Hereby I (retroactively) declare a moratorium on the airing of the following horrible and overplayed songs by whatever means for a period of 60 days, starting each year on November 15th:
All I Want For Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey)
Last Christmas (Wham!)
Wonderful Christmas Time (Paul McCartney and/or The Wings)
Christmas Time (Bryan Adams)
Do They Know It’s Christmas? (Band Aid. You really think they’d give a damn?)
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (John Lennon)
Happy New Year (Abba. Actually, make that any and all songs by Abba.)
Thank God It’s Christmas (Queen)
8 Days of Christmas (Destiny’s Child)
Driving Home for Christmas (Chris Rea)
Fairytale of New York (The Pogues)
Feliz Navidad (José Feliciano)
Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord (Boney M)
Merry Xmas Everybody (Slade, as requested by John)
This list may be changed at any appropriate moment and is not up for discussion. Additions may be suggested, however.
EverymodernbrowserI know has a build-in, customizable web search feature. Yes, even Internet Explorer 7. ¹ So what I still can’t quite figure out, is why there are still a lot of people who *insert “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” joke here*.
Looking something up is very easy: just hit CTRL+E (if you use Windows, on a Mac it’s probably CMD), type in what you’re looking for, and hit return. Easy as that. Or alternatively, if you’re reading a page and come across a name or book or something else you want to know more about, you can select that text, right-click (or the appropriate keystroke), and select the search option from the context menu. Works in all browsers but IE7.
And really, that’s it. Alright, depending on what information you’re looking for, you might have to jiggle the keywords around a bit to get to the right information, but apart from a couple of strategically placed quotation marks there’s a good chance you won’t need anything fancy. ²
Now that you know how it’s done, it’s only a matter of practice. And don’t be surprised if the next time you ask me a question that a simple search would have answered I tell you to just fucking Google it.
No, IE6 is not a modern browser. It’s a 7-year-old relic from a different age which should have been phased out when IE7 was released over two years ago. If you’re still using it, you should upgrade to any alternative as soon as possible. back
Every once in a while I do use the site: modifier to search for some information on a specific website. So when I was looking for some archived posts about my knee, I used this query: site:evilnickname.org knee. back
John Lennon’s “[The Beatles are] more popular than Jesus” remark has been forgiven by The Vatican.
Grant Publishers are taking pre-orders for a new edition of The Little Sisters of Eluria (including the revised DT1: The Gunslinger). On the one hand, do I really need a book including two stories I already have (twice even)? On the other hand, a pretty book with new illustrations by Michael Whelan. Tempting. Too tempting.
There are at least two communities dedicated to explaining why the Inheritance cycle isn’t, *cough*, all that good: Impishidea.com, anti-shurtugal.com.
Like it’s subtitle Brisingr —or— The Seven Promises of Eragon Shadeslayer and Saphira Bjartskular (Book Three of the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini) could have benefited from an editor. Or at least, when Paolini said that he needed a fourth book to resolve all plot lines, his publisher should have insisted that there was no way in hell that was going to happen.
All you need to know about the story is that it boils down to a basic Lord of the Rings meets Star Wars* fantasy epic with an teenage überemo, human/elf-hybrid dragon rider as protagonist. You know the type of story I’m talking about: walking (and flying) around a lot in Middle Earth Alagaësia, an evil overlord in a remote mountain stronghold that needs to be overthrown by a rebel army of elves, dwarfs and orcs Urgals, magic, epic battles and unpronounceable names. Not a lot of singing though.
If I were an editor and this book would come across my desk, I’d suggest the following:
Burn your thesaurus, and change all the big words meant to impress your readers back to something that actually makes sense.
Likewise, omit scenes that don’t help the story along. For example: dragon rider boy runs back to the rebel army, and comes across a hermit spellcaster in an abandoned tower. He does some gardening, gets a meal out of it, listens to the magician rant, and runs away. While this guy may prove useful in Book IV, he is absolutely insignificant for the rest of this story. Another example: while Yoda Oromis is explaining something important that might actually help them overthrow Darth Vader Galbatorix, a hummingbird flies by to feast on some leftover lunch. Just some random observation in an onslaught of exposure.
Bottom line: this book should have been shorter. The small amount of plot doesn’t need 700 pages. When Book IV in the trilogy is eventually released, I predict more filler**. It wouldn’t surprise me when both books could be condensed to a much better single volume. We’ll see. Meanwhile, Brisingr drags the series down from “derivative and mediocre fantasy genre piece” to “I wish I hadn’t bothered with the first part, but now I’m in too deep to consider stopping.”
Book read
Christopher Paolini — Brisingr —or— The Seven Promises of Eragon Shadeslayer and Saphira Bjartskular
First line
Eragon stared at the dark tower of stone wherein hid the monsters who had murdered his uncle, Garrow.
* Disclosure: I haven’t seen any of the Star Wars movies (nor was I planning to rectify that), so I’m just going along with what the other geeks are saying.
** Also, I predict dragon rider boy defeating the evil king, him getting the elf-girl after all and then sailing away into the sunset from whatever the equivalent of Grey Havens will be called in this world.