"If I'm a Selt, then you're a sunt!"
From here:
Allan Ramsay's censored edition of the sixteenth century poem A Bytand Ballat On Warlo Wives inexplicably substituted "Sunt" for 'cunt': "Sunt Lairds and Cuckolds altogither" (1724). Ramsay added a mistakenly self-congratulatory footnote: "Sunt [...] is spelled [here] with an S, as it ought, and not with a C, as many of the English do."
Some good discussion of place-name pronunciation at LH threads here and here.
I'm just glad Lisa returned from the Land of Hiatus. I missed her.
--A Guy Who Studied Old Irish in Another Life
Wouldn't you feel the same way in our position? At least to some extent?
Oh, absolutely. As I think I implied in my comment, I'm aware of her deficiencies, and had the thread been uniformly positive, bemoaning her plight, I would have been eager to make some of the points that have been made here. It's the uniformity and the glee that bother me. It's like everyone is kicking her with extra savagery because they're all thinking "if she suffers enough, maybe I won't be next."
Man, what a depressing thread. I can't believe so many people are taking such delight in lambasting this woman. Yeah, she didn't appreciate her luck, she made some bad decisions, and her article is pretty scattered. I sure hope every one of y'all is as good a writer as the real Jane Austen, has never made a bad move, and never, ever whines in public. I wish I could wave a wand and make it so that the next time anyone who's taken a whack at "Jane" complains about some aspect of their life that would not be considered a serious problem by, say, a victim of the civil war in Sudan (remember, kids, there's always someone worse off than you!), a printed-out copy of this comment thread would descend from the sky and whack them upside the head.
That "Jane" is such a jerk! She had the temerity to hope she could make a career as a writer, the folly to take an unrealistic advance, and above all, the gall to complain about it! Why couldn't she be coldly realistic about her abilities, her prospects, and the state of the industry, like every other writer in the world?
I say he was just faking it, and I'll fight anyone who says different!
John: I was checking to see if Leigh Brackett had ever done a sequel to "Purple Priestess" and discovered she has her own Wikipedia entry, and quite a good one too. I should investigate Wikipedia more.
Certainly you may call me Language; I will insist, however, that the New York Times refer to me as Mr. Hat. Although I very much like "Anatole de Motic" -- maybe I'll use that to review my own work...
As for Ogre-Eyed's Orwellian world-state, I think the 1000-ft high video screens and neo-Gothic surrealist palace sound like a lot of fun; I'll sign up to be one of the uniformed and uninformed syncophants.
You know, I read through this whole damn comment thread hoping that the Lord High Yngve Defender would drop by and leave a defensive, supercilious comment explaining how much better he was than thee and me, but no... all I get is a bunch of reasonable people saying kind, sensible things. Bah.
And me, I comment here exclusively to suck up. One of these days you'll be seeing Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon, by Language Hat, on the Tor list, and then you'll all be sorry! All of you! Uh, what was I saying before I was interrupted by megalomania? Oh yes: it's not you. History has its peaks and troughs, and this is definitely one of the troughs. My late father-in-law used to say, whenever anyone complained about Joe McCarthy or other evils, "Just wait ten years." I wish I thought ten years would be enough...
Anybody interested in rejection letters should look for a copy of The Eureka Years: Boucher and McComas's Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1949-1954, which prints a selection of rejections sent out by that pair (among the most literate and gracious editors ever to grace an sf magazine). A couple of samples:
17 November 1949
Dear Mr. Lowert:
First a word of warning: 95% of all editors in the business would simply have returned your MS unread, because it was in handwriting. Or rather they wouldn't even have returned it, since no postage was enclosed, but just dumped it in the wastebasket.
If you can't afford to buy a typewriter, then beg, borrow or steal one. Or pay to have your story typed by a professional. Submitting handwritten MSS is a pure waste of time. And ALWAYS enclose return postage, and put your name and address on the story as well as on the cover letter.
AL'S REVENGE certainly isn't publishable (how many first stories are?): but it's a little hard to say whether it shows promise. The idea of a corpse returning after the cement treatment is good and I think new; but the writing, I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn, is very amateurish. The structure's awkward, your characters are just names without personalities, the prose has no individuality.
The hacks that you speak of so scornfully (and incidentally, they do not make "comfortable livings") may have little real talent, but they do have experience and technique. The only way to get those qualities is by reading a great deal in the fields that interest you, reading critically and trying to observe just how things are put together, how effects are attained; and by writing a great deal, to the point where you begin to see what's wrong with your earlier stuff and how to improve it.
As I say, it's hard to tell from this very fumbling first effort whether you should continue. But if you do decide to, we'd be very happy to see how you're coming along -- say about 20 stories from now.
Sincerely yours,
The Editors
And here's one to an agent:
16 March 1950
Sorry but... after reading this, A.B. coined the proverb: one man's turd is another man's turquoise. This disgusting little piece of scatology is definitely not our turquoise. McC
(The latter submission was clearly ahead of its time; it would be snapped up for Hollywood today.)
