Sidney Blaylock Jr.'s Blog, page 66

Project: Skin Deep 2.0 (Rewrite)

Just a quick post – the new school year essentially starts for me this week (with training, team building, and classroom set-up), so my 2015-2016 writing “season” has also officially commenced.

I am currently rewriting a story that I finished last year, but never submitted anywhere called Skin Deep.  It is a sci-fi story, but I wasn’t entirely pleased with it.  It didn’t quite match the vision in my head and I didn’t feel that it was good enough to start submitting without a rewrite.

In September, Rhonda Parrish plans to open up submissions for a new anthology (tentatively) called Sirens. I’m rewriting SD in hopes of submitting it to the anthology.

As I’m rewriting, I realize that I missed the element of setting.  The story operates in a bland, vanilla sci-fi setting.  I’m changing that to a specific time and place: Jamaica 2086.  I’ve known two people who are from Jamaica and they’ve told me quite a bit about the island.  I’m going to try to extrapolate what I know and add in technology that I think would be consistent for 2086 and see what happens.  The plot will stay the same (except where setting affects it) and the character has undergone minor alterations (her name has changed and at least 1 motivation she has for the story has changed as well).  I’ll write an Author’s Note on this story talking about it in more depth when I finish it.

Here’s hoping I have both a happy and healthy school year and a successful writing “season.”  Cheers!

Witcher 3: The New (Old) Rhetorics of GrimDark

Hi, Everyone,

Sorry that I haven’t posted in a while, but my WiFi for the past month or so has been out nearly 90% of the time.  I’ve been quite frustrated with it, but things seems to be better (fingers crossed).  In an update to the current OS, Apple has replaced discoveryd with MDSNResponder and I’ve replaced my new router with my old router.  Over the weekend (when I normally publish blog posts) WiFi was down, but as of Monday, WiFi has been up pretty much consistently for the past 3 days.  There was a small blip of about 2 hours, but everything came right back up.  As I write this entry on Wednesday afternoon, I’m WiFi enabled and it FEELS good!

I’ve been playing a lot the Witcher 3 and I’ve (mostly) been enjoying my time with it.  I have noticed that it seems to be part of that “GrimDark” genre that has taken hold in the Fantasy genre lately.  The idea that life is horrible and that everyone needs to die in order for fantasy to be “realistic.”  Game of Thrones didn’t start this movement (see Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and Mordandt’s Need books for the early mid-80s take of GRRM’s series), but it has popularized it.

The rhetoric of postmodern fantasy is that there cannot be “good vs. evil” because that’s too simplistic.  You must have gray in everyone and everything.  Everyone (heroes included) must have some evil in them (and you must show it) and everyone (villains included) must have some good in them (and you must show it).  Otherwise, they say, “your story is too simplistic and doesn’t mimic real life.”  It is too much of a fairy tale and real life doesn’t happen that way–we don’t have good vs evil, we just have everyday folks in a world of magic.

This was brought home to me as I played a Quest in the Witcher 3 storyline.  Since i can’t spoiler tag anything reliably on my blog, I’ll be as non-spoilery as I can.  There is a decision that must be made and it is presented as do you kill x thing or do you free it?  I’d already been lied to by a “ghost” in another quest line and doing the “right thing” there ended up costing a life, so I was unsure how to proceed on this new storyline.  So, I spoiled it for myself and read the various outcomes via Wikis for Witcher 3.  Well, imagine my shock when I discovered it doesn’t really matter per se which outcome you choose.  Outcome 1: Some people die.  Outcome 2: Some other (different) people die.  The only choice you’re making is which set of people die.  The game doesn’t tell you that–it pretends that the choice is between “right vs wrong.”  One side says that something evil is killing things and then when you get to the evil thing, it says that it was imprisoned and that the other side is evil.  Neither choice actually saves anyone, however.  There are going to be deaths, the choice is actually whose deaths are you choosing, which the game intentionally misrepresents under the cloak of “right vs wrong” (This thing is evil and killing people, go kill it vs. I was imprisoned by those things–who are, by the way, going to eat some people, so set me free if you don’t want that to happen.)

