If you leave the room, then the king leaves you

[sovay]

I am not really catching up on anything. The night we got home from New York, there was an exciting cat-related incident at five in the morning that kept everyone from sleeping until after the sun came up (everyone is fine, cats included), and this morning we were awoken shortly after eight by the sounds of construction thinly separated from our bedroom by some tarpaper and shingles. It is the roofers finally come to prevent further ice dams, but they were supposed to come this weekend while we were out of town and instead they are forecast for the rest of the week. I assume I will sleep sometime on Saturday.

1. There is a meme going around Facebook about the five films you would tell someone to watch in order to understand you. I've been saying Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944), Ron Howard's Splash (1984), Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993), John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953). Which is hardly complete, but adding postscripts feels like cheating, so I haven't. The internet being what it is, of course, I first saw this meme in the mutated form of the five weird meats you would tell someone to eat in order to understand you, to which I had no difficulty replying: venison, blood sausage, snails, goat, and raw salmon.

2. In other memetic news, I tried the Midwest National Parks' automatic costume generator:



and while I don't think "Paranoid Hellbender" is a good costume, it'd be a great hardcore band.

3. I haven't done an autumnal mix in a while, so here is a selection of things that have been seasonally rotating. This one definitely tips more toward Halloween.

Anaïs Mitchell, "Any Way the Wind Blows"

In the fever of a world in flames
In the season of the hurricanes
Flood'll get you if the fire don't

Belbury Poly, "Caermaen"

"Belbury Poly's Jim Jupp discovered the vocal—Joseph Taylor singing 'Bold William Taylor' on a CD of English traditional music. The rendition had been originally captured in 1908 on a cylinder recording made by the folk-song collector Percy Grainger. Sampling the whole tune, Jupp 'changed the speed and pitch and recontructed it to make a different melody with unintelligible lyrics'. Effectively, he made a dead man sing a brand-new song. Someone with a superstitious streak might well have hesitated before taking such a liberty." —Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past (2011)

Brandi Carlisle, "The Stranger at My Door"

Condemn their sons to Hades, yeah, Gehenna's full of guys
Alive and well, but there ain't no hell for a firewatcher's daughter

The Clientele, "Lunar Days"

When it's late November and you're lost in the leaves
And you speak in beaten copper tongues that nobody hears

Chris Sullivan, Damon Daunno & Company, "Wait for Me"

Ain't no compass, brother, ain't no map
Just a telephone wire and a railroad track
You keep on walking and don't look back till you get to the bottomland

The Cramps, "Fever"

Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago

Elvis Perkins, "In the Garden"

She wore her hair around her neck
At the foot of the bed her husband kept
In the sea of white roses where the lower things crept

Ensemble Economique, "I Light My Cigarette, I See YOU There"

Jake Xerxes Fussell, "Canyoneers"

What's in a man to make him thirst
For the kind of life he knows is cursed?

The Moulettes, "Devil of Mine"

And where the devil is that devil of mine?
Quickstep roulette rotating in time
He could have any heart that he wanted, but he chose mine

Sam Phillips, "World on Sticks"

I spent all my disbelief on you and how far
We made it before it all came apart
It's amazing what a girl can do with half a heart

Zeal & Ardor, "What's a Killer Like You Gonna Do Here?"

Have you ever killed a man before?
Did you see his begging eyes? Did you feel the gore?

I would really like to be writing about anything.

P.S. I just want to point out that if you have recently seen The Robots of Death (1977) and you open a copy of the official tie-in anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View (2017) and see a pair of characters named Poul and Toos, it is extremely confusing that the former is female, the latter is male, they are respectively a senior and a junior officer aboard the Death Star, and neither of them has a problem with robots.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

you open a copy of the official tie-in anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View (2017) and see a pair of characters named Poul and Toos, it is extremely confusing that the former is female, the latter is male, they are respectively a senior and a junior officer aboard the Death Star, and neither of them has a problem with robots.

