If that isn't an obscure literary allusion, that's bad news.

Posted March 18, 2006 11:35 AM by Bob Oldendorf

If books get damp they have to be dried immediately, otherwise they'll become mouldy and, eventually, will have to be discarded.

Posted March 18, 2006 11:39 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Oh, dear.

Consider pallets?

Posted March 18, 2006 11:50 AM by James D. Macdonald

Wet books smell funny.
Cat sniffs from the doorway, then
Stalks away. No fish...

Posted March 18, 2006 12:02 PM by Lizzy L

I've heard that freezing them is the best way to deal with damp books, sublimation being neater than evaporation.

The folks who hang out here may not have seen Faust's SASE, but will certainly appreciate it.

Posted March 18, 2006 12:09 PM by Betty

Oh, damn...there were a lot of books in that basement. This is bad.

Posted March 18, 2006 12:16 PM by Will "scifantasy" Frank

And consider that there are huge desert areas, dry as... well, as a desert... where you could store your books for hundreds of years without getting them damp.

Ironic, no?

Posted March 18, 2006 12:25 PM by A.R.Yngve

Books in the freezer.
Pressed under the penny jar,
The last batch I froze.

Posted March 18, 2006 12:34 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I lost half my books
In a spring flood long ago.
Heartfelt sympathies.

(Had to rework that to put in a season.)

Posted March 18, 2006 12:51 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

We had a smaller-scale disaster with an overflowing window A/C unit once; we lost about 50 books that way. My sympathies.

Posted March 18, 2006 1:00 PM by Linkmeister

Wow, Fausts Rejections are based on real ones. I recognize the one from Asimov's. When I got back the story with it, I reread my manuscript and decided it was poorly written, derivative crap, and never submitted it again.

Never submitted anything else either. That needs to change.

Posted March 18, 2006 1:20 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Hey, I've gotten some of those rejections!

Sorry to hear about the books. I hope they can be saved.

Posted March 18, 2006 1:39 PM by Melissa Mead

I once dropped a book
Right into a swimming pool:
This is so much worse!

Posted March 18, 2006 2:06 PM by candle

Too ambiguous!
Your situation, I meant,
must be so much worse.

Posted March 18, 2006 2:11 PM by candle

Drunk books? Disaster!
Delaware sends some advice
on drying them out.

Posted March 18, 2006 2:18 PM by Jon Hansen

Given that this is an open thread, perhaps I'll be forgiven a radical change of topic to ask the following question:

Aside from this one, what are the best SF blogs?

By this I don't mean blogs by people who happen to also write/edit/whatever SF. I mean blogs that talk about what's going on in SF these days. (And by "SF" I mean mostly "written SF", although I certainly wouldn't mind discussions of other media.)

Any recommendations? thoughts?

Posted March 18, 2006 2:21 PM by Stephen Frug

Basement floods, all books get wet.
Potential disaster? You bet!
But what's really nice
Is to put them on ice,
The best way to protect from regret.

Posted March 18, 2006 2:29 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I was just planning to move some books and tape down to our basement, as it's been dry since we moved here 4 years ago. On the othe hand, as experience testifies....

Posted March 18, 2006 2:45 PM by John Farrell

I've read a few Walter Scott novels in my life, such as The Talisman and Quentin Durward, but never Ivanhoe, for some reason. Have you? I am curious about Ivanhoe's attitude toward Rebecca in the book. Considering when it was written, he probably acts nobly and all that toward her, but never entertains any romantic ideas because, well, they are of different religious backgrounds. I don't know about the book's depiction of her character, but in the Robert Taylor movie, Rebecca comes off as so much more interesting than Rowena, and Ivanhoe comes off as an idiot for not thinking of Rebecca in a romantic manner, religious differences notwithstanding. And yet... Some time ago, I noticed that the movie's last scene shows wall-flower Rowena looking adoringly at Ivanhoe who's just staring straight ahead, away from her. Maybe Ivanhoe wasn't a total idiot after all.

Posted March 18, 2006 2:54 PM by Serge

There once was a lady who screamed:
"My books! They are floating downstream!"
A helpful lad cried, "I'll save them!"
He dived -- and came up with a fistful of bream.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:25 PM by Lizzy L

Lost best cookbook to
Sewer backup in basement.
Found new copy (used).
Nearly wept with joy,
Bought it immediately.
Attic keeps my book.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:28 PM by Amy Rye

Teresa,

That's really awful. I'm very sorry.

John Farrell,
I was just planning to move some books and tape down to our basement, as it's been dry since we moved here 4 years ago. On the othe hand, as experience testifies....

If you were going to put them on bookshelves, just don't put books on the bottom shelf. That's what we've done, even though we haven't had water in the basement since we treated the walls when we moved in 4 1/2 years ago.

Or, put the shelves on bricks or cinderblocks to increase their height from the floor.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:28 PM by Michelle K

If you have books in a basement, you will eventually need to know this: the best way I ever found to get basement-smell out of books is to put them in an attic for several years.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:35 PM by Scorpio

Faust's rejections made me jealous--mine are never that long. But now I really, really want someone to paint magnificently tacky cover art of my novel on black velvet. Really.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:47 PM by J Austin

Some more open thread weirdness:

Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Saw it on Eschaton.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:49 PM by Dan Lewis

I noticed a letter in the Guardian yesterday which mentioned the poet John Clare (1793-1864), who rarely provided punctuation. It ends: "three letters from the asylum in Northampton survive, in which he omits all the vowels."

Voluntary auto-disemvowelment, eh? Nasty.

Posted March 18, 2006 3:51 PM by NelC

I once dropped a library book into the bathtub.

Freezing was surprisingly effective in salvaging it.

Or I'll assume so, since the library didn't charge me to replace it.

Posted March 18, 2006 4:12 PM by Emily H.

When we moved into a new house in 2001/2, we put as many of the boxes of books as would fit into the original master bedroom of the house with the intent of declaring it the (primary) library. We did so, because the downstairs level of the house had flooded from a nearby creek rising several years before we bought the house. We thought that putting the primary library on the second floor was sensible.

Until a branch fell, poked a small hole in the roof, and during an unseasonably heavy rain the leakage caused the soaked-through sheetrock to split and fall in.

Posted March 18, 2006 4:13 PM by Steve

Oh dear,oh dear. (Runs in circles, flaps dodo wings, weeps.)

I can think of few things I would hate worse to have happen at my house right now.

Oh dear,oh dear.

Jane

Posted March 18, 2006 4:33 PM by jane

TNH - Argh. This is a second run in with a wet basement, albiet in new environs, no? Sorry to hear this and hope you get everything appropriately re-dessicated.

Dan Lewis - The authoritative source for Snakes on a Plane has to be via Jeffrey Rowland's always excellent Overcompensating.

I bought the T-shirt and you can too.

Posted March 18, 2006 5:40 PM by Larry Brennan

You have my sincere sympathy, the more so as we lived in a tiny, poorly ventilated house without air conditioning in Georgia for several years. The humidity was so high the books moldered on the shelves. Not in the basement--we didn't have one. In the main part of the house.

Posted March 18, 2006 5:56 PM by Lila

Wrecked books... Argh... Sorry that this happened to you two.

Posted March 18, 2006 6:01 PM by Serge

I've had good success with freezing paperbacks, even totally saturated ones. Freezing can warp the boards of hardcovers, though.

Posted March 18, 2006 6:03 PM by Robert L

Aauuuggh! How awful!

Books is preciouussssss!!!

