(no subject)

[apocalypsos]

Whee! I figured out how to check my email through my cell phone! (Took me long enough.) Now, if I want to check LJ replies at work and not have the Glorified Optimist pounce on my back and yap like a rabid lap dog 'cause I'm using work computers to do it, I can.

*snerk* I'm such an unapologetic LJ addict.

So, you know, kill time with this post. Tell me something I don't know. Or, hey, do what they were doing on Ron and Fez last night and ask about some TV show, book, or movie that you remember bits of, but not the name of it. Hell, there's lots of people on my friends list. Somebody's got to know what it is.

Example: When I first got into reading romance novels, there was this one that I really liked that was about a witch who married a duke without actually telling him she as a witch. She was really bad at magic (not that it stopped her from doing it) and she had an aunt named Mary (which I only remember because in the end, the duke and the witch had a pile of kids and all of the girls were named some version of Mary). The duke had totally white hair, about halfway through the book he finds out he's got a mentally handicapped brother he never knew about, and every time the duke and the witch had sex, rose petals fell from the ceiling. Sheesh ... all this, and I still can't remember the writer or the title.

Comments

[jtersesk.livejournal.com]

Oh! I've got one!

When I was a kid, I read a book about a girl who gets a magical calendar where whatever she writes down on the calendar will come true. There's a memorable part where she ends up being in two places at once because she writes down two different events at the same time.

Another part I remember is that she writes down "I get a call from the President" or something and then the president of the PTA calls her. See, she didn't specify which president.

I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the book, but I remember that I really enjoyed it.

taking you up on it

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

may i ask you again if you know the (approximate) words denis quaid uses in "tdat" to describe the oversweetening of the ocean due to the melting of the polar caps? especially, if a word like "oversweetening" is used?


ps: i'd also like that witch-duke-book.

Re: taking you up on it

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

desalination? As in the freshwater from the melting ice was diluting the sea water, with a net effect of desalination?

I don't remember the exact phrasing either, but I think that this was how they explained it.

[mystic-savage.livejournal.com]

Here's something you may not know: there's a new Big Bang theory (I almost wrote "Big Gang Theory") that states that the next universe could start anywhere at anytime. Yeah. The next Big Bang could be under your desk.

And here's something else you may not know: the complete Gidget collection was released on DVD early this month and you can get it on Amazon.com for like $20. Is there a better bargain in this or any other universe?

And here's another something you may not know--a poem by e.e.cummings:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

Here's something you may not know: there's a new Big Bang theory (I almost wrote "Big Gang Theory") that states that the next universe could start anywhere at anytime. Yeah. The next Big Bang could be under your desk.

Isn't there also a school of thought that says this already occurs pretty much constantly, and the only reason we don't notice is because each new universe expands in a dimensional set orthogonal to our own. IIRC, it has something to do with the spontaneous creation & destruction of quarks and antiquarks in the quantum foam.

[thornsilver]

When I first got into reading romance novels, there was this one that I really liked that was about a witch who married a duke without actually telling him she as a witch. She was really bad at magic (not that it stopped her from doing it) and she had an aunt named Mary (which I only remember because in the end, the duke and the witch had a pile of kids and all of the girls were named some version of Mary). The duke had totally white hair, about halfway through the book he finds out he's got a mentally handicapped brother he never knew about, and every time the duke and the witch had sex, rose petals fell from the ceiling. Sheesh ... all this, and I still can't remember the writer or the title.

That's probably the work of psychological defense mechanism called "repression". Now, if you only forgot about the thing with the rose petals. :P

[matildarose.livejournal.com]

All I could think of with the rose petals during sex was, "Pff! Pff! Damn petals keep falling in my mouth!"

[snellios.livejournal.com]

did you ever get your freeipod?

is it this one?

[feath.livejournal.com]

http://www.jillbarnett.com/hiband/bewitching2.html

[cleobourne.livejournal.com]

did you know:
Due to the high incidence of accidents involving red cars, Brazil and Equador prohibit drivers from owning them, possibly because red objects appear closer than they may actually be.