LOL, that would throw me too! That's kind of impressive. Who wrote it? Is it accidental or deliberate, do you think? Poul is fair enough, but Toos less so, and Toos and Poul... has Uvanov turned up yet? (Which reminded me that I kept saying I would leave more comments on that post, but I never had enough brain. But it occurs to me that you read my fic anyway, and my fic tends to be far better way of conveying any Deep Thoughts I had about stuff I watched, so that works out. I do admire that you can do that so well in your reviews!)

1. 5 films is not enough, or maybe would never be enough. (5 TV shows or 5 books, maybe)), although clearly I need to work on the fact that there's only one of those 5 I've seen even part of. /o\

I hope life, cats, and roofers allow you to get some peace (and writing) soon!

[sovay]

Who wrote it? Is it accidental or deliberate, do you think?

It has to be deliberate. I've never seen anyone else in fiction named Toos (and Commander Poul's first name is Pamel, which makes me think she's being played by Pamela Salem). The short story is "End of Watch" by Adam Christopher, an author I don't know; the anthology's conceit is a kaleidoscopic retelling of Star Wars (1977) from the perspectives of the supporting cast, so this one is an administrator's eye view of the incident with "the mystery freighter currently holding up the schedule down in Docking Bay 327." I did not see mention of Uvanov anywhere.

[edit] Adam Christopher has not only seen The Robots of Death, he calls D84 "something of a hero of mine." I wonder why he didn't write about droids.

5 films is not enough, or maybe would never be enough. (5 TV shows or 5 books, maybe))

I think part of the point of the meme must be that it's impossible. I could do it with TV shows, because not that many have been important to me; trying to select five books would be a disaster. I did fifty sf/f novels once and even that's changed in the last eleven years.

I hope life, cats, and roofers allow you to get some peace (and writing) soon!

Thank you!

[thisbluespirit]

It has to be deliberate. I've never seen anyone else in fiction named Toos (and Commander Poul's first name is Pamel,

Ha, that is cool. Although, Pamel Poul, really? (Is Toos Dav Toos or something??) And, aw, D84! <3

Perhaps the other authors had already bagged all the droids?

I think part of the point of the meme must be that it's impossible. I could do it with TV shows, because not that many have been important to me;

I couldn't do it with films, because not enough have been important to me - films would be a very odd list and I'd have to either spend all of it apologising or lying, and none of them mean as much as TV and books. I suppose, given the nature of books and TV, that I've always spent a lot more time with those I love, whereas films in my formative years were random and brief and soon recorded over because my Dad needed the space on the video tapes, and the cinema was a rare treat. (Five would be too motley even to start!)

But at least this means all the old films are new to me now!

[sovay]

(Is Toos Dav Toos or something??)

I don't remember that he had a first name at all! It's the logical question, though.

Other characters in the story may also have been named as hat-tips, but since I didn't recognize any of them, I do not remember what they were.

and I'd have to either spend all of it apologising or lying

Why?

(Not having five films that are actually that important to you makes sense to me and is a perfectly valid reason not to run the meme that way; I don't understand the apologies.)

[thisbluespirit]

Not having five films that are actually that important to you makes sense to me and is a perfectly valid reason not to run the meme that way; I don't understand the apologies.

Well, I don't know if there aren't some that aren't important to me, but five that would tell people things about me? LOL. And it would definitely include at least one Carry On among other things - so, I'd be apologising for liking a lot of things I'm not supposed to like! But then again, I did once nearly apologise to a lamp-post when I walked into it... Actually, probably The Mummy, The Lady Vanishes, a Carry On film would be a start information-wise, and that's not too motley.

[ashlyme]

1. Could you do five bands? I think I could manage that. Books: impossible.

2: I got Prickly Pine Cone (or "Sleepy" if I go with Mat) which just seems a but too easy!

3: Great mixtape! It'll do as a soundtrack while I go shout at the Death Star...

[sovay]

1. Could you do five bands? I think I could manage that. Books: impossible.

I don't see why not! What are your five bands?

