— sadie (@Sadie_ATL) September 16, 2022
Not sure I could sit through a whole movie, but there’s certainly material for one. Olivia Rutigliano explains that “Charles Dickens really, really hated his fanboy Hans Christian Andersen”:
… [I]n March of 1857, Andersen earnestly wrote to Dickens to say that he was traveling to England, for no more than a fortnight, to take Dickens up on his offer. And so, in June of that year, Andersen showed up to Gad’s Hill, Dickens’s country estate in Higham, ready to become roommates with his hero. “My visit is for you alone,” he wrote. “Above all, always leave me a small corner in your heart.”
(If it weren’t for the fact that Andersen seems kind of cluelessly sweet, this would sound like horror movie. I’ve definitely seen this horror movie.)
Although the Dickens family was expecting him, in a way, they could have never expected him. Andersen, socially awkward and apparently one of the nineteenth century’s premier literary softbois, was not good at picking up on social cues or maintaining any kind of formal demeanor, demanding in one way or the other that he remain the center of attention. When he arrived, he asked that one of Dickens’s own sons give him a daily shave, explaining that this was a custom for hosting male guests in Denmark. Weirded out, Dickens made him a daily appointment at a nearby barbershop instead. One night, during a dinner, when Dickens held an arm out to one of the ladies present, Anderson scooted over and grabbed it himself, and walked with Dickens arm-in-arm into the dining room. Which is not even to mention the fact that he stayed for three weeks longer than he had originally proposed.
Now, this was a particularly bad time for Dickens to have any (let alone such an oblivious) houseguest—Little Dorritt was not doing so well critically, and he was attempting to leave his wife for a woman half his age. Plus, he was acting in a play—his friend Wilkie Collins’s play The Frozen Deep. So, he was clearly a busy man, doing many important things.
Then again, Andersen was difficult to be around. At the premiere of The Frozen Deep (with Dickens in the leading role and Queen Victoria in the audience), he loudly burst into tears. Afterwards, he apparently sulked because his presence at the event was not noted more highly. And when he learned that one of his pieces received a negative review, he hurled himself down on the Dickens family lawn and passionately wept. Despite this spectacle, Dickens’s daughter Kate called him “a bony bore.”
It is speculated by some that Dickens may have based his gaunt, obsequious character Uriah Heap on his guest. It is assumed that Anderson based his character of the Ugly Duckling on himself…
Baud
Maybe Idris Elba can play Dickens in the movie.
Edmund Dantes
That is hilarious. I never knew that history of the writers.
Baud
Before mermaidgate, weren’t people complaining about black people in the new Rings of Power show on Amazon Prime? It’s not a diverse cast at all, except for a few isolated characters.
SpaceUnit
If people can believe Jesus was a white gun-toting Klansman we can make mermaids any damn color we want.
delphinium
Ah, the old “I”ll be traveling to England, for no more than a fortnight” trick. Andersen sounds like a celebrity stalker.
Never read Little Dorritt, but the miniseries was quite good, with the wonderful Claire Foy and eye candy Matthew Macfadyen.
LeftCoastYankee
One of the thoughts that buoyed me during the pandemic (and living alone), was the idea that I could have been stuck hunkering down with some of the old clueless roommates of my youth.
I’m sure there’s some kind of dark comedy in the “unfortunate” demise of a bad pandemic apartment mate.
(ETA): And “Hans” would be an appropriate name for the mate.
prostratedragon
My god, this is hilarious! Is he the original Man Who Came to Dinner?
prostratedragon
@Baud: Scoffers should consider how close Dickens’s reaction probably was to Stringer Bell’s exasperation with bone-head subordinates.
JoyceH
@SpaceUnit:
I saw someone parodying the mermaid controversy with an outraged huff on Twitter that in the original, the little mermaid’s lower half was clearly cod, whereas in the reboot, she’s mahi-mahi.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I thought we were going with Mer-a-Lago. I was informed that “-gate” is tired.
SpaceUnit
@JoyceH:
Sounds fishy.
Frankensteinbeck
Andersen was a fruit loop. I have studied him only a little around reading a big chunk of his execrable literary work. He would serially fall in love with and write madly passionate letters to people who might or might not know him. He was incredibly horny on main, while simultaneously thinking that sex itself is gross. His stories are full of passionate people going to bed with each other, apparently to cuddle and smooch.
