Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:45 PM

I've got this quote running through my head, and I can't remember where it comes from. Does anybody recognize it?

I thought... I thought --
You didn't think at all, it was just spite!

Googling's getting me nothing. Can anybody help me place this? Thanks.

Added later: I think it's coming back to me. I think this may have been from the 1970s animated version of The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Does that match with anybody else's recollections?

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:20 PM

Thanks to Free Screenings, this week I managed to get free advance passes to two films I've been wanting to see: Alexander (on Nov. 23) and Finding Neverland this coming Wednesday.

Each movie pass is good for two people. Problem is, Ian will be at rehearsal Wednesday night. Anybody in the Boston area interested in seeing Finding Neverland with me Wednesday night 7pm at the Loews Boston Common? It's a biopic of J.M. Barrie revolving around the writing of Peter Pan. And it stars Johnny Depp...

Any takers?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:36 AM

Far be it from me, an avid reader of Harry Potter fanfiction, to scoff at other people's fandoms. But I was a bit weirded out to discover people are reading/writing Good Omens slash. After all, the characters in question are ethereal beings, not physical sexual ones. [He's an angel. He's a demon. Together they fight Armageddon!]

But last night I started rereading the book again for the first time in gd knows how long. And the passage I was thinking about didn't quite say what I thought:

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.

Okay, so I guess the key to GO slashfic is making them want to make the effort. And I suppose I could buy that demons, for whom temptation is part of the job description, may be more sexual.

Still. I feel somewhat iffy about it. Not in a squick/YKINOK manner, but just doubtful whether I'd actually want to read any of it.

I don't recall precisely when I discovered Good Omens, but it was shortly around the time I graduated college; I think slightly afterwards (any of my old college friends reading this remember? I know I pushed copies on lots of you). My primary copy is a first edition / first printing American hardcover -- not that I was seeking out such things, it's just that's when I bought it. I used to have a copy of the trade paperback as a lending edition so I wouldn't be without my own copy. [That vanished somewhere along the way.] And I bought an extra copy to donate to the Brandeis SF library. And for well over a decade, I called Good Omens my all-time favorite book, partly because no matter how often I reread it, it had the ability to make me laugh every time.

So I've been a fan of the book for a long time, even if I hadn't read it in a while.

But while I was in fandom at that time, I wasn't part of fanfic-fandom (ficdom?), so never really thought about it in those terms before.

Anyway, if you're curious about Good Omens slashfic, wayfairer has been soliciting recommendations, so you can probably find good stuff through there. That's probably where I'll go after I finish this rereading.

Also, if you do like Good Omens, and are looking for another enjoyable book on the same theme (a group of strange-rs try to prevent a biblical apocalypse), check out Before and After by Matthew Thomas, which has a similar subject and tone.

In tangentially related fangeekery, may I recommend for your reading pleasure the LiveJournal community known as Idol Reflection. It's a place for character studies and essays on various characters throughout various fandoms. I already plugged the Percy Weasley essay; as someone who's only seen about half of Smallville, the portrait of Lex was eye-opening. According to their schedule, next week will include character essays from Firefly, The Sentinel, Homicide, Highlander and X-Files. Some pretty interesting stuff.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:50 PM

Trying to get away from the standard exaggeratedly-divisive red-blue map, several people have pointed to electoral maps using shades of red & blue (in other words, purple) to more accurately reflect the vote. You can view this by state or by county. Others have pointed to cartograms, where states have been resized proportional to population, which look like so. Both forms give a more balanced view of the country.

Claudia has combined the two: a proportional map of the states showing shades of purple. We're really not that different after all:

If the image does not display, follow this link.

And isn't that a pretty color scheme?

Before the election, the Boston Globe had an article on recent books about past elections: 1800, 1816, 1826, 1831, 1876 and 1912. Not ones that commonly get covered in the history classes. It may be worth a look to put things in perspective. From the article:

John Ferling, in his splendid book on the Adams- Jefferson showdown of 1800, makes it difficult to take seriously all the hand-wringing about "negative campaigning" circa 2004: Jefferson's Federalist foes described him as "a howling atheist," the "head of the French party in America" -- this at a time when war with France appeared imminent -- and, for good measure, the "greatest villain in existence."
A less obvious, but more profound, parallel is the recurring theme of deep anxiety about America's future. One of the salient points of Ferling's book is the extent to which Jefferson's victory was driven by fears that the legacy of the American Revolution had been squandered -- already!

