Who's Afraid of Jane Austen?

Nobody, I suppose, if you just mean her books as books. Words on paper. But if you mean the whole cult, the museum in Bath, the Georgian Crescent, the O and A Level exams, the films based on sense, sensibility as well as on one's pride, plus powers of persuasion and prejudice, I guess. And when I met a woman called Emma, distant descendant of Jayne (spelt with a Y) Mansfield, she stared at me with steel-embedded eyes, she being a cut-throat film agent from America who wanted me to finance her husband's directorship of a recently discovered long-lost Austen novel called TRADING LACE...

I wondered if she'd got herself - and thus her pet dog of a husband - embroiled with sniffing out modern gold in old English Literature because her name and heritage were the obvious hybrid of two well-seasoned Austen novels that had no doubt already been filmed to death. Assuming Emma was the director proper and her husband the director in name only, I knew I was talking to the organ grinder, not to the, ahem, male dog who sat atop the barrel-organ laughing at itself for not being a monkey. The 'face of the film', yapping terrier-like not roaring as the MGM Lion once did. The cockerel of Pathe News having been deader than a dead parrot since the death of Sir Winston Churchill himself. Never a fan of Jane Austen, I'm told.

The searchlight beacons of Twentieth Century Fox started twirling in Emma's widening eyes when I said I would be pleased to invest in her husband's directorship of a new Jane Austen cinema package should she be able to get her nephew to star in it and we all know who that is, don't we? Tom Mansfield. *The* Tom Mansfield ... of the Passion Peak TV series. Her face fell faster than the time it took me to add the following brief contractual stipulation: the title TRADING LACE would need to change to HONITON HOUSE. You see, she knew that I knew that she and her husband had fallen out big time with Tom Mansfield ever since .... Well, that's another story.

As to the title change, I once persuaded Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to exercise their own art of persuasion with Edward Albee to switch Gertrude Stein to Virginia Woolf for the title of his play in which they were about to star. 'Who's afraid of Gertrude Stein?' didn't have the same ring. And nobody had heard of Gertrude Stein. A rose is a rose is a rose is .... There's always a better word for any word that nobody's yet thought of - that's my motto. Often a whim. But often right. And HONITON HOUSE rang right. Rang twice. Like the postman.

When I finally met the dog, the nephew Tom Mansfield was sewn up - how they persuaded him I shall never know - and HONITON HOUSE was agreed, with Jane Austen herself being exhumed, I was told, to rubber stamp it. TRADING LACE? Well, Jane Austen was never wedded to that title, she admitted, before being dug back into the churchyard where her fans often gather to hear the muffled voice, an imprecise sound that sometimes could be heard at unpredictable times.

The film? Like many films, it never even reached the cutting-room floor. But I still got my contractual kill-fee, of course. And some off-cuts of costume lace for my wife. She's always had great expectations, my wife. But these days she's easily consoled. If the first attempt fails, keep trying till the next one works.

The dog laughed. Despite having heard the 'There is Something Nasty in the Emma Woodshed' joke before.

Who's afraid of Stella Gibbons?

Preacher Creature

In the old days, there were songs about seeing an alligator later, about purple people-eaters. Johnny with his hurricanes. Charlie Gracie’s butterfly. Duane’s bass guitar. And a not so familiar name these days, Joe Dorati, who had a one-hit wonder: preacher creature. You could hear all those songs – even Joe Dorati’s – on mighty wurlitzers of the musical spirit called Juke Boxes each with a tentacular arm taking its pick from the shuttling whorl of black discs and slapping down ... the disc's middle missing: punched out – and, indeed, in those days, I don’t think I ever heard one single middle, but just the beginnings and ends. Like the whole of life, I guess, with things going blurred with strangeness in my twenties and thirties - and since I died in my fifties those fuzzy years became my lost middle. The middle that was punched out to make a bigger empty hole ... so that the brimming music could be threaded by the chunky central spindle, dropped upon a round rubber mat that all those Juke Boxes had at their heart. Where the spinning was. Where the grooving was. Where the friction was. Where the needle was. Where the needle sometimes got stuck, hanging from my pick-up like a huge foreign insect with a tubular torso. Yes, that was my lost middle. Once upon a time, though, I woke up to find myself fifty. I looked downhill in both directions of coming and going. Finally, I went to meet my maker, my own preacher creature. I’d forgotten my name when asked. But it came back to me briefly – Joe Dorati – before I forgot it again: this time forever.

Celebrity Big Brother - Summer 2012

This is what BB should all be about. And thanks for the aide memoire of names, Marion, and the report.
Actually, I at first cringed and was embarrassed by the task, in case it was a damp squib, but the two ladies did brilliantly.
Having said that, I only know three of the Housemates (Kemp, Goodyear and Clary) - so wonder why the others are called celebrities, but that will always be the case with an old fogey like me.
I lived most of my life -- from 1970ish until around 2004 when I gave up watching Corrie -- with Julie Goodyear (when did she leave the series?) ... actually I started watching Coronation Street when it started in 1960. Perhaps they'll bring in Ken Barlow as a surprise HM later?
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Marion wrote: "Julian is sleeping in the bed next to Julie - this delights him. He is comforted by the thought of Bet Lynch only an arms length away from him - she;s earthy and understanding, the kind of person he admires."
Yes, just imagine that situation in the staggering paranormal foresight of this scene from yesteryear! All those pub fires seen through the prism of Madness TV, Alec Gilroy banterings, bar-top gossip with Rita Littlewopd, Ena Sharples' hairnets that caught the Bet Lynch soul in its trammels, Ken's ludicrous philandering...
Jasmine seemed to be the emerging prime-mover last night. Her legs are Sara's legs but now whittled down into slender willows by adolescent boys on an endless summer's riverbank with their awakening penknifes of growing-up.
Talking of Sara et al, this set of celebrity housemates seems a cut above the ordinary BB session just expired, in a different league of perception, articulate repartee and cute awareness. No wonder they are celebrities. I think that is the first time I've been able to say that with some conviction when comparing celebrity HMs with their 'ordinary' counterparts that preceded them. Very promising.
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(18 August) The Channel 5 signal vanished last night on my TV, but I managed to catch up on the internet this morning except for the nomination session, so thanks Marion for filling in any gaps.
I am amazed at all the gossip and goings-on in these people's backstories. Merely that. But some backstories are re-moulded I guess to match the 'truth' of the present moment...
The only people I seem to like are Julian and Julie. A good team by temperament and name and platonic bed-sharing.
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The Mouldy Cock
Luckily (?) my Channel 5 signal has returned. I think it's the atmospherics of the hot weather.
I loved Julie's quote from Bette Davis ("Old age is not for cissies") when she got up, coughed and accidentally peed herself. And I haven't laughed out loud so much watching her cut up a banana... Later, her tending to Jasmine's trauma, like cradling a sick chick; it felt almost sexual. Julie was and always will be a STAR! Still calls everyone 'cock' as an endearment: as she did on Corrie, I note.
The Lorenzo task was a bore and a cheat. Not a real BB task as everyone knew what was going on and no attempt at secrecy in all the women flirting with him and why.
Danica, Jasmine and Rhian are an interesting trio of characters: rinsing for me was what we did with the washing-up before drying. Now we have rinse-aid to add to the dish-washer. Well at least I do.
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Yesterday the mouldy cock, today the reincarnated seagull -- dutifully squawking, that was indeed hilariously from-the-sky if not off-the-wall. One of those synchronised shards of random truth and fiction.
The Danica smile being switched on and off like a lighthouse: a nice smile, though, if seen beyond the context of its intentions. Her 'Thing' crabbing was good, too.
The talent show was a bit eclectic, a ragbag of dubious talents with very little indestructible gold. I would have given Rhian a tick for saying 20% of 100 was 5%. Just a slip of the tongue. The method was right and the answer correct without the superfluous second %.
Colleen wants to be matriarch and Sunset Boulevard star, I guess, impugning our Julie on the sly as she did. Beware the seagull.
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Mouldy cock, reincarnated seagull now the white swallow...

