I’m looking forward to this movie, but it doesn’t appear to be coming to my area.

Stop what you’re doing, and listen to this report. An American woman has dental surgery done and possibly has a mini-stroke while being sedated. When she wakes up, her speech pattern is so affected she sounds as if she’s from Britain. She has a rare form of brain damage called foreign accent syndrome. You have to hear the radio report. Jane Greenhalgh states:

There have been only about 100 known cases of the syndrome since it was first reported in the 1940s. The most famous case was a Norwegian woman who was hit by shrapnel in World War II; she developed a German accent and was ostracized as a result.

The annual Danish Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa is history now. I fear it won’t be remembered as one of the best. The combination of a bad economy and rainy weather kept the crowds well down from last year.

As you may guess from this picture (though all the tents aren’t shown), our Viking encampment was also smaller. Which isn’t to say we didn’t have a good time. I’d say we had a very good time. We had a big battle on Saturday, and although I failed to survive any of the skirmishes, I wasn’t physically hurt at all, which is a fairly rare thing. The crowd for the fighting was large under the circumstances, and they were enthusiastic.

I didn’t sell many books.

Still, I consider it a success because I finished getting the footage I wanted for my Epic Book Trailer. Now I’m in the throes of learning film editing on the job. The big challenge will be sound—lots of wind noise in the outdoor shots, which was most of the shots.

I don’t think there’s an audio editor in Windows Live Movie Maker, except for music, though I’ll have to look again.

If I’m distracted for the next few weeks, it’ll be because I’m pondering my challenges as an auteur.

File this under: Super Cool Old Stuff. Old streets, rooms in medieval buildings, and ancient Roman sewers are being opened under Jerusalem for tourist use adding a new sub-level of antiquity to an already ancient city.

South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.

To our fallen. I don’t say it enough, but I owe you guys.