Eccentric Flower talk:201007/Consider the Lobster
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201007/Consider the Lobster
See, I didn't perceive anything in that entry as being anything close to poking folks with a pointy stick at all. *I* got poked with the pointy stick a fair bit in it, but not so much everyone else. Or did I somehow fail to make clear how very much I consider most of the interaction problems here to be the direct result of my own neuroses?
-- 02:43, 29 July 2010 (BST)
Or, put more concisely, it annoys me to write an entry which I perceive as being about "what the hell I'm doing wrong here and why I likely won't ever be able to fix it" and then be told that I should stop slamming everybody else.
-- 02:45, 29 July 2010 (BST)
Kubrick made a couple-few excellent movies and the rest are, I agree, rather overrated.
I was raised without any appreciation for poetry, and it's been slow going for me to learn that on my own, so I have little to say about SF poetry.
And I disagree with you about the intrinsic horribleness of the human race, and especially about the horribleness of men over women (most of the worst people I've ever worked for/with were female), but believe me, I do not have nearly enough energy to spend on a discussion about it. Wouldn't change anything anyway.
I prefer crawfish to lobsters; they are easier for me to deal with and eat. However, I consider that a regional thing; if I'd grown up in Lobster Country instead of Crawfish Central I might feel different.
-- 02:47, 29 July 2010 (BST)
I have a small personal fantasy of bring all the people raised in Lobster Country down to Crawfish Country and showing them, "Here, try this; this is what your lobster would taste like if it actually had any flavor."
-- 02:49, 29 July 2010 (BST)
Also, I want to know what you consider to be Kubrick's excellent movies.
-- 02:53, 29 July 2010 (BST)
Paths of Glory and A Clockwork Orange. Oh, all right, Dr. Strangelove is pretty darned good too, although I would not call it a masterpiece or anything.
Couldn't make it more than 20 minutes through "Lolita" before I shut it off in disgust, although that may have less to do with Kubrick and more to do with a fervent love for the source material. Can't seem to get interested enough in "2001" to watch the whole thing. Hated "The Shining." Watched bits of "Eyes Wide Shut" and bleah.
Admittedly, I haven't seen "Barry Lyndon" or "Full Metal Jacket" and perhaps they are stupendously awesome. But I can't get all that excited about Kubrick.
-- 03:44, 29 July 2010 (BST)
I haven't seen Full Metal Jacket either and like you I reserve the possibility that it is secretly awesome. I mostly wanted to see if you would put 2001 on the list, in which case we could have a fun little spat. I think bits of Kubrick movies are brilliant, even iconic - but the one that holds up as a overall thing of brilliance from start to finish is A Clockwork Orange. That said, it is a hard movie to watch; and if we are talking in terms of voting with our dollars, the only Kubrick I actually own - and the only Kubrick I feel an impulse to watch over and over at intervals - is Dr. Strangelove.
-- 04:25, 29 July 2010 (BST)
"Oh, I'm sorry; this is Abuse. Argument is down the hall."
Lobster runs afoul of the rules against eating anything that looks like it what it looked like alive, and against eating anything I wouldn't touch when it was alive. You're dead on when you say it's conceptually like eating a bug.
Paths of Glory, Strangelove, Clockwork, Shining, yes. 2001, sort of. Barry Lydon, ok. FMJ, awesome first half, "You are so selfish, Soldier, that if you were fucking me in the ass, you would not even give me the common courtesy of a reach-around"; should have stopped and never done the second half. Legs Wide Open and AI -- the horror, the horror.
-- 11:34, 29 July 2010 (BST)
Joy:
I loved this sentence: what really separates us from the lobsters is this lone fact, that we are willing and able to believe that we are better than lobsters. For some reason the word lobsters highlights some absurdity there.
I kind of hate lobster. Well, no, it is too bland to hate, and as a butter delivery device it is fine, but I was always sympathetic to the scene in Mystic Pizza where Julia Robert's character is amused at her boyfriend's tony family bringing out the fancy lobster, when she comes from the portugese lobster-fishing side of town where it is eaten every night and kind of boring and gross as a result.
I've always thought strict vegetarians, and ohmygod vegans, were total hypocrites. Or just unbearable if there was a smug earnestness behind it all, a moral highground being taken. I was a vegetarian for 8 years, but it wasn't for moral reasons but rather ecological/health-related ones, and I actually did eat seafood during that time because there seemed to be (this was the late 80s, early 90s) fewer ecological issues with it (i.e., I wasn't much worried about how the fish felt, and I was careful to not eat from endangered populations).