His writing is awful. It’s bizarre. It’s nihilistic. His religious beliefs appear to be that life sucks and going to heaven is the only happy ending, and that you get this by praying. Morality is… iffy. Just pray. Also beauty, he’s really into beauty. And naked children. He has huge, huge, book-sized ‘stories’ that are just page after page of describing a setting, with no plot. He openly declares at the open of one of those that he’s hoping to find a painter who will paint these and will be paid in exposure. No, seriously, he’ll pay them with riding the coat tails of his fame.
Snow Queen is a great story. I highly recommend it. No resemblance to Frozen whatsoever, but great story.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
No, it sounds like something out a horror movie. Misery, specifically. If anybody ever wrote like that to me, even if I had met them before and kind of knew them, I’d be creeped out. It’s too…much; like this person doesn’t understand boundaries and how relationships develop
zhena gogolia
URIAH HEEP
HumboldtBlue
I think I’m gonna do this to Cole.
Write him a letter saying I’m coming, and then just show the fuck up and stay for a month.
delphinium
@Frankensteinbeck:
Gotta admit, my mind went elsewhere about the ‘paid in exposure’ part.
Spanky
@HumboldtBlue: In Cole’s case, he’ll just walk a few blocks to his folk’s place and leave you to clean cat boxes.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Thank yew
prostratedragon
@delphinium: So it wasn’t just me.
Anne Laurie
Keep in mind… Cole has both military training, and a Maine Coon cat. You really wouldn’t want to outstay your welcome!
Emerald
Uriah Heep is a character in David Copperfield, published in 1850, so if Andersen was the inspiration then Dickens must have known him years before his visit in 1857.
geg6
OMG, that’s a hilarious story! Big Dickens fan here. As a preteen, I read all his works, over and over. But I never heard this story and it’s fascinating.
trollhattan
Gov Gav feeling frisky, definitely not feeling DeSantismentum.
HumboldtBlue
@Anne Laurie:
Oh, I was Army too, infantry, and Steve and I would immediately be besties.
Tom Levenson
@Baud: You so win the thread.
Splitting Image
@Emerald:
I thought he was based on Lindsey Graham.
Dan B
@Frankensteinbeck: And a reminder that you informed us that the little mermaid was a slave of the prince in HCA’s story. I appreciate that information.
HumboldtBlue
OK, which one of you did this to this poor old white woman in Utah?
delphinium
@trollhattan: While I liked the “I’ll bring my hair gel” line, Newsom doesn’t need to debate DeSantis (something about the old sage “never wrestle with a pig”). California is doing wonderful things so would rather he continue to focus and bring attention to that. Honestly don’t feel debating the Florida weeble would change many minds.
CaseyL
Oh my god. I love the info that Anderson descended upon the Dickens household at the same time Charles was in the process of leaving his wife. The dinner table conversations had to have been lit.
Dan B
@JoyceH: As a counterpoint us Queer boys could complain that Jaysus in the original book was middle eastern, swarthy, and spent all his time with twelve men and you know they’d have an Instagram account on their return today if not an Only Fans.
If they’re gonna have the vapors givem some high octane ammo
I believe there’s a subplot where these “fishers of men” go for the Big Mermen
And with that, plus the before dawn cat throwing up, I need a nap.
Spanky
Wikipedia sez
It would be interesting to read the story of how they met.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Reposting this from a few days ago, because I think it’s a pretty big deal:
A few people mentioned the composite rate of I-Bonds being something 9%. That’s great, but you used to be able to get a fixed rate at 2-3% 15-20 years ago. I’d like to have real returns above inflation. EE bonds are just at bad with the fixed rate at 0.10%, needed to be held for 20 years to get an eventual annualized rate of 3.16% with automatic doubling. It used to be you only wait 17 years to get that, with an annualized rate just over 4%. My step-grandfather bought me several $50 EE bonds for my birthday and Christmas; most of them pay way higher than the ones issued today and within the last 10 years. That’s BS and it seems to me like the PTB want this program for small investors with nearly 100 years of history gone because Wall Street can’t capitalized from it
geg6
@HumboldtBlue:
Holy shit. Just…holy shit.
Sure Lurkalot
@trollhattan:
Fucking liar’s face is fucking punchable.
