…all of a sudden I have a lot to write about? Mostly watching and reading. But first let me tell you about the Karasu Jiken! So I was walking home the other day, and there are several guys trimming the trees on a local boulevard, as they do, and several crows flying around cawing, as they do, and I only consciously noticed either when one of the former started yelling, from up in his tree, “Fuck! It’s coming for me! Leave me alone! Fuck!” while the nearest crow answered at similar volume and in similar language. He came sliding frantically down from his tree and said to his mates on the ground, who were all laughing their heads off, “It came down right in front of me! Fuck!” The relevant crow in the tree branches was going CAW CAW CAW at the top of its lungs, both furious and smug.
I’m slowly working my way through the lovely rec list provided here (come and link me to your fics/other works if you haven’t already?) and enjoying myself a lot.
Exchange reported between a-Pei and her nine-year-old daughter a-Hua, in which I was pleased to be able to recognize the pun (based on a-Pei’s Taiwanese pronunciation of guo as gou):
A-Hua: 今天有没有淘宝的包裹?
A-Pei: 还没寄来。
A-Hua: 那有包猫呢?
And the other useful Chinese word I learned this week (from my ongoing fic reading), 起床气, bad temper due to getting up in the morning.
Was reminded of Liu Chang singing a very silly Japanese anime tune, just for a boost. For something completely different, have Takemitsu Toru’s To the Sea for alto flute and guitar; I love low flute music.
Three watching things: Going over the Guardian script once again, and man I am just so fond of Lin Jing, saying with injured dignity “I’m telling you, I’m the National Sweetheart of STEM, I’m NOT a science weirdo.” To which Zhao Yunlan reacts with an illuminated “Ah!” followed by “Wang Zheng! Cut his bonus for next month!” “More and more responsibility, less and less pay,” poor Lin Jing grumbles, getting busy fixing the car.
Thanks to mumble, an episode of this farming reality show 种地吧 featuring Wang Yang. (If we have the blessed Wenella for Zhu Yilong, lately mumble, sakana17 and grayswandir have been the Wang Yang trinity and I approve.) It’s very cheerful and very silly (I learned 石头剪刀布, rock-paper-scissors, or rather rock-scissors-cloth) and Wang Yang is a delight as usual. I might go on and watch the other episodes available even without him as quasi-background noise, just for the listening practice of a lot of (helpfully subtitled) casual conversation.
Parallel World (as of ep 8): I’m curious about the mystery, and I like the parallel-world concept itself, but I am basically watching it for the chemistry between Bai Yu and Ni Ni. I don’t care if Chang Dong and Ye Liuxi ever get around to sleeping together or not, I just love their partnership, the weird...calmness of their relationship, two people fucked-up by circumstance who have accepted each other on a fundamental level (plus a bit of competence kink on both sides), skipping the intermediate steps to near-total trust (and, because the actors are that good, making it believable). They’re also funny when they’re fucking with each other (“I didn’t call you Liuxi out of any, you know, intimacy! It was just a moment of urgency when two characters were faster than three!”) and Ni Ni is dazzlingly beautiful, although the more so when she’s wearing more clothes and has her hair braided. Bai Yu as Chang Dong strikes me physically as sort of…a nice-looking ordinary guy? which lead actors often don’t achieve for obvious reasons. Plenty handsome enough (and the baseball cap suits him) but not stunning, which if anything is part of his warmth.
