Lady Adventure

I really only have one thing to say about this ep:

( Spoilery caps )

Paradise Lost: The Movie

With Bradley Cooper. As Satan.

...

WHAT.

On the other hand, it doesn't sound like they'll be skimping on the fight scenes! At last, maybe we'll finally get to see why you should never bring a cannon to a mountain fight as God Satan BRADLEY COOPER WTF Milton intended.

Thirty Days of Genre

Day 4: Your guilty pleasure book.

You know, one of the good things about being an English major is that I can argue the merits of even utter crap quite convincingly, so clearly none of my favorite books are guilty pleasures. But for works I love despite, ah, certain flaws, I would probably have to pick The Belgariad by David Eddings (which hasn't aged well in certain spots, but generally makes up for it with SNARK APLENTY) or Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (which somehow manages to feature cardboard supporting characters, a wonky time line, a main character who is literally Boy-in-the-Iceberg!Katara ("I JUST HAVE ~SO MUCH HOPE~!"), and so many plot twists at the end that they start twisting for things that have absolutely no relation to the current plot (one word: PIRATE) -- and yet is still made of win.) Because Awesome can carry you a looooong way.

Off to the Philly Folk Fest this weekend!

Haha, remember that time a noreaster rolled in during the five minutes it takes me to walk down the block to Starbucks, and then it immediately stopped raining as soon as I got there? ME TOO. ::wrings out khakis::

In other news, on my commute this morning, I honest-to-God saw one of these trucks.

It's probably just as well I don't have Lance in my pants; he'd be soaking wet by now.

Spam, Spam, Bacon, Links, and Spam:

Any article that mentions kuru is a winner in my book - FYI: Could Scientists Really Create a Zombie Apocalypse Virus?

The pizza you save may be your own - Alert Pizza Delivery Driver Saves Customer's Life

Said Bookisms: the edible ball-bearings of the writing world - The Use and Abuse of Dialogue Tags

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE - Time Lapse Videos of the Universe

Seriously, anyone who doesn't put Isabella in the Lawful column clearly didn't pay any attention AT ALL during Measure for Measure - Shakespeare Alignment Chart

Damn you, British theater-goers! WHY CAN'T I HAVE NICE THINGS - Danny Boyle's Frankenstein (Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Lee Miller) (HAHAHA HIS FAAAAAAAACE.)
ETA: Woohoo, broadcast!

The Christian Science Monitor: boldly going where all 12-year-old minds have gone before - Need Help Finding Uranus? (And don't miss the follow-up article, Scientists Plan Uranus Probe. Did you know Uranus has the most powerful wind observed in the solar system?)

BUFFY REBOOT SANS JOSS WHEDON

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POR QUE

Ray Winstone to Play William Blake

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...

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Sure, why not?

( I've got an idea for a movie, too! )

So, I found this amongst all the stuff that's been moved out of the classrooms while they have their floors cleaned:



I assumed it was the custodians that piled all the desks in the hallways, but I'm willing to consider the work of lemony-fresh malevolent spirits.

Thanks to a chance remark from mea soror, we went on an impromptu web quest to decipher THE SAGA OF PERCY SHELLEY'S HEART. Somehow, I am not surprised that of all the literary movements, it's the Romantics who end up playing Hot Potato with dead people's organs.

Time Magazine, 1933:

Romantic to the end was the heart of Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who drowned in the Gulf of Spezia in 1822. Italian sanitary laws then required the immediate cremation of a drowned corpse. Those who disposed of Shelley's corpse were Poet Leigh Hunt (who wrote a nerve-wracking description of the event), Poet George Gordon Lord Byron, and Adventurer Edward John Trelawny. As Shelley's incinerating ribs fell apart on their pyre of driftwood, adventurous Trelawny, a lion of a man, thrust in his brawny arm, snatched out the simmering heart. Cried Lord Byron: "Don't repeat this with me. Let my carcass rot where it falls!"

1) KALI MAAAAAAAAA
2) What are the qualifications for listing your profession as 'Adventurer'?
3) When Byron gets weirded out, you've crossed a line.

IT GETS BETTER.

NYTimes, 1995:

After Shelley's death by drowning, his body was cremated in the presence of his friends Edward Trelawny and Leigh Hunt. Strangely, Shelley's heart did not burn and was retrieved from the fire by Trelawny, who gave the heart to Hunt, who ultimately gave it to Shelley's wife, Mary. The heart was finally buried in 1889, 67 years after Shelley's death, with the body of his son Sir Percy Florence Shelley. In a 1955 article in The Journal of the History of Medicine, Arthur Norman suggested that Shelley may have suffered from "a progressively calcifying heart . . . which indeed would have resisted cremation as readily as a skull, a jaw or fragments of bone."

HIS HEART WAS POSSIBLY MADE OF STOOOOOOONE! WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. Because as one can imagine, once you have the slightly charred and potentially petrified heart of a guy like Shelley, you're not gonna want to give that up. According to some dude on the Internet, once Trelawny the Adventurer desecrated his buddy's corpse, "...there than followed an unseemly tussle between Mary Shelley and Leigh Hunt, who had acquired the heart. Mary finally obtained custody. She secreted the heart in a copy of "Adonais", which she kept under her pillow."

1) Ewwwwwww
2) Yes, she's the one who wrote Frankenstein. (Years before this, incidentally.)

Of course, she might not have ACTUALLY kept it under her pillow; it's possible she just "carried it with her in a silken shroud everywhere she went for the rest of her life" (someone else on the internet). As one does.

In conclusion: WTF.

Now, I love Robin McKinley, and have read nearly everything she's written.

However, I cannot for the life of me shake the feeling that the summary of her new book, Pegasus, actually originated in the My Little Pony section of the Pit:

Because of a thousand-year-old alliance between humans and pegasi, Princess Sylviianel is ceremonially bound to Ebon, her own pegasus, on her twelfth birthday. The two species coexist peacefully, despite the language barriers separating them. Humans and pegasi both rely on specially-trained Speaker magicians as the only means of real communication.

But it’s different for Sylvi and Ebon. They can understand each other. They quickly grow close —- so close that their bond becomes a threat to the status quo—and possibly to the future safety of their two nations.

Princesses? Pegasi? Mary Sue names? Uncomfortable subtext?

I'm a little nervous.

...what.

MUSIC BY ABBA.

I cannot help but think that would have been AMAZING.

"[John] Lennon, however, had been championing a Lord of the Rings project (he planned on playing Gollum with Paul McCartney as Frodo, George Harrison as Gandalf, and Ringo Starr as Frodo’s confidant Sam)." -- The Beatles Movies That Never Happened

...

WHAT.