Posted March 18, 2006 6:47 PM by Clifton Royston

So, the most recent post on scamming agents managed to prompt me to look at that list of things TNH's said about writing. I made my way back to the entry on fanfiction. I'd read it before (months ago, when I first discovered Making Light and was trawling the archives as an amazing source of interesting, insightful things to read) but I found it interesting to look over again. I'm in fandom, and I greatly appreciated the post and the discussion in the comments, then as now.

However, rereading bits of it, I'm reminded of the thing that nagged at me when I was reading it the first time. That is, that people in the discussion seemed to be using two different definitions of slash fanfiction. The two categories overlap, but they're definitely not the same. They are:

1) Fanfiction involving explicit sex scenes; and
2) Fanfiction involving a male/male relationship.

Slash is definitely defined as (2), there's no question about it. No one knows why. (Okay, I can relate the classic story of how it started with Kirk/Spock; but that doesn't explain why it's only used for male homosexual relationships. People write, say, Buffy/Angel as well. But it's not called slash.)

Slash can have graphic sex or not. So can femslash, the slightly less original term for the female equivalent. So can het, the term used for heterosexual relationships if you're moving in circles where that's not assumed to be the default.

There are certainly issues to be discussed in response to both homosexual relationships and explicit sex in fanfiction, but they're not the same issues, and calling the latter 'slash' only confuses the issue.

It's really an exercise in switching your mental conceptions back and forth to read through the comments to that thread.

On the one hand, you've got fandom people using the terminology with the ease they've become accustomed to - Ellen Fremedon says "there is a lot of badly written, poorly motivated slash *and hetfic*" - and on the other hand you've got non-fandom people, intelligent and interested but mistaken about what 'slash' means. Jonathan Vos Post explicitly mentions "purely homosexual slash and purely heterosexual slash," but the way others phrase their statements implies they have the same idea.

Nowhere that I can see was the definition clarified, which I find somewhat mind boggling. Hopefully someone who was a regular at the time can tell me that I just missed it?

[Yes, this post is very out of left field. But that's what open threads are for, right?]

Posted March 18, 2006 6:56 PM by Kylni

Flood? Oh, dear.

Did the Great Basement Shuffle last month at least make it better than it could have been?

Posted March 18, 2006 7:12 PM by elise

"Intelligent and interested" aren't the first two words that come to mind when I think of J******n v*s P**t.

Posted March 18, 2006 8:40 PM by James D. Macdonald

tears from the mountain
running through my basement walls
peaches for breakfast?

Posted March 18, 2006 8:48 PM by xeger

James D. Macdonald:

Heh. Alright - if it makes you feel better, I picked his quote because of the explicitness of his misunderstanding, rather than any particular esteem I have for him personally. (Which I wouldn't feel qualified to comment on, anyway.)

"Intelligent and interested" was a general statement meant to make it clear that I wasn't implying that everyone with an incorrect conception was just being obtuse or deliberately ignorant.

I'm still relatively new here, so I don't want to spark any conflict inadvertently...

Posted March 18, 2006 8:51 PM by Kylni

re: slash

I used to do miscellaneous work for an artist that made herself popular with really good portraits of various fantasy/SFactors (I think she had the US license for the BBC things like Robin of Sherwood). She also had a link to Star Trek and did some lovely artwork in that universe before the studio turned into assholes about fandom.

She is really nice, devoutly Catholic (so much so that I think, if she didn't have their art talent, they'd have become a nun.)

She got invited to a convention that didn't go into detail what the artist was going to in terms of panels, etc. They took her artwork, gave her her convention badge and the agreed per diem and gas money, and said, "we'll do set up for you, don't worry about it." She went up to her room, freshened up and went back down a couple of hours later to the convention area.

Her artwork had been set up on easels and free-standing displays in the doorway of the art room, you had to walk 'around' them to go into the room. The rest of the artwork on display was graphic K/S porn artwork. My friend says she spent the rest of the weekend in her room. They'd invited her to have 'nice' artwork to put across the door to keep other guests in the hotel from getting upset.

I wish I could go back in time (she didn't tell me about this until we'd kown each other for a while) and just smack the committee for scaring the hell out of her.

Posted March 18, 2006 9:02 PM by Paula Helm Murray

My understanding of the origin of "slash" refs fan fiction is that it simply referred to two existing characters having a sexual relationship in the tale. The name came from labeling the story as being "Character A/Character B" (sometimes names, sometimes initials if it was obvious who was meant). It didn't have to be explicit, and it could be het; I do believe that it did not apply to characters who actually had such a relationship (at least, not a significant one) in the source work, since part of the point of writing such a piece of fanfic was to present encounters that wouldn't have appeared in the source. Which helps to explain the association with non-het works, since many of those relationships weren't going to be allowed in the originals, however much they might have been suggested subtexutally.

The label was obviously useful as shorthand, briefly indicating content for purposes of location or avoidance, depending on one's taste. I can recall other indications of the, uh, relative humidity of the story.

The fact that the word is used by different people to mean different things isn't at all surprising, given that it emerged from casual usage rather than being specifically created as a label.

Virgule fiction: unofficial stories in which two characters who are primarily known for time in the sack find something else interesting to do.

Posted March 18, 2006 9:16 PM by John M. Ford

I had books get damp enough to mildew sitting on concrete slab a foot about the outside ground level. Apparent cause: the wall was an addition to the existing house, and didn't have a mud-sill equivalent (it probably stopped at the level of the slab) so water seeped under it when rain hit it. I didn't find out in time to freeze them, and ended up using bleach to kill the mildew. (I still have the books; they survived the treatment.)

My brother lost a box or two in his garage due to leaks. If you put them in a grarge, use shelves, and maybe put the boxes inside trash bags.

Posted March 18, 2006 9:28 PM by P J Evans

Paula Helm Murray:

Arg, that's horrible. Totally aside from the fact that slash and explicit content are things where you definitely should be told what you're getting into, to use her art in that way without telling her is just... callous and nasty. If you ever get your hands on a time machine, I'll join you in the smacking.

John M. Ford:

The thing is, I've been in online slash fandom for four or five years now, and I've never seen 'slash' used to mean anything but "based around a homosexual relationship, sexual or not, 'canon' or not."

It is, of course, possible that I've just managed to avoid everyone who uses it any other way; but it seems unlikely. It's also possible that that's just how the term has settled in recent years - it's been around since the '70's, so maybe it had slightly different connotations then. But still - four or five years seems enough time to consider it the current official usage.

People use '/' for writing pairings of any kind, of course, but the term 'slash' is different. (As a side note - I've also never seen anything used to distinguish between pairings which are present in the source work and those that aren't - the latter is more popular to write, of course, but there's not any notation difference I've ever seen.)

There is, I suppose, a possibility that I've been overly influenced by the anime fandom term, 'yaoi,' which has slightly different connotations. (Another fun thing anime fandom does occasionally is use '+' or 'x' instead of '/', with '+' implying affection/a relationship and 'x' implying actual sex. [This is particularly fun in Gundam Wing fandom, where character names are abbreviated as numbers - "You'll never look at multiplication tables the same way again!"])

Still, I'd be interested to see any example of usage of the term 'slash' (particularly in the past 5ish years) that differs from what I mentioned above.

Also: "Virgule fiction" made me snicker.

