The Desert Mermaid

Speaking of modern fairy tales, this dad is as modern as it gets. Right down to stopping in the middle of the story to check his memory with Wikipedia.



While I could probably get the sequence of events a lot more in order because I live in a basement without friends and still play this darn game pretty consistently, I am pretty sure I told stories in exactly this manner all the damn time when I was a kid.

I don't anymore, because I've learned I am a super-boring storyteller. That's why I write things instead. I am much more interesting on paper.

I applaud this family's taste in mirrors, though. And also their adorableness in babies. Damn, that kid is cute.

All the tragedies in the world this week, and the one that moves my cold, dead heart to insonsolable sadness is a dead bunny. I dunno why. The story just gets to me, in a way that even tragedies like murder don't. I can always get angry as well as sad with the senseless murder of a fellow human being. But this ... there's no real reason to be angry, so I'm just sad.

Bah. I'm starting to wallow again. I think we all need some happier bunnies, don't we?



Feeling slightly better now.

Nyyyeeeargh. Finished my first playthrough of Skyward Sword. I still can’t stand Archduke Fancypants, even with his last surprise,* but at least he’s not the FINAL final boss. The actual final boss made me feel much better about villains in general.

Now I have to go back over my notes and see how they’d look as a little commentary. No commentary could top the Christopher Walken-esque swearing of Super Mario Bros. Frustration Guy, but it’ll be fun to play it out anyway.

And when I wasn't playing that this week, I was reading Mastiff--and the combination set me to yearning again. Seriously, game designers, Tortall video game. I WOULD BUY A CONSOLE JUST TO PLAY IT.


*Though I suspect my complete failure to be even slightly amused by his antics must be how Batman feels about the Joker. You just know Bats thinks those of us who find that clown an engaging villain are idiots.

To the long list of reasons why I don’t plan to be a parent, you can add the fact that I’d probably mess this up, too:



These are the important things one must consider when having kids.


ETA: The quote is from Jon Stewart on his four-year-old son's tastes. Gonna take some deprogramming to fix that.

Following Netflix’s suggestion, I finally started watching The X-Files. Partly it was in an attempt to understand what the hell everyone else was watching back in the day when I was an adorable little counterculture twerp who feared scary TV shows, and partly it was being sick of only having seen what fans assure me are the four worst episodes,* although how they differentiate is difficult to tell now that I've seen more. I mean, they're all pretty bad. And as I watch, I think I’m finally starting to understand what my sister was talking about when she explained her addiction to True Blood. My thought processes for The X-Files go something like this:

“Dang, this is a terrible show.”
*next episode*
“Totally boring and pointless.”
*next episode*
“Nobody told me the actors were this bad.”
*next episode*
“And I never knew how completely ineffective Scully and Mulder are.”
*next episode*
“I mean, do all of these monster-of-the-week episodes end with the monster still at large, or at most temporarily inconvenienced?”
*next episode*
“Why am I still watching this?”

You get the idea.

Although I am having a great time seeing just how different things were just under two decades ago. I can see how people get stuck in the When I Was Your Age loop: it’s fascinating to see how things change. Even the mindset is different. (No Straight To The Internet mentality—not even for crazy conspiracy theorist loners looking to meet other crazy conspiracy theorist loners—and at least one episode based entirely on phone tag.) Pretty entertaining.

Mostly, though, it’s a perfect show to ignore while writing, and I’ve certainly got a lot of that to do if I’m gonna get this OGYAFE done by my own deadline. Time to turn on another boring ineffective badly-acted** X-File and get back to work!

*next episode*


*The one where Scully gets an evil tattoo, the one where Bryan Cranston's head explodes, the one where inbred hillbillies booby trap their house, and the one where Deep Roy crawls up people's asses and kills them.

**The first season has terrific sound mixing, though. I can hear every single ambient conversation in the street scenes. Sadly, though, I was left hanging with the drama of Lady Trying To Establish Which Store She Will Meet Someone In Front Of Later in favor of some other story about monsters running amok. Also I swear our heroes are being shadowed by one very determined, Tourette’s-affected dog.

It’s that time again!

Remember when I was going through a medswitch and it was sucking and so I asked y’all to distract me? Well, I am not switching meds, but this week still sucks for its own reasons, and everything is making me nervous, and by god I need distracting again. So please, Internet, I appeal to you: DISTRACT ME.

