2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 2

As we wandered the grounds the sound of singing could be heard and very good singing at that. The melodious sounds drifted out of The Pub, which oddly enough, is a pub.

With most of the group wanting to keep pressing on, we didn’t get a chance to tarry there and these hurried snapshots cannot convey how good the group was. Alas, my Canon Digital Rebel does not take video at all.

Child torture device or good wholesome fun? You decide.

Whilst wandering about and looking like tourists, we were assailed called out to by gypsies seeking an audience. No, they were not seeking to curry favor, they were after warm bodies to watch their act, the Fandazzi Fire Circus. As you can see, they were quite poor and had resorted to eating fire for sustenance.

The show started with flaming whip cracking, which was sadly not done to Devo.

Flaming fan dancers were next up. The lass on the right took a tumble as soon as she came out. She hit the stage hard and it clearly was not part of the act. But she recovered to perform as pictured.

Next up was an old soft shoe dance routine – with flames.

Now I’d always heard bad things about gypsy hygiene, but marked that off to being prejudiced. However, it is obvious they have bad breath as the photo illustrates. At least they aren’t unicorns.

I wish I’d used the bigger zoom lens. Too many shots of people’s heads. Still, I was pleased with catching the flames clearly.

 

Chain twirling followed. The rest of the performance was lackluster with many a dropped flaming baton. It appears that they all had too much of a Friday night.

After the performance ended, we decided to check out the Enchanted Forest. To enter you pass by what used to be a hobbit hole. Sadly, no hobbits are to found in it like ten years ago. The trail took us past many a scaled down fairy house and informative signs about said residences.

After descending down the trail, a sudden vista comes into view. It is quite lovely emerging from the dark forest to behold this.

The trail was a bit crowded and there was a sign promising a Secret Garden. Near the end of the walk we found it and singing going on.

It was a nice performance and well deserving of a tip.

Opposite of the bards was a small waterfall and pond perfectly in scale for fairies.

Upon exiting, this sign is encountered. Good to know everything is in order.

To be continued…

Part 1 can be found here.

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 1

Labor Day weekend marks the end of summer and it seems like I missed the whole season. But at least I got to the local renaissance festival this year. A group of my younger friends and I did a road trip up to Shakopee with me toting my big camera this time. My quest for the elusive killer photograph continues…

So on to the pictures!

Note: No unicorns were killed in the production of these posts.

Though we got there at a relatively early time, the parking lot/field was already filling up. In the distance you can see towers and a pirate ship beckoning.

This was the row we were in. It foretold encounters with unicorns – the other other white meat. Yes, I don’t like unicorns. Unless served with a good BBQ sauce, that is.

Even before getting through the gates, performers are there to heckle you. They also heckle you when you leave. Ah, abuse.

Once through the gates, it takes awhile for the crowd to break up and head their separate ways. This weekend the promise of a longbow competition had us interested and this was the first sign showing the way.

Oh great, a unicorn already. The blond giving me the evil eye obviously doesn’t understand I’m documenting the pernicious and evil influence of the mono-horned creatures upon our society. Sorry, this photo was not about you.

The forecast warned of rain and possible thunderstorms. We drove through both coming up but blue sky appeared. A promising start to a banner day.

This qualifies as a good sign, doesn’t it?

You see all kinds of cosplay at renaissance festivals. This was one of the more elaborate attempts. Unfortunately the still can’t convey the awkward walk those goat leg stilts caused. I think she was going for a D&D tiefling or something like it from a video game.

We passed by a glass blowing demonstration and I got a couple of snaps of the bottle being crafted being reheated in the furnace. There wasn’t time to linger since the longbow competition awaited, wherever it was.

Funny, this looked more like food shops to me. I was soon rerouted to the entrance to the shooting grounds I’d walked past. I have to say the gator and shrimp were tempting, but I was determined to have a scotch egg again – I keep failing to get that delicious item every trip.

