Things to do...

Had an amazingly fun, totally unproductive weekend.  Today must be slightly more goal-oriented.  More scones and coffee may help with that.  More pleasant weather definitely helps with that.  My ennui, however, continues.

Once again, I'm left to wonder a little whether my motivational problems are more linked to ADD or depression.  I know I've got one of the two, but really, how can I (sans health insurance) know which one?  Or both, it could be both, that would be fun.

Anyway, I stayed up until 1 AM last night reading Flytrap by Frances Hardinge, the sequel to Fly By Night.  It was stellar.  The worldbuilding is still fascinating and believable, functioning as a sense-of-wonder-inspiring piece of alien weirdness; a believable and well thought-out world in the context of the narrative; and also in a more allegorical sense as a way for the author to address various issues of class, authority, and religion in interesting ways.  The main character is still compelling, frustrating, admirable and unpredictable; her mentor-sidekick-boss is still entertaining, as well as being one of the most complex and deeply human characters I know of in his contradictions and flaws (and deep down, deliberately buried, a real sense of value and love and moral character)...

... however, dare I say it?  I'm getting tired of the diabolical pet goose.  He's a useful plot hook, slapstick-enducing comedy device, and bodyguard; but it's exactly that multi-function tireless service to narrative necessities that makes him tiresome.  He's a versatile anser ex machina, but he's also a crutch to get out of slow spots and narrative corners, and I feel that in the Campbellian lottery of narrative lives, it's time his number came up.  Kill him off in the third book and let that be the motivation for the action of the plot, rather than tossing him into the middle of things to resolve them in a spate of random comic violence.

And I think that's all I've got to say about things at the moment.

CALLING ALL READERS: tell me about Dead Stuff!

Perhaps I ought to clarify.

So I am working on a webcomic which heavily features extinct things.  Dinosaurs, megafauna, etc. etc.  However, I would also like to include extinct (or weird and impressive) plant life, and I know nothing about plant life.

So, if you know anything, please educate me!  What should I include?  Tell me about megaflora (are megaflora even a thing), monstrous plants from the ages of the dinosaurs, weird botany facts... and feel free to throw in commentary about tasmanian wolves and dodo birds and other extinct animals I should be including in this project.  Also, cool microbes or other microscopic entities, but those are less important.

Tell me about Dead Stuff!

I love my kitten.

So I left a comment over on another blog about my cat, and then suddenly I just wanted to share it with everyone because they should all know how adorable and terrible my feline is.  So here it is:

Rusty has been ours for almost two years now. He was still very small when we got him, very kittenish, and his previous owner was a neighbor of ours who felt she could not care for him. She had announced her intention to simply release him and let him go feral, and my wife and I decided we couldn't let that happen, so we took him in. The owner told us, at the time, that he had his shots and his papers... and then, once we had him for a few days, told us this was not the case and she had never claimed otherwise. Regardless, he was (and is) boisterous, clumsy, and extremely affectionate, and we were glad to add him to our family. He grew like a weed (our current joke is that he is the model for the "longcat is long" meme), and we assumed this was a regularly scheduled growth spurt.

A year later, we met the woman who owned his mom, and found out that when we had gotten him, he was already more than a year old. He'd just been so malnourished that he hadn't grown or gone through cat-puberty until we took him in and started feeding him better.

In any case, he's a brilliant and devious animal (he's not polydactyl but he can open doors, he's very good at figuring out patterns and then deviating from them), and absolutely the slowest and most terrible hunter a feline could be. He's the only cat I've ever seen who has worse reflexes than I do, he mistimes jumps, often stops and sits down mid-pounce... my wife and I joke that we call him a bad cat not because he misbehaves but because he is simply bad at traditional feline pursuits.