Day 23 – Most Annoying Character Ever

Ronald Bilius Weasley. The middle name says it all really.

Weak, cowardly, petulant, lazy, stupid and jealous, (a typical teenage boy then) I never really saw the point of Ron Weasley. Everything about the character grates on my nerves, and I certainly have never understood what Hermione is supposed to see in him. Other than Harry what exactly do those two have in common? Why would such an intelligent and powerful witch choose to repeatedly take back such a thoughtless and often vindictive little tit?

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 23 - Track You Love That Was Released Decades Before You Were Born



I like a lot of old music, but I struggled to find something more than a decade older than me that I really LOVE.

Day 22 – Favorite Non-Sexual Relationship

This is where I look like a complete copycat by choosing the same answer as Siobhan @ Book And Biscuit but I do think that the completely psychotic relationship between Mrs Danvers and Mrs De Winter II is one of the best character interactions in any book. The whole scenario is a perfect example of how someone can be so downtrodden that they can ultimately be trained into making themselves feel inferior, and how someone can love a person so much that they aren't just blind to their faults but think they are virtues.

A woman with any strength or backbone could have thrown off the shadow of Rebecca quite easily, but then such a woman probably wouldn't have attracted Maxi, and a woman with confidence and a bit of commonsense would have wondered what Mrs Danvers was up to, but again such a woman probably wouldn't have gotten herself into that situation. The whole book for me was like one of those horror movies when you already know something bad is going to happen but the teens still go to the abandoned movie theatre. You just want to reach into the book and shake Mrs De Winter II. Or hand Mrs Danvers the matches.

You should definitely watch David Mitchell as Mrs Danvers in the Mitchell And Webb version (about 6 minutes in), in the sketch they turn to the situation on its head and have Rebecca thinking about the mysterious future Mrs De Winter. "Oh no Rebecca, we'll never use the boating lake after you've gone, the future Mrs De Winter will find it too upsetting, and besides, people will say its haunted."

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 22 - Track You Look Forward To Introducing Kids To

There's no anbswer I can give to this that doesn't make me look evil, or that isn't from Labryrinth. So here's my current favorite song to inflict on people.

Day 21 – Favorite Romantic Relationship

Urgh. Two romance questions in a row? Really? Pass the sick bucket.

As much as I love Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, I'm going to have to go back to Pratchett for this one.

(His Grace, His Excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander) Sir Samuel Vimes and Lady Sybil Ramkin first meet in Guards! Guards! as an alcoholic captain of the Night Watch and the richest spinster in Ankh Morpork. Long story short he saves her from being sacrificed to a dragon and she helps reform him into the one of the most influential men in the city. I'm choosing these two, rather than the more "romantic" Angua and Carrot or the more intriguing Lord Vetinari and Lady Margotta, simply because they are ultimately so very ordinary. They just get on with life with out excessive drama, ok so they have the occasional soppy moment but usually its interrupted by Vimes having to run off to deal with criminals or some international crisis.

Yes Heathcliff and Cathy are terribly passionate, but by the end of Wuthering Heights everyone is dead. Sybil and Sam are a prime example of a sensible older couple who perfect compliment each other - Sybil can't cook but "since Sam Vimes"s spectrum of gastronomic delight mainly ranged from 'well fried' to 'caramelized'" it's a match made in burnt crunchy bit heaven. I'd much rather have that kind of relationship than some tragedy.

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 21 - Oh My God Listen to the Violin!



Don't just listen to this song, watch what he's doing! It's all the violin, including the percussion. If you haven't seen Matt Howden live, you haven't really experienced music.

Day 20 – Favorite Kiss

It was insanely difficult to come up with an answer for this one, cos generally I don't pay any attention to such sappiness.

In the end I picked the only kiss I could remember, from Seasons of Mist, volume four of the Sandman graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman. I'm not going to show the kiss itself here because, 1. I've lost my copies of Sandman one through six and 2. its rather graphic.

The kiss in question is between Lucifer (The Morningstar, The Adversary, The Great Serpent, Satan, Lord of Hell) and Mazikeen who is a demon and a daughter of Lilith. This kiss takes place as Lucifer is planning to close down Hell and quit his job as Satan. Mazikeen pledges her love and loyalty to him even though he is no longer her lord or master, to which he states "you may love me, if you wish" before kissing her goodbye and using her knife to cut off his wings. The reason I'd class the kiss as graphic is that Mazikeen (as a demon) is missing most of one side of her face. Literally her brain is exposed and you can see inside her mouth, which makes the image of her kissing the David Bowie-esque Lucifer very disturbing indeed. Here's a link to it in ummm... spanish I think.  You've been warned.