Teresa, what is it that you're not sure you agree with? Most of it is a (fairly unexceptionable) analysis of Marxist-Leninist positions on imperialist wars; the last bit is, as Katherine says, so incoherent it's hard to know what one might agree or disagree with.
"It had always been my experience that, when Ukridge was around, things began to happen swiftly and violently, rendering meditation impossible."
Which explains much of this comment thread.
Naomi: You mean Buenos Ayres, with a borrowed pipe?
Oy... the pain, the pain...
I say, old horse, I'm not quite sure how we got from Ukridge to Uxbridge, but I trust the Wodehousians here all recognize the name of Stanley Featherstonehaugh (pronounced Fanshaw) Ukridge, first encountered in Love Among the Chickens.
I'm sorry, I really can't see my 7lb cat driving a car, can you?
Of course! Has everyone forgotten Toonces?
Toonces, the driving cat,
the cat who could drive a car.
He drives around, all over the town.
Toonces the driving cat!
Not that this has any connection whatever with PETA, but... that's a good thing!
Jeez, I really should have caught up with this thread a long time ago.
BSD: I work in NYC (and lived there until a recent move up the Hudson), but I spent a lively year teaching in Taiwan in the late '70s.
Lydy: I'm sure that's true, and if I had vegetarian friends I'd be familiar with some excellent places in the city, but since at the moment my friends are all as carnivorous as I, I'm not.
It seems to me that the carnivores who defend their diet by asking about the suffering of plants are really claiming that we don't know what pain and suffering are... I think that's horse hockey. You know pain when you see it.
Then how come Descartes, among others, was convinced animals don't suffer pain? I'm not saying he was right, obviously, just denying your premise. If he was wrong about animals, you could be wrong about plants. That said, I like your general approach.
Vassilissa: I'm a vegan because it suits me to be, and I think that's the only justifiable reason.
You're my kind of vegan!
Jason: the young lady told me that they found that people took brochures to keep the Greenpeace people from harassing them and then just threw them away when they got home... and could I please just give her a check right then and there
Boy, you're a much more accepting person than I. I would have said "Bullshit, and you've got some nerve."
Vera: You know, I started out being interested in what you had to say (despite its excessive length) and wound up writing you off as a repellent ideologue (the "repellent" part based on your incredibly offensive approach to Lis). Way to go.
This is a remarkable thread; the subject is almost guaranteed to produce flames, which (mostly) have not occurred.
While I'm not a vegetarian myself, I'm very glad the world has come so far in accommodating them. I remember when I went on a tour of Russia in 1971, the poor vegetarian in the group found it almost impossible to make the Russians understand what he meant, and when he got it across, he wound up eating potatoes almost exclusively. When we got to the Caucasus, he almost wept with joy because he could switch to rice. And when another vegetarian friend moved to Prague in '92, the situation was almost as dire; a few years later, she told me there was a tremendous variety of veggie stuff available. Progress, comrades!
I have, however, passed for a Buddhist when travelling in China. It made getting vegetarian food so much easier...
Taiwan is the one place I willingly ate at vegetarian restaurants (I'm a confirmed carnivore). Most such places in the US serve ostentatiously good-for-you food, sprouts and fruitshakes and what have you, that no meat-eater in his right mind would take a second look at. But Chinese Buddhists abstain from meat because of religious prohibition, not because they want to feel good about themselves or superior to meat-eaters, and they create mock-pork and -chicken dishes that are by god indistinguishable from the real thing and usually taste better than what's available at similarly cheap normal restaurants. (And I didn't actually mind the fact that it was better for me.) Moral: concentrate on making a product attractive on its own merits and skip the sermon, and you have a winner on your hands.
In the unlikely event there's anyone reading this thread who's as ignorant as I about modern stefnal acronyms, here's what I got off Google:
RASFF, the rec.arts.sf.fandom Usenet newsgroup, has sometimes been described as an online con room party, with conversations having little to do with SF and much to do with bagels, cats, Jewish minutiae, and chocolate.
That's why they denominate me Language Hat!
And thanks, Teresa; it's nice to have one's scientifictional efforts appreciated. Now perhaps that Gernsback fellow will finally publish my "Captives of the Web"...
...when the Web was a scientifictional dream.
Ralph 4CR looked around in astonishment. "You mean... there are invisible beams all around us, carrying information to all parts of the globe, even as we speak?"
The Master of Communications turned towards him solemnly. "Yes," he asseverated, "and the information is not carried whole, but is broken up into a myriad of infinitesimal packets, to be reassembled without fail when they reach their destination."
"You astonish me," breathed Ralph. "And this information is accessible to all?"
"It is," nodded the Master. "The issues of the day are debated by all citizens, no matter where they may be located, and communication no longer waits on tides or weather."
"And what are the great issues so decided?"
The Master cast a glance at the poll on his screen: Which Jedi Knight Are You? He looked severe. "I fear our issues would mean nothing to you across the great gulf of time you have traversed. You should go now and refresh yourself. We will speak later. You have much to learn. Vanna, show our young guest to his room."
A lissome blonde appeared from behind a curtain and beckoned...
Technorati's back:
it now shows fresh links for me.
Self-esteem renewed.
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| 2004 | 16 |
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