The longbow competition was not as impressive as hoped. It was underway when we arrived and this was the only photo I could salvage from trying to photograph through the crowd. Check out the traditional Japanese archer and his huge bow.

At this point, I wondered if I should have put the big 55-200mm zoom lens on the Canon Digital Rebel. Not having had a lot of chances to use it, I was uncertain if it would work out better than the 18-55mm in crowds.

To be continued…

Huffing and Puffing and Blowing…

…but the house is still standing. Though I did get to witness rain being blown through the air conditioner.

At 7 AM we had another round of severe wind from storms this morning and branches are down all over the property again. One small tree/bush is broken at the base in the small windbreak – which has had a literal meaning this year.

Not worth it to take pictures this time and I see that damage is far worse elsewhere again. One fascinating thing is how the grass was blown flat in the somewhat overgrown West yard which took the brunt of the storm. That is a new one for me.

I should go out and see what the damage is on Highway 16 locally. We’ll see if time and schedule permits – not to mention if weather allows. More storms are in the forecast for today and tomorrow.

My being a human barometer meant that I did not get much sleep last night due to pain, but sadly I lacked the wisdom to realize what it meant. I should have checked the weather instead of whining to myself!

It is time to think of planting some fast growing trees farther out to create a better wind break. This mini-break isn’t going to hold up much longer.

Hopefully the weather will be nicer up North at the Renaissance Festival tomorrow.

Thought for the Day

Nico Machiavelli discussing the cautious Roman general Fabius Maximus methods versus Scipio’s desire to take the fight back to Africa during the war with Hannibal and the invading Carthaginians:

…if it had been left to him, Hannibal would still be in Italy, for he did not see that times had changed, and that new methods of warfare were called for. So that, if Fabius had been king of Rome, he might easily have lost this war, since he was incapable of altering his methods according as circumstances changed. Since, however, he was born in a republic where there were diverse citizens with diverse dispositions, it came about that, just as it had a Fabius, who was the best man to keep the war going when circumstances required this, so later it has a Scipio at a time suited to its victorious consummation.

For this reason a republic has a fuller life and enjoys good fortune for a longer time than a principality, since it better able to adapt itself to diverse circumstances owing to the diversity found among its citizens than a prince can do. For a man who is accustomed to act in one particular way, never changes, as we have said. Hence, when times change and no longer suit his ways, he is inevitably ruined.

-- from The Discourses, “Adaptation to the Times”

Italics are mine.

Gratitude for Having an Attention Span

An odd thing struck me last night. I am very grateful to have an attention span that allows me to appreciate old and slower moving entertainment, whether it be movies, radio, or television. It has allowed me to enjoy things that others apparently are unable to these days.

People have been mocking the ever decreasing attention span of the modern American ever since MTV became popular in the early 1980’s. That which was flippant in many cases (at least I was) has turned out to be true as communications between humans has devolved considerably. We have gone from physically getting together to speaking on the telephone to email to texting on mobile to Facebook and finally to Twitter. Every stage has lowered both the quantity and quality of ideas communicated.

Even how we get our news has been affected. Going from five minute sound bites to five second texts is not a sign of great intelligence. It may be hip, but the price paid for it becoming stupider or at least less mentally disciplined.

Lately I have been watching more movies from yesteryear and appreciating the fact that even the action films didn’t have explosions going on every other minute. So when a friend mentioned that he was amazed how slow and boring the pacing of the original Doctor Who stories were, I was a bit taken aback. It also made me flashback to another friend who had the same problem with Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

These are not dumb people by any measure of IQ, by the way. Upper one percent to be precise if you care about such measurements.

Perhaps it is because I am older or that I grew up in a household that only had broadcast television and did not go to movies in the theater. Maybe it is because I have worked on personal patience since my teens. It could be that I am just different that way.

I remember watching 2001: A Space Odyssey as a very little kid and understanding it. It was not the least bit boring, to the contrary it was fascinating. Then there were all the old black and white movies which were still a staple of filling in programming blocks in the 1970’s. The comedies were masterpieces of timing and the art of the slow burn was often on display.

