I totally thought he was going to throw the kid into one of the cages.
I thought the same thing as teo. I don't like that story at all.
Do you not get the twist? Or do you get it and you still hate it?
I get it (I think), but it still seems odd.
Without having read Becks' link, I'm going to recommend this story, which was recommended by Husband X on one of his ventures.
I thought he was going to give him earplugs. The gift of amputation was a little harsh.
7: Yes, but that doesn't really clarify the oddness.
Oh, wait, does it have to do with this part?
Depending on the version, at most two children remained behind (one of whom was lame and could not follow quickly enough) who informed the villagers what had happened when they came out of the church.
I got the reference to (SPOILER), but I still don't like the story. At all. In fact I despise it.
The twist is that the kid becomes the lame kid who isn't abducted by the Pied Piper, isn't it?
Because he was the only one that was kind, so he was 'spared.'
I just made molasses peanut brittle. I don't want it. Someone come take it from me.
12 - Yes. And that the pied piper brought the rats to the town in the first place, knowing that they'd ask him to lure them away, that they wouldn't pay, and then he'd be able to steal all their children.
6 - Ben - what was that short story again that you linked to a long time ago on your personal blog about the Jew who goes to see his rabbi? I really liked that.
I posted this on the D.C. party thread, but I got there after most people had moved on, so I'm reposting this for the out-of-towners:
Re: cheapish places to stay, I have discovered that there are many more B&Bs & etc. in D.C. these days, some with rooms for $100 or less, and several apts/studios into which it sounds like you could fit 4-5 people for under $200/night; some have small kitchens, for the saving of addt'l bucks.
Check out http://www.bedandbreakfastdc.com and http://www.bbonline.com/dc/washington.html
A few of them are quite near the Flophouse.
Wouldn't a nice Piper have just told the kid "hey, here's some advice: don't follow me out of the town like all the other little children"? Cutting off his toes seems a little much.
Oh. I never knew about the lame kid. Still, bleah.
16: Ah, okay. I was not familiar enough with the details of the story to pick up on all of that.
I'd like to read Ben's story, but it's way too long. Is there an abridged version available?
17: it's "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" by Nathan Englander, and you can read it here.
My toes now hurt just thinking about that story.
I'd like to read Ben's story, but it's way too long. Is there an abridged version available?
Once upon a time there was a man with a short attention span, and his intelligence decayed a little more each day until he could no longer perform his job-related duties and had to find work as a stevedore to support his family.
You can mail me your brittle, AWB. I would be ever so thankful.
22 - It's a little clearer in the context of the play. And when read very slowly in a creepy voice.
Once upon a time there was a man with a short attention span, and his intelligence decayed a little more each day until he could no longer perform his job-related duties and had to find work as a stevedore personal productivity consultant to support his family.
Ben, don't make me punch you for being a classist dickhead.
14, 15: If it's very tasty, why don't you want it?
Also, Becks's story is awesome, so there.
WTF is a "personal productivity consultant"?
Anyway the relevant feature of whatever it is that he ends up doing is that it shouldn't require a lot of hard thinking, so I don't see how any one thing will be better than another. Plus, we know that since Boston has a port, it has need of stevedores, but since it's in the heart of Puritan New England, everyone there is always producing as productively as he or she can, to show Electness.
"The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!"
Just watched Sweet Hereafter again this week. Liked Beck's story a lot.
The whole wikipedia entry linked in 7 is fascinating and hints at a great horror. I don't know about the rest of you parents, but I've found stories of bad things happening to children, even if they happened seven centuries ago, especially upsetting since having children of my own.
35 - Wow. I linked the Wikipedia entry but hadn't read it. I didn't realize it was likely based on realish events. Too creepy.
You do. You may not know it yet, but you do.
You're right! Send me your mailing address and it will be there in 3-5 days.
OK short story. I still like The Yellow Wallpaper, canonical as it may be.
Dude, fairy tales are full of bad craziness: the wolf telling Little Red Riding Hood to throw her dress on the fire, because she won't need it anymore; the prince raping Sleeping Beauty to wake her to world of men; that other one with that ridiculously sexual symbolism and quasi-pagan anxiety; and the one about the guy who has something bad happen to him. Dude.
w-lfs-n, given that we attend the same institution, I suggest you watch your back once AWB's brittle arrives.
(& damned if I'm not trying to figure out the title of an awesomely creepy story I wanted to share but can no longer find.)
I haven't had a chance to keep up with the threads in the last few days. Have we gotten a date report from you, Flippanter?
Oh! Because you will attack him! Ha! I was all offended.
and the one about the guy who has something bad happen to him.
