The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

I must be turning into a grouchy old lady.  I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins – you know, that hit YA fantasy that’s scheduled to be made into a movie next year – and all I could do was cringe at the diction.

The story is nice enough, if not entirely original.  In a dystopian future, the government forces children from each of the twelve Districts to battle each other to death on live television.  When her little sister gets chosen to be this year’s contestant from District Twelve, Katniss Everdeen, warrior girl, volunteers to take her place.  There is also a subplot in which Katniss has difficulty deciding between two boyfriends.

I shouldn’t be sweating the small stuff, but what bothers me the most about this book are the adverbs.  Katniss is forever doing things “quickly” or “slowly.”  Not a semicolon in sight, dozens of places where one should have been.  Collins even goes so far as to word “actually” in a non-ironic fashion.

We are expected to believe that Katniss Everdeen likes dresses.  Katniss the pragmatic survivalist.  Katniss, who is reported to break out of the electrified fence surrounding the compound where she lives to hunt food for her family.  Okay, she’s a kid.  I liked dresses too, briefly.  When I was eight.  But you can’t move around in a dress and you can’t afford to spill rabbit guts all over it.

What is it with kids these days?

Why I love Minnesota

Since I’ve moved to Minnesota, I’ve had to get used to things being done a little bit differently around here.  The Democrats are known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party.  You don’t put casserole into a casserole dish, you put hotdish into a casserole.  And for some reason the DMV is called the Department of Vehicle Services.

Last week I needed to go down to the St. Paul DVS to change the address on my driver’s license.  The office is located inside a pleasant building and looks very much like the lobby of a nice orthodontist.  I approached the lady at the front desk and had the following conversation:

Me: I need to change the address on my–

Lady: Oh, here’s the form you need for that.  You can go fill it out over there and your number is B106.

No sooner had I completed the form than the system called up my number and I went to another counter with another nice lady.  We happened to have the same first name, and we made small while she stamped my papers.  Then I paid them $13.50.  Then I was done.

In Minnesota, the DMV works.  How cool is that?

Small Favor: One of the Dresden Files

Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only professional wizard.  While he’s not solving crimes as a consultant with the Chicago PD, he’s trying to keep out of a turf war between the Summer and Winter Court of the Fae (think Queen Titania vs. Queen Mab), avoid demons who are trying to kill him, and escape the notice of Chicago’s supernatural crime bosses.  And he’d like to find a girlfriend and figure out how he’s going to make rent this month.  Yep.  It’s pretty much a hardboiled detective novel … with magic.

Jim Butcher has got a formula going here with the Dresden Files series.  But the formula works, and he’s running with it.  If you’re looking for a lightweight read with lovable characters, something you don’t have to analyze too much, Small Favor is for you.

Thank You Very Much, YouTube

I think I was in the fourth grade when I got the best Christmas present ever.  It was a plastic magenta Made-in-China radio.  The only station it could pick up was the 80’s music station for disgruntled Gen-Xers, but man, I loved that thing.

It was 1997 and I was getting my musical education to the likes of Duran Duran and the B52’s.  Remember, kids, we are living in a material world.  Some of them want to hurt you, some of them want to get hurt by you.  Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.  And then there was that one song where the chorus kept going, “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.”

Whenever that song came on the radio, I would rush over and try to puzzle out what the lyrics meant.  This was before the days when if you wanted a song, you could just go on the Internet and buy it.  A megabyte was a lot of memory.  As far as I could tell from repeated listenings, the song told the tragic story of Kilroy, who everybody thought was a robot.  But why?  And what was Mr. Roboto?  The scientist who cyborgified Kilroy to save his life?  And why did Kilroy keep saying “I am the maldrin man?”  Was a maldrin some sort of automaton?

Oh, but the plight of poor Kilroy bugged me.  Years passed, the memory faded, but I never really got over it.  I think Kilroy is part of the reason I remain obsessed with robots and androids to this very day.  That and an early brush with Isaac Asmiov.

But in the meanwhile, as I went about graduating from high school and then college, somebody invented this thing called YouTube.  And Wikipedia.  The other day, I idly searched for “domo arigato Mr. roboto.”  Oh!  The song was called “Mr. Roboto” and it was by a band called Styx.  It was released in 1983 on an album with the same name.  And Kilroy was a human.  Who disguised himself as a robot to escape from prison.  Modern Internet, thank you.  You have just laid so many childhood worries to rest.

Now I just have to go figure out what happened to poor Major Tom.