We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Hamsters

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, we’d followed Ermingard to 2016 and a battle with Jill Polarity and Dr. Oatmeal, and we’d seen Katrina in a post-apocalyptic wasteland discovering some surprising wreckage before getting tranquilized by persons unknown. Now it’s time to see what the eponymous heroine of the Catrina Chronicles is up to, aboard the Dangling Participle and still all ghostified…

*cue theme*

“Captain’s log, stardate….erm. I say, V.V., what jolly old stardate is it?”

“I do not know, comrade captain. The computer calendar is still set on David Copperfield time.”

“Ah, yes; what a glorious experience that was, the thrill of a phaser duel with Mr. Murdstone, and courageously fending off the attack of Zombie Steerforth. Right, well, then, moving on, whatever stardate this happens to be, we’re in the 12th century or thereabouts, checking in on our valiant ally Catrina, whom we haven’t seen since our adventure with her in her novel. Alas, our computer has scanned the planet several times, and we have as yet not been able to detect Catrina’s life sign. Our search for her continues!”

Catrina, listening to Ferdinand Roderick Marshalham Willingsford the Seventh make this recording on the bridge of the Dangling Participle, facepalmed once again. It was something she’d been doing a lot lately. “Of course you can’t find my life sign on the planet, because I’m not alive!” she said, not that they could hear her. In her current ghost form, Catrina could only be seen or heard by people who were not important to the story in any way whatsoever. This meant that she couldn’t communicate with her friends the space hamsters, much as she’d wanted to. Catrina wondered whether she could try knocking on something, maybe a few spectral taps here and there, but try as she might, she couldn’t make herself tangible enough to do it. She was beginning to worry about her situation. Suppose the Dangling Participle left Earth’s orbit and jumped into meta-warp drive? Would she be able to float along with the ship, or would she be left behind, floating about in the atmosphere? It was not pleasant to contemplate, and so Catrina decided not to contemplate it. Instead she focused on something vastly more interesting; the unusual energy reading that had just shown up on Valentina Viktorovna’s computer. “Captain,” the white-furred hamster whispered in awe, “I believe we have located the Golden Spleen.”

“Well, yeeha,” Becky-Jane cut in, “but would y’all mind tellin’ me why we should care about finding any sort of spleen, golden or otherwise? Is it Catrina’s spleen maybe, and if it is, what’s it doin’ outside ‘er?”

“The Golden Spleen,” Ferdinand said excitedly, “is the repository of the mythical element splenithium, rumored to restore injured or even slain beings who touch it, not to mention serving as a virtually unlimited power source! Valentina! Activate the transporter and lock on to the coordinates of the Golden Spleen!”

“I did that five seconds ago, comrade captain, while you were expositing,” she said calmly, flicking her left ear.

The Spleen materialized on the bridge in a blur of shimmery light, coincidentally right next to Catrina. Intrigued by what Ferdinand had said, she reached out a ghostly magneta-tinged hand and touched it. Instantly the power of the Spleen flowed through her, cool and refreshing like a chocolate milkshake such as you might get at White Castle of an evening except sometimes the shake machine has been shut down for the night and so you must be content with a Mello Yello which really isn’t that bad, all things considered. Catrina could practically feel herself coming together again, taking visible form. Unfortunately the first part of her that took visible form was her small intestine. Needless to say, Ferdinand, V.V., and Becky-Jane were a bit startled by the sudden appearance of a small intestine on their bridge. Becky-Jane grabbed for her lucky plasticianum-handled laser pistol, Pollyanna. “No!” Catrina yelled, suddenly realizing she might very well get killed again. “Don’t-”  But Becky-Jane was already firing at the small intestine, and Catrina, deciding that discretion really was the better part of valor, made a run for it, taking the Golden Spleen with her. This led to a terribly amusing chase scene as Becky-Jane pursued Catrina’s bouncing small intestine throughout the corridors of the Dangling Participle, with Bucklebury the volebot trailing along behind suggesting sensibly that maybe they should try to open communications with it instead of shooting at it.