That one still haunts me to this day.
45: Of course not! I am covetous of all types of brittle & envious of personages distinguished enough to receive gifts.
Also! The Dionaea House was the "story" I was thinking of. I like it in part because it involves so many links.
that's funny, the "trunk or treating" post had me thinking about the little apple men.
I liked the Pillowman, though the stories within it are really not my style.
Speaking of plays I saw at the Steppenwolf, here's a public service announcement to New Yorkers: don't see August, Osage County.
Er, "of course not" meaning "of course you shouldn't be offended."
I really want to know who wrote 42.
Oh, caldwellian, apparently. I really want to be able to read.
Ben has earned this brittle. He sends me mix CDs. We can arrange things, caldwellian.
Caldwellian, I see you link to a blog called "wyatt gwyon", presumably one which does not link up two mythopoetically significant names by chance, but rather because those names—in that order—form the name of the main character of The Recognitions.
It would not be too much to say that I find this intriguing.
50: It isn't quite as alarming as it seems. We both jabbered about Lichtenberg in Sepp's class that one time . . . & you loaned me a dollar another time.
52: I like making mix CDs & sending/receiving things in the mail in general. I am delighted by this prospect of an "arrangement."
53: You are correct. (Additionally, I provide the link I do only because my other blogs are even more phenomenally pathetic than this one, & perhaps shame will motivate me to write something useful.)
I like the story linked in the post more conceptually than stylistically, if that makes sense, and even if it doesn't.
54.2: Excellent. I really love making candies in the winter, but I don't like eating candy much. When I was dating a dude with kids, they served as a candy dump for two winters in a row: soft melty pralines, experimental brittles, milky caramels.
Apple pies with bourbon-cherry caramel sauce inside, too, but pies don't mail well. Chocolate custard pies, coconut cream pies. Red velvet cakes. Nutty chocolate cookies. Sigh. I need a pie-hole boyfriend.
I wish I could be your pie hole.
Ben, you are already someone who makes too many pies. Don't you need a pie-hole of your own?
I don't understand how someone could enjoy making a food he or she doesn't enjoy eating. Perhaps that's why I'm not a cook.
I am willing to be anyone's pie-hole.
I too am willing to eat pies indiscriminately.
60: I enjoy tasting these things, and I'm really into textures in dessert-foods. I'm really into textures in all foods, actually. But getting a candy to snap just right, or a cake to spring back, perfectly moist, is an accomplishment I'm proud of. But I lack a sweet tooth for mass consumption of sweets.
Ben, you are already someone who makes too many pies.
Always already, even. I actually haven't made a pie or tart or anything baked since moving, which is why it's so important to get on the olive oil cake tip.
Your cake sounds downright erotic, AWB.
Perhaps you should start a bakery.
You're right, though, I do need a pie hole of my own.
67: In NYC? This would be like bringing homemade saltwater to the beach. I've done some catering for friends' parties before, but not in NYC. What I'd really like to do is be a live-in cook. Or know a lot of people who would compensate me for making shitloads of sweets for them.
Now I wish we could have a pie-making-&-indiscriminate-consumption party.
57: AWB, if there is some genre of item you would like to exchange for delightful treats (which do, in fact, sound sinful), you should email me & make demands.
71a: Megan (From the Archives) had a pie-making party not too long ago, and not far from you!
71b: What are you offering? And what do you want?
72a: She has one every year, in fact.
All of the Grimm stories are creepy, in much the same way that tarot cards are. I recognize in each of them some cultural resonance that connects me to something brutal in medieval life. I can only trace liberal thought back to Hugo Grotius, but I can recognize immediately post-Latin horror.
Preview reveal this to be off-topic, but I've spent 12 minutes of my life composing this post, so fuck you.
A pie for a pie, sweet tooth for sweet tooth.
AWB -- I have a lot of apples, and was just thinking of buying some bourbon. Where would I get the recipe for this apple-bourbon-caramel pie of yours?
With the move, I'm going to have to figure out what parties I still throw. I had a pretty regular cycle down (I just realized that I closed out with the 8th annual pumpkin carving party.), but I suppose it is all up in the air now.
I could move Pie Contest to the Oakland, but I copied the idea from a friend of my sister. The originator has since taken the original Pie Contest to Philadelphia, but I would feel like an impostor, hosting Pie Contest among the people who knew it before I did.
(Pie Contest has gone on to two more venues from my house. The originator is delighted with all this.)
76: I made it up. Email me and I'll try to approximate the recipe for you.
