Somebody said zombies overran the ISP. There's talk of moving to the mall.
"I put out hundreds--nay, thousands of fires. I saved dozens of innocent lives. Do they call me Leroy the Hero? No. Leroy the firefighter? No. They do not. I've run my farm for fifty years now, since my dear old daaaaad passed away. Do they call me Leroy the Farmer? No. They do not. I've raised three fine upstandanding children, all of whom went to college. Do they call me Leroy the Father?"
"But you fuck one lousy sheep..."
My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.
Apologies for the rectocranial inversion. I'm not sure what I was thinking of. I've got a vague memory of my sunday school teacher saying something along those lines around 1976, but at the moment I can't reconcile my obviously flawed memory with any events that take place in the real world.
Lizzy L wrote:
Why the God of my fathers and mothers decided to forbid his chosen people to enjoy steamed clams while permitting such enjoyment to others has always been beyond my comprehension...
Alan Braggins wrote:
I'd speculate that the God of your Fathers was trying to spare you a night hunched over the potty.
Alan Braggins already pointed out how easily one can get food poisoning from shellfish if it's not properly refrigerated. In that same vein, it's worth noting that, from an epidemiologic standpoint, swine are remarkably similar to humans. For instance, we swap influenza with pigs much more easily than with, say, cows, cats, dogs or almost any other animal besides humans. This is why you don't see "pork tartare" on the menu next to "steak tartare".
IIRC, the scriptural injunction was along the lines of "And the swine, though he be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch, they are unclean to you" and there was a similar one about not eatething ye those critters that walloweth about in yon seabed.
My understanding is that the Catholic injuction against fish on Fridays was a hangover from the days when people used to do their fishing (by law?) on Sundays; by the time Friday rolled around, the fish were likely to be toxic.
Every so often I run into someone who says, "Oh, yeah, I think I might have had food poisoning once,"--I chuckle politely and correct them. If there's any doubt in your mind, you didn't have it. I speak from experience. Picture a 10-hour workday in which you vomit every 5-10 minutes. Occasionally the festivities are punctuated by explosive diarrhea. I promise you, if it happens you'll know it for what it is.
As a 2x sufferer, I have no trouble seeing how the effects of bad shellfish or undercooked pork can be interpreted as the fury of God. To this day I will not be in the room with a raw oyster.
Quite a few things that are forbidden by God can be accounted for as a pre-scientific culture's way of steering its members away from dangerously unhygenic practices. For instance:
cannibalism - Even the most well-cooked recipe for long pork is going to carry more risk than an alligator stew.
incest - Close relations have a much stronger chance of reinforcing dangerous recessive genes and producing unfortunate offspring.
unrestricted sex - Other than eating someone, having intercourse with them is the best way to catch whatever diseases they may have. But to a mind that is innocent of a theory of germs, that poxy prostitute probably did look as if he had been cursed by God.
usury - I am confident that a particularly icky corner of hell is reserved for those bastards who stuff the mailboxes of college freshmen with Visa applications
"I've got to go polish Boba Fett."
This is not what it sounds like either.
And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Empire Strikes Back was the best-written of all the movies.
You're not--that opinion seems to be nearly unanimous--but I still disagree. Ep. V probably had the best plot of the bunch--"Luke, I am your etc"--but I wasn't especially impressed with the writing. The Han / Leia romance was, IMHO, pretty stilted, and...
fuck. I just had one of those "moments of clarity" you hear about. I'm a total fucking geek. I mean, I sort of knew already, but it's now like, irrefutable. Anyway...
...I got a little sick of everyone calling everyone else "buddy," "friend," etc. Every time two characters came together it was like a group hug. What happened to "walking carpet?" What happened to "farm boy?" If they're so damn strong in the force, why can't they banter anymore?
That's enough for now. I've got to go polish Boba Fett.
Mark DF wrote:
"Could I spent $15K a month? Sure, we all could. But if anyone believes they need that much to be happy, they probably don't understand what makes them happy."
Applause.
I really liked the movie of Dagon in a lot of ways - but given the scene with the knives, and a bit near the end, I think it would be a mistake to imply it's not gory.
Good point. I forgot about that. OK, yeah, it's gory. Not quite Re-Animator gory, but far from Merchant Ivory.
Dammit, I had a big long post will all sorts of links to great Lovecrafty crap, but it got held up for approval and by now most of it has already been said.
To summarize:
Stuart Gordon (director of Re-Animator, From Beyond) is getting less gory in his old age. HP mentioned both Dagon (adapted from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth") and Dreams in the Witch House. Personally, I'd reverse HP's rankings. I *loved* Dagon but thought Dreams was just pretty good.
If you're up for some ersatz Lovecraft, you simply cannot do better than John Carpenter's woefully underappreciated Prince of Darkness. It remains my all-time number one favorite horror movie, and I've seen a whole lot of horror movies.
HP is also right about Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Don't be seduced by the pretty decent cover art; it's so bad it'll subtract points from the director's next movie. It would take substantial improvements to make it merely unwatchable.