When I stopped by the library this evening to return an item due today, I went looking for some of these. I didn't find them, but did finally pick up a copy of What's the matter with Kansas?: how conservatives won the heart of America, which I've seen so heavily recommended. Now, before anybody gets the wrong impression from the title, the wrongness he's asking about is why Kansans have been voting against their own economic interests. But I do not believe it is an attack on the people or party.

I also picked up Freedom just around the corner: a new American history, 1585-1828 out of curiousity. I don't expect to read it in its entirety, but I was intrigued by an American history that actually starts with the Elizabethan explorers. And there's nothing like history to lend a little perspective to current events.

Added later: Claudia has found further maps, including one which shows votes as color and voter density as brightness. Again, provides a different perspective to the election results.

Added even later: I have since found county-by-county cartograms showing the difference in votes. FYI.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:18 PM

By the way, Regency House Party on PBS is really really good. It's a LARP! Seriously! All the guests have been given personas -- partly based upon their modern selves, but characters nonetheless, complete with little booklets explaining their backgrounds and social status. And those and the class-based social constraints are doing quite a good job at keeping them in character.

I've thought for a while that the Reality TV craze would be a natural for LARPers, and this really seems to be a demonstration of that. It's a nine-week romance LARP, with each character's goal to make the right match.

It's also amazingly cool how well-cast the program is. [OMG! The woman they got as hostess is simply perfect! A former debutante now in her 60s(?) who feels very very strongly about manners. And how about recruiting a Regency romance novelist as one of the chaperones?] And also how quickly the men fell right into their roles. They weren't there six hours before they were all drinking and gambling with a perfectly period devil-may-care attitude. It was truly delightful to watch. [Even Ian enjoyed himself.]

If you can still catch the first episode, to get acquainted with the characters, I strongly recommend it. I'm not sure how many episodes the program has in total, but I'm really looking forward to seeing how all this turns out.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:35 PM

So, I finally watched Ian McKellan's Richard III from a library DVD. Is it sacreligeous for me to say I preferred the Actors' Shakespeare Project version I saw last month?

For one thing, McKellan & Loncraine cut some of the funnier bits, such as the comic assassins (and if you haven't seen "Bloody Deed" in Freestyle Shakespeare, I can't plug it enough. I don't want to hurt their ticket sales, but I'm sorely tempted to ask permission to digitize it and share it widely. Trust me, you'll laugh outloud at Michael Anderson's interpretation of the scene). They also eliminated the Dowager Queen and her curses, giving some of them paradoxically enough to Richard's mother (played by Maggie Smith for you Harry Potter fans). And despite some reviewers' criticism, there definitely were times that John Kuntz' Richard felt more menacing than Ian McKellan's.

The fact that this was my second time seeing the play certainly helped me in recognizing and understanding the characters and their relationships, I really think I preferred it with the crosscasting. You've just got this sea of older white male faces, and it gets a bit... tiresome after a while.

I'm not saying this is a bad film, and I do recommend it. It's certainly an interesting interpretation, moving it to 1930s fascism. I like many of the directorial choices (such as the delivery of the initial "Now" speech. And the Marlovian in me absolutely adores the Big Band version of "Come live with me."

Now I have heard rave reviews for Olivier's performance, but, well, we tried to watch Olivier's Henry V and it really didn't work for us. So I have my doubts.

And I'd still love to get folks together to try a Rocky Horror style interactive Richard III, as portrayed in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. I found Act I Scene I and an LJ community for planning purposes, but they seem rather dead. I had a lot of fun a few months back doing a group reading of Macbeth a few months ago. Anybody interested in a similar reading of Richard III (after Iolanthe)? We could even wear costumes... [I have fantasies that when Shakespeare & Company finish their recreation Rose theater, trying to convince them that midnight Richard III would be a great regular feature...]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 AM

I think I od'd on news yesterday, so I'm going to try to cut way back today.

So, to change the subject, how about this quiz on Shakespearean opening lines (via redaxe).

I took it yesterday afternoon. I needed to use process of elimination to resolve several, quite a few were blind guesses, but:

You scored 90%!

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."
Twelfth Night (2.5.144-146)

And that was because I accidentally skipped one question, intending to go back to it in good old-fashioned SAT technique, and then missed it on my retry.

Not bad, hunh?

