Half-formed thoughts

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Hello My Friends,

Remember when international affairs and world politics were mundane and peaceful? If you said no then you’re right. Don’t get me wrong, what’s happening in Ukraine is terrible, but it’s not unprecedented. Maybe it feels bigger because it’s not in the Middle-East. Or maybe it’s the extremely on-point social media coming out of the country.

A big name author has recently raised a ridiculous amount of money on Kickstarter for 4 books. Last I checked, the total was just over 25 million. That’s amazing and I want to be happy for them. But this author is also on record as being against same-sex marriage because of their religion. It frustrates me to no end when I know there are authors out there with massive talent and fantastic books and they’re barely making rent. No one needs 5+ million to write and publish a book.

I need to stop reading comments. I’ve come much too close to just replying F-you to people in random comments. It’s not healthy. I have to stop.

The world sucks sometimes. Apparently people are trying to bypass the laws against conversion therapy in Canada by using “life coaches” from other countries over video calls. It’s reprehensible and disgusting. No one should be tortured or abused because of their sexuality.

In that same vein, I wish the laws had included other forms of radical therapy that psychologically and physically tortures participants until they behave a certain way. ABA is an example and churns my stomach to think about.

It seems the major protests funded by the right wing fringe are calming down a little, or getting less attention anyway. It still seriously hurts that I have family and had friends who were willing to support Tamara Lich and Pat King. It was always the same thing too. The family and former friends were willing to overlook the white-supremacy, anti-semitism, homophobia, and general hate because the organizers of the convoy were fighting against mandates. That hurts and I just can’t believe people can forgive and support hate just because they agree with someone on one subject.

We watched Around the World in 80 Days (the television show with David Tennant). It started off a little more intense than I would have liked, but it built up really well and had some great characters in it. I’m glad it’s been renewed for a second season. I can also see why so many commentators and reviewers (I really need to stop reading comments) didn’t like it. It tackled a lot of race, sex, and class issues that are still extremely relevant.

Shopping for appliances is a ridiculous process involving much too much jargon and misinformation. As much as the hyperfixating part of me is loving researching washing machines, I’m getting annoyed at the lack of forthcomingness. Unfortunately, while I have friends who are experts in cars, computers, cooking, gardening, books, games, and many other things, I don’t seem to know any washing machine aficionados.

I think that’s enough random half-baked thoughts for today. (Okay, now I want cookies.)

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on any of these in the comments. I shouldn’t read them, but I probably will.

Stay safe and be kind,

Éric

The Three Musketeers (1948) – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 1948 film The Three Musketeers.

Story

There is a fine line between doing the story justice and changing the tone and feel. The changes they made to the story didn’t help anything but get the movie past the censors. Instead of coming off as an innocent boy who falls in love at the drop of a hat, d’Artagnan comes off as an airhead.

There’s also a reason that most movies only do the first half of the book. The rest of it is a little bit of a drag.

Score: 0

Characters

D’Artagnan was terrible and flaky when dealing with women, but when he was sword fighting, he was awesome. All the other musketeers were great and I wish they’d gotten more screen time.

The treatment of the women was possibly less progressive then the novel and extremely predictable.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

The dialogue is mostly quippy and fun, except when it comes to the romance where it’s stilted, awkward, and cringe-worthy.

Score: 0.5

Visuals and Music

The filming angles, colours, shots, lighting, and framing are absolutely gorgeous. The fight choreography wonderful and the location shoots splendid.

The music is great and epic.

Score: 1

Fun

An amazing cast which all did a great job. The fighting was fun and the little bits of humour were refreshing, but mostly it was dour. Both kids got bored and so did I.

Score: 0

Overall

A semi-faithful adaptation of the book with not enough humour or sword fighting. Although visually stunning, the changes to d’Artagnan made him unlikeable and the movie didn’t age well.

Final Score: 2 Stars out of 5

Guitar Lessons Part 30

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Dec 23: Christmas

I played so long today that my strumming arm hurts.

I played both my songs. Then I played through all the Christmas songs I know in one of my books.

It was a lot of fun.

I definitely need to work on my rhythms.

Oh, and I think I’m going to be writing another song. It’s percolating, people!!

Dec 24: Attempt

I played only my songs today, without looking at the music.

I obviously know Get to Know You without any issues, although I made a couple mistakes.

However, this is the first time I’ve tried to play the wedding song without the paper. I did better than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. I don’t know the fourth verse at all. I mixed up chorus 2 and 3, but that’s not a huge deal. And I forgot the different line in chorus 4. But I remembered everything else, including all the chords. So yay!

