While at camp, I read Frederick Farrar's 1858 book Eric, Or Little by Little. (Plot spoilers!) It's the story of a boy who goes to school and learns to swear and smoke. So, God kills his pious friend as a warning, and Eric reforms. He relapses and drinks brandy, but reforms again. Ah, but what is reform without punishment? When everyone is happy, ( Read more... )

At some point in the 12th century, a pair of green-skinned children (a brother and sister) are said to have appeared in the village of Woolpit, in Suffolk, England. They spoke no English and ate only green beans with stalks attached. After being baptized, the boy grew ill and died. The girl lived on and learned English. She explained that she and ( Read more... )

velvetpage and I took the girls to see it this afternoon. They quite liked it, though one long scene had Claire hiding her in coat with her hands over her ears.

General PointsThe CG was stronger than previous films. Reepicheep and Aslan looked very real indeed ( Read more... )

The Flippant Fandom One-Liner Review
velvetpage and I have just returned from Avatar, James Cameron's rather shallow remake of the classic 5th Doctor serial, Kinda.

"Why do you think the plants are hostile?"


( Read more... )

( Read more... )

My dad bought me a used IBM-XT clone for Christmas, 1989. Around that time, Omni magazine was carrying ads for dial-up MUDs, multiple-user text enviroments where you could hang out and pretend to be a dwarf. I loved this idea. I imagined making a con artist in one. I'd describe him as a wise old man, and he'd sit outside the town gate and sell ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I think the most successful RPG campaign I've ever run, by several metrics, was The Voyage of the Riddock's Dawn for Ironclaw. This game, if you didn't know, features animal people living in a fictonal world with society and technology vaugely akin to 15/16th century, with magic. And... yes, animal people ( Read more... )

Before bed, I fired up Conan one more time, and took on an additional quest. I went back to where I'd found the tailor and blacksmith who'd given me the dead-simple quests. There was a fisherman, and he was starving to death. He'd been chased away from his fishing gear and catch by pirates. His quest ( Read more... )

( Read more... )