Posted March 18, 2006 9:47 PM by Kylni

Answers.com appears to have an interesting discussion of the topic in their slash fiction article. Lots of good info. In particular:

Due to increasing population and prevalence of slash on the internet in recent years, some have begun to use "slash" as a generic term for any erotic fan fiction, whether it describes heterosexual or homosexual relationships. This has sparked mild concern among writers of heterosexual fan fiction. This concern is sometimes based in bigotry and intolerance of homosexuality, and manifests itself as offense at the notion of being compared to homosexual subject matter. It has also caused concern for slash writers who believe, that while it can be erotic, slash is not by definition so, and believe that defining erotic fic alone as slash takes the word away from all ages suitable homoromantic fanfic, and may cause confusion, when the quite unambiguous words 'erotica', 'adult', and 'porn' already exist.

Posted March 18, 2006 9:56 PM by Kylni

Ack, wet books again!

I used to know a guy who told us one night that he had dropped a book in the water while he was in the bathtub. Then he said "It was Red Mars, so it was fine." It wasn't, of course, but it's a good joke.

Posted March 18, 2006 10:29 PM by Marilee

I have read all
the books
that were in
the freezer

and which
you were probably
trying
to salvage.

Forgive me:
they were deliquescent
so wet
and so old.

[xeger's mention of peaches is to blame for this]

Posted March 19, 2006 12:18 AM by candle

This is just to say
I have laundered
the books
that were in the basement

and which
you were probably
intending
to reread

Forgive me
they sat nearby
so dusty
and so absorbent

   --Mei Tagg

Posted March 19, 2006 12:34 AM by Andrew Willett

I somehow feel beaten to the punch, but,

This is just to say

I have freeze-dried
the books
that were
in the drywell

and which
you were probably
wetting
for compost

Forgive me
they were ancient
too wise
to feed mold.

Posted March 19, 2006 12:48 AM by Larry Brennan

I have set fire
to all your
bourgeois learning

which probably meant
something
to your false consciousness

Forgive me, but
Long live The Revolution!

Posted March 19, 2006 12:58 AM by bryan

furthermore

Please note:
I have done something
having the value of X
to some specific object Y

That you were probably
saving to do X to
yourself

apologies are in order
but
the logic was inescapable.

Posted March 19, 2006 1:01 AM by bryan

V for Vendetta was pretty good*, with a nice portion of awesome, modulo some clunky expository lumps. At least, if you don't mind your propaganda being driven home like a blunt corkscrew applied with a 5 lb sledge.

I hope someone's able to put out 'V' costumes this Halloween. For one thing, it might get the themes back in discussion right before the election. And might just get the Bushies to crap their pants if the costume sells particularly well.

Hell, it'd be really cool if lots of people wore 'V' costumes to the polls on election day. (They'd probably have to remove the mask in the polling place.)

- JH

* where 'pretty good' is defined on the Hollywood Movie scale, on which Star Wars 3 was a definite 'suck'. Or, to put it another way, I felt I got my $11 IMAX admission's worth.

Posted March 19, 2006 1:28 AM by jon H

jon - As long as the V for Vendetta has nothing to do with V the lizards ("She's a V!"), it has potential. Although needing to remove a mask is somewhat ominous.

Posted March 19, 2006 1:34 AM by Larry Brennan

Well, since we're talking movies:

I saw "Night Watch" this afternoon.

It is an adaption of the first novel in a Russian urban fantasy trilogy. It's set in current-day Moscow, which appears to be a mix of modern shopping areas and horribly shabby apartments.

The setup is really dippy. There's a sort of clandestine cold war going on between the forces of Dark and Light. Humans with special powers -- "others" -- must choose between good and evil when they realize they're different. Each side has a bureaucracy and cops to keep things in line. (In a nice twist, the forces of Light use the Moscow power company as their HQ.)

The "Night Watch" of the title are the forces-of-good cops; the movie begins in 1992, with a sting on a shady witch hired to do what amounts to a psychic abortion. As she is arrested, her client, Anton, is discovered to be an Other; a seer. Fast-forwarding to 2004, we see Anton working for Night Watch, tracking down a vampire trying to entrap a kid.

I'll leave the summary at that.

Overall, this was pretty good. Not particularly smart or original, but fun, with lots of action and a well-maintained sense of tension.

The subtitles deserve mention. They're not just words superimposed on the bottom of the screen. They shift around and get covered over by the characters and (for example) pulse red to indicate a vampire's psychic compulsion.

The second part of the trilogy is already out in Russian.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403358/

Posted March 19, 2006 1:36 AM by Stefan Jones

Larry Brennan: V for Vendetta is based on the Alan Moore comic book, and is not even remotely related to that television show about alien lizards.

Posted March 19, 2006 2:39 AM by David Goldfarb

I hope someone's able to put out 'V' costumes this Halloween.

It's far more traditional to put them out five days later.

Of course, times have changed. Last time I was there for the event, "penny for the Guy" was up around 20p. A couple of them were very fine Guys, however.

I do intend to see the film, but if it doesn't put across the significance of the outfit, and the mask, then that's a significant failure of the script.

I suppose it's too much to hope for it to contain a performance of "This Vicious Cabaret." I'd likely pay for a good video version. Not quite sure who should sing -- Nick Cave? Henry Rollins? Bowie? (Yes, I'm old.)

Posted March 19, 2006 3:23 AM by John M. Ford

JMF - If wanting to hear Henry Rollins makes you old, sign me up for that distinction, too.

Posted March 19, 2006 3:31 AM by Larry Brennan

>I do intend to see the film, but if it doesn't >put across the significance of the outfit, and >the mask, then that's a significant failure of >the script

Well, it starts 400 years ago with the original gunpowder plot and the execution of Guy Fawkes, so the connection is made with him. They don't mention the specific significance of the mask, but then I don't recall that Moore'd graphic novel did either. V for Vendetta started out in WARRIOR and was intended for a British audience, remember, so this was knowledge it was just assumed everyone would have. And for those non UK citizens who might be puzzled, the explanation is that Guy Fawkes has been burned in effigy on bonfires across the land on every November 5th since 1605, to the accompaniment of fireworks. Children make their own Guys out of old clothing an the like, but the face is almost always a printed cardboard mask, bought from a toy store. I wore one of these while playing as a child. I'm sure most British guys of my age did, too. Nowhere near as elaborate a mask as V wore, of course, but Guy masks have strong cultural resonance for us.

Oh, and I really enjoyed the movie, btw. I thought they did a creditable job of adapting the graphic novel for the screen. From the reviews, it seems like those who didn't object to the politics were nonetheless disappointed it wasn't more of an action movie or that it was too didactic. Well, the GN was also didactic and low on slam-bang genre action pieces. In this, the film was true to its source material.

Posted March 19, 2006 5:16 AM by Rob Hansen

Saw V for Vendetta. I've never read Moore's graphic novel so I don't know if one problem I had with it was also in the original.

It tells, but doesn't show much.

We're told that this is a very oppressive society. And yet, when they show the society, they undermine their own premise. Hell, when Stephen Fry's comedy-show actor takes Evey to his home's secret room, she sees a piece of art that had been banned for making fun of the Chancellor because it depicts the Chancellor wearing the same hairstyle as Queen Elizabeth II. And yet, when Fry uses his TV show to run a Benny-Hill-like skit that ends with cops shooting the 'Chancellor' to death, I thought "OhmyGod, he's committing suicide", but all he expects is that he'll be fined. Guess what, that's not what happens to him after that.

