Saturday, May 05, 2007

Responsibility, I expect

With great power comes great something or other. For example, one day, you make a joke about Anansi Boys (in a blog entry called Fizzle -- Last paragraph.) And the next minute someone is sending you a link to this:

That'll teach me. (And thinking about offhand comments that have spun off into webthings, I was sad to see that the Johnny Theremin site is currently no longer with us. But at least The House of Clocks is still up at

Neil, I happened to be sitting next to you during Spidey 3, was wondering what your thoughts were. Also, I've recently worked on the interactive campaign for Beowulf (which looks amazing). Can you share your thoughts on online media as it relates to your work?

Not sure who you were sitting next to, or where, but I’m afraid it definitely wasn't me. (And I've not yet read a review of Spider-Man 3 that makes me want to see it anywhere other than possibly at the drive-in.)

Mostly I keep wishing that someone would take the web and do something completely original with it to promote stuff, things that only the web can do. But I can wait... And I'm really looking forward to seeing more on the site than the current film. (But mostly I'm looking forward to the Wednesday Evening Beowulf presentation that Roger Avary and I will be doing at Comic-Con, when Stuff will be Unveiled.)

Which reminds me -- there's a German trailer for Stardust - Sternwanderer -- up at Youtube, and you can see 30 seconds of Stardust (as the witch eats the heart of the star) and an interview with Michellle Pfeifer at

Dear Neil,

I was looking at the beautiful Dream Project site and at your dream posted there.
I did not recall you mentioning it before, so went through your labels to see if my memory was playing tricks on me (it does more often than not). But I found no mention of your dream post or of the Dream Project.
How come ?


Because at present the labels only go back to the beginning of this year, when blogger started doing labels. And they're fairly capricious anyway, and deeply unreliable. If you need to look for something, either search , or just do a google for and whatever you're looking for. I did that for Dream Project and got

I just did a similar search for Clan Apis, which I'm currently rereading now that I actually know something about bees, and was surprised to find that I'd never talked about it here. Lovely, lovely graphic novel (I've still got the comics somewhere), I'm going to get Maddy to read next.


Hello there, Neil (if I may be so bold),
About the Dog and its name... I had already found it odd before, but now with the deluge of suggestions, it's itching my brain:
What was the dog's name before it was yours? Didn't the former (and farmer, ha ha) owner tell you? Shouldn't you be calling Dog whatever it was? I mean, dogs usually recognize their names, unlike cats (as far as I know, feel free to correct me on that)...

They do if they get called it, but I don't think anyone ever actually spoke to him. He was just tied up in the farmyard. He doesn't react in any way to his former name (it was "Buck") -- if he did, we'd happily keep it the same.

I'm having fun teaching him to sit. (It'd work better if he was more easily bribeable, though. What kind of dog doesn't like treats?) First obedience class Wednesday night.

King Arthur's dog was Cafall and Caval and Cabal and many variants thereon. I'm leaning to Cabal...

Labels: , , ,