What really happened in Star Wars...

Seen on zonereyrie and gamera_spinning's LJs, and probably soon to be all over my friends list...so what the heck, I'll beat the rush. Someone's come up with an amusingly twisted "between the lines" reading of Star Wars IV: A New Hope.

http://www.morningstar.nildram.co.uk/A_New_Sith.html

I have to admit, I love the whole idea of "Chewbacca, superspy."

Islands in the stream...that is what we are...

I was just browsing Google Maps, looking at St. Charles, Missouri, where I may end up living if my brother is able to get me a job at the place he is working (fingers crossed, fingers crossed).

And my attention wandered a little bit to the northeast of St. Charles, where there was this rather large kind of boomerang-shaped island in the Mississippi River. I wandered over to it, flipped over to satellite mode, and zoomed in, exploring it visually from above. And what I found is that, oddly enough, it seems to be largely empty land—forests and open fields—except that right in the middle of the island is a small cluster of buildings

If I go a bit southwest, to the southwest tip of the island, I notice some kind of causeway apparently linking the island to the east side of the river. Or is it a causeway after all, and not just foam and debris caught up against a wire or something? Though it looks like a causeway given that a road connects to it from the eastern shore and on the island itself. Maybe it's just a sandbar?

Anyway, the island doesn't have a name on the map, the roads aren't on the map either, and now I'm insatiably curious as to who, if anyone, lives there, and who owns the place. It's actually downright tempting to try to drive out there, if I end up moving to that area after all, just to try to solve the mystery. Of course, if it's private property then I'll just have to keep wondering.

Also wonder I, what on earth can this thing, dead center of the smaller island just east of it, be. A baseball diamond? Why would there be a baseball diamond on an otherwise completely empty island?

Just talkin' 'bout shoe (and we can dig it!)

Well, today I did the Storyteller's Bowl TalkShoe interview show with Diane Duane, Sharon Lee, and Steve Miller. It ended up going just over an hour, and it went very well for the most part. I stuttered and stammered a few times toward the end after I basically ran out of things to say, but there was a lot of good stuff there for fans of the Wizardry and Liaden series. I hope that I can have all three of them back for longer reviews on more general topics in the future.

Checking my stats, so far I see it had 4 participants and 11 streaming listeners, and has had 18 downloads as of the latest time tallied by TalkShoe's meters. (Well, actually, there have been 18 downloads of all episodes of my show since then. I'm going to assume they're all or mostly the latest show, however.)

I also did a two hour, fifteen minute Robotech show, where a bunch of Robotech fans got together and talked about the show. I cut it off at 2h 15m because I didn't want to intimidate people who don't want to download five-hour monsters, especially when there aren't any guests to attract the more casual fans. I'll be honest, it's basically a whole lot of arguing over minutia again: stuff people have heard about Shadow Chronicles and whether General Leonard really was "evil." There's only so much of that I can take at a time, and I'm one of the biggest Robotech fans I know.

Anyway, both shows can be found via my TalkShoe page.