Catrina rounded a corner, and stopped in newfound amazement, as red light spilled across her face. The red Sporksaber hung in a rack upon the wall, conveniently pre-activated. (How it got to be there is a long story which I’ll have to go into sometime.) Several things happened at once, as things are wont to do in these stories. A final surge of splenetic power shot through her, finishing her materialization neatly. Becky-Jane rounded the same corner and saw Catrina. Catrina, meanwhile, had reached for the Sporksaber, her hand closing round its hilt. Immediately she felt the power of the Sporky Force; only her other hand was still touching the Golden Spleen. Spleen met spork, there was yet another big kaboom (Catrina was getting used to it) and she and the red Sporksaber both vanished from the ship. At the same time, just outside the vessel, a wormhole exploded into being in a dazzling array of color.

Ferdinand saw the wormhole through a viewport, and dashed back to the bridge, seized with the desire to explore it. Becky-Jane, completely bewildered, nonetheless decided to make something useful of the situation; she picked up the Golden Spleen and marched off to hook it up to the ship’s engine. She didn’t see an oozy black blob drip off one bit of the Golden Spleen and puddle on the corridor floor, nor did she notice the blob taking shape until it assumed an evil and familiar form. “Well,” said Susan, smiling like a diabolical lolcat, and she was about to say something dramatic and ominous, except at that moment the Dangling Participle lurched forward into the wormhole, and Susan was thrown against the bulkhea. “Ow!” she yelped. “Bella Cullen, that hurt! Blasted space hamsters!”

Meanwhile, Catrina opened her eyes, and found herself staring at a jar of mayonnaise. She started to move, and instantly found that she didn’t have much room to move around in, as she appeared to be stuck in a thermally insulated compartment with a metal shelf sticking into her back. “Oh come ON!” Catrina exclaimed. “You put me in a refrigerator? Really? Of all the-seriously, author, do you even understand what the whole women-in-refrigerators trope means? This isn’t even a device to facilitate the development of a male hero, it’s just….random! To quote Rebecca Dew, this is the last straw!” She drew her red Sporksaber and slashed her way right out of the refrigerator, tumbling through the fragments of the door and landing facefirst in snow. Braced by the cold air, Catrina scrambled to her feet, Sporksaber in hand. A long slope ran up before her, culminating in a high ridge that connected two towering snow-clad mountains. On the brink of the ridge stood a single cow, gazing stonily down upon her. “Oookay,” Catrina said. “A cow. This could be interesting. I wonder-”

Just then the cow raised its head and gave a long, low, chilling “Moooooooooooooo”.  A sheep appeared beside it, a sheep standing on its hind legs and waving a terrifying battle-axe. Then another sheep crested the ridge, and another, and another. Soon the ridge was crowded with sheep, a whole horde of them, the sound of their combined sheepish voices filling the air and echoing off the mountains like spring thunder. “EM-TA-LA!” they chanted. “EM-TA-LA! EM-TA-LA!”

Catrina smiled, a slow, half-smile that spread across her face and lit her green eyes like a rising flame. She raised the Sporksaber, its red light dancing across the driven snow. She didn’t even consider emulating Mulan by shooting off a rocket and starting a convenient avalanche; no, instead she ran forward, charging the entire sheep army all by herself and screaming her name like a banshee: “Catrinaaaaaaaaaaaa!” As she ran, her boots tearing through the snow, she heard dramatic battle music soaring in the distance, and she broke into wild laughter. Finally, things were getting fun!

Will our plucky heroine survive? Will this story’s increasingly convoluted timeline ever get sorted out? Of course it will, because I made a helpful diagram of it. To find out what happens, stay tuned for Episode 44 of the Catrina Chronicles, coming soon! To catch up on previous episodes, go here. To check out Catrina’s previous adventure with the space hamsters, read Catrina in Space, available now on Amazon.Thanks for reading!

The Best Things Don’t Always Happen When You’re Dancing

This week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge was the word “decay”: to fall into ruin. And here we go…

It was a typical sad night for the Pocaville drive-in movie theater. Between the new multiplex in Chartreuse (a nearby, slightly less small town) and the installation of a Redbox kiosk in the Fried Egg diner next to the jukebox,  few Pocavillians went to the drive-in anymore.  The place had fallen into decay; the projector shorted out every other showing, grass had sprung up amidst the parking lot spaces, and the abandoned concession stand had been colonized by a band of maniacal ants as the first step in their plan to establish an ant empire. On this particular night, only one car had parked there, and the two med students in it, Sam and Shirley, were ignoring the movie and engaging in an extremely interesting discussion of cell meiosis. Then, the movie suddenly fell silent. and there was a sudden burst of Irish music. When Sam, badly startled, looked out the car window, he saw that the entire population of Pocaville, all 942 of them, had surrounded his car and burst into riverdance.  Sam took in their slack-jawed expressions and uncanny talent for stepdancing and realized it was the work of one ingenious supervillain: the Mad Riverdancer.