HumboldtBlue
@geg6:
Right?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@geg6:
@HumboldtBlue:
It’s weird. The tweet says they checked that it’s a real campaign, but if you look in the upper left hand corner of the video, it says it’s apparently from “IG: Utah Satire”. I take “IG” to mean Instagram. But then the tweeter linked to a news article. It is cringe tho, either way
Spanky
@geg6: I watched it with the sound off. I’m very glad I did.
mdblanche
For centuries the Danes have sent their madmen to England. There they either recover their wits, or if they don’t it’s no great matter since the English are all mad.
geg6
@Sure Lurkalot:
How can anyone stomach this smarmy, hostile creep?
Baud
@mdblanche:
There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.
kalakal
@HumboldtBlue: That’s not something you see every day. And I, for one, am grateful.
HumboldtBlue
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I did not notice that, either way, it makes one wonder.
And let us all fondly recall this hip pastor doing his best to get the youths involved in church and loving Jesus.
oatler
How about a biopic of William Morris? No CGI costs.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: I think you should go copy your comment from the nearly dead thread earlier and copy it into this one.
mdblanche
@Baud: It’s kind of like Florida that way.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@HumboldtBlue:
WTF? That has to be satire. It’s so hard to tell with people like that who are so clueless
ETA:
Rappin’ For Jesus
I knew it couldn’t have been real lol
Ken B
@HumboldtBlue: That’s what happens when you sniff Jesus’ jockstrap for too long.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue: Oh, God, that is so horrible.
HumboldtBlue
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Oh no, that’s fo’real.I thought it was real, I stand corrected.@Ken B:
They were sniffin’ something.
@zhena gogolia:
I can hear the horror in your words.
zhena gogolia
@Sure Lurkalot: He does that same Mussolini thing with his mouth that TFG does. God, someone even worse than TFG, I can’t believe it.
Baud
DOJ has filed it’s stay request with the 11th circuit.
Anne Laurie
… One of whom (John the Apostle) he repeatedly called his ‘most beloved’. Also among his coterie, his mom, the only certified virgin mother in (Christian) history, who followed him everywhere, to the grave and beyond.
Not to mention the, shall we say, ‘retired entertainer’ known as Mary Magdalene. Magdala, at the time, was the resort town where all the most powerful Roman bureaucrats & their hangers-on went on vacation. As the nuns in my parochial high school told it, there was implicit New Testament propaganda that ‘Mary Las Vegas’ was impressed by the miracles of Jesus — she’d seen the best professional magicians, worked with the biblical equivalent of Siegfried & Roy, so she knew genuine miracles from mere stagecraft!
planetjanet
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I-bonds are the new savings bonds and they are indexed to inflation. The current 9% is mind-bogglingly amazing and you lock in that return for 30 years. What is not to like? Yes, they are online. So are all stocks anymore. So you don’t have a pretty little piece of paper to put in a grandchild’s birthday card?
ETA: Did you look at the timestamps of those links. The world has changed since 2014.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
The lawyers for both parties have been ordered to Brooklyn for a hearing on Tuesday.
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
Yes, for the special master.
Steeplejack
@Emerald:
Good catch.
Suzanne
@HumboldtBlue:
Send him an email, in all caps. Maybe include a dick pic and some mustard.
Mike in NC
Was delighted to see Netflix just added the insane comedy “This Is The End” with Seth Rogen and James Franco.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
OK, I was unclear what it was related to, just saw a headline flash past.
@Suzanne:
You’re devious, I like the way you think.
Sparkedcat
Jackals will appreciate this. I did not catch all the references.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1570910665703059456
StringOnAStick
The DOJ just asked the 11th Circuit to restore its access to the classified documents that Cannon and tRump are trying to keep away from them.
Suzanne
@HumboldtBlue: LMAO, that’s why we’re all here, innit?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@planetjanet:
The US Savings Bond program currently consists of two offerings, I Bonds and EE Bonds. There’s two components to the Series I Bond: the inflation component based on the CPI of the previous 6 months, and the permanent fixed rate. Both can change every May and November of the year, but the Treasury sets the permanent fixed rate. It’s been 0% more often than not for the last 10 years. That 9%, while great, is only due to the inflation component which is changed every 6 months. The 0% fixed rate never will. On top of this, you’re not getting a real rate of return; you’re not even keeping up with inflation very well either because there can be lags with the interest rates changing. Eventually, if inflation settles back down to 2%/year, that’s what the I Bond will then earn over it’s life more than likely, which is suboptimal. Contrast that with I Bonds issued 20 years ago with a 3% fixed rate plus that 9% inflation rate. It would be an annualized 12%.
