How I Love Thee, "Literature"

Mr. Fillion, I absolutely refuse to READ anything until you take off your shirt.

I'll wait.

Goodknight, Terrible Cliche

Isn't it time to retire the whole "knight" as "night" thing? Please? I'm starting a movement here and now.

I, as a content creator, agree to never use knight/night in a cutesy way. It's not original, it's just lazy, like eating microwave popcorn for dinner -- the first time, it was novel, but over and over again it's sad. I also agree to never give a character the last name of Knight, because Knight Rider did that better than I ever could and every further use of Knight as a last name is obnoxious.

Signed:

1. Lucy Woodhull
2. _________________

PASS IT ON

If You Want to Sneak Away to theWaterfall With the Dastardly Duke,Turn to Page 12

I recently mentioned to my husband that I was thinking of attempting a "Choose Your Own Adventure" romance. Awesome, right? I had been looking for one of the original 80s CYOA books in every thrift store I visited to no avail. Since it had been many years since I read one of them, I needed a primer on exactly what the format was and how the possibilities and choices unfolded for the reader.

Last week I began fleshing out a plot bunny that first attacked me months ago, and I considered that it would be especially fun as a Choose Your Own Adventure romance novel. Ricky to the rescue! After he visited his parent's house for a couple of weeks he came home and handed me this boxed set:


Isn't he the best? It's from 1981 and the set contains CYOA numbers 6, 8, 9 & 10. Poor number seven appears to be MIA. Perhaps it chose to be a lone ranger.

Number ten is The Lost Jewels of Nabooti.



It looks as if it will prove to be mildly offensive in that 1980s un-PC sort of way.

I intend to read them to get a sense of how they flow and how the stories loop back on themselves. They promise "You can read each of these books at least 100 times and never read the same story twice!" I'm curious to see how a story that could end 36 different ways could apply to a genre in which the story must end with a happily ever after.

And lookee! I had forgotten that these books had illustrations.



Just think of the possibilities in a romance picture book. Yeah, baby! I'll take the Duke on page 25, please - and the position on page 42.

SAVE THE UNICORN!

Friends,

I believe that you know, if you've read the blog for more than one minute, that I love the Unicorn. 'Tis a noble beast, and magical, and pretty to look at. Plus, they are super good at making those pretty rosette things out of radishes.

As such, it came as a great shock to me that Unicorns are being ruthlessly slaughtered for their meat:

Woe betide me! How can such a great tragedy happen here in America, land of the free and home of the braves? (Um, except that we slaughtered a lot of Native American braves, so maybe this shouldn't come as such a surprise.)

This disgusting verbiage comes straight from the murderers' website, ThinkGeek.com:

Pâté is passé. Unicorn - the new white meat.

Excellent source of sparkles!

Unicorns, as we all know, frolic all over the world, pooping rainbows and marshmallows wherever they go. What you don't know is that when unicorns reach the end of their lifespan, they are drawn to County Meath, Ireland. The Sisters at Radiant Farms have dedicated their lives to nursing these elegant creatures through their final days. Taking a cue from the Kobe beef industry, they massage each unicorn's coat with Guinness daily and fatten them on a diet comprised entirely of candy corn.

FIRST OF ALL - Unicorns fart rainbows, they don't poop them. Sometimes they vomit them (see Exhibit 1). What they poop is harmony. EVERYONE KNOWS THIS, EVILDOERS. How can you betray the beautiful Unicorn and not even get their sciencey biological facts right? It is a slap in the face to every Unicorn, which is not worse than slaughtering them, but is still not nice.

EXHIBIT 1

SECOND OF ALL - The fact that the Unicorn killers are nuns just makes it all the worse. Maria from The Sound of Music would never do that! She would sing to a unicorn, or at least dress it in a curtain, no matter how old it was. Would you, vile sisters of God Satan, want to be ground up for Nun Spam when you got too old to say a Rosary without spittle flying off your maws? I think not. Plus, how could you waste all that Guinness? Wasting beer is the ninth deadly sin. (Listening to the soundtrack to High School Musical 2 is the eighth.)

