*grinds teeth*

Dear Lynn Johnson:

If your comic strip were scripted by blind monkeys, it would be better than this. I think the best thing about today's strip is the underlying message it conveys. "Those lying cheating aboriginals, they're all the same. They should stick to their own kind." Way to strike a blow against stereotypes, there -- especially after all your patronizing glorification of aboriginal culture a couple of years ago, which now takes on the flavor of Liz Takes A Trip To The Museum. Not to mention that this development makes utter nonsense of the past year or more of the Liz-Paul relationship, in which he was doing all the pursuing and accommodating, including taking a transfer to Toronto (which he manifestly disliked) in order to be close to her.

My parents stopped reading FBOFW years ago after Lynn Johnson made a blasphemous remark in a CBC interview, and my mother wrote to her with her concerns (quite politely, I may add) only to get a snippy letter back. I think they had the right idea.

Disgustedly yours,
--
A former reader

Name-Dropping

Eeeeeeee!

I know the soundtrack composer they interviewed for this month's Infuze Magazine! He's one of my brother's best friends!

Check it out: Interview with Mychael Danna.

Now I want to hear that soundtrack he did for The Nativity Story. The Medieval and Renaissance influences he describes make it sound quite cool.

And There Was Much Rejoicing

I've found a new name for the hero in Touching Indigo now, after days of searching through baby name books and sites, the telephone directory, and eventually in despair, the thesaurus:

Dr. Sebastian Faraday.

I started out with "Faraway" as a quirky and almost-but-not-quite-right surname, but then I thought, "Wasn't there a scientist named Faraday?" so I looked him up this morning and Michael Faraday is my new hero. In addition to being "the best experimentalist in the history of science", he said stuff like this:

• "Nothing is too wonderful to be true."


• "Work. Finish. Publish."


• "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly."


And best of all:


• "Speculations [about the hereafter]? I have none. I am resting on certainties. I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day."

*fangirls him shamelessly*

I also managed to convince another character who was being stubborn to change her name, so now Thea can stay Thea and it doesn't clash with any of the other main character names. Now I just have to name my villain... but he doesn't appear to care very much what I call him, as long as it's reasonably dignified.

Well, that was surreal...

So this afternoon I decided more or less randomly to go to our piddly little small-town mall and get a new antenna for my oldest son's CD player, and as I pushed Paul's stroller through the door I saw a young man standing there holding a baby. Our eyes met and I smiled, as I usually do when I meet another parent, and then I kept walking, thinking idly to myself that his face looked kind of familiar. Thirty seconds later, it finally registers...

Dude. That was Shane Wiebe.

I turned back, tempted to go take a second look at his daughter and congratulate him if nothing else, but then I saw that he was heading out the door, so I didn't bother.

I know his wife has family in this area, but he lives waaaaaaaay out on the West Coast, and it's well past Christmas holidays. Talk about unexpected meetings...