I'll be stabbing a pencil through my eye now, thanks.
Maybe it's nice to be flightless. Are the penguins really envious of the crows?
What if it's a wingless bird with really long legs, and it can run super fast?
Or maybe it has a jetpack. 'Cause that would be cool.
And I have "I waddled, I waddled so far away, I couldn't get away," stuck in my head now.
Penguins 'fly' underwater with remarkable grace and speed.
Maybe a cassowary? See below, from unfogged official blogcrush Maciej Ceglowski:
http://idlewords.com/2013/02/the_daintree_rain_forest.htm
10: Have you also watched "A Wish for Wings That Work"?
I "breathe" underwater with a certain jaunty drownishness.
I just felt that Dali was being a dick, and that this is a lovely haven of flightless birds. Don't shoot the messenger.
I hadn't realized that the tree on the masthead was meant to symbolize an unachievable destination
I *think* this must be a joke, which is good, 'cuz at first I was like, Huh? It's a picture Ogged's ex-before-ex-before-ex-before-now (not sure of the count) took. It's just a depiction of beauty. Stop overthinking! It doesn't mean anything about ambition!
Then I realized you were trolling. Whew.
Did Dali really say this? Google says it's also attributed to one C. Archie Danielson, and I don't see any source for either.
Kakapo, anyone? Not only are they flightless, their strategy in response to any threat is to freeze motionless, so that most of them have been killed by housecats who just kind of stroll up to them and start munching.
15: I had always assumed it was intended to depict an absence of fog.
16: Are you calling my Pinterest board a liar?
17: They're so cute! That can't be us.
I was recently fooled by a possum playing possum in my backyard.
12: Nope, but I've seen video of penguins swooping and swerving underwater. The contrast with their icebound waddle is striking.
I was recently fooled by a possum playing possum in my backyard.
I've had this happen! It was by the side of the road, with a juvenile. "Oh, poor little possum! I wonder what happened to it! Could it have been hit by a car? But it doesn't look wounded. Did it fall out of a tree? ... Ohhhhh."
Kakapo, anyone?
How will it be prepared? And what wine will you be serving with it? Sorry, I like to have all the fact before I answer.
Penguins have their dark side. Look at "The Wrong Trousers". And there's the hideous giant blind albino cave-penguins of Antarctica in "At the Mountains of Madness".
Kakapo, anyone? Not only are they flightless, their strategy in response to any threat is to freeze motionless
Holy shit, I think you've found me a new spirit animal.
On the contrary, the trees represent the bare ruined choirs where once the sweet birds sang, and indicate how far we've fallen from the heights we once achieved (or were projected to achieve).
Penguins have their dark side.
Namely, their backs.
28: Is there a housecat eating you at this moment?
29: Nay, those trees, I have always thought, are at the edge of a high cliff; the bare tree leans -- has grown -- outward so due to the wind sweeping perpetually outward from the land, and therefore indicates not how far we've fallen from a height, but how tenaciously we cling to said height. It's a rather robust 'Fuck You, Here I Am', if you ask me.
I admit I have nothing to say about the tree's leafless state.
33: parsimon accentuates the positive, and does her level best to ignore the negative.
17: That sounds like more of a tactic than a strategy.
Did Dali really say this?
No. It seems likely that this quote is sometimes attributed to Dalì because "Dalì" and "Danielson" are alphabetically close, so that a book of quotations that ordered its quotations by author's surname might place a quote from Dalì just before one from Danielson, and so someone who carelessly copied out the quote together with the name before the quote (rather than the name after it) might make this substitution.
Google says it's also attributed to one C. Archie Danielson, and I don't see any source for either.
Not only is no source given, but "C. Archie Danielson" only ever appears as the source for this quote. His earliest appearance in the Google Books corpus is in Reader's digest quotable quotes: wit and wisdom for all occasions from America's most popular magazine (1997).
Along with this pencil.
Mein Gott! Ich habe ein Bleistift im Kopf!