Yellow
Bright lemon yellow is the most luminous of all colours and the most fatiguing if viewed for long periods of time.
The most cheerful if seen at a glance
Couples fight more and babies cry more in lemon-coloured rooms.

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

The red car thing has repercussions in the US, too. At least for guys, your insurance costs are higher if his vehicle is registered as being "red", no matter what shade it is. As far as insurance goes, there's no difference between cherry red, also known as the "WARNING! WARNING! I HAVE A SMALL PENIS!" color, and maroon, which is the color of my car.

Just as yellow rooms cause the most irritability and annoyance in their occupants, pink rooms cause the most general happiness.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

There was a book my 5th grade teacher started to read to our class (she always read a chapter of a book to us right after lunch, and I was introduced to many fantastic things this way) but never got to finish because the school year ended. It had a traveling family, of magicians I think, and they met a man who cleaned his teeth with a bowie knife. That's really all I can remember about it, because we only got 1/3 of the way in and it's been well over ten years since I was in the fifth grade.

[mystic-savage.livejournal.com]

I think I know that book! It had a mule train in it, and they were going to California during the gold rush. And the viewpoint character was an older girl--maybe 11? But I don't remember the name or author.

This sentence is gramatically correct.

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

John, while Al had had 'had', had had 'had had'.

Not a lot of people know that.

Okay, and, a book? I tend to remember everything or nothing. Although there was one involving a magic carwash, Father Christmas, and eight pence in small change that I never can remember properly. Oh, and one in which a little old lady and her pet dog were revealed to be burglars.

Re: This sentence is gramatically correct.

[darcydodo]

So's this sentence:

Oysters oysters oysters eat eat eat.

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Rose petals? Huh. Sorry, I don't think I ever read that one.

But hey, I'd love to have someone tell me the title of the following book. I think it was "young adult" or suchlike, probably from the '60s or early '70s, but possibly earlier. It was set around 1100, and centered around a 13-15 year old girl who was distantly related to Eleanor d'Aquitaine. I remember that the girl had eyes that looked green or blue, depending on what she wore (and I remember that mostly because mine were similar) and that her Great Aunt or Great Grandmother or whatever Eleanor invited her to court where the girl had adventures of some sort.

Anyway, the book ignited my interest in Eleanor d'Aquitaine, so I'm forever grateful to it for that, but for the life of me I can't remember its title, or the author, or whether or not it was actually any good.

[snowpiratess.livejournal.com]

A book... I think its a 19th century classic, but all I can remember is a bitchy, conniving woman driving the entire plot, and the chapter title "How to live well on nothing a year".

Useless facts... The first smiley was used in 1982 in Carnegie Mellon University. And I was born in the same year as AOL, 9 days before Keira Knightley.

Shaun of the Dead RULES. Icon love!

So reading friends' flists DOES have some use...

[daniellafromage.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure that's Vanity Fair by WM Thackeray. It's one of my favourite books. :)

[drewbeartx.livejournal.com]

There's a book I read more than a decade ago, possibly young adult, where the entire story was set in a meta-universe of games. The main characters originated in a fully realized world that was literally a game of chess, and the "chesspieces" had special powers based on what type they were. The protagonists escape their world just as one of the kings is killed and the game ends, taking their world with it. They travelled through several other gameworlds, including a world based on Chutes and Ladders, one based on Monopoly, and one based on Chinese Checkers (I think) before reappearing in the Chess world, which had reset to the beginning of a new game/history.

cheap X-men ripoff, but still...

[gramaraye.livejournal.com]

i remember reading some books when i was a teen, about some psychic kids who all had "silver" eyes. see... their moms had been given some kind of experimental drug while pregnant, and all the kids turned out with powers. seemed like they formed a club or something.

