"I can't." How could he explain it in a way Leslie would understand, how he yearned to reach out and capture the quivering life around him and how when he tried, it slipped past his fingertips, leaving a dry fossil upon the page? "I just can't get the poetry of the trees," he said.
She nodded. "Don't worry," she said. "You will someday."
Uncle Willie was making his way down the long shadowed aisle between the shelves and the counter-- hand over hand, like a man climbing out of a dream. I stayed quiet and watched him lurch from one side, bumping to the other, until he reached the coal-oil tank. He put his hand behind that dark recess and took his cane in the strong fist and shifted his weight on the wooden support. He thought he had pulled it off.
I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of a whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock.
He must have tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high-topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them.
I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since.
The Darkness seemed to seethe and writhe. Was this meant to comfort them?
Suddenly there was a great burst of light through the Darkness. The light spread out and where it touched the Darkness the Darkness disappeared. The light spread until the patch of Dark Thing had vanished, and there was only a gentle shining, and through the shining came the stars, clear and pure. Then, slowly, the shinding dwindled until it, too, was gone, and there was nothing but stars and starlight. No shadows. No fear. Only the stars and the clear darkness of space, quite different from the fearful darkness of the Thing.
"You see!" the Medium cried, smiling happily. "It can be overcome! It is being overcome all the time!"
Prof Nemur says if it werks good and its perminent they will make other pepul like me smart also. Mabye pepul all over the werld. And he said that meens Im doing something grate for sience and Ill be famus and my name will go down in the books. I dont care so much about beeing famus. I just want to be smart like other pepul so I can have lots of frends who like me.
How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give 'em.
What do all of these snippets have in common? Someone, somewhere, has determined that you shouldn't read them. Every one of these excepts is from a book on the American Library Association's 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.
This isn't "I don't think that book is suitable for my child." It's not, "Some kids may be too young to handle these concepts." I'm fine with that. Parents have the right to raise their kid as they choose. And yes, not all books are appropriate for every child, or even every adult. BUT.
No one person has the right to make a blanket decision for every person's child. No one has the right to deny a great book to *all* readers because they're scared or offended by what it has to say. A good book *should* disturb you. It should scare you. It should shake up the way you think about the world. And it's not going to get the chance to do that for someone if it's not there.
So, celebrate. Be dangerous. Go read a banned book.
In order of citation:
Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia (#9)
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (#3)
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (#22)
Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon (#47)
Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic (#51)
I haven't been writing for awhile, I realized... first I was coming home tired from playing catch-up at work (we're short-staffed, and likely to become shorter-staffed before matters improve), desiring my pillow enough that even the half-hour or hour it generally takes me to post here felt like too much. (Yes, it really does take me that long. I'm a slow composer.) On Wednesday I started coming down with yet another horrible cold (having just got over one about two weeks before-- no fair!), and through the weekend I was far too stuff-brained to deal with "two new things a day." I was back at work on Monday, better than I was *before* the weekend (thank you for asking), not coughing and nowhere near as draggingly tired, but I'm still rather sniffly and a bit hoarse and not entirely with it.
Still (I hear you mutter in the background), well enough to get back on routine and supply your daily requirement of weird trivia. Yeah, but.... well, okay. I *was* working on cooking something up for Banned Books Week-- maybe you'll get that tomorrow (or Friday-- I'm very good at posting my little PSAs at the END of an event, too late to do anything about it ;) ) But...the past couple of nights Despair's had her hook in me, it seemed, and it was hard to write much of anything at all.
No, I was not actually despairing, in the "abandon hope" sense, just... suddenly depressed, with a strong tendency to dwell on all of my failings, flaws of personality or character, self-delusions and pitifully numerous shortcomings and wonder why anyone bothers to be friends with me. The saying that one is always one's own worst critic is quite true, at least for me. I could never be as harsh on another person as I am with myself when I'm at my blackest... if naught else, I'd always give someone else the benefit of the doubt. And perhaps there's the difference. I *can't* give myself the benefit of the doubt. It's my own self I'm flensing, here, and my mind knows exactly where all my bodies are buried. I can try to make excuses to myself, but I'll immediately recognize them as excuses. And because my sense of self-worth has never been particularly high (as opposed to my self-respect or self-confidence-- I feel fairly secure in my abilities and my honor, I just don't necessarily esteem the package they come in all that highly), I don't tend to cut myself much slack, either. It's... well, it's not pretty, when I get that way.