Again and again, I can’t help but shake my head and wonder why have we decided that shades of gray somehow means a more complex and rewarding narrative vs a “good vs evil” hero’s quest yarn.  It doesn’t.  It’s just the “train wreck” phenomenon. Humans like stories and the tragedy is a genre of story where the protagonist fails and we watch that for the purient interest of watching a “wreck” unfolding in front of us.  It doesn’t make it a better or more complex tale than the “hero’s quest” or “good confronting evil.”

Fantasy as genre, can (& should) do better than just the tired old “GrimDark” philosophy of the world is a crappy place that you live in and then die in (in as gruesome of a manner as possible) that seems to latch onto the genre like a leech every few years or so.  Fantasy should be about world-building, unique magic systems, awesome characters, and larger-than-life spectacle that push (but not break) a reader’s (or gamer’s) credulity.

IT’S NOT THE DESTINATION; IT’S THE JOURNEY

I’m a fan of the Tour De France—I have been since I was a child watching Greg LeMond tear though the mountains and flat stages in the early and mid ‘80s. I was (& still am) fascinated by the beautiful scenery of the French countryside in the summer, the myriad of tactical decisions that come into play during the race, and the incredible, almost zen-like focus and discipline needed to maintain hours of both training and racing.

As I watch this year’s tour, I was struck by a commercial that is currently airing during the tour. I was specifically struck by the words (& I’m paraphrasing): the destination should not be your focus, but the journey. In other words, enjoy the process.

Cycling is hard. It is physically draining and exhausting. Well, writing is hard as well. It is mentally draining and exhausting. Cycling is also fun—at the end of the day, you have traveled from point A to B and have seen new sights. Writing is no different. When you’ve finished for the day, you know more about your story than you did the day before.

Having a goal is fine—as a matter of fact, I think that it is super important to set goals because they give you something to strive towards. But it is very easy to get caught up in the trap of “finishing.” When you have a goal in mind, you know where you are going and you have (at least) an approximate idea of how you are going to get there. However, I need to remind myself as I attempt this novel (especially in the dark times when nothing seems to be working) that writing is FUN! Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. Yes, like cycling, it is hard, demanding, and leaves one exhausted, but writers get to try to recreate the images in their minds with words.

Writers don’t need budgets, CGI special effects or practical effects. We don’t need actors or sets. We don’t need extras, or catering. All we need is a good imagination and something to record what we write. And we need words, just plain old, simple words.

How cool is that?

I’ll Get You My Pretty (discoveryd and mDNSResponder and why I’m Peeved with Apple OS X)

This is perhaps the 4th or 5th post dedicated solely to my home network and the problems that I’ve been having with it.  Seems that I’m NOT alone.  There are multitudes of complaints and problems with the way WiFi works in OS X Yosemite.

Now, last time I talked about this, I thought that I had pretty much solved it, by going backwards with firmware, but the problem is even more insidious than I thought.

Image Source: austinally.wikia.com

I’LL GET YOU MY PRETTY (So What’s Actually Wrong with my Network)

It appears that Apple (since 2002) has used a very reliable process for WiFi called mDNSResponder.  It has (apparently) been a workhorse over the years and has had very little in the way of issues.  Its like a worker bee that just drones away in the background and gets its job done the the best of its ability.  Well, last October, when Apple released OS X Yosemite, they decided to replace mDNSResponder with a new process for WiFi called discoveryd.  This process is more like a prima dona rockstar: Great when it works, but has so many issues that it isn’t worth investing in.  Based on what I’ve read, it appears to have been written to help OS X features such as AppNap and (perhaps) Power Nap but it has caused no end of frustration to users of Yosemite. Here’s what an article at Ars Technica said about the issue:

Resolving DNS names, resolving Bonjour machine names, resolving Bonjour service advertisement and discovery, and opening ports in NAT gateways to allow incoming network connections are all jobs that have been performed by the mDNSResponder daemon. This was introduced with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar back in 2002. mDNSResponder is written in C and has been released as open source by Apple, and it has found its way to all kinds of non-Apple operating systems and hardware.

Again, as of OS X 10.10, mDNSResponder has been replaced by discoveryd. Curiously, discoveryd is (re)written in C++, not exactly one of Apple’s favorite languages. It’s not on Apple’s list of open source projects . . . For instance, when the system is unable to resolve DNS names, discoveryd log messages indicate that it doesn’t recognize the replies from the DNS server to its own requests. discoveryd is also a frequent guest in the CrashReporter logs.

