Jacque:
Maybe I'm just not all that horrified by my inner base archetypes. Care (dare?) to elaborate?
This isn't quite what I had in mind but it's close enough: read the paragraph just above the picture of Sian Phillips.
nerdycellist:
When rolling out truffles, it's best to make peace with the fact that you will get chocolate all over your hands (and possibly face if you're not careful). Also, do not be alarmed at what a freshly rolled ball of ganache covered in nuts looks like.
I make truffles from time to time. I get people begging me to do it again each time. Unfortunately it takes about two hours for the truffles and three to clean the kitchen and launder the towels (keeping my hands cold enough to roll the truffles always seems to take more ice and more towels than you think will be necessary at the time) and nobody wants to offer to be on the cleanup crew so I tend to say "The hell with it." I hope you've got a better process!
TexAnne: nor why ROT13 bothers you all of a sudden. (It's been local practice for at least the last two Harry Potter books--I know this because I got disemvoweled for a spoiler just before ROT13 came into common use.)
It's not all of a sudden: if you look back long enough in my posting history you'll see my complaint about it when it became local practice. I generally avoid it by not taking part in any discussion that might involve it's use, which is why it's not come up before now.
Rikibeth: Oh, wait. I just thought of another one, more suited to John Waters' early films, particularly Pink Flamingos.
Ew. I wish I hadn't thought of that.
Mine tend towards Caligula since I was a history major (with a nod to Cronenberg since I ran severak film series both in and out of college), but you're probably in the right ball park and you just made my point. See what I mean about how it slides right by if you don't pay attention? It's like the last line and sound effect in Arch Obler's infamous "A Day at the Dentist," a radio play which Stephen King observed starts out in the real world, takes some gentle turns before becoming less plausible than "the story of The Hook" at the campfire of your choice (and King rightly points out that the logic of the thing has no relationship to what happens between your ears when you hear it) before arriving at a resolution that's just as morbid as your mind is willing to entertain. I suspect Bujold had to do a lot of polishing before she came up with a line as innocuous as that one seems if you read it quickly.
Tom Whitmore: There are a whole series of other stories about Smethers and Linley, BTW, collected in a rather scarce volume called The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories.
I believe that's the name of the book Hank gave me as a birthday gift--it's downstairs and I'm upstairs, but I was delighted. All the Smethers stories as well as the story about the sculptor (any additional details about that story to be handled in e-mail, of course.) I should have know that you, of all people, would have the other copy...
Earl Cooley III: That's interesting. I spent a lot of time trying to structure my entry so I didn't turn into Tycho although I have a certain amount of sympathy for his viewpoint in this particular comic under the circumstances. I had no idea that I was being an aggressor, or that I was going to have to offer Jacque (or anyone else) an apology over anything beyond my poor writing skills compared to Dunsany or to Bujold. While I think I have managed to avoid spoilers in the past in my film reviews I shall work harder to make sure that any items I post on generally which might have elements of a revelatory nature are handled in e-mail--I should just have invited Jacque (and any other parties) to drop me a note.
Because I hate mad eyes and spittle.
Jacque:
Rot-13, please? I read MD, but it was a while ago, and nothing leaps to mind.
I don't do Rot-13 because it brings to mind Ellison's line about a monster being all "mad eyes and spittle" but I can quote the line because it's nothing without the proper context--sort of like the last line in Lord Dunsany's Two Bottles of Relish--plus it's not a spoiler for the end of the book.
I don't think it would hurt to remind you that by this time the line I'm quoting comes up Mark has been held for a few days in the Baron's little kingdom, which in context makes you think of what would have happened if Tod Browning had staged Freaks on the sets for THX-1138. Also Mark has been on a chemical cocktail to keep him functional and awake ever since he came through the doors.
Ready?
You sure?
REALLY sure?
Time to quote Smethers...
"I wish I'd never heard this one. I never did actually. But I guessed it from Linley's last words to Inspector Ulton, the only ones that I overheard. And perhaps this is the point at which to stop reading my story, so that you don't guess it too; even if you think you want murder stories. For don't you rather want a murder story with a bit of a romantic twist, and not a story about real foul murder? Well, just as you like."
(God, Dunsany structured his story like a Swiss watch--by the time Smethers [the PERFECT name--I often wonder how long it took to dream it up] says this you've ignored him so often before that it redoubles the wallop to follow.)
Anyway, back to Bujold. Ready? Don't say I didn't give you a chance to bail...
"Howl had a tendency to eavesdrop on Gorge's sessions, which came regularly while Howl's did not; and more than once Gorge turned up riding along with Grunt on his adventures, which then became exceptionally peculiar."
Think about it--but not too long...
