Go to Making Light's front page.
Forward to next post: Gitmo sutra
Subscribe (via RSS) to this post's comment thread. (What does this mean? Here's a quick introduction.)
"Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" is the greatest Beatles single ever.
However, "Paperback Writer" / "Rain" is my personal favorite.
Next: More opinions you should have! The entertainment never stops.
I need a source for the following poem; one with provenance and date. I found it first in Madeline L'Engle's book A Circle of Quiet. She merely identified it as "early." I've found it on the web, with equally vague information, and in two printed anthologies that listed no source but identified it as "medieval." I've tried the usual indices of anthologized poetry, and many, many anthologies; it's often there, but without provenance. I'm hoping you smart folk will know something . . .
The written word
Should be as clean as a bone,
Clear as light,
Firm as a stone.
Two words are not As good as one.
If it is early, it can't be too early in English; note the end rhymes.
That's certainly the most clueless article I've ever seen on comics that actually indicates the author has read some comics -- one can only hope she intends humor.
Tom wrote:
> That's certainly the most clueless article I've ever seen on comics that actually indicates the author has read some comics -- one can only hope she intends humor.
I certainly assume she did. I'm actually confused that the article caught so much flack - to me, it sounded pretty much like a comic fan bitching about their favourite gripes, rather than a clueless outsider stumbling into comics for the first time.
Yeah, I'm really trying to understand #6:
"6. Horror movies have crossed the Pacific, as has anime. Could manga be next?"
Now, a lot of the questions either reflect an odd disconnect from english slang of the last century ("Why are the Cats women?") or are actually questions that someone who's not a total comics geek could really ask ("Why is the Superman v. Batman question interesting?" is not a terribly stupid question if you're not conversant with Batman as he is written today). This one is just bizarrely out of touch with trends visible in bookstores and comicshops at ranges of 15 yards.
Really. Can one go into the geeky section of a B&N nowadays (or a Borders even more so -- the one near me has started carrying untranslated artbooks and tankoubon, some of stuff I've never heard of) and not notice the shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves of manga? Can one look at any artist to hit comics in the past decade and not say "Hey! I bet s/he has seen some manga."?
As far as I can tell, compared against the things around them, manga is doing BETTER than anime or J-horror. The former is mostly on late or, like the latter, mostly represented by American remakes, homages, and rip-offs ranging from the terrible (Darkness Falls, Xiaolin Showdown) to the not-at-all-bad (The Grudge, Kim Possible). Manga is edging out its US equivalent -- until the Tokyopop revolution, US comics companies were looking towards big bookstore sales of collected editions as their salvation, and things were looking up for the first time in a while. After Tokyopo hit, with an impact so hard that all the other US manga publishers changed their form factor and cover/spine designs to go on shelves with it, shelfspace for UScomics TPBs and GNs has shrunk, even in specialty stores.
Now, someone could not know this. But a person who knows even SOME of the ongoing WW film saga? Weird.
Which reminds me: Del-Rey's manga line seems to be doing OK. Any plans for Glorious Mountain Manga or what-have-you?
At first I clicked the link in the body of the post, and not the one that's actually the door into the comments thread, and I thought that Thread 43 was actually some sort of Trojan horse--a scintillating salon on the outside, a secret shrine to Walt Kelly on the inside. That moment of cognitive whoozis cleared up quick enough, but still: while we're on the subject, let's all take a moment and thank the Universe for giving us Pogo.
And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, winter is icumen in.
Lude sing catbird, which has apparently spent too much time listening to my neighbors' car alarm and now sings a disturbingly charming version of that miserable multi-alarm sequence.
Lisa, a quick web search attributes that to one A. Nonymous.
Now, here in Portland, I saw a spectacular double rainbow. Grabbed the camera, and if the patrons of photography smile on me, I may get one good chrome out of the shoot.
I clicked on the body of the post and was surprised as well. It's almost as if the teacher accidentally distributed the answer key along with the quiz.
I never really got Pogo. When I was a kid, it was impenetrable. I still find that there's too much going on in a single strip, and I find myself worrying that I missed the point.
I find myself wanting to say something clever about the ancient city of Sumer, but it all seems to fall flat.
Woo-hoo! David scored tickets to an advance showing of Serenity! This Thursday night at 10pm. For that I'll stay up late. (For this, too, apparently. Um.) He achieved this by hearing a useful rumor on LJ and then checking Fandango at half-hour intervals; not for the faint of heart.
Speaking of Mal and the gang, there's a fun (cool? neat? gaah! my adjectives have gone to bed without me) book of essays about the show. Finding Serenity: Anti-Heroes, Lost Shepherds and Space Hookers in Joss Whedon's Firefly, edited by Glenn Yeffeth. It's got serious and silly, The Tick and goddess archetypes, "what went wrong" and "what went right" and an appendix with all the Chinese translated. ISBN 1932100431. We got in a handful of copies at the feminist bookstore I volunteer at -- also What Would Sipowicz Do? (?!)-- nobody will admit to ordering them but I'm glad the Firefly one fell in my lap.
We've sold a lot of copies of Finding Serenity at OCH, once I told Dave about it as he hadn't noticed it in the general flood of titles out there.
Hey, let me know if they have music or credits at your showing, Kate! I'm interested in tracking how the prints change over time....
Well, I thought it was summer. The hills are all yellow, the buckwheat is blooming and the lupines are not, I get all sticky from tree fruit, and they keep talking about fire season and water conservation. Tourists, and tourist traffic. Yard sales and barbecues. Annoying movie ads.
