One plays the violin and sleeps inside a fridge

[sovay]

And today, Ajit Pai and the FCC burnt net neutrality. I guess this is one of the nights we sit up in the hills and plan how to hit the Seleucids so hard, Alexander's teeth will hurt. (Also he'll be confused, since his relations with the Jews were cordial enough to rate a touching if fabulous scene in Josephus and an equally positive appearance in Lights (1984), but you can't go around leaving empires where people live and expect not to get socked sooner or later.)

Here are some whiplashily different things.

1. Courtesy of brigdh: I had of course encountered "absquatulate" in the works of Barbara Hambly, but I had never heard of "dumbfungled" or "goshbustified" and I laughed like a loon.

2. I was asked on Facebook if I knew any weird or spooky traditions associated specifically with Hanukkah. I did not, and said that I associate the tradition of ghost stories around this time of year almost strictly with British Christmas, but I could offer a literary option: Eric Kimmel's Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins (1989), an original tale of Hershel of Ostropol which has so successfully passed into folklore that I have heard it retold in the wild. (I put it into a poem myself.) I wondered if it had antecedents in two stories in Isaac Bashevis Singer's Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966) in which demons visit households on Hanukkah—frighteningly but harmlessly in "Grandmother's Tale," with the real possibility of death and destruction in "The Devil's Trick"—but I just found this recent interview with Kimmel and the influence he cites is Dickens. I guess ghost stories for Christmas were relevant after all. I am honestly delighted.

3. Courtesy of David Schraub: Courtney Milan's #metoo story. It has since made the Washington Post. Since it becomes very clear in the course of her post that romance novels are the career she adopted after she was traumatized out of her previous profession, I figured the strongest gesture of support I could make was to buy one. I remember either phi or skygiants saying something that made Unraveled (2011) sound attractive to me, so that's where I'm starting.

ETA: I am sneezing my face off and going to bed.

Comments

[phi]

Have you read Hold Me yet? I liked it even better than Trade Me, for featuring a science nerd who doesn't have the usual science nerd background.

[thawrecka]

I have not! I've read hardly any fiction that wasn't graphic novels or terrible tie in novels this year, so I've got a huge backlog of romance waiting for me on my tablet. I've been meaning to get around to it, though.

[sovay]

I liked it even better than Trade Me, for featuring a science nerd who doesn't have the usual science nerd background.

See, that sort of thing appeals to me!

[muccamukk]

I also enjoyed Hold Me more than Trade Me (which I liked!). It's the first You've Got Mail plot I've read and actually believed in. You don't need to read Trade Me first.