Remarks from a beetle-browed Internet person

[vovat]

1. Making Money was far from my favorite Discworld book, but it still had its merits. While I appreciate that the series has progressed beyond the general mockery of popular fantasy that it was back in its early days, it seems like pretty much every new one is largely about politics, with the fantasy taking a back seat (with the young adult books being the obvious exceptions). One thing I do like is how Terry is really making an effort to incorporate a lot of elements from earlier books (often ones that are just introduced offhand) into the new ones. This time, we get appearances by the Watch, the Unseen University faculty, golems, the Times, the goddess Anoia, Dibbler (and we finally learn his full name, Claude Maximillian Overton Transpire Dibbler), and Harry King. There's even a brief mention of the war with the Ice Giants, who haven't been mentioned since Sourcery, as far as I can recall. I also have to say that I fell for the red herrings about Mr. Bent being a vampire, and the truth about his secret past was a nice twist. Vetinari's comments near the end suggest that we're going to be seeing at least one more book about Moist von Lipwig reforming a government institution. While there's still a lot of potential for stories about Ankh-Morpork's government agencies, I have to say that having TOO many more books along those lines would make Moist's story arc even more formulaic than Rincewind's ever was. A few people on the discworld community have suggesting that Vetinari might be planning to make Moist his successor, which makes sense. Still, I'm not sure I can see future Ankh-Morpork books without Vetinari present in them, and it's usually not Terry's style to kill off or incapacitate established characters so that newer ones can take the spotlight. So, anyway, I'm hoping I'll like the next Discworld book better. As far as what it will be, I know I've heard mention of three different possibilities:

• Nation, which I really know nothing about other than the title, but it definitely sounds like it'll be another politically-themed story
  
• When I Am Old I Shall Wear Midnight, the fourth Tiffany Aching book
  
• Unseen Academicals, about the University's attempt to create a football (i.e., soccer) team.
  

I'm hoping for the last one, since it's been too long since we've seen a book focused on the UU faculty, but I wouldn't count on it. I'd also like to see another Death book in the near future. I quite enjoyed both The Last Hero and Thief of Time, which successfully mixed the comedic fantasy of the earlier books with the more modern themes of the later ones.

2. While Season 10 of The Simpsons is not a particularly good one, the DVD set maintains the high quality of the other ones. In light of the fact that the commentaries tend to be overwhelmingly positive, I found it interesting that Mike Scully pretty much admitted the end of "Monty Can't Buy Me Love" (with Burns capturing the Loch Ness Monster and eventually putting Nessie to work in a casino) wasn't very good. The commentaries do include a lot of Ian Maxtone-Graham, quite possibly the most hated writer in the history of the series, thanks largely to an interview where he basically insults Internet fans, women, anyone who cares about continuity, and the medium in which he works. Yeah, way to make yourself popular, Ian. bethje says that he sounds humorless.

3. There's been some talk of a new Wizard of Oz movie, probably produced by Todd McFarlane. The screenwriter has implied that there probably will be characters from later Oz books, but I generally agree with yosef, who mentioned in this post that he'd much rather see them do an adaptation of another Oz book, rather than yet another rehash of Wizard. In regards to Todd's quote from the article, I think that the Dorothy of the books (as opposed to the frantic Judy Garland) IS pretty tough, but it's the toughness of a determined, resolute young girl, not that of a twenty-something action heroine brandishing a Super Soaker to blow away the Wicked Witch of the West. It's odd that the makers of the MGM movie were determined to make Judy look younger, yet recent interpretations of Wizard always seem to want to turn Dorothy into a teenager or adult. Also, if they really want Natalie Portman in an Oz movie, isn't she much better suited for Ozma than Dorothy? Oh, well. It's pretty likely the film will meet the same fate as the hip-hop Wizard or the thing with Drew Barrymore as a grown-up Dorothy being chased around New York City by a mysteriously living Wicked Witch (and yes, both of those were actual proposed Oz-related movies that I remember hearing about in the past few years).

4. I took some quizzes.

3m 24s

Click here to try the quiz.

For some reason, I was totally spacing on Minnesota and Missouri, but I got them eventually.

I can name 40 Asian countries in 10m 0s

Click here to Play

The remaining countries are: East Timor, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Oman, Bahrain, Gaza, Syria, Georgia, Armenia, Maldives, Macau, West Bank

Okay, I didn't know Gaza and the West Bank counted as separate territories, but missing Syria was pretty dumb. Also, I remembered Qatar because of "Alphabet Of Nations," but I didn't get Oman, which is mentioned in the same song. And I'm pretty sure I correctly identified Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on a quiz back in college, but I'd since forgotten about them.