The relationship Lucifer has with Mazikeen is the closest he seems to get to genuine emotion in the Sandman books, and I always felt sorry for poor ugly Mazikeen for being left behind. Until The Kindly Ones at least, when its revealed that Lucifer is playing piano in a wine bar and Mazikeen is part of the staff. One up for the ugly girls :p

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 20 - Oh My God Listen To The Lyrics



It was so hard not to pick another JoCo song for this, but for such a sad song, with a such a depressing message, this always makes me giggle. Why? 3:40 to 3:46 that's why. Ah, Pete Steele, you're sadly missed.

Day 19 – Favorite Book Cover

I am so jealous of anyone who has any book from this special edition series . HINT. Please feel free to buy me any of these. Ahem. Anyway, this obnoxiously pink design is absolutely perfect for the Alice stories.

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 19 - Track to Seduce Someone To

I'm on a JoCo kick right now, but, well a giant golden submarine would work on me, and once again, Helena by the Misfits is probably still too weird.

Day 18 – Favorite Childhood Book

I switched around day 13 and day 18 when I realised that I already had an entry for favorite opening scene.

It's hard to chose a favorite childhood book because I wasn't really a booky kid when I was a child, though I was an extremely booky teenager. I thank Terry Pratchett and Anne McCaffery for that, though more their adult books than the ones aimed at kids. Amazing Maurice didn't come out until 2001 when I was at university and that was really the first kid centric Discworld book. I'd already read the rest of Discworld by then, working backwards from Soul Music in 1994. But there are Pratchett books outside of Discworld. The shockingly tragic Nation being the latest, Carpet People being the first.

For me however the Bromeliad/Nome series was my first taste of Pratchett, and the first time I found a book that really appealed to me. It was set in places I knew about - department stores, quarries and Kennedy Space Center (yeah, I was a geeky kid and one of the few in my class to be lucky enough to go to Florida regularly). Pratchett has a great way of making everyday things wonderful by changing your perspective, and seeing the world through the eyes of creatures a few inches high is perfect for that. Plus it has spaceships, and Concord. It will always be a regret of mine that now Concord is gone I'll never get to eat strange woobly pink stuff and look for Nomes under the seats.

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 18 - Track That Reminds You It's Gonna Be Alright



Normally songs like this just make me more depressed but I think the combination of JoCo's voice and the fact that this is about a real guy, who really did all these insane things, makes it all ok.

Day 17 – Favorite Short Story

[caption id="attachment_505" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Cats can see the color out of space but are unimpressed by it"][/caption]

Ok so I've missed quite a few days of this. My excuse? Well Portal 2 came out. Then I dislocated my thumb. The first may have caused the second.

Anyway, my choice for this one has to be "The Color Out Of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft, the only genuinely scary story I've ever read. That link is to the full text. Go read it before you read any further. Or get the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company radio play version, its free in various places. A lot of the time you get the impression that Lovecraft isn't describing his monsters because he can't be bothered, isn't being paid enough or can't think of anything. All too often we get to the end of the book and end up with something like "never could I tell, try as I might, what it actually was that I saw", and on those occasions that he does describe his monsters (for example the epically detailed description of Wilbur Whateley in The Dunwich Horror) they're weird but they aren't (in the age of cinema FX at least) actually very scary.

But the whole point of the "bad guys" in this story is that they don't have a form to describe. They literally are just a colour (from space). A colour which can't be described using human language as it doesn't exist in our visible spectrum, rather like Terry Pratchett's Octarine aka the colour of magic best described as a 'fluorescent greenish-yellow-purple'. and how do you fight a colour? Or a vapour, or a wasting disease as it ultimately becomes? Well, you can't, that's the point.

The story ends with a proper sense of dread on the cliffhanger, much better than Lovecraft's better know stories because the action takes place close to a populated area, rather than the polar icecaps or the Australian outback.

Even  Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 17 - Track That Opened You Up To A New Genre



I'm not a fan of hip hop but chap hop is so much more dignified :D