But Thursday, it rained. And not the weird twice a summer tropical rains we get, a regular, chilly, puddles-to-the-ankles, darken the sky and bend the trees, winter-style rain. We got .59 inch, which is pretty respectable. The rainy season is supposed to have ended a month ago.
When I was growing up unseasonable weather was called "earthquake weather," because the old folks remembered it was hot and muggy on April 18, 1906. We got four decent earthquakes in the last week, but it's really not connected except in our busy little heads.
Tim Walters writes:
> And for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, winter is icumen in.
Similarly, from John Clarke's _A Dag At My Table_ (also to be found in the Southern Hemisphere)
Tide is igoin oute
Lhude yelleth yikes
Water dissapeareth fast
Ebbeth before eyen
Moon it pulleth tide out
Layeth boat on keel
... snip ...
Polly putte ye kyttle on
We wylle all hau tea
...snip ...
Birds isingen, sun ishinen
Fysshe ajumpin, cotton hyghe,
Nature goeth on and on
Boreth britches off
I just have to mention that Batman Begins rocked.
That, and I finally finished writing the story that's been tormenting me since January, so it was a good weekend.
Julia,
We're either neighbors or we're seeing a very strange adaptation in catbirds all over; the one that sings the car alarm ditty outside my window usually waits until early on Saturdays.
And Batman Begins did so very much rock. Best Batman movie, yet. Not that the competition is that stiff, but still...
See Batman Begins in a movie theater with a good sound system. When the new Batmobile is going full-throttle, you FEEL the vibrations in your gut.
Summer, with my first daylily, first cosmos, and first bachelor's button arriving together. The nasturtiums have already been going off like popcorn, and the first batch of vegetables -- some very pretty spring onions -- have moved from garden to kitchen. The tomatoes have been staked and will need more maintenance staking. Lots of green fruit on them.
There'll be more cosmos and bachelor's buttons to come. Some of the dahlias are suddenly shooting up and starting to look buddish. The gladiolus, oriental lilies, and cannas are coming along in due course, and should bloom later still.
Very happy.
Gardening question: do roses, like hamsters, re-absorb their unborn young? I planted a tea roses that had one bloom and a couple of buds. The bloom flourished for a few days, then died and was removed. Meanwhile I waited to see how the buds would do. Then I was busy for a couple of days and didn't get into the garden, and when I next went back to water, there were no buds. No fallen petals either, so I don't think they bloomed quickly and died. It was like they'd never been there. The plant seems healthy otherwise, and I'm happy for it to spend its energy on roots, but I don't know what became of the buds. Very strange.
Also, when I bought this rose, the bloom was yellow. I put it in the ground and watered it, and in the morning the bloom had turned a sort of peachy color, pinker toward the center. Very pretty but again, strange.
I am new to the ways of tea roses...is this normal?
Meanwhile the morning glory vines have been sprawling all over the fence; very pretty, but the blooms all face the neighbor's yard. I'm the one who waters them and loves them, but all they care about is that he's the one with the morning sun...
We went to Coney this weekend, and it was definitely summer. If you go, do take in the sideshow . . . .
Here's a link to the Google Cache of that comic book story in Particles.
First bear sighting: 6.19.05 in Franconia, New Hampshire. Alarmingly, on our own property, and just as I was telling my 4-year-old daughter what to do in case she happened to see a bear anywhere in the vicinity....
just as I was telling my 4-year-old daughter what to do in case she happened to see a bear anywhere in the vicinity....
Was she the one that noticed it first, or you?
Actually, out here in California, we're still waiting for sumer to start incuming . . . it looks like one will be able to celebrate the Glorious Fourth by skiing at a varieity of California slopes. Here in the San Joaquin Valley it still hasn't broken 95 yet (today's forcast high is 88).
But don't worry, climate change is just a figment of your imagination.
Bruce: You mean, say, the Imax screen they just opened at the Deer Valley 30?
We will sing "Sumer is icumen in…" on top of the highest hill in the Twin Cities tonight as the Sun is going down. It is the oldest song in the English language that we have both the words and music. Well, okay, Middle English.
Anyone who cares to join us anytime after 8, Prodea will be at the Witch's Hat Tower. We sing the Sun down at sunset on the Summer Solstice and we sing the Sun up at dawn on the Winter Solstice - about 7:45am in Minnesota.
Jeremy,
Was she the one that noticed it first, or you?
She did--God Bless her. And she's still being insufferably smug about it today. Her mother in law (who's never set foot in the state) did not help, of course, by telling her on the phone she had just saved the entire family from certain death....
Four-year-olds. Sheesh.
Her mother in law
.... assuming you mean your own mother-in-law...
The summer solstice is actually at 2:46 AM EDT tomorrow. Be there or be square.
Argh... I'm in pain.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8203492/
The reporter says that Spielberg substituted "tripods" for H.G. Wells' Martians in the upcoming movie.
*ouch*
Speaking of _Serenity_, I almost certainly have a spare ticket to the Albany preview this Thursday; if anyone needs it, e-mail me, with the understanding that there is a small but non-zero chance that it will be needed elsewhere.
(And I also recently bought 8 volumes of _Saiyuki_, and a few first volumes of other manga series, from a Borders graphic novel section that probably had more manga than Western comic trade paperbacks. _Saiyuki_, by the by, is complete and utter crack, in a good way.)
Jeremy,
Yes. Ahem. My mother in law. : )
RE Martians:
It's a tough call. The traditionalist in me wants the intellects vast, cool, and unsympathetic to be from the dying red planet.
But we know too much about the place to take it seriously as a source of the menace. An obstacle to suspension of disbelief.
I'm more put off by the line about the movie being about relationships.
The original intent of the story was to show how people react in the face of utter helplessness and hopelessness and the smashing of preconceptions about humanity's place in the universe.