I agree with Marion about Jasmine and the unhinged nature of her interactions. And Julie is making a mistake in becoming the lioness mother to this snappy foundling cub. As I said before, the relationship is almost sexual between the two women. And Julie has been a gay icon for many years, but not quite in that sense, I feel. But more in the sense of the combined birdbrained plan that she and Julian were hatching out for some sort of club...?
The complex emotions catalysed by Jasmine in the others, however, have at least made this interesting, if often uncomfortable, viewing. A very strange blend of people that could backfire at any moment...
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THE STORKER
The most remarkable thing I shall take away from this series is Julie's tale last night of the circumstances of getting married to a weird stalker who was seriously stalking her (an HGV driver 20 years younger), i.e. to stop him stalking her by marrying him I guess and because she felt sorry for him because he'd said he idolised her and no other woman would suffice and if she didn't marry him he would never get married at all and would be lonely for the rest of his life. Apparently they are now happily married! There's a moral there - somewhere.
Also whose legs do those legs alongside remind you of?
Lovely pics, Marion.
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Well, Jasmine left last night. She seemed a bit tongue-tied in the interview, but she did call the other girls 'skanky'. There was also some hint that Jasmine had been given the impression at the supermarket food-grab that Julie was two-faced in 'controlling' her, in fact the only one who could control her behaviour (instructed to control Jasmine by BB?).
Colleen is also trying to give the impression that Julie is two-faced. Julie as star was due to win, of course. But now?
Jasmine says she wanted Sam to win. Is that becuase Sam writes for the Daily Mail?
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Marion wrote: "So that's how it is done. Washed , rinsed, and hung out to dry."
Danica is a sexocet.
Julie is both wonderful and monstrous. Watching her dragging lingeringly on her long cigarette-holder emitting side gasps of "flying f***s" - counterbalanced by her Sunset Boulevard tragic humanity and her backstory as Bet Lynch, Bet Gilroy and a Stalker's wife... Who says sublimity is not housed within such human frailty?
I agree that Julian is detached.
Beginnning to like Coleen more. None of the men are particularly interesting, except perhaps Harvey.
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I'd recommend anyone who wants to know what happened last night -- and exactly what acutely just perceptions can be drawn from these events -- to read Marion's report ... but please be apprised of the mixed delights of negotiating the slippery letters that make up many, if not most, of her words.
I'd only add that the cowboy-style hat that Julie was wearing made her look like Jimmy Carter as he is today.
And, oh yes, Marion is right -- the sexocet has a new target. A Shangri-La Principality nestling within the Lost Hills of Ancient Italy.
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Marion wrote: "Ashley, Lorenzo and Mike. Not one of them is actually having a relationship with anyone in the house, but each of them is confabulating one as they know romance is a winner in BB..."
Yes, good to put those boy-cards in abeyance or flick them into the corner of the playground and, instead, play trumps with the Julie-Julian game of snappy quips elsewhere.
Did Lorenzo actually say to Danica last night that if she'd been playing, among 16 other girls, in 'The Bachelor', he'd've chosen her without hesitation? Could this be a real 'Romance' on his part? And on her part, too, because, in much Classic Literature, love was not always the main motive for 'Romance'? Fauxmance is as old as the hills. The Italian hills.
Quote: Did Lorenzo, in High School, eat lunch alone?
That was quite a good snappy quip by Mike the Situation.
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(27 Aug 12) Marion wrote: "Julie also had a moment when she was listening to Danica explain her work. Julie doesn't see anything wrong with it -people send her things too - earrings, toilet seats, pubic hair, addressed to Bet Lynch, England."
Yes, that was the highlight of the evening. Best to draw a veil over the rest, but thanks Marion for putting it so justly for the record on how NOT to run a BB show. And Men Behaving Badly.
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Marion wrote: "Valerie and Albert for the win!"
Albert Tatlock and Valerie Barlow, no doubt.
Julian was the star last night: with his brave public hatred of the Daily Mail and the perfect protectively maternal reading voice for children's bedtime (here less than hilariously geared to its adult audience tucked up with their teddies and toys but that does not take away from the perfection of the voice).
I have not really considered Samantha before. So far a bit of a non-entity for me. Despite her Daily Mail connections (£2 per word according to Julian), she is perhaps playing a long game, arguably more astute than Julie's misguided partisanship and Colleen's over-passionate reactions to her own eviction escape etc.
I dunno - Mike the Situtaion is effectively economical with the quips: whose backstory has a Prince Harry 'charm' about it. I reckon he might win. Playing to be 'played'. Julian as the other contender.
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Another brilliant summary, Marion.
A great Gods and Mortals task, but it is another idea they have pinched from this very discussion forum. (Cf the Jason and the Argonauts comments earlier).
'Candid' Danica was articulate in her attack upon The Situation, even though she wasn't quite articulate enough to know the meaning of the word 'articulate'. I found her frightening in her forensic diatribe, with cutting-edged forthrightness. She is certainly, as I said before, the ultimate sexocet.
There are two sides here, both essentially wrong and both essentially right. They are all playing a game or, like Ashley and Harvey, merely being swept along by things. Meanwhile, Julian is playing his own soft-toned, laid-back professional act of campness to a treat... It's as if he is another sort of Tommy Cooper who could never doff his Fez or cease his amusingly mis-performed magic tricks throughout all the waking hours of his life: in or out of the public gaze.
Julie's banana act was a classic equivalent in memory to a lionesque George Galloway's pussy.
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Well, I watched the amazing large hadron collider on last night's extraordinary opening ceremony - but now caught up with happenings at the House.
Martin Kemp is making his move - warning the boys about Julie. If Danica is a sexocet, I'd bet Julie is a one person Lynch-mob. Gilroy was here!
Rhian was not surprising as the departure. A misunderstood lady, I feel. Thoughtful, with a refreshing inner clown that popped out now and again. What you saw was what you got, including her seamless assets.
Meanwhile, the collusive Danica Situation prevailed.
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(31 Aug 12) Two giant reports from Marion fascinatingly extrapolating upon her view of the truth behind the Games being played. Thanks. But only by watching the programme will you get your own truth. And every viewer will have their own truth. Every viewer's truth is true according to the ground rules you set. One cannot hide your own reception of truth - unless, of course, you're in the House itself rather than viewing it from outside like the Olympian gods themselves. As for me, I'm working for an individual Games for every category of ability, even for each grey area between categories.
Danica and Julie and Colleen - like all powerful women of their sort - use the art of weeping as part of their armoury or gestalt...
PS: Marion, did you choose that TUSK song by Fleetwood Mac because the woman on the photo is the spitting image of Danica?
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I agree about Mike's situational cheating.
Yes, I take 'Delphic' as a compliment - mosaic, allusive, elusive, illusional, fustian to the nth degree...
I was surprised and disappointed that Danica was evicted. A star BB housemate, whatever you think of her. And she sure has had an effect on me, both good and bad. You can visualise her growing old into Bette Davis rather than Bet Lynch! Lauren Bacall, too...
And as to 70 year old Julie/Bet Lynch/Bet Gilroy, she's still the monster, still the soap queen, with some really intrinisic fault-lines that must endear her to some and infuriate others. And I shall always prefer her to Colleeen.
Harvey is the best of the men. An ethnic Arthur English. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

