Think about what you're doing when you pull those Hitler salutes

[sovay]

Then my health decided to fall apart this week and so did my ability to write about anything interesting. Have a bunch of link-type things.

1. rachelmanija is compiling a list of Jewish characters in genre novels whose plotlines cannot in any way be summarized as "it sucks to be Jewish!" (i.e., no Holocaust stories, no pogroms, no character growth defined by dealing with anti-Semitism). Please do not leave suggestions here! I've already spammed the daylights out of her comments, so you should go and do the same. coffeeandink has related discussion of Jewish erasure here.

2. I intended to link this article over the weekend, but Twelfth Night and a Readercon meeting and then staying up all night with a poem took it out of my head: Kate Adie on the women of World War I, whose roles were so much more than spies or nursing sisters. I plan to look for her book. One of the quietly strongest moments in Leslie Howard's The Gentle Sex (1943) is the revelation that a love interest's sweet old mother, seen heretofore only in relation to her dashing young flying officer of a son and the memory of his first-generation pilot father, was herself an ambulance driver in the last war: her husband brought her flowers while she recovered from her shrapnel injuries, a piece of which remains in her shoulder still.

3. This is one of the greatest covers it has ever been my fortune to discover on the internet at two in the morning and promptly share with derspatchel, which is why I'm still listening to it this morning: Dead Kennedys, "Back in the U.S.S.R." The entire album is wonderful; Biafra is a Dada emcee for his own songs, singing out non sequiturs like "We have to stay in tune for the tape! This is our big chance with Robert Stigwood, don't let us down!" and "Aha! The song for the blind Hitler saluters—'Ill in the Head'!" A fan shouts right into the mike, "We want to see some biceps, Biafra!" and without breaking stride he calls the next song's title like a station stop, "Gas-light!" It's noisy and caustic and fun and through an only slightly over-complicated daisy-chain of internet led to listening to Bonerama's "Helter Skelter," which Rob recognized at once from the trombones.

So far this afternoon has involved way too much arguing with pharmacies.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You know how your "reply" message says "tell me a story"? Well, I shall. It is very short. I looked at your last line, and in a kind of dyslexia that cannot be handwaved away as anagramization, I read it as "So far this afternoon has involved way too much arguing with pomades." And in the 15 seconds before I read it correctly, I thought, "for a historical cosplay? for fun in spare time? For herself or a friend?" Okay, that's not really a story. It's a scenario. The Scenario of Sovay and the Pomades. More fun than Sovay and the Pharmacy, I bet.

I'll have to go back and revisit Rachel's entry--I was hoping seeing other people's links would stimulate my own memory, but so far not.

[sovay]

I read it as "So far this afternoon has involved way too much arguing with pomades."

No, no, that was last night—derspatchel got his hair cut like Edward R. Murrow in preparation for The Big Broadcast of 1962 in December and of course Judy Jetson's sent him home with product in it. Fortunately, I think we won.

I'll have to go back and revisit Rachel's entry--I was hoping seeing other people's links would stimulate my own memory, but so far not.

I had the opposite problem—I kept having my memory jogged to the point where I made myself stop commenting, because I was pretty sure I'd crossed from "eclectically helpful" into "please just stop now."

eclectically helpful

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I now have a great new category in which to strive to excel/risk being annoying.

[spatch]

...of course Judy Jetson's sent him home with product in it.

"You have grease in your hair."
"It's not grease! It's not! The guy said it was Product."

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I had an argument last year with some Murray's Pomade. I lost, and the rest of the tin has remained safely in a corner ever since.