sugar levels crash, which culminates in the moment when the adult's competency as a parent is called into question. Probably the least worrisome was the imperious mother getting into a "Nuh-uh," argument--with park eviction as the parent's trump card--with her defiant pre-teen son.

I suppose the other writing idea comes from the ibis and cranes in Adventure Land. While most seemed to be fine avian specimens, the ones that I saw up close and personal were the shabby looking ones hanging out in the picnic area scavenging scraps from folks eating fast food. They looked like there was something wrong with their feathers; they seemed to be falling out and dirty. The crane had red skin showing on its neck, and the ibises were picking at the mostly meatless bones from one couple's fried ribs basket.

---

Today's observation about Disney is:  Which came first, Disney or the Wedding Industry? I mean the Wedding Industry works hard to instill the notion of a Special Day filled with memories. And Disney instills the notion that one documents one's Special Day with photographs, autographs (which are like guest books), and personal wishes coming through.

And, yes; we did see several newlyweds at Disney World.

Animal Kingdom

Monday morning, the 14th was Animal Kingdom Morning.

I had a stupid tourist moment as I entered the park. The ticket I had looked so much like a Metro Pass that I missed the place where a reader photos your fingerprint. So I stood there stupidly wondering where my ticket was going to be spat out before a nice guide instructed me to put my fingerprint on the gate. 

Wow. All Disney has to do is hook up with the FBI and I'll bet they could collect a lot of data. Come to think of it, if there are any finger prints on the on-site scene of a crime, they've already got ticket info.

I was going to go all crazy taking photographs of everything when I realized I probably already have photographs of everything. So I had a pleasant experience remembering things like lampposts and lamp shades that I hadn't seen in over seven years.  I like the way many of the artifacts in the Animal Kingdom have intertwined animals on them.

We went on the Safari, which no longer has the poachers or a shaky bridge. I'll have to see if we got close enough to take photographs of the animals. I'm going to bet Mark got some pretty good shots. My camera is better for close up objects and architectural details.

---

When I told her I was going to DisneyWorld, Nina wished me fun and lots of opportunities to get story ideas. So this morning's idea is the Komodo Dragon keeper.

I wish I could have placed her accent. It wasn't' Georgian; it sounded almost rural Oregonian because of the way the keeper said, "don't got no," and "ain't got none."

The Komodo Dragon is canabalistic. Mating is hard on the females. And bigger males will kill and eat smaller males. They look after the eggs, but once the kids hatch it's dinner time. The baby Komodo Dragons instinctively know to climb trees so that Mom and Dad don't eat them. Probably about half the kids make it. The Komodo Dragon Disney has is a male, because a solitary female is hermaphroditic, and can self-fertilize. In fact, there were no baby Komodo Dragons at Disney, because, "Then they could climb trees and get at us."

The Komodo dragon--which had been eating something near the back of its enclosure--turned around, came a little forward, and looked at his keeper.  He appeared to have gold eyeliner.

"Yah," she said, "You looking at me? I'm talking about you, Mr. Evil." The Komodo Dragon's tongue licked out as it stared at us. "What were you eating? Why didn't you show me?" The hypothesis was that a baby rabbit had wandered in too the Komodo Dragon's area. (Where would a wild baby rabbit live in Disney Worlds Animal Kingdom? I hope there were no pocket watches involved.)

Mark has taken something for his motion sickness, so he can go on some of the rides (hes still refuses to get on the Mission Mars ride) We went on the Kahli River ride, some of us got completely soaked (Hot Tip: If you don't want to get soaked, sit between two small children; on the big slide at the ride's end, the heavier side of the raft tends to turn to the lead and then splash up against the current at the slide's bottom, swamping the riders at that end). We went on it twice.

Then we went onto the Mt Everest Yeti ride.  I liked the Yeti temple we climbed through on the way up.  They make clever use of track switches and backwards falls. Now that I think about it, just looking at the ride, you'd never know that large portions of it go backwards. And corkscrew. Mark only went on that one once.

---

Back at the condo, we took a nap. A really long nap.  This set the pattern for our Disney crepuscular existence of early morning entrances and late evening lingerings.

Then we went to Disney's Hollywood park. I like the fake sets.  At the Imperial Palace Theatre, I took a picture of the dress Dame Judy Dench wore as Queen Elizabeth I

Sunday Nun Stories

Sunday the 13th we had a pleasant visit with Mark's Mother's Sister, Carol, and his cousin, Maura.