Whatever the reasons, I find myself becoming more of an iconoclast sniping away at modern culture at nearly every turn. Entertainment especially is irking to me and the decline in sales seems to support my hypothesis that quality has gone down hill drastically. In the end, feeding short attentions spans may be the dominant factor in that decline. It certainly cannot be helping.

You know, it is a good thing I have a long attention span. When you have a chronic illness, you end up with too much time to kill and can’t be productive. Perhaps it is all a defense mechanism to keep from going crazy.

Whatever the cause, I am very grateful for it.

P.S. I am still in shock anybody can find the original appearance by the Daleks boring. Scandalized, in fact.

Even Science Is Primarily Political

One of the things that I have come to a reluctant conclusion on is the fact that hard science is not really hard at all. It is subject to the same vagaries that all things human are, which is a fancy way of saying politics. Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is just the latest of many unsubstantiated theories touted as fact for political gain. This is nothing new with recent examples including ice age hysteria in the 1970’s and about anything to do with the Leakey’s in Africa.

For me, learning the reality of this has gored some of my sacred oxen held from childhood. I was always ready to believe my teachers and Walter Cronkite (aka Voice of God to generations) when they breathlessly talked about the latest discovery. Somewhere in my late teens I began to look harder at things as my love of things scientific blossomed further. I admit a twinge of desire that I had not done so, for ignorance truly is bliss.

So when my father forwarded the link to a story on child psychologist Arnold Gessell, I recognized the timeless aspect of politically motivated but accepted theories that had been flushed down the toilet once exposed to the sunlight of reality.  Eugenics is one of the nastier branches of science that has long since been discredited, but one hundred years ago it was at the cutting edge of left wing politics. Of course it took decades for it to fall out of favor, yet it spawned an organization, Planned Parenthood, which is still very active today. This quote sums up the problem:

How, Harris wondered, did someone such as Gesell become so enamored of eugenics that he would actually manipulate research? Harris said it is important to place Gesell in the context of the times. Social scientists were as much crusaders for the improvement of the human lot as they were researchers.

Things are no different today.

This behavior is not uncommon, despite what researchers would have you believe. There is another influence that does damage and that is simple greed. Far too much money flows into science supporting causes, though I admit quite a bit of data doctoring is also to keep one’s position in a “publish or perish” academic climate.

Beware do-gooders in science is what I say since it usually ends up skewing all the results . Science needs to be cold and ruthless. More Spock’s and fewer Dr. McCoy’s are needed. It may not be exciting to the masses, but I prefer accuracy over popularity. I imagine the residents of Alma back in 1913 would agree.

To wit, science should no longer be put upon a pedestal. Perhaps it never should have been in the first place. I can only hope time filters out all the corrupted data rather than accumulating it or we are in real trouble.

Health 8-28-2011

Not a good day at all, stuffed up and pain index is steady 5 peaking to 7. Very poor sleep due to the latter. Symptoms started yesterday morning.

Had a choice of not going out last night but though I was feeling better by the evening. May not have been a wise decision in retrospect.

Didn’t go to church and would have been foolish if I did. Very bleary on top of it all – crossword puzzle took nearly half an hour. Not even going to bother with Audiosurf since I’m getting a headache. Even though classical music is all I use for it on Sabbath days,  sound and flashing lights are the last thing I want to endure right now.

UPDATED 8-29-2011

Glad it was a transitory cold, I’m doing much better today as both the crossword puzzle and Audiosurf showed. Time to get some long postponed groceries!

Bleach Ep. 7: Greetings from a Stuffed Lion

Ichigo continues to battle the mod soul in his real body, a stuffed animal toy joins the cast, and a tragedy from the past starts to be revealed. The themes of free will, the right to live, and rain are the high points of this increasingly moody episode.

