a series of loosely connected thoughts

Okay, so when I said I was getting the hang of the html thing, I totally lied, and I'm very sorry to all the people not using IE. I only pretend to know what I'm doing.

And, on second thought (she says, after reading spoilers everywhere), maybe I do need to read the sixth Harry Potter book. ...god, I am so shallow. XD

In other somewhat-shallow news, Wild Arms: Alter Code F looks to be a combination of incredbly fugly and incredibly lovely. The screenshot of Emma's office is amazing, but all the shots of the primary three characters make me very sad. Cecilia has shoulderpads, and the intro animation is still the most hideous thing since The Crystal Sword. If anyone else even knows what I'm talking about when I mention that game, then oh, god, I am sorry for you.

Other completely random and unrelated thoughts...both A&E and TLC are premiering tattoo shows this week. On different days, even, so I can watch both of them. This is awesome. I love tattoos- they're like skin graffiti, and I love graffiti. I would have one now if I weren't an indecisive coward. :) The obvious choice would be an Om between my shoulder blades; I've always loved the concept of the sound from which all other sounds began. Unfortunately, the symbol itself has gotten to be somewhat ubiquitous, and I like being original. So my other choices would be words or music: a few bars from Concert in D minor around my ankle, or my favorite passage from A Cloud in Trousers in the original Russian. Maybe the word for "silence" in Sanskrit, since kanji is both overdone and less aesthetically pleasing. Words make powerful art.

...actually, I'm also totally enough of a geek to get a small Rood Inverse, though the full sized one would be seventy nine million kinds of awesome. The other obvious tattoo choices would involve dragons or phoenixes (or both), since those have always been my mythological creatures of choice. (Cowardly and indecisive!)

Most of my favorite characters end up with tattoos; Jubal has a thunder bird on his shoulder, courtesy of a bunch of Aztecs who thought he was a god, and Dei has a crucifix on the back of his left calf. Lyra has a Celtic knot on her hip, because she used to be a hemp wearing hippie, but no one else in Boffo has any inkings. The Celestials make their own markings, and a lot of them are fond of body art when taking human form.

Silverlock has maybe a square foot of uninked skin, total. His back is covered with a cross section of the Rothcar skyline; the undercity catacombs are inked across his buttocks and the backs of his thighs, which occasionally leads him to make all sorts of bad jokes about the Assassin's Guild being his seat of operations. Most of his other tattoos have arcane significance, but a few of them (the really obscene ones on the bottoms of his feet, and the flowers on his calf) are purely sentimental. All of the other non-half elven assassins have small identifying marks somewhere on their bodies. (Foxbird has a stylized red fox head, Lucky has a pair of crossed swords, Blaine has a sleeping cat.)

When Theron was in Rothcar, Silver tattooed several runes of power down his spine, and he has Crafter markings on his forearms, hands, and the back of his neck. (Magicrafters used tattoos on their hands and arms as visual foci, but they aren't necessary or even particularly helpful to most crafters. They're more of a fashion statement than anything else; the trend went out of style years before Theron was born, but Shanonil flaunted hers and insisted her son wear them.) Mih doesn't have any, but Brenon has Weaver marks on his arms. Mordant has a flaming skull on his right bicep, and some people suspect that if you were to remove all of Solneki's clothes, you'd just find another black suit and stupid tie painted over his skin. (You wouldn't. You would, however, find several crudely drawn smiley faces and some stick figures engaged in lewd acts, courtesy of Mordant and his handy magic marker. Mordant always has more bruises than Solneki has stupid doodles, though.)