Go ahead! It can be anything! Videos! Book recommendations! Dumb mindless Flash games! Blogs! GIFs! Trivia! Puzzles! Timesuck sites! Anything! JUST POST SOMETHING.

Here, I’ll get us started with distractions of my own:

The Food Timeline, on the history of food.

ARKive is an image database of the biological organisms of Earth. It is also blessed by my main man David Attenborough!

Torn World is a source of anxiety for me right now because it is a responsibility for me, but if you're not in the Land Of Neuroses you get things like sea monsters, the mysteriously tame Rainbow Rainforest, and huge shaggy unicorns. It's pretty damn cool, really.

And videos:



(I love the Two-Headed Monster so much, especially when you see how each head entertains itself "alone.")



Okay, your turn!

So several million years ago, westrider did an interview meme, and asked me some questions. I have finally gotten around to answering them!

And yes, y’all can say “hit me” in the comments and I’ll give you some questions, too!


1: How did you get into modding Dolls?

*grin* I started by necessity, mostly. I started out just liking the dolls offered in various catalogs, but—as with most of my interests—I sort of picked up where the companies left off. I would come up with characters that had very specific characteristics you couldn’t really find in a catalog. So, I had to do it myself.

To be honest, I don’t feel like much of a doll modder—I’ve done a couple of wig swaps, like with Danny and Tris, and of course Daja needed her brass hand, but really most of the additions I make are to accessories, wardrobe, and characterizations. The most extensively customized doll I’ve got right now is Kuen, who I designed down to the eyebrow, but who was put together by a short-lived company with extensive ambitions. But each one is definitely a unique character—even, at this point, the ones who have existing storylines, like Laurel and Molly, so I suppose that counts.

2: Do you read Webcomics? If so, which?

I read a few! I enjoyed DC Simpson's Ozy and Millie—it had fun characters and a good balance of silliness and philosophy, and of course Simpson is obviously a Calvin and Hobbes fan, which makes her my friend. I also really enjoyed Digger, a comic that proves that a practical, logical hero can give you one hell of a story—especially since the author has to work harder to outsmart an intelligent hero.

For the comics that are still going, we have just a couple. Jeph Jacques’ Questionable Content has yet to become too sitcom-esque for me, and I adore Hannelore. And of course there’s Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, a comic with the frowniest frowny faces ever committed to screen or paper.

3: I know I've read about your time in Kenya. Other than that, which Countries have you visited. If none, which do you want to visit most?

I’ve … been to Tanzania? For a few days? Yeah, not much travel other than that.

I would like to visit a few countries—at this point I would love to look around South America—especially the Andes, Peru, Patagonia, places like that. I’d also love to see Iceland Mostly, though, I’d love to go back to Kenya and look around more.

4: Speaking of which, though, how did you end up going to Kenya?

Honestly? It’s because I picked up a book on Swahili. I wanted to study abroad, and I figured as long as I’d studied the language, why not?

Obviously, there were other reasons, too. When you’re studying anthropology, it helps to Broaden Your Horizons, and I figured I’d start with a place that interested me. That was probably also due to the language—I was studying the history of the langauge and found that it was completely fascinating.

5: Wombat?

I believe I answered that in Question 2.

Okay, everyone! Meme time wrapup. Y’all asked me questions, and now I provide the answers in the Mystery Characters Doing Stuff Meme! The players were:

1. Bilbo Baggins
2. Toph Bei Fong
3. Pilot
4.Pyanfar Chanur
5. Hank McCoy/Beast
6. Granny Weatherwax
7. Donald Duck
8. Digger-Of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels
9. Data
10. Old Spice Guy
11. Daja Kisubo
12. Keladry of Mindelan
13. Lando Calrissian
14. Uncle General Iroh
15. The Joker

Put them all together, and ( hijinks ensue! )

Casual search of Firelord family trees got me nowhere useful, rather by definition, but it did lead me to this awesome ATLA storyboard artist who drew this awesome image, which I liked so much I learned how to make .gif images just so I could make it into an icon. (Don’t laugh! It’s my first .gif! If you can do better, please do; I would not be averse to a GOOD version of this icon!)

Because dammit, I dare you to come up with something more happy-making than a Calvin and Hobbes homage using Toph and Iroh.

And go check out her other stuff! It’s addictive. I literally honest-to-god laughed out loud at a couple of those comics.

Me, I should go to bed before it’s time to get up. Good night, or the 20 or so minutes left of it!

Gonna have to dig that movie up now. I think my sister has it ...