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[personal profile] robotnik2004
"See all that stuff inside, Homer? That's why your robot never worked!"

A quiet Sunday reading the paper, and books, and other nonelectronic things, and copying Season 2 of MI-5 from TiVo to VHS for [livejournal.com profile] jeregenest, who was in a scary and freakish and random accident. It sounds like he's going to be OK, mercifully, but he will, I assume, be convalescing for a while. (On reflection, odds are good that Jere's already seen the MI-5s, but it's nice to have a project.)

I was amused by this quote in the Sunday Book Review:

Here's the problem with 'Write what you know': What too many aspiring writers know, it turns out, is that a suburban American adolescence causes vague feelings of sadness—especially when one's formative years include a dying grandparent or housepet.

Yes, indeed. Substitute "Canadian" for "American" in that sentence and I know that problem all too well. (See, Homer? That's why my novel never worked...) The review in question goes on to say "It's the lucky writer whose story is familiar to himself and exotic to his readers," which then made me think of The Russian Debutante's Handbook, a bit of a trendy must-read novel a few years ago that I had somehow missed. L gave it to me over the holidays, and it was great. Highly recommended. One of the funniest books I've read in a long time. The feckless Gen-X hipsters therein reminded me an awful lot of me and my own friends in the PC 1990s, at least until the Russian mob shows up and starts breaking their kneecaps. That didn't happen to me and my friends as far as I can recall. (See how my uneventful Canadian adolescence has prevented me from being a literary prodigy? Oh the pain.)

I posted another rambling essay today about Ben Franklin and the Turk and 18th-century robotica over at my big boy website. Halfway through that post I mention that I have "another cool anecdote about the Imperial Academy of Science in St. Petersburg in the 1700s that I want to tell you." I know, I know, most people would be content with just one such anecdote in their life, but you are blessed with me as a friend, so you might as well enjoy it. Check this shit out: Peter the Great, Tsar from 1682 to 1725, was a passionate collector of monsters. In the 1690s, he began assembling a collection of anatomical and zoological monstrosities and abnormalities, living and dead. In 1704, he ordered that midwives throughout Russia were strictly forbidden to kill or hide newborn children with deformations. All "monstrous" births were to be turned over to the clergy, who would deliver them to his Cabinet of Monsters in St. Petersberg. After Peter's death in 1725, the Cabinet came under control of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.

"Cabinet of Monsters." Nice ring to that. Well, I doubt I have to tell you what I'm thinking: If those "monsters" were not giants and hermaphrodites and hydrocephalic kids but actually, you know, monsters... you could have a crazy 1700s Russian League of Extraordinary Gentlemen adventure, or some very cool backstory for the Russian version of the BPRD in a certain long-threatened Soviet Hellboy Delta Green game.

What else? Oh yes. [livejournal.com profile] bryant's Best Movies of 2004 post is up, which is great, and relieves me of having to write one. I spent a lot of 2004 passing off a combination of Bryant and Anthony Lane's opinions about movies as my own, so it seems appropriate to just link to his Best Of list now. My only gripes with his list? I'd drop Sky Captain. I found it dull and disappointing, and I can't help thinking that caffeine and a sense that "I should like this" is deluding Bryant and my other geek chums who still champion the film. And where is the love for Napoleon Dynamite? But other than that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Date: 2005-01-10 12:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mgrasso.livejournal.com
[livejournal.com profile] princeofcairo's Suppressed Transmission this week was on the Turk.

Date: 2005-01-10 12:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robotnik.livejournal.com
ARG! Gabbo!

I hadn't read it yet.

Smithers! Garbo is coming!

Date: 2005-01-10 12:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mgrasso.livejournal.com
That old grey mare? She ain't what she used to be. :)

Seriously, I thought it was another odd example of [livejournal.com profile] robotnik/[livejournal.com profile] princeofcairo synchronicity.

Hey, we should do Delta Green this week if DM doesn't work out.

Re: Smithers! Garbo is coming!

Date: 2005-01-10 12:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jeffwik.livejournal.com
I wanted to ask about DM, what with the crisis of legbreaking and all.

Date: 2005-01-10 01:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robotnik.livejournal.com
Oh wow, I hadn't thought about it. I am/was very much looking forward to DM but obviously Jess is not going to be available this week (& perhaps for a while thereafter?). But let's take that discussion to private mail.

Date: 2005-01-10 09:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] princeofcairo.livejournal.com
I had a very confused trail leading from the Turk to Melies and the first motion pictures, via an American stage magician, Maskelyne's Egyptian Hall, and Pepper's Ghost, but I had to junk it because it didn't make any sense even to me.

But the Maskelynes have not escaped me -- I'll get them, with their astronomy and their invisible battleships and their whist-playing, poetry-writing robots.

Date: 2005-01-10 10:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robotnik.livejournal.com
I had a very confused trail leading from the Turk to Melies and the first motion pictures, via an American stage magician, Maskelyne's Egyptian Hall, and Pepper's Ghost, but I had to junk it because it didn't make any sense even to me.

Well that would have been a neat trip, but I can see that the column, which was swell of course, was full up already. Have you ever done anything with the mechanist John Merlin? Seems like a natural. I love the image of him roller-skating through 1790s London, giving people electrical shocks.

But the Maskelynes have not escaped me -- I'll get them, with their astronomy and their invisible battleships and their whist-playing, poetry-writing robots.

Not to mention vanishing the Suez Canal and being a bunch of islands in the South Pacific for some reason.

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