Nota bene : I hate the Cthulhu Mythos. With the burning intensity of a bajillion burning things. I have, however, started reading Cthulhu 101 , by the inestimable Kenneth Hite ( princeofcairo ), and I am. . . . . . . . .enjoying it. Indeed, I find it quite charming. So, take that "mini-overview" how you will.

Those of you who know spookyfruit are well acquainted with his hostility to electronic communication taking the place of face-to-face. So it should come as no surprise that when his law partner and I happened to find ourselves seated at his Thanksgiving dinner next to the last two people in America who have yet to watch the Muppet "Bohemian Rhapsody">/a> and he began to play it on his iPhone...

Ernani was glorious. A riot of overripe melodrama or, in other words, everything you could hope for from an early Verdi adaption of an early Hugo play. Nuphy pronounced it "the best opera we've seen so far this season" before I gently reminded him that we've only seen one other opera so far this season (and Gounod got nothin' on Joe Green). You want your plot, we got plot. Have you ever asked yourself...

I'm very fond of my Belarusian colleague. Even though I can't recall ever having denied permission to rearrange her schedule, she still comes to me to explain the details of any proposed modification, and always ends with the question "Is it okay?" Every year around January 1st I find a bag of atrocious Soviet-style "chocolates"[*] from "Father Frost". And if she's not feeling better after an illness...

Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge In the prequel to this book, The Peace War, a technology called "bobbling" is discovered which lets you seal things up in perfect mirrored spheres. Inside, no time passes. Outside, millions of years might go by. In this book, by the early 23rd century, people are routinely using these bobbles for all sorts of reasons. Then, in the late 23rd century, every human...

It's two hours since Chicago got eliminated from the running for the 2016 Olympic® Games[*] and I'm still giddy. Literally, there was a spring in my step all the way to J.K. Sweets for lunch. Oh, I'll admit that I felt a twinge of disappointment when I heard we got eliminated in the first round, but it was drowned in the ensuing surge of relief like a spider in a waterspout. I really don't care why...

For 14 seconds today, my brain attemped to rationalize to itself that pyat had written an RPG based on Omaha the Cat Dancer*. I cannot help but wonder what metaphor princeofcairo would have used to describe it. *It was, in fact, another furry RPG based on a comic, Albedo. Trust me, it's not an easy mistake to make.

Happy birthday, princeofcairo !

"The first Americans immigrated here from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge around 13,500 B.C. We know they were Americans because they immediately invented a super-weapon , killed everything in sight, and gorged themselves on meat." - Kenneth Hite, aka princeofcairo , shares the opening joke he had to scratch from his new book, Complete Idiot's Guide to U.S. History, Graphic Illustrated...

I just added princeofcairo to my friends list. It is the first step in properly stalking Ken Hite, so that someday I can kidnap him, trap him in the basement, and force him to say witty things and give me interesting trivia on demand. (Don't worry, I would feed him.)