(Julian is a lovely man, but too laid-back.)
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Marion wrote: "I think BB orchestrates thse booing sessions, you know. Why else would an entire mob catcall in unison for a housemate who isn't even up?"
I don't think they would dare as some of the orchestrated would blab. It's just that the braying mob don't really know who Julie is. Imagine coming across someone like Julie COLD!
Julian is the real 'gentle'man - I HOPE he wins.
Otherwise nothing much to add to Marion's excellent report. Just like to know who else is watching the programme and/or reading Marion's reports of it?
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Marion wrote: "She has never sunk so low as Mike did tonight in the influencing nominations game - he offered that has- been Harvey a show with him once CBB is over - I susect that offer will disppear as soon as the series ends. But in the mean time, it will save Mike from Harvey and his gang's nominations."
Good spot, Marion.
Meanwhile just Julie, as you say, justice for Julie. Don't pretend to hold back, Colleen, just because you claim tactically that a 70 year old needs special treatment. Julie is scary as she wobbles and runkles in the bubbling juices of the jacuzzi. Indeed, let's hope the young voters see that she is the new azathothian incubation for a new myth of daleks.
Ashley coming up closer, though, with his sterling efforts beside the acid bath (as opposed to Julie's jacuzzi)
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Marion wrote: ":| :| :\ :| She is the most shameless old biddy in the world but she comes out slugging every time. Go, Julie - lay it on with a trowel and win through!"
Completely shameless. Like me if I'd resisted the nature of the review of 'Weirdtongue' simply because I am getting old (as I am) and then issuing a tearful prayer (to the God of self) to counter all genuinely bad or seeming mocking reviews and all adverse voting. Better than writing pseudonymous reviews of my own work myself, though, like some 'respected' authors have done apparently! But they are all things I'd never stoop to. Unless it be an up-front non-pseudonymous real-time review of my own stuff as an experiment in gestalt-seeking, of course!
Julie has shot her bolt but I hope there are more than just Marion (and me) who will continue supporting her: supporting her for, inter alia, her black-eyed pees and for her clownishly-foolhardy Sunset Boulevard nonsense (still nonsense, however well performed by this ancient stager) ..... and for old time's and old timers' sake.
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(5 Sept) Marion said: "The greatest joy of the evening, however, was the final scene between Julie and Julian. Tucked up in bed together he advised her that she has to be a good girl tomorrow. She complained that Harvey called her a disgrace. 'But you are,' Julian said gently and tenderly. She reckoned Martin might be better than her in the final and that she would go tomorow night. He told her to stay for the fun of it. Didn't she want to grow old disgracefuly?
She nodded.
'Mission accomplished,' he said.
It was a lovely scene, real and poignant. It will be a travesty if Julie goes tomorrow. The only proper outcome of the series is Julie and Julian standing together right to the very end."
Fundamentally, I'm singing from the same hymn-sheet as Marion vis-a-vis the great Julie Goodyear.
But I fear that hymn-sheet is not available to most of the BB voters.
And it was all very well BB allowing Julie to have her hair washed by a hairdresser 'for medical reasons' but to allow that to go beyond niceties of conversation with the hairdresser, to the extent that Julie could vent her emotions to another person outside of the house... On the face of it, unfair. If it hadn't been for Harvey and Lorenzo next door in the gym talking about what they heard through the wall, we BB viewers may not even have known about that hairdressing safety-valve that has presumably been available to Julie from day one to splutter like a volcano. Lava as well as lather!
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Sorry, Marion, that neither of us had our wishes about Julie winning.
'Nanna Julie' (gauchely describing herself as a "70 year old disabled pensioner") put a brave face on it after some loud music played by BB to deafen out the boos and she stone-walled Brian's basic, cruel question: WHY are you not upset about losing? I bet she is wondering today why she put herself through all that? A tragically flawed but still loveable figure of Shakespearean proportions.
We must now hope for a Julian win to recreate balance in the universe.
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Yes, I retract what I said earlier in this thread about Harvey. In hindsight, that was demeaning the memory of the great Arthur English. (Martin's explanation to Harvey of the difference between exposing the arse and the arse-whole was illuminating, by the way.)
I, too, hope for (and expect) a Julian win
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(7 Sep 12) Well, Julian won. He did develop naturally into the winner....and an overall satisfactory result. Thanks for your company again, Marion, and for your wonderful reports. See you in January if there is another CBB then.

Big Brother - Summer 2012 (4)

