I'd also like to note a) wolfson is being perfectly comprehensible and correct below and b) I think pan-psychism has more appeal than dsquared lets on.
Nah, just Margaret Thatcher and the Queen, like all the rest of us.
Nah, just Margaret Thatcher and the Queen, like all the rest of us.
I wanted to say that twice because it was so important to me.
Um, possibly Jane Bennett? But spite-fuck wise. She can't be that sweet.
I am having more trouble with this than I would have thought.
I think I've mentioned my standing exception for Louise Brooks before. Also Mary Wollstonecraft, who combined being as hot as hell with having about five brains, which were wasted on boring old Godwin.
I think the same can be said for Mary Shelley? Or am I mixing up my authors?
Actual fictional people, as opposed to people who wrote, or who represented fictional characters, not so much. Being a straight guy whose fantasies tend towards hot, straight women with five brains, the literary corpus doesn't serve me well. Most of the hottest, most brilliant women are gay.
Present company excepted, of course.
7. Mary Shelley was no slouch in either department, but I don't think she was up to her mother's weight. But that's only a personal opinion, which is about as valuable as any other opinion on whether you'd want to get it on with somebody who's been dead for 150 years.
7: Mary Wollstonecraft was the mother of Mary Shelley.
1. When small, I had a massive crush on Jason from Battle of the Planets. Not just fictional, but a cartoon.
2. Lord Peter
14 reminds me that I'd probably definitely make an exception for Harriet Vane, who I'd forgotten about.
Hard to resist the appeal of Roberta Wickham.
Lord Peter never did it for me, but I had wistful thoughts about Archie Goodwin.
I have so many issues that I had a crush on prince lotor from voltron. I mean, seriously wtf.
17: Oh, definitely Archie too. He could take me to the Stork Club.
No such place. I believe you're referring to the Flamingo.
Not just fictional, but a cartoon.
I'm not coming up with much else, fiction-wise. Along the lines of 16, I wouldn't say I was ever actually attracted to Psmith, but I wouldn't turn down a chance to hang around with him.
Well, I mentioned Oates, but I don't think authors, with a picture to aid the imagination, are what al means.
I cannot deny that at times in my youth I have indulged with purely text-based pornography, but I am not sure such work contains any actual characters except as placeholders for attributes and actions. Who the fuck is Fanny Hill, anyway?
Meh. I decided long ago that arousal comes specifically and entirely from objectification and subjugation, however complex and dynamic the process may seem, however much we try to deny and disguise it. See Sartre, see Albertine. It's all rape dominance, and bored me quite early.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stork_Club
arousal comes specifically and entirely from objectification and subjugation, however complex and dynamic the process may seem
you say that like it's a bad thing, bob.
Who the fuck is Fanny Hill, anyway?
The protagonist of a novel by Defoe, whose sexual adventures are actually the least entertaining part of the action (pls don't hit me, AWB).
Thinking about it, I did have a lifelong obsession with the wife of the King of Ithaca, but I named one of my daughters after her which is pretty much the definitive NMM situation.
24: Huh, I love that little park -- I didn't know it had been the Stork Club. I do know the Stork Club existed, but not in Archie's world. He drives a Heron, carries a Marley if he needs a gun, and goes dancing at the Flamingo.
28: Right. I think the Flamingo is supposed to be the Stork Club. I just want Archie to dance with me.
Incidentally, Tex Guinan's old club is the mid-town Flute location.
18
I have so many issues that I had a crush on prince lotor from voltron. I mean, seriously wtf.
In that case, I'll recommend the comic book. Specifically, the series that began in 2002 by Devil's Due Publishing. It was part of a minor wave of capitalizing on 80s childhood nostalgia, like Michael Bay's Transformers movies, but not nearly as commercially successful. Still, Lotor is definitely an interesting character there.
so he's not totally evil, just misunderstood? tell me more.
All the SF and fantasy I read, I'd think I'd have had some crush material in there, and nothing's coming up. Schmendrick the Magician sort of fits into the Psmith category, but not what I'd call crushing.
Perhaps it is an aspect of my mental illness makeup that I have never ever been able to imagine this stuff. As I guide Liz Taylor toward the four poster she always starts laughing and saying:"But you're short, dude." and no exercise of my mighty will seems to be able to force the star of Place in the Sun into a swooning "Oooooh, Bobby, take me." Somewhere twixt cunt and lip I start laughing myself.
31: yes, like Logan Echolls, whom I will now add to my list, even if he isn't strictly "literary."
Yes, definitely. Probably starting with Dick out of the Famous Five, though the thoughts wouldn't have been very lustful. Holden Caulfield. Yossarian. I'm sure there were some less mad ones later on.
31: He's got the spoiled prince/resentful son thing going on there, since his father is more driven than him. But no, he's not pure evil. His people in general are kind of Klingon-like or Spartan-like in their culture, so they're permanently antagonists to the humans, but it's not a story with black and white morality.
I'm trying to remember any fictional crushes, and coming up blank. What I get for reading so much Asimov.
Bayta Darell didn't do it for you?
It was never good when Asimov tried to write a sex scene.
37: Gladia in The Naked Sun was an early turn on for me, probably around third grade. She has actual nude scenes in the book, although viewed by the main characters only through the holograph. Connecting to curent events, I think I actually pictured her as Elizabeth Taylor.
There are also several explicit three ways in The Gods Themselves, but the creatures involved are very much not human and not exactly male or female.
Elsewhere in SF, the chicks in Stranger In a Strange Land were also early turnons for me.
Quincey Morris from Dracula made a huge impression on my 7th grade psyche. Rough and tumble and caring and adventurous and yum.
It was never good when Asimov tried to write a sex scene.
The only one I remember having read is the one from Robots of Dawn and, yeah, wow. Total yawner.
I cannot imagine having a sexual sort of crush on Psmith. Ego ideal, yes; object of desire, no.
As for crushes on or sexual attraction to fictional characters, I read Stranger in a Strange Land while growing up, now that someone else mentioned it, and the Xanth series, and comic books. My formative years happened to be during the heyday of Jim Lee and Rob Liefield. All things considered I'm lucky I turned out as well-adjusted as I did.
41: I was clued in to the virtues of a MMF three-way by Eunice Branca in "I Will Fear No Evil." The great thing about fantasizing as her was that you could pick male OR female!
-- Noob/ lurker question:How do you do italics here, again?
I suppose Psmith is the most theoretically sexual of Wodehouse's characters. You know, in secret, without Wodehouse's knowledge or approval.
Personally I like how Wodehouse only sexualizes his male characters if they're over 60 years old. E.g. Galahad Threepwood and Uncle Fred, reminiscing about music-hall girls of the Nineties.
My formative years happened to be during the heyday of Jim Lee and Rob Liefield. All things considered I'm lucky I turned out as well-adjusted as I did.
I know, right?
Which, together with alameida's link to Awesome Hospital, reminds me of the wonderful caption "Psylocke leaps vagina-first into battle!"
50: indeed. The younger characters fall in love, but never anything... mucky. But IIRC there is one point at which Uncle Gally reminisces about one of said chorus girls, now deceased, whose son has turned up in England and muses that he might actually be this man's father.
If it's a live-action TV show or movie, then how do you distinguish between being attracted to the actor or the character? I thought science fiction villainesses like Princess Aura (from Flash Gordon) and Princess Ardala (from Buck Rogers) were hot (and looking back on it -- clearly the same character), but I'm sure that I would also find Ornella Muti and Pamela Hensley dressed in the same skimpy costumes as attractive. Being a villainess is just a fringe benefit, especially since in 1980 argot, villainess meant "slutty".
One test would be if you were equally attracted to the same actor playing other people, or if you thought about them in those terms -- if you're thinking "Wow, I wonder what else she's been in?" then you're probably thinking actor, not character.
Oudemochka, I'm not sure we can count Logan since crushes on characters in visual media are part actor-crush.
I think I've admitted this here before (and elsewhere recently, so maybe I'm actually not admitting but boasting) but I cried at the death of Marvin in the I guess fourth Douglas Adams book, and some tiny part of me* is afraid the feelings were not entirely platonic. Otherwise I can't think of much.
*yeah yeah I saw the map too. shut up.
Okay, Marvin I definitely would not have guessed.
You didn't have a crush on Eeyore, did you?
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By the way, if you were masturbating to the author of Elizabeth Taylor's NYT obit, you really should have stopped a long, long time ago.
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58: You have named the one literary character I have been compared to more than any other, so that would have looked a little like narcissism.
Armande:
"Armande decreed they regularly make love around teatime, in the living room, as upon an imaginary stage, to the steady accompaniment of casual small talk, with both performers decently clothed, he wearing his best business suit and a polka-dotted tie, she a smart black dress closed at the throat. In concession to nature, undergarments could be parted, or even undone, but only very, very discreetly, without the least break in the elegant chit-chat: impatience was pronounced unseemly, exposure, monstrous."
Also Nancy Drew. In the back seat of the roadster . . .
I definitely did not wonder what else Ornella Muti had been in after "Flash Gordon". My thoughts were about who the hell this Brian Blessed person was, and whether he's always like that.
Around the onset of puberty, I saw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode where Michelangelo and this hot girl from Dimension X got to liking each other. This led to very sweet sexual fantasies in which I was a mutant reptile making love to an alien.
52: I laughed out loud at #10 on that list.
64: may I tell you about a fun little site called herpy.net?
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NMM to...
Walking the dogs this morning after the above comments, I turned a corner and there were a half dozen 40 somethings in white collared shirts and dark trousers (very unusual round here), four young men in olive with red berets, and a young black woman taking the soldiers' pictures in front of a yard flagpole at half-mast.
Everyone seemed relaxed and chipper, so my impression was that the heavy grieving had been done long ago, and this was about friends returning from a tour and getting appreciated by a family. The older women were nowhere in sight, though.
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This is NSFW, but I laughed out loud when I saw it. Just...why?
Eowyn. (And Faramir, come to think of it - honorable underdogs do it for me every time.)
I had a crush on prince lotor from voltron
My sister and I used to pretend that Lance and Keith were our boyfriends.
Other than that, Calvin O'Keefe from the Wrinkle in Time books. And Charles Darnay.
I am firmly corrected. A maroon beret No, it was Red. The maroon is darker than what I saw. But I think I also saw wings on the upper arms.
Among the Very Best, apparently.
A distant neighbour, I was reprimanded by the father a few months back for letting the dogs pee on his lawn. I had thoughts I now regret.
Oh my god, so many. So, so many.
A teacher in high school told me that everyone develops a huge crush on Natasha in War and Peace, which turns out to be true, but maybe not so much in a masturbating-to kind of way. Unless you're thinking of Audrey Hepburn in the '50s film adaptation, and she's dead, so so much for that.
I feel like my answer must be similar (quantitatively) to rfts's, but I can't really recall any specific examples. Thank god.
Irene Adler, I suppose. In keeping with the detective's-antagonist theme, Catwoman.*
I have been to Reichenbach Falls. They're pretty impressive, albeit narrower than I imagined.
