However, the theme for this year’s party will be literary characters–that changes things a bit. I’m still not sure if I will go, but it is certainly fun to think of good literary Halloween characters and costumes.  Here are a few ideas I came up with, but I’m sure there are plenty of others I haven’t thought of.

R. M. Renfield: A bizarre asylum inmate in Bram Stoker’s Dracula who eats live creatures to obtain their life force for himself. He begins with eating flies, then feeds flies to spiders and eats the spiders, then feeds flies to spiders to birds in order to accumulate more life. He serves Dracula (who provides him with delectable critters) for a time before betraying him in a moment of conscience. Dracula, of course, kills him for his betrayal.

Costume: A straight jacket. Plastic spider or fly half protruding from mouth.

Edward Cullen: I hesitate to call Twilight “literary,” but few costumes could be more horrifying than this ultra-preppy squeaky clean vampire. Roll all the terrifyingly annoying qualities of teenage girl romance movie/book heros into one person and viola!

Costume: Sparkles. Lots of sparkles.

Bradley Headstone: The creepy tragic villain of Our Mutual Friend would make a great Halloween character. Driven insane by his love for Lizzy and lack of emotional control he turns into a homicidal nervous wreck, nearly killing Mr. Eugene Wrayburn, and eventually perpetuating the murder of Rogue Riderhood and his own suicide by drowning .

Costume: Victorian clothing, a broken oar, and a bloody handkerchief

The Crazy Lady who Burns things: There are many examples of crazy women in English literature (I can’t imagine why . . . ), and one particular favorite subcategory includes women who burn down ancestral homes around their own heads. So go ahead, take your pick! Whether you choose Rochester’s wife from Jane Eyre or the crazy lady from  Ivanhoe, you’ll be sure to light up the party!

Costume: Once fine garments reduced to rags. A torch.

Variation: Lord Denathor, the crazy old man who spent most of his time in a tower and tried to burn down his son and himself in it.

The Wall: Dress up as the character playing the wall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s version of  Pyramus and Thisbe. Proceed to stand between people trying to have conversations.

Costume: A box painted gray. With a chink in it.

Dorian Gray: The handsome young man sells his soul so he will never age. Instead, a portrait of him ages in his place, revealing the effects of Gray’s severely hedonistic lifestyle. He is immortal unless the picture is harmed.

Costume: Late Victorian style clothes. A printed picture of yourself photo-shopped almost beyond recognition.

Any Shakespearean villain: No explanations needed.

Paris: Reviled by Greeks and Trojans alike. Hire one of the male societies from BJU to lay siege to the Halloween party. Then find a girl and ask her to make out with you while your other friends fight and die to defend the party.

Costume: Greaves. No need for a spear or sword though.

Disclaimer: Don’t expect this one to turn out well.

The Potsmaster: A shadowy anti-postmaster from Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 who may or may not exist. Run your own underground postage system to undercut (or support) the government run postal service. Leave drawings of muted trumpets in random places like on the bread box, scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk, or with permanent black marker on your friends’ faces.

Costume: A large plastic garbage can with leg holes and the letters W.A.S.T.E. (We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire) spray painted on.

Medea: Perhaps the ultimate crazy chick in all of literature. She is a powerful sorceress who viciously killed her husband, the girl he wanted to marry (oh the foolhardiness of polygamous cultures), the girl’s father,  and all the children she had had with her husband before being whisked away in a golden chariot pulled by dragons.

Costume: Grecian robes. A knife. Some poison. Probably a pistol and ammo belt. Nunchucks. Two halberds. A mace. Fully loaded marshmallow gun.

First, let us examine the history of grits. The cereal was developed by Native Americans and adopted by European settlers. Eventually it became a staple food of the American South, especially in the Southeast from Virginia to Texas.

Now, I do not mean to imply anything about the people who currently consume grits nor do I mean to insult anyone’s heritage. However, facts are facts. Have you noticed something these two great grit-eating cultures have in common?

Well, the Native Americans were soundly trounced in a series of wars and oppressions and were crammed into reservations or forced to move ever farther west.

The southern American states, after forming the Confederated States of America, promptly found themselves on the losing end of the American Civil War. Oatmeal fueled northern armies under the command of men like Grant and Sherman cut through the South all the way to the coast.

You may think that the defeat of these grit consuming cultures is merely coincidence, but can it really be coincidental that every single one of the world’s grit dependent civilizations have been defeated? Look again at line demarcating grit popularity–every Confederate state falls within the line, and every one of the victorious Union state falls on the oatmeal side. The facts are simple. There is a 100% correlation between a culture’s grit consumption and subsequent military defeat.

The reasons for this are not readily apparent, but with some research one may uncover the underlying cause. Consider the words of Charleston’s News and Courier newspaper in 1952: “Given enough of [grits], the inhabitants of planet Earth would have nothing to fight about. A man full of [grits] is a man of peace.”* These words from grits supporters should sound like an alarm through the lairs and dens of evil overlords everwhere. Of course grit consumers suffer military defeat since their food takes away the inner fire and their fighting spirit. The same thing would happen to any evil overlord who does not heed this warning.