The most fun was hearing all the stories about Mary and Carol's lives when they were girls going to catholic school (insert crazy nuns and high school shenanigans here).

The way they told the stories was kinesthetic memory in action:  one would say, "I was takling Latin from Sitster... Sister- oh what was her name?"  This would accompanied by a hand gesture for a big nose, or for a fat nun, and the other would name the nun.

I think my favorite nun was the French teacher nun who would poke students with a transom rod, and who subsequently went crazy and "was carted off."

Boarding without Seats

Saturday the 12th.  Whew. Out of Salt Lake City. For a few moments I thought we might not get seats. Luckily, Mark kept calm and we got on. I was not filled with confidence that we were in good hands when the ticket agent said, "You guys can get on the plane." Uh, gee; we'd like to, but we're waiting for you to give us our seat assignments.

Oh well. We'll see if our carry-on luggage, which we checked, gets to Orlando with us.

---

Later... We landed in Orlando on schedule. This left us about a half hour to rent a vehicle before the rental desk closed.  The first thing we noticed upon exiting the plane and walking down the terminal bridge was the air. It was damp. And humid. It smelled of a harbor and maybe palm trees. (Actually, there's a lot of sulfur in the water, which tastes terrible.)

My ears are still equalizing. The sensation of a worm trying to tunnel out of my ear reminds me of our last visit here, where it took like what seemed like forever for my ears to feel right.

After retrieving our luggage, I waited for Mark to appear with the car. I made the mistake of sitting downwind from a cigarette bin. Ugh. I don't know what they smoke here, but it smells sour and tarry and dirty. As soon as I could, I moved upwind.

There are more languages here than in Oregon.

The arrivals area looks like the inside of a space station. The concrete curders streatch to the right and left , threatening to merge in the perspective of the lace. In front of me, yellow metal girders curve away from the builing a support canval awnings (I think) At first I thought they were sheets metal painted white.

Mark has called and can't find me. So I will stand. (It turned out he was looking for me at the wrong terminal.)

Yesterday's Tomorrow

Going through my virtual Disney things.  I could have sworn I was the one with the broken arm in this video.

Airplane Geomancy

Tapping on an iPad's glass keyboard is not the best way to type. I'm trying to do geomancy by looking at the hills valleys and mountains below. The rivers ran through valleys. Long valleys penned rivers within their undulations.  Sometimes, the shadows of hills look like letters, but not on this flight.

There is a great haze lying over the globe. We're in a bowl of has the rim of which hovers above the horizon. Instead of white clouds, a kind of brown haze blurs the boundary between air and land. Below, the brown and tan plain is a wrinkled parchment for the strokes of roadway and the dark green squares and circle of fields.

Features on the land disappear into a band of grey brown haze. Mountains are vague shadows. Rivers, roads and snowy ridges are retreating reflections.

What I took for a river is actually a river canyon. Considering how the shadow of the bridges are, the canyon must be fairly deep.

The Eugene Airport

Apparently, the Eugene airport has a Full Body Scan. I got to stumble through it. I kind of didn't realize that I'd been shunted through it until I was walking under a sign about scanner wavelengths. I actually thought I was walking through a metal detector until I was instructed to rise my hands over my head. Sigh. Alas, you're supposed to hold still, as I was instructed after I started to go-go dance. If we're going to have naked pictures taken of us when we travel, we should be able to be photographed as if we were dance extras from "Laugh-In" or "Barbarella."

I think I would have preferred a pat-down. But I'm willing to try anything once. So I put my feet on the yellow feet marks and played along. The little booth is disconcerting. The rotating clear plexiglas shield is just a little too reminiscent of the Old Trek disintegrator booths. And the yellow feet reminded me of the appartment scanning scene in "The Fifth Element."

My right thigh pocket was folded up oddly, because it showed up on the scan and I got patted by a TSA agent after the scan. (Note to self, don't wear the tan slacks through security.)

Our next leg will be through Salt Lake City. Since our plane got changed several days ago, our seat assignments have become swizzled around. So we are not sure if we will sit together or not.

Eliza Doolittle Eclipse

Next week on the 20th of May / I declare a solar eclipse day !

It's happening around here in the late afternoon.

Obligatory Chessboard

It was inevitable.



 Eventually, after playing around with Blender, I was bound to create a chess set. So I did this one. It's a copy of one by a Bauhaus designer; it has a manifesto attached about doing away with anachronistic kings, queens, bishops and knights. I kind of like it, but I noticed when I rendered the black pieces that it looked a little like playing with Borg ships.

