This is how my tax dollars are spent? Now we know what government lawyers really do with their time.
I need to get one of these as a stocking filler for a friend who's badly blocked in her novel project, to encourage her. If they'll publish this, they'll publish anything. (Ch. 1, p.1, the protagonist is apparently still worshipping pagan gods in 999 a.d...)
a stocking filler for a friend
IYKWIMAITYD.
2: Also good for that (it's a trilogy!).
Amber I'll try that later (link blocked at work).
The Totally Tumesced Tax Attorney and The Enormously Engorged Executioner.
1: I actually knocked off a day early for Thanksgiving. Anyone with clever ideas of what to do with kids on Friday in the DC area should comment. (I'll be too wrapped up with kids and family friends to socialize, probably.)
The University of Maryland has one of the world's foremost academic apiaries. You could beg desperately for a tour.
Could we write The Particularly Priapic Pirate? Volunteers could email e.g. LB, who would randomise the order they go in, then notify the first one, who writes EXACTLY 1000 words (never mind if it ends in the middle of a sentence), and passes it to the next volunteer. And round and round we go. After, say, 30,000 words, the next player has to finish the thing within another 1000. Then we publish it on Lulu and retire rich.
The Breathtakingly Bawdy Buccaneer?
1: Up here in Canuckistan we have a saying.
7: The National Building Museum is really great, free, and has little kits of building-and-architecture-related program activities that kids can borrow for an hour or so.
The Awfully Amorous Acrobat
The Frequently Fruitful Furrier
The Horrendously Horny Haberdasher
We should be able to get one for virtually every letter. X and Z will be the grails.
The eXtraordinarily Xenophilic Xylophonist
The Zestily Zoophilic Zoroastrian
This thread reminds me of Animalia. Such a fabulous book.
Billy Goat Trail at MD Great Falls takes about 90 min, great climbing to tucker kids out and get outside. OK for responsible 7 y.o. +. There are a few spots where the kids have to be careful, so not good for a rowdy group.
If the outdoors feels cold, the US Botanic Garden sets up a train for the holidays and is kind of nice in its own right in winter. Air + Space is a few hundred yards away, as is natural history with excellent dinosaurs and a mummified bull upstairs in the Egyptian room behind the rock shop.
The Zestfully Zoophile Zymologist
The Xenially Xenogamic Xylophonist
Or, better still, The Xenially Xenogamic Xhosa
There were still pagan Vikings in 999 AD. Iceland nominally converted to Christianity around 1000 AD, but not everyone really switched.
Anyone with clever ideas of what to do with kids on Friday in the DC area should comment.
About doing things with kids?
I recommend a fricassee.
Ch. 1, p.1, the protagonist is apparently still worshipping pagan gods in 999 a.d
I hate it when authors get sloppy about the details and ruin the credibility of their otherwise unimpeachable novels about time-travelling Viking SEALs.
Maybe he was a Lithuanian? They didn't get Christianised until the Northern Crusades a couple of centuries later.
I would enjoy Goth clubs more if they were more Gothic - as in Ostrogoths. Full of people with a generally cheery and violent outlook on life drinking ale and occasionally setting things on fire.
Watch out if any Visigoths drop by, though!
The Lonesome Lustful Loaf-Digger.
15, 19: Nice. Very impressive.
The Delightfully Decadent Diamantaire
(had to add this one, even though it's an easy letter)
Q is also giving me some trouble
The Quintessentially Queer Qadi?
Just imagine the pathos, the internal torment, that this novel would allow.
re: 22
Full of people with a generally cheery and violent outlook on life drinking ale and occasionally setting things on fire.
You've been to Falkirk?
If any Huns show, you should move on.
The Swedes lagged behind the Norwegians in Christianizing. Maybe 1050 or so. And there were backsliders and cheaters. The Lithuanians lasted until around 1368 officially and longer unofficially.
re: 27
Ajay is probably quite familiar with Huns already...
If any Huns turned up, the patrons of a Goth bar would simply hide, becoming Invisigoths.
26: "Falkirk" s/b "Northern Ireland"
Huh? I'm afraid you must spell that out for me, ttaM.
Ajay is a Hun, I think is the idea.
A Hun is a German, you whelps.
re: 32
Hun is Scottish slang for persons of a Protestant persuasion, specifically the followers of Darkness (aka Glasgow Rangers FC).
re: 33
I don't know about ajay. Keir who frequents these parts is a member of the Hunnic diaspora, I think.
Thanks ttaM, and I thought I learned everything there is to know about modern Scotland from the Rebus Novels. I will never trust you again Ian Rankin.
re: 37
Siobhan is a Hibby in the novels so he has written a bit about football sectarianism, I'm sure. I'd be surprised if a character hasn't mentioned 'the Huns' at some point in one of his novels.
Yeah probably, but everytime football was mentioned my eyes glazed over the page.
ttaM, presumably, is a Tim*? (Or a tiM?)
One of the drawbacks of being a staunch** Hun is that you can't see a trailer for "Hunger" - which is no doubt a very serious political film - without finding yourself humming, to the tune of "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain", "Could you go a cheesy pasty, Bobby Sands?" Ah, childhood memories.
37: Rankin's from Embra***; "Huns" is more Weegie**** slang, I would say.
*A person of the Catholic persuasion; a left-footer, mackerel-snapper, Pape, Fenian, Taig or Dan.