* The art of detection, a love story: Once a girl asked me whether I felt like I was looking for something. Irritated by hours and hours of her conversation, I replied that I thought of myself as the kind of person who finds things. She took that poorly.
I did not develop a huge crush on Natasha in War and Peace.
76: I'd love to eavesdrop on a double date involving you and your old classmate.
78: Too busy operating our school for pickup artists to socialize.
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Marginally relevant, but this thread has destroyed my productivity. I expected lots of drunks, junkies, and things in rectums, but the compulsive masturbators were a surprise.
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I did not develop a huge crush on Natasha in War and Peace.
Further to 76, there's a deleted scene in Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta's character expresses affection for "that tough girl who used to hang around with Encyclopedia Brown." I share that feeling, but Brown Harvest isn't very good.
76.3: Bono still hasn't found what he's looking for. That's because Chuck Norris Flippanter found it first.
Margaret from the Judy Blume novel. The girl from Bridge to Terebithia. Deborah, Ester, and Ruth from the Old Testament.
The girl from Bridge to Terebithia.
This. Also, George from the Famous Five.
George from the Famous Five.
She was specified as being 11 years old, and they never grew any older.
I can't believe Rochester and Mr. Darcy haven't been name checked yet. I second Sherlock Holmes. However, my first love was Edmond Dantes. I had a huge crush on him from about 10-15. Unfortunately, re-reading TCoMC as an adult, I find his elaborate revenge schemes immoral, adolescent, and not all that well thought out (people go crazy and kill other people--you didn't think this might happen?). Also, I certainly see the Haydee relationship differently as an adult. So, I have renounced Edmond Dantes as crush-worthy material. The sandwiches, however, are still awesome.
Come to think of it, I probably had a crush on every tomboy I encountered in YA fiction.
81: Shit, everyone here knows me too well. It's like you're all my wife.
Marginally relevant, but this thread has destroyed my productivity.
That's great stuff. ER docs are kindred spirits. "The Law of Inverse Value: the less you contribute to society, the greater the trauma you can sustain with minimal to no physical sequelae".
Not a crush, but I used to think of Lucy Pevensie as what my little sister, had I had one, might have been like.
14.2 gets it exactly right.
Well hello, Jim Chee. I may have committed a crime, and the evidence might still be on my person. You better check.
Lolita. So, so wrong. I was 19 when I read it.
62, 69: A friend whom I never took to be a reader just recently gave me very thorough descriptions of Nancy and her friends from his readings twenty years ago. He was in no doubt about his preference order.
Lolita So, so wrong.
More or less wrong than Anne Frank?
97: Everyone is off researching.
Rochester and Mr. Darcy
Too bombastic to the first, and no personality actually represented in the book to the second -- he's a stick figure. I could probably do something useful with the Professor from Villette, though, come to think.
More or less wrong than Anne Frank?
Arguably less, because Philip Roth never wrote a book about it.
When I was a kid, I guess I really got off on softcore fantasy novels, but that's not the same as crushing on a character. In kindergarten, I got in trouble once for mooning around fantasizing about Han Solo instead of, I dunno, putting rubber bands on pegs or whatever we were supposed to be doing.
As an adult, I fell in love with Tom Jones (of Tom Jones), and Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch. But that's not really in a masturbating way, though. I don't think I've masturbated to non-pornographic fiction.
99: Observations of the reactions of ladies to the Royal Navy captain in Persuasion suggest that he's made entirely of (seawaterproof) catnip, but maybe that's Ciaran Hinds in the film adaptation.
I suppose if women read the Patrick O'Brian novels, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin would have their respective constituencies.
I don't know if this counts as a crush, but I had a feeling I would have been a perfect mark for Estella. I've grown since!
103.1: Hrm. He's a step up from Darcy, certainly.
I have read the Pat O'Brian novels, but couldn't possibly find either of the two of them less appealing in that way.
104 cont'd: And this is while scorning Pip for being such a dipshit. I was a complicated tween.
I wonder if there exists a woman eccentric enough to find attractive so obvious (if self-deprecatingly so) a male fantasy figure as Gen. Sir Harry Paget Flashman, V.C., K.C.B., K.C.I.E.; Chevalier, Legion of Honour; Order of Maria Theresa, Austria; Order of the Elephant, Denmark (temporary); U.S. Medal of honor; San Serafino Order of purity and truth, 4th Class.
I was a complicatednormal tween.
Maybe that's more accurate? I don't know. I drive all of them off my lawn nowadays.
104, 106:
Cartman: Go away, Pip. Nobody likes you!
Kyle: Yeah, what kind of name is Pip anyway?
Pip: Well, my father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Phillip, my infant tongue....
Cartman: God damn it, would you shut the hell up!?! Nobody gives a rat's ass.
107: Anything's possible. In theory. It could happen. But despite the entertainingness of his memoirs... I'm going to say very few.
100, 101: Speaking of Philip Roth and, I don't think I've masturbated to non-pornographic fiction all of my examples keep ending up in the grey area between pron and mainstream (or at least "grey area" as interpreted by me when I read them). That's certainly how I read Portnoy's Complaint (and even Goodbye, Columbus Brenda Patimkin) as a young teen (and even how it was viewed by many at the time). So yeah, Bubbles Girardi, "The Monkey" (modeled after his first wife I learn form Wikipedia!) and Brenda Patimkin.
The girl from Bridge to Terebithia.
Yeah, this.
Much earlier, I have strange not-very-clear memories involving a female Transformer who appeared in a comic book. I think it's best that they're unclear.
Bat girl (yvonne craig) on the Batman TV show.
Oh, hey, I found the Philip Glenister character in Life on Mars unsettlingly attractive, considering everything. And it's the character (despite the fact that I'm blanking on the name), not the actor -- he's a good actor, but I don't find him generically that appealing. Mmmm, violent alcoholic authority figures... that's really wrong.
Just about any woman in a James Cain novel.
I found out from my mum the other day that a family friend now writes We/lsh lan/guage pornography (I didn't think that last word needed much google-proofing). With a grant from the Assembly arts program to do so. Never has the phrase "what a way to make a living" seemed so appropriate. The fucker didn't even speak particularly good Welsh when I last saw him.
112: Were the memories of her as a robot or as, say, a sexy motorbike?
How does one moan without vowels?
How does one moan without vowels?
Glotally?
We/lsh lan/guage pornography
This actually brought tears to my eyes. I wonder if he writes it in Welsh, or composes in English and translates.
Also, if someone's paying him, presumably he has a Scots counterpart exploiting the parallel market.
We/lsh lan/guage pornography
Cwm again?
The terrible thing is that nearly all sex-words in common usage in Welsh are English loanwords, but I suspect (god knows I haven't read it) that if a Welsh Language Act grant is involved, he will have to use the archaic fourteenth century "pure" Welsh words, because the grant admin bods are often quite persnickety about that sort of thing. The idea of the two or three people in the world who might read this thing one-handed having to desperately switch back and forth between their preferred reading matter and the Aberystwyth University Comprehensive Dictionary Of The Welsh Language for some reason amuses me greatly.
I quite like the thought of a generation of kids getting motivated to learn welsh by the tantalizing sight of frequent "fucks," "buggers," and, this being in the vicinity of knifecrime island, "cunts," as they peruse the otherwise unintelligible pages of some school approved cultural text.
Also, if someone's paying him, presumably he has a Scots counterpart exploiting the parallel market.
Can't make those sort of assumptions since devolution.
126 - all Welsh schoolchildren have to learn Welsh up to the age of 16. (I hope I am accurate on that one.)
Now I am wondering where one gets hold of W.L.P.
My thoughts were about who the hell this Brian Blessed person was, and whether he's always like that.
So Ned, were you pleased or disappointed when you found out that yes, he is?
I definitely did not wonder what else Ornella Muti had been in after "Flash Gordon".
Neither did I, exactly, but what she might have been out of was a matter of some concern.
I am pretty sure there is no one getting any grant money to write Irish-language pornography. (I regularly attend the sort of events where everything published recently in Irish is displayed for purchase.) The nearest is a dictionary/collection of actual colloquial terms for sexual and somewhat related matters (periods etc).
Perhaps a back-up career plan if I get made redundant.
Hi emir!
Writing porn is my backup plan too, but I fear I don't really have a niche.
have to learn Welsh up to the age of 16.
After the age of 16, it's not mandatory but it is encouraged by the provision of government-subsidized pornography.
I regularly attend the sort of events where everything published recently in Irish is displayed for purchase.
That's pretty cool. Irish looks neat on the page.
Potentially offensive question that I won't attempt to excuse with a reference to the Irish-American portion of my blood supply: Is what one thinks of as an "Irish" accent the result, however distant, of the way that the most common sounds are made in the Irish language?
re: 121
I don't imagine there's much of a market for porn in Scots. Too close to English, and people don't have the same commitment to it as Welsh. And Scots Gaelic would be a pretty fucking niche market. Welsh is spoken by vastly more people.
I used to have a Breton neighbour [who also spoke Welsh] who claimed that Welsh was the only 'celtic' language that had much hope of surviving as a real language in the next 50 or 100 years. No idea what the state of Irish is, but Scots Gaelic is very low indeed [roughly 1% of the population of Scotland], although I suppose it might live on in the Hebrides.
134.last: (No one in this story is meant to represent anyone either living or dead, particularly not the Mum and Dad. Our Mums and Dads are all very nice and live in bungalows which we bought for them in the Outer Hebrides.)
I was relieved when I started crushing on real rather-than fictional characters; more risk of embarassment but some hope of fulfilment. Besides, despite the heroic support for reader insertion in the Lymond novels, I was never going to match Francis Crawford.
With adult perspective, Bunter & Jeeves are much more promising.
Writing porn is my backup plan too, but I fear I don't really have a niche.
Please, AWB, your niche has long been obvious.
No idea what the state of Irish is
From what I've read, about 1% of the population use it daily, and another 5% or so are fluent. Small market for Irish-language porn, but who knows what turns people on in the Gaeltacht?
Small market for Irish-language porn, but who knows what turns people on in the Gaeltacht?
I'm imagining now the output of publisher company Mills O'Boon. Handsome but cruel 17th century plantationistas sweeping the humble, but beautiful daughter of Erin off of her feet, etc.
your niche has long been obvious
Seriously, those pants are way too tight.
Athena. Anna Karenin. Lady MacBeth. Lady Jaye. The girl in the books about the tripods. Is that weird?
Looking back at the OP, Gilgamesh seems an unlikely crush object for anybody. The translations that I've read seem counter-erotic,* not necessarily solely when the Gilster rejects the advances of that sexy goddess. Given the existence of the Internet, there's probably Humbaba pr0n somewhere, but I don't want to know about it.
* I acknowledge the possibility of Gilgamesh/Enkidu fanfiction, but that seems both obvious and willfully obscure in a way that would make the Williamsburgiests hipster blush.
