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Nov. 27th, 2011 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreThings:
- Today, we are celebrating my birthday! (Since I was on a plane for much of the actual day.) There will be pizza and swashbuckling movies, one of which has Christopher Lee as a pirate! And also tangerine cake! (In my house, not in the movie with Christopher Lee the pirate. I believe he is a French pirate, also.) And it is blustering quite nicely outside and I have sock knitting to do while we watch and basically, today is ideal.
- Speaking of Christopher Lee. A little while ago, I watched The Devil Rides Out and found it to be quite entertaining, so now I am reading the book. The movie seems to have removed all the racism (well, sort of, since they managed this mostly by removing all the people who weren't white, which doesn't really count) and added a heaping helping of Christianity. Well, I haven't gotten to the end of the book, so I don't know if it ends like the movie, where the Satanist temple falls down to reveal a giant glowing cross. But we've had a conversation about how Jesus fits into the general narrative of Ascended Masters Who Teach the Ways of the Light, like Buddha and various other people. So that's kind of pleasant - I don't mind Christianity, but I dislike being bludgeoned with it. Of course, we've also had to talk about how Voodoo is Allied With the Powers of Darkness. No, Dennis Wheatley. No.
(There is also a ridiculously uncomfortable and yet kinda hilarious bit towards the beginning. So, in the movie, our heroes rescue their friend Simon from becoming a Satanist and leave him asleep in bed with a cross around his neck for protection. All well and good, though Satanists are not vampires. Well, in the book, Simon is explicitly Jewish. And I got to that part and I'm all "Okay, well, putting a cross on him is going to be kind of awkward." Only they don't. Instead, the Duc de Richleau pulls out a little golden swastika necklace. At which point, I hastily checked the copyright date, found that it said 1935, came back, and noted that the characters were indeed talking about how it was awkward to have a Jewish guy wearing a Nazi symbol. It was like tension - relief - NO THAT IS SO MUCH WORSE WHAT ARE YOU DOING.)
I am hoping that the book will give some much needed backstory that the movie lacked. Mostly, I want to know why the hell Simon wants to be a Satanist in the first place. There must be a reason, but the movie doesn't go into it. Also, I am hoping that the Satanists will do something actually evil some time before the halfway point, because they don't in the movie. Now, mostly, I realize this is a matter of perspective but when the most evil thing you do for half a movie is sacrifice a goat and threaten to sacrifice some chickens then I, as a member of a religion that also practices animal sacrifice, am not going to be all that scared. The goat appeared to have been killed cleanly and humanely, and I assume the animals were legally acquired. What the hell do I care what you do with them beyond that? (In fact, for much of the movie I was all "Okay, so you kidnapped a guy out of his religious initiation because you don't approve and now you're interrupting what you know to be their most important religious ceremony of the year by kidnapping people again and defiling their sacred things. Yeah, I would be pissed too." And then the Satanists started actually killing people and trying to sacrifice children, at which point I was no longer on their side.)
I am enjoying the book, because it does exciting pulp things and I do love pulp things - I love fist fights and car chases and ridiculous explanations of the occult by Wise Old Men who look like Christopher Lee and secret international Satanist covens that actually manage to summon demons and good upright men with names like Rex heartily punching people for justice. I wish the things I love were not so intimately coupled with horrible racism. It's like the time I tried to read Sax Rohmer. Sax Rohmer writes incredibly exciting things - his books just whip along and the tension is awesome - and then he smacks you in the face with The Yellow Peril. Ick. I couldn't manage more than a chapter or two and, y'know, I read Lovecraft. All the time. (Though I do occasionally feel I should apologize for it.) Reading pulp is hard, you guys.
- Also, while in Santa Barbara, I read the first Hilary Tamar novel, which was recommended to me back when I asked for new mystery novels. It was hilarious and terribly entertaining and I may have ordered the other four used on amazon. (This is an idiosyncratic thing but it heightened my enjoyment: I am not a visual thinker, so I don't visualize things much when I read, but I do fairly clearly hear the character voices in my head. And I was watching a lot of Blakes 7 before starting this novel. So, for whatever reason my brain decided that everything Hilary says - including all the narration - should be read by Paul Darrow. Totally awesome. I hope it continues for the other three books.)
- I am almost halfway done with my Christmas knitting. Unfortunately, the rest of it is for a person who lives in this house, which means that I can't work on it while watching tv with other people. Which means I get to work on more socks for me in public, and secret knitting in private or while on breaks at work. 8)
- I am really looking forward to that tangerine cake.
