Yepyep, Evelyn Waugh; what can I tell you, I saw the BBC version as a tyke and have been obsessed with decadent british aristocracy ever since.
Youtube is awesome for music, but I wish it had more movie scenes. Because if it did, I would link the one in Lost in Translation where Scarlett Johnssen (sp?) acts all snobby. Sigh.
Comrade Anklebiter Addendum
Of course you're reading that reactionary trash, Lord Dice.
[Knocks book from the hands of Lord Dice, which are soft, like a banker's]
Here, read Conrad's The Secret Agent!
(Only kidding. I've only heard good things about Waugh, bit I haven't read him. Yet.)
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I think that he and the Grinch are the same person.Actually, now that you mention it, I seem to recall that I had a girlfriend in college who used to say that...
That must be because it is true, Grumpy McGrumps.
Finished Hirohito and started in on W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello's The Opium Wars. I'm not very far in but already completely disgusted with a whole new Earl of Elgin.
Ah, the Opium Wars. British imperialism at its finest! Not that I have any idea who the Earls of Elgin are, but I bet I hate them.
May I ask you a personal question, Samnell? [Goes ahead and does so without waiting for an answer]
Anyway, you can ignore this if you like, but if you're game I was wondering if you had any thoughts?
Finished reading "Back to the Moon". A little predictable, but all said, a pretty good read.
Hello! I've never heard of that, but what are you going to read next?
Just read The Hunger Games, pretty much in one sitting (except for a brief pause when one of the Careers went all stabby-mutilation-funtimes and I instinctively threw the book across the train car in revulsion and had to be talked down and into reading the rest—you'd think Paizo would have toughened me up more, but it's harder when it's kids). On to Catching Fire!
I recently began this book. I am glad to see the prose elicits such a powerful response. It bodes well for the story
[G@# d#+nit. A rare CC appearance and I have nothing to say.]
Which one do you like best?
Finished Hirohito and started in on W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello's The Opium Wars. I'm not very far in but already completely disgusted with a whole new Earl of Elgin.Ah, the Opium Wars. British imperialism at its finest! Not that I have any idea who the Earls of Elgin are, but I bet I hate them.
May I ask you a personal question, Samnell? [Goes ahead and does so without waiting for an answer]
** spoiler omitted **
I can try to field this one.
The british upper classes have always been allowed eccentricities, which dovetails quite nicely with the permissive nature of the church of england, resulting in a Oscar Wilde friendly culture that we haven't had on this side of the pond until very recently if at all.
Honestly though, any american who self identifies as a monarchist should try living as a subject rather than a citizen first.
tl;dr: Of course my hands are soft, like a banker's. It comes from touching so much money!
tl;dr: Of course my hands are soft, like a banker's. It comes from touching so much money!
Hee hee!
I don't know why more people don't hang out on this thread; we're pretty funny.
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Finished Hirohito and started in on W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello's The Opium Wars. I'm not very far in but already completely disgusted with a whole new Earl of Elgin.Ah, the Opium Wars. British imperialism at its finest! Not that I have any idea who the Earls of Elgin are, but I bet I hate them.
Elgin pere and Elgin fils.
May I ask you a personal question, Samnell? [Goes ahead and does so without waiting for an answer]
Certainly. You can always PM too if you'd like.
The Question:What is up with gay dudes and royalty? I have, of course, met homosexual men of a many varieties of political beliefs, but I have also met a larger proportion of either straight-up monarchists or people obsessed with the royalty than in any other of the three demographics you could come up with using gender and orientation. Or at least the main ones.Anyway, you can ignore this if you like, but if you're game I was wondering if you had any thoughts?
So then, what's the thing? I think one of the very experiences of most gay people in most places and eras down through history is that of being in hiding. It's not quite Anne Frank in the attic, but there is a degree of constant self-policing. One must be careful of what one lets slip, how one behaves, etc to avoid joining the Pink Triangle Society. This is less true now than it has been, if one lives in the right places and moves in the right circles, but probably most of us have done time in the closet or only been out in circumscribed ways that still leave us mindful of appearing too stereotypical for fear that we'll go over someone's line in the sand and make trouble for ourselves. You can't imagine how often I've heard and read people thinking they're being broad minded when they say they don't mind someone being gay "as long as it isn't shoved in my face."
What constitutes shoving it in your face, Mr. Broadminded? Telling you? Holding hands with a guy? Kissing in public? You mean the stuff straight people do without a second thought? Experiencing an unwanted sexual advance? Like women do all the time? Yeah, so anything and everything.
