hedda62: (time travel)
hedda62 ([personal profile] hedda62) wrote2015-06-17 04:56 pm

shut up and dance

Update:

1) This video is the best thing ever.

2) Blog posts chez moi: the long one about race in my books, and the TAF outtake with Bernard as Sam Gamgee.

3) I'm doing some of the transcription on the Bulletin (see last post) now that my sister's done enough scanning for there to be work for two. The original text is typed on onionskin and sometimes a bit fuzzy; it comes through well enough in the PDFs that it can be copied into Word without excessive error, but there's still plenty to be fixed as one goes through. My favorite so far: COlllllUilications Officer.

My grandfather was a halfway decent writer. Here's an excerpt from what I transcribed yesterday:

I envy you these long September days. I will always associate this time of year with going back to school, end of summer, smell of new football jerseys, yellow leaves, goldenrod in the hedgerows, warm McIntosh apples, overripe, under the trees, and dusty country roads. It is the time of new departures, not fresh and intoxicated like Spring, but rather a change from old to new things, with the challenge of new problems, and the faint nostalgia of old ways changing. A quiet, thoughtful time of the year. This year, of all years, I would love to be home with you, but it looks more and more as if it were not going to be so.

4) I just want to note how grateful I am for the wonderful thing that is "Orphan Black." *shakes head endlessly over Tatiana Maslany*

5) Not so thrilled with "Hannibal" this season - art for artiness's sake just doesn't grab me. May just give up and not wait for there to be plot.

6) But we are finally watching "Leverage"! It is so fun, in a nostalgic summer-bingeing sort of way. Though we can't really binge, but occasionally there's been more than one episode at a time.

7) Also have watched (see 2 above) "The Book of Negroes," which I really liked. It made me want to say something about the power of - not cliches, but reiteration of the things everyone's heard before but that really need to be said, like the (slightly contrived but still good) scene where Aminata ends up in the same room as George Washington and asks him outright how he can believe in liberty and still own slaves. I had the same feeling on the day I wrote the post, hearing Anne Frank's words for the umpteenth time and still getting emotional over them. But most of the series is far from mere reiteration - it may not be a unique story but it's told with the cadence of a storyteller, grippingly. (Sort of research-relevant for me, or enough that I could get away with saying so.)

That's all for now. It's stinking hot here - we were almost the hottest place in the country yesterday, and I was outside all morning, yay.
philomytha: airplane flying over romantic castle (Default)

[personal profile] philomytha 2015-06-17 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, Leverage, we've been watching that too, and yes, just plain fun.

And I think I would have liked your grandfather.
enemyofperfect: a spray of orange leaves against a muted background (Default)

[personal profile] enemyofperfect 2015-06-18 09:44 am (UTC)(link)
That's an awesome quote from your grandfather.

And seriously, Maslany, isn't she just?
enemyofperfect: a spray of orange leaves against a muted background (Default)

[personal profile] enemyofperfect 2015-06-19 07:34 am (UTC)(link)
Yes! Sometimes I remember not to be unduly impressed when one of them does a particularly good job of impersonating another, but every time I see pictures from an Orphan Black panel, I think, wait, where are the rest of them?
enemyofperfect: a spray of orange leaves against a muted background (Default)

[personal profile] enemyofperfect 2015-06-20 05:55 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, absolutely. I'm still not over the layers of Sarah-as-Rachel earlier this season, with not only the facade of Rachel and the hints of Sarah inadvertently showing through, but also Sarah's own real emotions successfully presented as Rachel's and used to advantage. Maslany is just -- I don't even know.