Posted March 19, 2006 8:30 AM by Serge

There's an interview with Alan Moore from Sep 2005 online in two parts (part of "MILE HIGH COMICS presents THE BEAT at COMICON.com") in which he talks a fair bit about the history of the 'book' and film of V for Vendetta, as well as other things. He's not altogether happy with it. He also remarks that in the last few years he hasn't seen Guy Fawkes masks for sale, so that reference may be more obscure now to young'uns.

I hope the damp-book news isn't too bad. Sometimes it's just one thing after another.

Posted March 19, 2006 8:46 AM by Mez

I have learned with some sadness
no air conditioning
makes moldy summer basements

leaving for a hot month trip
returning sorrow
blue fuzz everywhere on books

-r.
p.s.
do not even get me to
start on the presence:
spring termites in the garage

never again boxes
on concrete floors damp
or not Paper falls to doom

Posted March 19, 2006 9:20 AM by rhandir

oops an error mine
early morning miscounting
dyslexic haiku

that was too easy
for a spring day, post again
and again with joy

-r.

Posted March 19, 2006 9:23 AM by rhandir

People who write and read fanfic generally use "slash" to mean non-canonical same-sex pairings, usually male-male (hence, as pointed out, "femme slash").

I don't remember if the definitional issue came up in that post, in the Mary Sue post, or elsewhere, but it is a constant presence in non-fanfic-writing-circles and I'm sure I remember having it here sometime. (Sorry--computer being stupid--will look for references later if someone wants.)

Posted March 19, 2006 9:24 AM by Kate Nepveu

Paula - your time machine:

Ori, A. 2005. A class of time-machine solutions with a compact vacuum core. Physical Review Letters 95(July 8):021101. Abstract available at http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v95/e021101.

Posted March 19, 2006 10:25 AM by Dawno

Answering a question from further up the thread:

Given that this is an open thread, perhaps I'll be forgiven a radical change of topic to ask the following question:

Aside from this one, what are the best SF blogs?

Just off the top of my head, here are four that I read occasionally:

Emerald City Weblog: http://www.emcit.com/wordpress/
The Mumpsimus: http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/
Bowing to the Future: http://www.louanders.com/blog.html
Notes from Coode Street: http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/

I haven't made actual links, since that would make this look too much like comment spam for my taste, but you can cut and paste the URLs if you want to check them out. (They might be linked on the main page as well.)

Posted March 19, 2006 10:39 AM by Wesley

Just saw V for Vendetta last night, and I've been a little... what is the word... tilted since then.

Part of me was thinking, "wow, f-ing amazing." Another part is having trouble with some of the things some characters did to other characters and thinking "that's crap" (to avoid any spoilers, that's about as specific as I can get). and part of me is just walking around, feeling a bit off kilter, thinking "huh?"

Anyone else have that experience? Just curious.

Right now, I'd rate it worth the price of a full-evening ticket. but part of me is wondering if it shouldn't be "wait till its free on HBO"

Posted March 19, 2006 10:57 AM by Greg London

John M. Ford writes: "It's far more traditional to put them out five days later."

In Britain, yes. In the US, it'd be a better fit for Halloween - I can't imagine Guy Fawkes' day taking off in the US because of a single movie.

Posted March 19, 2006 12:42 PM by Jon H

Serge: my 9th-grade English teacher's summary was that Rebecca was much too interesting a character to be left with the title drip; Rowena was as much as Ivanhoe deserved (and vice versa). I don't think this was Scott's intention; he might have been doing his version of Age of Innocence, or of the modern trope where the shady characters are more enticing.

JMF: the first several references I saw to "slash" were \all/ "K/S", which appears to have fascinated some female Trekkies from way back. If you have countering citations, NESFA would really like to have them, as it's been asked to provide support for the OED's additions of fannish and stfnal terms.

Stephan: A good summary, except that IIRC the witch was caught on a fair cop, not a sting (although we're never told how Andrey found her). Note that people should be wary of sitting too close to the screen, and maybe bring earplugs; I sat in my usual middling position and left with a headache from the flashy cuts and the sound system run at 11. I'm interested in seeing what happens with the situation this part ended with (unlike my reaction to many trilogies these days...), and wonder if we'll ever get an answer to the vampires' question.

Posted March 19, 2006 1:26 PM by CHip

CHip... So, Ivanhoe in the book was as much a drip as Robert Taylor's version was? I almost wrote that maybe then his way of playing Ivanhoe wasn't all his fault, but I think that his acting abilities have something to do with it. I saw him in Knights of the Round Table on TCM last weekend and it was, to put it mildly, a dreadful bore. He did have some good lines at the very beginning when his fellow knights, a bit hungry, come to an abandonned farm and go after the last remaining chicken, at which he exclaims "Three men against one hen...Chivalry, hide thy face." It quickly goes downhill after that. At least, Ivanhoe had Elizabeth Taylor and George Saunders to save it.

Posted March 19, 2006 1:50 PM by Serge

The theater where I saw "V" showed a coming attraction I had hopedhopedhoped they'd show. The moment it played the familiar music's first notes, my hopes were fulfilled. After it was over and after I had stopped squeezing my wife's hand hard, she pointed out something that I hadn't realized because I was too busy taking it all in: the look of Superman Returns appears strongly influenced by the art of Alex Ross.

Posted March 19, 2006 2:09 PM by Serge

Just realized while reading the William Carlos Williams remixes upthread that the original can be sung to the tune of this song, Dark as a Dungeon -- which the internet tells me is by Merle Haggard, although the version I know is Johnny Cash.

I'll include all the lyrics, since I didn't know the song by its title. Plus some of them are sadly evocative of the basement book predicament...

Come and listen you fellows, so young and so fine,
And seek not your fortune in the dark, dreary mines.
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul,
'Till the stream of your blood is as black as the coal.
CHORUS:
It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew,
Where danger is double and pleasures are few,
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine.
It's a-many a man I have seen in my day,
Who lived just to labor his whole life away.
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine,
A man will have lust for the lure of the mines.

I hope when I'm gone and the ages shall roll,
My body will blacken and turn into coal.
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home,
And pity the miner a-diggin' my bones.

Posted March 19, 2006 2:53 PM by Anna

er, Merle Travis, not Merle Haggard.

Posted March 19, 2006 2:57 PM by Anne

Re: Slash

Fandom and fan fiction, almost exclusively, tend to use "slash" as a label for fiction about homosexual relationships--whether explicit or implicit in description. Yes, there is such a thing as "G-rated" slash nowadays. Once in a while, you'll come across someone in fandom using "slash" as label for explicit sexual relationships: generally, those people are new to fandom OR very against adult (explicitly sexual) fiction of all forms and the usage is a mistake based on limited exposure. (In most cases I've seen, they're looking for a simple, singular term to define everything they don't like, which is both het and homosexual explicit fiction, and decide that the definition of slash == everything I don't like; they run with it for a while, until they throw a fit at someone for presuming that some explicit het fiction is "acceptable" and then it becomes even more amusing.)

In academia, the currently accepted fannish definition of "slash" has been used since at least the late 1980s.

From what I've seen and heard from others, in the early 1970s "slash" could be used for ANY non-canon romantic relationship. But the overwhelming amount of same-sex non-canon relationship fiction (partly due to the lack of good female characters in the TV shows whose fandoms popularized fan fiction) narrowed the definition and it was generally accepted to apply only to same-sex, non-canon relationships by the end of the 1970s/beginning of the 1980s.

I'd say that Internet fandom has widened the definition slightly again: making non-explicit fiction with same-sex relationships more firmly part of the "slash" label, and making CANON same-sex relationships part of the "slash" label.