CONTINUED FROM HERE

Marion wrote: "Asheligh's mouthhas erupted with herpes sores -"
Lessons and Lesions.
Oh what a report you've just given, Marion! So incisive, with such straight-eyed ironing-out of the unironic without abandoning a sense of irony for us to chuckle at. You should be employed by the national tabloids and by literary essay vehicles to portray this lesson in modern life as presented by BB, a vital lesson in social lesions, a lesson so often derided by the programme's detractors.
As to Ashleigh's cold sores, these are possibly the stigmata from the recent Confessional. I only say she has the best chance to win as she exemplifies best what I said above about life's lesions and what I predict will be the voting of people-not-like-us, Marion.
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(2 August): Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I diisagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
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Marion wrote: "I think the White Room may turn out to be an epic bore."
I disagree. Well, I would. In 2002 I published the world's first blank story in 'Nemonymous' - and produced another edition with blank covers, and many of the horror stories in Nemonymous were about blanks or nothingness or gaps.
Sara is becoming more interesting. Saying on her audition something that is evidently non-characteristic of her (i.e. doing striptease) and building up the tension and sensory deprivation / mental asylum angle of the White Room by acting out antipathy towards it. Constructing anxieties for the viewers that 'enhance' such a scenario. This is 'pure' Theatre of the 20th century (not 21st century) - something we had grown out of, until now. A happening. Even Conor benefited from the surrounding whiteness.
Deana claims she was 'excluded' from four schools not 'expelled'. Indeed, intriguing. She has a deeper backstory, like Sara's.
Although I agree with Marion on certain aspects of Ashleigh, she is the most natural person in the House. There is no side to her. The only one that comes close to her in that respect is Luke A. imo. {A series of reprises: here is a quote from one of my TTA forum entries in 2004 about that year's BB: "From my 56 year old perspective, last night's Big Brother was probably a bad influence on those involved and on those watching them - but the argument/fight was so well 'dramatised', 'stage-lit', 'acted', 'scripted', it was probably one of the greatest contemporary 'dramas' (full of accidental imagination, believeable grotesque characterisation, Shakespearean tragedy etc.) that TV has ever allowed to be broadcast."}
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Marion, a good White Room project would be on the constructively tedious end of things, I'd say -- a bit like a Robbe-Grillet anti-novel? With fleeting, barely caught expressions and moues in your avatar's gossamer wings or my numinous butterfly-net.
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Marion wrote: "She complained of no windows in the room, no freedom, no darkness, no sunshine and then burst into tears."
Sara is becoming quite a star, with natural idiosyncracies emerging from the pressure cooker that is the BB House and its inner White Room (we all have an inner White Room) rather than faux idiosyncracies. Also without makeup we see she has spots to match the ashen-lipped stigmata or lesions elsewehere in the house...
Her political non-rant of a rant was as off-kilter as her blind Royalism (it's OK being a Royalist in my book but Sara seems obsessive and she probably believes the Queen is a benevolent alien or an angel, to which state of being Sara herself aspires). As to voting Tory last time she voted, well, she probably lost a lot of votes and gained a few others as a result of making this admission (which she failed to make in the earlier Confessional).
Yes, shake-it-all-about Becky to go on Friday!
And thanks, Marion, for posting that wonderful Robbe-Grillet story. I had not read it before.
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Some very interesting points there, Marion. The chocolate on Becky's face "for the judges" passed me by because of inevitable temporary inattentions during TV watching. What on earth!
I did however think about Conor disrupting some Godgiven rule regarding the verities of the BB game with the usually default good sense of the audience having been by-passed by this event. Lessons / lesions indeed beoynd moral lip-synch.
Meanwhile, I agree that the 'white' quiz was probably the most hilarious thing ever on BB! Possibly ever in or out of BB.
I, too, was rather perturbed by the facial expressions of Becky during the interview: grotesque gurning with bulbous red lips and mad eyes that have fed on monstrous gossipings and bitchings incarnate and incarnadine.
A night stained with bad-blood, as well as chocolate. But a night also thankfully to rid ourselves of that bad-blood.
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Marion's Kipling quotes and Deana's 'soldiers' and last night's Team GB medals on a 'last balcony' before the world's financial, moral and, possibly, physical, state implodes towards an unpredicatble core of destiny ... I am left in an ambivalent mood. Conor was another medal winner, but a shameful, shameless one, with his case of money (symbolic of ill-gotten Libor gains) held aloft like a conscience-less version of a soldier going over the top of his own balcony towards an unknown destiny of recrimination in hiding beyond the public acclaim as winner that he once said he wanted. Both winner and loser. Luke S martyred.
Deana was also in an ambivalent mood. But what lies behind her lispy pragmaticism? Four exclusions or expulsions from school in her past? For what? This is probably her own version of paying off any of her own debts following the less serious form of Confessional that BB earlier provided: i.e. to emerge as the Winner: the ultimate act of not being excluded or expelled.
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(6 August): I don't think Scott can nominate Luke S any more, Marion. Luke S now only needs to think of the public vote in the final. He needs to dress up the buzzer push as a reflex action and, as you say, get the gay icon vote. He needs to be both mansion and cottage. He's not clever enough to pull this off, though. But clever enough, however, to have these goals in mind and to have worked out a strategy.
Deana went off-the-wall, both tipsy and lispy, with her mockingly seeking the ontology as well as teleology of the buzzer push. A drama worthy of the Wednesday Play when watching Luke S's reaction.The ins and outs of that White Room climax will be spoken of darkly forever within arcane BB discussion groups. Perhaps a good ploy, after all, by BB, having that stunt?
Meanwhile, the smoking mimesis-potion 'task' was SILLY. Housemates and BB in collusion - but nobody was fooled. It was just a mindless way to fill a day.
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Marion wrote: "Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee"
....like Marion's avatar on the TTA Forum, if not Marion herself!
Meawhile Sara storks like a daddy-long-legs.
I haven't got anything to add to Marion's exhaustive and helpful and unarguable report on last night's proceedings.
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I thought Scott's task was interesting, making one wonder if there is a difference between (a) a genuine 'mole' or double-agent and (b) someone just doing various things he wouldn't otherwise have done but without changing his character, his me-ness...
The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory theme echoed earlier chocolate finger task, and Becky's chocolately face and Caroline actually making the House tantamount into a Chocolate House... Deana certainly gives off the aura of Valkyrie and She who must be obeyed whatever ostensibly nonsensical incantations she recites as spells to dig deep into others' souls.
Just for House 'interest' interests of character-mix rather than for intrinsic goodness or otherwise as a human being, I hope Adam goes on Friday.
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Yes, it was an amusing task. A living museum of human-filled inanimate objects from the past ancient and near modern. Another effective semi-theatrical happening. Reminded me of the 'panoply' in my 'Yesterfang' and other incidents in the overall 'Last Balcony' (and 'Weirdtongue') if I may be self-referential regarding my published work for a moment, the comparisons seeming to be relevant - at least to me! :|
I don't *think* Ashleigh actually started the food fight proper but the Proximate Cause was something being put down her back after a previous minor infringement of throwing?
Sara's new rant-in-the-cups was not something I enjoyed. But she has actually become a *personality* in the House while for the early weeks she was just eye-candy.
I now know who Scott reminds me of most: the late Kenneth Williams.
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Yes, 'metrosexual' is a new word for me. A combination of being streetwise and engendering a wide spectrum of sexual orientation geared to opportunism?
I can't think who I want to go tonight. Perhaps there will be two evictions before the final. I feel very little loyalty to any of them.
But I think Ashleigh deserves to win for being herself (with all the faults of that self) and not having cuppish right-wing rants like Sara. I am suspicious of Luke A's claims regarding his backstory. And Deana is too artful for her own good, lispy, tispy, incantatory, wayward, sleek and slithy. Adam too laid back. Scott just a cipher acting a 'Carry On' cameo role. Luke S is a metrosexual ready to push any buttons that work for that self-image. Have I missed anyone out?
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Marion wrote: "She really is funny in a light waspish way."
If about Marion, I can only agree. I'd add 'perceptive' and 'astute', with a constructively stubborn touch of never forgetting why she likes or dislikes an HM - till beyond the very end of each season's audit trail of events and emotions.
And I was wrong about Ashleigh's potential popularity as a salt-of-the-earth character from within a poor bunch of wispy HMs. Perhaps because I live in Essex. But she is a far better woman than she gives herself credit for.
I was surprised, too, that Scott went before the final.
And I am shocked that Celebrity Big Brother starts on Wednesday!!
-----------
Yes, I have to admit the three musketeers or 'soldiers' in their little demob ceremony were both touchingly ironic and BB-iconic.
Mr Snuggles was the best evil clown I've ever seen. A wonderful Horror genre scenario. Coincidentally, I had real-time reviewed 'Hangfire Bubbler' by Rhys Hughes earlier in the day, a story *about* coulrophobia!
--------------
Sara's treatise upon Meatloaf and the Queen was probably the most bizarre of conceits ever straddled across by one brain. She could win, I suppose. And, marginally, I hope she does win.
Adam and Deana and Luke A are all OK-ish - and the memory-monologues about their experiences in the show were dressed up well by the BB production team. Gave them good grounds for winning. I won't be too upset about one of them winning. Especially for their communal demob speeches and mimes the other night.
The only one I definitely don't want to win is Luke S.
Mr Snuggles with Conor inside (not Brian D) awaits us all, one day, at the end of our own life's BB ramp of booing and cheering...
Watching CBB this Wednesday everyone?
--------------
In many ways a disappointing finale to an often disappointing series, with its odd highlights along the way since the beginning of June. Without the White Room stunt it would have lost a lot of interesting friction and motivational debate etc., for example.
Luke A is likeable enough - but a winner? Reminds me of that likeable but nondescript lady who once won - Rachel Rice.
For me, Deana was crafty and her 'soldiers' and prayers won the day, so all credit to her.  She strongly implied in her interview that some people took a dislike to her for no obvious reason even before getting to know her - in fact she said it many times in different words - and one can only infer that she is referring to racism.  She may be right.
Thanks again, Marion, for your wonderful reports.
----
CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER: SUMMER 2012 HERE

Olympics Opening Ceremony 2012

The part of the ceremony last night leading up to the 5 rings in the sky reminded me of a cross between a Wagner opera and Close Encounters.

A Competing Litany

The postwar [i.e. post Third World War] landscape, then, was all over the country, featureless and dull. But in the neighborhood of Cambridge there was an exception to this. Owing to one of those freaks in the process of destruction, of which the Second World War had given many examples, the western tower of Ely Cathedral still survived. The rest of the church was flat, its ruins scarcely distinguishable in the mud that heaved around it, but the tower still stood, a gigantic and awe-inspiring landmark. Indeed its effect was so overwhelming that beholders had been known to faint at the sight of it, and even the least sensitive were moved with tumultuous feelings for which they couldn't account.
Those few who remembered the great building in its glory would sometimes try to describe it but they got no encouragement to do this, for nostalgia of any kind was looked on askance. Not that the Dictator frowned upon religion; he even encouraged it as a necessary outlet of the human spirit; but it had to be the contemporary religion of his own brand, and the Litany was the only form of it that he permitted to delinquents. The Litany in which everyone was equal, equal in sinnerdom. The tower of Ely Cathedral, piercing the heavens, spoke another language.
-- from FACIAL JUSTICE (1960) by L.P. Hartley

L.P.Hartley - Facial Justice

FACIAL JUSTICE by L.P. Hartley - has anyone else read it? I think it is a long lost SF masterpiece, with touches of Rhys Hughes here and there, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, plus something intrinsically unique. I am only a short way through it so far.

"People were allowed five minutes a day in which to laugh and get it over, like the interval for coughing which, in earlier days, was sometimes conceded to bronchial subjects at a concert."

"Betafy means beautify."

"Motorists (as they used to be called) were utterly irresponsible in their dealings with the pedestrian public; for their benefit homicide was legalised."

-- L.P. Hartley (Facial Justice 1960)

Esplumeoir

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys. Perhaps he thought the word 'Esplumoir' was not in Malory because he misspelt it as 'Esplumeoir'!

"As all Merlin's disciples well know, there is a mysterious  word used in the Grail Books about his final disappearance. This is the word 'Esplumeoir.' It is inevitable from the context to interpret this as some 'Great Good Place', some mystic Fourth Dimension, or Nirvanic apotheosis, into which the magician deliberately sank, or rose; thus committing a sort of inspired suicide, a mysterious dying in order to live more fully. As he sought for one of his favourite passages -- for 'Esplumeoir' does not appear in Malory -- he kept murmuring that particular invocation under his breath, pondering intently on the occult escape offered by this runic clue from all the pain of the world, an escape so strangely handed down from far-off centuries in these thaumaturgic syllables."

