From Twitter 08-17-2009

• 00:02:05: Photo: Hey, is that Princess Langwidere? samuraifrog: http://tumblr.com/xpy2q01jk
  
• 00:15:54: Photo: From Auronsgirl on LiveJournal http://tumblr.com/xpy2q08n7
  
• 00:34:22: Photo: samuraifrog: http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0hu2
  
• 00:38:55: Photo: This is really cool.  I wonder how many tries it took to get it right. samuraifrog: http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0jz4
  
• 00:42:13: Photo: An elephant on water skis?  Now I’ve seen everything! samuraifrog: http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0lj4
  
• 00:43:54: Photo: samuraifrog: http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0ma4
  
• 00:44:25: Photo: Awesome!  Who WOULDN’T want a Pac-Man cake? samuraifrog: [via.] http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0mhz
  
• 00:45:22: Photo: What else needs to be said, really? samuraifrog: great pic! http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0mwy
  
• 00:46:51: Photo: More Pac-Man fun.  Pac-Man has to be the most iconic image since Jesus, and his game is much more fun.... http://tumblr.com/xpy2q0nl3
  
• 08:15:43: A NYT email refers to a "letter calling Iran’s supreme leader a dictator." Wait, what ELSE would a Supreme Leader be?
  
• 08:21:43: @3x1minus1 Yeah, but I'm still trying to work out all the details.
  
• 12:09:31: Happy birthday to Colin Moulding!
  
• 12:30:06: @NowIsStrange @eehouls If you're negative bitches, then what am I?
  
• 12:32:24: @themall Haven't you ever heard of Cutesy Khan, the Lovable Warlord? :P
  
• 12:38:04: Photo: Posted by Paul F. Tompkins: “This bust commemorates the day.. the Swamp Thing enlisted in the US Air... http://tumblr.com/xpy2q82n7
  
• 13:14:36: Olive Garden, if you're going to send me e-mails, send something useful!
  
• 14:07:37: Is Wilford Brimley such a big star that people feel they can't correct him when he mispronounces "diabetes"?
  
• 15:00:09: Fox Business is considering getting Don Imus. Get ready for Wall Street investors to be called nappy-headed hoes!
  
• 15:00:47: Tom DeLay is a trending topic? What did the ex-exterminator do this time?
  
• 15:02:59: In America, Crazy Is a Pre-Existing Condition http://tinyurl.com/ozdcq6
  
• 15:15:12: CEO of AssWhole Foods exposed http://tinyurl.com/msa4t6
  
• 15:16:10: It's weird how people associate organic foods with hippies when there are companies like that.
  
• 19:18:52: @pshumate I don't know that I'd trust him. He'll want to deregulate the show.
  
• 19:19:13: @eehouls True, but what fun is that?
  
• 19:20:47: @thelindsayellis So the Pixies have led me to believe.
  
• 19:25:14: @poisonyoulove So he counts as a star?
  
• 20:24:47: Photo: Glinda, performing research in her books http://tumblr.com/xpy2qebny
  
• 20:26:54: Photo: The cover of the 1993 Oziana.  I suspect this rip-off of Mount Rushmore is somewhere in the Munchkin... http://tumblr.com/xpy2qecn1
  
• 20:30:08: Photo: Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, and Trot, as drawn by John R. Neill http://tumblr.com/xpy2qee40
  
• 20:33:34: Photo: A cosplayer dressed as Ozma of Oz http://tumblr.com/xpy2qefp2
  
• 20:41:41: Photo: Tip, from an Oz collectible card game that I don’t think I’d heard of until now. http://tumblr.com/xpy2qejib
  
• 22:19:58: Photo: Weird Al meets Spongebob. http://tumblr.com/xpy2qfvus
  
• 22:46:27: Photo: The person who made that sign has the same sense of humor I do.  That’s kind of scary. samuraifrog: http://tumblr.com/xpy2qga6a
  
• 22:58:07: @JaredofMo The Great Book of Records? (No, seriously, I think I know what you're talking about.)
  

