Things I Enjoy

I've spent enough time bitching this week. :)

Transvestie D’Action: The Man. The Lipstick.

As evidenced on Fark today, one cannot spend a long time in cyber space without stumbling upon an enclave of maddened nutters throwing random quotes at one another, or worse, accidentally setting them all off.

“Do you have a flag?”

“Thank you for flying Church of England…”

“Long ears? On the side please. I’ll explain later…”

“I like my coffee hot and strong like I like my women hot and strong...with a spoon in them.”

“Fucking NUTS! How I long for a grapefruit!”

“It's like some new ambassador going to a new country and saying "Fuck you all! You're all a bunch of bastards! I hate you personally. Bye!”

You have not stumbled into a chat room of schizophrenics, you just entered an Izzard Zone: A gathering to devotees of self-described “Surrealist Comic” and English Transvestite, Eddie Izzard. In an era when the overwhelming majority of comedy has gone the low brow route, the intelligent & absurdist Eddie Izzard is a breath of fresh air. Especially as he doesn’t deal in the bitter cynicism that so many stand up comic take refuge in but is actually rather light hearted and human. I really can’t explain it any further than to say start with Dressed to Kill and expand outward from there.

“Hitler never played Risk when he was a kid…Cause you could never hold on to it could you? That Eurasia, you could never hold it. Seven extra men at the beginning of every go, but you couldn’t fucking hold it. Australasia, that was the one. Australasia. All the purples. Get everyone on Papua New Guinea and just build up and build up…"

One by Land and Two by Sea

The Napoleonic Wars gave us many things; nationalism, the semaphore, aerial surveillance, ordinance...but it’s most important legacy to us today in the new millennia:

Is three of the best selling and most entertaining series of novels in the 20th century. :D

Thanks to the Lost Generation, much of 20th century literature involved emotionally isolated characters wallowing in self-pity or aggrandizement while the author pretended that it was “deep”.*

Ballocks. It’s boring, that what it is!

If you want to have some real fun, the three guys you need to look for are Bernard Cornwell, C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian.

Bernard Cornwell’s contribution is the Sharpe Series which chronicles the adventures of one Richard Sharpe, bastard, ex-con, rifleman, born leader as he rises from Private to Lt. Colonel through conquests on India and the Napoleonic war’s “Peninsula campaign” as the British army under Sir Authur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) retook Portugal and Spain from France eventually culminating in the Battle of Waterloo.

I have only read a couple books of the series, but I do have all 15 British productions starring Sean Bean which are very entertaining. Cornwell’s writing style tends to be on the terse and extremely compact side. It’s written from Sharpe’s point of view and Sharpe himself is a no-nonsense guy so the books has very little nonsense in them as Sharpe, his best friend Sgt. Patrick Harper, and the 95th Riffles are sent out behind enemy lines and to forefront of deadly sieges in one adventure after another.

On Sharpe’s end: “He dies of old age, in his bed, surrounded by family. I, as his creator, can give him that, and he deserves it, because he's paid my mortgage off.” ~ Bernard Cornwell

I have read two of the 11 Horatio Hornblower novels so far and they also are very enjoyable. Personally I find the writing style more engaging than Cornwell’s and the stories are quite good. Like Sharpe, Hornblower is a bit of a brooder, but with more of the idealist & imagination in his soul which his thoroughly English consciousness attempts to crush. It’s a good character.I recommend starting with Mr. Midshipmen Hornblower, which begins the adventures of the young sailor through his ascendancy to Admiral, rather than Beat to Quarters which is the first one Forester wrote (Hornblower was a Captain at that point). His writing is a too stiff to be enjoyable yet in that first book.

Horatio Hornblower also has a series of British productions around it starring the so-stunning-if-God-wanted-to-send-an-angel-down-to-seduce-women-he-would-look-just-like Ioan Gruffudd. Haven’t seen them yet.

Now for my personal favorite.

The Aubery-Maturin Series is the best of the lot as far as I am concerned, principally because of the friendship between Jack Aubery and Stephen Maturin. The stories are excellent, the plots are satisfyingly complex, occasioning to the Byzantine, but the relationship is what really keeps the stories human and interesting. While the film was an excellent adaptation, there simply wasn’t enough time to get into the complexities of each character and the friendship that lasted their adults lives long.

