Links and Stuff

This week, Ganon goes down, Paul McCartney wants his songs back, Ringo’s most famous song becomes a picture book, and the return of the dime store novel. First…

Legend of Zelda Update

Wow, what a finale! The final Boss battle, facing Ganon himself, took a while because of all the steps and mini-battles (some not so mini) to get to him. Aside from re-living all the previous Boss battles (see last week), I had to confront Phantom Ganon and play a deadly game of tennis, and also face Puppet Ganon. Prior to these I received magical light arrows, which would have been awesome to have at the start of the game (they kill with a single shot), but are necessary for all these Ganon battles. Puppet Ganon took three forms, and with each I had to shoot a light arrow at a blue ball on the end of his tail. In his first form, he hung on strings that I had to break to get to the tail (of course, he’s trying to attack me while I’m doing this). His second form was a spider that dropped from the roof. I had to watch for his reflection in the shallow pool that covered the center of the room, and maneuver myself to his tail side when he dropped. Puppet Ganon’s final form was a snake-like creature that whipped around the room. It was almost impossible to avoid getting hit, and almost as impossible to get a shot at his tail. The shot that finally hit took my very last bit of magic. SecondBorn marveled at my skill with the bow. Okay, she actually said something about what a flukey shot it was. But still–I got out alive.

Then it was the head to head with Ganon, which started out as a three-way, with Zelda helping me. She would shoot a light arrow and I would deflect it at Ganon with my shield. After a few rounds of this, Ganon knocked Zelda out of the way, and it was one-on-one. Mano e mano. Well, not exactly, because we were using swords. Anyway, with some dodging and a final parry attack, I killed the Ganon, sinking my sword into his head (sounds a lot nastier than it looks, though it doesn’t look pretty, even when there’s no blood). Ganon turned to stone! Roll cut scene and ending credits.

And that’s that for “Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker”!! It was fun. I plan to play the HD version at some point, which SecondBorn says is much the same but with a few changes she considers unnecessary. She prefers the original GameCube version. I just want to see if I can muddle my way through it a second time without any help.  We’ll see how that goes. 🙂

Other Stuff

Many of you probably know that Paul McCartney doesn’t own the rights to most of the songs he wrote with John Lennon when they were Beatles. In a series of financial transactions, they wound up with ATV Music, who later sold them to Michael Jackson. It appears that Michael’s estate is putting his 50% share in Sony/ATV Music up for sale, and McCartney has expressed an interest. It’ll set him back at least $750 million, but he probably has that much down the back of his sofa. Personally, I hope he’s successful. After all, it’s not about the royalties for Paul. These were songs that he and his best friend wrote, and I’m sure he would prefer them to be a part of his estate, rather than that of someone who doesn’t have the same history with the music.

Speaking of the Beatles, the only other surviving member of the Fab Four, drummer Ringo Starr, might have a TV series in the works. Ringo was not known for his prolific songwriting. Indeed, only two of his songs made it to Beatles albums. One of them, however, became a classic. “Octopus’s Garden” found a home on the “Abbey Road” album, released in 1969, and it soon became a favorite with kids around the world. I remember singing it in school when I was a nipper. Forty-seven years later, Ringo’s words have been set to pictures in a children’s book (released in 2014), and now possibly a TV series! Hey, you don’t have to write a lot to come up with something that inspires people for generations. Just ask Harper Lee. Well, I guess you can’t now, but you get my point…

Finally, maybe it’s a sign of people’s ever-decreasing attention span, especially when it comes to reading *hey, wake up! stay with me!* but it seems James Patterson is launching a new line of novellas that will be under 150 pages long, cost less than $5, and can be read in a single sitting. He’s hopeful these little books, written by Patterson himself as well as others, will find their way into drug stores and supermarkets, much like the old dime store and pulp fiction books many successful authors today grew up reading. Amazon had already started e-publishing short form works, but Patterson’s focus seems to be on print media. These are probably not going to be works of great literature (though, who knows?), and you’re not going to get a lot of in-depth plot and character development–especially in under 150 pages. But I say all power to him. Not everyone has the time or inclination to read a George R. R. Martin tome, and if this encourages more people to read stories, then why not? If the idea takes off, it could also provide an outlet to authors who have story ideas that just don’t want to become full novels.

That’s all I have. Don’t forget, the April A-to-Z Blogging Challenge starts on Friday. For the month of April, this blog will be given over to A-to-Z posts (aside from the Sunday School Notes), so there’ll be no “Links and Stuff” until May.

Got any links or stuff to share?