Clone Wars. The Clone Wars Micro-Series is online at Cartoon Network here.
11.08.2003
Psycho-logical test.
My brother Matt sent me this:
This is an authentic psychological test:
It is a story about a girl--While at the funeral of her mother, she met a
man whom she did not know. She thought he was amazing, her dream guy, and
she fell in love with him but never asked for his number and could not find
him after the funeral. A few days later the girl killed her sister.
Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?
(To be continued in comments.)
My brother Matt sent me this:
This is an authentic psychological test:
It is a story about a girl--While at the funeral of her mother, she met a
man whom she did not know. She thought he was amazing, her dream guy, and
she fell in love with him but never asked for his number and could not find
him after the funeral. A few days later the girl killed her sister.
Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?
(To be continued in comments.)
11.01.2003
Shower.
Taking showers is supposed to be good for having ideas because, according to whatever source Doyce heard it from, ios are released into the air, exciting your brain.
Neat idea, but sleeping in always works better for me...I lay in bed (I'm always the first one up) and wait for everyone else to wake up...things come to me then. Showers are for things that you forgot to do the other day, or last-minute inspirations. Sleeping in is for longer things.
Taking showers is supposed to be good for having ideas because, according to whatever source Doyce heard it from, ios are released into the air, exciting your brain.
Neat idea, but sleeping in always works better for me...I lay in bed (I'm always the first one up) and wait for everyone else to wake up...things come to me then. Showers are for things that you forgot to do the other day, or last-minute inspirations. Sleeping in is for longer things.
Spirited Away.
Lee dug this out the other day for Ray.
The first time she watched it, he said, he kept having to rescue her. Yubaba would come on, or Haku would get hurt, and that would be it.
But she kept insisting on watching it.
She sat snuggled in my arms the whole time a couple of days ago, and we sang to the song at the end while she "played" the lyre on my arm.
Lee dug this out the other day for Ray.
The first time she watched it, he said, he kept having to rescue her. Yubaba would come on, or Haku would get hurt, and that would be it.
But she kept insisting on watching it.
She sat snuggled in my arms the whole time a couple of days ago, and we sang to the song at the end while she "played" the lyre on my arm.
Halloween...
...has been survived.
I managed to get all the errands done in the afternoon with time still for Ray and me to take a shower. It's difficult to convince her to get out of there before the water turns cold, but I did it. And even then there was time to do some yoga, so I didn't kill anyone or end up spraining something while dragging Ray around.
We waited. And waited.
The other little girl didn't show up. Phone constantly busy--ah, dialup.
Six thirty. I put a dish of candy outside the front door, buttoned Ray up, and heard voices outside the door. Kids. Big ones, about fifteen-sixteen. As I opened the door, one of them was stuffing the dish--the entire dish--into a bag large enough to hold an adult body of average height and weight.
"She's standing right here," one of the other said. "You better put that back."
F------ kids. I bet these are the same ones that keep knocking the rocks off the retaining wall.
Anyway, left another bowlful of candy outside the door, got out of the house, vroom vroom, and drove down the road to the mall.
By the time we got there, most of the candy was gone.
No, this was a good thing. Even though they were finishing up, we still had to wait a couple of minutes just to walk around a corner. So many kids! Ray didn't take trick or treating well until I convinced her that the plastic pumpkin filled with candy was hers, and she could put the candy into it instead of holding it all in one sweaty little fist and staring painfully at people when they offered her candy, because she'd run out of hands. She even let me hold the candy while she talked to Scooby Doo.
Nobody else had such a cute little elephant. A zombie dressed in blood, wig, bustier, transparant skirt, and g-string, pushing a stroller with a baby dressed as a duck, gushed: Oh izzu a ne'ffant den?
We wandered the mall and everyone else went to happier hunting grounds, places with more candy and fewer trick or treaters. It was fun. I don't know when the transition was made, but Ray's more fun to take windowshopping now. I don't know...she seems to understand that we're just looking at stuff, possibly poking it or cooing at it here and there. I don't have to carry her the whole way, and she'll hold my hand whenever there are just too many people.
