This post is going to be on the short side. Yes, there have been many exciting developments with the manuscript, which is being passed over to a copy editor, and, yes, I have been meaning to put up the Anita Blake post for a while. But the manuscript post will have to wait, as will Anita Blake. For one thing, I’ve been researching (okay, that makes it sound like more than what I did, which was look it up on Wikipedia) what has been going on with the Anita Blake series since I stopped reading it, and holy shit! I mean… whoa. It was pretty clear that things were heading in a kind of weird direction, which was why I stopped reading, but… I did not see anything quite like that happening. Those plot summaries have been… interesting.

But, more to come on that later! (…resisting… horrible…. crass… Anita… Blake… joke… must… be… strong… need… distraction…)

Yes, that will do it. Hee hee.

Okay, better now.

What’s mostly happening is that I’m back at work, so that’s taking up a bit of my time. But fear not, there will be more substantial posts to come. In the meantime, I give you delightfully insubstantial fluff with all of the intellectually nutritious value of cotton candy.

Oh, Internet. I just can’t quit you.

Admittedly, my version of Favorite Things comes with a lot less swag than when Oprah would do it (which I know through pop culture osmosis, not because I used to watch it), but it has a kind of “brown paper packages tied up with strings” quality that appeals to me. And, hopefully my reader(s?).

Just imagine if she’d had the Internet. We’d all know what rhymed with “LOLCats”

First favorite thing!

The SummHarry by Lucy Kingsley.

This is definitely number one, because it combines Harry Potter fandom, snark, and actual artistic talent all into one delightful package! If I’m ever rich enough to have my own private office where I don’t have to make decorating compromises (hint: Generation V is due out from Roc in May 2013!), I am totally buying this, framing it, and putting it on the wall.

Second favorite thing!

VlogBrothers by John and Hank Green.

I’m a huge fan of the Vlogbrothers, and if you’ve never heard of them or of Nerdfighteria, why are you still even reading this? Go forth and discover what happens when complete geekery meets video blogging! Plus, they are almost at their 1,000th video upload, and that’s a pretty impressive number. Particularly given how much time they probably spend making and editing those videos. And yet John Green is also the published author of a number of well-reviewed books.

Some people are clearly better at time management than I am.

Third favorite thing!

Rifftrax

When I was younger, I would spend every Sunday watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the SciFi channel. Because it was the SCIFI channel back then, not the idiotic Syfy abomination.

But, anyway, I saw a number of truly horrible movies. Manos, Hands of Fate. Hamlet, the crappy German version. The Horror of Spider Island. That weird one where the kids on the beach were threatened by the rubber-suit thing that had hot-dogs in its mouth.

And they were all completely awesome, because of the MST3K jokes.

But then MST3K went off the air, and even though there are a bunch of episodes on DVD (which you should totally rent!), I was really sad.

Then, something magical happened. I found out that the MST3K guys were using the Internet to produce audio commentaries that you could buy and then watch in sequence with the movie! And that because of that, they were now able to put commentaries to NEW movies! They did all six Star Wars movies! And seven of the Harry Potter films! And Thor!

Best of all, they’d even done Twilight. Watching the MST3K “best of” clips is the closest I will ever come to viewing those films, but they. Are. AWESOME.