my new ipod is sentient. it’s set to shuffle. there are 4,520 songs in there. every time a cocteau twins song comes on i skip it, cos i’m not in a twins mood, so it keeps offering me another one. there are only forty or so twins songs on the pod, but it knows, somehow, and it will not tolerate weakness. where’s that damn rabbit’s foot? i left it here somewhere….

Neil must almost be used to being quoted by the forces of evil, but how often has he been quoted by a superhero with a rabbit’s foot AND a pogo stick, huh? Huh? Well, this morning I see he wrote this:

Gene Wolfe’s short story collection Starwater Strains, and Margo Lanagan’s collection Black Juice are both marvellous, and if you like short stories you should buy them and read them. And if you don’t think you like short stories you should buy them and read them and find out how wrong you’ve been.

Who could argue with that. I should point out that you need only buy the Wolfe collection once, which is a bargain, while careful readers will need to buy their own homegrown edition of the Lanagan book, as well as the UK edition with the cool extra story (unless, of course, you are from the UK, in which case you are a lucky b*stard).

Many thanks to Sean for pointing out the supremely useless, but really rather amusing superhero name generator. For reasons I can’t quite explain, I am:

The spectacular Lieutenant Ebytwvfryv
Power: Direct computer interface
Source of powers: Extra-terrestrial spiritual mutant
Weapon: Plasma Lucky Rabbit’s Foot
Transportation: Golden Pogo Stick

As I travel around on my Golden Pogo Stick, and occasionally defeat evildoers with my plasma lucky rabbit’s foot, I can but envy Deb her superpower, “power mimicry”. How did they know?