Some Christmas Eve thoughts

1. Just got back from a Christmas Eve afternoon trip to Wal*Mart. Once upon a time I refused to shop there, being fiercely pro-labor, but that was before I discovered poverty. :p Hypocrite? Who, me? Anyway. Was actually surprisingly fun -- M and I flirted with a cheerful and very attractive sales associate with skin the color of dark French roast who was kind enough to show us where the matchbooks were (hint: they're not next to firelogs, candles, picnic stuff or toothpicks) and then the very speedy checkout girl had an electronic singing Santa hat. Christmas kitsch for the win!


2. I read all three volumes of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen yesterday. I'm ... I'm sorry, I'm just not that impressed. I probably would have been if I'd stopped with the first one. I mean, they're blindingly racist and cheerfully misogynistic, but this is deliberate, a genre-savvy sort of thing, and even though Captain Nemo is perpetually referred to and addressed with cringe-worthy racial slurs, he's also probably the most noble and most effective character in the series. I can deal with that in the same way I can deal with Huck Finn. What I can't deal with is the crazy mood whiplash in the second volume (spoilers ahead). You can write a very good comic that's sarcastic and self-parodying. You can write a very good comic that includes a graphically detailed scene in which a woman is brutally beaten to the point of vomiting. Possibly you can even do them in the same comic. But not within a few pages of each other. Even to someone who plays violent and disgusting video games with happy abandon, I found that part deeply shocking and unsettling. And then there's the fact that the characters change their character between novels. I mean, Mina and Allan in vol. 1 wouldn't even have a nodding acquaintance with Mina and Allan in the Black Dossier. Though I have to say, I really enjoyed Hyde and the complexity of his relationships and motivations.

It's ... I'm about to turn in my geek points. There were things that the movie did better. There. I said it.


3. If anyone needs lovely little personalized keepsakes, I highly recommend SweetScarlett. She did a wonderful little set of vintage-graphic owl-and-magpie bookplates for me to give to M. Free customization, too, since it was originally a crow. She's across the pond, but speedy and lovely and I highly recommend her.


4. If anyone needs T-shirts or decals, I highly recommend Broake & Thumb Studios, especially if you love Vikings. The artist did a custom-sized Viking Navy T-shirt for me. Their decals are also great, and quite sizable, and their dice bags are lovely high-quality pieces.


5. I've been reading up on blacksmithing. It's fascinating.


6. I just found out the the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie is slated for next December. I am very, very excited as that was my favorite Narnia book (though in close competition with the horse one, me being a seven-year-old girl at the time). Also, dragons. Also, ships. Also, Ben Barnes and his Sultry Accent. Did you know he based it on Inigo Montoya? This makes the (spoiler if you live under a kiddie-lit-free rock) "you killed my father" scene in Prince Caspian rather entertaining.


7. Yesterday:

"Ooh, do I get street cred?"

"M, I have read Prisoner of Azkaban over thirty times. I know who Tuor killed at the Fall of Gondolin in The Silmarillion. I own a d20. I am not qualified to award street cred."


8. And of course, a Merry Christmas and/or Yuletide to all! We sort of celebrate both -- ritual on Yule (M's an ordained priestess), Christmas Eve with her half of the family and Christmas Day with my half.

My favorite Christmas song this year is, by the way, Bing Crosby and David Bowie's Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth mashup. Usually it's something by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but I've bought their Beethoven's Last Night album since then, which is a non-Christmas rock opera, and am still having trouble not going "Why is Mephistopheles singing about chests of toys and old letters? What's in that chest?"

Now, mind you, I hate the Little Drummer Boy, I think it's vapid and excessively saccharine. But that dual song is about what ... well, what it's about. About giving more love than you receive to make the world a better place. Gives me warm fuzzies quite beyond the aesthetic tingle of a really good counterpoint duet.

So whether it is Christmas Eve or just past Yule, or Die Natali Sol Invictis, or early Kwanzaa or belated Hannukah, have a happy one.