Ninjineer

For five weeks, this country’s only cinema had show the same four movies: High School Musical 3, Bolt, Madagascar 2, and Tale of Despereaux. (Technically, the first two had been here for eight and seven weeks respectively, not that I was keeping count, mind you.) I kind of figured that the economic times being what they are, the theater was just going under. Or maybe just managed by frickin’ morons. But then last Friday they surprised me by retiring the oldest two flicks and putting up Twilight.

While I was heartened that the theater wasn’t dead yet, I can’t say I was exactly excited for the opportunity to see Twilight. My tween nieces, however, we ecstatic. Of course, they had just devoured all four books in the series which may have influenced their attitude. Their enthusiasm infected my daughter, which lead to my taking her, along with my older two sons.

My daughter found it too scary. What can I say; she’s only nine. The villains faced by Barbie are about the limit of her tolerance for movie danger. I tried to explain to her on the way home that the more fearsome the villain, the greater the accomplishment for the hero who overcomes that villain. I’m not sure she believed me.

For my part, I was surprised I didn’t despise the movie. I mean, sure, I found the whole sparkling-in-sunlight property laughable, but I can see why it was necessary in order to tell a story where the vampires go to school. And I was disappointed with how passively the villainous vampire acted when it came time to rip off his head. Still, for a tween romance movie is was tolerable … as long as I don’t think about it too hard. I imagine it helped considerably that I have not read the book.

Update: Yesterday, the theater brought down Despereaux and put up Four Christmases. I guess that confirms it. Morons do run the place.

dailymeh:

When Tumblr informs me I’ve got a new follower, I often skim through their blog, and that’s how I found this list of “interesting crazy facts”. The proper response to this kind of list — ducking accusations of being a party pooper — is “[citation needed]”. The list contains four etymological myths, that is, myths about the origins of words and phrases. Let me educate you:

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled ’ Gentlemen Only..Ladies Forbidden’..and thus the word GOLF entered into the English Language.

Actually, the origin of the word golf is unknown, but we do know that the game is Scottish and that it’s not an acronym. That’s just silly. One possible explanation is the Middle Dutch word colf, colve, meaning stick, club or bat. The first attested use of “golf” is a little amusing: it’s a 15th century ban on playing football and golf.

In the 1400’s a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb”.

This is utterly false. As far as we know, the origin of this phrase is exactly as it appears, namely, using the thumb to measure stuff.

In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase “goodnight, sleep tight.”

Alternatively, we could point out that “tight” used to mean sound, as in, “sleep soundly”.

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

It seems incredible that this tradition would survive into Modern English, and alas, it’s too good to be true. If I were to guess how this word originated, I’d say that honey represents sweetness, and moon represents how long it was presumed to last. That’s what the sources say, too.

The curse of the geek: you cannot present us with an unexpected, complicated connection and expect us not to verify it. For fellow geeks, I left the rest of the list to fact-check, if anyone’s bored. I’m sure half of the other alleged facts are equally fictitious.

Note to self: Just because something labels itself a fact does not make it so. It may make an interesting (tall) tale though.

• Content by Cory Doctorow — I had heard Cory’s name bandied about on the Internet, but had never taken the time to figure out what made him significant. Turns out, among other things, Cory has some strong ideas about digital rights management. This book collects several of his essays on that and related topics. Interesting, thought-provoking reading, though I wonder how persuasive it is to those who hold differing opinions (I’m looking at you RIAA).

• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow — I found it a pleasing blend of geek and thriller. It was a good read even though it yanked too hard on my suspension of disbelief at one crucial juncture. DHS secretly rounding up random people off the street right after the event struck me as completely absurd.

  Cory has his books available for download for free from his website, which is where I obtained both the above books. Cory is right in that these downloads did not represent a missed sale for him. I never would have purchased either book. Both are well outside the genres I normally peruse.

• The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu — This book’s heroine has a novel feature: symbiotic demons who pose as tattoos on her body during the day. Sounds cool. Also, the first sentence is a serious hook:

  When I was eight, my mother lost me to zombies in a one-card draw.

  Unfortunately, after that first sentence, irritations began to accumulate which ultimately sabotaged my enjoyment of the novel. For instance, instead of being animated corpses, zombies in this story were demon-controlled people. There’s already a commonly used word to describe such people: possessed. Why confuse the two?

• The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison — The earlier novels in the Hallows series all left me feeling like something major had happened. This one felt more like one long transition, bridging between the previous book and the one to follow. Still, I enjoyed the opportunity to interact with these characters yet again.

• Night Life and Pure Blood by Caitlin Kittredge — The first two books of the Nocturne City series continued my urban fantasy binge. They were alright, but not as satisfying as a Hollows or Dresden Files book.

• Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover — Of the works in this list, I’d rate this one the highest. Mr. Stover described the story, in part, as “a pop-top can of Grade-A one-hundred percent pure whip-ass.” And it was. But interwoven with that were examinations of entertainment, government, marriage, love, power, and more. It was the combination of all it that made this a damn fine novel. The surprising thing for me is that it was published ten years ago, but I only learned of it recently.

There is a factory in Northern Minnesota which makes the Tickle Me Elmo toys. The toy laughs when you tickle it under the arms. Well, Lena is hired at The Tickle Me Elmo factory and she reports for her first day promptly at 8:00 am.

At 8:45 am there is a knock at the Personnel Manager’s door. The Foreman throws open the door and begins to rant about the new employee. He complains that she is incredibly slow and the whole line is backing up, putting the entire production line behind schedule.

The Personnel Manager decides he should see this for himself, so the 2 men march down to the factory floor. When they get there the line is so backed up that there are Tickle Me Elmo’s all over the factory floor and they’re really beginning to pile up. At the end of the line stands Lena surrounded by mountains of Tickle Me Elmo’s.

She has a roll of plush red fabric and a huge bag of small marbles. The 2 men watch in amazement as she cuts a little piece of fabric, wraps it around two marbles and begins to carefully sew the little package between Elmo’s legs.

The Personnel Manager bursts into laughter. After several minutes of hysterics he pulls himself together and approaches Lena.

“I’m sorry,” he says to her, barely able to keep a straight face, “but I think you misunderstood the instructions I gave you. Your job is to give Elmo two test tickles.”

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan Island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up on a tie.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, “You stay here; I’ll go on a head.”
14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: “Keep off the grass.”
16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ‘No change yet.’
17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
18. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
19. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
20. A backward poet writes inverse.