Much Ado last week with yaaurens and company—every time there’s a different line that catches my attention, and this time it was Leonato’s “Being that I flow in grief…”, which makes me cry; it’s such an evocative phrase for that feeling of having your feet pulled out from under you, losing control of the narrative to the worst of times. I requested and got Borachio, whose stricken post-facto confession always fascinates me, though I don’t know that I did it justice. I saw a high school production years and years ago in which the whole auditorium was pin-drop silent and riveted during that speech, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Marjorie B. Kellogg’s Lear’s Daughters, a huge SF novel about a mission from a climate-ravaged Earth to a new world, which may be ruthlessly exploited for its resources or safely preserved for its existing alien society. Hard to summarize but worth the read: it’s real SF, setting and problem and solution all, and if not exactly character-driven it still has characters who bring the book to life. Not surprisingly I most identify with and enjoy Megan Levy, the grumpy, out-of-shape, middle-aged Jewish anthropologist; her expertise along with all her teammates’ is vital to working out what’s happening on this planet and how to deal with it, all the disciplines matter, linguistics, biology, meteorology, anthropology, geology, medicine, even spaceflight and game theory and music. I am less gripped by the quasi-protagonist Stavros’ religious/linguistic epiphanies—although I really like the way his increasing, circular understanding of one particular alien word illuminates what’s happens to him—but the way the central problem is shown, and solved, is terrific.
Jan Mark’s Handles--I don’t think I’ve posted about this one before, but maybe I have? Eleven-year-old motorcycle nut Erica, packed off from her home in Norwich to spend a boring holiday with narrow-minded rural relations, discovers a motorcycle shop and its eccentric proprietor. Erica’s dry tight-third-person narration is hilariously funny, while her need for motorcycles and city living and an imaginative inner life is real and almost painful. (“…and another, all in lower-case handwriting, william birdcycles. Erica got no further than William Birdcycles. Was his name William Bird, purveyor of bicycles, or was he Mr Birdcycles? Or did he in fact sell birdcycles, and if so what were they?”) (“’We’ve been smitten by an occurrence of frogs.’”) I actually read a Japanese translation of this book at one point—the translator didn’t attempt to represent the Norfolk dialect, sadly (I think both geographically and culturally, the kind of North Kanto accent with べ on the end of all the sentences would’ve been perfect), but otherwise they understood the wordplay well and did some nice things with it. Erica thinks derisively of her cousin Robert “That must be why he never thought, in case he sprained his brain; but if she called him Sprain-brain to his face he would never be able to work out why.” Here Robert’s would-be nickname becomes ノーみそ, a pun on 脳 (nō), brain, and ノー (no), none which I actually like better than the original.
Photos: Three cats (one with entourage of passing ten-year-olds), three maple trees, and three out of the one zillion cherry blossom photos I’m accruing as usual, more to follow at some point. One includes a cherry-blossom-viewing turtle.
Be safe and well.
I’m slowly working my way through the lovely rec list provided here (come and link me to your fics/other works if you haven’t already?) and enjoying myself a lot.
Exchange reported between a-Pei and her nine-year-old daughter a-Hua, in which I was pleased to be able to recognize the pun (based on a-Pei’s Taiwanese pronunciation of guo as gou):
A-Hua: 今天有没有淘宝的包裹?
A-Pei: 还没寄来。
A-Hua: 那有包猫呢?
And the other useful Chinese word I learned this week (from my ongoing fic reading), 起床气, bad temper due to getting up in the morning.
Was reminded of Liu Chang singing a very silly Japanese anime tune, just for a boost. For something completely different, have Takemitsu Toru’s To the Sea for alto flute and guitar; I love low flute music.
Three watching things
Three watching things: Going over the Guardian script once again, and man I am just so fond of Lin Jing, saying with injured dignity “I’m telling you, I’m the National Sweetheart of STEM, I’m NOT a science weirdo.” To which Zhao Yunlan reacts with an illuminated “Ah!” followed by “Wang Zheng! Cut his bonus for next month!” “More and more responsibility, less and less pay,” poor Lin Jing grumbles, getting busy fixing the car.
Thanks to mumble, an episode of this farming reality show 种地吧 featuring Wang Yang. (If we have the blessed Wenella for Zhu Yilong, lately mumble, sakana17 and grayswandir have been the Wang Yang trinity and I approve.) It’s very cheerful and very silly (I learned 石头剪刀布, rock-paper-scissors, or rather rock-scissors-cloth) and Wang Yang is a delight as usual. I might go on and watch the other episodes available even without him as quasi-background noise, just for the listening practice of a lot of (helpfully subtitled) casual conversation.
