I'm in a quiet moment, sort of, between the day's activities and tonight's jogging. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is playing on the television. I find it dull and stupid, but since I picked it (yes, me), I'm watching it through to the end while Mike has a nap. I am also blogging because it doesn't take much attention, frankly, to follow this fluffy movie. I can suspend disbelief, sure, but my difficulties began with the name Totenkopf. I started expecting the SS to show up. I could even buy the fact that the Death's Head units would build great big robots, and when Polly and Joseph and everyone else kept wondering who was behind everything, I kept saying, “Sheesh, how dumb can you be? It's Hitler of course!”
But the joke's on me because Totenkopf is the name of a scientist (German, naturally) and not the traditional Totenkopfverbande I expected. But I think it would have been far more interesting if Hitler had instructed the SS to create robots to take over the world instead of this rogue scientist with a Noah's Ark complex who wants to found a new world. Sheesh.
The other major annoyance of the day is Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code. Oh my God, this book is awful, and not because I'm offended by the subject matter. Where was this man's critique group? Where was his editor? No one in my writers' group writes prose this bad. If they do, they don't do it for long. Here's the best explanation possible as to why this writing sucks. Syntactic swill, I believe this fellow says. By far one of the funniest articles on the subject is here. I suggest, however, that easily offended Christians not read this one. This guy is definitely not a Christian, and he doesn't care who he pisses off. 🙂
In the meantime, I'll soothe my offended grammarian genes with some great writing. Ann Patchett, anyone?