Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Holy shit Dan Brown!

[The Great Quail]

> Yeah, I spent a lot of time yelling @ TDVC.  In
> public. 

My biggest problem with "The DaVinci Code" was its idiot characters. I mean,
Dan Brown has written these characters, see, that are supposed to be
GENIUSES in their fields of religion, language,. Antiquity cryptography,
etc. And then, every dozen pages or so, they all stand around with their
tongues hanging out, stumped at some moronic "puzzle" that any half-way
intelligent reader has guessed by the time his eyes hit the period ending
the sentence.

I shit you not -- at one point, a pair of linguistic scholars are staring
befuddled at ENGLISH HANDWRITING IN REVERSE and they have no idea what it
is. Once even remarks something to the effect that it looks "Semitic" or
"Aramaic" or something. Oh my fucking God.

It's like having Umberto Eco, Douglas Hofstadter, and Paula Frederiksen
being completely flamboozled by a pre-movie word-scramble of CHESS JURIST.

--Quail