** Protestants are always staunch, Catholics always devout, as Christopher Brookmyre pointed out.
*** Edinburgh; the Athens of the North, or possibly the Boston of Scotland.
**** Glaswegian; a native of Glasgow, the Detroit of Scotland.
39: Actually, I rather like glaze.
You know, LB, I wouldn't normally recommend it but the Air & Space Museum might be blissfully empty today. True of all of 'em.
A newly arrived Viking from the tenth century would have no chance of becoming a Navy Seal, as the Vikings weren't able to swim. I think you lot should write the prequel to this series, where a fuzzy Iranian halfwit tries to teach Hrothgar how to do an acceptable front crawl.
40: England wears Scotland like a really fucking ugly head.
Full of people with a generally cheery and violent outlook on life drinking ale and occasionally setting things on fire.
You're looking for a sports bar.
As I understand it, Motherwell is the Pittsburgh of Scotland. You'd think that this, combined with their awesome color scheme, would make it easy to support them, but I just can't muster the enthusiasm. Can't they recruit some foreign players with interesting names, or get bought by a Lithuanian lunatic, like other teams?
as the Vikings weren't able to swim
Due to an extra tendon in their shoulder blades.
re: 40
I'm only vaguely a Tim. My grandparents were Catholic, but my parents aren't religious [indeed, are actively and enthusiastically areligious]. I do lean towards the green and white hooped side of things football-wise, though. Not from sectarian motivations, but because I used to live next to Ibrox and developed a hearty hatred of active 'Gers supporters as a result.
Beowulf could swim, so the Viking must have been able to too.
44 wins the thread anyway.
The Buxom Bawdy Blogger
re: 51
I'm pretty sure there are references to swimming in the sagas. In fact, a quick google, gives a few examples [in Grettir's saga to take one].
The Welsh don't recognize Beowulf, I presume.
I'm pretty sure there are references to swimming in the sagas.
Aren't there references to flying also?
Swimming? I think not. Total puffery.
Actually, it has to be a male blogger, which means they can't be buxom...geeky adjectives like "brainy" are out too...
The Bold and Bawdy Blogger ?
Also, Old Norse dictionaries list words for swimming, and skill at swimming, and swimming games etc.
It's not as though swimming is any big deal. Any idiot can swim.
What about the claim that Greenland Norse didn't fish. It seems implausible to me.
Also, Old Norse dictionaries list words for swimming, and skill at swimming, and swimming games etc.
I am no expert, but I think they use the same word for drowning.
re: 61
Seems absolutely unbelievable to me. The same example (from Grettir's saga) is specifically of a guy swimming out to retrieve his fishing nets.
I actually saw a woman reading "The Very Virile Viking" on a train once. It became one of my go-to cocktail party comments when the topic of romance novels came up. If LB had pre-empted it in the post I no doubt would have mentioned it in this very thread.
The idea of a time-traveling Viking who becomes a SEAL is just brilliant, though. There would be this constant enticing struggle between his barbarian upbringing and his newly learned modern values. The woman would have to teach him sensitivity in between getting her clothes ripped off.
In ibn Fadlan here's a description of Viking washing practices ca. 890 or so. On the net, they were filthy, but they did wash their faces, albeit in a disgusting way.
It's not as though swimming is any big deal. Any idiot can swim.
I can't swim.
Neither can Michael Jordan, apparently.
There would be this constant enticing struggle between his barbarian upbringing and his newly learned modern values.
He's a SEAL; his newly learned modern values are also barbarian.
Diamond seems to bluff a lot. He's sort of odd in that he does have a lot of hard science background (I count biology is hard, thanks) but writes in a somewhat wild and crazy way when he does history. He probably learned it from McNeil. I like both those guys, but I hate it when people quote them as though they'd firmly established their hypotheses.
Diamond alwats has a Moral Of The Story, too. GG&S: anti-racist. More recent book: environmentalist.
You're not an idiot, PGD. A cross not everyone here has to bear.
The Welsh don't recognize Beowulf, I presume.
Well, he'd have changed a bit in all that time. It can be hard to remember folk after a thousand years or so,
Dating of the text "Beowulf" varies by as much as 300 years. Somewhere in the 700 AD -- 1000 AD neighborhood. One theory is that it was produced for Canute.
I've read the first 100 pages of Yuri Rytkeu's "A Dream In Polar Fog" so far. The Canadian guy's integration into the Chukchi society sort of parallels IbN Fadlan's integration into the Vikings in the Michael Crichton book. Except there hasn't been any battles or warfare so far.
Maybe Beowulf's disgust at his fellow Geats' inability to swim explains why he buggered off to Heorot. Breca did drown, after all.
So Beowulf would have you believe.
Ajay, 22 made me laugh pretty loud. Thanks.
OT bleg:
For school, I have to answer the question:
"What are Democrats afraid that George Bush will do in his final weeks in office?"
Be very grateful for some answers.
63: no, it's nonsense. Half their diet was fish. Isotope analysis.
Be very grateful for some answers.
Or else?
I'm not absolutely certain but it appears that the author has three different books about Vikings who travel through time -- one Viking becomes a Navy SEALs, one Viking meets a woman whose husband the Navy SEAL has died, and the last is an 11th-century Norsewoman who travels through time and meets a Navy SEAL.
Roy Orbison in clingfilm makes more sense as a fetish, I think.
hun, humuun means man, human in my language, and they still dispute our origins
i thought i would say
have no idea what is Turkish word for man
LB, before investing, you might want to preview some of her work. Here is Tall, Dark and Cajun on Google Books.
She stared at him hungrily, as if he were a Whitmans sampler and she was a chocoholic.