Based on my experience eating puffins, sea birds aren't very tasty. I guess a Kakapo isn't a sea bird but that guy doesn't look like he's fat enough to taste good. What were we talking about again? Oh, I'm totally ambitious, as I've said many times I want to be a dictator with a Pagani huayra, private luxury submarine, and all female ninja bodyguard team.
OT: Did anyone see the Paul Krugman / Joe Scarborough face-off on Charlie Rose?
I did see about 15 minutes of it when it aired on the teevee, but I fell asleep -- not because it was boring, but just because this has been happening to me lately. Last I'd seen, Scarborough was agreeing that we don't have a short-term debt problem, and so should not be engaging in austerity measures at this time, and Krugman was incredulously saying, "But, so that means you're at odds with 90% of your party!" Scarborough sounded weirdly like a Democrat for a minute there, which was odd.
Now it appears that everyone agrees that JoeScar wiped the floor with KThug.
It's possible that this is not the right thread to introduce politics, but there hasn't been much room for political talk here lately.
||
You've all noticed Osell's glowing review of Kelman at CT?
|>
43: no. I think you should reproduce it here in full!
Von Wafer gets it right. Split it out over a bunch of comments, though, so we can savor it.
||
Has anybody else heard that there's a winter storm in some parts of the country?
|>
She writes a prettier review than I do.
If it's going to be split over a bunch of comments, I think it's canonical that the commenter introduce a scantily clad indigenous meth-head as a central character. Maybe call her Blowcahontas.
Blowcanhontas in: A Miss-Placed Assacre
Don't feel bad, LB. I think Tedra actually cared about the book's subject matter, sorta-kinda. You did a pretty amazing job considering that the book was of almost no interest at all to you.
How many ways can Blowandhauntus blow, before you can call her scantily clad?
Don't make fun of me, heebie. It is a matter of great importance to my people's collective memory that the 'n' I added to "Blowcahontas" belongs exactly there.
51: That's true -- I'm not sure if it came across what strong endorsement of the book that was. Seriously, your topic was something that would have been very, very, very hard to get me interested in at all, but the book wasn't dull in the least.
I think Blowcanhauntus might be even better, though perhaps a tad on the nose.
||
Did people notice the completely strange war with Brian Le/iter that Paul Campos is on about at LGM? Yeah, well, uh-huh.
|>
The Snowquester is a complete dud around here.
If you're going to be a flightless bird might as well go all out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae
55: I was completely serious, and it did come through. I was and remain very grateful that you took the time to review a book about a subject of no interest to you.
perhaps a tad on the nose
That's a nose?
What I meant is that you should be very grateful I read the first ten pages. Finishing it, and writing something about it, is all you.
And now I will stop being complimentary and actually get around to sending out these goddamn litigation hold letters.
Penguins have their dark side.
"Is there such a thing as insanity among penguins?"
I would be far more grateful if one of you people would put me in touch with a producer of a major NPR show or perhaps find a way to convince Sam Tanenhaus to have my book reviewed in the Times.
Also, the Leiter-Campos spat isn't that weird at all, I don think. Just because it seems that they're both pretty horrid people doesn't mean that Leiter isn't rather obviously an unethical bully who uses blogs in ways that most of us would consider very, very shady (assuming the evidence is accurate).
I will stop being complimentary
How silly of you!
I am on a conference call that is completely out of control. We're into hour three, and we're not even remotely on task. Holy shit, tenure, coupled with lack of a good meeting chair, is a very dangerous thing.
It's right there, so yes.
Some people might not read CT!
(I certainly hope some people don't, because I just suggested that a friend give "Three-And-A-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or, An Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941" as his "favorite article" in a job application, and it won't have nearly the same "oooh, most applicants would have gone for the newer, sexier, more technical stuff, but you went deep into the archives for the conceptual piece--I like that in a data scientist!" effect if the person reading the application suspects that it was only brought to his attention in the last few days.)
@57Did people notice the completely strange war with Brian Le/iter that Paul Campos is on about at LGM? Yeah, well, uh-huh.
It occurs to me that Law Professor is one profession whose public image has not benefited from the advent of blogs.
