The Good, The Not So Good & The Aggressively Mediocre.
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The Parentals are back! And they brought me new clothes! *huggle* Seriously, I latched on to my Mum's arm like one of those weird Koala Bear clips. It's nice to have them back again! :-D
Also of the good, the hitherto blogless Stephen is now one of us! Now that both Ali and he are blogging, a force of randomness - the likes of which the world has never seen - will be unleashed upon the internet. poor darling internet, it won't know what hit it.
Not of the good - the TTC going on strike starting Monday. TTC Union guys -holding an entire city hostage to your demands is not the way to win sympathy for your cause. And frankly, the service where I live is bad enough that y'all ought to be taking a pay cut, rather than asking for a pay increase.
[RANT] Anyway, I was reading one of my brother's fantasy novels on the way home from school the other day, and seriously, it was the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern fantasy. The writing was amateurish, with constant repetition of certain phrases. Seriously, the sentence "the infamous left eyebrow arched" was repeated atleast 5 times in 7 or so pages. There was no characterization to speak of since all the characters were just cardboard cut-outs - the irresponsible prince, the wise wizard, the power-mad antagonists. I was getting annoyed just reading it. I mean, sure, you don't get writers of the stature of Tolkien every day, but this book was so rankly amateur, I'm surprised it got published. [END RANT]
Anyway, off now. Head cold demands attention. Stoopid pathogens.
The Parentals are back! And they brought me new clothes! *huggle* Seriously, I latched on to my Mum's arm like one of those weird Koala Bear clips. It's nice to have them back again! :-D
Also of the good, the hitherto blogless Stephen is now one of us! Now that both Ali and he are blogging, a force of randomness - the likes of which the world has never seen - will be unleashed upon the internet. poor darling internet, it won't know what hit it.
Not of the good - the TTC going on strike starting Monday. TTC Union guys -holding an entire city hostage to your demands is not the way to win sympathy for your cause. And frankly, the service where I live is bad enough that y'all ought to be taking a pay cut, rather than asking for a pay increase.
[RANT] Anyway, I was reading one of my brother's fantasy novels on the way home from school the other day, and seriously, it was the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern fantasy. The writing was amateurish, with constant repetition of certain phrases. Seriously, the sentence "the infamous left eyebrow arched" was repeated atleast 5 times in 7 or so pages. There was no characterization to speak of since all the characters were just cardboard cut-outs - the irresponsible prince, the wise wizard, the power-mad antagonists. I was getting annoyed just reading it. I mean, sure, you don't get writers of the stature of Tolkien every day, but this book was so rankly amateur, I'm surprised it got published. [END RANT]
Anyway, off now. Head cold demands attention. Stoopid pathogens.
17 comments:
The Fifth Sorceress, by Robert Newcomb
not quite "worst.book.ever!" quality, but not for lack of trying.
My infamous left eyebrow arched, I decided to comment.
This additional research must include at least n = 30 eyebrows in order to make statistical conclusions.
We can run a t-test between the left and right eyebrow as well to see if the difference in arching is significant, and whether or not one eyebrow arches more than the other affects whether one wins a Pulitzer for one's fantasy novel.
Also, we'd have to control for eyebrow colouration, bushiness and the unibrow factor. Our control group could include those who recently barbequed and singed their eyebrows.
Oh man, Sharon's gonna be pissed when she reads this. :D
I feel that at this time it is necessary to call upon a source:
Brow, Uni. Eyebrows for the ages: a study of cataclysmic barbeque accidents and their effect on characters in fantasy novels. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 42, 2001-3001.
According to Professor Brow, the loss of one's eyebrows not only results in the character not being able to express the emotion of sarcasm, but such a grand loss has profound socioeconomic ramifications. There are five sides to this argument, something like a pentagon. However, due to time constraints and the fact that I still haven't finished my fermentation writeup, I will limit my discourse.
First, a loss of one's eyebrows is a sign that (a) one owns a barbeque and is thus a member of at least the upper lower class, (b) one was at the outer edge of ground zero of a nuclear blast and thus walked away with only chronic myelogenous leukemia and singed eyebrows, or (c) one's erstwhile friends shaved off one's eyebrows for revenge.
Second, there is no point number two. I wanted to confuse you.
In summary, eyebrows are our friends from the fifth dimension. Treat them like the scum they are, and they will serve you well as humanity moves forward into the nineteenth and a half century!
