The Vineyards

This was supposed to be written at the beginning of the month, not the end. As has been unfortunately common lately, time is short. I will make it quick.

So, for 2010…

January 1st – “What is going to happen?” “Something wonderful.”
From the movie “2010″, the sequel to “2001, a Space Odyssey”. I just wanted a quote from the movie, to fit with the year. On that topic, frustrating how 2001 came, and nothing, then 2010 came, and nothing… No flying cars, space tourism, nothing. “Something wonderful” so far is HDTV, I guess.

February 28th – “Sympathy one receives for nothing, envy must be earned.”
Quote by Robert Lembke, German journalist. I was terribly irritated by bumper stickers I had been seeing frequently that said “Don’t envy me, work.” and variations of that, often with creative spacing and punctuation, “Don’t envy me…work!!!”. Why would I envy someone with so poor writing skills and so big an ego that he believes anyone else in the street would envy him? Even a make-believe ivory tower must be earned.

March 31st – “I’ve been in some strange worlds, strange customs. Perhaps this is considered torture here”
From Star Trek, the original series, episode “Bread and Circuses”. Another thing that had been bothering me was people being “proud” of the achievements reached by the soccer teams they support. What is there to be proud of in something you merely watch, most often on TV? But the whole post is based around a song from the anime “Shoujo Kakumei Utena” and actual bread. In fact, I was told I should not had mentioned soccer at all, since I had made it so obvious. That has put me forever in doubt if I did the right thing.

April 30th – “I don’t like to write, but I love to have written.”
American screenwriter Michael Kanin said that, and I wish I could say I share the point of view, but I never really wrote anything of note. I will probably love having done it, after I do it, if I ever do it, but the act of writing is not all that fun to me in itself. In any case, the post is a quick discussion of things I remember writing, most for school, when I used to impress everyone because I could write stories that used both sides of the paper. In response to one of these stories I mentioned having written, Flines commented “You created detective Monk!”. Come to think of it, maybe I did.

May 31st – “That was the weak part. Now you are stronger.”
Some complaints about the natural human inability. We have no chi, ki, chakra, cosmo, soma or youki that we can use to create fire, throw energy balls, resist damage, save the world. Humans only have very limited power that takes years to gain, or comes from technology, or is granted by society. This makes some aspects of life rather uninteresting, and is why we turn to fantasy. And the quote is from 4chan, said in response to someone who said “Part of me died inside when I saw that.”. But I have no idea what “that” was that he saw and killed part of him.

June 7th – “Is there any in this rout with authority to treat with me?”
From “LOTR: The Return of the King”, either the book or the extended version of the movie, said by The Mouth of Sauron (that is a character’s name, not the actual mouth of Sauron) when he addresses the rout led by Aragorn that came knocking on the Black Gate to distract everyone in Mordor while Frodo rushed to Mount Doom. The arrogance seemed so fitting, and the character was mentioned in the post.

July 31st – “No time to chat, the day is fading!”
I was extremely busy then and had no time for a proper post. And I wanted to use that “from my iMsorry” line somewhere. The line is said by a talking mouse (or a mole, or some other hole-dwelling critter) in the first chapter of “King’s Quest 7: The Princeless Bride”. “No time to chat, the day is fading! Come, Valanice, let’s do some trading.”. I think the rabbit had stolen the mouse’s glasses, so he could do little other than appear at his front door, touch objects Valanice presented, and say if he would trade for anything he had – and the thing he wanted, of course, were his glasses, as soon as possible.

August 31st – “Paris is well worth a mass.”
Supposedly said by King Henry IV of France when he converted to Catholicism. I just wanted a line that mentioned Paris to talk about the time I spent there. And although that was the second thing that came to mind, “We will always have Paris” sounded far too pretentious.

September 30th – “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
By Martin Luther King, Jr. (It must be terrible to be a “, Junior”. Not only it states in your name that your parents really just wanted a smaller version of the adult one, not a new person, it also gives your name punctuation.) In this post, I talk about how I like working with manga and find it absurd that some people may see it as “just a way to pay the bills”. It is something I love, and it makes me very happy to make money (even if not much) from something I love, so I always do my best. I refuse to apologize for extracting fun from what pays me; people who hate their jobs should quit, not share their misery, not do it halfheartedly.

October 31st – “There are four lights!”
Captain Picard says that in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode “Chain of Command”, part 2, in a reference to George Orwell’s “1984″, in a torture scene where… You all probably already know this, and the post has nothing to do with that. It is about traffic lights and how signs saying something like “Wait for the green three phases light” confused me for years before I learned it should have a comma after “green”.

November 30th – “There were no ill-stars during the days or nights of Hy-brasyl.”
From the beginning of “Seanchas Temuair”, that text that introduced the history of Dark Ages. I thought it would be fun to write (or rather, to have written – but it was fun to write, I admit) an alternative version of Dark Ages’ history, more fitting to our non-magic reality. And I never liked Danaan much.

December 31st – “There ain’t nothin’ over ’til it’s over.”
Rocky Balboa says that sometime, I forgot when. In all honesty, I forgot why I used it. Perhaps something to do with the end of the year, how it would not “feel” over until all the pending things were resolved, and how it just did not seem like an year’s end. No Christmas spirit, either. It was a bit sad, and I wish 2010 could have gone on a little longer, maybe it would feel more like a proper year’s end.

And that was that. One post per month. I should improve that, I know, but imagine how troublesome it would be to pick the quotes and then write this one post explaining all of them after each year!