77: Well, if Pie Contest does happen again, know that I will be an enthusiastic supporter of the event (even though pies aren't really my area of baking expertise).
If there is a Bay Area Pie Contest, I'll be sure to let everyone here know. All are welcome, of course.
34 That is creepy b/c it's not remotely ghostly.
I'll be sure to gin up some Campari/Cardamom Shaker Lemon Pie with Mincemeat or something.
I think the Shakers will shake you, lo, unto death for that.
Hey, here's a Halloween treat for you all &mdash "The Raven," read by Christopher Walken.
Not reading the thread but surely we can all agree that Gogol's Viy is the greatest Hallowe'en tale; and that Mosfilm's adaptation of the story features the best 15 minutes of film ever recorded (the last 15 minutes of the movie)? Surely.
I've just spent a ridiculous amount of time unsuccessfully searching the New Yorker website for my favorite creepy short story. Not very searchable archives.
Viy is on google video, but without subtitles. Zhal'.
This is my favorite story from the collection assembled by Edward Gorey and published by NYR Books.
eb! You just made my Hallowe'en!
Viewers, you need only understand that in this clip, our poor seminarian—in the original he is named Khoma but for translation's sake we'll dub him Adam Kotsko—is on night three of his horrible three-day trial. Earlier, over holiday (Orthodox spring break, if you will) Kotsko and a small band of schoolmates partake too liberally of libations and finally must seek shelter with an old pensioner; that old hag takes them in—but seduces and bewitches young Kotsko!, mounting him and riding him through the air like a pig. Kotsko utters sacramental chants and recovers from her bewitchment, and then strikes at the hag!, only to witness her fall silent and transform into the very image of a country devushka. Not merely the image of a devushka, but the very image of the young daughter of the wealthy landowner who supports Kotsko's seminary—the very dead image of that daughter, of whom the Cossacks have locally long told legendary tales. When the landowner reveals that her daughter's mysterious, final written wish was to have Kotsko stand vigil for three days over her shrouded corpse, what could Kotsko do to resist? Kotsko does not yet have tenure! Needless to say his adviser if not his entire department insisted that he spend the required three days praying over her poor form—three days that in sequence presented varied and escalating apparitions and curses! Kotsko's faith was challenged as well as his very senses, each night more horrifying than the last. We arrive, then, with Kotsko on the third and final evening—during which the accursed devushka summons in material form the devils from whom she draws her strength. Kotsko's faith is enough to overcome her witchcraft—until she summons the dread Viy! Kotsko knows that his life if not his soul is forfeit should he gaze upon Viy's visage, but—well, I will not spoil the ending of this tale!
mounting him and riding him through the air like a pig.
Do the roots of his hair turn red?
Why the fuck am I watching this stuff home alone in my costume, the candy all given away? Smasher, you really know how to give someone the creeps. . .
I wouldn't have taken all your candy if you hadn't offered it.
I wouldn't have taken all your candy if you hadn't offered it.
You know, sex is like a basket of delicious Halloween candy. If you give it away to just anyone who rings your doorbell, by the time your husband arrives, you'll only have the crappy kind no one wants left to give him.
Based on his previous links, I think Ben is thinking more along the lines of Hot Tamales.
Wikipedia's entry on Viy bafflingly led me to John of Cassian and now I'm reading about Gyrovagues. Damn all of you.
I know this is heresy, but I don't get "pie". Sure, the australian/Pom meat pie is way tasty, but the adaptattion of this technique to the sweet puzzles me. Apples are tasty, but their incorporation into a pastry seems decadent. A good apple needs no support..
"Here's my desk," said Kinney, pointing to a barrel that supported a broad, smooth board-top. "This is where I compose my favorite works." He turned round, and cut out of a mighty mass of dough in a tin trough a portion, which he threw down on his table and attacked with a rolling-pin. "That means pie, Mr. Hubbard," he explained, "and pie means meat-pie,--or squash-pie, at a pinch. To-day's pie-baking day. But you needn't be troubled on that account. So's to-morrow, and so was yesterday. Pie twenty-one times a week is the word, and don't you forget it.
They say old Agassiz," Kinney went on, in that easy, familiar fondness with which our people like to speak of greatness that impresses their imagination,--"they say old Agassiz recommended fish as the best food for the brain. Well, I don't suppose but what it is. But I don't know but what pie is more stimulating to the fancy. I never saw anything like meat-pie to make ye dream."
"Yes," said Bartley, nodding gloomily, "I've tried it."