Posted March 19, 2006 4:13 PM by hp

Re: Basement flooding

Oh, how awful. Back when I was a tween, my parents had a house that was half full-height basement, half crawl. The house itself was a split level (tri-level) with the middle level above the full-height basement, and the crawl beneath the lower living level. The crawl's floor was about three feet lower than the basement's flood. The house was older (~30 years) and the crawl had--as far as we knew--always been dry, and had been set up as storage (lots of built-in shelves) by a previous owner.

What we didn't know was that the crawl was ALSO intended for water overflow if the sump pump failed (it was actually quite a intelligent design: it kept the finished, full-height section of the basement from flooding for hours after pump failure; it could hold A LOT of water.)

While the library was under construction, the boxes of paperback books were stored on one of the shelves in the crawl (about 2 feet off the floor). The sump pump failed during one horrid thunderstorm.

Posted March 19, 2006 4:23 PM by hp

than the basement's flood

Ah, instead: than the basement's floor.

Posted March 19, 2006 4:24 PM by hp

Tomorrow at 3pmPST on TCM...

Adventure in Iraq (1943)
Americans are captured by Arabs working for the Nazis.
Paul Cavanagh, John Loder, Ruth Ford. D: Ross Lederman. BW-65m

Posted March 19, 2006 4:37 PM by Serge

It's been a long time since I've bothered wtaching Crossing Jordan. I'll probably take a look tonight because Miguel Ferrer, one of the cast members, is directing the episode. Oh, and his buddy Bill Mumy is a guest star. Here's an excerpt from TV-Guide's mini-interview...

Bill Mumy plays in a band with you. Does he ever settle conflicts by threatening to unleash the Robot or send someone into the cornfield?

It's the cornfield that really gets everybody! Nobody buys the Robot anymore.

Posted March 19, 2006 4:41 PM by Serge

(Blinks).

HP, if I understand you right, you lived in a house that would flood if a pump failed?

I mean, it actually needed a pump running all the time to keep from flooding?

Is this practice common where you come from? Because from where I'm standing it sounds just totally bizarre. I mean, I don't understand why anyone would build a house like that.

Posted March 19, 2006 4:52 PM by Charlie Stross

Sump pumps do not as a general rule run all the time, just when there is a lot of rain, or other source of water.

Posted March 19, 2006 5:29 PM by Dan Blum

I live in a swamp, er, a gravel pit, er, Michigan. Full basements are de riguer, since this is the midwest, not the backwards south. However, due to the local geography, and lax building codes, it is common to hear the sump pump kick on at 3 minute intervals during periods of rain or melting snow. Otherwise; 1d6 hour intervals.

-r.

Posted March 19, 2006 5:50 PM by rhandir

please note that I was attempting to gently tease both midwesterners and southerners in the previous post. No actual prejudice was intended.

-r.

Posted March 19, 2006 7:52 PM by rhandir

Charlie Stross expresses incredulity: you lived in a house that would flood if a pump failed?

I'm reminded of the mention in Gangs of New York? or maybe in Luc Sante's Low Life, of NYC apartments that would flood twice a day, when the tide came in.

Come to think of it, that's starting to sound like our hosts' apartments.

Posted March 19, 2006 8:10 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Last year there were apartments - aboveground - in the complex where I was living that flooded one day when it rained multiple inches and the (very dim) management didn't lower the pool level as various agencies had advised. Following which the management expected the tenants to air the places out and get rid of the mildew (some of the apts had no cross-ventilation without the unscreened door open).

Posted March 19, 2006 9:11 PM by P J Evans

For those who haven't heard, David Feintuch died on Friday night, at age of 61 years old.

Michael Burstein blogged the details

Posted March 19, 2006 9:14 PM by Lis Riba

Charlie Stross: HP, if I understand you right, you lived in a house that would flood if a pump failed?

I mean, it actually needed a pump running all the time to keep from flooding?

Is this practice common where you come from? Because from where I'm standing it sounds just totally bizarre. I mean, I don't understand why anyone would build a house like that.

I will make the connection no one has yet made--major cities have needed pumps, or barriers, or both to protect them from flooding. Their books got wet, too.

Posted March 19, 2006 10:09 PM by Brenda Kalt

(Blinks).

HP, if I understand you right, you lived in a house that would flood if a pump failed?

I mean, it actually needed a pump running all the time to keep from flooding?

Is this practice common where you come from? Because from where I'm standing it sounds just totally bizarre. I mean, I don't understand why anyone would build a house like that.

The basement would flood if the sump pump wasn't running during heavy storms. This is pretty common throughout the upper midwest in the United States (Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan).

How it's set up is that the foundation of the house has drainage tiles which collect the rainwater that gathers around the foundation. The drainage tiles direct the rainwater into the sump pit, which is then drained by the sump pump, either into the far reaches of the yard--or, if you live in a nice town that allows you to do it, directly into the municipal storm drain system. If the pump fails, the pit can overflow.

At our former house, the sump pump running was pretty much a every half hour occurrence during light rain; a every five minute occurrence during heavy storms. The current house does have a pit and a pump. We make sure that the pump continues working, just in case, by draining the basement aquariums into it. We've never had it run during a storm, but we got really lucky with the foundation on this house.

Throughout much of the midwest, a basement is basically a concrete bowl set in clay. (Or, a concrete bowl set in swampy areas.) You have to be able to move the water away from the foundation, or the foundation is eventually going to become the place of least resistance. Houses up here are expected to have basements--we're within 50 miles of a pretty major tornado alley.

(In fact, there's a new subdivision going up a few miles from us, and we were interested because they were selling "estate-sized" lots--lots of 1/2 to 1 acre. But it's right on top of a damn swamp--not just swampy ground but a REAL swamp at the headwaters of a creek, and the town is requiring *all* the homes to be built with full basements. Knowing the massive problems homes already in that area are having with basement water, that's where I'd build on a slab, but they're not being allowed to.)

Posted March 19, 2006 10:11 PM by hp

Charlie says: HP, if I understand you right, you lived in a house that would flood if a pump failed?
I mean, it actually needed a pump running all the time to keep from flooding?
Is this practice common where you come from? Because from where I'm standing it sounds just totally bizarre. I mean, I don't understand why anyone would build a house like that.

Only the part below ground level floods. :)

You gotta build somewhere, and if you don't dig a full foundation (below the frost line), the house will crack apart in the spring as the ground heaves (from thawing) under the slab. The water table here (MI/IN/OH/IL) is usually quite high. (e.g.: They dug a 6' deep hole for the foundation at my folks' house. When they came back the next day, there was 35" of water in the hole. Their sump pump runs every hour, every day, all year.) You have to keep the water out of the basement somehow, and you do it with a sump pump. Many counties require sump pumps for all houses, even those well above the water table.

We used to live along a ravine with a creek at the bottom, and the sump pump ran from the time the snow started to melt until the ground froze again in the fall, as the water ran downhill toward the creek. One melt season (of course, it was the one with 250" of snow, not the season with 180") the pump failed, and we got a 12" deep stream of water running through the basement (fortunately, no books were involved).

(My condolences on the soaked books.)

Posted March 19, 2006 10:54 PM by JennR

The corner of Minneapolis where I live (just south of downtown) used to be ponds. In the early 1900s, almost all of these were drained by land developers (one remained, in Loring Park, though it's now fully artificial). The buildings here have half-depth basements -- there's a flight up to the "ground floor."