The one who was alone, the cunning one, in front of Nintu, mother
of the land,
Enki, the cunning one, in front of Nintu, mother of the land,
has his phallus fill the ditches full with semen,
has his phallus glut the reeds with an overflow of sperm,
has his phallus tear away the noble cloth that covers the lap.
He spoke out: "No one walks in the marshland."
Enki said: "No one walks in the marshland."
He swore by the life of An.
His semen that belonged to the one lying in the marshland,
lying in the marshland,
Enki directed his semen owed to Damgalnunna,
poured that semen into the womb, Enki's semen,
poured that semen into the womb of Ninhursag.
One day being her one month,
two days being her two months,
three days being her three months,
four days being her four months,
five days being her five months,
six days being her six months,
seven days being her seven months,
eight days being her eight months,
nine days being her nine months, the Months of Womanhood,
like fine oil, like fine oil, like precious oil,
Nintu, mother of the land, like fine oil, like fine oil,
like precious oil,
gave birth to Ninmu.
After the age of 16, it's not mandatory but it is encouraged by the provision of government-subsidized pornography.
Naughty welsh limericks painted upon the backs of permissive sheep?
Baptist-language porn!
He leaned in close and whispered, hot in her ear, "Let's drive to the liquor store and dance."
I have a friend who writes pornographic novels professionally -- she has an agent and everything. i don't think there's much money in it, though.
Update! Apparently there is some disagreement, particularly on the part of the author, as to whether said novels are actually pornographic, or merely "literary". I thought it was too hilarious to be true.
133: "Is what one thinks of as an "Irish" accent the result, however distant, of the way that the most common sounds are made in the Irish language?"
Somewhat. Word choice far more so.
I'm no expert on that aspect so this might be more informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiberno-English#Pronunciation
re: 148
I read an article in, iirc, the Guardian or some other broadsheet newspaper, about people who wrote porn novels -- mostly freelance writers and novelists looking for quick money -- and yeah, while I can't remember the sums involved, they were pretty low. You'd have to turn out a lot of words in a year to make a living income.
141: The girl in the books about the tripods. Is that weird?
Umm, yeah, kinda, given how overwhelmingly homoerotic those novels are. I remember reading the serialized version of The City of Gold and Lead in my friend's back issues of Boy's Life when I was a lad. Of course, I didn't know then that I was bisexual, and would not have really been able to formulate that category anyway, but that story sure made me feel kinda funny.
re: 150
FWIW, almost all of those distinctions apply to Scots English, and a reasonable swathe of the north of England, too, so I'd be wary of drawing any particular inferences about the influence of Irish.
134 - I have a friend in Edinburgh whose kids (eldest must be about 7 now) went/go to a Gaelic nursery. I took this as a sign that Gaelic was being revived (to some extent)?
Most prose porn really sucks, either in the "erect member" way or in the "and then Susan had like a hundred orgasms" way.
(me @ 150)
(pwn by nattarGcM ttaM while writing this)
Actually on looking at that again it describes the various features but doesn't necessarily identify which of them might arise from the influence of Irish. Certainly the old-fashioned pronunciation of "ea" as "ay" doesn't AFAIK. The l-thing is interesting as the Irish language has two kinds of "l" * neither of which is represented in modern Hiberno-English. (there is a third "l" in some dialects which is much the same)
Oh my god, so many. So, so many.
Ditto.
147: I was flipping through my two-volume Aristotelis Opera, as one does on a rainy day, and was delighted to discover the (apparently spurious) Problems. Here's one prooblem:
Why are theatrical artists generally persons of bad character? Is it because they partake but little of reason and wisdom, because most of their life is spent in the pursuit of the arts which provide their daily needs, and because the greater part of their life is passed in incontinence and often in want, and both these things prepare the way to villainy?
May be!
26, 155: Actually, I rather like Fanny Hill.
Fanny Hill is truly awesome, and is an exception to the rule.
Oh my god, so many. So, so many.
Me three.
To the OP, I've just never seen the point of imagining myself with a fictional character. I mean, it's easy enough to fantasize about being a fictional character, who is getting it on with another fictional character, but I'd have to agree with McManus that having me show up in the novel or movie or whatever would look way too much like Hoffman and Bancroft in The Graduate, where Hoffman was so overcome by the silliness of the scene that he had to go and bang his head against the wall. Not much erotic about that.
I imagine Shearer is out there somewhere even now, furiously reading through teacher's union propaganda, telling himself how he has to stop, this is filthy, filthy!
I hadn't seen 26. Chris is mixing up Moll and Fanny?
re: 154
There are lots of initiatives like that. HUGE amounts of money spent, relative to the number of speakers. I don't think they've taken. Numbers are down year on year since, basically, the 14th century.
"But they are just not erotic," she said of the fan-chosen top 100 Penthouse "letters."
I can't say such things about genre fiction or art, that the popular stuff is objectively bad. Obviously it works for its readers.
What can be said is that I don't like certain popular entertainments, and that I don't like the people who enjoy the stuff I don't like, to the extent I think a judgement can be well-founded and if I give a shit. IOW, most artistic criticism is social criticism.
Are the prurient masses ignorantly depriving themselves of the finer more subtle pleasures of literary pron? Up and off, mouth cock hand pussy ass. It can be interesting, what individuals need, or think they need for what I believe are mostly non-sexual reasons, to surround the core of eroticism, but not to me anymore.
it's easy enough to fantasize about being a fictional character
Really?
As I, Cary Scaramouche, take off my mask and reveal my true identity to panting Grace Kelly...pretty tough for me, actually.
The closer I get to my personal reality or the more I can abstract from any subjectivity, the better it works. Hell, I can't imagine what my bed partner will do without watching her very closely and taking scary risks.
167.2.2 goes too far.
Of course there is experience and trust. But predictability, which I think is necessary to eroticism, requires some objectification. "Yes, if I caress her shoulder..." "Not tonight, dear"
OP:His thoughtful offers just now to wear a deerstalker cap and start smoking a pipe were met with a cursory "fuck you!"
Lots of stuff going on here. Battle for top?
Also to 26, I'm not sure Fanny Hill has much going on other than sexual adventures. There isn't a great deal of plot in the way. Is this also a confusion with Moll Flanders, because definitely her adventures as a thief are far more exciting than her sexytimes.
I'm dominating the thread, and I am probably the least sexual person here. What could I know?
I do know that my tastes in eroticism are shared by millions of men, so can't be that weird or transgressive, if not universal. They are probably patriarchal, but the guilt helps. Really.
I suppose I could imagine being chased down Fifth Avenue by the Olsen Twins or something, but it always feels silly and isn't necessary, even at my advanced age.
being chased down Fifth Avenue by the Olsen Twins
Just sic the dogs on 'em.
In bob's fantasy they're carrying torches and pitchforks.
143: One is assumedly revealing one's flaws as a creature of the post-industrialized, birth-controlled West, but that sort of anthem to fertility doesn't strike an erotic chord with one. One blames one's adolescent health education in the fear of fecundity.
It's gaining a certain Californian charm in the way of water-rights, though not this week.
It's gaining a certain Californian charm in the way of water-rights, though not this week.
Enki's practices? What's the referent here?
This thread has made me feel like an ESL student. Apropos of nothing, the medium lobster posted again, and I believe it was for my birthday. Because I'm special.
178: The Medium Lobster used to comment here all the time. But that was well before your and mostly before my time. Still, happy birthday!
179: Seriously?? Fafblog was my first internet crush. Really. That is crazy. Also, it was yesterday, and today I'm trying really hard not to tell my ex to just never contact me again, rather than send me weird Stepford-esque belated birthday texts referencing my mother. But thank you! I like you better.
PS Man, I want someone to answer the q I posed in Schlengths -- "what is literary merit"? Because I don't know the answer.
Happy birthday, donaq! Everyone knows that fafblog is better than an ex.
I managed to annoy one of my Libya-intervention-celebrating Facebook friends by linking to the Medium Lobster's post. Yay, the Medium Lobster!
(Who I had forgotten ever commented here. Google & Yahoo together find two comments. Are there more, hiding in the hoohole?)
I still want to know what you have against Larry McMurtry, Von.
Enki's ability to fill the ditches with fertility is going to be worth a lot in our lifetimes. It's probably high-phosphorus, too; hot stuff.
hiding in the hoohole
This is dirty, right?
Everyone knows that fafblog is better than an ex.
No one has ever been more right about anything, ever.
Also, I watched Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last night / tonight, and she really was something. I may have developed a crush exactly too late. Also, the writing is like, here's how to take some (now) very obvious themes / character motivations, and still make it compelling. Mofo was pretty good.
"what is literary merit"
Create a peer group that might care, a social reality, or only in your mind, or who you read and respect. What the majority of your group considers "good" has literary merit. Whether or however much this judgment is "relative" or "objective" depends on who is in your chosen peer group.
I do not mind Twilight readers thinking the book is very good, even though I think they are wrong. The tribal signals of their group are not those of mine. My own group is unlikely to be improved by any education or proselytization I might do. On the contrary, my understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of a book has consistently been diminished by contact with others who have read it.
Peer groups can shift morph etc dynamically. There doesn't even have to be one committed member.
I do not mind Twilight readers thinking the book is very good
You are far more generous here than I, bob. But that might be the woman thing? I dunno. There's part of me that feels like everyone who likes or supports those books hurts me. It's probably not a good way to feel.
Thanks Megan!
183: sorry, I didn't know you wanted to know. He's consistently awful in the NYRoB when writing about Western history; he's far too taken with myth and far too suspicious of what he sometimes calls "revisionism" (aka, new scholarship). And his non-fiction book on massacres is a true embarrassment: wrong on the facts, sensationalistic, and occasionally racist (and not the good kind). All of which really bums me out, because I love a lot of his fiction. I wasn't kidding in that other thread when I said that I wish there were two Larrys McMurtry.
McMurtry sometimes writes about Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s and does a good job; IIRC he had a nice piece about Lew Wasserman. But, yeah.
Having just looked back at that other thread, Halford, my opinion of Brechin's book is that it's pretty well written but incredibly over-argued and even overwrought. Also: he totally misses the boat on the idea that cities are actually pretty environmentally friendly, as patterns of human settlement go at least, and that San Francisco especially has done a great deal of good for the modern environmental movement. I actually reviewed that book once upon a time, but I can't remember where. Anyway, it had (has, I expect) beautiful illustrations.
192: if you want to e-mail me, I can also tell you in private that Brechin is reputed to be a fatuous dickweed.
that is not even remotely shocking given the tone of the book. I liked learning about the hydraulic mining industry, though, and the fact that Golden Gate Park is an environmental joke warms my evil Angeleno heat.
Heart. Though at this point it's really just an empty shell producing a little bit of heat.
What is it with Angelenos putting down San Francisco? I remember k-sky once claimed that the thing he liked about SF was that the people there, even though they aren't as attractive as the people in LA, act as if they are attractive.
The Pyramid of Mining! It's the root of all evil in the world! ALL! EVIL! Dude, calm down.
I actually like San Francisco a lot, in reality, although the people really are way uglier (it's true!) and it lacks the big chaotic city feel that I love about LA. I just get sick of the hostility going the other way.
