Arguing Comics

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/2032/

Favell Lee Mortimer

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4698196

http://www.sitella.co.uk/sideline/diversions/rwt/index.html

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13011


This seemed like some practical joke at first but Ms. Favell Lee Mortimer was real. A super-religious Victorian woman, Mortimer wrote nasty, self-righteous travel guides (sampled in a new anthology called The Clumsiest People in Europe) and some jaw-dropping children's books:

"God is on high.
He can see you.
You will die. Men will die."

and

"Six lads got into a waggon to go to a cot far away.
The lads had a sister Nelly.
The lads had a sister Peggy.
The sisters go in the waggon.
Snow drops on the way.
The waggon cannot go on.
The sisters lie in the waggon.
The sisters are frozen. The sisters die. The lads do not die."

Those Victorians knew how to have a good time, eh?

Links

the history of the history of ideas

Tony Isabella's 100 things he likes about comics

Simpsons & math

European mystery writers

economics of movie advertising

Christgau on Billie Holiday and the grain of the voice

High Tension

Hey, I get to play cutting-edge cognoscenti and sniff that I saw the original untrimmed, undubbed version of this a year ago. Then again this film is completely worthless so maybe I should have just kept that to myself. Nearly all of it is a mindlessly routine, by-the-books slasher film with zero tension high or otherwise which is bad enough. But then it ends with such an unbelievably ridiculous twist ending that it shows nothing but contempt for the viewer. The problem isn't just how much a cheat the ending is but that sections of the film can't be made to fit it. Still, lots of horror film fans like it for reasons that I can't fathom, despite having read numerous postings trying to explain why.