One of the functions of the mDNSResponder was to talk to a home gateway and ask it to forward incoming network connections for any services running on the Mac in question. In the non-Apple world, this is done with the uPnP IGD protocol, and Apple had its own NAT-PMP protocol for this. More recently, the IETF has standardized PCP, a new protocol that also works with IPv6 and firewalls, not just IPv4 and Network Address Translation (NAT) as used by home routers. mDNSResponder supported all of them, but it looks like discoveryd doesn’t use any of them.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/01/why-dns-in-os-x-10-10-is-broken-and-what-you-can-do-to-fix-it/

Wait, what?  Apple, your old software recognized old and new protocols, but your new and improved software doesn’t recognize any of them?

HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS

Image Source: http://www.breathingforher.com

Now, I searched and searched trying to find the issue or cause of my network’s problems and instabilities.  I wasted countless hours trying to diagnose this problem, even reverting back to old hardware and firmware to see if I could get my network to go back to the way it was: rock solid.  It seems that I’m not the only one.  Word is that Apple has reverted back to mDNSResponder for the Beta of the upcoming OS X El Capitan.  Here’s what 9to5 Mac had to say (click on link previous link for full article): After many complaints from the developer community about poor networking performance on Yosemite, the latest beta of OS X 10.10.4 has dropped discoveryd in favor of the old process used by previous versions of the Mac operating system. This should address many of the network stability issues introduced with Yosemite and its new networking stack.

Now, while I’m hopeful that this will clear up the issue and help me get back to my first love (writing), I’m not too happy with Apple at the moment.  No where could I find any mention of these issues on Apple’s (official) Help pages for networking–they just gave general advice such as restart your router, etc.  If you know there’s a problem, or a problem piece of software/code, say so.  Relying on the forum’s to figure it out isn’t an answer.  I searched forum after forum and tried suggestion upon suggestion.  Most people knew there was a problem, but no one could narrow it down to one specific cause/case.  However, there were developers who had more experience who apparently were warning Apple about this very issue (I reference Craig Hockenberry’s blog on the issue–warning: Salty Language).

Now, I didn’t find out about the discoveryd issue until MacWorld included it in a segment on one of their podcasts and then I was able to look it up and see that, hey, those are the very issues that I’m having, ah ha, that’s why I can’t get my wifi back to being consistent and solid.  In the Ars Technica article, there are workarounds to getting mDNSResponder back on your system before Apple “officially” does it and I would have loved to have known that because I would have tried them during the school year.  Now, however, I have to either wait for El Capitan or risk losing the writing that I’m doing over the summer by trying those suggestions or signing up for the El Capitan Beta (the 1st solution involves going into terminal and the 2nd involves a beta–which is, by definition, a testing platform).

SOLUTIONS

I would love it if Apple designated their help files as Novice, Intermediate, Power User & Developer.  I consider myself a Power User and given enough information I can maintain my system rather well.  All that Apple needed to do (for me) to have been satisfied was to give those general hints (restart router, etc.) in the novice or intermediate categories, but in the power user section say, “if you’re still experiencing problems, it could be . . . (and say discoveryd might not be working correctly on your system.  You can find our older mDNSResponder here, download it and tell us if it solved your problem).

Or perhaps visit an Apple forum anonymously and point us in the right direction.  I can’t tell you how many forum posts I looked at on the Apple forums and none of them listed discoveryd as a possible vector.

Do I have wifi as I write this.  Nope.  I’m tethered to the ethernet cable.  Yet, as I look at my MacBook Pro’s Activity Monitor, I see both discoveryd and discoveryd_helper sitting there just staring at me.  But right now, my Apple TV and my iPad are both useless to me, so any research I need to do must be done here tethered to cable or not at all.  And to know that I still have to wait until El Capitan releases (probably in Oct., nearly 4 months away) before I get an “official” fix is all the more egregious.

CORVIDAE Cover Reveal

So, some of you may remember that my story, Faerie Knight, was published in Fae, edited by Rhonda Parrish last year.  Well, she has a new anthology that will be released soon entitled CORVIDAE.  While I don’t have a story in the anthology, Corvidae is the genesis and inspiration behind my own recently completed story HawkeMoon, so what better way to show my appreciation to Rhonda than to showcase this awesome new project.