- Today, we are celebrating my birthday! (Since I was on a plane for much of the actual day.) There will be pizza and swashbuckling movies, one of which has Christopher Lee as a pirate! And also tangerine cake! (In my house, not in the movie with Christopher Lee the pirate. I believe he is a French pirate, also.) And it is blustering quite nicely outside and I have sock knitting to do while we watch and basically, today is ideal.
- Speaking of Christopher Lee. A little while ago, I watched The Devil Rides Out and found it to be quite entertaining, so now I am reading the book. The movie seems to have removed all the racism (well, sort of, since they managed this mostly by removing all the people who weren't white, which doesn't really count) and added a heaping helping of Christianity. Well, I haven't gotten to the end of the book, so I don't know if it ends like the movie, where the Satanist temple falls down to reveal a giant glowing cross. But we've had a conversation about how Jesus fits into the general narrative of Ascended Masters Who Teach the Ways of the Light, like Buddha and various other people. So that's kind of pleasant - I don't mind Christianity, but I dislike being bludgeoned with it. Of course, we've also had to talk about how Voodoo is Allied With the Powers of Darkness. No, Dennis Wheatley. No.
(There is also a ridiculously uncomfortable and yet kinda hilarious bit towards the beginning. So, in the movie, our heroes rescue their friend Simon from becoming a Satanist and leave him asleep in bed with a cross around his neck for protection. All well and good, though Satanists are not vampires. Well, in the book, Simon is explicitly Jewish. And I got to that part and I'm all "Okay, well, putting a cross on him is going to be kind of awkward." Only they don't. Instead, the Duc de Richleau pulls out a little golden swastika necklace. At which point, I hastily checked the copyright date, found that it said 1935, came back, and noted that the characters were indeed talking about how it was awkward to have a Jewish guy wearing a Nazi symbol. It was like tension - relief - NO THAT IS SO MUCH WORSE WHAT ARE YOU DOING.)
I am hoping that the book will give some much needed backstory that the movie lacked. Mostly, I want to know why the hell Simon wants to be a Satanist in the first place. There must be a reason, but the movie doesn't go into it. Also, I am hoping that the Satanists will do something actually evil some time before the halfway point, because they don't in the movie. Now, mostly, I realize this is a matter of perspective but when the most evil thing you do for half a movie is sacrifice a goat and threaten to sacrifice some chickens then I, as a member of a religion that also practices animal sacrifice, am not going to be all that scared. The goat appeared to have been killed cleanly and humanely, and I assume the animals were legally acquired. What the hell do I care what you do with them beyond that? (In fact, for much of the movie I was all "Okay, so you kidnapped a guy out of his religious initiation because you don't approve and now you're interrupting what you know to be their most important religious ceremony of the year by kidnapping people again and defiling their sacred things. Yeah, I would be pissed too." And then the Satanists started actually killing people and trying to sacrifice children, at which point I was no longer on their side.)
I am enjoying the book, because it does exciting pulp things and I do love pulp things - I love fist fights and car chases and ridiculous explanations of the occult by Wise Old Men who look like Christopher Lee and secret international Satanist covens that actually manage to summon demons and good upright men with names like Rex heartily punching people for justice. I wish the things I love were not so intimately coupled with horrible racism. It's like the time I tried to read Sax Rohmer. Sax Rohmer writes incredibly exciting things - his books just whip along and the tension is awesome - and then he smacks you in the face with The Yellow Peril. Ick. I couldn't manage more than a chapter or two and, y'know, I read Lovecraft. All the time. (Though I do occasionally feel I should apologize for it.) Reading pulp is hard, you guys.
- Also, while in Santa Barbara, I read the first Hilary Tamar novel, which was recommended to me back when I asked for new mystery novels. It was hilarious and terribly entertaining and I may have ordered the other four used on amazon. (This is an idiosyncratic thing but it heightened my enjoyment: I am not a visual thinker, so I don't visualize things much when I read, but I do fairly clearly hear the character voices in my head. And I was watching a lot of Blakes 7 before starting this novel. So, for whatever reason my brain decided that everything Hilary says - including all the narration - should be read by Paul Darrow. Totally awesome. I hope it continues for the other three books.)
- I am almost halfway done with my Christmas knitting. Unfortunately, the rest of it is for a person who lives in this house, which means that I can't work on it while watching tv with other people. Which means I get to work on more socks for me in public, and secret knitting in private or while on breaks at work. 8)
- I am really looking forward to that tangerine cake.