Nonsense. No hostility whatsoever! I, at least, harbor nothing but positive feelings for your insane patchwork of urbish areas that occasionally poke through the asphalt.
although the people really are way uglier (it's true!)
It's like you've never been east of downtown.
Okay, no, fashion-wise that totally holds up.
I just get sick of the hostility going the other way.
Have you ever heard any interviews with Sandow Birk, or seen the In Smog And Thunder painting series?
It's like you've never been east of downtown.
Racist!
Actually the fact that Halford thinks about SF at all puts him in the tiny minority of Angelenos who secretly want to move there.
What's so bad about Golden Gate Park?
"what is literary merit"
This Tim Burke post nicely makes the case for that being an inherently difficult question to answer.
Go ahead, think about it for a minute. Why is one work of literature great and another not so much? For that matter, why is a work of high culture great compared to a work of popular culture? (Or is it?) The answers to those questions are never obvious. If you think you can tell me in a paragraph why Moby Dick is a greater work of literature than Northanger Abbey, I don't think you really know what you're talking about, even though I'd completely agree with the sentiment.
202 -- Oh, that far east. Well, yes.
204 -- Apparently, Golden Gate Park is built on basically a big sand dune with no water whatsoever and requires a massive amount of totally wasteful and completely imported water (even by California standards) to produce the trees and lush lawns, etc. And the overwhelming thirst for that water led eventually to . . . Hetch Hetchy.
I mean, LA may have swindled a bunch of Indian-killing land speculators in the Owens Valley, but at least we didn't literally destroy the most beautiful place on earth in order to put up a grassy patch for trustafarians to have their drum circles.
at least we didn't literally destroy the most beautiful place on earth
Second-most-beautiful. Geez.
Also how can you not love golden gate park? Ignore the drum circles: it has roller disco, bison, and working windmills. What the f more do you want?
I feel like one writer who has tried to quantify literary merit, as something he can add to the world's store of, is Colson Whitehead. I tried to read one of his books and it seemed to be mostly efforts at describing in fine detail some state of mind, or some sort of complicated room interior or natural scene, that nobody had ever described before. Writing to get maximum degree-of-difficulty points.
It's not like they let you kill and eat the bison, so whatevs.
There are bison in all sorts of unexpected places.
I remember when I was surprised to learn that Golden Gate Park is not actually adjacent to the Golden Gate Bridge.
201: My observations aside, I think the hostility is pretty solidly established to be stronger SF->LA. I was just there last weekend and rather enjoyed myself.
Mostly my knock on San Francisco is that the whole playground thing has become extreme, kind of a summer camp for grown-ups, planned activities, etc. I think I've mentioned hearabouts the day I walked around town, running into randomly and visiting with people I knew from different walks of life, all of whom happened to be going to "the bunny party," except for the last one, who when I asked "so, are you going to 'the bunny party'?" responded, "No, I'm going to Big Wheels drag racing."
It's a good thing that it exists, but it's not for me.
hearabouts!
201.last: my ex-wife was an early champion of his stuff -- well, a middle champion of his work, but she wrote a bunch of different pieces about him and maybe a catalog essay. Everyone should watch the trailer.
Actually, I think I would like San Francisco a lot more if it was still controlled by greedy mining and railroad barons with moustaches. I like the Tadich Grill.
Also, attention philosophers: my gym's new motto is "Ready to do the Unknown and the Unknowable Full Time."
He's consistently awful in the NYRoB when writing about Western history; he's far too taken with myth and far too suspicious of what he sometimes calls "revisionism" (aka, new scholarship).
See, it's funny, because "too taken with myth" is pretty much the opposite of how I'd have characterized his writing about Western history. What I've gotten from his writing is a consistent reminder that the myth is completely overblown, and that "the West" was never what the mythmakers made it out to be.
And his non-fiction book on massacres is a true embarrassment: wrong on the facts, sensationalistic, and occasionally racist (and not the good kind). All of which really bums me out, because I love a lot of his fiction.
Huh. I read it when it first came out and I have to say that that doesn't jibe with my memory. It's sitting on my bookshelf; I'll have to revisit it.
"what is literary merit"
You rang? I can talk about this pretty well, but the explanation is boring. The answer is that there are several different kinds of measurements, and the measurements themselves change based on history and context, but my students end up being pretty good at talking about what the excellencies of this or that thing are. There is no such thing, I think, as total merit, but there are various ways of measuring merit that are in competition for dominance.
I think the original McMurtry vs. newer scholarship in academic history essay was in The New Republic in the late 80s/early 90s where he argued that what the historians think is new isn't and what they think is interesting isn't, and what he thinks is right is and shouldn't be changed. Also, lots of those historians went to Yale. And where's that? Not the west!
Ok, so I don't remember the essay that well, as the whole debate was kind of stagnant and dull by the time I got into history, but it was along those lines.
I had a debate on this in my lit class yesterday in which we were discussing a bit of shitty poetry in Eq/uiano and one of my excellent former poetics students immediately identified it as shit, while another student made the argument that Eq/uiano is clearly too brilliant to have written shit and may be working within the naive genre of country church poetry and we had a nice debate about whether it's possible for someone we respect so much as a thinker and writer to be so unaccountably shitty at writing quatrains. It was nice.
219: I don't know what to say to any of this drivel. Other than, you know nothing of my work.
Blake, frex, by many measurements, is a terrible, terrible poet, but other aspects of excellence must be taken into consideration. Poe, on the other hand, is a creepy pandering wanker as a poet, though his prose shows considerably more merit.
221: I've tried before to find a link to this. I suppose I should just scan it myself and put it up at the artist formerly known as my blog.
223: "[D]rivel"? Ouch. It's not like I said bad things about New Orleans!
So now there are two threads going on about literary merit? Well, isn't that fucking hoity-toity. Not entirely unrelated, a friend on fb just referred to something by Camille Paglia as "wonderfully Paglian". I should defriend him for that, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for a minute.
226: DRIVEL! (Nah, I'm just messing around. I haven't read everything McMurtry's written in the NYRoB. But the stuff I've read has been fusty. And the book on massacres really is lousy; that I know for sure. Plus, the article that fake accent mentioned rankles a bit. And then there's the fact that I'm terribly jealous that McMurtry is one of the go-to guys for reviews on Western/Native American history.)
227: You could try to get the ketchup thread going.
230: I just got a 404 error. DRIVEL!!!
231: Try the link from here.
(I also found a mention of that article in a post at the Claremont Review about his massacre book. They didn't have nice things to say about it either.)
Huh, I got a 404 from the link in 230 but it worked fine when I did a google search for the title of the piece.
232: I still get 404ed. Let me try neb's way. Yup, that worked. Thanks, neb! Thanks for nothing, Josh.
On the original topic, I remember having a huge crush on the woman accused of being a witch in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I'm sure there were others, but I can't remember anything immediately.*
I noticed sometime after college that I had stopped feeling involved enough in novels to have that kind of emotional response to them. Kind of sad, really.
*I'd say Hetta Carbury, but I saw the adaptation before reading the book.
I noticed sometime after college that I had stopped feeling involved enough in novels to have that kind of emotional response to them.
I feel this way about music, which feeling makes me very sad indeed. Books, though, still have the power to elicit strong emotions in me. Which is to say, I guess you're just dead inside. Also, good thing you're going to be a librarian.
238: I didn't say I stopped feeling any emotional response. Just that I stopped responding as if it were possible to meet the characters some day. Thinking further, it's not actually that easy to describe the difference.
The first couple of years of history school did kill a lot of my interest in fiction, but I recovered.
240: Well, the first couple of years of history graduate school opened me up like a crocus in March. I'm not sure what your problem is.
opened me up like a crocus in March
Rawr!
Sometimes I get the impression even I'm wasting my time here, guys.
The boy from Bridge to Terebithia. Paul Atreides (saw the film years later). And yeah, that cartoon serial of City of Gold And Lead in Boulys Life made me feel all kinds of funny.
227: MUST DEFRIEND
ooooh, I forgot about paul atreides! I was pretty satisfied with kyle mclaughlan too.
You rang? I can talk about this pretty well, but the explanation is boring. ... There is no such thing, I think, as total merit, but there are various ways of measuring merit that are in competition for dominance.
Please do go on if you're willing.
This is something that I think about with regard to music, and wish I had a better vocabulary for.
Or maybe it is just that simple . . . not all virtues are compatible and some are in direct opposition.
I think most everything Camille Paglia writes is "wonderfully Paglian."
246: I asked if by "Paglian" he meant "fatuous", and he replied that it certainly meant "obdurate", so I'm letting it slide this time.
literary merit
We simply need a standardized test of wisdom (broadly construed) and then test readers before and after reading, using the scores and an insanely complicated formula to calculate Wisdom Above Replacement Author (WARA).
e had a nice debate about whether it's possible for someone we respect so much as a thinker and writer to be so unaccountably shitty at writing quatrains.
Isn't it not only possible, but more likely than not, that any given brilliant writer will also produce terrible work. That certainly is the case in pop music. It's not that uncommon to see songs that are complete classics alongside others on the same album that don't really work at all.
246: THANKS JESUS, AS IF MY PRESS DIDN'T SUCK ALREADY.
YES, I KNOW IT'S ACTUALLY FATUITY.
We regret to inform you that the whole thing has been called off.
The girl in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure."
Weirdly, the girls in my English Lit for Non-English Majors class are not swooning over Mr. Darcy right now. They think Lizzie could do much better. Some of the boys have been staying after class to say they think poor Mr. Darcy is not getting a fair shake; sometimes men can be shy and women take it the wrong way.
169 is right. I apologise. In extenuation it's nearly 40 years since I read either.
re: 238
I noticed sometime after college that I had stopped feeling involved enough in novels to have that kind of emotional response to them...
I feel this way about music, which feeling makes me very sad indeed.
That may be the saddest thing I've ever read.
re: 256
Heh. I could see myself having a minor Lizzie B. crush, but I think that's more Keira Knightley in the recent(ish) Joe Wright film adaptation. Which is, imho, good.
Come'on, people you are way too respectable in your choices here; nobody's going to admit to a crush to any of the X-Women/Men, you big bunch of nerds you?
i was limited to superslow roaming connection on my phone the other week, and my spankbank has had way more penalties and fees than interest lately, and so was looking for some erotica to get off on. I realised i couldn't think of any fic i would like to read the erotic fanfic of, at least that i could find fanfic of. I am not sure what that means.
80: I remember running into that thread from (I think) Making Light. Checking back suggests it's just as great as ever. Although it's a pretty good document about the inevitable hatred of the doctor for the patient and yr. fundamentally sick society. All those people trying to game the insurance system or score drugs off the emergency room. (Although, in the UK we have locks on the alcohol hand cleaner dispensers to stop winos emptying them...) Also, who knew there were people who have "a history of self-catheterisation".