It all adds up to a lot of inhibition. I'm a fat balding guy with a big beard and long hair. When they were handing out the thin blond bodies and body glitter, I must have been elsewhere. But to be completely honest sometimes I wish I was one of the flaming guys back in high school. It would have gone terribly, but I wouldn't have been hiding. I could have said what honestly came to my mind about hot guys or whatever. I could have acted like I actually felt sometimes. (And how often during high school were you thinking about or talking about sex? Pretty much every time you weren't asleep and sometimes then too, right? Same here! :) ) One must always at least have plausible deniability and it's very stressful.
For example, I used to have a friend with whom I joked around had fun with. I'm told this is what ordinary people do with friends too. At lunch once in junior high, on impulse, in the heat of the moment, I threw my arm around his shoulders and said something funny. He acted like I'd tried to cop a feel so I didn't do that again, but it was a Platonic gesture. In fact I didn't do that with anybody else again. I still had the random urge to do so, but it was Not To Be Done. So much for showing friendly affection, eh?
What's that to do with the royalty? Or musical theater? Or Disney? The Royalty is a great big archaic institution with all kinds of fabulous romanticism, pomp, and ceremony about it. They bring out swords and all kinds of jewelry and make Vegas's craziest drag queens look like a bunch of Puritans. A typical protagonist in a musical or a Disney cartoon (pretty much the same character, really) is probably the least inhibited being on earth. Who else would grandly sing out their heart's desires in front of a packed house? It's fantasy, sure. And the royals are loaded down with fantasy tropes, if in a more real world way. They're kings and queens! They have princesses! They live in castles!
We don't all want to be fabulous, but I think that royals, musicals, and Disney flicks (ok, royals and two of a kind) present a kind of happy fantasy where we don't have to deal with all the extra crap of watching what we say and how we act so we can pass and/or avoid more trouble. They're free in a way that many of us are not or have been very far from. That's the Promised Land out there.
There's another angle too. At least in contemporary American culture, all three of the aforementioned are rather girly things. While most of us probably enjoy our genitals just fine the way they are, we already know we don't color inside the lines of officially sanctioned male interest. So there's less personal inhibition to appreciate these things and they can also appeal in a kind of transgressive way. I'm sure there are straight guys who like musical theater and watched the royal wedding, but wouldn't admit it. Such would call their masculinity into question. Ours already is. :)
On Evelyn Waugh* - Brideshead Revisited is excellent, but in my opinion his** masterpiece is the Swords of Honour trilogy - and his funniest is Scoop (where a countryside wildlife reporter is accidentally sent to cover a war in Africa).
*There's more than one Waugh
** Really... Evelyn is a boy's name... who'da thunk it.
*There's more than one Waugh
** Really... Evelyn is a boy's name... who'da thunk it.
Hee hee! That's the jist of the Lost in Translation scene I couldn't link!
@Samnell--Thanks for the reply.
He also was in love with titles. He called everybody "Mr." this and "Miss" that and asked us to tell him if there were other titles that would be more appropriate, such as military ranks. I told him to call me "Comrade," but he wouldn't do it. Hee hee!
EDIT: Oh, and I wasn't making any assumptions about your politics, but your last three books read were about royals or nobles, so I thought I'd ask.
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@Samnell--Thanks for the reply. ** spoiler omitted **
I hadn't realized my last three books were about royalty until you mentioned it. History, you know. It's lousy with 'em. Before that it was a wizard detective for 12 or 13 as I reread the Dresden Files...though there were fairy queens in that.
I'm becoming the stereotype! Help, someone stop me before I lisp and get laid! Ok, maybe hold off until I've gotten laid!
** spoiler omitted **
Just finished 2 Peter and will read Jude (both are books in The Bible) later today or tomorrow. I also just started reading Rightly Dividing the Word by Clarence Larkin. Written in 1920 it is an interesting book of/about Biblical interpretation. It is bereft of modern scholarly criticism which makes for an interesting read.
I also just finished Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones. It was very good! I haven't read any other Persian sword and sorcery stuff before. I may have to look into getting some Conan from the library.
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The british upper classes have always been allowed eccentricities, which dovetails quite nicely with the permissive nature of the church of england, resulting in a Oscar Wilde friendly culture that we haven't had on this side of the pond until very recently if at all.
The British haven't always been that Oscar Wilde-friendly. Oscar Wilde himself spent two years in prison for "gross indecency" (homosexual acts) starting in 1895.
Finally finished Marshal's and Manuel's The Light and the Glory. The authors try to make the case that God caused Columbus to discover America and bring light to the heathens -- and more settlers -- so that the U.S. could be founded as the New Jerusalem. In order to make their narrative fit, they use a lot of questionable sources like "What Columbus' Diary Might Well Have Said, If One Had Been Preserved." Moving forward in time, to their assertion that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation, they ignore all primary sources -- letters from and about Washington, Adams, Jefferson -- and instead base their "scholarship" on a no-name book from the 1950s that also asserts the same premise they're shooting for.