I wouldn’t mind so much about them being online if the TreasuryDirect website wasn’t so terrible, prone to locking people out and then having to wait hours on the phone to get back in. Before you could walk into a bank and purchase/redeem them for cash.
The point is, these used to be a much better deal some years ago and now they’re not. They used to be somewhat priced based on market-forces, and not simply Treasury fiat. Once inflation is brought back under control, I guarantee interest in these bonds will go back to where they were in 2014, assuming the fixed rate isn’t raised back up again.
Those articles are still relevant because all of the detailed changes still apply today. It seems to me that the US government has done everything it can to reduce demand for these products so they can eliminate them. The Forbes article argues that the Treasury’s arguments for cost-saving are BS
WaterGirl
@Baud: Thank you for that information!
Do judges work on weekends? Respond on weekends? Or is Monday the absolutely soonest we will see a response, even if it’s just a stay?
Does the meeting date set by Dearie (sp?) potentially speed up the process at all, indirectly? Won’t the 11th circuit want to weigh in before the first meeting with the special master?
Cameron
@HumboldtBlue: That’s not a parody, is it? Y’know, Florida actually isn’t all that bad……
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mike in NC:
Ick, James Franco
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC: I need to brush up on my Rogens vs. Rogans.
I had a nice little
pneumonicmnemonic thing going… but I can’t remember whether the “a’ stood for asshole or the “a” stood for actor. Dammit.HumboldtBlue
@Suzanne:
Pretty much.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Trump will get a chance to oppose. I don’t know if the court will grant a temporary stay while that goes on. I expect the 11th Circuit will decide within 1-2 weeks.
Steeplejack
@Spanky:
Okay, Wikipedia says that Dickens and Andersen first met in 1847.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Dearie is just asking for process information right now. He hasn’t started looking at documents.
lowtechcyclist
@Anne Laurie:
No, the narrator of the Gospel of John refers to the ‘beloved disciple’ (presumably John himself) that way in the narration. I don’t think he ever puts those words in Jesus’ mouth, though.
And of course there’s no talk about ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’ in any of the other three Gospels. It’s just a John thing. He must’ve had trouble getting his head through doorways.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
Obviously IANAL, but I think they aren’t disputing the Special Master. Only not having access to to secret docs immediately. But I don’t know that.
WaterGirl
@Sparkedcat: Yeah, it’s a little inside baseball for me. I think “Tulsi” was my favorite.
Wyatt Salamanca
Hans Christian Andersen has had great significance for me ever since Trump descended down the escalator to announce his candidacy for the 2016 election. At that moment, this nation entered the Age of Hans Christian Andersen. Arguably, Andersen’s most famous story is The Emperor’s New Clothes and it’s the perfect metaphor for Trump’s campaign and his presidency.
By any objective standard, Trump is the most incompetent and corrupt individual to ever serve as President. Yet in spite of Trump’s unprecedented stupidity and corruption, he still has millions of loyal supporters. Just as it should have been obvious to the King’s subjects in the Andersen short story that he was naked, it should have been obvious to 74 million Americans that Trump was manifestly unqualified to serve as President.
I look forward to this Age of Andersen swamp fever breaking by Trump’s death, conviction, or some previously unforeseen event.
Baud
@geg6:
DOJ will challenge the whole decision on appeal, but the immediate stay is only about the classified documents.
WaterGirl
@Baud:
So even if the 11th circuit won’t do anything until T* responds? Or at least will wait some respectable period of time to allow them to respond?The pace of all of this makes me want to bang my head against a wall. I guess I wasn’t cut out to be an attorney after all.Never mind. I just re-read your response and you pre-answered my question!
HumboldtBlue
Trevor Noah has a gem of a video to enjoy.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Probably no action until T responds.
Cameron
@lowtechcyclist: I thought that was a Mattie Gaetz thing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Wyatt Salamanca:
“The king is in the altogether,
The altogether, the altogether,
He’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born —
And it’s altogether too chilly a morn!”
WaterGirl
@Baud: Ah.