There's also one about the counties of England, but I couldn't find a way to post the results of that one to my journal, and I didn't do well at all anyway.

Comments

[dragonxbait.livejournal.com]

You got way more than myself on the Asian quiz- we got Syria, Georgia and Armenia, and we remembered Kyrgyzstan but we couldn't figure out how to spell it. Sadly we missed a bunch of major countries like Laos and Cambodia.

[revme.livejournal.com]

I ended up giving up... it's too bad that it doesn't have fuzzy spelling on that one. Just because, man, who the hell knows how to spell Kyrgyzstan?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think that might be the only "-stan" country that doesn't have the letter I before the "stan," which doesn't help matters much.

[revme.livejournal.com]

That's what makes it all the worse! The -stans are mainly notable for two things:
a) Being forgettable
and
b) Being hard to spell.

So, you know, K'stan is just doubly fucked, huh.

[revme.livejournal.com]

3m 55s

Click here to try the quiz.

You beat me -- I got alla 'em but spaced on Connecticut and couln't remember how to spell it, too. I also thought you had to click on the states at first. D'oh!

Also -- does Ian MG come off as a douche on the commentaries? Or just, to use Beth's word, humorless? Like a perfectly nice guy, just without a sense of humor? Cause I'm kinda bettin' on Douche, but I haven't got Seasons 9 or 10 yet.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I got alla 'em but spaced on Connecticut and couln't remember how to spell it, too. I also thought you had to click on the states at first. D'oh!

I thought capitalization counted at first. I'm sure I got a little faster once I realized I could enter them totally in lower case.

I think Ian comes off as kind of a douche, but I don't recall him being as specifically insulting as he was in that interview.

[revme.livejournal.com]

Hm, that's too bad, but at least he's not insulting like he can be. Though perhaps wait for _Saddlesore Galactica_... ergggggh. Though, hey, I guess I might be cranky too if I had the same name as a tiny car.

(Actually, I always thought MGs were pretty cool.)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

That isn't the kind of car the Very Tall Man drives in "22 Short Films About Springfield," is it? {g}

[revme.livejournal.com]

hahah, no, that was probably like a Volkswagen Rabbit or somethin.. that's what it looked like to me. Not that I am a car person by any stretch. But still. MGs are actually fancy sports cars that are wicked tiny and low. I think they're also typically convertibles, which probably ends up making you even MORE utterly boned in an accident.

[arfies.livejournal.com]

I just read the linked interview, and I'll have to go with "douchebag" myself.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

The thing is, while other writers also laugh off the hardcore fans' concerns about continuity and such, most of them tend to do it in a better-natured way. Ian sounds like he regards the online fans as his personal enemies or something. I think he mentioned that he was one of the later writers to actually start using the Internet himself, although I can't remember for sure if that was him.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Got rid of my websurfing guilt long enough to play these games-- you did much better than I did. I got the states in 4 min 18 seconds-- granted, probably about a minute of that was just me trying to figure out how to spell Massachusetts. Which I did in one try (says my automatic spellcheck) here now that I'm not taking the quiz. I got only 32 asian countries, but it would have been 33 if I could figure out how to spell United Arab Emirates (I must have tried every combination of vowels in Emirates BUT that), and I groaned because I forgot about Cambodia and Bangladesh and Singapore. I also took the counties of england, which was a lot of fun, actually, because I kept coming up with ones I didn't know I knew. Most of these were from literature (for example, Surrey. Quick now, who lives in Surrey?) That said, you'd think I would have remembered Cheshire, but I didn't. Also, I couldn't spell Worcestershire. And I spent quite a long time trying to figure out why it wouldn't give me yorkshire, only to realize almost accidentally that it was split up into directions....

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I got only 32 asian countries, but it would have been 33 if I could figure out how to spell United Arab Emirates (I must have tried every combination of vowels in Emirates BUT that)

It's easier when you remember that it includes the word "emir."

I actually tried Yorkshire several times on the England one, thinking it wouldn't make sense for that not to be included. I had thought that all of the counties ended in "-shire," but I soon found out that wasn't the case, and just tried to list all of the English place names I could think of. It was a little annoying that it wouldn't take "London," because I apparently had to type "City of London." I can't remember how many I ended up with, but it wasn't that many.