Before about 2004, my image of a law prof. was something along the lines of John Houseman in The Paper Chase
Between Leiter, Volkov, Althouse & etc., that image is now....different.
With his obsession with lists and rankings, Leiter always reminds me of the character in High Fidelity who relates to life primarily through drawing up Top 5 lists.
I've just found the rehearsal of complaints and issues between Leiter and Campos to be boring in the extreme. If Leiter is truly out to out pseudonymous writers, that is uncool. On the other hand, if I may be honest: I don't give a shit about the plight of law school graduates who can't find jobs. (I think that's what Campos is spending a lot time chronicling. Right?)
I'm out of the loop in any case, since I thought Leiter was a philosopher.
I don't give a shit about the plight of law school graduates who can't find jobs.
Cold.
I'm out of the loop in any case, since I thought Leiter was a philosopher.
His appointment is at a law school.
I think that's what Campos is spending a lot time chronicling. Right?
Not really, no. But why read when you can be vitriolic and hyperbolic! This is the internet, after all.
"Intelligence without ambition...
Actually I think I've got both of those. What's missing is discipline.
The proper group noun for penguins is a "Serape".
Also, apropos of an earlier discussion, my book is number one (sort of but not really, or at least not really in a way that matters very much at all).
39: You ate a puffin?! What's wrong with you?
Speaking of kakapos, I'd imagine everyone has seen the video where the guy says "You're being shagged by a rare parrot" but in case you haven't this is awesome.
77: If I were you, I would have been very sad to be listed below number 4 on that list.
I do apologize for making negative remarks about the Leiter-Campos thing when, truth be told, I stopped reading it after its first eruption.
79: I expect that I'll have that experience next week or the week after. History is fleeting; cat poetry endures.
when, truth be told, I stopped reading it after its first eruption
Me too, maybe even after the first paragraph of the first eruption. I was confused why you'd bring it up for discussion if you thought it was so tiresome. (Which, to be clear, I agree: tiresome.)
Even better is the DeLong/Graeber Twitter war.
Is that still active? Wow.
I should try twitter again. I signed up a while back, was fascinated for about a month, and then got irretrievably bored. But lots of the stuff I read blogs for moved over there, and I miss it.
82: I was partly riffing off the "does everyone know / has everyone seen" motif upthread, but also, since Campos seems so exercised, I thought I should vaguely inquire whether there was something serious at hand. Lame, I know, but that's about all.
Wrote Douglas Adams: "The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be."
Hey, book #4 on that list is one I've been following since it came out (and I own a copy). It's by the current author of Sally Forth, as well as Medium Large, which should be in everybody's webcomics rotation.
Oh, the Kakapo's the one with the super low-frequency mating call, which Adams points out is not so useful since it's basically impossible to determine the direction of origin of bass frequencies.
Dalì
If you're going to go to all the effort of putting an accent mark in, can't you make it face the right direction?
89 reminds me that we should totally have a thread about essear's collaborator.
It's a pretty big deal, surely parsi, that tens of thousands of young folks are being lured into hundreds of thousands in federally guaranteed debt they'll never be able to repay by rank fraud, rank ample cheerleading from clueless parents.
Those kids will be ruined, and the bill will be paid by the taxpayers. And the people making the money on this racket are lying up a storm.
|| The Brennan filibuster is quite something. Are there really 41 votes, though, for the rule of law? |>
93: it's amazing, isn't it? I'm starting to think we're going to get meaningful filibuster reform after all.
It's a pretty big deal, surely parsi, that tens of thousands of young folks are being lured into hundreds of thousands in federally guaranteed debt they'll never be able to repay by rank fraud, rank ample cheerleading from clueless parents.
Yeah, Campos is on the side of the angels with his Inside the Law School Scam stuff. The spat with Leiter still looks silly though.
Since you mentioned "cheerleading from clueless parents", I must say I'm impressed at how long the notion that law school is a sensible, safe choice managed to remain conventional wisdom. Long after it ceased to be true.
