Holy crap, I’m boring lately. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve been busy as hell, and yet none of it makes for good blogging material. Today in particular has been a bit of a productivity madhouse; this morning alone my labors have included (but are not limited to) such diverse elements as wrapping up Fathom line edits, sorting out Those Who Went Remain There Still proofs, printing and mailing a set of short story contracts plus some extras for Norwescon, and exchanging copious emails with assorted important persons.

Over the last couple of days I’ve also had a visit from Ms. Porkshanks*, gotten a fair measure of fiction writing done, and steadily maintained my New Year’s Resolution to varying degrees. Unfortunately, my preferred progress bar seems to be on the fritz — so I won’t post a general metrics update. I know I could pick another one, but right this moment I can’t be bothered.

Besides, I’m strongly considering trashing much of what I’ve done recently on Awake Into Darkness. I think I might need to start this one over from scratch. Meh. It’s going to be cool; I’m just uncertain of which brand of cool should be applied to this particular project. If you know what I’m sayin’.**

Hmm. What else? Oh yes. I saw Diary of the Dead this past weekend.
I was underwhelmed. Here. Have a quickie review.

In 50 words or less: Film students struggle to survive zombie outbreak, record every possible moment of it, annoy the ever living hell out of one another and the audience, and receive a crash course in irony.

Broad Impressions: Jesus H. Christ, Romero — you knew how to do this thirty years ago. What happened?

The Good: We’ve got a bad-ass elderly, mute Amish man named “Samuel.” Why yes, I would have bet money against ever typing that sentence in all seriousness. There’s also some almost-clever parallelism between “shooting” weapons and “shooting” cameras — but Alan Moore did the same trick much, much better in the old Swamp Thing run wherein he semantically plays with falling hammers (the tool/the part of a gun).

The Bad: The funny parts fall flat, the profound parts are accidentally funny; and the dialogue hurts worse than a hangnail. DotD scans like it was written by someone who has only just heard of this neat new thing called the Internet; I kept expecting someone to use the word “blog” with finger-quotes. Also, it spoon-feeds its moral with a hand so heavy it could crack walnuts.

Now here’s the part where I reveal myself to be a huge, pimply, two-faced hypocrite: If DotD had been made by a no-name director and crew, filmed on a budget circa Sam Raimi in 1980, and gone straight to DVD … I probably would’ve come out of it waving two half-hearted thumbs up. Oh, it’s not great film by anyone’s standards; but if it had the excuse of a budget that could be measured in pesos and some newbie at the helm, I could’ve forgiven it. There are laugh-out-loud moments, earnest shocks and scares, and a few risks taken with character types and portrayals. In short, if this were the first flick of someone’s career, I would call it a promising debut. But from Romero? It’s just embarrassing.

And now, to cleanse the palate and close the post, here’s a very silly cat sitting on a discarded Barnes & Noble bag.