Thankfully, these little self-loathing pity parties are pretty rare for me, and generally just give me a bad night's rest. I don't worry deeply about them because, as I said, they only happen on rare occasions. Lest you worry for my mental health (too late, muahahahaha!!!), I've had several friends who were prone to clinical depression; I'm aware of the warning signs, and I recognize the differences between that and what I get. I may writhe in self-loathing for a couple of days, but I have never, ever been suicidal. I recognize the pattern of my thoughts as unusual, I'm (sort of) able to talk about it, and I'm usually able to work my way out of it. A strong faith helps me, in that case. No matter how worthless a failure I feel, even if I feel as though I'm doomed to die old and alone (good genes, bad socialization skills, oh boy), my God knows about *everything* I'm cutting myself with (metaphorically, that is). He knows the worst of my failings, understands me completely, and still loves me. Depression just can't get a decent handhold for long on that.
The odd thing about this time was that I had *no* idea what triggered it. I was feeling better from being sick, I'd had a mostly relaxing weekend, I wasn't particularly worried about anything from work. I'd had wine after dinner, but less than I usually drink, and whatever effect it might have had depressive-wise should have been balanced by the truly marvellous bit of chocolate I'd had with it. Ahh, well. Some weird hormonal dip or something, no doubt.
Anyway, as you've no doubt noticed, I don't talk about myself much here... that's deliberate. I'm a fairly private person and a wee bit paranoid, and that doesn't go well with a web blog. I don't like putting "me" out there for everyone to gawp at. But I wanted to talk about this for a few reasons... one is that, as I said, it helps to talk about it. Like nightmares, much of what I get depressed about shrinks down to managable size when it's brought out in the open. So, in a sense, this is self-therapy. :D
In another sense, I'm doing this as a small service to others... part of depression's crushing weight comes from the feeling that no one else will understand what one is going through, that these are things that are hard to handle alone but nigh impossible to share for fear of shame or ridicule, and it gets worse, stronger, because you have to face it all alone. Well, you don't, and you're not alone. I feel like this, and other people feel like this too. Everyone has their crushing self-doubts, their bouts of self-recrimination. Bottling it up doesn't make it go away-- recognizing it, talking about it, sharing your insecurities with people you trust (or a therapist or minister, if you prefer), can. They're not going to laugh at you-- it'll be obvious to anyone who knows you that you're hurting, even if you think they can't see it. And friends will want to help, if they can, but may be reluctant to pry, if you've been stand-offish. If you feel like this a lot-- get help. Really. You don't have to be like this.
And thirdly... if part of my self-loathing is that I feel no one understands me, partially because I never let anyone get close enough to understand me... well, you've just had a little window into me. Step one to striking that one off the list. ^_^ Thanks for taking the time to look.
In honor o' International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day (aarrr, says I!), I be sharin' with ye landlubbers some manner o' things that'll help ye t'be more properly piratical in th'future, like.
First, ye cain't be talkin' like a pirate if ye have no notion o' how 'tis done, aye? Fer that, ye might be wishin' tae start small, wi' a wee small list o' guidelines like ye might be findin' at Pirate Speak, an' a bit o' cheatin' wi' words from Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates (Belay that pulin' bellyachin'! Yer a pirate, matey, o' course ye kin cheat!).
But if ye've set yer course fer yer PhD (That be Latin lingo fer yer Doctorate o' Piracy, me Hearty), ye might try a fine, big site like th' Encyclopaedia Piratica, and don't be fergettin' t' spruce up yer seaman's cant at th' Nautical Terms Glossary, aye? (Hoist th' Jolly Roger an' look lively about it, ye scurvy sea dogs!)
An' o' course, ye be no proper manner o' filthy pirate scum if ye cain't curse like a proper pirate. An' bear in mind, tho' he be a landlubbin' jackanapes, th' Bard o' Avon had a right foul tongue i' his head when it be suitin' him, an' ye kin take a page out o' his logbook, belike. So, splice th' mainbrace, ye sprogs, an' it's yo, ho, ho, a pirate's life fer ye!
So, I have a couple of things for today that came out of work. The first, technically, is something I learned *yesterday,* tho' in my defense I didn't really have time to peruse their web site 'til today. I received very late notice that a company called Bibliotheca was bringing a van to demo their RFID system at one of the local libraries. Soooo, having read a number of blurbs on the technology of late and being a bit concerned about how it could be used-- or abused-- I decided to motor over and take a look. Well, now. I have to say, RFID as they've envisioned and implemented it is really darn cool. It's not perfect-- it is still very much a developing technology-- but wow, the things it can do already!
On the negative side: it's still rather pricey (about 50 cents a tag, right now). The range of the tags they've developed is fairly short (3' optimum, about 6' max), and anything metal can block the signal (which has its good and bad points: short range and easy blocking make it bad for security, but very good for personal privacy). There's not really a library standard as yet, so it's uncertain if their tags would work with another company's system, or vice versa. And the tags themselves are a little big-- about the size of a business card, and so too large to fit down the spine of a book (which is generally the best place to stick a security tag, because it's very hard to remove from there). And while they're flexible, the tags could be ripped or peeled off pretty easily, as they are-- especially the (otherwise really smart) design they have for CDs and DVDs. And if the "antenna" part gets ripped from the "chip" part-- that's pretty much it. You could be inches from it, and it probably wouldn't be able to read the chip.
But on the up side... oh, the possibilities for inventory, which is really what it was developed for in the first place! The tags have room for 512 bytes of data-- so, say, a barcode, and an ISBN, maybe a call # and abbreviated title/author.... honestly, my personal inclination would be to put only what's needed on the tag, and just link it to the system (again, privacy issues). Using RFID, you can self-checkout, you can checkin/out a pile of, say, 10" worth of books simultaneously. And they considered that not everyone would have RFID-- even the self-checkout station is designed with a built-in barcode scanner, so that if some of your materials aren't RFID tagged they can still be checked out in the same transaction. There are linked tags, so if you have, say, a book-on-tape case containing a dozen individual tapes, each tape could be tagged and linked to a master tag so that in one pass you could check it out *and* make sure that all the pieces were accounted for-- without even opening the box! You can automate a bookdrop to check in materials automatically, scan the tags and route books to specific drop bins-- no more sorting, it does it for you! With the very nicely-designed handheld unit (battery pack is slung over the shoulder, so the wand itself is VERY light), you can run the reader (slowly, but they're working on that) along a row of books and get a list of what's on the shelf... or you can set it to beep when it encounters a book out of place, or when it encounters a particular title you're looking for. Shelf-reading would be so ridiculously easy with this system in place. And my favorite-- if someone walks out with a book that wasn't checked out, the gate alarm will go off, *and* send a message to the staff computers telling them *which* book is walking out the door.
Man, I'm such a geek... for all its downsides, though, this is definitely a system worth getting excited about. Not something we could put in right away, of course-- for that matter, I'd like to see them work a few more of the kinks out-- but... maybe Someday in a few years. ;)
As for my other new thing... nowhere near as exciting (at least, not for me), but interesting, I thought. I came across a new book on the American Civil War entitled Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861 (which, by the by, was quite well reviewed-- worth checking out, I think, if you have any interest in the field). Now, I know what the term donnybrook *means.* But it struck me yet again how strange a word it is... it doesn't seem to have much to do with the concept of fighting, etymologically. So I looked it up... as it turns out, it's a commemorative word-- the word was coined for a fair outside of Dublin that had more than its share of, well, donnybrooks.
Ever tell yourself, "Someday, I'll get my degree." "Someday I'll work on losing that extra weight." "Maybe I shouldn't do that-- I might regret it someday." "Someday we'll look back on this and laugh."
Well, today, September 15th, is officially Someday.
Get busy, people! You've put together a really ambitious schedule for today. ;)
A brief excerpt from this morning's online conversation:
<KT> oh, heavens to mergatroid
<Matt> (who is mergatroid, anyway?)
<KT> I dunno, something Marvin the Martian says sometimes
Which, of course, lead to a discussion of just who this person is (or was, or purported to be, anyway). Imagine my shock and dismay when I couldn't find it at all in either OneLook or Wikipedia!
Actually, the original phrase is "Heavens to Murgatroyd!" In meaning, it's pretty much the same as "Heavens to Betsy!", or "Oh, my!" It seems to have been popularized by (but didn't originate with) the cartoon character Snagglepuss, who debuted on "Quick Draw McGraw" in 1959. (I remember him better from "The Yogi Bear Show," which came a little later.) I say it didn't originate with Snagglepuss, because some sources note that the phrase seems to have been used in the 1940s as well (thanks for the link, Matt!). Google even turns up a 90s blues-punk band called "Thee Headcoats," who came out with an album called "Heavens To Murgatroyd, Even! It's Thee Headcoats (Already)".
So who was Murgatroyd, anyway? Well, there's some discussion over that, too. The 8th Man link above notes that it was a term used in tiddlywinks. The writer also suggests that the phrase *could* have been coined in reference to the accursed Bad Baronet of that name from Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore, or The Witch's Curse (if you're interested in more about the opera, check out this very nice Ruddigore site). On the other hand, there is a real British family name of Murgatroyd, and they seem to have had a pretty disasterous encounter with Cromwell's Roundheads. Personally, I think it just got picked up as a word that's fun to say. :)
And while we're speaking of nonsense words, I also offer you Alfred Hitchcock's MacGuffin, a neat word for a plot device. Technically this is not a New Thing I learned just today, but it was a New Thing for me not too terribly long ago (thanks again, Matt) and I've found myself using it a great deal lately (thanks, KT).
Both of my New Things for today happen to be food-related (and I'm writing this on an empty stomach, so expect brevity, here.)
Firstly, I found myself wondering, at lunch, what it is that makes pudding *pudding.* I mean, I know how gelatin is made, I know what the basis of a custard is... but I've only ever made pudding out of a box. (And boy, did it taste like cardboard! *badum-ching*) I couldn't think of what might make it go from milk to thick, so I looked it up. The secret? Cornstarch. (Now don't I feel a little stupid?)
And this evening, KT was telling me about a lovely she-crab soup she had at a restaurant. I'd never heard the term, and wondered why it would be so different from, say, he-crab soup, and how one could even tell the difference. Well... turns out there *is* a distinctly female ingredient besides the meat. Heh. (Sort of makes me think of chicken-and-egg soup...)
Right. Food. (This is what comes of being too busy for dinner.)
So, twice in one day, I came across a one of those curious words that we only ever seem to use in negation. And to my surprise, on looking them up, I discovered that the "naked" versions of the words weren't back-renderings, as I would have expected ... they are both, in fact, real (though largely antiquated, now) words that existed before the forms *we* commonly use now came to be.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, I give to you:
effable and feck.
(Darn, I like that last one. Feck. Feck, feck, feck, feck, feck. Hee.)
So, a couple of days ago I realized that the last movie I saw in the theater was in early July, and so deemed it high time remedy that on my next day off (which was today. Yay!) In fact, given the available choices, the fortuitous timing, and being unsure of when I might *next* get to the theater, I took in two, one after the other.
For those who haven't seen them, and trust me enough not to spoil it for you in giving my brief impressions of the two films, skip right down to the little "Continue reading..." link down there ::points::.
For those that don't trust me, or don't care to know what I thought of them (in which case, why are you reading this entry this far? Hmph.), suffice to say that I went to see Hero, starring Jet Li, and Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon. There. Now, go away!
Hi there! Glad you decided to join me. I love you, too. Have some popcorn. Go ahead, it's virtual, no carbs!
The matinees this morning were timed *perfectly.* There was about a five-minute breather between Hero and Vanity Fair, so by leaving just after the main credits, I made it to the matinee showing of VF in time to miss all the stupid ads, but see all the previews. ^_^
Taken together... wow. I think I managed to see the two most color-drenched, beautifully-costumed movies of the entire season, if not the year, back to back. If one or the other of these doesn't come away with an Oscar for costuming, art direction, or cinematography (or, heck, all of them), I wash my hands of the Academy in matters of taste.
Of course, neither of these movies will be for everyone. Hero is a Chinese wuxia (historical/fantasy martial arts) epic of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon variety (but shorter, by about a half-hour). It's sweeping, it's subtitled (the dialogue is in Mandarin), and there's a lot of wirework ("flying," walking on water, generally thumbing one's nose at physics) and long sword fights and long hair and traditional Chinese music and serious old men in very silly hats. Vanity Fair is adapted from a William Makepeace Thackeray novel of the same title. It's a period drama-- periwigs, corseted gowns, Regimentals, balls, dinner parties, people with names like Lord Folderol and Miss Farthingale, lots of snubbing and British accents. If neither of these sorts of movies appeal to you, you may want to give these flicks a miss.
Hero, of the two, was the better movie, IMHO. This is not to slight Reese's VF, but if you could only see one of the two, this is definitely the one I would recommend. The cast, besides titular nameless Hero, Jet Li, includes Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang (in a fairly minor role, actually), Daoming Chen, and Donnie Yen-- truly, a wonderful cast. It was directed by Yimou Zhang-- remember Raise the Red Lantern? That was his, too, which should give you an idea of what you're in for. The entire movie is stunningly, achingly gorgeous. The basic plot-- and I give nothing away, here, worry not-- concerns a nameless warrior of no particular renown who has singlehandedly defeated the three deadly assassins most feared by the King of Qin (Qin being one of seven kingdoms in what will later become the empire of China). He has been summoned to the king's court to tell his story, which unfolds (for the viewer) as a series of flashbacks to each fight as he starts to describe it.
Don't make the mistake of walking in expecting a kung-fu action movie-- yes, it has action in it, lots of swordfights (most of which are largely bloodless, if that's a concern of yours), but this isn't thrill-a-minute sort of action. The martial arts sequences are highly choreographed (as is common in wuxia movies), and downright balletic in their beauty... you're familiar with "poetry in motion"? Well, this is "Chinese calligraphy in motion." Some of them *are* very fast and thrilling, but others are deliberately slowed down, with lots of wirework. Those bits are more like... waking dreams of how a swordfight between two masters *might* go. (Yoda *wishes* he could have fought like this.) *Far* from boring, but not exactly adrenaline-pumping. Add to this beautiful actors wearing vividly colorful, flowing costumes arranged against an often stark landscape and you have a banquet for the eyes. This movie is very, very, *very* pretty to look at, and the beauty factor alone would make it worth seeing at least once (on a big screen, if you can manage it).
But, wonder of wonders, it's also got a plot-- a plot of unexpected wrinkles and layers (again, with his track record, this is not a director to underestimate), and characters that feel real and human despite their legendary setting. Yes, this is wuxia... which means almost everyone has some almost impossibly noble motivation. It's chivalry-fantasy, that's the genre. But these aren't cardboard characters... I cared what happened to all these people. I cried for most of them, even the villains (such as they are-- all the characters in this movie have their sympathetic moments, when I think about it). And y'know... despite the big sets, the artsy design and cinematography, the "noble legend" idea behind the basic plot... this isn't a pretentious movie, really. It's not one of those "ah! the deep, inscrutable symbolism of the flower that drops from her hair! how Jungian!" sorts of movies... yes, there's symbolism there, if you really want it, but following the plot doesn't depend on it. (In fact, in the few places that you *do* get hit with some hefty symbolism, the king often doesn't get it either, and the Hero has to explain it to him-- thus explaining it to us, too. Very politely. Because you don't say "well, DUH!" to someone who can have your head lopped off with a twitch of his pinkie.) It's not even... well, probably *because* it's not your stereotypical martial arts movie, it's just really, *really* good, and would quite likely appeal even to those who aren't really into all that swordplay stuff. Thumbs up. This one's definitely a keeper.
So. Vanity Fair. (I went on so long about Hero, I feel like I barely have anything left for this one... but I think I can manage. ;) ) I'll start with a little reminder about the difference between a movie *based* on a novel, and the novel itself. The movie is not the book. It can never *be* the book. And if you try to compare it to the book-- especially a dense, period social drama like one of Thackeray's-- the movie will (almost) always fail badly in comparison. (So? I liked Emma the movie better than the book. Don't look at me like that, KT.) This happens for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that a book can take its time. Very few people are going to read about 300 pages' worth of book in two hours. (I could tell you a story here about one really assignment-packed week at college that left me about that amount of time to read Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but I won't. I'll just let you guess how much of it I retained.) A book can make its own schedule. It gets time to work up the characters so you can *really* get to know them, time to develop the plot and explore as many subplots as it likes, time for loads and loads of set-up and back-story and character motivation and what-have-you.
A movie... doesn't. A movie gets two hours, more or less. for those 300 or so pages. (Well, in VF's case, more like 800 pages.) That's it. If it can't tell you the story in that time... well, it's not a movie, it's an A&E miniseries, and that's a different genre again. And a movie needs to maintain a certain flow, a modicum of pacing; while a book can luxuriate in digressions and introspective lulls in the action, a movie can only get away with so much dodging away from the plot. After all, it doesn't have the *time* to hare off on lots of digressions. Inevitably, that means something's going to get cut... a subplot, a scene, a minor character or ten, etc.
Now, let's add on a few more of the limitations of the audiovisual medium... for example, a book can describe, a book can tell... a movie *has* to show. Yes, you can always have voice-over narration, long, expository conversations, establishing shots to help set a scene in a few seconds... but there's a limit to how much of that you can get away with in a movie. And a movie can't leave much to the imagination, because it is, primarily, a visual medium. What it is, in essence, is the book as imagined by a fairly small group of people (the director, the actors, maybe the set designers and costumers, too) and then presented, fully realized, to its audience. Sure, the movie will have its own things open to interpretation, but... it's *already* filtering the book through someone else's interpretation. To my mind, because of this, it's never a good idea to reread the book just before going to see the movie, because you'll undoubtedly spoil the experience for yourself.
Okay. Done with the mini-lecture. And yes, obviously, there was a reason I beat you over the head with this. Reese Witherspoon and Mira Nair's Vanity Fair is not necessarily *your* Vanity Fair. It's not even entirely Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but you knew that, based on my little essay just now. It was a good movie, though. Not great, not brilliant, but certainly good. The setting was top-notch-- the houses, the costumes, the balls, everything. As in Hero, the director's use of bright, opulent color against often drab backgrounds was particularly striking. (It might help to mention that Mira Nair, who also directed Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay, is Indian born and educated, and takes full advantage of early 19th c. Britain's fascination with its colony of India in conceiving the scenery for this movie.) The music is also lovely (and no, Reese does not do her own singing, according to the song credits). I will freely admit that I came into this already liking a *lot* of the actors. Reese Witherspoon is one of my favorites, as is the hunky James Purefoy. Romola Garai, whom I recognized but couldn't place until I looked her up (Cassandra in I Capture the Castle), as Amelia. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers (whom I predict KT will drool over) as George Osborne. Bob Hoskins, who should do more period films because he's so GOOD at it, as Sir Crawley. Meg Wynn Owen, who was Mrs. Lewis in Gosford Park, does a marvellous Lady Crawley. And, surprise, surprise, Gabriel Byrne playing the Marquess of Steyne.
Okay, enough gushing. Yes, it's a very strong cast, and overall I felt that was the movie's greatest strength: good, solid characterization, with occasional flashes of brilliance. It's a big cast, as so often happens in period dramas, but you don't get everyone thrown at you at once, and there's enough continuity with them that you don't have too much of "oh yeah, who's that again?" The characters had drive, they had depth, and some of them had some *damn* sharp wit. Quite a bit of humor to leaven this drama, but some of it is rather owie. (So far, so good, as far as the book's concerned, right?.)
Alrighty now, here's the big point of deviation with the novel that I admit to liking: the novel is *not* about happy people, or even really decent people. C'mon, it's a satire on British society, and most specifically, the consequences of foolish pride and ambition-- social climbing, keeping up with the Joneses, getting ahead, snubbing the "out" crowd, etc. The first casualty of this, for me, was likeable characters. Even Becky-- heck, *especially* Becky-- pushes it too far a few too many times. (I suppose I should say "even Amelia," but I didn't like her much either.) I just... got disgusted, which is, I suppose, what Thackeray was aiming for. The dialogue was fun; I enjoy a good snipe as much as the next one. But I didn't really have anything (except the assignment and a sort of sick fascination) to keep me reading. I couldn't care less what happened to them all, as far as I was concerned, they *all* deserved what they got. ("A Novel without a Hero," indeed!) I don't really need to read about how people can be cruel to each other-- I learned that in elementary school first-hand, thanks. This is not to say that the movie *is* about happy people-- it's not. But, well... purists will probably take exception to this, but I felt the movie characters had a much more realistic range of feeling. Still no saints here, but... I don't know how to put it, exactly. The movie just feels more... positive than the book. Yes, I hear your incredulousness. ("Positive? Vanity Fair?? But... did they miss the whole POINT of the book??") No, I don't think they missed the point. It's just a different perspective. Yes, the movie still shows you how even the best of people can be petty and vain. But the movie *also* shows that even the worst schemers can have their moments of compassion or genuine regret. And... yeah, Hollywood probably had an influence on it, as far as that goes. The book is still a much stronger work than the movie, but in the handling of this one theme, I preferred the movie's take.
I'd say, on the whole, the movie is just... milder than the book. Bear in mind, it's PG-13, so some of the racier scenes are toned down (sometimes by quite a lot). But it's not just that... people in the movie just aren't as nasty, situations don't get quite as dire. That kind of thing. As I said, that was an aspect of the book I didn't particularly miss, but others might, so, fair warning. (As point of comparison, Dangerous Liasons is far more wicked, but it's also rated R.) And, as is to be expected, the plot is *quite* compressed. It's been awhile since I've read the book, so I couldn't tell you specifically what might have been left out or glossed over, but they certainly do hustle the plot along. Overall, I liked it, and I was able to get into it as I couldn't get into the book-- the characters engaged me more. But if you *really* liked the book, chances are you're not going to be entirely pleased with this movie, and you may want to wait for video.
A day for weird sorts of words. Today I came across the concept of shibboleths, such as the one up there in the title (pronounced CHUM-lee, for all you non-native-Brits). A shibboleth is the term for those odd dialectical words that only native speakers-- those "in the know"-- pronounce "correctly," or that, at least, one group pronounces in a distinct manner from another group's pronunciation. (Having encountered it before, I'd guessed from context that it referred to some sort of curse word or slur... on reading the correct definition, I'm not sure I was *that* far off the first time.) British English, I note, has a *lot* of these, especially in placenames and noble titles (which are, often as not, linked): the above-mentioned Cholmondeley, Greenwich, Worcestershire, Throat-Warbler Mangrove, Norfolk... oh, whoops, that one's a weird American pronunciation. ;) And to think, I *lived* in one my entire freshman year without knowing....
Ahhh, and before I forget, my second word of the day-- epithalamium. I suppose the word itself isn't so weird as the context in which I heard it. Apparently there used to be a wedding custom in early 19th century England known as "the butcher's serenade." A group of butchers' boys-- the type who chop meat, not mercenaries or somesuch-- would gather in front of a house hosting a wedding armed with their cleavers. (Yes, I know, this sounds like something from a horror flick, but wait.) They would then perform an epithalamium to the new couple on their cleavers, each being ground to produce a different note, like handbells. Sort of... wondrous and scary at the same time, I suppose, to have a group of men clanging their knives at your wedding. (Described in W. & R. Chambers' Book of Days, via Jeffrey Kacirk's Forgotten English Calendar, 2004.)
I wasn't planning on saying anything in particular about Sept. 11 today. Yes, it's the third anniversary. Yes, tears still sting my eyes when I think about it, or hear a song on the radio that I particularly associate with that day. I think this will always be my generation's JFK, as the Iraq War is my Vietnam.
But when I got to work today and saw the usual small crowd of people at our front doors waiting to be let in, they didn't make a rush, as usual, for the Internet computers. The headed into our meeting room, to keep their appointments at the blood drive we're holding today.
And y'know... it's September. We're at war. Florida and the rest of the Caribbean is dealing with the effects of three major hurricanes (and with Ivan, the number of injured and homeless will no doubt go up). A town in Russia just had to deal with a terrible massacre in their school. Yes, a *particular* disaster is very much on America's mind today... but disasters *keep* happening, and the most constructive response from the average citizen, I think, is to do what we can, when we can, to remember other people who are facing disasters no less devastating to their lives than September 11th was to others three years ago.
So... if you haven't recently, perhaps you can take a little time out today to remember.
Disaster Relief
The Hunger Site
American Red Cross (Donations)
American Red Cross (Blood)
UNICEF
So, I taught the first Internet Orientation of the fall calendar tonight... boy, was I rusty. Bad enough that I'm getting over a cold, and for some reason, oration tends to make my throat fog up and my nose run. But on top of that, it just took me a bit to get into the swing of it, so the class lasted even longer than my long-winded usual. :( Still, it wasn't all my fault-- I had a group more to the "beginner" end of "beginner to intermediate," and so I took time to go over some computer basics that often I can skip right over... and they asked a good number of questions throughout, so I don't think I was making anyone glaze over, particularly. But it was the last pair of questions that really got me. I'd just finished going through search engines, and was wrapping up, and asked if there were any questions. One gentleman had two.
"What was the name of Sancho Panza's donkey in Don Quixote?"
(Dapple, says Google.)
and...
"What was the name of Torquemada's horse?"
(...)
Well, darn it. I wound up working on this one all night, bulldog librarian that I am. I told him to ask me again when I had more time to look (hey, the building was closing soon), but I don't think I've got an answer for him. Unless he meant Fray Juan de Torquemada, the early Spanish historian of colonial Mexico, instead of the inquisitor. But even that's a stretch, and I can't find any horses specifically linked to him. Hm. I'd think my leg was being pulled, but he really did seem to want the answer, and he wrote the *other* one down. I did recall a very nice list of famous horses from Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (yes, I know, looking up a print source online, sort of cheating ;) ), but that didn't have it either. Ah, vell. If anyone happens to stumble across the name, please ease my mind and let me know, will you? (And cite your source!)
Nooo, I don' t mean Nancy Pearl. Reading Kirkus today (8/15 issue, I'm catching up, here), and I come across not one, but TWO instances of action librarians in fiction!
First up we have Larry Beinhart's The Librarian, due out in October, a "barn-burning political thriller" about a college librarian who's hired to catalogue a billionaire's papers, and suddenly has hired killers on his tail because he's discovered some big, nasty secret. Problem is, he doesn't know what he knows. (And if Beinhart's name isn't familiar to you-- his American Hero got turned into the movie "Wag the Dog.")
And secondly, we have Sam Hill's (I swear, that's the name given here) Buzz Riff, about a former merc-turned-"world's most adrenaline-addicted librarian." Writes Kirkus, "Interesting people plot nonstop to hurt each other in interesting ways."
And who says librarians don't lead exciting lives? (Well... at least in fiction. ;) )
Matt msg'ed me a bit earlier this evening. "Have you learned your two things yet?" Alas, slack, sickie person that I was, I had not. So Matt, bless his soul, gave me a nudge in the right direction. He'd been checking on the spelling of the term "scot free" and turned up quite an interesting etymology of the phrase.
What amused me the most about this was learning of yet another example of Old English/Old Norse word pairings. (Yes, I know, this was the first thing you thought of, too. NOT. But bear with me.) You see, Old English and Old Norse, which are pretty closely related linguistically (and would become more so when the English started adopting words out of the Danelaw), both had words with the "sc/sk" letter combination in them, but pronounced them differently. Old English went for the soft sound, Old Norse for the hard. Modern English inherited them both. For an example, take a look at a word that went both directions-- the Old English "scyrte" (pronounced, roughly, SHEER-ta) and Old Norse "skyrta" (pronounced SKEER-ta) both meant the same thing originally: a tunic. Today we've got both words in the language-- shirt, and skirt.
This business of "scot free" came down to us as two words, as well... there's "scot" (from the Old Norse skot), and there's shot (scroll down a bit, it's def'n 15), from the related Old English word, scot, as in "to pay the shot" (mostly used in British English, I'll grant you). In fact, Webster's Revised Unabridged uses one word in defining the other:
Modern English being what it is, we adopted *both* words. No wonder the language is so darn complicated.
Oh... der. I got so caught up in my little comparative etymology, there, I nearly forgot about the other two terms I ran across. I mentioned before that I'm on a pirate kick thanks to my 7th Sea game... well, one way of feeding my frenzy has been to hunt down wordlists of piratical and generally nautical lingo (as opposed to just plain naughty lingo). And so I share with you two particularly colorful expressions that are both rumored to have their roots in things seamanly:
"freezing the balls off a brass monkey" and "son of a gun"
(both originally found in the Sailor Dictionary of Terms, if'n ye be curious).
And even more amusing, *both* storied origins turn out to be total, unmitigated hooey, most likely. But fun, anyway. ^_^
So, I've been doing some research on vodka (and no, that hasn't involved drinking it, get your minds out of the bottle already). And as always, you, my fine readers (see how I flatter you?), reap the benefit of my studies.
Soooo.... a few new tidbits I picked up in my studies:
1) I had always thought that vodka was made from potatoes. It turns out that's partially true-- vodka *can* be made from potatoes, but it's supposed to give you a nastier headache than the finer traditional vodkas that are made from grain, specifically rye or wheat.
2) Dmitri Mendeleyev, famous chemist and one of the two men responsible for creating the Periodic Table of Elements (the other, before Jeff beats me to it, was Julius Lothar Meyer, but as far as I know he had nothing to do with the history of vodka), holds the further distinction of creating the modern Russian vodka recipe. He came up with the ideal balance of spirits and water that became the "golden middle standard" of 40 degrees proof, and was patented by the government as "Moscow's Special."
3) Russia came up with a very clever way of making sure that producers didn't water down their vodka too far. (After all, it's clear, and it already *has* water in it-- how else could you *tell*?) Rather than selling by volume, they sold by weight-- 30 pounds to the bucket. Because alcohol is lighter than water, any heavier would show that there was too much water in the vodka. Cool, neh?
Oh, and by the way-- this whole line of research started because I was trying to find out what the alcohol distilled from sugar beets is called. (There was a suggestion in the article I link to above that sugar beets were also used in making vodka in Western Europe (well, west of Russia, anyway), but I wasn't able to confirm that elsewhere.) After all, mankind has been abusing vegetable matter to get drunk off of it for an awfully long time. Rum's been around since the mid-16th century-- it didn't take long for some bright soul to start distilling alcohol out of cane juice-- and sugar beets are basically the same sort of product, so logically there has to be *some* sort of alcoholic beverage distilled from sugar beets. (The best I could find was beet wine, which isn't exactly what I had in mind.) If anyone knows what it is, I'd be grateful if you shared the knowledge. ^_^
(And in case anyone was wondering what the heck the title of this entry means, it's "to your health" in Russian.)
1:30 PM London Time (12:30 GMT): Astronomers deny ET signal report (BBC)
8:32 AM EDT (12:32 GMT): Could Space Signal Be Alien Contact? (Reuters)
Look at that-- they started denying it even before the report came out! Mistake, or deep dark secret governmental alien conspiracy??? You be the judge! (Insert Twilight Zone music here).