Vaguely on-topic, near my office there is a "car park" - i.e. a missing building, perhaps even a second world war bombsite that somehow never got built on, that someone cleaned up a bit and rents out as parking space - where the advertising truck for a strip club parks up. From the advert: "Four floors of the most beautiful girls in London. Indoor Beach, Harem Tent..." The 80/20 rule obviously applies to fantasy as to everything else. Let people come up with what they really want and you're going to get a *lot* of crappy slash fiction.
Also, repeating this call - I'm going to be in Palo Alto the week after next. I'm landing on Saturday afternoon and I'm off again on Thursday evening. I will be busiest on the 5th to the 7th.
There's an impressive old camera shop in Palo Alto. I've forgotten what it's called.
The Wire as a Victorian novel. If this were actually a book, and I were to read it, I'd fancy Beadie Russell.
How can you say we have a fundamentally sick society? I mean we do. Really, we do. But do you have to say it? If I were dying of cancer, would you mention, every chance you get, "you're dying of cancer". You probably would, you sinister bastard.
It occurs to me a day later about the OP that the reason I don't have crushes on literary characters is my appetites are too visual and my relationship to what I read is decidedly non-visual. (So the same reason I had absolutely no idea what was going on in the last trillion pages of that wretched book about the hobbits--improperly installed visual/spatial software in brain-- also means I have no idea what Jude Fawley looks like and if I want to do him.)
I have no idea what Jude Fawley looks like
Hollywood says he looks Christopher Eccleston, and Hollywood never lies, right?
Alex, will you be confined to Palo Alto itself?
256: Isn't that the typical reaction, up until well past the midpoint of the story?
nobody's going to admit to a crush to any of the X-Women/Men, you big bunch of nerds you?
I think 45 and 51 do so implicitly; in any case, I'll cop to, uh, basically all of the X-women (but especially Emma Frost, natch). But I think someone earlier in the thread had ruled out pictoral representations as cheating, so whevs.
Let's see, how embarassing can we get. Crysania/Raistlin, and Kitiara/Lord Soth from Dragonlance? Probably some Xanth characters, and definitely characters/situations from the Apprentice Adept series--wow, does that series have some heavy BDSM not-even-subtext--but I've been repressing my memories of ever having liked Piers Anthony, so it's hard to get more specific. Lanfear from "The Wheel of Time," absolutely. Basically everyone in "A Game of Thrones" & its sequels (coming to HBO in only! 23! days! Squeee!!), but especially Cersei (pre-FFC), Danys, & The Hound.
Really, it's more relationships/situations than particular characters.
266: This I don't know. I'm travelling through SFO, and I'm staying in the Crowne Plaza in Palo Alto and working around there. I presume I'd need to get an international driving licence and sign up for a four figure precautionary credit-card authorisation to go anywhere else, right?
270: And a firearm. Everyone in the States carries at least one firearm at all times. Everyone.
You could also attempt to use what passes for commuter rail around here.
I'm staying in the Crowne Plaza in Palo Alto
That's not even in the easily-walkable part of Palo Alto. But there are buses. And what nosflow doesn't tell you about Caltrain is that you can drink on it. (This isn't really a positive, if you happen to be on a train full of people who think the train is the place to begin their party.)
And, as Google reminds me, sometimes your train gets delayed a while because passengers decide to start fighting.
Silicon Valley is a huge pain in the ass without a car -- everything is reasonably far from the airport in disconnected little pods, traffic often sucks, there are few good hotels and those are often miles from where you want to be, etc.
You don't really need an international drivers license, do you? I'd just get a cheap rental car and drive into SF to meet Wolfson and Josh, which I assume is the point of all of this; you should be able to do that for about $50/day. But then SF sucks to drive in! It's a dilemna!
264: the reason I don't have crushes on literary characters is my appetites are too visual and my relationship to what I read is decidedly non-visual.
I'm figuring out that this goes for me as well. As hyper-sexualized as my nominally de-sexualized boyhood looks in retrospect, I really have no recall of words alone triggering that kind of thing until I got to Roth etc. (and then it had to be pretty explicit). Unlike visuals, where the comics crush went beyond the Archie girls to Daisy Mae, Brenda Starr, Blondie and even Mrs Denis the Menace (for God's sake), and as an 8-year-old I'd be right down there in front of the TV trying to look up the skirts of the dancers on the Andy Williams Show.
Caltrain blows. Suck it up get into a car like American Jesus intended.
What's with the travel planning? There are people trying to perv in here.
277: And leave your tap running all day; keep Hetch Hetchy under water for the next generation to miss out on.
The problem with female characters in novels is that you can't really tell how hot they are -- you just have to take on faith some dude's words.
The men, on the other hand, have a transcendent quality that allows the determination of hotness to proceed without reference to words.
For instance, no one ever uses words to describe how hot I am.
... and even Mrs Den[n]is the Menace (for God's sake)....
Her name is Jocasta, thank you.
OP is reminding me of a job applicant at my workplace many years ago who opened his talk with an unfunny "off-color" joke* about Elizabeth Taylor. And got hired anyway! He was let go a couple of years later after not measuring up in several ways that weren't that hard to predict given that choice.
*Something along the lines of, "I feel like Elizabeth Taylor's seventh husband on their wedding night, I know what I'm supposed to do but I'm wondering how well I'm going to do it."
284: Den[n]is
I don't even *see* double consonants ... or anything else since the. um, incident.
286: That must be tough for an orphan.
Definitely get a car, I'd say. UK driving license is fine, usually. Satnav would help, also, and SF is fine for driving in compared with London. At least, it didn't look hard, viewed from the passenger seat.
Driving in SF is fine. Caltrain is pretty much fine. We're all fine, fine.
Google Maps tells me that hotel, despite being pretty far from downtown Palo Alto, is close to the San Antonio Caltrain station. So that wouldn't be an unreasonable way to get around.
The River Walk is a little touristy, though.
Deep within my heart lies the Caltrain
The commuter rail by old San Antone
Where in dreams I live in a Crowne Plaza
Beneath the stars all alone
55 "Wow, I wonder what else she's been in?" then you're probably thinking actor, not character.
I beg to differ.
After all i gave him, Wisse better cough up some embarrasing shit of his own now. I mean, sweet jesus, dragonlance.
... Although raistlin/crysania is objectively hot. Just sayin.
I could see myself having a minor Lizzie B. crush, but I think that's more Keira Knightley in the recent(ish) Joe Wright film adaptation.
Keira Knightley seems almost too beautiful to play Lizzie Bennett, who I imagine as handsome and lively and charming, but not drop-dead gorgeous (as Keira Knightley is).
I have strong opinions on which Austen men are worth swooning over, and on which ones are not. In the former category: Mr Knightley; Darcy; Captain Wentworth; and Henry Crawford (not a hero but a villain, and yes, he's wicked and unprincipled, but that's sort of the point). In the latter category: Edward Ferrars (too boring, and too dutiful); Henry Tilney (also a bit of a bore, and a bit too smug); Edmund Bertram (a sanctimonious prig, and also Fanny's first cousin, yikes: she should have married Crawford, imho, and tried her hand at reforming a rake).
Most of the Bronte men are too high-maintenance (if not borderline crazy).
Opinions differ a great deal on whether Keira Knightley is even attractive at all. (I fall in the "yes" camp but was surprised to hear a professor say that he could never quite imaginatively buy into a movie in which she appears, on the grounds that he's asked to imagine that she's pretty.)
Keira Knightley is pretty, but at least at times she's been so rail-thin it's been a little disturbing.
In other news, I think I'm genetically obligated to shout something like "Kentucky!" right now.
I think Knightley is often beautiful looking without necessarily being attractive [to me], partly for the rail-thin reasons. But, she can sometimes be both. They do quite a good job of dimming it down in Pride and Prejudice partly because by comparison (intentionally, I presume) Rosamund Pike looks like she's constantly lit by angelic light.
Also:
||
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12869184
>
Given how clear it is that they don't know wtf is going on inside those places, I'm not sure why they haven't made more attempts to do so? People can't go in, but surely there are other methods? Quad-rotor mini-copters with cameras?
They had an exhibition at Chatsworth House after The Duchess came out, where they displayed pictures of Knightly next to original portraits of the 5th Duchess, who was at least a US size 14, probably 16. Knightly was completely unconvincing. That said, when she's not in one of her ultra-skinny phases, she is very pretty, and by all accounts a really funny person.
She's always quite charming when I see her interviewed on telly. Very British, i.e. takes the piss out of herself and others.
True. She described herself as 'a bit of a cunt' to the Guardian, which isn't standard movie star speak, but makes me think she's probably much less of one than many of her colleagues.
But she really shouldn't specialise in period movies, she's completely the wrong shape, however well she delivers her lines.
Quad-rotor mini-copters with cameras?
Wireless control doesn't work very well with large amounts of ambient radiation. I'm not sure if autonomous, radiation hardened, small quad-rotor drones are a thing that exists, yet. Also, CCDs have trouble.
Or, here, I could just link to the article where I learned all of the factual information in 304.
Hmm, I wonder what the alternative to CCDs might be. Analogue media are also fairly susceptible to radiation.
The first time I drove in SF, I got my car towed and had to pay over $200 to get it back. It really wasn't very clearly marked, which is to say it was a garage and sort of impossible to miss. It's one of the reasons I never took to the place which is, yes, completely irrational but if you move to a place with a significant other and break up a month later, you're irrational a lot. A friend took me on a Vertigo tour a week before I left, trying to get me to like the place a little, but even that didn't work. There's a photo of me pretending to jump into the bay at Old Fort Point and that is all I have to say about San Francisco. /Forest Gump>
(I do still speak fondly of Gordo's Taqueria.)
SF isn't so fun to drive in if you're driving a manual (and not so used to giant hills).
The first time I drove in SF, I got my car towed and had to pay over $200 to get it back. It really wasn't very clearly marked, which is to say it was a garage and sort of impossible to miss.
City Tow are mean (and sort of corrupt). I certainly didn't mean to imply anything about parking in SF being pleasant.
A friend took me on a Vertigo tour a week before I left, trying to get me to like the place a little, but even that didn't work.
Some people just don't take to it. My cousin moved there for six months or so and just did not enjoy it at all (it didn't help that she leaved in a terrible, remote neighborhood).
Did you do drugs? That can definitely help.
The most impressive SF flameout I ever saw was that of a professional chef who moved there from LA (he had been getting a bit deep into meth, and thought the change of scenery would do him good). First week in town: looking for a job as a sous chef at one of the many fine restaurants at which he had contacts. Not really partying, but having enjoyable evenings where he cooked for his friends. Second week in town: discovered the clubs, went to the End Up for the first time. Third week in town: meetings with potential restaurant-employers unavoidably rescheduled due to having been up for three days. New professional plan involved starting a catering company. Fourth week in town: crashing at an SRO in the tenderloin with a drag queen meth dealer named Candy who kept a pet grasshopper in a box. I think he moved back to LA after about two months, and is now doing great.
307: I went the through the exact same experience. Though I had visited SF a bunch of times before, so it didn't have much effect on my opinion of the place.