Look, guys, if your point is strong enough, the primary sources and real scholarship will bear it out. Misleading the readers with "what we think might have been" stories that directly contradict the evidence from primary sources is fundamentally dishonest -- a prime example of what a lot of people are starting to refer to as "Lying for Jebus."
Given the good reviews I got for this thing, I expected a lot better from the authors.
The British haven't always been that Oscar Wilde-friendly. Oscar Wilde himself spent two years in prison for "gross indecency" (homosexual acts) starting in 1895.
I thought of that while at work this morning.
@Samnell--I'd ask how old you are, but I don't want to know. I'm already disappointed that you don't look like your avatar. :(
I was picturing this maniacal gay kid running around Michigan (?) getting in fistfights with various denominational clerics.
stuff
[Keeps silent but, after skimming the reviews through the link, wonders why Kirth even picked it up.]
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stuff[Keeps silent but, after skimming the reviews through the link, wonders why Kirth even picked it up.]
Yeah, the reviews were...interesting. A good reminder why I try to avoid reading the comments sections on newspaper articles and youtube videos. Even the ones you agree with are put so badly you want them to shut up and stop making you look bad.
Keeps silent but, after skimming the reviews through the link, wonders why Kirth even picked it up.
I have a particular interest in the American revolution -- have read reams of Jefferson's and Adams' letters, am about to start on Franklin's autobiography, etc. A number of other reviews stated that these two guys (Yale-educated, both) had really done their homework, and produced solid research, despite some of their weird Calvinist intrepretation. I don't really care what their premise is -- I'll read stuff coming from any angle at all; it doesn't hurt my feelings or anything if I personally disagree (and hell, I might even be convinced, if weight of evidence points in a particular direction). My boss lent me his copy, and imagine my dismay when their "solid reasearch" turns out to be their discovery of a bunch of imaginative speculation, rather than actual primary sources. One thing I can't stand is outright falsification, ESPECIALLY when so many people fail to recognize it to the point where they praise the "honest scholarship" involved.
My wondering was mostly rhetorical. Also, I just got stung by a wasp. In February!
Ow.
My wondering was mostly rhetorical. Also, I just got stung by a wasp. In February!
Ow.
Time to move to a hispanic neighbourhood? ;)
The British haven't always been that Oscar Wilde-friendly. Oscar Wilde himself spent two years in prison for "gross indecency" (homosexual acts) starting in 1895.The british upper classes have always been allowed eccentricities, which dovetails quite nicely with the permissive nature of the church of england, resulting in a Oscar Wilde friendly culture that we haven't had on this side of the pond until very recently if at all.
Sure, and Clause 28 was a hell of a lot more recent than that; My fault for lack of clarity, but I was talking about the fantasy rather than reality. As said, I far prefer being a citizen to a subject.
OTOH, I was just watching The King's Speech with its rousing-and-comforting-all-at-once radio address, and it occurred to me that we just don't have that guy in the US. Given that our head of state and head of government are the same person, such a radio address would be seen as political motivated even if it ceded power to the opposing party.
...Books? Books are for suckers, I'd much rather sit in front of my TV and let the pretty pictures wash over me like a warm valium bath.
** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **
*No guarantee of superior value to go with inferior price.
Sure, and Clause 28 was a hell of a lot more recent than that;
I have a funny story about Clause/Section 28. It transpires that after it had been passed one of the ministers responsible had a meeting with Ian McKellen. Sirena tried to persuade him to reconsider the measure. He refused. Then the minister asked for an autograph.
McKellan brought out his darling old man smile and happily assented. He wrote these words: "F!++ off, I'm gay."
@Samnell--I'd ask how old you are, but I don't want to know. I'm already disappointed that you don't look like your avatar. :(I was picturing this maniacal gay kid running around Michigan (?) getting in fistfights with various denominational clerics.
Since you haven't asked, I shan't tell. :) I do dress just a little like the avatar, if that's meant to be a button-down shirt. I had one with orange and white pinstripes that I really enjoyed but it wore down to the point where it was mostly pink.
And yes, NE Lower Michigan. It's the least fashionable, least distinct section of the state. We stand out chiefly in cancer morbidity. Our chief export is refugees. There's one bookstore inside a hundred miles. For a good six months when the local Waldenbooks closed down, there wasn't even that.
Sure, and Clause 28 was a hell of a lot more recent than that;I have a funny story about Clause/Section 28. It transpires that after it had been passed one of the ministers responsible had a meeting with Ian McKellen. Sirena tried to persuade him to reconsider the measure. He refused. Then the minister asked for an autograph.