And if anyone's seeing Serenity in Atlanta this weekend, I'll be getting together with some folks for dinner beforehand. Most likely we'll be eating at the Little Szechuan restaurant on Buford Highway. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to meet up.
Randolph: Wasn't the sky just *amazing* yesterday? That was some tripped-out weather.
And I concur that Batman Begins rocks. That was a damn fine movie.
Steve, if I remember correctly, in the original Wells novel the fighting machines were tripods:
And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer. Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.Chapter 10, In The Storm
According to the June Wired, Spielberg is looing as much to the Orson Welles and George Pal versions of the story. He is moving back to tripods from floating machines because it is now possible to do it:
Traveling between the shoot and ILM, Muren translates Spielberg's directives to the effects artists. But he's been formulating his own vision of War of the Worlds for a long time. As a grade school kid in the suburbs of Los Angeles during the '50s, he says, "I grew up with this movie." Often he'd look up effects artists in the phone book and cold-call them, but it wasn't until last year that he got the scoop on The War of the Worlds from a friend of its original production designer. "They wanted to do tripods in 1953, but they couldn't figure out how to make them walk," he reports - so they switched to hovering saucers, then built models and suspended them above the soundstage on wires so they seemed to float above the ground. "Now we have the technology to do it."
Mary Dell: and when I next went back to water, there were no buds. No fallen petals either, so I don't think they bloomed quickly and died. It was like they'd never been there.
It sounds like something ate the buds. Do you have deer, or any other critters who could reach the buds?
Also, when I bought this rose, the bloom was yellow. I put it in the ground and watered it, and in the morning the bloom had turned a sort of peachy color, pinker toward the center. (snip)I am new to the ways of tea roses...is this normal?
It's not unusual. One of the roses I care for did exactly the same thing. It was solid yellow when it opened, and two days later it was blushed with peach.
Re the Flores Street House Eater: I guess a yellow rose really does grow in Texas. And grows, and grows, and grows....
Sorry for terminally-unclear writing; I was complaining that the reporter thought tripods were *new* to the War of the Worlds story, when they were front-and-center in the original serial. I guess since the rovers landed we have to give up on Mars as the origin, so I've resigned myself to a rewrite on that.
(All will be forgiven if Spielberg somehow gets the Thunderchild back in... after all, the trailers have already shown the ferry scene.)
Also, when I bought this rose, the bloom was yellow. I put it in the ground and watered it, and in the morning the bloom had turned a sort of peachy color, pinker toward the center. (snip)I am new to the ways of tea roses...is this normal?
I used to have a number of roses in my little backyard, but a re-landscaping forced them out. But I had to keep space for one, so one Peace Rose stands proudly amongst colors it doesn't match. (The Peace Rose was introduced at the end of World War II.) It opens yellow, turns pink and peach, and ends up mostly white. I've been a little disappointed in this one, which has not been as pretty as the one in the old version of the yard (and which may even have gone back to the 1940s) -- but this year it has been beautiful and vibrant.
Aconite: I suspect I may have a bunny problem, although nothing's nibbled on any of the leaves so far. It's also possible that the greedy mourning doves that hang out in the garden ate them, after carefully breaking the bird feeder.
The bird feeder is a nice stoneware thingy - a vertical tube, with openings for birdies to peck at. Under the openings there are thin metal poles that run through small holes in the main tube, and are secured on each side by a small rubber ring. The doves have managed to peck away all the rubber rings, so that the poles slide out and they have nowhere to stand and eat.
They also walk away, like chickens, when I come into the garden, rather than flying away, like proper birds.
Kate Nepveu
Speaking of _Serenity_, I almost certainly have a spare ticket to the Albany preview this Thursday; if anyone needs it, e-mail me, with the understanding that there is a small but non-zero chance that it will be needed elsewhere.
Kate - Oh, yes, please: my wife would LOVE a ticket, I'll email you. (Me, I tend to side with Chad's review: the erratic world-building keeps me from getting comfortable in the Firefly universe, nice though the characters are.) But my wife Maggie thinks it's the best TV she's ever seen.
Oh, and Anton P. Nym (aka Steve) notes about the Spielberg War of the Worlds:
the trailers have already shown the ferry scene.
This scene was shot in Athens, New York, last December. (I was an extra in that crowd.) It was pretty cool pulling the 'Penguin 60' of the Wells novel out of my pocket to read between takes.
Speilberg's version is a contemporary update of Wells - and while I got only a spear-carrier's view of the movie, I thought it looked pretty good. Nothing that I saw rang wrong, anyway.
(By way of comparison, I think it'll HAVE to be better than the George Pal version, which I've never been able to watch a second time.)
My roommate just called from the nail salon to inform me she just saw Nathan Fillion. (Cap'n Tightpants was not getting a manicure - she saw him walking down the street.) I hardly think this is fair, as she works in Universal's Archives (which they decided at the last minute *not to close) and she has seen him on the lot. I never see anyone famous!
I attempted my first Chicago Style Pizza, which was 60% right, but the crust was just not *crusty* enough. I am now faced with the daunting task of figuring out what recipe might make the dough less, well, doughy, and more dense and crust-y.
"We went to Coney this weekend, and it was definitely summer. If you go, do take in the sideshow . . . ."
What was it like? I've never been there, but I've heard about it.
Understood, Steve. At least you didn't create a new word such as "looing". At least I hope that's a new word. Several possible meanings do sort of jump out at you . . .
Mary Dell, re bunnies, "Bunnies aren't just cute like everyone supposes. They've got those hoppy legs and twitchy little noses."