The evidence does not stop there! We have seen how grits contributes to demoralizing defeats; see now how oatmeal causes precisely the opposite affect.

In his dictionary of the English language, the great Samuel Johnson called oatmeal, “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

Although he intended to disparrage oatmeal as a food, he of course failed (as oatmeal is undisparrageable) and, in fact, greatly contributes to the theory of oatmealic superiority.

Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British Empire expanded to epic proportions, not due to the normally accepted causes, but due to two facts concerning oatmeal. First, the British horses referred to by Johnson became great weapons of the British military. One must only read Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” to see what heights of heroism and valor oatmeal enabled British horses and their riders to obtain.

The second event which enabled the expansion of the British empire was the cessation of the silly English habit of vainly trying to fight oatmeal fed Scottish humans. Men like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce who ensured that Scotland would be the only division of the United Kingdom not to join England via military defeat feasted upon oatmeal, and that is where they got their strength.

So once Britain stopped fighting against those buttressed by oatmeal consumption and started using oatmeal in their own war efforts, the Empire became nearly invincible. In the twentieth century, however, the declining use of the British oat devouring horse as a war weapon directly caused the decline of the British Empire. The link is undeniable. As tanks and infantry, neither of which being fueled by oatmeal, grew in importance, the British Empire faded. Further extenuating the decline of England was the continued edition of northern American states and their superior oatmeal preparation techniques (see bonus section at end of post).

Three conclusions then present themselves to budding evil overlords.

1. Oatmeal is clearly the superior choice for world domination. Its prowess is well documented, being rivaled only by certain types of rice as fuel for empires and dictatorships. Grits may be perfect for lovers of peace and harmony, but that is not us!
2. Stay away from grits. They will sapp your determination to conquer and your will to fight. You will find yourself carrying daisies rather than war hammers and wooing females rather than scheming nefariously (well, there may be some of that involved still, but it will be less violent. generally).
3. Give grits to everyone else.

Bonus Recipe

If this oatmeal variant does not make your mouth water and your heart beat valiantly, nothing will.

The oats are soaked overnight in cold water, salt and maple syrup. Early the next morning, before beginning farm chores the cook will add ground nutmeg, ground cinnamon and sometimes ground ginger. The pot is placed over heat and cooks for upwards of 90 minutes, being served after the chores with cream, milk, or butter.

Now there’s some fuel to keep you going as you study tomes of war wizardry in halls of ice, or battle undead hordes on tundras at the edge of the world!

* http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess113_1999-2000/bills/4806.htm

Without further ado:

10. Ratigan (The Great Mouse Detective)

Disney has had some pretty good bad guys including Gaston, various wicked stepmothers, Cruella Deville (though she was mostly scary to animal rights activists), and Scar, but Ratigan takes the cake as the smartest and scariest of them all. Suave (until the very end) and utterly callous towards the lifes of others, he feeds henchmen and enemies alike to his pet cat–who is very fat. The intellectual and physical match of  Basil of Baker Street, he finally meets a Gollum-like end, falling from the Big Ben clock tower after a very intense and scary fight scene.

Quote: “You fool! Isn’t it clear to you yet? The superior mind has triumphed! I’VE WON!!”

9. The Balrog (Lord of the Rings)

For a story where evil is everywhere, LoTR has very few personal bad guys. Most are vague shadowy terrors, and the Balrog isn’t really an exception to that, but I picked him because of his sheer flaming awesomeness. Balrogs were some of the most powerful evil still living in Middle Earth. Servants of Morgoth, very few ever succeeded in killing a Balrog, and even fewer killed a Balrog and survived. A Balrog would be at least as powerful as the ring wraiths. Probably only the witch-king would even come close (yet another reason the witch-king should not have been able to defeat Gandalf the White in the movies *). Not just anyone can kill a powerful wizard like the Balrog did.

Quote: umm . . . “Rawr”?

8. Agent Smith (The Matrix)

It’s hard to explain the exact nature of Agent Smith to someone who hasn’t seen the Matrix. It would require a lot of explaining because the movie’s concept is so weird. An agent of the machines whose job it is to ensure that humans remain trapped in the matrix, Agent Smith is one of those scary bad guys who you know will always manage to turn up at absolutely the worst time and ruin everything. He also takes part in some of the most revolutionary fight scenes in movie-making. Not bad for a pointy-eared elf (Elrond).

Quote: “”You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. That is the sound of your death.”

7. Khan Noonien Singh (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

Genetically engineered to be smarter and stronger than everyone else, Khan’s main weakness is his sense of pride  (a rather traditional weakness for bad guys). Like many other bad guys on this list, Khan places human life considerably lower on his list of priorities than whatever his goal happens to be. He’s very similar to Captain Nemo, but his hate and ambition have kept him from being the great man that he could have been.