How did you do? [Don't be shy.]

By the way, I don't think I linked to it from my blog, but strangemuses wrote an absolutely brilliant essay on the character of Percy Weasley in the Harry Potter books. Really insightful, and I recommend it. Percy is not evil, darnit! At least, not in canon though he can be drawn that way / drawn to it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:10 PM

You know, he probably deserves a Darwin award, but wouldn't believe in them. Or, as Ian said, what's the point of having Romans if the Christians are just going to throw themselves to the lions?

By the way, I only caught the first 45 minutes of Regency House Party but it was great. They're rerunning it tonight at 1 and 4 am and tomorrow 1pm (when I'll be taping it for Ian), and I highly recommend it. [If you have Comcast cable, there are apparently additional showings on WGBH World (209), whatever that is.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:40 PM

How annoying. I just discovered that tvguide.com no longer has broadcast listings for my area code. Only thru cable providers (which of course number the channels all wonky).

And oh dear! Regency House Party starts tonight opposite Smallville. And Ian's at rehearsal so I was already planning to tape the latter for him Looks like 44 will be running Regency House Party at 1am, so I could tape it then, though our reception on that channel isn't as good...

And as long as I'm planning television viewing, I suppose I ought to check when PBS will be running its new Henry VIII miniseries (with Helena Bonham Carter as Anne Boleyn). [Just looked; it starts Sunday at 9pm, after the Halloween episode of the Simpsons.]

Life goes on, I suppose.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:15 PM

Hesiod said he was taking Counterspin down after the election, and it looks like he went through with it. Quite thoroughly. Blogger cannot recognize nor resolve the address counterspin.blogspot.com. I wish he kept it up for the archives and links. The most recent post in Google's cache is November 1st (meaning we've lost a day's worth of posts). And the Internet Archive Wayback Machine only goes up to February 2004.

Maybe I should manually archive Google's cached pages. Maybe I should claim the domain so no hijackers can screw around with it. [Such as the typoed counterpsin.blogspot.com I've tripped over a few times.

Hesiod, whereever you are, you contributed some great insight into the debate and you'll be missed.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:50 PM

Since I don't have lj-cuts nor expandable post summaries, I'm putting the body of this post on a separate page manually. Just follow the bouncing links (they all go to the same page).

A kaleidescope of conflicting thoughts are going through my mind. Here's just a selection of some of the things I'm reading, often contradictory:

And so I am reminded that after all the evils were unleashed, the last spirit remaining in Pandora's box was that thin but powerful wisp known as hope.

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:07 PM

Dear Gd, Cheney's acceptance speech doesn't make the slightest acknowledgement of Kerry's call for unity. Not even the hint that 50% of voters wanted the other guy or that there's another party they have to work with. I don't know where the infant is that I hear crying on NPR's audio, but I sympathize.

I don't think I can listen any longer.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:30 PM

Warning: Do not read this if you are easily discouraged.

I quoted Matthew Yglesias earlier:

I would caution anyone against deluding themselves into believing that a second Bush term won't be so bad. With a majority of the popular vote and expanded margins in the House and Senate, we're going to see Bush Unleashed -- something that will probably be much crazier than what we've seen over the past four years.

Josh Marshall repeats this:

The country is bitterly divided. And as much as anyone President Bush has divided it. But president Bush got 51% and if there's anything I've learned from watching him for the last four years-plus, it is that his team will take this as a popular mandate for an aggressive push for their agenda -- notwithstanding the profound division in the country or what has happened over the previous four years.

And Andrew Sullivan proves it true:

A MANDATE FOR CULTURE WAR: That's Bill Bennett's conclusion. He won't be the only one. What we're seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today's world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful. Our safety valve must be federalism. We have to live and let live. As blue states become more secular, and red states become less so, the only alternative to a national religious war is to allow different states to pursue different options. That goes for things like decriminalization of marijuana, abortion rights, stem cell research and marriage rights. Forcing California and Mississippi into one model is a recipe for disaster. Federalism is now more important than ever. I just hope that Republican federalists understand this. I fear they don't.

There's lots of talk around the blogosphere along the lines of don't get mad/sad, get organized, but I think we've got a lot of disappointment to deal with and a lot of work ahead of us. I am upset with John Kerry for conceding (see Bruce Adelsohn's comments to my previous post) and I'll confess I'm not yet ready to plan my next steps yet.