Something Smothering

To placate is often to playact.   I have just completed the novel GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY by Elizabeth Goudge (764 pages in Capuchin) purchased during a remarkable holiday in Ely recorded elsewhere. It was only fitting that the dying tones of Richard Strauss' FOUR LAST SONGS were sounding from the stereo: live from tonight's London Proms performance - for this novel has affected me more than any other, I suspect. Implicated as I am in its 'mistake'. The homophone, the heteronym, the semantic disconnection. But I shake off any doubts. I do not in the end renew my vows of love. You see, I never abandoned them. So do not need to find them again. Nor to renew them. They will never be old. They were never young. They were and shall ever be so.  Something smothering, something embracing. Implacable love, implacable death.

An Aside

Most placating is playacting.

Tender Shadows

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys is given below. But first, has anyone compared the phenomenon of Marianne and Marguerite Le Patourel in GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY (1944) by Elizabeth Goudge with that of Cordelia and Crummie Geard in THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys? No? Well, I just did. They are both sets of sisters, with similar tensions of difference, physically and mentally, as well as a very intriguing psychological confusion of names and (mis-)aptness of names that lead to semi-confusions of identity, a fact which in the Goudge novel at least is an experience of the reader whiich implicates him or her more deeply in the narrative in a very disturbing way. That may also become true of the Powys novel but this is my first re-reading of it since 1975 and my memory is not good!
----------------------
"As Cordelia watched the delicate softness of Crummie's limbs during the lengthy ritual, and the whiteness of her flesh thrown into tender shadows by the ruffled hem of her garment, there did come over the plain girl's mind a faint, flickering spasm of revolt. Why should her own poor knees be so bony and rough-textured? Why beneath her bony knees should her legs be like a pair of broom handles? If God had willed everything from the very Beginning of the World, why had He willed everything that all this exquisite delight in one's own body -- Crummie was at the mirror again now, turning this way and that way, as she tried on her new party dress -- should be given to one girl, while another girl felt her body to be a troublesome burden to be carried about? Oh, it didn't depend on having men to admire one, or to embrace one. 'It is the feeling,' thought poor Cordelia, 'of being beautiful to one's own self that matters!'"

Le Patourel and Geard

Has anyone compared the phenomenon of Marianne and Marguerite Le Patourel in GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY by Elizabeth Goudge with that of Cordelia and Crummie Geard in THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys? No? Well, I just did.

Big Brother - Summer 2012 (3)

CONTINUED FROM HERE

(13 July) I have a feeling that one of Lauren and Becky - and their definite personalities, often attractive, often not so - is heading towards winning BB. They both can act disarmingly well in roles beyond themselves. Not that I particularly like either of them!
The avant garde music that Conor elicited from his megaphone was an interesting highlight last night. But I still hope he goes tonight.
All in all it has not been an inspiring bunch of people this season compared to some previous ones, if 'inspiring' is not too strong a word to ever use about this programme! Unless they have new HMs, I can't see that changing.
I am finding the 'warden' task bitty and unsatisfying. Like the HMs themselves. And Sara Long-Legs does not seem to 'grow' as a character at all...
-------------
Marion wrote HERE: "However, Sara was funny trying not to weep in the 'no cry' task. The shoogling in her chair and stamping of her feet when her MUm sent her love was comical. Then Ashleigh's 'no sound' task was very satisfying. She had about six rule breaks for squawking when 'rocks', and what looked like dead fish and birds, rained down on her head."
Yes, richly typical BB task outcomes. More natural than staged.
I agree that Shievonne was very engaging in her interview. In fact a natural TV star in the making, and maybe she will still make it. Pity this didn't shine out in the House.
And also agree that Conor will now be insufferable and I have severe doubts about his inner stability (despite what his mother and sister said as character witnesses)... Still I enjoyed the megaphone music more than Marion appeared to do! It synergised with Friday 13th and the First Night of the Proms that clashed with BB on another TV channel. Good job that with two brains inside my head, I can be in two places at once. Still I may miss BB tonight. Because sometimes I am nowhere.
------------
Marion Arnott wrote: "The meanness of Ashley, Becky, Carline and Conor was shown in their appropriation of the alcohol that BB deleivered to the house."
Ashley and Carline? Are they new HMs I've not yet noticed?
The scream task had one great spin-off, however: Marianne being able to post Munch's Scream on this thread.
I saw that painting in real life in Oslo a few years ago.
Another bitty show. The wine-pilfering will run and run.
------------------
Marion wrote:
"Why is this ape still in the house? [...]
Caroline was at her whispering best - [...]
However, Ashleigh seems to have recognised something about Luke at last. In conversation with Conor, she remarked that in the photos, Luke's eyes looked like black holes, all screwed up. Yes, Ashleigh, dead black shark's eyes to go with his shark's grin."
Ape? Or gorilla? (and I echo the question!)
Susurrating Caroline continues to bundle herself bigger towards Becky's shape in some unconscious mimicry and fleshy masochism.
You are right, Marion, a better evening. And, indeed, by osmosis, Ashleigh seems to have already 'heard' what Luke S said about her during his own Carolingian self-puffing and hero-making calendarisation...
------------------
Indeed, Becky as well as Lauren was very funny in the 'ugly' team - and I think I mentioned before that these two are potential winners for their gamesmanship and ability to act and throw themselves about.
I got the impression towards the end of the programme that at least two HMs were either genuinely cracking up into madness or pretending to do so for Pinteresque dramatic effect - Deana and Caroline.
Thought Conor looked good as the Sheriff. One of his better nights.
------------
(18 July) I am sure this programme can be fully enjoyed only through the eyes of Marion. That's why millions are tuning into her reports, I guess. A ho-down, a ho-up of a report, again and again, day after day. Thanks.
The discrete Becky-boob weigh-in was something to put in the Kinga annals of BB.
Jade returns even larger than life. RIP.
And Caroline is something smothering, and placating is almost always playacting. A moving mountain of towel as a theatrical aside.
I reckon they nominated Lauren because they think she is going to win.
Luke A to go on Friday, I say!!!
-----------------
Marion wrote: "Caroline also took her insecurities to BB. She broke down in there, gasping and squeaking apologies which were practically inaudible because she had dropped into that ghastly little Violet Elizabeth Botts voice she uses when she's in trouble. Distinctly audible were 'Weally weally weally sowwy, weally weally intended no harm, weally weally ...million times better with Luke A and Lauren next week. And she weally weally hates herself."
That really stood out as a Nikki 'who is she?' confessional moment but in a different form. Didn't quite come off, but stood out and expunged near all else for me last night. Thanks goodness again for Marion's incisive eye.
Several people now seem to be wearing those one-piece snowtime pajamas that Arron once wore. Arron? That seems an age away now.
Sara is straight-talking, indeed, but lacks a 'who is she?' moment so far - and, in a funny way, so is Ashleigh straight-talking. Essex straight-talking in her case. No faux-mance for her. The land is flat in Essex and clear-sighted. The coasts with endless horizons, sometimes empty, sometimes full of hidden wisdom that one can bring to those horizons.
---------------
Did I actually hear Becky make the schoolyard joke that was around when I was young in the early 1950s? CONSTANTINOPLE is a long word - can you spell it?
There have been racial vibes in the house since this season started, I sense. Usually unspoken, often subtle, often unproven. The Curryhouse-gate incident is just one of them. The Shilpa Shetty incident casts its shadow every year on BB mores.
I wonder if the HMs realise they are going to miss the London Olympics? Is that why they often seem so sad.
Caroline acts as if she is about to divest herself from the mountain-of-towelling and dive in the archetypal Olympic pool. A catharsis not dissimilar to a body-and-soul baptism.
---------------
Last night, I was both surprised and disappointed that Lauren was evicted instead of Luke A. It will be the programme's loss. She did however lead Adam on a bit, what they call a P****-teaser in polite circles. Her interview was very professional. She may have far to go.
Sara starred, meanwhile, with her lie detector test. Sadly, she is not a star who can be starred, though, other than by her looks. There is also a strange steely British supremacy undercurrent to her character that may appeal to some viewers and not to others.
Meanwhile, I did not cross my legs to test out Becky's p**** theory...
-------------------
I was wondering if Becky and Caroline were not so much laughing off the actual thought of close-to-hand sex acts of any sort within the BB House, but more a subconscious or conscious homophobic form of such a thought? To go alongside some HMs' subconscious or (partially concealed) conscious racism. A sad emblem for our times. Unspoken fears and antipathies pent up within an ostensible 'politically correct' society. And sometimes spoken rather than unspoken within closed social groups outside the House. Then breaking out of that pent up state during long hot summers...
I was cheering on Luke A via-a-vis Becky. I was astonished that Ashleigh broke his confidences, but having read Marion's report maybe I shouldn't have been. And indeed Luke A expected such an outcome? He is rewarding us for having been saved from eviction!
-------------
(23 July) Scott talking like someone in Coronation Street and Sara dressed as a baby doll Queen Elizabeth II were the highlights.
Caroline and the Fish-Eye was a trauma and a half.
I felt sorry for Ashleigh. Hers was the only letter task that depended on overcoming a reflex or a glitch like a hiccough - i.e a lifetime of swearing between every other word. She was BOUND to fail.
I saw a trailer of Conor feeling sorry for Deana about her lack of a letter, but I can't recall seeing the incident in 'real-time' playback. Was it shown?
Becky has become a stranded form of an emotional sea-mammal. Excusable, though, when you're only 19.
------------
Marion wrote: "There wasn't a lot going on tonight and so I have only a few observations:"
Well, you could have fooled me! Another fulsome and generous supply of reported items. What would we do without Marion?
Ashleigh is rather buxom for her slender frame, I noted last night. The only item I can think to add.
Oh, and yes, Caroline's stern rabbit mouth when she tries to be serious. Not only casting aspersions but also then disowning them.
---------------
Marion wrote: "I'd rather look at Deana's, or even Adam's, than Becky's."
And talking of melons, I didn't get that game with the elastic bands, either, Marion. Until one of them spectacularly exploded. The nature of melons had previously escaped me.
I hope I don't hear a similar splatting noise when Luke S is in the vicinity.
And the fact that Becky was not nominated at all for eviction is something that religions are made of. An impossiblity.
Double eviction this week: Conor and Caroline!
Ashleigh or Deana or Scott eventually to win overall.
------------------
Well, I can't beat Marion's account (better than any other account on the whole internet) of the Ashleigh / Luke S 'fraughtmance'.
I'll just make mention of the GIANT slumber bed and its 'midnight feasts with crackly toffee paper' of the distaff soul. A quote I made much earlier on Facebook yesterday from 'Facial Justice' (1960) (the SF novel featuring the Tower of Ely Cathedral) by L.P. Hartley: "Little spirals of femininity had welled up in her, like bubbles in a soda-water siphon."
And those escapades contrasted with Albinoni's Adagio being played by the BB production team as background to an image of Luke A appearing as if he were about to appear in a Federico Fellini film...
----------------