Instead of directly continuing from the cliffhanger of the previous episode, we are presented with another look at the denizens of the black market shop, The Urahara Store. Kisuke Urahara, the shady owner and wearer of hat and clogs, comforts a distraught Ururu over her mistake that caused the mod soul to be sold. Maybe his isn’t such a bad guy after all. Preparations are made to retrieve the “defective merchandise” and it looks like they are well armed.

Back at the fight, Ichigo saves the three kids from the wrath of his stolen body, only for the artificial soul to make his escape when an emergency call comes in. Duty comes before retrieving one’s body, apparently.

While Ichigo and Rukia search for the monster, it turns out the mod soul can sense it – and sense that it is endangering the kids he was about to beat up. A tortured decision leads him to return to protect the children, but he is clearly outclassed despite his incredible leg strength.

Fortunately for him, this is a heroic show about heroes, so the main hero comes in to save the day. Unfortunately for him, Ichigo is very angry about the damage his body has taken. When the Hollow decides to butt into the argument, it is the last mistake of his existence.

An interesting heart to heart conversation between a somewhat sympathetic Ichigo and the mod soul follows. The idea of everyone having a right to live is discussed and the idea of free will being important is touched upon as they watch a trail of ants marching. One thing the creator of Bleach, Kubo Tite, has going for him is the ability to create characters with fully formed personalities and that is on display here.

Alas, the interesting conversation ends when Urahara shows up to take the mod soul away to a mandatory death penalty. An intervention by Rukia leaves the now pill bound mod soul in the possession of Ichigo. For someone who insists on following the rules, she does a lot of rule breaking. She tries to be the Sheriff of Nottingham but keeps behaving like Robin Hood instead.

Still angry about the damage to his body, Ichigo wants to castigate the mod soul further but can’t since he’s just a pill again. This less than noble motivation leads to a mad scientist experiment using a thrown away stuffed lion. To their surprise, Rukia and Ichigo witness the toy animal come to life. For the mod soul, it is more like sheer horror. After all, how will he get the girls when he is made of fabric and stuffing?

So now the stuffed lion in the opening credits makes sense (relatively speaking) and we have a new cast member. Named Kon to his great annoyance, the mod soul refuses to give up his perverted tendencies despite his utter impotence and this becomes a running gag in the series. But at least he gets to host the joke sequences after the end credits to bolster his oversized ego.

Needed downtime from all the action begins, but why is Ichigo staring at his watch? Tatsuki knows and reveals the secret to Orihime, but not before we get another example of how the redhead’s mind works. That, uh… unique piece of art she drew of how she sees her future self makes me think she is in need of counseling, ASAP. Mecha-Orihime?! Disturbing but funny.

Another face from the opening credits makes his appearance and he seems to be watching Ichigo and Orihime closely. The bespectacled boy also likes to do needlepoint. Sinister, don’t you think? The needlepoint, I mean.

Watching Isshin conduct the Kurosaki family meeting is inspiring. The way he suckers Karin in with a political move is hilarious and reminds me of how real politics works, sadly. But it is so effective.

Bleach occasionally reaches emotional levels that belie its aimed at demographic of young teens and preteens. As Ichigo’s secret is revealed, the theme of falling rain is used in a very poetic series of scenes that make for a very moody moment in the series. Sweet concern from Orihime about the object of her crush leads to one of the more memorable passages in Bleach:

If I were the rain… could I ever merge with somebody’s heart, like the way rain merges Sky and Earth, never meant to connect…

But things are afoot in Soul Society too, which looks a great deal like ancient Japan in our first glimpse of the place.

Thoughts

For an action show, Bleach doesn’t shy away from drama or slower moments of introspection. The recipe of action, manic comedy, and serious emotion is very present in the seventh episode. This is also the beginning of rain being associated with Ichigo’s heart and is a theme throughout the rest of the series.

Memories Are Made of These

Wednesday nights have become a family history night for my father and me. We’ve begun work on correcting and expanding out the family tree that I have in Personal Ancestry File (PAF) but have to halt that for a bit due to technical issues. However, there are piles of photographs from the 1990’s that have never been put in albums that have to be sorted.