McKellan brought out his darling old man smile and happily assented. He wrote these words: "F&#$ off, I'm gay."
I have hazy memories (doodle knows why) of Sirena on a talk show, describing getting a phone call notifying him that he was being knighted as he watched Thatcher et al leave Downing Street (as in, leave office) on the news; as I said above the head of state and government are different over there, but the Queen won that day :P
Many of the above posts have made me go "Hee hee!"
just finished the once and future king. i was expecting to read about king arthur. instead, i read about birds, lancelot, and history. weird.
And boar-hunting. And ants. And falconry (which I guess has birds). I'm only coming up to the end of The Sword in the Stone, and I think it is pretty awesome. I was hedging my bets before, but, yeah, it's awesome.
Comrade Anklebiter, dare I to ask of you've read The Mabinogion? My favorite Arthurian stories are in there.
I am ashamed to admit that I have never read it in all the way through.
Also, guys, I need help. I have relapsed into visiting ye usede olde booke stores again! Somebody, please, I need an intervention!
Made up for it by scoring wicked cheap copies of The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs (last in a trilogy) and Kings In Hell by C.J. Cherryh and Janet Morris.
Comrade, I'd've given you my barely-used copy of Perdido Street Station for free. Dig Mieville I do not.
What are you reading now, Kirth?
Finished "The passage" by Justin Cronin. Vampyrism(?) as a virus...
Started "Among Thieves: A Tale of the Kin" by Douglas Hulick . Thieves fighting over a macguffin done right.
Still wrapping up the end of Pratt's Blue Star. It started off REALLY promising, but seems to be going nowhere. Took some time off of that to re-read The Oatmeal's 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth. Also enjoying Adrienne Frost's I Hate Other People's Kids.
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I read the first three books from Mazo de la Roche's Jalna Saga... what can I say? Family sagas are not my cup of coffee. Drifting along with some good characterization, but no cohesive plot line.
Now i am reading through Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail. Yes, he is one of my favorite authors. And this is quite a ride at the start. I hope the pace does not slow down too much in the middle.
reading The Hobbit, after which I'll start in on my 50th anniversary edition of The Lord of The Rings.
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Still wrapping up the end of Pratt's Blue Star. It started off REALLY promising, but seems to be going nowhere. Took some time off of that to re-read The Oatmeal's 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth. Also enjoying Adrienne Frost's I Hate Other People's Kids.
Those books all suck.
(Hee hee! You've been trolled!)
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Just finished Iron Council. First things first: Doodlebug, you'll LOVE this book. Miéville's communist sensitivities shine through this work. On the other hand, he doesn't present any coherent argument for communism above and beyond personal preferences. I'd be willing to believe that it's the sort of thing where if you have to ask, you wouldn't understand, but, well, I've also read Orwell.
In standard Bas-Lag style, the protagonists are almost more defined by their faults than their talents, and there's a standard "no one gets out alive" aesthetic to the story. No problem there, but I was occasionally left wondering why people would react the way they did when it was clear that failure would be the only logical result.
All in all, The Scar is the superior novel, and the best of the series. Iron Council probably ranks at the bottom of the list, but that spot still means the book is a lot of fun.
Next up: Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.
A short version of Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin thus far:
THE STORY OF THE SPANIARD--This is 80 pages in, mind you. Anyway, the Spaniard has a long story to tell but, briefly, he is a bastard and an evil priest influenced his parents to toss him into a monastery. Next are about 100 trade paperback pages with print about half of what you're used to about the evils of monastic life as written by a bigoted Protestant. Fun stuff. Finally, our Spanish dude is contacted by his brother and a plan is outlined for his escape but...well, let's just say he ends up in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Where he is visited by MELMOTH THE WANDERER!
Freak circumstances occur, Spanish dude escapes from the Inquisition during a fire and ends up stumbling upon a hidden Jewish shrine where in the closet Jews are hanging out. Wackiness ensues, Spanish dude is led into a subterranean maze of hidden Jewish tunnels underneath Madrid where he runs into a 107-year-old Jewish wizard dude who tells the Spanish dude that he needs him to transcibe a tale of terror and thus end his life's mission. This tale is
THE STORY OF THE INDIANS--Seriously, I'm 2/3rds of the way in and he's gonna pull out another epic flashback that (skimming ahead) is going to take up all but the last 20 pages of the book?!?
In annoyance, I put it down and read a good chunk of Exodus.
When Cameron was in Pharoah's land, let my Cameron go.
I'm currently reading John and Jean Comaroff's Ethnicity, Inc. and El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty and the Transition to Democracy by Ellen Moodie. On a lighter note, The Pathfinder Beginner Box Hero's Handbook and City of Strangers: Kaer Maga have been occupying my time between RPG Superstar rounds.