sundries: late night, very random

[rm]

Little Kitty's ashes are back. I need a cat urn. It doesn't need to be cat-shaped. It needs to be round and squat though, like Little. I don't really have the emotional energy for the research (I tried). Any vendor recs?

Dreamwidth is under attack from anti-free speech trolls of the sort that may have precipitated the LJ StrikeOut thing. I don't really need to underline all the ways in which I have NO patience for this, do I?

I have just discovered the Whuffie Bank, and that I have nearly as many Whuffies as Lexa Doig. Despite telling you this, I don't know what it means.

Project Runway is back in NYC. Thank god.

Did any Jack/Alonso work show up while I was gone other than the piece by xtricks? Anyway, trying not to read, as I spent a lot of time on the boat (duh) cogitating on my own piece which I hope to be awake enough to write tomorrow.

Speaking of Alonso.... I'm seeing the rumors everywhere that he's in the not officially announced TW, S4 -- are any of the rumors from good sources? I haven't been back long enough to really look or poke my own sources with sticks.

Charity List and Haiti-related links to come. I need to be awake to do it, and obviously, people are ahead of me.

Started reading Sherlock Holmes on the boat. No one told me about the Mormons. Or the purple prose.

Comments

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Well, the Mormons are only in the one book.

Personally, I can't read the pre-rescue dialogue between John Ferrier and Lucy without wincing; it's like Conan Doyle is channeling Dickens at his sappiest.

Have you started the second novel, The Sign of Four? I think that's where the Canon really takes off.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nope. I'm still finishing the first. There was even more relaxing and even less reading than I had anticipated on the trip.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

It's interesting, because the way Watson describes Holmes changes dramatically between the two books. Either Holmes was on his best behavior during the early days at 221B, or Doyle decided to reboot his "thinking machine" and give him some bohemian/aesthete traits (the drug use, the ennui).

[argentla.livejournal.com]

If you survive the Mormons (who do not return, as laughingacademy notes) and the purple prose (which comes and goes, although that's arguably the nadir), consider seeking out The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, which is littered with exhaustive, obsessive footnotes about the ephemera of Victoriana. I think you would find it quite transcendental.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

May I second that rec! I have the Annotated. Very helpful if you have no idea what a gasogene is. Or some of the other terms one can find in Victorian stories.

I also have a reproduction of the stories as they were printed in the Strand, with illustrations by Sidney Pagnet(sp?) I remember spending some time attempting to reproduce those illustrations in my notebooks. (I liked to draw.) The representations of the women's clothing are simply wonderful. I so want a few dresses like those, but without that nasty corset.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes
http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0393059162
(I didn't realize that it has been republished! Dang. Now I'm wondering if I should get a copy. The one I have is the 1988 version.)

Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes
(This edition has several of the stories as they were printed in the Strand magazine, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. The illustrations are just darling little things, and show off the period so well.)
http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0890090572

Of course you can find these at Amazon dot com as well. The older version of the Annotated are there as well.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

I have a 1967 edition; I have seen but not looked at the newer editions. The one I have is edited by the late William S. Baring-Gould, and is full of insanely anal essays by crazed (but very genteel) Sherlockians on pressing subjects like how many wives Watson actually had. (Text implies two, fans suggest three to five, some quite absurd.)

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

I think I've seen that copy at the library. Or least I want to say I remember some essay along those lines (the number of wives) and the name is familiar. With the supposed number of wives, I can't help but thinking (1)that's sort of like the wife of Bath. (2) Boy, he sure wears them out quickly, doesn't he.

Yeah, bad of me, I know...