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The Fairy Line

L. Frank Baum seemingly didn't think of Ozma as a fairy initially, but gradually bestowed this status upon her. I know The Emerald City of Oz mentions her fairy wand, and later books show her using fairy magic. In a conversation in Glinda, the Supreme Dictator of the Flatheads tells the Royal Ruler, "If you are really Princess Ozma of Oz...you are one of that band of fairies who, under Queen Lurline, made all Oz a Fairyland. I have heard that Lurline left one of her own fairies to rule Oz, and gave the fairy the name of Ozma." But if she's a fairy from Lurline's band, is she still the daughter of the last King of Oz? Jack Snow addressed this issue in Magical Mimics, in which Lurline left the baby fairy Ozma with the old and childless King Pastoria, intending that she inherit the throne. So Ozma is one of Lurline's fairies, and also Pastoria's legal adopted child.

There are still questions remaining, however. The first sentence of Chapter 22 of Magic reads, "It seems odd that a fairy should have a birthday, for fairies, they say, were born at the beginning of time and live forever." Both Kabumpo and Wishing Horse say that Ozma is a thousand years old. And Merry Go Round has Ozma recognizing the Unicorn of Halidom from when she lived in the fairy forest of Burzee. So did she spend centuries as a baby fairy before being taken to Oz? I guess that's possible, as we don't know how quickly fairies develop. Indeed, it's odd that an immortal race would even HAVE children, but Baum shows his immortals trying a lot of different things out of boredom. This brings us to a curious statement in Scarecrow, which says that Ozma was "[b]orn of a long line of Fairy Queens." Even if some fairies do choose to have children, why would there be any need for such a line if fairies never die? Sure, they could have abdicated or been enchanted, but even if this had happened to a few of them, would it have been the case for an entire "long line"? Perhaps these queens were not FULL fairies, but simply had some fairy blood. That wouldn't explain how Ozma herself is apparently a full fairy, however. Perhaps we'll just have to accept that not all of the legends about the Queen of Oz are true, regardless of whether the Royal Historians reported them as such.

Throughout the course of the series, Ozma is given a few fairy relatives. In Tik-Tok, the Royal Gardener of the Rose Kingdom claims that a not-yet-picked princess "is named Ozga, as she is a distant cousin of Ozma of Oz." Betsy Bobbin and the Shaggy Man pick the princess, but as the roses want a male ruler, they drive Ozga out with the strangers. While she's a flower fairy in her own kingdom, she becomes mortal upon leaving. Eventually, she and Jo Files of Oogaboo fall in love, and she goes back to Oz with him. Actually, in the play on which the book Tik-Tok is based, the Rose Princess is named Ozma, but Baum obviously couldn't keep that name when he brought the character into the main series. The general belief is that the "ma" in "Ozma" came from Baum's wife's name Maud, the "ga" came from her maiden name, Gage. So how is a flower fairy related to Ozma of Oz? Baum never gave an explanation, but Melody Grandy did. In her Seven Blue Mountains trilogy, it's stated that the royalty of the Rose Kingdom are descended from a fairy named Omiarr, who was turned into a rosebush by an evil magician.


Another relative, Princess Ozana, is introduced in Magical Mimics. She is the Guardian of Oz, whose job is to keep the fairyland safe from the evil Mimics. While she initially keeps watch from the Mimics' own home at Mount Illuso, Ozma later transports her and her home to Story-Blossom Mountain in the Quadling Country. Oddly enough, the story of Lurline leaving Ozana at Illuso mentions the Guardian's "fairy wings," but she doesn't appear to have these when she actually shows up in the main story.

I fought the lawn and the lawn won

While it might not sound like it from the subject matter, the Bullshit! episode about lawns was actually pretty good. They focused largely on how some neighborhoods insist that everyone's lawn look a certain way, which is something I've always objected to. Even if you know what you're getting into by buying a house in a place with a neighborhood association (and some people probably don't have much of a choice when buying a home, even if free market fanboys like Penn and Teller might not want to acknowledge this), there's always the possibility that your lawn will die no matter how much work you put into it. To my mind, the whole idea of neighborhood regulations regarding appearance is pretty much stifling free expression, and forcing unnecessary work upon quite possibly busy residents. Of course, the reason usually provided for why other people's houses and yards have to meet some arbitrary standards is because of property values. Unfortunately, they're probably right, at least as far as some home-buyers go. I'm not sure why we as a society should be catering to the "I don't want to buy this property because the guy three doors down has brown grass!" crowd, but I'm no realtor.