So MikeStrange, you don't have to be too specific if you want to protect your anonymity (unless your last name really is Smith, which you've already told us), but have you gotten a book published? Just curious. Very cool if you have.

Cool interview
And some of the things he said support my theory that when Riddley tels that Eusa's head is dreaming us, dreaming might have meant controlling or manipulating. So the mincery manipulated the puppets, and the puppets manipulated the general populace (thus being puppets themselves). Note: I could be…

It all makes sense now. If I buy those frames, will I get as much tail as Rabin? Nabsy, clue me in to where you got those, bro.

Great chat. This book spawned the most interesting staff essays that we've seen since the format was changed. You guys and gals did a great job (last month's were good too, but more of you seemed to be more on board with this one so I think that helped).

Riddley was a Horny Boy and he rung Widder's Bell, Lorna being a widow several times over, apparently.

I like it, FJ.

Well, the first two myths in the book, the Hart of the wood where the devil convinces the parents to eat their own child and the first knowing dog story, are both Adam and Eve gain knowledge and get kicked out of the garden for it stories.

Here's mine: It follows the basic plot of the KOREAN TELEVISION DRAMA, YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL. In it, Go Mi Nyu is a sister-in-training. When her twin brother Go Mi Nam successfully auditions into the musical band A.N.JELL but is forced to leave for the United States to correct a botched plastic surgery effort, she is…

Yes, but Byrne and Claremont split over creative differences and now Byrne's writing with Andrew Lloyd Weber while Claremont's with Tim Rice and they're reportedly both writing operas designed primarily to point out how terribly the other handled Watchbaby continuity and to undo the changes that the other wrote into…

I heard that the opera was already written, but then Al Columbia destroyed the final pages, so now it's in operabiz limbo and may never see the light of day.

A cane is made of wood and wood (wud) is would and, would? means endless possibility and potential and it was the search for endless possibility and potential that killed Abel Goodparley, and the wud is in the heart of the stone, and it was the stone that pierced Goodparley's skull, so Cain is the stone, obviously.

Yeesh. Well, the world being what it is, it's probably a good thing that your daughter's being exposed to crazies from the get go.

A taste of something I'd forgotten
I appreciated the experience of reading this book because I work with many semiliterate young adults. They aren't fluent readers and must decode writing on a word by word basis before they can even hope to put the meaning of an entire sentence or paragraph together (shocking-to-me…

What're your favorite Riddleyisms?
Some of my favorite Riddleyspeak: spare the mending and tryl narrer. Also, many cools and party cools. HA!

Yeah, I'm glad I didn't have a book with the glossary or annotations, because I would have peeked instead of working it all out for myself. The process of reading a book about deciphering and discovery SHOULD involve deciphering and discovery.

Tell me that that Newagespeak is an exaggeration Mike, because if not, holy shit!

Yes, I'm American (OF COURSE!). We've got the trickster, fun devil in lots of our stories, too, so it was familiar to me and I enjoyed it.

There's definitely some of that in this book. Many of the characters are described at times using imagery that makes it seem like they all might just be small parts of a big computer, Tron-style, but that also works in the big collective-consciousness theme that MStrange is working out above, so it's hard to know…

Well, there's an Abel in this story: Abel Goodparley, and there's a mark of Eusa, and I suppose Abel does get killed by the Eusa that was living inside his belly.

Great stuff as always, WR. It's hard to imagine living in a world and trying to progress, but knowing that people had already been there before and progressed beyond anything you could even imagine. What a curse to have to live with and think about (as we see in Riddley and Abel's despairing at still living in cow…