"So Beowulf would have you believe. "
Watch your tongue, Ecglafes bearn.
How can she write "as if he were" and then right after that "she was"?
Actually, she has a whole bunch of Viking novels. Don't know how many of them are in the time travel series.
she was does not belong to the as if construction, maybe she needed a comma before and
well, lunch lunch
87: Probably in a manner similar to how you just did it your comment.
Considering that the Viking on the cover of Down and Dirty is carrying a handgun, and those in Rough and Ready and Hot & Heavy are wearing pants, presumably many, but I believe that The Very Virile Viking, Truly Madly Viking, and The Last Viking constitute a trilogy.
90: scornfully, full of disbelief and disappointment?
The word "hun" appears in Chinese, Iranian, and western languages as the name of various foreign tribal peoples. It might be a generic name rather than a specific name.
I believe that the consensus now is that the Huns and the Avars were basically Turks, but there's been a lot of debate. A lot of peoples of that type were bilingual and of diverse origin. For example, there have apparently always been Finns among the Swedes, back to 800 AD.
91: There seems to be two related groups of Viking time-travel novels. Here is a genealogy for the one under discussion (apparently the x and x′ books fit in somehow).
78: honestly? I don't think Democrats are afraid of Bush any more. Everyone has written him off -- he's more pathetic than anything else at this point. Although he could still bomb Iran.
Everyone should read the post linked in 4.
"The word "hun" appears in Chinese, Iranian, and western languages as the name of various foreign tribal peoples. It might be a generic name rather than a specific name. "
The same is true of "Welsh", except in old Northern European languages.
The word "hun" appears in Chinese, Iranian, and western languages as the name of various foreign tribal peoples. It might be a generic name rather than a specific name.
i meant the point is not the words in other languages meaning foreign tribal people, which maybe indirectly means that the said foreign tribal people called themselves that, but how the said foreign tribal people called themselves themselves from the beginning and not only themselves but generically humans and the language memory could be very long and precise, oral tradition
79: How do you explain the lack of fishbones in their trash heaps?
78: Violet, Dems are afraid that Bush will:
Bomb Iran
Give away the Treasury to wealthy cronies
Try to speak in public
Pardon some really unseemly types.
Pardon everybody, resign, then get pardoned by Cheney.
Violet: Bush is already known to be moving some political appointees (who can be fired without cause) into career positions (where they have civil service protection). This is a problem both because some of them are feared to be incompetent, and because most of them can be expected to sabotage Obama's program to the extent possible.
Bush is also issuing a lot of executive orders prescribing policy for various departments. These can be annulled but it's not completely routine.
On the economy we fear that his passivity and ignorance mean that he can't supervise the bailouts. In some ways that's a good thing, since his appointees are less stupid than he is, but in general having an executive who's completely dead in the water is not a good thing.
I also fear that Bush will initiate some kind of military provocation, possibly in Iran, which will have the effect of making Obama's job more difficult. His father did something like that to Clinton (invading Somalia). Possibly the significance of Obama's Gates appointment is that Gates will prevent Bush from doing that.
My guess is that Bush has so little support even among his own people that he doesn't have much spirit left. Even Republicans hate him now.
How do you explain the lack of fishbones in their trash heaps?
Vikings are so badass that they ate the bones. Duh.
The VVV series includes multiple scenes of the protagonist eating candy bars in their wrappers, Big Macs in their boxes, and baked beans in their cans. Sometimes it's comic relief, but other times it advances the plot considerably.
You seem pretty familiar with this series, JRoth.
LB, I assume you discovered this series from this Questionable Content strip?
102: Bomb Iran is a particular worry because of the likelihood the Iran would retaliate by closing the Straight of Hormuz, which would send the price of oil through the roof.
It's offensive to talk about flensing women's girl parts? Who knew?
Hmmm, there goes another ethnic stereotype - I hereby admit that Vikings can swim. I still believe that Puerto Ricans have short legs though.
"Welsh" is from a Saxon word meaning, broadly, "them". "Cymru", the Welsh word for Wales, is from an Old Welsh word meaning "Us" (the root is the same as "comrade", obviously).
Bomb Iran is a particular worry because of the likelihood that thousands of people would be killed and injured immediately, and hundreds of thousands in the general regional war which would inevitably follow. Count me among those who put the price of oil a little lower on their priority list.
Chip in, folks. While doing someone's homework for them across international boundaries is a felony, it's hardly ever prosecuted.
Violet, I'm afraid that the Bush administration will gut the Endangered Species Act before they go. They're working on it.
106: that is a reasonable assumption given the first link in the post.
Enact a bunch of crazy environmental regulations.
Enact a crazy health and human services regulation.
Release whatever horrors Cheney is storing in the man-size safe.
Welsh, Walloon, Wallachian (Vlach), Gaulish, Galician are all supposed to be cognate, meaning "foreigner" (outside the wall.) Supposedly from Latin originally.
Romans didn't give a shit about careful nomenclature. There are three widely-spaced Galicia/Galatias, three Albanias, and two or three Iberias.
111. John, Violet's task will be to ensure consistent British spelling.
(the root is the same as "comrade", obviously).
The OED seems to think that "comrade" comes from camera: chamber-mate.
110 - I assume that any bombing would be fairly tightly focused on nuclear production facilities and would result in relatively few casualties. I also doubt the potential for a general regional war resulting from it. It's true that the genuine worst case scenario would involve a large scale war, but I strongly suspect that the leadership of Iran isn't all that keen on getting themselves killed, which is a pretty likely outcome if they start a full scale war with the US.