The Lovejoy novels are worth reading but with caution. Don't think of the TV series: it matches the tone of the books about as well as sweet Jessica Fletcher matches Mrs. Iselin. Lovejoy is a protagonist, not a hero: he's a sexist, violent to women when frightened, and makes Rincewind seem like Conan. He also has a mania for antiques that starts several leagues beyond the borders of obsession and progresses from there. This sounds pretty awful but Gash's frenzied first-person narratives by Lovejoy suck you into the character's head, for good or ill.
I should mention one other item which folks usually miss over the trainwreck that it Lovejoy himself: If in the course of an adveture the baddie kills or injures a child, woman, animal, or bystander who knows Lovejoy but isn't in on the main scam they're not going to get out alive: at the crunch Lovejoy may spend his time snivelling about how he couldn't stop it from happening and how he tried to stop it but they WILL end up dead. This gets missed. Interestingly enough you can mangle Lovejoy seven ways from Sunday without pushing up daisies at the end: if the character has a subconscious I suspect it figures anything he gets is deserved.
Reviewers have complained about how brutally leads in Dick Francis books get damaged (the defense used is that the amount of damage they take is often less than Francis took riding as The Queen's Jockey), but there is a scene where Lovejoy tries to save a bluebird which was in his yard that made all the damage all the Francis characters have ever taken look like a sunny walk in the park. Everyone who hasn't read the book involved is now saying "What's he going on about?" and those who have read it are now gasping "Oh, GOD! I hoped I'd never think of that again!" It's one of those things that sneak in at 3:00 a.m., say "Hello!" and start measuring the bedroom windows for the drapes they'll install--like the one-sentence grenade that Bujold hides in Mirror Dance that ia so easy to slide by but is about as cuddly as Lovecraft's spawn when you actually read the line carefully.
John Meltzer:
That's what's wrong with mundane literature today. No good dragon/car slash.
That reminds me: all we need to do to reach Michael Swanwick's literary utopia is to enroll dinosaurs at a liberal arts college. (If we can trust Wikipedia it should be either Smith College or Mount Holyoke for continuity's sake.)
David Goldfarb:
Mm, no...not so's you'd notice. The dominant relationship there is between Laurence and Temeraire, but for obvious reasons it's a deep loving friendship rather than a romance.
In a universe with Knight Rider slash fiction I never bet on obvious reasons.
R. Emrys:
Other entertaining things that get left out of the adaptations: hanging out with too many romantic poets apparently gave Shelley a skewed view of what normal men do under stress. Dr. F, when startled, faints dramatically, in extremis taking to his bed for months. He's a deeply flawed character, but the narrative doesn't seem to see this particular behavior as strange or problematic.
Stephen King goes into some of this in his excellent history of horror fiction, Danse Macabre. (Which desperately needs a corrected edition, as the copyediting for the second edition to remove errors managed to add in new horrors of its own, including swapped footnotes.) My copy isn't available right now, but King points out that Frankenstein's full-speed-ahead to his wedding after the monster's promise "I'll be with you on your wedding night" isn't a obvious show of smarts on Frankenstein's part. It's been years since I read the book but I think King's other comment that Shelly's inability to decide if usurping God was worse than not taking responsibility for the monster hurts the book is correct as well.
Pendrift: thanks--I'll try it right away!
On another front, I was trying to make a point about fashion designers that seem to hate the women they design clothes for, and as a part of the whole discussion I tried to show the person I was talking to the extremely wonderful Particle about dresses that only Audry Hepburn could wear. Unfortunately I can't remember when it was and a month-by-month of the Particles isn't showing it. Can someone head me in the right direction?
Anyone with a Mac: I really, REALLY need to find out how to save the sound files here before the BBC removes them--they're not on iTunes, unfortunately.
Out of curiosity will someone let me know what Word of Power I managed to invoke in a URL-less post to get it held for moderation once the decision on posting it has been reached? I feel like someone short-sheeted my bed...
Paula Lieberman:
When NewTek was pushing Kiki Stockhammer, I got irate about it.... she was basically a booth bimbo
Probably true, but that wasn't the point. I used to talk to NewTek twice a week minimum (distributing Toasters to Japan 5-10 at a time means you talk to the source when you've bought out the standard US distributors--I used to talk to Jensen, Stockhammer, and when they'd sell out the production run damn near any dealer in North America that might have one left), and the amount of hostility when Kiki left NewTek to go work with Those Other Guys was strong enough that I'd expect Steve Jobs to hire John Scully to run Apple again before NewTek would hire her back.
My funniest call was to a company that made high-end genlocks. I was using a phone that would misdial about every seventh time it was used. Called to order another five genlocks--and got the secretary who sits right outside the office of George Lucas. And who was determined to solve the conspiracy that gave me the number for George's inner office and wouldn't take a misdial for an answer. I don't know if she needed a vacation, or Zoloft, or to get laid, but if she didn't get it before "Episode One" I expect they had to repaint the office to get rid of the red mist when her head exploded.