I'm not sure 95-lasts use of the past tense is actually appropriate.
96: yup, an amazing number of my bright students think that law school is a surefire path into the upper-middle class, and some of them seem to be deluded enough to think that they'll become ruling class (but that's just because lawyers seem to be, compared to my students' humble circumstances, fabulously rich).
I'm starting to think we're going to get meaningful filibuster reform after all.
I'll be very surprised if that happens. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised all the same.
63 put me in mind however tangentially of the opening of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House:
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."
Well and of the part of the Herzog documentary about Antarctica where he affirms that he is "not making another film about fluffy penguins" and then at some point shows a penguin apparently wandering off alone into the, I dunno, Lovecraftian distance, because life wasn't bad enough already being a penguin in Antarctica.
We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the land breeze blooow
Are there better places than Antarctica to be a penguin? Maybe the Monterey Aquarium.
This conference call is now four hours old. There should be cake.
I wouldn't want to be a penguin anywhere or an anything in Antarctica.
Compared to 103, Antarctica doesn't sound too bad.
Compared to 103, Antarctica doesn't sound too bad.
Sure...until you run into the shoggoths...
105: of all the conference calls, and all the flightless birds, and all the polar continents, this one is definitely the worst. People seem willing to admit that everything we're talking about is stupid and likely if enacted to be destructive to the UC's core mission, but yet still we're going to press on.
Announce "this is the worst flightless bird of conference calls. Kakapo? More like Krapapo!" and hang up. Solved.
I'm a doer.
Careful, you might end up chairing our meeting next month. (Yes, we do this every month.)
Are there better places than Antarctica to be a penguin?
Is there a Hooters in Pittsburgh?
107: Of all the conference calls, about all the flightless birds, on all the polar continents, he dials into mine.
I just watched Casablanca with the kids this weekend. Surprisingly, it connected -- Sally wants to be Humphrey Bogart now. And spent most of the movie wondering why movies these days don't have lines like that.
(It took a surprising amount of catching them up on the background history to get the basic structure that Captain Renault is formally independent of the Nazis, in that Vichy France isn't occupied, but is in actuality a puppet, across.)
And spent most of the movie wondering why movies these days don't have lines like that.
Most of the movies then didn't have lines like that (I think Roger Ebert said that Casablanca was the only movie to compete with an average Shakespearean play for the number of lines which have entered the culture).
I dearly love the Red Dwarf Casablanca episode.
It really was neat watching the classic lines hit a naive audience. One of my favorite bits ("You desspisse me, don't you Rick?" "I suppose if I thought about you I would") went by without a reaction, but it's delivered without a lot of emphasis. But pretty much everything else I thought of as a good line got a reaction.
It really was neat watching the classic lines hit a naive audience.
Surely a lot of the classic lines were already familiar to them, even if the context in the movie wasn't?
I don't think so -- I could be wrong, but I don't think they were familiar with it at all. "I am shocked, shocked!" "Your winnings, sir" got a surprised giggle, not a "I was waiting for that line" snicker.
My favorite is "I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue."
Hamlet and Casablanca were my two experiences of "wait, all those lines come from the same thing?" Especially the last few minutes where there's almost no gaps between famous lines.
I figure I'll make them watch The Maltese Falcon in a couple of weeks. It's always struck me funny that Spade's described very vividly in the book, and doesn't look anything at all like Bogart -- physically, it couldn't have been worse casting. He's supposed to be a big stocky blond.
physically, it couldn't have been worse casting. He's supposed to be a big stocky blond.
Kind of like Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher who in the books is a 6'5 blond with a 50 inch chest.
117: "Here's looking at you, kid"? "Round up the usual suspects"? "We'll always have Paris"? Kids these days haven't heard these phrases?
Make them watch To Have and Have Not for the "just put your lips together and... blow" line.
121: Not in middle school, I don't think. Or, not to notice?
120: More famously, Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate -- the character in the book is tall and blonde.
114.2 is so true. I need to see if Netflix has Red Dwarf. What was I thinking giving up all those dvds in that breakup????
