A Spot of Quizilla

Blogger.com is a bit sucky at the moment, which is quite funny because only last night I was thinking about how wonderful Blogger.com was. *sigh* Because there is no taskbar in the posting section that allows me to see the draft or amend dates, this old post will be listed as today. When Blogger.com sorts their problems out, I'll amend the current date of this post to its original date.

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Which Of The Greek Gods Are You? [The image is too big to include here.]

The Which Greek God Are You? quizilla determines that I'm Athena:

"You're like the Greek God Athena of Education. You're seen as sophisticated, smart, and a really down to earth person. Easy to get along with, easy to understand - and with great prospects. You do well in what you enjoy, and often excel in most things academic."

Nice summary [I wish!], but the name. I'm not happy about that.

Athena is the name of my great aunt's ****ing "baby" - a very, very spoiled Yorkshire Terrier - that seems to think that it's hilarious to clamp its jaws on the hem of my jeans and then, when I have to drag my leg with her teeth still embedded in my jeans hem, slide on its rump across the kitchen floor. The only way to get her teeth off my jeans is pry her jaws open. As soon as my jeans hem is free, I'd have to run and slam the door behind me, trapping her inside the kitchen, but she'd yap, bark [in high pitch], yip, and whine until my great aunt takes pity on the creature and let her out of the kitchen. Guess where it's heading? Yup. My ankle.

Not only that. At random times, Athena bites. One moment it's snoozing in its favourite place on my great aunt's armchair and next moment, it's hurling itself at my face, its jaws wide open.

I actually have a faint scar on my left hand, between my thumb and index finger, from a time Athena bit me when I reached for a magazine on the coffee table. I still can't believe that that tiny mop of earth-coloured hair managed to draw blood out of me.

All the while, my great aunt claims that Athena must have an issue with me because, according to her, I'm the only one Athena does this to. She implied that there is something bad about me that provokes her darling baby. Thank you very much(!) It is annoying how Athena dominates my great aunt and their home. What Athena wants, Athena gets.

I hate that dog. I really do.

Which is a big thing for me to say, considering the fact that I'm a card-carrying member of the RSPCA and a local dogs' shelter. I love all dogs. Except for Athena, of course. She's getting old, so - may God forgive me - I'm biding for the day for her to lie six feet under because she's been the bane of my life for almost 11 years. You only need to look at her eyes to see that she's not quite all there.

Be good, be bad & be safe.

Names, names, names

I realised that it's far too late for me to go to bed when I have to get up at around six, so I decided to read a historical romance. I chose Liz Carlyle's A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL. The opening chapter already tripped me up:

"Up Jumps the Devil

Winter along the Somerset coast was said to possess a certain bleak beauty. To some, however, the Feburary of 1827 was mostly just bleak. It could have been worse, Aubrey Farquharson supposed. It could have been the winter of 873.
That as the year a village of local peasants, harried, starving, and weary, raised a cairn on a hill high above the Bristol Channel, to keep watch for Norse invaders ...

[...and blah blah blah - a little story about Mangus the Waelrafen AKA the Death Raven, Castle Cardow and some pretty Saxon girl named Ermengild ...]
Thus ended, or so it was said, the first of many mismade marriages at Castle Cardow.
Aubrey Farquharson had heard this tale and many more during her journey down Birmingham. The naval surgeon - "

There I stopped. Her? Did it say her? I re-read the first two pages to be sure and I realised that Aubrey Farquharson is indeed a her. Never mind, I thought, I can deal with that.

Unfortunately after some twenty pages, I forced myself to admit the defeat. The confusion over the name continually tripped me up. Whenever I see the name Aubrey, I automatically expect to see 'his', 'him' and 'he' and every reference to the Opposite Sex but, instead, I get 'her', her' and 'she'.

So, I had to give up on it. :( I really wanted to read a Liz Carlyle novel. I know that later, if I don't get used to it, I will try to wrap my head around the idea of two men kissing. Hey, Walrafen, meet Aubrey who is the One for you. Isn't he pretty? :D

Ach, well. I will read THE SEDUCER, Madeline Hunter's first book in the SEDUCER series. Wait. Wait. Let me check the h/h's names in this one. Daniel St. John and Diane Albert. What is it with the name St. John, anyway? It's very popular with historical romances. It screams Romance! Heroine in Need of a Rescue! Adventure! Dashing Hero! Sex! Drama! Romanticised History! Dastardly Villain! Whoo hoo!