Sara came out tonight - as her namesake Bernhardt:
The farrago of the Office games was hard to understand. Surely the others eventually realised Deana and Sara were cheating because they had a secret mission. They do say Hell is Other People. An 'In Camera' Hell must be even more severe.
------------
Thanks, Marion. What I was trying to remember was being woken up in the middle of the night in midsummer to enact a New Year's Eve party with all its joyous singing etc. A bleary-eyed bizazz that beats any theatrical performance of real dislocation I've ever witnessed.
Marion, are you sure that object that hit Caroline's face - with such subsequent wild playacting injury - was not caused by her own throwing it in the air playfully and failing to catch it? I can't recall it being thrown at her by someone else.
I may not be commenting again till Sunday.
----------------
The Olympic ceremony was interesting, better than I expected, but I didn't notice the giant bed, as I wasn't watching the whole time. The scene leading up to the five rings in the sky reminded me of a Wagner opera.
Meanwhile, Brian was right: the interview was as chaotic as Caroline's hair: symbolic of a negative synergy that (as Marion also says) is a bit worrying with regard to the prospect of her mental health following this experience.
An interesting case-study, not necessarily one that was comfortable to watch. I said early on she was one to watch. It turned out that I was right for the wrong reasons. She'll never be another Nikki.
--------------------
Nothing to add to that, Marion. You created a very interesting review of a relatively boring episode.
A quote from Nina Allan's excellent story in TTA's Black Static #29 (which I am real-time reviewing at the moment):
“It is true that I have formed friendships, intellectual and sometimes emotional alliances that lasted a decade or more. But the ending is always the same: a boredom that finally becomes so oppressive that I am driven to fabricate some feud or schism that explodes the relationship apart.”
Life is just a slow-motion version of Big Bother, I'd say.
Or Big Brother is a micro of life's macro.
---------------------
Marion wrote: "Sara also decided a few tears shed wouldn't do her cause any harm. She related the tale of how she and her Mother helped a man with nowhere to go by giving him the only thing he asked for - food. She complained about the lack of help for people like him and wept. Cool as cucumber, Deana told her about poverty in India and how she should be glad to live in Britain where the poverty of India is unknown. She said people did not appreciate how lucky they are to live here and that she is proud to be British. This forced Sara into agreeing with her and re-establishing her Unionist and Royalist credentials. Deana took the drama right out of Sara's control and made her look silly. Oh, that Deana is a clever one!"
The box game was OK. But that bit Marion describes above was the most remarkable event, with lots of fleeting emotions over some people's faces, hard to read, inscrutable, but there nevertheless and interpretable in various ways, especially when Deana praised living in England or was it Britain, seemingly giving a right-wing salute as she said it? Ironic or sincere or subconscious or simply misinterpretable? Sara and Ashleigh were particularly inscrutable listening to Deana. Sara's Bernhardt tears returned and, already knowing about her extreme idiosyncratic Royalism, this model makes a very strange mix. Shall I ever fathom these people, as in a all great dramas and literature?
More significantly, can they fathom themselves? 
------------------
I wrote a week or so ago: "In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described by Marion above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!"
(31 July) The BB authorities obviously been reading this thread and pinched the idea.
Actually, like Marion, I thought it was a very good task. A lot of home truths shining through the self-theatre.
Sara seems to be growing middle-aged phsyically and mentally as day follows day in the House.
I still think Essex girl Ashleigh is a good bet for the eventual winner.
Deana's 'improvement' speech was well thought out and delivered. 
 
CONTINUED HERE
----------------------------------

The Diurnal Heroism of Manual Labour

Today’s quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys. This represents the first appearance of Geard: with a head like mine! But can one ‘own’ one’s head that is joined to the body. Don’t you only own things that need not be yours to own until you do own them?

“Here there was a suspended gas-globe, and here the strangers turned, revealing the black bowler hat and hooked Roman nose of Mr. Owen Evans, and a broad-shouldered, rather fleshy individual, without any hat, whose grizzled head under that suspended light seemed to Sam the largest human head he had ever seen. It was the head of a hydrocephalic dwarf; but in other respects its owner was not dwarfish. In other respects its owner had the normally plump, rather unpleasantly plump figure of any well-to-do-man, whose back has never been bent nor his muscles hardened by the diurnal heroism of manual labour.”

A Weather-Washed Lust

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE (1933) by John Cowper Powys. (I am collecting all these passages here: http://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/quotations-from-the-glastonbury-romance-by-john-cowper-powys/)
---------------
"Their love was lust, a healthy, earthy, muddy, weather-washed lust, like the love of water-rats in Alder Dyke or the love of badgers on Brandon Heath. They were shamelessly devoid of any Ideal Love. Born to belong to each other, by the same primordial law that made the Egyptian Ptolemies marry their sisters, they accepted their fatal monogamy as if it were the most casual of sensual attractions.
And in the etheric atmosphere about those two, as they stood there, quivered the immemorial Mystery of Glastonbury. Christians had one name for this Power, the ancient heathen inhabitants of this place had another, and a quite different one. Everyone who came to this spot seemed to draw something from it, attracted by a magnetism too powerful for anyone to resist, but as different people approached it they changed its chemistry, though not its essence, by their own identity..."