Here is the cover reveal and more information about the anthology:

CORVIDAE

Anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish

Rhonda Parrish’s Magical Menageries, Volume Two

CORVIDAE

Associated with life and death, disease and luck, corvids have long captured mankind’s attention, showing up in mythology as the companions or manifestations of deities, and starring in stories from Aesop to Poe and beyond.

In Corvidae birds are born of blood and pain, trickster ravens live up to their names, magpies take human form, blue jays battle evil forces, and choughs become prisoners of war. These stories will take you to the Great War, research facilities, frozen mountaintops, steam-powered worlds, remote forest homes, and deep into fairy tales. One thing is for certain, after reading this anthology, you’ll never look the same way at the corvid outside your window.

Featuring works by Jane Yolen, Mike Allen, C.S.E. Cooney, M.L.D. Curelas, Tim Deal, Megan Engelhardt, Megan Fennell, Adria Laycraft, Kat Otis, Michael S. Pack, Sara Puls, Michael M. Rader, Mark Rapacz, Angela Slatter, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, and Leslie Van Zwol.

Corvidae

Edited by Rhonda Parrish

Release Date: July 7, 2015

Genre: Fantasy and Horror

Length: Anthology, approx. 230 pages

Tradepaperback: $11.95; ebook $5.99

ISBN-13 (trade paperback): 978-0692430217

ISBN-10 (trade paperback): 0692430210

You can find out more information about Corvidae from the publisher World Weaver Press or on (my personal favorite book related site) Goodreads.

And hey, if you like the book and the stories inside, consider contributing a review on Amazon or Goodreads.  As authors, we all like to see a little recognition/appreciation for our hard work!  

Almost there . . . Wi-Fi and the Writer

Almost there–this post takes its title from Star Wars: A New Hope (aka Episode IV) during the “trench run” sequence.  I think that I finally figured out the problem with my wifi (crossing fingers, knocking on wood, throwing salt over my shoulder, and any other good luck myths that I can use).

If so, that will solve a HUGE issue for my for my writing and should make me more productive and regular in terms of fiction and this blog.  I’m on summer break and I should be using this blog to explore ideas for writing for the upcoming writing year.  I’ve decided that, hey, I’m a teacher, so my writing year should start and continue all throughout the school year.  Kinda’ sorta’ like what companies do with their fiscal year.  Summertime should be a time to let projects lie fallow (for editing), trying to come up with rough drafts (for things to turn into stories later), and finally new ideas for new projects (that can turn into rough drafts later).

But, with no wifi, I’m chained to the one area in the house that my ethernet cable will reach and its really affected the way I write.  I finally think I tracked down the issue: long story made short, it appears to be an issue with the mac and the airport utility (firmware) used to communicate between the router and mac.

So here’s what I *think* happened: (new) airport basestation –> downloaded (new) firmware when I plugged it in and connected it.  (new) firmware and (new) airport basestation ≠ (old) 2008 macbook pro and (new) OS X (Mavericks/Yosemite).  plugged in old base station.  (old) base station + (new) firmware did not get along, resulting in an unstable wifi connection (up and down constantly with new and old basestations).  finally reverted back to (old) basestation with (old) firmware with (old) 2008 macbook pro with (new) OS X (Yosemite).  Did you follow all that?  That’s 6 months of reading forum posts, trying different OS X solutions, YouTube vids, and waiting to see if new updates of IOS/OS X would fix the problem (hint: it didn’t).

Fingers very crossed that going backwards on everything but the OS results in a stable wifi connection again.  The computer is long in the tooth, I know, but it still has life in it and does everything I need it to do.  It runs all my software (except the games on Steam, but that’s what I have my PS4 for anyway

Dark Matter – Show Review

Yesterday, I watched the premiere episode of the ScyFy’s (I hate that spelling of their channel name, by the way) new show: Dark Matter.  I am cautiously optimistic.  It was actually quite good, although a lot of the tension comes from the initial concept of the show (that they seemingly answer at the end of the first episode.)

Before I begin with my impressions, I should note that there will be slight spoilers.  If you’re sensitive to any spoilers, you may want to wait, watch the show, and come back later.

