"You look Time Lord."

Saw all of the Fatty Arbuckle + Buster Keaton shorts.



They got better as they went on, but never to the point of genius. Usually ranged from "decent and harmless" to "JUST END ALREADY!". There's quite a lot of racism and misogyny, most notably in the "JUST END ALREADY!" category. The decent and harmless had some clever gags. Arbuckle can juggle knives like it's nothing.

As the shorts go on, Keaton's roles(s) get more prominent (I think it was his second short, he shows up for half a minute as a beggar. By the last short he's Arbuckle's sidekick.)

My favourites were The Bell Boy, The Cook, Back Stage and The Garage. (I didn't dislike Coney Island, it does have Keaton in a lifeguard outfit doing standing backflips and a very funny camera gag.)

Let's see what Ingmar Bergman film I'll watch now. Yesterday I saw Persona, which was good (don't ask me what it's about though).

A. and I have recently started watching Lie to Me. We're up to s2e7 and I've got a couple of questions. After my recent experience with Person of Interest, I'm coming to you hoping that one of you will either know the answers or else care little enough about Lie to Me spoilers that you'll be willing to try to find the answers:

1. What's up with the way Lightman walks? He just sort of flops around as he walks, and he tends to stand with his head tilted. I've come up with three possible explanations, but of course it might be none of them:
   1. Something in Lightman's past (which we'll learn about later in the series) explains it.
   2. It's an effort to try to make Tim Roth look shorter. (A. and I were both very surprised when I looked it up and he's 5'8"—we had both thought he was shorter than that.)
   3. It's just How Tim Roth Walks™.
2. Is the science in the show at all accurate? If so, to what degree is it accurate and to what degree is it handwavium?

I practically never remember my dreams, but I remember part of last night's dream. Not enough to reconstruct any sort of plot summary, but enough to remember that it contained the following elements:

• Heavy metal music (centered around a band named "Jihaad" — spelled that way to try to convey that the last syllable should rhyme with "bad," not with "sod")
• Low-quality animatronic dinosaurs (they couldn't consistently count on the stegosaurus to walk, so they had four wheeled platforms that they'd put on its feet to move it out from backstage, then they'd let it take 2 or 3 steps in front of the audience, and pray that it didn't break down during that time)
• Luchador wrestling (the wrestlers, the dinosaurs, and the band were on tour together in sort of a Mad Max type environment)
• Male menstrual cramps (which I suppose implies the existence of male menstruation, but only the cramps came up in the dream)
• Asshole bosses
• The importance of proper punctuation

I've no memory of reading this at all. The back makes it sound both interesting and memorable - a retired brigadier stumbling upon shenanigans from WW2 recruiting the sixth Doctor for help. Richards and Cole are both solid Doctor Who authors who I rate but none of it stirs a memory.

AKA Obsessing over minutia

( are you sure you want to click? )



*If you can call a "rewatch", watching an ep picked by randomizer that you've watched way too many times already.

We had a "free" day in Cusco, but there were some suggestions of activities that our guide could organise for us. Two other people in the group were interested in seeing the Moray Ruins and the Salt Mines of Maras and we were happy to tag along and make the excursion cheaper.

Moray was the first Inca Plant laboratory we encountered. As noted previously, it wasn't quite clear to us why it earned the status of laboratory.

( Pictures under the Cut )

The Salt Mines are not actually mines, but a salt extraction plant that predates the arrival of the Spanish and which are still worked today. Mineral rich water from the mountains comes in and fills clay lined pools. The water then evaporates and the salt is collected. They are owned by 300 families and there were people working them - flattening the clay lining - when we visited. I bought salt.

( Photos under the Cut )

The hardest thing about writing Peter Wimsey fanfic is the quotes. Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane have an encyclopedic knowledge of the literature of their era (and the literature that was considered classic/important in that era), and quote it often.

Today I posted on the Gaud Squad Discord that it would be awesome if we had a searchable database of the literature and poetry that they knew or could reasonably be expected to know, searchable by keyword and theme, so that one could look things up easily. And that I would be willing to do the data entry, but had not the technical skills to set it up.
supertailz responded by setting up a Notion instance and is noodling around with the technical aspects of it, so it looks like this is happening!

The easy part is getting the literature that Peter and Harriet quote added--all I have to do is read through the books (no hardship there!) and source the quotations. Although I know there are some annotated versions floating around, and if anyone has a copy of the annotations, that would be lovely.

The hard part is getting the right mix of things that Peter and Harriet would have known. Because what is considered "classic literature" changes over time. Some things rise in acclaim, some things fall out of favor. What would be really handy is a curriculum for Eton ca. 1900 and for Oxford ca. 1910, but so far I haven't found anything. Does anybody know how to search "what literary works were considered classics in 1920"? Or have a good list of where to start?

Off on holiday from tomorrow, back Monday, probably will be a bit sporadic on here in terms of comments and not posting, so will catch up properly when I get back!