Quote: “No. No, you can’t get away. From hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.” (quoting from Moby Dick)

6. Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine

My first cheat. But really, it is difficult to seperate these two. Darth Vader may have been the face and the muscle of the empire, but Palpatine was the greater evil and the impetus behind Vader. What makes them interesting is the tenuous control Palpatine exerts over Vader and their interactions with Luke Skywalker (not to mention the whole brutal world domination thing). Of course, in the great Star Wars climax, Darth Vader turns on the emperor to save his son, but for ninety-eight percent of the original trilogy, these two combine to form one of the baddest duos of bad guys around.

Quote (Vader): “Apology accepted, Captain Needa.” ( while using the force to choke him to death)

Quote (Palpatine): “And now, young Skywalker, you will die.”

5. Ben Wade and Charlie Prince (3:10 to Yuma)

These two make quite the contrast. Ben Wade is a Bible quoting, philosophizing, artist and killer, while his sidekick, Charlie Prince, is just a psychopathic gunslinger. Their relationship is similar to a father and his adoring loyal son (and it parallels and contrasts the relationship between the protagonist and his son). Like another evil duo on this list, one of them ends up turning on the other. Ben Wade’s character makes you think, and one big question is whether there’s any change in his character by the end of the movie. I say no, and that he and Charlie Prince are both as bad they come to the end.

Quote (Charlie Prince): “This town’s gonna burn!”

Quote (Ben Wade): Your conscience is sensitive, Dan. I don’t think it’s my favorite part of you.”

4. The Ghost and the Darkness (The Ghost and the Darkness)

This pair of almost supernaturally powerful lions terrorizes railroad workers in southern Africa. They’re not human, but they seem to display human levels of malice and cunning. They can’t be killed, trapped, or stopped. Every patch of rustling savanna grass and every shadow becomes terrifying in this movie. Not only are the lions terrifying, they are so beautiful and majestic they become thrilling to watch. The movie’s a bit bloody, but other than that, this is a great one to watch, and you’re never sure who’s going to end up winning.

Quote: umm . . . we’ll go with “Rawr” again.

3. Michael Corleone (The Godfather)

Michael Corleone starts as a very sympathetic character. He is a patriot, a WWII veteran, and someone who wants to get out of the family business to make an honest living.  Circumstances, however, inevitably pull him back into the mob, and he becomes a monster, ruining his own life and watching the lives of everyone he loves get ruined as well. You never stop feeling sorry for him, and in some ways even liking him, but in the end he makes all the wrong choices becoming just another murderer and gangster. There’s a reason the Godfather movies are considered among the best ever made, and Michael Corleone’s character is a big part of it. (Note, there’s also a reason I wouldn’t watch these movies except edited for TV).

Quote: “My father’s way of doing things is over, it’s finished. Even he knows that. I mean, in five years, the Corleone Family is going to be completely legitimate. Trust me. That’s all I can tell you about my business.”

2. The Joker (The Dark Knight)

The Joker lacks some of the complex personality and motivational attributes that make some of the other villains so good, but the portrayal by Heath Ledger is one of the best villain acting jobs you can find. The mannerisms, speech characteristics, and writing all combine to make an almost perfect pyschotic loose-cannon bad guy. He’s almost more of a demon than a normal villain thanks to his twisted goals.

Quote: “Do you wanna know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can’t savor all the… little… emotions. In… you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?”

1. Commodus (Gladiator)

Commodus is a very complex and thoroughly despisable character. The heart of Commodus’s character is fear and ambition. His ambition forces him to strive to be great, but his fear forces him to paranoia and cruelty. He wants nothing more than to make his father, Marcus Aurelius, proud (except maybe for his sister to return the romantic feelings he feels for her–ick), so he hugs his father and smothers him to death in order to become emperor. He is manipulative and cunning and proud. Two of the most chilling moments in Gladiator contains no violence at all. In the first Commodus forces his sister to betray Maximus in the presence of her young son by telling the son a “story” containing veiled threats against the son’s life were she to refuse. Later, in the second scene . . . well . . .

Quote: “Lucius [her son] will stay with me now. And if his mother so much as looks at me in a manner that displeases me, he will die. If she decides to be noble and takes her own life, he will die. [To his sister, Lucius's mother] And as for you, you will love me as I loved you. You will provide me with an heir of pure blood, so that Commodus and his progeny will rule for a thousand years. Am I not merciful? [she does not answer, fighting back tears] AM I NOT MERCIFUL??”

*shudders*

I have no idea how he didn’t make it on AFI’s list of 50 movie villains. He should definitely at least beat out Cruella DeVille . . . or “man, in Bambi”

___________________________________________________

* Apparently the film makers forgot Gandalf the White told Gimli “[I am] more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the Dark Lord himself.” That includes the witch-king!

Now the movies get a lot of this right–in fact, pretty close to perfect. The battlefield charges–Theoden and Aragorn at Helms Deep, Eomer and Gandalf at Helms Deep, the charge of the Rohirrim on Pelannor Fields, and the final charge in front of the black gates– and the speeches that go with them are some of the most beautiful and epic battle scenes in movies.* Some of the non-battle scenes are no less beautiful as well, the sequence where the black riders enter Bree and the inn, and the sequence in the third movie where Arwen sets out to leave middle earth, sees the child, and turns back are also favorites of mine. As well as almost anything on the battlements in Edoras ^_^

However, between these amazing scenes lies something that bothers me every time I watch the movies, and it really increases with each viewing as I get more acclimated to the awesomeness of individual scenes.