I hear the name Dearie in the voice used by the Mr. Gold / Rumplestiltskin in Once Upon A Time when he said Dearie.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
My respite is that I have a too small, unlanceable zit on my skull next to my forehead which has been swelling and is impinging on a facial nerve because it hurts like a motherfucker. After three fairly sleepless nights getting lit up by this thing every time it touched a pillow, I went to immediate care last night, which told me “it isn’t big enough to lance”.
After that trip I woke up this am with the upper right quadrant of my face swollen to hell and back (as today has gone one, my right eye is about as closed as Popeye could make it). Went to doc at 11:30 am, he gave me a combo sulfa-amoxicillin scrip along with gabapentin for the neuro misery, all of which led to poor customer service drama at CVS, which I’m obligated to because insurance.
If this shit doesn’t calm down by Monday, I’m in the hospital for IV antibiotics.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Yes, you’re right. I was using Special Master as a shorthand for “special master getting to see everything”. That was probably confusing.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I want the sprint, not the marathon!
edit: where’s the button they have on podcasts where you can listen at a faster speed than 1x? That’s what I want for this process.
Citizen Alan
@zhena gogolia: No relation to Imogene.
WaterGirl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Cursing those people who didn’t address it the first time you went in.
I’m sorry.
HumboldtBlue
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Ouch, feel better.
Frankensteinbeck
Per WaterGirl’s suggestion, I am reposting from a thread way down. Note that the links will go back to that thread.
THIS THREAD HAD BETTER NOT BE DEAD THIS IS FINALLY MY MOMENT.
I have read a lot of HCA. Nobody else has and it’s REALLY OBVIOUS every time shit like this comes up.
The Prince lives in an orientalist, slave-owning fantasy kingdom that is very definitely not Denmark. He is almost certainly not white. The unnamed mermaid was his personal slave. She could be any color. Andersen wouldn’t care, he thought this stuff was exotic and cool.
By the way, the relationship was incredibly messed up. She’s his slave. Her official sleeping spot is the floor outside his bedroom door. There is a scene where she’s sitting on his lap and they’re kissing, and he tells he how he A) thinks of her as a child, B) wants to marry her, C) can’t because she looks almost exactly like the woman he wants even more to marry. Andersen was fucked up.
Also most of his writing was incredibly tedious. Or depressing. ‘The Little Match Girl’ was his typical story, about how life sucks but going to heaven after your tragic, meaningless death is great. So be sure to pray a lot. But premarital sex, totally cool, go for it.
@Baud:
I don’t remember a specific description, but I’d lay odds she’s not wearing a clam bikini top as a mermaid. Andersen was fond of naked characters. Especially children. Andersen was CREEPY.
@LiminalOwl:
But it does have a happy ending! When the Prince marries that nun who looks like the mermaid, the mermaid is given a chance to murder the couple while they’re asleep after their day-before-wedding sex! And if she does she’ll be a mermaid again! But when she doesn’t, she wins the REAL prize, turning into an air spirit that has a chance of earning an immortal soul and going to heaven.
That story is SO. WEIRD.
Tl;dr – Everyone go read Snow Queen, it has zero resemblance to Frozen but it’s Andersen’s best story by far.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@WaterGirl:
I’m unreasonably and absurdly grumpy about the pain and gross appearance.
You could do anything else to me, and I would be mostly OK.
WaterGirl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I dunno, extremely grumpy seems like the natural reaction to what you’re going through.
My dad had shingles on his face and the pain of that and the upsetting appearance was terribly hard on him. So our faces hurting and looking funky is a big deal.
I hope this resolves quickly for you.
Poe Larity
John Cole should host a visitor every week. Then he could write a play every year about it.
StringOnAStick
I wish I could find it, but there is a tweet movie out there today of what Jesus would be like as a republican and it is quite funny. The very first scene is making someone take away the dark skinned immigrant girl, with the appropriate modification to the biblical admonition to care for the stranger in your home country; it proceeds from there.
delphinium
@Frankensteinbeck:
Thanks for this-I read some of Andersen’s stories as a kid but don’t remember the mermaid one. Seems like he had lots of issues.
Will have to read the Snow Queen.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@SiubhanDuinne: wow, that brings back memories! I listened to that record over and over.
HumboldtBlue
Time for the Venezuelan restaurant Peka to get some love.