Complicating things is how fuzzy memories get after more than a decade after events. Just figuring out which year has become a painful exercise in guesswork. Seeing all the departed people and cats does not help things one bit. Too bad I did not do this earlier, but the 90’s were not a good time for me health wise.

Of course, no time has been. But I hadn’t learned all the different ways to micromanage energy and time yet, plus all the other ways to cope with a chronic illness. 

Still, it would have been better if the photos had been labeled at the time so there were dates on them. One advantage of the digital camera era is timestamps recorded in the picture files. That’s if you got the camera set up right in the first place.

So after we finally get the 1990’s sorted out, labeled, and placed in albums our next task will be to choose which digital pictures to print out from the 2000’s. Which leads to another issue – weeding out all those pictures. Digital photography is wonderful but it leads to taking exponentially more photos!

Meanwhile, I see a hurricane named Irene is headed for the East coast of the United States. Looks like it could be a real menace.  Interesting how it comes on the heels of an earthquake in the region.

Here I have a less catastrophic problem to deal with. My Radeon 4850 video card decided to develop problems with overheating despite the fan and heatsink working correctly. Looks like the silicon has developed some faults since it idles at 64 C and hits 90-98 C while gaming. Black screen failures have come with that, so it is time for a new video card. Good thing I keep my older cards around. With the old Radeon 3870 in the system at least I can keep going until next month and a new card.

Bleach Episode 6: Fight to the Death! Ichigo vs. Ichigo

Comedy ensues when Ichigo is introduced to a strange item from Soul Society and consequently finds his reputation at school endangered because of it. There is no greater conflict than a man at war with himself. Or something like that…

A disquieting tone is set in the beginning with Rukia having problems with her artificial body, or gigai. That quickly evaporates as we have yet another scene of domestic bliss violence at the Kurosaki home.  Rukia isn’t there and that has Ichigo concerned while acting strangely to cover up she lives in his closet. This in turn causes Suzu and Karin to worry over the change of behavior in their older brother and their father starts rhapsodizing on adolescence being the cause. Fortunately for all of us, the afore mentioned violence cuts him short.

Nice to see that the family isn’t written as being oblivious to that something is going on with Ichigo. That’s a trope I despise.

Meanwhile, Rukia shows up at a run down shop where two kids are fighting with each other while doing chores. A glimpse of her big sister tendencies in reaction to bullying by the boy is something that won’t be touched on again for a long time. But the biggest thing to note here is the introduction of the shady owner of the shop. Lazy and unkempt, he appears wearing a hat and traditional wooden shoes.

Rukia knows him and is there to pick up fuel for her gigai.  Their conversation hints at much bigger problems for the wounded Soul Reaper.  A black market shop for items from Soul Society is an intriguing concept and makes Soul Society all the more mysterious. The visit concludes when a special item is retrieved by the bullied little girl for Rukia.

All of this is setup for Rukia introducing Ichigo to “soul candy” at the high school later on. Sounds like drugs, doesn’t it?

So what is soul candy? It is an artificial soul to put in an empty gigai when a Soul Reaper departs it to fight Hollows. This way Ichigo’s body will be occupied and cover for him while he is outside of it. The fact that it is a pill that comes in a disturbingly cutesy PEZ dispenser should be a warning that things won’t work out well.

It seems Rukia has a soft spot for all things cute bunny and the duck is not to her satisfaction, but hey it is black market goods after all. A Hollow attack summons the duo to another fight, leaving the substitute in Ichigo’s body to cover for him. Yeah, that look on his face doesn’t bode well.

Instead of keeping Ichigo out of trouble, the artificial soul starts getting into mischief of all kinds. But it is his discovery of pretty girls, especially busty ones, that causes the biggest trouble. He dares to go where the hero refuses to and macks on Orihime and Tatsuki to the horror of the girls in Ichigo’s class. Pure manic comedy follows.