“Sam!” exclaimed Shirley hysterically. “You’ve got to stop him! You can’t let Pocaville succumb to this madness of quick, intricate footwork!” Naturally she knew he was the superhero Variable, able to instantly clone himself; he’d told her right off in order to avoid relationship drama.

Sam gulped. “Um.,” he began over the background music, “Problem. My cloning ability decreases the more other people are around. More people, less clones. And now that the whole town’s here…”

“Gasp!” Shirley said dramatically. Then her face went slack, she scrambled out of the car, and started riverdancing herself.

“Crap,” said Sam. Now what was he supposed to do? How could he stop the Mad Riverdancer? Could Pocaville be saved? Sam wondered if he should exposit more dramatic questions, but decided against it. He had riverdancing to stop. Somehow.

The Ballad of a Farm

This weekend’s Trifextra Writing Challenge was to write a poem, in either 33 words, 3 lines or 3 stanzas.  I went with the three-stanza option. It was either this or try to write an episode of the Catrina Chronicles in verse, and honestly, I don’t think Catrina would stick to three stanzas. Her favorite number’s 17, and 17 stanzas is a lot to ask. So…yeah. Enjoy!

 

Shelly never knew that her life’s existence clung to likes and clicks.

Shelly raised her sheep upon her farm, lived happily and free. 

Never even knew that her daily successes depended on whether

Marsha had saved up enough XP.

But in the real world Marsha misplaced her Facebook login, lost like the meter of this poem

And then decided to give up her tech and move abroad to help underprivileged youth on an island in the Pacific,

And she never gave a thought to her Farmville posts on a wall that some of her 1,242 friends popped in on occasionally to wish her happy birthday or ask her to play Mafia Wars.

She never responded, but that was okay, since her real-world friends understood that she had gone off the grid and got back to nature.

 

Everyone understood.

Except for Shelly, her neglected Farmville avatar.

Alas, Shelly.

The Sneeze

This week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge is to write a story between 33 and 333 words using the third definition of the word wild : (1): not subject to restraint or regulation : uncontrolled; also : unruly  (2) : emotionally overcome <wild with grief>; also : passionately eager or enthusiastic. And here we go.

Pocaville wasn’t any different from most small towns, with one big exception. It had a superhero. Not only that, but it had a supervillain as well. This was extraordinary, since most superheroes defended major cities, leaping tall buildings in single bounds and so forth. The tallest building in Pocaville wasn’t technically a building at all; it was a water tower out on Route 42. But whatever they didn’t have, Pocaville had supers. Specifically, the Sneeze, and her archnemesis Doctor Sheep. Their battles were, if not  legendary, at least mildly interesting. The town’s single newspaper, the Pocaville Dot, had never sold more copies than its account of the first battle, back in the spring  of ’09….

***

Emmy Cambridge sniffed. Then her face went pale, and she gripped her nose. Not again, she thought. She’d been taking appropriate meds since Christmas, she’d stayed as far as she could from pollen or pepper, she’d locked herself in her room at the first robin of spring, but she still couldn’t avoid it. “Don’t make me allergic,” she whispered in fear as she cowered in the children’s section of the town’s tiny library, the only one in the county. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m allergic.”

For a second she thought she might have stifled the impulse, and she sighed in relief. Then she heard a crash from outside. She peeked out the window, and saw, to her astonishment, a sheep marching down the sidewalk, waving a sizable laser gun and yelling about how he was going to have his revenge on humanity and so forth. Suddenly Emmy Cambridge’s grey eyes lit with wild joy, as she realized for the first time that her unique ability could be useful. She dashed through an emergency door, came face to face with the diabolical Doctor Sheep, took her hand away from her nose, and unleashed a wild sneeze that catapulted him right into the Pocaville welcome sign, smashing it to splinters. And so the day was saved once again.

A New Writing Challenge!

Well now. The things one discovers on the Internet. I had participated in the Chrysalis Experiment last year, and that was exceptionally fun, particularly as it inspired the Catrina Chronicles. But that ended in December, and so I was thinking about doing another weekly prompt sort of thing. Lo and behold, I have found one. The Trifecta Writing Challenge, which I just discovered the other day, and which posts not one but two writing challenges a week! Hooray!  I think this could do wonders for the Catrina Chronicles, add that extra little bit of randomness. Plus, who knows the other characters it could inspire?