2: I got Prickly Pine Cone (or "Sleepy" if I go with Mat) which just seems a but too easy!

"Prickly Pine Cone" isn't a costume, it's an existential state!

3: Great mixtape! It'll do as a soundtrack while I go shout at the Death Star...

Hee. Enjoy!

It's an interesting idea for an anthology; I flipped through a bookstore copy and I think it rises and falls entirely on choice and execution. Mallory Ortberg's "Incident Report" is the official complaint Admiral Motti files after being Force-choked by Vader, space opera as workplace black comedy. Elizabeth E. Wein's "Change of Heart" recounts the small, crucial road-to-Damascus moment of an anonymous Stormtrooper watching Princess Leia stand up to Tarkin. Daniel José Older's "Born in the Storm" is narrated by a sarcastic, bored, drunk-on-duty Stormtrooper who is one hundred and ten percent done with "this armpit of a planet in the literal butt of the galaxy" where he's been sent "to recover some missing droids." Nnedi Okorafor's "The Baptist" gives a name and perspective to the tentacled alien in the garbage compactor and it's brilliant. A lot of the other stories didn't leave much impression. On some level I am just amazed this is an official tie-in book, not an AO3 exchange.

[ashlyme]

*What are your five bands?*

This was actually tougher than expected. Broadcast. British Sea Power. Van Der Graaf Generator. Tangerine Dream. Hawkwind.

[sovay]

Broadcast. British Sea Power. Van Der Graaf Generator. Tangerine Dream. Hawkwind.

Nice!

I'm trying to think about mine, and it is hard.

[lemon_badgeress]

And once again, Zombie Striped Skunk isn't good for....anything.

[sovay]

And once again, Zombie Striped Skunk isn't good for....anything.

It feels like an excellent defense mechanism to me. Not a lot of people going to bother a zombie skunk, except maybe a zombie great horned owl.

[davidgillon]

Bah, Dancing Hiker. And even swapping first for last just gives me Dancing Tour Guide. Splitting the difference and choosing middle letters gives me the much more interesting Stubborn Wolverine (my sister would probably argue that's not a costume, it's me).

[sovay]

Splitting the difference and choosing middle letters gives me the much more interesting Stubborn Wolverine (my sister would probably argue that's not a costume, it's me).

It's still better than Dancing Hiker!

[thistleingrey]

Moody Hiker: wouldn't even require me to dress up.

[sovay]

Moody Hiker: wouldn't even require me to dress up.

Is that the best or the worst kind of costume?

[thistleingrey]

I'm not much for costuming, especially now that I'm allergic to nearly all face makeup. But! This has been useful another way: finding the tiny iron cauldron I use when not quite dressing up as Baba Yaga. Reason asked me to trick-or-treat with her this year, and I wanted her not to see where I keep the cauldron (so that she doesn't filch it or other stuff kept with it). Thanks for that, inadvertently. :)

[dhampyresa]

The mixtape looks lovely! Thank you for sharing it.

[sovay]

The mixtape looks lovely! Thank you for sharing it.

You're welcome! Enjoy.

[kore]

I am....Zombie Selfie Taker. I have never taken a selfie in my life.

Did you hear about this? https://www.criterion.com/library/expanded_view?b=Criterion&o=false&p=1&pp=25

All in-stock Blu Rays are 50% off if you use the code COOP at checkout.

[sovay]

I am....Zombie Selfie Taker. I have never taken a selfie in my life.

See? No one would recognize you!

All in-stock Blu Rays are 50% off if you use the code COOP at checkout.

I can't play Blu-Rays, but since the same seems to apply for DVDs . . . *prowls*

[swan_tower]

I would be either a Moody Tour Guide or a Prickly Prairie Dog, depending on whether I go with my legal or pen name. Both of those sound like cocktails to me.

[sovay]

I would be either a Moody Tour Guide or a Prickly Prairie Dog, depending on whether I go with my legal or pen name. Both of those sound like cocktails to me.

Seriously. I bet there's juniper in the Prairie Dog.