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It really cracks me up the way people say “literally” when they mean “metaphorically”. Why do we do it? Where does this odd quirk come from? There was a corker today in an article on Stuff concerning the Phoenix Mars Lander:

The Phoenix lander already has operated far longer than expected when it was dropped on to the Martian surface in May, and its controllers said they would squeeze every drop of life they could out of the solar-powered lander.

“We are literally trying to make hay as the sun shines,” Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters.

So… why did they equip a Mars probe with a hay-making machine? And what are they going to use all that hay for?

The latest Dune book from Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert – Paul of Dune – scores 3.5 stars on Amazon.com, but people who don’t like it are making their feelings known in other ways, via the tags system. Tags on the book include:

hack
rip off
abomination
atrocity
joke
frank herbert would cry
loser
miscarriage
abortion
afterbirth
dung
fraud
hackerson
i_hate_kja
insipid
mcdune
rubbish

I guess it’s inevitable in a folksonomy that this sort of abuse should arise, but it’s a really unfortunate development. It’s likely that the people who have created these tags haven’t even read the book, and are just expressing a general dislike of what Anderson and Herbert are doing. Not good.

I wonder how wide-spread this missuse of Amazon.com tags is?

I went to the vegetarian expo today, expecting there to be very few people. Imagine my surprise to find that I had to queue to get in! While waiting to get in we were amused to notice that they were having a good-ol’ Kiwi sausage sizzle. Apparently this had caused some confusion, as they had felt the need to put up a sign saying, “Vegetarian Sausages ONLY”!

About a third of the main hall was basically a vegetarian food court. I was unable to partake due to a spectacularly bad bit of time management: I had only just come from a large lunch.

The rest of the main hall had an eclectic variety of stalls. Present were places like Trade Aid and Piko Wholefoods, but there were also people selling chutney and jewellery and even small statues, and one guy selling solar water heating units. There were also stalls promoting health remedies of varying degrees of wackiness. (I didn’t take up the offer of a free CranioSacral (sic) treatment.)

In a nice touch, mood music was provided by a string quartet.

Up on the walls were banners supporting various groups. My favourite was “Gay/Lesbian Vegetarians”. Boy I bet they feel marginalized squared.

Off to one side was a room where they were holding cookery demonstrations (tofu cheesecake while I was there), and another where they showed short movies, including the two I had seen at the Fitzsimons talk last week.

One woman was wearing a tee-shirt that said, “If you crave fresh meat, lick a vegetarian.”

It was nice to see so many people there – perhaps there are more of us than I thought!

I really really dig the lyrics of some of the songs on the Claudia Christian CD. I’m sure there are some Mondegreens in here, but as far as I can tell here are the lyrics for Beige MG:

Beige MG by Bill Mumy.

Sitting next to me,
In a beige MG,
By the Malibu Sea,
In back and white.
I can hear your laugh,
Through the photograph,
That I tore in half,
Late last night.

Maybe it’s the weather,
Maybe it’s the moon,
Maybe I’ve gone crazy,
A little bit too soon.
Maybe it’s important,
Maybe it is not,
Perhaps you know the name,
Of what it is I’ve got.

It’s a shade of blue,
It’s a lie come true,
It’s that look from you,
That I fear.
It’s a world gone mad,
I ever had, (???)
Irresistibly sad,
There and here.

Maybe it’s the weather,
Maybe it’s the moon,
Maybe I’ve gone crazy,
A little bit too soon.
Maybe it’s important,
Maybe it is not,
Perhaps you know the name,
Of what it is I’ve got.

Call it what you will.
It warms me with the chill.

It’s a rainy night,
By the firelight,
Something isn’t right,
But nothing’s wrong.
So I’m far away,
But I’m here today,
As this passion play,
Rolls on and on.

Maybe it’s the weather,
Maybe it’s the moon,
Maybe I’ve gone crazy,
A little bit too soon.
Maybe it’s important,
Maybe it is not,
Perhaps you know the name,
Of what it is I’ve got.