Parking in many places in SF is indeed miserable and soulcrushing. However, this should make you hate cars and parking policy, not SF.
In SF I learned that I find it completely terrifying to drive a car down a hill so steep that you can't see pavement in front of you.
312: I wish. The fucked-upedness of my life has never been quite that glamorous.
SF seemed nice enough when I passed through, very briefly, late last summer. A little less scoured-clean, even in its expensive areas, than NYC, though very expensive.
Has no one mentioned the making-sure-to-put-some-flowers-in-your-hair thing? It's like you guys want Alex to look a fool.
Along similar but more contemporary lines, pretty boys in discos may distract you from your novel.
Title of the thread to Geraldine Ferraro.
Speaking of Austen, during our current little spate of genealogimania I was somewhat amused to come across a sermon by an ancestor that used phrasing that I assumed was inspired by the famous opening to Pride and Prejudice:
I have not chosen this theme because I suppose it needs to be proven. I think I could hardly have hit upon a proposition, the truth of which is more universally admitted.* Christians, formalists, hypocrites, infidels, all agree, that he who professes to teach the Religion of Jesus Christ, ought himself to be religious.Dude lived 1769-1845, and P&P came out in 1813, but just learned this morning that it was only published in the US in 1832 (no idea how common book importing was in those times--he was in Ohio) We don't have the date the sermon was written down or given and it says "delivered many years ago."Now per these interesting n-grams I actually think it may have just been a common way of writing and speaking at the time.
*For reference: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
319: A vice that never happened.
320: I write about this in my dissertation, and yeah, it's a pretty common way of phrasing the argument, though all those sources are of course acknowledging each other. There are several examples of this kind of argument (common observation, universally acknowledged, manifest instances) that are really everywhere in the British 18c.
323: Timing! You were just the person I hoped would show up--thought you'd have some relevant knowledge.
You're welcome to read the chapter on this if you like. It traces this formulation through the prehistory of the philosophical argument that underpins it and how fiction makes use of it. By the time Austen latches onto it, it's already a joke.
No more happy hours spent reading Diana Wynne Jones and wondering when the next book will come out. Sigh.
325: Sure, if it isn't any trouble--the email on my pseud works. I didn't realize the knowledge would be *that* specific.
311: It amuses me lots to think that you went through exactly the same experience. We were right to break up with him, right? He was brilliant but terrible.
309: No drugs, I guess that's where I went wrong. Of course the version of this that has become a story is exaggerated. In fact I cried for a week, found a boring temp job, made a few good friends, talked trash about the bay area at every opportunity, and secretly did like the place a tiny bit better after seeing Muir Woods and pretending to be Kim Novak.
327: Very sad; dis-spiriting as hell, actually.
Someone told me yesterday that the attitudinal vector is "SF hates LA, LA likes SF," which I think is correct.
LA kind of likes everyone, don't they? I would say that's the same attitudinal vector for NYC and LA.
The full name of the city is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles de Golden Retriever.
310: No matter where you go... there you are.
329.2: So you didn't leave your heart in San Francisco.
336: No. I think I maybe left a futon frame there or something.
As long as you pushed a fat man in front of a trolley, all is well.
I also first went to SF in pursuit of doomed love. It sucked.
329: I like the idea that it's the same person, but in my case it was a woman. After I moved there, we just fought constantly for three weeks, and then broke up. (We broke up in a Chinese restaurant in Oakland's Chinatown.) She was charming, but neurotic in a way that was hard to take in long doses.
On that same trip, I had the most awful job interview of my life, where of the course of the interview it became clear to everyone -- including me -- that I claimed an area of expertise that I did not, in fact, possess.
Someone told me yesterday that the attitudinal vector is "SF hates LA, LA likes SF," which I think is correct.
The person was an Angeleno, I assume. What it really boils down to is LA likes itself, and because it likes itself goes in for this kind of "you hate us but we like you" pose. Whereas we all know what's really driving things: smugness.
/SF
I think the LA attitude about other places is something like, "What you've got going here is so neat! It's really super-special! I mean, sure, there's no sun and everyone's kinda fat, but I can see the appeal! It's pretty cool!"
Thundersnow has been making great claims about the quality of burrito to be had in the Bay Area. I'm afraid she may be over-hyping the matter, but perhaps not.
343: As a vegetarian, you are likely to be as disappointed by the legendary SF burrito as I was. I think whatever the extraordinary aspect of these burritos may be, it's not the rice, beans, and salsa.
Vertigo isn't all that good a movie and I don't see why a tour based on it would increase one's liking for SF or the movie.
Anyway, I'd really like to move back to the Bay Area, but not necessarily to SF. The LA would be ok too. It's been annoying me that I keep seeing job openings I would apply to in both areas but I won't be on the market until I graduate next year.
Vertigo isn't all that good a movie
I'm going to pretend I didn't just read that. Or copy and paste it and comment on it.
re: 334
Thanks, and now I have:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_6yzteqPt0
as an earwurm.
340: I had the most awful job interview of my life
Soon after graduating I had one where I was completely out of my depth. The interviewer was doodling on his pad including a "yes" and a "no". As the interview progressed he kept going over the "no" and it got thicker and bolder and nearly went through the page; I thought the fucker was going to take out a knife and carve it on the back of his hand as I stumbled deeper and deeper into incoherence. I'm sure it was "technique" of his and I guess I got the information quickly (it was a gov't job where the official rejection came weeks later), but not something I remember fondly.
346 - No, no. Just assume that fake accent had some sort of microstroke.
347: Earwurm[sic] not available in the US.
Not very good actually understates how much I didn't like it, but it's been a long time since I saw it.
SF claims to have outstanding burritos? As in, better than LA? This seems surprising. Daring, even. Though I'm not claiming any expertise in Mexican food.
SF also seems more local than LA, in that people don't travel as far outside their neighborhoods. Maybe it is an attitude about work, since people I knew in LA thought it was perfectly normal to drive one hour to go have dinner, or three hours to go skiing, whereas people I know in SF are usually "too busy" for that.
SF claims to have outstanding burritos?
To be fair, I think the specific burrito joint getting the most hype is in Davis, which is merely close-ish to SF, unless you're some sort of meetup-dodging Dutch Cookie.
On the subject of films, and just in case there were any question about it, David Denby can really be an insufferable weenie. He doesn't like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives because it's not exciting enough for him, so he likens it to "a slightly hostile art installation". Projection at all? It's the least hostile film imaginable (and it even has sexytimes involving a catfish, but like, a magical wisdom-speaking catfish).
355: Oh, you saw it? My roommate and I have been planning to go for ages.
SF is famous for a certain style of jumbo burrito, usually obtained in the Mission, no?
And Stanley, if the much vaunted place is the one I'm thinking of, I can't see how it would appeal to a vegetarian. All of the appeal is in the meats. (I also don't like them very much, but I think I'm weirdly picky about my Mexican food.)
Though I'm not claiming any expertise in Mexican food.
If you were, you would know that the burrito generally and the Mission burrito in particular haven't got much to do with it.
354: Guadalajara, I believe it's called. And ()'s and AWB's comments about the meats make sense and have me revising expectations downward.
359: Yeah, I'm not a huge fan, but it is true that most people seem to love! it. So take my thoughts with a huge grain of salt.
I don't want to say I've had bad mission-style burritos. They just didn't make me want to sell all my possessions and live on a grate outside El Farolito.
Though I'm not claiming any expertise in burritos.
Better?
356: I did, and I kind of love it. The only other one of Weerasethakul's films I've seen is Blissfully Yours, which it resembles in its glacial pacing, long takes, minimal script and natural settings—it's as though Tarkovsky were Buddhist and from someplace warm.
358: So the common use of "Mexican food" when applied to things like burritos sold in various parts of the US is not really that accurate? Whoa dude, gobsmacked!
362: Not hostile enough.
Though I'm not claiming any expertise in burritos, motherfucker.
Too much?
348 is the best bad interview story ever. The closest I can come is the time I was interviewing for a low-paying job in a depressing outpatient clinic and the interviewer gave me one of those unbelievably imaginative interviewer questions like "what's your greatest strength" and I was just having a day where my bullshit-motor was running low and I sputtered "I don't really know quite how to answer that question." She looked at me with open hostility and said "well this is a job interview."
"what's your greatest strength"
I suffer fools gracefully.
I'm trying to remember if anyone on here has IU connections. There's a burrito place in Bloomington called Burritos as Big as Your Head, and it has an incredibly disturbing mural of a basketball game where all the players have burritos for heads.
This is one of those things I type and then hope I am not secretly making it up.
Gualalajara's burritos are plenty good, but I am more taken by one of their sauces, which is basically chopped jalapenos stirred into sour cream. Simple enough, but I hadn't thought of it and it is fantastic.
It's like none of you have even heard of the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.
I still remember fondly the thread where we decided the correct response to the question "what is your biggest weakness" was to stare out into the distance and say wistfully, "Cock."
I have extremely thin IU connections. My friend Cornel/ius Boo/ts studied music there and I used to go see his band play whenever I was driving across the country, which was twice. I did not have a burrito.
In general LA has excellent Mexican street food, adequate Mexican restaurant food, and promising stirrings of the kind of interesting Mexican cuisine for which Chicago is the current U.S. epicenter. Where there are small joints with highly praised burritos, it's usually because of the meat, which is out of my expertise. For a vegetarian, Mission burritos are definitely better than the local offerings.
I'm not a fan of the mission burrito -- too big, meat not that good, too much bs rice etc. I love the tacos here, bit the sad truth IMO is that the best Mexican food in the US is in Texas.
369: I use something like this for a pan-fried fish sandwich with a salsa-like relish -- you use pickled jalapenos, rather than fresh, and also pour a little juice in, with sour cream or with a thick yogurt or creme fraiche. Can also add more liquid to produce a drizzling sauce for fish tacos. So good!
My overview is a little chary, especially after the amazing chile relleno con huevos I just had for breakfast (at a restaurant right around the corner from jms, unfoggeographers). Pumpkin seeds! Mmm good.
What's Mexican food like in Texas?
Burritos as Big as Your Head
There's a place with this slogan in Louisville, too. Maybe also in Chicago? Could be a chain. Someone could Google it, if they cared more than I do.
Maybe also in Chicago?
Yep, in or near Wrigleyville.
IME the Texas Mexican sit-down restaurant food (Houston, mostly, is what I know) is way more varied and interesting and better prepared; there's some of the high end Rick Bayless type stuff too which is very good but feels somehow more organic. In general TX Mexican food is closer to what (I think) middle class and above folks actually eat in Mexico, which makes some sense given the different populations. Our LA street food probably holds up, and I'd guess that we have more specialty regional restaurants, but who knows. Plus, Texas has breakfast tacos.
There's a burrito place in Chicagoland called El Famous Burrito, which name cracks me up.
I like burritos and the best burritos I've had have been in the Bay Area, but I have never liked burritos so much that I've gone around talking about how great they are - on an objective scale.* On a comparative scale, I've had lots of bad burritos and so have been nostalgic for Bay Area burritos and said so.