We left about eight thirty, came home, rescued the empty candy bowl (which had not been stolen), listened to phone messages: the weather outside town had been so bad that the other girl's mom had turned around halfway out, stopped at the store for candy, and had gone home. As it turns out, the age of two may be the last time before post-adolescence that it's possible to do this without a screaming fit. --Well, you're at risk for screaming fits at any moment with a two year-old, but there you go.
We picked up Lee from work early, but Ray fell asleep in the car, so I lay her down, still dressed in her elephant suit (but without the hat, so no ears or trunk). Zonkzilla, as Lee likes to say.
And that was Halloween.
---
I remember my father driving us around in a blizzard to go trick or treating out in the country one year. At best, we'd hit about nine or ten places: I think we made it three that year, and shouldn't have gone to any, but dad was too stubborn to take us back before then (or unwilling to face the consequences of two kids with loooooong faces).
Lee laughs when I tell him about it, and says, "I always knew I liked your dad. He knows his priorities."
...has been survived.
I managed to get all the errands done in the afternoon with time still for Ray and me to take a shower. It's difficult to convince her to get out of there before the water turns cold, but I did it. And even then there was time to do some yoga, so I didn't kill anyone or end up spraining something while dragging Ray around.
We waited. And waited.
The other little girl didn't show up. Phone constantly busy--ah, dialup.
Six thirty. I put a dish of candy outside the front door, buttoned Ray up, and heard voices outside the door. Kids. Big ones, about fifteen-sixteen. As I opened the door, one of them was stuffing the dish--the entire dish--into a bag large enough to hold an adult body of average height and weight.
"She's standing right here," one of the other said. "You better put that back."
F------ kids. I bet these are the same ones that keep knocking the rocks off the retaining wall.
Anyway, left another bowlful of candy outside the door, got out of the house, vroom vroom, and drove down the road to the mall.
By the time we got there, most of the candy was gone.
No, this was a good thing. Even though they were finishing up, we still had to wait a couple of minutes just to walk around a corner. So many kids! Ray didn't take trick or treating well until I convinced her that the plastic pumpkin filled with candy was hers, and she could put the candy into it instead of holding it all in one sweaty little fist and staring painfully at people when they offered her candy, because she'd run out of hands. She even let me hold the candy while she talked to Scooby Doo.
Nobody else had such a cute little elephant. A zombie dressed in blood, wig, bustier, transparant skirt, and g-string, pushing a stroller with a baby dressed as a duck, gushed: Oh izzu a ne'ffant den?
We wandered the mall and everyone else went to happier hunting grounds, places with more candy and fewer trick or treaters. It was fun. I don't know when the transition was made, but Ray's more fun to take windowshopping now. I don't know...she seems to understand that we're just looking at stuff, possibly poking it or cooing at it here and there. I don't have to carry her the whole way, and she'll hold my hand whenever there are just too many people.
We left about eight thirty, came home, rescued the empty candy bowl (which had not been stolen), listened to phone messages: the weather outside town had been so bad that the other girl's mom had turned around halfway out, stopped at the store for candy, and had gone home. As it turns out, the age of two may be the last time before post-adolescence that it's possible to do this without a screaming fit. --Well, you're at risk for screaming fits at any moment with a two year-old, but there you go.
We picked up Lee from work early, but Ray fell asleep in the car, so I lay her down, still dressed in her elephant suit (but without the hat, so no ears or trunk). Zonkzilla, as Lee likes to say.
And that was Halloween.
---
I remember my father driving us around in a blizzard to go trick or treating out in the country one year. At best, we'd hit about nine or ten places: I think we made it three that year, and shouldn't have gone to any, but dad was too stubborn to take us back before then (or unwilling to face the consequences of two kids with loooooong faces).
Lee laughs when I tell him about it, and says, "I always knew I liked your dad. He knows his priorities."
10.25.2003
10.22.2003
10.19.2003
Reviews.
The Tattoo Murder Case, by Akimitsu Takagi
Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, by Will Cuppy
The Tattoo Murder Case is a...murder mystery novel, of all things, which I suppose you never would have guessed based on the title.