It’s not really the plot additions (though the warg attack and Aragorn getting pitched off the cliff on the way to Helm’s Deep was a bit silly) or all the changes made to increase tension (Ents initially deciding against fighting, Frodo sending Sam away, Faramir taking Frodo toward Gondor, the exagerrated hostility of Sam toward Gollum, the shouting match at Elrond’s council in Rivendel, etc), though these things don’t exactly help.

The biggest thing I don’t like though, is the large amount of cartoonishness injected into the movies. Gimli is not in the story for comic relief, and Legolas is not a refugee from the X-games. The books contain enough humor with witty banter back and forth between the two, but there’s no need to have Gimli lose control of his horse and fall off, or show him belching with beer/mead/ale dripping down his beard in the middle of an important council, or thwacking orcs in the groin with his axe. The Harry Potter movies are about junior high and high school aged kids and it seems like there’s hardly more physical humor in those movies than in LoTR–and where HP includes physical humor it’s generally of a more intelligent nature and doesn’t stand out as badly as it does in LoTR (probably because of the setting).

Even Gandolf gets in on the physical humor in the third movie with his staff-bonking antics at Denathor. In this case, not only is it out of place atmospherically, but completely out of character. Despite Denathor’s despair and mistakes, Gandolf would display more respect for the Steward of Gondor. Additionally, it makes Denathor more comic relief, distracting from the incredibly tragic story of the downfall of a once great man.

Then there’s Legolas, who stays away from the unwanted attempts at humor (except for the drinking contest with Gimli), but seems to be constantly flying around in ways that defy physics and common sense. I guess a lot of it can be explained away because he’s an elf, but it still looks cartoonish and distracting in my opinion. And the references to real life things like him skateboarding/snowboarding/surfing the shield down the steps at Helm’s Deep breaks the separation I like between a fantasy world and the real world.

I think the blame lies largely on the personalities of the director and actors (mostly in the case of Legolas–Orlando Bloom is an extreme sports nut) showing through to make their marks on the story. But again, that breaks the illusion of a separate fantasy world untouched by ours. I think the real-world references and juvenile physical humor both really take away from epic atmosphere that really separates these books from other works of fantasy fiction and make them what they are. Therefore the movies lose a lot of watchability in my opinion. I will always love the epic scenes and scenery, but a lot of the rest I have lost interest in sitting through.

I think, given the potential of the materials they were adapted from, LoTR comes out below both Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter movies. Although they change some things around, the Narnia movies end up being fairly entertaining and consistent movies, and the Harry Potter movies vastly improve on the HP books by cutting out a lot of JKR’s repetitions and redundancies.**

I don’t really care if movies “stay true” to the books, but I wish the LoTR movies had done a better job of consistently sticking to the atmosphere that made the books different and so great.

* I think the fight scenes in “Hero” might be the best that I have seen for visual martial arts beauty, but the LoTR battles take place on a far grander scale and with better music. Here’s my favorite fight from “Hero” for your enjoyment.

**Yes,  I know what I did there.

The air is rank with the smell of it. Swamp gas fueled army camp fires pollute the air with their sooty smoke, rebel yells swarm the mason-dixon line, and the ghost of Jeffy Davis rides again.

Has so much time elapsed that the supremacy of ice and snow has been forgotten? Does Johnny Reb think that the wizards of the North  slumber? He is sadly mistaken if so, for they do not slumber but keep careful watch in their icy halls, nor has their strength, drawn from the iron hard earth, diminished.

After the Northern Wizards sweep across the South, crushing the foolish uprising and leaving rebel ranks frozen midstep from Gavelston to Charleston, there will be a second period of reconstruction. And this time, we will ensure that there will be no more forgetting.

Phase 1 (Compensation)

• Each state south of the Mason-Dixon line will pay a yearly tribute of seven young maidens. These maidens will be taken North and ceremoniously dumped in snowbanks as a metaphor for the North’s victory. South Carolina, as instigator, will be required to send an additional seven maidens, all from the town of Early Branch, the birthplace of the second rebellion.
• There will be a 97% tax (the average Southern summer temperature) on all teas containing sugar and/or artificial sweeteners. Teas served hotter than forty degrees Celsius are exempt from this tax.
• Representatives of the Southern states will sign a statement admitting responsibility for whatever atrocities (such the use of peanuts to create boiled products) the rebellion causes and binding the South to make financial reparations for the war.

Phase 2 (Readjustment)

• Oral exams will be administered to determine competency in Standard American English pronunciation and phraseology. Those with low scores will be restricted to making fried chicken, tobacco farming, and demolition derby driving.

Note: this item is currently being reevaluated by the powers that be (TPTB) as it is not expected to actually alter the current situation.