The second to last time I went to the Gordo near Golden Gate Park, I felt nauseous the rest of the afternoon and kept thinking I might have to leave work early. But I went back a week or two later and it was fine, so I might have just been sick.
*On the other hand, I like hot dogs (broadly defined) relatively less than I like burritos, but I'll go out of my way to go to Top Dog if I'm in the Bay Area.
Let me tell you, you can get some really shit burritos in Boston.
El Famous Burrito
Right up there with Brooklyn's La Bagel Delight. Oye veix.
384: happily, those are not the only kind you can get.
When I was on the west coast last year I went out of my way to visit a representative restaurant of a certain fast food franchise, because I'd heard so many great things about it. And what I found was that a typical In-N-Out is nothing if not a place to go to get great burgers. And it is not a place to go to get great burgers.
Now A&W, or Steak 'n Shake, on the other hand ...
When I worked at Mall Pizza Place, A&W was the red-headed stepchild of the food court. They seemed to have days with no actual customers, and everyone felt bad for their employees because the manager was a real tool about food trades, a well-established and widely respected currency among the employees of other places.
I went to one in Columbia Falls, MT, and I liked it. OK, it's a small sample. Also, I've seen an A&W in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: looked like it'd been there a while (it was a bit streaky looking). Quite cheeky of them to think that their epsilon brand would export successfully, and I admire them for it.
If you're thinking that I travel a lot, you'd be wrong. Those just happen to be places I've visited in the past year. I don't get out normally.
A&W has good onion rings, I seem to remember.
391: For instance, employees of Establishment A trading food from A to employees of Establishment B for food from B.
A&W seems more popular up in the Northwest (across the border included)* than in California. Also, it seems better up here than elsewhere. The idea that it's anywhere close to places like In-N-Out or Fatburger is laughable.
*The best local chain I've been to is Vera's, which seems a lot like Five Guys.
One of the things I like about Boston is that there are a couple of local burrito chains that both sell very tasty burritos, at least if you know what to order. And both have locations within a few blocks of my apartment.
Sometimes you get lucky and by chance you order the best thing the house has to offer. The onion rings were indeed good. A bit of Googling on the Malaysian A&W:
The A&W franchise was brought into Malaysia in 1963 by Mr and Mrs Lie Boff from USA. The Lie Boff family opened their first outlet in Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman making it the first fast food outlet in Malaysia. This was followed in 1965 with the first Drive-in restaurant in Petaling Jaya.
That 1965 drive-thru was the one I saw. Older than I realised. I like to think that the US A&W will just wither and die, but the Malaysian A&W will survive to become the true A&W.
On the basis that they would in any case get free food from the place they work?
The trouble with In & Out is that, upon eating there for the first time after years of hearing ecstatic commentary from California residents, one discovers that it's... a fairly typical fast-food burger, albeit a particularly tasty instantiation of the genre, one feels kind of let down.
On the basis that they would in any case get free food from the place they work?
Right. Plus, if you work at A, you're pretty bored with A's food after awhile. Is this not a widely done thing? I even traded for non-food items (movie passes, CDs, and a pair of sunglasses come to mind).
Oh yeah, the A&W onion rings really are pretty good.
I think In-N-Out can vary a lot depending on what you order.
As California fast-food burger chains go, I've liked Habit Burger in more than one place.
The title of the OP may now refer, also, to Diana Wynne Jones, I'm sorry to say. I like neither YA lit nor fantasy in particular, but have reread The Homeward Bounders and Fire and Hemlock many times with great pleasure since originally reading them as a YA.
I've never even heard of Habit Burger. I'll have to look it up.
That's In-N-Out to the likes of you and me, essear.
#400: On the basis that the music store people are frankly bored of all of their music; in preference to taking home yet another Kings of Leon CD, they'd go with some cooked meat?
And does this mean that generally, if you work in store that sells x, you get some tradeable x? I'm trying to think of some very impermanent x here. Ice sculptures?
#401: I ordered the notably outre burger and fries. No one gets that.
407: just the regular kind? Those are pretty boring.
In N Out is famous for not having any options.
Well, it's famous for only having secret options.
You shoulda got a double meat protein burger with grilled onions and hot peppers.
The trouble with In & Out is that, upon eating there for the first time after years of hearing ecstatic commentary from California residents, one discovers that it's... a fairly typical fast-food burger, albeit a particularly tasty instantiation of the genre, one feels kind of let down.
It's probably a thing where if you eat them like twice a week, you look forward to them more and more and reach a sort of equilibrium, while if you eat Burger King burgers twice a week, you start loathing yourself.
Secret may not quite be right. Unadvertised is more true.
I'm struggling to imagine how you'd demoralise your workforce more than by having hundreds of 'secret options' with stupid names, all of which have to be memorised, and respected, when people ask for them. They test the staff with mystery shoppers, don't they?
414: I've actually heard that they are among the most coveted employers among the teen-set.
I'm struggling to imagine how you'd demoralise your workforce more than by having hundreds of 'secret options' with stupid names, all of which have to be memorised, and respected, when people ask for them. They test the staff with mystery shoppers, don't they?
It's not really secret—not from the employees,anyway—everything you can order has an option on the register, is reflected in the receipt, etc. Apparently the staff doesn't mind, or at least this guy didn't.
414 cont'd, 415: reportedly they pay quite well, given the work.
As we wrapped up our order and he rung it in, Thomas confided that "this was the coolest day I've ever had at work." I agreed. It was a cool day.
OK, I admit that never having flipped a burger or even come close, I'm not in a position to comment. What's more, I will give In-N-Out one more chance.
Attention administrators: In the legal minds thread, I accidentally typed a name in my comment. It's bizarre, because it's hanging there without a sentence. I don't know what I was thinking. Could someone delete the name at the end of the comment please?
It's bizarre, because it's hanging there without a sentence.
It's not bizarre at all.
It's quite common to put a name at the end of a missive. Presumably you were thinking that you should be courteous.
Nosflow
On Latin cuisine in the greater Boston area:
Arlington has a reputedly good, but very expensive, Argentinean restaurant. A new Mexican bistro is opening up, and there's a great little family-run Mexican restaurant in the Heights. I like watching them make the guacamole at the table, and the cactus-leaf salad is very good.
It's quite common to put a name at the end of a missive. Presumably you were thinking that you should be courteous.
Nosflow
I think every Crooked Timber thread contains a person who does this. They usually seem to be 60-year-olds who regard themselves as the voice of authority on all things.
420 to 419. Essear, stop revealing Bostongirl's name.
does this mean that generally, if you work in store that sells x, you get some tradeable x?
Varies by store, but that's generally the case in a lot of retail environments. And not all such trades were done with the full awareness of management (though some very much were). And not every tradeable is as good as the others. We had pizza, which is broadly popular. I knew plenty of folks who steered clear of, to give an example, Taco Bell.
And I don't want to sound mean-spirited, but I'm a bit surprised that this sort of trading practice would be at all mystifying to Charlie.
That kind of trading practice would really only make sense in a mall food court environment, wouldn't it? It's true that when I had a friend working at a KFC in high school, he traded buckets of chicken for various things after work, but that wasn't really with employees of other food establishments.
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Apparently likely outcome of current budget shenanigans here is that the bus fares will go up by a quarter (they're currently $1.75 non-rush hour, $2.25 rush hour, +50 cents for express) AND regular routes would be cut FORTY-FIVE PERCENT! Fuck. I guess this is how you get a revolution though. Or just a destroyed economy, an immiserated working class and a Brazilified social structure.
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429: I guess this is how you get a revolution though.
I've been considering this quite a bit. USians put a hell of a lot of stock in comporting themselves according to the rule of law, so we're unlikely to see anarchist-style civil disobedience on any large scale.
Republicans are taking preventive measures in some cases in order to shut down strikes; see this, for example, on a provision in a federal House bill to means-test welfare recipients that can disqualify people from receiving food stamps if a member of the family goes on strike. (An update at the bottom of that article addresses the history and current state of affairs in the fight over this issue.)
Oh, it's even better than that: In the MN legislature, there's a bill that would criminalize welfare recipients if they are found to be carrying cash.
No, sadly, I don't think we are in a revolutionary epoch in the US. While I have been happy to see so many rank-and-file protesters on my forays to Madison, I have a hard time believing that they will persevere in the face of a well-organized and well-financed Republican onslaught. I mean, it's hard enough for dyed-in-the-wool radicals like the people I know to keep up that level of engagement in the face of setbacks. And those are people who've dedicated their entire lives to the cause of revolution. I'm not saying the masses are asses, quite the contrary. I think the broad mass of working people in this country know only too well what's going on now, what they can expect in the future, and which way everything is liable to shake out in the end. Their discernment is precisely the reason that they aren't out in the streets right now. Their only real error, as I see it, is to imagine that the specific processes that are in motion right now are somehow linear and discrete. They aren't. They're recursive and intertwined and entrenched. What's scary is that the breathing spaces in between flashpoints of the continuing crisis are becoming shorter and less frequent. That's the thing that people are not really getting. Whatever the next "boom" is, I think it is almost certain to be brief, localized, and confined to very small segments of the population. Even compared to the last one, which didn't help too many people I know.
I know most folx here aren't ready to hear this yet, because it just hasn't gotten quite awful enough for them personally. But it is coming down the pike eventually.
Oh, it's even better than that: In the MN legislature, there's a bill that would criminalize welfare recipients if they are found to be carrying cash.
Yeah, it's so totally absurd, and I can't even begin to understand the thought process behind it. I mean I assume there must be a public justification other than "we'd like to throw people in jail" but I can't imagine what it might be.
Also, totally unrelated but I've been wondering this for a while: why "folx"?
The US has plenty of civil disobedience - look no further than Republicans in power.
What's scary is that the breathing spaces in between flashpoints of the continuing crisis are becoming shorter and less frequent.
Yes. Certainly legislatively, we're undergoing an onslaught waged on numerous fronts in quick succession, which we are apparently not supposed to notice. I'm having a very hard time not wringing my hands.
432: Just a textual tic I picked up a long time ago from another anarchist. He is famously vegan, but not straight-edge, so I'm not sure if he was using it politically or what. Maybe just a punk rock thing.
There's apparently a bill pending in Florida to require all state employees and recipients of any form of welfare to submit to mandatory drug testing. This I saw on Steve Benen's blog. There's at the same time a move in that state to privatize Medicaid services (I believe), and the owner of one of the principal private health clinic chains in FL is the new governor. Actually his wife, as of this past January.
Anyway, the list goes on and on. It's really shocking.
There's not really any reason that a billionaire sociopath would want to become governor other than to further enrich himself. I honestly think that if this privatization thing doesn't go through, Florida's would-be despoiler will resign to pursue other ventures, like the Sage of Wasilla did.
437:The smartest man I ever met told me the purpose of life was to "create a dynasty"
Once your sociopath has acquired his billions the only sensible ambition left is pass his power and wealth on to his children and great-grandchildren, not because he loves them, but as an expression of his own power and contempt for others.