113: Fucking , fucking fucking isopangram fucking fuckup, fucking browser settings that don't differentiate linked text very well, fucking fucking fuck. That does it, I can't face ithe world anymore. With my self image is in the gutter, I'm staying home from work tomorrow, eating like a pig and veging out in front of the TV all day. AND IT'S ALL BEN'S FAULT.
Are there any gay time-travelling Vikings? If not, there's a market niche for someone.
Asilon lets her daughter read this filth? Wow. She is worse that Di!
Violet, Bush is selling drilling rights on federal lands. This means that previously pristine land, some of it very close to national parkland and wildlife reserves, will be opened up for oil and gas exploitation.
No reason to assume any of that, Togolash. Chaos is the plan.
The British are not like us, Will. They're like ttaM, Dsquared, and Asilon. An entirely different species, with their own strange ways.
Also, Bush and his staff will remove all the the 'O' keys from White House keyboards, take the batteries out of the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, and loot Air Force One. While hanging crack pipes from a Christmas tree.
124: They poop out of their bellybutton.
119,121: Asilon lets her daughter read this filth?
Oops, fracking, fricking, frigging, fudging foul up ....
121 - ach, she hears worse at home, and at school no doubt. And she has no interest in reading stuff old people write. You people use sentences and other old-fashioned stuff.
She has some sort of world current affairs quiz thing to do, and she said she was having trouble with that question, so I offered to let her ask some real live American Democrats. I think washerdreyer's reply might worry her teacher ...
Come on, you guys, with the exception of the bomb Iran thing (which is scary, I admit it), you're just being hysterical. THE BOGEYMAN IS DEAD. If he hasn't done it in eight years, he's not going to do it in the next eight weeks. Every single agency is crawling with Obama transition team people right now. Regulations can easily be reversed. Pardons don't matter because Obama isn't going to prosecute anybody anyway.
If you want to be scared of anybody, try Obama -- infinitely less scary than Bush, but a free people should always be frightened and suspicious of its government.
Also, Wall Street has already been given the keys to the Treasury, and it was pretty much bipartisan.
a free people should always be frightened . . . of its government
That's not in the version of V for Vendetta I read.
From The Lusty Lawyer
"La," said Lady Luella. "Let us not make light of ladies' longings, sirrah." Llewellyn Lightfoot, the lusty lawyer, knew longings of his own."
Do you think the people who write these books put stuff like 133 in to see if they can get them past their editors? I imagine an informal network of potboiler writers who meet once a year at dinner to celebrate the one who has succeeded in publishing the most obvious mickey-take, and present them a bottle of whiskey.
133: Needs another L. How about Lurching?
To be fair, 133 is a passage from a "fake"* book in a real book. Peace by Gene Wolfe.
*possibly more than one level of fake too.
The Lusty Lawyer was attributed to Amanda Ros. I figured she was fictional. False.
And he hearkened unto her: "hark hark!" hearkened he.
"A forgery of an announced (but never published) book by real author Amanda Ros", says this page.
One of Ros's lesser works: Donald Dudley: The Bastard Critic.
That's not in the version of V for Vendetta I read.
true I wrote a super-cheesy sentence there. Since when are Americans, or anybody else really, "a free people"? What is that even supposed to mean.
Still, be afraid of whoever controls the thousands of nuclear weapons, the surveillance technology, the propaganda machine, and the secret CIA prisons. That's just sound common sense.
You've all been very helpful k thx bai
Nick Page, author of In Search of the World's Worst Writers, rated Ros the worst of the worst. He says that "For Amanda, eyes are 'piercing orbs', legs are 'bony supports', people do not blush, they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.'"
Actually, I rather like "bony supports". (But then I like referring to bicycles as "wheely heteromobiles".)
||
I went to school with Richard Danzig, the Defense Department's new #2 guy, so if you have military needs I might be able to help you out.
I saw him at a reunion a few years ago too. He was totally wimpy as a student but had apparently spent a bunch of time at the gym, and his posture had improved.
|>
See, those are Icelandic kennings. Amanda is Sigur Rós's grandmother. People need to be more sensitive.
Democrats are worried that Bush will fix all of the problems before Obama can get into office, so that there's no crisis for Obama to take advantage of to initiate the transition to full socialism.
The transition to socialism has already happened. It's *democratic socialism* that's the problem.
they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.
TAKE ME, BEWILDERMENT! TAKE ME!
a free people should always be frightened and suspicious of its government.
I thought freedom from fear was an important goal to strive for. An ideally free people wouldn't have to fear any public institution.
I fear that if I take hold of you that you will never let go.
I know I'm no regular, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. My buddy Ryan is in the running to be the 2008 Art of Manliness Man of the Year. Not asking for bots, just for votes. Also, if you vote for him, he might give you a discount on a cabinet or something. He could really use the $2,000 to help him keep his green carpentry business running.
Questionable Content has the aesthetic of a nerdy, alternative rock fascism.
||
Greetings from O'Hare. You know what you should pay attention to, should you ever design a women's restroom? You should not put the coathook in such a position in the stalls that a coat hung on it would be touching the little box for used menstrual products.
At least I got to go down that hallway with the music and colored lights.
|>
I'm of several minds about that hallway, which I suspect is a side effect of the hallway itself.
I know I'm no regular
As though I need additional inducement to vote for the Manliest Man of All Manliness. He's mantastic!
