Africa's not a Country

I'm working on a couple short stories set in Africa. It's hard, since I've never been there, and I want to do it justice. 

My current work-in-progress takes place in the Congo. And it's been hard just finding names for the characters. I have a name book. They have an index where they list names by the country they're from. But not for Africa. Names from all African countries are crammed together in a tiny section. I checked every single name, and only 2 of them were from the Congo. 

Africa is not a country! It is an entire continent with many countries! Let's have some diversity in your freaking name book! 

I think I need a better book...

It did have the name "Simba."  Which, incidentally, means "lion." I'd like to have more creative names in my story, as much as I love The Lion King.

Something Alien I Made

It's been a long time since I worked on Evva's story. I just sent a chapter to my cousin, from the middle of the story. I read through it, to see if it needed anything. It felt like reading something alien. I mean, it hasn't been THAT long since I've gone through it. But the Peru trip feels like it took such a long time. In a good way. Before and after Peru are like different eras. And not just for writing, but for a lot of things.

Okay, I got a couple more big batches of animal photos. Hey, they add some color to the blog XD

Reticulated giraffe

Guanaco

Indian rhino, using a barrel for a pillow (he learned how to sharpen his horn wrong, so it's flat)

Pygmy hippo, covered in bark

Chacoan peccary

Kudu

Miniature donkey

Nubian goat (the one on the right is my BFF)

La mancha goat (they have tiny ears)

Kune kune pig

Good Characters, Poor Scenes

I mostly liked Rogue One, but both it and the Solo movie were kinda convoluted. Especially Solo. 

Spoilers ahead. 

One of my favorite Star Wars characters is in Rogue One.  Chirrut, the old monk. 

Actually, I like most of the characters in that movie.So it really rubs me the wrong way how some of them died. Particularly Chirrut. 

They have this random control panel sticking out of the middle of the beach. And Chirrut goes out there to push a button while they're under heavy fire. That button will complete a very complicated process of delivering a message (yeah, this is the most convoluted part of the movie - the writers were trying to make it as hard as possible to let the characters succeed). I guess they wanted to give Chirrut a noble death. But why would there be some random freaking control panel in the middle of nowhere?

 Even the way the Stormtroopers announced that he's blind, near his introduction, is clumsy and blunt. Couldn't they think of a more natural way to tell the audience? 

I get upset when cool characters are thrown into clumsy scenarios XD

Merry Christmas!

 Have some primates! We have apes, monkeys, and prosimians. All three types.

Chimpanzee

Young mandrills in a tree

Male mandrill

Sifaka lemur

Orangutan

Ring-tailed lemur

Black and white ruffed lemur 

A gorilla birthday party, with an Up theme

Charlotte and Wilbur

I have mixed feelings about using digital animals in films. 

First of all, historically animals have suffered a great deal in film-making. But animal training has become so much better in recent days. Animals have the choice whether or not they want to do something, instead of being beaten into it. Which also makes it harder to film. Photographers have to wait until the animal decides to follow directions.

Digital animals can do things that normal animals can't. And you don't need to worry about mistreatment. But so far, I've only seen one movie where I couldn't tell that the animal was fake (unless viewed from a certain angle). 

And nothing can top a real-live animal. So much of our lives are artificial now that it's important to have something real. Even if you're only seeing it on a screen.

 Anyway, this is all stuff I've discussed before. I don't see many real animals in film anymore. But I just watched the bonus features of Charlotte's Web. The live-action one (although the cartoon has fabulous songs). 

Almost all of the animals were real in the newer version. The filmmakers spent countless hours filming pigs and cows and sheep, and picking out the right motions to match the dialogue. They added mouth movements to make the animals talk, and there are a few digital additions. Like a pig doing a back flip. Templeton and Charlotte are entirely digital. Although they merge them into scenes with real animals. Like Templeton pushing a gosling out of the way. 

(Even The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe includes real animals, like wolves, even though it's very solidly in a fantasy world).

I was excited to find how much this film focused on real animals - in a way that was respectful to the animals themselves. It took a lot of work. Probably more work than it would have taken to make computer animals. An computers are taking over jobs everywhere else. What about the people that train animals? My cat loves to do tricks. She comes up and demands to do tricks every night (in return for treats). People that do humane work with animals shouldn't be put out of business. Again, we need real animals. Not just computer ones.

Change of Voice

Every now and then, when I'm listening to an audio book series, the narrator will change. It doesn't happen too often - I've only encountered it a couple times. But in one trilogy, each book was read by someone different. It always throws me off. I guess it's like when an actor changes in a film sequel.

 

Magellanic penguin chick

Penguin at the end of a rainbow

They have spines inside their mouth - like on a cat's tongue.

The legendary white penguin

 Emu

Tragopan - the males have these wattles that they can unfurl like a banner.

Open-billed stork

Sacred ibis chick

Blue-throated macaw

Bald eagle

Pink-backed pelican

 

Peahen (girl peacock) with her tail spread. It's far less impressive when the girls do it.

 Peahen with her chicks safely under a wing

  

Making Transportation Even Harder

Traffic around here sucks. Cities seem to deal with this by scaring you away from driving. They make it more and more difficult to go by car. And Americans are addicted to cars - we need less of them by an exponential amount. Except no one's really done anything to improve public transit. As much as I'd love to drive less (I hate driving), there's no other way I can get to work. And with unbelievably insane living expenses, there's no way I can move closer. A bus ride could take me 3 hours one way, for a ride that would be 30 minutes by car. The area's taking away transportation options without giving any alternatives. 

Now they've got a fun new idea.  Express lanes. They took away the carpool lanes, which actually do something to diminish the number of cars on the road. Then they replaced them with toll lanes. So there's one more expense on top of this insanely expensive area. Many people will never be able to afford the lane, when they used to take it for free and save gas while carpooling. And my eco friendly car has a carpool sticker, which I guess I can't use either anymore.

If they end up using that toll money to build more train tracks or something, I'd be all for it. But I'll eat my hat if that's where the money's going. And that still won't help the people that used to use the carpool lanes.

Poetry as Proof

I'm reading an old book from China, called Journey to the West. There are a number of poems used throughout the saga.

There's a phrase they've used several times, which always makes me scratch my head. Though it may just be a translation thing. Sometimes when they're talking about a certain event, they'll lead up to a piece of poetry by saying, "here's a poem that proves it." As though writing a poem about something is proof that it happened. And no one can provide false evidence. 

Or maybe it's a statement about the power of a poem? I'm not sure. I'd need a literature scholar to explain that one to me!

 

Another batch of photos!

Lioness

Snow leopard

Red Panda (he likes to play with his tail)

Meerkat