Sitting next to me,
In a beige MG,
By the Malibu Sea,
In back and white.
I can hear your laugh,
Through the photograph,
That I tore in half,
Late last night.

A neat new piece of art work that is also an interesting piece of social commentary has turned up at the Arts Centre recently: the Petrol Engine Memorial Park.

(The left-hand plaque reads: “FOR THE SPECIES WHOSE WORLD CAME TO AN END”. The right-hand plaque reads: “FOR THE OIL ERA AND ITS VICTIMS”)

(The plaque reads: “PETROL FUELED CAR 1885-2010 REST IN PEACE”)

(The plaque reads: “DESTINY OF ALL LIFE LIES WITHIN TECHNOLOGY”. Umm… huh?)

You can read my review of Baptism of Fire here.

I had me a most excellent dream last night, inspired in no small part by the Thornspell Launch yesterday.

In the dream, the new Lord of the Rings book was finally out, and so I scurried in gleeful anticipation to Whitcoulls. I walked up to the serving counter and squatted down. There beneath the counter was a cabinet with a big metal door like they have on the front of the corpse fridges in TV crime shows. I opened the door, and there was a big stack of hardback editions of the new book. I took four of them out and placed them on the counter. The disinterested weasel of a man behind the counter took my money (for some reason I was paying for one copy in cash but the other three with my credit card) and gave me my receipt. I put the books in my bag and scurried off.

Before leaving the store I decided to take a look at my new possessions, so I put my bag down, opened it, and hauled out the books. For some reason they weren’t hardbacks at all, but paperbacks. And the spines were all split and broken. Confused, I took the books back to the counter. The man assured me that I had in fact bought paperbacks, and that if I wanted hardbacks I would have to pay an extra $27. Still confused, I handed over the money and got a receipt, plus the free gift that came with buying the hardback edition – a puppy in a plastic shopping bag. I was nonplussed, but I figured that a puppy’s a puppy, so I took the bag. The puppy spent most of the rest of the dream clutched to my chest, perfectly well-behaved and perfectly happy to just sit in his plastic shopping bag and look out at the world.

I crouched down again to open the book cabinet, but now it really was a fridge, containing stacks of cold square things that weren’t books. I asked the weasel where my books were, and he just shrugged and went back to doing something more important. So I wandered around the shop, looking high and low for my books. I couldn’t find them anywhere, not even in the tall square stone defensive tower that soared above the shop.

Annoyed, I went back to the weasel and asked for my money back. He paid without demur, but insisted I give the puppy back, which aggrieved me greatly.

Still wondering where my books went, I left the store. Immediately outside was a wide green sward, cut through by a straight man-made channel with grassy banks. The channel was half-filled with water, and I could see that it emptied into a nearby stream. I turned and walked up to the other end of the channel. There I found a cracked terracotta pipe sticking out of the bank, just above the water line. It was hissing and spitting and disgorging lumps of steaming half-molten cheese into the water. I shook my head, thinking how terrible it was that Whitcoulls couldn’t think of a more environmentally-friendly way of disposing of their books.

The end.

Today was the official launch of Thornspell by Helen Lowe. It went very well, and was pretty much a perfect book launch.  The event was held in the Fendalton library, and was exceedingly well organised. Helen and Andrew had made two giant posters of the book cover, which they hung on the wall behind where Helen talked. The library had made a cake, with the cover of the book printed in edible ink on the top. About fifty people turned up, with kids sitting on bean-bags and pillows right at the front, grown-ups on chairs behind, and several people standing at the back.

Helen talked for about 30 minutes, interleaving stories about where the ideas in the book came from with readings from the book which introduced many of the important players.

Then two men from the SCA turned up in armour, and acted out a climactic battle from the book, with Helen narrating. It was an inspired idea, and worked very well.

Then Helen took questions from the floor, before ceremonially cutting the Thornspell cake with a Katana.

Baptism of Fire, the book written by Claudia Christian that was the focus of the “life-saving knives” saga, has arrived. It was accompanied, entirely unexpectedly, by a CD of Claudia Christian songs.

All that remains is to determine whether either is any good…

Update: You can read my review (of book and CD) here.