(That site makes me want to hurl, but a green carpenter's got to do what he's got to do to get by in this world, I guess. I voted for him.)
I have hated that hallway in the past, as part of my general seething hatred of this airport. I rode along the moving walkway drinking my first frappucino in years this time. It was kind of nice.
154: The Terminal of Tomorrow! I always sing "It's a Small World" to myself when going down that hallway.
I've been trapped in O'Hare for hours and hours (12+) on several occasions, but my favorite was when I spent those hours on a comfy chair in the Admiral's Club next to Weird Al as we both noodled on our MacBooks.
"The moving walkway is ending."
A grim reminder.
The wiki for the academic job market in German has disappeared!
Maybe some kind soul took it down for the holiday weekend, to give everyone a break from obsessing.
I cannot believe how many classic Unfogged threads took place during this one week period. In my memory, they are much more spread out.
Violet, Bush is also trying to push through a law allowing doctors to refuse to perform (or talk about) abortions on religious grounds.
Oh, and since your mum doesn't mind you listening to inappropriate things, you might want to check out the turtle video in this post on the Bush thing.
for the next eight weeks, until the Obama appointee issues a new rule.
Man, the left blogsphere is going to miss Bush when he's gone.
We're just trying for an orderly transition, PGD. As soon as the Franken and Chambliss races are decided, I will smoothly switch over to attacking Obama. I'm not out of control! I work systematically!
There is a 'Dennis the Dentist' Proper noun corollary by Pellam and Jones.
152: Okay, but someone should tell the nominator that Mr. Manly took the reins, not the reigns.
Thanks Kraab, and anyone else who took the time to vote. I'll work with the nominator on her homonym-related difficulties.
I read a romance novel once in which a Viking was transported in time to Victorian England and rescued from a circus show by a feisty (and beautiful and unusually tall) suffragette. It was of course ghastly. My general policy about romance novels: no Vikings, no Scotsmen, no vampires, no family sagas, no cowboys.
171: What does that leave? Pirates? Knights?
I read a romance novel once that had Irish people, le doit du seigneur, pirates, slavery, Moorish harems, the mysterious and sensual erotic arts of the east, and the court of Queen Elizabeth.
171: that's a fucking shame because "Count Lefty McLeish and the Longboat Chronicles" was a fucking belter.
Or skinny, depressed indie heroes with bad posture.
I could maybe make an exception for Count Lefty, as long as each Longboat Chronicle has a discrete ending.
Pirates are fine; knights fall into the gray area of medieval romance, against which I am prejudiced since it is usually so poorly done. I have been mildly amused by Sheikh-lit, but only very mildly.
I have been mildly amused by Sheikh-lit, but only very mildly.
Hits a little too close to home, huh?
Most of it isn't very well thought out. At least there's a standard protocol and writers manual for the Brawny Scotsman Fantasy.
171: le doit du seigneur
As in "we finna do it to it"?
All these romantic genres have in common that the object of desire is a brutal murderer with a secretly sensitive side. (Viking, vampire, etc.) This lends creedence to the chicks dig assholes theory.
There need to be more romances where a woman rescues a whiny, embittered, nice guy who comments a lot on the internet. There would be a huge male market.
Oh, and I forgot the incest. There was incest, too. Our heroine did not approve.
At least there's a standard protocol and writers manual for the Brawny Scotsman Fantasy.
Oh, aye?
There would be a huge male market.
O RLY? (Hint: Reading romance novels is gay no matter what. h/t Ogged, pbuh)
It is peculiar, really: we all know that the romance genre is targeted to women, that it's primarily women who read these things, yet even women who, on the face of it, aren't fans of the he-man motif continue to ... consume the stuff.
Anyway. Even in a variant wherein the guy's whiny, embittered &c., there is to be a rescue? Why?
They may not be prima facie fans of the stuff, but you have to consider facies secundas tertiasque too.
ttaM, trust me, you don't want any part of it. It's the same sort of American who pins tartan bows on her Scottie dog who reads these books.
'Darling! Be whiney again -- That drives me mad with passion! Promise me never to stop being whiney!"
By which I mean: no, I don't want to consider it.
I had a brawny, gay, demented, violent, HIV positive Scottish-American neighbor for awhile. He had red hair and less melanin than anyone ever. He got evicted for exposing himself to all comers, passed out drunk.
But not all Scots are quite that bad.
re: 187
Heh heh.
I imagine there's lots of manful striding across heather strewn hills in the gloaming and calling women 'lassie'.
It's not a he-man fantasy, it's a protection fantasy. The whole narrative is designed to sooth your worries: by the end, your emotions will all be validated and your needs will be met. This is dramatised by the fourth-act showdown with some external enemy who will be vanquished by the united force of the lovers.
The whiny embittered hero will need to vanquish something if he's to make a plausible protector for the heroine. Something that menaces her, too---not just someone who is very wrong on the internet.
Oh, sigh, ben.
That's the spirit!
191.---Occasionally there's a mention of how BAD the Scottish heaps with their rush floors smell, but of course the finely bred English lassie falls so in love and acclimates so thoroughly that she stays and fights with the wee bairns of the clan e'en when her scurrilous poxy relatives try to return her home.
Sometimes I run out of bad books in the local library and have to read the Brawny Scotsman romances.
Jackmormon is an object lesson used to scare people thinking of leaving their English PhD programs. "Look at what will become of you! You'll become a fallen woman, reading, and seeking out, such trash that romance novels will be a step up! You'll hardly recognize yourself!"
