R.A. McCandless's Blog, page 41

Living Life

Skydiving? You mean jumping out of a perfectly good plane!Been Married *Been divorced Fell in love *Gone on a blind date *Skipped school *Watched someone give birth *Watched someone die Been to Canada *Ridden in an ambulance *Been to Hawaii Been to Europe *Been to Las Vegas *Been to...

Some Notes on Guns

Deadpool.  You either love it, or you're wrong.Let’s get some stuff out of the way first.  Personally, I heart guns.  Deadpool was easily one of the best shoot-em-up super “hero” movies of the year, if not the decade. It opened with an exquisite orgy of gun violence and death that is both memorable and will be hard to parallel.  I love modern, vintage and archaic guns.  I'd love to have a replica of Wyatt Earp's famous Buntline Special on my wall right next to a Brown...

Game of Thrones- Redux

Mountain-stein? The Golem Who Rides?All caught up on Game of Thrones?  Ready for some interesting responses?  If not, be warned, there be light spoilers ahead!
Are you warned?
Warned?
Ok then.  I’ve been really enjoying the recent season.  As the television show is beyond George R.R. Martin’s books, I know they’re hitting the plot elements that Martin has dictated, but I feel like the production has missed some of the poignancy that is had before.  The story is moving al...

Monday You Can Fall Apart

There's a gnome who knows what he's about!My family is off in Salt Lake City at the NSDA National Speech Tournament.  This means that I can do one of my favorite things—clean the house.  What’s so great about this is that for at least this week, the house will...

Warcraft - Movie Review

Half-orc warrior woman for the WIN!Based on the best-selling game which I’ve never played (though I loved Starcraft), this is a waste of excellent CGI, stellar actors, and a built-in, worldwide audience.  With “franchise” and “Next [i]Lord of the Rings[/i]” in their eyes, the talented Charles Leavitt and Duncan Jones (whom I can’t praise enough for Moon) sacrifice plot and pacing for a bloat of characters and backstory.  I’d hoped all this foundation-laying might pay off in the big...

Secret Project—Background

 Would you love me if I was anything but what I am? There’s an old saw which says, “Everybody has a gris-gris.”  A gris-gris is a charm or talisman (even a belief) that we maintain without any support of its abilities.  The original term means a device for warding off evil or creating good luck, and generally only coincidence supports a gris-gris’ ability to do anything.
But, we humans, we’re desperate to make order out of the chaos.  We like connections that signify i...

Let's Keep It Real

Steampunk scientist is steamy and sciencey!There’s a lot of science in writing, or at least there should be.  The best worlds, whether science fiction, fantasy or any of the subgenres (yay, steampunk!) need to be based in science.  You, as the writer don’t have to be scientists to know that your world operates by rules.  You start out with some fundamentals based on our own world, because that’s easiest.  Most worlds have gravity, and the physics of motion parallels our ow...

A Quick Note on Bullets

I have two guns, one for each of you.You know that moment in the movies where the big bad is coming at one of the heroes, and swinging some blunt force object, like a sword or tank, and there’s just no way to avoid the hit which is certainly going to be the end of that character . . . but then, but then . . . another hero, unseen by the camera or the big bad shoots—BAM! BAM! BAM!—right in the chest.  The big bad goes flying backward, a distance that puts most professional quarterbacks to...

Secret Project

There’s a project that’s been brewing for the last couple of days.  Today, while working out some of the details, I stumbled into this.
Gnome Walking by John Huchthausen
Now my project is ultra-secret and totally going to happen.

More to report later.  Watch this site for updates!

Shakespeare Meets Black Adder

You're welcome!