A friend of mine pointed me toward some links last night: a musical ad for the coming season of Eureka and a new site hosting Dr. Horrible.

I have to hope there's a trend here, because Musical Sci-fi is my favorite genre.

Official first word: nap.

Elaine's been accompanying her attempts to communicate with sounds for a while now, but this is the first time she's pronounced an entire word (not just a first syllable like "dah" while pointing at a dog or duck) in order to communicate an idea. As long as she wants something concrete -- the fruit, bread, or water on the table in front of her, she can verbalize something vague and point. But, I was nowhere near figuring out she wanted to take a nap until she actually exclaimed "nap!"

The fourth Indiana Jones exceeded all of my expectations: it was both better and stupider than I expected. The first few scenes were pretty grim -- overdone Russian villains, dubious Roswell references (I'm always skeptical of Roswell references -- it can be done well, like in DS9, but it's never a good sign), a cheesily smug self-awareness of being an Indiana Jones movie, and an egregious misunderstanding of the nature of magnetism. I was worried. But, pretty much as soon as he opened the refrigerator, everything was uphill. Ridiculous, over the top, and stupid... But, oh so fun. The last few action pictures I've seen had me wondering if I'd outgrown action movies all-together, but now I can see that's not the case. I just don't like action movies that take themselves seriously. Action sequences should be fun. Not serious. And there was very little that was serious about Indiana Jones 4. It was a true movie for the fans -- not the people who complain that Temple of Doom was an abomination, the people who love Indiana Jones movies. All three of them. And, now (only fourteen years after I first heard the rumors at my first Star Trek convention) all four of them. Thank goodness this time the rumors were finally right.

Elaine has a third tooth.

I've read about half of the issue of The Nautilus Engine with my story, "The Necromouser," in it. I think they put it up last night. At least, that's when I found it. Anyway, it's pretty exciting to see how the editors have pulled all these very different but thematically connected stories together. They're all about death and resurrection -- but, each story has its own spin on resurrection. I can't wait to read the rest. Hopefully, Elaine will let me read some more tomorrow.

Speaking of Elaine, she's invented her first pretend game. She takes dog-like stuffed animals (her favorite is a fox) and puts them in Trudy's kennel. She knows that's where dogs go, and she finds it endlessly entertaining to put them there.

Well... Not "endlessly," obviously. If she really found it "endlessly" entertaining, I'd have a little more time to read The Nautilus Engine. Ah well. It's cute anyway, even if it's not quite that time-consumingly useful.

It feels very circular for Dr. Who to be my favorite show of late. It's not a show I've watched regularly since before I can remember; however, I'm told it was my favorite show when I was Elaine's age. So, David Tennant will be Elaine's Peter Davison.

I've tried watching some episodes of Dr. Who from way back then. Mostly, my dvr has been picking up Tom Baker episodes, but it recently graduated to Peter Davison. I like Peter Davison better, but I don't think that has to do with a residual fondness from my very early childhood. He simply has a more similar style to David Tennant. Either way -- Tom Baker or Peter Davison -- the 70s/80s Dr. Who's are much slower paced than modern television. Combining that with the general low-budget cheesiness makes them a little hard to watch. I generally leave them playing in the background while I read. That way I can absorb some of the history of the show without my brain ending up too numbed.

One thing that's surprised me in watching the new Dr. Who's is that the episodes I like the very best are the horror ones. Dr. Who does the whole spectrum of flavors -- fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. And, as I would expect, I like the sci-fi, by and large, better than the fantasy. The basic rule is: the farther into the future it's set, the better. However, if it's all strange and suspenseful -- well, those are the ones I just love.

I hadn't realized before what a taste for the horror genre I have. I started to get a hint of it when I read some Lovecraft last year. He wasn't at all what I expected, and I found his stories strangely addictive in addition to merely strange. I think, before that, I equated "horror" with "slasher," which doesn't interest me. Suspense movies, however... I've always been drawn to those. So, the idea of horror as strange and suspenseful is much more intriguing.

Elaine is learning humor from icanhascheezburger.com. Daniel looks at lolcat pictures with her -- he laughs at the captions; she loves all the pictures of animals. It's kind of frightening that this is where her sense of humor is being trained.

Apparently, she likes the pictures of kittens best.