Fanfic

"Far away, in a watery vista between the jagged edges of pale bluish houses, which have tottered up from their knees to climb the slope (a cypress indicating the way), the blurred Mount St. George is more than ever remote from its likeness on the picture postcards which since 1910, say (those straw hats, those youthful cabmen), have been courting the tourist from the sorry-go-round of their prop, among amethyst-toothed lumps of rock and the mantelpiece dreams of seashells"--Vladimir Nabokov, "Spring in Fialta"

Time passes.  Sometimes I feel lazy, but other times I feel bored, and one thing I've done about it is to dream up a fanfic. Remember the ending of Hound of the Baskervilles, where Stapleton the killer's footprints led into the bog and disappeared, leading Sherlock Holmes to conclude that he'd drowned?  But  what if Holmes was wrong... 

I started imagining a fanfic sequel in which Stapleton somehow faked his own death.  Later on, when Henry, the heir he tried to kill, married Beryl, the wife he abused, he watched from a safe distance disguised as a hobo. (Or was he a real one?) Years later during the Great War, Beryl was nursing in a military hospital and found her ex on his deathbed... 

At the Short Story Meetup we discussed three stories involving love.  They were Vladimir Nabokov's "Spring in Fialta," Junot Diaz' "The Cheater's Guide to Love" and Kelly Link's "The Great Divorce." (The last one was oddly whimsical, about a living man who'd married a ghost woman and wanted to divorce her.) Nabokov knew how to write colourful long sentences, surely a dying art today.

I've finished watching Dragon Ball GT (which is better if you're a kid who's never watched the first two series) and the Dragon Ball movies.  I'm going to resume One Piece once I get my new glasses and can read subtitles easier, but they still haven't arrived.

I've started reading a history of Reformation Europe for next month's History Meetup.

#59

Opening paragraph: "He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher--the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.  Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon,' hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot"--Kim

Colonel to General: "I apologize, Sir, for not telling you sooner that you're a degenerate, sadistic old man.  And you can go to hell before I apologize to you now or ever again!"--Paths of Glory

Today's my 59th birthday. (I was born during the big Aquarian stellium of 1962 that had some astrologers predicting the end of the world, and they say there's a smaller Aquarian stellium this month...) You know you're getting older when you buy a cheaper cake!

I finished The Handmaid's Tale in time for Thursday's book club. (I would have downstreamed the 1990 movie, but it was only priced to buy, not to rent.) Too bad only a couple of other people came.  I've started reading our next book, Rudyard Kipling's Northwest Frontier novel Kim.  I have a paper copy of it (from a Kipling collection), so I won't be reading it on the computer!

We laid some more concrete in the basement, but I'm no longer the slacker.  John bought a small spade that made scooping the gravel into buckets a lot easier, and we did a lot of scooping before the regular mixing so I had more time to do it.

We discussed some more Maupassants at the Short Story Meetup.  Unfortunately, he wrote two stories with the title "The Confession," and I read the wrong one! (I managed to read all the others, too.)

I've almost finished the book about the Hellenistic Era. (Next is a book about the Reformation!) Tonight the watch party showed Stanley Kubrick's powerfully bleak Western Front courtroom drama Paths of Glory, and there were about ten people!

Yesterday a Facebook group focused on the '70s started a fun thread where people post a single line from a song from that decade and the challenge is to guess the song.  That's right up my alley:  I posted a whole lot of lines, way more than people could guess. Stuff like "Back in the USA, back in the bad old days" (Paperlace, "The Night Chicago Died"), "We can still come through" (David Soul, "Don't Give up on Us"), "I'm gonna tell you once more before I get off the floor (ELO, "Don't Bring Me Down), "The marching band came down along Main Street" (Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, "Billy, Don't Be a Hero"), "Like a rose under the April snow" (Barbra Streisand, "Evergreen")...

Yeah, I need a life!