-- 15:01, 29 July 2010 (BST)
Joy:
I've gotten to the point where I just don't understand. Or can't take it. You want a conversation, but only about what you want, and if we pick something else then that is depressing or if we disagree it is debilitating, and who the hell cares anyway since everything is going to hell in a handbasket anyway, and it possibly only makes sense to you and you realize that but can't help it. I think you just effectively got rid of me, which plays nicely into the empty house.
-- 21:23, 29 July 2010 (BST)
I was born in walleye country, and I still will order crawdad gleefully and lobster only reluctantly.
I don't think this is the only comment worth making on this entry. But it's the one I have enough energy to make right now.
-- 22:32, 29 July 2010 (BST)
"once you cross that Rubicon, my goal is to leave you with your house burned down, your car destroyed, your fields laid waste and sown with salt, nothing left of your hair and clothing but smoke and a bad scorched smell."
See, I haven't been around that long, relative to most of your other faithful readers, but I instinctively picked up on the above, so much so that I was terrified to pipe up with anything you might consider even mildly argumentative, or, worse yet, inane. Did not dare comment for quite some time. Once I timidly put my toe in the water and found that you maybe weren't the cynical, scathing elitist I feared, I haven't hesitated to throw in the occasional comment. Especially when you run roughshod over something dear to my heart, like, f'rinstance, being able to keep all my money and do whatever I choose with it, versus being obligated to share the wealth, as it were. We've had a few go-rounds about that. I know I'll never change your mind, but you're at least willing to acknowledge that there could be another opinion, however misguided.
I am always out here reading your posts. I'm not well-enough read to participate in very many of your topics, but appreciate your use of language and your obviously passionate opinions (however misguided?)
I've never thought lobster was worth the effort, never mind the cost. I much prefer crab, although I have to say that I let somebody else do the shelling. Not sure I've ever had crawfish. John Besh makes it look inviting, but I still don't think I could bite off one's head. I remember the day somebody--was it Martha Stewart?--cooked a lobster on the Today Show and Katie Couric about had a stroke. Heard about the controversy for weeks afterward.
When I was a kid my mom took us to her home town of Chassal, in the Jura Mountains of France. Across the alley from my aunt's house was a butcher shop. Nosy little me watched in horrified fascination as the butcher scraped the bristles off of a live, squalling hog, thrashing around in a vat of hot water. Then he proceeded to hang it upside-down, slash its throat and catch the blood to make blood pudding, then butcher the critter, occasionally stopping to sharpen his knife, then sticking the sharpening stone back into the hog til he needed it again. Even at that tender age (eleven, I think) I realized that this had to happen if we were going to have pork roast and bacon. It never entered my mind to consider not eating pigs. I wouldn't make a very effective PETA member.
-- 23:06, 29 July 2010 (BST)
I do not know how to email you. Maybe I can find you on your LJ Profile page. For what it's worth, part of the reason I so enjoy your site has been the commentary, because you have incredibly intelligent, interesting friends. I'll miss that.
-- 02:44, 30 July 2010 (BST)
a) I've known you for more than half my life. That means that you can't scare me away so easily.
b) I like lobster. But the problem with it is that lobster is also an east-coast animal. I used to be enthusiastic about lobster when I lived in New York, but I had one once in Portland and it was deeply disappointing. I'm told that lobsters don't travel terribly well, so I only order it on the east coast, because I'd rather have something local and fresh and wonderful. And rarely do I have the opportunity to order it when I *am* on the east coast.