123: Huh. I guess I would have thought it's the sort of thing that would be quoted in children's cartoons or comic books or other random places. I feel like I was exposed to lots of knowing pop culture references (via, I don't know, Animaniacs or whatever was on TV then) that I didn't understand when I was young, that only made sense later when I saw more old movies or whatever.
I need to see if Netflix has Red Dwarf.
They do.
Or wait did you mean you would go look yourself?
127: I did go look myself. 55 episodes!! If I ever watched tv myself, I'd be set for life! I think I've seen three episodes of Parks & Rec so far this year and the rest has been stuff Lee chooses. But it's totally in the girls' best cultural interests to watch Red Dwarf! They need to know about the black people (and cats) of the future!
I didn't see Casablanca for the first time until college, so by then I knew a lot of the lines. In middle school I'm sure I wouldn't have.
It occurs to me that Law Professor is one profession whose public image has not benefited from the advent of blogs.
Whoo boy is that ever true. Think about it this way: some of the absolute stupidest people online (Althouse, Glenn Reynolds, Colonel Mustard) are tenured professors at generally very reputable law schools.
For any who care: Nia was totally into Red Dwarf, Mara was only interested because Lister's dreadlocks are entirely unlike hers, which I was retwisting as we watched the first episode. No comments yet on "smeghead," but I think I may have lost any moral high ground I had when I complained about Lee getting all the Charlie Brown specials with "blockhead" and "sly devil" and "stupid" and so forth. The second episode wouldn't load, so we only watched the first.
Anyhow, I generally agree with Leiter about 90% of the time, but he sure does seem like a guy it would be fun to punch really hard in the face.
They need to know about the black people (and cats) of the future!
That what Worf and Geordi La Forge are for. (another series that also happens be up on netflix in its entirety)
Not so many cats in TNG, though.
Oops, link should have gone here.
Meanwhile, the book Madeline's Rescue, which Jane currently has out from the library, has a character called "Lord Cucuface." But I never, ever first see it as "Cucuface."
(Obviously, it's "Cuntface." Every time.)
Lord Cucuface, beware! I personally have more trouble with the ven-ge-ance later in the stanza. I'm not really sure how I feel about that book, though I liked it a lot as a kid.
I kind of love saying VEN GEE ANCE! All the Madeline books are kind of awry.
OT: Well, this would have been good for a tedious bunfight in the pages of Spin and whatnot twenty years ago: "Punk Rock Is Bullshit."
Lovecraftian distance
Mrs. K-sky is a little disappointed in her doula. She was hoping to get someone to groove out on hippie cosmic love spirals of birth and connectedness with her. When she brought up the prospect of mystical meditations, the doula said, "My husband was telling me about... Cthulu?"
119: Was the physical description of Spade a self-portrait of Hammett? He doesn't look particularly "blond Satan[ic]" in photos, but I haven't seen all that money.
"All that many." God damn it, auto-correct.
I have fond memories of the early seasons of Red Dwarf. But, is there a way to view Cat as anything other than a horribly racist caricature?
I think Nick Charles (of the "Thin Man") was more of a self-portrait, complete with a drink on every page. (Not that William Powell resembles either.)
147: No one else ever gets it, either. Flashman uses the term for various political/diplomatic gatherings in the eponymous novels, and it also makes me think of the Drones Club. In unrelated news, I had very few actual friends as a child.
142: Something so perfect can't possibly have happened.
148 - Either Rfts or one of our friends once made the observation that Nora Charles is a particular sort of drunk's magical girlfriend. (I don't care, I still heart heart heart The Thin Man.)
We watched the second Thin Man movie when I was in Albuquerque. I wasn't entirely in the mood but it's a funny script. My friend I was staying with says the series is one long decline, and indeed, at the end of the second movie, when you realize just before William Powell does what Myrna Loy is knitting, it does seem all is probably lost.
I don't remember The Maltese Falcon book at all, but I wonder if Ricardo Cortez looked more like the Spade of the book.