Now, back to the show:

So, the premise of the Dark Matter is that several people awake without memories on a space ship that is floating unpowered in space.  The tension comes from the fact that no one remembers anything about themselves, the others, or why they are on the space ship.  The episode establishes character building, character relationships, and tries to solve the mystery of who they are and why they are here.  Whatever has effected their memories has left their abilities intact (and the show’s creators go through several scenes and a good bit of screen time to show you that several characters possess extreme abilities that they still possess even without their complete memories.

The episode reminds me of two different other pieces of media: The Bourne Identity and Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Conundrum.”  In each one, there is a mystery of identity to be solved, along with the idea of skills left intact and able to be used.  It also has a dash of Farscape mixed in as well, where there promises to be character clashes and conflicts based on the various personalities and character drives of the crew.  These are definitely not members of the United Federation of Planets (or any other Federation for that matter).  These crew members are portrayed as pretty tough–when one character can spin katanas like Darth Maul, you know that’s a guy who’s use to getting his own way.

My hope was that they would spend most of the 1st season figuring out who they were and that it would be revealed for each of the crew by the time the first season wrapped up, but they actually (again, seemingly) gave a crew biography at the end of the episode.  I say seemingly, because they do it in the last 5 minutes and they rely on the computer finding and repairing “corrupted data” to tell us who the characters are and the name of the ship–which is important as we learned from secondary characters slightly earlier in the episode.

[spoiler] Slight Spoiler Warning: The Farscape idea comes back again with the reveal of the characters identities at the end, but to say more would be a major spoiler. [/spoiler]

I’m not sure that I like that reveal, but I need to see more before I decide one way or the other.  I can already tell that I’m probably not going to enjoy ScyFy’s next new show which debuts next week–Killjoys (space bounty hunters) because of its irreverent tone, although I am planning to watch it (unless I forget).  Dark Matter, on the other hand, might be a keeper.  If you like Sci-Fi (ah, I finally get to spell it the CORRECT way!) then give it a try.  If nothing else, it has spaceships–which never fails to pique my interest.  Here’s hoping the show goes in the right direction.

Final Overall Episode Grade: B

Author’s Note: Childe Roland

On Friday, June 5th, I finished Project Roland. It turned out to be a short-story of (unedited) about 6,000 words long. I’m calling it Childe Roland. I will probably edit it over the next 3 weeks and start submitting it at the end of June.  It is, of course, based on the famous poem by Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

This project has been on my mind for years – I originally planned for it to be a novel (and I might still try to turn it into one later). After years of trying to unsuccessfully trying to plot it and expand it into chapters, I simply wrote down all the action that I saw in my head and shaped that into a story.

Childe Roland is about Roland’s quest to find the Dark Tower. It takes Robert Brownings’ poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came as its inspiration. Yes, I know Stephen King also has a famous series featuring the Dark Tower, but King’s Roland is a Gunslinger (in the tradition of Clint Eastwood or Yul Brenner).

Every since I read the poem in Dr. Shawen’s English Literature class as an undergraduate at UTC, I’ve imagined Roland as a “sword-bearer,” not a Gunslinger. This was brought home to me when I read about the sword Durandal (aka Durandel, Durindana) that Roland carries in The Song of Roland.

Very few of my stories actually have a genesis from my dreams, but this story is one of them. As a child, I’ve dreamed of the “Dark Tower” no less than 3 times. I can remember each dream as vividly as if they were from memory of events that actually happened even though they really didn’t. The clearest dream is from a school visit to Red Clay State Park. In the real trip, we traveled the park counterclockwise, from the main center, crossing a small stream, then seeing a remaining Native American meeting lodge, and finally back to the main complex. In the dream, we went clockwise and we started at the lodge, crossed the stream, and then where the right turn should be, there was a pass to the left, I took it and I would up in a darkened copse and there was the “Tower.”

Finally, as luck would have it, as a child, I happened upon the Dark Tower game in a toy store (the precursor to ToysRUs in the 80’s) and persuaded my parents to buy it for me for Christmas. It was, of course, the Dark Tower game. I learned the rules and learned how to beat the game on even its highest, most challenging session ).  I even still to this day have the Tower and the Game Board (although I’ve misplaced the pieces and instructions) for this game!