We have mourning doves at our bird feeder. They manage to get up there like the perching birds and then look incredibly stupid, like they don't know what to do next. They can't quite peck and perch at the same time.
Regarding Red Planets and Firefly and all:
Why does every disk in the DVD set depict Mars?
I think they may have slipped Mars in as the planet visited in the episode "War Stories" --it will take more freeze-framing before I'm sure-- but the DVD platters are definite. There's the twisted grin of Valles Marineris leering out at you.
None of the stories take place on Mars.
Did they think we wouldn't recognize it?
Frugal rotterblaggers!
My bunny lice soda devotion...
Claude: Understood, Steve. At least you didn't create a new word such as "looing". At least I hope that's a new word. Several possible meanings do sort of jump out at you . . .
It's a good thing I'm not British, or I might have looed myself at that one.
However, it still doesn't beat the comment an exchange student made to my Mom on a college trip in the '50s; "Knock me up early, I want to have a fag before breakfast." Separated by a common language indeed...
Bob Oldendorf: kate dot nepveu at gmail dot com will get to me fine, for making arrangements to meet up and such.
Relating to nothing else anyone's talked about, other than I'm probably not the only one who'd appreciate a giggle at the moment:
there's an anti-anti-fanfic rant at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels which amused me greatly in itself, but when I got to the comments thread, I found a whole string of very lovely haiku praising the use of Spam(TM) as a "marital aid"...
Kate: Thanks, I'll be in touch!
(I don't do a convincing version of the fangirl 'squeee', but Maggie just about can....)
A Joyful Solstice! - whichever hemisphere.
Some things people do on the Longest Night: Midwinter day 2004; Midwinter madness! 2003; Reflections on midwinter 2002 (From the Australian Antarctic Division)
For some reason, I was involved in an imaginary conversation (hey, I was trying to sleep.) The topic that came up was "Things that are hard to translate into/out of English."
So far, I have:
1) This sentence is in English.
2) "C'mon, Molly, grab the gat and let's beat it before the heat nabs us."
3) "`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves..."
4) Obviously, anything written in Linear A, but that's as much a tranliteration issue as a translation issues.
5) Cooking directions from a Scandanavian Grandmother. These feature such measures as "enough" and "a bit of" and "about twice what your Uncle Olaf likes."
6) Transcripts of Harry Carey calling Cubs games, esp. close games near or during the playoffs.
7) "Five-Seven-Five may
not say all that much, but that
is Haiku for you."
Somebody imaginary then broke out "This sentence no verb", and things went Hofstadterian from there. My brain is broken, but I cope with it.
Oh, and from the Make blog. Cellphone.
I really want to climb Long's Peak, leave this up there, descend a bit, wait an hour, call it, and ask if anyone's seen my sunglasses.
It doesn't look that hard to make, actually, given the cost of GSM cell modules, but I really need to finish the Nixie Clock and get the new Van de Graff generators built. (Plural, of course -- because you can charge them opposite, and get that much more voltage....)
But, man, to drop that phone on the belt on the way to the UK.
Erik: I can do an attempt of #2 into Swedish: "Kom igen, Molly, hugg puffran sĺ pyser vi innan bängen haffar oss." I'm not quite hip to the slang of the appropriate period, though.
#5 is hard even if you're just trying to follow the cooking directions and speak the same language as the Grandmother in question.
Melissa Mead:
The sideshow is being held/given in a fleabag of a theater right off Surf Avenue and right under the Coney Island Museum, which I suspect we'll visit on our next trip out. I remember when Dick Zigun was first starting to "revive" these bits of old Coney; he used to run a haunted house where real people would hide in odd corners and do things like grab your hair from behind as the car went by . . . it was a great shriek-and-clutch-fest.
Oh, and the local-artists-paint-the-boardwalk exhibit is going strong for the second year in a row, some nice stuff this year, too.
Anyway, the sideshow: we came in in the middle of the sword-swallower's act. She's a pretty young thing and bills herself as the youngest female sword-swallower in the history of the profession. The daytime patter is all just a tiny bit raunchy (well, there are lots of kids in the audience); the night-time show is, I expect, cruder. The sword-swallower was making jokes about "protection" and "sheathes", for instance. She also claims to have once been, before being corrupted by the big bad city, a good Mormon girl from Utah. She swallowed, separately, one thin and one thicker/wider blade, 2-3 feet long. Very nicely done, too.
She was followed by the fire-eater, another woman (all women scantily dressed to one degree or another, some in "ethnic costume") who was gorgeously tattooed including an intricate striped pattern on one side of her face. Another nice bit--fire running along her arms, putting fire out with her mouth, lighting torches by transferring flame from one ot the next with the palm of her hand, breathing fire, etc.
Short juggling act: two big knives and an apple.
Intermission: tour the museum of curiosities for an additional $1 per person (admission was $5 for adults, $3 for kids). 7 fingered hand, mermaid, "giant moth coccoon", etc. All monies from the museum go to renovating the theater, which really needs it.
Snake charmer--gorgeous woman, handsome albino python . . . a bit disappointing as the snake had apparently eaten recently and was a bit sluggish. Big snake, though.
Featured attraction: Eek the Geek. A thoroughly tattooed man who in fact made his living for a while as a real geek (claims to have learned it at a slaughterhouse he was working in). Now he does the bed of nails (he had a very overweight woman stand on the second nail platform on his abdomen, which made me cringe even though I know how the bed of nails works) and gets "electrocuted". Nice bit, that--he lights torches with his tongue and makes neon lights glow. Eek is also just plain funny and just about worth the price of admission all by himself.