194.1: I read one of these! It was a series, not bad at all: the headstrong lass (redheaded, I believe, but a lady rather than a lass, with a daughter) time-travelled to, um, some past time in Scotland, where she met him. Over the course of the series, she was tried as a witch but survived in some way I've forgotten. She time-travelled back/forward to her own time as well, whereupon it was revealed that her daughter was the child of this man in the past.
Weirdly, I borrowed these books from my roommate's dad, and we blathered away about them. Good times.
A odd thing to brag about: I can find the sex scene in any romance novel, typically within 20 seconds.
Oh, and of course it's all a protection fantasy. Why women are particularly drawn to such things is completely bewildering!
198: I can find at least one sex scene in Fanny Hill in about five seconds.
I read a romance novel once that had Irish people, le doit du seigneur, pirates, slavery, Moorish harems, the mysterious and sensual erotic arts of the east, and the court of Queen Elizabeth.
+ incest
So, I guess you've probably forgotten the name of this book, eh, Oudemia?
197: that would be the whoppingly successful Diana Gabaldon. That series definitely has some crack-type qualities. I think the original heroine had brown hair but the daughter, on whom there is more focus in the later volumes, has red hair.
It was the incest that really made you interested, wasn't it, mcmc?
I imagine there's lots of manful striding across heather strewn hills in the gloaming and calling women 'lassie'.
Isn't that pretty much all men do in Scotland?
I believe James Maxwell said it best in his diary entry:
September 18, 1849: Discovered how to split light by compressing fluids. Mary asked me why I'm such a pooftah. Heading to Trinity, at least there I'll seem manly.
201: I have not! It was called Skye O'Malley -- oh yes. I think there are even sequels, but I have never read them.
206: I wonder is she supposed to be some relation of Granuaile?
(googles)
No, looks like Skye is a sappy version of the much more interesting real historical figure. Came across a fan website with plot summaries such as "Although her new life is horrid at first, Skye transforms it with her hot blooded desires" and "Velvet de Marisco proves herself every inch Skye O'Malley's daughter". With a manfully striding Scotsman, too.
I really love Olbermann when he lasys it on thick. Wry subtlety is not right for mass media.
I really hate that Nikon camera guy on the ads.
Wow, lot of hits for Skye O'Malley, fiesty Irish heroine.
There's a novel in the library here about a Viking who somehow travels to Chaco. I don't think it's a romance, though.
202: that would be the whoppingly successful Diana Gabaldon
Good lord, yes, it was. Creepily, I remember(ed) neither the author's name nor the titles of the books. But that's it. Devoured 'em, I did. Not bad at all.
romance novels for me were The Forsytes, Romain Rolland's saga i forgot which, the title of it, Sigrid Unset's etc all family sagas
used to read a lot of that at the 6-7-8 grades
now can't read any romance novels, detectives, science fictions anymore, pity
I don't think many people would consider Sigred Undset's work to be romance novels these days.
now can't read any romance novels, detectives, science fictions anymore, pity
I'm curious about what you do read, read.
Oh, though I realize that you've mentioned here various members of the western literary canon. Apologies; I momentarily forgot.
family sagas i meant, coz never could read lighter romance novels excepting maybe Angelique, have this habit to easily leave books unread if i don't like anything in them
Something that menaces her, too---not just someone who is very wrong on the internet.
People who are wrong on the internet MENACE US ALL!
205: I imagine there's lots of manful striding across heather strewn hills in the gloaming and calling women 'lassie'. Isn't that pretty much all men do in Scotland?
Periodically we get drunk and cheerfully violent and set things on fire, as noted above.
I liked the James Clerk Maxwell diary.
"Another good day of striding today. That English shite Johnson said something rude about the Scots and oatmeal. So I decked him. Then off out to find the lassies!" -- Diary of James Boswell
I admit I had no idea that the Scottish Romance Potboiler was a real subgenre. Do other nationalities (other than sheikhs) get this privilege? The French? The Italians? The Spanish? The Israelis?
Poem by Maxwell:
Gin a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air.
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? And where?
Do other nationalities (other than sheikhs) get this privilege? The French? The Italians? The Spanish? The Israelis?
No. It's all about the outfit. Though based on a survey of supermarket shelves, there is a massive "Kidnapped by Apache Warrior" sector.
Oh Lord, I forgot to put that on my list. No Native American warriors and, relatedly, no gypsies male or female.
221: you mean the kilt?
Hey, you know who else wears kilts as a national costume? Somalis. And they're pirates too.
If you write a romance novel about bekilted Somali pirates, ajay, I promise to buy it in hardcover.
For you, JM, I will write such a novel, and I shall call it The Horn of Africa.
Have some swashbuckling action sequences in which nobody dies, please?
I think the heroine is the confident, independent navigating officer on a supertanker which gets overrun by the hero's terrifyingly kilted and picturesque crew one moonless night off the Puntish coast.
Bodice-ripped from the headlines...
I suppose that the mild mannered Wobegonian romance hero is even less marketable than the whiney hipster romance novel.
re: 228
Isn't that the whole 'Bridges of Madison County' schtick?
227: You should so write this. I'll take one too.
I heard a Somali pirate being interviewed on BBC and he sounded very intelligent and reasonable. He said the last source of livelihood for coastal Somalis, fishing, was being ruined by foreign factory fishing f, f, f, um, boats. So what are you going to do?
Kilted Somali eco-pirates!
Come to think of it, yes. Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Love Story, it seems to be so forgotten that people don't even actively hate it any more.