At any rate, rather than plunge right into the challenge, I suppose I should fill out the check-in form. It’s been a while since I’ve done a survey, so, here we go.

1. What is your name (real or otherwise)?

Arthur, King of the Britons!  No, actually, it’s not, but I couldn’t resist the Monty Python allusion.  Actually, my name’s Michael, and my blog here is hypotheticallywriting.

2. Describe your writing style in three words.

Random and wacky.  (And totally counts as one of the words. Right? Of course right).

3. How long have you been writing online?

On this blog in particular, since January in 2011. As far as online generally….well, I’ve been on Facebook since, oh, 2005, maybe 2006, because I remember distinctly when they opened it up to everyone. Good times.

4. Which, if any, other writing challenges do you participate in?

Well, there’s NaNoWriMo. I’m seriously considering doing their summer challenge, to write a whole novel in either June or August. And naturally I’ll be doing it again in November. Fourth year running!

5. Describe one way in which you could improve your writing.

Proofreading, I expect. I tend to write in a single burst, and I don’t go back and reread the post before publishing it, so more often than not there’s little spelling errors and plotholes like crazy. Then again, in the Catrina Chronicles, continuity long since shattered into a zillion pieces.

6. What is the best writing advice you’ve ever been given?

Good question. Well….I read once, in a post by The Hack Novelist, where he said that he got up early every morning before work, went to a particular coffee shop, and started writing. That inspired me, because when I first read that I hadn’t really been setting out a regular writing time, I’d just been writing whenever I had a chance. So, when I started law school next year, I left a little earlier every morning than I needed to, set up in a quiet place downstairs, and tried to write at least 500 words. It worked out pretty well, more or less; I kinda fell off from that in the second semester due to schoolwork, but I mean to pick it back up any day now. (Really).

7. Who is your favorite author?

Ooh….now there’s a tough question. I’ll just say that one of my favorite authors is Douglas Adams; his wonderfully random British humor inspired me to no end.

8. How do you make time to write?

Well, as I mentioned above, I used to get up early every morning and write something. Now, what with summer break and all….I just try to snatch a spot of writing time whenever I can. I might, for example, only watch one episode of Smallville instead of two, and spend that extra 40 minutes writing. (Side note: I really do enjoy Smallville.)

9. Give us one word we should consider using as a prompt. Remember–it must have a third definition.

Spleen. It’s just fun to say, as are any of its variants, like splenetic…asplenia…:P

10. Direct us to one blog post of yours that we shouldn’t miss reading.

Oh goodness. Well. Um….one of my favorites has been Piratic, which started out as a fanfic based on Titanic, but then the space lizards attacked.

Fortunately the hamsters were there to help.

And that’s the end of the questions. This should be fun!

Ermingard Goes to the Mall, and Hilarity Ensues

Last time, in the Catrina Chronicles, our new nemesis Katrina woke up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, discovered the wreck of the Dangling Participle, and did not write a Canadian ballad about it, but instead got tranquilized into unconsciousness by a mysterious and unknown enemy. That would be an interesting point to pick up on, but instead we’re going to go see what Ermingard’s been up to, on her new adventure in the 21st century…

Ermingard was overwhelmed. Amazed. Stunned, even. She stood there gaping, her mouth hanging open like the codfish she wasn’t. Finally, after several long minutes of astonished silence, she managed to pull herself together enough to ask a question. “And…it really works?”

“Mostly,” Gaseous Girl replied. “Once in a while it eats my quarters, but fortunately they added a credit-card receiver to this one last year, so I don’t even need to use change anymore. Allow me to demonstrate.” She produced her card, swiped it through the reader, and then pressed one of the buttons on the front of the vending machine. Ermingard watched in profound amazement through the transparent panel as the plastic bottle clunked into a holder, rose up inside the machine, shifted over with a whir, and then dropped into the bottle-shaped opening. She reached out tentatively and touched it. “It’s still cold!”

“Modern tech. Amazing, isn’t it. Just wait until you see the iPad!”

“The what now?” Ermingard asked. Before Gaseous Girl could explain just what an iPad was, there was a sudden loud crash near the front of the mall. The two women spun around, and Gaseous Girl groaned. “Oh no. It’s Jill Polarity. I really did not need Jill Polarity right now.”