Re: cheap X-men ripoff, but still...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_redpanda_/]

The Girl With Silver Eyes. I actually own a copy! And I wouldn't say it has anything do to with the X-Men, any more than any other wish-fulfilment kids' book about having mysterious powers. :)

[ktmobile.livejournal.com]

I remember reading a book about some kids shrinking and going inside some person's body to explore around. It wasn't the Magic School Bus, it was a novel. I just remember they got into several situations where a normal bodily reaction would put them in harm's way and they would have to escape somehow. I think they might have been with an older person like a scientist friend (like Doc from Back to the Future). *shrug*

[kijeren.livejournal.com]

Oh! oh!

um... it involved a family, the girls name was Meg, and they were shrunk to mitochondria size? the dad was kidnapped in one of the books.

[mystic-savage.livejournal.com]

Two more what-the-heck-was-that-book-title books in case anyone knows what they are:

1. Libby goes to Paris with her stepfamily--this would be a book that was out in the 1970's. She has a sketchbook.

2. There are three girls named Matilda and they all go by different nicknames and there is some kind of mystery involved.

[octopedingenue]

I remember watching some fantasy movie on TV when I was little (late '80s/early '90s) that I can't remember the plot of, just random bits--two little kids, a boy and girl; their friend a dwarf/hobbit type guy who may or may not ride a tricycle; and a lavish magical fairyland in which fairyland-people are transformed into enormous, grotesque, knobbly, mottled-green-brown spheres with eyes and mouths that spit pure gold dust.

Aaaaand then there's the book I read in fourth grade about two boys who get transported into a magical world and go on some quest or other involving a magical yin-yang-esque stone that's been split in half (light and dark). At the end of the story the stone gets joined back together and the two boys meld into one superpowered-Jesus type guy. And Fenris the wolf-monster from Norse mythology is involved somehow.


Yes. So VERY much crack.

[foxxydancr.livejournal.com]

your first one vaguely sounds like it might be related to mine with the slimemold, see down a few posts...

What was that book...

[kijeren.livejournal.com]

1. kids book - there's a boy and he learns that imagination is the true magic, and it involves coloring a man in a room with a brick wall and a dog - with his mind.

2. sci fi, at least 10 years ago - covers two or three generations, as the world is slowly being poisoned. near the beginning, there's a country that poisons the african continent, only the poison seeps into the sea. later they come up with a ship that's supposed to repair the hole in the ozone by processing the water into oxygen - only is sucks in the poison from the africa fiasco and kills everyone on board. at the end, there are some people living in the arizona? desert in a missle silo complex, and the world has mutants that they go fight for food. in the end, earth is a ball of mud, there's a dramatic scene in a hotel with car sized spiders, and the rest of humanity is living on a space station.

3. 3-6 years old, historic romance - all I can remember is that it's about a woman who's a physician, (REALLY unusual for the time period), and she's tracking down a murder, and she pretends to be married to this rich guy with brothers. (or maybe he claims they're married?) hijinks ensue.

[teleute12.livejournal.com]

I remember renting some animated children's movie from the grocery store, about 15 years ago. Near as I can recall, it involved a sick little girl who ran away from home with a fairy friend and felt better once she got into the sunshine; the part that really stuck with me was when they lit a fire with a glass marble.

And then there was a romance novel involving soulmates, reincarnation, lots of OMGangst!!!, and girls throwing themselves off cliffs. I mainly remember this one because the author of some Night World fanfic ripped it off whole-sale.

Oh, and then there was a book called "The Queen's Orange Grove" or something like that, involving a family trying to have success with their (Southern Californian?) orange grove around the turn of last century; the queen reference is because they compared main-charichter-girl's grandmother to Queen Victoria. The author's last name would've started with A or B, if I remember the book's posistion on the library shelf correctly.

Anyone know what those are?

[foxxydancr.livejournal.com]

One of the most disturbing things I have ever seen was part of an (admittedly very bad) movie in which people were thrown into a pit of slimemold and the Slimemold spat gold back. Anyone know what this is, or what the rest of the plot was?