Contortionist of sorts--not a great contortionist but when combined with the blades-through-the-box bit, pretty cool. This was the same woman who did the sword-swallowing and, an an extra added attraction, for an additional $1 per person, you could come up on the stage and look into the box and see her all curled up around the blades.
Human blockhead--nail in the nose, icepick in the nose, spoon in the nose, animal trap on hand, mousetrap on tongue. This is the same guy who juggles knives and acts as emcee for the whole show.
It was all tacky in just the right way, and heaps of fun. We did it at the very end of the day and it was a nice way to ramp down before taking the long train ride home. Also, there is a bathroom in the theater so we didn't have to use the paperless public restroom in the subway station--a very nice subway station, btw, now that it's all renovated.
The theater is decorated inside and out with sideshow posters and banners of the current acts.
Re Coney Island -- this Saturday is the best day of the year to visit, the day of the Mermaid Parade. This parade is some of the most fun I've had in Brooklyn.
"Things that are hard to translate into/out of English."
La rivičre se jette dans le fleuve.
Always been my favorite/most hated sentence to translate into english.
Erik: A sentence of mine from a short story I wrote years ago: "Her smile must be still upon her face when they find her," of a little girl killed by the monster/narrator. Someone tried to change it to "Her smile must still be..." but that loses half of the meaning, as well as the flag that there IS another meaning.
Also, the text of the last verse of a song I wrote a couple of years ago. The previous verse says that the narrator has never told anyone about the topic of the song, and the song includes a dream where the narrator dies. Then:
Now that you know that I'm lying still,I love the word 'still', obviously. It's so charmingly ambiguous.
My dear, my bonnie fair one,
Now that you know that I'm lying still,
The only one I love,
Now that you know that I'm lying still,
I never loved you and I never will.
My dear, my bonnie fair one,
The only one I love.
MD2: My best shot. "The river flows into the estuary." Not perfect (fleuve means the entire river that ends in an estuary, and not just the seamouth end) but it'll do in a pinch.
Of course, being born next to fleuve Saint-Laurent helps with that translation. (Pity I've lost so much French through lack of use...)
Excuse me, but I need to interrupt this Open Thread with an important announcement:
Kate Nepveu is a wonderful human being.
(That is all. Carry on.)
Oh good. An open thread!
Does everyone but me already know that:
a) The OED is being put into limerick form?
http://www.oedilf.com/db/Lim.php
b) Someone has written a linked haiku/senryu about how to decrypt a DVD?
The poem:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/decss-haiku.txt
The explanation of the poem's history:
http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/haiku.html
"Things that are hard to translate into/out of English."
Poetry, almost by definition, is hard to translate.
Hence, the more poetic a sample of prose is, the harder to translate. The begs the question of what "poetic" means.
English has the largest vocabulary of any known language, so a majority of words are strictly untranslatable. The two writers in English who invented the most words are William Shakespeare and James Joyce. Insert obligatory joke about Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Finnegan's Wake is probably the hardest book to translate from English, not that it's entirely in English to begin with, as Joyce kept several dictionaries open before him as he wrote it.
"The river flows into the estuary."
Nice one... until you realise three pages later it cannot be the estuary (not that I'm talking out of personal experience, or anything, obviously).
"Poetry, almost by definition, is hard to translate."
Two words: Stéphane Mallarmé.
And now excuse me I'll go cry other all those nights lost in the useless attempt.
MD2...maybe I can help? I'm sitting here after teaching a graduate reading/translation class, so I've got my game face on.
MD2, what did you settle upon? (And what was the context?)
Dangit, you've piqued my interest now. So much for a restful nap at work-uh, I mean, "time away from the keyboard during coffee break," boss. Really. Honest.
(Oh, and I didn't envy the guy who had to translate Trente Arpents into Thirty Acres... an "arpant" is a *linear* measure in this context, a minimum guarantee of river frontage. Translations can be the enemies of art, indeed.)
You can't hide behind those hoods forever:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8290795/
My most untranslatable published sentence follows.
"This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty-four letters."
[Jonathan Vos Post, Scientific American, reprinted in "Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern", by Douglas R. Hofstadter, paperback reprint March 1996, pp.26-27]
I have published transliterations of Chinese poetry, and have submitted (and had rejected) translations of Rimbaud. Of course, the fact that I neither speak Chinese nor French has something to do with it. The key is "transliteration." For famous poems, many translations already exist. One may be said to be the best literal translation; one may be the best in capturing atmosphere; one may best follow the meter. A good transliterator can interpolate a new transliteration in between the other ones. But I'm carefully avoiding the question of the topology of literature, albeit that is essential for proper formal discussion of tranlstaions as "mappings."
The original sentence was a comment on Icelandic Sagas, something about a surprise attack, which happened "lŕ ou la rivičre [x] se jette dans le fleuve [y]". The place being too far from the actual estuary, I gave up and ended up using using the somewhat misleading "where [x] and [y] meet".
I know, cheap shot.
Talking about translating poetry, it's hard job, people make mistakes, I know, but still I hate it when some of said mistakes make you doubt the reading ability of the translator. Worst recent case I can think of is the guy who did the job for Tim Burton's The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories. Why, why, did he decide that all the verse in Anchor Girl needed to rhyme I'll never understand.
Stefan Jones: "The original intent of the story was to show how people react in the face of utter helplessness and hopelessness and the smashing of preconceptions about humanity's place in the universe."
I thought it was a metaphor for European imperialism. No reason it can't be both, of course.
"This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty-four letters."
I remember that one. One of my responses, very much in the metamagical realm, was:
"This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty four letters, as well as an attached clause that renders it false."