Wooden Exactions

Today's quoted passage from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys: "Every girl lives so constantly in the imaginative atmosphere of being made love to that even the most ignorant of them is rarely shocked or surprised. It is the material consequences that they dread, not moral remorse or any idea that they are allowing what is wrong. John's way of love-making might, however, have easily palled on a more passionate nature than Mary's; for he was not only profoundly corrupt but extremely egoistic, touching her and holding her in the manner that most excited his own childishly fantastic imagination and never asking himself whether this was what suited her, nor for one second forgetting himself in any rush of tempestuous tenderness. But Mary, as though she really *were* a hamadryad, who had known the shamelessness of hundreds of whimsical satyrs, treated the whole thing with grave, sweet, indulgent passivity. Something in her kindred nature, some willow-rooted, fen-country perversity, seemed to need just this protracted cerebral courtship to stir the essential coldness of her blood and nerves. One quaint feeling often came to her, in the oddest moments of his 'sweet usage,' namely that he was one of her old, faded, wooden *dolls*; yes, the most dilapidated and injured of all four which used to belong to her, come to life again, but this time full of queer, hardly human exactions that she would willingly prostitute herself for hours to satisfy, so long as she could hear those wooden joints creak and groan in their joy."

The Two Twilights

Today's quote from THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE by John Cowper Powys -- "The best time for any human being to pray to the First Cause if he wants his prayers to have a prosperous issue is one or other of the Two Twilights; either the twilight preceding the dawn or the twilight following the sunset. Human prayers that are offered up at noon are often intercepted by the Sun -- for all creative powers are jealous of one another -- and those that are offered up at midnight are liable to be waylaid by the Moon in her seasons or by the spirit of some thwarting planet. It is a natural fact that those Two Twilights are propitious to psychic intercourse with the First Cause while other hours are malignant and baleful."

Only Sleeping

Excerpt from review here:: http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/a-certain-slant-of-light-peter-bell/

Only Sleeping
“Full-faced, however, her beauty was seriously flawed by an odd asymmetry of features.”

…describing a Russian woman as another form of iconostasis… but I am leaping ahead of myself: this is a spooky tale, sometimes self-consciously so or even satirically so, like ‘Lamia’, with all the trappings of a ghost story that would please MRJ fans (and the boy who is haunted in an Isle of Man guesthouse by the long corridor leading alongside his non-ensuite room surely deserves being spooked by reading MRJ stories just before going to sleep!) – but, artfully transcending that feeling of mine, the story is genuinely scary. And the ambiance of Douglas, the Russian woman’s ‘Don’t Look Now’-type bereavement, the decor of the guest house, with shreds of Robert Aickman or Elizabeth Bowen… Mentions of the River Mersey, of beams in the rafters as well as beams from a lighthouse, of a “screen” of sycamore and privet, all lend to the symmetry/asymmetry of this book, enhanced by Lowe’s excellent drawings, one with what I saw as a confessional screen like a barred cell or railings around gravestones (here “caged-in tombs“) ….and the dreaded “unconsecrated ground” ie unscreened by God? And the millennium ball toing and froing upon these tides of fiction. This book, I recommend to any reader wanting to be scared. No facelift can relieve that threat, I suggest, from the twisted visage within you or represented by the mask you hide under the normal face, a mask that upstages any talisman of self even if only by dint of ‘superstitious awe’. I wonder if this book is the prime example of what I call ‘ghorror’ (a word I coined recently as a result of a typo, pronounced ‘gore-or’) where ghost story trappings are accompanied by gory upstagings of one’s very soul. But that is just me idly rambling from the other side of the page. Or foolhardily rambling like Bell’s protagonists … to seek some oxymoron of destiny. A fate that is only sleeping. Or slanting from the vandalised past toward you with some mixed hope and despair for the future. (26 Jun 12: 12.05 pm bst)



A Certain Slant of Light
The reviewer in Ely Cathedral:

Big Brother - Summer 2012 (2)