Like Hornblower, Jack Aubery is a creature of the sea, a brilliant ship strategist and natural commander. Unlike Hornblower Jack is by nature rather…happily dense about just about everything that does not involve sailing. A trait that caused him much grief throughout his career. As one reviewer called him “Lion at sea, ass ashore Jack Aubery”. By nature is a good, simple man who greets the world with an open and upbeat heart and is rather shocked when he does not get the same in return…and he mixes his metaphors constantly, amusingly, often deliberately confused by his friend Stephen.

His diametric opposite. Stephen Maturin is the bastard child of an Irish Officer and a Catalan Lady. In other words, the child of two nations in rebellion. Stephen is intellectual, subtle, liberal and rather anti-social. He is also, and here the movie gave only one line hinting at it, a spy for the British Intelligence. A well-known naturalist trading his way to unstudied lands with his services as a doctor on his friend Capt. Aubery ships? It’s the perfect cover. He does work fermenting and assisting rebellion in French held Spanish held Catalan and later in the series South America. He is also, and here the film completely dropped the ball, a very deadly marksman and swordsman. Jack is brilliant in the heart of battle, but Stephen is the assassin.

And the only thing the two share in common is a love of music, which is how they met at a concert. Jack is an untrained virtuoso on the violin with Stephen barely keeping up with his cello. These two men share a remarkable friendship. It’s not they don’t drive each other bonkers on occasion, they do. At one point early on in the series they were quite estranged over a woman and I think at least once a book one get quite picqued with the other over some character flaw or trait they don’t understand.. It’s just how real the friendship feels, how real the characters become through it, that makes the series such a joy to read.

The only part people complain about is that O’Brien does not make many allowances for people who have never been around ships. Indeed, very few. Near the beginning of the first book, Master and Commander, there is a two page description of casting off and warping out of the harbor that can leave one completely bambollozed with nautical terms. If you keep reading, you learn enough contextually and through the scattered explanations to Stephen (who is a permanent “lubber”) to keep up with the story. But to get a fuller experience, it’s best to pick up the companion book Sea of Words which contains not only definitions, but chapters describing what was happening historically, as well as what the worlds of sail and medicine were like in the Napoleonic era.

Start with either Master and Commander or HMS Surprise. I like Surprise because the characters are established and allowed to breathe so there’s a natural humor that gently flows through the book.

* I may unduly slam writers of "lit-tri-Cha" at points and it's not necessarily because I feel their work artistically inferior (though in the case of Catcher in the Rye I most certainly do), but because of the way some of these books ares foisted on students in High School. Perhaps if people had been taught in Jr. High & High School that reading is actually fun by being given books they might actually enjoy, the country would be far more literate.

Window Shopping

While I am in a period of romantic abstinence (since I am leaving the state there really isn’t any point getting involved with anyone) I do enjoy men. Not merely hanging out with and talking to, but looking at.

Hubba

Hubba

Hubba.

But what about the butt?

Now, I have refrained from discussing Dale Earnhardt Jr. handsomeness because, quite frankly, every woman in the fan base does so and I didn’t want to be tiresome. What perplexes me is that an inordinate amount of the female fan base seems to be focused on Mr. Earnhardt’s hindquarters rather than other attractive parts of him, of which (all teasing aside) there are several. (If you count freckles, dozens, possibly hundreds)

While I understand the importance of a man being in shape from his lower back to his knees, I have never understood the female fascination with this area. I can’t think of any intimate situation where I would have to be looking directly at this part and tend to focus on the parts of the male anatomy I would be looking at/dealing with: face, chest, shoulders, and hands. Big square hands. And thighs. I do notice thighs.

Dale Jr. has beautiful eyes, narrow and predatory of a deep sea blue that draw a gal in despite themselves and Elliott Sadler has a great smile a woman would make a damn fool of herself for.

And on that note, best of luck to the 8 (and 81), the 38 and the 6 teams this weekend while they race under the lights at Bristol. Have a great time and a great race(s)! And Dale, I never worry about where you start, only where you end up. ;)

“Je dois partir maintenant par ce qu ma grand-mre est flambe.”