I noticed this as well. It looked awfully familiar in a lot of parts, except that the dialogue was mostly new.

That's probably why they're not. They're looking for finished/polished work. If they waited until after November, they'd be inundated with thousands of barely-finished NaNos.

Probably more like hundreds of thousands, assuming that this hits the normal rounds. Lottery ticket, indeed. The only thing that makes it slightly less like a lottery is that good stories (might) be rewarded. I can't get an idea from their website what exactly their criteria are.

This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I kept waffling back and forth between "Aww..." and "Euh...?"

Right now, she probably doesn't. Some day, she certainly will.

I saw this one. It turns out the phone has an evil twin or something, right?

I used to have a Chainmail rulebook; I think it was second edition. I'm not even sure who it belonged to, but I found it in our basement when I was a kid.

I've been using OurGroceries for a year and a half now, and it's great. Never had a problem with it, easy to create multiple lists by category or by aisle (we do category since we use more than one store) and it even keeps recipes for easily adding all the things you need for a meal straight to the list. Great app.

Clearly warrior-poet is your calling. It was all the rage, back in the Iron Age!

I saw a trailer for Hotel: Transylvania when we went to see Brave a few weeks ago. It... does not look promising.

And now we've given our eventual robot overlords the means to begin the process of stealing our faces. Seriously, guys...

Well-played.

Don't get me wrong, it was a really enjoyable film. I just didn't quite feel like the script was quite up (ha-ha) to the level of "Wall-E" or "Finding Nemo". I felt it had some unrealized potential, which I might be able to pinpoint on a second or third viewing.

Pixar was pretty quiet about it, but there are some hints in this LA Times (I know, I know) article: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/21/entertainment/la-et-0621-brave-director-20120621

As it turned out, Brave was a respectable (but not *great*) movie, so its revenue makes perfect sense. I felt it was a solid and well-spun fantasy, but it did not quite rise to that sublime level of Pixar storytelling perfection.

He's got kind of an 'Aladdin' look to him, although I think that's more the personality of the sketch than the actual ethnicity.

Well, that's what you get when you try to apply science to fantasy.

True enough! The problem is that the third note is the "start" button, rendering any further music-playing impossible. =)

I've read about Anthony and most of his books. In fact, I grew up on them (and yet, somehow 'magically' turned into a normal person). I understand that a lot of people see him that way, whether it's true or not.

What's creepy about a story where an author helps a misguided young runaway return to his family? Sorry, just don't understand what you're talking about.