web-goddess

I hate trolls. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been being attacked on this website over the past 24 hours for sharing an opinion that 68% of Australians also hold. (Or it might be that I’m also American. Or that the person hates George Bush. They’re not very clear.) Anyway, my attacker(s) aren’t even debating the issue; they’re trying to deny me the right to have an opinion on the matter. I tried arguing my case, but you know how well that goes. So now I’m just going to delete the crap. (I’d block them outright, but they share ISPs with several of my legitimate commenters, and that would block you all from the site. That said, if w-g suddenly disappears for you, that’s what’s happened. Drop me a line and I’ll grant you access.)

I’m not really sure what else to do. These people really don’t deserve any more of our attention, so perhaps we should just leave it at that. I guess I could force a sign-in for comments in the future, but I’d really hate to have to go to that option. Man, what kind of pathetic, antisocial jerk picks fights with people over things they say on their personal websites? We’ll just have to ponder.

Update: I’ve locked down commenting for the time being. Those of you who’ve commented before shouldn’t have any trouble, but please let me know if you do.

I have no idea how the airlines can get away with this crap. Using Qantas’s website, I get a fare of $1998 for a return trip ticket between Sydney and San Francisco. If I switch to their US site and use the exact same cities on the same dates (just going in the opposite direction), the cost is USD $1229. Even allowing for the exchange rate, that’s still a $500 premium that they levy on Australians. I got so mad I just called them. “We’re very sorry, Ma’am, but there are certain fares that are only available to North Americans…” yada yada yada. Qantas is supposed to be an Australian company, right? Why shouldn’t we be getting the special deals? This sucks. I’ll fly Air New Zealand instead.

Here’s a belated “Happy Valentine’s Day!” to my Snookums. We kept it pretty low-key, meeting Fiona (and Matt) and Bex (and Fin) for dinner at Una’s. After some lovely food, we retired back to our place to introduce Fin to WarioWare. Too funny. I think it’s a lot more fun to celebrate the day with friends and laughter than to worry about conforming to some romantic ideal. Wii and box wine are just fine for me!

This book nearly killed me. And not in a good way. I bought it a few months ago on the basis of this AskMeFi thread, which compared it to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I thought, hey, I liked that book! And people gave this one some rave reviews. So I dived in.

Ugh. I HATED IT. It started off okay, and I actually liked how Eco introduced William with a nod to classic Sherlock Holmes stories. (Specifically, the bit about the runaway horse.) The murder mystery was compelling, but it makes up only about 10% of the book. I’m serious. For every tiny scrap of a clue you got, there’d be twenty pages of random discourse on medieval monks, philosophy, the Inquisition, Papal succession, and heretical sects. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to recognize all these groups’ names (like, maybe in Italy this stuff is all well known?), or whether the point was to completely overwhelm and disorient the reader (which is what happened). The only, ONLY reason I forced myself to finish it was just so I could find out who the killer was. Oh, and I was mildly curious to find out what the title referred to, which is – SPOILER ALERT – nothing. IT SUCKED.

So basically, if you’re looking for a mildly compelling murder mystery with lots of priestly sex, torture, and poison, but that’s somehow also COMPLETELY BORING at the same time, this is your book.

Has anyone seen the movie with Sean Connery? Is it any good?