My building is still in a low spot -- you can see the street climb both ways -- and during extremely heavy rain the basement will flood, to eye level. This happened once just before I moved in -- the high-water mark was still on the wall -- and has occurred three or four more times in the eighteen years since. The last time, we tried sandbagging the doorway, which I think helped a little.

I live on the third floor, so this really doesn't affect me -- we don't even lose power -- but there's a basement apartment, which is usually occupied, and I wonder what the owners tell prospective tenants.

And, too, during a very heavy storm, some friends parked in front of the building, and though our basement didn't flood, their car did, and wasn't recoverable, though it was insured.

Posted March 19, 2006 11:14 PM by John M. Ford

Charlie, in KC, it depends where you live. In our first real house, the neighborhood had a high water table and a shallow storm sewer system. Having a sump pump that clicked on when the tile drainage system filled up the hole was vital. We didn't know this and we had a power outage because of an ice storm. We lost some of the bottom self row of books, plus some boxes of comics that were on the floor.

Our current house is a 1912 job, we don't keep anything vital directly on the floor in the basement because we have a couple of trickles that always come in when it rains hard. BUT we don't have a sump because the general neighborhood water level is below our foundation. Plus the storm sewers here are at about 19 foot down.

Pallets are your friend in a slightly wet basement (like ours now). They also kept everything down there above the savage flood when we had the house to main sewer line fail a couple years ago (eeuw.....)

Posted March 19, 2006 11:23 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Speaking of water damage, you may have heard on the news that there was a breached dam on Kauai this past week; here's an article about it, with a timeline.

More stories can be found at the Star-Bulletin and at the Advertiser, if you're interested.

There are seven people missing and/or confirmed dead.

Besides that heartbreak, this has caused all manner of consternation about the number of (mostly earthen) dams there are on various islands (over 60 on Kauai, and a dozen or so on Oahu), whose responsibility it is to ensure they're properly maintained, and the effect of more than a week of continuous rain we've had out here.

Posted March 20, 2006 1:00 AM by Linkmeister

Is it Anna or Anne or is that just a coincidence and it's two people, one correcting the other?

Anyway, Johnny Cash did cover "Dark as a Dungeon," as did a bunch of other people. Merle Travis recorded "Folk Songs From the Hills," a bunch of songs for kids about growing up in the mountains, and that song, believe it or not, was on the record which I may still have somewhere. "Sixteen Tons" was on the record, too, and "Don't You Hear That Whistle Blow?" and "I am a Pilgrim," and "Nine Pound Hammer." None of the internet sites mention the collection being for kids, but he addressed kids directly in the introductions to the songs.

Something I should have known but didn't was that the FBI warned radio stations not to play "Sixteen Tons" because it was too Red and so was Merle Travis, who wasn't, but he had some class consciousness, which was enough.

I have tried to put the nndb link in this bit three times and it always disappear when I preview it. Spooky. I guess yoall will have to do your own googling.

Posted March 20, 2006 1:37 AM by Lucy Kemnitzer

See those typoes at the end? They were not there before I submitted. Stuff is getting dropped out. I wonder why.

Posted March 20, 2006 2:02 AM by Lucy Kemnitzer

I'd find it interesting if Guy Fawkes had dropped out of the American collective consciousness, because of course the US is where the transition from 'guy' meaning 'effigy of Guy Fawkes' to 'guy' being a synonym for 'male person' happened.

From e.g etymonline.com:

guy (2)
"fellow," 1847, originally Amer.Eng.; earlier (1836) "grotesquely or poorly dressed person," originally (1806) "effigy of Guy Fawkes," leader of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up British king and Parliament (Nov. 5, 1605), paraded through the streets by children on the anniversary of the conspiracy. The male proper name is from Fr., related to It. Guido, lit. "leader," of Gmc. origin (see guide).

(I had a book flood when the attic cold water tank overflowed due to a faulty washer. Of course it never overflowed while I was in the house because I was using cold water; so it happened when I was out, and saturated a whole bookshelf. I still wince thinking of it.)

Posted March 20, 2006 7:58 AM by Nix

I wonder how many good songs are ignored because people cannot stand the singer.

For example, "oops, I did it again" is a reasonably good song, when not done by Britney Spears. Richard Thompson did a cover of it for his "One Thousand Years of Popular Music" CD which was excellent.

Posted March 20, 2006 9:55 AM by Patrick Anderson

Greg London: I've not seen V as a movie yet, but I felt a lot off kilter for a day or so after reading the graphic novel. I attributed it to letting my brain process it all.

I need to see this movie...soon.

Posted March 20, 2006 10:04 AM by Patrick Anderson

Ooo! Has anyone here seen any more information about Gedo Senki, as noted on the Hayao Miyazaki website (via). Also there's an translated interview and other related stuff, mostly still in Japanese, at a fan site rose-rote.hp.infoseek.co.jp/miya/gedo. This version was mentioned briefly in comments here back in January as 'rumoured'. With luck it may eventually arrive in Australia.

Hmm. I'm reminded by some nearby comments there that I never got my timelines and other info sorted out into a comment to point out that Pre-Cambrian English would very much precede any dinosaurs or even crabs, and was unlikely to have included "RAAAAAAAAWWWR!!! (hiss)" due to its submarine nature and the style of organisms present.

Posted March 20, 2006 10:46 AM by Epacris

I'm working on a story in which one of the main characters is an EMT or paramedic. I've got some questions about emergency medical procedure; I've been able to find out some of what I need to know from the online sources I've checked (starting with Wikipedia articles on Paramedic and Emergency Medical Services), but not all.

What kind and amount of education and training do EMTs and paramedics get relative to other medical professionals? The preliminary web searches I've done suggest that courses in various places can be anywhere from 8 months to 2 years for a full paramedic, 1 month to 8 months for EMT-Basic; and not surprisingly they generally include internships. What do EMTs and paramedics typically earn relative to other medical professions?

Do emergency response workers typically work 8 or 12 hour shifts? I imagine this varies from one place to another and if I set this in a specific real city I'll need to do local research; but if I'm making up a setting, what is most typical?

What is the procedure to be followed when an accident victim dies in an ambulance en route to the hospital? Google searches on phrases like "dies en route" and "dies on the way" + hospital don't turn up anything definitive. Does this vary from one state or locality to another?

If an EMT or paramedic passes out for a couple of minutes (near the end of a long, busy shift), but their vital signs are pretty normal (except maybe slightly low blood sugar) and an E.R. physician can't find anything obviously wrong with them, are they likely to get a referral to one or more specialists? (An endochronologist? A neurologist?) Would they be given medical leave for a few days until they can be examined by a specialist? I suspect they would be told not to drive for several days, at a minimum.

How long does the eardrum typically require to heal after being neatly punctured? If the EMT were found to be deaf in one ear when examined, would that change the answer to the previous question?

And, finally:

What is the better past tense of "sleepwalk"? "Sleptwalked" or "sleepwalked"? Ghit counts suggest "sleepwalked" is more popular (50K+ Ghits), anyway, but my native speaker intuition wants to say "sleptwalked", which with 607 Ghits is maybe acceptable. (This is relative to 766K Ghits for the base form "sleepwalk", in which Google apparently includes inflected and derived forms like "sleepwalking".)