So, in a weird way, the Dark Tower has been something that has been apart of my life from my earliest memories, through my childhood, into college, and now again as I a writer. It is only fitting that I should now write a story about the Dark Tower and one man’s quest to find it—even as I’m questing to find my own mythical Tower: success as a writer.

Nightmares

Nightmares.  Man, I hate them!  Short, ugly, angry outbursts of mental energy that send me scurrying from the dreamworld and back into the waking world and robbing me of much needed sleep.

Like most people, I tend to forget my nightmares fairly quickly–they seem to fade within minutes after waking.   And after quickly getting up and walking around (if nothing else but to remind myself of what is real and solid vs what is nightmare and fictional), I can usually go right back to sleep with no further problems.

But, I’m NOT like most people.  I’m a writer which means that in some cases, I actually remember my nightmares, and take the extra step of writing them down.  Some nightmares, like the one I had tonight, had to be written down immediately so as not to lose all the details.  Others, like the ones that formed the story I’m currently working on (Project Roland), are ones that I’ve had before and are now embedded into my long term memory/sub-conscience so deeply that I can tell you the entire nightmare from start to finish.

Tonight’s nightmare was a sequel to a previous nightmare.  The first time I dreamed this world, it faded.  I knew I’d missed something when I woke up, but after a vague sense of disquiet, I went about the day.  Tonight’s nightmare continued the story of made up characters in my mind in the same world as before.  Don’t ask me how I know that, I just do.

My main reason to write this blog post is this: the nightmare, though frightening, created its own internally consistent world and rules that the world follows.  In other words, I have a completely built world in my head (& jotted down on paper) of a fantastical dystopian post apocalyptic world that I can now hang characters and plot around to create an interesting story.  So now my “world building” is done–just need to find some strong characters to populate the world (jotting down the notes suggested a possible storyline & taking a quick shower helped to formalize an inciting incident inside my mind).  I’m calling this story Project Whisper for now.

So, as a writer I know that I should love nightmares.  They give me worlds and story ideas that I would have never been smart enough or bold enough to explore on my own.

But, truth be told, I still hate them!

Errata

Sorry this blog post is late . . . IIterally just got Wi-Fi back about 50 minutes ago.  It has been out since Friday night.  Eventually I will get this problem sorted, but it is very annoying to say the least.  

BOOKS

Currently, working my way through 2 books: Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon (rereading) and Teen Titans: It’s Our Right to Fight (Graphic Novel).  I love the idea of a young girl as a space captain which is why I love this series by Elizabeeth Moon so much!  Later books go off the rails for me (they take the character too far from the roots by making her too much like Honor Harrington rather than fufilling the promise of interstellar trade/commerce with combat intermixed with shipping schedules.).  The Teen Titans have always been a “guilty pleasure” for me.  One of my first comic books was a Teen Titans title (the one where Starfire fights her sister–it also has the origin of X’Hale (?)).  The storyline is from the mid-eighties, but it was intense.  Another Teen Titans comic that I bought at the time was when Dick Grayson abandoned his Robin identity for Nightwing.  I remember not being impressed by the suit, but the late 90s/early 2000s revision made him relevant.

WRITING

I am approximately 1.5 sections (of 5 total sections) through Project Roland.  I missed writing on Tuesday, so I’m approximately a section behind.  I have a May 31 deadline, so I may need to step up the speed (as much as I can).  I have decided to work around my network issues by writing/working Project Roland when I have Wi-Fi and working on (paper & pencil) rough drafts/notes for other stories.  I worked on 2 ideas today while my network was out: Project Templar and Project Djinn.  Hopefully, these 2 projects will turn into short stories over the summer.  

MOVIES

Just rented White House Down last night and watched it via Amazon streaming.  I have to say that I wasn’t impressed.  I would give it 3 stars.  It is very derivative and the narrative seems to try for over-the-top spectacle at the expense of the narrative/characters.  It takes its cue from Die Hard, but I referenced scenes from The Matrix and an odd tone shift as we got a scene from National Treasure.  The other movie that dealt with The White House that summer was a better movie (Olympus Has Fallen).  It wasn’t great, but I didn’t have to work as hard to stay invested in it as I did with White House Down.  

I plan to see the new Avengers movie next week.  Internet willing, I’ll post (spoiler-free) impressions on the next blog entry.

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I think I’ll end this post here–talk to you all next week!