Parallel World (as of ep 8): I’m curious about the mystery, and I like the parallel-world concept itself, but I am basically watching it for the chemistry between Bai Yu and Ni Ni. I don’t care if Chang Dong and Ye Liuxi ever get around to sleeping together or not, I just love their partnership, the weird...calmness of their relationship, two people fucked-up by circumstance who have accepted each other on a fundamental level (plus a bit of competence kink on both sides), skipping the intermediate steps to near-total trust (and, because the actors are that good, making it believable). They’re also funny when they’re fucking with each other (“I didn’t call you Liuxi out of any, you know, intimacy! It was just a moment of urgency when two characters were faster than three!”) and Ni Ni is dazzlingly beautiful, although the more so when she’s wearing more clothes and has her hair braided. Bai Yu as Chang Dong strikes me physically as sort of…a nice-looking ordinary guy? which lead actors often don’t achieve for obvious reasons. Plenty handsome enough (and the baseball cap suits him) but not stunning, which if anything is part of his warmth.
Three rereads
Much Ado last week with yaaurens and company—every time there’s a different line that catches my attention, and this time it was Leonato’s “Being that I flow in grief…”, which makes me cry; it’s such an evocative phrase for that feeling of having your feet pulled out from under you, losing control of the narrative to the worst of times. I requested and got Borachio, whose stricken post-facto confession always fascinates me, though I don’t know that I did it justice. I saw a high school production years and years ago in which the whole auditorium was pin-drop silent and riveted during that speech, and I’ve never forgotten it.
Marjorie B. Kellogg’s Lear’s Daughters, a huge SF novel about a mission from a climate-ravaged Earth to a new world, which may be ruthlessly exploited for its resources or safely preserved for its existing alien society. Hard to summarize but worth the read: it’s real SF, setting and problem and solution all, and if not exactly character-driven it still has characters who bring the book to life. Not surprisingly I most identify with and enjoy Megan Levy, the grumpy, out-of-shape, middle-aged Jewish anthropologist; her expertise along with all her teammates’ is vital to working out what’s happening on this planet and how to deal with it, all the disciplines matter, linguistics, biology, meteorology, anthropology, geology, medicine, even spaceflight and game theory and music. I am less gripped by the quasi-protagonist Stavros’ religious/linguistic epiphanies—although I really like the way his increasing, circular understanding of one particular alien word illuminates what’s happens to him—but the way the central problem is shown, and solved, is terrific.
Jan Mark’s Handles--I don’t think I’ve posted about this one before, but maybe I have? Eleven-year-old motorcycle nut Erica, packed off from her home in Norwich to spend a boring holiday with narrow-minded rural relations, discovers a motorcycle shop and its eccentric proprietor. Erica’s dry tight-third-person narration is hilariously funny, while her need for motorcycles and city living and an imaginative inner life is real and almost painful. (“…and another, all in lower-case handwriting, william birdcycles. Erica got no further than William Birdcycles. Was his name William Bird, purveyor of bicycles, or was he Mr Birdcycles? Or did he in fact sell birdcycles, and if so what were they?”) (“’We’ve been smitten by an occurrence of frogs.’”) I actually read a Japanese translation of this book at one point—the translator didn’t attempt to represent the Norfolk dialect, sadly (I think both geographically and culturally, the kind of North Kanto accent with べ on the end of all the sentences would’ve been perfect), but otherwise they understood the wordplay well and did some nice things with it. Erica thinks derisively of her cousin Robert “That must be why he never thought, in case he sprained his brain; but if she called him Sprain-brain to his face he would never be able to work out why.” Here Robert’s would-be nickname becomes ノーみそ, a pun on 脳 (nō), brain, and ノー (no), none which I actually like better than the original.
Photos: Three cats (one with entourage of passing ten-year-olds), three maple trees, and three out of the one zillion cherry blossom photos I’m accruing as usual, more to follow at some point. One includes a cherry-blossom-viewing turtle.
Be safe and well.