MD2--I know what you mean. There's a "translation" of Tournier's La goutte d'or that ends with Idriss deliberately breaking the window and being afraid of the cops. I think he might have grabbed a real woman to dance with, too. (For those who haven't read it, this utterly reverses the point of the book. It would be like saying "Narnia is destroyed, the end, nothing more to see.")
A college friend of mine used to sing these alternate lyrics to George Harrison's I've Got My Mind Set on You:
This song contains just six words...
(repeat ad infinitum)
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves....
Wow, that's by George Harrison? The late former Beatle? Learn new stuff every day... I always figured it was by Air Supply or someone like that. (Continuing in my pattern of not bothering to match up group names with songs on the radio... Recently I learned from Roy Edroso that Elton John was not the perpetrator of "Happy Christmas, the war is over")
"Imagine a world where this was the only song
And against your will
You had to sit and listen to it all day long
Till it made you ill."
repeat many times
--Peter Blegvad, "The Only Song"
Saw that, Stefan. Not enough, and not soon enough, but some justice is better than none.
Also, they found that missing cub scout in Utah. It's a good day.
You know, with that Boy Scout turning up, we're going to need another American in Peril* Story to lead the news with.
Please send applications to:
MiniDistraction
Level 73, Desk 1,217
1 Victory Boulevard
Freedomland, Goliad 9
Or your local Fox affiliate.
* Perils related to war, environmental damage or industrial mishap not applicable.
Hey, Tom! I know that song too! Except I can never remember the second line.
Jill - that's the Weird Al Yankovic version. "this song is just six words long..." etc. (what does it say about my fitness as a parent when my then-preteen daughter knows the Weird Al versions better than the 'real' ones?)
JennR:
"... what does it say about my fitness as a parent when my then-preteen daughter knows the Weird Al versions better than the 'real' ones?)"
Relax, JennR. That's true for my 16-year-old, too. If Weird Al Yankovic, rather than the director, had written the songs for the recent feature film "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" then it would have been a much funnier film.
He wrote some songs that most readers here have never heard, by the way. "Patterns" was the themesong for a Math TV show that never aired, or never lasted, or something. What was the original of "It's all about the Pentiums?"
Do we moan that nobody recalls the original poems parodied by Lewis Carroll? Thought not.
But do brace yourself for the pre-teen to teen transition. Our fun has just begun!
What was the original of "It's all about the Pentiums?"
That'd be "It's all about the Benjamins", by Puff Daddy.
Bill Blum:
Thanks. And was it Mark Twain who sang:
Puff Daddy, puff with care. Puff in the presence of the passenjare?
ooh open thread!
for Lost fans who still remember the old role-playing games...
Antukin: That's a brilliant little link. (Admittedly, I've only seen the first two episodes of Lost, on Virgin Atlantic airlines... but it really does map over pretty well, doesn't it?)
what does it say about my fitness as a parent when my then-preteen daughter knows the Weird Al versions better than the 'real' ones?
Probably the same thing as it says about my fitness as a daughter, JennR. My mom had heard Weird Al's Jerry Springer song but not "One Week" (and I'm a huge BNL fan, too). She was in a restaurant bathroom once and "One Week" came on. The rest of us were waiting to leave, and women kept coming out of the ladies' room with alarmed/freaked out expressions. Finally my mom emerged, wiping her eyes. She'd stayed in there until the song was over, laughing hysterically at how close she thought Weird Al had gotten it.
And she says she can't take us anywhere.
My Weird Al problem is that certain songs get tangled and don't get untangled again. I can't sing "American Pie" without some of "The Saga Begins" in it, and vice versa.
Erik: I know one of the toughest sentences to translate when I translated Spanish sex comics was "ˇMe pones burro total!"--which literally means, "You're turning me into a total burro!" but really means "You're making me really horny!"--but the latter, in context, wasn't much more satisfactory in context. I think I finally settled for "You bring out the beast in me!"--which wasn't really it either, but at least sort of retains the sense of the original.
"ˇMe pones burro total!"--which literally means, "You're turning me into a total burro!"
Perhaps you could render it as, "I feel like such an ass!" :-)
(Whoops, I posted this in Open Thread 42. It should have gone here.)
OH MY F#$^#%^# GAWD!
Check out this week's "THE ONION" ASAP.
Start with the Horoscopes.
http://www.theonion.com/2056-06-22/index.php?pre=1
Don't cry for me, Charlie Berlitz,
How this potato, her joy's named great is,
Ding-dong, the pen sleeps
On my aunt's table
And we make nothing,
We fish of April . . .
For your open thread entertainment, an interactive hamster dance...
People put the weirdest things on the net.
Tales of "Customer Service" Dept.
Family member bought a pair of cellphones. One would not initialize. Was broken on delivery. Went to get replacement. Clerk asked for driver's license. 3 weeks went by. Cellphone service still not functioning. Noticed driver's license missing. Searched everywhere. Assumed stolen. Feared identity theft. Many calls to banks, credit card companies, Department of Motor vehicles, many hours spent. Phone cellphone company. "Say, it just occurred to me; 3 weeks ago, did you ask for my driver's license?"
"Yes, we would have."
"Could you see if you still have it?"
[sound of drawer opening] "Yup. Here it is."
"Why didn't you call me, or mail it to me?"
"Because some people change addresses since the card was issued."
"But you HAVE my home phone number. Why didn't you phone me and say I'd left my card?"
"Oh.... Didn't think of that.... Sorry."
I suggested that family member write letter to company HQ, suggest would settle for 10,000 minutes of phonecall time.
Oh.... Didn't think of that.... Sorry.
(Camera cuts over to spokesperson)
And once again, we see the horrid consequences of Clue Deficit Disorder, and the toll it takes on the innocent victims and their relations.
