December 19, 2001

OK, my readers deserve a better diary entry for today than what I’ve been providing thus far.

The very breath of Zeus has been sweeping through my garden. The trees are swaying like they’re in a hypnotic trance, dancing to a music I can only hear as the whistle of the wind.

And at right, you can see what happens when a dead tree branch falls on a plastic chair. This occurred about ten feet away from me, on the deck outside my bedroom. Imagine what that would’ve done to my skull if I had been sitting there?

I finished the final DVD of Hand Maid May tonight. It was a very satisfactory ending…more satisfactory than I expected from shoujo. Perhaps that’s unfair, but there was this surprisingly tight SF story undergirding the whole plot. Impressive.

That said, the series is too uneven to recommend unconditionally. It’s great, in spots, but it’s also annoying and/or mediocre, in spots. If I gave out stars, I’d give it three out of five.

I was right.

I sense that I’m about to spend most of the day reading the archives of FANS!, yet another online comic strip. This one, though, is a parody of science fiction fandom (all of it, from Star Trek to anime to role-playing) that benefits from professional artwork, a fantastic sense of layout, and an incredibly solid story.

Really, the story rocks. I just finished reading a series where a fan punches out a mind-controlled Jeri Ryan to stop her from killing Harlan Ellison.