From The Horn of Africa, p. 392:
Captain Mohammed took another sip of his strong, heavily sweetened coffee. "What you do not understand, my dear, is that in contemporary Somali society, the influence of clans is hardly more than it is among your Scottish brethren. Yes, I am a tall, dark, slim but muscular pirate chieftan who wears a kilt-like garment -- but this is the end of the similarities between myself and a hero of your lurid novels. Do you know that I speak five languages? I was educated at the University of Mogadishu, in better days. My family were serious professional men, and strong, devout women. But seeing your neighbors slaughtered in the streets as the fallout from several hundred years of colonial intrigues changes a man. My relatives in America tell me that post-traumatic stress disorder is the wraith that stalks the cold streets of the new Somali centers. There's really very little about it that's the least bit romantic."
Probably wouldn't sell.
230: foreign factory fishing f, f, f, um,
...fleets?
Well, exactly. It has that whole sort of Noble Savage Resisting The Brutal Uncaring Modern World thing that is such a big part of (I should imagine) the Apache Romance genre. And the Scottish Romance genre as well, for that matter.
Now you need a nemesis. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest an evil CIA-funded Ethopian general.
I was thinking of the evil captain of the Russian nuclear-powered battlecruiser Peter the Great, even now en route for anti-piracy duties off the East African coast.
http://informationdissemination.blogspot.com/2008/11/5th-fleet-focus-international-request.html
Clearly I had better hurry up and write this while it is still topical.
It has that whole sort of Noble Savage Resisting The Brutal Uncaring Modern World thing that is such a big part of (I should imagine) the Apache Romance genre. And the Scottish Romance genre as well, for that matter.
Sweet. The Scots are getting to have their cake and eat it. Substantially inventing the Brutal Uncaring Modern World (tm) AND getting credit for nobly resisting it.
re: 235
It's still NaNoWriMo, no? You can knock it off in 3 days -- say 12,000 - 15,000 words a day. No problem.
But I'm not seeing how to incorporate bacon into the story.
re: 238
"We have to get this cargo of artesanal bacon to Dar es Salaam, dammit, or children will starve... "
Bacon could be tricky, given that Somalia is a Muslim country.
Africa wears Djibouti like a genital wart.
I used to know a Somali from a poor family who'd been educated in an Italian missions school. His brother was an MD who'd been educated in Russia. One time I introduced him to the benchful of old Russian emigre ladies who were feeding pigeons in the park.
The Italian-educated brother was OK in English, but the Russian brother was just learning. He carried a notebook around all the time and wrote down phrases. One day I saw "Fuck him if he can't take a joke". Always useful.
On topic now, in his early youth my friend had been in charge of the family laundry, which he washed in the ocean. He only had one kilt and washed it with everything else. Unfortunately the area where he did laundry was being developed as a beach resort, and an Italian woman came over to shoo him away. But he was able to answer in Italian, and he said that the conversation became quite civil.
But he was only about 12, so no bodice (bikini) ripping ensued.
"The Cross follows the bacon".
I also knew a Frenchwoman once whose brother had spent a year in the Army in Djibouti when they were struggling for independence. A small war but it was nightmarish for him and he suffered serious posttraumatic stress.
Somalis are of course ridiculously good-looking (like the Tutsis--have you seen that Tutsi rebel general running around Eastern congo? hottt), but I have a sinking suspicion that the romance-reading public isn't entirely ready for a black-white couple. I could be wrong. Still, there are an awful lot of half Arabs, half gypsies, half Native Americans and, yes, half French in these things.
Hmm. Could I make the heroine black as well, in that case?
Or, as you suggest, the Somali hero could be mixed-race. I suspect that will become a lot more acceptable to the public, given what happened at the start of this month.
and also, re 244: absolutely. Iman, for example. Waris Dirie.
There are a lot of dirt-poor war-torn nations with surprisingly high levels of hottness. Afghan women, for example; blimey.
I saw ajay's comment this morning, and thought, "Wow, somebody should totally write that." I come back a half-hour later, and it sounds like it's half-written. Unfogged comment threads get results!
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is forgotten? Is Ayn Rand now the totality of American juvenile literature?
Honey, you can write them as you see them. Just remember, for it to be a romance novel, the loving couple has to end up somewhere safe. Is there anywhere in Somalia that fits the bill? If not, they've got to get somewhere else, and our pirate-dude has to remain awesome in the new place. (Unlike in Victorian novels, contemporary romance does not require the sort of narrative economics that lost whatshisface in Jane Eyre his eyes and an arm.) So how's he going to be equipped for immigration or whatever?
One time-worn solution to all of this is to make everybody an English aristocrat in disguise. I, uh, don't imagine that's going to work out here.
While people have classified Jane Eyre as a romance novel, I've always thought that it's a parody of a romance novel. All of Rochester's dialogue is melodramatic, while all of Jane's dialogue is practical.
The pirate's blonde lover becomes the pirate leader when he is killed and establishes herself in a mountain fastness with her troop of hot bodyguards. Her new name is "She". When she tires of a lover he is fed to the crocodiles and replaced.
"becomes the pirate leader when her lover is killed"
One time-worn solution to all of this is to make everybody an English aristocrat in disguise. I, uh, don't imagine that's going to work out here
Why not? The House of Peers is now thoroughly multi-racial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroness_Scotland
OT, but awesomely, there is also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Sawyer,_Baron_Sawyer
They can end up in the unrecognised secessionist state of Somaliland. That's fairly safe and peaceful by East African standards. No Islamic Courts or Ethiopian invaders, for one thing.