This means, for the sociopath, the destruction of egalitarian institutions and possibilities.
431 - That's not actually what the proposed law (which, don't get me wrong, is insulting and gross) says; it limits the amount of cash people can withdraw from their EBT accounts to $20 a month (and makes it illegal to use EBT cards to buy cigarettes or liquor). There's a bonus don't-call-it-corruption thing where the EBT stuff would be handled by for-profit credit-card transaction processors.
Woohoo! Jail time for mortgage fraud. It's the hammer of ju-ustice! Just like the school boundary-crossing felon in Ohio. They're kind of make up calls for ones that unavoidably fall through the cracks.
I had the most surreal conversation with someone bitching about welfare recipients tonight. He went on to complain, "Even if I'm rich, I'm gonna pay forty cents on every dollar to government."
I immediately countered, "That's not how marginal tax brackets work at all." Which he conceded! But then insisted, "But you see my point. There's no incentive to work harder."
Uh. What?
The unavoidability of distractions is a reason not to work harder.
442: But not to not on comment Unfogged. Moby!
I've almost finished refurbishing the floor mats on the Jeep.
439: I'm dubious that the law would be applied in a limited or even-handed manner. As I've mentioned before, virtually everyone I know who gets some kind of direct government assistance has a horror story about how the current regime inflicts these thousand and one tiny cuts on the recipients. I can easily foresee situations where the new law would be used to deny whole classes of people continued access to benefits.
441: Sadly, the notion does get about in a weak form, even in classes taught by liberal economists, that marginal tax rates (or the equivalent in EITC phaseout) could create some theoretical disincentive to working more at the margin, though in mine it was added that that shouldn't apply much to high-earners since they don't much vary their quantity of time worked.
If you've reached the point at which the rate at which you value your time makes it, in your estimation, not worth your while to increase the amount you work, then clearly, if it's a problem that you aren't working that extra little bit, you should be paid less.
445 - Where did I say that the law would be used in an evenhanded manner? Obviously the point of the law is to make the lives of poor people more difficult. It's a shitty and insulting proposal. Nonetheless, it seems to be untrue that the law would make it a crime for someone receiving welfare to have $21 -- or $210 -- in his or her pocket.
444: Moby! I'd begun to worry about you. It's good to know you were restoring a classic vehicle and not off hunting bison in the Wichita Mountains or something.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12872707
And the news from Fukushima continues.
>
There's news in that link? I didn't see any (and again with the "eleventy million times normal levels" without saying what the normal level might be or what level might be dangerous).
Anyway, point taken on Caltrain. I am very unlikely to get a driving licence between here and Saturday, so...
451: water around the reactor has been measured at 1 sievert per hour? That seems both like news, and like a level that would be dangerous.
Sadly, the notion does get about in a weak form, even in classes taught by liberal economists, that marginal tax rates (or the equivalent in EITC phaseout) could create some theoretical disincentive to working more at the margin, though in mine it was added that that shouldn't apply much to high-earners since they don't much vary their quantity of time worked
Also it doesn't apply much to people who earn their money through interests on investments, or by things that are nearly socially useless, like moving around the money of people who live mostly on the interest on investments.
Um. Doesn't it seem like it's time to entomb the thing in concrete or whatever the hell the last resort is? Or is the concern that it melts through to the water table, and Japan gets a generation of talking radishes? (And cancer.)
re: 451
Well, it states that the current level is 1 sievert per hour, and the normal level is 0.1 microsieverts. 1 sievert per hour is extremely high. The safe dose level for Fukushima workers [which was doubled] is 250mSv per year. International standards are 20 mSv/year (averaged).*
So, basically, there's been a big increase. Staff have been evacuated. That sounds like news.
* via Wiki.
It is news. According to the xkcd chart that's been so popular, it's the equivalent of 25,000 flights from New York to LA, in the space of an hour. Or 172.4 chest CT scans, in an hour. Assuming you have faith in xkcd, and assuming I haven't pushed the buttons on my calculator wrong, I suppose you can judge your comfort level / level of normalcy from that. Is there a possibility that whatever is radiating 1 Sv / h could migrate further from the site? The diluting power of the environment is large, I guess.
According to wiki 1 sV exposure is in the 'will probably make you acutely sick' category but only a 1 in 20 or so chance of death. However, a couple of hours exposure at those sorts of levels and you are getting into 'will definitely die' territory.
The diluting power of the environment is large
Yes, but then you end up with the talking radishes problem.
True. Once the conversation gets around to radishes, good luck getting it back.
Levels of radish nation will remain elevated for decades.
This guy seems comfortable. Not with the 1 Sv / h thing, but generally. Redefining normal is always an option.
461: I just read something saying that there were thousands of deaths attributable to Chernobyl -- I should look around for it.
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Does anyone, off the top of their head, remember the name of an early 20th c. male author who wrote a bunch of eventually iconic stories about poor boys who, through virtue and hard work, are eventually rewarded (sometimes through a benefactor) with a comfortable life and respectability?
And who it turned out was kind of a pedophile?
It's driving me crazy that I can't remember this.
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462: I think they mostly just haven't died quite yet.
All a big Mistake on the radiation spike. Whatever, we trust you, TEPCO.
454:Read some discussion of entombment. Drive the cement mixer close enough...leave it, it's contaminated. Need lots of cement mixers.
Speaking of contamination rather than radiation, I have been reading up on Iodine 129 ...half-life of 15.7 million years, which means all natural occurring long gone, only produced in reactors and bombs, decent indicator of contamination. Nowhere near as radioactive as I-131, but I-131 half-life of 8 days.
Isotopes another page
"As is the case with 36Cl/Cl, 129I/I ratios in nature are quite small, 10−14 to 10−10 (peak thermonuclear 129I/I during the 1960s and 1970s reached about 10−7)" ...those are exponents in the original)
If you mean Horatio Alger, "kind of a pedophile" might perhaps be pushing things & anachronistic, in addition to being based on scant evidence, but that was based on 30seconds of wikipedia-scanning.
Ooops. Too much fact-checking to avoid being pwned, not enough to get the story right.
What I would point out to the 'radiation isn't that dangerous' crowd, though, is that the actual measurements of environmental radiation we make might be misleading. We might measure in the wrong places, or at the wrong times. It seems to me that if you're calling for upwards redefinition of the 'safe' level of environmental radiation - i.e. the odd spill is nothing to get upset about - you ought first to say what your position is on sampling methodology and sampling error. There are people who say that no one died at Three Mile Island. Maybe so, if you take that to mean no one died that day, or that year. But there are people who make the much more extreme claim that no one in Pennsylvania or elsewhere died prematurely because of TMI. That looks dodgy to me, but I suspect that there's not nearly enough data to settle the matter. Many other things make for plausible explanations of the causes of terminal cancers; quite possibly, some of the benefit of this doubt may fall to the pro-nuke side. Given that, asking pro-nuke people to agree to better data gathering seems reasonable.
Oudemia and x. trapnel! Yay! Yes, that's exactly who I meant. The ur-American dream: really just a way to gain the trust of young boys. Creepy. Someone can get a metaphor out of that, I'm sure.
Alternately, as atonement for past sins against such.
Another paper on Iodine 129 pdf. I think this says I-129 is 1/3 as dangerous as I-131.
PS:Funny was in Tokyo. Last week:"I-131 levels too dangerous for babies. Do not let your infant drink tap-water!" Three days later:"Ok, tap-water safer now, go ahead" Riiiiiggghhhht.
470:Some blog we all know marginally well posted anecdotal evidence on TMI cancers. "The air turned blue, and I fell three times getting to the house. The industry and gov't said there was no significant release." Angry Liberal? I forget, so you too. Ahh, wait, google-fu. Not about iodine.
That is a far more charitable view of human nature than I am willing to allow. I mean, I can see him convincing himself that that's what the motivation was. I just don't believe it. (E.g., couldn't he just support a bunch of those boys, or fund a charity or something? Why does atonement involve his deep personal involvement in their lives, and much time spent alone with them?)
I guess it's kinda dumb to argue whether someone who died ages ago abused other people who died ages ago. I'm just cynical.
Really, I was just parrotting wikipedia:
Scharnhorst believes Alger's desire to atone for his "secret sin" may have "spurred him to identify his own charitable acts of writing didactic books for boys with the acts of the charitable patrons in his books who wish to atone for a secret sin in their past by aiding the hero." Scharnhorst points out that the patron in Try and Trust, for example, conceals a "sad secret" from which he is redeemed only after saving the hero's life.
"There is a suspicion that the reading for iodine 134 is too high, so we are redoing our tests," said the spokesman, Takeo Iwamoto. He said that the utility would re-administer tests for all substances detected in the water at the No.2 reactor's turbine building, and update readings "as soon as possible."
Quite right too. (Cut and pasted from the NYT.)
Bob, I blogged about Datesman's blue glow theory: I thought it was interesting. The TMI interviews even more so. What strikes me about first hand reports like those is the extent to which they come across as modest, straightforward and reasonable. 'I tasted metal' (lots of people said that). 'There was fine ash falling from the sky'. Etc. This still doesn't mean there's much hope of disentangling them from UFO stories, short of putting all the interviewees in front of an enquiry.
Aaron Datesman at Tiny is posting a lot on contamination issues. This is Harrisburg infant mortality rates, 2nd post.
I certainly am not taking his posts as gospel. But I don't take anyone as authoritative. I just read a lot, withhold judgment, and run like the headless chicken on general principle.
My understanding is, the Japanese have already mobilized an extensive eradishcation program, so no worries.
Reverting to the original topic, it occurs to me to acknowledge my attachment to Margot Tenenbaum.
Maybe she'll like your next book.
I haven't seen it stated in news reports, but I hear the reason for the crazy-high radiation level reported earlier is that they were seeing Co-56 that they thought was I-134 (similar spectra, but half-lives are a few orders of magnitude different, so they inferred a drastically wrong number).
"There is a suspicion that the reading for iodine 134 is too high (..)"
There's actually no suspicion that the level of iodine 134 is too high, just a suspicion that one reading of it was higher than the actual "too high" level that is well established by now.
There might be a suspicion though that it is not the best idea to leave a private company in charge of a national disaster. I have a funny feeling that lawyer input has been more critical in how to deal with this than disaster recovery input.
481:
The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "Vámonos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.
I had no idea about that part of Horatio Alger's history. And maybe I need to talk to my shrink, but reading that part of his Wikipedia entry and then scrolling down and seeing his grave marker made me think he might be unrepentant.
Richard Hunter, Esq., rises to respectability not just through his virtue and hard work. He also catches his big break when he saves a child from drowning and the child's father gives him a job as a reward. No doubt this is a path to success is open to all who work diligently.
In re Alger's having been charged with "unnatural familiarity", I am surprised to discover that this is the only place google knows of on the web with the verse therein contained.
The thing Flip quotes in 484 is a favored part of that movie; I like, in particular, that it works both if you do and if you don't know who they're parodying. I also favor it because, well, how many movies take the time to include parodies of Cormac McCarthy?