Dec 25: Happy Holiday!

I got a lot of music books!

Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate.

I was spoiled rotten, as you can see. These are just the music books I received. (8 of them!)

I also got a shark capo and picks (the picks don’t look like sharks; they just came with it), a string cleaner, and a guitar strap with Disney princesses on it.

I did not play today. Too many presents to open, what with the two kids, my sister, my parents, and husband and I. (We’ve bubbled together and don’t go anywhere or see anyone else.)

I am ridiculously excited to play from these books, you have no idea!!

The Queen is too advanced for me right now, obviously.

These are just the chords for Bohemian Rhapsody:

Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody chords :O

I mean, you expect Queen to be complex, right? But this is an entire PAGE of chords.

Needless to say, I am not going to be starting with this book. I’ll try out some of the Disney books tomorrow.

Dec 26: Over an hour

It has been a long time since I played for over an hour, but that’s what I did today.

I also played with a pick for most of that.

I don’t particularly enjoy playing with a pick, but I feel like it’s important to try it.

I don’t think I can play Get to Know You with a pick because it requires tapping on the guitar and I can’t hold the pick and tap on the guitar at the same time. At least, not right now. Maybe after practice.

Btw, the song Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is super fun to play.

Dec 27: Second book

I played from the second book I was gifted for Christmas. (While technically it wasn’t the second one I was given, it is the second one I am playing from.) This book is the Deluxe Edition of The Lion King.

It is a beautiful book. It has pictures from the movie.

The chords are also unnecessarily complicated for no reason.

For example, I played Can’t Wait to be King yesterday from the other book. I was able to play it all the way through and it reminded me how to play D.C. Al Coda and D.S. Al Coda. (Because I know the lyrics by heart, naturally.)

But this book didn’t have the codas. Instead, it had a nasty key change right in the middle of it.

So I had to stop. I recognized none of them.

The only other song I was able to play in this book was Be Prepared. There were a couple chords in it that I didn’t recognize, but I muddled my way through them.

I think this book is a “play later when I get better” book. Not as complex as Queen, but definitely more complex than the last one.

I also played my songs. I made silly mistakes while playing them. I think I’m tired.

Dec 28: LOTR

It’s our annual rewatch of The Lord of the Rings today.

I did not have time to play.

Those Other Books I Make

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Hello My imaginary Friends,

For the past 5 years, I’ve been creating books that you can’t read.

Don’t worry, they’re not fiction or that semi-autobiographical Dinosaur Road Trip. (I should work on that again… maybe.)

Every year I make photobooks of the Dragon and now of Pegasus.

It feels extra, but we take roughly 2500 photos of the kids a year and we rarely go look at the digital albums. It’s nice to go pull out the books. It’s like the old photo albums, but without the fading.

So every year I make a copy of the pictures and sort through them and eliminate them until I have 200-250 for each kid and I create a photobook through Costco. It takes a long time. Actually, every year I swear I’ll start earlier or maybe just let a software do it for me, but I can’t do that.

So I’m proud to say that my first two books of the year are printed and published. Yay!

It’s a good thing they’re cute.

Now to write a story that has been percolating for over 13 years. It started as a dream that Jen had and I came up with a basic plot. Over the years it’s changed a lot, but now it’s time to get it written, and since it was Jen’s dream, she’s going to help me.

We’ve planned and plotted and now I’m going to go write.

Stay safe and be kind,

Éric

Weird Coincidence or Did I Inspire a Name

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

Last night Jen and I were procrastinating and we searched for Everdome in Google. What came up was mostly Everdome.IO. It’s some sort of virtual reality world that’s connected to cryptocurrency. I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand what it is, but it’s pretty and uses Unreal Engine 5, which is amazing.

I didn’t think anything about it until Jen came across a Reddit post:

A screenshot from the site Reddit
The original post reads: A book written by Eric Desmarais, about Everdome which idea Rob took to create Hero and Everdome. https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Éric-Desmarais-ebook/dp/B07W19ZHF8/ref=nodl_
The link leads to the Amazon.com link in spanish for my book Everdome.

There are two posts on reddit about the book inspiring someone called Rob.

When I looked into who created it, I found the CEO was called Robert Gryn. I looked into the site and it looks like it was launched in Fall 2021.

For context, my book came out in 2019. Now other than the name, the site and the book have nothing in common. The site is science-fiction and is 1 big dome while the book is fantasy and has multiple domes created when the planet exploded.

