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The Blog of Science Fiction Writer Michael A. Burstein
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Passover III: The Search for Chametz
Last night, after I got home from class, Nomi and I performed the traditional search for chametz one does just before the Passover holiday. And, as you can see in Nomi's post At Chez Burstein, Everyone Helps Search for Chametz, we always get a little extra help from our friends....

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Happy Cheese Weasel Day!
Celebrate cheese weasel day!

Learn the story of the cheese weasel at http://dglenn.livejournal.com/86811.html

Sing the song of the cheese weasel found at http://www.cheeseweasel.com/

But above all, have some cheese!

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Mild Paranoia in Downtown Boston
On Tuesdays, [info]gnomi and I try to meet for lunch in downtown Boston, at the Milk Street Café. Today, she had a lunch meeting and couldn't stay, but we did meet there briefly to pick up food and take it back to our respective offices. (Well, she did. I stayed and ate my lunch there, since it would be faster. Not that this is relevant to today's post.)

So, I'm walking back to the Park Street subway station, following the Freedom Trail and passing the Boston Common, in one of the more historic areas of the city. And I see, as one does in tourist season, tour guides in colonial costume explaining the history of various sites to groups of tourists. And as I approach the subway, I have a thought that is atypical for someone such as myself.

Today is April Fool's Day. What if all the Boston tour guides decided last night to agree on one piece of false history, and to share it, completely deadpan, with today's tourists?

How would the tourists know they were being fooled?

("Yes, over here is the spot where an alien spaceship teleported Ben Franklin into orbit, and then relocated him to Philadelphia. You don't believe me? Ask any of the other tour guides...")

Note to self: never take a tour on April Fool's Day.

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Reverse Meme
There are 36 things about you that I really wish I didn't know. I never wanted to learn them, and yet there they are, stuck in my head. Please take them out.

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More Crazy Doctor Who Stuff
So [info]gnomi's sister just got her a present, which can be seen in the photo below:


Penguin Doctors Penguin Doctors
Nine of the doctors as penguins, plus their TARDIS. Photo copyright ©2007 by Nomi S. Burstein. Do not reproduce.



Yes, those are nine of the Doctors from Doctor Who...reimagined as penguins by artist Pat Campbell.

If you want to know more, and to see some close-up pictures, check out [info]gnomi's post, Why I Love My Sister, Part 275881264.

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Best Phrase Ever
Nomi and I plan to see the new movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets sometime this weekend.

I took a look at the review of the film in the New York Times. The reviewer, Matt Zoller Seitz, understands that it's supposed to be a hokey movie, filled with cheese, although he does criticize it even within that genre (he points out that compared to films like the Indiana Jones series and "North By Northwest" it is lacking).

The best part of the review, however, is when Seitz attempts to lay out the plot. He begins with a rather straightforward recounting of what happened with a Gates family ancestor and John Wilkes Booth:

"Booth just happened to shoot Lincoln on the same night that he and a co-conspirator pressured Thomas Gates into translating a diary page that disclosed the location of Cibola, the fabled lost city of gold. To clear the Gates family name, the good guys must prove the existence of Cibola by finding the long-dispersed fragments of a map, one of which is hidden in a compendium of secrets handed down from president to president."

And then we get this little gem:

"To acquire the cleverly named Book of Secrets, Ben plots to kidnap the current president (Bruce Greenwood) and blah, blah, blah purple monkey dishwasher."

I know it's been around for a while, but I think that will become my new catch phrase.

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I'm Fixing a Poll Where The Rain Comes In
If everyone could please rush over to http://gnomi.livejournal.com/388817.html and vote for Nomi to come with me to the library tonight, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. :-)

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Time Machine Dreams
So I had a dream last night that [info]delkytlar had given me a time machine as a Christmas present. It was a nice one too, a big wooden pendulum clock-looking thing with instructions written in the wood. For some reason, though, he gave it to me at the house in New York where I grew up and where Mom used to live, and we had to figure out how we were going to get the time machine back to Boston.

So I mentioned this dream to Nomi this morning, and she asked, "Why couldn't we just get the machine to move to Boston? It's a time machine, right?"

To which I replied, "It's a time machine, not a space machine!"

Then for some reason Nomi started singing, "I dreamed last night I was on the boat to heaven..."

And I followed it with, "And by some chance, I had brought my time machine..."

So, [info]delkytlar, when am I getting my time machine?

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Random Silliness
Quack-a-Noodles! The noodle soup that quacks like a duck!

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Punctuation Puzzle
In honor of what is apparently National Punctuation Day here in the United States — and thanks to Nomi for telling me about it, he said by setting it off with em-dashes — I offer this old chestnut.

Punctuate the following correctly:

John while Jane had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher

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mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)
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Name: mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)
About this journal
Welcome to the blog for science fiction writer Michael A. Burstein. If you wish to syndicate this blog, feel free to do so using either one of these feeds:
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