Kinney laughed. "Well, I guess folks of sedentary pursuits, like you and me, don't need it; but these fellows that stamp round in the snow all day, they want something to keep their imagination goin'. And I guess pie does it. Anyway, they can't seem to get enough of it. Ever try apples when you was at work? They say old Greeley kep' his desk full of 'em; kep' munchin' away all the while when he was writin' his editorials. And one of them German poets--I don't know but what it was old Gutty himself--kept rotten ones in his drawer; liked the smell of 'em. Well, there's a good deal of apple in meat-pie. May be it's the apple that does it. I don't know. But I guess if your pursuits are sedentary, you better take the apple separate."
I too am willing to eat pies indiscriminately.
Cue the UK commenters:
"Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the pies? You fat bastard! You fat bastard! You ate all the pies!"
"Who ate all the pies?" is self-evidently superior to "Yankees Suck."
Also good: college hockey fans.
OT- Just downloaded the new Radiohead album from their site. Good stuff.
I love football songs. (Real football, not american football.) The Greasy Chip Butty song is a modern classic.
Man City's rendition of "Posh Spice Takes it Up the Arse" was a thing of beauty.
Re: 104. Post lyrics, please! I'm reluctant to google that one from work.
I'm not sure that there are lyrics. I've only heard it via improperly edited Fox broadcasts, but I understand the gist to be that Posh Spice takes it up the arse. I have not heard any further elaboration, but Man City circa 2003 were quite insistent that this was indeed the case.
It's referred to in this Ali G interview of the Beckhams.
Something along the lines of
Do you take her up the arse ...
Do you take her up the arse ...
Do you take her up the Arse ... nal?
(Arsenal pronounced Ar-sen-all.)
But honestly, the funnier ones are the ones which are cleverer, not just crude.
(This applies to many things in life.)
99 is funny.
I gave an effusive review to the album containing this song, singling out "Pies" for special praise, without ever realizing that it was based on a common chant (that came later). Not quite as creative as I thought it was, but still good.
Musorgsky's "Sorochintky Fair" is based on a Halloweenish Gogol story rather like Armsmasher's above. It's been recorded in a reconstructed version (Musorgsky didn't orchestrate it and his score is sort of scrappy), but the CD was produced for the Russian market and is almost unavailable. It's the granddaddy of all the folk operas you've ever heard, Aaron Copeland, Fiddler on the Roof, etc., except much better (and easier to listen to than Boris Godunov or Khovanshchina). Available at Amazon for a measly $62.50.
Musorgsky is the greatest of all opera composers, and even if you don't like opera (I don't) you should listen to him. If you pay attention to the lyrics you will find that Musorgsky had a theory of the State and a theory of history, and while both theories Russocentric, they're worthy of consideration. (Musorgsky wasn't a dumb musician, he translated [some] Hegel while he was in high school).
R. W. Emerson's preference of pie for breakfast is well known; I like it myself.
I went to an Arsenal game while on travel once. The one song I remember is of one of their players. 'He comes from Senegal and plays for Arsenal'. Beautiful in its simplicity.
You know, sex is like a basket of delicious Halloween candy...
Would you believe that my Religion teacher used this argument on us in earnest when I was in high school. Only with pie! (There won't be any pieces left to give your future husband.) To bring the two topics together.
As I've mentioned, my sister-in-law is a professional piemaker from a long line of piemakers. Jesus liked her pe, IIRC. People go to their place for miles around, because piemaking is a dying art. Bipartisan Cafe, 79th and SE Stark, Portland OR. No reservations required; formal and semi-formal dress frowned upon without an excuse slip.
Wasn't Musorgsky's job after he left the army something in the Department of Forests?
It's weird how many late 19th C musicians we now listen to were in a sense amateurs, since it was an age of very visible professionals.
Would you believe that my Religion teacher used this argument on us in earnest when I was in high school. Only with pie! (There won't be any pieces left to give your future husband.)
Amazing. Not fundies, either, just ordinary Catholics in the 1990's.
Jesus liked her pe, IIRC.
It's spelled "pee", John.
I watched Viy a couple of months ago after Sausagely posted about it. Creeptacular. I also loved the broad Ukrainian hillbilly accents.
He had various very low-level bureaucratic jobs. Essentially he was a copyist -- like a typist or even a photocopy machine.
He had lost his family fortune when the serfs were freed, and he he could have had a military career but quit. (Rimsky-Korsakoff was a naval officer, Cui was a military engineer, and Borodin was in the military when he met Musorgsky).
Musorgsky's peculiarities are usually blamed on eccentricity or alcoholism, but they could also be attributed to poverty, lack of appreciation, and lack of time (though he skipped work as often as possible). I'd trade everything Wagner ever wrote for completed versions of Khovanshchina and Sorochinsky Fair. (Actually, I'd trade everything Wagner ever wrote for a bag of rocks, but I'm trying to make a specific point here.)