So I did what any cheeky author would do and I tweeted the following:

I was promptly followed by a fake account with the same name but nothing else has happened.

I find it wild that I might have influenced something so large. It’s really cool.

Then again it could be pure coincidence.

If it isn’t a coincidence, I’m more flattered than anything else. Titles and names are not copyrighted. If the site had taken plot or world building from the book that would be different, but just the name is fine. I could have trademarked it but it’s not worth the cost and effort at this point.

If you want to find out what the book is about, it’s available at all major bookstores and ebook retailers.

Everdome

Or get a signed copy on our store.

It’s a wild world.

Stay safe and be kind,

Éric

A Knight’s Tale – JenEric Movie Review

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How This Works – Read Other Reviews

Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale.

Story

Someone thought that a sports/underdog movie should be done with jousting. It works, but it’s a paint by the numbers of all other sports movies.

The love story is trite and despite vaguely hinting at feminism, doesn’t feel authentic.

Score: 0

Characters

With a combination of fantastic actors and well written dialogue, the film is filled with likable characters. From the trustworthy Roland to the hothead Wat. The addition of Chaucer was a wonderful nod.

The only disappointing thing was how utterly white the movie was. All the main characters and all the crowds.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

Anachronistic, like the rest of the film, but filled with great little gems that I still quote today.

Score: 1

Visuals and Music

Again, I’ll complain about the lack of colour. Not just race but lack of bright vibrant colours. Other than Jocelyn there’s no vibrant colours. It would have made the joust easier to follow and been more historically accurate.

However the cinematography and sets are fantastic.

The music was a great combination of rock and sports score.

Score: 1

Fun

This is an exciting movie, but it’s a little long and my kids got bored. The jousting could have been done better with more colours and less early 2000’s shaky-cam.

It was, however, a lot of fun.

Score: 0.5

Overall

Oddly dated to the 2000’s aesthetic of jock and sports culture, lacking any sort of diversity. The movie has a boring love story with an exciting sports story arc. In the end, it’s the quality of the actors, the emotion, and the dialogue that stand out.

Final Score: 3 Stars out of 5

Guitar Lessons Part 29

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Dec 17: Cool

There’s something about playing my songs on guitar that makes me feel so cool.

I am decidedly not cool, just to be clear. (Although my 5yo daughter says I am, so there!)

But there’s this aura around other guitarists that makes them look cool, so when I play a song, I feel like I might gain some of that aura as well.

I definitely need to work on my confidence.

Dec 18: My songs

I played today!

Yes, I know, it’s Saturday. But I won’t have time to play tomorrow because we’re making Christmas cookies, like, all day.

I only played my two songs though. I don’t think I got the rhythms right on the wedding song.

Dec 19: Sunday is the new Saturday?

I didn’t even touch my guitar today.

*reaches out and touches it*

There. I touched it.

No playing happened though. My chronic back injury acted up today, so it didn’t seem smart to play when that usually makes my back hurt.

Dec 20: The wedding song

When I wrote the wedding song, I tried to put myself in Tommy’s place (Tommy is my character who “wrote” the song) at the time in the story. At that point, he had seen the couple interact in person at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and over March Break, and over video chat. So I broke the song down into four verses, one for each season. And the second verse is the one set at Christmas. Every time I sing that verse I get this overwhelming urge to read that short story.

I guess that’s a sign of good writing? 🤷🏼‍♀️

My kids asked me to sing it twice today. I’m glad they’re not bored of it yet.

I also played a couple Christmas songs from my books. Lots of C7 chords. I guess I need to cut my baby fingernail, because it keeps getting in the way.

Dec 21: Rhythm improvement

I played the rhythms in my Christmas book today and they came much more naturally. That’s really nice to see progress.

I’m still not sure what rhythms I’m doing for the wedding song. But my kids begged me to play it a second and then a third time, so I must be doing something right, right?

Dec 22: Ego and confidence

I played songs from my app first today. Tbh, I didn’t do as well as I’d like. It’s ok, I’m getting better slowly.

Then I played my songs. My eldest asked for a repeat of the wedding song, and then as I was about to pack up, my youngest asked for a repeat of Get to Know You.

You haven’t heard cute until you hear a 2yo ask for you to sing a song you wrote with big puppy dog eyes.

So obviously, I played it again.

It’s really good for my ego that they liked my songs so much. I know they’re heavily biased, but it’s still really nice.

I’m working on building up my confidence in my singing, mostly for the wedding song. If I don’t know a song really well, I sing quieter than I play. So I guess I’m getting more confident in my guitar skills, which is a positive.