Is Seth McFarlane funny?

Many people absolutely adore the television show known as Family Guy. Personally, I don't understand it: the jokes seem to be utterly random and possess no real punchlines. South Park had a great example:

• "Peter, did you do the laundry?"
• "No, but let's not forget my date to Mexico with Gary Coleman!

...Um, what? Did I just hear that correctly? Because I thought this show was supposed to be comedic. Of course I am referring to Family Guy, as South Park is quite hilarious, if a tad foul. If someone enjoys McFarlane's work, then I won't hold it against them. I just don't see the appeal.

Yet in a recent trailer review for Seth McFarlane's new movie Ted, which to me looks like a similar strain for comedic attention, which it somehow receives, the YouTube comments absolutely blew a fuse when the reviewer said it didn't look good, and claimed that "no one can match up to Seth's bad-ass jokes" and that "anyone who doesn't like [his works] has no sense of humor." The sad thing is, many people are of this rigid closed-mindedness and similar forms of it, and yet a good deal of them are far less vicious in person, when there's no computer screen behind which they may hide as they type trollish spam to other users. In addition to that, it would be a miracle if more than an eighth of them passed basic English classes. It still makes me cringe when people type things like "im gud, u?" If they're in a rush, that's one thing, but people now use text language all the time just out of laziness and stupidity. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a person writes the possessive pronoun "your" in the place of the contraction of "you are" - in other words, I want to add an apostrophe and an "e" along with "an idiot." "You're an idiot." And I have Mr. Nantz to thank for that example, although I was no stranger to the urge then either. But this seems to have become a grammatical tangent. My main point is still that people have a right to opinions, and while I do not always respect the opinions, I generally try to respect the person.

Book Review: The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer

Prior to this I had not read anything by Nancy Farmer, although I do own the multiple-award-winning The House of the Scorpion. I'll probably read that soon enough. I listened to this one as a Recorded Books audio production, read by Gerard Doyle.

The plot: After being captured by berserkers from the north in the late 700's A.D., Jack and his young sister Lucy are forced on a journey to meet the terrible Queen Frith and her husband, King Ivar the Boneless (who was a real person). Jack attempts to sing her an epic song of praise but accidentally curses the queen and makes her hair fall out. In exchange for his life, Jack agrees to embark upon an extremely dangerous journey to Jotunheim, the fabled land of trolls, dragons, enormous spiders, and deadly magic. If he returns within a certain amount of time, Frith will spare his life as well as that of Lucy, whom she intends to sacrifice to the goddess Freya when Jack fails to return.

The book never gets dull for a second, and is filled with mythical things and references to the saga of Beowulf and to that of Sigurd. The writing is very good and it is truly fascinating. I particularly like the scene at Yggdrasil, which I seem to recall from Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods. It had something similar, if not that, but I think it was Yggdrasil. The means of obtaining water from Mimir's Well reminded me a bit of the Fountain of Youth in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - but this book came out in 2004, I believe, and so before Pirates. I won't spoil why - you'd have to read it! But this book was a hit with me, and I believe it has two sequels. I ought to read them as well.

Great book, but for now I'm not giving letter grades, maybe never again: They remind me of public school, I tend to change my mind a lot, and they are too technical, for lack of a better word. I think I'm done with those, so look to my Shelfari or my Goodreads.