Please note that the authors had multiple competing interests but choose not to reveal them for unethical reasons beyond human comprehension. In addition, PNAS paid them off. :D
PNAS highly supports the use of cardboard cutout characters (in an alliterative fashion) such as the irresponsible prince, the wise wizard and the power-mad antagonists. Without such cardboard-cutout characters, we would not have the science fiction films we treasure today. The future of science fiction remains one of PNAS's highest goals... we intend to grow to reach that goal. No pun in ten did.
I would barbeque my steak, but after all these eyebrow-singing events, I'd rather not.
Whether 'tis nobler to take a stake on one's steak and by opposing the conundrums of life end them. Verily, giving up steak would be the literal stake through my steak, a skewer if you will. And from that skewer, I will set up a pin and beat Rahil at chess once and for all. For it is in the beating of your opponent at chess, that you do not have to beat your opponent to a bloody pulp. Another famous pulp was zebra mussel. In conclusion, Liberia is not a land of contrasts as it is easily confused with Libya.
Awaken my child of Bhaal, and behold the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am the narrator. I control all that you see and hear. If I want a character to attack you, I shall create one. If I want ten trillion characters to attack you, I shall have to click on "Create New Character" ten trillion times. Should I? It would be the logical course of action. And, as we learned from the illogical man Mr. Spork, "Logic is a word in the dictionary." Clearly, his words lend deeper meaning to the human condition. If only I knew what it was. No matter, for it is in the thinking that things will get thought. It is in the doing that things will be done wrongly. To wrong, perchance to dream. Let there be light and there will be no darkness. Light = 1, darkness = 0 in Visual Basic. Visual Basic backwards is Basic Visual, and as I stated at the beginning, I control all that you see and hear. Now, go forth, for thy people have corrupted themselves.
"The poisons of the frogurt run deep, me lord."
"Gobble them all down."
-Orca and Saruwoman, Fellowship of the Bracelet
"It is the language of Latin, which I will not utter here. But in the Common Palate it says: 'One bracelet to serve as a slave, one bracelet to lose them, one bracelet to scatter them all and in the bright light cause them to come apart. You are the weakest link, goodbye!'"
Jim: Thanks bro. There were some lumped koalas spotted today in Kuala Lumpur. For this story we go live to our eye in the sky, Darryl Dommer.
Darryl: Traffic is backed up as far as the eye can see! And now off to the weather room for the latest forecast!
Harrold Hossein: It gon' rain!
Jim: Thank you for your forecast. As usual, top notch, Harrold.
Jim: In international news, the USSR began World War III today. You would think this would be important news, but no, we left it till after the baby and candystore story. For updates, we go live to our World War III specialist, TML.
TML: Hey everybody look it's me!
Jim: Thank you very much for that report, TML. The world is better off thanks to you. For an ACTUAL report, let's go live to our bureauchief, the WOPR computer.
WOPR: Hello, Jim. Would you like to play a game of chess? How about global thermonuclear war?
Jim: No, thank you WOPR. I'd like you to open up your memory circuits for me.
WOPR: I'm sorry Jim, I'm afraid I can't do that. This mission is too critical for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Jim: Dammit, WOPR. You won't get away with this. I've got Arthur C. Clarke on line 2. Arthur C., how's it hangin' G!
Arthur C.: Yooooo, bro. Not toooo much, just sittin' back, collecting my royalties now that Stanley's out of the picture. Get it? Get it?
Jim: And that's all the time we have today. Stay tuned for our late-night movie: "Teletubbies: Revenge of the Dark Lord". Good night!
Before you kill us, Sharon, please realize that you foreshadowed this exact set of circumstances when you said: "Also of the good, the hitherto blogless Stephen is now one of us! Now that both Ali and he are blogging, a force of randomness - the likes of which the world has never seen - will be unleashed upon the internet. poor darling internet, it won't know what hit it." :D
So in essence, this is all your fault. :D
Ali&Stephen: OMG WTF! This is WHY the delete button was invented!!! Seriously, you two had waaay too much time on your hands Saturday, didn't you? :P
Vince: Yeah, I call my parents the parental units. :-D Yeah, I know, pretty weird.
[small voice] But but I found 'em kinda funny...[/small voice]
Hem, don't encourage them!
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