LiminalOwl
@WaterGirl: mnemonic?
SiubhanDuinne
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I did the same. Played that album until the disc was nearly translucent. Some really great Frank Loesser songs in that movie.
Tony G
@Baud: I’d like to see Shaquille O’Neal play Hans Christian Anderson!
SiubhanDuinne
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
That sounds awful! I hope it’s better soon.
Tony G
@Baud: The real problem is the existence of black people. That’s what’s causing all of this economic insecurity among Real Americans.
HumboldtBlue
@StringOnAStick:
Here ya go
LiminalOwl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: That sounds… extraordinarily unpleasant. Best wishes for speedy healing.
LiminalOwl
I am grateful—I think—to many of you for increasing my understanding of Hans Christian Andersen. Unfortunately, he sounds too much like our now-ex-housemate… (ok, not the sexual weirdness, but most certainly the narcissism and histrionics…)
Steeplejack
Hips don’t lie! For TBogg:
SiubhanDuinne
@HumboldtBlue:
Here is a longer version.
Steeplejack
@StringOnAStick:
Republican Jesus movie (full version).
@SiubhanDuinne:
Missed it by that much.
Peale
@Steeplejack: Thank goodness she’s from Columbia or DeSantis will send her to a blue state. I would hate to have her living next door to me. That would be awful. There would be protests. Well not really protests. More like we’d be trying to get her autograph. But its similar.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
I can relate. I read some of this stuff for a literature class. I note in passing that a lot of people confuse Andersen’s literary fairy tales, which were largely original stories, with the written retelling of folk stories by the Brothers Grimm. And then all this stuff gets thrown into the Americanized pop culture Disney version of things.
I don’t know about the original Danish, but in the translations I have read, in one scene the mermaid has white legs. She also has blue eyes, but and long dark (not red) hair, but is not assigned any particular ethnicity. And she is naked until she later is given something to wear when she goes to live with the prince. But the bottom line is she is a goddamm mythical character.
Anyway, you are right that Andersen often wrote some weird shit. But he was also a weird dude. Also, his critics expected children stories to be sternly moralistic, so he had to tailor some of his work for the expectations of prudish adults, not his intended audience.
Still he was a weird dude.
The Racist hysteria over Disney’s Little Mermaid is sadly part of a general pop culture racist and sexist pushback. White supremacy strikes back. Aspects of this has popped up over the Tolkien reboot, Star Trek and various Star Wars properties. And these dopes use social media to attract and encourage more unhappy souls to join their vile club.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steeplejack:
Am I right to be hearing that in Maxwell Smart’s voice?
HumboldtBlue
@SiubhanDuinne:
Of course!
Sister Golden Bear
@Dan B: Well in SF every Easter the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence hold their Hunky Jesus contest…. Just sayin’.
StringOnAStick
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s the movie, thanks! Retweet that link everywhere, people!
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Absolutely. I was really surprised when I started digging into Andersen’s creations that almost none of them were anything like a fairy tale. His writing is nothing like I was told to expect.
I have a lot of trouble with this as an argument. His morals were so consistently ‘life sucks, but going to heaven is worth it’ and they’re built so deeply into most of his stories, it’s not like a cleaned up ending. It’s an obsession. It’s a mission.
And for the rest, if he cleaned up The Saucy Boy, I hate to imagine the original. He has a whole story, one of his longest and most coherent, that at the end turns out to have been ‘These are the tough events Boy Protagonist had to get through until his sister was old enough for him to marry her.’ Also, ‘old enough’ was literally ‘the second she developed physical sexual traits’.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
Sounds to me HCA might’ve been a pedophile or something
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
RE: his critics expected children stories to be sternly moralistic, so he had to tailor some of his work for the expectations of prudish adults
Oh, this is not a defense of Andersen. It’s just to note that his censors were so insistent that he include a stern didactic message that they didn’t care about his creepy moralism.
Andersen seemed to have issues and this is reflected in his work. However, even folk tales often are problematic, especially when it comes to sex. In most variants of Sleeping Beauty, the prince who finds her has sex with her and she has two children, sometimes while still asleep.
I don’t know if fairy Tales and folk tales were supposed to make kids happy or scare the shit out if them.
