web-goddess

Oh God. This is turning into one of those “I hate humanity” kind of nights. Check out this Metafilter discussion and the accompanying links. (Warning: definitely not safe for viewing at work.) How can men be so awful? Why do I even bother trying to be optimistic about my fellow human beings?

Hee! Best April Fools Day fake news story: “You’ve got Blogs! AOL buys into homegrown media”. It’s about AOL-Time Warner supposedly buying the rights to two hundred of the most popular blogs. My favorite part is where the AOL executive says, “No cat will ever go ill in America again in obscurity.” Ha!

Okay, so I’m running this contest over at my Dahl site, right? I received about forty entries all together and now I’m trying to decide who wins. I’ve got lots of nice entries from adults, and several good ones from little kids as well. But the writing in the teen age group is just unbelievably bad. I’m not talking about splitting infinitives or misusing participles or anything tricky either. I’m talking about basic spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You know, the stuff most people learn by the sixth grade. These “essays” were almost unreadable. I’ve never seen such run-on sentences in my life. Random words would be capitalized for no apparent reason. One kid actually wrote the word “copetishion” (as in, “competition”). My jaw hit the floor when I saw that one. The nine-year-olds’ entries were so much better! I can’t figure it out. Snookums feels that – as a former County Spelling Bee champion – I’m being prejudiced against people who have difficulty with language and spelling, but I honestly don’t feel like I’m being overly pedantic. This is basic stuff. They’re not dyslexic; they’re just sloppy. Is it that the younger kids are still at an age where teachers care about such things and therefore enforce them? Is it that teenagers just don’t care? Is it that younger kids visiting my site are probably there because they’re precocious readers (and therefore a good writers), and that most teenagers visiting will probably be looking for a book report to scam off the Internet? Or is this just the way it works, and the smart nine-year-olds of today will eventually mutate into the surly illiterate fourteen-year-olds of tomorrow? I hate to sound so cynical, but you wouldn’t believe these e-mails. Are these sub-literates representative of high schoolers today, Max? I sure as hell hope not.

Since it’s still Easter where most of y’all are…

Happy anniversary to my sweet Snookums. Two years down, lots to go.

IU is through to the NCAA Finals. As a Hoosier, I have to say I’m pretty proud. And how cool is their new coach? He said, “In basketball, coaches get too much credit. I mean, I proved that this year. I mean, here I am, a second-year coach, no experience, and sometimes I have no idea what’s going on the court — I mean, no idea. I’m happy we’re playing for the national championship.” He sounds fun. Anyway, my cousin Jenny, who sometimes posts here, was actually at the semifinal game, so I figured I’d better provide someplace for her inevitable hysterical victory comments. Go Hoosiers!

Farewell to the Queen Mother. She was an amazing old lady. One of my professors in England speculated years ago that she’d consumed too much gin throughout her life to actually die, and that she’d just “ascend to heaven on her artificial hips”. She just seemed so invincible. I almost wish I was back in London to see the inevitable outpouring of national grief.

Ah, Easter. The grocery story is filled with chocolate eggs, the TV channels are showing Jesus dramas, and the sex toy shop around the corner has a chalk drawing of two rabbits humping outside its door. One holiday, so many interpretations…

New Poll! What’s your favorite Easter taste treat? (Warning: this poll is rather U.S.-centric, since I never really figured out what Brits eat for Easter.)

Friday Five:

1. If you could eat dinner with and “get to know” one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose?
Is there any question? Roger Ebert. Totally. Yeah, yeah, I know I’m supposed to say Shakespeare or something, but it’d be much more fun if it were a person who’s really alive that I could be friends with. And he’d be a really fun person to talk to, and then maybe he’d take me to the Oscars with him.

2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel?
I remember feeling absolutely gutted when I realized that Roald Dahl had died before I ever got a chance to write him a letter.

3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose?
As Snookums put it, “Me! I’d be me, famous!” If I couldn’t be myself, I’d probably be Britney, as long as she wasn’t having one of those “buckets of urine” days. I mean, she’s mega-famous.

4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? Who?
Nope. When you’re a quarter Asian, you don’t look like anybody but your own family.

5. Have you ever met anyone famous?
At a fan convention in England, I met David Prowse, who played Darth Vader’s body in all three Star Wars films. Does that count?