Seeing as my basis for comparison in reading mysteries is much smaller than fantasy or SF, here's all I can come up with:
I figured out something, though. I don't like mysteries that I can figure out before the denoument. There were a lot of details that I'd missed, but the central twist I had even before the murder occurred. I've talked to people that like to read a lot of mysteries, and most of them sound happy that they were able to figure out such-and-such by the end of the first chapter. Is that analagous to being the kind of SF reader that spends the entire time bitching about how explosions can't be heard in space? Which always struck me as being a waste of time, too. Oh, well. I spend the first chapter of a fantasy novel figuring out which country or myth the main country was based on. "Oh," I'll tell myself with smug satisfaction. "That's supposed to be France."
Lost in a Good Book is a good book for people that like to read. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's metafiction, but it takes some of the elements therefrom and turns them into insider jokes. No...this is more of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and the farce (dramatically) that was made out of the partial novel of The Mystery of Edwin Drooooooooooooo-duh. For example, two of the guys that are assigned to tail the main character early on in the book are called "Cannon" and "Fodder." They die, of course. One of the main villains is called "Jack Schitt."
The premise is that our Heroine, Thursday Next, is able to move into and out of books. That's right--in the first book of this series, The Eyre Affair, Thursday is transported into the original copy of Jane Eyre and changes the ending from the lame-ass "Jane goes off to South America"* and gets her married to Rochester. All other copies of the book change to reflect the new ending.
I'm not going to give away any more of the plot; it's too funny and I'd be here all night. Elements of note: Mycroft Next, Thursday's mad-scientist uncle invents Nextian geometry, which allows circular scones to be punched out of dough without any scraps left over; a Kafka-esque trial that makes fun of Kafka, Alice in Wonderland, and existing legal systems with one fell swoop; and nevermind, just read the book.
The Decline and Fall is really only summed up one way, by quotes.
On Alexander the Great:
"Alexander's empire fell to pieces at once, and nothing remained of his work except that the people he had killed were still dead."
On Attila the Hun:
"Attila the Hun was an awful pest, but there are plenty of others. You mustn't blame him for all your troubles, because most of them are your own fault, and the sooner you realize it the better.1
1Attila's name does not rhyme with vanilla, as it used to in my day. It is now believed that, if children can be taught to accent Attila on the first syllable, things may take a turn for the better."
On Louis XIV:
"Things went from bad to worse until just anybody could defeat the French."
On Catherine the Great:
"...but in 1754 Catherine had a baby boy who looked a lot like Sergei Saltykov, a young man with whom Catherine often discussed current events. Some historians thing Peter may have been the father because the child grea up to resemble him in character and general uselessness."
I have another book by Will Cuppy from the library that I haven't read yet, How to Be a Hermit.
"Coffee! With the first nip of the godlike brew I decide not to jump off the roof until things get worse--I'll give them another week or so. With the second I think I see a way of meeting my monthly insurance premium, and I simultaneously forgive the person I heard saying I was not half as funny as I thought I was."
--I can see Dave Barry and Terry Pratchett in here. Especially in the footnotes.
*Or wherever. I'm not going to look it up at this moment. Muahahahah!
The Tattoo Murder Case, by Akimitsu Takagi
Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, by Will Cuppy
The Tattoo Murder Case is a...murder mystery novel, of all things, which I suppose you never would have guessed based on the title.
Seeing as my basis for comparison in reading mysteries is much smaller than fantasy or SF, here's all I can come up with:
- Not as clever as Agatha Christie.
- A locked-room mystery where the locked-room aspect was downplayed, even mocked.
- Prose (admittedly in translation) inelegant and unappealing, but functional and readable.
- Compared in the reviews to John Dickson Carr, whom I haven't read.