They could go to Dubai, where the hero is revealed to be a sheikh all along, who became a Somali pirate because he was moved by the plight of Somalis.
Aren't those earned titles, though? The romance novel ideal is hereditary absentee landlords, with the occasional Yeoman Earl thrown in for the social responsibility angle. I do like the Somaliland solution---very convenient!
254.---Oh, my! Yes, that would work too, if you could get around the pan-Islam standard motivation, which would probably alarm most romance-novel readers. Really, though, we're already departing enough from the comfort sone of these genre readers that you might as well just go for the umma.
I think they end up in the US where the pirate wins the presidency in an upset over Ahnuld in 2016. (The constitution had been amended after the Supremes ruled in favor of the nutjob lawsuit that Obama was not eligible.)
256: yes, my aim is going to be to get through the entire novel without mentioning Teh Islam once.
G&S had some good and relevant stuff to say on this subject:
When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way
And I sink a few more ships, it's true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne
If he wants to call his crown his own
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do...
Violet, Scientific American has an article about Bush's push to establish regulations redefining the Endangered Species Act (just to add on to what Megan was saying).
So how's he going to be equipped for immigration or whatever?
He went to university and speaks five languages. I bet some consulting firm or other would love to hire him on. If you can manage a successful Somali pirate ship, you can manage anything!
It's true that this does diminish the awesomeness a wee smidge.
I can see it now: the final chapter closes in Washington DC, with our heroine ecstatic in the embrace of our hero, formerly a Somali pirate captain and now the new Assistant Deputy Treasury Secretary for International Finance...
261: Knecht hires him. He discovers Unfogged. Nothing else worth writing abut ever happens to him again.
The heroine should be multi-racial. I'm thinking "Bonnie Two Feathers Macguire", the fearless tanker captain daughter of a Scottish archeologist and an African-American US Navy submarine commander whose mother was half-Cherokee.
People. You just have to accept the hand-wavy and the overstated: he becomes a captain of industry, see.
That's very elegant, JM. Captain of ship to captain of industry. And here's how: he has an insider's knowledge of how to avoid ... pirate raids! He becomes a captain of the shipping industry.
263: he is unceremoniously dumped by the heroine thirty seconds after he greets her in a crowded bar with a shout of "Who wants to sex Mutombo?"
266.---Like Captain Morgan becoming Governor of Jamaica! If I recall correctly, Sabatini borrowed that device for Captain Blood---which means it has mass appeal!
He gives up piracy for aquaculture. Later, in the sequel, like a sheepfarming former gunslinger who has to go up against railroad thugs, he will have to strap on his AK to protect his fellow aquaculturists from, uh, sharks. The heroine will have died by then so he can have a new romance.
i finished Nausea today and it's a perfect romance novel
sure, late, i'm so glad to find it
i read others' impressions and nobody seems to mention 'the outlived self' concept when it's so common, one just gives up all introspection and questioning, becomes satisfied or forgets self pre that, awareness or maybe after one's personal enlightenment it should be just the natural next step, disillusionment, maybe the enlightened state can't be continuously maintained, or maybe that's the 'soulless' state, when one's soul departs due to some unknown reasons, means, but physical self still persists
"I do not think; therefore I am a mustache". That Nausea?
Not exactly a romance novel. You're teasing us, Read!
yes, that one
not a romance novel like a genre romance novel, but there was real love and the reviews i read all talk about rejection by his mistress, when there was that, mutual understanding of the futility of existence and love, so she outlives herself, chooses the easiest way maybe and he escapes through creating art or appreciation of art
i feel enlightened today and expect some stupor shortly
I'll have to look at it again. It's been quite awhile.
271: is that the first time read has ever used a capital letter?
capital letters are like capital ships; they should be used only rarely and for great effect.
why, i use it all the time, just my shift key is broken and i have to use it kinda sparingly
Knecht hires him. He discovers Unfogged. Nothing else worth writing abut ever happens to him again.
Nonsense! Why, just last week he attained Platinum status in three separate airline loyalty programs.
speaking of KR, i've noticed he's commenting markedly less after the meetup he organized
so maybe i should attend some meetups too
so that my obsession with unfogged would subside and allow me to concentrate on my professional studies, not language and communication alone
Unfogged is much more important than professional studies, Read.
Read, just let us know when you can attend a meetup and we'll have one.
That would be fun! I'd love to meet read. If it's any encouragement, I'd say that everyone I've met from Unfogged is a lot nicer in person than on the blog.
That's probably what ruined it for KR.
re: 283
I conceal my evil ways through the cunning expediency of living thousands of miles away from everyone [except Asilon and dsqurd].
That said, the three Unfogged people I've met have all been nice...
285: Conceal? You poor deluded bastard.
282, 283 thanks, maybe i'd ask you two to go with me to see The Gypsy Kings concert at the Radio City Music Hall
i bought three tickets thinking my niece and a friend will come to visit me in February, but still not sure whether they'll make it, coz depends on many things, their work and class schedules and visas
i'd prefer to attend meetups maybe as naturally occuring events
not less, but fewer times
i'm so very rude to suggest people i never met to substitute other people, in return to the kind invitation, sorry
really? i'm relieved
i'd offer the same to my irl friends without any thinking maybe too, just am not sure around new people
Unfogged is pretty informal, I think, since if we were touchy about protocol we'd never see each other at all.
I'm a thousand miles away, alas.