And there's something about this piece that seems cold. Maybe if I print out the pieces on a 3D printer and fill them with LEDs...

Tasseomancy

When we switched tea brands (the store was out of the black tea I normally get), I needed to add milk to my morning mega-mug of caffeine (Mark was a dear to buy tea when we ran out, but he likes his blends with more bite than I do).

After I added the milk (pause to wonder if the milk should be poured first and then the tea...) sometimes I would see little images turning within the cobalt darkness of the mug.  Then I would either channel my inner Centauri Noblewoman and whisper prophecies about the Shadows, or else I would channel Stevie Nicks and sing "Now here I go again, I have a crystal vision..." (pause to imagine Stevie Nicks as a Centauri Noblewoman).

After a week or so, I thought, "Hey! I could tweet these."  So I have.

April 20 - This morning's tasseography: a dog, a mask, an animated speaker with hand gestures.  (This one sort of came true, in that shortly afterward, I saw a mask (actually a bicycle banana-seat with handle-bar horns) that looked like the mask in the teacup.)


April 21 - Today's tasseogaphy (to Wagner): a rose, three circles in a triskellion, a sled, an Art Nouveau woman in harem pants.


April 22 - Today's tasseogaphy: three dolphins, sort of like a saint Brendan cross. And... um, milk diffusing into the tea.  (This one also sort of came true, in that we were listening to a book on tape, and St. Brendan's Cross being mentioned.)


April 23 - Today's tasseogaphy (to Beethoven): X and O - a tic-tac-toe game; broken glass (from a rock?); colliding worlds, colliding electrons.


April 24 - Today's tasseogaphy: very swirly roses, two dolphins, an eye (vaguely Egyptian), and a hawk-like bird's profile.  (Too early to signify the UO Osprey Nest at Hayward Field, as that happened the next day...)


April 25 - Today's tasseography: a nose, a - er, Freudian image. Later a giraffe, a longhorn steer with someone riding it.   (Let me tell you, that Freudian image was burgeoning, too).


April 26 - Today's tasseography: Hmm. Difficult to see. Always in motion is future. Just a funnel of milk spinning in tea.


April 27 - Today's tasseography: an elongated monogram combining J and M, which turned around and became a swimming long-necked dinosaur.   (Maybe Mark and I will go to Loch Ness....)


April 28 - Today's tasseography: an open sled on curled runners being pulled by an antlered reindeer.

April 29 - Today's tasseography: a rearing white horse. Then lots of bat-winged dragons with serpentine necks and chomping jaws.   (I was hoping that I'd see the dragons - there was a whole flock of them, with a really detailed close-up of the last dragon's muzzel.)


While I am hopeful that what I interpret in the mug might happen, I'm not holding my breath.  What I notice looking over this is that sleds, horns, steers, wings and bird-shapes seem to be a trend.  Dripping milk off of a spoon produces primarily rings and also numbers like 3 6 8 and 9.  Also, if I stir my tea too vigorously, the milk turns into a flower shape.

My friends noticed the tasseomancy.  In a recent Facebook exchange, one of my friends, JB, said, "You must have lots of fun during Rorschach Tests."  To which I replied, "You know, I've never taken one."  His conclusion was, "Oh, I think you are ALWAYS taking one."  

I think I need to put that into my e-mail signature.

Buying a Small Piece of Heaven

I went to the Crumpacker Family Library Book Sale.

Entering the Crumpacker Family Library always makes me want to run around like Julie Andrews and sing, "The Hills Are Alive" - only my song would be about how the hills are alive with books books books BOOOOKS! - and then read a book while seated on a ceremonial throne.

Before the doors opened, I met a painter, and we started talking about her paintings and how I hoped I'd run into a really good book on Paleolithic art.

Then the doors opened and I told myself that I wanted to look for books on Paleolithic art and oh, look interior arts -- and no, you're writing Steampunk, so - hey! Art Nouveau! and Oh! 7000 years of Iranian Art!

No. Focus focus focus Burridge! You're writing about fantasy and steampunk and you need to look at source work for the ... ooooh! a book on silver tableware! That's Steampunk, or at least fantasy....

Finding a scholarly book on art that's at a nice price which makes my heart bubble over with bibliophilic avarice.

Everyone was very polite. I helped someone find a book on interior design and the painter's friend handed me a book on European Art History. We were all enablers.