Ermingard had already put an arrow to her Spork-Bow. The one thing she understood clearly about the modern world was that there were villains, just like Susan or Katrina, and she knew what one was supposed to do with villains: fire sporks at them. She took aim at the new arrival, who was yelling something in high-pitched fury as she stomped around the mall’s main entrance, frenetically waving her arms around like a spastic cheerleader. Ermingard loosed her bow before Gaseous Girl could stop her. Jill Polarity saw the spork-arrow winging towards her, and suddenly purple beams of light (the exact color of her hair, incidentally) zapped out of her eyes and struck the arrow, whereupon it rebounded away from her and smashed into a nearby kiosk that sold calendars, stabbing right through one that had pictures of kittens making amusing faces. Jill cackled in amusement. Gaseous Girl seized Ermingard by the arm and dragged her into Foot Locker, where they could take shelter. “Look,” Gaseous Gird said quickly, “Brownie points for effort, but before you start slinging sporks at people you need to know who they are. That’s Jill Polarity, like I said, and her ability is that she can shoot Magneta-Beams out of her eyes, magnetizing any metal thing they touch.”

Ermingard knew a little something about physics, and she turned very pale. “She has power over electromagnetism? That is one of the four fundamental forces of nature! A person with that ability would be practically invincible! They could manipulate matter on a subatomic level, move whole asteroids, generate invulnerable shields, unleash shockwaves of incredible pow-”

“No,” Gaseous Girl interrupted, trying not to notice that Foot Locker had a sale on some really cute flip-flops, “she just moves metal. And only if it’s in her line of sight, and only if she’s first magnetized it with her eyes. She can’t fly or do anything else; she just moves metal things. And not big asteroids either; the most I’ve ever heard she moved was her cousin’s Volvo. And that was two feet onto the shoulder of a highway.”

“But…that’s stupid,” said Ermingard. “Completely unrealistic. If she has power over magnetism, why would she be limited like that? It doesn’t make sense.”

Gaseous Girl was going to explain that if Jill Polarity’s powers were realistic she really would be practically invincible, which would mean she’d win all that team, and supervillains just don’t do that. But again she was interrupted, as Jill Polarity launched a model of a pickup truck at her head (Jill had stolen the model from Kay-Bee Toys). Gaseous Girl burped a fiery burst that reduced the model to slag, but Jill wasn’t done yet. “I’m not done yet!” she exposited unnecessarily. “I’m going to make you pay! I’m going to make everyone pay!”

“Look,” Gaseous Girl said reasonably, “Jill, just calm down, okay? Everything’s fine. Just calm down quietly and we can talk about this. You haven’t been taking your meds this week, have you?”

Jill hesitated, a confused look on her face. “Well, not exactly, I mean, I did skip a bit, but it wasn’t my fault it was Andrew’s, we had an argument again you see and I got so upset and-”

But she became the next person to be interrupted in the story, as she was suddenly knocked off her feet by a massive torrent of white sludge, which sent her flying into another kiosk, this one selling sports memorabilia, mostly of the Edison City Carbon Filaments. Erminard cautiously approached the sludge and sniffed at it. “Is that….?”

Gaseous Girl sighed. “Andrew. Also known as Dr. Oatmeal. That’s his power; oatmeal manipulation. You’d be surprised how useful that can be.”

Andrew chose that moment to make his appearance, and he too was yelling in fury, but before they could work out what he was saying he was stifled by a collection of kitchenware the recovered Jill Polarity magnetically slung at him. Andrew, somewhat dazed after being bonked over the head by three cookie tins and a frying pan, rallied and fired off another salvo of oatmeal, this time flavored with little bits of apple. Jill, all over apples, rounded upon the Volkswagen Beetle on display in the center square of the meal, and fired up her Magneta-Beams. Just as she was about to unleash them, Gaseous Girl decided that she had just about had it with the two minor supervillains, and unleashed two massive burps that knocked them both out flat. “Honestly,” she commented to Ermingard, “I really wish they would just go to counseling like normal couples. But noooo, they have to work out their relationship difficulties in my favorite mall. Figures.”

“Does this happen all the time?” Ermingard inquired shakily. She’d gotten a bit of oatmeal on her 12th century tunic, and she’d never enjoyed oatmeal all that much.

“Always,” Gaseous Girl replied tiredly. “I guess that means you don’t want to stay in this time period, then.”

“Not terribly, no,” Ermingard said. “You wouldn’t know about a wormhole or magical cave or magical something-else, would you?”