Posted March 20, 2006 1:09 PM by Jim Henry

Jim

I got certified as an EMT way back in another life. The training was something like one very long night a week for 6 months or so. Towards the end, we got to go out into a salvage yard and run the Jaws Of Life for a night, prying open cars. (it wouldn't be our usual job, the fire department generally does that, but it was cool.) I ended up leaving the state soon after getting certified because I was changing jobs (ah, I still think wistfully of the heady days of contract engineering. sigh.) Since I didn't go on any calls, I felt that reimbursing the squad that paid for my training was the right thing to do. I was planning on serving on a small-town rescue squad that was an all-volunteer force, so no one got paid any money. People would be "on call" for a day or half a day or something, and would do their normal thing but carry a pager. might get one call every couple of days, so with rotating volunteers, you wouldn't get interrupted too often, and could hold a full time job.

EMT's can't do intravenous stuff. Nothing with needles, except, maybe an epinepherine pen. You need a paramedic for IV's. My memory says that a lot fo the training was splints, spine boards, neck braces, and how to apply all of them to someone who is in a car, upside down, and you can't get the door open yet. But my memory has been wrong before.

speaking of equipment, the new defibrulators are being used by EMT's, they used to require a paramedic. And though the training required you to get someone's bloodpressure with a stethascope (at least, way back in the day they did), everyone in the field used the automatic cuffs, which were a lot nicer because they would work even if you were bouncing down a noisy highway.

I looked at getting on an squad in my current residence (major metropolitan city). But the pay was abysmal compared to being an engineer, they only hired people full time, didn't want part time volunteers, and they had something like a two year waitlist just to do the training and get certified, so I decided to pass.

Beyond that, anything I tell you would be stuff I read about rather than had any direct experience in. Hope that helps a bit.

Posted March 20, 2006 1:51 PM by Greg London

I saw V this weekend (twice), and I loved and loved it. I have one or two questions that might be answered by the comic, but other than that, I thought it was great - marred only by Natalie Portman's crummy approximation of an accent.

The only review I can really give is that if you like the kind of movies I like, you'll also enjoy it. My tastes run toward swashbuckling melodramatic epics (Gladiator, SW, Indiana Jones), bonnet movies (Pride & Prejudice) and of course, upper-middle-brow SF (Serenity, LOTR, V for Vendetta, Nightwatch). If a preview has one or more shots of Our Hero flying away from a ball of flame, I'll skip it. (the MI:3 trailer had no fewer than three of these shots.)

Yes, there are plot holes (that one Serge mentions with Stephen Fry), but I find V interesting because he's very much an almost-villain, rather than an anti-hero. While parts of him definitely fit into that charming anti-hero role, he does some things that are truly reprehensible (and I'm not even talking about the blowing historical buildings up).

I saw the film twice and felt differently about the characters each time I saw it. I suspect next time I see it, I'll change my mind again.

Posted March 20, 2006 1:57 PM by nerdycellist

"I can't imagine Guy Fawkes' day taking off in the US because of a single movie."

You say. Stop you till they rechristen it "Anti-Terrorist Day".

Jim Henry: ah, let me think: The Earworms From Mars, right?
Not being a paramedic myself yet, I can only recommend randomreality.blogware.com/blog, the online diary of a London paramedic. But unexplained unconsciousness would be a bit worrying if bp and blood sugar were normal - depending on the other symptoms and length of unconsciousness, it might be a sign of epilepsy or something else neurological.

I would say "sleepwalked". You don't say "sleepingwalking" instead of "sleepwalking".

Incidentally, the definitive book on the forensic aspects of sleep is by Alexander McCall Smith, better known for the Precious Ramotswe detective stories. He has plenty to say on sleepwalking, including murders and other crimes committed while doing it, and the criminality thereof.

Posted March 20, 2006 2:00 PM by ajay

The idea of an "endochronologist" is pretty swell, from a science-fictional standpoint -- someone who looks after your internal time. Would be applicable to time travelers and people who do a lot of relativistic spaceflight, though in the latter case the patient would probably outlive a whole series of doctors.

Re punctured tympanic membranes: the Merck notes that in cases where the eardrum is left to close on its own, if it hasn't done so within two months, it's time to consider surgical repair.

Posted March 20, 2006 2:17 PM by John M. Ford

he does some things that are truly reprehensible

(avoiding spoilers as best as possible)

So, I'm pretty sure I know which thing you thought were reprehensible. And I keep flipping between, yeah, reprehensible, to well, I'm not sure. If the recipient of an act doesn't consider the act reprehensible, then how exactly can I? If they consider the act to be actually a good thing, then how can I condemn it? Granted extreme risks were taken that could have turned out extremely badly and resulted in something clearly reprehensible, but this is fiction and it gets to turn out exactly the way the writers want it to turn out, so its a weird limbo for me: in the fictional world of the story, fine, good job. In teh real world it would be an unacceptable risk.

Then there's the "life-coach" part of me that just thinks, it was reprehensible, and that there are much better ways to achieve the same result without any of the risk, and it was just poorly written. But then there are Zen Koans that achieve enlightenment through what is essentially similar means only on a much smaller scale. So, what do I know....

I think that the movie was first and foremost intended to make you feel uncomfortable, because comfort leads to indifference and together they produce the sorts of governments that you see in the V for Vendetta world. (and in certain governments in the real world that shall remain nameless) This intent at discomfort seemed almost directly spoken in V's recorded monologue played over the TV, blaming the people of britain. And if a certain reprehensible act made the viewer feel that same discomfort, then it was pure genius in writing. Whether it was intended that way, I'm not sure...

Posted March 20, 2006 2:22 PM by Greg London

Serge: Ivanhoe is actually the only Walter Scott novel I've read. Unfortunately, I read it fifteen years ago, so my memories of it are minimal. I do remember that I found it a bit tedious, and that the anti-Semitism was disturbing -- Scott was clearly down on people who persecuted Jews, but Rebecca's father was, as I recall, a fairly blatant stereotype in the Shylock mold. Rowena was pretty much a non-entity: a virtuous, dull wallflower. Rebecca was also terribly virtuous, but more interesting; at the very least, she got to demonstrate some intelligence and a lot of courage. Elements of romance between Ivanhoe and Rebecca were either barely hinted at or pretty much nonexistent.

I've never seen the Robert Taylor version you mention, but I had previously seen a TV movie version (from 1982) with Anthony Andrews and Olivia Hussey (with, I think, Sam Neil and James Mason as well). As in your Robert Taylor version, Ivanhoe comes off as a bit of a fool for ending up with Rowena when Rebecca was far more interesting (the fact that I had a bit of a thing for Oliva Hussey had, of course, no bearing on this artistic judgment whatsoever). They did at least kiss in that version.

Having said that, I should mention that there was a superb miniseries done about nine years back, in which a combination of judicious rewriting and inspired casting (someone named Victoria Smurfit) remade Rowena into a feisty, spirited, living character, enough so that you could understand Ivanhoe being torn between her and Rebecca. Actually, all the casting was excellent: Ciaran Hinds as Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Christopher Lee as the Evil Templar (Lucas de Beaumanoir), even Sian Phillips (who played Livia in I, Claudius) in a wonderful cameo as Eleanor of Acquitaine. The length also allowed most or all of Scott's various subplots to unfold and several secondary characters (particularly Prince John) to become interesting. Highly recommended.

Posted March 20, 2006 2:25 PM by Peter Erwin

Greg -

I do believe we're referring to the same thing here. I'm pretty sure the screenwriter/director intended to make that aspect uncomfortable. Beyond character motivations which when analysed, make complete sense - but explain rather than fully justify - I think the question is meant to be a variation on "do the ends justify the means?" both in reference to this individual reprehensible act, and also every other act in the film.

