elisi's humble abode

Sad things:

Wilfred Mott | IT'S MY HONOUR (R.I.P BERNARD CRIBBINS) by MARGARITA LIFE

I shall have more to say about the trailblazing, incomparable Nichelle Nichols, who shared the bridge with us as Lt. Uhura of the USS Enterprise, and who passed today at age 89. For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 31, 2022

~~

Happy things:

Football came home - the end of 56 'years of hurt'! :)
England created history by winning their first major women's tournament in a dramatic Euro 2022 final against old rivals and eight-time champions Germany at Wembley.

All About Spike is Moving to the AO3
It was the BEST fic archive, I'm so happy it's being saved.

~~

Other things:

I encourage people to donate to mermaids as I do every year on this day. Ringing your helpline was the first time I had heard someone tell me personally "it's ok to be trans". I think you saved my life, whoever you where. Thank you so much @Mermaids_Gender .#TransRights pic.twitter.com/B0P1eXsLNZ

— Liam of the closet (@GuyCalledLiam) July 31, 2022

Having finished The Goblin Emperor I then read Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones (I adore her books, but somehow never read the Crestomanchi series, which my children have been chiding me for for ages). After that I picked up We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and am about halfway through. From the blurb on the back:

Set in the twenty-sixth century A.D., Zamyatin's masterpiece describes life in the regimented totalitarian society of OneState, ruled over by the all-powerful "Benefactor". The inspiration for George Orwell's 1984, We is the archetype of the modern dystopia, or anti-Utopia: a great prose poem detailing the fate that might befall us if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom.

It was written in 1920–1921 and was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York, with the original Russian text first published in 1952.

I was partly curious due to it being the inspiration for 1984, but (disappearing down the rabbit hole) I discovered that Jerome K. Jerome's short story The New Utopia has been cited as an influence on Zamyatin's novel. I went to look for it, and here it is, online:

The New Utopia

It's only about 10 pages, and clearly satire. But what's fascinating is that reading it I can 100% see the influence, and how Zamyatin clearly thought 'This is a brilliant idea - I will expand on it and write a story set in this world'.

Finally, have another photo. Taken yesterday when we went for a walk, this shows Tórshavn (the capital) - or rather parts of it, it's a sprawling city:



(Basic info: The Faroe Islands are situated halfway between Scotland & Iceland. There are 18 islands, 17 inhabited, and the population is approx 50k. It's a tiny place where modern life/technology co-exists with traditional culture.)

Disabling comments as I have no idea when I will be able to reply. Also tomorrow is my 25th wedding anniversary. :)

I'm not much of Royalist (I like the tradition & the pageantry, and I'm glad we don't have a President Johnson), but a Royal family is an expensive luxury, and I'm not sure it's very humane to keep people in gilded cages. ANYWAY, thanks to the Jubilee I have a four day weekend, which is nice!

A couple of takes from Twitter:

The Impudence Of Youth
(Photo @lealolivas) pic.twitter.com/8DwC4iYZr1

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) June 2, 2022

This’ll lose me some followers🤣 pic.twitter.com/EeGNmgezjI

— Michael Warburton 🇺🇦 (@MichaelWarbur17) June 1, 2022

~

And this is fascinating:

“Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott was a transgender man
“I am more than half-persuaded that I am, by some freak of nature, a man’s soul put into a woman’s body.”

Sidebar: I have never read Little Women. Indeed, I didn't know it existed until I was an adult. You are welcome to yell at me in the comments. :)

~

Daily Dimash: Okay

New song is here, now with a fabulous video (I love 'proper' videos that tell a story). The song is very very lowkey (not sure how else to describe it), none of the crazy highs or lows, but it has grown on me, the way good pop songs tend to...



It's another Igor Krutoy creation (the premiere of which was pulled b/c of Russia's invasion of Ukraine). You can read about the idea behind the video here. :)


Reaction videos:

DIMASH "OKAY" | Análisis / Reacción | Vocal coach (Possibly the most excited reaction you will ever see to anything! :) Make sure to put on the subtitles.)