I figured out something, though. I don't like mysteries that I can figure out before the denoument. There were a lot of details that I'd missed, but the central twist I had even before the murder occurred. I've talked to people that like to read a lot of mysteries, and most of them sound happy that they were able to figure out such-and-such by the end of the first chapter. Is that analagous to being the kind of SF reader that spends the entire time bitching about how explosions can't be heard in space? Which always struck me as being a waste of time, too. Oh, well. I spend the first chapter of a fantasy novel figuring out which country or myth the main country was based on. "Oh," I'll tell myself with smug satisfaction. "That's supposed to be France."
Lost in a Good Book is a good book for people that like to read. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's metafiction, but it takes some of the elements therefrom and turns them into insider jokes. No...this is more of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and the farce (dramatically) that was made out of the partial novel of The Mystery of Edwin Drooooooooooooo-duh. For example, two of the guys that are assigned to tail the main character early on in the book are called "Cannon" and "Fodder." They die, of course. One of the main villains is called "Jack Schitt."
The premise is that our Heroine, Thursday Next, is able to move into and out of books. That's right--in the first book of this series, The Eyre Affair, Thursday is transported into the original copy of Jane Eyre and changes the ending from the lame-ass "Jane goes off to South America"* and gets her married to Rochester. All other copies of the book change to reflect the new ending.
I'm not going to give away any more of the plot; it's too funny and I'd be here all night. Elements of note: Mycroft Next, Thursday's mad-scientist uncle invents Nextian geometry, which allows circular scones to be punched out of dough without any scraps left over; a Kafka-esque trial that makes fun of Kafka, Alice in Wonderland, and existing legal systems with one fell swoop; and nevermind, just read the book.
The Decline and Fall is really only summed up one way, by quotes.
On Alexander the Great:
"Alexander's empire fell to pieces at once, and nothing remained of his work except that the people he had killed were still dead."
On Attila the Hun:
"Attila the Hun was an awful pest, but there are plenty of others. You mustn't blame him for all your troubles, because most of them are your own fault, and the sooner you realize it the better.1
1Attila's name does not rhyme with vanilla, as it used to in my day. It is now believed that, if children can be taught to accent Attila on the first syllable, things may take a turn for the better."
On Louis XIV:
"Things went from bad to worse until just anybody could defeat the French."
On Catherine the Great:
"...but in 1754 Catherine had a baby boy who looked a lot like Sergei Saltykov, a young man with whom Catherine often discussed current events. Some historians thing Peter may have been the father because the child grea up to resemble him in character and general uselessness."
I have another book by Will Cuppy from the library that I haven't read yet, How to Be a Hermit.
"Coffee! With the first nip of the godlike brew I decide not to jump off the roof until things get worse--I'll give them another week or so. With the second I think I see a way of meeting my monthly insurance premium, and I simultaneously forgive the person I heard saying I was not half as funny as I thought I was."
--I can see Dave Barry and Terry Pratchett in here. Especially in the footnotes.
*Or wherever. I'm not going to look it up at this moment. Muahahahah!
Ray's Birthday:
Her actual birthday was on Friday. Lee worked until after bedtime.
We were going to go to the Boo at the Zoo, at the Cheyenne Moutain Zoo, last night but:
Crap, man.
I still have the tickets, and I'm going to try taking Ray again later, but trying to get everyone in and out and up and down in under an hour wasn't going to happen.
Today we're having cake and little squealing girls with party noisemakers.
That's the good news. The bad news, well, will be left for another day.
Her actual birthday was on Friday. Lee worked until after bedtime.
We were going to go to the Boo at the Zoo, at the Cheyenne Moutain Zoo, last night but:
- I dropped the e'fant head back at the house on the way out the door.
- Military types turned us back at the pass.
- By the time we reached the shuttle bus, it was 7:30 (and the event finishes up at 8:30).
- We arrived at the Sears parking lot at the Boadmoor Town Centre, only to find a line of hundreds of people waiting for the frikkin' shuttle bus. Hundreds.
Crap, man.
I still have the tickets, and I'm going to try taking Ray again later, but trying to get everyone in and out and up and down in under an hour wasn't going to happen.
Today we're having cake and little squealing girls with party noisemakers.
That's the good news. The bad news, well, will be left for another day.
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