What Writers IM About

[jpskewedthrone]

Here is a conversation between me and pbray tonight (with some slight editing to preserve dignity and to keep all of the secret writer's code . . . well, secret).

pbray [9:59 P.M.]: tasty brain snacks?
jpsorrow [10:00 P.M.]: Bah. Not for the dieting Josh. Although I did just finish watching "I Am Legend". George is off for a meeting.
jpsorrow [10:00 P.M.]: Well, he just returned.
pbray [10:00 P.M.]: ah. i haven't seen that movie yet.
pbray [10:00 P.M.]: well now you have a brain.... go SNACK!
jpsorrow [10:00 P.M.]: It's an OK movie. Not what I was expecting.
pbray [10:01 P.M.]: i'm brain fried.
jpsorrow [10:01 P.M.]: I think there's an alternative ending, which would be interesting, because it ended like it should have.
pbray [10:01 P.M.]: well i might see it, so don't tell mehow it ends
jpsorrow [10:02 P.M.]: I'm brain fried as well. Tired from the con weekend. I shouldn't have stayed up so late on Saturday.
pbray [10:02 P.M.]: un-supervised joshua
jpsorrow [10:02 P.M.]: How was your weekend? Get everything for the bike trip figured out?
jpsorrow [10:02 P.M.]: Yes. Sam wasn't all that good as a supervisor. *grin*
pbray [10:02 P.M.]: :-D
pbray [10:03 P.M.]: weekend was great, bike trip narrowed down to two choices (idaho or south dakota) and then i was slammed at work.
pbray [10:03 P.M.]: got work stuff accomplished by 6 today, but it left me with no brain cells
jpsorrow [10:06 P.M.]: We should have gone to dinner or something. I didn't remember that George had this meeting until he reminded me today.
pbray [10:07 P.M.]: huh i was thinking i could use dinner out tonight but instead came home and ate leftovers...
jpsorrow [10:07 P.M.]: I had leftovers as well. And Triscuits. With hummus.
jpsorrow [10:08 P.M.]: I invited Amy to Friday's soiree, and possible movies this weekend.
pbray [10:08 P.M.]: hmmmm
jpsorrow [10:08 P.M.]: Sam did make certain I'd eaten something on Saturday.
pbray [10:09 P.M.]: good sam!
jpsorrow [10:10 P.M.]: So, how shall I season the fried brains? Salt and pepper? Some lemon zest?
pbray [10:10 P.M.]: balsamic vinegar
jpsorrow [10:10 P.M.]: Mmmm . . . perhaps some Italian dressing.
jpsorrow [10:11 P.M.]: Of course that should have been added before it was fried.
pbray [10:12 P.M.]: true. if they're already fried, you're best off with cheese or a dipping sauce
jpsorrow [10:14 P.M.]: I've heard Hollandaise is good with brains.
pbray [10:15 P.M.]: poached brains, yes. with fried brains i tend to go for a marinara sauce, like zucchini sticks
pbray [10:16 P.M.]: :-P
pbray [10:19 P.M.]: why am i now hungry for imaginary brains? i blame you
jpsorrow [10:20 P.M.]: I'm always at fault. Because I am EEEEEEEvil.
pbray [10:20 P.M.]: eeevilllllllll.
jpsorrow [10:22 P.M.]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wio728lLOh0
pbray [10:24 P.M.]: okay, that's raelly freaky and somewhat painful on the ears
jpsorrow [10:26 P.M.]: One of my students told me to check it out. It's pretty cool. But then, I'm a mathematician.
jpsorrow [10:26 P.M.]: But yes, I turned the sound off eventually.
pbray [10:26 P.M.]: we could hook it up to jennifer_dunne...
jpsorrow [10:27 P.M.]: It would create the image of a porpoise.
jpsorrow [10:27 P.M.]: Or an Escher painting.
pbray [10:27 P.M.]: or an escher painting of a porpoise .. all flippers interconnected
jpsorrow [10:29 P.M.]: Many porpi all entangled together in some kind of tesselation.
pbray [10:29 P.M.]: kinky!
jpsorrow [10:30 P.M.]: I'm going to blog this conversation. *grin*
pbray [10:30 P.M.]: hee!

Comments

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I deny everything. That was merely my auto response out of office Robot--it must have been set to "brains" as today's theme.

[krteilman.livejournal.com]

you are both dorks.......






but in a good way!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It's good to have friends where "tasty brain snacks" is an appropriate substitute for "Hi" or "How are you?" or "Hey, what's up?" or any of the other greetings used by mundanes.

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

That sound thing is amazing.

I liked 'I Am Legend' but I only saw it the one time, which with me, says something. I think its strength was his acting, imho.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

The movie was definitely carried by Will Smith, but even then I think it needed some editing and perhaps a little more in the way of plot. I wanted them to develop more about the fact that the "zombies" seemed to be evolving in some sense.

[elven-wolf.livejournal.com]

They did seem to be evolving and there was a lot of subtext there that could've been developed more, though that may have been deliberate, leaving it as it was. Who knows? I enjoyed it.

[music-lover3.livejournal.com]

LOL! You guys are awesome. :)

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

Oh, please please please read the original short story I Am Legend. Granted, it's a bit dated, and they did what they could to update it and make it more acessible to a viewing audience as opposed to a reading audience, but I'm pretty sure the screenwriters stopped reading the book about 3/4ths of the way through. Completely different story. The Omega Man with Charleton Heston was a bit more true to the book but not by much. The graphic novel is more faithful but still changes more than a bit. The message of the movie is entirely different from the original message of the book.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I am interested in reading the original now. Is it a short story? I thought they released it in book format, so maybe it's a novella. Either that or they released the movie version in book format. I'll make certain I get the original when I buy it.

[sylverwolfe.livejournal.com]

The book got re-released with the movie tie-in cover, but it's the same content. It's an anthology of Matheson's short stories, of which I Am Legend is the first in the book. 180-some pages in the mass market edition if I recall correctly. The other stories are very good as well, but none are quite as viscerally jarring or as thought-provoking as I Am Legend. The trick is to remember it was written in the 1950's as speculation on where the world might be in the 1970's. So much of the best speculative fiction is a trifle dated like that. 1984 for example, and a ton of Asimov's work.
Ahem. Sorry.
/soapbox podium

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised at both of you. The only way to eat brains is drenched in peanut sauce. with rice.

[ceibhfhionn22.livejournal.com]

Goodness gracious people. Ha ha! Brains. Hmm. You gotta do it like Hannibal Lecter. Can't explain it, just watch Hannibal toward the end. He's got wine and a frying pan thingy and fresh brain... Okay, don't ask I watched the movie, read the book and found it morbidly fascinating because I can't figure out how Thomas Harris could think of something like that. However there are weird Wisconsinites like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein. Creepy. *g*

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I saw that movie and remember that scene.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Who's a cannibal here? We're talkin' all zombies, all the time!

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

I would NOT produce a porpoise image. All those images were radially symmetrical. Have you ever seen a radially symmetric porpoise?!?!

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

It depends on the purpose of the porpoise.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

The symmetry is why I introduced the Escher idea with the porpoises. Escher could probably pull off radially symmetric porpoises.