The Witching Well

Onesome: The– Which is the Christmas movie for you? “It’s a Wonderful Life”? “Frosty the Snowman”? “Miracle on 34th Street”? Do you have a favorite you just love to see each year?
“The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Yeah, I’m twisted, but in a good way. The runner-up is “Bernard and the Genie” starring Alan Cumming and Lenny Henry in the title roles.

Twosome: Polar– bears seem comfortable in the cold and snow; how about you? Is snow a welcome pause for you? …an annoyance? …or perhaps something for ‘people living elsewhere’?
I actually enjoy maybe one or two snowfalls a year. Timing is everything: Saturday morning when I have time to play with the dog in the yard. Most of the season, though, it’s in my way and makes extra work for me.

Threesome: Express– Have you ever found yourself in the Express line at the store, but only realized that after you had loaded something like thirty items onto the belt, were paying by check and were planning on using coupons?
Nah. I’m much too anal-retentive to let that happen.

The Thursday Threesome

I just finished reading this last night. OK, so I’m just a little behind the times. Believe me, I paid for it in sheer effort to avoid spoilers — which I was moderately UNsuccessful at, despite trying to stay away from most of the fan sites after the book came out.

There’s a reason that J.K. Rowling is selling as well as she is: because she can write. She can plot, create tension, put interesting people on the page, and set it all somewhere that’s just half a step to the left of familiar. And most importantly for a book aimed at kids, she doesn’t underestimate the intelligence of her readership. Which is, I think, why she’s so popular with adults as well.

Is it a perfect book? No, of course not. I think there are a few spots where she gets a mite heavy-handed, especially when trying to describe the emotional turmoil that goes on inside a sixteen-year-old boy when it comes to girls. (On the other hand, I’m not a sixteen-year-old boy, so what do I know?) But it’s a genuinely fun read, and I’m glad to see even the adult characters growing a bit as the series goes on.

‘Cause, let’s face it, huge chunks of the fandom are just plain smitten with the adults around Harry. Google them sometime: Sirius Black? Check. Lucius Malfoy? Check. Severus Snape? Check, check, and check. My Gods, the fangirls really love the bad boys, don’t they? Me? To pull a line from another fandom: I like nice men.

Which is my way of saying that I really like the fact that Rowling keeps bringing Remus Lupin back. And I really, really like where she’s got him at the end of the book.

The fangirl in me was horrified at the other thing she did at the end of the book, but the writer in me understands why she did it. Well, half of it anyway. I’ll wait for the 7th book to see where she’s going to go with the aftermath. I have my own ideas of what *I* would do now, but I suspect she’ll surprise me.

I passed up the opening of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire last night for an evening with the MIT Musical Theatre Guild and their wonderful, hysterically funny Star Wars Trilogy: Musical Edition. Our friend Jax is the producer and her husband, Jamez, plays Darth Vader. When we left the MIT campus at the end of the show, my face hurt from so much laughing and smiling. I stomped my feet in sheer glee at least half a dozen times.

The show is in 3 acts, one for each of the movies of the original film trilogy, and the musical numbers are lifted from everything from Chicago to Phantom of the Opera to A Nightmare Before Christmas (with rewritten lyrics, of course). My personal favorite is the duet sung by Darth Vader and the Emperor in the third act (officially Act 6 in the program, of course) in which, to music from Jesus Christ Superstar, they sing “For the sake of the Empire, he’ll join us or die.” Very tongue in cheek. Very campy. Very very fun.

The storm troopers tap dance. I kid you not.

And just about everyone who’s anyone in sci-fi gets a mention (and sometimes a cameo) somewhere in the show. The droids that the Jawas have for sale include a couple of well-known cartoon characters and everyone’s favorite Star Fleet android. The cantina scene is full to the brim with notables (including one gentleman in a very long scarf and another in an ugly knit hat with ear flaps). They even throw in a few in-jokes for fantasy fans.

There are a handful of shows left, if you’re anywhere near Cambridge, Massachusetts, this weekend. I can’t promise they aren’t sold out, but it might be worth a try.

Turtle surrogate mother for hippo.

You scored as Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye. The Mechanic. You are a natural mechanic, and you are far too sweet and cheerful to live out here. How you can see the good in everyone around you boggles the mind occasionally. Still you don’t seem to be any crazier than that, and it is a nice kinda crazy. Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye 88% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 69% The Operative 63% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 63% Capt. Mal Reynolds 56% Simon Tam 56% River Tam 56% Shepherd Derrial Book 50% Inara Serra 38% Jayne Cobb 25%

Which Serenity character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Lifted from Body Electric.

Start with something small, something insignificant that most people (the sane ones anyway) wouldn’t look at twice. Trade it to someone for something just a bit better. Then trade that new thing, too. And then trade the results of that. And blog about it.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: One Red Paperclip.

The Independent says that US forces dropped white phosporus on Fallujah, which, as Hunter at Daily Kos points out, melts the skin off children.

I hadn’t realised that it had gone missing, but they’ve found it again, so that’s good. They’ve even had a portrait made, based on the skull. See?

Andy has a co-worker at the Museum of Science who is currently getting a great deal of mileage out of the fact that he looks enough like Copernicus in that portrait to be his brother.

As of just a few days ago, the International Phonetic Alphabet has a brand new symbol: the labiodental flap. And a rather attractive one, too, I think, if you’re into that sort of thing.