Regarding bugs, that's a cultural bias, because other cultures consider bugs to be a delicacy. I have not tried bugs personally, but I have heard that some are tasty. I could possibly be convinced to try some if they were cooked nicely.
c) I am starting to have trouble with the concept of eating octopus, and especially iidako. The thought of having to explain to an octopus that yes I have eaten many of their babies because I like the way the babies' heads crunch... well, there is absolutely no way to say that without sounding like a monster. Though octopi are carnivorous, so perhaps they would understand perfectly. I don't want them to decide that that makes it okay to eat human babies, though.
c) I would have been happy to have a discussion trading snippet of SF poetry (though really I'm out of practice and I have more fun with puns and doggerel). but it can't happen here because of the lack of notification (which is a discussion repeated elsewhere many times). I'm not going to sit here and refresh obsessively, especially on a pretty summer afternoon when there are errands to run (It could happen on Twitter but then I need to start checking twitter again). But now you say I am complaining about the location of the gallery (which leads into a complaint about the amenities, and the color of the paint on the walls) when I should be discussing the art in the gallery. And you are not wrong. But I have a limited amount of time and energy to spend in front of a computer and so I go with the one topic that captures my fancy. There might be meatier and more interesting topics that take more time and energy, but I don't always make good on my promise to get back to those later. Such is life.
-- 07:45, 30 July 2010 (BST)
I'm not going to sit here and refresh obsessively, especially on a pretty summer afternoon when there are errands to run [...] I have a limited amount of time and energy to spend in front of a computer and so I go with the one topic that captures my fancy.
And that's absolutely valid and correct and just and so on. I don't blame you for that at all.
For what it's worth, the hidden boobytrap on the SF Poetry entry was that discussion of whether this was a Boy-Related Problem was apparently in the "this will get me annoyed because I think it's so self-evident" category, but I didn't realize that when I wrote it. More on this in the next comment.
-- 16:17, 30 July 2010 (BST)
Because I refuse to post yet another entry about this.
Aet wrote to say:
And I replied:
This is exactly the point I was trying to make. The list IS baffling; there is no way anyone outside my head could reasonably be expected to guess well what is safe and what isn't. It makes me aware that I have been playing a game with readers which they can't possibly win, and that's not fair to them.
That's the bottom line here. If by this point you still aren't clear what this is about - and judging from the offscreen comments I've gotten, some people weren't - this is it. I don't feel right continuing to throw a rigged game at you. If this journal is primarily a place for me to work out my issues, then that needs to be done without encouraging you to try to have a conversation and fail because I create unwinnable rules. On the other hand, if this journal is primarily a place to share and discuss interesting things, then I need to stop using it for therapy. Since I don't believe I can accomplish the latter now, or soon, or possibly ever, it's time to opt for the former.
-- 16:22, 30 July 2010 (BST)
Bunny: Go here. I don't stress it anywhere else because I happen to know spammers spider this site occasionally (because I get garbage requests for user accounts).
-- 16:28, 30 July 2010 (BST)
Memo to Bunny: My reply to your email bounced. AT&T thinks you are a spammer; that seems to be the point in the chain where it was "blocked for abuse." (In an unrelated story, AT&T are dicks.)
-- 21:57, 1 August 2010 (BST)
As the person who visibly tripped that boobytrap (please correct me if I'm wrong), I'd like to say:
a) I agree. Screamingly obviously a masculinity problem.
b) I don't mind being told that I've tripped a boobytrap. *That* is how you make the rigged game fair. It's like playing Mao, which can be a perfectly enjoyable game: toss us a penalty card and less us guess again.
c) I apologize. I was aiming for light-hearted familiarity and presumed too much.
d) I'll miss the salon here, too. You provide the best discussion prompts anywhere in my regular reading, and I'm constantly aware of how much more time I'd like to spend responding, if I weren't, you know, snatching minutes while working. I could list three major topics I'd like to talk about in this entry instead of the fact that you're cutting off comments. I enjoy my fellow commenters, even the ones who I've gone head-to-head with in the past.
Would it be easier on your stage fright* for me to start a new LJ and mirror your public posts, so that we could discuss in absentia? I could do you the favor of not letting you know where it happens.
Then we'd have reply notification (yay!) and threaded comments (boo!) again.
*"Stage fright" isn't quite right, I think: maybe something more like "performance recursion deadlock."
-- 17:16, 2 August 2010 (BST)
1. Actually it wasn't you; I took your comment in the light-hearted spirit in which it was intended.
2. I think if you started a discussion area elsewhere you would find it didn't get much in the way of responses. This is not a challenge to try it!
3. I had never heard of that card game.
4. Speaking of commenting on things outside this particular mess, I hope you enjoyed the stories!
-- 22:06, 2 August 2010 (BST)
I know I certainly enjoyed the stories. Would love to know how you can use what I would assume to be a copyrighted, already-existing character in your own story. I should already know this, as I was, for many years, tasked with enforcing copyright law, such as it is. But I don't. I loved what you did with Ernst, I just didn't think that was kosher.