Last Wednesday TNT aired an adaptation of Stephen King's Lovecraft pastiche "Crouch End". It was way better than most King adaptations but nothing to write home about.
HP, however, did not mention that Guillermo del Toro has an adaptation of "At the Mountains of Madness" in development, but it's probably because (s)he has more sense than to quote random internet rumors.
1. Mr. Stross -- glad to see the world's leading expert on shoggoth bombing here. I think many of us would be curious on your take as to exactly precisely how many hit points a shoggoth has and how that translates into megatons?
2. A. R. Yngve wrote:
But King also argues that, hard as it may be to actually show the Lurking Thing (and risk a pratfall), the writer should still try.
Yeah, well quoted.
(............SPOILER ALERT............)
I'm a big King fan, but I'd suggest that perhaps this philosophy is why King's endings frequently are not the strongest component of his work. Recall the Hand 'o God putting in a cameo at the end of The Stand? It wasn't terrible, but (IMHO) it wasn't especially satisfactory either. Even worse was the Dark Tower's blow-by-blow dtaeh of Rnaldal Fgalg.
OTOH, to give King his props, I'd cite as excellent work the (MORE SPOILERS) last couple pages of The Dark Tower. After--what, 4500+ pages? a million words or so?--it would be impossible to construct an ending that would satisfy everybody. Or even one that would satisfy anybody. Instead he has Rlonad og bcak ot the bnniegig. Yeah, it was a bit gimmicky, but honestly, hats off. Some of his best work, IMHO.
/SPOILERS
I think there's a corollary to the effect of "the more the written work relies on the imagination of the reader, the harder it will be to film." E.g. the short story "Crouch End" vs. the filmed version or any of Lovecraft's written work vs. any of the filmed adaptations. I mean, I like Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft-flavored work (Re-Animator, Rats in the Walls, and especially the yummy, yummy Dagon) as much as the next geek but I don't think he and Lovecraft were in touch with the same Muse.*
*OR WERE THEY???!???Somebody should write a short story where it turns out that Barabara Crampton and Sonia H. Greene were the same person.
[HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA]
Stephan Zielinski wrote:
It's that little kid with the cast eye and the widow's peak. When he does the "Rain, rain, go away" chant, it works.
Unfortunately, he's going to be consumed with rage and guilt over his mother's shattered vertebrae. Unless he's stopped now, he'll be in the 2012 papers as the This Little Piggy Impaler. You know what you have to do.
Fragano Ledgister wrote:
"Personhattan"
[/HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA]
You guys are really on this morning.
Terry wrote:
Auschwitz
Yes, Auschwitz was very evil, and no mistake. But isn't saying that "Auschwitz is more evil than torture" kind of like saying "murder is more evil than homicide?"
Don't bother to reply. This time I'm just being an asshole.
Will the Wikipedia flamage ever end? In ten years, will people still blame Jimmy Wales for despoiling Eden by inventing bias, ambiguity, propaganda, and disinformation?
The difference between Wikipedia and Site X (a definitive source of unambiguous, unbiased, spin-free, meticulously documented information on all controversial topics, compiled by dispassionate aliens who watch us from the Moon) is that Site X exists only in my imagination.
I'm trying to branch out from bashing only Bush.
Jules, Christine, I think it's completely safe to say that Absolute Write is going to be fine. Things should be OK in a day or two, perhaps sooner.
In some respects Wikipedia is like Family Feud *; there's no right answer, only what the "survey sez."
* For those of you blessedly unburdened by the knowledge of American TV, Family Feud was (is?) an especially dumb game show.
"Just to let everyone know where we are right now: As of 2:30 AM Eastern time, our new host was going to overwrite everything on our account – don’t worry, Scott made a backup of the items we had already managed to rebuild – and install the recovered data. Our IT-person-Scott indicated that he felt there was a 50/50 chance that everything would be okay when the host installed it. Those odds made Jenna a little nervous, but I recognize a professional IT person not over-promising when I hear this."
Oh, gracious. That was a bad miscommunication--the "50/50" quote was intended to convey that there was a 50/50 chance that the restore would go perfectly on the first try. Even then I was quite optimistic that everything would eventually be OK--at this writing I'm as certain as it's possible to be that everything will eventually (day or 2ish?) be get back to normal. The Absolute Write forums will be fine.
If you're really nervous and well-off financially, I'll call your attention to the following house..
$.50 says the guy who built this place this was a Heinlein fan.
OK, I've got to ask: Diana Rowland, what's your take on the talk-v.-no-talk debate?
Let's say that some private citizen with no previous criminal record becomes a person of interest in a fairly serious criminal case. Let's further say that this person is completely innocent, but doesn't have much of an alibi. They were home alone, watching TV.
Are there some circumstances under which the person might do himself some good by talking to you the investigator, or are the chances of clearing his name so remote that it's more or less always a bad idea to talk?
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