Josh Marshall articulates yet another reason I'm so upset by what the results say about America:

Before today, the course that America had charted in the world over the last three years could be seen as the result of a traumatic event (9/ 11) and the choice of a president who was actually put in office by a minority of the electorate. This was a referendum on what's happened in the last three years. And it's been validated.

By claiming the mantle of "a uniter, not a divider", Bush blames those who disagree with him for the current acrimonious tone. [Remember Cheney's comments in the Veep debate?] On Air America Radio, Al Franken has pointed out that we've done this before, putting aside our differences to unite behind the President. We did this at Bush's inauguration, after Gore conceded. We did this after 9/11. Each time, Bush has stabbed us in the back. To meet in the middle, both sides need to reach out. Bush hasn't, but blames us. I worry that Kerry's request will further that interpretation.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 PM

Going by Elisabeth Kübler Ross's stages of grief, I have passed from anger to despair. If you're not in the mood for pessimism, you may wish to skip the rest of this post.

If you have other reasons for hope, please share them with me. I could use the good news. [And I'm a member of the reality-based community, so facts please, not wishful thinking.]

<Sigh> Ten minutes to Kerry's speech...

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:24 AM

I'm now seeing scattered reports on news sites that Kerry has called Bush to concede and will be giving a speech to that effect at 1 p.m.

Say what!?

Did they learn nothing from 2000? We've still got more provisional ballots in Ohio than the margin of error. What about John Edwards' statement this morning that:

John Kerry and I made a promise to the American people that with this election, every vote would count and every vote would be counted. Thank you. Tonight, we are keeping our word, and we will fight for every vote. You deserve no less.

Okay, now I'm disappointed.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 AM

I'm somewhat disconcerted that Rob Brezsny hasn't posted today's horoscope yet; he's never this late, and I've grown to appreciate his weekly pep talks. But I realized that America is a Cancer, as I am, so decided to check Eugenia Last, who writes the horoscopes for the Boston Globe:

Today: Emotions will be close to the surface today. Try to deal with personal matters diplomatically. Not everyone will understand your reason for your actions. 3 stars

I can see that as wise advice for the nation as we wait for the Ohio recount.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:00 AM

Well, cheers on Ampersand for finding some good news about the election:

Despite orchestrated Republican opposition led by Gov. Mitt Romney, and the push of right-wing groups, all incumbent legislators throughout Massachusetts who voted for equal treatment for same-sex couples -- in urban, suburban and rural districts -- won re-election.

So hooray for Massachusetts, at least, as a haven against discrimination.

On the other hand, eleven out of eleven states chose to further enshrine anti-gay discrimination into law. Demagogue found a powerful political cartoon on this.

Dave Johnson has an even more cynical (and depressing) look at the American electorate.

Meanwhile, Bellatrys (via Julia) has more on what's going on with Ohio and Florida. And Jack Balkin has the legal info on what happens next in Ohio.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:20 AM

By the way, so folks have an idea what we're dealing with in Ohio, I just found an Ohio Vote Suppression blog listing some of the dirty tricks that were being reported across the state.

Also, Bob Harris has the following:

International observers weigh in after visiting Florida:

The observers said they had less access to polls than in Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election system.

"To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few months ago was much simpler," said Konrad Olszewski, an election observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:45 AM

A couple things I'm seeing around the blogosphere to explain the voting results we're seeing so far:

First of all, exit pollsters are saying that (in the words of Josh Marshall): "the much-ballyhooed youth vote simply did not show up." Kos points to MSNBC exit polls that indicate "[t]he 18-29 bracket voted the same this year as in 2000, while 30-44 group was down. That's what's killing us."

Second, eleven states had antigay "Defense of Marriage" initiatives on their ballots, including several key battleground states. Those may have acted as a stealth "get out the vote" for homophobes, who would probably have been more likely to cast their ballot for Bush.

Third, though I haven't yet crunched the numbers myself, I've seen several people noting that the exit polls have been predicting the results quite accurately, except in Ohio and Florida. [Sources: Democratic Underground and this DailyKos diary] So what's going on? Massive sampling error just in those two states? Ohioans and Floridians more likely to lie? Or are people misreading the data? I don't know.