I really wanted to like the Thin Man movies, but never got into them. I've seen the first but never finished the second.
I write a lot of comments of the form, [something], but [something else], but I guess that's ok.
Not just healthcare; he also just straight up gave them money and food! Talk about irresponsible.
(I'm actually pretty ambivalent about Chavez and feel like I don't really know enough about him or Venezuela to have a solid opinion on how good his policies were for the country. But a lot of the anti-Chavez rhetoric is just patently ridiculous.)
All the Madeline books are kind of awry.
My daughters had Madeline Says Merci, which I kept seeing as Madeline Sans Merci. That would have been a great book.
158: Transplant. This procedure was first used by Harry Mathews before his introduction to the Oulipo; it entered the Oulipian repertory during the preparation of the Atlas, in which it was described as a double lexical translation.
Two texts are chosen, of similar length but differing in genre. Each text is rewritten with the vocabulary of the other. Complete short examples are a virtual impossibility. Here are the subtitles and opening paragraphs of the two sections of Cauliflower sans Merci, where the source texts are (a) Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci and (b) a recipe for the preparation of cauliflower with tomatoes:
I. Death-pale root-son with strange faery lily-manna made squirrel beautiful by fever
This manna is full sweet with sides of steed and with woebegone sides of steed. The latest fresh rose-cheek manna is here full of fragrant relish—this is the beautiful day for meeting this strange making of root-sons.
II. The Fine and Cold One of the Cooking-People
Uncover the knife that pierces you, you of the people of degree, now one, keeping to this edge, and white. The vegetables are dry by the Swiss water, and the skimmers are done.
God, that's wonderful. I'll scare up the book and try it. The transplant, that is, not the cauliflower.
157.2: As a general principle, I'd say that no resident of the relatively nearby world and hemispheric-dominant nation whose government at least implicitly endorsed a coup against Chavez has any standing to be overly critical. What would our democratic institutions look like in similar circumstances? (See also Iran.)
But it's totally in the girls' best cultural interests to watch Red Dwarf!
Thorn should adopt ALL OF THE CHILDREN.
ALL OF THEM.
is there a way to view Cat as anything other than a horribly racist caricature?
Apparently this is how Craig Charles (Lister) first got involved; one of the producers asked "we're worried that Cat is a racist caricature; is he?" and Craig Charles said "No, he's just really cool" and then the producers said "Good! While you're here, do you want a part?"
Apparently this is how Craig Charles (Lister) first got involved; one of the producers asked "we're worried that Cat is a racist caricature; is he?"
Kids these days just can't appreciate how hard things were before the internet.
154
I really wanted to like the Thin Man movies, but never got into them. I've seen the first but never finished the second.
As noted in 152 they go steadily down hill. So if you see them in order and don't like one of them there is little reason to expect you will like the rest.
a lot of the anti-Chavez rhetoric is just patently ridiculous.
Man, no kidding.
On the other hand that 45 story high-rise slum is not not freaky and dystopian.
The perils of intelligence with ambition but no common sense.
166: Squatters gonna squat. Construction on that building stopped 5 years before Chavez became president.
Caracas slides into the valley from the ring of slum-covered slopes where half its population of more than 3 million lives. At the low-lying center of the business district, a hulking skeleton in a battered glass mantle thrusts into the skyline. This is the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, conceived in 1990 as a gleaming hub for Venezuela's financial class, who would one day vault over the street-level misery and land on the rooftop helipad, 600 feet in the air. It didn't work out that way. David Brillembourg, the investor who gave the skyscraper its nickname, Torre de David, died in 1993. The following year, Venezuela's banks collapsed, leaving the half-built skyscraper standing as an accidental monument to financial disaster.
The complex stood vacant until 2007, when a group of families led by the convict turned preacher Alexander Daza staged an orderly move-in and founded an instant vertical community. Residents policed themselves, assigned the elderly and disabled to the lower floors, and formed a cooperative to collect dues and manage the space. Today, about 625 families inhabit 28 of the tower's 45 stories, trudging up unfinished staircases and hoping children stay away from empty elevator shafts and balconies that lack walls. Despite the dangers, the building provides a relatively safe haven in a city where, according to the U.S. State Department, travelers risk being kidnapped as soon as theyleave the airport.