• Air Conditioners will be outlawed.
• Grits will be replaced with oatmeal in all stores.
• Rather than mandatory military service like some countries, beginning at age 4, all male children will be required to participate in hockey leagues. Additionally, parents or other spectators heard asking questions like “what quarter is it?” or “when’s halftime?” at hockey games will be flogged with a combination of live salmons and wet noodles (as will you if you don’t understand why those are bad things to say).
• All girls found complaining about the heat and lack of AC while wearing knee-length skirts and nearly sleeveless shirts will be required to wear full dress suits during summer activities and on Sundays.
• Those too old for the mandatory hockey program will be forced on a rotating basis to take mandatory vacations in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, including mandatory swim time in lakes fed by water from glaciers.

Phase 3 (Integration)

• Those who fail the Standard American English test (see phase 2) will be relocated to snow-making machine factories.
• The machines manufactured in this manner will be distributed throughout the South and used 24/7 to bury the South in glorious white flakes allowing everyone to enjoy white Christmases, sledding parties, and daily snowball fights.
• A large screen will be launched into space to reduce the amount of radiation reaching the South, causing a 30-60 degree drop in temperatures throughout the South. This is expected to be greeted with much rejoicing due to the previous termination of air conditioning (see Phase 2).
• The status of hoodies will be changed from “unprofessional and slobbish” to “appropriate for all settings.”

Disclaimer: should any Southerner find this post offensive, I completely understand given the amount of fire present in Southern blood rather than ice and hardness. However, I would like to also refer any such offended personages to the link at the beginning of this post and remind them that this was started by a Southerner (some things just don’t change . . . ).

^_^

10. Honey Nut Cheerios

Normal cheerios taste good enough with milk and sugar, but it’s even better when the sugar has already been added! Honey’s one of the best tasting natural sweet flavors, and is well applied to these delicious little o’s. Equally good with milk or handfuls straight from the box!

9. Alpha-bits

Marshmallowy cereal at its best! Of course the little marshmallows are the all-stars of this cereal, but unlike lucky charms, marshmellow mateys, and other similar cereals, there’s something left to do with the remaining cereal once you’ve picked all the marshmallows out! See how many words you can find, write a story even since the marshmallows will be gone looooooong before the rest.

8.Golden Grahams

I haven’t had these for a while, but I like them much! They have the honey flavor fused with a little graham square. While some people I know have a distinct disregard for “SQUARES!!!!,”  squares in this instance are umm…not square.

7. Oatmeal

Plain but hearty, it’s perfect for cold northern mornings and gives some good lasting energy. Plus it’s healthy! At least that’s what it says on the canister. I’ll admit it doesn’t taste too good on its own, but there are lots of ways to spruce it up. My favorite is with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

6. Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Cinnamon and sugar toast was an integral part of my childhood. Almost as much as spankings and groundings, but much tastier.  This cereal brings back great memories and tastes, but is much faster and easier to make. Plus it leaves behind some of the best tasting milk.

5. Cinnamon Life

I must sadly make a confession: I terribly enjoy a good bit of cinnamon. Probably more than is healthy. In fact, I used to eat cinnamon sticks from my mom’s kitchen. In fact, I still would, but there seems to be  a distinct lack of cinnamon sticks in the guy’s dorms. There aren’t any cinnamon trees nearby either. I weep.

4. Frosted Mini-wheats (Maple and Brown Sugar or Vanilla Creme)

I still shudder at memories of mini-wheat’s predecessors. Big bricks of wheat that you had to break up by hand. We heated it with milk in the microwave and added sugar, but it was still rather wretched. These, on the other hand, are delicious bite sized crunchies with great flavor. The strawberry flavored ones are probably good too, but I’ve never had them.

3. Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds

Mmmmmmmm. Now we’re getting into the really good stuff. Sweet, nutty, and even a little healthy. I could eat it all day long just about.

2. Blueberry Morning

Beats out Honey Bunches of Oats by virtue of fruity goodness. The blueberries are vastly better than the fake fruitiness of Trix or Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles. On a similar note, Strawberry Special K is really good too, but I forgot about it until now and I don’t have room to put it on the list because the top spot is reserved for the one, the only . . .

1.  Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs

Calvin, the world cannot thank you enough. ^_^

* The committee has deemed grits inelligible for this list on principle. Also because it is corn rather than wheat based. Also because of your face. And because I said so.

I dream of street lights passing by:
Sleeping against the window, your face fades
In the dark spaces between
Then returns; the shadow of rain on the windshield
Cascades down your face like dark tears
Dissolving your form into darkness
Until the next light passes and you reappear.

Once, time slowed and the sun obeyed
Us, our arms outstretched binding
Afternoons and evenings to eternity,
But now we hurtle over pavement,
A wheeled rocket racing toward the end of the world,
Incapable of turning or stopping.

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla

The city blinks away behind us and
Street lights pass less frequently.
The dark spaces grow stronger,
Leaving you longer in shadow,
A black hole just beyond my elbow.
What beauty was in the world vanishes
As the last light fades, leaving
Only headlights to light the road ahead,
And no light shining on you at all.

Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.

I must drive deeper into the night,
Hoping to reach some distant sunrise
In whose light you would again appear
And wipe the sleep from your eyes.
If I stopped while darkness still veils you,
I would reach out my hand to wake you
And find only air where you once were
Because you had faded away forever.

So I grip the wheel and drive sleeplessly
Toward morning hoping desperately
That the road beneath me will last
Until the sun rises from its grave
Reclaiming you from shadow,
Despite knowing, as one does in dreams,
That night would prove longer than pavement
And the road would end, leaving me alone
Listening to windshield wipers in the rain.

Fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam.

Exhausted I wake relieved of dreams and see
Shadows diminished, through the window
I feel sunshine and hear a new day calling me

Lux aeterna luceat nobis, Domine,
Et requiem aeternam dona nobis.
Lux perpetua luceat nobis, Domine. Amen.

Introduction to Project Management

As project managers, we attempt to manipulate the project management triangle and direct team members in order to effectively produce a product (textbooks, in our case).

The triangle demonstrates the relationship between a project’s scope (its size or amount of work required, for instance how many pages will be in a textbook), the time needed to complete the project, and the cost necessary to complete it. For instance, if you want to decrease the amount of time needed to finish a project (demonstrated by shortening the corresponding side of the triangle), you would also have to change the other two sides to maintain the triangle shape. You could decrease scope (the amount of work you plan on doing), or increase the amount of money you want to put into the project, or decrease both scope and cost in order to make the project’s duration shorter. You could also accomplish a project in a shorter duration by changing the angle where the cost and scope sides meet without reducing scope and without increasing cost, but that would negatively effect the quality of the product. It’s not a perfect illustration, but it gives a general idea of what we’re trying to do, namely manipulate the three sides of the triangle to be the optimal size and shape.

Meetings

Pretty much everything we do to accomplish this job ends up in some sort of meeting, so the best way to describe more precisely what goes on would be to discuss the different types of meetings that we have. Most meetings fit into the categories of project planning, implementation, and tracking.

Planning meetings include product line meetings, charter meetings, and project planning meetings. Product lines include all textbooks of a certain subject. For instance, the product line I work on the most is secondary Bible, which includes Bible Truths A, Bible Truths B, and so on up to Bible Truths F (7th grade-12th grade). Our goal is to maintain a copyright age of 5 years or less for all textbooks. Since there are six products on my product line, this means we need to come out with a new textbook revision every year (the first year a book comes out it has a copyright age of zero, so it works out). In product line meetings all the different department supervisors (authors, art/page design, page layout, photo/text acquisition and permissions and editorial), as well as marketing representatives and a few others try to balance the consumers’ needs, our resources, and our time requirements to develop a general plan for the next twenty years or so. My job is to organize the meetings, direct them, make sure all relevant information is examined, and finally to produce a written version of the plan (normally an excel file complete with charts and graphs) to hand to sponsors (the really high up people in charge) for them to approve.

Charter meetings are more specific in nature; rather than looking at all the products in a product line, a project charter defines the attributes of all the items in a single product. My team just finished a charter for our next Bible Truths project and the charter goes into the particulars about what items will be included (student text, teacher’s edition, a CD to go with the teacher’s edition, tests, and test answer keys), what level of revision we will do (generally light, medium, heavy, or full), how much money we can spend on the revision, and when the items need to be finished. In other words, a charter defines what the triangle will look like for each individual project. Pretty much the same people come to charter meetings as to product line meetings, although supervisors might send a worker who will be working on the project instead of coming themselves. My responsibilities are similar as well, but the final draft of the charter is prepared by a marketing representative and then given to me to route around to the sponsors.

Project Planning meetings are even more specific. Project planning meetings include the workers from each department who will actually do the work on the project rather than their supervisors. These meetings produce the specific schedules that we use to execute and track the production of a text book. Normally I will create a preliminary schedule for the different items of a project in Gantt chart form using Microsoft project and go over that schedule with the team who will suggest changes to make the schedule more realistic by dropping tasks or adding them or changing their durations. We break each schedule up into work packages so everyone is working on a maneagable amount of work (like a single chapter or section) at a given time rather than just trying to complete the whole book. Each work package will consist of 5 to 20 tasks depending on the project and what stage of development it’s in. A team member will complete their task and pass the work package on to the next person. For instance, an author will write the revisions for a chapter and then pass the work package on to an editor who will edit it for conceptual or structural problems (proofreading type editing occurs later) and then hand it back to the author to incorporate the editor’s suggestions. I have to schedule and coordinate all the tasks for all the departments and make sure the durations are reasonable and everything is in the right order (trickier than it may seem sometimes–on our current project we’re scheduled to finish the testpack before the teacher’s edition, but a certain amount of the teacher’s edition needs to be finished first because the test answer key references page numbers in the teachers edition).