AND PART C OF MY COMPLAINT - Anyone can get their daily recommended dosage of sparkles at Joanne's Fabrics and Crafts, or by reading Twilight. (Um... better get it at Joanne's - fewer side effects.) This is the non-evisceratey way to obtain sparkles. If you need them to work quickly, you can always inject them. This is really basic sparkle knowledge, folks. Just go consult your food pyramid, Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2

ThinkGeek, you may think you are blameless in all this, as you are merely the purveyors of the murdered Unicorn carcasses - BUT YOU ARE NOT! You are just as guilty! How can you sleep at night, or play Red Dead Redemption, knowing the calamity you are spreading in the world? And not computer-simulated calamity, either - real, actual calamity.

I want you to Think about this, Geek, every time you shill a glittery can of repugnance. Actions have consequences. Every time you kill a Unicorn:

- A Teen Miss USA cries.

- Eight puppies develop the horrible puppy-poison ivy/hemorrhoids hybrid. They don't make a topical creme for that.

- Hugs become 7% less effective.

- George Lucas fucks up another Star Wars movie.

- BP blows up an oil well.

- A typhoon wipes out an orphanage.

- Angelina Jolie wipes out an orphanage.

ANGELINA CAN ONLY ADOPT SO MANY KIDS, PEOPLE. The madness must end!

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP

If, like me, gentle readers, you want to help protect the Unicorns so that your children and your children's children* may enjoy their sunshiney goodness, please do one of the following:

- Put down the Unicorn meat, asshole.

- Call your congressperson.

- No, to hell with that. Call Barack Obama. He is a special friend to the Unicorns. How else would an illegal Communist Nazi Kenyan AntiCrist Socialist kitten-kicker be elected President? **



- Sharpen your Nun Stabber

- While praying.

- Call Jesse Jackson. People pay attention to shit when JJ is involved.





* Even though I don't think that children should have children. That's gross. They should be, like, eighteen at least.

** I cannot take credit for the Obama/Unicorn pic. Whoever made it, I salute you!

I'd Make Short the New Tall

I'm back!

The intrusive real world took me away for a little while, blog friends. I had to work twelve hour days of actual day job work work, which is less fun than blogging nonsense, but currently pays more.

As I was slaving away and pleasing my masters like a monkey butler, I would fantasize about the good life.

So I pose a question to you, gentle author-readers: What would you do with J.K. Rowling kind of money?

Here's the scene:

The phone rings. It's your high-powered, yet friendly literary agent. "YOU!" she says, "I have a three book, three million dollar book deal for you with your dream publisher!" Kalu-kalay! The books sell out within days! Then they sell out their extra printings! You appear on Oprah, who has continued to do her talk show and book club just to feature you!

Soon, you have heaps of money, gobs of fame, and millions of book lovers the world over clutching your masterworks to their bosoms in pure, unfettered joy.

What do you do?

Yes, you help yourself, your friends, and family with money and debt and such. And you'd give your money away to needy causes, of course. Yeah, that's nice. We'd all do that.

But what else do you do? What crazy, maybe secret things would you do with it?

Here's what I would do.

• Get a unicorn. Yes, they are real. It's just that they are a rich people animal that you, as a plebe, have never seen, like the Fantastapotamus.

• I'd re-build the Pan-Pacific Auditorium.
  
  
  You may recognize it from the movie Xanadu - they used the exteriors for the Xanadu roller disco itself. It burned down ten years later. I'd house my unicorn in it, and, of course, it'd be a rollerdisco rink for me and my friends.
  

• My husband and I would travel.
  
  Lucy: Would we buy a villa in some glamorous foreign country?
  
  Ricky: Well, we'd have to do that.
  
  Lucy: Which one?
  
  Ricky: We'd have to test them all out first.
  
  Lucy: Naturally.
  
  Ricky: I'd buy a bunch of fast cars and race them through Europe.
  
  Lucy: With all that money, you could buy friendship with the Top Gear guys and drive with them.
  
  Ricky: Yes!

• I would hire someone with a great and slightly evil imagination to do nothing but annoy all the jerks who were mean to me or mine. Nothing really bad... just stuff like follow them to a movie and cough next to them the whole time, or randomly tell them they look fat in that outfit, or send them official-looking letters telling them they have $2000 in old speeding tickets and then set up a fake government phone number just to jerk them around. Stuff like that. Come to think of it, maybe I could set up a business like that...

• I'd have a vintage wardrobe to rival Dita Von Teese's.

• I would help women. Brilliant, creative women. Invest in their companies, mentor them, introduce them to the right people. I'd start an Old Women's Network the way the men have the Old Boys' Club. But I'd give it a catchier name, like "Bitches Be Taking Care of Business" or something.

Now tell me: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?