While the overall "message" of the film can be summed up as the rather simplistic and cliche "facism is bad", it's the little acts (the dominoes) that I'm going to be turning over in my mind for the rest of the week.

Addressing two previous comments - yes, they have made the Guy Fawkes connection rather explicit, specifically for the American audience I wager, and disappointingly, they've excised the Vicious Cabaret.

Also annoyed that the LA Times has reported that the film is #1, on accounta all those precious Male viewers who have now Saved The Cinema by deigning to buy a ticket. According to the article, 60% of the audience was male, which is less than an overwhelming majority if you ask me, though I'm no expert in statistics. Never mind that my friend (also a female) and I saw the movie twice in the theatre. Maybe we're just male and don't know it.

Posted March 20, 2006 3:04 PM by nerdycellist

My wife and I saw V together. (it was my turn to pick.) I didn't think she'd like it at all (then again, I wasn't sure I'd like it either.) In the end, she said she loved it. I am guessing that Evey's character helped her get into the movie. I also think that Valerie's Letter and her story was key to appealing to women viewers.

Posted March 20, 2006 3:22 PM by Greg London

What I'd call a reprehensible act on the part of V is how, after blowing up London's Old Bailey, he takes over the control room of a TV station to broadcast his revolutionary message then, to facilitate his own escape, forces some poor front-desk guy to go out wearing his mask and costume, with the predictable result that the cops shoot the old man to death. Yes, sure, V is fighting against an oppressive society and so must resort to desperate measures. That's when I ask "Says who?" People who aren't going to join the omelette against their will, that's who.

(By the way, was anybody else amused by John Hurt playing the evil Chancellor after playing the main character of 1984?)

I still think that Stephen Fry's character is the best and saddest in the whole bunch.

Posted March 20, 2006 4:13 PM by Serge

Having read the novelization but not the graphic novel - what V is doing is getting even with the people who made him what he is. Nice, no; he does whatever he wants to get the results he wants. (There was a throwaway line in the book, in the doctor's journal from Larkhill, about V's eyes. It makes things more interesting if it's kept in mind.)

Posted March 20, 2006 4:22 PM by P J Evans

Wasn't the tv guy in the comic working in a government propaganda studio?

Posted March 20, 2006 4:22 PM by bryan

Peter Erwin... Thanks for the stuff about Ivanhoe. I did see those other two mini-series adaptations your mentionned, but I wasn't sure anybody else remembered them. Sian Phillips was great as Eleanor of Aquitaine, but she's great in everything she does, even in something as small as George Smiley's wife in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And it did finally give Rowena some personality. Unfortunately Steve Waddington as Ivanhoe was something of a bore. I think I prefer the 1982 adaptation although Anthony Edwards as Ivanhoe is rather icky. And it seems like his character spends half the darn story lying on his back as he recovers from the first joust's wounds. But this version indeed had Sam Neill as Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and Neill almost manages to make you feel sorry for the obsessive bastard. And James Mason was absolutely great as Isaac of York,

Posted March 20, 2006 4:22 PM by Serge

Yes, bryan, the old man was working for the propaganda bureau, but he was shown being kind to Evey, and he was trying to survive in a world not of his own choosing. That didn't make him deserving of dying like that.

Posted March 20, 2006 4:25 PM by Serge

forces some poor front-desk guy to go out wearing his mask and costume, with the predictable result that the cops shoot the old man to death

Wasn't the tv guy in the comic working in a government propaganda studio?

he was shown being kind to Evey, and he was trying to survive in a world not of his own choosing. That didn't make him deserving of dying like that.

I think V's prerecorded message to the masses says that he blames the people in part for going along and getting swept up in the hysteria. Which sounded to me like V wouldn't buy the shtick that the old man was "in a world not of his choosing". Which means V is consistent in his thinking.

And I'd have to say there's a difference between working for the government in their propaganda office and not opposing the government while you work in a factory or something.

"The poor shlep was just following orders" style excuse sort of falls flat.

Posted March 20, 2006 4:39 PM by Greg London

V was indeed consistent in his thinking, Greg. As for the old man who was just following orders... I'm NOT going there.

Posted March 20, 2006 4:42 PM by Serge

Hmmm... While Greg and I might be in agreement, Serge and I are not thinking of the same Reprehensible Act, so I am going to have to resort to ROT13:

Gung jr ner gnyxvat nobhg gjb ragveryl frcrengr Ercerurafvoyr Npgf fhccbegf zl gurbel gung I vf yrff n gbegherq nagv-ureb guna n flzcngurgvp Ivyynva. Vg'f zl bcvavba gung ur zrnag sbe rirelbar va gur znfxf gb rzretr ng gur fnzr gvzr, naq gurersber nibvq univat whfg gur bar bs gurz fubg. Vg vf, ubjrire, cerggl nzovthbhf. Gur obzo irfg ur jrnef gb tnva npprff gb gur argjbex vf nabgure ovg bs nzovthvgl - V pna'g gryy vs vg jnf npghnyyl n obzo, be whfg n pyrire pbhagresrvg, fvapr uvf oybjvat uvzfrys nybat jvgu gur GI fgngvba xvaq bs qrsrngf uvf checbfr bs trggvat gur jbeq bhg - gung V guvax V zvtug cersre abg gb xabj sbe fher. Gur ovg bs rkcynangvba - juvpu V'z abg fnlvat whfgvsvrf nal bs I'f npgvbaf - vf urneq va gur fprar jura ur gevrf gb znxr rkphfrf gb Rirl: "Gurl gerngrq zr zbafgebhfyl!" gb juvpu fur ercyvrf dhvgr znggre-bs-snpgyl "Naq gurl znqr lbh n zbafgre." Naq urer V unir gb tvir cebcf gb Angnyvr Cbegzna'f qryvirel, juvpu xrcg gur erfcbafr sebz orvat n syvc erwbvaqre, naq zber n fvzcyr fgngrzrag bs snpg.

Zl qrfvtangrq Ercerurafvoyr Npg vf gur bar n yvggyr yngre - I'f flfgrzngvp oenvajnfuvat naq gbegher bs Rirl, naq ure riraghny tengvghqr sbe vg. V guvax gung'f npghnyyl gur pehk bs gur zbivr - lrf, fur unf rzretrq n fgebatre crefba naq ol ure bja nqzvffvba, fur nyjnlf jnagrq gb or srneyrff. Ohg ng jung pbfg? Va uvf qrsrafr, I qbrfa'g erzrzore nalguvat gung unccrarq gb uvz orsber uvf bja gbegher; vg'f gur bayl jnl ur xabjf ubj gb tvir ure jung fur jnagf. Gung qbrfa'g znxr vg evtug. Ohg gurer vf fbzr gval fbzrguvat va gur svyz juvpu xrrcf Rirl'f pbagvahrq qribgvba gb I sebz orvat abguvat ohg Fgbpxubyz Flaqebzr - whfg nf gurer vf fbzr bgure yvggyr jungabg gung xrrcf gurve fprar va gur Ghor ghaary jurer ur yrnirf ure sebz orvat gur ynfg fprar bs Pnfnoynapn.

Lrf, vg vf hapbzsbegnoyr, ohg gung'f jung xrrcf zr guvaxvat nobhg vg nyy qnl.

Oh, and may I just say that V just might be living in my dream home? While I would prefer maybe some southern-facing windows in there, his taste in art is just about my speed. Not to mention I fear his book-infested bedroom is what mine is ultimately destined to be.

Posted March 20, 2006 5:07 PM by nerdycellist