Unfortunately, St. John makes me think of nothing but St. John Ambulance, a very well known national voluntary emergency service that was founded a few decades ago. That and actress Jill St. John. :D

Actually, the question should be this: Why on earth should a name affect my ability to enjoy a story?

I don't know. To me, Aubrey is a male name. How do you get round that? It's akin to naming a woman Simon or John. It's not about the name itself, it's about my inability to "unisexise" the name. Hm, I'm curious now:

I am going to check the internet to see if Aubrey is an unisex or a female name in the US [where the author is from, I think]. All British sites refer Aubrey as a male name [Aubrey Beardsely the artist, Captain Aubrey from MASTER AND COMMANDER, etc.] and only two American sites that have two female bloggers who go by the name of Aubrey. It seems that Aubrey is indeed a female name in the US, but it is still very much a male name in the UK, where Carlyle's story takes place.

*sigh* Am I that petty-minded? I feel I am, but at the same time, I know quite a few British fellow readers share this frustration. A while ago, we listed names of British heroes in British-setting historical romances that we found disconcerting:

Devon / Brad / Brandon / Braden / St. John [as first name] / Reese / Demon / Reed / Kyle / etc.

Ironically, men of the nobility and such were [and still are] usually known - and addressed - by their surnames and, for some, shortened forms of their surnames, anyway. So it is quite disconcerning to see these English heroes being addressed by their first names! It's quite funny.

Actually, I remember a while ago there was a lengthy discussion on the All About Romance message board about Mary Balogh's MORE THAN A MISTRESS. A few American readers disliked the English hero's name - Jocelyn - because, in their views, it's a female name, which is amusing because, although it's less used these days, it's definitely a male name over here. Mary Balogh got it right, but her readers didn't like it.

Funny how it works out, eh? :D OK. I will shut up and get ready to leave here for London. Night, night to you all.

Be good, be bad & be safe.

Shaun, Shaun!

I was about to stumble off for bed when I heard the familiar piiing! sound. E-mail! From Outlook! Amazing! From the bloody e-mail program that rarely works! Absolutelybloodyamazing! Enough with exclamation marks. I'm in shock that someone actually used my old email address to send me a message. Who could it be?

It's from my brother's long-time girlfriend with a great piece of news. She knows someone who's agreed to give me a DVD copy of Shaun of the Dead, so she wants to know to where should he send the DVD.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD! I AM GETTING TO SEE SHAUN OF THE DEAD AGAIN! WHOO HOO!

Honestly, Simon Pegg is a genius. He's behind fabulous TV series SPACED and this time SHAUN OF THE DEAD. The film is basically a British comedy film about zombies. No, no, don't run away yet. It's honest-to-God funny. It has it all: one liners, comical situations, dead-pan delivery from Simon Pegg himself, Very English romantic development between Pegg's character - the unwilling hero that saves the Day - and a cranky blonde, and the script is superb.

Here is some examples of Pegg's writing:

Shaun of the Dead: Shaun [Simon Pegg]

Evidence #1:

Shaun: *accidentally runs someone over with his car* Arghh! Jesus! *looks at the body lying on front* Excuse me. *pause* Excuse me? Are you alright?
Ed: Why can't we just go?
Shaun: I've got to be sure. *looks at the body* Are you Ok? *the body rises and moans* Ohh, thank God! Let's go.

Evidence #2:

*looking through Shaun's LPs for suitable records to throw at two approaching zombies* Ed: Stone Roses?
Shaun: No.
Ed: ...Second Coming?
Shaun: I liked it.
Ed: Dire Straits?
Shaun: Chuck it!

And from SPACED:


Spaced: Tim & Daisy

Evidence #1:

[On Daisy's party decorations]
Brian the Artist: I see at as a tribute to Christo, the artist.
Tim the Flatmate: I see it as a waste of Baco, the foil.

Evidence #2:
Mike: Wanna go into your party?
Tim: But they were playing 'The Timewarp'. I hate 'The Timewarp'.
Mike: Daisy likes it.
Tim: So what? I hate it. It's a boil-in-the-bag perversion for sexually repressed accountants and first-year drama students with too many posters of Betty Blue, The Blues Brothers, Big Blue and Blue Velvet on their blue bloody walls.

Evidence #3:

Bilbo Bagshot: I used to know this guy, Minty. He had a dog who he'd train to attack rich people. He was into the whole class-war thing. He called the dog Gramsci after an Italian Marxist. Rumour has it, it could smell wealth from up to 20 feet. The thing is, it all backfired. Minty won 100 grand on a scratchcard and Gramsci bit his knees off.
Tim: That's terrible.
Bilbo Bagshot: Not really. He used the money to buy new knees.

Evidence #4:

*Tim is being dumped by girlfriend Sarah*
Tim: Just... give me a reason. You think I'm unemotional, don't you? I can be emotional. Jesus, I cried like a child at the end of Terminator 2.

Evidence #5:

Daisy: So how are you, you big bloody man?
Tim: I'm good, I'm good. Just, had a few things to sort out.
Daisy: With Sarah?
Tim: No, with George Lucas.
Daisy: Tim, it's been over a year.
Tim: It's been 18 months, Daisy. And it still hurts.
Daisy: Well, I didn't think The Phantom Menace was that bad.

Evidence # ... I lost the count:
*Daisy finally notices that her dog is missing*
Daisy: Colin's gone.
Tim: What?
Daisy: He went next door.
Tim: Oh, Daisy. I'm sorry. How did that happen?
Daisy: He walked.
Tim: Right, right. Sorry. My mum used to use "going next door" as an euphemism for being dead.
Mike: Whoa. Does that mean my rabbit's dead?
Tim: It's been 18 years, Mike, where did you think he was?
Mike: *sobbing* Next door!

If you have only twenty-five pounds to spare, get SPACED. Or with SOTD coming up, get the DVD. Pegg finetunes the Art of writing British comedy to a higher level. Genius.

Be good, be bad & be safe.

Bizarre Celebrity Suicides, etc.

I'm a regular visitor [and fan] of Trivial Trivia that collects weird facts, unusual trivia and all sorts. Today at the site, one of special features is Bizarre Celebrity Suicides. It makes quite a sad reading. Here is a selection: Hart Crane [poet] 1932 --- suicide by drowning. On a steamship, he bid his fellow passengers farewell and jumped overboard. Vachel Lindsay [poet] 1931 --- suicide by drinking a bottle of lye (Lysol). Last words. Kiyoko Matsumoto [19 year old student] 1933 --- suicide by jumping into the thousand foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima, Japan. This act started a bizarre fashion in Japan and in the ensuing months three hundred children did the same thing. Apparently, that incident was the inspiration of Koji Suzuki's Japanese novel RINGU that spawns the RING CYCLE series that includes Japanese, Thai and Korean film versions. I don't believe the volcano incident appears in the American remake, though. I will check the web site Ringworld later. Ringworld is fabulous as it has so much information about Koji Suzuki's novel and its numerous adaptations for the silver screen, graphic novels, television programmes and spin-off novels. Socrates [philosopher] 399BC --- required to drink hemlock to end his life after being found guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens. Like I said, it's a bit sad. Let's look on the bright side by checking out the trivia page about books: + All the proceeds earned from James M. Barrie's book Peter Pan were bequeathed to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for the Sick Children in London. + Barbara Cartland is the world's top-selling [romance] author with over 500 million copies sold. + Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays: Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth. + Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published on 20 March, 1852. It was the first American novel to sell one million copies. + Of the 2,200 persons quoted in the current edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, only 164 are women. Bummer. + Sherlock Holmes never said, "Elementary, my dear Watson". + The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy". Ooh, interesting. I didn't know that. + The Three Musketeers' names are Porthos, Athos, and Aramis. D'Artagnan joins them later. I must confess that The Three Musketeers was the cause of the first serious marital quarrel between Will and I. It went from an off-the-cuff comment to a downright dirty and loud argument that ended with me hurling a mug at Will's head. I remember how annoyed I felt when I saw that the mug missed his head by about 100 cm to left. Will said he was annoyed that I chose that mug as it was his favourite. Today, we jokingly refer that incident as "The Night A Book That Almost Broke Up Our Marriage". :D To this day, we can't remember what was it about the book that set us off. I think it was a debate over whether there was the fourth Musketeer. Be good, be bad & be safe.