Some­times hav­ing a broad gen­eral knowl­edge of fan­tasy lit­er­a­ture can lead to a story you don’t know being given away far in advance. For exam­ple, there’s a scene in episode three of Game of Thrones where one of the char­ac­ters talks about the cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance of drag­ons and how his ances­tors came to power rid­ing on their backs. Right there I can tell where a major part of the story is going, because one of the best known char­ac­ters in fan­tasy is Daen­erys Tar­garyen, Mother of Drag­ons.

I finally got around to watch­ing the begin­ning of Game of Thrones. I’ve never read the books it’s based on, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that some of the char­ac­ters were sup­posed to be much younger than they are in the series.

I just saw a trailer for a sci­ence fic­tion movie that didn’t look very good which con­tained a quote: “The Woody Allen of sci­ence fiction.”

That would prob­a­bly make for a bet­ter adver­tise­ment if I actu­ally liked the Woody Allen of Woody Allen.

Unarmed offi­cer: “I’ve got a good mind to try to take you all back by force.“
Sergeant with rifle: “Good luck with that.”

Star­gate Universe

If at first you don’t suc­ceed sky­div­ing def­i­nitely is not for you!

Sign in down­town Austin

I keep hear­ing the Austin is located in the “Texas Hill Coun­try.” It is slightly hilly, but less so than the “Los Ange­les Basin.” I sup­pose it’s a dif­fer­ence in per­cep­tion between a state that’s mostly flat and a state that’s full of moun­tains that reach more than two miles above sea level.

I’ve noticed a few cul­tural dif­fer­ence between LA and Austin that weren’t really appar­ent before I moved. Some of the inter­est­ing ones:

1. Dogs in Austin are mostly dog-size. The lit­tle hybrid rat/dog things that are ubiq­ui­tous in LA exist here, but are a small minority.
2. White peo­ple work min­i­mum wage jobs in Austin. I don’t recall ever see­ing that in LA.
3. In Austin a total stranger say­ing “hello” on the street is just being polite. In LA, he’s about to beg for change.
4. Anorexia is rare in Austin, and com­mon in LA.

A huge flock of these small black birds like to gather on the power lines at Bar­ton Springs and First Street around sun­set. It’s a bit creepy.

Occa­sion­ally I run across peo­ple (gen­er­ally of the obnox­iously smug and self-righteous vari­ety) who would go on about how inde­pen­dent cof­fee shops are so much bet­ter than large chains like Star­bucks. I’ve never really noticed any dif­fer­ence before, but today I’m in an inde­pen­dent cof­fee shop near a hotel wait­ing for my room to be ready and over­heard the fol­low­ing conversation:

Cus­tomer: I think somebody’s dead in the restroom.
Other Cus­tomer: Don’t say that.
Employee: Okay.

I can safely say I’ve never heard any­thing like that in a large chain cof­fee shop.

Since I’ll be in Austin all week, I took the pre­cau­tion of reserv­ing a hotel room with a nice view.