web-goddess

Only four shopping days left til my birthday… and if anybody wants to blow my mind, you can pick me up one of these on eBay. Seriously. I love my kitty but cat poop sucks.

Eyesore of the Month. I like architecture. This is a great look at some really bad buildings with hilarious commentary.

What do you call a group of cats? A clowder. That’s so weird.

For the Snook: Squirrel Fishing. There was a squirrel fishing bit on that Japanese betting show Banzai a few years back that Snookums still reminisces about. I’ve never seen him laugh so hard.

When I was 15, I read The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. I absolutely loved it. It was a fantasy with a princess and a dragon and magicians and secrets and I wished more than anything that I had written it. So I spent, like, a week plotting my own fantasy and inventing characters. There was a princess… and a dragon… and some magicians… You see where this is going. Eventually I realized that all I was doing was rewriting McKinley with different names. It wasn’t original and it wasn’t interesting. I decided imitation wasn’t the sincerest form of flattery and gave up the effort.

Christopher Paolini didn’t. He’s a weird home-schooled teenager “genius” who’s written this year’s pseudo-Harry Potter book of choice (according to the publishing industry, anyway). It’s called Eragon. It’s been getting a fair bit of hype so I picked up a copy last weekend. I regretted it as soon as I got home. There’s a gushing quote from Anne McCaffrey on the back! (I’ve never been able to get through a single Dragonriders of Pern book so her recommendation doesn’t exactly carry a lot of weight with me.)

It only got worse once I cracked it open. The first problem is the kid’s writing style. You can read some for yourself here. He actually says: “In my writing, I strive for a lyrical beauty somewhere between Tolkien at his best and Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf.” *snort* In practice, as far as I can tell this involves using lots of adjectives. Mountains are “forbiddingly solemn”, forests are “thickly treacherous”, and the danger is always “intensely palpable”. Once you get past the affected style, the story itself isn’t that bad… as long as you don’t mind rolling your eyes at the obvious influences. It’s like he put the Pern books, a complete set of Lord of the Rings, a dog-eared copy of Beowulf, and the shooting script of Star Wars into a blender and this is what popped out. He even prefaces the book with a map that might as well be Middle Earth. The story is full of elves, monsters, dwarves, men, dragons, men who ride dragons, etc. There’s no humour and no originality, other than in the combining of all these things. I keep waiting for hobbits to show up.

Am I being too harsh? I’m only halfway through, so maybe it gets better towards the end. Right now I’m just plugging along out of curiosity and duty. I dunno, maybe I’m just jealous that nobody ever offered to publish my derivative crap. At any rate, I can’t exactly recommend this one to the Potter fans yet.

Would you like some Turkish Delight?
Kevin discovered a rumor that Nicole Kidman might be playing the White Witch in Disney’s upcoming adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I actually think she’d be really good for that part. She’s got that whole beautiful-yet-terrible, pale-yet-flashy elfin ice queen thing going on anyway. I wonder if she’d sign on to play Jadis (“Empress of Charn”) if they get around to making The Magician’s Nephew…

Incidentally, when I first read the books I thought that turkish delight must be the best candy ever. Thus when I arrived in London in ’98, I headed straight for the local grocery store and bought some. It was awful! It was like a chocolate bar with a center of PINK JELLIED ASS. I still shudder at the thought.

I can’t resist. She’s just so cute!

   

She’s been sitting on my lap tonight learning about the Internet. We’re bonding.

The gutter-minded among you will be amused to note that the Snook, upon receiving these pictures from me, proceeded to forward them to his work buddies with the subject line: “Pictures of my girlfriend’s pussy.” Actually even I thought that was pretty funny.

My sister has caught the knitting bug and is ready to try her first sweater. She wants to do Cheesylove (the sleeveless version) from Knitty but she’s a little apprehensive. So we’re going to do it as a knitalong! We’re both going to knit it at the same time so we can help each other over the rough bits. Any of you other knitters want to join us? We’re aiming to get the materials this week and start next weekend.

“When Two Tribes Go to War: A History of Video Game Controversy”. Very interesting article about the games that have been giving Tipper Gore and Joseph Lieberman nightmares for decades. Be sure and check out the bit about “Custer’s Revenge”, a famous Atari game that involved a naked cowboy assaulting Native American women for points. Hmmm, we never had that one at our house…

New poll! My sister is wondering about the “ideal pet” breakdown of web-goddess readers. Please register your choice down there on the right.