Moving on to project implementation meetings–these are meetings that take place weekly or biweekly after work has already been started on a project. The team members meet to review what has been accomplished, communicate and resolve issues, prepare for upcoming tasks, and reexamine whether or not the team can meet the scheduled completion dates.

Project reporting meetings consist of a weekly meeting between all the project managers, all the department supervisors, and a few other people. The main purpose of this meeting is to make sure that supervisors are aware of potential problems in their departments and that the head of the product development division of the press has an accurate idea of what projects are running late or early or on time. To relay this information we use an excel chart such as the one below.

Each vertical column represents a work package. A column that is green all the way to the top means that work package is ready to be sent to the printing press. Red indicates where a task or series of tasks is late, light blue means a schedule has been made, and so on.

We also have meetings within our department to discuss better methods of management, strategic planning, and tactical approaches.

Summary

A good analogy for a project manager is a coach on a sports team. Like sports players, our team members do the real leg work, but we are the ones planning and directing the team members to do what they do more effectively and meet a common goal. One of the most important aspects in project management is communication, and that means a lot of meetings, and standardized graphs, and charts, and forms, and templates that we create and use as tools to help the teams as they work.

Now, if you actually read all that, congratulations! You get a big fat juicy cookie!

]]> http://themoth.edublogs.org/2009/07/07/being-a-project-manager-at-bju-press/feed/ 1 http://themoth.edublogs.org/2009/06/24/coriander-update-races/ http://themoth.edublogs.org/2009/06/24/coriander-update-races/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:07:36 +0000 Der Nachtfalter http://themoth.edublogs.org/?p=97 I’ve added a brief description of the four main races inhabiting Coriander: Humans, Halflings, Elves, and Krychnari. If the last one doesn’t sound familiar to you, don’t be surprised. It’s not a traditional fantasy race. In fact, it’s my version of a Dungeons and Dragons race, the Kenku (you can find a brief write up about the DnD version here).

Now, these four races are not the only races which inhabit the greater world around Coriander. There remains an indeterminate number of races which exist throughout the continent. I think there are far too many intelligent races in the Dungeons and Dragons universe for a realistic fantasy setting (there’s already about 30 different races in the current edition), but there are a few interesting races not normally found in high-fantasy that I’d like to use.

So far I know goblins (possibly the whole goblinoid family consisting of orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins) will be included. They live under the mountains bordering Coriander and occasionaly goblin raiding parties will attack smaller towns or unwary travellers.

Dwarfs seem too iconic to leave out. But I think in this world they have been mostly driven out of the mountains by the goblin races and instead travel in bands like gypsies selling precious stones and clever mechanical devices, possibly piloting ever popular steampunkish airships. The other option I am considering is to have dwarfs be not a distinct race, but the clumsy misshapen result of unions between halflings and larger races.

Besides that, I’m not sure what to include. So far I’m leaving out races of draconic heritage like kobolds (possibly too similar to goblins) and dragonborns, not to mention dragons themselves.

Giants are another race that may be easy to include without feeling like there are too many random races.

What about faeries? Doppelgangers? Minotaurs? Centaurs? Trolls? (Trolls and giants, or just one or the other?)Mer-people? Selkies?

Griffins have been suggested as well, but I think I would place them in the realm of animals rather than sentient races.

In other news, I’m hoping to have a satisfactory map of the continent that Coriander is on ready soon and then a more specific map focusing on Coriander itself. If anyone knows of any really good free online photo editors that might be helpful for making a cool map, let me know.

As always, suggestions and feedback on any aspect of Coriander is welcome ^_^

*disclaimer* I have not actually seen all of the movies the soundtracks I mention come from. Some of them may not be suitable for everyone.

10. Gettysburg (Lala) by Randy Edelman

This is somewhat of a sentimental choice. Filmtracks lists Gettysburg as the third most overrated soundtrack of the 90s, but I like the music anyhow. It was the first movie soundtrack that I owned and one that’s been played many times. “Fife and Gun” is probably the song people hear the most, but my favorite is “Over the Fence.” The slow melancholy version of “Dixie” is a nice twist on the normally upbeat Southern song.

9.Master and Commander (Lala) by Iva Davies/Christopher Gordon/Richard Tognetti

I’m not entirely certain I should put Master and Commander on this list. I love listening to the soundtrack, but by far the best parts come from the classical and traditional music included instead of original film score music. I think the combination of relaxing beautiful classical music with the more tense original music gives the soundtrack a good sense of balance, but, with apologies to Davies, Gordon, and, Tognetti, they just can’t compete with the Bach, Vaughn Williams, Mozart, and music from other classical greats on the CD.

8. Edward Scissorhands (Lala) by Danny Elfman

The soundtrack to this gothic fairytale contains some of the most beautiful music you’ll hear on a soundtrack. The children’s choir music can be especially heartbreaking. I like how the love theme never resolves; “Elfman always ends the theme (and cue) on a longing note, never returning to its grounding key and thus drawing out the score’s tragic intent even further.” In “The Grand Finale,” the theme simply fades away. I don’t think Elfman has the technical skill of John Williams or some others (though I’m not really a music expert), but this soundtrack is certainly worth listening to.