Anotherlurker
@WaterGirl: I, too, had Shingles on my face. I looked like a makeup test for a bad 1950’s Sc-fi film. The pain was intense and often contradictory as in intense burning, itching, stabbing and numb. Sometimes all at once. All in all I delt with it for a year and a half.
By far, Shingles is the sickest and most miserable illness I have ever had to deal with.
Ken
Terry Pratchett’s take on that in Hogfather is brilliant.
Albert: “She wakes up and there’s angels.”
Death: AND THEY TURN UP AT THE LAST MINUTE WITH WARM CLOTHES?
Albert: “Er, no, more like after the last minute.”
Death: YOU MEAN AFTER SHE’S —
Albert: “Yes.”
Death: WHY NOT BEFORE?
Albert: “I suppose people think it’s a better story that way. Although now that I come to tell someone….”
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No evidence that he hung around or bothered children.
He had friends, but was an odd person. In an early diary he vowed not to have sexual relations. But he later may have had relationships with men, maybe also women, although he had a thing for yearning for unobtainable women.
He had a strong friendship with the famous opera singer Jenny Lind.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
👍
Frankensteinbeck
Oh! One more tidbit I can’t believe I forgot:
In the truly bizarre Little Mermaid story, the best part is easily the Sea Witch. She has one trait that makes her cooler than the entertaining Disney version: She tells the truth. She is scrupulously honest. She warns the mermaid repeatedly about all the downsides of the spell the mermaid is asking for, going “Are you sure you want to do this?” each time. And then, at the end, she tells the mermaid that even if the mermaid goes through with all this, the Prince will not love her and the mermaid’s plan is doomed, and gives the mermaid one last chance to back out, which the mermaid refuses. The magics the sea witch sells are evil, but she sells them with no deception to people who get exactly the doom they asked for, demanded from her.
Ladyraxterinok
@StringOnAStick:
Years ago some blog had the Republican Jesu telling at the lowest and the fishes.
In that version when Jesus the boy with his meal—Jesus hold it up to the crowd and says see he came prepared remember and next time you come prepared as well. No miracle and no sharing whatever!!
prostratedragon
“Cucurrucucú Paloma,” Tomás Méndez; Juan Diego Flórez live
mrmoshpotato
@LeftCoastYankee:
Well put.
raven
@mrmoshpotato: When I came home I couldn’t live off campus because I was only 19 despite having served in combat zones for 2 years! I chose a private dorm because they had a pool and unlimited chow. I bet MY roommates would have committed seppuku if they had to hunker down with me!!!
satby
Big day today: oldest son and his partner, who I’ve called my daughter in law for 14 years, are making it official and getting married! Luckily, mother of the groom is a pretty limited role 😉
It’s going to be a happy day ending a roller-coaster week. 💖
Baud
@satby:
Congratulations!
ETA: Thanks, Biden!
raven
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Damn, hang in there. I had shingles on my forehead and in my eye and I feel your pain.
satby
@Baud: thanks! Went off to print some labels for the market today (yes, working a 1/2 day, mommy’s broke 😂) and my printer is out of ink. 😵 So, just going to roll with handwritten labels. Wedding is at 4, so I have plenty of time to do a few hours before leaving for Chicago around 12 their time. Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Gvg
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): well excuse me but if interest rates for things like mortgages are below 5% as they have been for years now, (that’s changing) and bank savings accounts are pathetic, well savings bonds are also going to be not worth much. You see it’s about competition. The government doesn’t need to offer higher rates to get people to loan them money. People want to loan them money because they are safe and reliable and there is a shortage of competition from good private investments. Savings bonds are not a government charity social program and the rates reflect what is going on in our society. A lot of the low returns and low sales actually men we aren’t spending enough on government projects like infrastructure. Repairing and replacing and upgrading cost money and if people won’t vote in enough legislators to do it for decades, the savings bond issues drop. It’s not the style of how they are issued, it’s how many are actually authorized to be sold to cover project costs.
The rates reflect the market demand which is low.
opiejeanne
@Gvg: Good explanation of The Way Things Work.
WaterGirl
@LiminalOwl: Yes! oops
WaterGirl
@Anotherlurker: I’m so sorry. Just awful.
SWMBO
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
If this is shingles, antibiotics won’t help much. You need Valtrex antiviral. That shit is miraculous. Take every 8 hours (not three times a day like with meals.) Every 8 hours. At about 7 1/2 hours you can feel it running out. Take with food.