It’s so nice to watch a movie that has a well-written script, addresses potential plot holes and deals with exposition intelligently.

The author, Thomas Wheeler, is a screenwriter by trade, and boy does it show. A trivial example: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle takes a ship to America in order to meet with H.P. Lovecraft. The chapter starting on his arrival is headed, yes in all caps, “TWO WEEKS LATER”. Now, this is something you have to do in a movie, where there’s no really good way to explain the scene shift unless you’re using a narrator. Same for the hero looking through the notebooks of a dead magician, and finding the kind of mysterious expository scribblings that, in a movie  are there to show the viewer what’s going on. In a book it’s ridiculous and reminds you that, yes, somebody is probably tilting this thing to be made into a movie.

Add in wooden dialogue, a frankly embarrassing portrayal of the lone female protagonist as a lonely sexpot, and a leaden Evil Conspiracy Opposed By A Good Conspiracy, and you’ll understand why I quit halfway through.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment or grease lightly.

1/4 cup loose darjeeling tea leaves
1/3 cup boiling water
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon rose flower water (optional)

Put the tea leaves in a mug and pour the boiling water over them. Allow them to steep, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Strain the tea through a fine strainer into another cup, pressing on the leaves to get as much liquid out as possible. Add the rose flower water to the tea.

Meanwhile, combine all the dry ingredients in the bowl of a mixer (you can also do this by hand, but it’s more work). Beat in the butter a few tablespoons at a time, incorporating it into the flour. Beat for another minute until the mixture is crumbly. Add the tea/rose water and beat for a minute or so until the dough comes together.

Pinch off a piece of dough about 1″ across (smaller than a ping-pong ball) and roll into a ball. Put it on the cookie sheet and flatten with your hand so it is a disc about 1/2″ thick. Repeat with the remaining dough until you have filled up the cookie sheet, leaving about an inch of space in between. On an average size cookie sheet you should be able to fit a dozen cookies.

Bake for 15-17 minutes until just firm but not brown. Remove from the cookie sheet immediately and put on a rack or plate to cool. Makes about 18.

Ōoku takes place in an alternate-history Japan where a plague that affects only men has wiped out a large chunk of the male population, so that the ratio of females to males is something like 4:1. Partly out of sheer numbers and partly to protect men (for example, from injury or accidental death) most jobs are done by women, including holding political position. The actual Ōoku of the title is the shogun’s harem, the shogun, of course, being a woman; and in a world where most women will never marry and have children by paying men to impregnate them, a harem is perhaps the ultimate “conspicuous consumption” and expression of the shogun’s power.

Really one of the most interesting things I’ve read in a while.

• “IANAL, but….”
• Anything describing how when you were a kid, [commonly accepted safety requirement] either didn’t exist or wasn’t used, and WE all turned out fine.
• Pretty much any sentence ending in “….and WE all turned out fine.”
• Support of tort-reform measures, unless you are a defense attorney or in some capacity employed by the Chamber of Commerce, PHRMA or the Republican Party, because at least then you’re getting paid for it.
• Any argument suggesting that matters of taste are actually matters of absolute truth. (“How can you not like strawberry ice cream? Strawberry ice cream is yummy!”)
• Statements about “religion” which make clear that you think “religion” is a synonym for “those annoying fundamentalist Christians who I had to deal with in the small town I grew up in”.
• A belief that any sexually explicit material, behavior or conversation is perfectly reasonable to have, display or wave around anywhere, anytime, because The Human Body Is Beautiful And Sex Is Natural. If you apply this standard to behavior that normal people would agree is sexual harassment, punch yourself in the mouth twice.
• Huffily stomping out of a discussion with a promise never to return. Yeah, that ever happens on the Internet.

I’m sure there’s more but your knuckles are probably split and bleeding as it is. We can pick up where we left off tomorrow.

And I absolutely want people who are stupid enough to believe that to keep their kids out of school that day. For every Wingnut, Jr. who doesn’t have the “work hard and do well” message reinforced, and who’s taught that education is a Commie plot, my kids have that much more of an edge. Rock on, wingnuts!

1957 Chevrolet 210

Samwise is baffled, probably because he grew up in the wrong part of Michigan and thinks we should get, I don’t know, a modern newish car with good gas mileage and crumple zones and that. He’s being a total dick about this. I mean, I’d settle for an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight or for a classic Cadillac!

In which Reality factors