As for the visitation scenario, I don't want to think about a more negative ending. I thought this one was pretty much of a downer. Beautifully done, though. It's as if I were there.
I'm being naughty, here and commenting. But the email snafu has me flummoxed.
-- 03:19, 3 August 2010 (BST)
Under the circumstances, putting unrelated comments under here is understandable (I still haven't tried a second round of test emails, but I will.)
Use of copyrighted characters is a whole huge can of worms that you can, I'm sure, find extended debate about in any reasonably large fanfic community. My personal policy is that if you want to use someone else's characters and you're not making any money from it or passing them off as your original work, then I'm usually okay with it. (I may wonder why you're not just making up characters of your own, but I won't consider you exploitative or a thief. Usually.)
I didn't spell out explicitly that Blofeld isn't mine, but I don't think I needed to here - I believe all the people likely to read that story would know immediately what they were dealing with (they'd better, or they won't get it!) Kevin McClory would probably demand a royalty, but he's dead, and I'd just tell him it was parody anyway.
I think the ending to "The Visitation Room" is actually quite upbeat. I'd explain why, but years ago I adopted the rule of never trying to interpret one's own fiction for others, and it's a good rule and I try to stick to it.
-- 16:59, 3 August 2010 (BST)
Sean explained to me about fanfic. I'd heard of it, but didn't realize it encompassed using existing characters. He theorized, as you did, that most authors wouldn't worry much about it, as long as you weren't making money from it. He's reading a Harry Potter site that apparently has thousands of readers, so it must not be a question of far-reaching influence; rather, it matters whether or not you can or do profit from it.
I re-read the ending, and I suppose I could see a glimmer of optimism in it. He was, after all, still visiting in case he was all she had going for her. Once he found out he was wrong, then he could move on. I was thrown by his withdrawal after he visited the last time. He seemed pretty bummed. But,hey, if she's that happy and content in hell, then there's hope for us all, right?
I still don't know who Fairlyn represents, as she seems to be more than just a fellow coworker, but you don't have to elaborate, if you'd rather not.
From what I've gleaned from various fora, even gmail filters in weird and wonderful ways, so I'd just as well stay with the Death Star. Sean suggested that perhaps all of Comcast's IP addresses might not be blacklisted, and it's a crap shoot as to which server you get with each email. Maybe if you try again, you'll get past that particular gateway. If they can blacklist the whole Navy, their settings are way too high, wouldn't you agree?
I could try contacting bellsouth from my end, but I'd need to know which IP address they're blocking, if it is, in fact, ATT doing it. You could let Sean know privately. Fortunately, he runs his own greylist daemon, so no worries for you there!
-- 18:22, 3 August 2010 (BST)
The question of the optimism of the ending becomes far more open when you ask which of the two unnamed protagonists is actually working through the process of redemption.
Comcast is vile. The interesting thing is that they are just the transmission medium for me (they provide my broadband, but my mail should, properly, only be touched/filtered by my ISP, which is on the West Coast and has nothing to do with Comcast at all), so they're putting their fingers in where they're not wanted. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can tell them to lay off.
-- 19:26, 3 August 2010 (BST)
It's always a pleasure to read something new in your fiction section.
This time around, I felt like I was reading through a bit of an obscuring mist, mostly from getting a bad start that set the mood: I'm not very familiar with the Bond mythos. I had to look up Blofield on Wikipedia to verify that it was in that universe, although I was pretty sure that it was going to be either Holmes or Bond when I started. I did very much enjoy the other Bondfic you posted, and I enjoyed picking up that this one was a Fortunate Fall story even if I couldn't appreciate the references as nicely.
I thought the happy ending of "The Visitation Room" was satisfying and well-earned. A couple of details on the way there remain puzzling.
-- 20:02, 3 August 2010 (BST)
Patrick:
I'm honestly curious about this -- if you want to steer conversation towards the topics you want to discuss, why is it that you insist on writing these in-your-face entries about just how difficult it is to interact with the people you invite to read and comment on your journal?
You always get mad when you do this, but then you do it again and again, and have for years. I think there's some part of you that really wants these discussions, because you're far too smart to keep poking at us with this particular pointy stick and expect us to suddenly decide to talk about novelty songs, you know?
-- 02:38, 29 July 2010 (BST)