7. A.I. by John Williams

The movie was weird and at times disturbing, but the soundtrack is haunting (in a good way). Williams borrows some minimalistic elements and does so quite well, resulting in passages that sound like something Philip Glass might write when he decides to write agreeable music rather than dizzyingly fast repetitions. The “For Always” song and theme lends a needed lyrical presence to the soundtrack as well. The only thing I really complain about is the techno-ish portions of “The Moon Rising” (I’m not really a big fan of the Josh Groban inclusion at the end either).

6. Schindler’s List (Lala) by John Williams

There’s not really much I can say about this outside of what the filmtracks review says. It’s an old favorite of mine driven by simple but beautiful themes. Appropriately for the movie’s subject matter, the soundtrack lacks any real heroic or triumphant music. This lack of real climatic sections probably makes me less likely to listen to the CD than otherwise, but this is still John Williams at the top of his game.

5. Kingdom of Heaven (Lala) by Harry Gregson-Williams

While Gladiator almost made this list on the strength of “Am I not Merciful” alone, Gregson-Williams’ soundtrack to a violent medieval movie is stronger and more interesting throughout. The soundtrack opens with a great medieval feel as a choir introduces the movie’s main theme. The soundtrack continues by blending medieval and Middle Eastern sounding themes with exciting action cues (that don’t rely on synthesized sound or plagiarism). It’s hard to put this above Gregson-Williams’ soundtracks for the Narnia movies, but I think overall it’s slightly better.

4. Star Wars by John Williams

Perhaps the most iconic film music in existence, from the original trilogy to the prequels, this is my favorite John Williams music. I’m not as familiar with the original trilogy’s music on CD form–I’ve only heard it in the films themselves–but from the imperial march to the lightsaber duel music at the end of Return of the Jedi, Williams produces legendary material. My favorite Star Wars musical moments are the dramatic choral pieces like the “Duel of the Fates” in The Phantom Menace, the aforementioned Return of the Jedi music, and much of the music in The Revenge of the Sith. If you can get past the corresponding film cheesiness, the love theme from Attack of the Clones is great music too. Overall Star Wars has just about perfect mix of fun, serious, and emotional music.

(I’m giving all the Star Wars soundtracks (and one other set) one spot because otherwise they’d take up most of the top ten list by themselves).

3. The Village (Lala) by James Newton Howard

After a rough day at work I love to get some tea or coffee and sit down, put headphones on, and listen to “The Gravel Road,” which may be my favorite single song from a soundtrack. The combination of strings and piano “that literally blow in the wind and swell and sway from bar to bar” in the main theme melts stress away. Tense moments occur occasionally in the soundtrack, but overall the soundtrack shares much more in common with the movie’s visual and emotional beauty than with the sense of suspense and fear. Oh, and did I mention the violinist is Hillary Hahn?

2. Lord of the Rings by Howard Shore

Shore brings Middle Earth alive with his fresh themes and orchestration. I like the Rohirrim theme best, but all of the themes are good. The Two Towers with the most frequent use of the Rohirrim theme, the Helm’s Deep music, and “Samwise the Brave” is my favorite CD, followed by the Fellowship of the Ring with “Of Hobbits” and “The Breaking of the Fellowship.” Overall, The Return of the King sits slightly below the others in my rankings, but it contains some great individual songs like “Twilight and Shadow” and Billy Boyd’s song at the end of “The Steward of Gondor.” At first, I didn’t like “Into the West” because the style seemed out of place; I still think that, but the song itself has grown on me.

1. Lady in the Water (Lala) by James Newton Howard

The fact that I’m putting this first despite its shortness (not even 45 minutes of film music) and the inclusion of four Bob Dylan covers at the end speaks volumes about what I think of the rest of the music. It’s beautiful like The Village, but with a little more variety and some interesting chord progressions that I can’t get enough of. Listen to “Prologue,” “The Healing,” “The Blue World,” “The Great Eatlon,” and “End Titles” for the best parts. As for the Bob Dylan songs, this version of “The Time They Are A-Changin” is pretty good, but the extra music on the Chronicles of Narnia soundtracks are better. I like this movie itself well enough, but I’d watch it over and over just for the music.

So that’s three for John Williams (seven if you count all the Star Wars films separately), a group of three for Howard Shore, two for John Newton Howard, and a big fat zero for Hans Zimmer? Well I do like Hans Zimmer a lot, but after a while all the bombastic synthesized action cues start to sound alike. I think the best Zimmer soundtrack is Hannibal (Lala) mostly because it’s a bit different from typical Zimmer. The incorporation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is nice, and I love the inclusion of spoken parts performed by Anthony Hopkins. Additionally the last song, Vide Cor Meum, is stunningly beautiful (and ironically not composed by Zimmer) and the ending . . . is brilliant. The soundtrack has plenty of flaws though too. Other Zimmer soundtracks I like include Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wits End, Thin Red Line, parts of Black Hawk Down, and the two Batman soundtracks, but none of them really stood out enough to make my list.