This year we were at San Diego ComicCon. There was a booth there showing off digitizers and Lightwave from NewTek. Now I used to sell Lightwave as part of the old Toaster systems--I know it's a powerful 3D program with the second best interface I've ever used. My wife the graphics designer had never seen it and has been wanting a good 3D program so we stopped at the booth, which was small enough that you could not get more than 3 feet from any of the attendants, and went over to the guy who was finishing up with a gent who had some questions about the product. He finished with the gent.
He started playing with the layout screen and totally ignored my wife for over 10 minutes.
She ended up sending a note to NewTek who said they didn't have any reps at the show. Funny, if there's somebody running around wearing a shirt with the company logo embroidered on it allegedly selling my software I'd do what I could to figure out who in blazes it was, but they thought that was enough.
Sorry NewTek. You lost well over $1,000.00 in sales, assuming she would have bought some of the accessory packs (which is a pretty solid frigging bet) as well as upgrade fees for all eternity. At this point I doubt sincerely that she'd take a copy if it was free and if you rehired Kiki Stockhammer to deliver it personally, and if anyone asks her about the program she's going to do her level best to talk them out of it. Clearly NewTek's not worried about it or the e-mail Margaret got back would have had a decent apology in it, but I admit to the temptation to dig out the OLD personal phonebook and see how many of those decade old NewTek corporate numbers still work just so they know they've had their reputation poisoned and that it's going to go on when this year's SDCC is long forgotten.
I have a somewhat different viewpoint on woo than most folks here. My dad was an attorney, and an extremely good one. (He would have liked to be a painter, but his school counselors refused to accept that as an option.) Since he'd handle legal matters for folks with unusual beliefs without denigrating them he ended up with a huge amount of clients who were experts in woo, and who often passed along freebies: color breathers, psychic healers (who recommended you do what your doctor recommended and deferred to the doctor's treatments), Tarot card readers, you name it. Because of this I've been exposed to the lot (with the exception of the Tarot--don't know how I missed that one), often as a cross between a dressmaker's figure and a dummy, which is why I always used to grin at the Molly Ivins line "I was born again three times before age 13 and it doesn't seem to have hurt me any."
Combine this with a membership in the Society of American Magicians in college and having had the luck to take a course from Rodney Stark while at the UW (Teresa may know who he is, but the rest of you will probably need to look him up. Basically he's THE expert on cults and indoctrination, and he ended up testifying to the Vatican II folks as an undergraduate.) and I ended up with a profound grounding in how and when it's possible to sell a load of bilgewater.
My favorite moment was back when I was in high school. My dad suddenly developed a blood clot in his eye that damaged his vision, so he ended up doing a lot of exercise, taking blood thinners, and looking at various relaxation techniques. Because of that he ended up signing up for Transcendental Meditation in the early days, when it was billed as a relaxation technique, and why he ended up paying for mom and me to get the training. Remember, this was years and years before the claims of learning levitation, invisibility, and walking through walls for only $6K each. Anyway, I found TM a good way to relax, at least until my roommate in college started bringing in groups of people to stare at me while I did so, which is why I've lost touch with that roomie.
Anyway, back to TM. The local training setup ended up flying in the first guy that the Maharishi had taught TM to in England, and dad got us tickets to the session so we could find out more about the guy who'd come up with the technique we'd been using.
I will never forget that meeting. The guy somehow brought to mind the shopkeeper in the Dead Parrot sketch, and when he'd come out with a sloppy statement dad would ask questions to try to figure out what the guy was going on about. This threw the guy because he clearly wasn't used to being asked detailed questions by a non-Journalist, and he'd come out with something else that was stranger, and dad would ask more questions. It all fell apart when he loudly asserted that the Maharishi could make the most perfect building in the world appear overnight but wouldn't do so because it would never pass local building codes...
Charlie Stross: On the other hand, "Peggy Sue et le Fantomas" might actually be quite amusing.
And "Mary Sue et le Fantomas" is one of those disturbing ideas that I'm sure will show up at 3:00 a.m. in the future when I'm trying to sleep. Urk.
Serge: The I, Lucifer script was supposed to be the second script filmed by Quinten Tarrentino, following Tarrentino's adaptation of A Taste for Death. Unfortunately, Tarrentino's script was delayed which was why the quickie movie we've discussed before was shot to give Miramax a chance to hold onto the rights. Now that Miramax is an entirely Disney operation I suspect it's going to take forever for the rights to clear or for a director to take over--I mean, outside of Jobs using his Disney stock as a 500lb bludgeon do you see Disney hiring Tarrentino and releasing any film he makes?
I'm reading Pratchett's new book. And, thanks to Teresa, I have "Vindaloo" playing in my head. This is not a happy result.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 93 |
| 2008 | 67 |
| 2007 | 129 |
| 2006 | 190 |
| 2005 | 70 |
| 2004 | 38 |
Total: 587 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Bruce Durocher II:
Show all comments by Bruce Durocher II.