CDD has plauged our young nation for nearly a century. With your help, we hope to find better treaments, and someday, a cure.
We're the Congress for Clue Distribution, a non profit organization dedicated to the fight against, and eventual victory over, CDD. With your help, we can win -- but only with your help.
Please help those who just need a hint -- all of the time.
Write:
CCD-CDD
c/o the CDC
Washington, DC.
Do it for your children. Do it for your sanity. Do it so you wont have to deal with the clueless again.
Was it Patrick who suggested that some people be issued badges declaring them "Legally Stupid," so that otherwise outrageously moronic actions would not be held against them?
That was originally Beth Meacham's idea.
In-Souls -- that is a seriously weird idea. I haven't read it closely enough to figure out whether it's serious or just an excellent satire.
Going back a bit: Apart from the famous quote about "intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic", there is some excellent writing in Herbert George Wells' book War of the Worlds, and perhaps more prescient foretelling of the twentieth century than in his officially futuristic stories. Some scenes described are familiar to most of us from newsreels and documentaries. Below are some parts that I thought try to put the fin-de-siecle British "Masters of the Universe" into sympathy with their subjects. The posters for the new film are around town now -- it will be interesting to see what scenes and themes are carried into it.
Chapter 1 - The Eve of the War
... And, before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
Chapter 7 - The Man on Putney Hill
... now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! Strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding place -- a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity -- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion...
Chapter 10 - The EpilogueSpeaking of films, for my solstice celebration I won a free ticket to a Sydney Film Festival special screening last night, with live, specially-composed music, of a silent German film, shot in Berlin in 1929, called Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday). After seeing quite a bit of film of Berlin in 1945 with the commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the end of war in the European theatre in May this year, watching the everyday life and the real people at their Sunday leisure was a curious added sensation. Walking home in the cold from the bus stop down quiet streets at midnight with a full moon at the zenith pleaching the world around me put me into my own silent black and white world, another source of strange thoughts and feelings.
... this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence,...
... I must confess the stress and danger of the time have left an abiding sense of doubt and insecurity in my mind. I sit in my study writing by lamplight, and suddenly I see again the healing valley below set with writhing flames, and feel the house behind and about me empty and desolate ... Of a night I see the black powder darkening the silent streets, and the contorted bodies shrouded in that layer;...
I promised a couple people at WisCon that I would report back, so:
I ordered two salwar kameez from indiashop1. Both have the traditional drawstring pants, which are fine and fit well, but you have to tie them fairly tightly if, as my mother says, you have a tum-tum-tummy. (You know who you are.)
One is made from what is listed as "chickan" and covered with embroidery. It is lovely and quite dressy. Following instructions, I had it dry cleaned the first time. Since that is costly, I hand washed it the next time. The colors are fine, but the lining is crunchy. I'm not sure if that is from getting soaked, or if I didn't get the soap fully rinsed out.
The other is made of printed crepe and is also striking. It has no embroidery, and is lighter in weight. The effect is not as dressy. Again, I had it dry cleaned the first time, then hand washed it. It is mostly bright red, and the dye is not colorfast. However, when it had dried the print was still clear and it looked nice. I was going to hand wash it again, when I noticed a label that said "Dry Clean Only," which was not what the instructions on the website said. I'm still thinking about what to do about this. (My instinct is that anything labelled "Dry Clean Only" can be hand washed, but I could be wrong.)
I bought one salwar kameez from ladiesden_india. I paid an extra $5 to have regular trousers made. These fit very well. This is made from printed georgette, and is much more casual in feel than the other two. I feel comfortable wearing it around town, in that it doesn't seem gratuitously out of place. (Although, I was once busted by my horrified family for having been wearing a coat two inches shorter than my dress for at least an entire winter season, and I was perfectly happy, so what do I know?) I hand washed it once, and then put it in the washer on cold water and gentle cycle, both times letting it hang dry. I noticed the last time I wore it that the side seam on the trousers had opened, but the lining had held so it didn't reveal anything. This is only a problem when sitting. I don't know if this was from putting it in the washer, or from the fabric being pulled tight when I sit down.
I will definitely order more, probably in the more casual printed georgette.
We now return to the more interesting comments in this thread.
Other neat bits from The War of the Worlds:
The narrator, in describing the martian's silvery multi-tentacled semi-living work machine, lets on that humans later studied and reverse engineered the devices. Kind of neat.
The martian tripods communicate by SOUND. Not radio. Kind of neat in an entirely different way.
The Artilleryman. Full of big ideas and harsh logic and great ambition, but in the end a worthless windbag. I've met his type, at cons and over gaming tables. Snorting blowhards.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
"Legally Stupid....That was originally Beth Meacham's idea."
Hats off to Beth, yet again!
Of course, "Legally Stupid" has little to do with IQ as such. Academe is filled with Legally Stupid professors.
I had a girlfriend in college (an anagram of her name was one of my novel characters in "The Ten Teeth of Terra": "Neon Gladring") who was smart (in IQ) but had even less Common Sense than I do (and I'm a Theoretician, where Common Sense is almost a violation of Union Regulations).
Once, in the Academic Commune's livingroom, an unopened king-sized bottle of Root Beer was accidently kicked over, hard. My girlfriend sprinted to it, and wrenched the top off, dousing us all in Root Beer.
"Why on Earth did you do that?" someone asked.
"Well, I knew that I was either supposed to definitely open it, or definitely not open it, and I forgot which."
It's official: the Eye of Sauron is 25 light years away. New Scientist says so.
erm. Though the idea of the moonlit midnight pleaching the gardens or street trees is an intriguing one, thats probably "bleaching". Though, to connect to Rosa Monday, here are some pleached rose bushes.
