My hubby said that dinosaurs don’t cry. I disagreed, and then he asked if birds cried. I didn’t know but wanted to find out.

As with all answers, it is complicated. Birds do have tear ducts, and they make tears to protect their eyes. Some birds that live near saltwater secrete an oily tear for the same reason.

So they could cry if they wanted to, and since birds are dinosaurs, dinosaurs have the ability to cry too. Even Blue.

No, this isn’t from one of the great Brendan Fraser Mummy* movies. Thanks to science, a 3,000-year-old mummy spoke for the first time since his death (one assumes.)

It’s not easy to get a mummy to talk. Vocal cords are made up of soft tissue and don’t preserve well. Skeletons can’t talk at all. But Nesyamun, a mummy first unwrapped in 1824, had well-preserved vocal cords.

The fact that scientists brought back the voice of this particular ancient Egyptian is quite the coincidence because Nesyamum worked for the pharaoh Ramses XI as a scribe and priest. He would have used his voice often for rituals. (Do you think the embalmers put a spell on him so that someday he would talk again?)

If you want to know how they reproduced Nesyamum’s voice, check out this article from Nature. It has every detail (there were a lot of steps.)

If you’re hoping that the mummy said a complete sentence, you’re going to be disappointed. The sound that was made was short and sounded like a vowel because the vocal chord was frozen in one position. Vocal cords change shape as people speak, so only one sound can be created from the mummy. Plus, our tongue helps us make sounds, and poor mummified Nesyamum doesn’t have hardly any tongue left.

Listen to the sound of the mummy here. What do you think he is saying? I presume that it relates to his last words ever spoken, which is fascinating. (Perhaps he said, “Death is only the beginning.“)

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There are a few exceptions, but if I can’t root for the main character, then I probably won’t like the book or movie. An easy way to gain my sympathy is a story technique called “Save the Cat.” Have the main character, no matter how evil they are supposed to be, do something kind for an unimportant reason. In some movies, such as the 2004 Hellboy*, the main character literally saves a box of kittens. In other cases, it can be more subtle. In Star Wars VII, The Force Awakens, Rey rescues BB-8. She didn’t have to and had no reason to, but it was her “Save the Cat” moment, and we automatically want her to win.

I watched Ocean’s 8 for the first time last night. I really liked Ocean’s 11 (the George Clooney version. We won’t discuss the horrible Frank Sinatra version.) and didn’t mind Ocean’s 12. I didn’t think I would like Ocean’s 8 as much, but I was surprised at how much I didn’t like it.

Technically, these women are thieves, so there is no reason to like them, but if Sandra Bullock had had a “Save the Cat” moment, I would have gotten behind her plan. But she didn’t. Even worse, she took advantage of customer service people who were doing their job and doing it well. Since I have worked in customer service for many years, I hated Sanda Bullock’s character.

I liked a couple of the secondary characters and ended up really liking one character that I thought was just a pawn. Overall the movie wasn’t bad, but I won’t be seeing it again because I had no connection to the characters.

“Save the Cat” isn’t always necessary, and anti-heroes are important characters, but for me, showing the good in a bad character can make me relate to them. Otherwise, they are just black or white, and there is always the Marvel movies instead.

(I guess in a roundabout way, this is a review of Ocean’s 8. It was just okay, and I’m glad I got it from the library for free.)

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“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

That is the opening paragraph of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.* This book was published in 1997. I probably read it for the first time in early 1999. My friend, Arlene, loaned me the first two books, and I was mad that the third was wasn’t out. I’ve reread the entire series a couple of times, but it’s been at least ten years.

I was watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and decided I really wanted to reread all seven books. Most of the movies are okay (I have severe problems with the third one), but the books are more complete. So I’ve started a new streak.

I’m not going to stress about this streak. I’ll just read a little Harry Potter each day. Perhaps a chapter or perhaps a scene. What will probably happen is that I’ll start reading and not want to stop. Either way, I hope to read all seven books this year. I can’t wait.

When was the last time you read the Harry Potter series? Which book is your favorite? My favorite is book three,  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (which is probably why I get so upset by everything they changed in the movie).

I’d love it if you reread (or read for the first time) the series with me. You can’t borrow my books, but I’m sure the library has them all. Accio The End.

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