151: What kind of dickhead links to TV Tropes without warning?
I have enjoyed seeing Cat (um, I mean Danny John-Jules) in Death in Paradise. That show is good for many reasons, but there's just something so fun about watching an actor who is indelibly identified with a character playing around.
Of course Cat is a racist stereotype. I've known plenty of actual cats who don't think that every shiny thing they see belongs to them.
159: Does one swap nouns in their strict order, as seems most fitting?
I'd differentiate Cat as a caricature from Cat as a racist stereotype, which is probably unfair and inadequate. The characters all start out as undifferentiated caricatures and grow into being more, I think. You could have had a white guy play Cat without having to change or rewrite anything (I'm seeing sort of Justin Timberlake as whichever of the BeeGees on SNL or whatever it was) and it would still work. Is it uncomfortable and problematic to have a black guy playing a subhuman character? I guess, but I don't think it plays out that way.
There was an episode that heavily implied Cat was also mentally retarded. Does that make it better or worse?
Cat is kind of the anti-Lister in the same way that Rimmer is the anti-Kryten. Lives to serve others vs. selfishly ambitious weasel, vain egotist vs. basically decent slob. They're all terrible characters. Forget Cat, can you imagine having a black Kryten? What kind of questions would that raise? (Especially the storylines about Silicon Heaven).
The characters all start out as undifferentiated caricatures and grow into being more, I think.
See, I don't think this is true of Cat. The others all have their noble, redeeming moments. Cat remains the vain idiot.
I'm going through Red Dwarf on Netflix (I had only watched it on rare occasion before) and I find the third series markedly less amusing than the first two - focused more on sci-fi concepts and less on characters than before. Does that keep up? Do all the time-travel mysteries get resolved?
Pretty much - they switched from doing time-travel and long plotlines to doing monster-of-the-week in Series 3 and more or less stuck with that. But some of the monster-of-the-week ones are great. You can't not like Demons & Angels, or Polymorph, or Justice.
The others all have their noble, redeeming moments. Cat remains the vain idiot.
I'd disagree; in the first series or two he's a sociopath who literally does not give a damn whether Lister lives or dies. He gets a lot more human in later series.
I enjoyed Polymorph, I suppose, but still found it a bit forced.
Justice
Strangely, I had the line "I lied ... twice" going around in my head yesterday. I am in sync with the universe.
Where in the series chronology does the episode in which Rimmer leads the daylight charge across the minefield? I like that one.
Best trial scene ever. "Who would put this joke of a man, a man who would while away his evenings sewing nametags on to his ship issue condoms, a man who -- "
"Objection!"
"--A man so stupid that he even objects to his own defence counsel, in a position where he could possibly endanger the entire ship? Who? Only a yogurt. The defendant is not guilty of murder. He is only guilty of being Arnold J. Rimmer. That is his crime; it is also his punishment."
183: I think that's the Waxworld one, isn't it? Wiki says fourth series, "Meltdown".
So, I should give Red Dwarf a shot again? I've only seen bits and pieces, but it never really clicked for me.
So, I should give Red Dwarf a shot again?
The thing I realized about Red Dwarf is that if you watch with an attitude of, "tell me funny jokes" it will feel disappointing -- the punchlines are infrequent and they are telegraphed a mile away. To enjoy the show you have to be in a mood to appreciate the set-ups and enjoy watching them tell predictable jokes very very well (particularly in the first two seasons).
I kind of suspect it's not worth it, LB. I loved Red Dwarf as a kid and it barely holds up for me, both on the writing side and the production values side. Even then only the first few series work at all. I have a hard time imagining it working for non-Brits who didn't grow up with it. That said, it does seem to have a surprisingly large US following, so maybe.
Red Dwarf thread and I missed it. Damn!
Also, was this the thread that answered what the photo is of at the top of this very blog? What is it?
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
