Belgariad author David Eddings passes away

The author that introduced me to an ongoing love of fantasy books, David Eddings, passed away on Tuesday 2 June 2009, at the age of 77. Eddings’ two most popular series, the Belgariad and the Malloreon, are still two of the most popular bildungsroman series written, and haven’t been out of print since they were first published back in the early 1980s. The series is still one of my favorites, and holds a very special place in my heart.

[David's publisher, Jane] Johnson said he would be missed “tremendously” at HarperCollins, which published his last title, The Elder Gods, in 2006. “He was a towering force of modern commercial fiction, a master of the epic, and a delight to work with,” she said. “The Voyager team and I were immensely sad to hear the news.”

My condolences to David’s family. The world of literature is far, far poorer for the loss.

[Link: The Guardian - Fantasy master David Eddings dies aged 77]

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Inadvertent inappropriate headline

“Family torn apart after bus blast”

I don’t think I can add much more to that. Mind you, I’m finding that more and more, IOL needs an online copy editor, because their headlines and articles are getting worse by the day.

[Link: IOL - Family torn apart after bus blast]

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WTF??? It’s illegal to use emoticons!!

Ok, this is just wrong…. I feel violated, you must read this and let me know what you think!

A Russian businessman has trademarked the emoticon – or combination of punctuation marks – used to convey a wink in text messages and e-mail.

And now Oleg Teterin claims other similar emoticons – like – could fall under his ownership.

full article

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Newsworthy news

So, I was on Al Jazeera reading some news, and they have a column on the right of the page listing important news stories from around the world.

What is wrong, or rather funny, with this list?

Clue: how can this be listed as news?

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Blizzard says “No” to Uwe Boll World of Warcraft movie

Blizzard Entertainment, the guys who made World of Warcraft, possibly one of the largest multiplayer online games in existence, were approached by Uwe Boll for movie rights. In Mr Boll’s own words:

“I got in contact with Paul Sams of Blizzard, and he said, ‘We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you,’” Boll revealed. “Because it’s such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it.”

Are we surprised at all that game studios are finally grasping the idea that he’s almost universally reviled by gamers, and that selling him the movie rights for games is not a quick money-making machine? Granted, as was pointed out to me in a prior post, game to movie adaptations are not the best at the most spectacular of times, but maybe game-to-movie adaptations need as much help as they can get. Getting Uwe Boll to direct a game-to-movie translation is about as helpful to the case as, for sheer argument’s sake, giving a serial killer his own butchery, knives, band-saw, and ready line of victims. I’m just glad that studios are finally beginning to realize this fact.

{Link: MTV Movies Blog, via Kotaku]

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Breaking news; slightly nauseating

Do you remember when Calvin creates his own newspaper, and he walks around the house looking for stories? Or the time when he entered the traffic sign competition, using cranium red and spaghetti sauce for effects? Do you remember how Bill Waterson phrased the news headlines?

For example: “Calvin drives fire engine; few injured” and “Town hall razed, statue of Calvin commissioned for site”.

Classic timing, the juxtaposition of ideas; all great comic stuff.

And then you get ABC News’ attempt on their home page: Britney Crashes Mercedes; Nobody Hurt

I mean, seriously now *roll eyes* You’re kidding me, right?

Is the headline supposed to ellicit a giggle? Do they know that Britney is a joke (and so last week)? Or are they being serious, in that they thought that headline is great?

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Fowl-mouth bird teaches other birds to swear

A foul-mouthed macaw in London has been teaching other birds to swear. Says the owner, Geoff Grewcock (that’s seriously his name?):

“They just sit there swearing at each other now, all kinds of foul language – it’s unbelievable.”

It’s similar to having very young, impressionable children around the house, don’t you think? And like little children:

Mr Grewcock added: “These birds can live until they are 70 so there are potentially another 60 years of this to contend with.”

Parrot stew, anyone?

[Link: IOL.co.za]

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Today’s insanity: girls beat up and kidnap another girl for YouTube video

A group of eight teenagers, six of them girls, were arrested for beating up another girl, 16-year old Victoria Lindsay, purely for the sake of filming the attack and uploading the video to YouTube.

One of the girls struck the 16-year-old victim on the head several times and then slammed her head into a wall, knocking her unconscious, according to an arrest report.

The police described the attack as “animalistic”:

“It’s absolutely an animalistic attack,” Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday on NBC television’s Today show. “They lured her into the home for express purpose of filming the attack and posting it on the Internet.”

The victim was treated for concussion, bruises, and damage to the left eye and ear. What interests me about this is this: at what point did these teens think: “Hey! Let’s beat up so poor schmuck and upload the video to YouTube! That certainly is a SMART idea!” and feel that they were going to get away with it? One of the teens involved in the attack handed the clip over to the police, so I guess the guilt must have been eating her. Still., it’s one atrociously horrific attack.

The insanity of it all is that these people thought that beating up someone for entertainment was fun. I can’t get my head around it: why do people think that willfully harming another person is entertainment?
And how far a step is it from there to snuff clips?

Question: what steps do you think might have to be taken to reduce the acceptedness of gratuitous violence for the sake of entertainment?

[Link: IOL.co.za]

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Today’s insanity: body parts left in bag on porch

Ok, so maybe the image is a little tasteless. Chalk it up to my tasteless gene. Anyhow:

Two sisters in Greenville, South Carolina, USA, were each greeted with a bag on their porch that contained human hands and feet.

One of the sisters currently lives at an apartment at the Andover Park complex on Cleveland Street and her sister lived at a house on Rose Avenue until about a week ago.

A bag containing a human and a human foot were found outside each of the homes on Monday morning.

The police are trying to get a grip on the matter, but can’t really put a finger on any suspects at the moment, despite checking in a wide radius. They hoped that someone would be able to hand a suspect in, but it was all in vein. Nobody finds the situation humerus at all, but a good rule of thumb would be to hunt for missing persons, and there the police feel they’ll keep their noses to the grindstone. The two sisters’ knee-jerk reaction was to scream bloody murder, but cooler heads prevailed. They don’t know who’d have the heart to do such a dreadful deed. We can certainly hope that the Greenville police are able to deliver with a suspect, and that some vigilantes don’t try to muscle in on the action.

Thankfully, there wasn’t a vehicle accident involved, or else they’d have had to call a toe truck.

Can anyone who spleen to me whether you actually have the guts to do something like this?

[Link]

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Some real insanity for once: 9-year old kids plot to kill teacher

In a horrifyingly strange example of some real, utter, insanity, a group of 9-year old kids plotted to kill their third-grade teacher.

“The plan was to handcuff the teacher, put tape over her mouth and hit her over the head with the paperweight and possibly cut her,” said Lieutenant Duane Caswell of Waycross police.

Now if that isn’t true insanity, I don’t know what is. My question: what kind of society are we living in where kids as young as 9 are plotting murder? Are we over-exposing them to violent media? Or do you think it’s the surrounding environment?
Link: News24.com

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