When I think of heaven, it's filled with books. When I think of buying a little bit of heaven, I go a little crazy with divine badness. That was a Freudian slip of the fingers there, but it's probably more correct to say "divine badness" because I really only meant for this to be a dry run on what I would do at the book sale next year -then next thing I knew I had a really huge, heavy stack of older books.

Which I bought.

And they're all my favorite. And I want to read them all. And I can use them for research. And I'm not sure where they will fit on my home shelves. But I am pretty sure Mark is going to start laughing in a few minutes when I walk out of the building with two shopping bags full of second-hand art books.

[editor's note:  He did.]

Eugene's Only Victorian House

Today we visited the Shelton-McMurphey-Johnson House, a home built in Eugene in 1888. It's easy to forget that we have buildings this old in Eugene.


I liked seeing some of the older items in the SMJ House; it's always interesting to go to a historical source for a Victorian setting.




I found myself comparing SMJ House to Olana.  Which really isn't a good comparison, but the attention to interior details prompted me to do so.



What I like about the windows in the front doors is how they use negative space.






The kitchens in Victorian houses are always interesting.



I always forget that the kitchen stove would have used wood as a fuel source, and that the ashes would need to be cleaned out periodically.



There was a large butter churn with a cool gear assembly. I like how the crank wheel has curved struts instead of straight spans.  I also wondered if the smaller, five-fold gear might not be original.


The furniture was ornate and it struck me how it didn't look like it had been mass-produced or created by someone's on-line plans and laser-printed.




An old sewing machine, tredal-powered.



What really caught my eye was this medalion.  The detailing on this is amazing; and there's no computer chips in the machine. How did they sew?



Here's the sewing machine's tredal mechanism. 








Obligatory old typewriter photo taken by an author. I thought this was a manual typewriter, but it looks like there's an electrical switch on this.





Door plate details.





Did they mass-produce these by pressing them, or were they cast this way?





Well, there; I can design some electrical face-plate in Blender and then print them out with MakerBot and...

Honor Killings in Fiction

I've been thinking about honor killings in the news and honor-based fictional societies, which has led me to the question, what is it about the Klingon's honor- and shame-based society that makes them cool? I mean, they've got Mauk-to 'Vor (ritual killing of an individual so that his honor can be restored), and the rituals around discommendation affect the honor of a family for seven generations. So how is different from honor killings like the one which happened in Arizona? If the father involved had used a sword instead of a jeep, would that have made it better?

I asked around how and why Klingons were acceptable. One Facebook friend responded "To themselves, they are socially acceptable." A group of writer friends thought that Klingons were more acceptable because their honor killings seemed to be confined to acts of males against other males. (This was followed by an interesting observation about historical romance novels: make the female main character too bold and the historians trash your story for being too modern western; make the female main character an integrated part of her historical society and the feminists trash your story for supporting the patriarchy.)

Thinking about it more, I made an continuum. On the left side I put Sheri S Tepper's Land of the True Game series, because the central moral theme is that parents have a responsibility to make sure their children have souls (the ability to be moral) and kill them if they don't. A little to the right go the Klingons. Further to the right are mediaeval cultures like the Vikings or Knights of Chivalry. And all the way on the right is the Arizona Honor Killer.

What this appears to boil down to is, when do we as readers admire fictional killers? Now I have to figure out where National Geographic specials with hunting lionesses on the serengeti fit in.

Writing Progress

Today was going to be the day when I wrote.... but then I made a stupid mistake syncing a manuscript between Scrivener and SimpleNote and the next thing I knew I was digging through backups to restore an accidentally deleted scene.  All I can say is, bless you, Scrivener, for automatically backing up my manuscripts.

On the "It's Not Working Because You're Doing It Wrong" front, I have a writing office that, by bits and pieces over the Winter Holiday, transformed into a junk drawer.  I have a bad habit of tossing things I'm not quite sure what to do with into my office; which is literally a spare closet.  I cleared out reconfigured the piles of paper and reclaimed the space.  Now I have to make the painful decision about what to do with my Very Old Desktop. It has a lot of Illustrator files on it, which I'd like to keep... but if I wiped the hard drive and recycled (or re-purposed) it, I'd probably get an extra three feet back in my writing closet.  The goal is to have a space I can write in without hurting my wrists, neck, back or feet, keep my writing and art projects from encroaching on the rest of the house, and that will be able to facilitate more than one project at a time.

Sounds like a day-by-day task...