Word Association for Movie Critics

My friend Michael came over last night for pizza and bourbon to celebrate his recent lawyer stuff success. We've know each other for a long time and our conversations tend to be more of a stream of consciousness than anything else.

As we were munching away on our food we had the Inside New Zealand Sex Wars documentary playing in the background. In one section of the show a very camp guy in a black and white stripy top wearing a dog collar and with spiky black hair was part of a group of men trying to look after a bunch of babies.

Michael observes: "He's kinda gay huh?"
Me - "Yep, and an emo. A gay emo."
Mi - "Oh! have you seen Spiderman 3?"

I think this sums up the movie nicely.

Sci Fi Fantasy Plot 102

Step 7: Select the appropriate pronoun and enter 'must defeat the'

Step 8: Choose one of evil, dark or powerful and one of wizard, witch or sorcerer

Step 9: Create a name for the antagonist. Here names beginning with M are strongly recommended and names that start with a word associated with evilness or death are excellent choices, for example Mortack or Murdana.

Step 10: Think of a world ending outcome if the antagonist created in Step 9 is not usurped by the hero such as [name of civilisation/species]'s fourteen moons collide or pretty much any outcome that includes the words chaos, oblivion or extinction

Now just put it all together with three dramatic dots at the end of the paragraph (' ... ') and you've got yourself a winner of a sci-fi/fantasy writing award that is named after some guy you've never heard of but always has an initial in his name' e.g. J.Edgar Johnston or William V. Hardy.

Let me demonstrate....

[Name] is the [last/only/remaining] [name of civilisation/species] aided only by [his/her] [corny ability] and [weapon or creature or scantily clad love interest] [he/she] must defeat the [evil, dark or powerful] [wizard, witch or sorcerer] [antagonist name] before [dramatic result] ...

Becomes:

Kalex-dor-tan is the last Katandorian. Aided only by his ability to communicate with the earth itself and the beautiful Kendia, he must defeat the dark sorcerer Murdana before Katandor falls to oblivion...

Sci Fi Fantasy Plot 101

For the past few weeks I have been working my way through my brothers near-endless collection of sci-fi/fantasy books and listing them on TradeMe. I've been including the little blurb from the back of the book in the auction details and after entering nearly 100 of them I began to notice a trend. I am pleased to say that I have managed to crack the author code and have designed a formula for creating your own sci fi-fatasy book plot! Feel free to use as you like folks...

Step 1: First off you need to create a name for your hero. Use of hypens and apostrophes is encouraged as are, for some reason, names beginning with the letter K (Kendric, Kenda, Kretek etc). If you are stuck for ideas take a real name and remove a letter or two e.g. Sarah = S'rah, William = Wilam) or merge two real names into one e.g. Peter/John = Pej-ohner or Emma/Michelle = Emaelle.

Step 2 : Choose one of last, only or remaining after entering 'is the'

Step 3: Create the name of the civilisation or species of which your hero is a member. For this group start with the first letter of the name of the hero you created in Step 2 and then try and reuse as many letters from their name as you can. For example if your hero's name is Kalex-dor-tan then your world should be called something like Katandor

Step 4: New sentence. Enter 'aided only by' followed by the appropriate construction

Step 5: Think up a highly improbable and corny magic skill such as the ability to talk with rocks or summon giant butterflies.

Step 6: Follow with 'and' and choose a forged weapon (such as a sword or axe), oversized talking animal (horses and spiders work well) or a love interest who should be depected on the front book cover wearing armor that wouldn't protect any vital organ whatsover

New! Stupid Idea!

You may have picked up from previous posts that my embarrassingly heterosexual girl cat is way past the festively plump stage and is now officially obese. I really do my best for her, I make an effort to engage in active play with her, she doesn't get snacks except the very occasional sliver of raw chicken and I spend $60 a pop on special diet cat food which I dutifully measure out twice a day. So imagine my delight when I picked up the latest sack of cat food from the vets and saw this great big yellow announcement:

What?! OK....whose fabulous idea was it to improve the taste of low calorie cat food? Hey logic boy, if p = q and q = t then my cat is going to eat even more of this food, damn it. Your Vulcan-like logic is astounding.