Abbotsleigh School Literary Festival
Long-time readers will recall that last year I gave a Roald Dahl presentation for my nephew’s third-grade class in Willoughby. It went so well that his teacher has asked me to come back again this year. Fun, right? So that’s scheduled for next week. Well, when Gadgetgirl (who is a librarian, you know) found out, she asked me to come speak at the Abbotsleigh School Literary Festival too. That was last week, and it was pretty hilarious. I mean, the program was full of actual children’s authors and important people — and ME. I gave the same presentation as last year: who I am, how I became a Dahl fan, a bit about Dahl’s life, how I started my website, how I visited Gipsy House, and then some of the more interesting items from my Dahl collection. I had two sessions, first the fourth-graders and then the third-graders. I didn’t realise there was such a huge cognitive leap between those age groups! The fouth-graders were well-behaved and attentive, and they asked lots of good questions about Dahl. They were also strangely obsessed with hearing about his divorce! The third-graders were more fidgety and kept asking the same questions over and over. One of them asked what he died of, and I made the mistake of saying “pneumonia” (among other things). That led to 10 minutes of “What’s pneumonia?!” and “My grandpa had pneumonia but he didn’t die!” Lesson of the day: 9-year-olds go for the soap opera; 8-year-olds go for death and disease.

“Study: Astronauts as weak as 80-year-olds in space. Bring on the rotating space ships!

Just discovered that Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote two fanfics about LotR’s Arwen: The Jewel of Arwen and The Parting of Arwen. Bookmarking for later reading!

WE ARE SEX BOB-OMB! 1-2-3-4!
Last Friday I went to see the long-awaited Scott Pilgrim vs. the World with the Snook and Kunaal. I’d been looking forward to it for so long that I thought the chances were good I’d be disappointed. Fortunately it lived up to the hype in my head – I LOVED it! I was giggling non-stop from the 8-bit intro to the very end. I just love the idea of applying the structure and aesthetics of an old-school NES side scroller to a movie. And yeah, I know that most of the world are completely over Michael Cera right now, but good ol’ George Michael can still do no wrong by me. (The Snook nearly lost it at the “I have to pee on her…” line.) I read Kevin’s review with interest this morning. I can see his complaints. Scott is kind of a dick, especially to Knives (who I loved). And Ramona is kind of a blank, passive cypher. I wasn’t bothered by that though; to me that’s just part-and-parcel of the whole videogame thing. Mario gets a personality; Princess Peach doesn’t. Somehow it didn’t trigger my feminist rage button. I think I tend to give well-written genre stuff a pass on a lot of that. (See also: The Princess Bride.) And on a practical level, they just had too much plot to get through to engage in a lot of character study. So I was able to forgive the gender stuff. It was just such a fun, visceral, WHIZZ-BAM! experience. It’s like the lighter side of Kick-Ass. Can’t wait to get this one on DVD…

Cook Like a Moomin. EEEEK! Moomin cookbook! Oh man, how cute. I’m not sure about how the Finns eat their fish, but I do enjoy lingonberries…

Bookmarking for future reference: DIY Painting Tips, Tricks, and a Step-By-Step Guide.

Australian Politics: A Harry Potter Primer. This is brilliant. I actually learned stuff from it! (Stuff other than the fact that Bob Brown was a total hottie…)

Return of the Jedi Missing Lightsaber Scene. Okay, WHAT?! There’s a Star Wars scene that I’ve never seen before? That’s a mind-blowing way to start my Monday. Very cool.