sea monkeys

Site of the day: Wendy Webb (online comic that sometimes mentions FILKING). I bought Sea Monkeys yesterday! I'm going to set my kit up next week....can't wait to see those happy smiling faces on my watery denizens. The kit comes in a brightly-coloured plastic "aquarium" and contains 3 mysterious-looking packages, a sea monkey feeding spoon, and an Official Sea Monkey handbook. I can't wait!

starship troopers

Joel Polowin tells me that the novel of Starship Troopers is not very similar to the movie:

The original book was by Heinlein, yes, but the movie seems to have
very little in common with it except for a few names, and some
scenes and situations mangled almost beyond recognition.  I recommend
the book.  If the movie is anything like the script that's been
posted (see http://www.script-o-rama.com ), I will be staying far
away from it -- there's a big emphasis on violence and splatter, and
a sense of physics and military procedure that rank with the worst
of Star Trek's bloopers.

SITE OF THE DAY: Joel Polowin's brand-spankin'-new website, http://www.cyberus.ca/~jpolowin.

micris

Apologies to those who have sent me email; I am a bit swamped in work right now and am behind in answering personal email these days. As a result of several meetings with my marketing advisor-types (Micris), I've decided to redesign Inkspot as well as make other changes to the site and newsletter that are going to require a heck of a lot of work during the next three months. As a result, my blatherings may either become a bit more erratic or (probably the case) even more disjointed and manic than usual. :-)
Last night's UT practice was fun; although we didn't do much practising, we did do a lot of post-con rehashing and congratulation Jodi about her new job (she starts on the 19th!). We're looking forwards to Confusion early next year (Jan 23-25) in Michigan, where we do an hour-long jam session with Ookla the Mok...should be fun. :-)
Jeff and I are going to see Penn and Teller tonight!

mookti

Lately I've been checking out Mookti as a possible home for future Inkspot moderated chats. MOOkti is "the multipurpose polysynchronous virtual learning community" at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. In simpler words, it is a veryvery cool learning environment with enormous potential. Some of you may be familiar with this kind of environment when you do MUSHes or MUDs or whatever it's called (as you can tell, I'm not an online gamer). Scott Snyder is a Mookti wizard and has been very kind in showing me around. I've built a little office off his tavern from which I plan on hassling his patrons and also learn more about the environment. MOVIES: Jeff and I tried watching DRAGONHEART last night. The dragon animation was kind of neat, but I wasn't too taken with the characters/story (I'm sure I will be flamed for this comment since I know the movie has some sort of cult following). Loved Sean Connery as a dragon, of course. GERMANY: Jeff and I are going to Germany for a week starting this Wednesday, by the way. I'll try to do some blatherchatting while I'm over there, but it depends on whether I can get online. If any of you know any German, I'd appreciate learning some Useful German Phrases.
I've started a sort of "blatherings" in Inkspot, by the way. Feel free to check it out and help me come up with a more interesting name than "From The Editor's Desk".

german

I picked up my OVFF pics yesterday, and will be gradually posting some of them here (especially the ones containing Blatherchatters! :-)). Unfortunately my scanner isn't quite working right at the moment (see unsightly streaks in photo above); I'm calling Visioneer today to find out what I can do about it. Bought a German phrasebook yesterday in hopes of becoming fluent by tomorrow. Thus far I have learned the following important words/phrases:

• Ich surfe hern im Internet. (I like to surf the Internet)
  
• Schokolade (chocolate)
  
• Kanst du mich nach Hause bringen? (Will you take me home?)
  

Downtown Freddy Brown has a website! Not a lot there at the moment, but I'm sure more will develop (which scares me :-) )...check it out at http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/8449/. His email address is dwntwnbrown@geocities.com. Jeff and I are going to see WINGFIELD UNBOUND tonight, a one-man show with Dan Needles. It's the sequel to the Wingfield Trilogy, which we both loved (thanks to Graham Leathers for introducing us to these plays!). Jeff and I used to live out in the country, and it's amazing how accurately these plays portray country life and some of the people. In fact, my brother-in-law was born and raised in the town on which Larkspur was based.

I remember my baptism into country life...shortly after Jeff and I moved in, our neighbours (dairy farmers) across the road invited me to check out the spring calves. I'm glad I wore boots instead of shoes, because in order to get to the barn I discovered I would have to cross a field of extremely fresh cow manure. My first impulse, of course, was to run away screaming. But as I opened my mouth to say, "Holy Toledo, I'm not walking through THAT", I noticed I was being watched very closely. Ah. The "city girl test". So I gritted my teeth and slogged my way through the field, cowpies sucking at my boots like the salt creature in classic Star Trek as I struggled to put on my "gosh I can't believe how much FUN I'm having" face. And it was worth it...the calves were darned cute. :-) EGOBOO: Hey, just noticed that Inklings was mentioned in the Fall issue of Canadian Author magazine, woohoo!