Actor and Filmmaker REACTION and ANALYSIS - DIMASH "OKAY" MUSIC VIDEO! (Lots of insights into what the video is doing, A+ commentary)


Dimash Masterpost

Doing Time on Planet Earth by our very own shadowkat is FREE on Amazon Kindle today through Friday!

Go, support a local writer! :D

According to Buzzfeed, it would seem that 'Grey' is basically just PWP...

I Read The New “Fifty Shades” Book, And It Is Absolutely Batshit (NSFW!!!)

shadowkat67 wrote a book!

Doing Time on Planet Earth is a character-driven dark comedy/off-beat mystery that’s filled with snarky satire, dry wit, and absurd situations as three very different individuals find their lives intertwining in the strangest of ways.

More info if you click the cover picture above.

Currently (TODAY 18th of MAY!) free on Amazon Kindle.

Go, read, review, spread the word!

Two interesting articles about Fifty Shades of Grey:

Consent Isn’t Enough: The Troubling Sex of Fifty Shades. The blockbuster fantasy has become a big movie—and a bigger problem.
By Emma Green, for The Atlantic.

Sex, Lies and Fifty Shades. Millions have read the books. Millions more will see the movie. And everything you think you know about it—and women—is wrong.
By Leslie Bennetts for Entertainment Weekly.

ETA: And via shadowkat67:

'Fifty Shades of Grey' Review - The New Yorker. No pain, No Gain.

This is the beginning:

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here.

Dan Brown's appropriation of Dante is (IMHO) something close to sacrilege, whereas Clive James has just finished a translation (after a lifetime's work). Interview here, but I've pulled out what is for me the money quote:

On working on his translation for 40 years: "In view of the likelihood that Dan Brown's Inferno novel will coin money like the mint and be turned into a huge Hollywood movie (Jeremy Irons as Dante perhaps, opposite the meltingly spiritual Beatrice of Angelina Jolie), it might be asked why I slogged away at a mere translation. The answer is simple: The Divine Comedy is a work of art so incandescently great that if you think you can convey some of its force and colored fire, you should. It was a duty. For 40 years, since my brilliant wife showed me what the lovers sounded like when they spoke Italian to each other in the fifth canto of hell, I knew it was my duty. I just didn't know how to do it. Somewhere in Dan Brown's new book, a professor says that Longfellow's translation does the job. But when I read that translation, and all the other translations, I still thought that nobody yet had quite caught the way that Dante's verse flies along, infinitely varied, infallibly vivid, totally brilliant. So I pushed on, and the effort brought me where I am today, competing head to head with one of the biggest-selling writers of all time. Smart move, eh?"

Currently reading:

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
Prayer: Letters to Malcolm by C.S. Lewis
Whedonistas by various fangirls

Under my bedside table: ( Read more... )

ETA: If anyone wants to copy this and turn it into a meme, you're more than welcome! :)

My father in law has HUGE amounts of books. Now and again I go scouring through them, and today came across 'Goodbye to Berlin' by Christopher Isherwood, and picked it up out of curiosity.

And - I think I'm in love.

I'd forgotten what it's like to be seduced by writing, the way reading can feel like drinking a rich wine and you try to take it slow so it'll last, but you keep picking it up for just another taste...

Also - despite having only seen a couple of trailers - Matt Smith seems a wonderful choice, since I keep reading with his voice (and the inflections he uses) in my head.

(Now the question is, will I have to hunt down 'Mr Norris Changes Trains' before Saturday [when Christopher and His Kind is on]? Not to mention 'Christopher and his Kind' itself. Hmmm. *wanders off to amazon*)

Please tell me that I wasn't the only one to hear of this story (a controversial American scheme wants to visit Bristol and pay drug users and alcoholics to be sterilised) and immediately thought of Miss Schuster-Slatt?

(Dorothy Sayers had the best names for her characters!)