And so we finally get to the events of the title for the episode. It is an amusing fight because we get to see it from the class’ point of view. All they see is Ichigo’s body kicking empty air and it is played to great effect. But there is a moment at the end of the skirmish that turned it slightly serious as the fear on the kids faces showed when an invisible Ichigo is kicked through the desks to the wall.

A stunned Rukia figures out what is going on and reveals a scandal from Soul Society’s research into creating artificial warriors called “mod souls.” Somehow, one had survived being destroyed and now has control of Ichigo’s body. But more worrying for Ichigo is how his carefully cultivated image has been destroyed. I’m with Rukia in how she reacts to that particular tidbit.

The mod soul is on the loose, happy to be free, and has very, very dangerous anger issues.

Thoughts

Episode 6 of Bleach has a lot going on, but it all feels like setup for more to come. From the introduction of the strange shop owner and his employees to Orihime somehow knowing it wasn’t Ichigo who kissed her, hints about the future storylines are being dropped all over the place. Normally that clutters up a television series episode, but here it works because most of it is played for laughs.

Again I have issues with the English dub. The shop keeper comes off as playful but sinister in the original Japanese performance, but is played as a surfer dude in the dub. It just doesn’t convey the character the same way at all.

Health 8-24-2011

Note: Written under duress from myself to be conscientious about logging problems.

Bad night again, this time from having my left eye begin to burn and weep uncontrollably. Looks like pink eye from the light discharge this morning. So much for going out to get a haircut and drop by some of my home teachees.

Also sniffling quite a bit, so I’m leaking all over.

Sleeping in to recover the lost time from last night failed. Massive muscle cramps in the left calf and a lesser one in the right were the culprits. I’m still limping hours later from it. When I was younger I’d occasionally have bouts of this but not this severe.

The irony is I ate two large bananas yesterday including one a couple of hours before going to bed.

Also, in case I forgot to document it, I’ve been feeling somewhat better since discontinuing taking vitamin D 1000 units. Not only did it not help, I suspect it made me worse.

My body has no respect for current opinion, I’m afraid.

Crossword puzzle went okay, Audiosurf not so much. I blame Rush for being tricksy in their song compositions. Yeah… that was it…

An Interesting Start to a Day

Despite a bad night with intermittent sleep, I had to get up early to get out the door in a somewhat awake condition. Why?  My state senator, Jeremy Miller, was having a coffee and conversation meeting in Caledonia at 7:30 AM. Forget campaign rallies and debates, these kinds of interactions with the public are the best to attend.

It was a low turnout compared to last year, but that was a campaign year and Jeremy wasn’t in office yet. As Sen. Miller quipped, it is probably a good sign. When people are mad at you, they show up in numbers. Fortunately for those of us in Senate District 31, he’s been doing a great job in office.

One of the local township officers was there and so the conversation was dominated by tax and aid issues. These are more complex than most people realize and affect us a great deal in the area. The delicate balance of state, county, township, and municipal budgets is always a thorny issue with things being made more difficult by the ongoing financial problems of the time.

While it might be boring to some, I enjoy having a glimpse of the nuts and bolts of how government funding and expenditures work. Every time I hear Kermit talk about the local infrastructure funding issues, I learn something new and he gave Jeremy plenty to think about too.

Our rookie senator continues to impress me with his command of the facts and willingness to truly listen. All politicians learn to at least pretend to listen, but Miller really does listen. How do I know that? Because I’ve heard issues raised at meetings like this and then heard well thought out positions on them later on from him – and now legislative action as well. Gotta love that.

There was a reporter from WXOW Channel 19 there and I hope I remember to check the news tonight to see if the story airs.

Health 8-22-2011

Not one of my better days. Been bedridden most of it. Got home last afternoon and didn’t feel great but muddled through. Today I slept in and had a hard time waking up. Crossword puzzle went fine, but Audiosurf was mediocre at best.

Took a nap, tried to get up and my legs were very rubbery. Dizziness and chest congestion again, ended up going back to bed. Typing this is far harder than it should be, so I probably have picked up a bug in my weekend travels.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.