And wow, that's a great picture. Sauron's Eye of the Southern Fish at Fomalhaut, or something.
Stuff Geeks Notice Dept.:
Oregon had a anomalously wet late spring, and the rains aren't letting up. Beaverton is currently getting hit with a wicked heavy downpour. When it started, half the engineering team here at work rushed to the cafeteria windows to watch.
A cow orker noticed something neat: A whale-spout of water and vapor emerging from the parking lot.
Apparently, the sheer force of water coming down the drain pipes from the roof was too much for the storm drains, and the water shot up out of a grill in the parking lot.
I suspect we engineers talked more about that than we did about the Runaway Bride or the Lost Boy Scout. Damn uncomformists.
Hello,
I've just found your Ultimate SF Site while searching for a book I read long ago. I didn't find it there, but perhaps I didn't look long or hard enough. Perhaps you can help me.
I seem to remember that the book had one of those semi-surreal covers, such as some Berkely SF books had in the 50s and 60s. The title may have been something like "20,000 A.D.," or "20,000,000 A.D." Or maybe it had the word "Armageddon" in the title.
The story concerned the findings and speculations of a survey or exploration ship of some aliens who explore the ruins of Earth many years after humanity has destroyed itself.
I hope you can help me; I've been trying to find this book for years!
Joe
"Kaposta, Joseph D"
Jonathan:
Did you consider paying the cellphone company for providing free storage for your relative's driver's license, when it took him three weeks to notice that it was missing? Or do you routinely assume that if you make a mistake, and some random stranger doesn't fix it for you, they owe you money?
Not meaning to poke fun at typos, but I'm fascinated by the idea of a "cow orker." Sounds like a rather sinister profession. (The image of that weird waterspout was really something, anyway. Thanks for sharing it!)
"Cow-orker" has become a deliberate, alternative label for the fellow denizens of your cube farm.
If it were for real, would cow orking be a profession, a hobby, or a fetish?
Stefan Jones: I suspect we engineers talked more about that than we did about the Runaway Bride or the Lost Boy Scout.
OMG! There's a lost Boy Scout?!? Maybe we'd better check in the Runaway Bride's closet! Quick, page Gerlado! Fax HANNITY & colmes! Alert Wolf "Quake-Before-My-Mighty-Facial-Hair" Blitzer! The world must know!
Juli - thanks for the report on the salwar/kameez. I was wondering how the second vendor's stuff fit.
I've found that most things that call for dry cleaning can be hand-washed, or washed in a machine on gentle cycle with cold water. I wouldn't try it with a lined jacket or similar item, though - the lining could bunch up. Also, if there's any chance the item isn't dye-fast, it should be washed alone. I once washed a lovely pink & lavender dress with a load of other light stuff, and the blue dye in the lavender part of the dress leaked. I now have lots more blue underwear than previously!
If it were for real, would cow orking be a profession, a hobby, or a fetish?
In the Half Past Second Age, before the first film crew entered Middle Earth, the cattle of the Rohirrim were many, and their leathergoods were prized both at Fayre and belowstairs at the castle, though their cheese was runny. Runnier than that. And the horses breathed heavy sighs that there was another source of tack, and it was good.
But the orks, the numerous yet rather poorly described beings of darkness, were an affliction to them, for they would come by night, when as all Men know there is little light, and move among the animals, so that in the day they were spoilt to use, and had moreover acquired faint foreign-sounding accents. Some said the cheese was a little better, but they were not believed.
And after enough of this, the leaders of Rohan gathered, as they did in those days when things to to the point where sitting on a horse in a tin nightshirt wasn't protection enough, and in their hallowed way said, "There must be some peasants we can lay this off on, and so there came to be the cow orkers, sturdy folk of compact build and good night vision, who would be posted in the fields by night to stand among the cattle, who would themselves be standing like statues, and they'd crouch 'neath the sky with a cudgel hard by, and they'd hope to give Evil a sock in the eye . . .
Oh what a beautiful morning
Whupped me a couple of ork,
Keep to yourself what you're thinking,
They don't taste nothin' like pork.
You know, Mike, it doesn't really help matters that I went to see Oklahoma! on Sunday, and that song is still fresh in my mind...
I'm all excited about celebrating the incoming of summer by harvesting vine-ripened tomatoes -- nine of them, in two clusters. True, they were cherry-type, so this isn't impossibly early considering that this is Southern California, and they were volunteers, so I can claim no virtue other than recognizing them as keeper seedlings rather than weeds to be pulled, but it's pleasing to have an unshaded area and be able to grow a few vegetables again. Almost as delightful as my first garden, at the age of six, seventy years ago.
From the I Like to Watch Dept:
When late-night channel surfers encounter two nude women in bed on a public-access show called "Fantasy Bedtime Hour," many things come to mind. Leprosy is probably not one of them.But leprosy -- and monsters and mud and swords -- are what this particular fantasy is all about. The two bedded women aren't really nude, just artfully posing under the sheets; and they're not holding a titillating tete-a-tete, but a confounding discussion of a 28-year-old paperback novel called "Lord Foul's Bane." Their girl-on-girl action is limited to pondering the meaning of words like "dotard" and "inchoate," and the program's live-action sequences involve developmentally disabled horses and 7-foot monsters made out of old pantyhose.
But Patrick, "Honky Tonk Women" / "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is the better record.
"Cow-orker" has become a deliberate, alternative label for the fellow denizens of your cube farm.
If it were for real, would cow orking be a profession, a hobby, or a fetish?
And what if you actually work on a dairy farm?
Comments on Open thread 43: