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And spend the rest of my life in bed
Welcome to mostly sunny, slightly more autumnal than I was expecting Maryland. As I got onto the shuttle from the airport to the trains, nearly all of the people around me were bonding over the fact that they had come to D.C. for "the rally." I found myself saying that I was visiting my godchild. The one conversation I struck up went abruptly flat as soon as I mentioned classics. I said mildly that I liked dead languages. "Of course you do. All the smart kids do Latin. And you have a couple of cats, right?" I said that I had no cats. He said everyone he knew who was a classicist had cats. Maybe I was allergic to them? No, I said, I'm not allergic, I just don't have any cats. That was the last word on the subject. I went back to reading about Ludwig Wittgenstein.1
(As I type this, however, a small tabby named Benjy is kneading her claws in my stomach and purring indecently. Her motives are wholly selfish, but I'm still cheered.)
As it turned out, there were only mentions of Arsenic and Old Lace in The Big Broadcast of 1946, but there was a guest appearance by William Henry Pratt and a jazzed-up version of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" and a wonderful bit of foley art with a cabbage, so I'll gladly tune in next week for the Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, whenever it may be.2 I would not mind seeing Tomes of Terror become a regular feature, either. "Oh, What Happened to Hutchings!" is a nice little short sharp Victorian shocker (with music by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sen_no_ongaku), but "The Sirens of War" was just lovely. "Shenandoah" is one of the most hackneyed songs in the American catalogue. Everyone and their high school chorus endures an unbearably treacly four-part arrangement at some point in their lives. This production made nothing more than the crackle of radio static and a woman's voice repeating, a cappella, 'cross the wide Missouri . . . chilling. Points to the sound designer, to Kamela Dolinova's many-voiced Ligeia, and James Scheffler and Marleigh Norton as a combination pair of unwilling Odysseuses. Renée Johnson as the dangerously sweet Bookkeeper is great frame-narration.
It does not appear that I will be able to watch TCM's Frankenstein marathon tonight after all, but anyone who wishes to tape Peter Cushing being four films' worth of brilliant and amoral will be in my eternal debt. Or at least a substantial one, since eternity is a dangerous concept to throw around in this context.
We are off to dinner at Hard Times. Any friendlist-type people I'm going to see at this rally tomorrow?
1. In this case, Bruce Duffy's The World As I Found It (1987), having read Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein (2008) over the summer and Terry Eagleton/Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993) last year. I have no idea when he became someone I'm interested in. I don't remember ever being particularly drawn to his philosophy, except for the inabilities of language.
2. I bought a button for Byfar Coffee Syrup on my way out. It'd kill me if I drank it, but I appreciate its existence immensely.
(As I type this, however, a small tabby named Benjy is kneading her claws in my stomach and purring indecently. Her motives are wholly selfish, but I'm still cheered.)
As it turned out, there were only mentions of Arsenic and Old Lace in The Big Broadcast of 1946, but there was a guest appearance by William Henry Pratt and a jazzed-up version of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" and a wonderful bit of foley art with a cabbage, so I'll gladly tune in next week for the Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, whenever it may be.2 I would not mind seeing Tomes of Terror become a regular feature, either. "Oh, What Happened to Hutchings!" is a nice little short sharp Victorian shocker (with music by
sen_no_ongaku), but "The Sirens of War" was just lovely. "Shenandoah" is one of the most hackneyed songs in the American catalogue. Everyone and their high school chorus endures an unbearably treacly four-part arrangement at some point in their lives. This production made nothing more than the crackle of radio static and a woman's voice repeating, a cappella, 'cross the wide Missouri . . . chilling. Points to the sound designer, to Kamela Dolinova's many-voiced Ligeia, and James Scheffler and Marleigh Norton as a combination pair of unwilling Odysseuses. Renée Johnson as the dangerously sweet Bookkeeper is great frame-narration.It does not appear that I will be able to watch TCM's Frankenstein marathon tonight after all, but anyone who wishes to tape Peter Cushing being four films' worth of brilliant and amoral will be in my eternal debt. Or at least a substantial one, since eternity is a dangerous concept to throw around in this context.
We are off to dinner at Hard Times. Any friendlist-type people I'm going to see at this rally tomorrow?
1. In this case, Bruce Duffy's The World As I Found It (1987), having read Alexander Waugh's The House of Wittgenstein (2008) over the summer and Terry Eagleton/Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993) last year. I have no idea when he became someone I'm interested in. I don't remember ever being particularly drawn to his philosophy, except for the inabilities of language.
2. I bought a button for Byfar Coffee Syrup on my way out. It'd kill me if I drank it, but I appreciate its existence immensely.
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I love the song Shenandoah--I think because I've been spared the treacly arrangements.
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Nonetheless, I hope they have a good time!
I love the song Shenandoah--I think because I've been spared the treacly arrangements.
Lucky. I got at least two.
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I won't be down there, but our college frosh daughter will be upholding the liberal family honor.
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Awesome!
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<3 Ooh, I am so going to use that line on my conservative relatives. Maybe I can hoodwink a couple of them.
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My da wanted to go to the rally, but you've never met him and he's not there besides. He said he wanted to bring the dog, which my mother vetoed, but my suspicion is he was only joking, in any event.
Enjoy dinner! And the rally!
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Whatever the rally's like, I think it will be fun. And dinner was Cincinnati chili: I can't complain.
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May your thoughts be fulfilled.
And dinner was Cincinnati chili: I can't complain.
Interesting--I'm not used to hearing of that being served outside the Midwest.* Glad you enjoyed it.
*I've always found it a slightly odd dish, in some difficult-to-articulate way that's probably an inevitable result of being from-but-not-from** Ohio.
**No family connections to the state whatsoever beyond parents happening to move there a couple of years before my birth, grew up round kids whose connections were mostly about the same as mine or less, etc.
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It's really too bad, though. I returned home just in time to catch this wonderful exchange:
Frankenstein's Disapproving Friend: I may not have been able to keep you from killing [that nice old genius professor], but I can at least stop you from taking his brain!
Frankenstein: Why? He's not using it!
Man. Some people JUST DON'T GET IT.
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Yikes. I'm sorry. Everything else all right?
Add them to the pile of stuff I have to dub to disc!
I owe you hugely.
Why? He's not using it!
*snerk*
Yay.
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So far, so good. Rami and Selkie have been showing me a ridiculously entertaining historical food show, The Supersizers, in which a food critic and an improv comedian select a historical period and eat its authentic-to-the-point-of-medical-bills cuisine for a week, as well as dressing and semi-observing the customs of the time. We've had the Restoration, the Regency, and now we've backtracked to the Restoration. The episodes before tea and coffee seem to be particularly hard on the hosts.
I might have actually continued to not have cats indefinitely our of habit but for getting one of them (*jerkface knows I'm typing on the subject of his Satanic majesty*) as a sort of relationship bonus. I did go promptly pick out one of my own thereafter (*her infernal fatness is somewhere around here*).
Hee. I'm not sure I've even seen photographs of your cats. Have you any?
Anyway, not sure why I am waxing on about the subject of the little bastards; enjoy the capital, if not the Capitol.
Thank you!
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that is the very blue that wine is red
and with the same reflective luminosity.
You look out from your boat
(whether trireme or ferry)
and say "wine dark", look, look, the wine dark sea!
Languages do die, and when you meet them in the dark
give them blood and greet them
in their own words.
Cats can be psychopomps, cats can be company,
they make tangled signifiers
of sphinxlike spinsterhood.
Cats among pigeonholes
or a piece of tangled weaving
would make him feel safe with you.
Words reach out and tear,
there is no way over
the wake of that dark water.
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or a piece of tangled weaving
would make him feel safe with you.
Hah.
Words reach out and tear,
there is no way over
the wake of that dark water.
That is lovely.
Thank you.