Also, there was a movie involving something that I have filed in my brain as a grandma factory. maybe it was a grandmother/robot type thing. can't remember much about that one except this family with two kids kid of gets one. then has to give it back. or something. help?

[kassandra05.livejournal.com]

The second one: The Electric Grandmother (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083876/).

[darcydodo]

OK, well, I posted about this some time last year in my own journal and didn't get sufficient answers, so now I'll try your friends. Three books that I read in my childhood and now can't remember what they were:

* There was a book that may actually have been The Fledgling, but I really don't think so; I read them at the same time, however. Salient features in my mind: a gazebo, of which different sides led different places (this sounds like Edward Eager, but I'm fairly blasted certain that he didn't write it), and a paper doll princess and prince, the latter of whom had a concave nose because otherwise he couldn't kiss his princess properly. (You must settle for inconveniences such as this when you're made in two dimensions, it seems.)

* There was a book in which there was a girl (I think) searching for a white crown. The crown as the object of her quest is one thing that has stuck firmly in my mind, as has an expanse of dark forest. There seem, however, to be many dark forests lurking in my literary memory, and I'm sure there can't actually have been that many. Though her society was not particularly technological, I think, there were definitely some bits of the plot that had to do with electricity — something in the crown, maybe? I thought the book had the words "white crown" in the title, but having done many a search on this, it seems not to be the case.

* Lastly, for now, out of pure curiosity, 'cause I can't remember if it was actually a good book or not, though I think it might have been, there was a book in which a witch cast a spell on the end of her broomstick to make it come alive, in order that she could use it as a dildo. Yeah.

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

I think the second book you mentioned would be The Silver Crown. No idea who it's by, I'm afraid. My elder brother read it when I was about six, and I glanced at a few pages. The girl was looking for the crown - which I think may have actually been made of silk - and she met a boy who lived in the dark forest and was very good at knife-throwing, and lived on stuff that fell off the backs of lorries.

It drops into my head every so often, and says 'Seek Me Out!', but I've never got round to it. Maybe tomorrow...

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Hey, did you hear about the whale?

[wicked-dragon-x.livejournal.com]

Hi, just introducing myself. I friended you 'cause you're snarky and I like that. Anyway.

There was this short story I read in, well, a short story collection. I don't know the name, or author, or any of that. It was about a mapmaker who could make a map to anywhere and anything on Earth. I distinctly remember that he made maps to peoples' lost keys, and that he made a map to the original lyrics, in plain English, to some unintelligible song (either Wooly Bully or Louis Louis). And I think he had a store that had plants growing all over.

[hiddenw.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing a videotape in pre-kinder (late 80's) of a cartoon that had a girl witch dancing around the rim of a cauldron. That's all I really remember. I think it had the drawing style of "Where the Wild Things Are." I doubt anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about it.

[cleobourne.livejournal.com]

the only witch movie I remember like that had a witch named Hazel and she had a green thumb. The narrator was an old Owl who tried to guess your name in the beggining of the movie....and there were pumpkins who sang a rap type song about halloween....and there was a witch docotor who tried to help Hazel cure her green thumb? or something like that.

[gruyere.livejournal.com]

Alas, I figure that at this point, nobody's still reading this, but I'll try.

It was a book I read early 90s about a boy who, after his mother dies, goes on an adventure with his long-absent father. At some point, they end up at a hotel called the Chez Whiz, and the dad eventually tells the son that he's not actually his biological father, and that the boy's mother was pregnant when he met her by the side of the road. The mother was native American, and the son and the father end up encountering and befriending a girl the same age as the boy and her single mother.

The book, as I recall, was fairly strange, but I don't think it was Daniel Pinkwater strange.

It's possible that I'm combining two books here, but I don't think so.

Sounds like...

[(Anonymous)]

"Bewitching" by Jill Barnett.

:)

LLWL