Added later: Susan has a partial explanation:

We're starting to see the pattern: the exit polls have an average 5% discrepancy in the states where there's electronic voting without a verified audit trail. In the states where there's a paper trail, the results match the exit polling.
Oddly enough, they blocked exit polling in Ohio:

Also Monday, The Associated Press and television networks sued Ohio's top election official, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, over a recent order banning exit polling within 100 feet of a polling station. The media groups use exit polls, or voter questionnaires, to help explain who voted and why.

Steve Soto has more on these.

Ian commented that he wouldn't mind the results so much if there weren't clear evidence that Bush supporters believe known falsehoods. They're not making their decision based upon the facts, and that's even more worrisome for the future of our democracy.

On a lighter, distracting note, get a load of this Flash animation to Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire"

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:20 AM

We're still waiting on results from the provisional ballots in Ohio, which could take days to resolve. So until then, repeat after me:

I do believe in Kerry. I do. I do.
I do believe in Kerry. I do. I do.

Remember, one of the reasons Bush was victorious in 2000 was that he created the perception that he won and that Gore's challenges somehow were trying to steal that from him. This is still up in the air, and I'm not quite ready to concede yet.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:05 AM

Ian had rehearsal tonight; got home after picking him up at the train station about 11:20. Went to bed 11:45 or so. Woke up sometime after 2; gave up on tossing and turning sometime before 3 and I've been sitting at the computer, just reading, ever since. I suppose I should try seeing if I can go back to sleep. Ian's got to be at work by 9 and is going to leave seven-ish to vote, and I was thinking of being supportive and accompanying him. [Before I found out about his work shift, I was going to vote after 9, figuring lines might be less after the 9-5 folks are at work.]

Been flipping through some of the fanfic I found; I'm really having second thoughts about the stuff from fanfic.net -- in fact, I'm thinking some of them would be worthy submissions to McTabby's Summary Executions.

Added later: Dear gd, one of the fanfiction.net stories was in a Summary Executions! I'm thinking it may be time to edit those out of the list and put them in their own separate grouping...

Let's see; Al Franken is recording his show live in Cambridge; that puzzled me for a moment -- why isn't he in a swing state or somewhere his presence might make a difference? Then I realized, he must be in town for some Kerry bash. [Wonder where it's being held and whether I could crash it? They wouldn't turn away a blogger, would they?] Meanwhile, I think Violet has gone into heat. She's started acting even weirder than usual. She's at the right age; I suppose I ought to go looking into discount spay services.

Anyway, it's now five, so I'm going to see if I can't get a few hours rest before Ian leaves this morning. Maybe I'll catch a nap in the evening -- if I don't try crashing Kerry's party, that is. :)

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:56 PM

I just thought to search FanFiction.net by pairing. Turned up another twenty-five stories with the pairings I'm seeking for my Percy/Malfoy list.

Problem is, it's FanFiction.net -- there's no quality control!

Well, I've just added them all, with warnings that I haven't yet reviewed them. [The joy of building this from spreadsheet tables; really easy to add, format and sort.] We now have fifty-five Percy/Malfoy fics, including two involving Narcissa. They don't all look terribly good, but I suppose that's the price for attempting comprehensiveness

Since I haven't reviewed any of these for truth in advertising, perhaps I should also allow people to suggest fics to remove from the list.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 PM

While the American presidential election tomorrow is important, we should stay aware that there are other issues on other ballots as well.

I wasn't even aware of this crucial race, until I found the online quiz predictor:

You're Voting Arthur Weasley!

"Science! Progress! And eclecktricity for all!"

Though Mr. Weasley is a career bureaucrat with plenty of experience working the system, up until recently, he's stayed out of the political arena all together. He offers a refreshing break from the norm, and promises to restore dignity and his eclecktric plug collection to the office of Minister.

Political Party: Muggleterians
Top Issues: Muggle Rights, Muggle-Wizard Relations, Science and Technology
Biggest Weakness: Makes up his own words while on the stump

Who's Your Candidate for Minister of Magic?
St. Dymphna's -- A Harry Potter RPG

Keep smiling; it's almost over...

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:44 PM

As a distraction from more serious matters, I decided to compile as complete a list as possible of all Percy Weasley/Malfoy fics out there. Not just slash, but stories in which Percy and a Malfoy are working closely together.

This could mean:

• Percy/Draco
• Percy/Lucius
• Percy/Narcissa
• Percy/other, with strong Malfoy presence
• Malfoy/other, with strong Percy presence
• Percy fanfiction archives

I've come up with over 25 fi