The defender of Edison City gave an expressive shrug. “There might be a wormhole upstate somewhere. I’ll fly over and check. Will you be alright here till I get back?”

Ermingard glanced around, and then her face lit up. Across the way, past the little pools of oatmeal and the collection of frying pans laying about, was the biggest bookstore she had ever seen. She sniffed, as a warm, chocolate-y smell wafted towards her, valiantly completing with the significantly less magical smell of oatmeal. “I think I’ll manage,” she said happily, which was an unusual emotion for her. “After all, what could possibly go wrong in such a wonderful place as that? Truly, in there I shall discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything.”

“It’s forty-two,” Gaseous Girl said. Then she flew out of the mall and rocketed upstate to look for wormholes, before Ermingard could ask what question forty-two was supposed to be the answer for. Ermingard sighed, and wandered off into the bookstore, little knowing that something was indeed going to go wrong. Very, very wrong.

To be continued, as usual, because this wouldn’t be a Catrina Chronicles episode without a cliffhanger. For previous cliffhanger moments that generally resolved themselves in the next episode, go here. To subscribe and get the next episode delivered to you by flying space monkeys (not really, but one can dream), click the “subscribe” button on the right of the page. Also, this is the 42nd episode of the aforementioned Catrina Chronicles, thus the obligatory reference to Douglas Adams. Thanks for reading!

 

A Bit about Comments

Ah, comments: the lifeblood of the Internet. I’ve gotten precisely 476 comments on this blog since I started it lo these many moons ago, although a good bit of them are probably my own replies to comments people have left, so those don’t technically count. Then there’s the spam comments. Lovely spam, wonderful spam, as Monty Python would say. And while I don’t really get enough of them to make for a regular feature such as what Girl on the Contrary does on occasion, I have gotten some doozies.

My favorite spam comments are the ones that try, even just a little bit, to make it seem like they’re really interested in your post. They’re not the spammers that just copy and paste the same thing again and again and again (yes, I’m aware my blog ranks low in Google, no, I’m not going to click your dubious link that will magically bring me millions of pageviews); these are the spammers that care. Or at least they pretend to. Because the hilarious part comes in once you read their comment, and then compare it to what exactly your post said. This is especially true when you consider what sort of things I write. For example, one enterprising spammer left this comment back in March. “This is just what I was looking for. I did not expect that I’d get so much out of reading your write up! You’ve just earned yourself a returning visitor!”  What a nice thing to say, you think. And you’d be right. Except that the post the comment was left on was Episode 33 of the Catrina Chronicles. Specifically, it’s the one that starts with the history of the Spork Brigade, and ends with Susan and Catrina getting into an argument.  I’m curious: what about that impressed you so much, wandering spammer person? Are you a passionate admirer of sporks? (Hey, who isn’t?) Were you profoundly moved by Catrina’s brief discussion of epistomology, which partly explained why she got turned into a penguin?  If you were….you need help. Then again, this particular spanner never did come back, so far as I know; apparently they have very loose definitions of the words “returning” and “visitor”.
Then there was this comment, which puzzled me at first because I had no idea what it meant (sadly, I didn’t note which post it appeared on before I saved it).  The comment read as follows: “When she gets assigned to Neil’s father’s case, it will lead her on a journey into her own past and to the heart of a shattering secret.”  And that was it. I was intrigued. Who’s she? Who’s Neil? What was the shattering secret? I mean, c’mon, that’s it? That’s all you leave me with? The suspense was killing me!  Then just now I thought of googling the curious phrase, and discovered that it was evidently copied and pasted from a crime novel called Black Flowers. The mystery deepens. Why would this random spammer think my posts have anything to do with crime novels? Why didn’t they properly attribute the quote?  And whoisNeil?  Alas, it seems I’ll never know. C’est la vie.

But that’s enough about spam comments. There are other comments, good and thoughtful ones, and on that note I have just recently received the Great Comments Award from Trisha. This is, I think, the second bloggy award I’ve received since I’ve started. I’m so proud.   As is the tradition with these things, I must now pass it on to others. So. According to my blog stats, the person who’s left the most comments on my blog is….me.  But since it would be terribly silly to pass this award on to myself, the top people other than me who’ve left the most comments on my blog are….drumroll please…..Trisha, the Hook, and Jes. Bravo, you chaps! Hooray! Thanks for all your loyal comments, and keep up the good work.