Musorgsky was a practitioner of the no-relationship policy, which originated with Chernyshevsky.
I'd feel terrible if I found out on my wedding night that the pie had all been eaten already.
Or the chant for Emmanuel Panther: "He's tall, he's quick, his name's a porno flick: Emm-a-a-a-nuel!"
I liked the story. I love pies: apple pie is good, strawberry-rhubarb is even better. I have no opinion at all on w-lfs-n's pie-hole or his search for a new one. I like Wiley's "Pies," but I was unaware of that song's connection to football chants. My favorite football chant is "Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! Leeds! We are Leeds!"
Via Coilhouse, Hedgehog in the fog is a Russian animated short that could easily become one of my favorite spooky stories.
I have looked for years for Rimsky-Korsakov's memoirs, where a lot of these stories originate; I only know it second-hand in the writings of Virgil Thomson and Albert J. Nock.
Maybe I should get Parsimon to get it for me. I never order books, just wait for them to appear; It's a habit I should break.
Apparently Balakirev was the original leader of the group.
I'm a Musorgsky buff and have something on the net (at my URL). It's unfinished and not very well edited, but, you know. There's a biblio in there. The one by Serov has lots of juicy bio that I haven't seen elsewhere. Borodin was an unbelievable guy.
Re:Wagner.
Remember when AWB said about Dylan-worship that the never-ending insistence on the importance of people sufficiently and exhaustively appreciated in their own time was what was so tiresome? That's a lot of it.
Jacques Barzun was making this point about Wagner publicly before WWII.
Also, like so many people, Wagner was a Nazi.
The fight in Russia was between the Russianist amateurs and the Germanist professionals. Tchaikovsky was a Germanist. Rimsky Korsakoff started off as a Russianist but switched. Cui was a Russianist of French-Lithuanian descent. Borodin was a Russianist of Georgian descent. Balakirev was the ideological leader and was an actual Russian.
Unfortunately, many of the Germanists were Jewish (Rubenstein), and of the Russianists Musorgsky at least was anti-Semitic, but you know.
115: non-procreative sex is evil -> all sex should result in a child (or more) + women have on average about a dozen births in them.
see, sex is just like pie.
Once a woman is pregnant the couple is rewarded with about 6 months (until maybe the 7th or 8th month) of free, consequence-free pie. Then, after a postnatal recuperation period of about a month, the pie-making should begin again. Naturally sterile couples should try to make pie several times a day until God blesses them with issue. It would be sinful of them not to. It's all part of God's mysterious plan.
I have a friend who organized 3 years of his life (and his wife's) around unsuccessful attempt to make pie. He finally adopted, which is not part of God's plan.
Musorgsky was a practitioner of the no-relationship policy, which originated with Chernyshevsky.
That's interesting --- I had associated it with Tolstoy of "The Kreutzer Sonata".
Tolstoy was later. Chernyshevsky was enormously influential during his time, though his works haven't worn well.
Ted Hughes wrote a poem about Tolstoi (a toothless celibate pacifist in his old age, a lecherous meat-eating soldier in his youth) to the effect that after eating all the meat in the world he wanted everyone else to quit when he did.
132: Yes, I studied Russian history, and still even remember a little.
If you're seriously interested in the history of the origins of the "no-relationship policy" I think you would have to go quite a bit further back -- maybe to the early Christian advocates of the monastic life --- probably even further back than that...
130: who said adoption was not part of God's plan? I think all the theologians agree that if your pies keep coming out bad, you should just go to the store and buy one. Leave the pie-making to the experts. You're encouraged to keep trying to learn to bake one yourself, though.
The contemporary no-relationship policy, espoused by me, doesn't go back beyond Chernyshevsky.
No, that's only the free-market theologians. The godly theologians just say, "Keep working that piehole until ou get pie!"
I guess I'm not familiar with those theologians.
136: I don't think I've actually read any Chernyshevsky, but I'm under the impression that his advocacy of a "no-relationship policy" had to do with believing in a single-minded devotion to the cause of revolution.
Is that what is behind the John Emerson ""no-relationship policy"?
If he had eaten all the meat in the world, getting everyone else to stop wouldn't have been very hard.
Ogged's recent comparison of David Markson and Emerson is well supported by this thread.
It was a poem, lobofilho. Figurative language.
Please take further complaints to Ted Hughes, who will rip your head off if he's still alive.
135: Assuming the pies at the store aren't pretty lousy is a bit of a jump