CONTINUED FROM HERE


(24 June) Marion wrote: and Lauren , although willing, not particularly impressed by his efforts to massage.
She seemed to go the extra mile, though, in her willingness!
A great report, Marion. Nothing else to add or subtract.
-------------
With all the excitement of England versus Italy last night, BB took a bit of a backseat. But I did note one birthday party versus another birthday party to become the Platonic Form of Birthday Party. The rude awakening regarding life's penalty shoot-off is that any Platonic Form is infiltrated by fallible humanity and Clockwork eye-decor. Even Fallibility itself is not what it was.
We go through life with eyes wide shut.
Thanks, again, Marion, for your infallible reports keeping me up to speed. (BTW I believe it's Conor not Connor)
--------------------
Marion wrote:  "gender insults abounded [...] We're right, Des - this is not a likeable house."
The only feasible likeables are Deana and Luke A, I feel. And perhaps Sara. Otherwise, not a good crowd, and mostly boring people, too (other than Lydia). So I don't know what BB is going to do to make this a likeable season in the weeks ahead. My spirit drops.
Agree that Conor is not only short of something vital in the intelligence stakes but also showed a very ugly side yesterday and BB should have evicted him. However did he pass the original audition?
Only glad that race doesn't seem to have come into it. On the surface anyway, with this factor having been drummed into all HMs, no doubt, following the Shilpa Shetty matter. But endemic 'genderism' has come into it and BB should deal appropriately with all such attitudes.
-----------------
Well, another big beast is liable to go on Friday: Lydia; Dislikeable yet interesting. A future politician on the centre right.
Caroline listed out the city venues for her Romantic 'Grand Tour' of Europe when she eventually meets the man who wants to care and service her. A highlight of the season so far. Luke A suggested St Petersburg would be better than Moscow in her list. I agree. 
 ------------------
Marion wrote: "hashing"
A new technical term for applying internet social media methods to real life situations, situations like Reality TV, even Reality itself!
Lydia was hashing hard last night in the diary room in a ploy to stay in the house. See the sparkle in her eye, see the metaphorical moustache of mischief being preened and then tagged?
Caroline - no doubt my favourite housemate from day one (even before she said anything) - who nevertheless goes up and down in my estimation day by day - is today's H. Rider Haggard 'She' or Mrs Bennett in the making (even Lady Catherine de Burgh) or an EM Forster heroine who yearns interechangeably for a room with a view and a passage to India. Travel by sedan chair or rickshaw (who's he) if not by motorised hash tag.
--------------
Marion wrote: "Oops! BB's nerve was struck and Caroline was summoned to the Diary Room and given a formal warning about what she had said. For a moment I thought BB was referring to her remark about his having no sanitation (her grammar is execrable) but no, he hinted tentatively about racism and then threatened her with removal from the house. Is she racist? I really don't know - there's no art to find the mind's construction in a word - but I find it odd that she can be threatened with removal for a single word while Conor can contemplate beating a woman and raping her with a hairbrush and only be gently chided."
Indeed, Marion.
And love Caroline or hate her, she certainly has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about her. A talking point so much more credible than Benedict.
Deana to go tonight, I say.
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Marion wrote: "So. The game is all over bar th shouting, isn't it. Luke S's group outnumber the outsider group by a wide margin. Next week, either Deana, Scott, Adam or Lauren goes...and the others will soon follow."
I think you and I should go in there as wild cards: Marion of Diamonds and Des of Spades.
Lydia was supposed to have a famous boy friend but when she got out, I didn't recognise him. Who is he? Who is he?
I agree with what you say about Ashleigh's behaviour. Being an Essex boy through and through, I assure you she is not typical. But Essex is getting infamous... When I was young, it was simply another county.
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(1 July): Thanks for another excellent report, Marion.
Scott is actually quite shrewd, amid his posh accentuation of vowels and consonants, describing the 'presence' or lack of it with the then potential of Lydia or Deana going. He is pontifical, strangely with his hair (that Marion once described as his brain bursting through the top of his skull) now shaped into a kippah-like eruption of orange-knitted lava. Also his kamikaze belittling of the Conor-'purchased' table (almost its phenomenological conception as the essence of Table) was like watching the Martyrdom of St Sebastian...stuck all over with toy-footballers on spinning stakes.
Becky's internal thigh slapping - after Deana describing her as possessiing the Wonder of being comfortable in her own skin - was something that martyred us viewers...
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I agree Deana was the star in 'calling' the Luke S and Ashleigh fauxmance. But she, too, is perhaps operating her own moral sting... A fauxmance between two chancers (or one chancer and one gullible individual) and a crusade (such as Deana's) on an unprovable point are both game-ploys that have grown up with BB over the years.
I think I'd keep a cool ployless, plotless head ... like Caroline?
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I'm glad you didn't divulge tonight's nominations here ahead of time, Marion. BB's Reality should not become real-time! I look forward to their gradual 'evolution' tonight.
Caroline's stony-faced assurance about who had not talked to her in the last three days begs the question of why she had not talked to them. Ever the mirror reflected back, that lady.
Although I think Deana is playing a game, I'm glad Luke S is rattled. Don't like him.
The Shievonne task was indeed brilliant and natuarlly flowed from her earlier Clownophobia (is there a more psychologically technical expression for that? Like the Stephen King Red Nose and Custard Pie Syndrome?)
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Coulrophobia, apparently!
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(4 July) Scott Gyrning
I continue to find Marion's reports invaluable for many reasons, e.g. because of the way the Housemates' gyrning and making Pinteresque absurdisms, rolling their eyes up into whites (particularly Caroline) and generally blocking sense with veils of misgotten telepathy-with-grunts-grins-and-gawps. But Marion miraculously seems to be able to transcend all this with her TTA Forum reports. The masque that rolls beneath the Geordie chanting of the Marcus over-voice that seems merely to achieve punctuating further diversions of sense.
An interesting foursome up for grabs this week. I hope Conor goes (he must have conned the auditioners for BB about his true nature). But I fear that Marion may be right about the fulsome current of the Beck flowing ineluctably back to source upon a wave of the TV audience's tactile voting.
Today is Higgs boson day - finding the dirty Diamond in the Cern Zoo. Seems somehow to be running parallel with BB.
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Marion wrote: "Is the world ready for yet another fauxmance?"
Or grosmance (pronounced growmance) where a fauxmance becomes real and/or gross with mass or dark matter -- or grows or morphs into something other than faux, if only in the self-deceived minds of the participants of whatever 'mance' it is.
Becky in trousers; I had to laugh at Big Brother saying he couldn't see her legs as they were in army camouflage trousers.
There is a lot of physical and mental gurning going on: even the furniture going green and blue with its own camouflage of 'genius loci'. (Sorry I mispelt gurning as gyrning yesterday: it was almost as if the word itself had started gurning: a vexed texture of text).
The world may have discovered the Higgs boson (or at least its lookalike) and Reality itself (as an extrapolation of Reality TV) has effectively started its gurning process: almost the opening of a Pandora's Box by the discovery of the 'God particle'; the next step will be Avian Flu passing human to human, I fear.
The Big Brother House: the ultimate CERN Zoo.
Meanwhile, I pray (not too strong a word) that Conor is gurnt off on Friday, the scorched earth of his designer stubble on his extended chin and all.
(From Wikipedia: "A typical gurn might involve projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible, and covering the upper lip with the lower lip, though there are other possibilities.")
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Marion wrote: "It's coming to something when a man who has spent time in one of America's prisons can be shocked by the behaviour of Britain's youth."
Proof that BB isn't just silly games but a Morailty Tale, too.
But the HMs' heads acting as green or blue loo-brushes was a real 'Happening'! A bit too bitty last night, though. We all know who we hope is going tonight. Becky is shaping up better, so I hope it's not her at least.
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Marion wrote: "A lesson must surely have been learned here - you cannot make people see things your way; there is such a thing as objective reality. He tried to drown out their protests by talking over them (he's what my Gran used to refer to as a wee yap o' hell)..."
A lesson for us all, indeed, as this Morality Tale - with Classical Horror's Hubris and Nemesis - Shakesperean even - perspicaciously rolls on. During the live streaming on 5* between cup and interview's lip, it became Continental Art Cinema of the Sixties with close-ups dwelling on faces, almost in dreamy slow-motion as emotions flickered between expressions that escaped involuntarily or were poised deliberately before slipping away again: a true revelation, brilliant TV as only Reality TV of this nature can achieve.
Marion is spot on with her epithet about the interviewee: "prize prat". And about everything else she says above. It turned out perfectly for justice, leaving Conor marooned in his own Sophoclean Tragedy, with Marion and I -- and other members of the audience with whom I'm in touch osmotically -- the Greek Chorus.
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(8 July) Marion wrote: "On this board, we talk a great deal about how HMs true characters are revealed in the house but so, it must be said, are the characters of commentators."
We reflect back from the stagings of others in the march of life. And by watching Reality TV we can perhaps fathom even more our own motivations for better or worse.
"It is a dark and opaque side to ourselves, one that we leave untreated at our own peril, but it is also a source of endless humour and amazement, so that we can also enjoy the subject as we suffer it." Robert Trivers
And thus gratifying to see grizzled Conor blubbing in the arms of Luke S. But, meanwhile, we tell ourselves that we were born to love and be loved, even Conor...
The enduring image for me last night was the blue towelling of a mountainous Sultan from Sinbad's days attempting to mimick another religion in the shape of a Buddha with the disarming drawback of speaking from Caroline's face.
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Marion said: "She reminded me of that blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland!"

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way –"
My highlight was Scott reciting that in his articulate poshese from beneath his kippah of orange brain-hair.
Yes, the Shievonne jape is to turn seeeerious... Adam, watch out.
That is brilliant, Marion, your blue caterpillar Caroline.
My original conceit above was a merging of these two:

And this is the current Diary Room chair:

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Marion wrote: "Conor is a man of few words - so he just keeps repeating them."
Indeed. And when a love-circle was proposed he probably first thought of something else.
Seriously, I think BB stepped over the mark with the entrapment of Adam. Made it more into a voyeuristic hothouse psychological investigation into human behaviour when taken to extremes of personal interaction rather than a Reality TV game which often borders on that 'hothouse', true, but hopefully doesn't cross the line into deliberate manipulative cruelty.
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Marion wrote re Shievonne: "She flapped them at BB, threw them up in the air, then from side to side, even circled her own head with them - a magician making magic passes. She said she'll be carried out of the house on a stretcher and duly crossed her arms over her chest to symbolise a corpse."
In all the years I've been watching and commenting piecemeal on BB seasons, I don't think I've ever thought to compare the DR to a religious Confessional, with a priest (here BB) on the other side of the grille. With Scott's lengthy meticulous pickings out at his thoughts. Shievonne's eschatology described above. [I coined the word eschairtology recenty, as it happens (HERE in connection with a Reggie Oliver story)!] And I could go on with this analogy!
Like Marion, I have no idea re the unseen backstory of Sara and Luke A.
I think Caroline at one point said that Scott would win this BB season. I'm beginning to think she's right.
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Yes, I forgot Sara is an ultra-Royalist. Ashleigh looks like a frail flower of an innocent abroad, as you imply, Marion, but in nobody else has there been an innocence so subsumed by an inner archetypal Essexisation...and, meanwhile, even I knew that the Queen's dogs are corgis.
I still depend on your reports to set me straight, Marion. Until I read it this morning, I thought last night's show was confusing, mostly inaudible and boring, and I see I was right on the first two but not, retrocausally, on the third!
Conor to go tomorrow night!

CONTINUED HERE

Fugue for Black Thursday – George Berguño

Excerpt from my real-time reveiw HERE.



“Time grows in all directions, sprouting new limbs and branches.”
I was opportunely listening to Mozart’s Piano Sonata K333 (just finished being broadcast on BBC Radio 3) while I was reading this story. You will know why opportune when you read it. Also the story today has another opportune synchronicity with the Ukraine-Poland Euro Football Tournament with references in this story to Drohobycz (and the England footballers being taken to visit Auschwitz in the last few days) – and synchronicity with the evil things today going on in Syria. Do I dare belittle the story by calling it Whovian? Still, this truly great story has variations on the theme of Time’s Arrow concerning Bruno the Jew and his three pictorial sketches: following a quote from ‘Tempus Incognitum: a small town in Ukraine’ - Berguño’s story being narrated from the ostensible POV of a first person singular Gestapo officer in 1942 and 1983. Fascinating, intriguing, devastating. “…man or woman or child, old or young, just kill for the sake of killing.” (12 June 2012 - 10.05 a.m. bst)