I recently re-watched Dr. Horrible

[conuly]

And when I say "recently" I mean "several times over the past few days". I tend to fixate on things like that. As a child, it wasn't at all unusual for me to read the same book three or four or more times in a row, and then pick it up again a few weeks later to repeat the process (and that's why I have parts of A Little Princess memorized).

Anyway, this has gotten me thinking about Penny's last words. Thinking about them more than just "God, Joss Whedon really sucks", that is. Am I the only one who thinks that maybe Penny was intentionally trying to twist the knife there? I mean, she'd just watched her boyfriend humiliate her and insult all the people in the room (people she works with and cares about) and her friend-friend went nuts and shot up the place, incidentally injuring her in the process. I mean, I don't know, it just seems like if there's ever a chance to be a little bit vindictive, that's the time. A lifetime of suppressed bitchiness coming out right at the end, to somebody who whole-heartedly deserves it - I'd do it. Wouldn't you? You're supposed to lie and be nice to dying people, but dying people get to do what they want consequence-free, don't they?

I need to find a new hobby, I think.

And on the subject of hobbies, I think we've worked out that centaurs probably don't work and humans can't fly, but mermaids are still on the table, right? (Borrowers and Tinkerbell-type fairies are right out, of course. Too small. Maybe if they were chubby and furry like mice? But then they'd effectively BE mice, wouldn't they?)

Comments

Re: Why are borrowers out again?

[conuly]

Naked mole rats are tiny and hairless, and they get along all right without clothing.

They're also damn weird. What sort of mammal has exactly 11 nipples? Thy fearful (lack of) symmetry indeed!

I've always assumed that the Borrowers were the result of magic, even though the books don't say anything about this one way or another, because it makes no sense for them to have evolved that way.

Didn't the first book strongly imply they were an invention of the bored sick little boy?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I love naked mole rats. They had them at Point Defiance Zoo once when my daughter was young; they were amazing. I could well see them having been people once, with whom some Goddess was most displeased, or even a race of fairies cursed by a rival fairy queen, to be what they are now.

There's something about their blood that lets them live with very little oxygen, which might be a very handy trait to patch in to a genetically-engineered human flyer, because efficient oxygenation of both wing-muscles and brain is one of the big problems. Bigger heart and lungs means bigger, heavier chest, which already has to be massive to anchor those wing-muscles, and the weight goes up accordingly. But if the blood is like naked mole-rats' blood, that grabs every molecule of oxygen out of every breath, maybe the heart and lungs don't have to be quite so big.



The first book made it clear that Mrs. May, who first told the story to her niece Kate, had never quite known whether or not to believe her little brother's tale - he died in the war as a young man, so he wasn't around to ask, but even as an older lady, she still wasn't totally sure. In the second book, though, Mrs. May and Kate go back to the town of Leighton Buzzard, and discover evidence that it was all true.

[conuly]

Wow, naked mole rats are somewhat more awesome than I thought!

They're still weird as hell, though.